Guild Wars 2

Just messing around in hotjoin with this build, and I went with S+S/Staff as you suggested. I can definitely see pistol being just as good (if not better), though once in a while I’d get lucky and Counter Blade would get multiple interrupts and getting to disregard body-blocking is nice. I seldom found myself wanting the block over the daze as well.

(edit: Oh, right… cooldowns, especially with double-dipping with sword spec. That’d be a good reason to prefer it over pistol.)

For utilities, I ran the maybe-suboptimal set of Arcane Thievery, Mantra of Distraction & Signet of Domination, with Bountiful Interruption (after your post in the Signet thread, I think it was?)… It sounds like your staff play is just plain better than mine, so I didn’t feel the loss of staff spec as sharply as you might. I found in 1v1, you really could lock down many opponents and anyone who held their heal would pay for it dearly, particularly if they were counting on stability to help them later. I had trouble with sustaining a long kite, particularly since iLeap/Swap isn’t the most reliable snare ever and giving up Blink felt painful in those moments… disengaging with Mass Invisibility didn’t always feel like the best decision, but I suppose until I get better at dueling, it’s better that than just give people a free kill. :P

Funny enough, I was fiddling with builds today and ended up with a clone-condition build with all signet utils. Sure enough, the distortion from Blurred Inscriptions gave a lot more survivability than I was expecting (particularly with Midnight, like you were saying)… I can definitely see how you would take a shining to this build. Cleansing Inscriptions seems like it could be handy, but do you find it makes enough of a difference? I’d be worried that dropping one condition would just feel like a drop in the bucket.

Since Domination & Midnight are really the stronger signets and Illusions isn’t so handy in this kind of a build, I wonder what kind of trade-off might help you consider taking a non-signet for your third util? I haven’t had a super good look at how the build might get varied up, but there are a ton of other great utilities that could give this build some oomph. Any strengths in particular you could imagine getting even better, or weaknesses that could be better covered?

Great idea!

Name: Rrakmoo
Server: Yak’s Bend
Role: Scholar, i guess?
Playstyle: mostly sPvP, but a bit of everything

Hmm… I know the ‘port-’n’-clone is thematically in keeping with mesmers, but I wonder if it would be interesting for them to have a 1- or 2-second blur instead as their “stomp break” ability.

Hey Jelle… and it’s all good, we were all newbs once.

With your big toughness push, I would’ve expected 25 points (maybe even 30) in Chaos to get Chaotic Transference, which will give you a second copy of the bonus as your rune set… I’m pretty sure the two bonuses stack. If you’re planning on using your staff heavily, taking Chaotic Dampening (Chaos-VIII) might be handy for you, since both for the toughness and getting shorter cooldowns on Chaos Armor and Storm in particular, since they are both really big for survivability.

Depending on how much you want to commit to it, another theme you could add to this is the extra conditions that dying clones could give people. Dueling-25 adds 1 confusion (though that’s pretty deep and may not be worth it)… Domination-V adds crippling… and Chaos-V adds weakness/vulnerability/bleeding. I’m not sure if you knew, but when clones explode because you summoned more than 3 of them, they count as having been “killed” and will apply these conditions as well.

I definitely think your plan (lots of toughness & condition damage, apply conditions and be persistent and annoying) is a workable one, though. Are you finding you’re making a nuisance of yourself?… because ultimately that’s pretty much the goal, right?

Hey Auruan. Some nice ideas there, and my experience is that finding that optimal build is a little harder to find with PvE, just because so many different approaches work depending on how much defense, utility, support and how many “oh crap” abilities you want to have just in case.

Trait-wise, I feel like some things are off but I’m not 100% sure of what’s off about your build from the link that you posted. I imagine Phantasmal Haste should be there in Illusions, though? I don’t mind Nueshak’s idea of getting Shattered Strength, but I’d probably drop Sharper Images for it instead of losing direct phantasm damage… though will you shatter with a build like this often enough to really appreciate it? Maybe if you run Signet of Inspiration, but more on that later.

Specifically about focus, I actually kinda like the idea of Warden’s Feedback to have a reflect handy, and with that plus Feedback, you’ll probably rock anything that’s primarily ranged, though I’d be tempted to take a different utility (probably Null field) to get a broader range of abilities, after all iWarden is also a ranged defense you can have against those. I think focus is a great PvE weapon not so much for Into the Void but because iWarden has so much AoE damage potential, plus that double retaliation combo from sword-3 that sinican was talking about. Couple that with swapping out an Illusion trait for Confusing Cry can give you the chance to get long retaliation stacks, usually around 30 seconds or more… though as you mentioned, you probably don’t want to shatter too often if you can help it.

Sigil-wise, in PvE I feel like the stacking on-kill sigil should be on at least one of your weapons, particularly if you’re good at not getting downed. In this case you might even opt for the precision one, with on-crit sigils on the other weapons, maybe something like Fire (like you have already) or Generosity (the new one that passes your conditions to your target) as a persistent condition-removal tool.

Utilities can be swapped in and out whenever, of course, but I’d consider Null Field for condition removal, and it’s an ethereal field like Feedback…. Signet of Inspiration I like a lot in PvE lately, particularly for sharing long retaliation stacks and because if you run with even one buffing sort (shout warrior, most guardians, etc.), you have this opportunity to nearly double all of your allies’ boons… iDefender is an interesting defensive choice, and I imagine if you’re smart about its use, you’d feel a little safer not running Decoy/Mirror Images or some kind of stun break?

Overall, though, nice melee/ranged options, lots of phantasmal AoE, certainly looks on the mark for what you were hoping for, for sure.

Extra notes about casting from stealth:

-The Prestige is different from the other skills in that it’s a channeled stealth that ends with that explosion, so casting/dodging will not only abort the explosion, but will lose you the stealth as well.

- The general rule for stealth is that if you hit an opponent with any effect, you’ll drop out of stealth; If you whiff completely (even if it’s a targeted ability), you’ll stay hidden. So you can expect that Phase Retreat will keep you stealthed, and Phantasmal Warlock will not.

4 seconds, you’ll usually get boons twice if you stay stealthed for the full duration of your ability, and Illusionary Membrane will trigger off of the regen (so it’ll look like you got two).

Two threads on build ideas/play experiences going right now on this that I’ve seen:

the popular one that’s actually getting replies
and my crappy one

Agreed that there’s a lot of survivability to be nabbed with this trait, though damage is a bit of an issue, since there’s no natural synergy with offensive skills, eh? I’m wondering if the real danger here is clever 2-man work with a stealth-oriented D/x thief. Between the 2 ally stealths and an extra burst to key off of smoke clouds, I’m not sure whether it works in practice but on paper it sounds dangerous.

I went with an odd, arguably sub-standard build that gave up Illusionary Persona, but kept Deceptive Evasion. The build is 5/25/30/0/5, with all the on-death clone effects, staff and sword/torch, and a mix of carrion and knights gear. I’m not convinced that it’s especially dangerous, and so it’s probably pretty safe to ignore you in a build like this, unfortunately. I mean… what’s the worst that you could do, right?

It’s too bad, too. I’d be very surprised if Anet ever added stealth skills to mesmers, since that’s really a thief-specific mechanic, but I can imagine a “when emerging from stealth…” trait for mesmers. Maybe a short but big might/damage buff.

I’ll play with it for a while, though, maybe something neat will emerge.

So just messing around with Prismatic Understanding following the buff. The description, as written, is:

Cloaking skills last 1 second longer and you gain a random boon when you are cloaked (protection, regeneration, or aegis).

Some observations:

- The random buff is applied the moment you go into stealth, and every 3 seconds thereafter. An exactly-3-second stealth like The Prestige, will get the buff twice. Mass Invisibility, at 6 seconds of stealth, will get the buff 3 times with one casting provided the stealth isn’t cancelled.

- The buff-on-stealth currently has no internal cooldown. If you use a second stealth skill while already stealthed, the new stealth effect will overwrite the old one, and they do not stack. Thus, the “every 3-second” buff will not be applied multiple times because you used multiple stealth skills at once, but you will still receive the initial buff-on-stealth for your second stealth, even if you were already stealthed at the time.

- The buff will be one of the following:
1) 4-second Aegis
2) 4-second Protection
3) 4-second Regeneration (triggers Illusionary Membraneif available)

- Works with Desperate Decoy (Dueling-V), as it should.

- Despite it saying “while cloaked”, it works with any stealth effect. It works with both ally-created stealth, be it from ground AoE effects (like Shadow Refuge), regular AoE effects (like Blinding Powder) and ally combos (like smoke/blast). Also works with your combos off of ally smoke fields, i.e. smoke/blast and smoke/leap.

Actually, I noticed something very odd when I was playing yesterday in WvW. I summoned my warden on a fairly close, moving target (probably around 300) and immediately after appearing, the warden ran up to him (couldn’t have been more than a second of movement), then started swinging his arms around as usual and didn’t move from that point again.

Part of me wonders whether during that delay that’s new from the last patch, there are some circumstances under which the phantasm will move before attacking. Weird, maybe even a one-off, but it’s my weapon set of choice in wvw so hopefully I’ll get the chance to try again many times.

Shatter builds tend to be really good at spamming clones, and trident clones in particular are fairly nasty because they apply confusion. If you want a big confusion spike, Mirror Images + evade > Cry of Frustration, then another quick 3 clones and your opponent will be drowning in confusion. When your cooldowns are up and you can get another quick three, shatter again at every opportunity if you want to make the best of your trait picks.

The downside is if you have no condition damage (on account of expecting more Mind Wrack damage), Confusion won’t do quite as much damage and the bleeds from Sharper Images might not be so exciting. But the confusion is still quite painful, it’s common to see opponents at 10+ stacks.

• Sword 3>3 (Illusionary Leap > Swap) while standing on any combo field will grant you the leap effect both times. Works best for stacking effects like the retaliation from light fields, like Temporal Curtain.
• Mirror Blade (greatsword-2) is ideal when you have exactly two enemies to hit, it will bounce between them for surprisingly good damage particularly with Illusionary Elasticity (Illusions-VII). If there’s no other opponent around, make sure you’re close and it will bounce off you instead, which can get you a decent stack of might.
• Speaking of I-elasticity, with it Winds of Chaos will bounce a second time, so try to pick targets standing near at least one other target to try and get out that second hit. (the extra bounce won’t apply to your clones’ WoC so don’t lose any sleep over that).
• Spacial Surge (greatsword-1) will trace a beam directly to your target even when you’re out of range. If you’re not careful this will give away your position, but it can also be used to point out enemies to the people around you, even if they’re not in your party.
• Underwater, you can get a speed surge for you and your allies out of spear-4 (a sort of a variant of Temporal Curtain) and it will also block pursuers as well. You can also use spear-2 to surge forward (and forgo the swap) to get a little extra distance.
• After Mimic absorbs the first projectile that hits you, you will block melee attacks and reflect all projectiles for the rest of its duration… I only just learned this myself from this thread
• Moa Morph will overwrite an enemy’s transformation (Lich Form, Rampage, Tornado, Plague, etc.), and leave it on full cooldown.
• Medic’s Feedback (Inspiration-I) is a great way of getting a second Feedback bubble if you don’t mind it being centered on yourself, but this can be advantage for rangers and such who are used to it being around them. In WvW in particular, you can “revive-tap” a dead ally then quickly cancel if you didn’t intend to spend the whole time reviving them. Semi-related, Feedback’ing an enemy in melee can make it look like it’s a “friendly” feedback to enemy archers.

Honestly, I think you’ll probably find that every class will get their turn getting bonked by the nerf bat. I imagine this will be a never-ending process of tweaking and adjusting for A.net and sometimes – particularly when you’re playing a profession intensely – it’ll feel like a giant slap in the face. What you should play depends on what you want:

- If you want to play a profession whose core mechanics won’t ever be profoundly affected, the trick will probably be to play one that has as straightforward an approach as possible… so nothing with pets or fancy pants tricks that could break at any moment like Mesmer. For example, elementalists might not be the most powerful prof all the time, but attunements are super straightforward (almost like two extra weapon sets) so while you may lose your favorite toy every so often, the basics of the profession are unlikely to be gutted by only one change. That is, of course, unless ALL of your play hinges on one mechanic. Speaking of which…

- If you want to play the strongest currently unchecked profession or the one that best exploits an as-yet-unnerfed/corrected mechanic (like stealth was, for instance), then you probably need to play them all and just be flexible in swapping from one to another at the drop of a hat. It’s the kind of thing that has the potential to change every reasonably-sized patch.

- Of course, if “this prof sucks now, what should I switch to” is more your way of venting about what’s been changed but that you have no actual intention of actually switching, then it might be clearer to just say that. You’re certainly not alone in being unhappy about those changes, but then it’s fairly rare to be happy about losses in power/utility for your class unless you think they were way overpowered to begin with.

So after mucking around with Dazzling for a while, I wasn’t really super impressed by it… I’m currently running with Illusionary Persona and Deceptive Evasion as “must-have”‘s (even if there’s wiggle room in there) and so I ended up giving up Vigorous Revelation (vigor on shatter) for Dazzling. While I definitely missed the Vigor in PvP (it works out to a lot less dodges in any reasonable length fight), I just found that the 3-second vulnerability just wasn’t especially sticky. I can imagine it working really well in super-organized tPvP, but in small pick-up squads and casual play, that doesn’t even amount to a full Blurred Frenzy so it was hard to really make the best of the damage. Even with +condition duration, I have trouble imagining it lasting longer than 4-5 seconds, which is already a fair bit more but then ties up runes as well.

The other option I’ve been considering is to do a staff-centric build, with Rabid gear. It doesn’t save a ton of space since it’ll still have Sharper Images, so the decision is really between Deceptive Evasion and Chaotic Transference (which is only good for around 80 condition damage).

Hey Nya! I think you’re probably touching on an interesting part of your build there, because 20 dueling leaves you a ton of different helpful options and none are more correct than the other. Pistol spec, sword spec, Desperate Decoy, P-fury and I-defense are all tremendous options there… Maybe it’s more a matter of trying them out and seeing which one you like best? I think the only weird mix would be Desperate Decoy in PvE, but then I’m sure some people actually keep it as a last-second way to shed aggro.

Signet of Illusions has an odd quirk, that the health bonus doesn’t kick in for a few seconds after the illusion is summoned (the jury is still out on how many seconds). That’s more in case you didn’t know already.

In general, though, your choice of utilities seems really sensible to me, particularly since this is an offense-leaning spec. It can be worth looking at a buff/debuff stripper (like arcane thievery or null field) if you find you’re getting hosed by conditions, or into glamours in general. As glamours go, since you already have a deep commitment in Inspiration, you could pick up traits along those lines, even a third one by moving the 5 points in Chaos over. Feedback, Null Field and (depending on who you ask) Veil can all be fun/handy in WvW because they’re fields with no limit in the number of targets they can affect. Even if you don’t run your whole spec around them, it’s sometimes nice to keep that idea in your back pocket.

Y’know, I totally didn’t click on that, but Dazzling should be in the list up top, what with Diversion being probably the best source of Daze for most (non-asura) mesmers… I’ll add it right after his.

While we’re on the subject, though, I could imagine that despite Illusionary Persona being the popular girl in school right now, Imbued Diversion has some potential with on-interrupt traits, particularly in WvW. 4 seconds of Fury on interrupt may not seem like much, but if you got it x5 for shattering into a pack of enemies… too bad it’s a 30-point trait! It’s also a shame that Halting Strike does such little damage… and that most of the on-interrupt traits are pretty weak no matter how you slice them, now that I think about it.

Thobek.1730:

NatashaK.9418:

When I encounter a thief in wvw, I immediately hit 2. This creates a clone of your corpse and teleports you to a random location. Then try to target him and hit 1111 this causes a small amount of damage and stacks confusion making it harder for hit to kill all your friends as well.

LOL!! thank you this post made my day. I was half asleep when reading this and actually thought it was a viable tactic until I read it again.

I’m glad someone else caught this… I laughed pretty hard at this too.

Oh see now that would be a neat way to do a mesmer meetup… or just be able to talk shop while you’re logged in.

I definitely like the idea of mass vulnerability stacking in PvE, where AoE’s will be particularly effective. In tPvP it might be a nice way to spike targets as well… anyone have a sense of what other profs’ capacity to stack vulnerability is? I’ve had two frustrations in particular with this approach: the first was renewing and reapplying the stack on targets with a reasonable amount of condition removal… the second was that you can’t actually control where GS2 bounces, unfortunately.

Make sure to invite a necro pal to the party, though… Like I was saying earlier, epidemic on this would be particularly fun.

Doh, yeah I’m definitely guilty of supporting that shatter bandwagon, but to be honest I actually didn’t run with Illusionary Persona until a few weeks ago. There are definitely some other ideas out there, though some of mine might be outdated by now.

ddoi.9264:

When I used to do some wvw I tried a condition-on-death build, it was quite fun.

This I’ve run before and found it to be pretty good, actually, even in PvE. Most of the AoE was iBerserker (not so good now, obviously) and iWarden, and once two phantasms were up, there was some effectiveness in generating one clone at time, each time waiting for it to get close so that its “on death” explosion would hit. I suppose in PvE cripple isn’t so stellar, but the chaos and confusions one are still worth something.

I enjoyed Confusion/Blind for a while, though I still feel like confusion is not terribly powerful… something like 20/0/0/20/30 with heavy glamour, running scepter/torch and staff, condition damage & duration, and Feedback/Null Field/SoMidnight. It annoys in PvP, but it’s not so hot in PvE where bosses aren’t really affected by Blind.

For specifically non-Illusion builds, there are some condition or healing themed bunker builds that would probably work, centered around staff or restorative mantras/illusions, respectively.

gymdawg.6347:

When I run shatter builds, they tend to be more support oriented (in dungeons at least) and i end up taking imbued diversions, and rending shatter/shattered concentration.

How could someone possible miss the opportunity of stacking 25 vulnerabilities, to MULTIPLE targets. It’s insane.

Ah, see now that’s kind of interesting. I like the idea of aiming for those big vulnerability stacks, which can almost work out just as well as a pocket necromancer with Epidemic. You like Shattered Concentration for PvE though?… I actually would’ve imagined it to be better in PvP where you have the opportunity to be really disruptive, but can’t necessarily pay attention to what everyone is casting at once.

oZii.2864:

Zilm.8459:

The 30 in Illusion is for Persona.

I probably should have underlined that since its in my post at the bottom. Ill fix that 1 sec.

Yea I know what its for sorry I just hate when people reply quick and don’t read.

My question is losing the points in power dmg wise worth picking up persona in anyones opinion?

Hey Ozii,

On the Domination side, you’ll get out 100 more power and an extra trait, though I don’t know that there’s a totally game-changing trait to take in there, since you’ll probably already have Mental Torment and GS training, right?

The argument for Illusionary Persona is that it adds a decent amount of power and some utility… it just happens to do a bunch of things other than the obvious extra clone effect. First, on Mind Wrack, I’m not sure if you knew, but apparently each extra clone adds less and less damage, so that shattering with 3 does about 2x the damage of shattering with 1 (rather than the 3x you’d expect). The kicker is that Persona will add an extra clone’s worth of damage without those diminishing returns, so it’s actually stronger than just being “like an extra illusion”. (these numbers are approximate and made up, btw)

• 1 clone = 1x 200 damage
• 2 clones = 2x 160 (320 total)
• 3 clones = 3x 145 (435 total)

But with the same power:

• 1 clone + persona = 2x 200 (400 total)
• 2 clones + persona = 3x 160 (480 total)
• 3 clones + persona = 4x 135 (540 total)

(I’m not sure how 0 clones + persona determines its damage, though… I’ll have to test that out)

The other thing is that when you have Persona, you can activate shatters without having any clones out, with the effect centering on you. So if your abilities are on cooldown and you’re out of endurance – or worse still, you got jumped straight out of combat! – you still have access to the damage shatters, but much more importantly, a 1-sec distortion and an (albeit short range) instant daze/interrupt. What’s more, if you have an “on shatter” trait like Vigorous Revelation, you can get its effect (in this case, Vigor) by using a shatter you don’t need with no illusions on the board… though now that I think about it, that may be the only trait that actually works with 0 illusions, the might one definitely doesn’t right now.

(edit: haha, wordfilter)

Vendris.4201:

I agree with djtool – the problem is, for a shatter build to work well at least 20 dueling + 30 illusion is really not optional.

No, I agree… right now it’s really hard to say no to those, also because the Illusions line has plenty of decent options along the way. I liked your idea for the ranged shatter, though, that’s definitely in the realm of acceptable specs. It’s a shame that scepter is still awfully slow, it might actually have a place in an approach like that.

I’d imagine that the only reason to pass up Deceptive Evasion then would be that you actually have more important/dangerous things to do than roll around on the ground all the time, or conversely that you’re in an environment where you have to save every roll for defense. But it kind of feels like greatsword is the only weapon that actually keeps itself so busy, particularly since all the offhands have such long cooldowns… I’d be hard-pressed to name a second weapon set that would fit the bill, though if there were something decent, a swap-spamming approach might make sense. Cross-over with the staff build, maybe?

It’d certainly be nice to have a little more wiggle room, though, to choose weapon spec traits, maybe boon removal on shatter, things like that. I know that in WvW, focus spec is attractive enough that I might grab it instead of a “core” shatter trait.

Trait-wise I’ve been running mostly for shatters as well, since it’s decent AoE. Utilities end up being things like Blink, Null Field, Mantra of Concentration, the phantasms and Signet of Inspiration. Inspiration in particular seems to go nicely alongside guardians, with Arcane Thievery in certain encounters (like the jellyfish and its 25x might), and with the big retaliation you can get from Confusing Cry + the sword/focus double combo.

There are probably other ways to exploit Inspiration in this way, though.

Oh good gravy, a launch on mind stab would be awesome. I guess that would make greatsword a much better chasing/cc weapon too, eh?

I guess I’ll start.

I’m beginning to feel like Illusionary Persona is important or necessary, or maybe just unusually strong. Being able to shatter without having any clones has been super handy, particularly the 1-second daze and distortion. Combined with Vigorous Revelation, it usually means you can have Vigor on demand, which in turn helps power Deceptive Evasion. There’s also a post out there that talks more about how much power it adds to Mind Wrack (spoiler alert: a lot), if I can find it I’ll add the link here.

Beyond that I’ve been having a lot of deciding between remove condition or remove boon on shatter, but the former is so deep into inspiration that it’s painful because you can’t have that, Persona and Deceptive Evasion all at once. In WvW, I’ve settled on having neither, and instead getting the two on-clone-death traits, which I imagine is totally sub-optimal, but being able to trait-swap into Mender’s Purity and Mental Torment has actually been handy.

Lately I’m also really liking Confusing Cry, which can stack up back-to-back with the sword-focus combo for around 30 seconds of retaliation. I’ve taken to throwing in Signet of Inspiration in PvE to share it with my party as well, which I think works out pretty well for big chaotic moments.

Out of curiosity, is anyone doing a shatter-ish spec with deep Chaos?… it sounds hard to pull off, but I’m wondering if it’s possible to get a pile of toughness and survivability and still shatter semi-often.

Hey folks. I know it’s a little unusual to be posting a thread these days without some sort of complaint about the metagame, but I was hoping to talk some about shattering and shatter-centric builds. In particular, that it’s not really possible to have ALL the traits you may want and I imagine that means people are weighing out priorities and making well-thought out decisions about what to take and what to leave. I’m hoping this thread will be a collection of those ideas, as I’d love to hear what people think about it.

My hope is also that we can keep the “Oh you’re stupid, there’s only one way to do this”-type dismissive posting to a minimum. I understand that certain abilities might be weaker (or perceived as weaker) in the current metagame, but if that’s your justification, say so and remember that things could change on a dime. Expressing it along the lines of “I didn’t find X useful in that situation, and I’d much rather have Y because blah blah blah” can go a long way to keeping the discussion constructive, so let’s try and keep an open mind. It’s okay to think an ability should be stronger than it is, but keep in mind we’re talking about why we like/dislike abilities, not what we think the order of the universe should be.

So to start, these are probably the most interesting shatter-related traits in each line:

Domination

• Dazzling (master) – Inflicting daze also causes 3 seconds of [5x] vulnerability.
• Mental Torment (I) – Mind Wrack causes 20% more damage
• Rending Shatter (IV) – Shattering Illusions causes [1x] vulnerability for 8 seconds to nearby foes
• Shattered Concentration (VII) – Shatter skills also remove a boon on hit

Dueling

• Deceptive Evasion (X) – Create a clone at your current position when you dodge

Inspiration

• Vigorous Revelation (III) – Shattering illusions grants [5s] vigor to nearby allies
• Shattered Conditions (XI) – Using a shatter skill removes a condition
• Restorative Illusions (XII) – Heal a small amount when you shatter illusions

Illusions (also increases shatter recharge rate)

• Illusionists Celerity (adept) – Illusion-summoning skills recharge 20% faster
• Illusionary Retribution (master) – All Shatter skills inflict [1x, 3s] confusion
• Shattered Strength (grandmaster) – Shattering illusions give you [1x, 5s] might
• Precise Wrack (I) – 10% higher critical-hit chance with Mind Wrack
• Confusing Cry (II) – Cry of Frustration grants [5s] retaliation
• Illusionary Persona (XI) – Shattering illusions creates the shatter effect on you as well
• Imbued Diversion (XII) – Diversion hits multiple targets

(edit: added Dazzling and stack size/duration info to some traits)

Nothing.

Also, words words words.

Y’know, I wasn’t looking forward to some of these changes even though I honestly do agree with them in the grand scheme of things.

But honestly? Reading this forum over the past couple of days, I actually wouldn’t mind a few more nerfs, just to weed out the chaff from the mesmer player base. At least after that we’ll know the only people left are either hardcore or hipsters. xD

So let’s see… I’ll go with:
- longer Blink cooldown
- capping the number of projectiles reflected by Feedback
- Illusionary Persona duplicates core shatter effects, but no longer benefits from secondary shatter effects from traits, and no longer allows shatters to be used without illusions.
- Illusionists Celerity reduced to 10%
- Sharper Images now has a reduced chance to cause bleeds proportional to the number of attacks generated by the same skill for any ability that hits more than once.

There. That should do it.

This bit about scouting strikes me as super interesting. Normally I’d say that the side with the better intelligence would win, provided they could get it in time to respond to threats. I feel like normally there should be lots of scouting and counter-scouting, feints and stealth moves, and that that would go a long way to creating initiative for one side over another.

That said, in the current environment and with “perfect” squads, it’s actually very difficult to deny your opponents information. Perma-stealth rogues can’t necessarily get into (all?) the fortresses, but because they only need to be able to see bigger movements (and don’t need to be up-close-and-personal all the time), I find it hard to imagine opposing commanders wouldn’t have all the information they could ever want. Maybe troop movements underwater would become more popular!

Kind of interesting, and I’m not really sure how WvW scoring works, but with the match not really being in the balance over the next two days, I can imagine most YB’ers not stressing over the score. And it looks like it’s entirely possible that if FA manages to claw down a good chunk of YB’s lead, they could end up taking that 9th-place spot away from YB… the projected gap is only 25pts at the moment, and that might be less than half of the current lead, which could easily melt away with the rush FA has been on since the weekend.

And with that FA would be the one moving up to T3 while YB stays T4. Huh.

Carighan.6758:

wads.5730:

kittentering

That’s the worst word censor I’ve seen on a forum.

Omigosh… is “shatter” actually being filtered or did that happen because of a typo?

Edit: Oh thank god… kitten is a little more understandable.

I’m not 100% clear on what they intended out of scepter, but I feel like the fact that its clones (and its auto-attack, for that matter) has no condition attached to it feels odd compared to sword’s vulnerability or staff’s winds of chaos, particularly considering I’m not quite seeing the trade-off. I’d like to see it apply confusion (maybe on the first or second attack, maybe clone third) but that may be asking for a lot if confusion’s damage is hard to keep in check. It’s hard to tell.

For greatsword, Illusionary Berserker is a complete oddity because of it not needing LoS. I definitely can’t imagine them changing other phantasms to match it, as that would make mesmers absolutely terrifying in siege… so I can only imagine they’ll take it away eventually. I think its crippling and damage still make it very worthwhile, but like everyone else, I wouldn’t mind seeing Mind Stab buffed to compensate… maybe a noticeable dps bump over autoattacking would do it too.

One small note for focus: Temporal Curtain‘s failure to stack with itself is intentional for sure, but I’m kinda wondering if it’s complicated on the programming side to have that limitation in place but also still allow it to stack with other swiftness buffs. I wouldn’t be surprised if they intended to make that decision, even if it’s not ideal. Like it kinda feels like there’s a switch that simply says, “does not stack with other buffs of its type” or “always overwrites” (which it doesn’t), but that you can’t have a switch that says “overwrites itself but stacks with others”. But then how come there are plenty of debuffs that seem to do that just fine? (Sneak Attack comes to mind)

Tough idea for sure… I think you’ve pretty much picked up on all the (practical) ways in which you could put might on yourself as a mesmer but sadly that doesn’t add up to a ton, eh? I have a tough time imagining how you can get a dangerous enough stack on yourself to be creating a real threat, even when you consider that the big scare is buffing your whole team with 5-10x might.

There’s a couple of ways I can see getting a much more frightening might stack, and for both I’d be thinking that Time Warp would be the way to make this dangerous, since the big stack probably won’t last longer than 5-10 seconds anyhow:

1) … is unlikely and not terribly good: stay stuck to warriors with the hopes of stealing their crazy high might stack with Arcane Thievery, then share it quickly with signet. Not especially good because you can’t control when it’ll happen.
2) … is to run alongside a team in either s/tPvP or WvW and coordinate spikes with the buffs going out quickly at the beginning of engagements. With lots of shouts/yells going around, you may even have a 20+ stack going once you swap/mirror blade/shatter, then just remember to share it quickly.

Might be better as a sub-theme than as a sort of primary goal of your build?

Hey Switch. Awesome that you find time to play, and although I think a lot of people like to characterize their own class as elite-only and hard to play, I firmly believe that you don’t need to be a hardcore player to play mesmer and enjoy it… and most classes in this game have a decent skill ceiling if you happen to be a quick learner too.

I’m not sure what’s hardest about breaking through to a great understanding of the class… heck I’m not even sure I’m anywhere near that myself. But learning to use everything all at once can be overwhelming… maybe that’s what’s making it harder? Do you think it would it be easier if you learned one big aspect of the class at a time? Levelling for a while in one spec then swapping was definitely how I got used to different weapons, and I found that different weapons lent themselves to different specs.

So example: maybe starting with learning to spam clones, primarily as “extra targets” to help you last longer, kill tougher enemies and get used to having them around and positioning them… I’d suggest staff, possibly greatsword for that. Then starting to incorporate shatters, at first right before mobs die so that you can get extra value out of them, but then in mid-fight as well… this might be a nice time to try out scepters, since they don’t have “on-demand” clones but can spam them by autoattacking. Then maybe adding phantasms to the mix… you can maybe flip between off-hands since they all have different phantasms to try here. “Good” players may decry leaving phantasms out at first because of how much damage they do, but if doing it all at once feels like too much, I think defense-before-offense is a decent way to learn things for mesmers.

Phantasmal Mage’s confusion lasts 9 seconds, base. Does that count?

Would it be possible to have a difference in downed symbol based on whether the person is downed, or fully dead?

While it’s fairly obvious in small fights, both AoE spam and shallow water can both obscure whether a player is down or not, and a small difference (like say light blue vs dark blue) would be really nice – particularly in wuvwuv. Downed allies are usually worth rushing in to make a quick save… dead allies often just have to wait.

Thanks!

CeCaKonVeu.5734:

Empowered Illusions (Domination 10) 15% illusion damage and Phantasmal Strength (Inspiration 25) 15% phantasm damage : Traits do not stack, pick one or the other or both it wont change damage = 15% boost instead of 30%

The quoted post is from two weeks ago, but I just got done doing a little testing in Mists on target dummies, with Phantasmal Disenchanter. It was a tiny sample (n=~50) but very consistent across armor types, and I noticed a few things:

- Empowered Illusions (Domination 10) alone gave +20% damage, not +15%.
- Phantasmal Strength (Inspiration 25) alone gave +15%, as advertised.
- Both traits together gave +39% damage.

It looks like not only do these two traits stack, but (1) Empowered Illusions is stronger than the tooltip indicates, and (2) they may even stack multiplicatively, not additively. Nice little perk.

In any case, the important bit appears to be (1), anyhow. That may need to be corrected… either the tooltip or the effect. But maybe I’ll try testing some more and see if the discrepancy holds up in the long run.

In messing around trying to see the exact effect of Temporal Enchanter, it felt like Null Field was unusually short, duration-wise. Its advertised duration is 7 seconds, but I was finding it lasted closer to 4-5 seconds untraited, tops, and 5-6 traited. Any chance someone could confirm that?

I’m not sure where you’re seeing this problem with greatsword-1 + rune of earth… I’m testing it right now and it’s proccing just fine…?

[edit: bah, might as well write about it all at once]

One more note about Debilitating Dissipation, just to be explicit: It applies its debuff in an AoE, exactly the way you’d expect given that the clones explode. I’m not sure of the exact range, but a wild guess would be 240, since you can catch both target golems if your clone is between the two. The debuff applied is always the same for a given clone “death”, so if someone got bleeding, everyone got bleeding.

Crippling Dissipation is a 3-sec cripple, not “3x cripple” but I guess that’s still technically correct since cripple does indeed stack duration. The wiki says 5s, but I’m thinking that was adjusted by the tester’s +condition duration.

Confusing Combatants is a 3-sec, 1x confusion.

Dazzling applies a 3-sec, 5x vulnerability per individual daze effect, including each illusion shattered for Diversion (and Illusionary Persona, if you have it)

I’ve added most of this to the wiki as well.

So I haven’t tried hardcore tournaments or anything yet, but my general experience with clones is that yeah, experienced players will eventually see through them, but it also depends on what you do, and how much deception you’re trying to create. I’ve almost nothing but mesmer this whole time and I particularly enjoy facing other mesmers 1-on-1 because I feel like it’s a real test of how well I understand the prof and how well I’m seeing through that deception that I could on for that durability you were talking about.

Generally clones only do their auto-attack, run forwards (like no strafing or backpedaling), and always face their target straight on… this in itself is usually a big giveaway, but it still often takes a second when facing a mesmer to scan the battlefield and pick out the right one, and this hesitation is often what you’re trying to create, since I sincerely believe you can’t hope to keep a good player befuddled for more than, say, 3-5 seconds at a time with clone play. So if you stand still in attack range, face your target and have spawned clones in such a way that it’s not certain which is you, you’ll probably blend in and buy yourself an extra few seconds. Although not otherwise a great skill, I’m sure how you can see how Mass Invisibility would set up this kind of moment perfectly, since you and your clones would all reappear simultaneously.

The trick then is to create this deception at just the right moment to nudge your opponent to play less than ideally… against another mesmer, for instance, one moment would be when they’d like to be summoning phantasms, so that they either have to concentrate to discover which one is you, or risk blowing a phantasm on your clone. You may have to hold off from busting out your fun abilities, but if you were primarily staff, you could try to set this up so that clones are applying a dangerous bleed/burn, and your best abilities (think Chaos Storm/Armor) are already on cooldown. Footnote: the one problem with this particular approach right now is that Winds of Chaos, the staff auto-attack, looks differently when done by the clones… whoops.)

I kinda feel like for good clone deception play to work, time has to be on you side at least somewhat, since it’s difficult to do big chunks of damage at the same time as you’re hiding amongst your clones.

The problems with Illusionary Leap and its failure to spawn actual clones are currently being discussed in the bugged abilities sticky. Join in!

Charr mesmer. They’re kinda on the rare side, eh?

Illusionary Leap (MH-sword’s clone ability) seems to be very inconsistent past around 300 range or so, especially any time you are in unusual terrain. Certainly at the edge of its 600 range, I’ve rarely seen it work… by which I mean no clone, no cripple, no swap option. Has anyone else had this experience?

ranias.2760:

Clones spawned from my the greatsword’s Mirror Blade do 0 damage and the sword’s Illusionary Leap do something close to 1 and 2 damage with each hit. Is this supposed to happen?

Yessir. Clones currently do next to no direct damage, no matter where they come from. That said, they do apply any conditions they’re supposed to, such as vulnerability for 1h-sword clones.