Guild Wars 2

Hello! I am not sure this is the right forum for this, but the dungeon forum is pretty active so I’ll take my chances.

I just hit 80 on my mesmer so now I have the opportunity to get some max level gear. I was wondering if it was a good idea too buy some Exotics from the Karma vendors to aid in my exp dungeon runs.

If so which type of gear should I start with?

Buying exotics with karma isn’t a bad idea. I think I put all rares on my mesmer when I first hit 80 and just ran a lot of CoF. Which type of gear depends on what your traits are and what your trying to do. You might actually have better luck asking this question on the mesmer forums… that is if your up in the air as to what spec you want to play.

Berserker – Power/Precision/Critical Damage.
Why? When you start playing with you won’t struggle later like you’d do when changing from P/V/T to P/P/C.

For mesmers, Power/Precision/Crit Damage always seems to be the way to go. That said, I would get yourself an invisible 20 slot bag and carry around a set of power/vitality/toughness gear, for situations where your group comes up short faster than you can safely do your job wearing your glasscannon stats. It’s what I do for my thief. Primarily wear glasscannon, but if my group is either bad or we just need to survive (grawl fractal and lupicus come to mind), I’ve got safety gear ready for use.

If your doing COF primarily, get full berzerker gear. It is all the pugs look for there atm. But if your planning on getting dungeon master and doing all the rest of the dungeons, you might want to get some PVT or knight armor with berzerker trinkets instead to help in survivability.

you can just run the dungeons in whatever you have.

Berserker armor and trinkets. Maybe Rabid if you are doing a condition build (although mesmer condition builds in dungeons is not strong imo). Soldier armor for a second set in case party is too squishy/bad.

If it’s your first character it’s not a bad idea to get a soldiers set of armor. Once you have learned your class and some of the content, take off the training wheels and get a berserker set and use that instead since it is the way to go for memsers. Also, that soldiers set you have will come in handy for some cases so you will not have wasted your time grinding for it.

I would suggest making a defensive rare set and as many exotic berserker trinkets as you can afford and then do ascolonian catacombs path 1-2 or honor the waves path 1 since they are easy and have soldiers stat gear. You will get some dungeon experience and can branch out to harder ones from there and get some berserker gear. Citadel of flame is by far the easiest to get berserker gear from. Crucible of eternity and arah are the hardest but are the most fun and they have nicer looking berserker armors. That’s if you don’t want to farm karma for a gear skin that you may not even like.

It isn’t necessary to have exotic armor for dungeons. Ideally you should be getting your exotic armor from the barter tokens. It’s worth remembering that this is a game where skill is more important than itemization so exotic armor is only really giving you some contingency for mistakes as you learn the dungeons.

Nevertheless, if it’s your first character, with no experience, then some extra protection will help a bit. You can get some 76-80 exotics from the chests for completing zones so you might want to consider doing that for malchor’s leap, cursed shore, straits of devastation, and frostgorge sound. Rare armour is very cheap now from the Trading Post.

With what type(s) of group do you want to play?

• Guild group (casual)
• Guild group (pro/speed runs)
• PuG (casual)
• PuG (pro/speed runs)

If guild casual group, then maybe you should ask them what would be best for their . If PuG, pro groups will want a mesmer to do damage, so dps gear (berserker). I’m not going to start the CnD stinks v. it doesn’t argument, but the perception is that direct damage is better. If you choose a CnD build w/ staff/scepter then either Rampager’s (for more crit chance) or Carrion for more life. If casual, expect harder runs sometimes in which P/V/T gear (best source for 5 of 6 pieces is Orr temple karma vendors, if you have the Karma, or AC) will keep you up longer. Or do as suggested above and get both.

Karma is really your best choice since you get it way more than you need by simply doing dailies and monthlies.

Other than that I would suggest doing AC for power/toughness/vitality or COF for power/precision/crit dmg armors, since those 2 are currently easiest to do and are rather short too.

I have a mesmer too and I have no problem going full glass canon in any dungeon with my cof armor. But for open world or fractals, I might suggest something with a bit more vitality in it.