Guild Wars 2

Mostly outnumbered fights in wvw. Have fun

https://youtu.be/mM8sWYW96Oo

I put in a quick build overview, but this is the build if you’re interested.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQRAre7fn0nBFqhNqBmpBEgiFnjquQT0G9MAGgEDtx2nEA-T1xCQBT4hAUwTAo+zJ2fAAHBgEpEMLK/qn+hAAIAzsMLzyM4oH9oH9oHtZOzZOzZOzCBsYNA-w

Longer fights against multiple opponents. Some win, some loss, some run away

Have fun

https://youtu.be/PbzVwkk5hjw

I only play condi chrono and in WvW roaming. I don’t play the standard build. I use this build with mainhand scepter and sword/torch offhands.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQRAre7fn0nBFqhNqBmpBEgiFnjquQT0GFtx2nE4MAGgED-TFyCQBF8EAq/MhHCQ90PkFlKA4IAkIlgnY/hKqsKAACwMLzysMDO6RP6RP6RbmzcmzcmzsQALWDA-w

I think it’s extremely strong 1v1. The disenchanter is undervalued in a lot of builds in my opinion. I have to have the boon strip from it to beat berserkers with their endless resistance. I think this build is quite capable in more than 1v1 fights. The first fight on the video below is a 1v3. Granted, the thief dies to AoE trying to rez the first ranger and the second ranger probably could have done more to pressure me down. But it can work in multi-person fights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ude6CGAFcsE

In zerg fights, I try to loop around the edges because the illusions just don’t last long enough in the middle.

For this build, I think the ideal starting rotation for me works something like this:
- Scepter block/shield block until you have 3 illusions
- F5,F4,F3
- Tides of time
- Gravity well
- Weapon swap
- Prestige
- iMage

If you do it fast enough, you come out of continuum shift with both prestige and image available again and this is a big part of what wins the first fight (along with Balthazar runes)

Sorry – I usually do a quick intro scan over the build, but the clips I had basically filled up the whole song.

Here’s a link to the build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQRAre7fn0nBFqhNqBmpBEgiFnjquQT0GFtx2nE4MAGgED-TFyCQBF8EAq/MhHCQ90PkFlKA4IAkIlgnY/hKqsKAACwMLzysMDO6RP6RP6RbmzcmzcmzsQALWDA-w

Couple of fights and one escape. Have fun!

https://youtu.be/Ude6CGAFcsE

I keep my inventory minimized and dragged over in the bottom right corner of my screen. I put the focus in the top left bag slot. Just double-click on it, cast curtain, and double-click again (because the weapon you swapped with will be in that spot.)

In four years roaming in wvw, I only remember three times when I was stuck with focus in a fight.

Note: It’s important if you use on-kill sigils to make sure you don’t wipe your stacks when you do the swapping. Easiest way is to make sure the sigil is on a single-hand, mainhand weapon.

This is one of the reasons I stopped playing in pvp mode. It just feels like portal is mandatory there, and I had so much fun in other modes playing when I didn’t have to have portal on my bar. All of my recent experience is only based on WvW, so maybe not helpful for the OP actual question

I love disenchanter. As a condi build, it’s great because it removes resistance. It has a low cooldown so it has great synergy with Persistence of Memory and Chronophantasma.

I think the initial cast condi cleanse is actually centered on the target (this is what the wiki says). So it’s a bit tricky doing a one-second cast while staying close to the target to get the cleanse effect.

But I think Anet has come a long way in making this skill really nice.

I like this patch. It has more change in it than I anticipated, and yet the build I play is totally viable and actually seems a little better.

There’s a bit to experiment with in terms of the changes – particularly the iMage phantasm cast. I think getting in that close at the end of the cast is going to be a real challenge, but it has a payoff. So there’s something different to work on, but it’s not because the build I was playing was destroyed and I have to do something different to be viable.

In a quick bit of WvW roaming tonight, there didn’t seem to be any completely new and overpowered builds. I’m happy to see Ranger pets get improvement. I played ranger for a while. I’m not bothered by Revenants getting alacrity. Hopefully the patch was okay for most folks.

Couple of quick test items:

- The initial attack for the iMage is not 1200 range. If you cast from far away, you will not land the burning on the foe.

- The second instance of the phantasm (from Chronophantasma) does not seem to generate the “on cast” effect.

Good point. I still get a little panic’d in fights and sometimes blow too many skills. I even sometimes pop distortion and then use a block skill… Definitely needs practice.

I can’t imagine trying to charge the healing mantra in a fight without Malicious Sorcery. With the number of interrupts that are in the game now, it feels like it makes a big difference on the longer casts.

A really good berserker is a long and hard fight. The best chance is to be patient and let the disenchanter sit out there. The good berserkers kill it right away. I win more than I lose, but I lost to a berserker 1v1 today.

Dragonhunters are annoying because of the unblockable shots. They wait for the shield block and then shoot through it. The whole sequence where they yank you through the trap pretty much always forces me to to pop a couple skills. Still, there typically comes a point in the fight where they can get locked down with gravity well and tides of time, and then I can usually get them down.

I feel like if I play smart, I can win just about any 1v1 matchup. But sometimes I still loose my patience and blow through skills (and I can end up losing to a good daredevil if I do that as well – it’s really hard to get the mantra recharged against them)

Just a long fight I happened to catch on video. Multiple opponents in a friendly camp

https://youtu.be/aEEWn_0ToNk

A couple of 1 v X fights in towers – plenty of mistakes and a couple of observations about what’s in my head during the fights

Have fun!

https://youtu.be/GUbtPRaC-34

Thanks for the heads up. It’s probably already part of the plan, but it would be great to have a little summary for each profession in the thread that will get created Wednesday. Just something that says what the devs feel is the current state of that profession and what the changes were trying to accomplish.

Thx for all the hard work

Neat! I used to use scepter in power phantasm build.

I like the concept of starting off a battle with a burst, but the pure condi builds are tricky to get an early spike in damage.

Thx for sharing your build

I think in a 1 player versus 1 player fight, a condi mesmer has an advantage over a necro. As long as the mesmer avoids the attacks that can transfer condis back from the necro to the mesmer, I think the mesmer should win this fight. And the game will always have cases where one profession is stronger than another in 1v1.

If this happened during a fight where there five players versus one mesmer, what were the other four players doing? Nobody rezzed you? It’s really hard to stomp when four other players are attacking

I’m a huge fan of scepter, but pretty much all I do is WvW roaming. In that game mode, I typically have 1v1, 1v2, and 1v3 fights. I actually use a build that is always scepter in mainhand. I think shield and torch are fantastic offhand weapons, so that means either scepter/sword, sword/sword or scepter/scepter.

Scepter has clone production on auto-attack (and it produces torment if you have three illusions), clone production on block (and 5 stacks of torment) and confusing images pierces, so you it’s a semi-aoe weapon.

If you’re interested in scepter, I think the best idea is to give it a try. If you can do a build with the Malicious Sorcery trait, I highly encourage trying it because it makes the scepter (particularly confusing images) feel much smoother.

I was goofing around making a video of opening bursts last night. This isn’t particularly great scepter play, but it gives you an idea how it an work in WvW. https://youtu.be/d_TePbucMJs

Was recording some video while testing scavenger runes. Recorded a couple of fights that had decent opening bursts, so put them together with an old Cars song.

At the end of the video, I replayed one of the opening bursts in slow motion. I’m curious what combinations people use with condi builds as their openers – this is pretty aggressive, but very fun. Would love to hear what other folks do – thx!

https://youtu.be/d_TePbucMJs

Hi Jenzie,

Glad you liked trying the build. I re-read the original post, and realized it could have come off sounding like “MY” build. I meant it to be – “the build I’m using”. The double scepter idea actually came from Messiah. Back when Mercenary Amulet existed and Persistence of Memory was 2 seconds per shatter, this was really fun in pvp. I actually played to diamond rank that time. But I hate letting down a pvp team and I just haven’t found a pvp build I like, so I haven’t really played pvp much since the removal of merc amulet.

You are right (from my opinion) that it is better in WvW. In WvW, you can go all trailblazer or dire and be really survivable. The illusion generation seems fine for me. If you let the scepter auto-attack and you use the scepter block a lot and you shatter the phantasms to reduce the recharge, it seems to keep a nice supply of illusions.

The main point I was trying to get across (poorly) in the original post, is that Chrono, Illusions and Inspiration really synergize well and make a really nice condi roamer. So I would opt for no changes in those lines versus things that break the build if those were the only choices. And putting in changes in the other trait lines or runes and sigils would be cool to see what people can do.

Have fun!

Your summary is better than mine, Duck.

I think the best changes are ones that buff the other trait lines to give people more choices and things to try out. I think buffs to rarely used runes and sigils is also a nice thing to try.

I do think for people doing condi roamer builds, the Chrono, Illusions and Inspiration trait lines are really appealing. And I hope they don’t get nerfed

@jenzie I realized my last video had a couple thieves. This is just a goofy video I made for fun around Christmas, but there’s a daredevil who enters the fight around 1:20 in.
https://youtu.be/ZUbFUJYFVf4

Fair point. My goal wasn’t trying to say that my build is extremely unique. In fact, I was trying to say that it seems like the most viable WvW roaming build is condi, and that nearly all condi builds are Chrono, Illusions and Inspiration. So it’s hard for Anet to make changes that don’t nerf that build but still give options for theorycrafting.

In terms of why the weapons I choose, there are a few reasons. I often end up fighting 1v2 and 1v3 fights. So I need to be able to stay alive while still putting down the opponents. To do that, I rely a lot on the defense of both shield and torch. If you look at healing per second, the mantra heal outperforms everything if you take restorative mantras. But to get the recharge done in a fight, I need both the extra stealth from the torch and the 20% faster charging speed from having scepter and malicious sorcery. So always having scepter in main hand is great for offense and it helps me with my healing strategy. And scepter block available every 4 to 5 seconds is very nice.

In terms of fighting thieves, it really doesn’t seem that bad (in a WvW context). Typically, I stealth with torch to start and foil the Steal opener. Then I cast the phantasmal mage and disenchanter. Now when the thief closes, I have block, shatter, weapon swap for geomancy, and, most importantly, I can chain CC together with Tides of Time and Gravity Well and typically I can land at least one. That usually will do it for a thief fight.

But my main goal in writing the post was that it seems like Anet has made it such that there’s a really good build (with some small variants) that works well for WvW roaming. So if I had to choose between nerfing the core of the condi roamer build and having more theorycrafting options or having fewer changes and less theorycrafting, I would take fewer changes.

Theorycrafting new builds is really fun for me. So part of me looks forward to every balance update.

But… right now, my condi mesmer build is awesome for my favorite game mode (roaming in WvW). I get that balancing is sometimes easier by weakening some things versus strengthening others, but it’s not fun to have to theorycraft because your current build has been nerfed so much that it’s not viable. So my fear of the major nerf is bigger than my hope for some fun new things to try out.

I think the challenge for Anet is that there seem to be only a few kinds of changes that could fit the non-nerf but fun to theorycraft category. Here’s how it looks from the perspective of my current build.

I’m always going to take Chronomancer – the default run speed, continuum shift and gravity well are just too much fun. Time catches up, illusionary reversion and chronophantasma are simply all great traits.

I also think I’m always going to take Illusions. I have a lot of investment in condi gear, and I’m totally used to the timing of shatter skills. Plus shattering is fun There are a couple areas where I might experiment if they were better. I would be really willing to try Shattered Strength instead of Maim the Disillusioned if the amount of Might was bigger (maybe 2 stacks per illusion?) Persistence of Memory is still awesome, but I would consider The Pledge or Compounding Power if they were better.

Currently, I’m always going to take Inspiration. The condi removal and healing from Restorative Illusions by itself is enough justification to take the trait line. Mental Defense has wonderful synergy, and Restorative Mantras has been rewarding enough (both as a self-heal and a way to help others) that I use the heal mantra (and this makes Mender’s Purity even better).

But I would consider taking Chaos if it provided a way to deal with conditions. It’s easy to see taking Master of Manipulation and trying to learn to use the Mirror heal. Chaotic Transference is straightforward benefit for a condi roamer build. So somewhere, something would have to deal with condis. It could be from adding Resistance somehow. Otherwise I can’t see dropping Inspiration (realized I made a typo and said Illusions instead of Inspiration in my first post)

So there aren’t a lot of areas that seem like they can change to offer new choices without hurting the things that work so well right now. The one area that seems like it offers some possibility is tweaking sigils and runes. There are a number of them that nobody seems to use because they are underpowered. I’ve kept a stack of Aristocracy runes around hoping for the day that Shattered Strength gets better. And there lots of other runes that seem like they just don’t quite get interesting enough to try.

So in the end, I’m hoping to have mostly very small changes. And the challenge is to find some fun theorycrafting to do with those changes.

P.S. For reference, I’m not using the condi roamer build on Metabattle. I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting and making something I like. I’m using a build that is always scepter in the mainhand, and I really appreciate the buffs to Illusionary Disenchanter in the last updates. I’ve come to really enjoy that skill, and I think it’s a great example of the kinds of changes that work well for me. Here’s my current build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQRAre7fn0nBFqhNqBmpBEgiFnjquQT0GFtx2nE4MAGgED-TFyCQBnY/h6pfIRKBL4JAU/piKrAwRAILKVmwDBIAACwMLzysMDO6RP6RP6RbmzcmzcmzsQALWDA-w

For sure, this build is powerful and can be played without a ton of skill (in my opinion).

This video is really just for fun. My apologies if it came across as being critical to anyone else. I haven’t made a video in a while and just felt like doing something with holiday music.

I’m not particularly proud of my playing in the video. I know I’m a pretty average skill level player. The nice thing about the build is that it lets me try outnumbered fights and see what I can do. As someone who roams in wvw solo most of the time, I need a build that can do that.

The PU builds were really powerful but felt really passive. I try to play this build by getting right into the middle of things. I agree that power builds require more skill and are less survivable. If they are more fun for you, you should definitely play them. As a solo roamer, I would just get killed repeatedly with a power build – and that’s not really fun for me.

Hmmm – it plays for me. Maybe it’s blocked some places because of the music?

Well, happy holidays anyway!

Just for fun. Quick overview of the condi roaming build I use, and then a long fight where I repeatedly fail at my goal of using the snowglobe finisher.

https://youtu.be/ZUbFUJYFVf4

Happy holidays

There are definitely people who are fantastic with staff. Besides the fact that shield and torch are both good offhands, here are the things I like about going scepter-scepter mainhand.

- With malicious sorcery, everything is 20% faster because you always have a scepter in mainhand. That makes charging the mantra much more realistic (as well as getting through some of those 1 second casts)

- The scepter block is available more frequently than every 5 seconds. It’s only a little bit of defense, but it’s a ton of torment damage and a clone.

- It makes the runes of tormenting even more valuable.

- I just like scepter. I’ve used it for years – even before it had it’s enhancements.

I think there are probably lots of condi mesmer builds that can work well, so you probably want to experiment. If you try scepter, definitely try it with Malicious Sorcery.

Good luck!

This is what I use

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7fn0nBFqhNqBmpBEgiFnj6MAGgEDtx2nEouQT0GF-TFyCQBF8EAq/URlVA4IAUP9DMb/hEpEcCPEgsoUJAACwMLzysMDO6RP6RP6RjQALWDA-w

The big difference from pvp is that you can use trailblazer or dire gear, so you are much more survivable. If you pick the mantra heal like this build, it’s good to get in the habit of recharging while you’re stealthed. The disenchanter is important for me because that’s how I get rid of the resistance boon.

Since I spend almost all my GW2 time solo roaming in WvW, I’ll share a couple thoughts.

As mentioned by some people, wvw is very different depending on your tier. Being on NSP, I’ve gotten the chance to see a bunch of different levels in the last few weeks. When you get up higher in tiers, it’s very rare to see solo roamers. So if you’re roaming solo in a world where everyone else is in a group, you need a build that’s going to work for you or basically you’re going to have no fun at all.

No doubt a dire (or trailblazers) condi mesmer is very strong 1v1. If I do find someone running by themselves, I often ignore them unless they engage me or don’t stomp them once they are down. And, I almost never run from a 1 v 2 fight (even though I’m gonna lose that fight more than half the time). So I find my own ways to make it more “fair” because it’s more fun to me that way.

I will always die to a group of 3 to 5 who are focusing me and pouring on the cc. I always run with phantasmal disenchanter because there’s no way I can beat the resistance-heavy builds without it. So there are tradeoffs in a build like this.

But I always find it interesting when people choose to message that this is a “cancer” build. If you see a solo mesmer in your north camp, what build were you expecting?

What happens with the Inspiration grandmaster trait that casts Signet of Inspiration on phantasm cast (Illusionary Inspiration)?

Does that apply all the boons to you?

As far as the axe goes, I’ll be happy if it’s able to support either condi or direct damage. I think most likely if I liked Mirage, I would end up playing axe, scepter, torch and some other offhand (depending on what fits).

I think you can only have one Elite spec slotted, so picking Mirage means losing Chronomancer. So I would really want a viable way to have a decent passive run speed. The F5 shatter is amazingly fun for Chronomancer, so I hope Mirage gets it’s own interesting F5. I suppose there would be a lot of people who might hate the idea of more “passive” play, but I think it would be cool if Mirage unlocked a phantasm elite skill.

Congratulations on your baby!

Thx for your constant innovating and sharing

Cool – I’ll message you.

I’m on Northern Shiverpeaks (so we are linked to Sea of Sorrows right now).

I mostly record myself to try to figure out how to play better. But sometimes there’s an interesting fight to share- and then Messiah can tell me all the stuff I’m doing wrong

Have fun!

Some fights and some escaping from multiple opponents.

Plus more 80s music

https://youtu.be/eZkjsQ_Ibes

Yeah, I shouldn’t have stomped. It was a really long fight and he could have just gone into Bay and given up.

Over time, I’ve gotten better about not stomping and just acknowledging the fight. And I often don’t even attack newer players now.

Totally fair feedback

All great tips – thx much!

Quick tour through the build and then one long fight.

Contains plenty of mistakes, good plays and 80’s music

Have fun!

https://youtu.be/XrZmy1EVMuo

Ah – that it explains it – thx!

I think the Mental Defense tip inherits the utility phantasm description, but you don’t actually get the protection.

I have really enjoyed the patch so far. I spend most of my time roaming in WvW as a mesmer, but I play some PVE as well.

Balance changes were good. I have some things to think about, but I know I have a build I like and can continue to use. Torch improvements were enough to push me over the edge and actually build and equip Rodgort.

Salvage change is awesome.

New map looks really interesting. I played with my son and had fun going through the start of the story. It looks like a ton of work was invested there, and I’m sure it will take me quite a while to get through the whole episode. It’s also encouraging me to finish up my glider masteries.

Only confusing thing was the change to ascended amulets. As a primarily WvW player, I didn’t really understand what had happened and what I should do now. It would be cool if some WvW vendor sold whatever the new thing is that I can slot in the amulet.

Thx for the great work!

I only got to try this for a couple of minutes and didn’t record video, but I didn’t see the protection boon proc when I got the Phantasmal Defender via Mental Defense trait.

I was in a party with a friend. We both stood next to a mob. I attacked it and then blocked it’s attack. Phantasmal defender appeared and illusion of defense effect showed up, but no Protection boon.

Did I read the notes wrong? Is it actually that illusion of defense effect is 33% reduction? I thought the tooltip showed a protection boon.

Thx!

Below is the build I’ve been using for WvW roaming before this patch. I really liked it before, and it’s even nicer now.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQNAr+fn0nBFqhNqBmpBEgiFnjquQT0G9MAGgEDtx2nEA-T1xCQBZR5XBPBg6PJSJIe2foe6FAwBBYCPAgAAIAzsMjMDO6RP6RP6RbmzcmzcmzsQALWDA-w

Thx Pyro

If anyone has a little time to test, it would be nice to see how the new disenchanter skill works.
- How many condis/boons does it remove on initial attack?
- If you have an effect like blind on you that spoils the phantasm cast, does it also ruin the initial attack?

Thx

I’m playing on one of the pairs of servers against YB. I thought it was great.

Every time I see an Anet tag, I try to cheer or wave. I’m happy that they play the game.

In basically every fight that I’ve seen where an Anet tag is visible (pvp or wvw), the person with that tag gets completely focused.

I’m happy to have Anet employees in the game, and I hope they have fun playing

Thx much!

Here’s one more question that relates: Is boon duration only calculated at the moment a boon is applied?

In other words, if you had 40% boon duration at the moment you gave yourself a 10 second might stack. Is that boon going to last 14 seconds regardless of whether your boon duration dropped to 10% or increased to 50% immediately after you got the boon?

I’m hoping (just blindly hoping) that this utility gets improved a bit in the next balance patch (shorter cooldown and/or figure out the cases where it fails mysteriously and fix them).

In any case, I’m wondering if anyone has done any testing to see if anything affects the duration of the boons stolen. My guess is that you get exactly the duration remaining as cast by the original creator of the boons.

But there are two specific cases I’m curious about:
- Does the Chaos line Chaotic Persistence trait affect duration of the boons once stolen (e.g. you steal a stack of might with 10 seconds remainin, but you also have two other boons, so you have 9% boon duration – does that stack effectively last 11 seconds?)
- Does the Sigil of Concentration have any effect on stolen boon duration? (the description reads “boons you apply” – are you applying the boon to yourself if you steal it with Arcane Thievery?)

Thx!

Looking through build possibilities and assuming that sustain for other classes will remain high, I think one of the things that would give me the most options to try different things would be for the Chaos line to have some way to remove conditions.

Even just swapping the resistance boon on Bountiful Disillusionment to something like the F2 shatter would give Chaos some chance at handling condi’s. As it stands, nothing touches the Inspiration line in that respect

Thx for all the feedback.

I realize this is all too late for any kind of update that’s going to happen soon, but possibly it’s helpful for Anet to see what people are hoping for and do a bit of planning for the next release.

I agree with apharma that, right now, I just don’t see myself using a build that doesn’t have Inspiration. The condi removal is just too important.

And for WvW roaming, the Chrono line is key to me just for the run speed (but having the F5 shatter and additional clone and phantasm creation and gravity well would just be really hard to give up as well).

So that means it’s down to only one trait line left, and that ends up being Illusions. It’s not a problem because I really like the trait line, shattering and scepter. But it does mean that when I look at other choices, they just don’t compare.

Theorycrafting and experimenting with new build ideas is my favorite part of the game. So at a really high level, I’m happy with a balance update if it:
- Creates opportunities for new skills, traits, and gear to be viable
- Includes some buffs along with whatever nerfs come
- Leaves me with at least one fun viable build (primarily for WvW roaming since that’s where I’m spending my time these days, but I’d love to have a build I feel good about for pvp too)

So that all probably sounds good to everyone. Here are a few specifics (which are clearly too late for anyone to act on for this update – but give some perspective).
- I’m clearly playing condi shatter (inspiration, illusions, chrono trait lines). I’ve come to like the way this plays, so I’d hate for this to get totally destroyed.
- I think it’s hard to play power mesmer, so making some way that domination is more appealing would be good (some way you can really get defense?)
- I have always wanted to make a hybrid power – condi damage build. The weapons will work, but the only way I can see it being viable is making Shattered Strength better (2 stacks, longer duration or both). That would be a nice tradeoff for Maim the Disillusioned which is just so much better. It would be nice to see Carrion ascended trinkets to support this kind of a build. This kind of change would mean a lot of new gear for me, but I think that’s fine – I like having goals to work toward.
- I mentioned in a prior post a few skills whose cooldowns feel too long (arcane thievery, mirror images, phantasmal mage(torch 5), chaos armor(staff 4))
- It would be cool to see some tweaks to runes and sigils that are never used today. I tried to do a build around burning, but it’s hard to justify with the sources we have. Tweaking Balthazar runes to do 2 stacks of burning instead of one (plus maybe making staff better) could be enough to push me over the edge.

Bottom line for me is that I have a build I really like right now, so I hope (and fear a little) that it doesn’t get nuked. But I think a few tweaks like the ones above will give me plenty of stuff to happily experiment with for another couple of months.

What would make you happy in the next balance update?

I stopped playing pvp after a few ranked games this season. I’m a really average player, but I made it to diamond last season and generally felt like I was helping my team more often than hurting.

Part of not playing this season was starting out with a lot of players who were clearly better than me (as all legendary and diamond started at sapphire). But the bigger part was that it felt like a real struggle to make a big positive impact for my team. I actually like the condi shatter builds, and I’ve been having a ton of fun playing in WvW. But I agree with Ross that generally the issue comes down to needing to focus so much on surviving with your trait and weapon choices and being really boxed in on utility choices.

As a pretty average player, I have trouble when I don’t have two stunbreaks. So the utility choices end up not working out well (people expect portal and without some kind of boon strip, I can’t really handle warriors with high resistance uptime).

When mercenary amulet was still in the game, I felt fine with some more tradeoffs to try more risk. But lacking that, I’ve spent my time in WvW where I can adjust gear to give me the mix I want and then feel free to play more with weapons and utilities.

It will be interesting to see what changes come in July

A long WvW fight where I make a lot of bad decisions about stomping or not stomping
https://youtu.be/OrMujxxD1jk

As always, my gameplay is loaded with mistakes and the video is just meant for fun.

There are a couple of points I’d like to make:
- After more than 2000 hours, I still love the mesmer class and the combat in this game. It takes me a long time to get the coordination down, and every time I watch video of my gameplay, I just cringe at all the stupid mistakes.
- But playing mesmer is really fun for me. The movement in combat, the stealths, the fun tricks with blocks and cc. I really enjoy these fights, and I hope whatever changes about mesmer in future balance updates, there’s some kind of a build that can play something like this.

Have fun!