Guild Wars 2

Remind me of anything I missed, I will keep adding stuff as I go

Tooltips:
They are horrible. Take every tooltip with a grain of salt. Cooldowns do not update correctly. Damage does not update correctly. Durations do not update correctly. There are typos, poor vocabulary, etc. etc.

Illusions vs. Phantasms vs. Clones:
Both count as illusions.
Phantasms are beefier, high damage illusions.
Clones are throw away illusions that essentially do no damage. Their conditions still do full damage however.

Death vs. Shatter:
Death refers to when an illusion is killed or replaced by a new one.
Death is not a form of shattering and shattering does not count as death.

Condition Duration:
Your condition duration attributes do not apply in any way to your illusions and phantasms, nor does it apply to sigils.

Sigils and Runes:
Sigils only appear to apply to summoned phantasms when placed on the weapon that summoned them.
+5% damage will apply to the iDuelist if placed on the pistol.
Bear in mind that sigils share a GLOBAL cooldown, if ANY of your sigils are on cooldown, then every sigil with a cooldown will also be on cooldown and will not activate.

Many sigils and runes that give you effects do not carry over at all to your clones and phantasms. These include bleed duration, effects on crit, extra bounces on bounce attacks, and more.

Instants:
Instants can be cast no matter what you are doing, and some will not interrupt what you are doing. These include
All of your shatters, Staff 2, Decoy, Mantras.
The shatters are important to note because you can trigger them during a roll, or while you are reviving or channeling a skill, notably F4 to turn yourself invulnerable and immune to disruption.

Note that because of this, you can trigger (instant) a mantra while you are chanelling not instant) a different mantra.

Pistol Skill Bonus Range:
See the reference, bonus range is on the right:
http://i.imgur.com/GtxIX.jpg

Debilitating Dissipation:
In an AoE this will grant one of the following on clone death only:
3xWeakness (5s)
3xBleeding (5s)
Weakness (3s)

Crippling Dissipation:
3xCripple, stacks in duration

Phantasmal Haste:
This only changes the rate at which your phantasms attack, not the cooldowns for their summoning.

Boons and Conditions vs. Effects
Effects refers to all buffs and debuffs of which Boons and Conditions are a subset. Check the wiki for the complete list but any orange or red icon shaped like a school crossing sign is a boon or condition respectively. In general, skills can only effect boons and conditions, and other than that effects are untouchable.

Examples of effects we can provide that aren’t conditions: Swiftness, Chaos Armor and Daze

Deceptive Evasion
You must be actively in combat mode to trigger this ability, but you do not have to actually mitigate any damage or avoid a skill, just rolling will work. It seems this ability is slightly buggy so if you are starting out a fight try to use a targeted skill first to ensure you are in combat mode.

more to come
Throw any and all mechanics questions at me

What else are you expecting it to do besides damage…

I guess I’ll just shill my guide

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Dungeon-Builds-With-Tips-and-Tricks/first#post58449

If you’re only worried about tagging creeps in a zerg just grab power and tag them with crappy AoE. I don’t find zerging to be interesting at all.

Counters drop decimals

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

I will updated/add/re-write this as necessary, please leave your tips/comments/suggestions etc.

Purpose

A fun, active build with an option to sit back and pump out DPS close to a full DPS build without sacrificing utility.

Weapons
Staff + Scepter/Pistol

Traits

Domination: V
Dueling: II X IX
Illusions: III VIII X

http://i.imgur.com/bEFBn.png

Swap out Power V for Power III if you know you have a really easy boss coming up

The highlights here are 30% critical damage, 300 condition damage and precision, and all those juicy shatter buffs and free clones.

Slot Skills:

There is no right answer here and you can swap them out between every fight. Utility skills are not part of a build in dungeons, they are supplemental. I will explain what compliments the build later. Picking utility skills and never changing them is a mistake.

Sigils to Consider:

Energy, Frailty, Corruption, Perception, Stamina, Speed

See the write up for this, sigils are more confusing than they seem.

Runes to Consider:

I still have to do the math on this but some promising sets are
Eagle (4/6)
Ranger (4/6)
Thief (4/6)
Lyssa (2/6)

Note that these are all budget runes.

*Equipment: *
Until I see something with Precision, Critical Damage, and Condition Damage, the choice is
Rampager’s (Power, Precision, Condition Damage)
That’s 6 items plus 5 pieces of Jewerly, straight across the board.

Ok, that is the build, now onto the tips and comments.

Shattering

Shattering is critical to playing the mesmer correctly. This build offers 30% faster shatters, confusion on shatter, might on shatter, etc.

You have 4 shatters, you already know what they are but there are some crucial things to remember.

F1 and F2 are your damage shatters. The F1->F2->F1 combo is your bread and butter. This combo shatters 9 clones in around 10 seconds. Beyond a lot of damage, that’s 9 free might stacks and 12 confusion stacks total (not all at once.)

Now you can roll F1->F2->F1->F3->F1 repeat which will have you constantly shattering clones, but I don’t consider this a great idea.

F3 and F4 are your fantastic shatters and they have a ton of tricks.

F3 can daze entire groups of enemies if you spread out your clones, 1 target for as long as your clones are hitting him +1 second after that, OR suck 3 stacks of defiant off of a boss all at once. So good.

F4 is also amazing, 3 seconds of pocket invulnerability? God yes.

These shatters are fantastic and this build gets to use them to nearly their full extent with the dodge clones and scepter.

I haven’t even mentioned the best part:
The shatters are instants

That means you can use them whenever you want, no matter what.
Reviving a downed player and you’re about to take a ton of damage or get interrupted? Nah, invuln yourself for 3 seconds without skipping a beat.

The other critical piece of timing is to roll a split second before shattering if you have 2 clones, you crap out a 3rd for the shatter. You rarely have to shatter with just 2 illusions and there is no excuse for shattering with just one unless you are desperate for an F3 or F4.

More to come later when I edit this post. Feel free to share your comments but keep in mind that I made a lot of decisions based on testing which resulted in some seemingly obvious choices being left out.

But Rhyno, this build has no survivability.

Yes it does. The mesmer does not synergize well with armor and vitality. He synergizes with his clones, who can cripple, daze, draw aggro, turn him invulnerable, etc. More clones = more survivability. Also more dodging = more survivability, AND more clones. That’s why Vigor and energy sigils are so sexy.

But Rhyno, why no +condition durations

That stat does not transfer to clones, or conditions from sigils. That’s why you don’t see condition sigils or runes.

Pistol Range Reference – Traited range on the right

http://i.imgur.com/YEoqI.jpg

Slot Skill tricks and options
Single Target Stun City – Signet of Domination / Mantra of Distraction / F3 = 3 sources of hard CC totaling 6 individual applications.

Trivialize Traps – Blink / Veil / Portal Entre lets you blow by skippable segments while bringing your entire team through after you

Arcane Thievery / Signet of Inspiration is a cute combo but the cooldowns are too long for them to be practical I’ve found

The rest of your utility skills allow you to mix and match condition control and survivability.

Never underestimate Null Field and Feedback.