Mesmer Discussion Thread

[zito]

It can be, depending on what traits you're giving up for those 6 seconds.

Nothing important in the toughness tree besides anguish but anguish isn't all that great with its 90 second cd. It can activate on some pretty useless CC.

but I know that, more than once when playing with builds, I've passed up that 20% for something else

Since it was just discovered like an hour ago and its not in the tooltip...

[DrakeWurrum]

Depends on the build, insofar as secondary weapon set and utilities and other traits.

---------- Post added 2012-08-09 at 06:33 PM ----------

Since it was just discovered like an hour ago and its not in the tooltip...

I'm talking about across all professions. Every profession does that for every weapon.

[Kelesti]

The third hit applies Confusion and summons an Illusion, unless that wasn't the case last BWE/stress test. Illusions do no damage, but can apply conditions, and can be shattered to apply more confusion (2 stacks per illusion, if you use Cry, I think). Two of your Shatters are also useful for defensive purposes.

As an update to this, seeing as I didn't misremember this: The word "Confusion" is in the tooltip for the third hit, but not the actual effect. It still does not apply any stacks itself. That was the case during BWE3, last stress test, and that's still the case now.

So no, third hit is for over-writing your phantasms with spawning useless clones in melee range, hoping that the mass you're "capable" of summoning faster than the cooldown is actually worth anything.

---------- Post added 2012-08-09 at 08:51 PM ----------

I'm talking about across all professions. Every profession does that for every weapon.

Not quite, hotshot. Every profession offers +50 to a stat with a weapon. The cooldowns are new.

[DrakeWurrum]

Every profession offers +50 to a stat with a weapon.

Well Thief can't, but there's an obvious reason for that.
Went to double-check, though, and it looks like instead that, in the case of
Guardians, they get CD reduction on everything but Sword/Mace/Scepter - instead they get 5% damage increase on each of those. They have had it for off-hands and two-handed weapons though.
Elementalist specifically has it for attunements rather than weapons, which is kinda the same thing (the standard way would be OP).
Warrior has it for Greatsword, Rifle, Hammer, Mace, Shield, Warhorn (for sword/axe, they get crit stuff instead, and it looks like longbow gets a range increase?)

I could keep going, but I guess they don't have it for every weapon. I suppose, since this is all based on the wiki, and I didn't double-check during the test, that I could be wrong. Since, obviously, Mesmer doesn't have it for any weapon on the wiki, and you're talking about what was in the "current" build.

---------- Post added 2012-08-09 at 10:22 PM ----------

As an update to this, seeing as I didn't misremember this: The word "Confusion" is in the tooltip for the third hit, but not the actual effect. It still does not apply any stacks itself. That was the case during BWE3, last stress test, and that's still the case now.

In case you forget, shattering is really good for Confusion-stacking anyways, and is in fact the main way to burst up to ridiculously high stacks of it, which I covered back when we had this debate. The auto-attack itself would only apply 2 stacks of Confusion if it actually did what the tooltip said. (still need to verify how Illusionary Retribution works - one extra stack per shatter, or one extra stack per illusion? I noticed that the Shatter that already applies confusion is one stack per illusion)
I still think it's weird that they fixed the tooltips for two of the skills, but not for the third skill. When they made the change to Thief Dagger's third chain attack to only apply one condition instead of a random chance between two conditions, they cut out the text referring to the random chance the "easy" way and created something grammatically incorrect that made it obvious it once said something different. ("Strike your foe with an cause Weakness") So I don't know why they didn't do that, either.

Consistency dammit! Currently hoping it's a "doesn't work" situation, similar to the blind from the Guardian Focus.

[zito]

I'll test scepter confusion again.

My beef is, there is no steady stream of damage via confusion it's only burst. Plus the only way to get insanely good stacks of it in a burst formation is to do the confusion glamour spec I was running. I don't know how frequent engineers stack confusion but all I know is its faster then mesmers.

If scepter stacked confusion the first 2 hits instead of the 3rd hit it would actually be better. Because in order for confusion to work effectively you need condition damage well outside the 5 stack you can apply condition damage is wasted with scepter attacks especially if you run something like pistol where phantasms don't stack confusion but rely on power for their damage. Which in turn forces us to go torch for the confusion phantasm. However if you stack power the confusion damage becomes useless now and if you run torch with scepter the torch phantasm is now useless.

Once again limiting builds.

I said before scepter is a double edge sword but its more of a rusty sword.

[MKing]

I just switched my main from Warrior to mesmer after this stress test, the abilities are so much more fun with mesmer and i love the mechanics. warrior is just very bland, all you can do is hit things, hit things harder, or take less damage. And warriors only get to use a few conditions while mesmer can use them all. Plus the randomness is kinda my playstyle.

[Durzlla]

I'll test scepter confusion again.

My beef is, there is no steady stream of damage via confusion it's only burst. Plus the only way to get insanely good stacks of it in a burst formation is to do the confusion glamour spec I was running. I don't know how frequent engineers stack confusion but all I know is its faster then mesmers.

If scepter stacked confusion the first 2 hits instead of the 3rd hit it would actually be better. Because in order for confusion to work effectively you need condition damage well outside the 5 stack you can apply condition damage is wasted with scepter attacks especially if you run something like pistol where phantasms don't stack confusion but rely on power for their damage. Which in turn forces us to go torch for the confusion phantasm. However if you stack power the confusion damage becomes useless now and if you run torch with scepter the torch phantasm is now useless.

Once again limiting builds.

I said before scepter is a double edge sword but its more of a rusty sword.

Actually the scepter auto attacks NO LONGER apply confusion... at all period... and idk why you hate the scepter so much that was BY FAR one of my favorite weapons and i was reliant entirely on conditions and my phantasms for damage bringing absolutely nothing in the bursty aspect for myself... and idk about you, but 5 stacks of confusion were more then enough to bring any poor bastard to their knees and weep, especially if i hit them with a 3 cloned cry of frustration... *wipes tear from eye* it's so beautiful seeing people with 6 confusion attack someone with 3 stacks of retaliation and just explode....

---------- Post added 2012-08-10 at 11:43 AM ----------

I just switched my main from Warrior to mesmer after this stress test, the abilities are so much more fun with mesmer and i love the mechanics. warrior is just very bland, all you can do is hit things, hit things harder, or take less damage. And warriors only get to use a few conditions while mesmer can use them all. Plus the randomness is kinda my playstyle.

Omg.... i'm not the only one who enjoys the randomness and isn't on the forums going "ZOMG!! RNG IS BAD!! I BRAKEZ DA PVP!!!"

[Bovinity Divinity]

and idk about you, but 5 stacks of confusion were more then enough to bring any poor bastard to their knees and weep,

How much damage is a 5-stack? Going by the formula on the wiki it doesn't seem like all that much. =O

[Durzlla]

How much damage is a 5-stack? Going by the formula on the wiki it doesn't seem like all that much. =O

i had 1.4k condition damage (stacked toughness and condition damage and had 10% of my toughness turning into condtion damage) so i was dealing 170 damage per stack, 5 stacks is 850 damage per attack, each confusion lasted roughly 5 seconds, and most people kinda shrug off that damage so it really adds up, and between confusing images, cry of frustration, and 2 phantasamal mages it wasn't uncommon for me to get 15 stacks on the enemy for a good amount of time which is 2,550 damage everytime the enemy uses an ability, not to mention i was reflecting a lot of attacks back at them by using feedback, not to mention my cry of frustration put retaliation on me making them take even MORE damage for just using abilities.

[MKing]

Omg.... i'm not the only one who enjoys the randomness and isn't on the forums going "ZOMG!! RNG IS BAD!! I BRAKEZ DA PVP!!!"

YES, i love playing games and getting super lucky and doing crazy things.

[Durzlla]

YES, i love playing games and getting super lucky and doing crazy things.

lol i prefer it because a lot of people try to predict fights all the time and they can't predict a fight when even you don't know what's going to happen during it xD

[MKing]

lol i prefer it because a lot of people try to predict fights all the time and they can't predict a fight when even you don't know what's going to happen during it xD

Very true, it's funny though my friend was playing a mesmer too and had the signet that gives you random boons, he refused to turn it off and kept getting swiftness on the jumping puzzles we did.

[Larynx]

How much damage is a 5-stack? Going by the formula on the wiki it doesn't seem like all that much. =O

Assuming 1500 condition damage, ~900 damage.

[zito]

Did anyone else test focus with reflect trait?

My warden seemed to be able to reflect projectiles but my curtain did not. I tested it against the elementalist npc and a ranger player.

[Durzlla]

Did anyone else test focus with reflect trait?

My warden seemed to be able to reflect projectiles but my curtain did not. I tested it against the elementalist npc and a ranger player.

Warden ALWAYS reflects projectiles, so that trait seems broken if it doesn't work on the curtain.... Btw, that elem doesn't use any projectile attacks, lightning whip isn't a projectile

[Iryne]

Hello hello dear mesmers, would someone look at this build? Specially the runes&jewels, I just picked one and stack that. >_>

Here is the picture about traits & stats to give fast idea what build is trying to do:


I'm still a bit biased how good mesmer will be at PvE. I'm mainly concerned about the fact that I lose illusions every time mob dies. At the times I think that "it will be all right, I just need to learn shatter faster" or "it will be better when I go to higher level areas and mobs live a bit longer".

Any experiences about mesmers in dungeon? How was it? Are my worries vain?

[Durzlla]

Hello hello dear mesmers, would someone look at this build? Specially the runes&jewels, I just picked one and stack that. >_>

Here is the picture about traits & stats to give fast idea what build is trying to do:


I'm still a bit biased how good mesmer will be at PvE. I'm mainly concerned about the fact that I lose illusions every time mob dies. At the times I think that "it will be all right, I just need to learn shatter faster" or "it will be better when I go to higher level areas and mobs live a bit longer".

Any experiences about mesmers in dungeon? How was it? Are my worries vain?

Ok can't look at build for another 30 or so min (at work on phone) but your stats look good, you got defense and offense (smart man/woman) your traits look pretty nice from how I see them... Will get a better idea when I can look at the actual spread...

As for your fears they are indeed in vein, against tougher mobs there is 0 worry, it's against the trashy 4 shot wonder mobs that mesmers are bad against because their measly health pool causes them to die before your illusions get up which are your primary defense anyway, which is why mes has so many problems early in. Now I didn't PLAY a Mesmer in a dungeon but I was grouped with 2, 1 never died ever, and was beasting it up with illusions an trickery and the such (they had scepter focus and greatsword NO IDEA on build though... The other one I swear to god was a trained chimpanzee and died every fight ever.... By the time we got to second boss they were naked due to lack of working gear... All in all though I think mesmers really well off survivability wise if you know how to work your magic, otherwise you better get used to running...

[zito]

There is really no reason to use offhand sword.

Watched the phantasm damage video. Offhand sword phantasm is garbage damage compared to iduliest and iwarden. Torch is weak because it applies confusion.

Iduelist doing 2k-3k per shot. Offhand sword does 4k every 6 seconds with trait. Iwarden is better then all of them because it stand stills though.

So useless block and useless phantasm woot....

[DrakeWurrum]

A "useless" block that turns into a Daze. Never discount Daze, especially since Mesmers can trait Dazes to have extra effects!

I also think we shouldn't bother to judge numbers until we get to live. Balance tweaking happens so much on their internal builds that trying to decide on a meta from build to build is just worthless.

[zito]

A "useless" block that turns into a Daze. Never discount Daze, especially since Mesmers can trait Dazes to have extra effects!

The new change, you can not activate the secondary effects yourself anymore. It's an added effect if the initial effect does not work. So if you don't block anything it'll do the daze.

Secondly offhand sword offers no niche compared to the others. Pistol has a ranged phantasm and stun/daze/blind, Torch has a confusion phantasm and a cloak, focus has a reflect phantasm and a slow/pull after it expires.

Offhand sword? A melee phantasm you can easily dodge and has a run time (he has to run to your target) and does less damage then any other phantasm and a block which guarantee won't block the attack you want since combat is so fast it's hard to predict when to use it and not waste it, not to mention pistol has more control over that than this block and main hand swords blurred frenzy offers more surv then that on a lower cd.

If block blocked everything for 2 seconds it would be useful, currently it's not. There isn't a silver lining right now. IMO scrap offhand sword and gives us the 1h MH weapon we actually need (we don't need 4 offhands with just 2 mainhands). The only 1h is scepter which is clone factory with its damage split between conditions and power and a melee weapon.