Guild Wars 2

messiah.1908:

i said 3k-4k dps its mean dmg per second which is very high not total of 3-4k dmg

I see, my mistake.

messiah.1908:

in sunburst vid the first fight was against mesmer and thief came and SR . common who SR on dead with gs mesmer out there and trying to res. and then third thief came with p/d and s/d mostly used p/d used SS and SR without needed them . so if using all your utilities making you good wow.

You also misread though, I did say “first 1v1 thief fight” so ignoring the 1v2 with bad players…. also yea it was p/d and not p/p.

Maybe not the most skilled thief but he’s not bad either, SS he used to get behind the mesmer, SR when <25% hp to heal up and attack from stealth so wouldn’t say they weren’t needed… And yes I’d take good use of utilities and all the skills and mechanics available to you as a sign of a good player.

Jurica.1742:

Shatter is not there for sustain DPS, it is there for burst that is the first thing you got very wrong.
Condi shatter compared to power is nothing. The players in your video were really bad. Keep in mind the people that Helseth is fighting have thousands of hours of high tier PvP experience. They aren’t Gods of course but it is really hard to get a good burst onto them because they are aware of whats going on and most importantly they know how to dodge stuff.
If condi was really better than power, trust me, Supcutie and Helseth would run it. They’ve extensively tested a lot of different mesmer builds and weapon sets to see what is best for top tier play and nothing beat power shatter.

What was done here was a clip of Helseth autoattacking Alkore who is a really good warrior (shoutbow so even more tanky) and + there was a lot of cleave around Alkore so his clones were getting destroyed then a clip of messiah just killing noname badies with a condi build which disregards armor in a 1v1. Thats nowhere near a fair comparison. If you compared Helseth getting a nice shatter combo off onto someone to what you did, I’d call it fair and it would be in favor of power shatter. You may argue that power is squishy so condi is automatically better. Power isn’t supposed to take damage/be on point in the first place so it is irrelevant. Condis can also be removed while power damage can not without using a heal which is also something you can do against condi. There are a ton of condi cleanses in todays teams with all these cele classes. You may say power can be dodged, but so can the condi application.
If you don’t care about playing at a higher/decent level, condi shatter will do, but beyond that you kinda have to go power shatter.
A good comparison would be this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQglrsPBeF0

Insta killed a thief in stealth. Probably not the best example but a much better one than the one you supplied.

Exactly this, I agree with everything you said.

Great clip too, hadn’t seen this one before… awesome he knew the result already when the first arrow was flying : D

The thief isn’t a bad player either, if Helseth had been running MtD in this clip he couldn’t have done anything to the thief…. immob would have been gone and thief again free to attack from stealth with distortion and one dodge gone on helseth.

messiah.1908:

and Wile.5024
i watched the vid and how can you tell the thieves or rangers etc were good if they got burst down in 5 sec. maybe they just were noobish like all wvw players… sarcasm ….
but the burst omg 3k-4k dps !!!

Hahahhaha take a look at the first 1v1 theif fight for example:

- Fight took over a minute NOT 5 SECONDS
- Several bursts were needed
- Both anticipate others movements and counter
- All skills and utilities are used
- Mesmer is at an disadvantage due to thief s/d
- Bursts did around 75% of thieves hp everytime, 80%+ the final blow THIS DOES NOT EQUAL 3000-4000hp You think straight up lying about the power damage is a good idea?

Your thief fight on the other hand: 10seconds, 1 diversion shatter (lol) from t4 stealth…. thief did not dodge or cleanse or do anything, he just spammed aa with confusion and run a circle before dying…

Both the mesmer and the s/d+p/p thief on the wvw sunburst vid show much more skill than you in any of your vids. Any player with at least some experience can see that right away.

messiah.1908:

Wile – you basicaly saying that against heavy armor helseth shouldnt have engage at all or try to burst with F1 F2 gs attacks but as condi which ignore armor mmm….

I’m definitely not saying the first thing at all, and I can’t say for what helseth was doing in that clip… waiting for an opportunity perhaps? There’s a cele warrior backed up by a guardian in the clip, condibuild would have done absolutely nothing in that situation too.

Then when you think about the game outside of that small clip.. if helseth would have gone with your MtD build, he’d have less range, less interrupts, no illusory persona, no boon removal on shatter, slower burst making him less useful through the whole game. This agrees with your comment on effectiveness:

but pls make a video of power shatter of 1 game and check your dps all over the game period. you will see very low dps compare to condi. but i am sure your effectivness in the game can be better then condi or even the same

I’ve played both builds, and I didn’t notice a huge difference in damage like you claim: VERY LOW DPS COMPARED TO CONDI. Both seemed to be able to dish out similar lvls of pure damage in a straight up fight. But then outside of the narrow damage perspective MtD was clearly inferior to power shatter for various reasons pointed out by me and others on multiple threads.

I might make a vid next week when I’m back to my PC if I have the time… In the meantime, If you just want to see good uses of power shatter against some good players, you could take a look at that wvw sunburst vid on the mesmer forum for example.

Really nice use of melee gs and wave to shatter, wp!

The thief fights were especially fun to watch : D

edit: you seemed to find lots of nice dueling opportunities, or was this like from days of footage? Maybe you’re on a good server with this kind of dueling culture? Last time I went wvw (I play on desolation), seemed like everyone just ran away from 1v1s or even 1v2s, the only ones who wanted to fight were the troll thieves with ~permanent invisibility.

Ross Biddle.2367:

messiah.1908:

i put out the vid to show the DMG not my or the enemy skill

See, devils in the details, and context is everything. Haters were so quick to scream “bias!”, all the while inserting their own bias into their knee jerk responses. It’s easy to judge, not so easy to judge soundly.

Even the title of the topic is “Damage – MtD condi versus power” saying this is a comparison. Then what you show on the vid is:

Power: basically autoattack from max range without burst or melee gs on a heavily armored top tier player. This is like 10% of the dmg the build can do.

Condi: full melee range range shatters hitting r1 noobs who eat up everything, don’t cleanse and just die.

You can call me a hater if you like but I don’t even hate the condi build. I hate the exaggerated claims being made about this build, and the false claims about power shatter. This biased video and the “mtd versus power damage” is nothing but a joke.

I can only imagine how much you fanboys would cry if I made a similar video other way around and then call it a legit comparison or proof of how power > mtd. In the vid I’d first be autoattacking with a scepter from 900 range and doing a lazy shatter that barely connects dealing negligible damage. Then swapping to power and using it up to it’s full potential murdering ppl, one shot some poor thief and a ranger.

Sure the condi is dealing a lot of damage but the situation is perfect, you could do this with any build: put up 3 wardens and then slow-mo on the damage numbers when they all hit some stationary target yey.

Dondagora.9645:

Condi doesn’t do small ticks of damage over time.

That’s exactly what it does, and I was talking about one hit.

Dondagora.9645:

Mesmer’s Condi Shatter can stack for massive ticks. It’ll take 3+ seconds for it to rev up, but the pressure and damage it places can be greater than Power’s.

Yes it can be greater but it can also be zero. Hit someone with a full f2 shatter and the enemy instantly cleanses it => 0 dmg done (almost every build runs condition cleanse). Hit someone with full power mind wrack => tons of dmg every time.

Dondagora.9645:

, however Condi does things that power can’t such as applying constant and strong AoE pressure

This one sounds reasonable as you’ll be inflicting torment and confusion with every shatter.

Yea I can totally see the famous lord Helseth first autoattacking 1200 range with gs and staff to a cele warrior (who btw was dodging and moving and using skills) , then shattering HUGE BURST with clones walking 1km from him to the warrior , shattering one by one with 1 minute intervals

Then you somehow think videos of you

1) Killing a sad thief WHO DID NOT DODGE ONCE from stealth in melee range
2) Killing a sad nec WHO DID NOT DODGE ONCE in melee range
3) Killing a sad STATIONARY warrior IN 2v1 situation

is somehow proof (?) of MtD dmg being higher than power shatter….

This vid, like the other ones you’ve posted previously, just made me laugh…

I’m getting sick of your more or less black and white comments…

Let’s simplify: power does large dmg on one hit, condition does small ticks for some time => both do same amount of dmg in some time if you stop attacking….

- Condimesmers get focused the same as power does (15k hp yey!), maybe even worse since you need to be closer all the time

- I kill cele engis with power, I think I’m not the only one

- You can soften up other celes for 2v1 with power, you can kill them 1v1 too if you hit good shatters + use interrupt…. very hard to hold a point with both power and condition

- Not having decoy+blink will hurt you a lot with condition, it’s not like some “free extra” utility slot like you constantly keep claiming

messiah.1908:

power – hight short burst
condi – constant dps

Both have constant dps, both have burst even if condi burst duration is longer (MtD).

messiah.1908:

power – dont have free utility slot
condi – do have free utility slot

can take portal, boon rip feedback, null field etc so yes

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say but I see them both having decoy, blink and an optional slot. Sure you can take away blink and pick something else but that applies to power too.

messiah.1908:

power – cant handle the cele meta
condi – can handle the cele meta

Is there a huge difference? You can kill engis with both… celes and warriors seem very hard to kill for both and I’m pretty sure you get pushed off the point or die… I don’t exactly call that “handling the cele meta”.

messiah.1908:

power – hardly make the enemy use skills by it attacks
condi – push the enemy to use cleanse and heal

This…. just complete nonsense…. If I start to murder someone with my power shatter you’re telling me he won’t heal, dodge, counter, use invuls etc?

messiah.1908:

guys till now i havent read even 1 reason why power better then condi

Why I think power is better than condi: For me personally it’s the speed and surprise + the incredibly useful illusionary persona trait… such utility in 1v1s and in team fights, when stomping, ressing, interrupting, defense, when you need that one extra hit to down someone or one boon stripped.

Wouldn’t trade these BIG advantages to SLIGHT advantages that condimesmer brings.

Some days I think everyone should just play turret engis, even the top tier players…. every game… make whole teams of turret engis => cause so much rage and frustration anet will eventually wake up

B Rad.5416:

I also wonder how many people from the WTS NA finals team are in the top 25 of the leaderboard. I don’t know the answer but if it is 0 it just shows how terrible the leaderboard is.

idk about NA but with the exception of some soloq players, I don’t recognize anyone in top 150 EU… I imagine it’s the same there.

50% pve turret engis farming…

Horrible build for everything: close to zero dmg, can’t hold points, no team support… completely useless

Go ranked, no courtyard or skyhammer… It’s the same as unranked otherwise, same rewards too. Ranking doesn’t mean anything so don’t worry about that…

It’s completely ridiculous, terrorsquad is 100% right. Turret engis just keep winning…

You need some basic knowledge about the game to counter turret engis with rotation, and that only helps if there’s just one of them.

Matchmaking is awful, games get formed with players of all skill levels… newer players just run in and die. Last game I played our necro and ranger died to a turret engi in a legit 2v1 (everyone full hp and cooldowns at start).

Why is this build not nerfed already? No one uses it in actual high tier play and it’s COMPLETELY OP in low-mid skill lvl play. It’s ruining the game.

skcamow.3527:

If you’re solo and want to take it, down the rocket turret quickly as it’s one of their biggest damage threats.

This is exactly what you should do first if you intend to kill the engi. I usually jump in on the point when it’s down, keep pressure on and interrupt the panic crate which is coming.

Mr Colin.1863:

Would it not be an option that the Chronomancer’s “Extra things to compensate” would entail the shield only be an option in combo with only one MH, as you fully take on the role of Chronomancer. So both your MH and the Shield skills will change.

Yes, it’s a possibility, anything really is… I dont’ really see the point in guessing. +Like Fay said, pretty much everything you said in the first post is more or less false.

I can understand why ppl are being negative…. nerfs, useless traits, pushed out of the meta by hard counters, ~1 usable build, unfixed bugs (or “features”)…. I bet no one at anet even plays a mesmer. I’m having a hard time believing we’re getting something as good as the other classes in the expansion when I doubt they even know what that means.

gj putting copyrighted content on the vid, can’t even view it

:o seems interesting especially with the mantra of pain, got to try it out sometime

thanks for the link!

BlackDevil.9268:

@ Wille
I’m not gonna argue with someone’s opinion, but in both ways it’s a bad matchmaking and I guess we both agree on that. The old MMR was after a while heavily based on the amount of games you played in that time span it took for the mmr to update. You could just lose game after game and still rise up the rankings, just because you played games. That’s not any better or worse than the current MMR.

This is just not true, it’s not an opinion if you’re talking about facts. When soloq and tpvp were around you would ALWAYS lose MMR if you lost a game.

The rising up the ranks when losing would only happen on the leaderboard on one special occasion: you hadn’t been playing for some time, and lost ranking to temporary decay. When you eventually did play a game this temporary decay would then get removed and the MMR change added to the original rating. An example with made up numbers: Have MMR of 1000, don’t play for 2 days, decay 1000 → 500, play one game and lose it 500→1000-50=950.

I really hope they’ll add another main hand weapon, reasoning:

At the moment you have:
- Sword, strong power focus
- Scepter, only condition dmg

This means when you do go power or condition in pvp you pick only one of these weapons.

Then you have these 5 offhands: focus, pistol, torch, sword, shield… all have nice mechanics and have potential in various builds but due to the main hand restriction you can only pick ONE.

=> add a main hand weapon => enable dual offhand builds => increase build variety by a kittenton.

BlackDevil.9268:

The ranking system, especially at the time you played tpvp, was more based on the amount of games you played (with a few exceptions of 11-1 scores) rather than on the amount of wins you had. The current leaderboards are just a little better, but still give you points based on the amount of times you played.

hahahahhahaahhauwhuaifhaglahew

You’re calling the old MMR based leaderboards worse at reflecting player skill than the current farmingboard ones? :————-D Most ridiculous thing I’ve read today.

MMR was very volatile: get to the top by accident => lack the skill and you’d lose games => MMR plummets and back to playing with noobs. If someone managed to stay there day after day with a lot of games played, it definitely told me that player had skill. MMR is in no way dependant on how many games you have played, how otherwise would you explain ppl on the top with 11 games?

Players who were at the top hundreds recognized each other and chatted with each other, every game you’d see someone you know. It had a sense of community and ppl made friends. Makes me sad to see what kind of system it devolved into because devs want to cater for pve ppl (introduce farming to pvp). 50% of top 100 farmingboard is probably turret engis atm, grinding points with 0 skill involved…

You make good points, would have been great if your first post was like this : D

Yeah with some needed buffs I could see this build replace an engi…

Fay.2357:

Good players use scepter 2 intelligently to force other players to eat the torment.

True, I ended up doing exactly theses kind of things in my games too… for example torment via popping an engi mine. It’s kinda a shame though that can’t really use the skill to punish someone for attacking you with a high dmg skill targeted at you. Like block an eviscerate and cause torment… seems to me it’s very often only one of these: useful block OR torment.

I wish devs would buff the weapon to be faster and more responsive, same goes for the LAZOR even if your next post had valid points.

Fay.2357:

Wile.5024:

- Horrible chase potential due to slow projectiles

Why are you chasing?

There’s a huge difference between these 2 scenarios: a) defend a point and make the enemy flee b) defend a point and kill the enemy. Option a) makes me worried, depending on the situation I might have to stick around… the enemy could come back with full hp after some seconds, even with reinforcements. If I tried to leave the point he might circle back, stealth, blink whatever. Option b) The enemy is dead, I can immediately move on to go help my allies.. or in the case if enemy reinforces it’s another 1v1.

Fay.2357:

Wile.5024:

- Horrible max range fighting due to slow projectiles
- Need to be in close proximity to setup clones for good shatter

While power shatter has better long range pressure, the close range clone setup is common to both.

Again true, felt like the clone setup was very similar. izerker and mirrorblade do summon a clone next to the enemy from max range though which is useful sometimes.

Fay.2357:

Wile.5024:

- Bad for stomping, bad for on-demand interrupt

There’s nothing wrong with this build for stomping. You don’t have IP distortion, but you’ve got quite a few other ways to protect your stomps.

In team fights I felt I needed to rely much more on my team to do the stomping… the extra second of distortion with IP really helps. With such a squishy character I felt like I often couldn’t take the extra second of damage. There’s another awesome thing you can do with IP too: interrupting the res WHILE stomping.

For smaller scale fights the torch seemed to work nicely though.

Fay.2357:

Wile.5024:

- No boon remove shatter OR no clone death (1 of these)

Debilitating dissipation is 100% unnecessary. You shouldn’t be letting all your clones pop right and left, you should be putting them to efficient use in shatters. 4/4/0/0/6 is a vastly superior build compared to 0/4/4/0/6 when you’re playing in sPvP.

I went with OP’s build as it was advertised to be GREAT in every aspect of sPvP (lol). But yeah personally would pick boon removal (and extra condition duration) over this too.

Fay.2357:

Wile.5024:

- Enemy having AoE condicleanse in team fights is a huge problem

This is more or less equivalent to saying ‘Enemy having aoe blocks is a huge problem’.

It’s not equivalent at all… aoe block in team fight is very likely to block minor dmg from some aoe or cleave. A guardian using a shout to clear, let’s say 6 stacks of torment and confusion from 3 enemies is HUGE in comparison.

All I’m saying is that the effectiveness of this build lowers drastically if enemy counters with team condi clear effectively… if you think about the power shatter, the AoE healing of direct damage isn’t as effective in this game.

Fay.2357:

Nobody is claiming that this build is going to be the new meta for mesmers at a high level. The fact is that mesmers are not in the meta at all at a high level. Maim builds perform at a very similar level compared to power shatter and interrupt builds that are more commonly used. Their higher inherent defense and active defense with a nasty bite makes them more suited to dueling with thieves, and the higher sustained damage but lower burst gives them a slightly different team-fight role.

Many claims were made in this thread how this build is equivalent or better than power shatter in various situations and against the cele meta and thieves. And I still disagree on this being any better against thieves based on the points I made in my previous reply.

The sad part of what you say is true, mesmers being left out of the meta, maybe that’s why I wanted to point out flaws in this build too… who knows, maybe a balancing dev would have stumbled here by accident and would have seen this thread with nothing but outstanding and 100% positive replies and thought to himself “oh great they already have a meta viable condition shatter build, no need to buff anything at all”.

played 10 solo unranked games today to test this build, 2x 4v5s .. counting those out won 7/8 games! The same result I would have gotten with dps shatter. Sometimes seeing someone with 11 stacks of torment is fun, so is seeing him/her trying to disengage without cleansing the conditions…. but is it a great build, comparable to power shatter in effectiveness?

Some thoughts, – +:

- 16k hp with some extra armor = as squishy as dps shatter
- Good players dodge scepter 2 EVERY time when they see “block” appear
- Horrible chase potential due to slow projectiles (in case of disengage: torment stacks caused before fleeing don’t count… if you used the same logic to dps the enemy would already be dead before fleeing)
- Horrible max range fighting due to slow projectiles
- Need to be in close proximity to setup clones for good shatter
- LAZOR is terrible
- Bad for stomping
- Bad for on-demand interrupt
- No boon remove shatter OR no clone death (1 of these)
- Enemy having AoE condicleanse in team fights is a huge problem

I also felt that team utility was slightly worse than with power shatter since the build is lacking in ressing, stomping and interrupt potential.

+ Clone death OR boon removal is great (1 of these)
+ Multiple torrent stacks possibly on multiple targets are nice
+ Slightly more trait options
+ Torch worked surprisingly well

Also many ppl here have been saying it’s better against thieves, I have to disagree… you have the same issues with clones not being able to keep up with the thief and most of our abilities need a target. There’s actually even less AoE than with power. The higher armor is offset by lower hp. What makes this build WORSE than dps shatter against thieves is shatter on self and the lack of knockback. The fight is often decided in split seconds and the shatter EXACTLY when you need it the most is a life saver. 1 shatter on self daze can turn a bad situation completely around.

During 1v1’s on point, enemies did force me off the point a couple of times causing me to lose the point. I did not notice this build to be any better at holding points. I did win all of the 1v1 encounters… though I’m sure I would have done the same with power also.

Mostly the build worked like I thought it would work, even did a good job at times. It’s definitely slower and easier to play than dps shatter too. A decent build but definitely a tier below the double ranged shatter.

Keep in mind I’m talking about just pvp, I have no interest in how pve(wvw) side of the game works.

Saturn.6591:

Wile.5024:

You, like these other fanboys on the thread, see everything so black and white.

You, like other haters, see everything so black and white…

…at least if it is about trying to make a point why a build is bad. For the arguments why a build is good, suddenly everything is one huge grey-area, downplaying (or simply ignoring) all the points that would clearly qualify as “white”.

Every reply I made has been backed up with reasoning, facts and personal experience… I’ve even used examples to make my points valid.

If I’m indeed a hater this is because ppl on this thread constantly claim OP’s build is the best thing ever,without any arguments or reasoning. These are just some of the stuff that has been said:

-great against the cele meta, bunkering, 1v1 far or close
-Maim does well against most builds except for cele warrior, but the cele war won’t be able to kill you either
- I’ve played double ranged shatter too for a bit, but I find that I can do so much more with MtD and I also contribute much more to the team.
- smart d/d ele who fights me on point wont be able to still it if i am on it
-Thief vs dps shatter is a 90% lose rate. Thief versus mtd is only 60%.
- do NOT underestimate the burst on Confusing Images, because it rekts
- Either they smash keys and kill themselves (warriors, rangers and thieves) or they sit there not doing anything.

You see, when I read this kind of stuff it makes me sad. I look at the build and to me it looks like an average-good build with situational usefulness. I proceed to explain why I think it is not that great and point out several downsides which make it less viable than shatter. Then get contradicted by ppl who did not even bother to read what I wrote carefully or just lack understanding of mesmer or pvp in general.

Maybe instead of actually explaining my views I should have just written it like witcher did:

witcher.3197:

This build is fun, but in no way “Great” and that should be clear to anyone with some ranked experience who knows Conquest roles and optimal builds. The forum in general thinks that the easier a build is, the better, which indicates that most people can’t make harder builds work because they lack the experience and this lack of experience leads to many bad theorycrafting where inexperienced players encourage each other and eventually convince themselves that what they made is good.

The profession forum section is full of people who live in their own bubble, don’t acknowledge optimal builds because they can’t play them (or simply because they are too hipster to use popular builds) and then theorycraft their horrible builds and have an orgasm even from watching a hotjoin killshot video. These people will never get good at the game with their current mentality and most good players left this place a long long time ago because they realized they can’t do reasoning with people who are blinded by their devotion to some specs.

MailMail.6534:

I’d like to get this thread back on track, because it seems like these latest arguments are focusing a lot on ideal 1v1 fights. Let’s make another thread, and I’ll argue why MtD is also good there. But to be back on topic, I think messiah and others make a fantastic case why MtD is great in tpvp.

1v1’s are a huge part of tpvp, also my favorite part of it. And I think messiah made a horrible case why this build is great, the original post was a bunch of biased and one-sided fights.

MailMail.6534:

• You’re less susceptible to conditions
• Slightly more on-point fighting capabilities with condi shatter.
• More utility to support allies with condi shatter
• More boon rip potential via utilities. You shatter more often with condi shatter, so you’re ripping more boons over a period of time.

These are debatable, the rest I agree on. Power shatter can also drop stun breaks and take more team utility, condicleanse or boon removal. Also traits can vary like with the build variation you provided earlier.

On-point fighting is a bit of a question mark too if talking about the build op provided… no melee weapon, no knockback, 2x invisibilities, no boonstrip, no distortion or diversion without clones. It does have 1 block, weakness on clone death and more armor. Maybe they’re about the same, both relatively bad at on-point fighting.

Fay.2357:

You’re right, confusing images isn’t a burst skill. However, it’s simultaneously a fantastic tool for baiting defensive cooldowns.

Glad someone finally agreed. Yeah I can see it working as a bait, I still think it’s underpowered.

Fay.2357:

The confusion is really just an incidental bit of bonus damage. Consider it an idiot tax.

The torment, on the other hand, is not something that can be ignored. Saying that ‘standing still and using no skills for the duration of the conditions’ is a counter is incredibly disingenuous.

Idiot tax is a good term for the confusion, it’s also what I’ve been saying about confusion all along.

You’ve got what I said about torment wrong, I never said you should stand still and wait for torment duration to run out (unless you have low hp and really no other choice). For the third time if hit with 6+ stacks of torment, what I said was: STOP AND CONDICLEANSE .

Fay.2357:

1. You get to set up clones however and wherever you want, preloading your next shatter
2. You get to freely apply any and all conditions you can in this time (burn/bleed from staff auto, poison from doom/chaos storm)
3. Your friendly neighborhood thief notices someone standing perfectly still and using no skills, and eats them

You, like these other fanboys on the thread, see everything so black and white.

1. Most condicleanses in the game take less than a second to cast (or even instant) which doesn’t give you a lot of time (or none).
2. Enemy would dodge and take some torment dmg if the option would be to take way more dmg from another source
3. Enemy would use a defensive skill and take some confusion dmg if the option would be to take way more dmg from another source
4. Dodging doesn’t proc confusion dmg
5. Confusion has a short duration

Let’s take a look at the torment description:

“If the victim is moving, they take twice the amount of damage they would while stationary.”

It’s like everyone here thinks that every player hit by torment will always take DOUBLE dmg in every situation. Idiot tax applies here too.

Fay.2357:

The fact that a weapon is useful for a melee burst doesn’t make it a melee weapon.

I guess it’s a matter of preference. Personally, I like to categorize stuff by their main function.

MailMail.6534:

I dislike it when people leave out certain parts of a quote that gives context to a statement. You did exactly this in order to somehow prove a point that scepter has issues as a weapon which is something I haven’t even disagreed about. Bolded is the part you left out.

5 stacks of confusion during 3 seconds is not “burst” by any stretch of the imagination. I left nothing out.

MailMail.6534:

The damage difference between two cases is HUGE, that is why I listed torment and confusion as unreliable.

Comparing to dps shatter? Why exactly are we comparing them? That’s counter productive. I think it goes without saying that they do very similar things offensively/defensively at insanely different velocities.

I was comparing situations where a player with torment and confusion recklessly attacks and moves to a situation where he does not.

MailMail.6534:

Ok, so here’s one fundamental thing you’re forgetting about MtD “burst”: you have access to more than 1 burst.

So no, while your enemy is twiddling his thumbs wasting his time not attacking, it’s giving me time to set up another one of my bursts. I mean, do you think that after I burst him, I’m just staring at him not doing anything? lol And if he stops and condi clears, that’s exactly what I want him to do, because I have more conditions coming right at him soon enough. Also, I speak for myself when I say the duration on torment is not short. My torment lasts 8 seconds. If enemy waits this period out, that’s long enough for another Phase Retreat, Scepter 2 AND a dodge.

More over, let’s say that silly situation happens for whatever reason. You have stealth, Blink, chaos armor and chaos storm to mitigate any counter this imaginary enemy has up his sleeves after not playing the game for 8 seconds waiting for conditions to clear.

The scenario above that you imagined in order to make MtD seem disadvantaged is simply that: imaginary.

Yes you have multiple shatters but you can not instantly spawn ready to shatter clones next to the enemy indefinitely.

If you think good players just stand still when you send more clones and eat shatters, you’re sadly mistaken. You list some of your defences, enemies don’t know how to use any of these? I never mentioned waiting out torment either, I was talking about massive stacks of confusion which even when traited for +33% duration only last 4 seconds. Dodging doesn’t count as a skill activation either.

Maybe at the skill lvl you play and the kind of enemies you face, enemy actually using his/her brain is indeed imaginary.

MailMail.6534:

Now for the other poster here who needs some feedback.

do NOT underestimate the burst on Confusing Images, because it rekts. Scepter isn’t a great weapon but it works great in this build.

Torment and confusion partly rely on enemy stupidly moving or attacking

I’m trying to be respectful here, but this is a very foolish thing to count as a “con”. It’s not just you, but many people have said this, so maybe I’m just frustrated hearing this ridiculous statement. Let me ask you a question: if a player isn’t moving and a player isn’t using any skills, in what state is he most likely in? No no, not the downstate darling, he’s probably dead.

Rhetorical questions aside, confusion/torment is a soft lockdown that is HIGHLY effective in the right hands. It’s really the most polite way to kill your opponent, because you’re giving them the choice on how they’d like to die. Either they smash keys and kill themselves (warriors, rangers and thieves) or they sit there not doing anything. The latter essentially means you’re you’ve locked an opponent down to the point where you can temporarily +1 a fight or get extra dmg off of him via another player. Please explain to me how this isn’t a pro, because I’m confused now.

Also as a side note: power gs is more or less a melee weapon

This is just factually wrong. GS’ AA attack encourages the player to be further away to do more damage. The knockback on GS5 essentially screams “GET OUT OF MELEE RANGE”. The cripple on pBerserker synergies with keeping enemies at bay and unable to reach melee range in the first place. So there’s nothing really Melee about GS except for maybe Mirror Blade.

Ok first I wouldn’t call 5 stacks of confusion applied slowly in 3 seconds a burst, it’s horrible. Even better the skill gets easily canceled if you’re not facing the enemy properly + the LAZOR animation is clearly visible and therefore easy to counter.

Let’s imagine a situation where you’ve successfully bursted someone with for example 6 stacks of torment and 9 confusion… what does a decent enemy do in this situation? Does he keep autoattacking and running? Answer: he knows you’ve just spent your main burst, you don’t have clones up, he would stop and condicleanse before doing anything else. If he doesn’t have condicleanse he would possibly wait for the 9 stacks of confusion to go away since the duration is really short.

The damage difference between two cases is HUGE, that is why I listed torment and confusion as unreliable.

Idk how you play power but gs melee shatter has the potential to instantly kill a zerk player from full hp. Sure you can (and you should) shoot beams and drop izerkers from distance but the main burst is melee range => that’s why I said it’s more or less a melee weapon

Just the same bad stuff as in the previous vids + 2x 1v1’s without moa….

First a zero dmg bunker guard autoattacking with staff who did not even try to dodge and just facetanks everything. Then a ranger who helpfully uses up double dodge and stone signet before even activating combat, then you do a random torch 4 which conviniently happens to blind his entangle and he proceeds to eat the whole shatter and just die…. made me laugh at least : D

messiah.1908:

be sure i dont win any fight and sometimes i take bad choises like staying far after 3 enemy down on mid -> they will spwn to me . so you want to see me die in 1v3 . no class can or should handle 1v3 if not full bunker.

yes thief can kill me 50% of the time if he’s above average player. but in group play i have more freedom to handle him
with 5 confusion thief usually goes SR – result i want as he wont attack for few seconds
sure gs can push him back . but why handle 1v1 if i can handle 2v1 for few seconds for fast down.

it seems you want me to be in hard spot just to prove something
put a shatter mesmer or thief in 1v2 will he stay and fight ot disengage?
will shatter mesmer fight turret engi on far? – no it waste of time for him. while i can but result maybe in waste of time also. unless he is on 50% hp after using heal

you missing the point on how holding a point – my clones can do on 1v1 10-15 bleed stack , weakness, burning which push my enemy to play defense and miss some attacks with weakness. if i shatter also punish him more moving and using skills

smart d/d ele who fights me on point wont be able to still it if i am on it while he will lose time for his team so usualy they are leaving . as most of the time he will be on water for the cleanse and less on fire for the dmg

Idk if you really even read most of my reply or if it’s your English or you just missed everything I tried to say… The only things I got out of your confusing reply are using offence as defence when holding a point and overwhelming cele with conditions.

I still don’t see how you could hold a point against a decent player with this, nor how it could be better against celes than power with boon removal. Also think power is more versatile due to shatter on self.

And yes I did try to put you in a hard spot since you claim all these things (great build, great against the cele meta, bunkering, 1v1 far or close etc) without backing them up at all or explaining why it’s good in any in these things. The videos seemed very biased and clearly cut to show only the good sides of this build against half-dead opponents or while having another advantage.

However, I’ll give the build a try based on the good feedback on this thread, I really would like there to be another viable mesmer build..

messiah.1908:

@Wile.5024
what is challenging as power shatter ? fast burst and go out
i look for to be effective to my group
1v1 i did and prove the build is good with several tester of several guilds
its not op build (thieves eat you)
this build can handle the cele meta better the power shatter

- i didnt say condi is better then power. but condi can do burst after burst with 3 shatter while power mesmer will blink away w8ing for recharge

I assume the build has most of the same challenges as power… the play style looks generally the same though would argue power needs to do more melee range combat (to make use of mirror blade and shatter on self). “Burst and blink away to wait for recharge” is not how I play power at least, you need to keep the pressure on…

Saying this build is better against celes than power… I did not see any proof on the vids, the build doesn’t have boonstrip, eles cleanse tons of conditions.

The videos were all about you being in ideal situations, you could make a montage like this with any build… a LB power ranger for example: run to an ongoing team fight, boon up, press 2 => fast kill, cut to the next fight.

While I do get these are the types of fights you want to get into, I would have wanted to see situations where things are not ideal for you which happens all the time especially if not running a full, well thought-out party. Sometimes the team is fighting 3v1 somewhere in the middle of the map, sometimes they just purely suck, sometimes you have only squishys…. 1v1 a thief or a cele, arriving to a losing team fight, team fight where the enemy actually targets the mesmer, getting outnumbered.. these sort of things. What would be more convincing that this is a great build than showing it can work against odds too?

messiah.1908:

pros:
more armor then zerk one
make the enemy team to use utilities, cleanse, heal early in the fight
more team player and can hold/fight on points better then zerk
great against the cele meta

I did forget to mention more armor as a bonus.

Would argue power causes enemies to heal slightly more quickly since the dmg is instant where conditions need time to work, also gs gives extra range. Faster need to cleanse obviously goes to the condition build.

I’m sceptical about holding the point too, you have 2 invis and no knockback, no melee weapon… sure the armor helps a bit but still.

Still not convinced this build is great, I’d be happy to watch a less one-sided video :p

Firstly I’d like to comment on your videos. Would have liked to see some more challenging situations on the vids… these don’t really tell much if the build is viable at all, one of these apply to almost every fight:

1) You were outnumbering the enemy (or the enemy reinforced late when the first enemy was already going down)
2) You were supported by your team
3) You used moa (shame on you)
4) Enemy did not target you
5) Lack of thieves?
6) Lack of classes with heavy condi cleanse?

In the few 1v1 fights I saw (no moa), sure 6-11 or so stacks of torment at one time might just kill someone outright but the same applies to anyone eating a mirrorblade 4 clone mind wrack with power build…

My thoughts about the build, pros:

+ Heavy AoE torment and confusion in team fights
+ Team utility potential

Cons:

- Lack of boon removal on shatter
- Lack of shatter on self which gives so much flexibility
- Long cooldowns on torch
- You die of old age while waiting for scepter animations
- Torment and confusion partly rely on enemy stupidly moving or attacking

Overall looks like the build is alright, but not great.

Also as a side note: power gs is more or less a melee weapon

yeah I’m curious about the whole build… traits do look promising. OP’s build seemed too tanky to my liking.

skcamow.3527:

I will say this – the trait allocation here is almost the exact build icy has been running for a few months now and what I believe is one of the strongest mesmer PvP builds I’ve seen in a long time.

What’s this build, do you have a link?

Trying to blink across the glass panels on skyhammer still fails, end up standing next to the panel….every time -.-

Awesome idea, gives advantages of both char locking and not locking, +1

Personally I hate counter x builds/classes, feel like some of them are way too powerful against the builds they’re meant to counter… That’s why I think swapping should only be allowed to happen based on your OWN team, like OP suggests.

For example, rly dislike swapping from mesmer to some profession I am way less skilled with and don’t enjoy playing because my team has another mesmer and the enemy team swaps to thieves because of this.

The farming board with the point system made me lose interest…

Even if the previous leaderboard was too volatile among other things, actually winning against good players made rating go up and checking the positive progress on the leaderboard after won games felt like a reward. (the reward tracks etc don’t interest me at all).

I guess it also doesn’t help that my chosen class of mesmer isn’t in the best spot at all.

Justin ODell.9517:

We removed seeing other player’s rank to prevent harassment and the shaming of new players.

We don’t show MMR for the same reason.

How about when you log in to view the leaderboards , you could see your own MMR on the top?

While I don’t agree with your opinion on visible MMR causing shaming… showing your personal MMR just to yourself would keep you happy this but it would also let players keep track of their own progress better instead of just looking at points.

Cynz.9437:

YOU still didn’t give ANY good reasons why thief should be penalized on first place… they are already penalized by lowest survivability in game and fact that they HAVE to build almost full glass to do any kind of dmg…

I and other posters gave plenty of reasons why it should be penalized; every other class in the game is penalized with cooldowns, low effect of aegis/blind, stealth outlasting invuls, low cooldown of stealth skills compared to defensive skills, lack of opportunity cost, promoting skillful play… these seem like good reasons to me.

If by “survivability” you mean stuff like face tanking damage, then yes they might be the worst class at that but if that’s what you want to do with a thief, you’re doing something wrong. Defences for the thief come mostly from shadowsteps, evades, blinds and ofc stealth used defensively and there are a lot of each… I might as easily argue that it’s the class with most survivability as they can easily disengage from combat.

The way I see thief played well is when they wait for an opportunity and then strike. Especially with the zerk builds it’s supposed to be a high risk – high reward class where you jump in, deal the damage and then retreat. You’re not supposed to stay next to the enemy and spam backstab if the enemy is invulnerable, and yes you should be punished for it.

Okaishi.8320:

The problem with nerfing the offensive potential of stealth is that dagger mainhand builds heavily rely on backstab for their damage. Currently it can already be hard enough to land it against skilled players. What I’m talking about is players anticipating your backstab, moving around a lot, evading, spamming AoE around them while also using blocks/blinds. The difference between skilled and lesser skilled warriors for example is that the latter will wait around for you to exit stealth, while the former will spam his attacks, suddenly use their hammer stun or knockback, which can easily turn the momentum of the fight in their favour when you get CCed and exit stealth without having landed a backstab, while having taken a good amount of damage.

Such players will be near impossible to fight if you put instant reveal when your backstab misses/gets blocked. Not to mention that thieves can’t really do much damage at all if their backstab doesn’t land.

You make some good points on how to try to counter stealth but spamming AoE isn’t rly an option to some classes, most classes need a target to cc like that and aegis/blind don’t offer much protection. For the warrior I can think of shield stance and endure pain which you should already be waiting out before going in for the backstab. Also thieves do huge damage even without the backstab (heartseeker, clusterbomb to start with).

Imo this change would not change skilled lvl play almost at all, but help even out the situation where often less skilled players get rewarded for spamming backstab without almost any risk to the thief. And again, I never said anything about an instant reveal… All the time been talking about a minimum 0.5s reduction to current stealth duration on failing a backstab!

Stand The Wall.6987:

The OP suggestion doesnt make sense, same with some posters here.
Make revealed state longer and call it a day. Force thieves to adjust to the higher skill floor.

Why exactly it doesn’t make sense? Please give at least some reasons for your opinion instead of just saying this.

Imo increasing revealed state even with 1 sec would have a much greater impact, and it would affect every thief regardless of their skill lvl. The idea behind this topic was to penalize the backstab spammers and make well timed blocks/invuls a bit more rewarding, not to give a flat nerf to stealth.

muscarine.5136:

We already lose 1+ second for using a stealth based attack that fails to apply. Attack animation > aftercast > repositionning is what it’s called.

Well backstab activation time is 1/4 seconds, aftercast around the same and there isn’t much repositioning happening if the thief is autoattacking with backstab and besides you can move during the attack/aftercast, even with the lowest possible stealth duration of 3 seconds which is basicly spammable it’s possible to backstab 3 times.

If this change is made after losing 0,5s to an aegis for example, you will still have at least 2 tries to backstab. If you spam backstab on a 3s invulnerability though you will get revealed before the invulnerability ends which to me seems reasonable.

Cynz.9437:

@Daishi: the problem is that people want flat nerfs to stealth… the issue with stealth as said many times is that it is about only mechanic together with dodge that thieves have for survival; thief entire toughness tree is based around stealth…condi removal, dmg, regen, mobility to certain extend all tied to stealth… if you add flat nerfs to stealth w/o compensation you might as well delete the class

to make comparison just to make clear how silly the proposed change is: every time any class swings their weapon around and every time attack gets blocked, misses or doesn’t hit anything, the player should lose protection, invul, regen and toughness for each strike… does it sound ridicilous? yes it does, so does the proposed change

First of all, suggested change is not a flat nerf to stealth but a situational nerf to offensive stealth mostly in the case if the stealthed attacker is spamming autoattack on a temporarily invulnerable target. Like another poster said before, this change is not going to affect defensive stealth at all.

Second, your comparison does not make any sense… an actual comparison could be for example a mesmer trying a simple burst (sword 2 + shatter), if the opponent activates his invulnerability at the right time in addition to negating all the damage the mesmer will have his high damage skill on cooldown and lost all of his clones. Another comparison could be a warrior using his burst skill and losing all of the damage and the whole adrenaline bar to a well timed blind. What you seem to fail to see is that there is no cooldown for backstab or iniative cost, the thief does not get punished for attacking an invulnerable target with a very high dps skill like all the other classes are (for other classes the high dmg ones are usually #2-#5).

Reducing current stealth duration by suggested min 0.5s duration for each attack failing to invulnerability is not in any way going to make the thief useless.. the way I see it all the skilled thieves already time their attacks by looking at the opponent before acting, they do not spam the backstab on the enemy while the invulnerability is active to not give away their position. This change would however slightly increase the skill level required for backstabbing and promote skillful play, which to me seems reasonable considering the possible over 8k backstabs.

Shockwave.1230:

1. Blind would completely remove the offensive potential of stealth. Defensive potential would be removed if attacks were attempted.
2. Aegis would completely remove the offensive potential of stealth. Defensive potential would be removed if attacks were attempted

How does a suggested minimum 0.5s reduction completely remove offensive potential? Aegis and blinds arent spammable….

And yes 3s blocking/invul skills do remove the offensive potential… During that time you just do not attack like all the other classes

And yes, none of the other classes arent punished for aa reveal but the difference is up to 8k of damage…. Other classes mostly use #2 to #5 which they are punished for

BobbyT.7192:

If you think about it, all someone has to do when they see a thief stealth is put up a block/ aoe blind and you stop a thief every time, seeing is that most block and blind skills will last longer then the thief will be in stealth for. If people think that “mindlessly attacking” is bad, mindless defence would be worst. I know I would never want to fight a guardian ever again.

This is just wrong… how long does it take for a thief to aa with backstab, 0.5s / attack? So that’s how much will aegis/blind give you, and since the stealth duration is usually 3-4 seconds that doesn’t count for much. Stuff like shield stance or distortion or invulnerability have up to 90s of cooldown, other classes get heavily punished if they waste their abilities attacking a target that is shielded, why not the thief too?

This “mindless defence” you’re talking about doesn’t rly exist in the game, even equally skilled bunkers will go down when the defensive cooldowns are off.

Paulie.6215:

Sounds like someone just got beat up by a thief…

Yes I’ve been beaten by thieves multiple times, I’ve also killed at least as many by playing pvp and wvw since launch. I also have a thief (my other lvl 80 char). I’m did not make this thread cause I was beat up by a thief but because of the reasons I gave in the previous posts.

Coldtart.4785:

Any other class that whiffs an attack, for any reason (blinded, blocked, invul, latency, etc.) has to pay the full opportunity cost for that attack, usually at least 30s cooldown for the most valuable attacks.

Exactly, and since it’s a very high damage attack there definitely should be at least some opportunity cost. Every skilled player on other classes will stop using their attack skills (#2-5) for example on a warrior using shield stance because of cooldowns.

Also many post seem to have the idea of instant reveal on a failed attack, this is quite different from reducing the current stealth duration on the attacker by a small amount (0.5-1s) on a failed attack.

Dual.8953:

Maybe have unsuccessful attempts cost 500 ms instead? Or up base stealth duration to kitten (First one’s way less likely to unbalance things imo)

Would be happy about a 0,5 second reduction too!

All of the solutions sound good and fixing such a key skill for mesmers would be much needed!

ens.9854:

What is the thief supposed to do in this situation if the target activates a blind or block? You say you want skillful play but offer nothing they can do in this situation besides stand around til stealth wears off and try it again

Aegis/blind: hit away since will take only 1s of your stealth duration away which is usually 3-4 seconds

Invuls/shield blocks/multiple second distortion: this is where the skill aspect comes to play … classes other than the thief if they do not react to these will get their attack skills on cooldown (skills #2-5) and completely wasted but the thief can just spam auto attack without no penalty. Here thieves should obviously wait like all the other classes… the suggested change would imo encourage this.