Guild Wars 2

so what could Toxin do as a new condition?
anyone wants to take a wild guess?

Haha, this is very nice idea.
May I just toss some thoughts on this to make it even more fun.

The idea is that the racers will need to portal and carry the 3 judges to the end of JP as well.
This will make this easy for the judges to observe who gets there first. At the same time, it will make the race has its mesmer Portal-fest flavour LOL.

The judges are not to make any jump at all, basically just look out for portals to move forward.

Edit: Obviously with this arrangement, racers must not use others’ Portal, using one will disqualify but wheres the fun in that!

@OP:
I play a P/P thief and nice to see someone like me welcome the new change to Body Shot. Lots of whining about it in the Thief forum.

From a mesmer point of view, we are already lacking good condition removal and now Immob. stacks in duration and Thief can spam it… Go figure xD

@Pyro:
How did confusion bomb build work before? This build type obviously predates my time in the game.
Did it rely on Cry of Frustration shatter?

DirtyHoudini.2917:

nosleepdemon.1368:

What I wouldn’t give for a game that gave assassins proper weapons, like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katara_

The Assassin in D2:LoD used that weapon…

Assassins in Ragnarok also dual wield Katars or Daggers.

The skill is quite buggy.
Unblockable doesn’t mean they can’t dodge it.
Make sure you have LoS and in range when you cast it, best to do it in stealth when you can position yourself properly.
That’s all I know about the skill.

Azo.5860:

traited pistol will not be %100 projectile finisher it ll be as on tool tips %20 projictile finisher

Thanks for clarifying. I know about this already, it’s a bug fix, not a nerf imo. Thought there was some other stealth nerf to confusion dmg.

Koala.2805:

How do you handle thieves? If any kind of thief jumps on me he r*pes me completely.

Most often thieves will try to CC you when they jump on you, break stun with Decoy, dont panic, sort yourself out.
Block his next few attacks, CC him and summon your phantasm when he’s not in stealth.
You’re now all set.

Wait, did they nerf confusion dmg yet gain?

Hi OP, low health pool = low chance to win against a heavy condition build.
Maybe you should consider getting more health and regen?
Just a thought.

OP clearly hasn’t experienced condition bursts from necros…
Full-blown conditions? They only apply BLEED on crit if they live long enough to do it.

Just a quick question? Do you use clone-death traits to deal dmg?

Here’s how the build works: (quoted from Pyroatheist)

So, I’ll just put down a quick analysis of how the blackwater build functions, and how to beat it.

The build applies conditions from several sources, but the most potent of these sources are clone deaths and the scepter torment block. However, both of these work much better if your enemy actually attacks you. Clones can be force-exploded, but there’s no guarantee that they will be in range, and so a careful opponent can avoid the on-deaths if they avoid damaging the clones.

However, with the exception of phantasm mesmers (for the most part) in order to kill you, they will have to attack you. This means they can get hit with your conditions. If a super bursty thief jumps on you, you can hit them with the block, a couple clones, and stealth out. Same deal with a warrior or engie or w/e. If they are actually attacking you, you counter with conditions.

A phantasm mesmer beats the build because they never have to attack. They can simply summon phantasms and let those beat the crap out of you, and most of your offense is disabled due to their lack of direct offense.

Hybrid builds are weak against this build simply because they offer nothing in abundance. This build has strong condition cleansing, and that means the partial conditions applied by a hybrid build will not be too powerful, and this build also has extremely high armor/good protection uptime, and so the partially strong damage that the hybrid build applies will simply not cut it to kill this build.

That being said, well played (non-phantasm) mesmers can be a royal pita to take down with this build because it’s so incredibly hard to actually get the block torment onto the right target. You have to use the block with specific skills to get it to work. Good candidates are chaos storm, confusing images, obvious shatters, and greatsword autoattacks. Once you land the torment, fights generally get finished rapidly.

You mention how it takes a long time to ramp up damage. This is not necessarily the case. The damage ramps up however quickly you are able to start applying counters. Often I’ll dismantle people within the first 10 seconds of a fight because of how offensive they go. Torment block + several clone explosions + confusing images + chaos storm can often kill lower hp classes outright (I have 2000 condition damage when roaming).

So in more explanatory terms, the rapid damage ramp-up is achieved by chaining together multiple quick condition applications. Drop a phantasm, get burning from the prestige, proc the block on an attack, a couple of dodges + chaos storm + confusing images can all be accomplished within 3-4 seconds, and that applies a massive condition load.

The key about this damage is you can’t always launch it right away. Direct damage specs will be able to jump right into combat, but this build needs to counter. If you face a person that just jumps right onto you, then you can counter immediately, but against someone that goes a little slower, you have to match their pace. You get a little more setup, a little more posturing, but once they go in, your counter burst is what kills.

Wait.. what?
IC doesn’t reduce iCounter CD?

Here u go, happy reading
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Lyssa-s-Grimoire-The-Mesmer-Handbook/first

Hi guys,

Based on what is shown on this official website: https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/the-game/professions/mesmer/, i think Mantras were meant to be just as good as Glamours as they are our SPECIAL skills.

The truth is, and i think everyone agrees, Glamours trump Mantras in almost every way.

The way I see it, Mantra is something so isolated from the rest of our class. It simply doesn’t synergize well with anything else. You either use Mantra or you don’t.

While I welcome the new buff to Mantra, it simply doesn’t address this issue of Mantras being lonely in their own world.

In this light, I would like to suggest my idea to improve on Mantras so they can integrate into our class better.

When you activate a mantra charge, you have 20% chance to spawn a clone.
Mantra of Pain/ Mantra of Distraction: clone spawned near target.
Mantra of Recovery/Resolve/Concentration: clone spawned at your location.

Also, the trait Harmonious Mantras no longer gives you extra charge but instead increases the clone spawn chance from 20% to 50%.

Now let me explain the logic behind my suggestion. There are 3 mantra traits in Dueling line, and thus compete fiercely with Deceptive Evasion. With this change, Deceptive Evasion is no longer a must-go-to that most builds rely on. You can have a mantra build with a decent clone generation rate.

So what do u guys think?
Please discuss.

Good builds are designed with a specific role in mind and based on a vivid idea. You can’t make a hybrid build just for the sake of being hybrid.

The problem with hybrid builds lies with its very definition. How do you define a hybrid build?
If it’s about dmg sources (direct and condition) then its really hard to define hybrid because ALL builds deal both types of damage (just differ in the proportions).

Another way to look at hybrid builds is the dual-role/function that build could perform effectively (like playing 2 roles at a same time). And if such a hybrid build does indeed exist, it would be very skill-demanding, not easy to pick up for an average player. And this is probably why hybrid builds are not popular.

Oh 1 thing I learned the hard way recently, "Warrior’s Signet of Might will render the Scepter block useless so watch out for it, I had some nasty surprises with it as this warrior kept CC me with his attacks and they just went past my block T_T. I used Moa to kill him eventually LOL, so no hard feeling now.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Additionally, toughness indirectly increases the strength of your heals, while vitality decreases it. The same strength heal heals for a lower % of your hp with a lot of vit, making it indirectly weaker.

Again, just my 2cents on this bit.
There are quite a few direct dmg skills in this game that gain increased dmg based on enemy health threshold (Heartseeker, anyone?).
This means, given a same healing power,

- with a high health pool with low toughness, its harder to heal to full, and your health is likely to stay at a low percentage (below 50% or even 25%) —> makes your enemy attacks stronger.

- on the other hand, a lower healthpool with higher toughness, you take less direct dmg and easier to heal to full, thus your health can be sustained to stay above the dangerous threshold.

Pyroatheist.9031:

-snip-

Just want to add Weakness is a good part of the build defense as well, just like you can almost perma-cripple your enemies, you can perma-weaken them, and thats (statistically speaking) 25% dmg reduction for you.

On a somewhat related note, a way to beat Blackwater i can think of:
- u need good condition removal (kinda obvious going up against a condition build)
- u need high single target dps (AoE will work against you as you keep killing clones)
- u need to attack the right mesmer

So a phantasm build would be your best bet (as Pyro already pointed out).

Or you can go condition build yourself and see who’s more tanky and can stack conditions faster.

EnderzShadow.2506:

about other classes that are glass cannon’ish builds.

OP, my reply is not meant to insult your skill or anything, just want to shed some light on the matter.

In principle, any condition build is a hard counter to glass-cannon build, because:

- they’re built to last for attrition fight with high defensive stats (they are tough and/or healthy with the use of Rabid, Carrion, and/or Dire gear)

- they deal condition dmg which ignores armor whereas GC builds need to crit thru armor and want to finish the fight as soon as they can. Thus the longer the fight gets, the more advantage the condition build gets.

Blackwater build is a really tough build to beat because it has both the passive defense (stats from gear) and active defense (block, stealth, boons, etc.). Decoy and Torch #4 are pretty much your 2 reset buttons when things go bad.

So I find it surprising that you have trouble fighting against bursty builds. My advice is to control the pace of the fight to your advantage by timing your block/disengage skills (bursty builds usually have hard and fast pace but if they lose the momentum, they’re losing the battle overall).

Now about the hybrid builds matter that Menace raised in this thread.
My view is that hybrid builds are not easy to play and master compared to more purist/specialist builds, that means if you encounter someone’s playing a hybrid build well. They must have great skill and they beat u because they outplay you, not because their build is better than Blackwater. Blackwater is a great build and it has been proved over and over many times.

There is no best build in general imo, only builds that best suit your style.

I run this build for laugh in WvW (yeah, not a serious min/maxer either), the idea is to be a glass-cannon as much as possible.
Link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAqa4YlUm6OXcS4E/5Ex2DfCUe6pAsitTxVtKA-jUCBYLDimgAmsIQUBgJPFRjtMsIasqFYqSER1eDFRrGA-w

In zerg fight, I just sneak around and look for enemy below 50% health, pop 2 signets to get 10 stacks of might, and Unload can crit for 10k for all 8 hits, so unless they go true bunker, it’s an instant down when they eat the whole attack.

Before I rarely used Body Shot because why do that when u can just Unload again.
I welcome this new change because Body Shot now acts as a utility and can offer some offensive support in group fight, for example, instead of spamming Unload, I can spam Body Shot and let my team down my trapped target.

Me Games Ma.8426:

True.
But most time before a autochain is done you have to use other skills like the block. This resets your autochain and you have to start again. I think many ppl do not have the right feeling for “now i first use my autochain til the end” and “now i have to use my other skills although my autochain resets”

Edit:
I think the scepter is one of the most skill requiering weapons a mesmer can use.

Totally agree with you here, people who have spent extensive time using sword or greatsword will have a hard time adapting to use scepter or staff even effectively. They need a whole new approach. As for me, I love scepter because it fits nicely with my counterplay/deceiving style.

One of my best experience: Revealed my position and invited an enemy thief with Confusing Images (Yes, I’m here and on low health, please HS me), then countered with… well, iCounter, he died before he could stealth away.

@Nretep:
I believe with Mantra of Concentration, the stability boon is AoE, but the stunbreak is for you only.

There are couple of things that people usually overlook when talk about Scepter #1:

- you won’t use the autoattack all the time, if it gets buffed, it just encourages boring gameplay and likely make Scepter OP with certain builds.

- the attack speed is affected by the projectile travel time, which means using it at melee range, it is just as fast as sword autoattack.

- the autoatttack chain is not reset when u don’t hit a target, which means u even can try to slash air with the first 2 of the chain then hit your target with Ether Clone.

All this is really important and it does somewhat explain the hidden philosophy behind scepter – Subterfuge

The scepter at first sight, looks like a mediocre weapon, in fact, u wanna try to make your enemies believe in it, until you get creative and punish them for underestimating its power.

Peace

I always thought Quickness increases skill recharge and movement speed as well. If not, then that would be my suggestion, no need to add boons to Time Warp, boons can be ripped, stolen, or worst, corrupted.

Terrahero.9358:

evilapprentice.6379:

“Sic em cannot be dodged” – I didn’t get a chance to watch the whole stream earlier (stopped after thief), and I just caught this watching the vid.

An unavoidable skill that locks a class mechanic…sigh Anet, just Sigh.

Stealth isnt your class mechanic.

Engineers have stealth, Mesmers have stealth, Rangers have stealth. Any smuck that happens across a smoke-field with a leap or blast has stealth.

Thief class mechanic is Intitiative.

And its not like you are suddenly the only one that has to deal with a counter. Example, i got an HgH Alchemy build. Its traitline is about boons and stacking boons, guess what, boons have a counter. Just like your stealth.

Ofcourse the counter to boons is far more abundant and far more severe. Rather then just, not being able to stealth for 4seconds (which is a reveal + 1sec) from 1 single ability on a long cooldown. I loose several cooldowns worth of stacking, across several cooldown cycles. To a spammable ability. Or one that cannot fail. Or even someone that picked up a certain sigil.

You have no right to complain. Its a joke that Stealth has gone so long without any counter as it is.

According the official website (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/thief/)

The following are part of thief class mechanic:
- the resource system: Initiative
- signature move: Steal
- special skills: Stealth skills, Shadowstep skills, and Dual skills.

So yes, stealth is part of the class mechanic and if u play the class, u know it’s a big,… no, huge part of it.

Other classes have access to stealth, sure, but they are nowhere as good as thieves, and they shouldn’t anyway.

I honestly just want to something simple like when u hit Shatter, phantasms will attack for the last time before they go kamikaze.

Hi skcamow, cool build. Interesting choice of rune and investment in healing power.

Just a comment in the blind from glamours from my own experience running a similar build:
The blind persists even if the target moves out of your glamors and its an AoE blind. Feedback has no cast time and Null Field has 1/4s cast time, so it’s a guaranteed hit.
It takes some practice with the timing/positioning of your AoE cast to negate enemy bursts completely. Sometimes, its simply a matter of putting Null Field on cap point to deny enemy team to cap that point, thus a bunker build. In WvW, your glamours can act as area denial additionally.

I agree with Chaos that if you want to go full support with this build, in WvW zerg fight, Retaliation should be invested in (Cry of Frustration, Leap combo with Light Field) so that any attack gets thru Blind and will meet with Retaliation, punish the enemies even more.

Alternatively, you can spec full condition with Blind & Confusion working together as control conditions —> a lockdown build with soft CC rather than hard CC (daze, stun).

skcamow, have u tried Imbued Diversion instead of iPersona, you probably wont have good clone generation to shatter a lot, so might as well get the AoE daze and chain it with blind to completely lock down enemy’s skill usage.
Just a thought.

@OP:

There is a 0.5s window between the block and the counter (clone is made, a direct dmg is inflicted and torment is applied to target)
During this very short window:

- you’ll be rooted, if you move or dodge the counter will not happen.
- you’ll be extremely vulnerable, you can take dmg from other attacks or that same attack u just blocked if it’s a multi-hit attack. Be prepared to get hurt and don’t dodge by instinct or you’d waste your torment.
- there is a range check
- the counter will not happen if target evades/blinds/goes invul. etc.

Tips on how to land the counter:
The key is that you must not let enemy know that you’re gonna block before they launch their attack. If they can see you holding the scepter up (the channel animation), then they’ll most likely:
– not attack at all
– attack and prepare their dodge timely when they see the blocked popup.

If the enemy doesn’t know that their attack is gonna be blocked, they have exactly half a second to react when they see the blocked popup. And 0.5s is too short of a window for an average person to react to.

The skill has 2s channel but i never let the channel run past the first second and wait for an attack. If that happens, i just use counterspell for the blind and consider the block has been wasted. Its all about good timing.

juno.1840:

I swear they were dodging almost continuously out of stealth. Someone said they can build for three dodges, but not having a thief I don’t know.

I’m leveling a thief at the moment and gotta say thieves have plenty of ways to get perma-evade

- Lots of skills with evade built-in
- Lots of traits to get vigor and regain endurance
- Dagger auto attack gains endurance

Feline grace is a trait that alone by itself effectively enables u to have 3 dodges and its a minor trait.
>.<

With the contest is now concluded, I just want to express my special thanks to the following individuals who made the event possible and successful.

ORB Members

Chaos Archangel
Fay
Pyroatheist

Participants

Sensotix
Zen
Kaamau
Narsil
Natsu Dragneel
Arkedi
skcamow
Deathcon

Voters

Alissah
Advent
Xaylin
Marsares
Nikked
Gozzo
Warlord of Chaos
Gingelyr
Eliyahu
Dietzen
Cares Less
Requiem
Nubu
Reesha
Rskin
WitchKing

Thanks again and I’m looking forward to your continuing support in future events of the guild.

Hi Chaos,
Thanks for your kindness.

If you dont mind, please test out my Clone Spammer build. That would be much appreciated.

The original build thread is in my sig, but its kinda outdated. So please use this updated version: http://tinyurl.com/lrevr7p

The build is meant to be a control build with Confusion condition, AoE perma-cripple and 2 solid single-target stuns. It can hold on its own in dueling, or 1vX situations, but really shines in group fight as offensive support role from my past experience.
The choice of condi removal utility, sigils, and runes is flexible. What I have there is just personal preference.

I am busy in PvE farming karma and fractal relics for my legendary, #cough# Obsididan Shards #cough#. Besides, my skills with mesmer are not really polished so I can’t realize the full potential of the build.

Anyway, hope u’ll have fun testing it in WvW and thanks for your time.

@Chaos: a bit off topic but how do you change the text size in post?

Hi guys, with the ORB results posted by Pyro above, we now have the final scores for the participating builds. Please check the scoreboard in OP.

I am here to announce the winner is Natsu Blackwater Build with the total score of 39.5 pts. Congratulations to Natsu and Arkedi.

The rewards have been chosen as suggested by the winners and sent to them accordingly.
Natsu gets Bone Pick and Arkedi gets Braham’s Heavy Armor Skin.
I uploaded screenshots here as confirmation of the award.

CHEERS!

same issue here, so the bump

@ Chaos: thanks for the update. Sounds like we guys have been working on a standard testing framework and thus the Stage 2 tests for this event is still in conception stage. However, I really appreciate your continuing work on this, with a standard framework to test builds, this can be used easily and quickly for future contests.

I myself will probably make some changes in the next contest regarding how the build can be evaluated closely but easily, maybe some alternative mean to the current in-game tests we have at the moment. I’ll keep u guys posted.

@ WitchKing: thanks for voting.

Hi guys, as we all know there is a big patch coming up in about 2 weeks, which is already half-way into October, I figure I give people sometime to play around with new mantra changes while I spend time think more about how to improve the contest and arrange a solid support team to organize November contest, this is me talking about the best scenario btw.

Hi guys

Today is supposed to be the last day for BotM September contest.
However, regrettably, the contest has received little to none interest and on top of that, I have received no information regarding to Stage 2 tests from the ORB. I don’t know whether they have been discussed, arranged, or done.

I am here to extend the contest until this weekend and if I still receive nothing from the ORB members I will proceed to award the winning team based on the popularity votes only.

In the meantime, I welcome your continued support so that we can see this contest to the end.

Cheers

PS: With this extension, there will be no BotM contest event for October and it is unclear another one could/should be done for November, at least until we can muster an adequate amount of interest and support from our guild members.

Reesha.7901:

This was a difficult choice, but I have to go with:

+1 To the Natsu Blackwater build.

I find it to be a really strong and survivable roaming build. It has solid sustained damage and good condition cleansing.
It is fun to play and with Veil, Decoy, The Prestige and mass invisibility is feels very mesmer’ish when adding to the element of confusing your opponent. Most people do have a hard time actually pinpointing you when you are popping in and out of stealth.

On top of that, I love that a killed clone is not a useless clone due to Crippling Dissipation and Debilitating Dissipation.

Not sure if you’re aware of this but you can vote for more than one build. In fact, if you like them all, you can +1 for all of them.

Anyway, thanks for voting.

Bump. Come on guys, the end of the contest is drawing near.

Just one thing incorrect about Turret skill #1 in the video, it’s not entirely useless.
During stun phases, Turret users should spam this skill since it deals around 9k dmg per shot to Tequatl, really boost the overall dmg. However, outside of stun phases, turret users should never ever touch this kill.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Thedenofsin.7340:

- a mechanism such that the overall success of said group hinges primarily on 6 players

Unfortunately, a lot of people who fail this event a lot tend to blame the Turret gunners. But that is incorrect. You need all players in the fight to understand their tasks. This is a team fight. If Turrets fail, you all fail. If defenders fail, you all fail. If the main attacking group fails, you all fail.

I’m sorry you’re unable to complete the fight. I’m sure with time and practice, your server can pull it off. This is permanent content, so there’s no real rush.

QFT

The success depends all 3 teams doing their job properly and support one another.

Zerg fails, mob rush to turrets —> defenders fail —> turrets fail —> zerg fails.

Question to OP: what sort of build is best to operator turret?

I’m not convinced that you know how to operate a turret properly based on what u said in this thread, so please don’t trivialize people’s hard work.

Teq fight is not a dps race. World record is set at 7.42s at the moment, which means a sub-optimal dps zerg can make it in time with proper organization.
Every build (full dps, bunker, support, healer, crowd control, lockdown etc.) has its place in the event.

Chaos, again, great piece of work. This is truly amazing, really appreciate your effort.

There is no healer class, but there is healer build for any class.

Hi guys, just a quick reminder we are one week away from the end of the Contest.
How are our participants doing with Stage 2 tests?

@ Nubu: the scoreboard has been updated with your vote. Thanks for voting.

Please keep on voting guys.

Cheers

@Chaos: my experience with Crippling Dissipation (and I’ve been using this trait since start of my mesmer) is that you need to couple it with Confusion to get the best effects, in other words, to truly lock down opponents.

Slower base movement speed wont hurt much if your enemies can still jump around with movement skills. Thus with Confusion (preferably high stacks) added, enemies will get hurt no matter what they do.

I hope that helps with your decision to choose between Crippling Dissipation and Halting Strike.

Alissah.9281:

A fight of the month contest would leave support and bunker builds out though.

And you can already make videos for your build to better tempt people in voting :P

Maybe add a line in the guild recruitment thread that links to this one? I feel like that one is much more popular.

edit: ninja’d by pyro :o.
edit: oh, and this thread has more views than the recruitment thread, for some reason :P

Its also up to the participating teams to redirect the people commenting in their own build thread to this thread to get them to vote. Natsu has been demonstrating how it can be done in his Blackwater Mesmer build thread and his signature. I strongly suggest Kaamau and Sensotix can help us out in similar ways too.

Too many OPs in your post, that might trigger some of Anet’s nerf protocol… just kidding… welcome to mesmer forum.