Guild Wars 2

Hey folks! I wrote a guide to frontline boonshare Mesmer a few weeks back for the profession subforum. Feedback was terrific and I figured it’s only logical to share it with you guys as well. Enjoy!

“Hey guys. I’ve spent the last couple of months playing a lot of large-scale WvW and GvG. It’s no secret that a lot of folks are frustrated right now and there’s a sense of pessimism through the community. In light of this, I just wanted to keep things positive and share some awesome things you can do with Mimic. If you’re unfamiliar with Mesmer and the amazing utility it provides, I recommend paying a visit to the wiki and brushing up on skill mechanics and cooldowns.

Recommended Reading on the Wiki

Mimic
Signet of Inspiration
Illusionary Inspiration
Continuum Split

Just as a background for folks that might not be as familiar with the WvW scene, the majority of Mesmer builds you see out there tend to focus either on solo/small-scale roaming or large-scale utility for the zerg, e.g., “veil-bots”. Back when the specialization rework was released the summer before HoT, the introduction of Illusionary Inspiration opened the door for a viable third option, the frontline boonshare Mesmer. With HoT bringing the Chronomancer elite spec and the shield offhand, everything was in place for guilds to begin theorycrafting and implementing boonshare into their team compositions.

So here’s the build that we’ll be working with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWl0nhq0YBawPNQtGLEHV9l+pl6ZFcBfmZAkALEA-T1xHQBwT9HwpPAgK/W3+DPUJY+eCAA4UAIKgMD-w

Chaos/Inspiration/Chrono is a fairly popular and forgiving trait setup. It doesn’t require the timings and group training that Domination/Inspiration/Chrono uses, and has a lower barrier to entry with respect to beginners and gearing.

Now, if you’ve been keeping up the patches, you know that Signet of Inspiration received a major overhaul fall 2016. They essentially changed certain boons from stacking in intensity to stacking in duration, effectively eliminating prebuffing and nerfing might/stability stacking. However, that same change buffed resistance and quickness application by letting the signet use the Mesmer’s boon duration. That’s huge.

The biggest shortcoming for Chaos boonshare has always been not doing enough. Your Signets have 30s cooldowns which means you’re designed to win the endurance race, not the fight that’s over in 20s after the first push. The addition of Mimic takes care of this weakness. It gives you the “burst sustain” your team needs to survive. When you factor in signet changes, one properly trained Mesmer now has the carry potential to win entire fights for his team. Let’s see how it’s done.

Video Tutorials and Gameplay

Skill Breakdown
Fast Version
Gameplay on NA
Gameplay on EU

So what’s going on here? I’m pumping out six casts of Signet of Inspiration to buff my team. In order to pull this off, you’ll want to start in sword then swap to staff for sigil proc. Activate continuum split during the after-cast of Warlock to get Illusionary Inspiration and the illusion for CS duration. Time Warp, signet, then Mimic. Your skills will reset after CS ends and you’ll still have Echo on your buff bar. Use your shatter skills during CS for Inspiring Distortion and boon generation. When you revert back, you should be able to finish your rotation without getting interrupted. Weapon swap for another sigil proc before casting the last two signets.

Illusion generation is paramount to having enough time to get through your rotation. Quickness helps a great deal, so make sure you’re shattering or opening with Tides of Time. In the middle of a zerg fight, it can be too risky to cast everything without getting cut off early. You can mitigate this with Distortion for the rift, leaving either signet or Mimic out of the rotation, using Phase Retreat for an extra illusion, or by simply not having terrible positioning."

“You don’t necessarily need 66% boon duration in order to make these boonshare builds work. If you’re using Chaos, you will always have Chaotic Persistence. That adds up! If you’re running full Minstrel’s, you’re pretty close to capping out on boon duration (sigil, food/oil, CP) before you even factor the runes.

Regarding runes, there are several options to for various situations. I’ve used Durability, Mercy, Monk, Revenant, and Water runes at one point or another depending on the situation. Revenant runes are probably the most useful for pug zergs if you lack a reliable source of resistance. The 10s ICD lines up well with your mantra heal, and it allows you to share resistance more reliably between CS rotations.

You can also take this build into the healing route by doubling down on Restorative Mantras, the trait that provides AoE healing after you finish casting a Mantra. Mantra of Pain is pretty popular to this end, and some folks end up going all the way using healing nourishment and sigils."

Let me know what you guys think. Feedback appreciated!

did the mesmer forum vanish? Why dont you put it there?

Aury.1367:

did the mesmer forum vanish? Why dont you put it there?

He did put it there. That’s the second sentence in the OP.

I’m surprised this build isn’t that popular in NA, it’s one of the strongest force multiplier builds that fits into any organised comp, I personally prefer the mantra of pain healing variant for most things (go ministels with transference sigils and riceballs and swap stab mantra with mantra of pain.)

Hmm, I’ve also asked myself that. I think it’s mostly due to barrier of entry. There’s not a lot of literature out there covering Mesmer in WvW group play, and the guilds or servers that do adopt boonshare builds have no incentive to share their knowledge with outsiders. A bit unfortunate, but here’s to bridging some of that gap.

Digikid.7230:

I’m surprised this build isn’t that popular in NA, it’s one of the strongest force multiplier builds that fits into any organised comp, I personally prefer the mantra of pain healing variant for most things (go ministels with transference sigils and riceballs and swap stab mantra with mantra of pain.)

IMO the problem with this “force multiplier” is that unless you have an extremely coordinated guild, its very limited in general zerg use. There is no reason for it to be popular because if you want insane healing you can just stack 10 healbots to blanket the battlefield in waterfields and if you want insane damage you can just stack 10 chillomancers and blanket the battlefield in condis. The first thing make all those boons redundant (you just heal through everything) and the second one make all those boons a liability. Since the beginning the Mesmers have been like… 1-2 per 25 man in the zerg. Decent force multiplier perhaps, but never popular because its not allowed to be lol.

Digikid.7230:

I’m surprised this build isn’t that popular in NA

It was, it’s just boring to run and no one cares enough to be that bored.

this is helpful, thanks. it seems the skill breakdown / fast version videos are one and the same. they are both pretty fast paced. perhaps a written (tedious I know) out skill chain would be helpful for some slower ppl like me. there are 1 or 2 points in the rotation that I get lost at.
anyway good job, its my first time actually seeing the rotation play out in first person. op.

Glad you found it helpful. I wrote out the skill rotation in the second to last paragraph of the OP.

So what’s going on here? I’m pumping out six casts of Signet of Inspiration to buff my team. In order to pull this off, you’ll want to start in sword then swap to staff for sigil proc. Activate continuum split during the after-cast of Warlock to get Illusionary Inspiration and the illusion for CS duration. Time Warp, signet, then Mimic. Your skills will reset after CS ends and you’ll still have Echo on your buff bar. Use your shatter skills during CS for Inspiring Distortion and boon generation. When you revert back, you should be able to finish your rotation without getting interrupted. Weapon swap for another sigil proc before casting the last two signets.

I am a returning player and I tried it on one of my toons (well more the mantra heal type build) and I think its good for 10+ people. For roaming with 5 I tend to get focused and die a lot (although im using blink).

Smaller I would probably stick to my healbot ele.

Just what I found, i am not the best player and its probably my lack of skill or some more time to play this.

Edit: To be fair, I think I was more focused on mantra healer

Thanks for trying the build. The trick to playing the healing variant (Mantra of Pain instead of Mantra of Concentration) well is to cover your long mantra cast times with stability; and the trick to doing that is making sure you’re getting sigil procs for the extra boon duration. You’ll really notice the difference in the stability uptime from your shatters, and it’s easy to follow up those shatters with one of your signets for the group.

For small scale roaming you really need to be smart about your defensive cooldowns. Personal alacrity uptime with this build is quite a bit lower than a shatter or pve build so the little things start to matter. Practice kiting with sword 3/staff 2. Don’t animation cancel sword 2 just because you have quickness. If you need to use shield 4, make sure you actually land a block and don’t panic and waste Deja Vu.

If it helps, I look at a support tempest as being more effective at active sustain and reacting to teammates under pressure. Whereas the mesmer role is more about passive sustain and making proactive decisions.

Hi folks. I’ve got some new footage to share. This is all from reset night in Tier 4. Some of the fights were pretty sloppy, but you really see how strong boonshare still is if the enemy group doesn’t have proper strips and corrupts.

Hey guys,

I discovered a neat behavior for Mantras and you can read more about it if you’re curious in my post on the Mesmer forums here. There’s also a new gameplay video of [BoRP] fighting YB outnumbered 3-1 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMkWPAWJKIQ

I also wanted to let you guys know that I’ve been collaborating with my guildie Arete, who is a WvW moderator for Metabattle, to update the page for Mesmer in WvW. The new build takes a Mantra based approach, similar to the one in this guide. We’ve even min/maxed the boon duration with the new living story nourishment and stacking sigil so you now no longer need the expensive concentration sigils. This massively simplifies your rotations because you no longer need to time things with weapon swap. You can check it out here: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Support_Chrono

Lastly, this is my final post on the forums. Unfortunately I no longer have the time nor heart to continue playing this game. It’s been explicitly stated that there are to be no intrinsic improvements to WvW for the rest of the year and given their record I do not have confidence that things will ever change. I’d like to thank all those who have set out time over the years to prepare resources and help out others on this forum. Shout outs to everyone that fought with (or against!) the “Rebel Alliance” last year. Cheers to the many roamers and roaming guilds that have filled this game with enjoyable fights. And a big thanks to all the drivers and leaders of guilds and servers across the tiers that have made this game mode great. Stay strong!