Guild Wars 2

Really good thieves and warriors, specially when there’s more than one of ’em.

Single warriors are generally not a problem unless I have to fight in an enclosed space (like dueling over a Ruin or something), but in tight quarters they can be a nightmare.

Solo thieves are always an interesting duel, going against the good ones can be a scary experience. Generally comes down to avoiding backstabs (blink, stealth, well-timed dodges and blocks), and being able to burst HARD after you knock them out of stealth.

Multiples of the above in any combination are very hard to deal with, and I usually run away.

Left shift.
It’s caused me trouble sometimes when I accidentally backflip off a ledge because I thought I was typing a capital letter in chat but the chat window wasn’t focused but on the whole it’s the most comfortable button for me.

mahariel.4981:

10/20 is trash, use 0/30/0/25/15 or 10/30/0/20/10.

Really, dude? We’ve talked about this.

10/20 is perfectly fine and likely better dps in any situation where you can keep phantasms up and reflects aren’t the majority of your damage (e.g. Arah/Lupi).

Not to mention EM is wasted if you don’t run mantras, and offhand pistol isn’t always needed (I’d rather Sw/Sw+F in most cases), and at that point there’s nothing useful left in dueling that can compare to 15% more phantasm damage.

I usually run 0/30 myself, but stop calling things trash without any rational basis. Let’s see some actual tested DPS comparisons, eh?

Use 0/30/0/25/15 with mantras, or 10/20/0/25/15 without.

Here’s a guide for playstyle, the trait-build in there is out of date but otherwise it’s good:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Dungeons-Phantasm-build-s/first

/signed.

Just make the clone leap work like Flashing Blade or Inf. Strike.

/signed. This is really, really frustrating.
The initial attack should HAPPEN RIGHT AWAY. After the first spin, I’m fine with it repositioning or whatever it feels like doing.

Yep, I realized that.

Ok, makes sense. Thanks!

That’s true, but Zealous Blade is a good boost for when I swap to GS (5% more damage on WW, yes please), and some nice extra healing. I can’t see a single useful Master trait in Radiance…

This is for dungeons/fractals. Full zerk/scholar, etc.

So I’ve been running 15/15/0/20/20 Hammer+GS symbol dps and really enjoying it, but I’m finding that the extra 10 points in Virtues for Abs Res isn’t really necessary, since I get enough condi clear with Purging Flames on a fairly short cooldown, and the GS spin moves for a little extra when needed.

Would y’all recommend 25/15 or 15/25 for more dps? Radiant Power is better than Symbolic Power since it boosts everything instead of just symbols, but I don’t see any useful majors in Radiance to beat Zealous Blade.

Wells are great, both the damage ones and the util ones – but the universal problem with wells is that they’re on pretty long cooldowns, specially the utility ones (power/darkness); there are better classes for blinding (thief, guard) and condi removal (guard, mesmer); and the well cooldown trait is on a line that isn’t great for DPS builds.

AoE fear is almost never useful, breaking up a stacked group of mobs that you’re dps-ing is the exact opposite of what you want to do.

I’m sorry, but this post feels like it’s six months old at the very least — even the “popular” pve meta has evolved a lot since then. If you’re still seeing 3w/1g/1m group requests those players haven’t looked up builds in forever. Warrior DPS is nowhere near the best; a single warrior is all a group needs for banners, beyond that you’re better off bringing other classes.

The only class that’s somewhat sub-par in dungeons is Necro, and that’s because they have no real party utility, and no vigor/evade/block/invuln which makes survival much harder (specially now that you can’t tank killing blows in DS anymore).

Couple notes on the original:
1. All sigils share cooldowns, so your Fire sigil is wasted – stick to a stacking (Bloodlust) or static (Force, etc.) sigil for the offhand weapon.
2. Mirror of Anguish is fairly useless, I’d take Bountiful Interruption instead – you can get interrupts pretty easily with Magic Bullet and Illusionary Wave, and the might stacks and boons from BI are pretty awesome.

The extra Daze duration that got added to Confounding Suggestions might actually be better off being attached to Imbued Diversion. That way it benefits a lot more than just our F3.

Then change Confounding Suggestions to proc the stun before the daze instead of replacing it, so that it’s still buffed relative to pre-Dec10th. And that way daze duration increases don’t feel semi-wasted when taking Confounding.

From what I remember of posts doing the math, Berserker is almost always better, though the dps difference isn’t enormous. It’ll also depend on your buffs. If your team is providing fury, Spotter, Banner, etc. then you will end up going over 100% crit chance, which is useless.

If this is mostly for solo play, then full Assassin is a dps boost for your reflect damage — since that’s not affected by power. For your personal / shatter damage it’ll still be a loss though.

My idea for this is to make “Blurred Inscriptions” also affect our images when it’s active – i.e. signet activation also makes all active clones and phantasms distort for 1 second.

That would, in my opinion:
1 – allow for “active” dodge play (so it’s skill-based) instead of just being automatic
2 – buff an under-utilized trait, and greatly open up signet build viability
3 – not be really overpowered, since they’re all on fairly long cooldowns

Nice concept. I’d take battle sigils on both swaps instead of what you have, and switch 5 points from Illusions into Dueling for Sharper Images. GS clones, iZerker and iDuelist all proc a lot of bleeds, even without condi damage on your gear that adds up to a good amount of pressure. Might stacks from battle sigils and the occasional mirror blade will boost that as well as your regular damage.

I’d also consider Traveler runes instead of Scholar – you lose damage but the run speed is amazing in WvW. Losing Compounding Celerity also doesn’t hurt at all that way.

Lazy Kai is all you need for leveling. Shatter burst is great because most things die too fast for phantasms to be worthwhile. And you get to practice one of the most fun mesmer styles.

You can always switch to phantasm builds once you’re leveled up.

And yes, definitely go power for leveling.

I just carry two sets – zerker + ruby for pve, and Knight + Traveler for WvW.

@Duke – click on the link Jerem posted, it goes to a build editor with the specific traits picked out.

Illusionist’s Celerity also benefits Decoy and utility phantasm summons (Disenchanter, Defender); and if all your phantasm cooldowns are up you can potentially mix in shatters as well for more burst (or interrupt, or invul).

You can run dungeons and fractals on the same build, they’re not different enough to need a respec. I’d go with 0/30/0/25/15 if you want to trait into mantras and reflect. Take Empowering Mantras and all the personal and phantasm damage traits.

OK, let me answer. This will be a bit long, take from it what you will.

I’ve tended to stay out of your threads, colesy, because they always devolve into this sort of brawl. And it seems like the same is true of all of the regulars on this forum — Alissah, Chaos Archangel, Fay, now Qaelyn, so many others. Pyro just stepped in to try to stop the flamewar. And don’t try to blame others for “forcing” you into it — the choice of style of your posts rests entirely on you.

Here’s the thing — no matter how right you are, winning an argument isn’t about being right; it’s about convincing the other side to agree with you. And your constant and needless aggression continually detracts from whatever you’re trying to say. Sure, you may occasionally get through to those who can look past your posturing and judge by your content, but those are rare.

And that’s sad, because you really do have good content. I know you’re genuinely trying to help raise the level of play around here. Your dungeon guide is excellent, and btw, I wish you’d update it, I keep wanting to link it for people who ask for dungeon builds but it’s still out of date.

You just need to realize that not everyone even necessarily wants to play like you do, all out 100% all the time. A lot of people don’t have the skill or reflexes for it. A lot of people don’t care that much for fastest-possible runs. And they should be allowed to ask for and get advice on this forum without you constantly jumping in and berating everyone because that’s not how the speed-runners do it.

Now to answer your actual question — yes, your expectations are extreme. I’ve got 2k+ hours played, 1.2k+ of those on mesmer (last I checked, it’s been a while). I run full zerk, have Dungeon Master, was up to fractal 50 before the patch and almost back there now (haven’t run as many post-patch) with 350+ runs according to my achievement panel. I’m rank 90+ in WvW, been to top200 in Solo and Team Queue, I’ve beaten Liadri with Mesmer, Guard and Necro. All this to say, I like to think of myself as ‘experienced’ — not “highly” so in any one part of the game, but reasonably all-around.

And yet, if I’d joined that run you would kick me. I melee everything I can, and I’d love to try it on the Grawl shaman, but no single PUG I’ve ever been in has gone melee on the final boss fight. I can if I want to, but 1) as Pyro said, it’s harder to do without boss-cam, and 2) it’s much more risky, and when the whole party is spread out at max-range boon-sharing isn’t even possible, so the DPS difference is greatly reduced.

Want to know the most valuable trait I’ve found for that fight? Medic’s Feedback. Popping a bubble during rez has let me prevent innumerable party wipes, it’s really a godsend with most groups. With an experienced, melee group it’s utterly useless, since people shouldn’t be going down, and when everyone’s stacked properly Glamour Mastery is clearly better.

So I tend to prefer GS + S/F on that fight. And I’d zone in with a GS on my character and be summarily dismissed. Does that sound reasonable to you?

“Experience” means different things to different people. If you want a full-melee speedclear group, then “experienced only” isn’t specific enough. And expecting people to know that’s what you want, and then trying to claim that they’re griefing if they dare to join your party, is patently ridiculous.

For mostly dungeons / fractals:

Perception can work better than Bloodlust stacking for mesmers since precision boosts your reflect damage while power doesn’t. Unless you’re at 100% crit already from your party comp (unlikely) I’d go with that. I like to have a sword + focus with perception for faster stacking (it’s our best AoE set).

After you’re stacked:
Fire is generally less dps than Force I think — can’t recall where I saw the math, but it’s been checked iirc. You do want to boost your multipliers as much as possible for personal damage, even if it doesn’t affect phantasms; that means Scholar runes, Slaying potions, Night / Force sigils.

Force is reasonable everywhere, if you want to optimize you can carry an extra weapon with Night for +10% in several of the dungeons. If you want to get crazy about particular dungeons you can carry extra offhands with specific slaying sigils (Undead Slaying, Flame Legion slaying, etc.).

Battle sigils are great for permanent 6+ might stacks on yourself, if your team isn’t might-capping already. You can share them out (along with doubling whatever your party is giving you) with the Signet of Inspiration, so you add to everyone’s dps.

I actually do like Fire for open world events and for WvW tagging, but on the greatsword — the triple-attack from 1200 range is amazing at triggering it, so you get a lot more tags than you would otherwise in zergs.

So, to sum up:
Swords with Force, Battle (offhand sword), Perception (stacking).
Focus with Battle, Perception (more stacking).
Pistol with Battle.
GS with Fire.
Extra offhands with Night or Slaying if you want to optimize or are in a group that can might-cap without your help.

The other thing to consider though is the Signet heal, which lets you start fights with three phantasms up – which is further boosted by having 15% phant dps instead of EM. If you’re running SoE and Feedback, that leaves you with two spots for mantras which is just 8% more personal DPS when they’re up.

Situationally, EM can win out, but by no means is it a guaranteed dps increase over the alternative. The more relevant factor is that the stats offered by Domination don’t affect reflect dps at all, compared to dueling which has prec and crit, both of which are a factor.

I’d say if you often run dungeons where reflection is a major chunk of your dps, 0/30 wins. If not, 10/20 is definitely competitive.

Two things:
1. Put blink on a mouse button (I use the middle button)
2. Use “fast cast with range indicator”

Makes blink super-smooth and easy to use:
When I want to blink, I just middle-click once where I want to teleport — if it fails, no big deal, just click again. If I’m unsure about range, hold down the button and sweep the cursor til it’s green, then let go. It’s heavenly.

The point of roaming isn’t to just wander around and look for single enemies to kill – that doesn’t really benefit your server.

When you roam, you want to cap camps (any good roamer should be able to solo a non-upgraded camp), kill yaks and sentries, report on enemy zerg movements, and watch for swords on friendly nearby towers so you can run in to man siege and call for backup if needed.

During the course of all of that, you’ll often run into enemy players doing the same thing, that’s when you fight them.

Qaelyn.7612:

Curunen.8729:

…cheesing Mimic with mirror blade…

What’s that?

(Cheese is tasty and nutritious.)

Mimic doesn’t start blocking until it absorbs a projectile, but you can capture your own bounced ones (Mirror Blade, or staff bounce) to kick-start it vs a melee opponent.

Pretty handy.

Signed. It’s the least they can do after they nerfed quickness!

lol. DE as Adept trait? Where do I sign up? !

I’m slightly surprised they haven’t bumped it to GM yet…

It does stack, but 0/30 is still used often because Empowering Mantras adds up to 16% to your personal autoattack and reflected damage (but not phantasms). If you don’t want to fill your bar with mantras then go 10/20.

Phantasmal fury is always nice, but given you have a sword/sword setup blade training is probably more worth it. Given how phantasm-focused this build is, I might almost be inclined to try it without Deceptive Evasion, instead. A little riskier, though.

As for gear, I’d lean more towards berserker and cavalier than Valkyrie – you already have 30 in Inspiration so you have a more than adequate HP pool, and with all the healing you should be getting from mantras the bonus toughness of Cavalier will be more valuable.

Of course, how much survivability you need depends a lot on specific circumstances, so you’ll have to play around and see what you’re comfortable with.

Oh, that’s interesting. I hadn’t looked at that, and I’m away from my game comp atm so I can’t look at it. Post it in the bugs forum, let’s find out

RM is a separate effect, it doesn’t make charging count as a “heal skill”. Pretty sure it’s intended, although if RM + MP + MoR did make that happen it’d be pretty neat (and really strong!)

Neat build! This is pretty close to the old PvE phant build, but tweaked for mantras and survival. I’m assuming you use MoP spam for healing and bonus armor when in trouble, and let your phantasms do most of the work? I may give something like this a try.

My suggestions, mostly minor:

1. I’m not sure how much mileage you get from Debilitating Dissipation when you have zero condi damage or duration boost. I’d trade for 10 points in Dom and get Empowered Illusions for even harder-hitting phants.
2. All sigils share cooldowns, two on-swap (Doom + Energy) won’t work together. I’d change one to a stacking sigil or Force sigil.
3. Since you still have exotic trinkets, definitely get put in crit jewels (I’d suggest ruby instead of emerald), they’re the best slot in the game for crit dmg. You get +1% critdmg per 5 stat points only.

In that case, confusion and retaliation are both really not worth it, since they only proc when enemies attack, and most mobs don’t really do that very much.

For PvE you really want a berserker phantasm / reflection build. I’m going to shamelessly copy the post I just made in the other thread:

Valarauka.2719:

Glass cannon phantasm + reflection is standard for dungeons.

10/20/0/25/15 with all the phantasm-boosting traits and a traited Focus. The other major variant puts 30 points into Dueling to grab Empowering Mantras and runs 3-4 mantras on the bar to get more damage multiplier; it’s a bit harder to play in PUGs since you basically give up your utility bar, but is hands down the best reflection damage you can get which is useful for Lupi and some other bosses. It loses out a little bit more in general now too, since you can run the new Signet heal instead to get more frontloaded damage (by having three phantasms out right away).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/What-is-the-PVE-Mesmer-DPS-meta/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Dungeons-Phantasm-build-s/first

For the disappearing, you can always run Decoy on your bar. If you want to disappear even more, I suppose you could do Sword/Torch + Sword/Focus, or something. The Prestige is actually a pretty decent AoE burst, so that could be a fun playstyle for open-world gaming.

What parts of the game do you play? Disappearing and confusion sounds like Blackwater, but that’s really only a WvW roaming build.

Glass cannon phantasm + reflection is standard for dungeons.

10/20/0/25/15 with all the phantasm-boosting traits and a traited Focus. The other major variant puts 30 points into Dueling to grab Empowering Mantras and runs 3-4 mantras on the bar to get more damage multiplier; it’s a bit harder to play in PUGs since you basically give up your utility bar, but is hands down the best reflection damage you can get which is useful for Lupi and some other bosses. It loses out a little bit more in general now too, since you can run the new Signet heal instead to get more frontloaded damage (by having three phantasms out right away).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/What-is-the-PVE-Mesmer-DPS-meta/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Dungeons-Phantasm-build-s/first

The star isn’t visible to enemies.

It’s actually been working great for me in WvW, I play a power-focused PU phant build, but decoy / veil / MI give me plenty of stealth and aegis in which to safely recharge the healing mantra. After a while you get the pattern of timing your stealth with the mantra cd, and it becomes pretty easy.

The other thing to remember is you can always blink or F4 (or phase retreat) while charging, which often helps get safe charges off too.

Oh man, before they nerfed Perplexity runes this build could’ve put out some serious hurting with Imbued Diversion and the interrupt-proc from the runes.

As it is, looks like a strong build. Adding pizza and tuning crystal puts you at 1900+ base condi dmg, and your 12 second cd hasted duelists will be terrifying.

I’m wondering if it might be worthwhile to trade IP for Bountiful Interruption (or maybe staff trait) – Magic Bullet and Chaos Storm should get you a fair amount of interrupts, and more might stacks will push your damage through the roof. IP is more critical to power shatter builds since Mind Wrack gets such a huge boost from it – but in a condi build your wracks won’t hurt that much anyway so maybe you can live without. The instant F4 is always useful though.

The other thing I might consider is sigils of doom instead of Energy. More dodges always rock of course, specially with Debilitating Dissipation, but poison adds another useful cover condition, and helps a ton against high-regen builds. It’ll also hurt a fair bit itself with your condi damage.

Solstice.1097:

and IMO untraited shatter skills pretty much suck compared to an untraited primary class mechanic of other classes.

Eh, untraited guardian virtues suck pretty hard.
Untraited thief steal is fairly useless, too.

In response to the thread:
Sword 2 – hate hate hate how it bugs out more often than it works.
Portal – we really need a timer and range indicator.

Yeah, I run something similar myself, pure power-focused (with the aforementioned zerk/cav/knight setup, and traveler runes). DE is just too amazing though. I run with Crippling + Debilitating Dissipation, and neither of those will be that useful without the amount of clone generation you get from DE.

If any build doesn’t need DE, it would be a stealth-phantasm setup like this, but in that case I’d want to swap Debilitating Dissipation for iDefense and add at least one more mantra to make better use of HM.

Also, the damage looks good on paper with 3600+ attack, but 4% crit chance and no cdmg bonus means it’ll actually kinda suck in practice.

Check out blackdevil’s thread, it’s a better version of this.
Moving 20 points from Domination to Dueling gets you Deceptive Evasion, Phantasmal Fury, and both minor traits (Critical Infusion and Sharper Images) in that line are super valuable too.
Harmonious Mantras isn’t getting you much and GS training can be lived without pretty easily.

Also, full soldier’s is wayyy too tanky given how much stealth and protection you have. I would go Cavalier/Knight/Berserker mix if you want to stay power-focused, or mix in some Rabid if you want more condition damage at the cost of power.

Swiftness or Aegis randomly would be nice. Keeps a bit of the random character, is not 100% swiftness uptime (which would make it stronger than all the other classes’ speed signets), and Aegis is actually useful when running around since it prevents you from getting in combat when something hits you.

The bunnies must die because they are EVIL.
It is known.

Sick of hiding in the shadows like a cowardly thief?
Tired of letting your clones do your work for you?
Introducing MAN MODE — MANtras, MANipulations, and no pansy stealth.

Sword/Sword and Staff, 0/30/20/20/0.
MoR, MoD, Arcane Thievery, Blink, Moa.
Double-traited mantras and manipulations, both weapon traits, and Mender’s Purity.

Excellent duelist and strong team-fighter; built to counteract mesmers’ “traditional weaknesses” – lack of speed, and conditions:

• MoR can clear 4 conditions and heal you for ~9k every ten seconds, 2.6k of that in AoE.
• MoD for some lockdown power, can also be swapped for stability mantra if needed (Skyhammer), or MoP for crazy heal-spamming.
• Arcane Thievery for even more condition cleansing, but more for boon-stealing; MoR will already melt the conditions off like water. It’s also fun to wait for a nice big bleed stack and transfer it right back.
• High swiftness uptime from Air runes and heal mantra, and a double-traited blink for all those shortcuts means you can get around amazingly fast.

I’ve just started testing this in pvp, feels really strong so far. I haven’t played lockdown styles very much so my MoD usage is pretty sub-optimal, it should only get better with practice. Would love some more testing / feedback!

IN A WORLD …
… where Hammer warriors stun you forever …
… where condition necros Terrorize the neighborhood …
… where Ranger spirits stampede over everyone …
… ONE CLASS … has finally had enough.

A hero will rise.
A meta will fall.

MESMER
Coming soon, to a server near you.

twity.4732:

Yeah I’m sure. Now is it the intent of Anet to have it this way or just a bug, i’m not so sure., but it unfortunately definitely doesn’t stack.

I can’t remember if it stacked pre-patch. Does anyone remember if it did?

Did you test the skill itself or just the tooltip? The tooltips are bugged, in that they still show 16 seconds, but if you try actually casting it you’ll see it does in fact stack and you’ll get a 12-second recharge.