Guild Wars 2

Hi hehe, so my friend and I are new (around level 20ish). We want to just have fun joining games in the pvp browser, nothing serious. He likes playing high damage classes like power ranger, dual pistol thief ect. I’m looking for a class/build to level that can hold someone in place while he demolishes them. I’m open for any class and build, just please don’t tell me that this plan is stupid as we’re not here to win tournaments, we just want to have fun.

Thanks in advance

Mesmer > all

Dirven.3021:

Mesmer > all

So a mesmer has lots of stuns and knockdowns? Do you mind letting me know which build I should look into to specialize in that field?

hambow #1 lockdowns EU!

pewpew with right pets is close second

Hello Joben,

Haven’t tested it (so it could probably be refined in practice), but I think the following mesmer build could do what you want.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArdWlknpGtNqxTNMrNSphY6cH3dqrkOwjCA-TJxHwAOLDE4JA4a/BAnCAA

Principles:

• As you’re a supporting type, I’ve made the build quite tanky. While its primary focus is the control of opponents, I’ve made it condition-based too, so that you can still contribute to the damage.
• To control your opponent, you may use Diversion (to daze/stun), Temporal Curtain (to pull), Chaos Storm (to daze/stun), Mantra of Distraction (to daze/stun).
• All these skills, if they result in an interruption, will immobilize your opponent, and possibly blind/cripple/chill him. If your opponent decides to kill your clones, he will end up being crippled as well. And we use hydromancy sigils for more chill, in the case he somehow gets angry at you and tries to retaliate.
• In terms of game play, you should build your clones calmly, then activate either Cry of Frustration or Diversion. Note that these skills, aside from their base effect, will also strip the opponent from some of his/her boons. Your scepter and your staff will give you plenty of active defense as well.
• And finally – you want the moa as elite

The mesmer class can be a bit overwhelming at first, but quite dangerous in experienced hands. Hope you’ll have fun with your friend.

Play dagger/pistol thief with basilisk venom and tripwire trap. Shadostep to your target, stun with venom, second later knockdown with trap, and at the end immobilize with panic strike, that is deadly arts grandmaster trait.

You can also steal mace from guardians for like 4 second daze, or bone from pets/clones for 3 second stun (but that’s random and doesn’t always pop).

Warrior and ranger can give you some long stun/dazes, however mesmers have more interrupts and can keep a person locked down for long times using these together with traits. Chaotic Interruption immobilizes on interrupt, so you can potentially keep people locked down in place while your friend pew pews them down.

Necro has a crap ton of fear/chill. Engie has a crap ton of immob/stuns. Warrior has a crap ton of knockdowns/stuns. Thief has a crap ton of immob/stone.

I would go with one of those 4 to lock down an enemy. Try playing around with the build editor. http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Warrior is the best, no contest. If you want to run a semi-legit tanky lockdown here’s a couple options:
LB/Hammer with leg specialist trait
LB/Mace+X
LB/Sword+sword condi (tons of immob),

If you wanted to be less meta you could run with something like axe+mace/mace+shield, or maybe hammer/mace+shield or really whatever you want.

Okay thanks guys, I’ll give both the warrior and the mesmer builds a crack on the dummies and watch some videos and stuff and see which i like

cheers

Venom share thief.

If you have a strong stomach try warrior. otherwise go mesmer

Eurantien.4632:

Venom share thief.

with 45 seconds cd venoms are realy a reliable source for locking down an opponent.
I forgot it’s full of venom share thieves in high ranked teams…

Any Tanky class… Warrior, Necro, Ele even Ranger can distract while you kill.

warrior cant really lock down, cuz when enemy has stability, he becomes useless.

If you want real lockdowns, the ones who can remove boons such as lockdown mesmer, fear necro are better choices

unless your friend himself can remove boon too.

Kolly.9872:

Eurantien.4632:

Venom share thief.

with 45 seconds cd venoms are realy a reliable source for locking down an opponent.
I forgot it’s full of venom share thieves in high ranked teams…

I know you’re being sarcastic, but if you don’t mind being totally worthless without your friend run a venom share thief with all venom traits and p/d. The 2 on the pistol fills in the gaps for locking players down.

30 0 0 30 10, all venom traits except for condi clear up shadow arts and the stealth on rez in trickery. it’s very troll for hotjoins.

p/p thief myself.

I say WAR HAMBO!!!!!!

Hyena’s you are not getting back up any time soon

Ostricheggs.3742:

30 0 0 30 10, all venom traits except for condi clear up shadow arts and the stealth on rez in trickery. it’s very troll for hotjoins.

Ghetto builds are ghetto ostrich. This is the way to go if you want to give aids.

The build can maintain about 10 to 15 stacks of might. Around 5 stacks to allies. If you share your venoms with your ally, you can maintain about 10 stacks of vuln on the target. The immobs help you to land your steal items, stealth attack, and cloak and daggers.

Bottom line though, you need to try and maintain around 5 to 7 stacks of bleeding with 4 stacks of torment and poison to see any type of progress. The trick to land your pistol stealth attack is to link it with bassi venom or immob (when under 50% health) and attack them from behind. It’s very easy to dodge the stealth attack for pistol, but harder if you can stun/immob them on first hit. So activate your venoms in stealth to not send red alerts. A typical rotation I do is to blow bassi venom with skale, then blow heal with skale. You can clear condis with cloak and dagger, and you can clear ally + you condies with shadow refuge.

Thrill of the crime is more for your buddy than for you – Thrill of the crime works by proccing before the teleport, so line yourself close to your buddy before you steal. Engies will die to this – its very easy to condi nuke with this. The biggest trouble is not having access to stealth via heal (which means the use of shortbow is going to be rather limited, and you can get jumped easy), on the plus side, if you steal from a thief, you can get your stealth access that way. So if you consider that a problem, you might want to switch out the heal but i wouldn’t recommend it.

I’m considering using celestial amulet because its aids as well. Have fun in hotjoin with some P/D swag!

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Vee Wee’s Gadget Meta Build is the best for lockdowns! Just see here! Vee Wee prevented a res for DAYS!

http://www.twitch.tv/livskis/c/5016482

Wahoo! Bye frands!

ellesee.8297:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Vee Wee’s Gadget Meta Build is the best for lockdowns! Just see here! Vee Wee prevented a res for DAYS!

http://www.twitch.tv/livskis/c/5016482

Wahoo! Bye frands!

hahaha, it’s really an incredibly amusing video. this has to be from the bottom of SQ, no?

I agree with Ostrich:

If you’re looking to be a cool duo, and just troll around together, then try this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqYVlsMp7pFNxpJ8PNRMhw9uf98ar2NWEA-TpxCABWcEAA4EAc8DAQryAUcIAmZ/BA

It’s an improvement on the previously listed one (imo) and is great fun to play in a small group/with a friend. Get your friend on power ranger, and watch people melt. Have fun!

I wouldn’t recommend that build, however I get this is for hotjoin.

It doesn’t have a stunbreak, which it is sacrificing for spider venom – any thief that jumps this build is going to destroy it. Secondly, it’s short on gapclosers, which a person can use shadowstep for. Poison does nothing for this build if a person tries and stack it, which is the nature of p/d as its single target. Without spider venom, the build has two sources of poison, steal and shortbow 4 (which is already an aoe poison field), so if someone tries to clear, the build will always be able to re-apply without the need for spider venom – which is why anyone should bring multiple sources of non-stackable conditions like burning or poison. Secondly, merciful ambush isn’t needed with smart useage of shadow refuge. On top of it, thrill of the crime is just more useful for working with a teammate. I wouldn’t recommend running anything but energy sigils on both sets, as the build cannot get access to vigor. Nightmare runes are just too OP to pass up. Finally, residual venoms is actually a pretty lackluster trait in comparison to panic strike, as the build will already be stacking venoms via venom share. It needs some other source to reliably hit the stealth attack, bassi venom does wonders, but it needs another source – which is where panic strike comes in.

^I don’t agree with you.

This is 2v2s against weak players. You should be able play without a stun break if you position yourself well. If you can’t, sure drop spider venom, but the damage from that is not only poison without having to swap to short bow (and hence lose damage from pistol auto-attack) but also the leeching health and damage (which procs 5 times each for each person, hence about 4k damage instantly (if I remember correctly).

This build is p/d and short bow. In a fight, you won’t be gap closing on a player to target them hard, because you’ll be keeping range. If you want to gap close/chase someone to a point, just use short bow 5, and save your utility slot.

Merciful ambush is to troll in 2v2s with your friend. Sure, run thrill of the crime if you want, but for the fun of bad enemies wondering where you went, take merciful ambush, AND save shadow refuge (which is on a long cool down).

Nightmare runes are not too OP to pass up. I have no idea what you mean. Much higher bleed duration is better. Nightmare runes are great for necros because of the terror trait, but they’re not too OP for other classes because of the long cool down, no terror damage, and for this build, bleed duration is important because of the auto attack. Chicago Jack is just plain wrong.

Energy sigil on one set is enough. Take the higher damage. Obs L2P issues can make you take more than one, but your choice.

Residual venoms for the elite, spider and torment venoms is OP, especially in a 2v2 situation. You don’t need your opponent to be immobilised to hit the stealth auto attack. That’s ridiculous; it’s insanely easy. If, however, OP does want more immobilise in the build, you can take the immobilise venom or panic strike, sure.

I’ve actually played a build like this, trolling around, quite a bit.

a ranger with a black widow and Entangle can do a pretty epic job of keeping someone locked in place, entangle alone lasts well over 10 seconds, the spider also has a 6 second immobilize (from f2 and their default immobilize)

you can do something like 16 seconds of immobilize, every 48 seconds.

Learn to run a good Hambow
Best CC with DPS spike that you can get in a single character

No contest

I don’t know which is the best class, but I’d probably say the worst class is the Guardian. They seem to have very little access to controlling effects outside of their no-pass zones.

Elegie.3620:

Hello Joben,

Haven’t tested it (so it could probably be refined in practice), but I think the following mesmer build could do what you want.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArdWlknpGtNqxTNMrNSphY6cH3dqrkOwjCA-TJxHwAOLDE4JA4a/BAnCAA

Principles:

• As you’re a supporting type, I’ve made the build quite tanky. While its primary focus is the control of opponents, I’ve made it condition-based too, so that you can still contribute to the damage.
• To control your opponent, you may use Diversion (to daze/stun), Temporal Curtain (to pull), Chaos Storm (to daze/stun), Mantra of Distraction (to daze/stun).
• All these skills, if they result in an interruption, will immobilize your opponent, and possibly blind/cripple/chill him. If your opponent decides to kill your clones, he will end up being crippled as well. And we use hydromancy sigils for more chill, in the case he somehow gets angry at you and tries to retaliate.
• In terms of game play, you should build your clones calmly, then activate either Cry of Frustration or Diversion. Note that these skills, aside from their base effect, will also strip the opponent from some of his/her boons. Your scepter and your staff will give you plenty of active defense as well.
• And finally – you want the moa as elite

The mesmer class can be a bit overwhelming at first, but quite dangerous in experienced hands. Hope you’ll have fun with your friend.

Sorry to say but this is not an ideal Mesmer lockdown build for multiple reasons, most importantly the amulet and lack of any form of condition removal and our most reliable interrupt: Mantra of Distraction is not present.

If you wanna lock opponents down and keep them from being able to do anything, theres been some good suggestions. If you wanna do it on Mesmer, look up different lockdown Mesmer builds or check out this thread or this thread.

Keep in mind lockdown Mes is very difficult to learn.

Hello,

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Elegie.3620:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArdWlknpGtNqxTNMrNSphY6cH3dqrkOwjCA-TJxHwAOLDE4JA4a/BAnCAA

Sorry to say but this is not an ideal Mesmer lockdown build for multiple reasons, most importantly the amulet and lack of any form of condition removal and our most reliable interrupt: Mantra of Distraction is not present.

Err… the mantra of Distraction is definitely in the build, and there is some condition removal, too. I welcome criticisms on the build, but… are you sure you reviewed the right link?

Also note that the build is a bit particular, in that it solely works as a support for a burst class, as per the OP’s request.

Kind regards.

Elegie.3620:

Hello,

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Elegie.3620:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArdWlknpGtNqxTNMrNSphY6cH3dqrkOwjCA-TJxHwAOLDE4JA4a/BAnCAA

Sorry to say but this is not an ideal Mesmer lockdown build for multiple reasons, most importantly the amulet and lack of any form of condition removal and our most reliable interrupt: Mantra of Distraction is not present.

Err… the mantra of Distraction is definitely in the build, and there is some condition removal, too. I welcome criticisms on the build, but… are you sure you reviewed the right link?

Also note that the build is a bit particular, in that it solely works as a support for a burst class, as per the OP’s request.

Kind regards.

Ah, you’re right, my bad. Definitely didn’t see that. x_x To be more specific (and hopefully more helpful) I’ll point out the specific gripes with the build.

Settler’s Amulet: This is completely unnecessary and is actually hurting the build over picking Rabid. Mesmer- especially condition mes- is heavily reliant on crits for damage (Dueling 15 is a big contributor to condition damage), which demands high Precision. The Healing Power from Settlers is doing almost no good for you, and the lowered Condition Damage for the sake of Healing/Toughness is doing more harm than help.

Lack of Condition Removal: Pretty Self-Explainatory. It’d be a good idea to throw in Null Field or iDisenchanter somewhere. Disenchanter works better in smaller engagements, 3v3s or less, Null Field is better for general use. Both of these also rip boons from opponents, which is important for securing your lockdown.

Confounding Suggestions It’s generally not good to try to run Confounding AND Chaotic Interruption if you’re new to Mesmer and lockdown style in general. This is because taking those two traits locks you out of grabbing Deceptive Evasion (DE), and DE is extremely important for setting up offensive/defensive shatters (and ripping boons via Shattered Concentration). Confounding is more forgiving than Chaotic, since it doesn’t rely on an interrupt, but Chaotic offers better movement lockdown once your interrupt timing improves. It’s generally better to try to go 6/4/4/ or 4/4/6 and focus on one of the two interrupt traits, especially when you’re new to the class and playstyle.

Mirror Images This isn’t enough of a replacement for Deceptive Evasion. In fact, this is where your condition removal should be… If you’re feeling particularly bold and lockdownish, grab Signet of Domination (and maybe sigil of paralysis if you’re going to follow my next suggestion) but know that you’ll still have a massive weakness to condition damage.

Focus More of a personal preference, but I think Pistol would be better. While i use Focus often and looove it, the pistol offers an instant stun (which’ll help) and better damage for a condition build. If you’re going to use Focus, keep in mind that the phantasm won’t be for damage, it’ll be a defensive/utility bot to protect you from projectiles (such as Rangers and Engineer).

Lack of Deceptive Evasion Nearly any build that goes without DE is going to be a difficult build to run, and with the traits chosen (Clone-Deaths, Condition Damage, Shattered Concentration) you’re going to want to pump out clones as often as possible. Deceptive Evasion is crucial for this particular build and in general is a must-have for all condition builds.

TL:DR – Lack of Deceptive Evasion and condition removal in addition to Settler’s Amulet will really hurt this build. I’d recommend this instead:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraWlknpGtNqxUNcrNSpxY6cmZHSGwDl8kyB-TZRHwADOCAw2fIZZABnCAAPAAA

or, if you want a more condition-oriented less lockdownish variant..

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraWlknpGtNqxUNcrNCuxY6JCpCU+zQlMgfB-TZRHwADOCAw2fIZZABnCAAPAAA

Hi,

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Ah, you’re right, my bad. Definitely didn’t see that. x_x To be more specific (and hopefully more helpful) I’ll point out the specific gripes with the build.

First, thank you for your insight and your clear, well-articulated answer.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Settler’s Amulet: This is completely unnecessary and is actually hurting the build over picking Rabid. Mesmer- especially condition mes- is heavily reliant on crits for damage (Dueling 15 is a big contributor to condition damage), which demands high Precision. The Healing Power from Settlers is doing almost no good for you, and the lowered Condition Damage for the sake of Healing/Toughness is doing more harm than help.

I think you’ve understood why I took settler, though. I wanted the build to provide as much control as possible, so that the partner of the OP could DPS down the target pretty fast. As such, I chose as a basis for the build to run both Confounding Suggestions and Chaotic Interruption.

Doing so, I then asked myself what the nature of the build should be. The purpose of the build being supportive, I decided to go for a condition build. The investment in two grandmaster traits made precision useless (no Sharper Images), so I ended up with Settler.

But…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Confounding Suggestions It’s generally not good to try to run Confounding AND Chaotic Interruption if you’re new to Mesmer and lockdown style in general. This is because taking those two traits locks you out of grabbing Deceptive Evasion (DE), and DE is extremely important for setting up offensive/defensive shatters (and ripping boons via Shattered Concentration).

Honestly, I haven’t played much without Deceptive Evasion myself, but thought that it’d be manageable when your role is to lock down a target while a friend puts it down. But if running without it is too difficult, then indeed what I have suggested is fundamentally flawed. I’ll trust your experience on that, mine being rather limited on that subject

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Lack of Condition Removal: Pretty Self-Explainatory. It’d be a good idea to throw in Null Field or iDisenchanter somewhere.

I would have loved the null field, but needed the other skills to have the build “work”. This is why I ended up with Mender’s Purity, as a fallback.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Focus More of a personal preference, but I think Pistol would be better. While i use Focus often and looove it, the pistol offers an instant stun (which’ll help) and better damage for a condition build. If you’re going to use Focus, keep in mind that the phantasm won’t be for damage, it’ll be a defensive/utility bot to protect you from projectiles (such as Rangers and Engineer).

Well, if you get Sharper Images, then the pistol is definitely interesting! I chose the focus because of its ability to position the target (so that it can be brought down), and because there are a lot of rangers in hotjoins currently.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

TL:DR – Lack of Deceptive Evasion and condition removal in addition to Settler’s Amulet will really hurt this build. I’d recommend this instead:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraWlknpGtNqxUNcrNSpxY6cmZHSGwDl8kyB-TZRHwADOCAw2fIZZABnCAAPAAA

or, if you want a more condition-oriented less lockdownish variant..

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraWlknpGtNqxUNcrNCuxY6JCpCU+zQlMgfB-TZRHwADOCAw2fIZZABnCAAPAAA

Thanks again for your comments, they were interesting and instructive.

Regards.

Simon.3794:

warrior cant really lock down, cuz when enemy has stability, he becomes useless.

If you want real lockdowns, the ones who can remove boons such as lockdown mesmer, fear necro are better choices

unless your friend himself can remove boon too.

totally incorrect.

If you want to farm HJ as the stun bot, why not do it and kill everything at the same time as well. Hambow like some one above said, put a zerker amulet on. Your hammer attacks hit heavies for like 3-4k crits or higher. Use Rampage as Elite, a full new bar of CC why not (dont forget 40k hp, hits glass for like 6-7k and extra source of stability).
Even if you can’t stun them or kd them because of stability, the damage is there to more than make up for the what? 10 sec max some one has stability…