Guild Wars 2

It really bothers me as a mesmer that I feel less like a liability to my team if I use a greatsword and staff since those are the only two that provide range safety and boon provision and field effects to my team, compared to my sword/sword setup.

Even with Vigor procs from the dueling line it seems like there’s not enough endurance to compensate for the incoming damage from groups of mobs in melee range and the amount of AoE effects around enemies.

Since melee already do well in PvP, would it be considered to give melee weapons in PvE an endurance regen bonus over ranged weapons or a durability boon to the user?

I know Guardians and warriors already do pretty well in melee, but dagger elementalists and mesmers seem to suffer quite a bit and the majority appear to stick to ranged weapons throughout the dungeon. So this endurance regen bonus could be provided to the classes that need it.

At some point running double ranged weapons gets boring.

I D/D on my ele quite a bit through CoE, but I swap it up for some fights. I havent seen a serious issue, but then again I have a lot of stuns, auras, heals, and interrupts to use when things get rough.

personally, i feel that the gs offers fewer defensive options than any of the one handed options. the staff works equally well for offense and defense. but the only gs skill that even works defensively is iWave, which is the longest cd, even if it does offer solid control. the berserker’s cripple is somewhat controlish, but nothing compared to the sword’s cripple/immobilize (not to mention clone generation) combo, it’s reliable distortion (which comes with high damage output). the scepter mainhand and the sword off-hand both offer counters, that double as active interrupts. confusing images punishes them for going on the offense, but isn’t as useful in pve.
the full offhands all offer defensive options. the pistol carries a triple interrupt, both focus skills offer defense and controls for close range (as well as some of your highest aoe dps). even the lackluster torch offers the prestige, and phantasmal mage offers the potent if situational confusion/retaliation combo. that’s almost every single weapon, except for the gs, and i haven’t even begun looking at utilities, which offer more stun breaks, interrupts, and condition control than any other movepool.

when i do play my mesmer in pvp, i can burst down almost any but the hardest targets. i take the staff and the sword/pistol (sword/focus for pve). most of my gw experience comes from playing the guardian, who is REALLY strapped for ranged damage.

i promise, the mesmer does not need more toys.

Sword/torch.
I’m a lvl 80 mesmer that goes staff and sword/torch in dungeons, and sword torch does indeed do more damage, and I find it the easiest to use. Sword’s #2 skill makes it very easy to negate obvious one-shot attack animations that you’re out of endurance to dodge away from. The 3 skill works as a gap closer as well as a CC to help your team and if you find you’re out of both of those and still taking a bit too much damage, Torch #4 takes all the attention off you and lets you sit back to wait for your heal. On top of that, if you specced condition damage for staff, as it feels like you should since all of it’s abilities seem to focus on conditions, the torch has fire and the torch phantasm has confusion which both scale off conditions too. It’s worked wonders for me.

The Torch’s iMage is terrible and if anything your suggestion is a damage loss when offhand sword has a counter on a much shorter cooldown that can give you a time gap to dodge.

The issue is that there’s not enough endurance regen available to compenstate for the amount of spike damage going out against melee versus their healing per second.

It’s a damage loss if you’re doing a power build yes. But if you’re using staff in the other hand, I kinda doubt you’re going power. Confusion while it’s not activated often in PvE situations, does a lot more damage in them. Dunno why it gets scaled so far up in PvE but when bosses hit themselves, they hit hard. Retaliation on everyone is also a nice buff. Sure you won’t be seeing the big numbers with the buff spread around like that but if there’s a damage loss, I doubt it’s a significant one.

in my response i mentioned the torch was probably the worst mesmer weapon available. you completely ignored my account of your damage mitigation options. every single weapon offers skills to prevent damage at melee range, and if you trait for condition duration and damage you’ll have wonderful damage output as well. staff off with like mirror images, drop chaos storm on all of you, and phase retreat out for chaos armor. summon iWarlock. switch to sword combo. cripple and warp in, blurred frenzy/immobilize, dodge away, summon next phantasm (swordsman, duelist, warden, etc). drop more cripples or conditions (temporal curtain, bouncing pistol shot (5)). you’ve got ridiculous damage on someone, still haven’t shattered, and have buffed nearby allies and conditioned nearby foes. and i’ve only mentioned one utility (mirror images). you’ve also only used one dodge, and probably still have at least two stun breaks and two interrupts or blocks (from sword/focus or sword/sword and utilities).

oh, also, in a two on one, you can moa morph the harder target and drop his friend before he knows what’s going on.

what are you still missing?

I use dual daggers in most of the dungeons as Elementalist, and it works pretty well. Although there’s some dungeons / paths / bosses I go ranged on.

Melee I feel like has a harder time staying in melee for many fights, whether its because of pbaoes or reacting to really fast boss actions, you end up having to run out anyway to recover.

AsteriskCGY.5931:

Melee I feel like has a harder time staying in melee for many fights, whether its because of pbaoes or reacting to really fast boss actions, you end up having to run out anyway to recover.

That’s for any class though. Like people will tell you alot, unless you have some REALLY dedicated support or very good switching between other melee’s, no class can just sit there and eat it in melee range. The trade off for the higher damage is the inability to keep it up constantly.

I don’t think melee needs a boost like that, and I run D/D for almost everything.