38 replies to this topic

[Kuskah]

I'd like someone to explain this to me. From a damage standpoint, I feel that off-hand pistol would offer more - iDuelist and stun-daze-blind from Magic Bullet. Focus has the Swift/Cripple curtain but the main use of that I see in traveling. iWarden I quite don't understand, since he seems fairly useless, although one time he managed to dish out ~ 3k damage each on a crowd of undead in Orr by doing the bubble. Not quite sure how his attack works, anyone care to explain?

[lordlp]

Kuskah, on 27 December 2012 - 08:17 AM, said:

I'd like someone to explain this to me. From a damage standpoint, I feel that off-hand pistol would offer more - iDuelist and stun-daze-blind from Magic Bullet. Focus has the Swift/Cripple curtain but the main use of that I see in traveling. iWarden I quite don't understand, since he seems fairly useless, although one time he managed to dish out ~ 3k damage each on a crowd of undead in Orr by doing the bubble. Not quite sure how his attack works, anyone care to explain?

Love Warden - he does a sword fury type move, and I think bleed to boot; spams quite a lot of damage. Downside is, Warden does not move, he is a inmoveable object, a hard to kill imoveable object, but he is static. So if a boss/big mob is static due to a tank or what not, he can realy dish out some dps.

I use focus because I find I'm mostly exploding my summons, and illusionary gunner takes to long to cast. Also move 4 grants haste, slows mobs, and can explode to pull (or push away depending) - which is damn usefull once you get used to it.

PvE or WvW though, gun = win.

[Luphine Coalhart]

Equipped with the right traits, Curtain reflects projectiles, Glass cannon doesn't mean all out damage with no survivability.

Warden do is he attack up to 12 times with a 1200 range aoe, meanwhile the bubble he creates reflects projectiles. The reflection can be comboed with a field spell, E.g. if your Warden is in an ally's field of poison, the projected it reflects away all also deal poison damage.

Duelist is more offensive but its single target while magic bullet deals decent CC. Warden is possible to deal more damage to multi target aoe, however it doesn't move. Curtain is always a good life saver

[Kuskah]

Been running with Sword/Focus today and it's actually pretty cool. Whirling Defense (the thing iWarden does) can be actually pretty deadly if positioned right. Felt kind of more in control compared to Pistol

[heatrr]

Hmm, I actually switched out of my focus for pistol in WvW. The focus mainly gave reflection (if traited) and a speed boost when running to and from attack/defend spots. I'll settle for the loss of speed boost for stun, etc. from pistol - fits my playstyle better.

Luphine Coalhart, on 27 December 2012 - 12:27 PM, said:

Equipped with the right traits, Curtain reflects projectiles, Glass cannon doesn't mean all out damage with no survivability.

You have enough survivability with mesmer without reflection traited and focus. My glass cannon mesmer in WvW is doing just fine without them given I maintain some sense of distance and don't get mobbed.   Usually after I Moa bird crap the opposing sides baddest player and we eradicate him in Moa morph, I usually get mobbed pretty quickly afterwards.

[Luphine Coalhart]

Most people go for main hand sword

heatrr, on 28 December 2012 - 02:00 AM, said:

Hmm, I actually switched out of my focus for pistol in WvW. The focus mainly gave reflection (if traited) and a speed boost when running to and from attack/defend spots. I'll settle for the loss of speed boost for stun, etc. from pistol - fits my playstyle better.



You have enough survivability with mesmer without reflection traited and focus. My glass cannon mesmer in WvW is doing just fine without them given I maintain some sense of distance and don't get mobbed.   Usually after I Moa bird crap the opposing sides baddest player and we eradicate him in Moa morph, I usually get mobbed pretty quickly afterwards.

Your losing out Esencially an aoe cripple/disrupt not just speed loss. Some people tactically knock people off the edge using curtain etc etc. To me WvW would benefit from curtain more since you are cripple a swarm of enemy. So to me sometimes stun and blind 3 mob won't be enough haha.

Anyway. People usually go for sword as main hand, you can't always maintain some sense of distance. He is asking why focus, i'm just responding to his answe thats all. To each his own

[Netfools]

I would use sword/pistol over scepter any day. iWarden is too situational and hard position in my opinion and goes against the point of a glass cannon build. Pistol is more focused and offensive. That is usually the reason you make a glass cannon build to begin with, to put a hurting on someone fast.

I run a glass cannon phantasm build mainly, but I really like shatter builds for spvp and such. Essentially, this is my loadout.

Phantasm build solo: GS / Sword+Pistol
Phantasm build group: GS / Staff
Shatter build: Staff / Sword+Pistol

[My Sweet Lily]

People, where is the off-hand sword? I think this is the best off-hand weapon for glasscannon shatter builds.
   Skill 4:Block. Use it again for interrupt. Why I love this skill? Because not all mobs can be interrupted with Magic Bullet, but (I think) all attacks in pve are blockable. If you time the block badly, you can shoot that interrupt and still not get hit. If you block, you do pretty great damage and a clone, ready to shatter.
   Skill 5:Phantasm that hits like a truck. Really good, when I want to spike someone (let the phantasm strike and then shatter before the phantasm leaps away). And the great thing about this phantasm is, that it's not in melee range, but it's not far away. What I dislike about iDuelist is, that when I shatter, I need to wait for that phantasm to run to the foe, and that makes the burst fail.

I've been wondering, if I should change my off-hand sword to focus, but I can't see enough reasons to switch. iWarden does less dmg than iSwordsman, but iWarden is a bit more ''defensive''. With the right placement of curtain, you can interrupt a whole group of mobs, but still, not all foes can be moved (stability, or just ''natural stability'' some foes have).

[carnifex2005]

My Sweet Lily, on 28 December 2012 - 05:03 PM, said:

People, where is the off-hand sword? I think this is the best off-hand weapon for glasscannon shatter builds.
   Skill 4:Block. Use it again for interrupt. Why I love this skill? Because not all mobs can be interrupted with Magic Bullet, but (I think) all attacks in pve are blockable. If you time the block badly, you can shoot that interrupt and still not get hit. If you block, you do pretty great damage and a clone, ready to shatter.
   Skill 5:Phantasm that hits like a truck. Really good, when I want to spike someone (let the phantasm strike and then shatter before the phantasm leaps away). And the great thing about this phantasm is, that it's not in melee range, but it's not far away. What I dislike about iDuelist is, that when I shatter, I need to wait for that phantasm to run to the foe, and that makes the burst fail.

I've been wondering, if I should change my off-hand sword to focus, but I can't see enough reasons to switch. iWarden does less dmg than iSwordsman, but iWarden is a bit more ''defensive''. With the right placement of curtain, you can interrupt a whole group of mobs, but still, not all foes can be moved (stability, or just ''natural stability'' some foes have).

I concur about using sword in off-hand. I swapped to that from the pistol during leveling and like it a lot more. If I'm in melee range, I like  having a block that can spawn a clone for a extra shatter and another clone that does great damage with their attack.

[Visul]

I tried all the weapons out there fitted for a mesmer, but for some reason i simply cannot leave my sword/focus behind. I usually start my fighting with the greatsword and when the mobs are a little "static" fighting the clones or team mates, i pop up a iWarden and charge in with Blurred Frenzy, dodge out and "Cry of Frustration", the damage IMO is perfect.

[yanniktism]

Im loving the offhand-sword too.
Espacially beacause the clone uses a combofinisher, which gives him and allies around him chaosarmor, when using a ethereal combofield

[placerhood]

yanniktism, on 29 December 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

Im loving the offhand-sword too.
Espacially beacause the clone uses a combofinisher, which gives him and allies around him chaosarmor, when using a ethereal combofield

It's a leap finisher.... only the illusion itself with benefit from chaos armor.

[yanniktism]

Î just tried it with the staff 5 skill, with null field and time warp and me and the Illusion got chaos armor...

Edited by yanniktism, 29 December 2012 - 01:18 PM.

[placerhood]

My bad, when u first spawn the iSwordsman you seem to proc a combofinisher leap on yourself too.

I did misinterpret your statement and though the iSwordsman would keep giving me constant leap finishers ^^

[Sakujin]

This is actually the first time I've seen someone mentioning Swordsman doing more dmg than Warden. While Swordsman do provide high crit once in a while, having leap finnisher and does actually chase after the target, I don't believe it does even half the dmg as Warden on a non moving target or this is what I've observed during my tests in fractal runs from 1-30+.

I gave basically every illusion and phantasm a try to see which one is good where so I could swap out weapons to get the benefits, but I have to agree Warden is not so good in wvw, but the skill #4 is.

[Strife025]

I cringe everytime I see someone say Focus 4 isn't good for fights.

Focus 4 is imho the best pull in the game. Grouping up mobs against a wall for your party to hit with melee attack cleaves/AoE skills will do way more damage then what you provide with a pistol.

Not to mention with focus cooldown + reflect projectiles, focus becomes invaluable for quite a few dungeon encounters and high level fractals.

Now that they nerfed Shattered Strength, I find myself only taking 20 points into the shatter line and taking focus cooldown + reflect instead because of how much utility it brings.

[Estriella Faerie]

Strife025, on 08 January 2013 - 07:24 PM, said:

Not to mention with focus cooldown + reflect projectiles, focus becomes invaluable for quite a few dungeon encounters and high level fractals.

I've changed my traits to take the reflect on focus (8 Inspiration), but I am quite disappointed with it.
Most of the projectiles I encounter are not reflected by it, as it seems they go above the curtain. In fractal, happens with harpies, grawl shaman (if the trait worked there, it would be pretty nice), bloomhunger poison shots, etc.

[Strife025]

Estriella Faerie, on 15 January 2013 - 12:35 AM, said:

I've changed my traits to take the reflect on focus (8 Inspiration), but I am quite disappointed with it.
Most of the projectiles I encounter are not reflected by it, as it seems they go above the curtain. In fractal, happens with harpies, grawl shaman (if the trait worked there, it would be pretty nice), bloomhunger poison shots, etc.

You have to put it at your feet and stand right behind it. It doesn't work when you put it in front of the mob since it's actually on the ground floor, but for some reason it works when you put it close to you.

[CepaCepa]

Sakujin, on 31 December 2012 - 05:07 AM, said:

This is actually the first time I've seen someone mentioning Swordsman doing more dmg than Warden. While Swordsman do provide high crit once in a while, having leap finnisher and does actually chase after the target, I don't believe it does even half the dmg as Warden on a non moving target or this is what I've observed during my tests in fractal runs from 1-30+.

I gave basically every illusion and phantasm a try to see which one is good where so I could swap out weapons to get the benefits, but I have to agree Warden is not so good in wvw, but the skill #4 is.

The thing with warden, aside from it not moving, is: the cast takes LONG, instead of the typical instant damage that the other phantasms do, it does it over 3 seconds. That's not bursty enough in many cases, things may move, aoe may kill phantasm, and in case of player they'll definitely dodge away or heal. The second thing is that, the attack CD is.... Just way too long. If you ever, ever want to take advantage of the second attack from your phantasm, warden should be one of your last choices. If we're talking about dps over a boss fight in dungeons/fractals, either iDuelist or iSwordman edges ahead, iDuelist for its range and multiple hits, iSwordman due to its fast attack rate.

Focus has its niche, #4 is a great skill and warden does have that blocking feature. But for pure, pure dps, there are better choices if you're into min/maxing.

Edited by CepaCepa, 15 January 2013 - 11:04 PM.

[Symbiont]

pistol does offer more, only reason i switch to focus sometimes is purely because mesmer SEVERELY lack speed.

Arenanet, come on add some speed to one of those signets.

[chaosdude]

#4 on the focus also pulls mobs without aggro, extremely handy in some situations, and in the hands of a good player can pull just 1 or 2 mobs away from a pack.

[SCLOBERNOCKER47]

I think you underestimate the power of the warden.

I run a phantasm build with warden and zerker. Full rampager gear.
Its flat amazing.

I run it in PvE and WvW,

The positioning is as difficult as you think.
Even when chasing runner.

Curtain+pull. Immediate Warden. Sword port for the immobilize.
They eat a full warden volley.

Frenzy after the port and swap weapons for a berzerker.

I can stack 12-18 bleeds in seconds with the first volley of iWarden+iZerker

[Sakujin]

CepaCepa, on 15 January 2013 - 11:02 PM, said:

The thing with warden, aside from it not moving, is: the cast takes LONG, instead of the typical instant damage that the other phantasms do, it does it over 3 seconds. That's not bursty enough in many cases, things may move, aoe may kill phantasm, and in case of player they'll definitely dodge away or heal. The second thing is that, the attack CD is.... Just way too long. If you ever, ever want to take advantage of the second attack from your phantasm, warden should be one of your last choices. If we're talking about dps over a boss fight in dungeons/fractals, either iDuelist or iSwordman edges ahead, iDuelist for its range and multiple hits, iSwordman due to its fast attack rate.

Focus has its niche, #4 is a great skill and warden does have that blocking feature. But for pure, pure dps, there are better choices if you're into min/maxing.

I really can't believe ppls are even arguing about this, you spesifically equip the weap/util/pick trait specifically to the encounter if you want to maximize ur group's success. Believe it or not, the focus is one of the most useful OH weapon in fractal due to convinence of either pulling, slowing, denying ranged attacks etc. and not to mention Warden does exceptional dmg when your in full zerker gear as I. iSwordsman is slow as well since u mentioned warden attacks being slow, but then again the warden nullifies projectiles when its swinging the axes which is very useful on many encounters if placed correctly and it'll survive more than just half a second.

iDuelist is good, but the only time I use it is at dredge boss if I'm not on pulling leveler duty.

EDIT: correcting grammar etc. it's late

Edited by Sakujin, 22 January 2013 - 03:41 AM.

[CepaCepa]

Sakujin, on 22 January 2013 - 03:34 AM, said:

I really can't believe ppls are even arguing about this, you spesifically equip the weap/util/pick trait specifically to the encounter if you want to maximize ur group's success. Believe it or not, the focus is one of the most useful OH weapon in fractal due to convinence of either pulling, slowing, denying ranged attacks etc. and not to mention Warden does exceptional dmg when your in full zerker gear as I. iSwordsman is slow as well since u mentioned warden attacks being slow, but then again the warden nullifies projectiles when its swinging the axes which is very useful on many encounters if placed correctly and it'll survive more than just half a second.

iDuelist is good, but the only time I use it is at dredge boss if I'm not on pulling leveler duty.

EDIT: correcting grammar etc. it's late

Focus has utility, yes, that's what I said at the end, and what most people agree. When you need that swiftness we really don't have much choice, when you need that pull or when you need as many projectile reflect as possible, you switch to focus too. But if you need none of those and you're looking to maximize your damage, there are better alternatives than focus. Not saying you're not justified to using focus on your mesmer, it's all about playstyle and personal preference, but OP asked for damage, so we're talking damage.

You can't say "warden does exceptional dmg when you're in full zerker", because the argument is that "iSwordman and/or iDuelist do MORE dmg than Warden when you're in full zerker". Let's look at some numbers: With traits but without might, in full berserker, Warden does around 8-10K damage in 5 seconds (VERY long duration, hence not bursty and requires target to not move for this whole duration). With 20% phantasm recharge it takes the warden 12.4 seconds to attack again. Warden also has 20 second summon CD without weapon trait. This means that even if you have 3 wardens already up attacking a mob who stays 100% stationary, that's 30K damage every 12 second, or 2.5K dps. Now iDuelist does 6-8K damage every 6.5 seconds, the summon itself is 16 seconds CD so you can get 3 iDuelist 20% faster than you can get 3 iWarden. 3 iDuelist = 24K damage every 6.5 second or about 3.7K dps. Assuming 70% crit (full berserker + fury trait) iDuelist will each keep about 5 stacks of bleed on the mob to a total of 15 stacks with 3 of them, that's another 700-800 dps, to a total of 4.4K dps. iSowrdman does 5-7K damage every 4.4 seconds (fastest attacking phantasm), 3 of them would be 21K damage over 4.4 second = 4.8K dps. While iDuelist and iSwordman are comparable damage, iWarden is almost half of their dps. Hence for maximum damage alone, focus shouldn't be the first choice. In other words, if you're using focus, you're using it because of its utilities, not because "it does mad deeps".

And we're not going into Torch because, well. You know.

Edited by CepaCepa, 22 January 2013 - 07:07 AM.

[yanniktism]

But we need to take into concideration that iWarden does AOE-damage
Of course are AOE-Attacks weaker than singletarget attacks...

But if you have 2 mobs around you, you can outdps the other illusions

Edited by yanniktism, 22 January 2013 - 08:09 AM.

[CepaCepa]

yanniktism, on 22 January 2013 - 07:47 AM, said:

But we need to take into concideration that iWarden does AOE-damage
Of course are AOE-Attacks weaker than singletarget attacks...

But if you have 2 mobs around you, you can outdps the other illusions

Yes, except iZerker. iZerker does much better aoe damage than iWarden over the long run due to 7 second of recharge instead of 12.4 seconds. It also bleeds moderately and applies cripple. But you're right, those are our only 2 aoe phantasms and one is definitely justified to taking Sword/focus + GS for AoE situations.

[Asha2012]

Netfools, on 28 December 2012 - 04:38 PM, said:

I would use sword/pistol over scepter any day. iWarden is too situational and hard position in my opinion and goes against the point of a glass cannon build. Pistol is more focused and offensive. That is usually the reason you make a glass cannon build to begin with, to put a hurting on someone fast.I run a glass cannon phantasm build mainly, but I really like shatter builds for spvp and such. Essentially, this is my loadout.Phantasm build solo: GS / Sword+PistolPhantasm build group: GS / StaffShatter build: Staff / Sword+Pistol

So for pve, I've been using GS/sceper+pistol or GS / Staff mostly because these are my best weapons right now.  I need to get a better sword as I do like sword main hand.

So how does "glass cannon" differ from a "shatter build"?  I'm not on my home computer so I can't check to see exactly how I traited.  

I think I am 0/30/30/0/10 but it might be 30/30/0/0/10 (actually, looking quickly at Wiki, I'd say it's the latter).  I've been using a lot of ruby upgrades for Beserker. I can shatter successively pretty quickly and can make clones and phantasms easily enough (I create a clone on dodge as well).  

I'm still not wearing all max armor or using all max weapons but I have already seen a marked improvement in dmg and survivability.

Edited by Asha2012, 23 January 2013 - 05:56 PM.

[CepaCepa]

Asha2012, on 23 January 2013 - 05:54 PM, said:

So how does "glass cannon" differ from a "shatter build"?  I'm not on my home computer so I can't check to see exactly how I traited.  

Not much, you can essentially trait 20 20 0 0 30 and switch on the fly between both. When people say "shatter build" they often mean 1. Reduced CD on shatters through traits, 2. Taking 20% mind wrack damage increase in domination and 3. Taking illusive persona in Illusions (30 major). A phantasm glass cannon build means 1. Taking 15% illusion damage trait in domination 2. Taking phantasmal fury trait in dueling and 3. Taking 20% reduced phantasm recharge in illusions. Both builds (glass cannon) requires you to put 20 or more points into dueling due to clone on dodge, sharper image, precision/crit damage itself, and other goodies.

As for play style, you shatter when you need to shatter, but in a shatter build you can do so more freely without a damage loss due to phantasms dying (and ideally, you want to shatter every 10-15 seconds depending on your phantasms, and have 2 phantasms do 3 attacks before shattering followed by immediately summon up 2 more phantasms). As opposed to a phantasm build, your goal is to keep up 3 phantasms and if you don't have those shatter traits, don't shatter whenever you have 2 or more phantasms on the field unless you know they'll soon die anyways and both your phantasm CDs are up.

So, 20 20 0 0 30 can allow you to take all the necessary traits for both shatter and phantasm. However, in fights where your phantasms can live longer, switching out the shatter traits and put in some weapon traits (extra bounce for mirror blade/wind of chaos, GS CD reduction, etc) is best dps.

[Asha2012]

CepaCepa, on 23 January 2013 - 08:46 PM, said:

Not much, you can essentially trait 20 20 0 0 30 and switch on the fly between both. When people say "shatter build" they often mean 1. Reduced CD on shatters through traits, 2. Taking 20% mind wrack damage increase in domination and 3. Taking illusive persona in Illusions (30 major). A phantasm glass cannon build means 1. Taking 15% illusion damage trait in domination 2. Taking phantasmal fury trait in dueling and 3. Taking 20% reduced phantasm recharge in illusions. Both builds (glass cannon) requires you to put 20 or more points into dueling due to clone on dodge, sharper image, precision/crit damage itself, and other goodies.As for play style, you shatter when you need to shatter, but in a shatter build you can do so more freely without a damage loss due to phantasms dying (and ideally, you want to shatter every 10-15 seconds depending on your phantasms, and have 2 phantasms do 3 attacks before shattering followed by immediately summon up 2 more phantasms). As opposed to a phantasm build, your goal is to keep up 3 phantasms and if you don't have those shatter traits, don't shatter whenever you have 2 or more phantasms on the field unless you know they'll soon die anyways and both your phantasm CDs are up.So, 20 20 0 0 30 can allow you to take all the necessary traits for both shatter and phantasm. However, in fights where your phantasms can live longer, switching out the shatter traits and put in some weapon traits (extra bounce for mirror blade/wind of chaos, GS CD reduction, etc) is best dps.

Awesome and very specific answer.  Thank you.  

I really think I'm running 30 30 0 0 10 actually but it seems to me like I'd want more in Illusions.  I think I struggle with when to shatter the most.  Often times my iDuelist will be left alone to initiate range attacks with decent damage but if its target is in a group and that target dies, when the duelist shatters the damage from that is wasted where if I shatter she would run into the group.  

Much to learn and practice. I think your traiting advice is where I'll start and then practice with shatter timing.  I'm doing solely pve right now.  Thanks again.

Edited by Asha2012, 23 January 2013 - 09:18 PM.

[Netfools]

Asha2012, on 23 January 2013 - 05:54 PM, said:

So for pve, I've been using GS/sceper+pistol or GS / Staff mostly because these are my best weapons right now.  I need to get a better sword as I do like sword main hand.

So how does "glass cannon" differ from a "shatter build"?  I'm not on my home computer so I can't check to see exactly how I traited.  

I think I am 0/30/30/0/10 but it might be 30/30/0/0/10 (actually, looking quickly at Wiki, I'd say it's the latter).  I've been using a lot of ruby upgrades for Beserker. I can shatter successively pretty quickly and can make clones and phantasms easily enough (I create a clone on dodge as well).  

I'm still not wearing all max armor or using all max weapons but I have already seen a marked improvement in dmg and survivability.

A shorter version of the great response you got.

Glass Cannon is a type of build in any game for any class that puts Heavy Damage output over defensive focus. Essentially, taking all damage increasing skills/traits/ and armor stats and not any defensive ones.

Shatter build is a trait/playstyle specific to Mesmers. Essentially you set your traits and skills so that you can pump out illusions at a fast rate and use them to shatter and combo for high burst damage.

Example: I'm not a shatter build. I am a phantasm build. I traited to make my phantasms stronger and last longer. I don't use shatter except to get some extra damage on a mob before it dies and my illusions disappear anyway, but I am a glass cannon. I am in full Berserker gear and don't have any specific defensive traits.