Guild Wars 2

Awesome sound and animations :P

At this point I have to mention that it makes a huge difference if somone is using the GS like “TAB, 1, TAB, 1, TAB, 1” or if the mesmer makes some positionings and aims for the farest target to hit multiple enemies in a line.

“But why are you coming with the AoE argument now!? Dungeons aren’t AoE anyway!”

Since one is using the GS there must be a AoE part in this dungeon. Like it exists in any dungeon. It’s just naive to beleve that there are only 5v1 in dungeons.

I don’t say you should run GS if there are many enemies, I would go melee with sword, but I’m saying IF one goes for GS, the player is aware of melee and uses it against multiple targets. Better than be downed all the time. Its easier of course.

I LOVE MANTRAS (PvE)

Greetings everyone!

The only reason I haven’t played mantras was that they were only good for solo. Now there are AoE cleanse and stability. So I decided to give it a try and … they are awesome!

I started with a full damage build 30/30/0/0/10. I used to go 20/20/0/30/0 so I’m really missing the reflection on focus. However it’s just one skill to be honest. I still got my feedback.

While in dungeons I run with 3-4 mantras. Depending on illusions I’m able to get a (up to) 26.44% damage buff. Since I lost 15% damage of illusions due the traits it looked bad first, but I also gained 100 power, condur, prec and 10% crit dmg. The phantasms aren’t even hitting for less then ususal!
Added everything up I just deal about 30% more damage and thats kittening noticable in combat. Hitting for 3.5k with Sword1 3rd hit without any boons is sexy. Even GS seems to deal damage now, about 3-3.5k too. I really can’t comlain!

I’m gonna try mantras in more different dungeons now, they seem really strong, maybe even the new meta.

greez

I LOVE MANTRAS (PvE)

Well the only reason I haven’t played mantras was that they were good for solo only. Now there are AoE cleanse and stability. So I decided to give it a try and … they are awesome!

I started with a full damage build 30/30/0/0/10. I used to go 20/20/0/30/0 so I’m really missing the reflection on focus. However it’s just one skill to be honest. I still got my feedback.

While in dungeons I run with 3-4 mantras. Depending on illusions I’m able to get a (up to) 26.44% damage buff. Since I lost 15% damage of illusions due the traits I also gained 100 power, condur, prec, 10% crit dmg.
Added everything up I just deal about 30% more damage and thats kittening noticable in combat. Hitting for 3.5k with Sword1 3rd hit without any boons is sexy.

I’m gonna try mantras in more different dungeons now, they seem really strong, maybe even the new meta.

It depends on the enemy if they are faster or slower than you, even in combat.

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s a technical limitation. The most you could hope for is for each class to get their own unique form of the various conditions in PvE only. May not be ideal, but you’ll never get more than 25 stacks. It’s the same reason AE cap will never be raised. It’s the same reason pets will forever be useless.

Technical limitation? Really? You have no idea about programming, do you? That’s not even a tiny little problem. Programmers literally are gods :P

There is no need for a cap of conditions who deal damage. Vournability shouldn’t go after 25 stacks, this makes sense to not overpower the whole damage. But it makes no sense to punish bleeding skills.
If I hit with a skill for 5k damage, a bleeding skill that does the same amount over 10 sec shouldn’t be punished if he does it with 10 allies at the same time!

Also everyone deals conditions – especially bleeding – and for those who don’t know how this works: the newest condition allways removes the oldest one. Even if the oldest one was from a condition builder.

If you say “what!? No Tequatl could have 600 stacks bleeding, thats ridiculous op!!” … why? Does it matter if I deal instant 5k damage with a normal attack or if a necro casts a spell that deals 5k damage over 10 second? It’s even worse if you ask me, so why punish someones damage? It’s like to say “no, this enemy get hit by hundres blades right now – your hundred blades will no deal no damage, sry bro” … It’s just stupid and bad designed. And it need a fix.

Just make dungeon runs, sell all the items you gain, profit. You can make easy 10g/day.
Also go every day to orr to farm high lv mats.

what were force/energy again?

But to be honest – I relly run geomancy on staff. I innitiate with sword 3, cast warden, 3 again (no I’m in), 2, SWITCH, chaosstorm, backoff with 2 after a few seconds before cs ends to gain chaosarmor.
This is just for some survivablity AoE. I use it at places like ascalon fractale against all these mass’o’mobs.

Geomancy sigill says “causes bleeding on weapon swap” … great. Now I expect 1 stack for 5 sec on … something around me? The trueth is there are 3 stacks over 7 seconds (1000 damage with 0 condmg/malice) AND it deals an additional crittable 1000 damage to 5 targets. Like 10’000 damage on weapon swap there. I like it to be honest

I just can support this. Why should I play 100% damage with 50% fun instead of 80% damage with 100% fun? I play for fun! For efficiency I go to work.

However for me personally 100% efficiency and 100% fun is the same :P Thats why I carry all the weapons with me and run a flexible build.. ^^

As I said you just have to wield the weapon with the sigill. You could have damaged it with the other set and just switch in the end and still gain the stack.

As for “another free sigil” … What do yo uwanna take? All the +5% damage / crit won’t affect the phantasms wich are the only damage sources of offhands.

It’s easier to make use of swap and get might with offhands and use bloodlust as main. There aren’t any other useful sigils anyway except maybe hydro and geo for aoe. But in general single target / might is better.

Its a bad idea but yea it works. It works like “an enemy you attacked dies while whielding weapon with bloodlust”

Since +5% dmg doesn’t affect phantasms:

stacking power / presicion + battle offhands.

colesy.8490:

Xyonon.3987:

Well, glad I anyway didn’t use the pistol much, nor the trait. Sword offhand seems to be better now.

Duelist does still stack bleeds though.

Swordsman – 144
Duelist – 98

like 50% more damage? I don’t think the bleeding will come up to this or at last it will come to the same damage as the swordsman. However the swordsman has a better presicion and has that neat block.

→ situational <-

but in general i like the sword more.

If you simply want to have the highest damage output without taking anything against specific situations (reflection, boonshare etc):

30/30/0/0/10. Go for full Mantra damage and as much phantasm damage as you can. Just started testing it and the damage is ridiculous (for a mesmer). It’s completly new to me to crit for 3.5k with sword 1 final hit.

To have 20 is stupid because you need 25 for the +15% dmg on phantasms normally – then you better go 30 for more utility and reflection because normally no other ?5 trait will grant you so much power. But it depends on build as allways. And on your own playstyle.

Right now I’m playing full Mantra build – awesome dmg but I’m missing feedback on heal, cdr on glamour and focus reflection

It is allways situational, but these threads allways become a X is better than Y thing and somone is yelling “it’s not because Z is better than X!” … It doesn’t make sense, don’t think about it.

Weapon choice is a sitational thing, based on enemies, allies and traits.

colesy live – main reason to say something is to “prove” them wrong – even if its completly nonesense sometimes.

Well you have to be fair Pyro – Back in my early days I used to play staff + sigill of geo + mirror images to deal aoe. I say the staff is much more useful for shattering than the gs is, since you can innitiate with the normal sword and switch weapons (proc sigil for awesome dmg (yes it does awesome dmg), mirror images and 2 so your clones are IN the enemies mkittentering hits 5 targets and if you use mirror images on range the clones will just hit the edge.

I say for a normal phantasm build GS has a better aoe tagging for sure, but the staff is more useful unter given conditions.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Thats exactly what I meant. Well gonna record a zerker once and watch it afterwards, should be easy to detect in slomo.

they could do it cheap – if a weapon with +5% dmg sigill is in use they just at a *1.05 at the end of the phantasm dmg calculation. It’s a common “if, then” command.

Well Chaosstorm can hit up to 5 different targets at the same time. How much has GS? 3 or 5? Dunno, hoever it can hit upt to [enter 3 or 5 here] in every swirl. So for PvE farming against large groups, it hits more different mobs than the staff – sadly.

Sometimes 5 enemies just feels too weak as an aoe :/ At least we have shatter too.

i guess then they wouln’t be affected anymore by fury? :O

since when do you like the staff colesy? o.O

And we see no reasont to not doing it. :/

That’s not the current topic. The topic is “Scepter vs GS”. As for me this seems like an enemy that kills everything in melee range immediately. :P I would go sw as much as i can too you know that.

But other champions arent? huehuehue … HUE HUE HUE

colesy.8490:

Considering the damage dealt drops below swordsman and duelist if only 3 hits connect, yes there are better phantasms.

I dunny why you allways come up with this. I rarely see my izerker hit for less than 8k. He does however – sometimes.

colesy.8490:

I don’t really get why GS fanatics use the AoE argument either, it’s relevant basically never, unless you think “tagging mobs” is a legitimate defense.

Xyonon.3987:

If there are at least 2 tagets, you won’t be able to outdamage them anymore. And there are more than one target, since you are ranged – otherwise you would take sword/sword and go melee. Also if you are forced to range an enemy he will be dangerious and you need distance – guess wich phantasm has cripple?

Because taking out enemies one by one is by far not as efficient as killing them simultaneously.

About the “Guanglai Kangyi”-Thing – just beacuse it’s not a common build and it’s not mainstream doesn’t mean it’s bad. So try it first before complaining about Guanglai.

they can for sure but they seem not to want it to happen – and thats the topic – why? mesmers aren’t really outdamaging anything and they could at least allow our phantasms to use sigills.

what i guess is that they had to programm it difficult by still copy the mesmer bonus stats since other sigills like bloodlust (lol) or bleed on crit shouldnt work. maybe they would even block our sigills to work. but again → takes a bit to programm but it could be done. “it’s to difficult” is no reason to not implement something so essential.

it would be pretty funny if illusions would use the same weapons as we do. would make even legendaries useable as a mesmer.quip

And I was excepting buffs … well – at least I know that I can go full zerk now with my necro! Thx for your info

sigh my lack of english

if there are too many ppl on the server or your settings are too low – one of those – they replace the phantasm / clone with a dummy.

Pyroatheist.9031:

@Xyonon: Thanks for doing that. I was too tired to wade through that post right now.

Had to edit the whole thing about 3 times -.-’’ Crazy quote thing makes it look weird sometimes – but btw – np :P

So – the reason why they don’t share such sigils is because of the lack of programming skills of arenanet? I don’t think so.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) The phantasms you get access to are MUCH better. Plus if you are playing dedicated range you get access to two via offhand swapping.

Ignoring the fact that the phantasms aren’t much better – Using a GS doesn’t mean you can’t swap. In any weapon combination you will have 2 different phantasms, aslong as you don’t use 2 times the same offhand … Your argument makes no sense at all.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

2) You don’t have to sit at 1000+ range all of the time to get damage. The closer you are to the target, the easier it is to give/get AOE buffs.

You don’t have to sit at 1000+ range all of the time to get *max damage.
I’m not even sure that the scepter outdamages the GS in melee. They probably gonna have the same dps, just that the GS has penetration. But I don’t have exact numbers here right now.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

3) Confusing Images is way better damage than anything on the GS. It’s not enough to overtake the raw auto-attack DPS difference but it is there.

The skill takes about 4 seconds to complete. However it deals great damage to up to 5 targets in it’s path, the damage isn’t that bursty as it looks. I’m not ingame so I don’t have exact numbers on this one, but I bet it’s not that much higher than GS aa’s in this time (except you manage to hit 5 targets) Also you won’t have the ability to stack might or remove protection or other boons like the GS. To be fair you will have a very strong block with probably the highest dps of all the GS/scepter skills.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Overall, one Swordsman, one Duelist, and one clone on top of scepter auto will overtake three Berserkers and GS auto in terms of raw DPS, not to mention that it’s much easier to maintain two phantasms using two weapons than to maintain three using one.21

This is totaly male cow excrement.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Phantasm-DPS-traited-vs-untraited/first

DpS:
Swordsman – 144
Berserker – 115
Duelist – 98
Warlock – 81
Warden – 81
Mariner 67
Mage – 30
Whaler – 28
Disenchanter – 21
Defender – 18

If you now stop ignoring the fact that the Zerker is AoE you might get an idea how much damage the phantasms really deal. Even if you hit just one target, the berserker is still about the same as the duelist (bleeding) and a bit weaker than the swordsman. If there are at least 2 tagets, you won’t be able to outdamage them anymore. And there are more than one target, since you are ranged – otherwise you would take sword/sword and go melee. Also if you are forced to range an enemy he will be dangerious and you need distance – guess wich phantasm has cripple?

Also you can still (as I have already mentioned before) switch weapons and use another phantasm offhand if you want to. If you need full range and you play sc/sw + sc/p I’ll go for GS + sc/s. I guess I’ll be fine. And if you use sword on other hand – so will I.

Check first if you say something plz.

JonathanSharp.7094:

• We’re also looking to make conditions scale better in PvE/WvW leveling so that they’re more viable at different junctures in the level scale.

-Balance and skill team

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/October-15th-balance-skills-updates-preview/first

Sad the buffs didn’t make it into the patch on 15th. :/ It still feels useless to play condition damage in pve especially with these 25 max stacks on bleeding … arenanet?

I hope they don’t forget about condition players – it doesn’t affect me directly but I really would enjoy more different sets used in pve. Right now you only can go for berserker or maybe kitten to be efficient.

toughts?

Midius.6501:

It was a good skill in PVE bevor the nerv. All Skills that applied quickness were decreased from 100% to 50% but got doubled their duration, except Timewarp.

THIS! Or just last longer / get cd reduced?? T_T anything I would be happy

How? I tried absorbing some agony skills but when I use them they won’t proc agony :/ Or did I miss something???? <3

2k damage compared to the 3k the sword does, wich also has a cleave and vournability on hit, in the same time is meh in my eyes.

And about the saff – you will allways priorize phantasms over clones don’t ya? So the auto attack should be stong enough to be used by the mesmer only and deal decent damage. Also the vournability debuff is just annoying on the aa >_> Its too weak/short.

Every 2 sec? More every 3 or 4 :/ It’s slower if you go on max range wich sux even more.

Staff and Scepter aswell GS all have meh auto attacks. Scepter has the worst.
- GS needs like to stack vournability or grant might in a line with the final hit?
- Staff an additional bounce or serious boon durations / more vournability stacks at once
- Scepter a random condition on 3rd hit (1 sec root, 2 sec cripple or 3 sec weakness would be nice) or the damage should get buffed by 25%~ (just aa).

To deal huge nubers shouldn’t be the reason to play a mesmer.

sigil i meant – yes xD sry :P
(btw for me i’m talking about PvE)

Its because they copy your own stats – but I would really really really like to see them copy crit chance instead of presicion for example. The same problem is with the ascended weapons. Everyone gains +5% dmg from exotic to ascended, phantasms just 1.5% thx to the great skill calculations the phantasm uses.

I really think this is a major problem of the mesmer and needs to be fixed. Also – what runes does a mesmer use if not “battle”?

Scepter aa has a lower dps than GS’s. However scepter has a decent block and a good burst skill and can make use of offhand phantasms and utility. Scepter 3 also works like GS aa, just with 5 targets instead of 3 in a line.

Still, I guess for “I need a ranged weapon” situations GS is better in general. But it (as allways) depends on the situation.

It’s not like its a low trait that can be changed any time you want to. You don’t have to retrait so if I see “oh I’m at wall fractale” I’m gonna use more HP on phantasms or condition remove on heal or something like this. And if I see “oh it’s the harpy/grawl/mole/… fractale” I’m gonna use this trait.

But to be honest – 80% of the entire game is about projectiles and therefore about reflection for a mesmer. There is rarely a place without shooting enemies.

It will happen that somone is downed or you can “corpse abuse” the NPC :P

Well, glad I anyway didn’t use the pistol much, nor the trait. Sword offhand seems to be better now.

Medic’s Feedback: Increased the duration of the feedback bubble created by this trait to match the actual duration of the Feedback skill.

This is an awesome buff if you ask me! I am using this trait since I started playing phantasm mesmer. What the buff really did: It increased the feedback duration on heal from 3 to 6 sec. It has an internal CD of 10 sec. This trait is awesome really. It will allways happen that there is someone get downed or just use the next NPC that just died. Just start ressing them procs the effect for the full duration even if you cancel the healing. I think it’s very underrated since everyone thinks “ha, in my party noone will ever get downed!”. Well, I made the expirience that it safed my kitten like a hundred times … every minute

What do you think about this trait?

Depending on your boons and enemies vournability and conditions the Warlock will crit between 6k-24k so i guess it’s just fine.

Tell me even one correct tooltip of a phantasm :P Gonna use him tonight against Dwayna – if he still hits for 20k it’s still fine.

Heya anyone.

I made some toughts on the timewarp and it’s ridiculous long cd combines with it’s medicore use in PvE. When do we use TW? At boss fights for 10 sec +50% dmg … hm.

What would you say if the timewarp wouldn’t only grant quickness? It should feel like a giant dome of “I’m fast, you’re not”-ness

The idea was: It should grant quickness, swiftness, overcharge and chill. Overcharge would be the opposite of chill. It’s a boon that lets your CD’s recharge faster.

What do you think??

greez

Hell no Just go full Zerk as colesy says! It makes no sense to go for a better heal you wouldn’t require if the target dies faster! T_T
Every Class got their AoE heals, and together they’re enough. Most of the heals done are anyway from Ele, Engi and probably Guard (never played him, but I guess so).

Healing mantras will be ok, IF you still deal the same amount of dmg. Also, I guess phantasms heal more than your mantras ever will…

Total 16 Mantras 16*2700=43200/59=732.20HPS aeo others

I tought Mantras heal on charge, not on activation … ? o.o