Guild Wars 2

Good point on using BF more defensively. I often struggle with the strategy of “Do I just go full burst and burn it down, or save it as a 3rd evade?”

Trickery? Mind games? Confusion? On a mesmer?? You’re silly.

I assume you mean Blurred Frenzy? I’ve never actually experienced that bug with it.

Of course essentially needing to land iLeap as a prerequisite for Blurred Frenzy is an entirely different discussion all together.

I am not much of a WvWer, so take this with a grain of salt. But as to your point on Arcane Trickery earlier, you should know that you need a target for the skill to work at all. So if you’re about to die to a stealthed thief and have poison on you need to clear that condi immediately and pop your heal. Arcane Thievery throws a wrench in that (and other) situations.

Null Field is nice for the dual offensive (boon stripping) and defensive (condi cleansing) utility but forces you to stay fairly immobile if you want it to cleanse more than 1 condi reliably.

Mantra cleanse is by far the most reliable but offers 0 beyond pure condi removal.

Agreed with StickerHappy. Despite our bugs I still feel that mesmers can add a lot to a group effort and can 1v1 quite well against a lot of professions. In PvP at least. I am not convinced there is any reason at all to have a mesmer in a dungeon, sadly.

As for being facerolled, I have a much harder time with the average d/d ele than I do an average thief. Some thieves kill me in 2 seconds, sure, but d/d ele? I may have a 10% win ratio in 1v1.

Yep! I think I may have had Undead runes on though and I think I was using Deceptive Evasion and not the shield.

I’m still not a great player at all though. So I still get face rolled in a lot of
2v1s or against thieves and some warriors.

This is somewhat similar to the build I posted in Chaos’ challenge thread. I am by no means as experienced as a lot of people on this forum but I see a few issues:

1. Blinding Befuddlement is just bad. The ICD neuters the skill to near uselessness and it weighs down the build a lot. I really think something like the recharge shatters on health drop trait would be better. This also makes you call into question the blind on glamour trait you have. I would also consider switching that out with something.
2. If you want a lot of Chaos Armor uptime you may want to consider sword OH. The iSwordsman if summoned inside of an ethereal field will apply Chaos Armor to YOU as well as the phantasm. Right now your only source of Chaos Armor generation is actually Staff 4. Personally I have fallen in love with the Sc/Sw setup since using it in Pyro’s Phantasm build. The double block really makes you hard to bring down in a 1v1 scenario and greatly increases your chances in a 2v1.
3. The gear here is the hardest part. I am still struggling with it in my similar build, but I will point out one thing. Almost all of your runes/sigils play into Torment. That’s cool for the theme and Torment can be really heinous, but you are one condi cleanse skill away from neutering yourself. I would try to bring in other condis as well, like maybe some Doom sigils for Poison and such.

I think we can probably keep mesmer theorycrafting rather civil, ladies and gents.

Anyhow, I have played a little bit with the build I posted above with a few minor alterations between matches. Here’s what I have to report:

1. As stated by Chaos above it really needs crit chance. This is the single largest glaring hole in the build and I am not for sure how to accurately fix it, or if it is even possible. I am open to any suggestions.
2. I actually really like Moa for this. I mostly use it on professions I think will have great condi cleanse and it shuts them down really, really fast. Stacked torment and confusion through scepter skills and a shatter just melt them.
3. You are quite glassy if you try to actually facetank people. Staff offers good mobility and the double block setup can let your survive long enough to get several good condi ticks in, but when the hits actually land they land hard. The mobile nature of the defense in this build made it hard for me to really hold down or capture points vs more than 1 enemy, but if I had a friendly with me I felt like I was a great asset.
4. Trait changes: dropped Compounding Power for longer Confusion duration at times. I don’t really have a strong opinion on if one is clearly better than the other at this time. I also had good success with dropping Deceptive Evasion for Retaliatory Shield. While it goes against almost every build relying on shatters to not have DE, I never really felt like I lacked illusions to feed to my shatters. Whenever an offensive shatter was up in combat I almost always had at least two illusions ready and could easily produce the third with a weapon or utility skill.
5. I tried all of the different heal skills and I think I agree with Chaos – Mantra is not the way to go. The tried and true Ether Feast seems to just be straight up better.

Would love to hear how everyone else’s build is holding up!

Curunen.8729:

See I’m having a little difficulty because the ideal build in my mind would be hybrid direct damage/condition damage shatter – 4/4/0/0/6 (taking staff + scepter/pistol or torch).

Stats to focus on would be:
1. Power
2. Condition Damage
3. Precision
4. Ferocity

Unfortunately the trouble is in pvp the correct amulet doesn’t exist, and in pve/wvw the right stat combo doesn’t exist.

The idea would be to play glassy like a normal shatter (ie minimal toughness or vitality), and instead of full zerker, drop power and ferocity down and raise condition damage to roughly 50/50 spread.

But this would require Power/Condition Damage/Precision and Condition Damage/Power/Ferocity or similar gear to work.

Rampagers is useless because you don’t need precision as the major stat…

:/

tl;dr – All condition damage gear has “useless stats” on it – such as vit/tou, or wrong distribution (rampagers) – will not work for glassy hybrid shatter.

I agree that it is the challenge and major flaw to the hybrid power/condi shatter mesmer.

What if, however, we tried to make up some of that Precision/Ferocity ground through Runes of the Ranger? The wiki says it works with illusions and you should nearly ALWAYS have at least one illusion up.

This would give us an almost-perma 7% damage boost (can anyone confirm that this applies to condi damage as well?) and add +100 Precision and +65 ferocity. I would still run this with a Carrion amulet.

We would lose a lot of condi damage (100) and condi duration, however. Maybe that 7% boost can help.

Obviously there is no perfect solution. The downside to a hybrid anything is that you are spread thin in the stats department or have to just decide to not be a 50/50 split and favor either condi or power just slightly.

What are your opinions on the hybrid build? Does hybrid just not have a place in pvp?

Agreed that the play style will change a lot. I saw the role being a difficult to kill force multiplier when you’re outnumbered. Just you and an ele defending vs 3? Ensure that he has perma protection while also protecting him from projectiles or helping his condi cleanse.

I never really considered using most to just make people freak out and spam skills. Good call.

It would also remove their condi cleanses. May be good on high condi cleanse professions like guardian.

Ross Biddle.2367:

This takes me straight back to my confusion shatter build days. The build is exactly the same. What’s important is not the build but how you play it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArfWlknpRtlpxNNcrNitBZyOUCUPkjsySGghB-TFyCABA8AAYe/BsU+dp6PMcEA0Tfw0nCgxUCGAABYmlZZOzAIFAETjA-w

The obvious weakness here is no swiftness. I’m reluctant to take torch in place of focus for that reason, but the torch works so well with the condition shatter it’s better not to go without.

I really like the trait spread here but I think I would run it with Sc/Sw and Staff or maybe even GS. Staff and GS #5 are quite good for CI procs.

My only big question here is why the celestial amulet? This seems to be mostly a condi build or maybe a hybrid build. So why not rabid or carrion?

Sadly that doesn’t mean that taking it will make it work. IMHO Blinding Befuddlement weighs down any build it is in. I also wish it was worth it but the fact is that it isn’t.

As for the on topic discussion:

I don’t think Confusing Images needs to be reworked due to the ease of dodging argument. As an earlier poster said a lot of skills are easy to dodge. I do think, however, it needs to actually be an effective means of putting out multiple stacks of AoE confusion – something the so-called Masters of Confusion suck at.

To do this I think we need to drop the line “area of effect” and instead make the skill burst around your target in a medium sized radius (360? Whatever that standard is). Line type area of effects are nearly impossible to use and are mostly just luck if you can get it to hit the rather small hitboxes in PvP. I don’t even consider my line skills to be AoE but rather single target skills that sometimes happen to hit other people once or twice a match.

Turning this into a burst radius AoE on the target would make Confusing Images our go-to confusion application skill, which is what I feel it was designed as but sucks at.

This PU build is significantly lacking PU.

Did you link the wrong build?

This sounds fun! All of these builds may end up sucking in practice but here is my submission, a PvP Torment Mesmer:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArcWl0npBtNqxQNcrRSrBdqjg6rkleSqAUyPUNA-TZxFwAI3fwZZAAHBAEnCADPAAA

My goal was to make a Power/Condi hybrid whose Mind Wracks still hit decently hard and leave you maimed.

Weapons

• Sc/Sw offers a very defensive loadout with two blocks, the #3 applying the build’s focus of Torment. #4 hits hard can be used as an interrupt (not a primary focus of the build but it does stack Vulnerability to set up for the shatter). Confusing Images hits decently well due to Power and stacks a bit of pressure/condi shielding through Confusion. The iSwordsman is what he is. If it is up use it but he will probably just feed the shatter machine.

• Staff because staff is awesome and offers even more defense and mobility through #2. The iWarlock hits respectably hard but will again probably just feed your shatters more often than not.

Utilities/Elite

• Mantra of Recovery: Used for trait synergy.

• Signet of Domination: Significant boost to condi damage and an on-demand stun for interrupts and setting up shatter.

• Decoy: Because it is Decoy.

• iDisenchanter: Your primary source of condi removal. Could also use Null Field if you don’t want to manage the phantasm or want more reliable cleansing/area cleansing for point fighting. You lose some synergy with traits (Illusions III) though.

• Mass Invis: Because everything else is terrible.

Traits
I have several choices here that I am really iffy on and would love feedback. I will detail the changes that I see could be made.

• Domination I (Mental Torment): I am going for a hybrid build here so this helps bring Mind Wrack into a respectable range for damage. If you want to focus more on conditions move these points to Chaos and grab Debilitating Dissipation. (Question, does a clone being “killed” count on shatters? Sorry I am a noob and have never tested this. Burn me at the stake as you see fit).

• Dueling IV (Blade Training) and X (Deceptive Evasion): Blade Training for reduced block duration which adds more defense and a shorter CD Power spike of damage. Also makes Shatters crit a bit more. That isn’t a bad thing. I would love to see how Retaliation Shield would work here with the 2 blocks. But in the end I feel Blade Training is better.

• Inspiration IV (Mender’s Purity): Condi removal synergy with Mantra heal. ’Nuff said.

• Illusions III (Compounding Power), VII (Illusionary Elasticity), and XIII (Point of This Thread Trait): Compounding Power for increased shatter damage (Question: Does this damage increase apply to stacked conditions? Namely the confusion and torment the shatter will cause. Again with the noob and fiery witch hunt thing). Grandmaster choice needs no explanation.

Gear

• Carrion amulet for the hybrid focus. You will have zerker level survivability though. So that sucks.

• Rune of the Nightmare: Tormenting isn’t available in PvP from what I can see, so I thought this could be interesting. It adds a solid amount of condi damage and duration increase for more mileage out of Torment and Confusion. Nightmare on being struck both guarantees torment’s bigger damage tick and offers survivability/control.

• Sigil’s of Energy: More defense. More clones. More shatter. Much good.

• Sigil of Doom: Condi shielding to protect Torment from cleanse, anti-heal pressure, minor damage.

• Sigil of Ice (I may actually switch this with the Doom one. Unsure yet): I am a Chill fanboy. Also, slower movement means more walking which equal more tormenting. Hydromancy would also work just as well.

I am new to mesmer theorycrafting but really like the class (even if we are in a downturn at the moment). I would love to hear from you veteran mesmers on how much this build is laughably terrible.

Thanks!

I never realized it was nerfed for lag reasons. That’s actually kinda hilarious.

Yup. Every other condition is just defeated by maybe having a condi removal skill ready. The only tactical decision for the defender is if using that condi removal at that moment is a good value. I love that confusion and torment can both be “beaten” without a cleanse but at the expense of basically dazing of immobilizing yourself.

I do too. I think confusion and torment are the coolest conditions in this game and we suck at both of them. I do think torment is more fitting a necro but there is no question we should be the undisputed masters of confusion.

Design does not align with the flavor/lore at all.

Oddly enough it seems that the Mesmer is meant to be the worst profession for applying confusion (out of all the professions that have access to the condition).

It makes no sense to me.

skcamow.3527:

I would pick iWarden for all three so I can confidently play with the focus again. So much broken.

+1 for this. It’s not like the iWarden is even that hard to counter. You can, you know, take 5 steps in any direction away from the iWarden and watch as it does its pretty little axe dance.

My three would be…

1) iWarden
2) Traited focus reflects (both iWarden and Curtain) not working.
3) Blink

@Chaos We were in a few matches together the other day and you mentioned you were running with this build (or some similar boonshare setup) quite often. It made me want to look up the build – it sounds pretty interesting for a team fight!

I was curious though, have you ever tried a variation using Sw/T-St and PU? It would offer great defense through stealth and more boon generation. Here’s a quick modification I did:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsfWnsISjaWqGGoB3aGB3YM9ENExJHZlSGwvA-TZhFwAAeAAMOCAULDMb/hEnCAA

I’m not for sure on the Inspiration Master trait. I also considered the glamour CD reduction. In practice I would most likely switch out Null Field and Feedback depending on what the opposing team seems to have more of (I hate slotting Feedback only to fight a bunch of melee people).

The major downsides I see here is a lack of control through the loss of Temporal Curtain and CI and no Blink, but I find Blink less needed with a stealth heavy build.

Would love to hear your opinions!

shimmerless.4560:

(there’s a reason they didn’t just give us mainhand pistols to begin with).

What’s that reason?

I feel a MH pistol focused on Power damage makes a lot of sense. We currently do not have a MH ranged Power weapon – it fills an obvious gap in the profession’s skillset.

With the precedent set by Magic Bullet the auto attack could be a bouncing attack, giving us an uptick in AoE damage and synergy with existing traits (Illusionary Elasticity). I would also be curious to see how a stealth skill on MH would work, maybe something like you fire a single target shot that does mediocre damage but cripples, generates a clone, and sets invisibility for 3seconds on a longish cooldown.

Azo.5860:

sigil of chili?

The tastiest of all sigils.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

That’s an interesting build Veruah. I ran something similar before, but with 2 in Dueling rather than inspiration.

Out of curiosity… why scepter over sword? Also, with the focus you have on chill (and Mantra of Recovery), you’ll probably benefit more from Runes of Grenth than Runes of the Mesmer, but there will be a slight damage drop to gain the AoE chill-on-heal.

As for the weapon choice, mostly because I do not like the functionality of iLeap and was going for a more ranged focused build. Also the block on scepter gives a form of defense on the main hand that isn’t as dangerous to use as Blurred Frenzy, with the whole killing yourself on Retaliation thing. I’m not necessarily married to scepter though.

While I really like the chill-on-heal thing with Runes of Grenth, I would be dropping a lot of Power and Precision. Do you think I would be better served taking a condi focused amulet/armor load out (Rabid? Carrion?) and switching GS for Staff, focusing more on condi damage?

No problem, Dalirant. I’ll be happy to share my super meta knowledge with you on future builds.

All hail the new downstate meta!

I love where this build is going but I don’t understand why you have such a huge oversight in this build. I’m not trying to cause a rift here but I seriously question your SUPER META BUILD capabilities for not seeing this. I suggest we all make the following change:

Remove Desperate Decoy from Chaos and add 2 to Illusions, picking up Master of Misdirection. Our goal here is to get to downstate so we can unleash our devastating torrent of OP confusion blasts while sitting in permanent retaliation, punishing those foolish enough to assume we are actually in a bad spot. Desperate Decoy actually lengthens the time it takes get to downstate – there is absolutely NO synergy in that trait with this build’s theme.

I expect better from the mesmer community.

UrMom.4205:

umm….how did you miss the nerf that mesmers got this round….

“Skritt burglars are no longer affected by Polymorph Moa.”

Un-freakin-believable, mesmers get nerfed literally every single patch…it’s insane..

Hah. Not this really matters at all but, seriously, this has to be a joke.

I wonder how many development hours were spent on discussing and implementing this change.

Personally I really hope that the iWarden not working 50+% of the time is just an intended part of the skill and there is a minor bug fix to update the tooltip.

I really think it would be cool if when the iWarden doesn’t attack you just don’t summon it at all and instead a little flag with “BANG!” on it pops out of your focus in a burst of purple-y mesmer butterflies.

What do you guys think? Cool bug fix or totally lame?

Kadj.6725:

Veruah.5302:

I was curious, however, what you all think of this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraRl0npMt1oxQNcrNiphY6bxydqqkOwhBA-TJhBwAAOFACeCAjLDwc/BA

The idea here is to get guaranteed dazes/stuns from pistol while also having a pretty good phantasm for proccing Sharper Images at a distance.

You don’t have Sharper Images. That’s Dueling 3. I’m seeing 6/0/6/2/0 in your link… Is this the right build?

Gah. Yes it is the correct build, I just kitten ed and thought for some reason I had picked up SI. The core traits I am trying to build around are Chaotic Interruption and Confounding Suggestions.

Ignore the SI comment.

daydream.2938:

the problem is mesmers are over powered in small scale stuff ( maybe a lil bit, like perplexity mesmers with perplex runes) and yet , not very good at large scale stuff.

And PU condi/power played right is probably the best 1on1 spec in the game.

IN fact, confusion is a little overpowered, nerf confusion, and that fixes most of the ‘Mesmer is op’ . Its not so much mesmers as condition damage from confusion.

This is a joke, right? Is this like that time I almost fell for an Onion article being real news?

…right?

Hey Lockdowns!

I’ve been playing a few different lockdown builds posted here (mostly Mind Crush and Chillruption) in sPvP with varying amounts of success. I’m still getting used to the playstyle in general but find it pretty interesting.

I was curious, however, what you all think of this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraRl0npMt1oxQNcrNiphY6bxydqqkOwhBA-TJhBwAAOFACeCAjLDwc/BA

The idea here is to get guaranteed dazes/stuns from pistol while also having a pretty good phantasm for proccing Sharper Images at a distance. iBerserker is used for AoE damage while GS #5 can proc AoE Halting Strikes and stack boons through BI.

The big downsides I see with the build are escaping (I am tied to Blink only).

What’re your thoughts? I am trying to make a solid Power focused interrupt build that does not rely on Sword MH.

Thanks!

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Maybe you guys are the ones who don’t understand the playstyle and are getting mad because Anet isn’t conforming it to your incorrect notions. PvP is the one format Anet actually balances around, I think they generally know what they’re doing better than a bunch of randoms with questionable experience in the class.

You guys sound like the Smash players who complain about Sakurai “ruining” Smash by catering to casuals and making it less hardcore when it was never a hardcore game to begin with. Just because something happened to turn out the way you liked one time doesn’t mean it was intended or in conformity with the overall vision.

I’m curious, what is Anet’s “overall vision” then for the mesmer? Unless you are actually an Anet employee posting off an Anet forum account it seems you would be right alongside of us in this “bunch of randoms.”

Also, this is a product that a business sells to customers. If a significant amount of Toyota owners were like “Hey, Toyota, we really, really, don’t like how the GPS in the new Corolla is laid out. It negatively impacts our driving experience and I am less likely to buy another Toyota automobile in the future because of this” and Toyota considered them just “a bunch of randoms” somebody would get fired. I promise you that.

Lord Jim.3971:

I’ve had my Warden fail when cast almost point blank on a NPC Scout that was standing stock still and firing at me…..

I applaud your initiative but I don’t think you’ll find any specific avoidable action or situation which causes failure if simply casting it on a stationary NPC is enough to break it. Also not doing this will save you the anger and despair which will inevitably come when you and the community produces an exhaustive list of failure situations plus potential coding causes/solutions which Anet then ignores.

They seem to give some attention to the mesmer bugs thread on the Game Bugs forum. I was hoping to collect a few instances here then post them there in one reply for easy reading.

But you’re probably right, it’s probably a waste of time. I’m not convinced good project management is at the top of Anet’s skillset.

As I have been playing in level 80 PvE, PvP, and WvW over the past few weeks I have seen more and more instances of iWarden not attacking at all. I barely experienced this in my 1-79 career but have really seen it take off these past few weeks (I can’t say for sure if it is tied to the recent patch or not. I wasn’t monitoring it that closely then).

So, I thought it may be useful if we gathered a list of confirmed circumstances that will make the iWarden fail in some way. I searched around and couldn’t find a similar list. Hopefully this can serve as a guide for when using iWarden is risky and maybe help Anet’s developers (assuming they read this).

Here are several circumstances that I can reliably say I have seen iWarden fail at least 50% of the time:

1. The iWarden and the target are at different heights. I notice this when summoning an iWarden on a staircase – it almost never begins attacking.
2. When I summon iWarden while on the move.
3. If the opponent is currently in the middle of a dodge roll animation. Unknown if evade skills (like Blurred Frenzy) also cause this.
4. If the opponent is currently knocked prone due to an effect like Temporal Curtain’s shatter effect.

These are the only ones I have been able to notice over and over again recently. Have you all seen these as well? I would love some feedback and maybe additional circumstances where using iWarden is risky.

Thanks!

I am admittedly a very new mesmer (just recently hit 80) and pretty new to GW2 overall, so take that for what you want. It seems to me that the very design of iLeap is not very mesmer-y, even without the bugs and such coming into the discussion. We are supposed to be about misdirection, diversion, control, and being slippery through stealth, dodges, teleports, etc. When you summon an iLeap clone to the target and then swap with it there is no question who the real mesmer is. You’ve just given up the entire “misdirection” thing while also pulling one of your clones out of the fight.

What if when we used iLeap we immediately teleported to the target and summoned a clone and then Swap would work like the thief Infiltrator’s Return and return us to the spot where we initially used iLeap while immobilizing enemies around where we teleported from? This would keep the misdirection flavor, keep our clone in the fight (for shatters or on death traits), and give main hand sword an escape option similar to staff.

What are your thoughts?

@Chaos I’ve read a lot of your lockdown stuff as I’ve been leveling up. I come from a past of playing Enchanter in EQ so lockdown casters have always been a draw for me. Since I am so close to 80 I figure I may as well finish it out and see how it goes. I guess with the sword nerf I will try to make a GS/Staff lockdown build work.

@Swish I never realized how many limitations Power Block had. I figured it probably couldn’t lock out a #1 skill. Suddenly the other grandmaster trait there looks a lot more appealing (Chaotic Suggestions I think?).

Hah, so all of this sounds like why play a Mesmer then. I’ve already felt some Mesmer hate in even story mode dungeons (being kicked for a Guardian) so I know we aren’t the most loved there.

At face value Mesmer seemed like the control/disruption profession of choice in the game with all of the on interrupt traits and almost every weapon set having access to some form of daze, stun, or knockdown/pull. Eh, guess I am wrong.

So, if Mesmer blows at… mesmerizing people… what control option is there for PvP? I haven’t really looked into thief or engineer much.

I’m new to GW2 but have always enjoyed playing control type classes in RPGs. I apparently missed the golden age of control in GW1 with our namesake class, but I have been leveling a Mesmer (currently 72 – hoping to finish it out this weekend!) with hopes of playing control in WvW or a PvP mode. I’ve lurked on the forums for a while and really like the sound of several builds, including Chillruption and anything that uses Power Block.

So, my question is, with the recent changes to Mesmer do you all think a lockdown focused build is still a good choice? Are we needed in WvW/PvP? Can we make a legitimate impact on a fight with our lockdown and skill interruption and cooldown lengthening powers?

Thanks!