Guild Wars 2

People are running conditions very heavily. I got wrecked countless times by a condi burst before I would even try to use any cleanse.
The fact that I was running condi (MtD shatter) myself is completely beside the point :p

I can’t see such a change being anything else than a bug…
This would be too amazing not to be documented in the first place.

Is this change undocumented because… it is a bug?
I don’t imagine this being the developer’s wishes.

How well did the mantra rotation work? Is it easy to keep high “harmonious mantra” up-time? I guess for long boss fight it may be difficult…

I just realized that they actually reduced the bleeding, confusion and torment compared to what was announced last week… The 3 conditions mesmer rely on
Because of that, the sinister/rampager build is less stellar. Still a notch over the berserker, but since it also implies slightly slower damage building, I would say that both are competitive.

In a sense, that is better, that means we have an actual choice. But disappointed over the big nerf (an easy 30% less!) of what first seemed like a strong buff :p

It would be fun and instructive to run a full mesmer dungeon, and try to see what works best. I actually think we have top tier DPS now (although I don’t know how other professions have evolved)

So, after some dungeons run in exotic rampager, the 30+ bleed were definitely there. I was even on a PUG with a necromancer stacking his own bleed, so the enemies had close to 50 all the time
I haven’t managed to check how much they actually hit though.

But fun in any case to play a bit differently and to see other people’s new builds. Until the new meta settles, there will be quite some variety around, hopefully even the meta will include some different viable playstyles.
I was surprised to see the very same lfg messages “zerk only”… People don’t like change :p

It seemed to be working for me (in PvP training at least).

@Zmodd, then you loose the stun break which is pretty sweet. Or make the whole skill a stun break which will make it way easier to use (although they would need to reduce the casting time to instant, which they won’t do)

I was actually disappointed about that. Most skills of other professions have seen their burning and poison duration increased to match the new system, but not ours… So basically we got nerfed in a sneaky way.

Based on my calculations (and if anyone has done other calculations, please tell me), the best DPS is sword-pistol/focus on a mixed sinister + just enough rampager to get close to 100% crits (assuming fury + banners or spotter), with both condi signet, rune krait.
Doing this, the DPS is WAY above our pre-patch DPS.
We have enough damage to use the sword efficiently + massive bleed damage over 8s or so.

On the other hand, I agree with telekinesis, GS would be better on a full berserker. The phantasm hits only 4 times basically (depends on hit box I think) so at most 4 bleed stacks, well below the duelist possible 12 stacks which was the reason we went into hybrid in a first place. Now if you only run a GS as a plan B, keeping sword-pistol as main, then you probably want to stay on rampager/sinister.

I’m a bit confused with Maxzero’s suggestion. The opening you mention does not have anything to do with GS. Sure, without the staff, you may not go for chaos and keep domination instead and thus get the vuln from the daze/interrupts, but except for that, there is no mention of any GS skill in your rotation.

For me it’s bleeding on crits which doesn’t

I did some maths and confusion combatants was just bad. On the other hand perma-fury = massive bleeding from sharper images and with the pistol traits and the fast procs of the duelist, pistol may just be our best condition off-hand weapon. Before I saw these changes, that’s actually what I was hoping for…

The release notes do not match exactly the ones previously given. In particular, the minor confusing combatant has been changed to an almost perma-fury. I actually like that, I though the confusion from this trait was really lackluster and we definitely need a boost to our crits.

About the GS vs staff. If Maxzero wants GS, it is probably because he wants/need to stay at range sometimes. In that case, the staff is not amazing. I really don’t see the staff as a ranged weapon: the chaos storm is very nice to apply on yourself as well as the enemy + this allows to get chaos armor by staff 2 which is the best way to get CD reduction and thus to use chaos storm more often. So at range, the staff loses so much of its benefits.

With the bleeding duration we have, Sigil of Earth would be an additional 4-5 bleeding stacks right? It may add a bunch to our personal damage with the sword AA…
Malice and agony probably are the best in theory, but it extends our damage over time and not on burst. I’d rather have more condi/direct damage than more duration. Mesmer was already slow at building damage (3s just to get our phantasms up), I’d rather we don’t wait for the 10th tick of a 10s bleed stack…

Since we have many shatter traits as baseline + we are somewhat forced to take shatter traits by lack of choice (especially the GM) I tried to see how useful shatters could be. And it’s quite impressive. I think when your illusions are well sync’ed, you could shatter them after they all did their attack, because the shatter damage is completely worth the close to 3s spent recasting the phantasms when your signet of the ether is off-CD. Especially in sinister/rampager build, the confusion is quite decent, and if you expect a boss to attack fast, F2 can be very worth it (nearly 2k damage per attack with the 8 stacks confusion it applies). I almost wonder if maim the disillusioned could be better than phantasmal haste…

@Fay you’re perfectly right. For trash, the extra clone of scepter is not as detrimental, but you can’t hit easily multiple target. Staff has more AOE/bouncing but does not hit that hard (only chaos storm does decent work). Sword is really our only decent cleave/AOE weapon. And it hits like cooked spaghetti in rabid. I think Rabid is ideal for PvP/WvW where the extra toughness is very useful and scepter is a powerful weapon (confusion + torment wreck).

@NiceNikeShoe: well those are not the best traits, but there was nothing else which I found tempting. I indeed hoped to improve somewhat the burst of shatters as finishers or when I know the phantasms will get AOE’d and die. The interrupts are for trash mostly since boss will be defiant most of the time. And ineptitude is because we get blinding from evade and we have mass of that (one more reason to keep sword main-hand), so it’s a free extra confusion + blind on the enemy, can always be useful.
I haven’t found any PvE build so far which does not have troubles with the GM traits. These are the least life-changing GM ever (for PvE) :p

When doing theorycrafting calculations, it seems that the best build (meaning better than even berserker) is actually a hybrid (sword-pistol/focus). Almost all the condi damage comes from the bleeding but this is massive bleeding (about 36 stacks):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fintothemists.com%2Fcalc%2F%3Fbuild%3D-R%3B4k2l51U73VV71%3B9%3B4STW%3B0147257046%3B45sY0y%3B9%3B0FLLZ0VN5T

Just to mention we already started a discussion on that here.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/PvE-Dungeon-Mesmer-Builds-for-June-23

Greatsword is already not massively weaker than sword-sword at full distance (maybe 20% less damage). But to still benefit from party buffs, everyone would need to stay at range.

Why would danger time matters? It’s only a crit rate increased no? Of course then one could almost spec without any crit (power-ferocity-condition damage?).
I actually hope some new stats combination happen, because there is currently much less condition damage combinations than power. Not to mention that condition duration, boon duration etc have now disappeared from the trait lines so we need to get them back in armors or in runes.

I agree with Telekinesis, if playing staff, the CD reduction of chaotic dampening is almost necessary. The AA is weak so the more often you do chaos storm the better!

Coming back to rabid vs sinister, I did a bunch more calculations. Using my build (sword-pistol), switching to Rabid, giving up domination to get the chaotic transference in the chaos line, I do get a slight increase in overall damage. However, this is at the expense of having basically no personal contribution to damage (10% personal, 90% phantasm).
Switching to scepter instead of sword does not help, the personal damage is much stronger but the loosing of one phantasm reduces the damage output too much. In fights where phantasm survival is difficult, this may be the best solution.
The other problem with scepter is that it is not a great AOE/cleave weapons. It can in principle hit multiple enemies but not reliably.

So in conclusion, I believe the hybrid build (rampager or sinister) with sword main hand is still best in both AOE and single target situations.

I have also looked more into reflect builds. The one I suggested in my first message is crap I realize. I believe the ideal would be dueling, inspiration, illusion. Illusion allows to take phantasmal haste. They finally fixed it for iWard so 2 iWard should be close to 100% reflect uptime. However, as we do not benefit as much from the insane bleeding of iDuel, so in this case rabid is not as strong even if we could have chaotic transference. I was on the other hand surprised that this sinister/rampager still beats the berserker heads on!

The problem with chaotic transference for staff is that it is on the same tier as chaotic dampening…

It depends a bit of how they really increase the stats, but with 30% increase + increase of ascended vs exotic, rampager ascended in an organized party may be overkill. So I would go for Sinister. Rabid is too defensive, the extra power of sinister is still welcome. And for the rune, krait seems really strong (we get 36 about bleeding stacks, so bleed duration yeah!).
If reflects are needed, the lack of ferocity is annoying as reflect damage only scale with crits. Would be nice with a condition+precision+ferocity… weird combination right? :p

Also I was thinking that with alacrity coming in HoT, weapon rotations not relying only on auto attack get a boost, so scepter and staff will become stronger (and I am looking forward to alacrity on phantasms for a super phantasmal haste)

@frifox
Well they did increase the duration of most burning and poison skills to make up for the nerf of the damage/stack.
But it is clear that this is a HUGE patch, and there will be a lot of tweaks in the future to get it balanced. The first weeks, there will just be a succession of new broken build until Anet nerfs them all!

@Telekinesis
Yes, with proper rotation, I can see staff and scepter being relevant to PvE now (not only in solo)!
I am very much looking forward to the changes, and I’m really curious to see if the meta for mesmer (and other professions) will include conditions or not. As it is right now, I cannot find a damage build beating the hybrid or condition ones (at least in the optimal settings that I use for computing), except for short (less than 7-10s) fights.

Time warp has a much longer cooldown, so I think this shout is rather good. Maybe it does not feel “elite” because it is weaker and on short cooldown, but this is a good skill!

I just computed the staff DPS. The AA is weak even assuming the enemy is hit twice with the extra bouncing. On the other hand, Chaos storm is very strong and assuming an almost realistic perma-chaos armor it is on a 13s recharge. Doing so, on condition spec, the DPS rotation with staff beats the sword AA. On the other hand, the extra clone of phase retreat (needed for chaos armor) is annoying, and the warlock does not hit that hard even with mass of conditions on the enemy. So I don’t think the staff is superior to sword-pistol.
Staff is a very good weapon for its additional defensive-support abilities but the DPS is not so high. If the rest of the party cannot supply might and fury reliably, it may be a better choice (and definitely for solo play).
As I said earlier, the extra clone of scepter also reduces the DPS, so not superior to sword pistol either.
Now this is assuming a strong party + the survival of phantasms. If the extra clone is no problem because phantasm die anyway, scepter/pistol + staff is definitely better.

@Telekinesis
You’re perfectly right, I did not look for pure conditions builds. I was just trying to compute how the DPS build performed and tried for fun to change to condition stats and realized it improved the overall DPS.
Maybe it is already known that conditions have a larger DPS, but I did not expect that to be honest. With the 25 stacks limit, the superiority of raw damage was always quite clear. I’ll try more builds, and next week, I’ll also see how long it takes for the damage to build up compare to damage build.
I didn’t want to start a fight but just reporting my first calculations

But how often can you actually use interrupts? I agree with frifoxy, on mobs it can work and be a very nice addition, but not on bosses (defiant). And the 2 first minors of domination are now useful also for conditions and chaos and inspiration are only defensive, almost nothing for DPS!

Just for an approximate estimate: loosing the ferocity of zerker means basically 150% crit damage instead of 200%, so a 25% loss in damage (assuming 100% crit chance). With a DPS of about 10k (which is about the right value), that means 2500 DPS loss. Just with the sharper image, the duelist hits 8 times so about 8 bleeding stacks, lasting about long enough until the next duelist hit. With 3 phantasms, and about 200 DPS bleeding per stacks in rampager, that means 4000 DPS. So without changing the build, the DPS lost in ferocity is gained in condition damage. Add Duelist’s Discipline (a good party should anyway be able to maintain high fury uptime) and the new build clearly outperforms the old.
In summary, having the dueling minor (which all power builds have) ensures close to 25 stacks of bleed. Not investing in condition damage is just a waste!

@Telekinesis
I must say I did not know what to put for domination GM, nothing seems to fit phantasm build so I kept the one of frifoxy.

The sinister (or rampager) has high power and crit, so the increase in ferocity gives the same increased damage as on a power build. I could say in the same way that power build will take compounding power which now also increases condition damage.

I agree that many of the damage multipliers are lost. On the other hand, from what I understood (correct me if I’m wrong) they do not apply to phantasms anyway, which means we benefit only on 40% of our damage in zerker builds.

Thanks to sharper images, the focus has decent condition damage. The focus is anyway a fairly weak phantasm in zerker also compared to swordsman (if against only 1 enemy) but thanks to its 12 hits, it deals nice bleeding.

The build is most likely not optimal, I am just saying that when computing the DPS, it did beat all the zerker builds suggested above by a significant amount (especially with rune of the kraits). But I would love if someone could do the calculations and confirm or not this (my calculations can be wrong).

Hi skcamow
I looked at the scepter and the condition hits very strong, but the additional clone from the AA removes one phantasm, and the extra damage just does not make up for it.

But I am surprised nobody seems to pay attention to what I found and everybody is still speaking about zerker builds. Maybe someone can try to compute the DPS to check, but I found a clear edge for the hybrid rampager build over the zerker build in terms of DPS (using iDuelist instead of iSwordsman as main single-target phantasm).

Wow, with rampager + krait runes, I get results which are way OP on my hybrid build!
Main problem is that it obviously builds up slower than pure damage and the other problem is that it relies much more on phantasm (down to 20% personal damage, 80% phantasm) so in a boss where their survival is not guaranteed, it can be difficult…
But the numbers look really good!

I did some first calculations, and the build I found best was a hybrid sinister build.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-R;4k2l51U73VV71;9;4STW;0147257046;45sY0y;9;0FLLZ0VN5T

or the reflection variant:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-R;4k2l51U73VV71;9;4STV;0147257238;45sY0y;9;0FLLZ0VN5R

My calculations can be wrong and we do not know anyway the exact changes in the items stats. But thanks to the bleed-on-crit and to a lesser extent the confusion-on-crit, the condition damage shines. It is particularly true in the reflect variant as the 12 bleeding procs of the iWarden make up for the lower damage. Also, the signets offer a more permanent source of damage than mantra, especially because as far as I know, phantasms do not benefit from the extra damage from traited mantra.
On the other hand, I did not go for scepter simply because of the clone overwriting.