Guild Wars 2

Don’t listen to MasterElements, condi necro is actually pretty beastly now, and I’d totally rate it over zerker power necro considering how power necro is burst-class food while condi necro has favorable matchups against thief/mesmer/ranger because they tend to run minimal condi clear. I wouldn’t have recommended it yesterday, but the scepter buff has improved the overall condition pressure considerably.

As for amulets, I prefer Carrion because the extra health lets you handle burst much better. The hemophilia crit proc is negligable, and carrion makes DS autos hit harder. I personally run Spite/Curses/SoulReaping, but I think Blood could work to gain “sustain” from unholy martyr (it works really well on crusader/knights builds that have similar overall tankiness). Spite also gives you more boon rip via spiteful spirit and chill of death (or Signets of Suffering). I’ll test out a blood magic variant and see how well it works, since I like how it has options for movement speed.

For curses you’ll want plague sending and weakening shroud for sure. The master tier slot is a toss up, any of them can work well. I’d say terror works as a catch all trait, but master of corruption can be decent if and only if you’re team objective is to pull an abjured and outrotae teamfight comps and stall plague on a point to keep capture points ticking. Corrupt boon can be used much more frequently, as well as the heal, but the self-applied condis are very annoying so you need plague signet to deal with them. I also like spectral armor as my last utility, but flesh wurm works well too.

If you buy the expansion and run reaper, try curses/SR/reaper and make sure you take path of corruption for that and the heal shout+augury to help with life force generation. Dhuumfire is also great with it. Deathly chill can work, but I’d honestly prefer blighter’s boon for the sustain.

Anyways good luck and have fun playing condi necro!

Based on this and your other thread Angel, I’d say you’re the PU condi mesmer WvW roaming poster child.

Still I think malicious sorcery is pretty good where it stands. The 15% attack speed increase is amazing fro getting stomps and the like, and is an offensive condition option compared to the defensive ineptitude.

Well I mean bleeds are generally pretty awful in this game to begin with, so I doubt the extra bleed stack would have mattered.

Still I think it would be cool to summon Geesus from the heavens for explanation on this controversial polarizing balance decision that has forum-goers kittening eachother in writing.

I also want to point out that its disenheartening that burn guardian remains completely untouched, while every other condi spec, mesmers in particular are handled with extreme caution.

Also necromancers had to beg to get our scepter to be more useful than a toilet plunger, and it took so much lobbying to get it there, and condi necro still has some trait issues that make it hard to play compared to bruiser builds.

Speed Starr, I should note that my anecdotal data is pretty bad since I’m terrible at condi necro! People who know what they’re doing have been getting 350-400K DPG post-patch, whereas I’ve only peaked at 290K since the patch. Those numbers I gave earlier were prepatch.

nekretaal.6485:

ZDragon.3046:

nekretaal.6485:

Reaper isn’t solid… it’s hard countered by anybody with a ranged weapon.

Life blast and doom are gone & scepter/axe/staff provide next to nothing damage.

Until the weapons are fixed, reaper is garbage.

Thats called being fair reaper converts necro into a high pressure melee brawler. You cant expect it to have ranged pressure anymore of course its countered by range play. Thus its actually is solid.

The problem is baseline necro not Reaper.

“High pressure melee brawler.”. —->. No defenses close ranged slow highly telegraphed glass cannon, with no other means of pressure. (and middle of the pack DPS in optimal circumstances)

This game shouldn’t be throwing around hard counters so generously.

If you’re playing reaper as a glass cannon, you’re doing it wrong. Reaper with soldier’s, Knights, or even celestial is an excellent bruiser with great cleave pressure and very high sustain due to Blighter’s Boon.

But build issues aside, in general, reaper will always work as long as there are people standing on a point to clobber. Longbow ranger death from afar is only of true concern on legacy of the foefire, and you can typically LoS them on a side node until they get close enough to to try and contest the tiny capture point where you can fight them.

So unless you’re talking about stronghold or WvW roaming, I don’t think the ranged weapon hardcounter is nearly as signficant as you think it is.

Even chronomancer vs. zerker reaper duels were shown to be about evenly matched based on player skill via evidence from people like Holls that duel a lot.

spoj.9672:

I was hoping for some address to the corruption and Master of Corruption issues. CPC change is nice and all. But 6 seconds of self weakness holds it back so much. Especially now that the duration of the field is lower so the self condi is almost fully neutering you for the fields full duration. The corruption concept needs a drastic overhaul and i really hope it happens before HoT.

I know its not an ideal solution, but can you run plague signet or offhand dagger or staff or something as an offset to GS to help deal with the self-weakness in PvE?

MethaneGas.8357:

nearlight.3064:

I’m doing some cross comparison end of March damage screen data collection between the two amulets so I’ll report what I find at some point and how much better it is after tomorrow.

How much damage do you usually do per match? From what I’ve found using carrion so far, power does a significant proportion of damage throughout a match. One kinda bad match I did 20k more power dps than condi dps even.

It will be interesting to see. Is there a way to see how much total damage you take as well?

Wow… hmm… I don’t usually look at my stats in a match. I will try to look it over when I get to play next (hopefully today when I finally get home -_- … so stoked… )

Yeah the stats list EVERYTHING, even how many boons your remove and apply, and how much healing you do…

On condi necro I would generally get around 125K Physical DPG and 175K Condi DPG, for about 300K total, which is roughly in line with what most shatter mesmer builds will get per game. Burn guardian can do over 1 million condition damage per game… so yeah, thats the ideal :/

WereDragon.6083:

This was a nerf to Zerk Ele, not Cele Ele. D/D Ele is still going to decimate.

I just want to clear out this misconception.

Per phantaram, the best zerker ele build is marauder S/F air/earth/arcane. I don’t see how it was nerfed considering it doesn’t run fire traits, dagger skills, or ice bow, but actually did get buffed with more damage on two very lackluster skills.

So yeah, zerker ele wasn’t nerfed, since the only good zerker ele builds in pvp weren’t abusing fire to begin with.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Silverkey.2078:

• Temporal Curtain: Removed functionality that prevented the swiftness applied by this skill from applying to allies that already had swiftness. Now applies 12 seconds of swiftness to allies the first time they cross the wall and 1 second of swiftness to allies that cross it again after receiving the initial swiftness.

How you know it was never “working as intended” as previously stated :p

Signit Heal now with no clone heal pulse. Somemesmer somewhere might be happy.

One streamer I know plays cele Mesmer with blurred inscriptions and sw/p staff. I’m sure he’s overjoyed, and also that duelists discipline finally works for his build, which he was complaining about for a while.

Okay yay, now the tooltip is fixed so you can go on and live your lives with a perfectly balanced pledge.

I don’t play the uncompetitive vacuum that is WvW roaming Denis, so I’ll take your word for it. In spvp though, stealth isn’t needed at all to do well, and chronomancer helps for the reasons that apharma described, and many more, such as through slow and sheer burst reset ability alone.

I think everything’s fine. Axe range and slight extra damage really helps and I think most reaper builds will run GS axe/horn if they go for a bruiser build with no condition damage.

About lingering curses, I mean you were already gimping yourself by running this over weakening shroud, so I see no difference. Weakness spam>slightly longer cleansed bleeds.

About losing extra power damage on scepter, this probably kills it for celestial builds. I’ll be doing damage tests comparing rabid and carrion but I don’t expect it to be a huge or impactful nerf for condition damage builds, even if a huge amount (33%ish) of condi necro damage right now has ironically been power based.

feight.2704:

nearlight.3064:

You did know that the cooldown reduction from this trait was bugged to give more than it should, right?

I mean even with just torch and decoy and no PU burning both gets the prestige down to 15 seconds after 6 seconds of stealth.

So? i don’t see why people want to nullify the Stealth options of Mesmer back to the abysmal state it was in. Even if the actual% of the cool down reduction on The Pledge doesn’t match the tooltip, doesn’t mean that it was necessarily a mistake. instead of nerfing the trait, we could just update the tooltip.

Because as a Mesmer you don’t need to camp stealth to succeed. In fact things like PU (pre today’s nerf) on their own can carry bad players by ensuring that they almost never die, while doing nothing to contribute to damage. A thief at last needs to combo skills and manage initiative in order to use stealth, for Mesmer it’s brain dead easy with the press of a button. Thankfully, stealth builds will be obseolete in the future since chronomancer won’t need it at all to survive, and revealed will be a bit more common as well.

Yeah the tooltip of the pledge should be fixed just for consistency alone. Without PU it’s fine.

You did know that the cooldown reduction from this trait was bugged to give more than it should, right?

I mean even with just torch and decoy and no PU burning both gets the prestige down to 15 seconds after 6 seconds of stealth.

The only thing about them that is anywhere near OP is that the coding for purging flames (and ring of fire) is bugged so teleports through the field burn you.

They can also kill svanir and legacy/SH lords faster than anything else, but that’s more PvE related (can they get cleansing please?). They also do the most damage per game out of nearly any build, usually peaking at over 1 million condition damage per game.

Yet I still think they’re pretty balanced, given that they have a hard counter.

Hey Ceimash, I agree with points 1/2, and I’d honestly love for 3 to happen (I’m a closeted condi-aids-lover).

About 2: I’m not sure if full on mantra builds would come back (with inspiration and harmonious mantras) but just mantra of distraction on its own could comeback. Most top mesmer players I’ve noticed so far opted to take Domination/Dueling/Chronomancer with GS and either S/T or staff but S/Sh will probably be great now that the block actually… well, blocks more than one attack. They opted to keep Deceptive Evasion and take either the slow or quickness GM, but I think non-duelling chronphantasma builds could be really strong too, especailly for interrupt builds.

Anyway the problem with mantras/inspiration is that the mantra heal becomes a liability in prolonged fights when it goes on cooldown, and that difficult to work around. Not to be a fanboy, but these top players also say that chaos and inspiration aren’t really needed because the f5 shatter lets them pressure the enemy so much that they don’t need to camp stealth or use mantra heals to survive counterpressure.

for point 3, I think condi builds could become a lot more visible, especially on reaper, (in part due to scepter, in part due to cele necro not being as needed for the ele counter post-nerf). I’m tracking my gamewide damage with condi necro builds, now, post-scepter buff, and with reaper to get a good idea of its potential.

On the flipside, I think trooper runes soldier’s reaper will also be a very good and popular build, which is just more passive AoE cleansing that makes condi builds harder to run. Druid cleansing, grace of the land, and scrapper adaptive armor also threaten condi builds a little more than they probably should, especially when I bet that some of those traits were intended for PvE-Raid use.

Then theres defensive condi revenant, which I’m not sure will be as godmode as it was during BWE2, but we’ll have to see how things turn out.

(note: I actually didn’t watch your video yet, but I will tomorrow and I’ll post any other poignant thoughts).

Maybe add to earthen proxy that those with an aura take less condition damage? Similar to grace of the land in the Druid line but maybe only 20%

Or go the more overpowered route and make protection cut incoming condition damage on you and allies.

I’m doing some cross comparison end of March damage screen data collection between the two amulets so I’ll report what I find at some point and how much better it is after tomorrow.

How much damage do you usually do per match? From what I’ve found using carrion so far, power does a significant proportion of damage throughout a match. One kinda bad match I did 20k more power dps than condi dps even.

I think this is the perfect thread to discuss condi-necro’s viability considering its getting a straight upgrade tomorrow (and reaper is arguably and upgrade as well, one that relies even less on terror damage).

I am eager to try out a revamped condi necro build using the new scepter 3 trait, since its honestly fantastic sounding. I am also willing to try out the new lingering curses trait, but I’m wondering if weakness spam would be better to help survive, and the fact that lingering curses hardly helps us deal with cleansing.

I really like the idea of spiteful spirit on a condi build, although with reaper you’ll have to drop spite for reaper so you could keep dhuumfire, but lower CD AoE PoC makes this a non-issue imo. Alternatively you could run MoC to get lower CD corrupt boons and a lower CD heal, but I don’t know if that would really be worth it for the harsh self-cost.

I honestly prefer carrion amulet, since some of our skills scale pretty well with power, and the extra vitality gives us more of a buffer against other conditions. To add to that, the passive bleed proc in curses is absurdly weak. Weakening shroud’s proc can be made up by way of intelligence sigil on the staff or just from fury in DS.

Anyway, I’m thrilled to try it tomorrow! And I definitely think we can make it work without terror.

Xillllix.3485:

Indeed, condi/shatter mesmers and engis are way more broken than d/d ele ever was.

It sounds nice living in whatever fantasy world you inhabit.

I mean condi Mesmer and condi engi were on like every top team in the past year, am I right? It’s so overpowered that all 4 torment stacks a Mesmer puts out in a teamfight get instantly cleansed by an ele rotation or guardian/warrior shout!

My advice is to run s/f with earth, air, and arcane. Earth traits give you better survivability over time and the ability to actually use the signet heal, which gives you way more damage mitigation from low cooldown earth focus skills than say water traits or blinding ashes can do for you.

Pre-patch Mesmer and fresh air ele 1v1 was about 50/50, but Mesmer got a lot better in comparison and still has better team utility. The matchup will probably be closer to 50/50 again, but Mesmer with sword/torch (or shield soon) will have better damage mitigation options than fresh air ele, so I feel that Mesmer will be an all around better pick for a zerker build still. The PU nerf won’t impact them that much, especially since good mesmers didn’t really even need it.

Thief generally should avoid 1v1ing anything that can be considered a bruiser or anything new with extremely high condition damage output, as most of those builds are designed to hold and shrug off burst (condi new in an exception to the point holding rule). That leaves other zerker builds as the only thing you can really 1v1. And of those, the only ones I would fight as a thief would be power necro with no life force prestacked, marksmanship power ranger (no protective ward) and mantra mesmer with no or few mantras up. Oh and zerker ele/war/engi too are generally pretty thief weak, but medi guard, PU, CI, BD or illusions Shatter Mesmer should be avoided at all costs.

Not sure about zerker revenant yet, but I wouldn’t bet on it since they typical pack revealed.

This is exactly what I suggested when the change came out, but the devs tend to be spread too thin to create new coding.

I mean it took them over 3 years to fix minion AI and mesmer focus swiftnesss, and they just turned rev downstate 2 into a knockback instead of changing the displacement code to make it recognize stability, which was the real problem.

They’ll also justify it with the age old, “new players won’t understand anything complicated, so for them we’ll dumb everything down!!!”, line of reasoning thats gone into a surprising amount of balancing for this game. I mean look at some of the reasoning behind gravity well iterations over the past few months, the devs don’t want its complicatedness to scare new players away.

So yeah, they just don’t have the resources to make a complicated, yet ultimately more appropriate solution.

I think settlers will be ideal. I’d just be concerned about AF genereration without staff, seeing as S/T A/D will likely still be better for this build. Maybe staff/SB could work, since the SB daze can trigger ancient seeds, but I’m not sure considering how bonfire+evade spam is overall a lot better.

I think it could work at traps, but I think having to drop a line for skirmishing would be hard to do since you need the sustain from the other traitlines, but druid could let you substitute one if you take some of the condi cleanse traits.

I’m not sure I’m fully confident in Shiro Herald’s 1v1 ability, mainly due to relatively poor condition removal, and while it can engage very quickly with phase traversal, disengaging is much more difficult without team coordination. Anything with good sustain or condition pressure should be able to hold the point against it as long as it dodges unrelenting assault. Also some side nodes, such as henge, don’t let you target someone from a huge distance away.

Chronomancer though I beleive in as a roamer. Its essentially the current mesmer role with all around better 1v1 potential due to the time reset alone. The shield is a really powerful tool since it gives them defense on their sword set that isn’t stealth, so they won’t give up points to an enemy bruiser as easily as they do now. I also predict that the portal timer buff will help them a lot since now they can just pop portal when the timer is about to end to check things, instead of having it expire too easily like now.

For pvp the only good corruptions are the heal, elite, and corrupt boon. An MoC build actually works relatively well on celestial, but can’t 1v1 things that aren’t eles/guards as well due to no SA.

I think it will make settlers/crusaders/clerics druid builds a force to be reckoned with in spvp.

Ancient Seeds on a settlers build has already got my all hot and bothered with how cancerous it could be.

Hey sticker,

Most builds are either solid with stunbreaks or solid vs. condis, but not both at the same time. The shiro stance for example has a stunbreak with essentially no cooldown, but an energy cost instead. You also get a stunbreak and condi cleanse on legend swap if you take invocation, which helps hold things together nicely.

But the other thing to realize is that revenant has ways of almost hardcountering condis and CCs if you take the right build, while invocation just helps manage it a little bit. Run Mallyx/X with herald, corruption, and retribution (a condi tank build essentially). You basically get permanent resistance if you manage skills correctly and near permanent stability through F2, enhanced bulwark, and the stab on dodge minor trait in retribution. In the last beta that build with glint felt like a new and improved version of the 2013 spirit ranger, but the next beta balance notes are making it a bit less OP. Mainly redeeming protection gave it perma-prot with F2, but now its being merged with Eye for an Eye to share a 45 second CD for 3 seconds of prot (and the taunt proc.. meh). But it will have decently high weakness uptime as well to compensate.

But yeah in general zerker shiro/glint builds will be pretty condi weak and focus fire weak, but thats more due to a lack of invulns. Infuse Light, the Glint heal is the best tool the revenant has to deal with short burst condi application and focus fire though, as its instant cast so can work through stuns in place of a stunbreak.

They removed one bounce from mirror blade, which is a slight reduction to the overall burst on any mesmer build.

Yeah you can run other weapons and get away with them as long as you have the mantra, but its not optimal for the playstyle. Greatsword is mainly considered the best burst weapon on mesmer because it lets you do high damage from ranged compared to every other weapon with more than just the shatter skills and phantasm. Mirror blade and mind stab still hit quite hard.

Staff offers great utility and survivabilty against kitable melee professions and good movement, and chaos storm is wonderful, but it doesn’t do much damage without shatters. Sword is a really good weapon as well, but not really for its damage, more for the control and the defense of the invuln. Offhand sword can work decently for a lockdown build (never really tried, but I might try it over pistol to see how it works), and to be honest I’ve only really run that specific set on boonshare builds, where it shines the most. Non-GS interrupt builds would probably work better in duels compared to focused burst in teamfights, which is where GS shines.

I still highly recommend running GS though, since theres no point in lockingdown your target with interrupts if you don’t have the damage to kill them while they’re locked down.

You can read the full preview notes in this link:

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/

Basically the only thing thats getting nerfed about mesmer is PU. Going from 100% extra duration to 50% extra duration. I agree with this nerf 100% because it made playing full glass cannon mesmer way too forgiving and easy for inexperienced players, since even if you couldn’t land your bursts, you could always run away whenever you wanted, which was just a stupid playstyle to becoma a “meta” build.

As you’ll see, the other mesmer changes are strictly buffs. Mesmer won’t disappear from pvp at all.

As far as interrupt mesmer builds go, I think they’re quite fun, and the most flavorful type of mesmer build you can make. Theres a ton of variation in what you can do with lockdown builds, but most take powerblock and one or both of either confounding suggestions or chaotic interruption to help make interrupts hurt a lot more. They’re strong because things like mantra of distraction+counfounding suggestions can guarantee a landed GS burst on a target. In fact this type of build was previously overpowered and nerfed, but now its back in line as a balanced build.

Some people go full out into mantras to take synergy traits with dueling/dom/insp with the mantra heal to have high sustain vs. condis 1v1 and the ability to hold a point with tons of healing, but I believe the build falls apart as soon its mantras go on cooldown.

I prefer playing a GS/staff dom/duel/chaos spread with bountiful disillusionment, to be able to lock targets down with powerblock/CS but having stability to be tough to lockdown myself, which helps especially with thieves.

You absolutely need GS on an interrupt build for the damage alone, and either staff or sw/pistol work as offsets. I do suggest running sword/sheild though instead of sw/pistol if you play chronomancer in the expansion, which makes playing interrupt builds even stronger since you get slow for easier interrupts (longer enemy casts) and extra sources of clone generation and a really strong elite CC skill.

This is a really good idea! I’d be willing to test out reaper, chronomancer, scrapper, and druid, and possibly revenant builds so I’ll check back here next week to see if theres anything I can help with.

I’ll probably only test builds that generally interest me though, and most likely for spvp only.

Mesmer scepter is fine.

The necromancer scepter was woefully underperforming as a condition damage weapon, simply because its sustained pressure was kitten due to bleeds being really weak. Now it will actually have some burst condition application, which its needed for all this time.

Mesmer scepter 2 and 3 are both condition burst skills, and they’re in a very good spot for balance atm.

There seems to be a lot of options for Druid builds but most of them will be healing power centric, I think remorseless Crusaders and settlers condi bunker 2.0 and maybe even some cele build could all work really well, and I’m excited to try it out!

And let’s not forget that outside of signet of stone, limited stealth access, and RaO stab, Druid will be relatively easy to focus, lockdown, and kill in pvp. That sustain means little when you’re being pounded into oblivion, as evidenced by point-holder necro builds. The staff movement skill helps though, and overall I think it’s a good supplement to defensive ranger builds and I’m excited to try it,

While o think your argument is valid, I don’t think that Moa should counter necromancer as harshly as it does compared to every other class. Moa lets you finish off a low health target in DS, by removing DS entirely for its duration, in addition to ending transforms and killing minions.

That’s simple too much necromancer specific countering in one skill. Ending transforms is fair, and the DS issue is complicated, since we don’t want a moas infused with death and hatred scourging Tyria in Moa shroud. Other classes aren’t shut down as much by Moa. The only other thing I can think of that comes close to the level of overall hardcounter is forcing removal of stone heart on a staff bunker ele, or rending war/engi rampages, which is more justified considering how strong rampage is and how strong stone heart can be in some scenarios.

I just feel that Moa counters necrosis more than other classes, which is a bit much in my opinion.

Also you’re worried about MM necro becoming too strong in 1v1s without the Moa hardcounter. I wouldn’t be concerned with this since the whole point of the build is to be extremely strong 1v1 but laughably bad in teamfights due to being countered by the cleave present on most decent team compositions, that even cleric heals can’t help with.

I just wanted to voice my support for these previewed changes. Are these coming the Tuesday before the beta or after the beta?

Also I still think that axe auto needs a damage increase, although the range increase was a huge buff, and it will work wonders at letting range Melee centric reaper have some actual ranged damage pressure, so for that I am very thankful,

I also believe that Moa shouldn’t kill all minions, simply because it’s one of the reasons why Moa shuts down necromancer a disproportionately more so than any other profession, as it ends DS (the most critical counter fact) and transforms, but I’m glad I can finally run flesh wurm and plague at the some time without gimping myself.

No, the best solution would be to have the original Mallyx but have an effect in Mallyx make you immune to cleansing while the legend is active. However the devs don’t have the resources to create new or better coding that much, which is why they do things like turn downstate displacement into knock back, when they should have just changed the coding to make the displacement get blocked by stability.

There are plenty examples of lazy coding in the game. You just have to teleport out of a ring of fire or rally off of necro transferred conditions applied to your friend to see why.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

nearlight.3064:

let you lick targets down

?

That’s what I get for going in the forums on my phone during class. Since that gave me a really good laugh I’m not going to edit my post! I meeting to say lock your targets down, with CC and kitten, but I guess since lickitoungue’s lick has a chance of causing paralyze, that works too

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

PU makes it really easy to survive in zerk, so I understand that it’d be a good build to learn the class on. However, especially if you do spvp compared to wvw, I’d suggest trying out other, more aggressive playstyles and builds, because eventually you’ll get to a point where you won’t need the defense from PU to survive.

PU has different purposes in WvW and PvP.

In WvW, PU allows you to turn a corner, be greeted by an oncoming zerg, and gtfo without dying.

In PvP, PU allows you to approach a point or other ongoing fight while stealthed, and then unload your burst for an instakill before the enemy is aware of your presence. Repeat that ad infinitum for additional +1ing of fights.

Well I can understand its uses in WvW, I disagree that it’s all that necessary in PvP. Yes it lets you back cap more easily, but that’s still overall a role done better by a shadow arts thief due to sb 5 map crossing, and their stealth is overall more supportive to allies compared to Mesmer stealth.

Yes you can do stealth bursts, but those are honestly pretty predictable in pvp. It only really works as a one-off burst, after that, catching them off guard will be difficult since the typical PU build won’t have the tools needed to repeatedly lock down targets to land bursts compared to one that doesn’t. As a Mesmer you can +1 a fight on nearly any power build, I don’t believe that stealth gives your huge advantage for that role either. If you don’t need the trait to survive, it’s better to invest in the tools that let you lick targets down better or for things like inspiration to give you more on point staying power during a 1v1 so you don’t instantly let a decap happen.

I think this change would certainly be extremely powerful, and since my mouse is kitten, it would disproportianately effect me! You should see how long it takes for me to retarget the ranger after a taunt proc. Other than that though, I’d be all for this as its sound and skillful on paper, but it would get tons of hate from people that can’t adapt very well.

The other solution is to buff the phatasm distortion trait that gets rarely used.. but I like pyro’s idea better.

Well I will say your video editing and music choices are good, if that makes you feel better at all.

Anyway regarding PU, I should apologize. I just tend to have an “anti-meta” bias regarding competitve builds in this game, in which I try to show meta builds that there are equally, or more viable options than the ones that other people have come up with. Thats kinda my design philosophy, though I would play meta builds if they kept me from getting bored too quickly, which is really rare for me.

PU makes it really easy to survive in zerk, so I understand that it’d be a good build to learn the class on. However, especially if you do spvp compared to wvw, I’d suggest trying out other, more aggressive playstyles and builds, because eventually you’ll get to a point where you won’t need the defense from PU to survive.

I main necro and mesmer. Whisper me if you like to duel, and we can work on things until you feel at least a bit more comfortable of the matchup.

In your case, it sounds like you don’t understand necro and Mesmer mechanics very well, which is fair. I’d suggest either playing a few games as them, or watching streamer vids on twitch from people like noscoc and helseth to better understand those classes.

I don’t want to be rude or anything, but this video is boring. Watching PU stealth burst montages is boring. PU is also a crutch for players that don’t know how to survive without it.

If you really wanted viewers you’d make your own super creative interesting build and run with that to show us unexplored playstyles and interesting fights.

shion.2084:

So what Scrapper traits synergize well with a power rifle build and the scrapper trait line?

Adaptive Armor. /endthread

Edit: And I mean stabilization core could give you more wiggle room for stability Overcharged Shots in vicious downed/rez conumdrums.

I hope you’ve gotten a better mic/computer/headset/noisereduction technology since the recording of that video, background noise issues always make me twitchy.

I only had time to watch the first 20 minutes, but it was interesting recalling about how weak mesmer was in pvp during the spirit ranger hambow meta.

Apparently on Friday there will be a skill balance preview at the end of a long day of other live stream stuff at twitchcon, so we’ll find out details then.

Curunen.8729:

Sword/Shield + Scepter/Focus Chrono Power Interrupt
PvP ~ WvW

Domination: Confounding Suggestions, Shattered Concentration, Power Block
Inspiration: Restorative Mantras, Restorative Illusions, Mental Defence
Chronomancer: Delayed Reactions, Danger Time, Chronophantasma

MoRecovery, Blink, MoDistraction, Decoy, GW(PvP) / MI(WvW)

Armour: Berserker + Rune of Melandru
Trinkets: Berserker (WvW), Marauder (PvP)
Weapons: Berserker Sw/Sh + Sc/F (Energy/Generosity)
Chickpea Poultry Soup + Quality Maintenance Oil

I would do so many things to get Staff #1, #2 and #3 as a Mainhand option. Scepter is not the ideal choice here but there’s no alternative.

Motivation:
- to run Focus and Shield at the same time for aoe crowd control potential.
- to build up as much passive condition reduction as possible.

Key features:
- High passive condi duration reduction
- Good active condi removal and sustain
- AoE projectile destruction
- AoE crowd control

Weaknesses
- low toughness/vitality
- scepter is not ideal

Questions to answer:
- Is the passive condition resistance worthwhile?
- Are there enough sources of illusions to shatter in practice?
- Is it necessary to go full zerker in wvw for damage?
- How good will it be at chasing enemies in wvw without greatsword?
- Just how awful is scepter/how much do we need another mainhand…?
- Is Staff + Sword/Shield better in pvp, to use chaos storm for interrupts on point?

Saw this build in your sig, and personally I don’t recommend using either scepter or focus. Focus used to be a good weapon but I find its lockdown ability paying in comparison to pistol, which itself isn’t that great. Personally I would drop sc/f altogether to take either staff or greatsword, either of them would offer way more to your build in nearly every way. In particular I believe that GS is a mandatory weapon on burst builds, even lockdown just because the damage is so great and the mantra ensures it rarely fails to land.

I plan to run GS/sw/sh most of the time but I’ll swap s/sh out for staff on forest since it ha the most important phase retreat spots compared to other maps.
Personally in not a fan of the mantra heal, since charging it in combat is too risky when any other heal gives your more relatable healing in longer fights, so you can take your peeling time with MoD as priority in comparison.

Is there a new animation for the AoE pulse from the shield phantasm that shows either the range of the effect or an animation that shows who is hit by the skill, besides allies ferrying the purple flame for alacrity?

It doesn’t matter too much, but new animations are always fun

Bigbosos.2063:

Aside from chrono, were there any major changes to the mesmer class that made it more interesting to play? Or is it the same old shattercat-like builds that’s to be played?

Basically one of the more active developers gave it a complete rework in the trait revamp back in June. It honestly feels like a much better and more polished class. In fact, it was even considered widely overpowered for the first month after that patch until some things got fixed and toned down, but now its overall in a great place in spvp.

In spvp, power PU is considered “meta”, but its honestly just a crutch for bad players to be able to run a zerker amulet without having to worry about ever dying. It doesn’t give you anymore damage or anything, but just lets you run away alive after failing to contest a point or burst anything down.

I think the best builds right now are lockdown based builds, and there are many different ways to build one, provided you take power block and shattered concentration in domination and then one or both of either chaotic interruption or confounding suggestions, and generally dueling for blind-spam, fury, and deceptive evasion.

Regarding chronomancy, I personally think its one of the most fun things thats being added to the game. I disagree with denis, and I believe that its more helpful for most builds, particularly lockdown or teamfight oriented builds, and off-meta condi/hybrid builds gain a lot from it as well. The best things about it are a time-reset mechanic, new AoE damage/support utilities (wells), a shield that offers far more consistent defense and CC than any existing offhand, and cooldown management through alacrity. It also gives you better access to slow, a very debilitating condition to help with locking targets down, and chronophantasma, a phantasm-reset-after-one-shatter-trait that enables builds to have same or better burst ability as a build with deceptive evasion, but without actually running dueling. And the 25% movement speed trait is just pure awesome-sauce

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,

The Reflexive Hammers trait in retribution is going to be changed after BWE3, before launch. Right now since it uses projectiles that hover around you, they currently don’t work underwater and I think it no longer really fits the line as that is more about damage, plus it muddies the FXs around the character when the actual hammers are around you.

Soooooo…. I wanted to throw out an idea I had about a new GM trait for retribution to place it and see what you all think. The trait would be more dwarf stance focused since we don’t have a dwarf stance specific trait.

• It would give you some way to proc Rite of the Great Dwarf like at some percent health trigger or something and then make Rite of the Great Dwarf (both proc and the skill) have reduced condition damage taken as well while allies have the buff.

Let me know what you think.

I like this idea. Just make sure the proc is instant and doesn’t cost energy.

Also, I think the gain might when hit under retal trait should make dwarf stance skills give 3 seconds of retal, since there isn’t enough to proc the trait consistently.

Well scrapper truly has a ton of superspeed but tempest only has the air shout which is on a 45 second untrainable cooldown and the air shout proc. 6 seconds of superspeed per 90 seconds is nowhere near constant bro.

You know scepter is terrible when it doesn’t make it into a settler’s build over dagger