Your link won’t display on my phone. I happen to like mantras. I like 30/30/0/0/10, picking up harmonious mantras and empowering mantras. Depending on trait choice you can favor clone death (deceptive evasion, crippling dissipation), shatters (precise wrack, mental torment, shattered concentration) or illusions (empowered illusions, compounding power). It works too if you trait in domination for dazes, mantra of distraction is great. For gear it works well traited for damage, but also works well with sub optimal gear. The potential +16% +9% to damage help make up for gear that’s not focused on dps. I especially like it with a tanky set I use that is toughness/vitality/power.
If you want more support you can dig into inspiration for heal on mantra. I tried that and found it worked well enough, but it wasn’t fun for me. I think I did something like 0/20/20/20/10. Vigorous revelation+deceptive evasion lets you pump out clones between casts to still do damage while channelling, and if you bring a few mantras you can spam one you recharge another.
For any mantra build to work for you you must relearn how skills work. Most skills are limited by recharge, generally mantras have short recharge but are limited by the long cast time. The key to using them during a fight is losing the idea that you’re stuck doing nothing while you cast. You can shatter, use another mantra, move, and use any of your instant casts like phase retreat. Once you learn not to stand around like a dork chanting for three seconds, mantras become strong.
After using them fora while, your non mantra skills start looking like a pain to use in comparison. Our only utilities that daze, grant stability, and do direct unconditional damage are mantras. The bang per cast, especially traited, is unmatched. The biggest weakness they have is one that’s seldom mentioned. No mantra provides a combo field or finisher. That’s often the biggest reason you would ever prefer other utilities to a mantra that does the same thing.
I think you’re looking for things to be sad about.
First off, it makes perfect sense for every single Mesmer to use shatters – at the right time. Your precious phantasms disappear no matter what once they have done their job. You may as well get some benefit from them before they do.
The active benefit of Signet of Illusions is of no importance in a phantasm build. Using the signet will make your phantasms easier to kill. Not something you want to do if you rely on them for everything, is it?
Phantasmal haste requires 20 points in Illusions. Typical for those 20 points, you’ll get Illusionists Celerity (required for phantasm build) for reduced illusion summoning recharge, Compounding Power for 9% damage buff when you have three illusions out (always, if you can help it), Illusionary Retribution which gives confusion on shatter, and Phantasmal Haste. Three traits that help your build, one that is mostly irrelevant.
You’re also going at least 10 deep into domination for Empowered Illusions. Why aren’t you complaining that you’re forced to pick up Illusion of Vulnerability along the way? It does nothing for your build either.
The trees aren’t designed with any one build (ie, yours) in mind. You’ll make compromises. The same is true of shatter builds, mantra builds, shutdown builds …. You get the point. You can’t focus a build 100% on any one thing, the game isn’t made that way.
No. Some clones are more useful than others ATM. This impacts the usefulness of the weapon that summon them. Scepter, for instance, is a fine weapon. It’s weakness is the clones are far less useful than staff clones, for instance.
Clones are not balanced across weapons and that makes weapons not balanced.
I think it makes perfect sense. If you don’t enjoy playing a Mesmer AT THIS TIME then why waste your time playing a Mesmer AT THIS TIME? If you hate it and insist on playing it anyways you’ll end up angry and bitter, and probably answer every thread in the forum with essentially the same rant about whatever you are angry and bitter about.
Play what you enjoy. The profession is going through changes. If you played Guild Wara you should be aware that the game will never stop changing. Sometimes significantly. When changes come along you either learn to play with them and wait it out, or play something else in the mean time. Common sense, really.
OP, clearly it’s not just you, a lot of people hate the class. Obviously it’s not the class either, a lot of people love it.
If its not working for you, either watch some guides and try something else, or play a different class that suits you better.
It depends on how you want to play. Both can be good support if you want that. They can both do good damage too if that’s your style. I leveled Mesmer first and prefer it to Necro. Nothing wrong with them I just prefer the more indirect play style of Mesmer.
Ironically I think mesmers are better if you are thinking of a minion build. Our illusions are meant to be throw away and have appropriately short cool downs. My experience with Necro minions is that they last a wee bit longer than illusions, but have longer cool downs.
I think it’s the design. Some traits reward you to shatter, some reward you to not shatter.
Most of my builds use a mix of those traits, so I’m not overly pressured to do something for traits sake, but can do whatever the situation requires. For example, if I don’t shatter I get protection+regeneration+ increased phantasm damage, if I do I get vulnerability+confusion+vigor+shatter effect. Then I’ll have a few on death traits too, just because sometimes they die before I can use them, and at least then I feel they’ve done something.
You can also go the other way and build exclusively around maintaining illusions, shattering illusions, or letting them die. Depends on how you want to play really.
I miss fast cast in general.
My mantras stay charged going underwater. There was a fix for that, previously they reset.
I like my mantra damage build. It lets you do respectable damage when not geared for it. Geared for it, you do tons. It’s best for pve and wvw I find. In neither case is it my “best” build but it is fun.
@OP
So don’t play Mesmer.
I don’t think objectively means what you think it means. The word you were looking for is subjectively.
Right. It always caused blur. Tooltip said it gave distortion leading people to expect traits that effect distortion to work with it. They don’t. Now the tooltip reflects what the skill really does.
The biggest problem playing a tanky build as a Mesmer is that other players think you’re just bad. Mesmers can tank. We have as much HP as warriors, and if your trait and gear for it, more toughness than most soldiers. If they go all out they will have more, but not many do.
Warriors have a base 3k more HP than a mesmer, and the Warrior can rather easily hit over 2100 Toughness and even over 2200, and with their heavy armor this pushes them over 3400 Armor. Mesmers can’t hope to match those numbers.
I got it wrong. Necros have warrior HP, mesmers are on par with rangers.
The base difference in armor amounts to 290. In general that gap
Is easily bridged and then some. Of they wear the same gear as you they will come out ahead. In my experience, most of them don’t. Even where they do, we have our survival assets that can make us tougher than expected. Distortion is a tool I’m sure soldiers would love to have. Blurred Frenzy alone gives 2.5 sec invulnerability on a 10 sec cool down.
I ran a tank build for a while and I believe Anet delivered on the idea that every profession can fulfill every role if they want. It might not be perfectly balanced, I can’t say. But if you want you can definitely do it.
The biggest problem playing a tanky build as a Mesmer is that other players think you’re just bad. Mesmers can tank. We have as much HP as warriors, and if your trait and gear for it, more toughness than most soldiers. If they go all out they will have more, but not many do.
It looks like you have an idea what you want. I built a few different ways and found what worked for me. Some of the traits I likes best:
Illusionary Membrane – Protection is awesome for melee Mesmer, the more you can get Regeneration the better. (Let your team know.)
Illusionary Defense – flat damage reduction when you have clones. You always got em.
Restorative Illusions + Illusionary Persona – big investment to grab both, but it lets you spam shatters for a moderate heal as well as their usual effect.
Vigorous Revelation + Deceptive Evasion – shatters fuel clone generation. If you are a tank so are your clones, they can be very successful at soaking up hits. And dodging is so useful just for avoiding hits.
I never really tried the retaliation traits, but wondered if mimic with retaliatory shield can stack it as high as it seems it should.
There’s no way to make everything for in one build, but I’m glad it works that way. There may not be a best tank build, but there should be one that’s best for you.
Now I’m usually in my amazing magic find pajamas, but hopefully that helps.
My only question is if you need that much clone generation. I use just Deceptive Evasion and with Greatsword Training and Blade Training, find it impossible to run out of clones, even soloing champions.
For the style of play you’re looking for Distortion is pretty awesome. If you can fit Blurred Inscriptions in and take a few signets, it’s pretty awesome. Even better if you can get cleansing inscriptions and free up a utility for condition removal. The downside being that you won’t really have any combo fields with your weapon choice and a signet build.
If survival is a concern pile on toughness. Mesmer has top tier HP already so I like toughness to make that go further. If you want clones dying quickly though, that won’t work. For runes I like Dwayna, for regeneration when you heal. I usually take mantra of recovery, so each cast is two heals and 12+ sec of regeneration.
I play Mesmer. I don’t play thief.
I would rephrase the opening post as
“Mesmer sucks.
Thief wins.”
You can stealth. And blind (and confuse, if you want). And daze. And be totally invulnerable to damage. You act like blind negating phantasms means there’s nothing you can do. Maybe pvp is not for you.
Thieves have totally slaughtered my Mesmer. And I have totally slaughtered them. The phantasm change has probably made some un intended and strange consequences. It didn’t ruin us.
Mantra of Celerity – 3 sec of quickness
It was our missing elite in GW, and a mantra, so it would be nice to finally get it now.
For traits, deceptive evasion.
You can do well on packs of mobs. Leveling up that’s where I felt my strength was. We can kill a group of 3-4 nearly as fast as 1. I used swor+/focus/sword and staff. Now I use a GS as well, depending. All do well against groups. Staff is probably easiest and safest, but not fastest.
Our damage isn’t really AoE (aside from sword), rather its multi-target. Illusionary Elasticity is a huge upgrade for staff and GS damage. Get mobs in a group, bring three clones out and circle strafe. When they are 30-50% dead, shatter and clean up the pieces.
You say your clones die fast. That’s your equipment. Toughness is one of my primary attributes, and my phantasms can even tank a little. My clones live plenty long that I can always replace them on death.
We have Tons of support without trying. If you try, you can make a huge difference.
Ethereal fields are amazing. It’s easy to bring 4 or more. Make sure people know to use blast in the field, and you can have almost constant chaos armor on your team.
If you want to build for support there’s a lot you can do. Reflects, blinding glamour fields, regen from phantasms (ooops still don’t work right), spreading conditions on clone death or shatters, boon stripping …
As to straight up healing, I’m not a fan of spamming mantras for heals. I do sometimes take that trait, but look at it as an added bonus, not my purpose in life. Used as part of a build that grants a lot of boons and hinders enemies, it does make you very useful to everyone in your team.
I disagree.
Mantras seemed useless to me until I forced myself to use them. The long cast time is a disadvantage but they have enough advantages to make them useful. Especially if traited – I would almost say mantras can be overpowered in the right build.
If you are frequently stopping during a fight to recast them you have the wrong idea. (Unless you are using the trait to heal when you cast one, then the more the better. They can be cast while you move, just don’t dodge and you’re set. The actual use is instant cast so can be used when dazed, knocked down, dodging, casting something else – at any time you want it, basically. Or while recharging another mantra.
Look at your positioning. It will usually bounce to you if you are closest to your target. It will probably bounce to an enemy if its closer to your target than you and your allies are.
Mesmers can be really hard to take down. Or not, up to how you want to play.
It always worked that way. If you generate a clone and you have 2 phantasms and one clone, the new clone replaces the old one. If you have three phantasms and generate a clone, it has to replace something so one of your phantasms die.
Maybe it’s a bug but I doubt it. It’s always worked that way. There has to be some way to handle illusion generation with the cap of three, and the way it’s working is consistent with the idea that you generally prefer a phantasm, but still allowing you to summon clones if you wish.
The opinion that matters is Anets – since they fixed the LOS issue, they clearly saw it as a bug, case closed.
Not I (15 char)
To your opponent, you are a hemorrhoid.
To your ally, you are preparation h.
Think of cool downs. Say your average utility slot has a 30 sec cool down, you will seldom use them more than once a fight. Almost never more than twice. If traited for it, you can use mantras three times in a normal fight.
Using the. Is also instant, so there’s a lot you can do while channelling one – use another mantra, shatter, phase retreat, etc. The cast is almost always between fights, and if not you aren’t stuck doing nothing in the mean time.
They would have to make Mesmer game play boring or frustrsting. As long as I’m having fun, I’m in. I see a lot of unhappiness about the patch, but honestly in game I don’t notice a difference. (Aside from Beserker LOS, but I played like that was an exploit anyways.)
Ok.
The most oft repeated complaint mesmers have is our difficulty in getting loot in zerged DEs in Orr. That’s where the best loot dropped, so it’s understandable. With changes to loot drops, there’s no reason to farm those DEs for loot – you can get the same loot more easily in lower level zones.
There is no reason to farm Orr for gold, only for karma. I’m certain the new complaint will be “but everyone else can do both,” but its a massive improvement.
It was successfully addressed to a large extent. Loot farming in Orr DE’s.
Now as a mesmer you go to a lvl 55+ zone, tear through mobs, sell your full inventory of stuff every 20-30 minutes. No hassle finding the zerk after, even. The upside is you can farm and do your daily at the same time. Downside is that karma rewards are reduced to 75%. Upside is that you’ll solo most DE’s and get all the loot – until the kids figure out its a lot (!) easier than what they are doing now.
Yeah, there were nerfs. When your hiney stops hurting, reroll, or adapt.
The tool tip is wrong. It reduces the recharge on the phantasms attack, not the recharge of the skill that summons them.
It doesn’t have weakness. That would be awesome. There’s a thread asking to remove vulnerability already.
Wiki says that quip gives your duelist chaos gun, the precursor. To me it looks a lot like Ilya. I can’t tell if its the same skin.
Pyro atheist, again opinion vs opinion. Mesmer is the only scholar with two different 2 handed ranged weapons. Does that mean necros are missing one? Necro is not Mesmer. Necro having something doesn’t mean Mesmer must, just as Mesmer having something doesn’t mean Necro needs it.
We aren’t short on ranged weapons. We are limited to one melee option. That’s what I would rather see. My opinion, disagree all you want. You have your own. It’s a young game, the odds of getting new weapons added at this point are slim to none. It could be about to happen, but if its going to those decisions were made long since.
Basically what you said. You lose flexibility. One thing to realize is you gain a different sort of flexibility. Your goal isn’t to never use your mantras, but you do want to keep them charged. If you blow all your charges on one you lose 4% damage – not optimal but if you needed it, we’ll worth the trade off. Also you can use mantras while stunned or doing something else, like recharging a mantra. So even while busy you can keep someone dazed with MoD followed by diversion, or burst with MoP mind wrack MoP.
It is fun but I don’t think it’s amazing.
Here’s how anet balanced things in gw – they watch the meta. Players are very smart in large numbers. Some might use something that sucks. By the thousands, they won’t. Look at the staff as it is. It is a very, VERY popular choice. Anet will conclude nothing is wrong with it, and its very unlikely they will buff it.
I do expect clones will be looked at just because of the differences in what they do. If that happens the weapons would need to be looked at as well, since clones are linked to them so closely.
If we get a new weapon at some point, what we are missing is a two handed melee option. Yeah, I want to chase you down with my army of tiny little sledge hammer wielding illusions.
Daggers is a nice idea, I just prefer a second melee option to a fourth ranged one.
Actually, you are incorrect. The weapon we are missing is a main-hand power based weapon. The casting classes in this game do not have a 2-handed melee option, nor should they.
Incorrect? It’s a thread about wishful thinking, nothing more. There is no right or wrong.
Your opinion vs mine. We don’t have a 2 handed melee weapon. I say it’s missing and I want it. You say we shouldn’t have it. Based on the fact no other scholar has one? No thee scholar uses GS, that’s no reason we should not.
We have only one melee weapon. Adding a second main hand melee would be rather similar more similar to sword (using same offhands) than a new two hander. I would be happier with a new melee option just because we have plenty of ranged ones already.
If you’re looking for a midrange weapon that shines with power, great sword. 1 is best at long range, good at midrange. 2,3, and 5 are midrange. We don’t need another midrange power weapon.
If we get a new weapon at some point, what we are missing is a two handed melee option. Yeah, I want to chase you down with my army of tiny little sledge hammer wielding illusions.
Daggers is a nice idea, I just prefer a second melee option to a fourth ranged one.
It’s damage isn’t cut by 80%. It’s damage is 100% of what it is designed to be. You don’t like that design, but changing it would raise the damage past what is intended, and that would lead to unforeseen consequences.
Also, why on earth are you chasing down an opponent with 3% health with a staff? To quote my Mesmer, “You’re already dead, you just don’t know it.” If you burned them down with a staff they are so covered with conditions let them run. It won’t help.
I think you’re right. Matter of taste. I see the usefulness on world bosses and dungeons. I’m not convinced it does more damage even in that scenario, but the game is about fun, not number crunching.
For the old Mesmer feel stack up dazes and control effects and trait for confusion. Alternate daze and confusion to really annoy your opponent. After a few dazes you can be sure they are ready to spam skills so stack up confusion and let them. Then daze when they try to heal and finish it. Fun in pvp, less useful in pve.
Some traits to look for are Confounding Suggestions (chance to stun on daze), Imbued Diversion (daze shatter is AoE), and the various effects on interrupt traits (boon, condition, damage).
You can also double down on the punishment idea by confusing them and getting retaliation. Attacking you gets even more painful.
There are other builds I enjoy better but that’s because I drink, and can’t interrupt worth a kitten
I’ve tried that, but for most pve situations I don’t get it. In wvw it felt ok.
But with a damage build (not glass cannon gear) normal mobs take auto attack > mirror blade > phantasm > clone > shatter or auto attack > mirror blade > mind stab – MoP > clone clone shatter. Single targets are mostly down before mirror blade recharges, or when you hit them with it. Group take longer of course, but phantasms die with target so getting out three is dicey anyways.
When I used that build it frustrated me that two traits buff phantasm damage by 30%, vs mantra build where two traits conditionally buff all damage by 25%. (I dont think it affects illusions but I dont know.) What am I missing about the legion build that makes it better than I thought?
Mantra dps build can be very strong. It is somewhat rigid. All the mantras have their use, but unless also traited for mantra healing, they don’t provide much team support. In a mantra damage build you generally want to keep mantras charged and use only when needed, in the healing build you want to spam them.
As a solo pve build I find it fun, and in wvw it’s not bad. All it lacks is flexibility I terms of which utilities you bring. If the damage is worth it to you, you’ll have fun.
I did something similar vaguely similar and liked it. I didn’t stack healing, but still its pretty fun.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mzmc0mz9MocoTkocoTk0GGx0MRmamRq
I focused it more as a tank build – the mesmer version of a wammo. I stacked toughness and vitality, and went mostly with sword/focus and staff. Its quite fun. You’re tough as all get out, and it’s really hard to get overwhelmed. Its a good thing too – your enemy dies about as fast as paint dries, but it really is meant to be a team support char. I also like to have more combo fields, when possible. (Though the poison field for a survival build is amazing!)
I changed things up because the bugged Phantasmal Healing bothered me. I was trying to use Phantasmal Fury as well, which just doesn’t work right. I’ll likely try it again when they fix those traits.
Aside from that, the biggest weakness this build had was that people don’t want to take a tank mesmer – they assume you’re just bad or stupid. Most players just haven’t seen that it really can work well. If you try, you can have as much armor and HP as a warrior – more if they are damage specced. And you have other tricks to survive – I mean, there are usually 4 of you, defender helps, Illusionary Defense, Chaos Armor, Chaos Storm . . .
Here’s an idea that every1 will like. Remove it from the game and let us dual wield pistols.
Remove portal for a main hand pistol? No no no no no.
The fact that you, personally, don’t find something useful doesn’t mean it is useless. It just means you don’t like it.
Staff is powerful as is. Raising its damage would make it more powerful. Other weapons would become less attractive in comparison, making builds less diverse. This isn’t the sort of change you can expect outside of a bigger scope profession rebalance.
Solo farm seems fine. I don’t have anything else at level 80 so I can’t compare. But I don’t have issues making money. Maybe another class makes it faster or slower. The only time I get in trouble is when I’m drunk. ;-)
Really this is a bad suggestion. Clone death skills would be supercharged. Just ask for the scepter auto attack to apply aoe cripple, confusion, and weakness/bleed/vulnerability, while giving you nearly full uptime of 9% less damage taken, 9% more damage dealt, and/or 15% runspeed.
(I know it doesn’t all fit in one build, you have to drop one. Still, this is very poorly thought out.)
A change can be a buff or a nerf. Or both at once. Having the fewest changes sounds fine to me in a patch with “a ton” of bug fixes. If our bugs are fixed, there’s very little that needs buffed, and I’d rather not get nerfed.