Sword Ambush, Shatters and Quality of Life

[Arlette.9684]

Hello there fellow Mesmers,

And a Happy Wintersday to you all.

 

I recently decided to dust off my Power gear and doned on the Shatter Mantle to prepare for the inevitable nerf to condi Mirage.

As I started tinkering with sword ambush in depth, I couldn’t help but notice that it is MIGHTY hard for it to actually connect to a non static target. Has anyone found a workaround and want to share some tips about making it land consistently instead of being a 600 leap and nothing else?

 

Also has anyone tried Axe as a power weapon? I’ve been stuck at work the past few days and haven’t gotten around to testing it myself but based on the wiki (not a very trustworthy source) the phantasmal seeking axe takes .4 attack coefficient and from what I recall the axe 3 sports a ~1500 tooltip damage at 2500+ power. Would that make it a viable substitute for the clunky sword mechanics, and why if yes or not?

 

Feel free to drop a comment and help me theorycraft on my lunch break :smiley:

[Curunen.8729]

Regarding axe - while I don't play full power, in my current hybrid build I've seen axe 3 crit for just under 4k. I'm sure if you go full zerker/marauder it can crit even higher, which at an 8s traited cooldown is nice addition to F1 burst. :)

[Arlette.9684]

I did some light testing last night, the damage looks fine, certainly connects a lot. Less Bursty for sure, more sustained damage and I only used an exotic axe for testing so the shatter damage was about 300 lower than my GS (tooltipwise).

[Hot Boy.7138]

Axe as a power weapon is pretty strong. I think it's a stronger weapon than sword as a power weapon. The big issue is that if you're using axe, you're giving up the domination trait line that buffs illusion damage by 15% and your own damage by 12.5% cause of the vulnerability bonus damage. But that damage was just slightly less than a sword build. And if you consider that it is doing that much damage without domination, it can be assumed, that axe is stronger than sword for both power and condition, but the domination trait line gives sword the slight edge.

 

Also, Axe's ambush doesn't delete a phantasms, and axe 3 hits pretty hard when fully buffed. And it allows for retargetting of illusions.

 

I still use power mes on fights where power is the better option. I can get 30k each time on KC if my subgroup has the right buffs. However, the ramp up time of using power builds, or phantasm builds overall, power build doesn't have a choice, is really offputting. Especially in open world.

 

And about sword ambush. My attack miss sometimes if my target is dancing skillfully around me. But i think that's the reward for moving skillfully. I don't think sword ambush should be guaranteed to hit. It should be avoidable if one is moving in the right ways.

[Wandering Mist.2973]

> @"Arlette.9684" said:

> I did some light testing last night, the damage looks fine, certainly connects a lot. Less Bursty for sure, more sustained damage and I only used an exotic axe for testing so the shatter damage was about 300 lower than my GS (tooltipwise).

 

What kind of rotation are you doing for this? Are you using F1 on cooldown?

[Arlette.9684]

A few details before I elaborate.

 

I built it mostly as the off weapon, as the shatter rotation on GS is vastly superior in my opinion. My thoughts were that I needed it to provide a little more consistent damage, be it as a finisher or to help me swap to targets more fluidly while detargetting, something to give me that extra bit of pressure while my Shatters are on CD.

I went with Mirage/Illusions/Dueling as I felt I was lacking that 25% crit chance on Mind wrack, and I’d much rather it crit all the time, than deal 15% more dmg and be a noncrit.

I cannot speak for PvE as I don’t do any, aside from Wintersday daily. And I’m fairly positive Griever or Viper will be better for that.

 

> @"Wandering Mist.2973" said:

> > @"Arlette.9684" said:

> > I did some light testing last night, the damage looks fine, certainly connects a lot. Less Bursty for sure, more sustained damage and I only used an exotic axe for testing so the shatter damage was about 300 lower than my GS (tooltipwise).

>

> What kind of rotation are you doing for this? Are you using F1 on cooldown?

 

I haven’t gotten around to building a rotation, I only got to do about 30-40 mins of testing in a handful of fights, and in all those I ran into heavy support bunkery builds of one sort or another (Barrier Scourge/Support FB/a whole lot of passive invulnerability druids and the likes). So with that being said I am just now starting to experiment with rotation. All I did so far was track auto attack averages per axe on different armor types and the rest of the axe skills. I can honestly say that the seeking axes damage to, in-stealth thieves is quite spectacular.

Also worth mentioning is that people tend to cleanse all the 0 condi damage conditions I apply. So there’s the psychological factor to consider as well.

 

I’ll be updating this as I go.