Guild Wars 2

Put some cavalier trinkets in, grab a sigil of prec. You’ll increase ur toughness, keep crit dmg, and stack up the prec at like wolves or something then swap out for geno.

(Just incase you didn’t know, Cav’s Power, Toughness and Crit, but I’m sure you do.)

Esplen.3940:

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mesmers have the easiest access to the best stunbreakers of any class. Stability is not even close to necessary.

And that being said, there’s a mantra that provides 4 seconds of stability on a 25 second cooldown.

^this. Staff blink

Stop spreading misinformation.

Staff blink (Phase Retreat) is NOT. A. STUNBREAKER. (anymore).

Let me clarify myself then. Use it to position yourself and avoid stuns. PREEMPTIVELY

And again, I will repeat it. Damage mitigation and avoidance > stability.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

Dear OP. This build happens to be same as my Apex Predator build… So I hope you will not submit it.

If we’re gonna play this game, please dont submit your Apex Predator build, it happens to be the same as the Blackwater Mesmer build….

But srsly…

did you even look at this guys trait allocations?

I was under the impression the Mesmer forums were a place for us to iterate, build up and enhance off of one another. Not bicker over whose build has a similar basic PU structure, and god forbid, try to pass off variations of things.

Thieves are OP please nerf anet. This thred iz rite. mesmar so squish. much vulnerability. much low hp. needs more survivabilimaty plz. Buff UP Mes, nerf OP BS Thieves.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mesmers have the easiest access to the best stunbreakers of any class. Stability is not even close to necessary.

And that being said, there’s a mantra that provides 4 seconds of stability on a 25 second cooldown.

^this. Staff blink, hard blink, portals, decoy, sword leap, blurred frenzy, distortion… all on super short cooldown. Damage mitigation and avoidance > stability.

Basically what Esp and Carighan are saying. I only ever swap it out if people want duels. More often than not, you’re outnumbered when small group roaming, with the combination of blinks, staff and stealth melee isn’t an issue. However, the risk of having your heal rupted, having projectiles hit you, deal damage etc. is much higher risk. Not only do you mitigate more often than not more damage effectively healing more than ether, if you’re built zerker, your damage output is still very nice.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

I conjured my mighty flaming sword of fire and whirled at the warrior. He also fell to his knees… and I watched in glee …

Sounds about right.

Quick tips I’ve learnt over the past year to help you wreck thieves.

• When the thief invis’, keep moving, rotating and never, under any circumstance, back pedal.(Walk backwards.)

• Try and keep a block, invuln or blink for when they’re about to break invis. Try and time this for when they’re about to break invis and burst. This mitigates any backstab damage, and if blocked, returns a significant burst.

• Double energy runes are amazing, pair that with a staff and you’re jumping everywhere. I recommend shatter for this very play style. You can move in and out of combat, while turning that mitigation into damage.

• Using an iWarden as the thief goes invis will spawn on where they’re standing. Using this method, you can get some insightful guesstimation into what they’re gonna do next. ie, come in for burst, back off and regen a little. Make sure that you keep on the harass the moment they start to run away.

• IF you’re playing shatter, feign a flee. Thieves are greedy and will chase you. When you think you’ve got them in a good position, summoned phantasmed while running, etc. and have enough for a burst, send your sword 3 backwards, and blow em up. Nothing counters a thief harder than surprise.

• Stack those dazes when they start to get low. If you can sense you’ve got an upper hand for them, be prepared for them to invis. Stagger your clones, and hit em with an f3.

• and finally. Dont overextend and chase them down. If a thief hasn’t been able to kill you, and is running, consider this a personal victory. You’ve probably hurt their ego.

Goodluck, Have fun. Shatter hard

Soyboy.3548:

Geeo.2154:

Anyone come up with anything good yet?

Have you no shame? You have to copy others’ builds?

Lol. Please stop. Meta will always be meta.

Im a massive advocate for shatter play styles, and am a firm believer in using mirror as your heal. Now, I only really touch my heal for it’s reflective properties, and a heal if i get low, other than that i dont really touch it. Although this may seem like something that encourages ezmode mesmer play style, I’m actually quite interested in seeing how strong it is, and sustainability it may bring for shatter play styles.

TBH I’d much rather see this put in as the adept trait. It’s good, but still not good enough to slot in.

20/20 with boon strip shatter is by far greater dps than 10/30. (This being from PvP interaction standpoint) Not only do you get increased damage from the stack vulnerability, but the boon-strip element is the most critical part, since you can remove stuff like protection and regen, resulting in less DPS mitigation, making the damage you do count.

skcamow.3527:

While I think this would be better than making F3 AoE by default, and I would dance up and down my street if it happened, honestly I think it’d be too OP. The reason it would be OP is because of the other interrupt traits you could take that would make our lockdown capabilities ridiculously strong. IF you didn’t take a single other interrupt proc’ing trait besides ID, it might be OK.

It’s on like a 36 second cooldown… :? Warriors can hammer burst like every 9 seconds for a much longer duration, and harder hitting stun… I dunno. I dont think there’s really a problem with the change, and if you’re going to go heavily into stun proc’ing trait lines, you’re losing out on a bit. Then this’d mean you’re traiting into a stuncentric build, which we’re trying to make viable in group play S:

Don’t know if JP’s still reading this, but there needs to be serious buffs to Imbued Diversion, or have it shifted down a tier. In it’s current state, I do not think it diserves to be a grandmaster tier’d trait.

It’d also synergise with shatter builds, since there’s nothing really in the master trait that’s a serious OMG MUST GET TO COMPLIMENT trait. Just a thought.

Alissah.9281:

I wonder if Arenanet is aware of Mesmer build diversity atm :/.

Jon mentioned only shatter, phantasm and mantra. Where is the lockdown and condition? Or even bunker and support :o.

I hope he simply forgot, because if they aren’t aware of other builds, well, it would have a negative effect on my trust for them to change Mesmer properly >__<.

If you were to read, just below that he includes lockdown and signet mesmers as less popular. As for your opinion of diversity, just because the diversity is there, doesn’t mean there’s viability. Yes lockdowns can be situational, ie. PvP, however they can be alot better. Support mesmer does exist, but why have a support mesmer when a guardian does a much better job?

The whole point of this thread is to discuss changes which can build upon and improve the diversity, making it more viable. Not defend shotty builds which ultimately, in it’s current state, lack.

deathTouch.9706:

EverythingEnds.4261:

But vigor isnt probably the main reason condi mes is hard to kill in 1 vs 1, either.

The point being why do they need even greater access to it, relative to other classes.

lel. I hope this is a joke. Anyone that wants to 1v1 needs to understand that other classes are gonna be imba. If you’re referring to roaming by yourself and you come across another person and want to 1v1, and you notice they’re a condi mesmer? Run away. Condi mesmers really can’t do anything if you decide to just go.

In regards to why do mesmers have such high in-combat mobility and damage mitigation; Mesmers are ridiculously squishy. Without that, they’re pretty much going to blow up in any group engagement.

And taking away the ability for mesmer’s to have vigor doesn’t just hurt condi mesmers, but all mesmer builds. It’s like saying “Itz so unfair dat worriers can b tanky and runz away big distances wif a buzzilion skilz wen they bout 2dieSz”, when warrior weapon mobility allows for zerker warriors to engage and disengage fights.

skcamow.3527:

Why is that? As you are the creator of one of the first stun-focused builds (Stunway) I would be interested in hearing you expound on this.

If assumptions are right, and they trade the stun for daze duration, the lockdown capabilities drastically change. Although their skills are on a longer shutdown, they’re still able to move, dodge, etc etc. As opposed to being forced to sit through the relentless attacks.

Not just that, I feel as if Arenanet’s really focusing in on a “dueling” identity in terms of building the mesmer skillcase, through buffed mantras, phantasms etc. Now I wouldn’t have this problem if this were GW1, but it’s not. Team play starts to lack and the viability and massive input that mesmers bring to “group play” and “zerg play” are only really utility.

I don’t know what I was really expecting, but I really felt like a shatter buff would’ve been nice, or mantra viability if they’re expecting us to go down that track. But I mean, mantras in its current state, no matter how much you think are “viable”, really aren’t in group play. The meta, in it’s current state, is rather disappointing. We have this massive focus on “bunker” and “survivability” which is fine, but the fact that you can build tanky, while outputting out enough DoTS to kill everything and anything is just imba. Yeah you can build just to fit in with this meta, but lets be honest here, that’s stale and boring. With these changes, yes mesmers are able to survive the meta more, but to a cost of DPS and having to really build into those areas. It kinda really pigeon holes you.

I’d like to also see an addition to the stun trait, something that increases the cooldown after interrupting an ability, because 3 seconds is just… lame.

So yeah, that’s why I’m kinda disappointed with the to-be changes.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

/grumble

Confounding Suggestions.. Ugh. I’d rather the stun. The daze duration synergizes beautifully with Runes of the Mesmer (which also needs a buff)

I’m actually really disappointed with the proposed changes…. oh well…

+1, love this

Roquefort.4160:

good fights in tonights (and last nights) oceanic in SBI BL. even though i tried all night last night, finally got your gari tonight. solid defense of bay and gari though.

Have my babies. Plz.

aaron.7850:

everyone is running tanky condition builds, and shatter sucks against them.

lulz, totally gonna disagree with you there. Shatter’s still largely effective. It’s all in the execution. If you want to be successful, you gotta be unpredictable.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Once activated it stays for 15seconds (Activated as in 2nd portal dropped)

With such a low cooldown, I find this to be the issue. Couple that with zerker stats, and a GS, you’ll have so much QQ.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Personally i would rather have:

A Player only version
30 second cool down
1500 Range
Once activated it stays for 15seconds (Activated as in 2nd portal dropped)

Because this won’t be abused at all…..

wombat.6123:

About 10 of us just reported an Bronze Invader Ehmry Bay thief from GF guild who was teleport hacking so badly it was obvious to even the new players in wvw. gg.

Merp, if you reported them, you should probably leave it at that. Dunno what it’ll achieve inside this thread, other than hostility and arguments. When my internet gets really bad, I get the same accusations (due to lag,) so keep that in mind.

Thanks for the fun EV and GF. Enjoyed the 3v3’s.

I hope people realise that it’s pointless to duel a phantasm mesmer. However, I would probably suggest 6x Runes of the OP, with a Sigil of Ridiculous (on GS.) You could probably get away with a Sigil of Juststupid on your offhand, it works extremely well with Sigil of Invisspamautopilot.

Goodluck

Pyroatheist.9031:

There are a lot of viable builds that don’t involve shattering.

Blasphemy! Burn it, burn it before it can breed!

Given Anet’s track record for “soon”, I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.

Lanimal.6541:

Don’t bother with Corey hes got a chip on his shoulder because his horribad mesmer is carried by Pickle xD

;D I don’t deny the fact that I get carried but a support guardian. But at least I don’t have unrealistic expectations of my skill level while running a phantasm build xD

citadelli.2591:

/agree Luvpie, SoS was amazing today. Even though we out number them right now on TC during us times, they always bring a great fight and play smart ;-)
They also don’t seem to forget it’s a game, but they are a really cool server with a great attitude.
I think they need to fix the competition level a little bit again IMO.

I’m not actually sure you can fix this matchup. TC has the numbers and coverage of a mega t1 server, yet lacks the skill to stay there (it gets stomped into the ground.) But since they have such swamping numbers, ever other server below suffers.

Loken.9724:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-4qklvizBY

DPS vs AWE

15v15 GvG

Wow, sick stuff. Glad you came back to FA.

Secret? I would’ve thought this was common sense.

Edited for post patch. Halting strike now does significant damage, save those mantra dazes for shutting down enemies trying to heal.

I don’t understand… How do you expect to kill people like this? Or is it just a troll build?

skcamow.3527:

Did you test using Chaos Storm or Focus Pulls? Those two, coupled with the occasional F3 shatter provided mounds of boons and extended duration (if you already had the boon) when using bountiful interruption. Now with the “buff” to the trait, there won’t be quite as many boons, just more might and a single random boon.

As effective using those methods were for interrupts, with the changes I can see maintaining very high might stacks using the same build. Haven’t tested it out yet to validate though.

How is this a skillful use of interrupts? Right now the things that are viable to interrupts are elites, heals, and classes with extended cast times (engies, guardians and warriors.) I would be happy with being able to reliably interrupt said skills if the cast time would be reset, hell, even a grandmaster trait that makes the interrupted skill go on cooldown for another 10-15 seconds would be nice. Yet it’s available in another 3 seconds. It shouldn’t be a, “oh, let me drop this field down and pull here and there. Maybe I’ll get an interrupt and score some boons” type of situation.

loseridoit.2756:

seriously, i kinda wish there is a ban on posting videos of 1vs1 dueling mesmers unless they are playing odd builds

its impossible to tell if the poster is decent or the class is carrying them

+1 to that. I’d much rather see 2v2’s IMO.

TC, I must commend you for your amazing teamwork. When fighting outnumbered situations you always manage to get the hard-res’ off.

trooper.2650:

WvW/pve. But I already changed mind. 900 range isn’t good enough

To be perfectly honest here, WvW and PvE are very much different. You do not want to be running the same builds on both.

You trait for recharged shatters, yet you don’t really have any way of fueling that? Seems like a wasted 10 points into illusions to me.

trooper.2650:

Thank you again for your feedback.

I tried it in spvp and I was quite happy, good survivabilty, good damage… until I went out in the open, and realized scepter has a major drawback: 900yards range. When fighting on the nodes I didn’t realize it!
What it also kitten es me off is that pistol trained, not only the tooltip, but its effective range doesn’t change. Bug?

Anyway, the scepter short range in wvw is unworkab for me le so I immediately switched back to 2h + sword pistol

Pistol traited allows you to summon from 1.2k range, and stun from 1.2k range. However once summoned, the clones still move in to 900 range… I dunno why. Maybe it’s a bug, maybe Anet just doesn’t care.

In power builds, scepter does 1-2k auto attack hits, nothing really spectacular. However, scepter block and confusion ray do a lot of damage. I would say it’s alright, however personally I’m a bigger fan of invulnerability from sword 2.

One really effective tactic against phantasm mesmers in 1v1 situations is to utilise the power of Greatsword.

You want to enter the battle positioned away from the phantasm mesmer, and take advantage of swiftness + GS 3 and 5. However you’re going to be aiming these away from the phantasm mesmer. This will render the phantasm mesmer useless as he will be unable to catch you.

Eventually phantasm mesmers will cry at their lack of mobility, and inability to kill outside of 1v1’s and switch over to a more effective build.

You win.

The problem I find with this, although SoInsp. is nice, you’re going to have a hard time reaching your target of 2-3 duelists. This being, without any phantasm HP buff, each duelist can be killed really easily.

This becomes bad for a couple of reasons;
1) Phantasmal Haste becomes redundant; if they’re going to be dying moments after they’ve been casted because of low HP, why bother?

2) In group fights they’d die pretty fast that’s a given (even phantasm builds with increased HP pool find their damage dealers dying fast), and in 1v1 situations you’d be handy capped significantly especially if the opponent has retaliation. Combine that with low HP pool and you’re not going to be able to reach your desired 2-3 duelist target.

Also, the 5 points into Chaos seems like it could be used better somewhere else. Like in Inspiration for Restorative Illusions. Then remove the 10 from Illusions and grab pistol recharge as your grand master in dueling, and get out dodge roll clones as your master. This will allow you to proc your iDuelist for the initial burst of damage, but not waste a trait because they’re gonna die eventually, and synergise better with your food and energy sigil.

As for your heal, I’m a major fan of Mirror, however I usually run shatter builds. I can see it ether feast being more beneficial possibly in group situations here.

I guess it’ll give your more sustainability and take advantage of your phantasms squishiness.

Esplen.3940:

but interrupting is typically in place for condition damage builds.

Lol, not at all. There’s some pretty sick stun builds out there already, I run one which is pretty damage intensive. PTV, some zerker and cav gear.

PBLOCK AND ESURGE! GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME NOW!

Name:Corey Goes Shatter
Account Name: theCOREYCOLAK.5698
Rank:29

:P Sounds suppppper fun.

EnRohbi.2187:

No problem,
Take away Moa Morph and give me Panic back from GW1.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

iAmEM.6072:

I just wanna share this to all.. Enjoy guys
Deep Penetrations Hard core SEA GUILD

Skills vs Numbers

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

“Skills vs Numbers” then proceeds to show 3 minutes of staff 1 spam.

Thanks for the laughs. You’ve made my day.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

I was just about to make a thread theorycrafting a PvP lockdown build but I realized

“Wait… Didn’t I see something called Stunway?”

This looks really interesting, and I’d love to see a video of it in action. My idea was similar, but more damage/mantra-focused.

30/30/0/0/10 – Domination: IV,VII, XI / Dueling: IV, VII, XI / Illusions: III

Full set of Mantras besides MoPain. Sword-Sword / Staff and Knight’s Amulet (Berserk Jewel). with Runes of the Mesmer.
—
My idea was more with Dazes in mind rather than Stuns. I figured 6 dazes (with 2 multi-target dazes) should be enough to get the job done while I have a boosted 25% damage to beat down my opponent with 3 clones and 4 readied mantras, though I was really tempted to experiment with Illusions (XII) mixed with Deceptive Evasion.

I also had a Retal/Heal/Daze bunker in mind.

0/0/20/30/0 … Not exactly sure of traits yet, thinking Cleric’s amulet for the power and healing power, iDefender for double retal procs and mantra heals.. Squeezing dazes in there somehow would allow me to charge my mantras in relative safety but the entire concept is still in its infancy.

While Dazes are nice, I’d much rather have a smaller number of stuns over dazes. Simply since the lockdown is ridiculous, and synergises incredible with group play (ie, another shatter mesmer, or warrior running +50% crit chance against stunned foes.)

I’m attempting at putting together a video of it in action, however, I’m running GW on my macbook pro, so screengrabbing software is limited, and clunkiest. Not to mention I don’t have the best graphics

Wonderer.1790:

Disturbing yes, but maybe better sounding than ‘The Phatter’ build.

Hahahaha oh man, I just spat my water out all over my screen. Thank-you very much for the laugh.

I somewhat find the title of the build… disturbing.