Guild Wars 2

OK – thx for the explanation.

To me, they are just all attacks with different characteristics. Looks like Mesmer choices for you are pretty limited.

Sorry if this question takes this thread too far off course, but why aren’t phantasm builds viable in pvp? I have only gone into dueling arenas a couple times – never played pvp match. But it seems like phantasm builds work fine there – including against PU condie mesmers and thieves just like in wvw.

And a question for the OP, why not phantasm? Is it because you think all phantasm builds are cheese or you don’t think it would be effective.

Feel free to tell me to start my own darn thread, but Fay was responding in this one

Greatsword + Scepter/Pistol

I pretty much never see anyone else run this, but I’ve used it for so long it’s just natural. Every attack can be done at range. The phantasms are both summoned on the 4 skill. Both of the 5 skills are interrupts.

With this set, I think of the weapon skills as basically all offense/interrupt (scepter block is the only real defense and it’s still quite damaging). The rest of the defense comes from mixing in some sentinels and knights pieces along with PU from decoy/mass invis.

And, with this set, I can stay hopeful for some changes to scepter at some point…

What sigils are you using? You can increase damage a lot by stacking might with sigils of battle or strength

I tested some more last night, and definitely could cause it to work when facing away from the opponent.

I’m trying to record more testing of the skill. There’s still times where I try to use it and I don’t get the result I’m expecting. But it’s always in the middle of a chaotic WvW fight, and I’m sure some of the time I’m just missing something.

Thanks for all the great answers.

It feels like AT should be really powerful, but every time I try to use it, I feel like I can’t quite get the value that should be there.

I’ll keep experimenting, but if there are any other tips on using it, I’d be happy to hear them. I’m trying to use it as my only condi removal (in addition to having the option for boon stealing).

I was testing Arcane Thievery last night, and I thought I saw a case where I triggered the skill and the icon just flashed (kind of like you see when you get a client disconnect)

I will test more tonight, but I was wondering about a few specific rules that our experts here may just know off the top of your head.

- Do you need to face the target?
- What happens if the target dodges?
- What happens if you have blind on you as a condition?
- What happens if the target has Aegis on? (AT is supposed to be unblockable)
- Is the cast time really 1/4 sec? It feels a little longer
- Any other criteria besides obvious things like being in range that really affect the skill?

Thx for the help!

I played in NA Silver league. While there were certainly some matchups that were unbalanced (SOR had a rough time, HOD crushed everyone as they got into the top bracket), there were a lot of good fights.

There were a lot of people playing. Our server had queues on some maps even past the midpoint. It was nice to see lots of people out.

The meta was more achievable. I didn’t feel the same grind as the first time through.

The last week turned out to be meaningful for my server. I found myself building defenses and trying to hold a tower for a few hours on Sunday morning (and I found I liked it). I chatted with people who said they went all night without sleep.

As always, there are things that go wrong and things that can be improved, but I think it’s worth acknowledging the things that went well.

Very short video. More 1980’s music.
http://youtu.be/EBStdjXeeYI

Just trying to show some of the mechanisms for stacking might and how it affects damage in a phantasm build.

Recorded in WvW, but no humans were directly harmed in the making of this movie – feel free to complain about the opponents

1) Decoy – so useful, so fitting for the class

2) Mass Invisibility – can have such a big impact for a whole group

3) Illusionary Disenchanter – I could definitely say Blink here. But disenchanter is fun because not many people use it. It has a slow cast time, can die pretty easily, and only pulls off 2 condis from you each time it shoots. But it’s so useful in fights with guardians, necros, engis and ele’s, and I do a lot of 2v2 fights where it can help out my friend.

This is the build I use right now in WvW. I spend more time roaming than in zergs, but it seems to work for either (at middle tier of wvw).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQNAR7ansISZa2oGGqB3aGJ1IMd66LJHCK5XIA-TFjFABDcBAgb/hkUSpoaDRqKDAHBAjUmckSBGeIAXoR4MdBAqEMAACAr85CX4CXnFCw8CA-w

For AoE, you have zerker, mirror blade, mind stab, and the auto-attack (if you can line up targets) on the greatsword. You have scepter 3 if you can line up targets as another auto-attack. The sigil of fire also does close to 1000 to multiple targets if you get a few might stacks. When your target is low health, you can shatter for a bit more AoE. Since everything is ranged damage, you can stay on the edge of the zerg fight.

The bleed stacks add a fair bit of damage (especially from the duelists). If you want to accelerate damage, you can use the healing signet to get an extra berserker or duelist out quickly.

Often in a zerg, I replace the disenchanter with some other condition removal (or veil if I’m helping to stealth the zerg). Disenchanter is cool in small fights, but dies too quickly in a zerg.

Most people will use main-hand sword instead of scepter. I’m just trying to be different (and stay at range). You might also like off-hand torch instead of pistol. It gives you another stealth and some fire damage. I just hate the illusionary mage.

Yup – all criticisms are totally fair. Sorry about text size – I’ll shrink it for the future.

The ranger fight is silly as a fight. It’s only meant to show two things – that phantasm builds can generate a lot of damage quickly and that scepter 3 can be effective in a power build (it’s pulsing for over 1000 per tick).

The siege fight is not that interesting as a fight either. I just notice that I rarely see roamers set up siege to defend a camp, and ballista’s are very effective.

No doubt my reflexes are not great. Every time I go back to a video, I see spots where I should have dodged or interrupted.

@maha one point I kind of disagree on – when I fight phantasm builds, I do try to kill the phantasms. They don’t take much damage, and it removes a lot of the damage you will take. In the two warrior fight, they decided to target my friend. That happens somewhat because I stealth fairly often and it’s easier to keep attacking the target you can see.

One question for those who play phantasm builds – do you use Signet of the Ether? You can see I use it a lot offensively to get three phantasms up. It’s aggressive, but I use life steal food and stealth to try to balance the lack of healing. Anyone else play this way?

Just noticed that the video quality gets a lot better after the first 20 seconds or so.

Also the most interesting fights are at the end of the video (a 2 v 2 against 2 bronze warriors and a 1 v 2 that becomes a 1 v 3)

A few things I’ve learned while playing a PU phantasm Mesmer roaming in WvW.
http://youtu.be/KXJuDgkCUlQ

Not trying to show amazing achievements – just things I have learned and how this kind of build can perform.

Please share any thoughts or feedback. Every time I record a video, I see tons of things I would like to do better. But I’m sure there’s a ton more that I could improve that I don’t see.

Thx!

P.S. Contains more old-guy music…

Fair enough. I’ve only ever seen gold players in zergs, so that makes sense.

I’m just about to silver with 90% of my time spent roaming, so I figure that some of the silver thieves, mesmers, engis, and other roamers I meet also leveled up by roaming.

It would be pretty cool if there were some more objective measure of player skill. I see people talk about winning 1 v X fights, and I always wonder what the X players were like.

Maybe I’ll just make a list of beat a “good” player of each profession. I have certainly encountered players who are more skillful than I am

I don’t zerg a lot, but greatsword can be nice for AoE. Zerker has to survive for a couple seconds, but can hit multiple. The auto-attack is three-target pierce. Mirror-blade is two-target bounce (and then is right next to the opponent for a shatter). Mindstab is 5 targets, but the ring is small.

Another thing to consider is Sigil of Fire. That’s an AoE damage on crit with a 5-second cooldown.

iWarden can hit multiple, but they have to stand in the same spot.

The silver and gold thing is something of a proxy for player skill. I mostly play as a roamer, so when I meet a silver rank player (e.g. silver colonel) I generally assume they are better than a bronze colonel who I assume is better than a colonel. Clearly this isn’t always the case, but there’s probably some correlation if the opponent is also a roamer.

Thanks for the cliff-pull suggestion. Early on in EOTM, I had a ton of fun dropping into stealth, running onto a bridge, and using greatsword illusionary wave.

I also like the 1 v 1 v 1 suggestion. One tricky thing about that is that it can be hard to tell if people are dueling if they happen to be doing it in the open field.

Still it’s nice to have a list of goals

On my earliest trips into wvw, I was happy to take out a sentry or take a camp with a friend.

Then I worked for a long time on soloing a camp, and then trying to get the time under a minute.

Finally, I managed to solo a fully upgraded camp (with the cabalists and zealot) a couple of days ago. It took a while.

It started me thinking that maybe I should have a list of goals for things to measure accomplishments in wvw.

So I’m looking for suggestions. They don’t have to be solo things. Here’s a few that I’m trying to track so far.

- take camp plus one opponent
- take camp plus two opponents
- duo a tower
- solo a tower
- 3-man bay, hills, garri

win 1v1 vs each class at bronze, silver, gold

win 1v2 regular levels, bronze

win 1v3?

Down and stomp an opponent among at least 4 living opponents and survive

Rally 3 times in the same fight and survive

Anything else that seems like a fun and achievable goal to track?

Maybe time-based goals?

This is what I use. You should definitely look at Natsu and Osicat’s builds.

I’m a medium-skill player, but I feel like I can win any one-on-one encounter with this build. It takes me about a minute to take a camp if I do it well with this build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQNAR7ansISZa2oGGqB3aGJ1IMd66LJHCK5XIA-TFjFABDcBAgb/hkUSpoaDRqKDAHBAjUmckSBGeIAXoR4MdBAqEMAACAr85CX4CXnFCw8CA-w

I like having choices makes the game more fun, so I wouldn’t want to remove food

My guess is making these foods more like + and – 20% is better than the current values

It’s pretty clear from adding the floaters and making changes like the confusion nerf a year ago that lots of players (especially new players) have challenges understanding what the conditions do, what impact they are having, and strategies for dealing with them.

The thread isn’t specifically about making the new player experience better, but you can see Anet factoring this into the changes they are willing to make. So reducing the durations in wvw encounters is going to help a bit. It’s hard to say if this is really enough to make a big difference for newer players in wvw. I think an experienced player with a condi build is still going to mop up a new player in wvw even with food that has only 20% duration.

Thanks – that’s helpful. How do you think Torment fits in here?

The wiki says “inflicts damage twice per second if the victim is moving”. Do you think this means that Torment gets its own timer when it gets applied? (Or at least gets it’s own secondary timer?)

I seem to remember an old post about getting to 1.75 seconds was enough to get two ticks. There’s an old Reddit post here that talks about that.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1d00x1/how_condition_duration_works_a_psa/

When I was testing my condi build, it seemed like the timer for burning started independently for that condition when it was applied. And the first damage happened at the 1 second point. So it seems like getting to only 1.75 seconds will not get two ticks. (I was testing by recording and watching the floaters. For sure, there may be errors with this – I saw one floater appear showing fire damage when burning was NOT on the target).

Has anyone done much testing with this recently? Thx!

After the patch, I tried a 0/0/6/2/6 condition build based on shattering (with the new torment trait). So it didn’t seem to need sharper images for bleeds, and I tried to use mirror images, decoy, traited staff, and phantasmal disenchanter to have enough things to shatter without needing deceptive evasion. With dire armor and PU, it was pretty survivable.

It worked okay. There were times I could get more than 12 torment stacks on things, but it generally did not burst well. I could take a camp in under 60 seconds which is actually hard for me with my PU power build. In the end, it was slow and not as much fun for me.

I hope it doesn’t get declared to be a condi-only weapon. With some might stacking, it is a really nice power weapon and the only one-hand, mainhand that works from range.

And since it’s the weapon that new mesmers start with, I don’t think you want it to be condi-only. Condi’s are a tough concept for some new players.

Just for clarity on my suggestion, I wasn’t thinking you would need a target.

The active effect for cancelling the scepter block would be an AoE blind of 1 second duration with a 120 radius and a max of 5 targets.

If your goal was to use it as a blast finisher, you would just invoke the active ability immediately. Seems like it would be more reliable than prestige.

I don’t use sword off-hand, so I can only comment on scepter. Also, I use scepter in a power build that focuses on staying at range,

Here’s what I suggest for scepter block:

>>> Counter Spell creates a small radius, short duration AoE blind – and is a blast finisher.

I think this matches the “tricksy” nature of the scepter and gives it a finisher – it has no finishers today. It creates more interesting decisions.

Here’s a little background. I’m pairing scepter with pistol to give a ranged set (with Greatsword as the other set). When I’m using scepter block it’s either when I’m at range or if I get in trouble in close and don’t have an escape. In a multi-person battle at range, sometimes it’s hard to guess if I’ll get targeted. Perhaps this is just poor play, but I end up putting up the scepter block sometimes with no incoming attack. When that happens today, I do send the Counter Spell and just go on with my rotation (and the projectile is slow, so it often misses). So this change would force me to think about closing enough distance to make the blindness blast worthwhile.

Note that scepter could get a blast finisher at the end of auto-attack chain and the block wouldn’t really need to change for me. But I’m trying to stick to the point of the thread.

One other note on scepter block. When it does trigger, there can be a strong jerking motion to the camera. I think it’s spinning you to face the opponent that triggered the block. I’m guessing that’s disorienting for new players – and this is the default weapon for new mesmers.

Thanks for starting these discussion threads BlackDevil. Hopefully, Karl stops by for another quick visit

While the ferocity changes did hit crit damage pretty hard, I think the sigil changes allow you to now combine sigil of strength and sigil of battle (as Osi pointed out in his thread). This not only lets the power attacks hit hard, but bleed stacks can pick up quite a bit of condition damage (if you’re going at least 15 into dueling).

For me, it’s more of how the gameplay feels as Pyro is describing. I just have a hard time getting comfortable with how the condi builds that I’ve tried so far actually play (especially considering I do a lot of solo roaming in WvW)

Thx Karl – it’s great to see your posts here

I’m with Chaos, #4 sounds interesting.

I love greatsword and this is the one skill that is “meh” enough that I feel like I’m screwing up when I use it.

Still… if it was a choice between doing something for this skill or fixing other things like iWarden or make iMage impactful, I’d rather see those other things get fixed – even though I don’t use focus or torch.

Have a great Friday

Great stuff – fun and informative to watch

And thx again for the rescue at sentry a couple days ago (Elbrin)

Hi Osi – always love your builds and videos – please keep up the great work.

I’m wondering how you feel this compares with the PU phantasm builds as a roamer. I tried experimenting with some condi PU builds (I was trying 0/0/6/2/6 and trying to make torment runes and torment on shatter work), but it didn’t feel as fun as my 4/4/6/0/0 PU phantasm build. It was hard to get the same intensity of burst, and it felt more sluggish.

Do you like playing this build more than the PU phantasm builds? Do you find it more survivable in 1vX?

I think all your builds are cool – I’m just wondering how this one ranks versus the others for you.

Thx!

I’m trying this build right now for WvW. It’s kind of a torment tank
http://bit.ly/1gNO8ah

It’s slow, so you need to travel with friends or swap in focus for running (but still slow). You can’t chase anyone down.

I don’t have all this gear yet, but I can take a camp in under a minute. I never played the 20/20/30 blackwater builds, but I would guess this plays fairly similarly.

Yup – I was being lazy asking while I was at work yesterday. I tried it out last night, and it seems like it actually does stack. I let the blast finisher happen, and then I did phase retreat and I counted until the shield dropped. It seemed like about 8 seconds.

I’ll try to record it with FRAPS tonight and get an accurate count.

Thx very much – always get great answers here

One follow-on question: Does chaos armor stack duration or does it get replaced?

If I do the Prestige blast in Chaos Storm and then do Phase Retreat, is that 8 seconds of chaos armor (or 5 seconds from the leap or the leap doesn’t proc at all because I already have chaos armor on me)?

Thx!

I’m being lazy posting some of these while I’m at work instead of testing them on my own, but I appreciate all answers!

What happens when you use other skills while you have the stealth part of The Prestige activated? So far, I can see that casting a heal or summoning a phantasm doesn’t seem to change anything – the stealth continues and the fire blast triggers. But what happens for these cases:
- You do an attack (I assume it breaks stealth – but does the fire trigger?). For example, if I started Confusing Images on the scepter right before stealth expired, what happens?
- You do a weapon swap (I’m wondering if I can use the blast finisher in this sequence – cast Prestige, swap weapons, cast Chaos Storm – will the blast finisher still happen?)
- You get dazed/stunned/knocked down – does this prevent the fire blast?

Phantasmal Mage says in the wiki that it cannot bounce to the same target more than once. So if you have Illusionary Elasticity, and you’re fighting just one opponent, it sounds like it won’t bounce back and put more confusion on the opponent. Is that right? (Seems like a needless limitation on a weak skill)

Thx for the help!

I’m trying a 0/0/6/2/6 build

I’m sooo slow in WvW after having travelers and blink. And I’m really trying to get my head away from the “burst them down” mentality that I had with my phantasm build.

But I like trying new builds, so I want to see if I can make this work

I was really hoping to see this change. Hopefully they’ll be able to make it happen.

I’m sure Anet has a lot to tweak after a major release like this.

I’ve been playing with it for a while tonight. Feels like it has promise.

I’m not great at shattering yet, but I have stacked up to 12 torment stacks (in conjunction with other skills).

Just wondering if anyone else is testing it and what you see so far.

Thx Pryo. I was writing my long-winded answer while you were posting the efficient response.

It seems hard to come up with a scenario where it’s worth consuming two sigils just to get a good chance to proc an on-crit effect. Maybe the numbers will all be different tomorrow…

The wiki reads the way that Aniltiger is saying – all forms of chaos armor apparently just give the ability to get boons and give conditions on hit.

But I thought I had read something about there being a difference between the two ways to generate it like you’re saying, Seras.

It does seem odd to have a whole skill that does only what the combo does.

Yes – their is an on-crit vuln sigil (frailty), but I think it’s changing to on-hit tomorrow. All of the on-crit sigils have a cooldown, so as soon as the first crit happens, the sigil procs – you won’t get multiple procs.

I’m playing around with a build that has a horrible base crit chance. So I was wondering if I put sigil of intelligence and an on-crit sigil on the same weapon, how many chances would I really get to proc the sigil.

For example, let’s say I put sigil of intelligence and sigil of fire on a staff. I swap to the staff and send in three clones to do mindwrack and let’s say there’s one other mob standing next to my target (so inside the range of the shatter damage). The clones run up to the target and shatter. So now there are six total hits that happen – each clone that shatters hits two targets. I’m guessing that each hit is done in sequence, so the first clone that explodes uses two of the 100% crit chances because it hits two targets. Then the second clone uses the last 100% chance.

With a 30% chance to proc sigil of fire on crit, this isn’t that great. It’s expensive to use two sigils for this. But if each clone is guaranteed a crit on both targets, that’s six crits and now it gets more interesting. And if this really only took one of my three guaranteed crit attacks (pressing F1), then it’s even more interesting because I could do something like throw down chaos storm and get more multi-crit chances.

I guess it needs some testing – but if anyone has played with this, I would love to hear

I think the sigil of intelligence changes to 100% crit chance on your next three attacks when the patch comes out Tuesday.

So let’s say I get three clones out, then I swap to a weapon set that has this sigil and I presss F1 to do a Mind Wrack.

Does this count as one attack? Or are is each clone’s shatter an individual attack?

When clones shatter and they do AoE damage, is a crit roll done for each affected target, or does it do one check on the shatter?

If clones don’t survive the whole run to the target, do you think that would still consume one of the “attacks” for the sigil?

Thx much!

Many thanks to all the great mesmers listed. I’ve benefited from the posts and videos of basically all of them.

I love how I can ask a question as easy learning mouse turning and as complicated as interactions between skills and traits.

It always makes me want to find ways to give back.

Thanks very much!

It’s been a long time since I’ve used staff, but I’m theorycrafting a bit now with it.

I think the one-second burning does no additional damage unless you get it to a full two-seconds in duration? Is that correct?

What happens if someone gets hit simultaneously by two Winds of Chaos balls and each causes a 1.5 second duration burn? Do they add so that you actually get 3 seconds? (I’m thinking that now that the clones attacks bounce, maybe you can get to the point where this could happen more often.)

I think chaos armor now basically does nothing until you get hit. Then, once per second, one hit can give you a boon and give a condition to the opponent. Is that right? Is the effect exactly the same for chaos armor you get from leaping in an ethereal field?

Thanks much!

Couple other notes as I look it over the build one last time
- Runes of tormenting apparently have a 20 second cooldown, so you could use Ether Feast as the heal instead (especially if you already have the disenchanter)
- You can choose Debilitating Dissipation in Chaos. If your clones are getting killed before they shatter, it could be good – don’t know how often this happens.
- Since the build is so low on crit chance and crit damage, might as well take longer confusion duration as a covering condition instead of increased crit chance on Mind Wrack

So then the build looks like this:
http://bit.ly/OPSNk6

If I didn’t have such a huge investment in phantasm-power-crit, I would definitely give it a try. I’m sure the lack of mobility would be maddening in wvw, but I bet you could wreak some havoc

One little mistake I noticed already. Should use Chaotic Dampening (X) in the chaos line for faster staff skill recharge.

http://bit.ly/1kduCIA

I know Osi was working on testing out a torment build and there’s already another thread on post-patch torment, but this felt like a little twist.

The idea is to take the Maim the Disillusioned trait and then have 3 ways to apply torment in the same build (scepter block, shatter, and heal). The goal is to use the tankiness plus stealth to survive while the conditions do the work.

The huge weakness here is mobility. You’ll never chase someone down (maybe if you’re great with staff blink) and you’ll never outrun anyone getting away. Mirror could be dropped for blink to get a little mobility.

The other issue is that the bouncing attacks will probably point out where you are in stealth to anyone paying attention. I see the primary goal of stealth being to give you some time to recharge the mantra. It’s not too bad if people come toward you during this time because you’re going to use the mantra heal to put torment on them (and burning if you’re coming out of the prestige).

I basically never play shatter or use the torch, so there’s possibly a good deal more that I’m missing here.

You can get multiple procs of this trait with one attack like iWave or focus pull

Thx @Carpboy

This won’t apply to the actual attacks of the clones and phantasms though, right?

It’s only crits triggered by some sort of attack that I make, right?

With the new patch coming, I’m mulling over some build ideas. Any help with these questions is greatly appreciated.

Can a shatter crit proc an on-crit sigil?

Is shatter crit chance always your character attack crit chance (plus precise wrack if you have it traited)?

Can a shatter crit proc an on-crit food?

Thx much!