, but I’d first like to know whether Ele finally got (out of combat) weapon switch by now.
Anyone can switch weapons out of combat.
oh man how do i miss glamour with my guild:
If you watch the video closely (I’m sure you have) the confusion damage isn’t even that high. I saw mostly 4-600, with a few 1500 range 2000 tops.
Best part of the video is the feeling of purpose you get from watching it.
Mesmer at the moment is good for veils and portals, however portal is only used in niche situations. Everything else is outclassed by every other profession.
Why do you think so many people think otherwise? Are you happy with the state of Mesmer?
They don’t want you to get so discouraged that you stop playing mesmer and they lose their portals and veils.
If you think clones are spammable then you must also admit that dodge is spammable.
Since we all no that is not true, then your original statement is also false.
Clones have a definite limit/second as to how many can be made, and one must take time between their generation.
Like Coxy says, passive effects that trigger when enemies are attacked are not evaded. This also includes retaliation and auras. (check the wiki)
Ranger suck.
Mesmers blow.
Either way you’re f***ed.
Buffs/fixes for all please.
Unfortunately our confusion glamour build got double nerfed last year and has been useless ever since.
Which is really too bad. The build was essentially the Mesmer version of the necro wellomancer build (ie two aoes on a 30-40 second cd capable of a lot of damage) but the devs thought it was too strong.
I agree it needed to be toned down, but they nerfed it so hard no one uses it at all anymore. Keeping in mind that their is almost no other really good “zerg” build for Mesmer you would thing that it would speak volumes to the developers that mesmers prefer taking solo oriented specs into zergs than the aoe glamour builds, lol.
Oh and yah it was never good in PvE.
In the screenshots above, you have less power, crit chance and crit damage than someone who has geared themselves in full PVT (read tanking) exotic gear with cheap food from head to toe, even without upgrades in their jewelry. And also way less toughness/armour.
There is no way you could beat anyone at all with that stuff.
Unfortunately in WvW there has been some power creep with those who have been playing consistently for the past year and a half able to don themselves in full ascended gear who will absolutely destroy anyone in anything less than full exotics.
I feel your pain when it comes to in game funds but the truth is you will need to get some gold to be able to buy competitive gear.
Qaelyn’s suggestion is pretty good. You can buy rares for very cheap, probably fully gear yourself for less than 10g.
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In this case I think the buff on PU merely went too far – maybe it was even unnecessary. I’d revert it for another WvW season, see how that works out. Maybe buff stealth a bit baseline, especially when taken in small doses (only a single ability).
I’d like to see them keep the buffs on PU but drop the extra second on all stealth skills. It would help limit stealth uptime, and indirectly nerf the boons also without breaking the trait.
PU yes, specifically a condition PU build.
20/20/30/0/0
Pick every “on clone death” trait and then prismatic understanding in chaos. People use different weapons but staff/sc-torch is most common.
For gear just go for condition damage and toughness on everything.
For utility most go with decoy for sure, then toss up between veil, blink or whatever.
The non-condition PU versions are also good, but there is no doubt that PU condition is by far the most survivable.
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. I play for both.
I hate being steamrolled in an uneven fight even if I get some bags or we are ahead in PPT.
I enjoy good fights even if we lose and I get no bags and are losing in PPT. But I like it better if I get some bags and it earns the server some extra PPT.
I like winning better than losing, but not if it means karma train.
So basically, I like bags, I like PPT, I like good fights. All at once. As each gets taken away I have less fun.
Even spawning iwarden on doors in WvW (a completely stationary object) often results in him not doing anything.
Sigh, after the 1 second delay nerf on into the void I thought focus lost some playability, now with a bugged out iwarden who either won’t attack, or who moves around too much making using him as a projectile blocker impossible, the focus is completely dead for me as an in-combat weapon.
Only the pull for tower walls in WvW and the swiftness are useful now. Although it is the one of the worst swiftnesses in the game also.
Most people prefer the aesthetics of the Warrior archetype. Couple that with the fact that they have made the warrior class itself (compared to engi):
1. Easy to play
2. Very strong in all game modes
3. Less likely to die in stuff like WvW
4. More likely to get bags in stuff like WvW
5. Great mobility through traits or weapons or both
6. Generally amazing
Even for those that prefer the “tech” type of character, with all that a class like the warrior has going for it isn’t too surprising that people will sacrifice aesthetic for playability.
they just run away or if im with a friend or two they just ignore me untill my friends are dead (my main partner is a gaurd)
And you just described the best way to shut down a condition based PU Mesmer. Much of the condition pressure comes from your enemy killing your clones, so if they simply ignore you they can take a substantial bite out of your damage potential.
This is the main reason why I switched over to a more hybrid power/condi build a while ago, and ditched the staff for greatsword (with sigil of earth for the bleed procs)
Less survivable? Sure. But a PU build already has pretty darn good survivability. The hybrid build has better chasing power, is less passive, and can’t be ignored.
Is no one else concerned with the barkskin buff that 50% reduction + 33% protection + a couple thousand armour you can become indestructible at 25% health? (-conditions of course)
Last time I checked these things were additive.
edit: Have since noticed a couple other threads showing these traits don’t seem to work quite additively.
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Over the course of 15 seconds (the cd for the skill untraited):
Swiftness is 1.33 units of movement, non swift is 1.00 units.
currently:
8s*1.33 units = 10.64 units after 8 seconds
then 7 s of 1.00 = 7.00 ,
7+10.64 – 17.64 units after 15 s
proposed:
4s*0 units (not moving at all)=0 (recharge is at 11 seconds at this point)
and 11s*1.33 units=14.63,
14.63+0=14.63 units movement after 15 seconds.
however you will have 2 seconds of swiftness left over for the next stacking session which means you can get perma swiftness after a while without having to stop.
I think over the long course of running from point a to b the newer version will eventually overtake the older version, but I prefer the older version for simplicity sake.
Is it use an eternal potion and then press 6 to heal back into normal form? That was a “feature” that they removed then put back into the game awhile ago. This can be spammed after the 10 sec icd and doesn’t waste your heal.
Yah after watching the stream you can see that is what is goin’ on. I can’t say for sure if this is intended or not, but it sure seems like an exploit to me. That is to say, I can’t see them programming in this functionality on purpose, but can definitely see it being accidentally overlooked.
Beware of using this.
Ok Mesmer Master, what’s the trick with the swiftness?
I’ll guess that he simply switches to mirror heal when not in combat. He has an extra 50% uptime on swiftness between his runes and his traitline choices. So that is 15 seconds of swiftness when he uses a heal skill.
Or switch to the mantra heal (although last time I checked using the heal twice immediately doesn’t stack) and it only has a 10 second cd.
So constant swiftness. People have been using the mantra heal and runes for a long time to stack swiftness. Not sure what’s with the secret.
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Our “create a chaos storm on falling damage” trait seems to have an unstated icd of about 30 seconds.
While on my warrior today I noticed there is no icd on the “damage and launch foes on falling damage”
Seems unfair. I’d like the icd gone.
What server you on?
JQ, I believe the thief was BG but my memory ain’t great so it could have been SoR.
I had a fight with a Thief last night.
Had a similar fight yesterday with a thief holding one of the ruins in WvW. He started off with a SB / d/p set, but after about 2-3 minutes he disengaged and switched to a s/d / d/p build. I was running a PU power based build at the time.
Like yourself the fight went on and on for probably 10 minutes, with neither one of us going far below 50% at any time. He kept stealing my boons which is most likely what kept him alive for so long. Also the huge amount of dodging meant landing ileap/swap was very hard. I think a PU condition build would have been easier.
In the end we got interrupted by a 6-man group that killed me, as I naturally only had 1 stealth available, which is not enough to get away from all the mobility available to other classes. I assume the thief got away just fine, of course.
Hardest thieves for me these days are still the dedicated backstab GC ones IF they get the jump on you. 1/2 or more of your health gone instantly is tough to recover from as you have to stealth then heal, and now that your heal is gone the thief has 20 seconds to try and finish you.
The last time there was a “It’s not fun not being able to use my skills” type of debate was with the glamour Mesmer, and anet nerfed that from 3 different directions (confusion damage and 2 traits got nerfed) making the build unviable.
Hopefully anet takes the approach of small changes, which they said was how they would handle adjustments, and not kill the hammer spec, but something needs to be done.
Quick fingers.
Get 2 clones and phantasm 5 (torch up). Once he hits with his attack that is 3 stacks, then shatter for another 3 stacks, scepter 3 for 5 stacks, then if you have perplexity you will have probably gotten 3 stacks from the 4 set bonus, then use staff 5 and if you get an interrupt that will be another 5 stacks.
If you can do this fast (and with some luck land everything) you can quickly get the 15-20 stacks you have heard about.
Also + 40% cond dur food will help keep them up longer.
I will add to what has been said above,
Waypoints.
Get where you want to fast, for silver. Or go it on foot if you like. Options are good.
Also, waypoints.
I have one question though. Does debilitating dissipation apply conditions when the clones shatter due to being replaced by new ones, or is it only when a player/mob kills it?
The “illusions do x on death” traits work in all situations EXCEPT shattering. So if they are destroyed or replaced by another illusion and I believe if your target dies and they “vanish” they also do the explosion thing.
(Actually not sure about the last one but I am pretty sure I have seen residual illusions, you know the ones that hang around for several minutes after a fight, still do the debilitating explosion when they finally dissapear)
decoy (4s), torch offhand stealth(4s), mass invisibility(6s), veil(3s), desperate decoy(4s)…
21 seconds of stealth potentially.
You can also go through veil twice (or just hop on the line) for a total of 24 seconds to be fair.
Cool thing about decoy, I’ll have to keep that in mind when escaping. Not sure too many people take desperate decoy since there are better dueling traits than a 90 second cooldown stealth at 25% health (which only triggers with direct damage apparently) but sure it’s another one.
Keep in mind the cooldown for these skills are (traited) 30(24), 40 (32), 90 (72), 90, 90 so it seems pretty fair to me. And if you want to get the traited version of decoy you have to go 25 into illusions which is very bad for the PU build, as is the traited version of veil which requires 10 in inspiration, which isn’t terrible but not exactly desired either.
Anyway others have replied similarily to me, but if you want an unbiased opinion go ask in other class forums if they think the build is OP. I think they would have other classes/builds higher on the list.
I think it really depends on the builds/professions you are up against. The truth of the matter is this build allows the Mesmer to survive in an environment that has become so heavily laden with conditions/stuns that without the stealth they become sitting ducks.
No one is fooled by clones anymore when they can see the real Mesmer dodging /strafing / casting/ backwards walking, so shatter Mesmers, while not a weak build, is just not as great as it was a year ago.
If you run the math I believe the Mesmer can (with traits + torch) stealth about once every 10-15 seconds averaged out. Of course it can be chained together but then they will have longer periods of no stealth.
Not sure what you mean by “stealth through reveal” as I have never seen that happen to me or anyone else.
Builds that I have trouble with while running a PU/condition build are:
1. Necros
2. Engineers
3. Anything with strong condition application, since mesmers have only active condition removal abilities that require traits/utility slots, nothing passive.
4. Anything that has decent AoE
5. Unkillable healing warriors, usually a stalemate.
Also for WvW (should be clear that is what I am talking about in this post) the mobility is terrible, and if you get caught by a larger group you will not escape unless you have multiple stealth skills off cooldown, since Mesmers have, with the exception of blink, no gap increasers.
That’s my take on it anyways. A strong build, but unkillable? My history (for what it’s worth) would say otherwise.
However I just tested out the Restorative Mantra trait (X in inspiration) which is supposed to heal your allies whenever you cast a mantra and it didn’t put out any heals to my allies. Is this trait bugged by chance, or am I possibly not understanding its uses?
Not so much not understanding as that the description is terrible. It should say “heal allies at the end of charging a mantra” instead of the “heal allies when you cast a mantra” that it currently says.
Oh and also note you won’t see any heals on allies that have full health. Also the range is around 600.
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I wonder if you fight tequatl for the sake of having a fun experience or you’re just completely on loot. So yeh they gone through all the hard work to make it hard and you say meh loot not good enough so i don’t care if its hard or not.
No reason it can’t be both, make both sides happy.
If it’s purely from a damage point of view, the answer is “both”. Here is a chart that shows the average damage multipliers in 5% increments of crit and crit damage.
Just from looking at the gear, you’ll note that it’s much easier to get crit damage% than it is to get crit%.
And what you can also see is that your average damage goes up faster by loading crit chance % first to 50-55%, then after that start going for crit damage.
So if you think you will have fury up all the time get your crit to 30-35%, then start to look for crit damage gear. Once you have taken that as far as you can go, revisit crit %.
Of course this is all just talking about highest possible damage using only crit related gear, ignoring power completely.
I am also very sorry to hear about this personal loss you have to endure. My brother passed away about a year ago to bowel cancer and it was really rough. He was only 42.
Don’t be embarrassed by the man-tears. They say real men don’t cry, but I think the good ones do. The ones that don’t are probably psychopaths.
Also note that you apparently no longer see the damage done by your phantasms with retaliation.
Pyroathiest tested this in his Immortal Mesmer thread.
Anyway, if you meet enemy in 1v1 and he tries to run to sides to avoid arrows then you should be happy – to do it, he has to stay on range and you still deal part of bow dmg + most of pet dmg. It can be annoying, but it’s far from best way to kill bow user.
I was on my Mesmer in my above example with a greatsword. So he missed, I didn’t. It is a definite disadvantage, that is all.
Oh no, a ranged weapon sometimes doesn’t hit at 1500 range, must be garbage.
Sorry you had to go so far out of the way to miss the point. That must have been inconvenient for you.
Yup, arrows from all bows in GW2 can be easily sidestepped.
A thief with a shortbow was trying to goad me towards some guards a week or so back in WvW by shooting me with his shortbow. So I just stood 900 away and hit left, right, left, right constantly and nothing would hit me, lol. (thief shortbow used to be heat seeker but was nerfed a few patches back.)
Actually , I would love if they reimplemented the 2 clone bug on scepter aa again. It makes it attractive for on clone death specs and more attracted for shatter specs as well, perhaps alleviating the need for deceptive evasion in those builds.
I think it’s funny that after several buffs to scepter (torment, aa projectile speed) and several nerfs to sword (bf cd, bf invuln—>evade) sword is still considered more desirable in most situations.
Scepter could imo use a couple things that would make it better:
1. Confusion on scepter auto attack chain. Since the confusion nerf I really see no reason why scepter aa chain could not apply 2 stacks of confusion (2 seconds) on attack chain part 2.
Maintaining a low level amount of confusion on your opponent would be a welcome addition to an aa chain which seems out of place on a condition oriented weapon with a short enough duration that it can’t be stacked too high, even with 100% cond duration.
2. Shorten the pre-animation on skill 3. The channel with the bright purple beam is bloody long enough without the 2 second wind up.
The link to the video for chaining chaos armor sends me to
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_Tuning_Crystal
Could you fix that? I wanted to see the chain because it looks confusing as you describe it. For example you put timewarp1 -> timewarp2? What does that mean? Use 2 leap finishers inside 1 timewarp?
I’m assuming he means you do a leap (phase retreat primarily) through each of the ethereal fields he describes in order. So since timewarp is a 10 second field you can do a phase retreat through it, then 5 seconds later do another phase retreat though it when the first chaos armour ends.
When he says “chaos armour” in that list he means hitting staff 4.
1. Scepter 1 has no condition on it
2. Sword 3 does not work on slopes
3. No on demand swiftness on any utility except SoI, which is a 1 in 8 chance at swiftness every 10 seconds. Makes it so you must take focus or runes sets/sigils with some swiftness buff.
There are more, but these (esp 2 and 3) seem to affect my gameplay constantly.
So what you mean to say is, with 80% condition duration its 3 seconds of immobilize, because without the full 100% duration any decimal points equate to nothing.
I believe that is only for damaging conditions, which tick every second on the full second.
Things like cripple, chill, etc. do take advantage of partial seconds.
Server lag (especially in WvW) does strange things. I believe this to be one of them.
Decent idea, though you can sneeze at a clone and it dies, all it would take is a quick auto attack on the clone and then a Backstab on you.
But if he auto attacks the clone he is revealed, and can not do the backstab. I think the op was starting from the position of “thief is in stealth already, a clone is out, can I stand on the clone and cause a free revealed”.
Like I said it depends on the quality of thief, much like most fights in this game depend greatly on the quality of opponent you face.
Which would explain why I (an admittedly average player) will steamroll a thief, thinking I got it all figured out, and then minutes later get steamrolled myself wondering wth just happened, lol.
This technique actually works pretty well. Thief dagger only hits 1 target. However I have had really good thieves simply pop out of stealth, c ’n d my clone/phantasm, then immediately backstab me. The really good ones start the animation for c ’n d while still in stealth so you only see them flash visible for a split second before the backstab comes.
Against average/bad thieves though this can definitely frustrate them.
I am worried about Orr at the present moment.
Yah Orr took the longest of the PvE areas for me too. There are some good online guides for getting the tough to reach ones. I can’t recall if you need the temples to be flipped to get everything…
IIRC PvE was no problem at all. Just took a bit of time to go all around.
WvW was another issue. There are simply some areas that you will probably never get unless your server is the correct colour for that week (WvWvW has 3 colors, one for each team that is determined by past weeks performance)
For me it took 3 months to get world completion all because 1 tower in Eternal Battlegrounds, deep in blue territory, simply never flipped, and at the time Jade Quarry was green every single week.
Mesmers most commonly use the minimap. The mini map zoomed in its fullest, from the location of ur portal, move until it is at the edge of the minimap. that is your max range. some mesmers put down a “personal waypoint” to mark the spot, but for example with a golem rush in wvw, you’ll see green dots or commander tags to mark the spot :P
Minimap also has to be as large as possible, in addition to as zoomed in as possible for this trick I believe.
Ok, so what we have is a failure to math. The trait line says increases the recharge rate.
Yah the inclusion of that word “rate” is what makes it different. Pretty lame. Why not make it the same as all other “recharge” type traits? It’s not like it can stack with any other traits or runes or sigils or anything to make it op.
Only Anet knows…
Perhaps someone older and wiser than myself will step in and correct me, but I thought the math for determining the reduced cooldown would go more like 15 sec / 1.3 = 11.5 sec.
That matches up with what you’re seeing in game, anyway.
Probably older but maybe not wiser…however using that math what would you get with a 50% reduction? 15 / 1.5 = 10.5? Shouldn’t that be 7.5?
Or 100% reduction should be no cd at all but your example would work out to
15/2.0 = 7.5?
No the op is correct it works like all other cd reducers. For instance decoy will go from 40s—>32s when you get illusion 25. (40X.8=32)
Looks like a bug to me. I tested it by pressing mind wrack and the cd begins at 11s so it is not just a tooltip error.
I’ve tested it thoroughly. As it turns out, the retal DOES work. However, the devs somehow managed to couple the retal damage to the phantasm itself and not the Mesmer, causing us to see no damage floaters from it.
Good to know. I tested on some mobs and didn’t see the floater and their health didn’t go down before the phantasm was killed.
When I used multiple phantasms it looked like normal phantasm damage and nothing else. I assume you tested it with a friend and they were able to check the logs or something.