Guild Wars 2

Charge me monthly, or for expansions, or through the black lion market because the economy sucks.. but not 2 out of the 3.

I’m not so keen on vitality stacking in wvw, since there are so many heals going off that toughness is the best survivability stat. Tough/pwr/prec or tough/pwr/crit is my preferred gear (knight/cavalier/zerker mix) due to that.

I can see why dealing less damage isn’t as severe in a zerg setting though, because i imagine the majority of your damage comes from phantasm retalliation procs and reflects.Offensive abilities scale well vs one player, force multipliers like reflection/retal/aoe absorbs from phants work just as well either way.

Nretep.2564:

fadeaway.2807:

I’d like to see some evidence of staff #1 being better dps than greatsword as mentioned above..

I calced it with average stats in some thread. Even with sharper images the staff simply wins in terms of damage. The burning is just strong.

[ Edit ]
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/How-to-maximize-bleed-stacks/first#post1576530
my calculation

Thanks for this. I wouldn’t call it a mistake but I think you’ve overlooked something incredibly important.

1)
MsdDPS := sDmg / sCast * ( crChance * (1.5 + crDmg) + (1-crChance) ) * (1 + avgVul/100)
= 111 / 0.75 * (60% * (1.5 + 30%) + 40%) * (1.022)
= 148 * 1.48 * 1.022
MsdDPS = 223.9

2)
MscDPS := (vulDmg * vulChance + bldDmg * bldChance + burDmg * burChance) / sCast
= (0 * 33.3% + 298 * 33.3% + 328 * 33.3%) / 0.75
= 208.7 / 0.75
MscDPS = 278.2

3)
MgdDPS := gDmg / gCast * ( crChance * (1.5 + crDmg) + (1-crChance) ) * (1 + avgVul/100)
= 300 / 1.5 * (60% * (1.5 + 30%) + 40%) * 1
= 200 * 1.48
MgdDPS = 296

4)
MgcDPS := 0
// Note: no condition damage from mesmer with GS

In the above calculations where you pit greatsword against staff… notice the following part of your equation applies to both greatsword and staff
( crChance * (1.5 + crDmg) + (1-crChance) ) * (1 + avgVul/100)

This is basically the modifcation by your critical damage stats and the target’s vulnerability. Remove this for a moment, and you get the standard vanilla dps stats:
staff = 111/0.75 = 148
gsword = 300/1.5 = 200

Your crit damage modifier came out to +48% damage. +48% direct damage meant a lot more to the greatsword than it did to the staff. If the target has 25% vulnerability which is fairly often in pve, the greatsword benefits even more. Wheras the staff only gained 71 damage from your crit stat modifiers, the greatsword gained 96.

What I’m trying to say is that the difference between gsword and staff hugely depends on what gear you use. If you focus on crits, greatsword will pull ahead by a ridiculous margin.

Finally, I’m sorry to say this, but the staff #1 tooltip is wrong. The attack speed is not 0.75. It’s actually closer to the greatsword at 1.4-1.5 seconds per attack. Go try it in the mists

Couldn’t help but feel your survivability was a bit low while watching you against the first two. You don’t run any toughness gear like Osi or 7mirrors, do you?

Good video though, I enjoyed it. My biggest annoyance with phantasm builds is that they can be slow without focus (and warden isn’t a great choice for phantasm builds in pvp) and that when they use staff they don’t usually have the 20% cd trait which means you can’t bring out 2 phants every 12 secs like you can with sw/sw + sw/pi, and if you run into a large group fight you don’t bring as much to the table.

I’d like to see some evidence of staff #1 being better dps than greatsword as mentioned above..

The problem with staff is that if you swap from sword to staff, your dps will suffer by a huge amount.

If we’re talking about wvw or pvp… then things are different.

If you don’t mind doing poor dps then it’s great..

So does retaliation from your phantasms tag enemies for you in wvw?

Based on the cooldown of your phantasmal warlock and phantasmal swordsman, the clone on roll, and the 57 sec cooldown of your distortion, you must have at least 20 in the duelist tree, 20 in chaos, and must have 5 in illusions.
The amount of points in inspiration confused me, as your regen tick is 157. With 15 points you get 149 ticks, with 20 points you get 150 ticks, and with 25 points you get 161 ticks.
Care to help me out here please?

Thanks as always for comments, Osicat

I really like it. Though I thought gsword was better than staff for zerg.

Basically – reflect ALL the things!

I didn’t know retalliation tagged enemies for you. That makes phantasms pretty good for zerg tagging actually.

Seems a shame to pick up 20 duelist for the prec/crit dmg and not wear any zerkers gear though. I’d be tempted to stick with my knight/zerker mix.

Osikitty… I have watched your latest video a few times now and closely watched your playstyle.
I noticed your illusions do not live very long – you shatter or they die quickly. Especially the warden! Also they are often far away from you or your group. This means you use less of the regeneration boon from phantasms.
I also notice mostly when you use temporal curtain you use into the void soon after, using less of the reflect.

With this in mind I question your 20 in inspiration. Is it really that useful to you?

There are far better trait options in all scenarios if you ask me.

You sure do love that illusions line :P
Surprised to see you give up your beloved staff, but I suppose it was necessary for the wvw/aoe stuff.

Not totally convinced about dazzling glamours… with only 1 glam util (maybe 2 if you swap for null field) every 30 seconds.. that’s not a huge amount of blinds.

Thanks again for all your work.

I know how awesome stuns are, I use a traited pistol for 2 sec stun on a 20 sec cd which is amazing.

Besides a chaos storm every 35 secs and a daze shatter every 45 secs, you don’t seem to have any other dazes. So traiting for am extra fraction of a seconds worth of stuns twice a minute or so feels like a waste compared with what you could be doing with those points.

Also a full daze shatter doesn’t stack, one daze/stun causes the others to be ignored.

Am I missing something? You don’t have access to many dazes, was it realy worth focusing your traits and gear on them?

Gonna guess he’s not coming back

Let’s do the time warp agaaaaiin!

Clones overwrite other clones before they overwrite phantasms. Only if you have 3 phantasms out will a clone overwrite a phantasm.

20/20 is generally better than 10/30 because you will struggle to find a better 3rd trait in the duelist line than the vuln on daze minor in the domination tree, which provides a huge amount of vulnerability for your group’s dps.

Change the 20 in chaos to domination/dueling and you have a build similar to the one outlined in Pyro’s overpowered 1v1 build (and swap some weapons). Towards the end of that thread I tried adding healing mantras but felt it lacking. I felt my escape mechanisms, defensive abilities and the extra utility slot were better options than standing around casting MoP for a 2.6k heal.

Considering my job as a 10/30/0/25/5 was to drop people fast and be able to escape if required, I didn’t know what sacrificing damage for immobile sustainability was going to achieve. It goes even further that way by taking points out of dom/duel and into chaos. Kavia’s question is a great one – what role is this supposed to play? There are far better bunker options, better nuke options, and better mobility options. Or are we talking wvw?

The way I see it there is offensive play (kill stuff) and defensive play (either facetank like a bunker guard or escape/get range), the heal on mantra isn’t powerful enough to allow you to facetank, and I always found the best defensive option was simply to use our amazing retreat options to back off rather than try to heal through it using hps equivalent to a bunker warrior’s dps.

Charging your dmg mantra lowers your overall damage output. Thus it is better used as a spike, as the name suggests, to help drop a target.. with that in mind the heal of mantra cast is less useful.

I can’t imagine wanting to trade one of our amazing utility slots for a relatively weak on demand extra bit of burst.

You’re coming from a warrior. You could play as one of those terrible tree form npcs in caledon forest and feel op.

I used to play a warrior, it was my favorite class for many months. Eventually I saw how bad anets balancing was and how slowly it happened.

My advice to you is to jump on the op classes as soon as you can without fear of nerfs, cause it takes them a very long time to realise there is a problem.

To put my questions into perspective – I do a lot of spvp/tpvp/hotjoins/whatever they’re called nowadays but not much wvw. I’m just now getting into wvw so it’s interesting to relearn everything, find out what works etc. For example I haven’t used staff much before, and I’ve always played a glass cannon. Various prominent wvw mesmers on this forum are showing me I may need to adapt my playstyle to succeed in wvw thanks for the help btw Osi. ps I have a couple of cats similar to osicats in my house (bengals)!

Phantasm vs shatter aside, I don’t actually see you using shatters a huge amount. In fact, shatters do less damage than phantasms most of the time (even more true without the 20% dmg trait in domination for mist 2.0). Have you ever thought about dropping the illusion line down to the 5 trait minor? You could do a lot with those points.

I’d like to see it changed to something like guardian hammer 2, a leap aoe. That way you can be sure it will hit properly, it retains its aoe, and the numbers can be easily balanced.

I dunno man, if you take the standard sw/sw + sw/pi phant build and just swap out one of those sets for staff you get a similar level of mobility unless you’re talking about mist 2.0 which uses focus for more swiftness.

haha I love how people are putting ranger pets as a whole class, brilliant. They are a bit over the top..

Long term dps… if phantasms do not die and the boss has many conditions then you will not beat a 10/30/0/25/5 sw/sw & staff zerker.

That’s a pretty big IF though.

Yeah I think the reason is that power is the main dps stat, far more valuable than prec or crit dmg in terms of theoretical dps. That’s why soldier is up there for dmg compared to knight.

However as soldier warriors may be able to atest… theoretical sustained probably isn’t as good as the surprise burst from builds like this and osis, because that’s what will catch people off guard and allow the kill.

At least that’s my take on it after thinking about it for a couple of days.

Can I ask your opinion on phantasm builds Osi? Surely you must have tried them. Is there a reason you always come back to shatter?

I’m liking the amount of threads revolving around survivability/damage mixtures rather than full glass cannon at the moment. I used to have the same problem with blowing people up and then eating dirt myself.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about..
This is a 0/20/20/0/30 build, I commonly see it used as a defensive one in wvw.

Here it is with full soldier gear, +pwr/vit food and +pwr sharpening stone which scales off vit/tough.
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|c.1c.h4.c.1c.h14|6.1c.h4|1c.73.1c.73.1c.73.1c.73.1c.73.1c.73|2u.0.2u.0.3u.0.3u.0.2u.0.2u.0|0.k4a.k30.0.u13b|2m.1|33.34.39.3d.0|e

And here it is with full cavalier gear, prec/crit dmg food and +prec maintenance oil which scales off vit/tough.
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|c.1n.h4.c.1n.h14|6.1n.h4|1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73|2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.2v.0|0.k4a.k30.0.u13b|39.7|33.34.39.3d.0|e

Soldier:
Effective Power 2695.21
Health 23062
Damage Reduction 33.57%
Effective Health (EHP) 34719

Knight/Cavalier:
Effective Power 2827.5
Health 15082
Damage Reduction 40.79%
Effective Health (EHP) 25473

What’s the point of all the fuss around knight/cavalier if soldier gear gives you very almost the same amount of damage and a great deal more survivability?

Agree. Please buff mesmers. Totally rubbish class.

Yup.

Honest.

Buffs please.

sneakysneaky

With 20/20/0/0/30 spec, zerker gear and air runes – the air proc crits for 1800 in spvp.
I just can’t see how you’re getting 6k crits unless it’s nerfed in pvp.

Phira.3970:

So shatter or phantasm build? What are the top mesmers playing as?

I prefer sw/sw + sw/pi phantasm because it’s a guaranteed win 1v1 or almost a guaranteed kill + escape in a 2v1. Maybe I’m just not as good at playing shatter, but I just can’t get the damage output to match iswordsman.

How are tagging experiences in wvw with the above builds?
I usually run phantasm builds but with greatsword bugged my ability to tag mobs both in pve and wvw is terrible.

Let’s not be rude, or Jon won’t come back :p

Are rune of air crits nerfed in spvp or something?
The only place I’ve tried it out has been in the mists pvp zone and the damage was rubbish.

10/30/0/25/5 with sw/sw and sw/pistol. Take both sword and pistol traits.
Used properly this melts anyone in 1v1.
Rubbish at tagging in wvw, slow and poor escape mechanisms compared to other builds and phants die instantly in pve though.

Suppose I’ll just have to sell my greatswords!

Tagging with phant spec must be a pain.

What are you running in wvw post-confusion nerf?

Did you stick with confusion?
Shatter?
Phantasms?

Tell us

Aza.2105:

It maybe the highest dps in the game WHEN it hits. Problem is in pvp it never does really. The attacks are so slow and tend to miss the target even if they move slightly.

Also smite is just as bad. Sometimes the attacks do not register. Fixing skills 1 and 2 for scepter would be a big improvement. I’d actually use the weapon!

Don’t guardians have multiple immobilizes and stuns?
Have you tried chaining these into close range scepter spam?

My testing appeared to match pyro’s before the patch, I haven’t tested post patch.

Thanks for the reply Jon. I’m guessing that means the only bug is in the pop up number which tells us how much it did? When testing on golems I’ve previously had it do 700 dmg as full zerker spec, and it certainly didn’t look like his hp bar moved as though he really had been hit for 4k.

Osi you are counting on staff phase retreat and in many cases focus/armour runes.

Using focus is a bad idea if you are phant spec, as is staff in comparison to offhand sw or pistol. Phant specs definitely suffer most by sacrificing to get speed.

Yes. Most annoying when you’re in a 1v1 on the clock tower roof…

Centaur or air runes? Which do you guys prefer?

Xavi.6591:

Why wouldn’t you put 20 points in Dueling for clone on dodge trait?

I find that trait is good for shatter builds and skippable for phantasm builds.
For phantasm builds my duelist line is phantasmal fury, sword trait, pistol trait if going 30 points deep.

Thoughts post patch, everyone?

Interested to see what dawdler runs instead.
I found running phants in wvw to be counter productive because the best phant weapons are not three best escape weapons such as staff and focus, additionally they are the worst aoe weapons.
For reference I believe the best phant weapons to be sw/sw and sw/pistol in small combat where nuking an individual is important.

Because of that I believe shatter specs are better in wvw since you can run mobile weapons like staff and focus without crying about the loss of powerful phants, because you rely less on phants kittenter.

Well this sucks.