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Sand Shards boon priority


Hackuuna.4085

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Didn't see anyone talking about this but I'm actually sort of surprised at the priority. It's a lot better than I thought it was going to be though I wish Regen and Vigor were swapped.

  1. Aegis
  2. Stability
  3. Protection
  4. Regeneration
  5. Retaliation
  6. Alacrity
  7. Fury
  8. Swiftness
  9. Might
  10. Resistance
  11. Quickness
  12. Vigor

Overall very strong. Great at stripping stab and also strips Aegis before applying damage. I can see this becoming quite exceptional in group fights.

The damage also isn't trivial. Was landing 2.5k crits running full zerk.

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I went to the test golem for raids and had it apply all boons. I dodged next to it to see what order the boons would get stripped. I repeated this about 3 times and saw that there is no randomness.

I then went to WvW and tried it out and started destroying warriors and rangers after stripping their stab constantly to verify the potency. It's nice being able to CC again even if I do have to be in melee range to get the strips off.

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@"Hackuuna.4085" said:I went to the test golem for raids and had it apply all boons. I dodged next to it to see what order the boons would get stripped. I repeated this about 3 times and saw that there is no randomness.

I then went to WvW and tried it out and started destroying warriors and rangers after stripping their stab constantly to verify the potency. It's nice being able to CC again even if I do have to be in melee range to get the strips off.

Very interesting. Since aegis is obviously "strippable" by applying damage, it's a stability priority strip. That's potentially very powerful.

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@"Fat Disgrace.4275" said:Same as bountiful theft ?

I wasn't aware of what it was so I looked up Bountiful Theft in the wiki and you're right. It's an identical boon order. I'm happy that mesmer finally has an option to strip out two important boons in Protection and Stability and the fact that it's AoE means it's going to be really good in team or outnumbered fights.

At first glance it seems fairly balanced since you have to be in melee and the damage component can really mess up anyone who relies on stealth.

EDIT: Playing around with it more I see we can use the ol' jump trick to negate the trait. So for stealth builds that want to use this trait you can still use it without fear of breaking your stealth if you jump.

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I'm happy to say that from this patch there was a ray of light. I'm glad to see other Mirages using Sand Shards, I swear I often felt I was the only one that ever used it lolz. (from my very unscientific poll in wvw) All in all, I like the boon strip and gain a boon plus the higher base damage that may not get cleansed along with the other bleeding I've applied. And it's passive applied after Mirage CLoak.

I mentioned in another post recently about the importance of arcane thievery against boon reliant metas these days and this helps out just a bit more. I've only done some hard WVW soloing once since the update but I "feel" I'm doing a little bit better in 2 or 3v1's against meta booners.

Sand Shards now has a nice synergy with Shattered Concentration and Arcane Thievery. That's a lot of boon stripping in a shatter burst combo on my Axe/Pistol-Scept/Torch condi build. 4 from Shatters, 2-5 from Mirage Cloak (via the infamous orrian truffle and meat stew with Adventures runes) and 3 from Arcane Thievery in less than a minute of combat. Did I mention I run Signet of Illusion? So i'm able to get those 4 shatters back fairly quickly for a second burst round. I guess I could go for more via sigils but for now, I need them for other things. I find in 1v1's, my opponent is pretty much stripped bare of boons on a continuing basis. It's especially a nice counter to Holo and Warrior.

Given all of the latest ahem, changes to Mez. It's nice to have found at least one nice synergy line.

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  • 1 month later...

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:so you wanna run into several people into melee range as mirage, just to strip 1 boon ?

in zerg pushes, if you lose stab, chances are you're gonna die.

and running into melee range solves that ?

huh? i'm confused.

sand shards has Radius: 180. so if you wanna make use of it you need to be in melee range.im going to ask you again, are you going to run into melee range of zerg to strip stability ?

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:sand shards has Radius: 180. so if you wanna make use of it you need to be in melee range.im going to ask you again, are you going to run into melee range of zerg to strip stability ?

that is the nature of my question, yes. I personally am not. I am asking if people think its a feasible idea.you good?

the only way i could see it work is like portal -> blink -> evade -> focus 4 -> disortion -> evade ends -> take portal back -> yoink.but if you can pull off something like that then you might as well play some other broken build and just stroll in and 1v4

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:the only way i could see it work is like portal -> blink -> evade -> focus 4 -> disortion -> evade ends -> take portal back -> yoink.but if you can pull off something like that then you might as well play some other broken build and just stroll in and 1v4

cuz 1v4s are not zerg v zerg… you build tanky and dodge like everyone else.

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:the only way i could see it work is like portal -> blink -> evade -> focus 4 -> disortion -> evade ends -> take portal back -> yoink.but if you can pull off something like that then you might as well play some other broken build and just stroll in and 1v4

cuz 1v4s are not zerg v zerg… you build tanky and dodge like everyone else.

you cant express skill all that much in zerg fights, thats what i brought up outnumbered fights where you can do that.

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