GW2 Random Class Discussion: Shiyo Knows Best edition

[Kirbyprime]

What trait line in Ele is complete garbage in your mind?

Not Shiyo but can somewhat answer this to an extent.

Fire is fairly useless and is rarely used in any of the community defined builds. At most they will up it to 15 for some extra power. For Grandmasters, fire is completely underwhelming. you have one that increases fire field duration by 30% and the "best one" giving a stack of might for every fire spell cast. Testing has the second one giving at best around 5 stacks, which is somewhat decent. All things considered, it's fairly crappy for a Grandmaster skill. So yeah, pretty sure that's the useless one.

Air grandmasters are probably more useless... since our "knockback" apparently doesn't count as a knockdown so doesn't trigger XII Grandmaster skill but more of lower level air skills are useful compared to fire.

[Shiyo]

I'd love that when you make these sweeping statements that you define them.

What traits do nothing for Mesmer? What trait line in Ele is complete garbage in your mind?

The entire chaos line of traits do literally nothing(mesmer), any air traits past 10(ele) do literally nothing, almost every single grandmaster trait except Illusionary Persona does NOTHING AT ALL for mesmer. You could figure this out after 5 seconds of playing mesmer.

Pretty much every class has 1-2 viable specs, so you cannot complain about that as a necro. You necro players need to play another fucking class to realize your class isn't as bad as you think it is.

[Gokulo]

To jump in with a random question where we're on topic, any link to a cool leveling PvE build for Elemental when i finally buy the game? Got it to @28 when I played the free weekend.

[Shiyo]

I'll vouch that most Mesmer traits are practically useless, outside of our Elite skills. Aside from one Twilight Arbor battle, I can pretty much run Mantra of Resolve, Signet of Domination, and Signet of Illusions + Time Warp in any group situation, and solo, I never need my elite skill. Portle Entre, for jumping puzzles, and then there is Moa Morph and Mass Invisibility for any situational stuff you may want to use them for. Most skills I've never needed to slot and don't really help out that much in the extreme situation I might actually want to use them.

Mesmer has tons more useful utilities than that, and most of those are actually HORRIBLE utilities(the signets at least). Mirror images, decoy, mantra of resolve, mantra of concentration, feedback and null field are all godly. I mainly use mirror images 100% of the time, null field or feedback 100% of the time, and mantra of resolve/concentration 99% of the time. I'll occasionally swap my mantras for portal when it's needed for a fractal path/dungeon/fun.

[Cjskater]

The entire chaos line of traits do literally nothing(mesmer), any air traits past 10(ele) do literally nothing, almost every single grandmaster trait except Illusionary Persona does NOTHING AT ALL for mesmer. You could figure this out after 5 seconds of playing mesmer.

Pretty much every class has 1-2 viable specs, so you cannot complain about that as a necro. You necro players need to play another fucking class to realize your class isn't as bad as you think it is.

I think we need to teach you what nothing means. Nothing means they do not work at all and there is no difference between having it equipped and not. What you are saying is there is no discernible difference when you use traits past 10 with ele or anything in the chaos line. Which, I'll have you know, Necro is very familiar with both. Maybe you should try the Necro out yourself.

Lets go through the chaos line right here.
Minor:
Metaphysical Rejuvenation: Standard minor trait, even necro has this one in exactly the same spot (5 points).
Illusionary Membrane: Pretty ok minor trait, wish I had something like this instead of Reanimator.
Chaotic Transferrence: Holy fuck are you kidding me

Major:
1) Chaotic Revival: I don't think anybody ever picks the downed traits, Necro has this shit as well.
2) Descent into Madness: Don't even try to argue this isn't an amazing trait. Ele doesn't even have this and I know they wish they did.
3) Master of Manipulation: All classes have these types of traits, not really that impressive most of the time. Could possibly be useful for being annoying with arcane thievery. But I don't even use those types of traits with Necro so probably not. It is only 10 points though, which is actually pretty reasonable, they are usually 20.
4) Illusionary Defense: basically like that guardian signet, which would reduce the damage of even siege by 10%.
5) Debilitating Dissipation: I don't know what "when they are killed" means. If this applies to shatters then that shit is pretty good.
6) Retaliatory Demise: Sucks to have 2 downed traits, but at least it's not Reanimator.
7) Mirror of Anguish: Necro has this exact trait, in fact it was so bugged that it killed your character or something retarded. No idea if it works yet. In fact yours seems way better considering it sends the disable back. Mine fears me.
8 ) Chaotic Inturruption: Are you kidding me? that interrupt build is the most fucking annoying shit in the universe. So not only do you annoy the shit out of me you also apply conditions.
9) Cleansing Inscriptions: Warrior has the same trait I'm pretty sure, enough said.
10) Chaotic dampening: Wow what? That's at least twice as good as the Necro staff trait. Considering Mesmer's staff is just as good as Necro's... how could this ever be a bad trait?
11) Bountiful Inturruption: God damnit, this is annoying. And its grandmaster while the other is master... fucking wish Deathshroud's traits could have synergy like that. Yes I would love to have stability and reduced recast (both are 30 points).
12) Prismatic Understanding: That annoying ass invis build? awesome, I'm sure stealth needed assistance

So lets see here, with this 1 traitline you could be a shatter/confusion build, invis build, and a interrupt bullshit build. Let's not forget its also the toughness tree, aka the best tree, so you go 30 points into it and you've got a fuckton of toughness with the added bonus of converting all that into 75-85 condition damage (or more).

Now compare that to Necro's Curses traitline, which is our best. I'd say your "worst" (according to you) traitline is either on par or very marginally worse than our best traitline.

[Shiyo]

I didn't say necro didn't have useless traits, I said every other class has just as useless traits/utilities/weapons.

But WTF? The entire "toughness"(chaos) trait line for mesmers is complete garbage and has no direction, it's just a bunch of garbage traits that do NOTHING.

[Cjskater]

I didn't say necro didn't have useless traits, I said every other class has just as useless traits/utilities/weapons.

But WTF? The entire "toughness"(chaos) trait line for mesmers is complete garbage and has no direction, it's just a bunch of garbage traits that do NOTHING.

But they do something, and for the most part they are useful, and I just named 3 directions you could go with that tree. It particularly meshes well with that interrupt build (or more specifically probably is the build), since boons/conditions are the main thing you have going for you in that build. Are you under the assumption that confusion mesmer is the only build or something? I really don't understand how you could say that is a bad tree.

Also I would argue that too much direction makes the tree worse. You want choices within the tree that synergize with each other, but you also want some variety. Necro's toughness tree for example is very obviously catering to minions. Well, minions are ass, so that tree is for the most part really shit. The first minor trait spawns a minion that enemies have a chance to rally off of, the second one gives you +50 toughness for each minion you have out (aka none) and it doesn't even count the minion that spawns from the 5 point trait. The third is the only useful one, toughness into power. But even then you don't have enough points to spare in most builds to go that far, not to mention it isn't really worth that many points for just that. Both 30 point grandmaster traits are minion traits, so there is actually 0 reason to go that far for every Necro in the game. The only good traits for anything not-minionmaster are the 10 point traits. So again, that tree is bad?

[Shiyo]

If you aren't 10/30/0/0/30 as mesmer you're basically completely worthless. There are no "interrupt builds", that's retarded. Mesmer has ONE spec, shatter build, condition builds are OK but basically do 50% of the damage or less of a shatter build.

[Cjskater]

Is that so? If that's how you feel then ok.

Interrupt build, btw, interrupts your actions to apply conditions to you, and every time you get interrupted you proc confusion or some bullshit like that. I've been hit by it before, and it got me killed since it was a 2v1. It is low on damage but high on annoying. Haven't seen it in awhile since everyone is running shatter builds these days, but from what I understand it works similar to thieves proccing quickness. I remember asking the resident Mesmer what the fuck just happened, that's how annoying it was.

[Amiricle]

Sorry Shiro, I completely disagree. Mesmer actually has several useful builds. I'm personally 0/0/20/20/30 and it is very effective in WvW as well as dungeons. I also tried an interrupt build for a while after hitting 80 and while it wasn't my cup of tea, I will vouch for its effectiveness in team pvp.
That's 3 (including yours) that are shatter based. There are a couple very effective ones that use illusions as pets rather than fodder as well.

[Shiyo]

If parsers existed, everyone would be my spec, it's superior in every way from a DPS standpoint, other specs are inferior.

There are other builds that can be passed off as "viable", but they do a good 30-75% less damage than mine and nothing they gain makes up for this DPS loss.

[Amiricle]

Again I disagree. I have held off an entire moderately sized zerg from a tower/keep pretty much by myself several times as well as managing to kill (down & finish) occasionally. When you are 1 vs 20 and can manage to kill even 1 let alone survive that is unarguably effective.

Mesmer is far from cookie cutter.

[Shiyo]

I'm not talking PVP, I'm talking PVE specs.

[Amiricle]

Fair enough and I'll concede that at base your spec would have higher dps than mine but you have stated yourself in your toughness stat advocation that pure damage isn't the only thing that matters and mine has more support. Also situationally vs ranged mobs mine would skyrocket due to having an extra reflect.

[Shiyo]

The support from your spec is complete garbage and better done by 036036 other classes, my spec also has enough survivability to not die when played properly. An extra reflect is never a reason to say a spec is "better".

You're giving up 30% crit damage, 17.5% crit, 100 power, -20% CD on sword/pistol(or fury on phantasms), clone on dodge roll(THIS IS A GIGANTIC DPS LOSS, not having this is completely suicidal and retarded), 20% mind wrack damage(one of your main sources of damage........), bleed on illusion crits and vigor on crit(literally no idea how you play without this LOL).

What do you gain in return? A very crappy AOE regen,mantra AOE healing, 200 vit, 200 toughness, 200 healing, 20% boon duration, reflect on focus skills and self-protection? Sign me up.

I mean sure that's probably the best support mesmer spec, or one of the best, but support mesmer is realllllly weak/bad and support is better done by other classes.

[Amiricle]

Lol why are you so angry all the time? I'm in no way saying that the spec you use is in any way bad, just that there are options.
The spec I use is also purely ranged so no worry of melee I instagibs and does have stronger survivabilty, enough to tank for a time. Also more & more often ethereal fields. I'm at work so can't lay everything down especially since I haven't even played Mesmer in 2 weeks for leveling engineer but I know full well that you know the power of feedback so saying an extra reflect is nothing, not to mention that its also a cripple & a light field on a shortened cooldown, I don't understand.

[Rhyis.]

I think Shiyo has a different definition of useless than the rest of us.

Shiyo: A lot of Mesmer traits and skills are useless 'cause they don't add to my phat deeps.
Everybody else: A lot of my classes traits and skills are useless 'cause THEY DON'T FUCKING WORK.

[Amiricle]

I'll post it when I get home cause I can't remember it off the top of my head, but from a dps standpoint there's a non-shatter phantasm build that is close enough to the shatter one that you'd HAVE to have a parser to tell the difference, and as such is just as viable. Just a play style preference.

[Jeherrit]

The Phantasm build you're thinking of doesn't actually exist sadly. Even if it can theoretically achieve simmilar dps on paper the reality is that without a major retooling of mesmer clone mechanics phantasm builds rely on too many external factors to keep up. Whatever else one might think of Shiyo's opinions and tone she's 100% correct that shatter build is far and away the best mesmer build for pretty much everything except intentionally griefing larger groups in pvp.

[Amiricle]

It dawned on me that I never said what weapons I use, which are staff and sceptor/focus.

In any case, heres a dps build that doesn't rely on shatters. It was also made with pvp (sPvP in this case) in mind, but is just as effective pvedps, and though I have tried it, I didn't come up with it. Taugrimm did.
10/20/15/15/10 Using Sword & Pistol / Greatsword
Empowered Illusions / Phantasmal Fury & Deceptive Illusions / Illusionary Defense / Compounding Celerity / Compounding Power
Utility with this would be Phantasmal Disenchanter / Blink / and either Feedback or Null Field
Also, due to Illusionary defense & membrane & phantasmal healing it allows for less tanky stats on gear and the use of divinity runes.

This build wouldn't do well in WvW though, whereas Shiyo's would.

Edit: Adding that my current is not the best support either, theres 1 or 2 that utilize mantras that may be better, and there is a 20/0/0/20/30 build that is just as effective WvW. I had a tank build with dual swords / staff and a friend had a CC control build that was trolltastic.
Point I'm trying to make is there really are very few truly useless traits/abilities for mesmer. While there are ones that are useless for your spec & playstyle, they may be useful to someone else.