Guild Wars 2

I run with a very similar 0/20/30/0/20 build with Prismatic Understanding (love it), but with different weapons. (staff + scepter/focus).

Thanks to around 50% crit chance and the Vigor proc on a crit, I have more than enough endurance for dodge/clone generation. I only use phase retreat and dodge to create my clones, that’s enough (I avoid creating scepter clones because the are worthless ones and overwriting my precious staff clones. Scepter in my build is just there for #3 attack to appyl 5 stacks of confusion.) Torch would be cool (for extra stealth) but I need the speed from focus (WvW player here).

Since I don’t use 1h sword I don’t have the trait Blade Training but instead I got Desperate Decoy. Together with Prismatic Understanding, the stealth effect from Desperate Decoy (when your health drops below 25%) is better and often saved my life in really desperate situations.^^

I’d say you don’t need Mirror Images, except maybe for double-shatters (but I doubt this is supposed to be a heavy shatter build). How about using Null Field instead (you have zero condition removal right now).

Why do you use the Mirror heal? You’ll have 3 illusions up at basically any time, Ether Feast heals for a lot with 3 illus (cooldown is a bit slower but not really a factor).

Interesting idea about the Altruism Runes. Haven’t tested/thought about this yet.

I checked Trident damage with my mesmer (condition build, only 1100 power) in the WvW lakes:
(all numbers are non-crit)

1. autoattack: 80 damage
2. blind: 350 damage
3. clone: no damage itself, just clone
4. phantasm: about 500 damage and 4 bleeds (plus maybe some from Sharper Images)
5. sink: about 500 damage, but things get a bit weird here. The sink effect seems to have unlimited range, but deals no damage if the range is beyond 1200. Also the target reflects projectiles while sinking (confusion from my clones gets bounced back to them)

Conclusion:
The trident #4 phantasm is actually decent damage. #1 and #2 deal very low damage.
Using #5 will even hurt yourself. Only #3 is what makes trident strong (and only if the target fights back instead of just swimming away).

Another observation I made:
It seeems the confusion from trident clones does not have the doubled confusion damage in PvE and WvW. 10 stacks under water deal about the same confusion damage than 5 stacks on land. Anyone else noticed this?

Yeah, trident clones are insanely powerful, but my own trident autoattack is very weak. It does about 100 damage and gives me a boon, that’s it.

Trident needs to be balanced somewhere in the middle, not be a weapon with one overpowered attack and all other skills being crap.

Under water as a condition mesmer I can only kill ppl who are actively attacking me (and thus hurt themselves by confusion). Those who just swim away don’t take confusion damage at all. Trident has nothing else to offer but confusion from clones, the other skills do negligible damage.

@Rainu:
I know you can’t spam Death Blossom because you run out of initiative. I also know Null Field helps. But hey, the good thieves just reset the fight and try again if I don’t die on the first try. Next try is probably without Caltrops and without Null Field because of cooldowns. Well, the thief doesn’t need Caltrops (it’s just the icing on the cake) but without Null Field ready my chances are close to zero.

Arcane Thievery might work, thanks for the idea. But I have an important question: Does it work vs evading targets? Can they evade my Arcane Thievery?

btw, the also feared D/D Elementalists are just “annoying” for my condition bunker build. They have great mobility and survivability, but they do WAY LESS damage than any thief out there. D/D Eles simply fail to kill me due to lack of damage. They try it for a while until they realize it’s a pointless waste of time and zoom away.

From all classes and builds, thieves give me the most trouble.

Even if they are bad players and thus unable to beat me, they can always escape from me.
At the same time, I cannot escape from them.

I often manage to escape from a whole zerg, but I cannot escape from a single thief who knows what he is doing. I’m not exaggerating here.

As a condition mesmer my only hope is to blow them up with confusion stacks. Works fine against stupid ones. Doesn’t work against smart ones.

Worst of all are the Death Blossom condition thieves. I created one myself to see how this works, and it made me cry when I compared it to my condition mesmer. All the thief has to do is to press Dagger/Dagger #3 Death Blossom three times in a row and that’s 9 bleedings on every target around. 9 bleedings is more than my mesmer usually manages to put on a single target, and that’s with a lot of work and rack up time. A thief dishes out way more condition damage than my mesmer can even dream of, and all he has to do is press “3, 3, 3”. On top of that, they are evading while using their #3 attack, and usually they dodge roll away and go into stealth after finishing. Please tell me how on earth do you attack them? I simply can’t.

I forgot to mention they can increase the bleed duration up to >20 seconds. Compare that to the 5 second bleedings from my staff clones or from Sharper Images. Lousy 5 seconds and nothing on earth can increase their duration.

To drive things into crazyness, a thief can use the Caltrops utility skill and stack up to 25 bleedings (AoE of course). Now that’s insane!

There is another thing I want to add to the list:
They are the hardest and most annoying class to stomp when downed, while at the same time you cannot counter their stealth stomps once you are downed.

Even without the stealth culling issues, thieves are not balanced. Not at all.

Adaneshade.2409:

2. Lack of strong CC.
-this is what enabled smaller groups to use their higher coordination and skill level to win fights vs huge odds

Be careful here. Strong CC was simply too frustrating for the other side, that’s why you don’t see much CC in modern games. I think a bit more than we currently got in GW2 would be fine, but too much CC is worse than too few CC.

Adaneshade.2409:

3. Caps on AOE.
-bring enough ppl to the fight and well placed aoe is irrelevant

I assume the AoE cap is to prevent “AoE bomb groups” but the number cap is the wrong method. Lower overall AoE damage but without number cap would be better.

Zosk.5609:

We have different opinions about the causes of death of Warhammer, what I consider the best RvR game to date…

It would have been a great RvR game if it had:
- three realms fighting each other (not just two, didn’t they learn from their own DAoC ? )
- less bugs (WAR had really tons of them)
- better class balancing (but ANet ain’t doing it any better so far …)

Many will say Warhammer was an outright bad game but I have to disagree, they did a lot of things right and the game had great potential.

Examples for good things in WAR:
- taunt/detaunt being useful in PvP combat (not just for aggro management in PvE)
- the dual target system with offensive and defensive targets (it was too complicated for casual players, but this was a point where real player skill shines)
- hybrid healer classes done right! (not too weak, not too strong, and thanks to lifetaps and dual target system they really could nuke and heal at the same time)
- two types of heal debuffs, incoming and outgoing, but available on different classes (very good concept, required teamwork and tactic to use it’s full potential)
- tank classes done right! (in vanilla WoW, tanks were either offensive spec and just another dps class in PvP, and defensive tanks were completely useless; in WAR things are different, good PvP tanks didn’t require a certain spec, they required a skilled player!)

And last but not least for the PvE folks around:
- public quests (WAR basically invented the dynamic events we enjoy now in GW2)

Ekove.4586:

1. I dont see why people whine about NPC’s, I think they are always needed in WvW…I just think the problem with them is they are mostly noncontributing, or even counter productive.

For example the NPC’s scattered all over the maps (as opposed to the ones in camps) serve no purpose other than decoration.

Actually the NPCs serve a purpose: Smart players will use them to rally when they are downed. I’m being sarcastic here, because this is a stuipd and annyoing purpose. The NPCs shouldn’t be there, or at least it shouldn’t be possible to rally on a trashmob while fighting other players in WvW.

It becomes ridiculous when a downed warrior uses Vengeance, quickly kills a nearby trashmob with 100blades and is fully revived thanks to the Sweet Revenge trait.

WvW player here.

I used the “on death” traits for my clones a while, but like Swish said, it’s rather unlikely for a clone to explode near anything useful when they get replaced. And even if the enemy actively kills my clones, they do it often from range or with AoE attacks. No “on death” effect applied either.

About scepter clone generation: It looks fast on the first view, but actually I think it’s very slow. One clone every 2 seconds, are you kidding me? A good player will probably dish out 3 clones, shatter, pump out another 3 illus and shatter again, all within only a little more than 2 seconds. That’s how the game is played.

Scepter is okay as a starter weapon for low level mesmers, when you have no traits and not utilities yet to generate your illusions.

I’d say now we have at least some diversity amongst mesmer builds, compared to the times before iBerzerker got nerfed. 99% of mesmers in WvW were running greatsword and had focus in second slot just for the travel speed. You saw nothing else.

Then, after the iBerzerker nerf, mesmers nearly vanished from the WvW battlefields for a while. Often we hadn’t enough mesmers to port our golems, unless someone logged onto his low-level mesmer twink.

Now almost any mesmer uses a shatter build (for obvious reasons), but they use different weapon sets, and I even see a condition mesmer sometimes.

Unfortunately the dodge clones always attack the nearest target, which is not necessary your target. (the clone will also shatter on the ‘wrong’ target)

If there is no target in range the clone will just stand around doing nothing. On shatter it will simply explode where it stands. If a target moves into range the clone will attack it.

We don’t even know if this is a bug or “working as intended”. I say it’s a bug.

I think Mass Invisibility is okay, just the cast time is too long.

In WvW I use it to escape from a zerg (useful in combination with evade clones) or simply to drop target in regular combat. Sometimes I use it for stealth stomping.

My mesmer is a tanky condition build and I solo a lot in WvW. Timewarp is not very useful for me, it’s more a group ability. I defeat enemies by outlasting them, not by bursting them down. Even with Time Warp I couldn’t burst them down, but Mass Invis allows me to escape when there is too many of them.

That’s why I use MI instead of TW.

Katiechops.6807:

But hey the good news is unlike Warhammer Online or Aion etc if you were in a server mis-match like this the losing side players get frustrated and quit, the winning sides get bored with nothginto fight and quit,, here this friday new match up more balanced opponents more fun throughout the day and night as well as prime time everyone happy again.

Yes, the server ranking system seems to be the best approach so far. Having played Warhammer Online before, I know what you are talking about. A battle with only two (and always the same) sides fighting each other simply doesn’t work over a longer time frame. The outmanned side gets frustrated, the overpopulated side gets bored. MMO developers should have learned this lesson back in the old DAoC days, but nooo, they kept making MMOs with only two sides fighting each other.

Here in GW2 we have three sides fighting each other AND a dynamic matchup system.

It still feels frustrating sometimes, like yesterday when I entered EB just to see we don’t have enough Kodash ppl to start the breakout event while probably 50+ Elona are sitting in the fortress that should be ours …

At the same time the Piken corner in EB was mostly untouched by the otherwise dominating Elona. They preferred to sit in our fortress. I guess Elona really hates Kodash.^^

vutak.3186:

- The general rule for stealth is that if you hit an opponent with any effect, you’ll drop out of stealth; If you whiff completely (even if it’s a targeted ability), you’ll stay hidden. So you can expect that Phase Retreat will keep you stealthed, and Phantasmal Warlock will not.

Yes, maybe Phase Retreat will keep you stealthed, but your char starts autoattacking immediately after using Phase Retreat, so I guess that’s how you will break stealth anyway.

Dodge roll on the other hand works great. I use dodge roll almost everytime I stealth, because it’s such a good way to fool your enemy around. Especially combined with the Decoy clone. They kill your decoy clone and it goes poof, then they see another mesmer popping up from stealth and they all think “THAT IS THE REAL ONE!!!” but again … poof

Too bad we can’t dodge roll while using The Prestige.

Condition/bleed mesmer here, having the same problem, knowing the reason.

A big part of my damage comes from staff clones. Many of these clones are created through dodge rolls. As you all should know, dodge roll clones do not always attack your target, they simply attack the nearest target. When fighting another mesmer, the nearest target is usually a clone/phantasm, especially when fighting a GS mesmer since their clones spawn right in front of you. Because of this, your staff clone army is probably doing no damage to the real mesmer. Only your own staff autoattacks will hit the real mesmer, but that’s not enough to kill him.

Also when I shatter my illusions, many of them will shatter on the wrong targets, e.g. enemy illusions.

The iWarlock would be a good way to damage the enemy mesmer directly, but in a condition build it’s usually weak, lacking power.

The GS mesmer on the other hand has only little problems with all that. His damage mostly comes from GS #1 autoattacks, #2 mirror blade and #4 iBerzerker, all casted directly at you. For clone generation he probably uses “Mirror Images” which creates clones that will attack and shatter on you, not on any of your illusions.

Another problem: My damage output is too slow to kill his phantasms. Other classes/builds can one-shot or at least two-shot that pesky iBerzerker. I can’t. In order to deal about 2000 damage (to kill a typical phantasm) I have to stack some bleeds and give them a few seconds time to work. This is no viable way to fight an iBerzerker.

My best shot at killing a GS mesmer is using confusion (applied with scepter #3) but while many other classes are clueless about where suddenly all this nasty damage comes from, most mesmers are well aware about confusion. They just stop attacking for a few seconds, that’s it.

Here is what I do whenever I encounter a GS mesmer in WvWvW:

I run!

But only until I reach water, because under water a typical GS mesmer has next to zero chance to win against a condition mesmer. The smart ones know this already and – unfortunately – don’t follow me into the water. The clueless ones join me for a swim and meet some of my beloved trident clones.^^

PS: I have similar problems against minion-master necromancers. Same reason, half my clone army is attacking his pet army.

Xom.9264:

So I made a Mesmer a bit ago because I thought they were unbeatable OP gods. After playing and learning the class funny thing happened, I got really good at killing mesmers on my other classes when they used to own me.

Yes, it helps a lot to learn and understand the other classes, especially when fighting a Mesmer confuses you a lot.

Thieves kept telling us that all day long: “if you have troubles with thieves, try playing a thief yourself and you’ll find out how weak they actually are.”

I did that and what happened wasn’t funny but very sad instead. They are even more OP as I thought they are. Now whenever a competent thief wipes the floor with my toon, I can tell how he did it and I know there was nothing I could have done against (other than what I already did to stay alive a little longer before I died anyway).

Few days ago a condition-spec Thief sent my condition-spec Mesmer back to elementary school. So I logged onto my thief toon to figure out what exactly happened and what their condition-spec can do. What I saw made me very, very sad. A properly specd condition thief just have to press dagger/dagger “3” three times in a row and gets 9 bleeds ticking on everyone nearby. This is way more than my condition mesmer can ever hope to dish out, no matter how many buttons I press. Just be spamming button “3”, other skills allow him to stack even more bleeds, theoretically up to 25 bleeds. And worst of all, the thief can increase his bleed duration up to 20 seconds, can you believe that? Oh wait, I forgot to mention that the thief is evading while using his dagger/dagger #3 attack, so you can’t even hit him while he stacks all those bleeds on your entire team.

Sorry for half-hijacking the thread.

Hehe, sometimes you catch those Alt F4 dudes on their wrong foot.

Yesterday I managed to down a thief who jumped me (he didn’t seem to have much skill), tried to stomp him, he does this little downed state teleport trick, I try to stomp him again but of course … Alt-F4, he’s gone.

A minute later he found me in the same place (I was killing ogres on the eternal map) and jumped me again. Once again, I managed to down him easily (he was really bad). This time I use Decoy (my char is a mesmer) and finish him from stealth. Voila, he died right away, didn’t see the stomp coming, too late for Alt-F4.

I think he was just hoping I wouldn’t find him after he uses the downed disguise skill, that’s why he waited with Alt-F4. Too bad my stomp came too early. Other Alt-F4ers exit the game instantly when they are downed, but not thieves.

tldr;
Alf-F4 thief got owned by stealth stomping. Priceless.

Last night we had an awesome fight in Stonemist.

This is what happened (at least as far as I can tell):

- Miller had SN
- SN outer wall was open due to Treb shooting from Deso tower
- a few sneaky Kodash ppl made it inside and attacked the inner door with rams
- Miller defense was there when door went down, but an awesome mesmer managed to get to the upper floor, porting Kodash ppl up there.
- it did not look good for Kodash at this point, we had too few attackers, fewer than Miller defense
- meanwhile at the open front door, some Deso players tried to get in
- thus Miller had to defend their castle against both Deso and Kodash, that was too much for them
- finally after a long drawn out fight around the lord room (even including a lord respawn cause it took so long), Kodash was the winner

I dunno how this was possible. It was against all odds. Miller had more defenders than we (Kodash) had attackers, but still – to our very surprise – we ended up capturing Stonemist.

@Deso:
I’m very curious, did you even know that we (Kodash) were there camping in the upper floor when you tried to rush SN through that open door?

plasmacutter.2709:

The phantasms should be an elaborate spell effect like elementalist’s dragon’s tooth, and just as vulnerable once summoned to attack. (e.g. not at all)

They should also disappear after connecting their attack, and be de-coupled from our illusion counter.

This seems like the best solution to bring phantasms into line with the devs’ current ‘vision’ of phantasms while removing the triple-penalty of having the summon dodgable, the phantasm killable or its attack also dodgable, and the dodging of the summon also denying us our shatters.

It would also provide more reliable balance numbers.. we would no longer be nerfed based on the upper-bound of having 3 wardens, or 3 zerkers, or 3 duelists up at one time.

Best suggestion so far.

wads.5730:

any condition build without 15 in duelist is a sub-optimal one in terms of its dps.

I agree to this, but only if you have a half-decent crit chance.

The build we discuss here has only 4% crit chance. The “Sharper Images” trait from 15 pts into Duelist line is worthless when you have such a low crit rate.

On my own Mesmer I basically run a 0/20/20/0/20 build (with 10 spare points to spend, for example 0/25/25/0/20 or 10/20/20/0/20 or whatever you like). Equip is mostly “rabid” with precision/toughness/condition. Weapons are staff + scepter/focus. I create lots of staff clones with Deceptive Evasion, having Vigor up all the time and dodge rolling like crazy while my staff clones do some damage. If this doesn’t work I switch to scepter and try to kill them with confusion.

Saulius.8430:

i’d say its balance… we (mesmers) are nearly impossible to kill. now imagine other classes couldn’t even run away from us… it would be too easy and boring.

How does this balance concept work for thieves?
Killing a perma-stealth thief is next to impossible, but …
When was the last time you successfully ran away from a thief?
When was the last time you successfully killed a thief who wanted to run away?

Or was your comment trying to be ironic?

Today I did some tests on dummy golems in the mists when I noticed something weird with the scepter autoattack.

First, the way autoattack is supposed to work:
When using GS or staff I just press “1” and it keeps firing. That is, if I am within 1200 range to the dummy golem. Once I move out of that range, it stops. When I move back into range, it starts firing again (me doing nothing but movement, no pressing “1” again).

And now lets try this with scepter:
I started at the exact 1200 range position where I did the tests with GS and staff. As expected, scepter says out of range (scepter range is only 900). I do a tiny step forward, press “1” and my scepter fires a single shot at the golem. It does not keep attacking, just fires a single shot every time press “1”. Once I move into the 900 range my autoattacks keep firing normally.

Summary:
Scepter actually allows you to attack at, let’s say, 1190 range, but you have to mash your “1” button to make it work.

Weird!

Wompage.4586:

I’d like to personally thank the Kodash trebbers in SM that allowed [GG] (and some pugs <3) to take and then dump durios every point tick for over an hour without ever putting up siege.
I’d also like to take the time to thank the FS that took it back each time, and then left 5 minutes before point tick.

Eventually it seemed Kodash got pissed enough to send in its zerg, I guess after all that they deserve to take durios for once

Hehe, yeah that was funny, even seen from a Kodash trebbers view (I was one of them^^).

Too bad our mindless zerg was banging their heads against Anzalia instead. They were literally trying to raid the upgraded and heavily defended Anzalia tower with bare fists, while there was Durios AND Quentin with walls down due to permanent trebuchet shooting. Hopeless.

We had no real commander on the map and no well-organized small guild groups, thus you guys had an easy time there. Excellent timing btw, well done.

To be honest, we had no chance to actually hold Durios/Quentin, but thanks to the trebs we could stop our enemies from upgrading and building counter-trebs there (most of the time at least).

just noticed some hilarious statement:

… and he cannot cap points since he has to be invisible to heal…

Oh noes, there is finally a disadvantage when being invisible?

What did you expect? Going there and cap/hold that point while being invisible, immune to nearly anything the other players can do?

You Sir, need a reality check.

If it bothers your friend that he is invisible while healing, tell him there are two other heals with no invisibility included. Also, if we are talking about Shadow Refuge here, this is not the regular heal, it’s a bonus healing ability on top of the regular heal. In other words: Having double healing abilites is another thief luxury which most other classes don’t have.

Azure Prower.8701:

Funny thing is. If you goto the thief forum. They’re there complaining about mesmers and how they are impossible to kill.

Nope. They are happy we are easy cake now.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Mesmers-easy-cake-now-D/first#post812080

notebene.3190:

What I’d like to see in dailies and monthlies is a grab bag. 10 things; complete any 5 for the achievement. That way you choose what best suits your play style.

Yeah, that would be a better solution.

Or make them different for different aspects of the game, just like the new sPvP/tPvP dailies and monthlies.

Unfortunately, ANet considers PvE and WvW as being the same. I dunno why. Personally, I play mostly WvW and I hate dungeons. Last month it was fine for me, this month I have to enter dungeons/fractals.

Azaziel.3608:

(a) A number of servers have no queues for WvW … (come to Dzagonur ^^)
(b) If you’ve entered WvW from one of the capitals there is no TP fee

a) yes, no queues on Dzagonur, thus the ALT+F4 escape is very popular.
b) yes, no taxes, no fee, no penalties.

Anyone who uses a SSD harddisc in his gaming PC will be back in WvW within a few seconds.

Something needs to be done about ALT+F4 but right now there are more important issues to fix.

Hastur.6231:

On a side note I talked about my thief friend a few posts earlier, he got bored of playing the impossible class that is a thief …

Oh well, if he has so much trouble to be successful with his thief, maybe HE is the one who should l2p.

Carighan.6758:

[…] These 3s will reset back to full 3s whenever the target hits anything, up to a maximum total duration of say, 15 seconds.

We should have the duration reset on the regular confusion effect. Whenever the target uses a skill, the duration is reset.

With this change a single confusion effect would be somewhat useful. Your enemy (in WvW/PvP) will probably ignore it because one confusion is really little damage, but this gives you the chance to build up more confusion stacks over time, up to the point where your enemy has to stop attacking for a few seconds to get rid of the confusion.

Right now you have to apply all your confusions at once, you need at least 5 or better 10 stacks on the target to make it worthwile, and then you hope your enemy will mash some buttons in the next few seconds. If he plays smart and doesn’t use any skill except dodge roll and running way for a bit, all your effort was useless.

This is a main problem with confusion, it’s only viable if you apply huge stacks.

btw, the crappy iMage would suddenly become useful with the suggested confusion duration reset mechanic.

AsteriskCGY.5931:

I’d consider the Staff a midrange weapon, because while the ball is 1200 range, the bounce range is much shorter, and it’s the bounce that does the most of the damage.

Actually if you are running with a group (which is the way this game should be played) and there is at least one melee class around, the shorter bounce range is no longer an issue.

Dasboba.1652:

My main is also full exotic geared thief, only I run a P/D condition heavy build. I really think the BS build is cheap and way too easy, and I was very surprised not to see it nerfed last week. I totally agree with Mjk. When I’m on the thief boards it’s funny to see all the thieves defending the build. I abandoned that build a long time ago for the one I run now. I just hope when, not if, the nerf comes, it’s to BS and not stealth.

Two things need to happen: A backstab nerf and a fix to the graphic engine, making thieves actually visible the moment they come out of stealth, not 2 seconds later.

Dasboba.1652:

Without stealth, most alternate thief builds just wouldn’t work. It would be like taking away a mesmer’s phantasms…oh wait, anet basically did, heh.

LOL, yeah!

btw, it’s always again an amazing show when I meet a thief who actually knows what he is doing. Just had a thief who tried to gank me and caused me serious trouble but he finally decided to abandon on me because an easier cloth-wearing target came along and joined the fight – which he instantly downed. I managed to prevent him from stomping the poor dude, and when a third player joined the fight he retreated from the battlefield. We three were charging him, only to find him nearby fighting a Dolyak, which he managed to kill while we 3 of us tried to kill him. It took him a while but he still managed to kill it. Finally there was 5 of us charging him, but he got away alive.

Business as usual, some might say. But in this special case, the thief wasn’t even lvl 80. So we are not talking about someone in exotic end-game gear with perfect runes and stuff.

He wasn’t exploiting, I saw what he did and I know how the thief class works. My brother plays one, usually sitting next to me while we play together.

But surely someone will come and tell me thieves are fine and I should learn to play …

Indeed, it seems to be only a display bug.

I was testing it on dummy golems again, and even while no numbers were showing up, the life bar of the golem kept moving.

Pyroatheist.9031:

If you compare the mesmer weaponset to the other casting class, necromancer, you can clearly see that mesmer is missing a weapon. Ele’s have the capability of doing either condition damage or power damage with any weapon, so they are irrelevant for this discussion.
Necromancers have 3 mainhand weapons: The dagger, for close range damage; The scepter, for mid-range condition damage; The axe, for mid-range power damage. These 3 weapons are the basic makeup of the different builds possible with a mainhand weapon.
Now you look at mesmer. The mesmer only has 2 mainhand weapons: The scepter, for mid-range condition damage; The sword, for close range damage. As you can see, the mesmer is obviously missing a weapon, and this is where mainhand pistol should be introduced.

Full agree!

We need two different ranged mainhand weapons, one for condition damage, another one for power builds.

Right now we only have the scepter, which actually tries to fit both roles. The #1 autoattack only deals decent damage if you have a power build (and the clones are only useful cannon fodder for shatter , which usually also requires a power build). The #2 attack is defense/utility, doesn’t matter what stats you have. The #3 attack is only useful if you are condition spec.

I think the problem with scepter is that it tries to act as both power and condition weapon, but as a result it is an overall weak weapon in both cases.

Just stop using clone abilities once you have 3 phantasms out.

If a situation forces you to use a clone ability (e.g. you need to use “Decoy”) simply recast the phantasm right after it. The cooldown should be ready anyway and the new phantasm will overwrite the clone.

Problems only occur when:
- using the trait for clones on dodge roll.
- using scepter autoattack where a clone will spawn every 2 seconds.

Mjk.7562:

Lol, it’s fun to read replies of some kids around here. At first, i completly agree with OP, my primary is thief, full exotic, ful berserker, but build is healing/dmg, so i keep incredible dureability with cloaking/regen when cloaked, longer cloak and still keep backstab betwen 10k-8k on soft and 8k-6k on heavy. I laugh at those zealously defending thief . no offence but that class is completly broken for pvp, mainly when you know thief well as me and staret other classes like warrior, now have it on 80 and mesmer 80, what i can achieve on mesmer with mega-combinations of buttons, i can easily get repeated button mash on thief :P

Thanks for being honest.

Mesmer player here, who created a thief just to see how it works. Same results. On my mesmer I have to use complicated mega-combinations of buttons, on the thief I just mash some buttons and kill much faster and more reliable.

I run a condition-build using staff. My important traits are Sharper Images and Deceptive Evasion.

For WvW roaming I need the focus in my secondary weapon slot.

In my secondary weapon slot mainhand I use scepter not because it’s good, but because it’s the only one-handed ranged weapon we have for the main hand. (if there was a main hand pistol, I’d probably use it instead of scepter, but there isn’t).

Scepter #3:
This is the only scepter skill I really use. Sometimes when my usual tactic (clone crit bleeds and staff attacks) doesn’t work against an enemy (fighting a tanky build, or they got too much healing power and condition removal) I try to kill them with Confusion damage. Having three illusions out all the time, I switch from staff to scepter, hit #3 to apply confusion and use F2 shatter Cry of Confusion at the same time. Sometimes they blow up themselves, sometimes not. Often they just dodge roll through my scepter attack and/or evade my shatter. Oh well …

Scepter #2:
I consider this as a pretty crappy skill. I use it as a gap filler when the above tactic failed, while waiting to switch back to staff. Once you have used the #3 scepter skill, there is nothing left to do. (except waiting for staff to become ready again)

Scepter #1:
I actually avoid using this skill, because it does lousy damage anyway (I’m heavy into condition damage, not much power) and it kills my precious staff clones (who are using staff #1 and probaly do more damage than me using scepter #1). If there are scepter clones out when I switch back to staff, I instantly shatter them and replace them with staff clones. Scepter clones are just worthless.

tl;dr
Scepter is mostly crap, but it’s the only one-handed ranged weapon for my main hand. I use it only because there is no alternative.

Winds.3087:

I’ve never seen any necromancer actually nuking something in long-range, outside of lich form.

I think that’s because their only long range nukes are on staff weapon. Staff autoattack deals very low damage and is single target, the rest are various ground-targeted AoE effects. That’s not really what you call a “long range nuker”.

Actually necros are fun in zerg/siege fights in WvW. You can cover your entire screen with AoE. But in small skirmishes this is not helpful. Many necros use dagger (=melee weapon) in small fights. Again, this is not what you call a “long range nuker”.

A mesmer with greatsword has “long range nukes”, but he lacks some serious AoE capabilities. In siege fights (attacking/defending towers and fortresses) the mesmer is pretty useless right now. They shine in smaller fights.

In PvE they are both slow. Especially when it comes to cash farming, both necro and mesmer are awful.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Yes they do and if this is removed one day, what will be our damage under water? Trident has no damage (your phantasm has a pathetic damage lol a clone is more useful) and spear is melee range under water lolz no thanks.

Without confusion, there is still the option to stack bleedings for damage. Works fine if you are condition-spec and use Sharper Images. The trident phantasm alone creates about 5 or 6 bleeds in my build, all ticking for 100+ damage (trident phantasm has a rapid-firing multi attack, thus it’s much better than staff phantasm iWarlock which is useless in a pure condition build).

But I admit, the trident autoattack is a bit lousy. It should be more like the staff autoattack, creating both conditions and boons, not just the latter.

The trident clone autoattack on the other hand is overpowered, no doubt.

We need some middle way here. If ANet ever touches the Trident, I hope they rework both the normal attack AND the clone attack.

Spear is the weapon for power builds, and in my opinion you shouldn’t be actually fighting in melee range but use your #2 skill to ram your enemy every 5 seconds. You can stay out of their melee range and create some clones for shatter. It takes some practice to master your spear underwater combat skills, but I think it’s a pretty cool way to fight. Skills #2, #4 and #5 allow you to play a hit-and-run game. Unfortunately this requires a lot of room to maneuver and you’ll add a lot of mobs. Too bad there are so many angry fish monsters in the WvW lakes.

Sonnet.9840:

If you can’t see that a class like thief was/is a problem in PvP environment (where casuals are also involved), I don’t consider you a good player, no matter how good you are in actual combat.

Well said.

There is way too much discussion about how everyone (except the thief players of course) should learn to play and stuff. But in reality, every veteran MMO player can clearly see how overpowered and game-breaking thieves in their current state actually are.

Kilauea.4217:

I can’t even count how many times I have fought a thief and get him down to 20% before they burst me down. Then in my downed state I’ll stack the confusion and summon phantasm and get the win.

You know a thief can stomp you while stealthed?

You can’t even use your downed skill #2 to teleport away since this requires a target. Too bad the thief is invisible, no target for you. Can’t attack him, can’t summon your phantasm. A second later you are dead anyway …

In other words: The thieves you fought didn’t even know how to play their class, otherwise they would have destroyed you.

I find it ridicioulus that thieves have the best downed state skills AND the best ways to nullify other ppls downed skills.

Add that to the list of countless advantages the thief class has …

Just tried to use iDisenchanter under water (where Null Field doesn’t work) while fighting some fish mobs in WvW lake. Out of 10 times it never worked. Frustrated I switched to the mantra cleanse.

Later I went in PvP-lobby to the underwater target dummy golems to test this. Well, it works, but the range is extremely short. You have to be almost in melee range to successfully cast it.

This really hurts all staff mesmers out there, especially if they spec Sharper Images.

Staff + Sharper Images + Deceptive Evasion* would be a pretty cool combination, but it’s really hard to pull that off, especially in a PvP situation.

(*) Deceptive Evasion is also bugged, since the spawned clones will attack anything near at random instead of assisting on your target.

Nice, thanks for posting this.

Finally some fast-attacking mobs who hurt themselves with confusion damage. I no longer have to respec my condition-bunker Mesmer when I leave WvW to do some PvE.

ManCaptain.3154:

Not to mention the idea of utility phantasms on a class that uses them in shatters is pretty dumb.

Well, at least the cooldown on Phantasmal Disenchanter is really short, so you might just use it as cannon fodder for shatter and conjure a new one after.

Seen from a shatter perspective, Phantasmal Disenchanter is a bit like Mirror Images, just with half the effect and half the cooldown.

Mirror Images is still better because it has an additional stun break and it never fails to spawn …

Vendris.4201:

Using a sword mainhand in both sets is crippling yourself.

All cooldowns on sword skills are pretty low. Basically the weapon switch cooldown and the sword cooldowns are on par. I don’t see a big problem in using sword in both mainhands.

Pistol and torch on the other hand have very high cooldowns. The cooldowns are long enough to switch onto another weapon set and back before they are ready again.

In summary, having for example a pistol in both weapon set offhands would be outright stupid, but I see nothing wrong with two mainhand swords.

Darnis.4056:

Not sure if I can find a team that would run me instead of a thief though…

Maybe if they want a thief with portal ^^

Everyone and their mother was running with GS in WvW. I see 99% of WvW mesmers running with GS spamming 1, 2 and 4, some of them also use clones on dodge roll and shatter, but that’s sums it up.

Now GS got nerfed, oh well. There must have been a reason why everyone was using this weapon. Guess what, there are half a dozen other weapons to choose from. There are other builds which are viable.

Adapt or reroll, but stop crying please.

oZii.2864:

- scepter auto attack doesn’t overwrite phantasms anymore(bug fix?)

Unfortunately, no. Scepter autoattack still overwrites phantasms.

psirca.9452:

Yeah the portal nerf is not really a nerf. It didn’t fix any of the issues like being able to transport an entire map to one spot… they did however limit healing to 5 targets, that cuts down some of the “stand on the portal and heal because only 5 ppl get hit by aoe nonsense”.

Yeah, the change to healing hopefully stops that “turtle formation” nonsense.

We should be glad there was no fundamental nerf to portal. It would have been another way to prevent turtle tactics, because without portal the “turtle formation” cannot move.

A cooldown increase on portal is not really a nerf. It could have been much worse.

I’m glad they fixed it.

Maybe now we see Mesmers with different weapons on the battlefields, not just 99% of them running around with GS.