Guild Wars 2

I’m trying this build now. http://bit.ly/14W53US

There are a couple things the build site can’t show:
– I’m using Bountiful Interruption as the Chao master trait
– I’m using mostly Sentinel armor
– I’m trying out Mistfire Wolf as my elite since its cooldown is much shorter

But mostly, I’m trying to use interrupts. My goal is basically to stack enough Might that my damage, my condition damage, and my phantasm damage are all good enough.

So far, I’ve seen Halting Strikes hit for between 1100 and 3300 in Orr and WvW.

Sometimes, it seems like I interrupt and I only get the might stacks, but I need more practice.

Torment seems to work OK on the scepter block. It feels like it might be hitting more than every second if the opponent moves.

If anyone else is trying an interrupt build, I would love to see what you’re trying.

Thx for all the pointers – I learn a lot on these forums

Errr… a “lone” guardian… not a “loan” guardian… anyway

How do you fight a guardian in a solo fight?

Thx!

My server is up against two stronger servers in WvW this week, so I was roaming my own borderland looking to take back some camps. I see a loan guardian, so I chase him and eventually he decides to make a stand.

The fight went on for maybe five minutes. I kept knocking his health down, but he kept getting it back up. I never really felt crazy-worried about my health (maybe I was down to 40% a couple times), but I felt like the fight might go on forever. Finally an ally joined the fight on my side and it ended quickly.

My question is – what is the right way to fight a guardian? I don’t see them a lot because I’m mostly out trying to solo camps and I mostly run into other roamers. I’m playing a phantasm build but one where I tend to shatter a lot (nothing that boosts phantasm health). I realized later in the fight that one of my goals needed to be keeping the guardian in null field long enough to take away boons, but I feel like I’m probably missing some key tactics.

If anyone wants to take on a bonus question, I’d love to get tips on fighting elementalists. Those fights go on for a long time as well.

Thx!

It’s a really helpful video. Every pass the zerker makes from one side of the target is a complete miss. I tried 40 cases, and I only got the complete miss scenario to happen once (but all of my targets had the ability to move).

The developers say that 0 hits is possible for one of the zerkers attack sweeps. For me, it just doesn’t seem very probable – I don’t see it happen a lot in real world cases.

Still, this suggests that a relatively small change could make a big difference. If the zerker starts a little closer to the target and it travels a little more slowly along its vector (so that the hit boxes overlap more), it seems like the odds of the complete-miss passes would go down.

This is the build I’ve been playing WvW (mostly for taking camps).
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1%7Cc.1g.h19.c.1g.h8%7C1.1g.h17%7C1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.b1j.1c.71j%7C4s.d1g.21k.e14.3t.e17.21k.e14.2s.e14.1c.61%7Ck3a.k24.k45.0.a3%7C39.7%7C31.34.35.39.3q%7Ce

I already try to interrupt the guards when they heal (with shatter, GS wave, or sword block terminated early to create daze bold).

If the patch notes are accurate, it will be a simple change to swap Bountiful Interuption for Debilitating Dissipation. I’m looking forward to trying it out.

I’m pretty much in the same view as Embolism. In general, Berserker damage seems okay to me. I posted some separate numbers in another thread, but they are similar to Embolism’s results.

The only troubling thing in my testing was one complete miss.

I use Berserker a lot in WvW, and generally it seems to hit for good damage.

My only questions were mainly about whether the apparent wide range of damage is intended (as it seems that 0 – 4 hits is the intended behavior for a single target) and what damage the devs intend for it to do.

I didn’t really pay attention to damage before February, so I don’t any prior experience to compare. As it stands, I intend to keep using it as one of my preferred phantasms in my phantasm build. I would just love to get a sense of whether it’s likely to change much going forward.

I hope these notes are real. They suggest a desire to weaken things that were probably too strong (like Sirens) and yet not go overboard.

More importantly, they show a desire to open up new types of builds and gameplay. I think trying to create interrupt-focused builds will be very cool. I’ve been playing with a 20/20/20/0/10 build that mixes phantasms and shatters. I’ve been working a lot on trying to get better with the interrupts that are available there, so this patch looks really interesting to me.

It would be interesting if this made Wastrels Punishment somewhat valuable.

Move and you take Torment damage. Don’t move and you take increased damage from other attacks.

That general pattern could apply in terms of putting it on someone who is in an AOE damage field. Torment makes them pay to move out.

I hope it has a clear indicator like retaliation.

Seems like lots of interesting gameplay possibilities from this.

The new Torment condition sounds interesting – damage to opponents who are moving.

I’m wondering how this actually works. Does it tick and if the opponent is holding down a movement key at that time, then it damages? Or does it do damage constantly while the key is down? Or does it look at distance?

Seems like there could be interesting interactions with Torment and blink, dodging, portal, and the cripple condition.

Any guesses on the actual mechanic?

I feel bad for Magumma. I think fighting impossible battles in WvW is probably very disheartening.

For me on KN, the last matchups have been a ton of fun. Yaks, CD and Ebay have been really enjoyable fights. After one fight where a I managed to down two guys, they invited me to a group and we chatted a little until I died to their friend. We wished each other good luck – that’s cool.

My only memory of fighting Magumma was losing a 4 vs me fight and having all four guys pointing at my corpse and laughing. That was less cool.

I’m still pretty new to WvW and play on a server (Kaineng) that has had its ups and downs in ranking. I think if it’s important to you to be on server that continuously ranks high, you should pick one of the currently highest ranked ones.

Otherwise, I think you should pick based on the kind of gameplay you want. As others have pointed out, the higher-ranked servers seem to have more large-scale fights and the lower ranked servers have more opportunity for smaller groups or solo players to do something. A lot of my most fun moments in WvW are playing with one friend and spending our time taking supply camps.

Good luck!

I tried searching since I’m sure this has been asked, but when is the benefit for holding something actually counted?

The timer goes down to zero and then shows a set of dashes for several seconds. Then it resets and starts counting down.

If you finish flipping a camp or tower while the timer is showing dashes, do it’s points for that cycle count for you or for the prior owner?

Thx!

Thx for the tests. Most of the time when I use this, I’m busy trying not to die while I’m trying to hurt three or four characters at a supply camp at the same time.

So I’m not very good at looking at the numbers while this is going on.

If you’re hitting a target at range 1200 with spatial surge, and you have another target that is in the beam but only range 300 away – what damage does the target at range 300 get?

Does the spatial surge beam have a chance to crit on each target it passes through? I’m using sigil of fire, and I’m wondering if the flame burst will only happen at the targeted mob or every mob the beam passes through is a chance to proc the effect?

I really like this trait after playing with it

Does anyone know the range for the affect to apply to other targets? Is there a max number of targets that it can affect? Does the same effect hit every target or is it random for each?

Thx – Mesmer is so cool for me because you can keep playing with builds and get great advice

Thx for the suggestions, Duck! I tried out the build last night, and it worked okay (generally not a brilliant idea to try a new solo roaming build on reset night… lol). I took a couple camps and even managed to win a 1v2 (but clearly the players were pretty new since they went after my clones a lot).

But it is pretty squishy and I don’t think the extra damage really pays off. Plus, even though I know 3x casts of Mantra of Recovery beats Ether Feast, it doesn’t feel that way. And every time you go through water, you have to recharge the mantras.

Time for some more experimenting today…

@jon thx very much for coming back to this thread – it helps a lot to get the conversation going

I think there are really only a couple of questions that need answering to really close this out.

First, can you confirm the 0 – 4 hits is the intended behavior?

Second, what is the expected number of hits on a stationary target? It’s fine with me if 0 hits should almost never happen. If the expected number of hits is 3, that’s very different than if the expected number of hits is 1.5.

Third, can iBeserker hit every target inside the swing circle (let’s say he’s running through a zerg) or is there a maximum number of hits he can do on a pass. The possibility of doing 7 or 8 hits, for example, needs to be factored into his value.

With those answers, I think we would have a realistic picture of what this phantasm is supposed to be and could decide if it fits our builds and play styles. I don’t really care what damage it did in the past. I just want to know what to expect from it.

As a side note, there are a couple of curious things about your images. I’m sure it’s very hard to capture these, and they may not represent precise points in time. But in image #1, it appears the golems health has dropped at the point spin #1 is happening – and this is the one swing that doesn’t hit. Then if you look at the relative lengths of the health bar lines, it seems like the change from total health to the amount of health shown in the first picture is a lot bigger than the other screenshots (which, in theory show two hits worth of damage).

The description is clear that it only applies when a clone dies (not an illusion which should include phantasms).

I’m just wondering if the description is accurate. I had a build idea that would work better if it applied to phantasms too.

Thx

Thx very much for the feedback.

I realize now that saying “in WvW” really doesn’t explain enough. Right now, I play in middle tier WvW. I mostly do small havoc teams or play solo taking out supply camps. If I get in a zerg fight, I try to stay on the edges.

Basically, I’m experimenting with the idea of doing a good chunk of damage with the phantasms without investing in the “full phantasm build” costs. So I’m skipping the 15% damage you get by going 25 into Inspiration and I’m skipping the 20% haste on their attacks you get by going 20 deep into Illusions. Then I’m playing around with different combos.

The theory I’m trying out with this build is that I can help speed the time it takes to capture a camp more by boosting my damage than by anything else. So the greatsword auto-attack is pretty nice here because it hits pretty hard and I can often line up multiple targets. When Sigil of Fire procs, it usually hits several guards. When mirror blade comes off cooldown, I can let that bounce around. And Mind Stab is actually useful if the guards cluster together. The guards heal is pretty easy to spot, so the daze mantra lets me stop that and stack on some vulnerability to speed up the kill. When the guards cluster together, I feel like iBeserker is going to hit something. And because I’m not too worried about preserving the phantasms, I will use Mind Wrack before the very last moment to get more AOE damage. So, all together, this is my approach to doing more AOE damage with a Mesmer.

With the gear I’m using the build I linked has a bit over 1400 toughness and a bit over 19,000 health. I could use food to drive up those numbers a bit. So it feels pretty survivable. I feel comfortable taking on a 1v1, and I’m getting to the point where I can sometimes win a 1v2 (but this has happened so rarely it’s really hard to tell if this is more about the opponents). Mostly I end up in these fights while traveling to camps or if an opponent meets me in the camp.

Retaliation damage is a good point, Pyro. I hadn’t thought about it, because I almost never encounter it. I’m not sure why – maybe my fights against other players are just too infrequent.

This is a little experiment with the standard 30/30/0/0/10 mantra build.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1|c.1g.h19.c.1g.h8|1.1g.h17|1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.b1j.1c.71j|4s.d1g.21k.e14.3t.e17.21k.e14.1c.61.1c.61|u3ab.u24b.0.0.a3|3l.7|32.3h.34.39.3o|e

The goal here is to get the phantasms out and let them do some damage and then use greatsword to contribute to the damage from range. With quick cooldowns on the phantasm cast skills, there’s not a lot of worry about keeping them alive and the goal is to shatter them at some point. The distraction mantra is meant to interrupt heals.

Anyone play something like this in WvW? I’ve been using 20/30/10/0/10 with only the distraction mantra and none of the grandmaster mantra traits.

Thx

I thought it might help to get a little real-world data on iBeserker, so I took a build where the zerkie would have a 66% crit chance and 72% crit damage down to Orr. I did 40 attacks against a variety of mobs (risen humanoids, rise bull, oozes). I have the Sharper Images trait, so it was easy to count critical hits by the number of bleed stacks. (I turned off all other attacks.)

There was one complete miss. I was so surprised. I cast berserker and watched him zip through the target and I looked for damage numbers, and then I realized nothing happened and the target hadn’t even aggro’d.

Of the 39 remaining samples, the averages for damage and crits didn’t seem that crazy. Average damage (not including the miss) was 2995. On average, there were 2.23 crits per zerkie charge. If all 4 swings are supposed to hit one target, then the average should come out to 2.64 crits at a 66% crit chance.

Other than the miss, here are a few things that seem odd:
Lowest damage was 1198 with one crit. Highest damage was 6366 with 3 crits.
There was a 1671 damage with 3 crits sample. And a 2930 with 1 crit.

I wasn’t diligent enough to keep track of the number of hits per sweep, but I never had zero crits nor more than 4 crits.

But the basic thing that stands out here is that there must be a lot of variability in the damage range for each hit. To get 1671 damage and 3 crits, you pretty much have to assume something like 3 hits of 250 points each. And to get 6366 and 3 crits, it seems like the average hit needed to be around 840 (and assume you got 3 crits and one normal).

So when you combine the randomness of the number of hits, the randomness of crit chance, and the apparent range of values for base damage per hit, you get a really wide range of outcomes. (As I was getting ready to test, I saw result of 560 total damage for a pass, but it never came up in my test samples.)

I’m guessing the hit detection is the hard part to tweak in the code, but it seems like there is a potentially easy improvement in just reducing the range of the base damage.

Any other testing would be very interesting to see (particularly where specific number of hits were tracked)

I know this skill (Greatsword #3) probably isn’t that great, but I try to work it into my fights.

I often open up with iBeserker, and then use Mirror Blade. Then I try to cast Mind Stab, and I almost always get an “out of range” message. I’m assuming the problem comes because I’m trying to use the fast-cast targeting (so it hits where my cursor is). I’m putting the cursor right at the feet of my target and both of us haven’t moved since my first two casts.

Anyone else having this issue?

Thx

Great job on the podcast – informative and entertaining!

Seems like the next time Grimms is a guest, there needs to be a Mesmerized podcast drinking game. I nominate Kylia to create the rules.

I couldn’t test Silvari exactly, but I think it worked with the ghostfire wolf. The wiki says SOI works with any mobile summon.

@curunen – yes – the golem gets the increased health from SOI (assuming he gets the affect on him before he dies – sometimes it takes several seconds before the effect applies). And the golem gets the effect from the Defender as long as he is within 600 of the defender (so usually this effect will go away because the first target dies and then the golem picks a new target and it’s questionable whether I’ll get the new Defender cast and close enough to the golem)

@esplen hopefully the link is fixed now – it should show SOI, Defender and Null Field. I agree the Golemancer runes would be even more fun – great suggestion. I don’t run COE that often, so I think it will take a very long time for me to get all the runes. I’d love to see a video with both golems in play – that would be hilarious – and I’d be curious if SOI applied to the golem from the runes. Thx for the suggestions!

I would guess that this build is a lot like many other phantasm builds. Also, it should work with any race that has a good elite summon skill.

This is not a great WvW build for many reasons (the only swiftness comes from swapping in focus when I’m not in combat), there’s almost nothing for mobility in combat (except sword#3 which is a bit unreliable for me), and it’s pretty slow to develop in a fight. If you play WvW on a serious level server, I imagine you could get ridiculed for even trying it.

But it’s fun for me, so I wanted to share. What it does well for me is taking supply camps solo and letting me bring down some players quickly. It doesn’t require the skill and reflexes of some builds. Maybe someday I’ll be able to bounce around like Osicat, but for now, this build lets me enjoy WvW within my current skill level.

Here’s the build:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1|1.1g.h1h|c.1g.h19.a.1g.h1h|1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j.1c.71j|4s.d1g.21k.e14.3t.e17.21k.e14.1c.61.1c.61|k3a.u249.0.0.k3a|39.7|31.3l.36.39.4|e

Basically, I’m trying to get to high toughness and vitality while keeping crit chance and crit damage high enough. It ends up being around 19,000 health before WvW buffs and about 1400 toughness. I’m actually using three pieces of Sentinels gear, but the build calculator won’t show it. The phantams end up around 80% crit chance and 80% crit damage.

The fun part of the build is the Series-7 Golem racial elite skill. This thing is ridiculously slow to cast (2 seconds immobile). It falls out of the sky and buries itself in the ground. Then it gets up and thinks about whether it wants a mocha or a latte and then it might get down to business. It has a pretty low health pool too. Why is this fun? Well, it unloads with some nice ranged shots and it sticks around for 40 seconds. And it benefits from both phantasmal defender and signet of illusions, so it actually tends to be up and running for the full 40 seconds. And it looks cool and nobody else uses it (so there might be a tiny bit of shock value).

To take a camp with this build, you pop the golem out of combat then enter the fray with all three phantasms on a guard or scout. It will go down pretty quickly, and you should be able to move to a second one before the golem goes away.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful or at least humorous for you. Someday, I think it would be riot to see an army of Asuran mesmers come running across the battlefield with their legions of golems and phantasms. Have fun!

For a phantasm build, the bouncing doesn’t seem bad for Greatsword. Basically, if I’m at long range on a single target and I have the zerker already cast, I’m going to give the zerker some extra might, and I’m going to hit the target a second time. So that’s better than what MirrorBlade did before.

If I have two phantasms out (assume one zerker and one duelist), then MirrorBlade should replace the existing MirrorBlade clone and probably bounce off the zerker. So, in that case, I would be losing some might on myself and on the duelist (assuming I would have been close enough before for the bounce to hit me). But if I’m fighting from long range, this is still better than I had before.

So it seems like this change is pretty much pure benefit if you stay at range with the greatsword and never get more than one clone out.

Thx for the help. Does this apply to other weapons as well? Maybe cannons?

I guess I’ll need to get used to adjusting that setting if I’m going to be operating siege

I’m still fairly new at WvW and haven’t tried many siege weapons.

I hopped on an arrow cart once, but didn’t see any targeting control. Is this because I’m personally set up to use fast-cast (i.e. where my mouse is pointing) on ground-targeted skills?

Having never tried an arrow cart before, I felt pretty foolish not being able to see where it was shooting.

Thx for any suggestions or clarifications

I think what would help me the most is an Anet statement about what the intended damage is for zerker. I don’t even need number ranges. Just a couple statements like “on a single target, zerker should hit for approximately three times the auto-attack damage from spatial surge” That’s a completely made-up example, but it would be really helpful to have some notion of what the design intent is for the skill.

Thx for all the great work on the podcasts. I really enjoy listening and learning.

Thx – a few months ago, I had been experimenting with sigil of accuracy or force to see if I could boost phantasm damage and then learned that the 5% does not transfer.

It looks like I’ll stick with sigils of battle because they have the 20 second duration on the might stacks.

On the programming side of all this, there must be a ton of state management code to keep track of all these changing variables. I have stacks of might coming on and going away, my power or precision can change as I swap weapons, etc. The duelist channels his 8 shots over a 2.25 second duration. It’s fairly likely that my power and/or precision changes during that time.

Thx – so to wrap this up with a nice bow, I think the following two statements are true.

Whatever power you have at the time of summoning the phantasm (based on any modifications, including might) transfer to the phantasm. Any subsequent changes in your power (including gains or losses of stacks of might) do not have any effect on any existing phantasms.

Sound right?

Thx much for the help. Baa, when you say “Might transfers, but might on the phantasms themselves do not affect their damage.” What does that mean?

If I have 3 stacks of might on me when I summon a phantasm, my Power is 105 higher and I believe that higher level of power is used to set the stats for the Phantasm when it is created. If I get another 3 stacks of might after the Phantasm is created, I am unsure if it affects the existing phantasm at all. Also, if the original 3 stacks of might expire after the phantasm is created, I’m unsure if this has any effect on that phantasm.

Thx!

I’ve been experimenting with stacking might and summoning phantasms.

I’m wondering what happens to the power level of the phantasm when the might stack expires on me.

Thx!

Thx very much.

Do you know if it figures out a crit chance for each separate target in the field when it pulses? I didn’t do any testing with two targets that I tried to keep in the field.

I was doing some experiments to test damage when I noticed that Chaos Storm appears to do its damage not just once but on some sort of a timer (assuming the mob stays inside it). The combat logs are… challenging… but it seems like maybe it procs every half a second or so.

The wiki simply says “6 hits”.

Also, the damage in the combat log doesn’t match the tooltip – and sometimes it doesn’t match the calculation for crit damage above the base listed on the tooltip.

Anyone done some deep digging into how chaos storm’s damage really works? Also, is this behavior true for all AOE fields that cause damage (that they have a built-in period proc rate?)

Thx

There was a fairly vague note about it in the last patch release. I can’t tell exactly what was changed.

It’s so cool when it works. But so disappointing when it doesn’t. I mostly stopped using it.

Thx for all the help. It’s a sad thing that I just assumed left-mouse-button would be the one to control turning. If you ever want an exercise in frustration, try to move around using this… lol

Anyway, I’m trying the practice exercises now

This isn’t really a Mesmer-specific question, but we have a lot of helpful people in this forum.

I’ve been trying to break the habit of using the A and D keys for turning and use the mouse instead (because it seems like this is how the most skilled players play).

For turning, I have tried to use left-clicking and sliding my mouse left or right. This can result in a pretty quick turn, and it leaves me free to use A and D as strafe keys (and that in turn opens up Q and E for other things).

But when I try to play this way, I find a few problems, so I’m wondering if I’m not understanding the correct setup. Here are the problems:
1) If I’m moving forward, I will not actually turn. When I letup on the mouse, I immediately snap back to moving forward.
2) Sometimes I don’t seem to turn even if I’m not moving forward. Especially if I am trying to make a small turn, sometimes it seems like it doesn’t get registered.
3) I have a hard time getting the right amount of mouse swipe to get the right degree of turning.

Am I just doing this wrong? Is it just a matter of practice?

Thx!

Just got a chance to listen to the second fan questions episode – great stuff. Thanks for answering so many questions!

I learn a lot from every episode – keep up the great work

I tweaked this build a little bit since I found out sigils of accuracy don’t transfer crit percent to phantasms and since I decided I really can’t play without the focus.

Here’s the updated build. http://bit.ly/17eYD36 It comes in at 1579 toughness and 19,652 health (using curry pumpkin soup). The illusions should be around 75-77% crit chance (but up to 90% crit chance if I build perception stacks) and 75% crit damage.

It’s fun to play so far. I’ve survived a lot more bad situations in WvW, and there’s some flexibility in swapping around skills.

I found I needed to significantly increase toughness and vitality from what I was using in pve.

There is power-vitality-toughness (“soldiers”) armor and accessories available for the dungeon tokens you get from running AC and HOTW and for karma from the vendor at Cathedral of Silence after the Grenth event in Orr (though he only sells three pieces of the armor). You can also buy this type of armor from the WvW vendors for the badges of honor you get as WvW rewards.

Thx for all the help.

I tested last night and found that I could dump a condition on an ambient creature.

Happened to get crippled while following a guild bounty target. Dumped it on a rabbit. Funny to watch a rabbit hopping in slow motion.

I still need to test whether you can lose conditions by targeting a gate or siege. I know that they can’t be damaged by conditions, just wondering if it works.

Thx for the help. The skill seems to fail every now and then, so I’m trying to figure out why.

If you have confusion on you as a condition when you cast this, do you take the damage from using a skill?

If you target a object (like a gate) or an ambient creature (just to dump the conditions), does this still work? Can you dump conditions on a downed player? I’ll try testing this – just wondering if someone already knew the answer.

I assume the condition you pass back is exactly as it landed on you (duration, damage). So if you have reduced condition duration food, this would knock down the duration before you passed it back.

Do boon duration bonuses apply on boons I pull from someone else (or are the boons exactly as they were on the opponent)?

It seems like if I try this and the target is out of range, it just fails and goes on cooldown. Is that right?

Does this skill work on boss’s in dungeons?

Any other WvW experiences with this skill would be really interesting to hear – thx!

The wiki says that illusions are not affected by non-stat effects of sigils. So I assume sigil of accuracy (+5% crit chance) does not transfer to the illusion. But what about stacks of precision from sigil of perception?

Are the conditions and boons from chaos storm truly random? Is there a chance to get all three of either the conditions or the boons? Same questions for chaos armor.

Thx much!

I don’t quite have all the gear for this build, but so far I like it. I survive a lot more.

I found that I needed the focus a lot, so I went sword/focus versus sword/sword as I planned.

Otherwise, it’s a fun build to play so far. Lots to learn about timing and skill use.

Thx for the notes. I don’t have the soldiers armor, so I’m playing this with my zerker gear right now.

I think it has promise, but I need a lot of practice to get up to speed with it. Right now, I feel like I’m thinking a lot about what skill I should be using.

The gear for this is big investment (divinity runes and sigil of generosity alone are over 50g), so I’d like to make sure this seems like a reasonable build.

Thx