Guild Wars 2

I’m getting sick and tired of posts by KensaiZen.3740, Chopps.5047, and Durzlla.6295.

You three keep making unfounded, often completely incorrect (Chopps especially) posts in the Ranger forums and make no efforts to prove any of your claims (and to many of us it’s obvious why).

I am getting tired of the misinformation garbage going on.

If you want to claim something on the Ranger is good, do like Sol does and make videos of yourself using it with great success against non-baddies.

If you don’t have the skills to do this, I’m not sure why you’re trying to expound upon how any build is good as a baddie isn’t going to get much of a different result from different builds (Thieves excluded … but that class is a dumb anomaly)

I don’t know Bolo, but I’m online most days by around 8:00pm eastern, so if you want to message me and meet in the mists to test this, feel free :-) I’m curious about it as well … especially since maybe one day ArenaNet will eventually fix spirits and longbow.

This is what we’re talking about guys … before talking about a build and what it can/can’t do, it’d be great if you actually play-tested the build to make sure it can/can’t actually do those things.

Otherwise, I could talk about how my Mesmer’s scepter is awesome in a condition build because the autoattacks inflict confusion … and, of course, just leave out that it hasn’t done that since early beta … this would be the same as your posts.

Killing people with a build doesn’t make it good or bad.

There is a difference between “don’t have enough time” and stating things that simply aren’t true.

Additionally, when asked directly about these things, you defended them … why would someone who “doesn’t really know” because they “don’t have time” defend these things?

Chopps, people’s biggest issue with you is that you say things that simply are not true.

I just finished testing what you guys were saying about Barrage and the various condition applicators and I found that:

• Sharpening Stone does apply the bleed per “wave” of hits, so it is possible to apply 5 bleeds to up to 5 different targets (this was true)
• Sigil of Doom does NOT apply poison to more than one target when you use barrage (so you lied)
• Weakness from spider venom applies it to the spider’s attacks (already knew this was a lie from you)
• Sun Spirit was only ever proccing burning on one target at a time, even when I traited for +15% proc chance and shooting at the large group of golems with sun spirit and barrage.

So the only thing that was true about your posts about this “awesome combo” is Sharpening Blades + Barrage. That makes less than 1/2 what you said be true. That’s not great and this isn’t the first time.

Alright, I’ll do some tests in the Mists tonight to check this out. I do hope you’re right as it would make longbow a bit more viable which would make whatever changes are coming up even better.

Whoops, thanks. Updated OP to include cast times and illusions-per-sec to be calculated as: num_illusions / (cast_time + cd)

Spider venom affects your spider’s attack, not yours.

Sharpening stone inflicting only 5 bleeds means only 1 bleed on those 5 people … very different from what you were describing in your post as 1 bleed isn’t going to drop anyone.

The burn is fine. Traited you have a 50% chance to proc, untraited 35%. Both are fine for barrage.

The vulnerability is only that first on you hit.

… so we have 1 bleed on each of those 5 targets you hit, poison on the first 1 target you hit, vulnerability on the first one 1 target you hit, and weakness on the first 1 target your spider hits … this is not going to do anything devastating.

Recording a video showing your comb isn’t hard. You run fraps (or whatever you prefer) and hit the hotkey to start recording. Upload to youtube and then done.

Honestly, I think this is just a bunch of bull and you’re simply getting bags because you’re able to tag a good number of players while your zerg is doing the actual heavy lifting.

This is like your video showing how quickly a Ranger can kill an NPC in cursed shore for comparison to the warrior videos out there … except you ignore in your video that in dungeons your pet is not going to get to stick to the target for 100% of the fight as you’ll have to move it back or it die for some bosses.

You keep trying to paint rosie pictures when you’re really just misleading people into thinking things are much better than they really are.

Chopps.5047:

It’s pretty fun loading arrows with burning, poison, weakness, vulnerability, sharpening stone bleeds and with a single barrage (from eagle eye range) I can easily drop half a dozen conditions on 5 people and they often hit the dirt shortly after. So it’s fun and actually really good ranged/ backline support for an army doing siege or a tower protecting the door. This build works for what it’s meant to do. I have obtained over 50 badges in just a couple hours of casual play in T1 so I’m not just trying to lie to you guys about ranged condition damage. It’s really good

I’m very curious how you’re applying all of those conditions on multiple people with a single barrage. Please make a video showing this.

Poison on barrage? I assume this is from weapon sigil which means you’re really only poisoning the first person your barrage hits.

Weakness on barrage?

Fire on barrage? I assume from sun spirit.

Bleeds on barrage? From sharpening stone, I’m pretty sure it will only bleed the first 5 hits, each hit consuming one “charge”. The rest of the bleeds would simply be from the Sharpened Edges trait (if you have it).

Vulnerability on Barrage? I assume from opening strike. This assumes you’re not already in combat and I’m pretty sure it only affects the first hit, not all hits of the barrage.

Since the sun spirit burn is a “proc”, I’d think a faster firing weapon would be better. Only #2 and #5 on the longbow fire decently quickly to leverage this. The auto-attack is horrendously slow.

I don’t have much trouble with my warden getting killed except in large cluster fights.

I also make use of the temporal curtain to pull people to my warden and usually follow that up with immobilize from the sword. It’s a wonderful way to inflict the warden’s “pain train” on people.

I do think Rabid would probably still be better than Apoth. For +healing to be truly useful I think you need at least 3 sources of healing. Rangers with regen + signet heal + trait heal + troll unguent are a good example of what I’m talking about.

I think there are several utility options that could work for this, though mantra of pain + mantra of recovery are must haves for their use with restorative mantras.

Please let me know if you play around with this build or a derivative. It’s always nice to get feedback from others playing the same thing. You often learn more from the discussions that then ensue :-)

3 weapon skills that when used together provide an immense amount of utility + damage:

• Sword Illusionary Leap + Swap (#3 skill)
• Focus Temporal Curtain + Into the Void (#4 Skill)
• Focus Phantasmal Warden (#5 Skill)

(1) Cast Warden on enemy, it will land some hits but enemy will move … you can move to it to be protected from projectiles
(2) Cast Temporal Curtain on Warden, it will whirl finisher a condition cleanse for you and allies
(3) Use Illusionary Leap + Swap while standing on the curtain in order to gain quite a bit of retaliation
(4) Into the Void to pull your foe back to the Warden

You can also change up the order of 3 and 4, pulling to the Warden first before swapping so that they are pulled to the warden and then immobilized next to the warden (this hurts!) via Swap. This will result in less retaliation for you, but your warden will deliver more of his “pain train” to your foe(s).

I disagree with “no one” :-p

“No one” and “every” are two words that fast track you to losing a debate ;-)

I agree that the stunbreaker aspect of Mirror Images and Clone are large reasons why they are taken, as well as the “instant illusion” aspect of each and the stealth from decoy (always appreciated).

However, for those builds that are not shatter builds but want to maintain the illusion cap (perhaps they are taking 2+ of the per illusion bonus traits), this information could be beneficial.

I know some people aren’t fans of decoy and seeing that if you don’t need another stunbreaker and/or don’t care about the short durations stealth that you’re better off with any of the other 3 for illusion generation could be useful.

I half agree about clone-on-dodge being the best source of generation. It is nice, but it also eats up endurance. The statement that it is the best also ignores the beauty of taking both a weapon trait and Illusionists Celerity for illusion generation … especially Blade Training with Sword+Sword.

Ultimately, I’m just trying to get more info out there that I’m not seeing on the forums so that perhaps we can spark some more interesting discussions on the Mesmer class. I think we have one of the best (if not the best) community on here of all the classes, and I wish to leverage that to its fullest :-)

It sure as heck beats the Ranger community where some of us are friendly but most of us are angry.

Lol. Please see the attached picture.

As far as toughness both Rabid and Shamans(Apothecary) have toughness. It’s really more of a toss-up between precision and healing with Rabid also having more condition damage.

I am curious about replacing my usual blink and decoy with iDefender and iDisenchanter. Their cooldowns are not that long so the fact that this build shatters wouldn’t be much of an issue … in fact, iDisenchanter has the best clone-per-sec of all the utilities with iDefender being only worse than Mirror Images. The issue here would be a lack of a real stunbreaker so it’d be much more reliant on Phase Retreat on the staff.

Given the utilities I was using, the biggest weakness I ran into was a lack of condition removal. iDisenchanter could be beneficial for this, but it isn’t as reliable as Null Field (which could provide more chaos armor w/ staff) or Mantra of Resolve. I could also change the scepter+pistol out for sword+focus. This would provide more condition removal via curtain+warden as well as retaliation via curtain+illusionary leap+swap.

The 250 toughness from Protected Mantras did seem to make quite a nice difference. When I had to go quite defensive, constantly using Mantra of Recovery and Mantra of Pain, I was taking quite a bit less damage. Looking at gw2buildcraft.com, +247 toughness gives you 11.86% damage reduction.

(http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.0.0.0.1n.0.0.0.1n.0.1n.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e)

My current thoughts on playing around with this are weapon changes (i.e. sword+focus) as well as the whole shatter vs not.

With shatters you get more pressure on your foe(s), vigor, and heals.
Without shatters you can focus on per-illusion bonuses, regen from phantasms, etc.

A mantra shatter build definitely requires high APM to be effective. However, it’s somewhat weird in that while having high APM, there are times where you are somewhat biding your time as well. It’s definitely taking some getting used to … especially since the builds I usually rotate through don’t leverage mantras.

DrixTrix.7168:

I would personally go Charr, they look bad kitten when you finally get the right gear, my Asura Mesmer is 80 and while i love him and all the animations there is something about playing a big ol’ charr that is infinitely better mainly beacuse of the size of the weapons + gear.

I agree that size is wonderful when it comes to enjoying your gear. In a game where the end-game is about aesthetics, it only makes sense to me to be big enough to actually see your gear (without squinting).

DrixTrix.7168:

any good player can distinguish clones from the original, any slight movement or animation gives them away so race really doesn’t make much difference imo.

I agree that a good player can distinguish clones from the mesmer as soon as the mesmer moves. However, I still believe larger clones are more confusing than smaller clones when it comes to fighting with allies. Norn/Charr clones impede vision of everyone. Other clones only impede vision of same size or smaller races.

Just to provide insight at the illusion generation rate of each Mesmer Utility

Without Illusionists Celerity

• 0.0465 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 20s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Disenchanter
• 0.0444 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 45s cd : 2 Illusion : Mirror Images
• 0.0317 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 30s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Defender
• 0.0250 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 40s cd : 1 Illusion : Decoy

With Illusionists Celerity

• 0.0571 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 16s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Disenchanter
• 0.0555 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 36s cd : 2 Illusion : Mirror Images
• 0.0392 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 24s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Defender
• 0.0313 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 32s cd : 1 Illusion : Decoy

If you’re going to take the “color suggestion” into consideration, do please realize that that will only affect PvE and sPvP. It will not affect WvW.

I’ve been curious about this … I see you, Osicat, SevenMirror, etc. take the shatter cooldown reset at 50% hp in several of your builds. However, when I’m watching the videos, I’m not really seeing this be leveraged, particularly by you and SevenMirror since both of you aren’t as prone to shattering as Osicat.

Could you please elaborate on why you take this trait, particularly in a build with such low illusion generation due to a lack of 20 in Dueling?

Thanks.

I played around with this for a bit in sPvP last night and was never taken down 1v1 and able to hold and take points quite successfully (took longer to take than with shattercat, of course, since you have less burst)

sPvP Gear Used

• Rabid Amulet
• Runes of the Centaur (to mimic my WvW runes)
• Staff w/ Sigil of Accuracy (+5% crit chance)
• Scepter w/ Sigil of Accuracy (+5% crit chance)
• Pistol w/ Sigil of Earth (chance to bleed)

Skills

• Mantra of Recovery
• Blink
• Decoy
• Mantra of Pain
• Mass Invis

Amusingly, I ran into another Mesmer running a similar build and our fights kept being draws until one of us received reinforcements … in which case that Mesmer generally escaped.

Being able to confuse people (i.e. being a Mesmer), heal up quite a bit from mantras/ shatters/regen, having good mobility, and constantly applying conditions via staff and shatters makes you a tough nut to crack.

I was taking to Fay a bit about it while in-game ankittenhinking I’ll have to try it with Shaman’s (Apothecary) gear. Before I was only thinking of the +healing in relation to the Mantra and Shatter heals, but it does affect the regen as well.

I’d love to hear from anyone else trying this or similar. I think there are still several good builds utilizing mantras that we have yet to discover. It’s just quite odd going from no mantras to 2+ :-p

What do people’s eyes get drawn to? Big things. As a Norn mesmer, you are that big thing. Your 3 illusions are as well. They do a great job of overwhelming people’s screens.

Take a look at a video of someone fighting a good, big Norn (or Charr) Mesmer and compare it to them fighting a good Asura Mesmer. The fight against the Norn (or Charr) has their screen full of giant illusions.

As far as the “small animations” of an Asura, I’ve found that the animations people notice (magic bullet, summoning iBerserker, etc.) are all very obvious even if you’re an Asura. However, to compensate for the Asura being so small, a good number of their animations are exaggerated movements. I find this makes them easier to spot amongst their clones.

Before switching from my Asura Mesmer to my Norn Mesmer, I played around in sPvP a good bit on both and polled people about which one they thought was harder to kill. I went into it thinking it’d probably be no difference or favor the Asura (hence why my original Mesmer was an Asura) but the feedback I was getting was overwhelmingly in favor of the Norn being harder to fight against. The big illusions make a bigger difference than you can imagine.

Test it out in sPvP yourself though if you want to be really sure :-)

If you’re worried about quickly applied conditions, Shattered Conditions is actually a very good trait. The reason you don’t often see people take it is because of the plethora of other good traits Mesmers have.

There is no other class in GW2 that I’ve leveled to 80 that I’ve thought “if only I had 5+ more trait points” than my Mesmer. I think this is in part due to the fact that the Mesmer has so many great traits but also in part due to what Fay was saying about the layout of mesmer traits.

Anyways, back on topic before you all get yourselves reported …

• The issue with pets is that they die quite easily in specific parts of dungeons.
• The issue with fixing this by reducing the damage pets take in dungeons is that pets could then theoretically enable 2+ rangers to trivially take on bosses through pet tanking
• Nothing in GW2 is supposed to be able to tank (including pets)

It seems like a logical solution would be to make the pets more tanky but change enemy AI to ignore pets in favor of attacking rangers and their allies. This solves the issue of pets dying too much (they are tankier and aren’t getting aggro) and prevents the issue of pet tanking trivializing content (pets aren’t taking aggro that could be directed at players).

We want our pets alive for their damage and utility, this gives it to us. If you want the pet to take hits, stand behind it and let projectiles hit it instead of you.

If you enjoy it, it is not a waste of time.

That said, it is currently not considered “one of the best” at anything except structured pvp and there it is only one or two specific builds (depending on who you ask).

Mesmer is good in all aspects of the game except open world farming of events with a zerg due to a low number of AOEs. They do fine here but they can’t tag mobs nearly as easily as other classes.

Mesmer Condition Removal Options:

• Utility: Null Field
• Utility: Phantasmal Disenchanter
• Utility: Mantra of Resolve
• Utility: Arcane Thievery
• Trait: Cleansing Inscriptions
• Trait: Mender’s Purity
• Trait: Shattered Conditions
• Combo: Focus Temporal Curtain + Phantasmal Warden

Then there are Sigils and Runes.

We’re not like Elementalists who can currently have condition removal from all 3 utilities and their heal and have the utilities also be stun breakers, give vigor, give regen, and do other effects and then also have weapon skills that heal and remove conditions … but that is a bit OP and hopefully to be nerfed one day (ArenaNet has mentioned they’re looking at Elementalists for some nerf-bat action.).

Whatever Mesmer I feel like being at the time :-)

It’s one of the beauties of the class.

The only thing consistent about my play is that I’m a Mesmer and that makes me the slow kid at the back of the group :-p

KensaiZen.3740:

Sebrent.3625:

KensaiZen.3740:

Sebrent.3625:

KensaiZen.3740:

You can maintain a good amount of regen if you use 2 pets that have them.

Ranger pets on land with Regen for group:
(1) Fern Hound
(2) N/A

Do please explain what you’re talking about here. I’d love to know what “2 pets that use them” (regen) you’re talking about.

Oh my bad, not 2 pets with regen. Just 1 regen and one outright AoE heal. So thats one regen and a little burst healing. I never claim to be a master at the class and know everything. But like I said. If a noob Ranger like me can do it, whats stopping you pros?

What exactly is this “it” you’re able to do?

When it comes to comparing my Ranger to my Mesmer, people want my Mesmer, they couldn’t care less about the Ranger (even prefer it to not be there).

My Mesmer can be extremely useful in both 1v1, skirmishes, and zergs with one build. My Ranger cannot.

I am pretty sure You and I know what Mesmers are good for. But can you enlighten me as o the role Rangers play in WvW?

Sure thing.
The roles I’ve been able to get my Ranger to be able to fulfill in large battles without making myself suck at 1v1 and skirmishes is area denial via traps, control via traps & entangle, and picking off solo targets. I almost always have shortbow equipped and depending on if I’m denying an area defensively or offensively and which set of gear I’m wearing dictates my other weapon set.

The problem with the offensive denial is that you can get lit up quite quickly trying to throw 600 range traps on part of an enemy zerg.
The problem defensively is that often you’ll have a pet/minion run over your traps.

When it comes to picking off solo targets, that isn’t very helpful in zerg fights compared to being able to completely nullify enemy boons/conditions, projectiles, mass invis, mass AOE, etc.

Piercing arrows can be nice, but you’re not going to hit the same multiple people with it consistently. It’s really best at making sure as long as you’re in range of your target that you still hit them even if others get in the way.

… now, back to my question … what is this “it” you’re saying you’re able to accomplish.

This image should be all the reason you need to be a Norn mesmer:

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT_nRqz1yyb1pkZ2W67UC2GCMx4rBEwsNBaxTdF9pZVehtGl5Xl

Benjamin.8237:

Sebrent.3625:

I seem to confuse people more on my Norn mesmer than I ever did on my Asura mesmer.

This is why Norns, are the best. Go norn or go home.

Also, you’re another “big sexy” … and your illusions not only cover you but your allies as well …

I seem to confuse people more on my Norn mesmer than I ever did on my Asura mesmer.

If it would trivialize it, then that is expalanation I was requesting.

However, perhaps they should move away from “Ranger pets can tank”. This game wasn’t designed around anything tanking anyways. It was designed around players avoiding damage (dodge rolls, blocks, etc.) to stay alive.

Perhaps making the pets not hold aggro that the players could easily take would fix this “issue”. It would probably also make it easier to scale the Ranger with other classes.

KensaiZen.3740:

Sebrent.3625:

KensaiZen.3740:

You can maintain a good amount of regen if you use 2 pets that have them.

Ranger pets on land with Regen for group:
(1) Fern Hound
(2) N/A

Do please explain what you’re talking about here. I’d love to know what “2 pets that use them” (regen) you’re talking about.

Oh my bad, not 2 pets with regen. Just 1 regen and one outright AoE heal. So thats one regen and a little burst healing. I never claim to be a master at the class and know everything. But like I said. If a noob Ranger like me can do it, whats stopping you pros?

What exactly is this “it” you’re able to do?

When it comes to comparing my Ranger to my Mesmer, people want my Mesmer, they couldn’t care less about the Ranger (even prefer it to not be there).

My Mesmer can be extremely useful in both 1v1, skirmishes, and zergs with one build. My Ranger cannot.

JP = jumping puzzle

Charr are a horrible nightmare in a jumping puzzle compared to other races (especially Asura)

FLIMP.8172:

Sebrent.3625:

I mostly agree with you Fay. I found that I was best applying condition via high crit chance with clones/duelist/berserker. Sadly, that means you have to dip a bit into your condition damage to up your precision

or you could get rabid gear and get both precision and condition damage?

Yes, but Rampager and of the Knight (those new ascended trinkets) gives higher precision so if you need higher it’s a tradeoff. That’s what I was talking about.

Charr are cooler than Asura … lol … but that doesn’t matter because Norn beats all ;-)

KensaiZen.3740:

You can maintain a good amount of regen if you use 2 pets that have them.

Ranger pets on land with Regen for group:
(1) Fern Hound
(2) N/A

Do please explain what you’re talking about here. I’d love to know what “2 pets that use them” (regen) you’re talking about.

misterdevious.6482:

How do you know what content you can solo unless you try? How do you know if you can solo the hard content unless you try really hard… you know… like with perserverance and stuff.

My worldview is not defined by what videos are or are not posted on youtube. I tried it. I did it. It can be done.

My point has nothing with whether or not a Ranger can currently solo a boss.

My point is that, given several classes have videos of them soloing bosses, why should a potential solution not be considered because it allows two rangers to take on a boss together?

The logic behind this appear lacking, hence why I’m requesting an explanation.

0/20/0/30/20

Vigor -> Shatter -> More Vigor:
You gain vigor from crits and shatters, allowing you to create more on-dodge clones which then allows you to shatter for even more vigor. Shatters can crit too.

Heals:
Shatters are not only giving you vigor, but you are also healing each time you shatter. On top of this, you gain regen from your phantasms and heal when you recharge your mantras. With Mantra of Recovery and Mantra of Pain you can constantly cycle between the two if needed.

Support:
Your shatters are providing vigor for allies as well, your phantasms provide that regen to nearby allies to, and your mantra healing heals nearby allies too.

You’re also providing support for your allies as your shatters are providing them vigor and recharging mantras is providing heals.

I left most of the skills unselected as you can be quite flexible with them, but, since it is a shatter build, decoy and mirror images are logical choices as your other two utilities, but you could also take Phantasmal Defender or Phantasmal Disenchanter to summon other phantasms instead. These skills have lower cooldowns, provide phantasms instead of clones (so more regen). and have their own unique skills such as boon+condition removal (disenchanter) and 50% damage mitigation (defender).

If you feel you don’t need Protected Mantras and want to use swords, swapping out Protected Mantras for Sword Mastery is more than fine. Lower cooldowns and more precision is welcome, especially since it ups your illusion generation.

When it comes to whether or not to take +healing gear (Apothecary) with this, I think it’d be better with Rabid (more condition damage). Precision gives you more direct damage, get more vigor from crits, inflict more bleeds from illusion crits, and can leverage on-crit sigils. If you look at the coefficients for Restorative Mantras and Restorative Illusions, they appear to have a 0.5 coefficient on the wiki, so having +1,000 healing would only make these two traits heal for only about +500 more healing each. Compare this to +1000 precision which would give about +47.61% crit chance. Either way, you need toughness since this has 0 points in Chaos, otherwise you’ll be too squishy to leverage your heals very effectively.

With this build, you should be able to apply constant pressure on your opponent via shatters as you are healed each time and apply confusion (+ the shatter’s effect(s)) on your foe with each shatter.

I mostly agree with you Fay. I found that I was best applying condition via high crit chance with clones/duelist/berserker. Sadly, that means you have to dip a bit into your condition damage to up your precision

However, it’s not that horrible of a thing since Mesmer gets a 100% return on precision w/ 15+ points in Dueling and so you have precision improving both direct and condition damage (assuming you aren’t a shatter build).

As far as “what are Mesmer’s not good at” … I’d say having a versatile build. It is quite difficult to have a build that fits every situation. The Mesmer doesn’t have anything like the Elementalist’s current 0/10/0/30/30 Dagger+Dagger build.

The Mesmer specializes and as such this specialization forces the Mesmer to incorporate particular strengths and weaknesses. For example, take a look at Osicat’s shattercat builds. Do you see condition removal there? Nope. Guess what melts it if you can land it? Look at Pyro’s immortal mesmer build. Its damage isn’t going to pressure anyone nearly as well Osicat’s.

jportell, the issue with your logic is the fact that the necro’s skill has to hit us to teleport the necromancer to us. Since the necromancer isn’t hitting us, we should not be involved whatsoever with any teleporting associated with that skill.

I am often doing Staff / Sword+Sword as well. I summon whichever phantasm is up at the moment as they both fulfill the same role.

I agree with Esplen that I’ll summon warlock more often in large battles, but that’s because I am more prone to using my staff in large battles than sword+sword.

You love being a Mesmer, but think you are normal …
… we call this denial.

In a land filled with people wearing armor, magical robes, etc. and attacking with fireballs, lightning, swords, axes, arrows, etc, you thought that butterflies were the supreme weapon.

My sets are:

• Soldier (Power + Toughness & Vitality)
• Rabid (Condition Damage + Toughness & Precision)
• Rampager (Precision + Power & Condition Damage)
• Berserker (Power + Precision & Crit Damage)
• Knight’s (Toughness + Power & Precision)
• Cavalier trinkets (Toughness + Power & Crit Damage)

If you’re interested in a shatter build, I recommend checking out Osicat’s site as well as aiming for Berserker, Knight’s, and Cavalier pieces.

I got Cavalier ascended accessories first since they go well with both a Knight’s set as well as with a Berserker’s set.

Fallen, that will you give swiftness and blink. Even traited, blink is 1,200 range.
Ranger greatsword cancels out your blink and is on a much shorter cooldown.
Elementalist ride the lightning, lightning flash, and burning speed beat it out.
Warrior’s whirlwind, charge, and leap beat your blink.
and so on…

I’m sure you can keep up with the necromancers, engineers, and guardians, but those other classes are in a tier of their own as far as cross country speed.

My Norn Mesmer arrives exactly when he intends to … sadly, that’s generally after my Elementalist, Warrior, Thief, etc. allies have already killed half my enemies … stealing half the fun.

Condition-Shatter-Heal-Build thread

Because, just from the 30 points in water, Elementalist can have 3 utilities that:

• Give Regen
• Give Vigor
• Remove Condition
• Stunbreak
• Teleport+Damage, Invulnerability, Protection+Stability, or AOE Fire+3_Condition Removal

No other class in the game can get nearly as much utility from their utility slots as the elementalist.

Then, thanks to all the +boon duration stacking possible in WvW, Elementalists are able to keep 100% up-time on their boons from swapping attunements and criting. Since these boons include swiftness, protection, regen, and vigor, the Elementalist is extremely difficult to peg down and kill. Even more so due to those utilities (Cantrips) I listed above.

Then there’s the heals which all 3 of which are wonderful. One gives more might (blah), swiftness, regen, or protection; one heals per cast when not on cooldown; and the last one provides even more condition removal.

Then there are the auras from dagger+dagger that are giving swiftness and fury (10 pts in air) and stunning or chilling anyone that hits you.

Then there’s ride the lightning and burning speed to provide even more speed … because a teleport and 100% up-time on swiftness weren’t enough.

Then there’s also the +2% damage per boon that synergizes extremely well with the up-time of the elementalist’s boons to allow this extremely mobile, tanky build still have respectable damage.

There’s also the massive amount of heals from just weapon abilities, constant regen, mist in water form, switching to water form (thanks 15 pts in water trait line).

There is no other class in the game that can consistently go from 20% hp back to 100% in a 1 minute fight as the elementalist. Not even the Guardian.

Basically, Elementalist has an alpha build that leaves you wondering why you would want to play anything else.

It has speed, mobility, defense, offense, support, etc.

What needs to happen?

• That one build (and some of its derivates) needs to be toned down
• Other elementalist builds need to be buffed

What does this accomplish?

• Encourages a variety of elementalist builds
• Removes an OP elementalist build that has caused it to be overwhelmingly used in both WvW and sPvP
• Maybe gives Thieves a chance in sPvP to fulfill the roamer build in sPvP … as currently, why would you take a thief over an elementalist in sPvP … the elementalist is brings so much more to the table as a roamer (as stated by ArenaNet devs).

So, earlier in this thread, Robert Hrouda had told us that they did not want to reduce the damage Ranger pets take from AOE because then 2 rangers could solo a boss with proper pet management.

My problem with this “issue” with that “solution” to Ranger pets in dungeons is that we have videos like the following where you have a single player of a given (non-Ranger) class soloing one of the harder bosses in the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye85Ad4LJqY

What does the thief do? Mostly just Sword auto-attack and #2 (Infiltrator Strike & Shadow Return).

So why, given that there are plenty of videos of other classes soloing content, is it a “problem” that two rangers (twice as many Rangers as other classes in those videos) are able to solo dungeon bosses?

@Gaiawolf: Between the HotW armor (look like a heavy) and the HoM armor (look like a gentleman), it’s Norn all the way. The Mesmer masks look better on the Norn too … I still have my starting mask as part of one of my sets.

Charr Mesmer … out-of-place
Norn Mesmer … big and sexy!

Anyone had much success with Superior Runes of Altruism? Particularly with 30 points in Chaos?

Between 30 in Chaos and the set bonus, you get +45% boon duration.
I hear the fury and might on-heal gives you 10 seconds, so that would become 14.5 seconds. With a 15 second cooldown on mirror, it seems like this could be a good way to maintain fury/might.