Guild Wars 2

Norjena.5172:

25 are usually never needed. Only in rly bad gruops, but this gruops don´t do dmg, even with 25 stacks.

Wait … whut!? So … only “bad” groups require might stacks? Only “bad” groups should get exotic + stuff? Seriously, everything that increases damage is awesome for the group. It’s never ever about “what’s required”. It’s only about how to deal max damage. And 25 stacks vulnerability are a part of it.

Norjena.5172:

BTW: Rifle AA + toolbelt + SD DPS > Ranger Longbow/Shortbow DPS.

So it’s less worse than the bearbow ranger? Gratz – now the ranger goes melee? What do you do? Right … going for explosives.

LordByron.8369:

P.S. the sword block is slow and summons an illusion overwriting your phantasms
Staying in blocking lowers your dps unless you do it on reaction (thing you can t do so often) rather than spamming it in hope to block stuff.
Also pistol stun bounces….

It’s hilarous to read and post in these forums. If we talk about high dps, we allways hear “you rarely gonna have 3 phantasms out at the same time, they die during combat” but if there is a skill that deals heavy damage but creates a clone: “It’s bad, it destroyes our 3rd phantasm!!” … seriously – you really rarely gonna have 3 phantasms out. Also it’s not like you couldn’t resummon them or you wouldn’t deal significant damage with the block alone.
Also the block is definitly not slow wtf o.O It’s kinda instant, unless you suffer from heavy lag. You can easy time the block between attacks without lowering your DpS but increasing it! I do not want to insult somone, but it’s completly normal that if you never use a block weapon, you gonna have trouble using it efficient in the beginning. If you missed the block you even can release a daze-in-line skill wich is very useful for the team, same as the pistol 5 of course. The pistol seems to be easier played efficient, but the sword can do more but takes some efforts.

colesy.8490:

random colesy GS hate hate hate

Noone forces you to read the suggestions, nor to accept them. You hate the GS, we all know that, you will never change since you are just playing this game with premades.

LordByron.8369:

I wonder who would people choose between a player with 6 weapons in his inventory…switching them according to situations…

And a player with only 3 and that can play only with certain players/profession…..

Exactly this. To be flexible and able to adapt to almost every situation makes you truly a good player.

The rifle is a short range or melee weapon, not a long distance weapon … That would be the grenade. To change your weapons, kits, skills depending on the situation is something rarely somone does, but it’s what ppl should do. It helps a lot. To retrait is too much imo ö.ö’’

PvE, PvP or WvW?

It’s not hard to play without kits, in fact, it’s much much easier – but the damage will be pathetic. I tried different rifle builds, but even full buffed the damage was terrible. The auto attack sux so hard, Kits are simply required. And instead of focusing on the rifle and go for kits aa, better focus on kits and go for 2345 rifle attacks if needed. However Pistol Shield is better due the fact of a combo finisher explosion and 2 sigils.

Pretty interesting :o gonna test that myself tonight

Linc.6834:

Xyonon.3987:

So nothing really worth taking i guess ö.ö Even the FT was better combined with that elixier might stack stuff and might dura. But personally I think the FT’s damage is pathetic so I won’t take it anymore. I played it about a week but even with 25 stacks might it’s damage is so low. Also grants no cc and utility, why take it? IMO

No CC and utility??!?!?!??! Did you even look at the #3,4,and 5 skills? I do agree damage is rather subpar, but bro the lowest cooldown aoe knockback/reflect? Longest fire field in the game?? Point blank AoE blind on instant cast even while downed??? And if traited will stack might and give an extra 20 trait points worth of toughness!! The flamer is a very utilitarian weapon

1 hits like a Mesmer auto attack over 2 seconds, so to trait the FT for might is just wasted, even with full stacks of might the damage is pathetic. The AoE (2 i guess) is pretty strong imo. The firefield lasts long but is small, especially compared to the bombs. And we already got a knockback on the shield to stack enemies. I don’t say its very useless, it’s just that they kinda force you to keep it in your hands to get might but it’s still weak. Other kits hit su much harder.

1. Condition Damage
2. Weapon Design
3. Pets
4. Unique attacks of classes
5. scaling of not power things (healing power, vitality, …)

Just because something is optional doesn’t mean you can be efficient without it. It seems you know something about the mesmer, very well, a little example there at the traits: There is a trait that grants all illusions perma fury. You could miss it, it’s optional, but it’s not efficient to not take it on a power build. Or the GS, perfect compareable to the rifle: Good skills but the aa is totally crap.

We got kits so make use of them. It’s like our weapon swap. It’s negative that we have to use a utility slot, but we can carry 4 weapons at the same time with us due this mechanic. And the point that we can switch between them without CD grants us the ability of flexibility. It would be ok if we wouldn’t have a 1 on the main weapons, they are just fillers.

I understand that you don’t want to sacrifice a utility slot for an acceptable aa, but its how the Engineer work and not every build has to be as efficient as the other, not everything has to work, no weapon shall be strong by itself. Engineer is a very complex class and very stressful but very funny and efficient if played properly.

So nothing really worth taking i guess ö.ö Even the FT was better combined with that elixier might stack stuff and might dura. But personally I think the FT’s damage is pathetic so I won’t take it anymore. I played it about a week but even with 25 stacks might it’s damage is so low. Also grants no cc and utility, why take it? IMO

What does “Explosives V – Incendiary Powder” do? :o Have no access to the wiki here :s

Grenades deal more damage than bombs in a team since they stack vulnerability much easier. Also they prob more swiftness or bleeding if you trait it. However noone says you mustn’t use both at the same time. I often use 3 kits since the elixier gun grants all the utility i need.

I played flamethrower engi but even with perma 20 stacks of might the damage is pathetic compared to bombs and grenades.

Back to topic: I feel like having 0 problems with the aim of grenades. Also what’s the big deal? Hold right mouse button and place the indicator about 700 range before you with a 45° angle into the ground. Now if you look up you get range, if you look right into the ground you attack melee. Easy-Peasy

Yea the trait is much more viable in PvE than in PvP, since in PvE the mobs attack so slow it will be procced all the time, whereas in PvP you will never get that bonus.

They also seem to dodge sometimes. Maybe we should test confusion there and see how it works.

That’s not the point. The point is that you have the skill and you should make use of it. You can also easy play with 3 kits, because the kits themsleves grant you the utility you need.

The grenade or bomb kit are more damage focused, whereas on the other hand the elixier gun and the (forgot the name, playin’ in a different language) mechanic kit are very utility focused.

Tell me – what skills do you use as Utility slots? Or better: wich one do you want to use but you can’t because of the kits?

The toolbelt is not our main mechanic. It’s simply a class mechanic, but it’s not that important as the kits themselves. It’s like shatter for mesmer – the main mechanic still is the illusions.

Is “Incendiary Powder” the +10% for explosives? If yes, then it’s like it just has been removed since traiting grenades is a must have for PvE Sad

Permavigor is still there, we got another trait that grans swiftness on crit, you can still keep it up.

If you use kits? IF you use kits?! IF you use kits?!?!
Dude that’s like you would say “Mesmer are just good if they use illusions” o.O It’s our main mechanic to use kits wtf o.O At least one is a must.

I think the engineer is totally fine with those skills he got. If you use any auto attacks on the engineer for spam, you should stop playing him and go for a warrior or GS mesmer, bearbow ranger, or fire staff ele, what ever.

The engineer is not made for auto attacks. He also never has to use them. You can spam grenades with vulnerability, 2,3,4,5, spam all the toolbelt damage skills, can use the rifle 3,4,5 switch to elixier gun or grenades again, you never ever have to use an auto attack on the engineer. You have no time for aa’s.

I often see engineers just shooting pistol and rifle 1’s and it’s making me sad. They are completly useless if you think about what an engineer can do with all those combofields and finishers.

For example take the heal turret, fire bomb, elixier cannon and a shield:

• healing turret
• toolbelt explosive keg
• fire bomb
• explode turret
• shield double 4
• elixier gun 4
  → Everyone got 12 stacks might for 20 sec.

You also can do this with a water field and heal the sh|t out of it

I think it has been fixed 2 patches ago. Also: Do we talk about PvE or PvP / WvW?

The best thing would be to change most of the mobs attack speed. They should use different skills, fast ones, slow ones, to balance confusion and retalation with blocks. It also would greatly increase the ingame expirience to decide what to block and what to “tank”. But yea – much work :s

Most important question: PvE or PvP or WvW?

I prefer the sword by far (PvE). It never misses unlike the pistol; it cannot be meatshielded, mobs cannot run out of range and it has a greater dps unless the duellist is in a fire field.
They are both ranged castable and the iSwordy leaps too for some distance. It’s most of the time safe too.
The biggest + for the sword OH is that it has a stun and a block compared to the stun only pistol. Also the sword 4 is able to stun multiple targets in a line, whereas the pistol just goes for 2 targets and a blind. Sword is also better with dom.15 and doesn’t force you to go duelling 30.
PvP and WvW is a different story, where you can easly evade 4 and 5 of the sword but not of the pistol.

One does not simply go celestial and be efficient :P Unless Hybrid but … just go for the Zerker stuff since condition damage scales so poorly you won’t even notice it.

But the main question is: Do you enjoy more WvW or PvE?

Exactly because of this. After Dom 10 the traits are just getting worse and worse. Normally one goes just 10, sometimes 15 or 20 into Dom.

Another probelm is: even buffed there are just more important things to go:

• Duelling 20
• Inspiration 20
• Inspiration 25
• Illusion 10
• Soon Illusion 15
• Therefore maybe 20

But if it get’s buffed it shouldn’t be the damage, it should be the situation. “Inactive” …. what does it even mean? It’s too situational especially in PvP.

Ikaros.5730:

Problem is that this game is balanced around WvW and PvP.

Bullsh|t… This game’s PvP and WvW is as important as the PvE part. And there are plenty of changes just to buff PvE, like mainly Mantras or Illusion HP, or pet HP in general. Little PvE haters like you make me sick.

Btt: Yes confusion requires another change in PvE. At the moment it deals double damage in PvE than PvP. But I guess the way confusion works is awesome, but the mobs attack way too slow. Instead of changing every mob’s skills I really support this suggestion to let it work kinda like Torment.

But I would decrease it’s damage to PvP nubers then:

• Confusion damage in PvE decreased by 50%
• Confusion deals damage wheneever an enemy starts an action (attack, heal, …)
• Confusion deals one tic every 2 sec

@Soul: Very unique and awesome! I really like your Mesmer!

Nearly everything makes sense if you write it down like this, thx

But the poitons are bugged since release – or the tooltip is just terrible written. You take 10% more damage from enemies of the specific type. There is a also somewhere a thread about this at the bug forum. It has been confirmed by really many ppl. But well – we are Zerkers and we trade tankyness for dmg i guess :P

Sword has a block + stun (daze pve = stun) and the pistol just got a stun. And the sword is traited with 20 points AND synergizes pretty well with vulnerability on daze passives.

Just to clarify the “Zelda is a he” thing …

http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Gamer+Girl+is+an+Idiot.+Stupid+people+have+no+idea_e9c91a_3154903.jpg

as I said – pseudo gamer girl :P

You … guys do know that “base damage” doesn’t exist?

Do you allways start flaming if you don’t understand what somone else wrote?

I did never say that the direct damage is wrong. I said since the beginning that the tooltip is wrong. I tested for you the phantasms damage with what equip ever, it won’t matter as I tried to figure out the difference between the difference between two pahntasms and their tooltips.

If the difference a phantasm and it’s tooltip has is the same as another phantasm and it’s tooltip, then there is a calculation behind it. You clearly can see that each phantasm is differently wrong according to their tooltip.
This proves that there is a text bug in the tooltips.

I don’t have to test this against 2600 armor targets since math works like this in that specific situation. Even if you had 5’000 power or just 1’000, if the target had 5’000 armor or 0 – it wouldn’t matter for my calculations.

If you are unable to understand what I am trying to tell you, you should just ask and not flame, since I’m just trying to help.

Greez

Yea I randomly cast mass invisibility too during a bossfight /irony off :P

TW en solo is a bit weaker yes, however it still deals about around 20k damage. But I guess the best soloer’s are the pets like that wolf thing from CE or sylvari dog, human dog etc.

There are still many who shout at me "wtf mesmer where are you going, press “ready” omg why do you go to mossman again, wtf mesmer" le wild ice elemental appears nuke “WTF WAT WAS DAT, PROBABLY THE WARRIOR” T_T xD

Until you cast it on a wall … by accident … most of the time … maybe … ugh …

And yea – TW is the best elite ingame.

Throw away those ugly wings and I like it.

Well there are pretty girls, normal girls and ugly girls, and each of them can be a “real life” girl, a pseudo gamer girl who thinks she’s so nerdy and wants to make out with zelda ‘cuz he’s hot or just play farmville and stuff and there are the true gamer girls <3.

And mine is a true and pretty gamer girl DING DING ^^ I wonder why she’s still single :P Men out there must be silly … xD

The switch? Nope – it’s because you would loose the charge while entering water and that would be as silly as all the necro pets may die while entering or leaving it But we are Mesmers so we will not suffer from such problems due our higher iNteLigeNce! genius

The oneshot thing is just because champs have 0 agony resistance and therefore, to echo an agony shot kills them in general.

You also can switch the charged skill and keep the charge. So you can choose 3 utility skills and take mimic again for the echo against a champ.

Thats why I allways post it in pugs, but normally i play in ts with my mesmer buddygirl <3 yes a real gamergirl

Doing this all the time. Unless it’s the last fractale. It depends also on the team to take mimic or blink. However it’s awesome against the elementals, you get hit once and reflect everything else (since they aren’t melee) including the shaman.

Also try to keep one arrow, same as for the mossman axe. Those are able to oneshot champs.

First of all – sorry for the late answer Had much to do this week. ^^

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So 25 might stacks is 875 power/condi dmg. Compared to ~2000 power that most mesmers run with and some bonus bleed damage from sharper images, that can be about 40-50% increase just from might stacks.

• 875 malice is pretty much 100% increased bleeding damage (+ for phantasms).
• 875 bonus power increases the phantasm’s damage exactly the same % as the mesmer’s damage.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Mesmers also have a hard time with fury: 20% more chance to do about 160% bonus damage (crit dmg has a base of 50% bonus). Then add banners for more power/crit chance/crit dmg. All of this adds up to about 100% more damage. Also could factor in frost spirit/spotter/empower although those aren’t nearly as common.

• 20% more crit chance is just for the mesmer yes, because phantasms already got it permanently (+ for mesmer compared to my calculations).
• The crits however are the same for the phantasms as for the mesmer (160% bonus damage) however, just more often due their perma fury.
• Banners: power affects phantasms too, precision too aswell crit damage … so no benefits for the mesmer compared to the phantasm.
• All of those adds are for the phantasm too … so? They still got better scalings.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

With that in mind, these don’t require melee stacking, just stacking with your team. However, in practice I have rarely seen groups stack all those buffs at range. The buffs have 600 range, usually require blast finishers centered on the enemies and most people that play at range will spread out because stacking is “dangerous.”

You stay melee, recive the buffs (as mentioned above) an transit them to the phantasms. So what do you wanna tell me with this part?? o.ô

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Mantra: 1.04^3 (It could be 4 but usually you bring at least feedback) 1.03^3 for 3 illusions. Sigil of night, runes of scholar and sigil/potion of slaying are all 1.1 coefficients. All of these multipliers are multiplicative so…
1.04^3 × 1.03^3 × 1.1^4 = 1.8 multiplier. If you are doing 100% more damage and then having that further multiplied by 1.8, 1.8 × 2 = 3.6 or 260% bonus damage.

• Very optimistic. Mantras go on CD, you could make great use of Signet of Inspiration if you had space for it, Illusions die etc. Everything together could be a better investment if you let your personal damage go and trait for the phantasms. They get the +65.3% too, so the damage would be the same, but your utility increases a lot.
• Forget about the “100% more damage” – as I mentioned before. Its about the Phantasm vs Mesmer and not “how much can I pimp my Mesmer” :P It makes the final calculation of 260% bonus damage a bit silly.
• Sigils, runes and potions of slaying are indeed 3x 1.1. You mentioned 2x the sigil or did I miss something? However: Battle Sigils grant you 6 stacks might (share → face book … I MEAN SIGNET o.O) and add ~8% damage to you and the phants. Also Bloodlust. But yes you can switch the full stacked bloodlust with that 1.1 multiplicator. However, until then – and if you get downed – nope. It’s too situational.
• Same is for the runes. The best stats for you and your phantasms you get from the Ruby Orbs.
• Slaying pots are nice and sure something a phantasm will never benefit from. However I hate them since they make you even more squishy.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Reflects will be boosted by the 1.8 multiplier and also the fury so I estimated about 100% more. Phantasms will only be affected by raw stats like might but not the potions/sigils/fury (they already have it).

This is the main + for the Mesmer. But when do you really need that boost? Lupicus … go on … I won’t trait for something such specific. It’s like to go for confusion and condition damage to defeat one specific boss :P imo

Greeez

In general a Phantasm build is the best for PvE, especially fotm.
Viable builds are everthing that’s based on X/20/X/20/X. Those are the must have traits for fotm. Sure it may work otherwise too, but this is the most important for you.

So you really can go:
0/30/0/30/10
0/30/0/20/20
0/20/0/25/25
10/30/0/30/0
10/30/0/20/10
10/20/0/30/10
20/20/0/30/0
20/30/0/20/0
20/20/0/20/10

In general don’t go over 20 in dominon, don’t go over 20 in illusions and don’t go over 0 in chaos Yes there are exceptions

Dummies are puppets you can hit and they don’t die. :P The armor doesn’t matter in a damage calculation like this, nor your equip. The % difference between tooltip and reality between the different phantasms will allways be the same since the whole damage calculation is multiplicative.

If you use phantasms naked they’ll use rare equip. If you wear exo, ascended or legendary they’ll use exo.

(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AohSpGgKCVZ7dE5lUnVXOEVQNEZrQnRyUUt0VWk4ZFE&single=true&gid=0&output=html)

It also affects the attack spee of phantasms, so the warden protection lasts shorter for example. However the cooldowns aren’t affected, not yours, nor the CD’s of the phantasms, means it increases the DpS of the channeled phantasms more than others:
iDuellist, iWarden > iSwordsman, iWarlock.

Also Time Warp is by far the highest damage skill in the whole game (except fotm mimic xD), if you calculate what it deals in a dungeon against a boss for example:

The ø DpS of a party member is between 5k and 10k. If you calculate:
7k x 5members x 0.5 × 10sec = 175’000 Damage

:) Yes, very underrated imo :P It’s just annoying if somone (especially rangers and gs mesmers) are going on full range and don’t benefit from TW, or when the other mesmer goes dual TW with you -.-‘’ (it doesn’t stack).

btw: TW also has no channel time like dagger strom of the thief, means you can go for your own DpS during the 175’000 Damage dome doing’ it’s job

Ok here we go, that is the source thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Tests-for-phantasms-and-weapon-grades/first#post3011036

And here we got the actual calculations:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AohSpGgKCVZ7dE5lUnVXOEVQNEZrQnRyUUt0VWk4ZFE&single=true&gid=0&output=html

So actually there are two different Tiers: Low Tier (White-Yellow) and High Tier (Orange, Pink, Purple). You seem to feel a huge difference between them (+15% dmg). But the minor +1% damage of the ascended compared to the exotic seems just to be the additional stats.

So it’s important to get exo stuff.

Thats not really true my friend. Someone posted this not long ago, testing every rarity and they are just affected by that. The result was something like a tier list. White, Blue, Green and Yellow were weak and Orange was strong and Ascended was like +1.5% again. I try to search it, but exotic gives you definitly more damage than common items.

However, in general they aren’t affected by the stats, rather the rarity it seems. Gimme a few minutes to look for the post.

€dit: do not reply this post anymore

Ok now you have to help me, I really lost you.

The extra crit dmg and precision helps too.

What are you talking about? o.O Wich extra stuff?

Sigil of night/slaying/runes…

There are Mesmers that use those? Since battle gives overall 8%~ and of course bloodlust. But that’s just my personal opinion.

it gets up to 80% more stabbing/reflects

I reeeeeeally doubt that. Give me the math on this. 80% Is pretty heavy.

The 100% more damage from stacking in melee for group buffs also does not translate to 100% more phantasm damage. It would be closer to 70% more phantasm damage.

Wat? o.O what 100% more damage from melee? What buffs?

Ideal situations, your sword auto math will end up being buffed 260%. The phantasm damage by ~70%. Reflect damage will be uped by ~100%

? @_@’’

How will damage modifiers affect the wardens reflection? And I see that 2 phantasms are already enough to overwhelm the mesmers single target damage. Also – while casting something we got death time, didn’t calculate that either. And dodge etc. It’s pretty even isn’kitten

Late answer sry. So I tested the damage of all the DD Phantasms without any multiplicative boni on the dummies in Lion’s Arch:

iSwordsman

• Tooltip…: 1700
• Dummie: 2100
  (23.5% difference)

iWarlock

• Tooltip…: 600
• Dummie: 1800
  (200% difference)

iDuellist

• Tooltip…: 350
• Dummie: 2300
  (557.1% difference)

iWarden

• Tooltip…: 1000
• Dummie: 3700
  (270% difference)

iBerserker

• Tooltip…: 800
• Dummie: 2600
  (225% difference)

The tooltips simply make no sense at all …

Greetings everyone. Lately I’ve been wondering how much % damage I do and how much my phantasms. Was it more worth to trait for +32.25% phantasm damage and +25% attack speed or better +3% damage per Illusion and +4% damage per Mantra for myself?

(Btw I know different boni are multiplicative but is the calculation for +3% and +4% per I/M multiplicative too? So it would it be +9% and +16% or +9.3% and +17%? btt:)

Best dps in general: mh sword aa in one minute:
24 x (650 + 650 + 1200) = 60’000

• 60% crit chance
• 100% crit damage
  = 114’000 /min
  = 1’900 DpS
  (no mantra or illusion bonus, nor might)

iSwordsman:
13 × 2100 = 27’300

• 80% crit chance
• 100% crit damage
  = 60’060 /min
  = 1’001 DpS
  (no bonus damage or attack speed, nor might on me)

We actually can keep up 2 phantasms all the time and the trait boni are much better for phantasms than for ourselves. They would benefit from a +65.3% damage increase if everything is traited, while we stay at +27.8%. So it would be:

1 Mesmer:

• 1 Target(s): 1’900 | 2’428
• 2 Target(s): 3’800 | 4’856
• 3 Target(s): 5’700 | 7’284

iSwordsman:

• 1 Phantasm: 1’001 | 1’655
• 2 Phantasm: 2’002 | 3’309
• 3 Phantasm: 3’003 | 4’964

It’s a bit short minded I know, but at single targets we get outdamaged by far by our phantasms. Against multiple targets we win, aslong we don’t use iWardens or iZerkers I guess. Well the warden is known for its poor dps however it requires more testings to show this. Maybe (colesy will hate me for this sentence now) if full traited for phantasms the bonus damage of the iZerker is higher against many targets than the loss of DpS from the basic attack of the sword compared to the aa of the GS.

All in all I feel like the damage in practice will be 50:50, wich means it’s more worth taking for example 25 in inspiration than 10 in illusions or 30 in duelling to increase the own damage by a few %. But as allways – everything is situational. But what do you think? Did I miss something important?

greetings

Alissah.9281:

On another site, i think mmochampion.com or something, they mentioned that eventually every profession will have acces to all weapons… Somehow :P

Link the source.