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how to play a stealth Mesmer in WvW?


Knighthonor.4061

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@"Knighthonor.4061" said:how to play a stealth Mesmer in WvW?Its one of the classes I dont really play so I dont really know how to make the stealth build and how to play it.

The answer turned out longer than I though and I apologise for it.

What do you mean? The power shatter mesmer? The one with stealth, burst then kite mechanic?

If yes, then it's simple. You don't.

But honestly, depends on how much stealth you want. It's a nice additional tool for a mesmer but don't rely on it too much. It will be important though.

Now also the question is: Do you want a normal build? Or the "what the hell just happened" burst build that is there not to fight but to execute the enemy?

If normal, then you can start at the metabattle.com https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mirage_-_Shatter_Mirage

Probably you already did but just saying to be sure.

Few things will have to be changed though. And you might even consider going for core mesmer but for now mirage. The general idea of the burst is to stealth with torch 4/Signet of Midnight, get close to the enemy and then (if you are running Domination trait line) use Diversion (F3) which will stun the opponent, Mirror Blade (greatsword skill 2), dodge for 1 additional clone and to avoid being interrupted, Mind Stab (gs skill 3), Mantra of Pain and last but not least Mind Wrack (F1). All of that needs to be done in max 2 seconds.

It would be best if you would do it in less of course. Getting close before the burst is important here because Mirror Blade bounces of the enemy and hits him again if you are close enough, which in turn deals more damage and because the Mind Wrack also happens not only at clones' location but also yours.

As you can see the burst requires a lot of skills to be used. Putting them all on cooldown early in a fight might not always be a good idea until you know that the enemy either has used his defensive skills (stunbreaks most importantly) or doesn't suspect you are close. The problem with a burst power mesmer, mirage or core (let's not talk about Chronomancer) is that sustained fight can be a bit harder to pull off. The longer the fight goes on the harder the fight will be. And if you see that you need to fight a class with a lot of evades, or blocks, stunbreaks or invulnerabilities your burst can be totally ignored. Even despite all these nerfs, Power Mesmer still has high burst potential but without stealth its highly telegraphed and considering that for optimal burst you need to be close while also being squishy its quite a high risk and sometimes high reward type of gameplay.

Kiting. You need to kite. And then get close for the burst and kite again. All of that needs to be repeated until your enemy dies. Between the bursts you need to survive either by again kiting or evades, distortions and so on. You can use stealth too but that is important for bursts so yeah.

For the gear: Normal build is full Berserker's except amulet, one ring and one trinket which will be Marauder's. You can of course choose different pieces to be Marauder's or just add more if you are struggling to survive at first. Don't put on too much of Marauder's gear though. You will need as much damage as you can so you will be running Berserker's mostly.

2500 power, 50% crit chance and 210% crit multiplier. That's minimum.

For runes, you have two good choices, Runes of Scholar, and Runes of Fireworks. Scholar gives more damage and better burst, while Fireworks give more power, boon duration for a better might uptime for Mantra of Pain and most importantly, 6 stacks of might and fury plus vigor for 6 seconds with an addition of perma 25% increased movement speed which is hard to come by with mesmer. Both are equally valid choices but it's up to you to decide what you prefer.

For sigils, you can't go wrong with Sigils of Energy on both weapons when it comes to Mirage. Of course if you want more damage on burst then you should go with a Sigil of Air or Force on greatsword. Sigil of Agility is quite useful in pulling off the burst. When you are ready for it swap to gs and fire up that glass cannon. Dodging, shatters and Mantra of Pain charges do not interrupt your skills so with added 1 second quickness on weapon swap it's more than enough time to fill entire burst in 1 second since you can do many things at once.

Of course as it often is, if you want you can change the utility skills. There are few options. Your optional slot is Mantra of Pain. It's there for just pure damage increase. If you want you can change it for Decoy (additional stealth source), Mantra of Distraction (better control over enemy attacks and additional way to set up bursts, they can still dodge it though because it dazes not stuns), Signet of Illusions (very minor clone generation on passive and a shatter recharge which can help with putting pressure on the opponent).

Also depending on what you feel might work better you might consider changing elite skill Jaunt to Mass Invisibility for even more stealth but then say bye bye to any condi cleanse because Mesmer's aren't allowed to have proper condi cleanse for some reason until you take Inspiration traitline which barely anybody uses, because of how Dueling and Domination are essential for this build. There is also a Mantra of Resolve. If you are fighting a condi heavy build and you have problems to avoid condis then taking the Mantra is a better option instead of Mantra of Pain.

Now the next thing, clones. You will want to shatter your clones. Don't hold onto them for god knows how long. Average lifetime of a clone will be 3 seconds.All classes have easy way to just outright remove your clones. Thief can destroy them with bouncing dagger, shortbow or dagger storm, Warrior gs burst, Rangers with longbow skill 5, weaver with ANY skill really when on Sword/Dagger, Necro with multum of AoEs, Dragonhunter with traps and several AoE's plus Longbow skills, I mean you get the idea. Holding your clones is fine if you are about to burst the enemy in few seconds but overall you need to use them quickly. In WvW zergs you might as well as forget that you have any clones. Additionaly your clones are dumb. They don't move until your opponent gets out of range, then they just run straight to him. They also run when you want to shatter so if you are in stealth and a thief for example doesn't see you but sees that the clones suddenly come to him while weilding a ranged weapon he can assume you are about to burst the damage so he can shadowstep away and just shoot your clones with a autoattack effectively removing significant portion of your damage.

Don't get discouraged though. The build does offer tools to win. Despite nerfs Shatter Mesmer still has high burst potential. You can kill people quickly if they are not careful. Attacking them from behind either at the beginning of the fight or in the middle of it is a good way to fool them for at least a moment. Forcing them to rotate camera constantly just to look at you can be distracting and in an attempt to catch you they will have to use their mobility skills which they could use to run away. Oh yeah and you can't attack on gs if your enemy is behind you. So if you want to run away from them AND attack then you can't. That is a nerf to our kiting. We could do it in the past. Thanks Anet.

Oh yeah one last thing. Mirage doesn't have a lot of dodges. Despite the popular belief we have a finite amount of defenses. We have 2 dodges, additional one per 9 seconds if using Sigil of Energy, Blink on 30s CD and a distortion on 50s CD. On Sword/Torch set you also have a 1s distortion on Blurred Frenzy (sword skill 2) on most likely 8s CD thanks to Fencer's Finesse trait in Dueling. The rest of defense comes from, as mentioned earlier, kiting which is possible thanks to Jaunt (don't over use it though), Blink and sword ambush skill which is a great mobility skill with an interrupt. It doesn't offer any evade though so it can be interrupted easily because of highly telegraphed animation.

I also mentioned the Core Mesmer build. Change Mirage traitline to Chaos and choose traits: Master of Manipulation, Auspicious Anguish, Prismatic Understanding.Then take Signet of Midnight and Mass Invisibility. Blink is a must and for the optional slot: Mantra of Pain, Decoy or Mantra of Distraction. This set up highly increases your stealth duration giving you effective 15 seconds of continous stealth (provided you use all stealth skills at once). Mass Invisibility will also have reduced CD from 60s to 48s.All skill that count as Manipulation, will also give you 3s superspeed. You can use manipulation healing skill too (Mirror) which is now on 12s cooldown and reflects projectiles.

You might even try the build Im trying to make work. Dueling, Illusions and Chaos.Dueling: Desperate Decoy (mid), Fencer's Finesse (low), Deceptive Evasion (low)Illusions: Shatter Storm (low), Escape Artist (high), Phantasmal Force (high)Chaos: Master of Manipulation (low), Auspicious Anguish (high), Prismatic Understanding (mid).

Gs, Sword/torch, Skills: Mirror, Mantra of Distraction, Blink, Signet of Midnight, Mass Invisibility.

That allows for a lot of clone generation from stealth, weapon skills, and dodges, plus your recharge on shatters is reduced from Illusions traitline and also you have now 2 charges of Mind Wrack. Your burst is now a bit weaker but you can burst more often. You lack stun but still you can attack way more often efectively putting more pressure.I am not saying this build is good. Im just saying what Im trying right now I do often win with it.

And finally:

The "one shot" build:

Full berserk, Runes of Scholar, all power infusions, Sigil of Bloodlust and Energy on Sword/Torch (try to kill downed enemies on this set to stack Bloodlust), and Sigil of Force and Air on Greatsword.

The build is the same on the Power Shatter Mirage from Metabattle.com except in Dueling at the end you choose Superiority Complex.

As for utility skills: choose anything you want. Mantra of Pain is mandatory for bigger burst and 12 stacks of might when it's prepared. I guess you can get Mass invis for longer stealth duration so you can safely get closer to the enemy and have time to prepare Mantra of Pain for those 12 might stacks.

As for the burst itself.

Start in Sword/Torch

Find target

Use Mass Invisibilty and start getting close to him.

Prepare Mantra of Pain

Use Prestige (torch skill 4)

And now the hardest part:

Wait until Prestige will wear out and blast the fire then immediately:

Swap to greatsword: Diversion, dodge, Mirror Blade, Mantra of Pain charge, Mind Stab, Mind Wrack. All as fast as you can.

If the enemy lives after that (not likely if you pulled off entire combo succesfully) then you can try to dodge again and use Gs ambush skill and Cry of Frustration (F2).

If you downed him then cast Gs phantasm and swap to sword/torch to finish him off and to get more stacks of Bloodlust.

If you failed: RUN.

So that is it. Sorry for a long response.

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I got my butt stomped by an ambush mesmer earlier today. I mean, I came back and beat him, but he did win that first bout. Someone posted up a big post on it, but honestly I started skimming after awhile. But, as I slowly rebuild full ascended marauder for my light armor classes, I have considered what I would do for a skirmishing mesmer.

Honestly it doesn't seem that complicated. X/Torch + Greatsword, with Decoy, Blink, Signet of Midnight and a whole bunch of offensive traits with a mixture of berserker/marauder gear. Change a few things around depending on if you're solo, in a group, or with a zerg. There's a lot of nuance on how to deal with different professions, but so long as you keep a critical mind as you play you'll probably figure a lot of things out.

That, or read the incredibly long post about it that someone else made.

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Stealth isn't as reliable or useful on Mesmer as it was back in the day. During the HoT days Mesmer could get pretty close to perma stealthing through Continuum Split, Prismatic Understanding, Mass Invisibility, Mimic, Decoy, and The Prestige. In the current game, mimic inside of CS doesn't work, PU has been drastically nerfed, and reveal is everywhere. Its literally built into towers and keeps. At this point, stealth is essentially used for a brief reset during combat or to assist in disengaging from a fight. Most builds don't run anything beyond 3-6 seconds of stealth every 30-40 seconds. Definitely include stealth in your Mesmer setup, but don't try to make it the main focus that you build around. It won't work.

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