Guild Wars 2

By default, you want 3 clones up at all times. Like Carighan said, you can maintain nearly 25 stacks of bleeds at all times, and you apply them so quickly with 3 clones up that cleansing it does barely anything at all. Even with little condition damage, it’s still quite powerful, and the boons you get will be glorious.

If you are condition specced: Once you get those clones up, you spam your blind and retaliation (trident #2 and #3) along with your trident #5 for some CC when needed. Shatter whenever you have the ability to very quickly make 3 more clones (Mirror Images, full endurance if you have Deceptive Evasion, #3 makes a clone, etc.). Use the iWhaler phantasm if you need shatter fodder, can’t make a 3rd clone yet, or another person with you can generate bleeds.

The clones are generally better. But since you can hit the bleed cap yourself, if another person generates bleeds, then your bleeds may become redundant. Adding in some confusion instead of extra bleeds will allow for more overall group damage.

Overall, you aren’t looking to spike them down. You are putting up sustainable damage to win by attrition. Kite, avoid as much damage as possible, and keep the clones firing until it wears them down. Also, it would be wise to use Arcane Thievery underwater- we don’t have as much access to boon-hate as on ground, so a well-timed Arcane can make all the difference.

I don’t have much experience with power based builds underwater, but I would assume you would do a standard shatter-spike, with trident clones for sustained dps in-between shatters:

Set up clones for bleeds → Shatter (Mind Wrack if you can get it to recharge, otherwise Cry of Frustration) → Evade (for a clone) → Spear #5 for CC→ Spear #3/phantasm → Spear #2 → Spear #2 again to return to location → Mind Wrack → Set up clones for bleeds until you can spike again.

Most classes have what feels like “incomplete” weapons underwater. They may not engage you simply because underwater combat was an afterthought in this game, and certainly not balanced for pvp.

They might also have bad memories of when mesmer clones caused confusion on autoattack when underwater. Back then, 1v3ing was not only possible, it was easy.

Iruwen.3164:

Wtf? That’s not even a targetable object.

I like to think you accidentally stumbled on a way to find invisible devs who are spying on the botting/hacking communities.

Jyeoi.6027:

Wanted to say this last week but if [AGG] is the best ya got DB.

You are not prepared.

k.

Shaojack.3871:

Ya people get a little wound and vent in the forums.
Just recognize that person represents only their own opinion and not the server’s.
If it is a complete flame post, simply report it. It’ll go away and you can feel better because you saved a few people some brain cells.

But you can never get your time back, nor your brain cells. Ever.

T1 threads are where dreams go to die.

Esplen.3940:

cyyrix.6105:

- Into the Void – Flashes yellow warning message across opponents’ screen for two seconds prior to activation. Must satisfy thief forum qq’ing.

Also added a two second delay before it pulls so the flashing yellow warning will be able to properly warn players.

Further added a two second delay so that a flashing red warning will ask, “Are you sure you don’t want to avoid this pull?”

Strippling.3524:

Actually [Agg] have been wiped many times so far this match up by BG guilds and by JQ guilds. Not putting Agg down, they are definitely very good at what they do, but there are also many other guilds that are excellent too.

By coming into our forum and stating “I’m guessing that that fight did not go so well for JQ” is only bait for flaming and QQs. There is already enough of that in this forums and it’s disgusting. So I kindly ask that you don’t write posts in our thread that will fuel the fire of hate even further in this match up… especially considering you aren’t even in this match up.

Thanks for the fights today TW, a lot of fun had.

Oh, quit being so uptight. JQ wasn’t being put down- in guild groups vs militia groups (the guild tags from the JQ zerg look very diverse), the guild group nearly always has the upper hand. There’s no shame in being wiped like that.

LIVING IN A LONELY WORLD, TOOK THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN GOING ANYWHERE.

Traits

• Deceptive Evasion: This has always been a very powerful, almost mandatory, trait. Therefore, in order to make other traits more appealing, we are applying a 10 second internal cooldown.
• Illusionist’s Celerity: Fixed a bug that allowed this trait to stack with other cooldown-reducing traits.
• Blinding Befuddlement: This trait in was extremely powerful in large-scale combat in WvW, and was actually causing all servers to delete any non-mesmer characters they had so that they could run it at least 5 times at once. However, we may have been too harsh with the previous change to this trait, so we will be reverting the internal cooldown, but giving it only a 0.1% chance to proc. Fear not though, for each Black Lion Chest you opened within the last hour will give you an additional 0.1% chance.

Fuzzion.2504:

Nicely put.

DB has been begging to get into T1 for 6 weeks now. Santa Anet granted them their wish.

I’ve begun to think of you as the creepy stalker ex who stares into DB’s windows at night, with a blank look and a kitchen knife in hand.

Ironically, I used to run that exact stat combo back when I ran condition builds. It’s a really good setup, and you can port it directly over to WvW without trait changes. Granted, it isn’t as effective anymore due to the confusion nerf, but you can still make it work if you really want :P

Let’s see…

• Scepter #1 does not cause confusion.
• Duelist’s Discipline also gives the iDuelist a 100% projectile finisher chance. For example, if there is an etheral field, and the iDuelist uses his attack when this trait is active, each hit will cause confusion.
• All glamour skills show the duration as if you took the 20% longer duration trait.
• Using a shatter (without Illusionary Persona) with no illusions will cause a 4 second recharge instead.
• Shattering via Illusionary Persona will activate Illusionary Retribution (all shatters cause confusion), but will not activate Shattered Strength (shattering gives a stack of might per illusion).
• Staff #4, upon activation, will instantly give you protection.
• Staff #2 is instant cast, and so it can be used during stuns, knockdowns, immobilize, etc. However, you will still be under the effects of the stun/knockdown/immobilize, just in a different location.

Those are all that I can think of for now. Sorry for not separating them into categories.

saiyr.3071:

CHIPS.6018:

I never would have imagined that the gap between tier 2 and tier 3 is that huge. Whoa…

DB beat us by a pretty wide margin before they got all of their transfers… o_O

To be fair though, it definitely seemed like your militia was really demoralized by that point. Having the same opponents for a few weeks, especially when our SEA population is tier 2+, takes it’s toll.

Vi Au.8341:

we will be GvGing Agg tonight. all are welcome to watch. and best of luck to Agg

Where and when?

Mister Mustard.7203:

It looked like Mag jumped to DBBL and took a big chunk of it, hence the low PPT in the prior screenshot.

When we only had our keep in EBG we actually were still leading PPT until the very end.

I had a blast defending that keep in EBG, it was pretty hectic with some giant zergs from both sides. I thought the push SBI had when they first broke their wall was going to be our doom, and it probably would have if Mag had been able to get inside a little quicker.

And yes, when both servers are coming in opposing walls in your keep, if you hold it you did just fine.

It’s weird though, I checked the PPT a few times, and I saw at most 1 keep taken, and never expanded beyond that… it was more like we had no people in our BL and the Maggy Pies just logged. Maybe I just looked at the score at exactly the wrong time haha

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I can’t discuss with you because you compare apples to oranges. You absolutely lost me there in the “Necros have the same DPS” comment, and lost me even further when you seem to believe that Blurred Frenzy isn’t as good as Hundred Blades… There literally is no downside to Blurred Frenzy.

I looked at the weapon damage on the skill tooltips, and multiplied by cast time. If mesmer AA and necro AA scales the same with the same amount of power (which I explained in the post) then their AA dps after a burst is about the same. Not hard to understand.

The downside to Blurred Frenzy is that you cannot move. Is it good? Yes. It is. I’m not denying that Blurred Frenzy is good- it just isn’t the god-mode ROFLSTOMP ALL THE NUBS skill you seem to think it is.

I’m also quite interested in you quoting what I said that made you think Blurred Frenzy isn’t as good as Hundred Blades. Please, quote it for me, because I even re-read everything I typed and nothing even comes close to that insinuation.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Hammer has alot of CC, yes. BUT IT CANNOT BURST. You’re comparing that to Mesmer S/P? You have everything you could possibly need jam packed into a single weapon set. Don’t try to compare classes to a Mesmer, you cannot. Mesmer can do everything another class could do, better.

That’s why there’s weapon swaps… you CC them, then switch to GS and burst. And I never compared them, where the heck are you getting that from? All I said was that most classes do not require their utilities for their burst.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mesmer, again, has everything they possibly need in their weapon sets, and their Class mechanic. Every other class in the game save Ranger, need utilities to deal damage, or set up damage. All of the setups and damage are ALREADY aligned with their Mechanic/Weapon. That’s an enormous advantage over most other classes immediately, as it becomes far more consistent.

Again, the only thing you need to burst someone is to CC them, and then do damage. Most classes and builds have CC on the weapon sets themselves. Classes rely on their utilities for survival to different extents, but you seem to have this misconception that every class is a cripple without their utilities except mesmer… and that’s just not true. Mesmer relies on their utilities to safely do their burst as much as any other class.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I didn’t say the DPS glass Staff Ele build was bad, I said that you wouldn’t be able to use it. Mesmer is far more effective, and far more tougher than said Ele build, despite trying to accomplish the same things.

Once again, go play a 5v5 tournament against a team that built their core around 2-3 Mesmers. Try fighting a Mid point being bombarded by shatters.

I’m not saying Mesmer is OP because I fail to kill them, I’m saying they’re OP compared to every other class in the game save only Ranger which is equally strong. The things a Mesmer can do vs the things other classes can do.

Of course it wouldn’t work,glass cannon staff ele is for large-scale combat. It isn’t designed for 1v1, 2v2, etc. combat because it is mostly aoe effects with very little mobility to help with survival. The fact that you interpreted “terrible small-scale build” as “terrible build” is really making me start regretting even posting in this thread.

IBountyHunterI.4601:

DB native here, not liking the DB 2.0…

We need to learn to communicate better, EBG was a mess tonight.

From my point of view, I thought we did fine. I got on when SeaBear and Maggy Pie were pushing our 1/3 together, and got us down to just our keep. They kept pushing, one after the other (think there was one push where they clashed, but for the most part, one would wait for the other to wipe before pushing). After 4 or 5 wipes, including a fight in our keep with lag to rival 3-way SM combat, we were able to start taking supply camps.

Maggy Pie’s population seemed to disappear after a few wipes, and we started taking back our towers. As of this moment, we just regained our 1/3, without losing our WPed keep.

Granted, I couldn’t see what happened before then, but we did just fine while I was there.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Guess what, Necromancer has the most severe drop after a burst. Try using a Wellmancer, after your Wells are gone you have virtually nothing but light Dagger attacks. Necromancer Wells are on a 45 second cooldown, 38 seconds IF you trait for it (Involving 20 points into Blood Magic, where you don’t want it to be)

Plus if you build specifically for Deathshroud, your DS autoattack damage goes down immensely based on how much Deathshroud you have left. How neat is that?

I don’t have a necro to try this out with, but going off the damage listed on tooltips (granted, this assumes that all autoattacks scale approximately the same with power), necro dps is actually about the same. All necro MH weapon autoattacks (and even the deathshroud AA) do more than mesmer sword AA, so with skill activation speed considered (and the fact that necro are ranged attacks) necro and mesmer have approximately equal dps.

Would be interested in testing that, however.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

So? It still makes him invulnerable for the duration.

If you ignore the downsides of using a skill, of course you can make it seem OP. Using that logic, deathshroud is massively OP- you can get a ton more health out of nowhere, and I can’t blind/interrupt/daze/counter it whatsoever. You need life force for it? So what? You still get a ton more health and there’s nothing I can do about it.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Warrior requires utilities to set up a burst. Thieves require utilities to survive after their burst or to aid it. Engineer actually needs their utilities for a burst AND surviving afterwards. Necromancers need their utilities for literally everything and have to build around them. Elementalists need their utilities just to survive long enough to achieve a burst.

Warriors have CC on their weapon skills (hammer has a ton of CC, for example). Thieves have CC on their elite, stealth on their weapon skills, and shadowstepping on their weapons/class mechanic. Engineer also has some CC on their kit skills, and to some extent, some on their weapon skills (though from what I understand, those aren’t often used). D/D Eles have CC on their offhands (staff eles aren’t used except in large scale battles, which I assume you aren’t worried about). None of these classes/builds need utilities to set up burst. They can help make it a bit more likely to hit, but they aren’t necessary.

Well necros might be the only ones who actually require utilities to do their burst (because the wells themselves are utilities), but pretty much every other class doesn’t require utilities to do a burst. They are used to survive between and during the burst. Why you say “mesmer doesn’t need utilities” as a reason they are OP is beyond me.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Guess what, I dare you to go play an glass cannon DPS Staff Elementalist, with only 14k vitality and 0 toughness. I double dare you. Can’t do it? Guess what, even the glassiest of Mesmers are incredibly hard to kill. They have invulnerability, they have invisibility, they have loads of CC, and even half stun breakers on weapons. How in the name of hell do you find that bloody balanced?

Yes, let’s all go play a terrible small-scale build and use that as the poster child of why a build in another class that focuses completely on small-scale battle is imbalanced.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

1v1.

Try paying attention to that in a 3v3. Against 2 of them, and possibly a Thief.

That’s an issue with battlefield awareness, not with shatters.

Also, more people = more aoes being used. More aoes = clones/phantasms die off a lot easier, and clones from Deceptive Evasion are far more likely to target different players (at which point you are slapping two or three people, rather than punching one in the face).

Also, just for the record, where are we talking about mesmers being imbalanced? In 1v1? 2v2? 3v3? large-scale 20v20? I’d appreciate it if we picked a format to discuss and stick with that only.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

See above.

See above.

What armor are you using? If you’re using rabid, you really should run a build more like 0/20/25/0/25. It gives you more clones to work with (meaning you always have 3 illusions up), and more importantly, gives your illusions the ability to cause bleeds on crit. Significantly more bleeds = better than slightly more condition damage. The extra crit damage will also slightly help our your iWarlock hit harder, especially vs objects.

In fact, I doubt you produce enough conditions to begin with for the duration to be worthwhile. Staff 1 is fairly slow to cast and travel, and you don’t have access to many clone-creation skills, so it seems like you can only have 1 or 2 clones out at a time. That won’t generate enough conditions…

Think of it like this- assuming you can get about 50% more duration, that makes each bleed count as about 1.5 bleeds. But Sharper Images, the trait you would pick up with my suggestion above, allows each clone/phantasm crit (you get about 60% crit rate iirc) gives you an extra 1.0 bleed, even when it procs vulnerability. iWarlock can proc it too! So with 20 in Dueling, you’ll be getting more illusions, and thus, way more condition stacks, nearly double. So you should be getting almost 2x damage done, rather than the duration’s 1.5x damage. Quantity wins (provided you don’t hit the condition cap, of course!)

Plus, having more clones lets you use your shatters more often and with less “penalty” since you want to stay on staff only. I highly recommend you go this route.

I spent about 1,000 hours of game time playing condition builds on mesmer. The first 300 or so were without Deceptive Evasion and Sharper Images, and the rest were with. The difference is huge, and the gameplay is so much more flexible. Rabid armor can be tough to come across, but if you want to play condition on mesmer, its the way to go.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

So does EVERY OTHER CLASS TRYING TO DO DAMAGE. Only Mesmer does it WAY better, whilst still having moderate to high survivability.

That wasn’t a point refuting anything you said. That was supposed to point out how to achieve the burst, they build completely around it, just like any other glass cannon. Which, in turn, supports my point later on that the damage of the burst isn’t the problem.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Those bursts are strong, but Mesmer’s bursting comes easier, and on a short cooldown, and ontop of that it CANNOT be interrupted or blinded! I can interrupt a Hundred Blades Warrior, plus he’s not invulnerable while doing it.

And no other class has such a severe decrease in dps after the burst (mesmer auto-attacks hit for less than pretty much every other class), or can have their burst take physical form, which can be killed before applying damage. It’s a trade-off.

Blurred Frenzy also makes him immobile. If you move away before or during the attack, you have some time to reposition yourself to counter-burst him.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Essentially, a Greatsword Warrior has to bring utilities to help him get off his 100 blades. A Thief has to do quite a bit of setup, and bring utilities just to survive the retaliation. Hipshot Engineers have to waste ALL of their toolbelt skills for a huge burst, and those have long cooldowns.

The only thing this “proves” is that classes rely on their utilities… I don’t know about engineer, but a warrior and thief certainly don’t need utilities for their burst (each have CC on non-utility skills). Utilities just make a build more effective, and mesmer utilities have long cooldowns as well. Also…

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mesmers have everything they need on Staff and S/P. I honestly ran a shatter build a while back with no utilities, I did quite well.

I find this extremely hard to believe. The utilities don’t make your burst more damaging, they help your survive (and I’ve played both tanky and glass specs without survival utilities. Both have a lot of problems staying alive against competent opponents). You had to have faced people waaaay worse than you are, and they must have died to a single burst- which, if that’s the case, any class could have killed hem just as easily.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I would like to see you counter swap on reaction in the middle of a fight surrounded by clones.

If the mesmer stays at mid-range, then suddenly moves towards you, you know burst is coming, and should be reacting accordingly. If you mean keeping track of the actual mesmer, that is most certainly an experience thing that comes with practice. Even with the most frequent stealthing a mesmer can do, they are easy to pick out of a crowd. I find them in my mesmer vs mesmer fights quite easily.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

You cannot learn how to counter it. It is not possible. It’s like me telling you to counter my Corrupt Boon, or my Blood is Power in the middle of a fight, the kitten ed thing is virtually instant and you’ll never see it coming in time to stop it, and I only wish utilities on other classes on 45+ second cooldowns could do as much as a single Mesmer shatter.

The tells that a Swap is coming:
-Mesmer stays at mid-range to long-range for a while, then runs at you. iLeap is very short range, and Illusionary Persona shatters require melee range, so burst is likely about to happen. You should be on your toes.
-iLeap isn’t insta-cast. If you see them wave their arm (not swing their sword), ESPECIALLY if they aren’t close enough to swing their sword and hit you, iLeap is happening.
-iLeap sends a clone at you. Swap requires the clone to travel to you. The travel takes time. If you see a clone leaping at you, a Swap is about to happen.

Three different visual clues. None of them are instantaneous. It requires some quick reflexes and thought, but you certainly can learn to counter it.

I still don’t see a good enough reason for any nerfs. Full shatters require consumption of your clones/phantasms, which don’t just pop out of thin air- just because Mind Wrack is off recharge, doesn’t mean you have the illusions out to actually use it. And when you do use it, you leave yourself very vulnerable and without sources of significant damage. So if you avoid the burst through whatever means you choose, you have almost no pressure on you from the mesmer until MW recharges.

Basically what I’m trying to say is: to get the big burst you think is unfair, a mesmer must devote the vast majority of their traits and all of their stats towards shatter damage. If a player specs that heavily into something, they should get good dividends for their heavy investment. That’s how bunkering/glass cannon-ing works.

But let’s look at the combo you are QQing about- iLeap > Swap > Daze Shatter > Blurred > MW. Or maybe it’s Daze Shatter before the iLeap? Not sure, but regardless- I think that’s the one you’re talking about. Gives immobilize, daze, and good damage compression since MW can be used with Blurred Frenzy. What are the key skills here to make the combo so strong? Is it the damage itself? Hundred Blades, Kill Shot, engineer burst (I don’t know the combo for that) and Backstab combos can all easily match the raw damage. And you said it yourself that those bursts are strong, but strong != overpowered.

The problem, as your posts hinted to, is the CC involved with the combo. The two CCs that occur are the daze and the immobilize. Daze is completely negated by any skill with a stunbreaker. But even if you have a stunbreaker, you wouldn’t be able to stop the shatter with an interrupt or CC of your own anyways. It only prevents skills that apply blocking or invuln, provided they aren’t stunbreakers or insta-cast… of which, there are very few. So the issue isn’t really with the daze. Immobilize seems like the culprit, which negates the most powerful tool for negating shatters- dodging.

Swap causes the only immobilize mesmer has. If you aren’t immobilized, it opens the door to dodge-rolling, which (when done correctly) will completely negate the entire burst combo. If you can counter Swap, then the burst damage is negated just as easily as other burst combos.

So if you learn how to counter swap, which is just a generic CC skill with more than one tell, then shatters aren’t an issue… hence why people say l2p.

Carighan.6758:

That’s a fairly big fallacy, though. It’s completely meaningless how ItV compares to other pulls. Reason is, those are on other classes. Other classes have other selections of other weapon skills, traits and utility skills, making exact carbon copies of skills have different strength, just by being on a different class.

Taken individually (i.e.: I’m fighting alone), ItV isn’t even powerful enough to make up for the fact that I have to commit 30 trait points + runes to getting run speed, alternatively enemies can very easily disengage from fighting me. If I had a 25% runspeed signet and perma-swiftness, yes, I could see how ItV could be “too” powerful.
But it’s on the slowest class, allowing to slow down enemy targets who do run faster than us.

In short, “How it compares to other pulls” is exactly the wrong way to look at any ability on any class.
“The other abilities on the weapon are weak” is much better already, if still flawed.
“What’s the context” is the better one.

I’d also like to point out that using ItV as a long range pull means that you have to choose between the swiftness to catch up with them, or pulling them backwards for an extra shot or two. You don’t get both- using ItV means you won’t get the swiftness temporal curtain provides.

Privet Garden is amazingly beautiful.

You don’t need a teleportation gun to get there though.

If you’re soloing, Hounds. If you’re in a group (3+), Time Warp.

Mesmer autoattacks aren’t our primary source of damage- our other skills are (shatters, phantasms, clones). These sources do not get buffed by Time Warp, because clones and phantasms have recharge times on their attacks, so quickness is completely useless for them. So unless you have a few others that will actually benefit from it, you’re better off getting the hounds, which have decent dps by themselves.

From my understanding, each player (whether its the same for each player or different, I have no idea) has an internal “clock” that will apply the effects of each condition each time it hits 1 second elapsed.

So if you apply a 5 second bleed at t=1.8 seconds, it applies the damage of the bleed at t=2.0s, 3.0s, 4.0s, 5.0s, and 6.0s. At t=6.8s, the bleed disappears, and so won’t tick at t=7.0s. That accounts for 5 full ticks.

Now, if that 5s bleed had a 10% increase in duration, it would last for 5.5s. So in the example above, the bleed would last until t=7.3s, so it would tick when the check happens at t=7.0s. That means it would tick 6 times instead of the expected 5 times, even though you don’t have the full second.

So if this is true, then condition duration for fractional seconds do not guarantee additional ticks, but they make them more likely. It would almost be like critting with conditions, except it’s based on when you apply the condition vs. the internal clock.

That’s how I believe it works anyways. I’m not 100% sure about it, we’d need input from the developers to know for sure.

ophidic.1279:

I tipped 5 silver for a portal. I dunno if that’s too much or if it’s insultingly low. I have no basis for comparison.

In my experience, as a mesmer who offers portals quite often, every bit is appreciated. Most of the time, people don’t pay you anything. At the same time, it’s not necessarily high- I’ve gotten about an average of 10-15s from people who actually did tip, with a personal record of 10 gold from a single tip.

Long story short- a bit less than my personal average, but no amount is too little to be insultingly low

Also, my sylvari- tried to match the colors of the flower itself as best I could, while going for a sort of “nobilty” look. The colors themselves could probably be better, but regardless….

Just looked at the ratings based on current scores (the end scores are likely to be approximately what they are now). DB will be losing about 5 rating points, leaving us at around 2,020. JQ, who will be in third next week, is losing about 40 points, and should end up around 2,140.

If JQ stabilizes, it’s going to take a massive collapse of either TC or FA (and at least two weeks of demolishing them) for DB to move out. The same goes for TC and FA. And considering how competitive our matches have been, that isn’t likely to happen.

The next few weeks are going to be interesting, with the spotlight on where JQ ends up- will they end SoR’s surprising push into rank 1? Will they collapse? Will they find equilibrium such that they have enough rating to stay in tier 1 and out of t2’s reach?

I find it interesting that JQ plays such a heavy role in the future of tier 2. But anyways, good fights all around, loving the match-up!

Curtis Johnson.8456:

For clarification.. you hit the button twice? or you typed in twice the number you intended? I think i’m reading the first case.

The button does disable briefly to stop double-clicks till the success message comes up next to it.

Disabling the button is definitely a nice feature. It would be nice to have it reset the input numbers to 0 too, so that even if you lag/double click/whatever, you literally can’t accidentally exchange more than you intended.

Nub.2391:

are you suggesting that we will let Farmer able to gift items and sell through BLT ?
when that happen, do you know how will gems price go up to the point maybe u unable to buy with gold?

i vote NAY

Since we have the option to buy gems with in-game gold, a third party gold-seller can just give you enough gold to buy X amount of gems and let you buy it yourself.

Gifting would have little to no effect on gems.

1. There is no “best” weapon combo, but most of the mesmer’s weapons are certainly good. The mainhand sword is a really good choice though. Pistol is good too, but its really up to you whether you prefer to have a ranged phantasm or the offhand sword’s melee phantasm. Personal choice really, there won’t be much difference in damage before you hit 80.

Try experimenting with the staff though (by dropping the GS for now, at least until the phantasm gets fixed). The staff is a wonderful weapon, its sooooo good for survival. You might end up getting slower kills because you don’t have as much dps as the GS, but you won’t die nearly as often, which brings us to point two…

2. Don’t die. Seriously, armor repairs is the silliest thing to spend your money on. Avoid death at all costs until you have disposable income.

Don’t waypoint everywhere. When you can, teleport to either WvW or the Heart of the Mists. Both of these places contain a portal to Lions Arch, which has Asuran gates to nearly everywhere in the world. Use LA as your traveling “hub” as much as possible to cut down on traveling costs.

Do the dailies- each daily gives you 5s.

Sell all the junk items you get as loot to the merchant.

Doing heart “quests” will give you some money. The higher level the area, the more it gives.

Do dynamic events when you stumble on them. Even bronze participation will give you a cash reward.

If you’re a high enough level, do the world boss meta events. The chests can give decent loot, and you’re guaranteed a rare the first time you complete it each day. That alone could get you the 10s you need. http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/ that will let you know if any events will be happening soon, and where they are.

Sell unidentified dyes and “_ bags” (they contain crafting mats). Those are for gamblers, not someone who wants a steady income. They unopened items generally sell for more than what you are likely to get out of them.

Lastly, don’t use the Mystic Forge (loving nicknamed the Mystic Toilet). Just don’t. You have no chance of getting something to make it worthwhile yet, so just leave it alone until you hit a higher level, or know exactly what you’re doing.

That should give you a head start

You… you didn’t even get the meme right.

I can hear Allie weeping for Dragonbrand right now.

LumAnth.5124:

This is one less build for the Mesmer.

Actually, there’s more than one type of condition build for mesmers. You can either focus around maintaining Chaos Armor, and allowing the opponents to kill themselves off the confusion + blinds (which make confusion) that it generated, or you can spec into glamours.

Granted, both of those builds are trash now in WvW, but you get the point. Condition builds as a whole were hosed in WvW.

Did it with partial guildies, partial pugs. Had a guardian, mesmer (me), ranger, ele, and engie. Had no problems up to the final bosses, where we wiped twice, but finishedit up after that.

I had few problems with dungeon, and I was running full glass. I even dropped down to 6 fps for half the dungeon lol. Nothing wrong with it.

I agree with Entropy. But as an aside, mesmer glass-cannons are more resilient that any other class. We have a bunch of stun-breakers and invulnerabilities, including some limited stealth. While you may not being able to tank many shots, you have more tools at your disposal to prevent those shots from even connecting in the first place.

Granted, you always have to give up something to gain something- glass cannons have no condition removal, so poison and immobilize can be killer in pvp. You’ll pick your poison through your trait and utility selection

McNuggetBandit.8376:

Richard Nixon.6573:

I would be perfectly happy with this, would finally shut up the people who QQ about mesmers being “mandatory” due to their utility.

I’m not sure Engineers will be to happy with getting even more of their skills nerfed though.

and then you would be kitten at everyone QQing over wanting engis and also QQing over wanting mesmers, its not portal that most people are after its the timewarp

No, no I would not. I couldn’t give two kittens about what people want me to do, I play the way I find fun. And I don’t care if Time Warp gets given to someone else either; I personally find the ability to borderline bad because of the cooldown. Let some other class have to deal with having their kitten nerfed because of it.

Pannonica.5378:

Mesmer complaining about confusion nerf?
Now imagine being an engi.

Imagine being an engineer? Why? Because you can still output reliable condition damage through stacking burns, bleeds, and poison on top of that nerfed confusion?

Mesmers cannot do that. At our best, and this is assuming that our clones never die once, we can maintain 6 stacks of bleeds on a single target. And if RNG is in our favor, we can also get about 60-80% uptime on burning. That’s it. There is nothing we can do to boost that- no weapon swapping, no utilities, no traits. Nothing. And every clone that dies decreases that by ~2 stacks of bleeds and 20% burning uptime lost.

We can’t even do any might stacking to boost our condition damage. We’re stuck with 1,400 dps (subtract about 300-400 of that for each dead clone) with our only burst damage (confusion) halved. And the funny part? This is for mesmers that aren’t built specifically to apply confusion.

Condition builds as a whole got hosed from this. So why should I imagine being an engineer again?

I would be perfectly happy with this, would finally shut up the people who QQ about mesmers being “mandatory” due to their utility.

I’m not sure Engineers will be to happy with getting even more of their skills nerfed though.

Detharos.3157:

Besides, let’s admit that confusion builds have become over-saturated in the mesmer community. At least this should force some players into a little more build variety.

Take it from someone who has played 1000 hours as a condition-based mesmer- Mesmers have no other conditions they can reliably apply. Staff clones and Sharper Image illusions require time to get them all up, AND they have to survive… not to mention that staff clones (and the staff #1) have a 33% chance of applying vulnerability, which adds about 15 damage or so to your attacks because you can’t build into power/crit.

If I can get 3 clones/phantasms up, and somehow they miraculously survive, I can sustain about 6 stacks of bleeds and not even perma burning. A bunker can nearly outheal my dps with a single regen boon. I would hurt more if I could wield a wet noodle.

And you think this will allow for build diversity? You are strongly mistaken.

dank.3680:

Are you arguing the class mechanic ‘shatter’ does nothing but confusion? Again, a thing that is quite effective in other builds. Or are you trying to argue that the ‘glamour’ mechanic is only about confusion? Because every single glam skill – portal, nullfield, feedback – etc has a separate main purpose with confusion only as a secondary benefit.

He’s referring to Cry of Frustration. Granted it’s not the whole mechanic, but Mind Wrack is obviously intended for power builds and CoF for condition builds. Nerfing confusion makes shattering almost redundant for condition-based builds.

Don’t think of illusions as pets. They are cast on a target to either be a resource (clones) or a physical manifestation of a condition (phantasm). They do not outlive their targets, they cannot switch targets, and they die very easily. Illusions are supposed to be the successors to hexes from Guild Wars 1- hexes were the core of the mesmer profession back then, and illusions are supposed to be the physical manifestation of hexes. So even flavor-wise, it makes sense that they would differ from pets.

Anyways, you can easily test how armor affects phantasms in the Heart of the Mists- put on armor that has 0 power/crit, like rabid, and use a power based phantasm on the golems. Then put the armor on and test again. You will notice a huge difference.

When you shatter a clone, the confusion is considered from you (since the action was from a skill you have and activated). I don’t believe it works for Confusing Combatants (clone death = confusion. note that shatter =/= clone death) because YOU didn’t activate a skill to cause the confusion. Same thing with the iMage- your skill summoned the phantasm, but that alone didn’t cause the confusion.

So Pyroathiest should be correct, it will extend every source (except for iMage and Confusing Combatants, of course)

I’ve used a similar build in the past for WvW, and you can certainly make it viable with a few tweaks.

First off, you want Rabid armor with this type of build. The toughness fits with traiting into Chaos, Condition Damage will help increase your dps, and the precision helps proc Sharper Images, which will be a big portion of your dps. When all is said and done, assuming rares/exotic Rabid items, you should be sitting at at least 1600 CD, if not more.

Staff is a must in this type of build. You absolutely need it for the #2, which acts as a non-stun breaker blink AND fuel for chaos armor, which is AMAZING. The other weapon is more flexible- GS will proc Sharper Images more, but a sword/torch will give you some limited CC, a 2s invuln, and another stealth to take advantage of Prismatic Understanding. I would personally go with the sword/torch.

Drop Desperate Decoy, it activates at way too low of health to be useful (if it does at all). Sword recharge would be a better option. Personally, i wouldn’t take the “clones give a condition on death” trait either- traiting for manipulation cooldown (for blink) or 3% less damage per illusion are far more worthwhile.

You can also play this build a few different ways, but when I used it, I had a lot of fun as a “lead the charge” kind of guy. Because of your huge toughness, stun breakers, and null field, you should have no problem surviving a mad dash directly into the enemy zerg. You can run in, get a few hits on the guy with low health, hopefully down him, throw chaos storm on him and blink/phase retreat out. If you get stunned, decoy into phase retreat into blink. if you get immoblized, null field, decoy, and phase/blink. Its a fantastic burst of mobility, and is really fun to play.

I especially loved playing this when 2 zergs were fighting at some choke hold- due to your toughness and bursts of mobility, you can survive running past the initial aoe, start wailing on a few people and draw attention while the rest of your allies can stream through with far less resistance.

If you don’t plan on playing like that though, I’d recommend running Feedback if possible. It does wonders for group fights, even without being traited for confusion/blinds. And if you don’t plan on being in the front lines, I’d recommend a GS for the long range damage.

All in all, its a fun spec that’s definitely viable. You will have some issues tagging loot, however, since your best aoes are chaos storm (35 second cooldown) and Cry of Frustration, which is equally as long and requires illusions to shatter. Confusion can be a hit or miss too, so sometimes you won’t feel like you’re contributing much. Honestly though, you really need to level your mesmer by playing- getting used to certain combos and setting up shatters is a lot harder than it sounds. Fumbling with clone management will really hurt this build a lot.

Rawnoodles.1398:

Gellor.6497:

Ex EMP is now RE and NS on DB. Yes they have made a difference, our NA is better

We brought over 100 Core WvW players and have roughly 30+ man coverage in a 12+ hr daily span.

Also our new guild is called [RE] – Red Essence & [NS] – Night Shift Gank/havok , to preserve those EMP that wanted to reside with JQ.

We had a fantastic time with the amazing DB community and have enjoyed the various fights against MAG’s PYRO. Been seeing you guys out allot! Looking forward to many more encounters. In regards to guilds moving over, there are a few in major discussion but have asked to keep things on the DL.

Thanks for the info, and glad to hear you guys are enjoying yourselves!

I’m just curious. I’m happy for the guilds that transferred over, and I wish them a great (and hopefully permanent) stay, but it doesn’t make me any less curious.

Thing is, I’m curious as to whether the cause for the “noticeable presence” is actually because their numbers are making an effect, or because Mag/Yaks just didn’t field as many players.

It’s either this or we go back to the chest-thumping or whining that has become commonplace :P

That’s why I was hoping for some input from the guilds themselves. They would know how many they currently have, and how many are expected to still come over

I’d also like to know numbers though too. Our NA being “better” is relative, it could be the extra coverage, or it could be just lower turnout from Mags/Yaks.

Would it be possible to have a list of who decided to transfer to DB, and how many people have transferred/will transfer? I’m curious to see exactly how many people we are actually getting.

If it’s just EMP and r-something (sorry guys <3 ), I’m not sure how much of a difference it’ll actually make… and I don’t think it would qualify us as a bandwagon server :P

Would appreciate it if we stick only to things directly from those guilds, or if you’ve talked directly to their leaders. No grapevine rumors.

Sumusikoo.1360:

just a question.
Should I stack 3 mesmer clones and then send them to confuse the enemies or just everytime I got 1?

Generally you’d prefer to shatter with 3 illusions up due to the way that shatters scale, but it’s not that easy. Playing as a mesmer requires awareness and good judgement on the fly- you have to decide when you should shatter your illusions based on the situation, and which shatter to use. Things to consider:

-Do you have phantasms up? Phantams can deal quite a bit of dps, so shattering them in a non-condition based build can actually make you deal less damage.
-What traits do you have? On-death traits don’t activate when you shatter.
-Do you have enough clone/phantasm generation to be able to use shatters on recharge? If not, you may need to save that 1 clone for an emergency Distortion.
-Are your illusions all cast on a single target? If so, you definitely want to shatter them before the target dies, since the illusions will disappear anyways.

There are more things to consider, but you have to think about the situation and be able to decide what is most beneficial yourself, because every situation will be different. This is part of what makes a mesmer difficult (and fun) to play- every situation has a different “optimal” solution, so you have to think as you play.

You’ll get an idea of what’s best through experience and taking the time to learn from specific situations you come across.

I think the real problem is that you obviously feel like you’ve done it enough to have a good grasp of the puzzle (or you wouldn’t be complaining), and yet it takes you 20 minutes to complete the puzzle.

It took me 20 minutes the first time I ever did it, without looking at guides. And god forbid we have pvp in the pvp zone… the problem isn’t the puzzle.