6/6/0/0/2 is better only if you don’t plan on summoning phantasms (terribad mes), want to maximize reflects and are not wearing assassins armor (terribad mes, kinda), or have 0 might/fury/vuln (nobody cares about dps in those parties anyways).
Afaik, 6/6/0/0/2 is pretty much [SC]‘s standard requirement for a mesmer trialee to have a clean Lupi kill in their organized runs. Personally, I don’t have the balls to go for such extremity but witnessing how it works proves to me that “terribad mesmer” is just your opinion.
I took the “terribad mes” jab at the gear type, not the buid. It was an extreme but has merit.
And of course, time to scrutinize the mesmer section:
For 2/4/0/5/3 drop Blade Training and get Phantasmal Haste, ending up with 2/3/0/5/4. Now you are doing .5% more dps than the previous build with 1 phantasm, 1.87% more dps with 2 phantasms, and 3.5% more dps with 3 phantasms.
6/4/0/0/4 is more dps than 6/6/0/0/2 with 1 or more phantasms in fully buffed scenarios. Also, will allow you to perma-reflect with just 2 wardens. 6/6/0/0/2 is better only if you don’t plan on summoning phantasms (terribad mes), want to maximize reflects and are not wearing assassins armor (terribad mes, kinda), or have 0 might/fury/vuln (nobody cares about dps in those parties anyways).
I’m preparing an updated buglist. Might take some time to go through the rest of the thread to add any new bugs that are not in the OP. I’ll post here once the new thread is up.
I have reported and sent videos of quite a few myself. Result? They finally got patched nearly 1 whole kitten year later.
Yeah, they have to look. I checked video history and the submitted videos were always viewed either the same or the following day. After that? Not a single view.
Seriously, there’s a reason why I included this. If a build happens to be extremely proc heavy, or natively stack a lot of ferocity, then knights becomes better offensively.
Ok, I took out all on-crit damage procs from my calculations. Both Soldier and Knight builds had exactly +16% critical damage (236 ferocity) which is just pathetic compared to a proper zerks +56% (845 ferocity). The 0/0/0/0/0 build Soldier/Knight tests had +2% (36 ferocity). It would be stupid to call either those “a lot of ferocity”.
No Might / No Fury
2,039 dps – Celestial
2,132 dps – Soldier
2,276 dps – Knight
25 Might / Fury
3,116 dps – Soldier
3,286 dps – Celestial
3,438 dps – Knight
Now, the same test but with a 0/0/0/0/0 build (because pug builds are equally horrible)
No Might / No Fury
1,137 dps – Celestial
1,311 dps – Soldiers
1,339 dps – Knights
25 Might / Fury
1,969 dps – Celestial
1,987 dps – Soldiers
2,129 dps – Knights
Same story, Knights is better than Soldier. Under full might/fury Celestial actually becomes BETTER than soldiers but still not as good as Knights. Not sure why you keep refusing to accept the inevitable. Soldiers gear is just terribad no matter how you look at it.
Case in point looking at the two sets under your circumstances:
Pre buffs: 2040 effective power soldier vs 1880 effective power knights.
Post might and fury: 3220 effective power soldiers vs. 3155 effective power knight.
Post might no fury: 2933 soldiers vs. 2833 knight
Post Fury, no might: 2240 soldiers vs. 2040 knight
Guan, you have a serious case of disconnect with reality. You, just like ANet devs, are simply ignoring the fact of how severe the current bugs in the class are.
I’m sure many of those who truly enjoy playing the class are still playing it. It’s just that for quite a few the iLeap fix/nerf was the final blow that broke their spirit. It’s like a relationship with an abusive girlfriend who you still love. She hurts you yet you endure it, but only to a certain point. There does come a time when you just say it’s not worth it and move on.
If you, Guan, are truly playing a mesmer atm then you are still in the honeymoon phase. You simply have not experienced enough of these bat-to-the-head blows ANet is dealing to the class with almost every patch.
I have an interesting idea. Press 3 and a 1s countdown starts after which a clone spawns and leaps to your target. If you actually tap 3 within that 1s countdown, YOU leap on the target leaving a clone behind.
Something like a combination of pre-launch #2 and #3.
It’s not a case of you moving outside the range during the cast and thus failing to summon the clone. There is a small range past 600 where there is no red bar below the skill yet the skill will activate and of course – fail. It’s a bug, nothing less.
In the past few weeks I now have had multiple people claim that Timewarp lowers Fiery Rush’s dps. Where did this idea came from?? From all my tests Timewarp does NOT lower rush’s damage output.
I have counted and rush does exactly 68 ticks both with and without timewarp. Here’s how I tested it:
- Mind Spike now deals extra damage against boon-less targets.
While they did “fix” the different coefficient trigger when your enemy has no boons, they also lowered it’s damage by 10%. It was both a fix and a ninja nerf all in one.
Easiest with a thief but doable solo with every class except mesmer and necro. Or, can always get an friendly ele to summon you a LH and do the jump with the conjure.
@frifox
thank you for the fast answer. That is The perfect scenario and I apologise for mentioning that. But I also said pvp and as you know you cannot always be hitting the target, running, not always having 2, lets not mention 3, phantasms out.
My weapons choice is pistol and swordman. Yes, a phantasms only comparison would be really appreciated, thanks!
PS: no mantra trait, no sigils. For runes either pack or ranger
Assuming you are running Berserker jewel & Ranger runes and have Dominaion IX and Dueling II equipped. PvP environment with no might, against a standard decap engi with no protection (3,063 armor).
Expected damage per unload.
6/6/0/2/0
Swordsman (base): 1,548 direct + 215 bleed = 1,763 unload
Swordsman (crit): 3,196 direct + 215 bleed = 3,411 unload
Duelist (base): 1,764 direct + 1,717 bleed = 3,481 unload
Duelist (crit): 3,642 direct + 1,717 bleed = 5,359 unload
4/4/0/6/0
Swordsman (base): 1,691 direct + 186 bleed = 1,877 unload
6/6/0/2/0 will have 9.1% more sustained dps than 4/4/0/6/0.
6/6/0/2/0 will have 9.9% more sustained dps than 2/5/0/5/3.
6/6/0/2/0 will have 7.0% less sustained dps than 6/4/0/0/4.
ps: this is combined damage meaning phantasms + you constantly attacking with the sword. if you want phantasm only dps comparison then let me know.
After some testing came to an interesting but probably not a surprising conclusion. Alpha’s armor value is exactly 2,600.
Why is this useful? Knowing that you can get to him and use him as an test dummy that doesn’t hit back (just like the test golems in HotM) with almost no effort, he is a perfect test material for those interested in calculating skill coefficients and similar theorycraft-fü in PvE environment.
And also being aware that phantasms have only 5.8k HP and are as glassy as their owner which is completely ridiculous once you compare it to ranger’s fav dps pet, jaguar, who has 25k HP and 1,374 toughness even if their owner is glass cannon.
On a 2,600 target with 6/4/0/0/4 (assasins armor/weapons) and ALL offensive buffs swordsman will hit for 7,057 – 8,625. If we let him inherit all the damage modifiers from gear he’ll hit for 9,593 – 11,725. That’s a 36% increase and knowing that with 3 phantasms out the split between mes and phantasm dps is around 50/50 so mes as a class then would get at most an 18% dps boost.
Anything that affects the core stats will transfers to phantasms. Whatever you see in your hero panel under “Power”, “Precision”, “Ferocity” is what phantasms will use as their own stats. Might increases “Power” so yes, it will transfer to phantasms. “Critical Chance” and “Critical Damage” and anything that modifies them however will be ignored by phantasms.
Yeah, to do perma reflect with 2 wardens you need PH, and that’s what your’re sacrificing with 2/4/0/5/3 – perma reflect traded for better initial damage burst.
Correct, which is why I said it’s an “anecdotal” evidence. I didn’t bother actually calculating anything past some quick napkin math, which is swordsman doing 15% more dps with the fixed ph trait compared to pre april 15th patch when ph was practically useless.
For the question above, solo or meta dungeon party? Those builds compare differently depending on the environment.
Yea he had 1 clone, 1 swordsman, and 1 warden. Compared to 2 swordsmans and 1 duelist that’s right about 20% less dps. Signet was introduced Dec 10th and his video is dated also Dec 10. If instead the signet was used to summon 3 dps phantasms the time should have been 16sec x 0.8 = 12.8sec. Ferocity nerf in April lowered glass mesmer dps by nearly the same amount so kill time probably would have jumped right back to 16 sec.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s truly intentional because that would require devs to be quite evil. However, I do think they are quite happy with the end result no matter what is the cause.
The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.
Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.
Dev considered consumables that summon AI pets a “bug” because they put a lot of stress on the servers. Mesmers summon and destroy these “AI pets” every few seconds. Mesmers therefore cause the most stress on the servers. Devs keep ignoring our bugs and constantly keep nerfing the class. Players are so fed up that they give up and leave the class for something that is actually viable and works. Less mesmers = happy servers. Looks like this is dev’s hidden agenda and they are finally achieving it.
The end of this podcast is just one of examples.
PS: I know this is a bit anecdotal but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true, even if devs will surely deny it publicly.
Granted, jerem did say he wasn’t going for a record with his attempts but 16s was definitely record fast back then, a time I couldn’t beat when I was trying before the patch.
I have made a mathematical comparison and the difference between 2/4/0/4/4, 2/4/0/5/3, 2/3/0/5/4, and 5/4/0/5/0 builds was less than 2% at most. Just run whatever you are more comfortable with. 6/4/0/0/4 on the other hand was about 15% more dps than all of the above, which is why it is the meta right now.
And, mesmer wasn’t nerfed, it simply gotten a harder to pull off the mad dps we used to easily do with that one-build-for-everything setup. Now you have to work twice as hard to avoid being a dead weight on your party during a dungeon run.
In fact, there are cases where you can pull off MORE dps than before the “nerf” patches.
While it’s awkward at first you eventually get used to it and it becomes easy. Same can be said about using torch 4 as a blast finisher. Nobody in their right mind will use torch in actual combat in PvE dungeons. So ooc weapon reslotting is the obvious answer. Double click torch, use #4, double click focus/pistol, expect a blast finisher in about 3 seconds. Personally I found it difficult at first but after constantly using it to blast ele fire fields In dungeons it became very natural and now do it all the time. In fact, same can be said about swapping traits and utilities between fights (and even trash running) ooc. To be a better mesmer you HAVE to get used to the idea that you will be swapping traits, utilities, and weapons constantly when ooc.
Thanks for the tips, but I have a ‘and what then?’ question. I’m just levelling a mesmer now. Having come from a thief background I thought swords were a good way to go (S/S S/P), but I’m having trouble keeping everything flowing.
If I’m maintaining/resummoning phantasms then I’m just stood there auto-attacking and dying.
If I’m dodging around to stay alive then I’m interrupting my own casting for all the good stuff like mantras and phantasms.
Alternatively I can drop back out of melee to get my illusions up again, but then I’m losing dps by not hitting anything.
Any tips?
Time your Sword 2 evade to mitigate high damage hits. Also, use Sword 4 block to mitigate single hits but only if absolutely necessary as it will overwrite a high dps phantasm with a crappy clone if you had 3 of them up. Otherwise use it on cooldown because it’s one of the hardest hitting skills we have. Good example of using those two together @1:13 and on in this video:
If you can, always try to summon phantasms on one side of the mob and then move around to the other in order to minimize how much your glassy phantasms get hit. If phantasms still die too fast, try summoning a duelist or two at a near max range and then moving in to melee. Quite often duelists will be safe from any danger at distance steadily dps’ing enemy without interruptions.
Stopping your dps to summon/resummon phantasms and mantras unfortunately something you can’t avoid. The best you can do is plan ahead and time your summons and mantra charging to minimize interruptions. This one is achieved mostly from practice and experience. Once you are comfortable with the class and dungeon encounters planning ahead will be a second nature to you. It’s only difficult initially but gets easier the more you play.
There are, however, fights like in the video I posted above where it’s nearly impossible to keep 3 phantasms up so at that point you simply summon them when they’re off cooldown when you can/want and focus on buffing your personal dps and staying alive instead. That’s one of the main weaknesses when playing a phantasm mesmer, phantasms die too easily :/
The biggest weakness with dps-spec mesmers is the horribly slow time it takes you to reach 3 active phantasms for max dps. Most of the time (in speedruns) the fights are either done or are well past 50% by the time you reach that point. Luckily, there are a few tricks you can do to minimize that dps downtime. Below I’ll run down through 3 most commonly used ones along with a video showing how it’s done.
Level 1: When you don’t have the line-of-sight to the mob until he’s right on top of you. This is most common in dungeons that utilize the “los the boss” technique. Expected first-hit to max-dps time is 5 to 7 seconds:
Level 2: When you don’t have the line-of-sight to the mob but can handle some split-second click-fü at the start of the fight. The trick is to summon 3 different high dps phantasms without actually using the healing signet by re-equipping weapons before you get into combat. Expected first-hit to max-dps time is 3 to 5 seconds:
Start summoning Berserker
As skill is casting, double click Focus or Pistol in your inventory
Level 3: When you have clear line-of-sight to the mob from 1,200 away. The trick is to use the time it take the Swordsman to reach the mob to actually summon other phantasms. Expected first-hit to max-dps time is 1 to 3 seconds:
