Guild Wars 2

race breakdown:

human: Good cond removal utility, elites all have their strong spots

charr: whatever… There might be some Guardians out there who actually use the charrzooka as a ranged option… Rest is garbage.

Asura: Pain inverter and Technobabble are really great utilities, if you can fit them into the right builds. Just watch Xsorus’ vids over at youtube. Elites are the biggest garbage out of all the racials.

Norn: Become the snow leopard is maybe the strongest racial elite in the game, cause it allows things, no other racial allows. First, it grants stealth with 10 seconds cd, second, you can cover large distances quickly. This might make norn one of the best races for engineers who have absolutely no way of getting out of tight spots(besides walking)…

Sylvari: Healing seed might be good for some classes, the spirit elite seems decent if you lack alternatives… However, the true jewel here is the side-effect of another elite. Screw these 3 turrets, they do nothing… But the 3 seconds of invulnerability are VERY strong, even when it LITERALLY roots you.

As for necro, the only remotely interesting race might be asura, but that’s only for one very specific build and is only needed, if you REALLY want to apply confusion and got no mezz/engineer in your team who can do it better than pain inverter will ever do.

For necro, it doesn’t matter.
There are some no-no’s, like running an asuran engineer, for example(3 bad elites +2 and a half bad elites equals only half an elite to choose from) but unless you plan on some really exotic builds(an asura would potentially be a better race for a necro, if you planned on an epidemic build, cause it’d give you access to confusion), race does not matter outside some special cases, which really boil down to whether your profession absolutely lacks good elites, like engineers and elementalists do, or if you plan on using a very specific aspect from a specific race, which is, to be honest, kind of rare… Watch Xsorus’ vids, if you wanna see, what an asuran ranger can do that no other ranger brings to the table.
As long as you don’t plan on making an engineer that never, ever dies(full tankcat with norn’s become the snow leopard as elite) or something similarly unnecessary, don’t give much thought about races. The looks is everything, Guild wars 2 is a dress-up game.

Nothing like getting a stun into the face after casting heartseeker through a smoke field.
It typically means instant death… Even if you live through the stun.

woah nice comeback

Well, combat speed is lower than the speed out of combat. This is regardless of whether you have any speed buffs or not.
On the other hand, this particular case needs testing. Might be worth it for some builds… Which is highly unlikely though, given, the runes in question don’t give that good bonuses.

jamesigall.5938:

The elementalist static field affects anyone passing through, no limit. As far as i know, things that enemies or allies have to actually run through/past to get an effect have no limit, i.e. guardian staff 3, mesmer focus 4, etc. Not sure on some of these but i know coordinated groups of 20+ can run their whole team through a mesmer veil for mass invis.

You put something in there which doesn’t belong there. Staff 3 is simply a pulsing effect, which is applied to 5 targets max every tick. Basically, every tick can give 5 guys swiftness. If people run through, it will probably give roughly 10-15 guys swiftness.

stuff which triggers once passed through, however, does have no limit, that seems correct. Wards, veil, temp curtain, bubbles, static field, …
Note that while many of these are “walls”, “wall-type” spells do not have no AoE by default. Flame barrier, for example, is a simple pulsing effect, same with the cripple barrier from eles.

well, engineers and rangers can self-rezz, so basically, I wouldn’t say, it’s impossible right off the bat, but…
The question is, whether this small delay would be enough for you to go down and be fully recognized as downed by the game before the banner fires off.
This is something which actually might or might not work, depending on the current server load.

silverfire.2547:

Theftwind.8976:

Really, if you want or need lessons on how to solo an undefended camp I will gladly take donations for lessons!

Can you teach me how to carry 100 supply all by myself quickly and efficiently? I think you can teach me how to carry 5 more, but I’m afraid that’ll take a long time.

4 guys with maxed out supply capacity can carry 100 supply in one go. :>
Add a guild bonus on top of it and 5 guys can carry 150 supply.
Now the only question is where this supply should come from, as no matter the capacity, the rate at which supply is generated will still be the same.

If you are level 10, just use a well of suffering and a staff and go kill everything…
AoE wins.

I Monk For L O V E.7528:

All your base are belong to us HoD

someone set us up the bomb.

From my experience, the priority is like
-ranger pets: It will always cycle through ranger pets before targetting anything else
-bone minions: Second stop
-Phantasms: Next obvious target
-flesh golem and shadow fiends
-mesmer clones
-wildlife
-npcs
-walls
-water, empty air, the road, trees, rocks, …
-ranger pets on other maps
-phantasms on other maps
-satan himself
-players

That is the order and nothing can change it.

Detharos.3157:

Although its kinda late, welcome to tier 8 you good fellows of Gates of Madness/Team Aliens!

Glad to have you on board sir, you will definitely fit right in with us.

Fair the well in tier 7 big brother Sheen!

And without further delay, your tier 8 celebrity score update!

lol

funny thing, NSP and HoD are already complaining after half a week, when ET and FC sat through these zergballs for 3 whole months.
Show some backbone, guys, you are friggin T7 and get stomped by a little server which belongs in t8, cause it gets crushed in higher tiers, right?, right?

Well, I have to say, the 15 pt trait in DA is quite nice to quickly cover bleed stacks. bleed someone, then poison them and they have 2 conditions to remove before they can touch the bleed.
Problem is, thieves actually don’t have as many ways to poison opponents as I wish they had(or let’s put it differently… I wish, spider venom had a shorter cd but fewer stacks…)
Steal will also poison, making a quick steal another way to cover conditions.
From a PvE point of view, trickery is better. But from a PvP point of view, I’d rather have these 20 points in DA.
What you do is burst, swap to d/d(sigil of the geomancer), death blossom, steal, cripple → around 12-15 bleed stacks, covered by 3 conditions.If they pop their cond removal, you follow up with spider venom.

Open world PvE? Dungeons? sPvP? WvW?

Cactus.2710:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Cactus.2710:

DevonCarver.5370:

I talked to our server guys and we just don’t have the ability to reset these at different times. .

That may be true on some level, but I’ll bet not a purely technical one.

It’s probably true on the coding level, meaning it may be so deeply engraved in the system that it’s either near impossible to change, or changing it would cause so many problems across the board that it’d be better to not do it. At least that’s my thought on it as a programmer.

You mean you think the resest time might be hard coded into the system software? OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . but truthfully, as a programmer would you ever do such a thing in the first place?

He never said, changing reset time was impossible. He only stated, it was impossible to use seperate reset times for EU and NA… Which may simply be an issue with the way, the servers are set up.

Manekk.6981:

No it’s 100% not that it’s on CD he just doesn’t do it when downed and it’s only in spvp.

Another thing that has me wondering is the downed interupt ability it’s now also failed me dozens upon dozens of times the past couple of days and I have looked carefully if they had stability wich I can be certain they didn’t in most cases, sure I could have missed it a few times but hardly every single time I’m wondering if there are other abilities that could prevent the interupt, any you know?

It’s almost as if I’m lagging on just specific abilities and not on anything else as stupid as that sounds.

I don’t know worth asking about I reckon…

blind?
just guessing

Tanryth.1074:

Score update and some fine treb action….

If you are trebbing as ranger, you should really use a frost spirit.
a chance to +10% damage on a treb hit can hurt.
And the 10 sec cd on the proc doesn’t really matter given the loooong reload times on treb.

Hm kinda forgot about the Lyssa runes…
The random boons on heal are nice.
12 sec of retaliation is lol, having over 20 sec vigor is lol anyway, 12 sec protection is broken beyond belief too and no comment about fury.
Well, when it counts it will probably be might anyway.
Basilisk Venom is pretty nice now too… The cond duration is not really needed but let’s just see it as a nice side effect.
I’m totally persuaded.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQRAoa8IlYmiOncy5cCZ7xOVh8kXBwq7BXpVVFA

Full zerker gear, S/D, D/P, 0-30-0-30-10

Basically, the thought is capitalizing on the evasion and blinding capabilities of the thief class while ditching stealth almost entirely.
Withdraw is a great heal on 15 sec cd with a built-in evade. We combine this with Acrobatics (III) which grants us vigor on heal to have a spammy source of vigor and evades. To capitalize on our defense, we also grab Assassins Reward, which heals us every time, we burn some initiative.
By maxing out the acrobatics traitline, we also get access to 3 initiative on weapon swap and +10% damage, when endurance is not full, which gives us the edge in prolonged battles.

On the damage side, we got +7% crit chance and +5% damage, when flanking, +20% damage against foes below 50% and some minor traits from the critical hits trait line.

What I am unsure now is, what runes to get.
As we are not built for a one hit combo out of stealth and we certainly will fall below 90% health, the runes of the scholar, I am currently using, just don’t cut it.
Runes of the eagle are pretty lackluster, considering, we get +20% damage against low hp targets anyway and we’d do better, increasing our damage base, so these 20% are as big as possible.
Of course, I could always go with runes of divinity, but they are kinda meh… Like “didn’t know any better”…

An interesting idea would be completely ditching the idea of offensive runes and grabbing Runes of the Dolyak or Runes of Dwayna instead to further boost our survivability by boosting our health gain.

Also, I am unsure about sigils.
Currently, I run sigils of battle, but I found myself not switching weapons for quite long at times, mainly because thief got no cooldowns which press you into swapping. Maybe Sigils of Energy for an emergency dodge or Sigils of Nullification would do better here.

As I am still kind of unexperienced with thief as a whole, I’d like to hear the opinion of some experienced thieves about the issue.

Sebrent.3625:

@naphack: I used “fine” for all of them that didn’t “suck” … it was a “fine”/“sucks” binary description :-p

You did not.
That’s what started my whole rant :P
The only one, you regarded as “great” was sb autoattack, probably as a way to point out, just how broken LB auto is in your opinion.

Scleameth.6809:

Thanks Devon,

Just getting a reply from you makes a world of difference to our mood!

If throwing a bunch of points into T8 (and probably T9) would upset the system too much, how about throwing points at T1 thru T8 but distribute it so that the lower tiers gains a greater percentage of points than the upper tiers? Just a thought.

EDIT: Personally I’ll be glad that SF gets rewarded with a positive ranking out of all this when they are beating FC and ET by such a big margin but loosing points at the moment (as is the case with a number of green teams beating the opposition and still loosing points). If any permanent fix could be achieved then I hope that the winning team always gets a positive ranking rather than loosing ranking because Glicko said so.

there is nothing wrong with losing points even when you are winning, if the other server fares better than expected.
The problem here is, glicko should probably be adjusted.
In chess, for example, even if you are not that much better, you can easily take 100% of the games against a worse player. The outcome is predictable, so if the other guy grabs, says one out of the matches and actually wins it, while managing to get remis in 2 others out of, says, 7 played matches, it clearly shows, he’s actually quite good, so he will be rewarded with points for it.
Thing is, it’s literally impossible to win by 100% in this tiered setup. JQ (NA) against Vabbi(EU) might be pretty much the only matchup, I can imagine, where a server could truly get literally 100% of the points.
Glicko probably needs to be adjusted towards the mid. Right now, it expects landslide victories of huge margin, where they cannot possibly happen to the point actually expected by glicko. Glicko needs to be taught in some way, that getting more than 66% of the total points in a matchup already is a huge beatdown in this game.
THAT is the kind of adjustment needed, cause then, servers can actually break out of the glicko hell, if they only try hard enough.

And about EU tier 9: they constantly get the snot beaten out of them by changing servers, so they got a way to compare themselves to the higher tier.
Why would they complain?
NA tier 8 is still kind of competitive, even with SF winning by large margins, while they did not have a chance for the past months to try against other servers, where they actually belong rating wise. Of course, they will be kitten , if they just can not know what would happen, if they actually faced a t7 server for once.
For the t9 eu servers, it’s clear, no matter, which server comes down, they probably have no chance.
If t7 servers come down and really beat FC and ET, they will probably settle for it.
But as long, as they got no way to prove themselves, they won’t. Things will change, so the conclusion will come soon.

A not soft AoE would be churning earth, for instance.
Eruption, Concussion Bomb/Big ol’ Bomb, Judgment, Dragon’s tooth+phoenix…
Stuff which can outright spell doom to you if you miss the dodge.
Also Well of Corruption, which gets worse, the longer you stay in it.

I’d rather sit in a barrage than take a churning earth or eruption to the face.
Of course, it also depends on the situation. If theres a lot of bodies around to soak up damage, just try to get out but don’t burn endurance/cooldowns. If you are the only one, you should obviously gtfo asap^^

What’s up today?
Did someone die?
Someone got possessed?
So much red in the forums!

Terkov.4138:

Dodgin out of 5.? I play mostly WvW, and with all the AoE there, I’m fine if someone dodges my attack, coz it means he wasted a dodge on a “soft” AoE.

fyp
When theres a lot of action, I’d actually never dodge out of Barrage. There’s way worse skills out there and if you dodge out of a barrage, you might find yourself bullush-100bladed without a way out, cause you just burned your last endurance.
Barrage is, like most stuff of the ranger, consistant damage over a longer time. It makes the opponent feel VERY unvomfortable to stand in a barrage and just soak up the damage, while at the same time, dodging out might only make matters worse, if the ranger plays it right.
Dodge out of barrage even in a duel and I will ping you a knockback shot to the head, vuln into rapid fire. If you dodged towards me, you are actually right back in the barrage.

Btw most fun I ever had with knockback shot was when some guy tried to jump at me from a wall and got lifted straight back mid-air.

Well, the problem is, his categorization is off.
I’d put it more like that:

LB#1: Does what it’s designed for but it’s admittedly bad even at that.
The main application of the skill is as a gap filler in between the “big” skills, when the combat range at the moment does not allow weapon swaps. That’s probably also what the devs had in mind.
LB#2: Slightly lackluster, as is every skill which deals raw damage only.
It’s pretty much our bread and butter skill to deal bursts of damage. It’s not overwhelming but considering the range, the damage is quite good.
LB#3: A solid skill. Basically a projectile based on my mark with short cd. Call out a target, vuln it and watch your team rip it to shreds.
LB#4: Amazing. I don’t see, how you shrug it off as being “fine” aka at the same level as shortbow 4 or 5.
LB#5: Another great skill. It has a wide range of applications, which is balanced by the windup time. Not much to add.

Sebrent.3625:

Rundown:

• Longbow #1 sucks … Shortbow #1 is great
• Longbow #2 sucks … Shortbow #2 fine (up to 10 seconds of poison)
• Longbow #3 is fine (vulnerability) … Shortbow #3 is fine (free evade & swiftness)
• Longbow #4 is fine (short range KB) … Shortbow #4 is fine (cripple & poison)
• Longbow #5 is fine (AOE dmg & cripple) … Shortbow #5 is fine (daze/stun)

So shortbow has all 5 skills that are fine while Longbow’s #3, #4, and #5 are really the only skills that are fine. I’d prefer to have 100% useful than 60%.

I’m glad, you are not part of the balance team… Such a sloppy way of doing things.

Coldtart.4785:

Had a 22222 thief attack my P/D once in wvw. I just CnD’d and shot him in the back as he leapt off into the distance. =D

Fighting bads never gets old.

Thats so full of win

Jarin Arenos.2736:

Habib Loew.6239:

Also, please don’t infer Mesmer changes from the fact that it’s my current main. I’m just a programmer – design stuff like that is somebody else’s responsibility.

Robert isn’t a designer either, but he still sits in as a class commentator for Ranger in balance discussions.

Well, Robert got more say on this.
“I’d really like to make a more challenging new dungeon with high agony values but I am afraid, my current idea gets defeated by the lack of agony resistance on pets, completely unbalancing the ranger class. I can not make a dungeon which is entirely unplayable for a whole class. So could you please do something about agony resistance on pets? I really like my current approach.”
→ Pet ar gets fixed.

For a dungeon designer, bringing in balance suggestions is pretty easy, as you can see

Sebrent.3625:

naphack.9346:

I don’t think, these calculations matter much.
You get beastmastery mainly to make your pet more beefy, so it doesn’t die, when it gets stared at for half a second by an opponent.
The damage increase, even if existing is only a nice secondary benefit but not the main reason to sink points in BM.

If you look at the numbers, I included what it does for your pets’ survivability as well (i.e. more hitpoints and damage mitigation).

With this info, you can see that sinking 30 points in beastmastery will up your pet’s survivability by:

• +3,000 hitpoints
• +14.1% damage mitigation

I find it more beneficial to know “how much” something is doing … not just that it is “doing something”.

Many people simply say “put 30 points in Beastmastery to make your pet stronger” … this shows that those 30 points gives your pet:

• +14.1% damage
• +14.28% crit chance
• +3,000 health
• +14.1% damage mitigation

the fixed stats are pretty much irrelevant. What’s more important is the relative stats.
“how much was there before, how much after?”
As it stands, the pet which probably benefits the most from bm stats is the hyena.

About the cond remove on heal: I found it was lacking, cause it removed only one condition per pop. If opponents cover their conditions, it’s pretty much useless. Mantra of resolve clears 2 conditions where mantra of Restoration would clear one condition.
I just found myself spamming mantra of restoration while poisoned to get rid of some really nasty bleed stacks, throwing half the heal into the gutter. Mantra of resolve can remove2 conditions a pop which makes it incredibly useful.
As stated earlier, a noteworthy alternative might be Arcane thievery. Then probably slotting something like blink, arcane thievery, decoy and skilling dueling ( I ).

As for Mantra of Pain: In a power build, I’d take it. This build is so heavily specced on conditions, it’s simply not worth channeling a mantra for 4 seconds to get some AoE heal, only to shoot 2 bolts at negligible damage, where even a single stack of confusion would deal more damage. Sure, the mantra can crit and proc the bleed sigils… Still not worth it. My mezz has anywhere around 900 power. Mantra of pain hits like a wet tissue while eating up time, I could use to cast phantasms or get in some scepter autoattacks to get clones rolling.
Also, the Dwayna runes seem to proc reg in a way larger area than the MoP does heal. Mantra heal has around the area where phantasms grant reg… Means, you need to be almost within sword range of your allies.

About the sigils: Ye, my bad, forgot about the mini cd on bleed sigils.

the one I listed a couple posts back.
It’s nice, cause you have reg up all the time. Every time, you cast mantra of Restoration, you give you and all allies around reg for 6 seconds(10 sec cd)
Basically, as long as your phantasms have as much as a 30% uptime, you got 100% reg uptime.
Granted, in WvWvW, the way to go is obviously centaur runes, but in spvp, full reg and vigor uptime, while spamming clones left and right and healing with shatters and mantras is pretty strong. Haven’t encountered a good thief yet, so I don’t know whether another stun breaker would be needed(in that case, switch the disenchanter out for mirror image) but basically, the whole build is

Scepter(energy)/Sword(Earth), Staff(Earth) //For dual block and evade+good condition uptime
Rabid Gear (7xDwayna)

0
25 (III, X)(might swap out III For protected mantras)
0
30(III, X, XII)
15(II)

Mantra of Restoration, Mantra of Resolve(Arcane thievery???), Decoy, Disenchanter(Mirror Image/Blink), Mass Invis

My power build with almost the same layout was built around retaliation(retaliation on block, retaliation on cry of frustration, phantasms got retaliation)
Just wanted to throw this in here in case someone wants to pick up the idea. I scratched it mainly cause my own experience with the Mesmer did not live up to the challenge at hand. I simply died too often.

Next I’m gonna try is Dwayna Runes btw. They would guarantee good regeneration uptime even when the phantasms are down.

Edit: Dwayna Runes make the build perfect. It’s so broken, I can’t even put it into words.

Ok. My current build:
0-25-0-30-15

The trait point allocation is the same I used for my previous build. Didn’t respec, just swapped out some traits as I didn’t feel the need for traiting auto-renewal on shatters.
Right now, I have the same traits, you picked, except, I run Dueling III for retaliation. As the power of this build is quite low, I might drop it for protected mantras or phantasmal fury later on…

Weapons:
Scepter/sword, Staff

Utility:
Mantra of Restoration, Mantra of Resolve(!), Decoy, Disenchanter, Mass invis

I solved the problem of having no condition remove by dropping in a Mantra of Resolve, which allows us to remove 4 conditions, in packs of 2, every 20 seconds. To top it off, I run a disenchanter. I do not have that much experience with this specific utility allocation yet. Cond remove on heal prove to be worthless, so I ditched it in favor of getting the vigor on shatter back while switching out blink for a cond removal. Time will tell whether this trade was worth it.
The build plays fluent and natural. I never had that much fun with mesmer, might also be because I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Contrary to what you were saying earlier, I’d actually recommend this build to beginners. It’s certainly not the easiest build around but it’s sturdy and unifies almost every aspect of the mesmer without being too reliant on the player getting one particular thing right. In fact, it’s very forgiving(for a mesmer build). So if you want to learn mesmer as a whole, this build got it all in one package while not going too deep into things.
If I could squeeze out another 5 points somewhere, I might try going 10-20-0-x-x, incorporating a cripple on illusion death into the build. As it is now, the build is rather group focussed(for heavy group action, drop mantra of resolve for a null field) and can not kill stuff on its own. That is, it can. It deals good damage, the cond stacks do wonders, but as soon as your opponent starts to run, you got nothing to stop them. Might try swapping the mh scepter for a sword to try and fix that issue but I don’t really wanna miss out on the confusion and block.
Maybe, I am asking too much of the build. It has great group support, great heal, good but not overwhelming damage, good but not overwhelming survivability, can hold its own in a duel(well, duh, it’s a mesmer after all), does not self-destruct at the first mistake you make and plays fluent and natural. It does, what it is designed for and it does it good. It might just need some tweaks to squeeze in an interrupt or 2. I dislike the pistol, so that’s not an option for me. It just doesn’t have that much of a visible impact. It slowly stacks the odds into your favor, the longer the fight goes. That’s a good thing, but sometimes, you are pressed for time. The build clearly has limits to its viability outside the stuff it was designed for. To get the most out of this build, you’d need an organized group. In such a group, I can see it rip stuff to shreds pretty fast. In such a group, maybe Mantra of Resolve will not be needed and can be dropped for a feedback bubble or a null field.
As I could write on and on, I’m just gonna make it short.

Verdict: Viable, sturdy, not too demanding. Would certainly suggest this build for a beginner. Problems lie in catching escapees and being unable to do anything against opponents channeling big spells in plain sight(except for preparing a block to counter it).

Leo G.4501:

I was just imagining what ‘Spirits Unbound’ could do besides make them walk (which, like mentioned, is kind of sabotaging your spirits to die).

Spirits Unbound – Spirits teleport to target location.

Basically, all the secondary skills the spirit casts become ground targeted and wherever you direct it, the spirit will begin casting then end up at the target location + the effect. It’d actually give them a sort of auxiliary use in that, before a fight, you can summon a spirit in a safe spot then call it in to create its field/effect. Also, with the other trait that gives their effect upon being destroyed, you can use them sort of like minion bombs, dropping their effect twice from being called and from being destroyed. It’d also work by being able to move them to desired spots out of danger when a battle shifts and you want to keep their passive effects.

This is great.
Really.
Drop this into the suggestions forum and I will give you free bumps for the rest of the month!

Banners are great for point defense in WvWvW. You drop them and all your guys get stronger. Now don’t say shouts. Banners do something, shouts can never achieve: They buff raw stats.
You should realize, just how utterly broken banners are already just by sheer numbers.
Name me one shout/skill which comes close to what a banner of discipline does to your team(besides timewarp). The damage increase for the team is huge. In a big AoE, while everyone gets free regen. And it has 100% uptime.
If banners are changed the way, you suggest, the stats need to be cut down by at least 66% or they will be outright broken.

Hjulstad.6317:

I would love to see spirits more viable for wvw.. i am a 100% melee player and What i Think could be a solution is this:

1: make spirits move by default.
2: Give spirits more toughnes and vitality.
3: Change spirits trait to be able to move with Each spirit giving a certain buff. For example one giving 10% less damage taken. And one could Give a damage increase by maybe 5-10%.
4: Make spirit activation skills either like traps that can be traited For ground targeting or so you can send them on your target. .

And 1 Off-topic thing since John Might read this: Give us a trait that gives a damage bonus of 5-10% for stowing your pet.

This way you have a chance to choose from alot of other builds then we Currently have.. spirits would be used as buffers and with a reasonable cd on their skills you would need to choose wisely about when to use them. .

about the trait which replaces spirits unbound:
How about giving the bonus to the SPIRIT?
basically
Spirit of Nature: AoE heal, whenever damaged, 10 sec ICD
Stone Spirit: Spirit gains aegis every 10 seconds
Storm Spirit: Spirit gains Retaliation for 4 seconds when struck, 10 sec ICD
Frost Spirit: Chills attackers
Sun Spirit: Burns attackers

Just give every spirit an individual ICD.
Stone Spirit – stays 10 sec
Frost Spirit – no icd at all
Fire Spirit – 2 sec
Storm Spirit(the most annoying mofo in DotA) – hm… This one actually needs a rework… maybe make it give a chance to get a stack of might too, then it might be worth considering.

From the look it seems easier than a purely mantra based control build…
If you gotta time your dazes and interrupts in between recharging your mantras, while generating illusions and phantasms with your weapon skills and keeping track of potential openings to get shatters in(especially the daze shatter, as you trait heavily into interrupts) this one seems comparably tame.
At least, it seems possible to manage without 1k+ hours of mesmer gameplay experience. The only thing, you gotta be wary of with this build(or lets say, the similar prototype, I built) is being too spammy with mantra of pain and forgetting about other skills.

this seems like the kind of build I tried to get to work in between rocking pickups with my ranger and testing out stuff with my thief… Tried a couple mantra builds but they were all too control centered for my build, tried something of my own which came pretty close to this but didn’t get it to work…

Maybe gonna give it a shot later on. I so love mantras but getting builds around them to work is a tough piece of work… maybe, with this build, it’s finally time to roll a mesmer for good.

Gonna give it a shot, sounds promising. Tho I feel like it either needs menders purity or shattered conditions… Or at the least some cond remove utility.

Don’t get your problem.
Banners rock in stationary combat and CAN be carried but are not really godlike in mobile warfare.
Works as intended, I’d say.It’s like people complaining about the long windup on killshot. They are SUPPOSED to be of good use in stationary combat but a bit unreliable in mobile fights. If you want to understand where I’m coming from, look at ranger spirits.
Then say again, banners are bad in any way.
Banners are utterly amazing.
Got a large scale event? drop banners!
need to hold a choke? drop banners!
need to hold a point? drop banners!
Need to do some gimpy jumps while chasing some random guy? Get some friggin shouts instead, that’s not what banners were designed for!

Kumakichi.2583:

Gaiawolf.8261:

But charr are infinitely cooler.

I originally made a very fierce looking male charr mesmer but then noticed how white female charr’s floppy tails seem to make enemies so angry like its taunting them as if you were wacking them across the face with that floppy white tail. I bought one of those changeover kits and made the switch with no regrets. Its just so much kitten.

eeeeew! So that cute kitty with the fluffy tail was a male once?
Sick kitten, don’t get too close to my cubs!

:D

I don’t think, these calculations matter much.
You get beastmastery mainly to make your pet more beefy, so it doesn’t die, when it gets stared at for half a second by an opponent.
The damage increase, even if existing is only a nice secondary benefit but not the main reason to sink points in BM.

Just make some more screenies, guys!
I love these zergball pictures!

give him a downed penalty!
Every time, he goes down, he will get rezzed with 20% less hp :>

Noktern.1395:

As far as i remember , last refuge saved my kitten a bit much, dont know why if its bugging you guys, yeah but maybe not that much. If you guys think that <25% hp – defensive-skill-proc is useless, try to look at Runes of Vampirism’s #6 benefit ,which turns you into a mist when you fell below 10% hp, which is 1.) You’d die before it procs or 2.) It proc, but you’d die because of condi damage, which is a pain in the kitten while having 10%hp, or less. But all around, last refuge DID save my kitten a bit much , and still i think, if the devs plan to change that trait, ill still agree.

The problem is, if it procs mid-swing, you will instantly leave stealth, triggering revealed for 4 seconds. Remember, you were on 25%? Oops, so you needed that stealth to survive?
Best if it procs in the mid of a CnD animation

I run LB/GS in spvp. The build pretty much is berserk gear and full gc.
Pretty much, what the build comes down to is knowing when to run. Prolonged battles kill you. Had nice long duels against an engineer once but they are usually the exception. It’s all about sitting back, knowing when to strike and knowing when to run.
Typically, you will run around and try to snipe opponents which are engaged in duels with quick vuln and burst for an easy picking, then search out the next engagement, while avoiding duels unless someone blows their skills, trying to catch you, then you turn around, vuln, rapid fire, knockback, swoop into hilt bash and maul.
Elevations are your friend, flat areas your enemy. Use the terrain. I have still yet to try switching to SB on flat area. Will probably be the better weapon thre.
It’s the type of gameplay that can net you the most kills out of all players in a game, without a single death, while your team still loses. Cause holding points with this paper thin build is just not possible. I typically run spirit of nature tho, which can allow you to hold a point against a single bunker or even two, if they suck, for quite long

TL;DR, if you wanna go LB, go all out damage, unless you only want it for the vuln in a beastmaster build.

bundles which stay after you drop:
-siege blueprints:D
-mines
-fireworks(?)
Tho you probably want to look after ones which are actually useful.
Can the portal gun be dropped?
There any bundles which give you boons on use AND can be dropped?
Any other stuff which triggers on weapon swap? Well, theres sigils of battle which give you 3 stacks of might for 20 sec on a 9 sec ICD. Anything else coming to mind?

Page says “this is affected by boon duration and nature’s bounty”.

With these weapons any build will do…
Question is what you want to be, not what you want to use to achieve it.

get some thief to stealth you(preferrably blinding powder, shadow refuge is too obvious, or get him to drop a smoke field and just use any blast finisher), so you can charge up killshot :>
SURPRISE BUTTSECKS!
Probably works once or twice…