Guild Wars 2

Which stats prefere Elementalists and Mesmers in guild raids? Celestial (for ele) or Soldier? Knight for mesmers?

zerker for both.

please don’t bring a zerk ele to a zerg I am in. Thx.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

please don’t bring a zerk ele to a zerg I am in. Thx.

Why? You’re too lazy to protect your backline?

we have plenty of rally bait most of the time, thx. : )

What we usually don’t have enough of is well-placed and called water fields. A dead zerk ele isn’t much use for those.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

we have plenty of rally bait most of the time, thx.

If you have rallybait in your GvG your guild have problems…

what would a zerk ele be doing on the back line? You trying to use staff with that build?

I have a zerker d/d ele with about half her gear ascended. She can kill anything in PvE, but her contribution in WvW is mediocre.

On the other hand, my full ascended tanky staff ele makes a significant difference by paying attention to when and where the commander is regrouping during the fight, getting the right water field down and calling it in comms so it can be blasted. Really makes a visible difference, especially if you coordinate with a couple more staff eles. Your team simply doesn’t die.

Positioning keeps you alive more than tankiness in WvW, being on TC nanyetah, you know this well.

It’s pretty simple to keep yourself out of damage and use your escape skills as a zerk ele , and still be able to get the fields where the commander needs them. I only really consider staff for zergs. full zerk is definitely not the way to go in WvW on D/D

Mesmer should run full zerk. If you need some extra help, add in some cavs trinkets, but anything higher than 2200 armor and you’re probably just bad.

For staff ele, I run a mix of zerk, cavs and valk. Again, my armor is rarely higher than 2200. With cantrips, you should be able to stay alive unless you’re a scrub. A thief or whatever opens on you, you’ll have at least a few seconds alive from dodges, mist form and lightning flash. Get to your train and they will die.

yes, I live long. I still run staking runes, so I don’t like to get killed.

Agwa runs 2800 armor. About 850 healing.

Lots of blasts, in case I need to do my own, which I often do.

I run mostly zerk stuff and I play staff 95% of the time. As a ele, most of your damage mitigation should be coming from your positioning and skillful use of cantrips rather than your armor. I provide support and my meteor showers hurt too. I’m usually one of the last to go down in a wipe situation.

If you’re new to ele, gearing a little tanky isn’t a bad thing. After you’ve been playing awhile and are skilled in group combat situations and positioning comes second nature you’ll naturally feel yourself wanting to switch to more zerk stuff to do more damage.

As to the guy who said “don’t bring zerk eles to my zerg” I can only imagine you’ve not played with skilled elementalists. PvE PUGs running their zerker gear will die in 2 seconds flat. A skilled WvW group fighter or GvGer in zerk gear, particularly with a skilled guild composition protecting them, is a different story entirely.

This is from the experience of running full zerk mesmer in PUG map zergs vs guild zergs and what not (most of the time outnumbered, and yes, my Silver server pug map zerg is smaller than some guild zergs), and I can say there’s little issue with staying alive as long as you have decent positioning and awareness.

PU, long range blink, torch and decoy are for your survival.
After providing the veil and timewarp you are basically free to engage at will. Personally I like to target the lead guardian or warrior and spam Greatsword skills on him ^^. Mmmm, the sound of 3k mirror blade, 2k iBerserker, 4k aoe mind stab on a weakened enemy melee party…many a headshots to be had.

If the enemy zerg comes for you, decoy and blink away while in stealth, throw a dodge or so and continue your rampage. Get creative.

Your enemy is the rival havoc group, typically thiefs and skirmish warriors. That’s why you don’t stray too far away from your zerg. If focused by the havoc group use what you have available and close the gap to your zerg. They will be happy to get a extra easy kill.

Edit: traveler runes are awesome, runes of speed are also a option if strapped for gold. I don’t zerg without them

what type of ele?

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

Agwa runs 2800 armor. About 850 healing.

Lots of blasts, in case I need to do my own, which I often do.

Mate OP is asking about GvG’s not EB pug raids

In WvW I’m mostly hearing calls for ele support. Small and large waters to keep the team alive. Mesmers also are really a support class unless you’re roaming with a small group. When I run my mesmer I run it real tanky and put portals, veils, mass invis, and one other skill on my bar so I can help my group maneuver the field.

I run my mesmer with survivability specifcally so I can sneak portals into enemy lines if the active leader wants to play that way.

If you’re going roaming solo mesmer that’s a totally different ballgame. You should just search videos on youtube and find a few WvW builds to try and get a feel for how you want to equip your mesmer.

I’d say staying alive in a pug map zerg as a berserker is good practice for GvG, considering pug zergs don’t typically look out for their ranged.

With a supporting melee train staying alive is easier.

On the the topic of stats, I can contribute a bit for the mesmer side
When I first started out mesmering, I went for dire gear and a glamor/blind support build. Results were meh due to cooldowns and condi clears. Survivability was meh, mostly due to lacking escapes.
The things that the zerg liked most and were most effective were veil and timewarp (commander can direct timewarp/veil location and timing over TS— > timewarp ahead of my tag! veil on the left! etc…) .

After a while I went knight stats, still keeping veil and timewarp for zerg. Staying alive was improved with additional escapes, and the switch to power damage allowed for higher contribution to getting the enemy down.

That’s when I went balls out and put in full berserker + power/precision food/spanner, staying alive remained the same, overall zerg utility same, but the capability to inflict pain was much better.

I’m not super familiar with mesmer but i would say if talking GvG then soldiers. If general wvw then anything goes depending on the situation. the situation and your personal tastes will dictate what you should wear. Although, in GvG your leader will hopefully have a a solid idea of what he wants or needs you to wear and what build he needs you to be in to contribute the most to the GvG group composition. So if you are doing GvG then you should ask whoever is setting up your matches. If you are just trying to get into the GvG scene then hit up OS during prime time and ask around.

Hamster.4861:

Positioning keeps you alive more than tankiness in WvW.

+100

especially for ranged classes

if u need somebody to take the punch better it would be melee =))

In GvG, you build as glassy as you can without dying. Ideally, you’ll be full zerk or close to full zerk. If you’re still getting used to the class, then I recommend zerk armor/cele trinkets for ele, and a mix of zerk/valk/knight for mesmer.