I’m a bit partial to this trait being used in power builds, but if this is working for you then great.
So do you use omnomberry creams with this or rare veggie pizza?
I don’t see how ridiculing Anet for fixing a bug that affected all npcs is justifiable. The fix to Power Block was questionable, since we all thought it was pretty fun and useful without really being op. The fix to npc damage was necessary since no one likes being hit for high numbers by pets. Also being accidentally one-shot by Chieftan isn’t fun either. :<
Good job anet, mesmer was almost viable.
Because phantasms hitting harder than they should is going to make us viable.
If you think that a finisher and a few skins that some people might not have was ever meaningful progression, then I’m sorry but you need to reevaluate what that word means to you.
Skins are finishers are meaningful to me. It may not be meaningful to you – which is cool since no one will force you to chase then.
Different things motivate different people right?
It’s not that it was just meaningless to me. It was meaningless to a lot of people. That’s why the population dropped so much a couple months after launch, that’s why my friends stopped playing, and it’s also part of why a lot of competitive pvpers quit. The game hardly rewarded people that put a lot of time into it and therefore couldn’t keep people drawn in to play it.
I understand where you’re coming from, but being honest here you’re a minority of a minority. It’s not that what you are saying is necessarily wrong, but many other people wished for a better system than the previous one and I think this new system is a good step towards that.
You say you can also do 16k damage “instantly” while evading attaches AND stack multiple conditions in a 240 range AND build 19 might AND add more vulnerability for a daze AND have your auto attacks hit for up to 2.6k if your opponents make a mistake.
He never said he could do all of those things at the same time although it is possible to do a couple of them at the same time. Getting all of this to happen though isn’t as easy as you make it out to be. Since most people aren’t braindead.
Is all this massive damage and good stuff on 180 second cooldown? No?
60 seconds? No? 45 seconds? Nope?
Why would it be? Mesmers have to use multiple skills to set up high burst so why would it all be on such a long cooldown when this is supposed to be a fast paced game?
Can’t you also be stealthed, harder to target, and/or blink out of range too???
And other classes can’t possibly do this………
If a newbie gets penalized this bad for making a mistake and it can happen to them over and over and over….every 30 seconds at least…then I think you highlighted a big problem and, ironically, gave yourself the evidence of why you get those PMs.
You’re right. It’s a big problem that people don’t know what mesmer’s highly telegraphed skills do. Maybe if they are really having that much trouble they could, oh I don’t know, look it up? There’s so much information as to what our weaknesses are and how long our cooldowns are but people don’t know any of it out of pure ignorance. If I’m having trouble against a spec, I look up what makes it strong and then take advantage of its weaknesses. If you aren’t willing to do the same then don’t complain.
If you think that a finisher and a few skins that some people might not have was ever meaningful progression, then I’m sorry but you need to reevaluate what that word means to you. WvW was always the pvp type with the most progression, but I get that you didn’t like it because it’s more about zergs than individuals. This update has brought the closest thing to progression that this type of pvp can have and I think it’s a massive improvement over the old system. Also it leaves room for them to add new things for r80s and everyone inbetween.
Thanks for the post, it has some good info on it.
I’m sure since they added something like the Balthazar back piece, that they do understand that pvpers want items specific to spvp. So I think in the future they will add skins according to our wishes. Could be wishful thinking on my part, but hey I can be optimistic sometimes.
This build is actually pretty interesting. Also this is one of the rare instances where mirror images is a fine choice. Imo the dueling gm minor is one of our best traits for condi builds so I like that you went that far into dueling since most people don’t.
On-death and shatter styles can create somewhat of an identity crisis though.
OP – honestly not sure what that 7% damage modifier is going to do with such low base power. I wonder if an on-heal set would be better due to the 3 power returns. That said, you seem aware of this. With the might stacking, how hard are your mind wracks hitting for?
People keep saying this, but it’s not quite true. There is no perfect world where you get 3 clones up every time to shatter without the enemy destroying them. So having clone death traits isn’t bad at all, especially in a condi build where you don’t need that many specific traits so you have room to experiment.
Also I was under the impression that the damage modifier affects condis is that wrong?
This build is actually pretty interesting. Also this is one of the rare instances where mirror images is a fine choice. Imo the dueling gm minor is one of our best traits for condi builds so I like that you went that far into dueling since most people don’t.
Our class is just similar to thieves in that we crush inexperienced people. Coupled with the fact that people don’t like being confused and they don’t like losing. We’re actually not as strong as people think in 1v1 if the player knows how mesmers work. All of our tricks and burst have very obvious animations and are fairly easy to predict. People who have trouble with this are simply people who aren’t very good. Landing pretty much any hard hitting skill requires us to either be next to our opponent (which is risky for a light armor class) or for them to be caught off guard.
The build looks alright, just some minor tweaks and I think it would be a bit better. Imo going 6 into dueling is still one of the best ways to run a phantasm build. Even with no condition damage confusion procs can add up. Not to mention traited pistol is very strong. Traited greatsword is pretty good, but imo it’s better for builds that do more personal damage than phantasm. I know this is your main source of might to trigger the rune of strength, but have you considered using sigils of battle instead? It’s much more consistent might uptime at least, plus using both can get you quite a few stacks of it.
Just my thoughts.
Solo queue might give you some better luck. At least there you won’t be facing actual teams.
People also haven’t realized that with the Ferocity change crit damage in pvp on the zerker amulet actually got buffed. That’s why everything is hitting harder. It’s amazing that this happens and people complain but thieves have been backstabbing for 10k+ since always.
The crit damage just needs to be lowered again that’s all if you guys a really think it’s so bad.
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Ele is fine. Diamond skin just needs a bit of a change. Necros would be fine if they all weren’t running Nightmare runes. That’s what kind of makes them a bit ridiculous right now. The runes should be shaved though not necros. Also it’s Balthazar runes that need the nerf not engis.
Warlock got ninja buffed maybe? You can see in the log it hits you for 12k then 3k. So there had to be some difference between those two attacks.
So my question is this: what the heck is going on? Is PvP full of hostile raging people like this? I just don’t get it. Any advice on how to handle these people/scenarios?
All pvp has hostile raging people. Best way to deal with them is to ignore them. They can’t be reasoned with no matter how good you are, or how well you explain it to them.
If we’re talking about full rotations hitting people perfectly I would say ele but not by much.
I do see validity in Bountiful Disillusionment for alternate shatter builds, not everyone likes running PU, which is yes, a very powerful trait indeed, but requires you to be in stealth to reap the rewards, there isn’t anything wrong with that it is just I see PU as a defensive boon supply with defensive boons and BD as an offensive boon supply with offensive boons. Pdefender may offer retal but doesn’t sit well in a shatter build and requires you to place points in inspiration. PU & BD are for two different playstyles in my opinion.
Just saying, using this trait for shatter damage isn’t good, and as long as IP is a trait it never will be good. Yeah I agree, they are different playstyles, but our defensive trait is much better than this offensive one. To be honest it would have been better if they had switched the Mind Wrack and CoF boons. Then it would have actually made sense and actually be a possible trait in a good boon sharing build. Even having fury on Mind Wrack would make the trait more desirable. I’m not completely dismissing it, but as it is now there are better options for us.
@Mystogan
Sorry to say man but you’re wrong. It’s a 2 3/4 second immobilize with possibly 4 seconds of blind or 2 3/4 seconds of chill. It’s super good no matter how you look at it and people will have to blow significant cooldowns to get out of it which is always a win. Only thief and warrior with dogged march don’t have to do this, and thief doesn’t always have the option.
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I like how you didn’t even mention the inspiration trait lol. I’ve tried to think good thoughts about the new traits, but honestly the only good one is maim. Power block was good, when bugged, but as it is now I only see benefits for it if you interrupt the same person multiple times and not for interrupting multiple people. Also since it has almost 0 use against thieves you’re better off using CI.
I’ve said it already, but Bountiful Disillusionment is a lackluster trait. You can get more retaliation uptime using pDefender, more reliable regen from the inspiration master minor. Pretty much the only reason to use it is because it does give a decent amount of might, and pretty much our only source of fury. To which I say, there are better classes to do that so why not just give defensive boons instead? We are easily one of the best in protection/aegis uptime so using PU to boon share seems like a much better idea. Some people like to run sub – optimal builds though so I can see how BD can still appeal.
I’m not trying to be negative, I’m being realistic. I’m mostly a pvper and there is no room for impractical builds there if you want to win. So can the traits be useful? In certain situations yes. That doesn’t make them good though.
tl;dr
Just saying though you won’t find much sympathy here for thieves.
I always thought tdm fit this game better. There is definitely good team play in tdm. Not everything needs to be annihilation to be competitive. To me this game has pretty fast paced gameplay and with the absence of true support/healer classes annihilation literally leaves no room for error in group fights. You could say that involves skill but all it really means is that each group will find the squishest person on the opposing team and focus them down relentlessly while the opposing team does the same. Which pushes out glassy builds and makes everyone try to bunker. The community has been pretty against that archetype from the beginning so I doubt they would want that. Tdm leaves a little more room for error and makes it so that you at least have a choice in your builds. It’s also a more newb friendly mode that people can actually practice in, instead of being instagibbed and waiting 5mins for the next round. Just my opinion.
Also, it’s pretty easy to stop spawn camping. You just make multiple ways to leave the spawning area, Anet figured that one out on their own.
BD doesn’t offer the same survivability that PU does, also there are better ways to get the boons that BD gives you. Overall it’s a useless trait that doesn’t add anything significant to your build for the points invested.
Yeah this game has build issues, but no more than other mmos. Also it has more diversity than most.
You can’t get an interrupt through stability anyway.. I agree with all of these except the auto attack thing. It just completely annihilates many high skillcap builds.
High skill cap builds that rely on aa? You mean s/d ele? Other then that no other class relies so much on aa. Maybe sb ranger and condi warrior.
2- Power block can stop players from ressing for 10 seconds if interrupted while ressing WHICH mean if any1 dies and you get interrupted by a mesmer than there is no chance of that player getting back up.
I though it was fixed at last patch.
OP didn’t read the notes yet.
We knew it was coming, I don’t see why anyone is surprised. I’m hardly upset even. Chalk it up as another nice thing we had that Anet took away.
You seriously overestimate the amount of abilities in this game that have cast times. A person in the mesmer forums dedicated some time to make a pretty comprehensive list here. Interrupts sound good on paper, and I find it to be a fun playstyle but they are simply a faded shadow of GW1 mesmers. There aren’t that many game changing abilities you can interrupt to begin with, and out of the ones you can interrupt, half of them have 1/4 second cast times or very hard to read animations. You say interrupting heals is important, but there are only 3 professions that use heals with clearly interruptable cast times normally. The only thing that even makes interrupting worth it are the traits. Since immobilizing can be a big deal, putting stomps/rezzes/AA’s on cd is very useful and being able to do a little more damage for nailing an interrupt can feel rewarding. Although we don’t really have a way to “spam” interrupts like you’ve stated there are ways for us to chain interrupt people. You should also be aware that once most of those are used they go on a considerable cooldown the lowest being our daze mantra with its minimum 2 charges that you can use consecutively every 5 seconds. Although they have a 32sec cooldown once they’re used.
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That’s why I said stop giving ME skill points. I expect people to know how to read. You should have a choice of stuff you want . PvE players can farm for a specific thing and in PvP you play and get random stuff that you probably don’t need.
A choice of what? What else do you want them to give you? There is literally nothing else to give in spvp you have max stats and whatever gear you want. Will they create more rewards? Eventually. Though complaining about that 3 days after the update seems a bit premature.
Also just a little fyi they did a discussion on what kind of rewards people wanted and this is what we asked for. Sorry Anet couldn’t cater it to your desires though.
Well if that is the way you want to operate that is well within your rights (assuming you don’t break the ToS in your flaming speech).
I’m simply pointing out that I should never see a thread from some sPvP person that “has been loyal to this dying format since launch” crying about how the game mode is dying. If you want to be toxic and claim it is inevitable, go for it. Your game mode will get no dev attention (because you guys can’t support the dev time with your sparse gem store purchases on your own), and it will die. You are drowning yourselves and asking for more rocks to help the sinking process. Hope your ability to attack random people on the internet was worth it.
You assume a bit too much there bud. I try to help people that want it, but the fact is that most people don’t. So do I get frustrated when my team is fighting over stillness for almost 5 mins while they have us 3 capped and I’ve told them repeatedly to try to fight on points? Yeah. It also might result in me venting that frustration at the end of the match. I’m only human, I can only take so much frustration at a time.
Also the population didn’t start off low. It dropped dramatically over the course of a few updates because Anet showed that they cared very little for what the community wanted/needed and the fact that it takes them much too long to fix broken things. It started off fine with loads of potential and declined rapidly, that’s why pvpers complain.
Also developers should care immensely about every feature their game has. Period. It doesn’t matter which part makes you the most money if you created the entire thing. It’s called having pride in your work. That’s not a shot at Anet btw, just a blanket statement.
This was an inevitable thing. If you didn’t know, pretty much every game that involves pvp has a rather toxic community. I’ve never played a game that doesn’t. You will also never find a game (that has at least a few thousand players) that doesn’t have people like this. It’s a part of being on the internet. People on the internet typically aren’t nice. Thinking that they will be is naive. I wouldn’t even consider myself a nice person and it takes a lot for me to bad mouth my team. This isn’t really an issue at all, people need to grow a thicker skin if they’re going to step into pvping because most pvpers are some of the most trolly, rage-happy, toxic people on the internet.
You know that if you ever want to craft a legendary you need at least 200 skill points right? It might not matter to you but part of the changes were to make all items available to pvpers which includes mats, skill points, and tomes. Just because you don’t want it doesn’t mean other people dont.
I agree that it would be a super underwhelming trait once it gets hotfixed. I’m all for keeping it how it is so that it at least has a place among our very few high level builds, but I doubt A.net is.
The reason why I suggested this is for specific changes to shatter mesmers. It is great in bursting but hard to sustain damage compares to other builds. Especially when sustain damage become essential following ferocity. Each burst has a long gap of 11.5s and we’re usually down to one phantasm, few weapon skills and auto-attack to sustain it, leaving so much space for opponent to fully recover. Hardly an ideal situation when looking at other builds and professions. It is sad to see power shatter limited to squishy opponents just like us and hard to counter condition tanks and high regen opponents, both of which is quite frequent in WvW.
While phantasm builds get buffed and PU build remained as powerful as before, it’s hard to uplevel shatter and encourage players to play it.
I mean that’s how burst classes work though. You do your burst then pressure with phantasms and weapon skills. You’re not going to tell me that blurred frenzy, pistol phantasm, Zerker phantasm, sword phantasm, or mirror blade don’t do enough damage to pressure someone after we burst. I’m not saying it’s easy, but playing shatter hasn’t been easy for a long time.
Also I don’t recall phantasm builds getting any kind of buff. The only thing we got that could be considered a buff is to our condition shatter builds.
You won’t find many. I’ll start with that. Some of them stopped playing while the others just post videos every once in a while. Supcutie, Sensotix, and Lord Helseth are the ones I would recommend. They all play shatter mesmer almost exclusively. Only recently have we heard of a 4/4/6 lockdown build being viable in top tier play, which is a good thing though. I don’t know any other super skilled spvp mesmers with YouTube channels, but you could check out some of the past ESL weekly tournaments to see how some others play mesmer.
This is the build I used before the changes happened. It just needed a couple extra conditions to make it truly viable and this trait did that. I haven’t tried it since the patch because I’m still obsessed with power shatter atm, but if I ever switch to a condi build this would be my first choice.
@NICENIKESHOE
I think clone death traits are very complimentary to shatter builds actually, because you are never going to be able to shatter all your clones with none of them being destroyed 100% of the time. The only problem is that for power shatter you need specific traits for it to do good damage or for it to be useful in a group setting. With condition shatter it opens up options for clone death traits that can have a pretty big influence on fights.
GS/Staff is a more defensive take on a shatter build. People usually get Halting Strike with it to compensate from the overall loss of burst from using staff. The reason people started running it was actually to survive longer against thieves and warriors.
The staff is much more than just a defensive weapon. It provides fantastic mobility if you know the phase retreat spots
There aren’t nearly as many of those as there used to be, at least from what I’ve tested. Also mobility can be used offensively yes, but for the most part phase retreat is a defensive skill.
Countless runs an decent phantasm signet build. Imo that’s the only way signet builds are viable. I have no idea what the build was though. I just know it had blurred inscriptions.
The power block things being non-intentional kind of took the wind out of my sails. Critical Infusion nerf hits wvw mesmers harder than it does spvp I feel, but it by no means makes shatter impossible to run. It just makes it harder for us (like it wasn’t already).
GS/Staff is a more defensive take on a shatter build. People usually get Halting Strike with it to compensate from the overall loss of burst from using staff. The reason people started running it was actually to survive longer against thieves and warriors.
I do think power shatter needs some help. With the vigor nerf and ferocity, power shatter mesmer is taking a lot of hits with no compensation. Perhaps move vigorous revelation from inspiration to illusions, since shatter works horrible in that trait line and there isn’t a must have major adept trait in illusions. Perhaps swap that to confounding power since confounding power can form better synergy with phantasm builds.
Just saying, the vigor and ferocity changes hit all classes not just us. Of course shatter mesmers feel it pretty good, but I’ve hardly had a problem bursting people in the past and I doubt this will be the difference. The whole point of them changing Critical Infusion was so that we wouldn’t have access to permanent uptime of vigor without really giving anything up for it stats wise. So switching Compounding Power and Vigorous Revelation would completely defeat the purpose of this nerf. There isn’t much you can really change about power shatter builds without making them more powerful than they should be. They still do good burst to squishy people, and mediocre burst to tanky ones. I’m not sure what else could be done to make us better without breaking something else.
This trait is so much better than I thought it would be. Definitely competes with CI and doesn’t completely kill the 6/2/6 build now.
I know how to fight a mesmer…but it’s getting lamer and lamer…you don’t know what to expect anymore…moa-cd’s on AA’s now from what I read than it’s invibility…thing is; and this can’t be denied…the mesmer has too diverse and way OP utilty and now elite skills/traits compared to all other classes…now that’s ok…but be honest something needs to be nerved bigtime…I suggest either range or damage…again stop your sharade and hiding behnd “just cause u don’t know…”
Seeing as how I’m 100% positive you’re just not a good player maybe you should just make a mesmer and test out how op we are. Until you do that you’re just a supremely ignorant person that’s cluttering this thread with terribly inaccurate complaints.
Lol, this needs to be fixed ofcourse…CD’S on AA’s is just pathetic…also the mesmer just became viable somone said…dude, get real: The mesmer is the MOST OP class in game and far FAR more superior than a warrior…invisibilty-teleport-clones-Moa morph … and insane damage spam and not even having to know where your foe is….cause it’s all autotargeting ranged spam…mesmer needs either a nerf in damage or range…of at least 33%…. hush…you all know it’s true
Just because you don’t know how to fight a mesmer doesn’t mean we’re op. Players at the highest level hardly consider mesmer viable for a good reason. We do everything thieves do but worse. Please troll a different subforum because your arguments will never have any validity here.
You people are out of your kittening minds. If you’re using Mantras on a Mesmer, you’re playing the class wrong. Mantras blow, they always have and they always will. I can’t believe the amount of people in here freaking out over a freakin’ MANTRA change. Do yourselves a favor, go with a 10/30/0/0/30 max DPS shatter build and thank me later.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s actually hilarious.
Also it’s not like finding games is actually that hard.
Are you having a laugh? Have you tried clicking play now at all? Nothing… All games are full. Selecting a server you find yourself in a crowd of 10 people watching 10 others play the game while you sit there doing kitten all.
Joining a server with space, you find yourself randomly kicked by whoever owns the arena. I say again. This is nonsense.
I’ve been pvping on multiple servers the past couple days and finding a hot join server to play in is actually extremely easy. Clicking “Play Now” has never brought me to a game that I wanted to play in and I doubt it ever will. Unless you’re on the lowest pop server in this game I don’t see how you can’t find a game that’s not full. There are plenty of public servers to choose from I promise.
8v8 is so inaccurate as to how you’re supposed to play the game and made it so that new people have no idea how to do actual 5v5s when they solo queue.
It’s much better off just being an extra thing for hot joins rather than the main mode that it used to be. Also it’s not like finding games is actually that hard.
I think thieves forgot that this move was meant to be a gap creator and not an “evade all damage” move.
Gonna repost another explanation from similiar thread
"
.ronpierce.2760:
They did what needed to be done. If you use it properly without spamming it, aka using it to dodge an attack rather than avoid all possible incoming attacks) and watch other people’s attack movements, they won’t b hitting you in that .3 second gap becuase they’d be missing with their attack you evaded, and by time they got off a new attack that .3 sec frame would be over. Just adapt and use the ability a little better now and it’ll work just as well as ever. In teams, evades already scaled too well against numbers of people, of you’re being swung at by 5 guys so e of those hits should land. Sorry you can’t perma evade against an entire Zerg anymore.
Welcome to everyone else’s world. :T"
Except, u know, all the instant stuff, ds fear for necro, mesmer daze, anything another thief does, ele air spikes, offguard meditation burst, hell even an auto attack from engi can kitten you easily with the burn proc being so strong now ( any thief can confirm how hard it is to win vs bomb/nade engi), in meele even a hambow could initiate a stuncombo via hammer 4 and you’d be dead. You are not considering the fact that evasion is the primary way of surviving as thief. I agree that shortbow 3 needed a nerf, but this is not solving the problem, just shifting it.
Evasion shouldn’t be the primary way of surviving. Good positioning should. Why does every other GC have to worry about where they are in a fight but thief can be like “it’s ok I have evades”. I get that it’s their mechanic to get out of bad situations, but that’s not all it was being used for.
I’ve seen thieves troll soloq by just sitting on a capped point and evading for 20 seconds until their team comes to help while 2 people sit there and try to dps him down. It’s not fun to play against and there was no way to stop it if the thief builds for it.