Guild Wars 2

Ruby orbs are pretty trash though these days. Ranger runes at the very least should be used.

Pokecenter.3548:

Screw it, im not reading the second page. This thread annoyed me quite a bit at some point, but at least now i know that Mantras are not viable. I was curious about them, i only use the one to give me stability at certain dungeons, or the other to cleanse conditions. Still, i may try a more oriented Mantra build sometime later.

Mantras are super viable for dungeons, and appear in most of the maximum DPS builds. The lack of sustain doesn’t matter so much in PvE, where mobs won’t notice you channeling and might not even be alive long enough to require re-charging in fight.

Pokecenter.3548:

Didn’t Brazil said something along those lines on a Mesmer video he did after the April patch? About how good the Assassin’s+Ranger runes could be.

He said that in one of his updates. There was a good discussion on reddit about some of these points. He was pointing out that you could do zerker + ranger effectively, to avoid having to invest in assassin’s, but it seems like assassin’s + ranger is working very well here.

I feel like I dodged a bullet with all these posts because I started playing the game so late (last summer). The community, especially here and at guru, seems to have settled down by then on the correct points, so I was never misled by GS shatter specs or fun things like that.

thank goodness anet has already said a thousand times that selling paths is legal and they have no intention to change that!

And anyway, how do you know they were selling it? Did you see it pop up on LFG? They could have just given it to a friend for free, so your solution on “banning selling” wouldn’t help. Removing kicking from the game is so “lol” that I won’t even address it.

Given that anet is not going to do what you suggest, you should consider other ways of making sure you don’t get scammed.

lol at those solutions

I’ll poke you when I get home (currently living EU but still playing NA). Can’t promise super high quality, but happy to help if you need another.

I think most folks have been assuming Scholar runes instead of Ranger, which gives you a lot more precision.

You have no stacking weapons here either?

frifox’s calculator doesn’t support rotations like yours, Zelhyn— it just tells you a DPS for a build + combination of phantasms.

This is good enough for mesmers… we basically only have one good weapon (mainhand sword), and cast time for all the phantasms is identical. The only thing that matters when comparing mesmer builds is just the DPS of the traits + gear + phantasm combinations, since summon times, etc. are constant across all variations. This is of course very different in ele, where there are tons of different weaponsets you need to compare and therefore you need the full rotations to have any idea about comparisons. Mesmers get away with something much more like Effective Power because there is a little less variety in what you can do.

Anyway, a full mesmer rotation is kind of annoying because it is very situational. Phantasms die and need re-summoning, but only if the fight is going to go on for a while longer, etc. etc. This is why knowing the personal damage (which you can always rely on) vs phantasm damage (which can be sporadic/unreliable) is so nice.

Finally, afaik Blurred Frenzy is a minor DPS loss (and you don’t get the boon strip + vuln from the auto-attack). But if it saves you a dodge, it’s a DPS gain, of course.

EDIT: One final thought— you bring up exactly why it’s hard to compare mesmer DPS to other classes. The question of “how long does it take to summon your phantasms” and “how reliably will they stay up” is a big part of deciding how mesmer DPS compares to others. But this is hugely situational, so figuring out the exact timing with a lot of assumptions may not be very helpful.

hendo.1940:

Goon for Hire.7150:

You want proof about stacking not being intended? There’s no need to get a developer for this, because it’s in the game already. Living story has implemented plenty of mechanics specifically to get people out of this mindset.
.

Waitwhat? Most new content basically cries to be facerolly zerged.

The Marionette even required stacking in small groups to be effective.

dutchiez.7502:

Yaki.9563:

the lack of risk is you exploiting and stacking so that you never have to get hit by boss special moves.

toppest kek

another AC hero i see

It works.

There’s an identical thread on the front page with some responses already:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Current-Build-Help-PvE/first#post4011736

Dynia.5038:

Hi,
I was trying to level my mesmer char and since I’m almost at lvl 80, it’s time I started looking for a viable build for my mesmer. What are the popular and viable builds?

For what content? Open world pve, dungeons, wvw?

Interesting, thanks pyro. The cap would explain why I thought that.

Strength is great for pugging/ starting out because of all the solo might gain you get get. But at 80+ gp for a full set, it’s kind of ridiculous, and if you have a good party scholar is better anyway.

If you already have scholar, just stick with it.

Toeofdoom.6152:

If the op means viable as in “accepted meta pve/PvP build”, yeah, it’s not happening. If it’s just about having something that holds up reasonably well, this would work.
1. In some builds/teams you might have aoe fury going off anyway.
2. In PvP with gs/staff and restorative mantras you would have a lot of ranged damage and quite a bit of survivability.
3. In pve with melee weapons it should be within about 10% of 6/2/0/4/2.

I’m 99% certain that Phantasms don’t get fury from party buffs, just like they don’t directly get might stacks from your party. They only inherit primary stats like precision and power from you. That’s why your might stacks help your phantasm (because might buffs your power), but fury doesn’t, because fury affects crit chance directly and not precision.

maha.7902:

you need to use a movement key to break out of hundred blades and then dodge

and if you don’t feel comfortable doing that just make sure you have ww up whenever you hb

also hi everyone

My goodness, another account! hallo

Most pugs aren’t meta/dps/zerker at all. Don’t join groups that specify “experienced zerker speed clear” and you’ll be fine running whatever you want. The community that cares about playing as well as possible is much smaller than the broad community, and the most “elitist” folks avoid pugs anyway.

frifox.5283:

No assumptions are made, there is no real need to make any. Stats with 0/0/0/0/0 should cover that. You can use gw2skills editor to equip whatever gear you want (weapons, armor, trinkets, and runes) and copy/paste the base stats you get with that combo into spreadsheet.

The reason on spreadsheet you can choose different weapon quality is because different weapon tiers have different strengths (and stats too so adjust 0/0/0/0/0 accordingly) and that in turn also affects your damage output.

I see. Thanks!

This is so cool. I’ve been playing with it for a little while now. Very cool how you can test/play with almost every single trait and configuration!

One question though— I haven’t seen where we input armor choices. Are you assuming full exotic zerk for the equipment?

PvE: 6/6/0/0/2 with full mantras + feedback is the “full DPS” build. 6/4/0/4/0, again with full mantras + feedback, helps you keep up 100% reflect uptime with traited wardens. These are the two builds I, and many others, switch between depending on how many reflects we need. Always using sword/sword and sword/focus, and taking all traits which maximize damage and reduce cooldowns. Gear can be complicated… a mix of berserker’s and assassin’s is probably the best, but assassin’s can be a pain if you’ve invested heavily in berserker’s already. One option is to run berserkers and stack perception, which is what I’m doing now.

Other alternatives without mantras are 5/4/0/5/0, 2/4/0/5/3, 2/4/0/4/4. These are all more or less equivalent— they do a little bit less damage than the 6/x builds above, but are easier to run because you don’t need all the mantas on your bar all the time. They all also maintain full reflect uptime with the traited wardens.

If you’re starting out, I recommend one of the 2/4 builds (doesn’t matter which one). After you play with things for a while, you can switch to mantras if you want to get closer to the “best” builds.

How cool! This is excellent, and super clear and easy to use. I’ll start validating insofar as I can. Thanks for this excellent resource!

Toeofdoom.6152:

6/0/0/5/3 for a mantra/phantasm build would work, but would not have many mantra or weapon traits and loses vigor on crit.

No one would run this because you miss Phantsmal Fury. That’s a huge source of damage in a phantasm build.

We still run full zerk in level 30+ fractals where bosses can take much, much longer to kill. Staying alive with only active defenses on a 50 moss man is an accomplishment.

Longbow is better. You get a fire field, a blast, and blind options.

hendo.1940:

Immediately after patch I thought of 30/10 but then the fact that you can just switch traits in dungeons means that you can honestly just switch between 20 illusions and 20 inspirations dependent on whether you want focus reflects, plus you don’t have to give up blade training that way.

Yes, I much prefer this myself because I like Blade Training so much. But Brazil’s option isn’t bad either, I don’t think.

There are some more-or-less meta PvE builds that only put 2 in dueling these days (Brazil’s 6/2/0/4/2 for example). Still have to take the II trait for Phantasmal Fury no matter what, though.

The problem, Mike, is that everything staff guard can do, someone else can do better. All it “brings” is 12 short duration might stacks, which are easily outclassed by ele, engi, and warrior sources of might. They give a bit of swiftness, so staff is a useful running weapon, but that’s it.

Reflects, condi clear, stability, aegis— the other things staff guards can do which are useful— can be done just as well with full dps weapons like sword, great sword, or hammer.

Thinking a bit more, there was one assumption I was making— that using either weaponset, the guard would be more or less attacking with the same consistency, and with good rotations. If you have the sword guard kiting around like a bad, obviously that is going to lower the DPS and make them indistinguishable. If the rest of the party is bads and keeping DPS super low/sporadic, than it’s even more likely to be indistinguishable.

Maybe this is the “situation” he’s talking about? In which case, OK, bads are bads and pugs are pugs and all bets are off.

DigitalKirin.9714:

oilstorm.1748:

Right, ignore my claims.

Getting into this conversation late, sorry. What were your claims? (In a nutshell would be great, thanks!)

He claims that he has never been slowed down by a staff guardian, I think (that kill times from a staff guard can be similar as with another type of guard).

In the “everything dies from FGS in 2 hits” limit, that’s of course correct and reasonable. In the case of actual content and real, non-trivialized fights (like Obal’s solos) it is patently false.

PS obal’s videos are not anecdotes. They each sample the distribution of damage from the respective weapon hundreds of times. This is reliable data.

Hi, I’m the other physicist on the forum.

Wow, you are too funny! Most (all) physicists are basically statisticians through their extensive use of stats. You do know that each hit from most weapons is drawn from a discrete uniform random distribution right? Normally, if you were who you said you were I could stop right there and not need to explain more. However… Its clear you dont understand the innate variance from each random variable drawn. Its ok, I’ll explain. Someone using a staff could potentially get the same KILL TIME as someone using some other weapon, given the right conditions, even a ‘zerger’. Have your courses covered variance yet?

Is the dumbest thing I’ve read today. Congratulations, internet troll, for thinking you understand statistics.

You have two separate distributions, with different means, which you’re sampling randomly. In the small N limit, which happens when you’re fighting trash or mobs when you’re super-downscaled and everything takes 1-2 hits to kill, the sampled distribution may look very different from the underlying distribution— and you may even get weird situations like a knight’s staff killing something faster than a zerker sword. In the large N limit, as the sampled distribution is guaranteed to approach the underlying distribution you’re sampling, fluctuations like what I just described die out. Over the course of fighting a longer lasting boss like Lupicus or Archdiviner, the chance of a statistical fluctuation like what you are describing drops to basically 0. Yes, congratulations that you know that a fluctuation is always possible.

It’s like rolling a d6 vs a d10. In the limit of low number of tries, you might find that the d6 has a higher average, because the d10 got unlucky a few times and the d6 got lucky. That’s not unreasonable. As you keep rolling, and the sampled distributions approach their true, uniform distribution, than the mean becomes more stable and the d10 is revealed to be higher. (Except it’d be more like a 1d6 vs. 1d6+4).

Bad troll is bad.

Xyonon.3987:

Nope. You trait in the “bullkitten” trait line to get there wich decreases your dmg in general. Noone need condition damage or shatter cdr in pve. WvW and PvP is someting else.

As for PvE I’d rather recommend 6/4/0/4/0 or 5/4/0/5/0 (<2 mantras) instead of 2/4/0/4/4 or 2/4/0/5/3.

I’m not sure why you say this. Illusions has a +9% damage trait in the III, and a global phantasm cooldown at the Master minor (which gets your iSwordsman cooldown to ridiculously low). Inspiration is great for many purposes (glamour cooldown and reflecting focus is great), but it’s strictly less damage than Illusions, and the healing power + vitality is useless in PvE as well. It’s of course absolutely fine to take Inspiration for the reflect uptime, but if you can only take one line between Illusions and Inspirations, it’s Illusions which maximizes DPS.

(And I know appeal to authority is not a particularly strong rhetorical argument, but the maximum DPS builds from DnT and rT and so on reflect what I wrote above).

DutchRiders.2871:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

ele seems to take aggro from a lot of mobs, Tazza included.

other examples – lupi phase 3 (tossup between ele, guard – though ele normally takes aggro), COE golem (and the trash mob golems laser eles in my experience)

Now you mention it,did definitely experience extreme focus when fighting the COE golem. Luckily the NPC usually gets it.

Gah, I faceplant on this boss on ele so much, and rarely if ever on mesmer/warrior. Now I have an excuse! (besides the fact that i’m a bad)

I can’t say I’ve noticed the same with Tezza, but I almost always play s/f + LH on her, so I’m almost always attacking in melee. I think I get more aggro on her as warrior, usually, but I could be wrong.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Emanuel.9781:

tips top hat

That you or your partner in the photo? Looking very dapper.

got a real hard hitter here, folks, watch out

“experienced heavy zerkers only” for SEp3. Have 3 guards in the group. At least we’ll have plenty of reflects for the first champ, right?

Nooope. Instant party wipe, not a wall in sight. gg pugs, you win today.

Slither Shade.4782:

I married a BearBow. Then we had BearBow junior. Then the other child made the exact same character I first made which was a male asuran thief. Too bad I suck on thief and could give no good examples of how to play. Life would be easy if they were all warriors but you deal with what you have. Spouse is a zerker BearBow at least and the only time I got kind of annoyed with BearBow was when trying to pop the hologram on Clockheart while my BearBow kept kiting Clockheart away. Bearbow Junior spends 3/4 time in sword so good there and have switched him to more of a zerk build as he has moved away from using any contions. Still has his Barkskin so didnt change his style any. My little thief
asked about being a guardian so I ground his lvl 10 guard to 75 which he finished off. He used guard to do Aetherblade.

Kid#1 lets Kid#2 die right beside him without bothering to even drop his shadow refuge. I ask why he didnt and got no response so I look over and Kid#1 is is completly engrossed in an Archie comic auto attacking the final boss. Wasnt aware of anything outside the comic at all. Sound like some pugs you know?

Bearbow Mom is getting frusterated during a path and states that she doesnt even like tbis kitten game. Kid1 and Kid2 took it personally and said fine you dont want to be here we and proceeded to vote kick Bearbow Mom. Bearbow Mom suddenly finds herself outside the dungeon wondering what happened. I tell her and she is not impressed. The dungeoneering was suddenly over that weekend. Dont be pulling Mom aggro. Dont vote kick your mom it dont end in your favor.

cof path where you have 60secs to gather components for the kaboomium Kid2 says after we failed to four man it once… why dont we all preposition ourselves at the pickup points before you start it…. mmm smarter than me already?

kid1 makes a necro and goes ac story… proceeds to drop the staff aoe’s onto the casket before it is opened… mmm efficient…. also smarter than me already?

I was a god guide at first but they moved beyond that. Which is good because sometimes its all I can do to keep myself alive. Ill still try and tell them what to do once in a while but they dont listen. Its good they have developed there own things which get the job done. They have started to use the jungle cat pets mighty roar after I finally asked them to. They do choose to listen sometimes.

Probably had to be there.

Oh and their Aunt. Aunty Warrior is our fifth sometimes. Vengance! Vengance! Always use vengance at every opertunity even if someone is only one tick away from reviving you.

“Dad…Aunty used vengance again should I revive her?” and me “…………………no” in a quiet sad voice. “I just push all the buttons when Im downed” aunty said when I asked.

had to be there

omg, this post. So fantastic. Thanks for this

Lalocat.6793:

Fror.2163:

/ignore VideoGamermike.5813
So, based on your advices, I used the beloved /kick command.

I created that LFG, said zerker meta builds only for a full run of AC. I didn’t care for the profession, just meta-build.

Do you know what I got? Dozens of guardians with staff. First pug to join, a necro zerker, a real one! God bless him! And then the journey into oblivion started. Kick over kick. The staff guardians aligned to join, I kept asking to ping their main weapon, all of them were staves. So that was a real kickfest

Awesome, please keep using “meta” in your group description so I know not to join. Not being snarky, that is one of the key words I look for to know not to join. Other words that keep me out are gear ping and speed run. I want fast, but I just don’t take it all so seriously.

cool story bro

Tachii.3506:

maxinion.8396:

Embrace The Bold.7619:

maxinion.8396:

Tachii.3506:

On the same topic Staff Eles and Mesmers are more or less the same. Obvious inferior DPS in dungeons which can only be explained with the label “casual gamers” that play just to have “fun” and using what they feel is comfortable for them.

Right, that’s why almost every speed run meta group includes 1 staff ele, and why two of Europe’s top dungeon guilds are led by folks who main mesmers. Clearly they are classes for casuals, and you know what you’re talking about.

At least you got the bit about staff guards right.

Um I think he was referring to staff mesmers (which are so bad) but you are defientetly right about staff ele, when set up right.

Ah, yes, I see now— I may have misread, sorry. Yes, staff mesmers are terrible, even worse than staff guard in most situations.

But staff ele is top tier, that’s absolutely for sure.

Not when that staff ele only autoattacks and occasionally use fire 5 when off cooldown. Also, in such DPS runs you usually need other ele builds as well, right? Staff ele by itself? Eh. I don’t think I’m that casual to call it top tier when they’re by themselves hitting 1.

And yeah, I meant staff mesmers.

Staff 2 in fire is one of the higher DPS skills in the game, and provides 100% fire field uptime. Without other eles, staff alone can provide 6-9 might stacks, but combined with an LH ele, the synergy with constant fire field and blasts is crazy. The damage is certainly higher than LH ele, if all things like might stacks are equal. This is all fairly old news, though obviously the particular build linked there is out of date.

Embrace The Bold.7619:

maxinion.8396:

Tachii.3506:

On the same topic Staff Eles and Mesmers are more or less the same. Obvious inferior DPS in dungeons which can only be explained with the label “casual gamers” that play just to have “fun” and using what they feel is comfortable for them.

Right, that’s why almost every speed run meta group includes 1 staff ele, and why two of Europe’s top dungeon guilds are led by folks who main mesmers. Clearly they are classes for casuals, and you know what you’re talking about.

At least you got the bit about staff guards right.

Um I think he was referring to staff mesmers (which are so bad) but you are defientetly right about staff ele, when set up right.

Ah, yes, I see now— I may have misread, sorry. Yes, staff mesmers are terrible, even worse than staff guard in most situations.

But staff ele is top tier, that’s absolutely for sure.

Tachii.3506:

On the same topic Staff Eles and Mesmers are more or less the same. Obvious inferior DPS in dungeons which can only be explained with the label “casual gamers” that play just to have “fun” and using what they feel is comfortable for them.

Right, that’s why almost every speed run meta group includes 1 staff ele, and why two of Europe’s top dungeon guilds are led by folks who main mesmers. Clearly they are classes for casuals, and you know what you’re talking about.

At least you got the bit about staff guards right.

Chaos storm is useless in PVE, because a few random, unreliable boons/conditions will not help your team. Chaos Storm also has a habit of putting down Ethereal Fields, which are useless, below good fields like Fire and ruining them. Staff has the added bonus of being terrible DPS (except for the iWarlock, which is fairly good).

To help your team as a mesmer you do:

1) DPS with sword auto-attack and phantasms
2) reflections with traited focus and Feedback
3) Use portal to move your team when appropriate
4) Use mantra of resolve and/or null field and/or iDisenchanter for group condition cleanse

Staff helps with none of these (except maybe DPS because of Warlock, but the staff auto-attack is so poor that you shouldn’t use it beyond summoning the phantasm). Greatsword is also a poor choice in PvE because it encourages max range, where you avoid your shared party boons like might from elementalists, and is also poor DPS. If you want a range weapon, keeping either staff or greatsword is fine, if not completely optimal.

Now, can you actually survive and beat content with staff/greatsword? Yes— the game is easy enough that you can pretty much do anything and still win most of the time. But will you be helpful, as you ask, with staff/greatsword? Not really.

I’m not going to defend PuG strategies as optimal, because they’re not. I know how to pop the AC bosses in 2 seconds each with FGS, and I do this on guild runs all the time.

But when I’m doing a run at 3 AM and no guildies are awake, I know I can reliably beat down the Howling King in the center of the room in 20-30 seconds if I have just one or two reliable melee zerkers with me. I could try to explain to them how to go around the corner or wait for him to walk by the wall, but it’s faster to just use the PUG strategy, and I have to type less. I know it would be faster in an organized group, but a run that’s a few minutes longer is not the end of the world for the convenience that I get (being able to run at 3 AM when all reasonable people should be asleep).

So my point is… yes, we all know that PUGs are bad. Duh. But they’re still good enough to get you through most dungeons and get you your daily gold in the easier dungeons. In the harder ones, or ones that require more coordination, I tend to screen the PUGs more closely (gearchecks, etc.) and it still works out.

If your goal with PUGs is to run completely meta with full efficient fights in every situation, you’re gonna have a bad time. If your goal is to get a reasonably smooth run to get your gold, it’s completely possible to be satisfied.

If you want to FGS everything in a pug, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Xyonon.3987:

maxinion.8396:

Having a weapon just for clearing trash is a waste, considering that sword+focus gives you plenty of trash clearing potential and is good at bosses.

So your argument is “I do not want to swap my weapons so I think S/F is better than S/F + GS against multiple enemies” …

Clearing trash is something almost any dungeon is about, aswell fotm. I do not want to count now, but swapping weapons to adapt to any situation isn’t something you should dismiss just because of lazyness. People buy stuff for much gold to be a bit stronger wich isn’t also “a waste”?

Trash mobs also often consists of multiple veterans and elites. I cannot see any “waste” here…

When I can signet to put out two wardens, and then just melee with sword, and be just as effective as someone with greatsword… no, I don’t need to swap. The boon strip you point out might be mildly useful in Dredge to clear their proc, but an iDisenchanter probably does that better. Mainhand sword does boonstrip just as well anyway.
Offhand sword is plenty good at trash clearing too because of the group-stun, and the swordsman can be put on Elites or Vets to damage them while you attack trash.

Nothing changed with the patch except that Greatsword Training became more of a false target, since the meta builds contain 6 in domination now and lead people to think that Greatsword is more viable than before. Mesmer might stacking with Sigil of Strength is a waste of a Sigil, since might stacking is not your job. Anytime you swap to GS in a fight (after the opening seconds) is a DPS loss compared to sword, so it’s not worth it. Especially since with 6 points in Domination we are less reliant on Phants than before and more reliant on personal damage, losing time on the sword melee is a bigger loss than ever before.

GS isn’t the worst choice for range weapon in places where you can’t fully engage in melee, but the meta continues to be sword/sword and sword/focus for a reason.

Xyonon.3987:

Ryuujin.8236:

If you’re in a fractal or dungeon team however you probably won’t be pulling your weight if you’re packing a GS because:

• Sword has higher DPS and cleaves. (It also has good evasion)
• Focus has excellent DPS, and packs good utility
• Offhand sword packs an extra defence move, and it has a fantastic phantasm for boss-DPS.
• GS1 requires you to stand out of might spread range, lowering your DPS even further compared to the guys in the thick of it.
• GS provides no support of note. So even the “But I’m support spec” excuse doesn’t fly

Obviously there are some bosses where melee is simply NOT an option, in which case GS is a good fallback, in the same way a ranger might fall back to using a longbow, but asides from those exceptions, GS isn’t really a weapon you should be seeing a mesmer sitting on. There’s a reason it’s colloquially referred to a “noobstick” by some circles)

I would say that all is true, if this post would be 1 month old.

• Sword has higher DpS and cleaves.
• GS line dmg is harder to use.
• Focus has good burst and low dps against multiple targets
• GS has great dps and burst against multiple targets
• Offhand sword, pistol are both rather useless against multiple target
• GS1 is indeed rather weak and should be evaded. However “out of buff range” is a semi good argument. When you need aoe you just use the GS as opener. If you use it as range option against bosses, EVERYONE stays out of buff range and comes together when it’s time to buff (fotm). You rarely stick together in range battles.
• GS provides excellent support, removing significant boons immediately instead of waiting for 3rd auto, aswell granting tons of might with skill 2, especially with rune of strength aswell signet of inspiration when engaging first.

GS was a terrible dungeon weapon once. However wisely used you can use it for greater damage than the sword with a crappy single target offhand. A swordsman is pretty useless against 10 enemies at once. The weaker aa for a few times gets outdamaged by the stronger phantasm in such cases. There is allways the time for each weapon as a mesmer.

Having a weapon just for clearing trash is a waste, considering that sword+focus gives you plenty of trash clearing potential and is good at bosses.

I see games like Dark Souls doing the same thing (teaching you how to play by killing you) all the time. It’s not necessarily nice, but it’s one way to teach the mechanics. I certainly think it could be taught more effectively and that the learning curve is super steep, but once you do your first few dungeons, you learn to recognize boss tells just from the standard glowing/charging up animations which are very similar. It’s just a matter of l2p.

VideoGamermike.5813:

sorrow, my issue isn’t with using or not using reflect, thats up to the individual. My issue is someone being called useless or pathetic for not following someone elses build and having their priorities. A mesmer without deflection is still a mesmer, people have various priorities, or heck, different skills unlocked if your in the AC area which would have lower levels.
Selfish or not, its not irony or a ‘waste of space.’ Selfish depends on the situation(as it isn’t -that- critical in most places), but selfish in certain situations is somewhat fair, calling someone worthless for not having a certain skill at all times is just dumb.

Mesmers are the best (or second best) class in the game at reflection. Why on earth would you play Mesmer and ignore your best mechanic and main source of damage? This is basically the only thing Mesmers are good at, and I say that as someone who mains a Mesmer. Good god, #playhowiwant indeed.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m not sure if the issue is dungeon design, or the lack of proper instruction on that end.

Something I noticed about GW2 is that it does a crap job of teaching players how to do anything. That’s why we had players running around 14/14/14/14/14 builds. Players who have no idea what a blast finisher is, or how to use them well. Players who use orb of wrath at maximum range in clerics gear, because they’re too terrified of one hit kills to get in melee range. There’s no real indication if something is unblockable, unavoidable, or an instant kill, and it is frightening to players who, to the extent of their knowledge, have skills that don’t work right for arbitrary reasons. Worse yet, things like the sheath weapon key are unbinded, so many players will auto attack themselves to death against reflection and retaliation.

Anets stance on this issue is a bit troubling. In general, they say nothing, however they did once post saying that they want to push the difficulty of events slightly forward, in hopes that players will spontaneously generate knowledge of more game mechanics to compensate. You can tell I’m not a big fan of the “don’t teach, punish for not knowing” method of instruction, especially when so many players don’t know what they don’t know.

Dungeons are a learning cliff in this game. Without being taught proper techniques, players will run heat first into a wall, then throw up their arms in frustration. To this end, I can kind of see where the whole “stacking ruins skill levels” comes from. It’s wrong, though, since it misdiagnoses the problem: A lot of players will copy stacking, but with no real knowledge of how to do it properly they’ll fail at it, and the lack of understanding shows through. I’ve seen plenty of groups try a cookie cutter method, but once it fails, simply give up in frustration rather than trying something different.

It’s chicken or the egg again. The players never had skill to ruin in the first place.

This is basically correct. There is no reason why players should have failed the Marionette event time and time again— and yet it was hilarious how many times that event was failed. Dungeons are the same thing. I hope ANet is able to teach folks more about how to actually play the game with Living Story content like the Marionette, but I doubt it.