Guild Wars 2

I’ll keep this brief. I’m returning to the game after quite a long break and didn’t make it through HoT very far due to the difficulty of soloing. Perhaps it’s easier for other people or professions. Anyways, I’m looking for a jump-start on specific gearing (stats) and perhaps builds. I’m open to anything that’ll help me survive a bit longer in the jungle. I would prefer to use shield + sceptor and greatsword if possible but whatever recommendations I’ll gladly take. Also I’m looking for ways to level Masteries quickly. I’m sure it has to do with the zone events but I seem to get lost pretty quickly when they happen or just miss them entirely.

Thanks folks

I’ve mostly solo’d HoT relying on my phantasms to do most of the work: Dom/Ill/Insp traited for signets (evades, cleanses) and mimic. Went with GS, S/F as weaps. Sure you are slower than Chrono or other builds to get things down, but you survive well and I was even able to solo some camp events and Gold Champs (before they were nerfed).

Let me start by saying that Mesmer is indubitably the worst class in the game to do open world content solo. Every other class will do it easier, faster, and safer. That being said, advice:

You’ll want sword/focus+gs. Scepter just is not a good choice for open world stuff. It has no cleaving damage and the single block is ineffective against many of the more dangerous mob types (multiple-hit stun frogs for example).

This is a power set, so you’ll need power stats. It’s possible to survive and solo fine in full zerker, but that’s not for everyone. If that’s too squishy for you, replace pieces of zerker with knights until you’re appropriately tanky that you don’t die as much.

Build should be domination/chrono/X. You can take inspiration for heals and defense if you’re having difficulty staying alive, dueling for more damage, or illusions for more of a mixed bag of choices.

For mastery progression, you need to maximize exp gains. There used to be some farm spots where this was optimized, but they may have been nerfed/fallen out of favor. I’d recommend doing dragon’s stand and the verdant brink meta events, as those are easy to follow and have good rewards. Auric basin is decent as well.

Fay and Curt, thanks for the replies! So I’ve got a combination of 4 zerker and 2 knight gear which seems to be perfect for what I’m wanting. I I’ll give sword/focus + gs a try initially with the recommendations of Fay first and then give curt’s stuff a shot and see how it goes. I think the other deal is that because I’ve not finished Chrono that it’s just not a strong as it is balanced for.

Thanks!

Grenix.3762:

Fay and Curt, thanks for the replies! So I’ve got a combination of 4 zerker and 2 knight gear which seems to be perfect for what I’m wanting. I I’ll give sword/focus + gs a try initially with the recommendations of Fay first and then give curt’s stuff a shot and see how it goes. I think the other deal is that because I’ve not finished Chrono that it’s just not a strong as it is balanced for.

Thanks!

So once you get the grandmaster minor in chrono, drop focus and grab shield. Mainly focus is for swiftness so that you’re not painfully slow, but that minor takes care of that issue. Shield has much better utility, defense, and aoe damage compared to focus, so it’s generally the better choice.

Yeah so I’ve been messing with this build Fay and at least 1 on 1 it’s a bit better. I am finding that if I spend more time at ranged that I’m much better off. I’ve also got clone (the ability that puts you in stealth) that helps take the heat off of me when I’m getting targeted which is helping survivability a ton. I still don’t feel ‘strong’ but so far things are going in the right direction.

Grenix.3762:

Yeah so I’ve been messing with this build Fay and at least 1 on 1 it’s a bit better. I am finding that if I spend more time at ranged that I’m much better off. I’ve also got clone (the ability that puts you in stealth) that helps take the heat off of me when I’m getting targeted which is helping survivability a ton. I still don’t feel ‘strong’ but so far things are going in the right direction.

‘Strong’ is an unlikely feeling to get from solo Mesmer in PvE. ‘Not garbage’ is a better milestone, and ‘reasonably workable’ is going to be a more achievable goal.

Fay.2357:

Grenix.3762:

Yeah so I’ve been messing with this build Fay and at least 1 on 1 it’s a bit better. I am finding that if I spend more time at ranged that I’m much better off. I’ve also got clone (the ability that puts you in stealth) that helps take the heat off of me when I’m getting targeted which is helping survivability a ton. I still don’t feel ‘strong’ but so far things are going in the right direction.

‘Strong’ is an unlikely feeling to get from solo Mesmer in PvE. ‘Not garbage’ is a better milestone, and ‘reasonably workable’ is going to be a more achievable goal.

Oh pish posh, mesmer dps is OP! PvP people said so…in the bunker meta with sentinels amulet.

And now with condi mesmer.

Also I’m in tears trying to hold a straight face typing all that.

New to Mes here, and I’m still in core game maps. I leveled it to 40 the old fashioned way, and enjoyed it enough to go ahead and use tomes to take it to 80. But I’m progressing with my Personal Story.

How important is Restorative Illusions to self-healing? And should I try to balance condi/power? Or is it one or the other, but not hybrid.

I’m not having any real trouble, but I’d like to go ahead and craft an Exotic armor set so I can get Tailoring to 500 and eventually craft an Ascended Set.

I crafted a Rampager set, and it’s fine. But am I fooling myself about the level of Condi contribution? Everything seems built around Shattering.

Stick with a zerker build to be honest, you will roll over stuff much easier in the personal story till you get to Orr. At that point I’d really recommend getting a friend to run through it with you so they can cleave stuff better. Orr gets a lot more mobs and open world they die to a full shatter but in story not sure they do.

Sad to say but mesmer sucks compared to all other classes for personal story and I include barebow ranger.

apharma.3741:

Stick with a zerker build to be honest, you will roll over stuff much easier in the personal story till you get to Orr. At that point I’d really recommend getting a friend to run through it with you so they can cleave stuff better. Orr gets a lot more mobs and open world they die to a full shatter but in story not sure they do.

Sad to say but mesmer sucks compared to all other classes for personal story and I include barebow ranger.

I just didn’t want to spend money/expend materials on crafting Zerker Exotic, since I seem to be doing fine with Rampager. I crafted Rampager mainly because it’s cheap to do so.

What Ascended Armor would you recommend? I mainly WvW.

I’ve got 5k hours in the game (mainly on Engi) and I’ve got boat loads of Ascended trinkets, etc., and enough mats, laurels and gold to buy what I need.

Soon.5240:

apharma.3741:

Stick with a zerker build to be honest, you will roll over stuff much easier in the personal story till you get to Orr. At that point I’d really recommend getting a friend to run through it with you so they can cleave stuff better. Orr gets a lot more mobs and open world they die to a full shatter but in story not sure they do.

Sad to say but mesmer sucks compared to all other classes for personal story and I include barebow ranger.

I just didn’t want to spend money/expend materials on crafting Zerker Exotic, since I seem to be doing fine with Rampager. I crafted Rampager mainly because it’s cheap to do so.

What Ascended Armor would you recommend? I mainly WvW.

I’ve got 5k hours in the game (mainly on Engi) and I’ve got boat loads of Ascended trinkets, etc., and enough mats, laurels and gold to buy what I need.

I wouldn’t recommend getting ascended armour at all (unless doing high fractals) and stick with ascended trinkets and weapons. The stat difference is minimal on ascended armour vs exotic and certainly isn’t worth it just for WvW.

You might also want different armours too, for example I have a full set of berserk with scholar, berserk with traveler and a condition set and have replaced most of them at some point or another.

However if this is not your main class I wouldn’t bother investing too much. Keep it cheap and cheerful.

Soon.5240:

apharma.3741:

Stick with a zerker build to be honest, you will roll over stuff much easier in the personal story till you get to Orr. At that point I’d really recommend getting a friend to run through it with you so they can cleave stuff better. Orr gets a lot more mobs and open world they die to a full shatter but in story not sure they do.

Sad to say but mesmer sucks compared to all other classes for personal story and I include barebow ranger.

I just didn’t want to spend money/expend materials on crafting Zerker Exotic, since I seem to be doing fine with Rampager. I crafted Rampager mainly because it’s cheap to do so.

What Ascended Armor would you recommend? I mainly WvW.

I’ve got 5k hours in the game (mainly on Engi) and I’ve got boat loads of Ascended trinkets, etc., and enough mats, laurels and gold to buy what I need.

You don’t have to spend gold. Complete the Arah pvp path once for 3 zerker weapons and 2 pieces of armour. Buy the other 3 for 1500 airship parts or karma.

If you manage to get in parties or groups, Chrono suggestions above are the absolute best because essentially the Mez is the best group booster. In fractals I always go Chrono.

Also, a good test for your various gear and choices is to go solo against vet karka. I hunt them daily since the shells are always around 10s/apiece. They are awesome combat testers because you have to deal with their myriad of attacks (and evades which drive you crazy). That is essentially how I came up with my signet approach and I found that it gave me uber survivability in HoT. Chrono or straight up power builds will allow you to put down things much faster, but you are more susceptible to going down.

I just got a mesmer to 80 myself. I wouldn’t say it feels powerful as the damage seems low, especially if you’re using greatsword – which I highly recommend in open world HoT! Self-healing is also fairly limited, but mesmer seems quite survivable anyway.

The illusions are highly effective at distracting enemies and greatsword’s range makes it difficult for them to reach you. You also have plenty of tricks like blink, decoy, etc. to make it that much more difficult when you need to.

I’m still playing around with builds but the illusions + greatsword combo seems effective in pretty much any configuration.

You can check the guide in my signature. It might look a bit dusty, but is actually still up-to-date as not much has changed (the chrono build has actually received a buff last patch).

I’m having fun as zerk shatterer chrono. GS + sword/shield. Only certain champs can be hard to solo.

If only I could borrow GS from reaper…

AliamRationem.5172:

I just got a mesmer to 80 myself. I wouldn’t say it feels powerful as the damage seems low, especially if you’re using greatsword – which I highly recommend in open world HoT! Self-healing is also fairly limited, but mesmer seems quite survivable anyway.

The illusions are highly effective at distracting enemies and greatsword’s range makes it difficult for them to reach you. You also have plenty of tricks like blink, decoy, etc. to make it that much more difficult when you need to.

I’m still playing around with builds but the illusions + greatsword combo seems effective in pretty much any configuration.

I’m definitely finding this to be true. The best way to not die seems to be avoidance – plain and simple. Decoy has been really great and firing at range with the greatsword gives you that much more survivability. I’m almost thinking the best off-hand weapon might be staff due to the teleport back and quick casting of clones which provides more cover, as you imply. The shield is really nice but I’m not totally sold yet and our options for the main-hand with shield seem a bit awkward to do anything else but get out of the fray.

Greatsword is great for one v one but tackling those pocket raptors and other groups gets really technical really quickly. I wish we had a better way to handle multiple mobs.

Grenix.3762:

AliamRationem.5172:

I just got a mesmer to 80 myself. I wouldn’t say it feels powerful as the damage seems low, especially if you’re using greatsword – which I highly recommend in open world HoT! Self-healing is also fairly limited, but mesmer seems quite survivable anyway.

The illusions are highly effective at distracting enemies and greatsword’s range makes it difficult for them to reach you. You also have plenty of tricks like blink, decoy, etc. to make it that much more difficult when you need to.

I’m still playing around with builds but the illusions + greatsword combo seems effective in pretty much any configuration.

I’m definitely finding this to be true. The best way to not die seems to be avoidance – plain and simple. Decoy has been really great and firing at range with the greatsword gives you that much more survivability. I’m almost thinking the best off-hand weapon might be staff due to the teleport back and quick casting of clones which provides more cover, as you imply. The shield is really nice but I’m not totally sold yet and our options for the main-hand with shield seem a bit awkward to do anything else but get out of the fray.

Greatsword is great for one v one but tackling those pocket raptors and other groups gets really technical really quickly. I wish we had a better way to handle multiple mobs.

Shield is your best bet for pocket raptors with its aoe hard cc and good damage. Additionally, mainhand sword has blurred frenzy, one of the strongest defensive skills in the game. Shield also comes with the double block, better than almost any other skill Mesmer has for damage avoidance.

Avoiding damage rather than tanking it is always optimal on every class. Mesmer has an enormous amount of active defense between blurred frenzy, shield blocks, and shatters. HoT has a lot of nasty stuff that requires good use of these skills, as you’ll run into many mobs that won’t be deterred by a simple short range blink from phase retreat. All the frog archers, ranged chak, wyverns, and mordrem snipers will kitten on you if your only active defense is mobility.

Fay.2357:

Grenix.3762:

AliamRationem.5172:

I just got a mesmer to 80 myself. I wouldn’t say it feels powerful as the damage seems low, especially if you’re using greatsword – which I highly recommend in open world HoT! Self-healing is also fairly limited, but mesmer seems quite survivable anyway.

The illusions are highly effective at distracting enemies and greatsword’s range makes it difficult for them to reach you. You also have plenty of tricks like blink, decoy, etc. to make it that much more difficult when you need to.

I’m still playing around with builds but the illusions + greatsword combo seems effective in pretty much any configuration.

I’m definitely finding this to be true. The best way to not die seems to be avoidance – plain and simple. Decoy has been really great and firing at range with the greatsword gives you that much more survivability. I’m almost thinking the best off-hand weapon might be staff due to the teleport back and quick casting of clones which provides more cover, as you imply. The shield is really nice but I’m not totally sold yet and our options for the main-hand with shield seem a bit awkward to do anything else but get out of the fray.

Greatsword is great for one v one but tackling those pocket raptors and other groups gets really technical really quickly. I wish we had a better way to handle multiple mobs.

Shield is your best bet for pocket raptors with its aoe hard cc and good damage. Additionally, mainhand sword has blurred frenzy, one of the strongest defensive skills in the game. Shield also comes with the double block, better than almost any other skill Mesmer has for damage avoidance.

Avoiding damage rather than tanking it is always optimal on every class. Mesmer has an enormous amount of active defense between blurred frenzy, shield blocks, and shatters. HoT has a lot of nasty stuff that requires good use of these skills, as you’ll run into many mobs that won’t be deterred by a simple short range blink from phase retreat. All the frog archers, ranged chak, wyverns, and mordrem snipers will kitten on you if your only active defense is mobility.

In the end, mesmer/chronomancer is fairly subpar even with all the active defense in open world HoT.

Just play a necromancer/reaper with “Unholy Sanctuary” and you can go on and on and on and on… Just killing stuff without all the worries.

Personally I played most of the expansion as ranger/druid, which is easy too (even though I get bored of it fairly fast now). Damage is subpar, but you have an out-of-jail card all the time with “Celestial Shadow” which is making HoT open world just super easy.
Also, with your bouncing axe, you tag bloody everything in Dragon Stand, giving you insane amounts of XP.

I still spend time on my mesmer, but I sort of feel crippled in HoT when I try to get things done in a reasonable timeframe…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Fay.2357:

Grenix.3762:

AliamRationem.5172:

I just got a mesmer to 80 myself. I wouldn’t say it feels powerful as the damage seems low, especially if you’re using greatsword – which I highly recommend in open world HoT! Self-healing is also fairly limited, but mesmer seems quite survivable anyway.

The illusions are highly effective at distracting enemies and greatsword’s range makes it difficult for them to reach you. You also have plenty of tricks like blink, decoy, etc. to make it that much more difficult when you need to.

I’m still playing around with builds but the illusions + greatsword combo seems effective in pretty much any configuration.

I’m definitely finding this to be true. The best way to not die seems to be avoidance – plain and simple. Decoy has been really great and firing at range with the greatsword gives you that much more survivability. I’m almost thinking the best off-hand weapon might be staff due to the teleport back and quick casting of clones which provides more cover, as you imply. The shield is really nice but I’m not totally sold yet and our options for the main-hand with shield seem a bit awkward to do anything else but get out of the fray.

Greatsword is great for one v one but tackling those pocket raptors and other groups gets really technical really quickly. I wish we had a better way to handle multiple mobs.

Shield is your best bet for pocket raptors with its aoe hard cc and good damage. Additionally, mainhand sword has blurred frenzy, one of the strongest defensive skills in the game. Shield also comes with the double block, better than almost any other skill Mesmer has for damage avoidance.

Avoiding damage rather than tanking it is always optimal on every class. Mesmer has an enormous amount of active defense between blurred frenzy, shield blocks, and shatters. HoT has a lot of nasty stuff that requires good use of these skills, as you’ll run into many mobs that won’t be deterred by a simple short range blink from phase retreat. All the frog archers, ranged chak, wyverns, and mordrem snipers will kitten on you if your only active defense is mobility.

In the end, mesmer/chronomancer is fairly subpar even with all the active defense in open world HoT.

Just play a necromancer/reaper with “Unholy Sanctuary” and you can go on and on and on and on… Just killing stuff without all the worries.

Personally I played most of the expansion as ranger/druid, which is easy too (even though I get bored of it fairly fast now). Damage is subpar, but you have an out-of-jail card all the time with “Celestial Shadow” which is making HoT open world just super easy.
Also, with your bouncing axe, you tag bloody everything in Dragon Stand, giving you insane amounts of XP.

I still spend time on my mesmer, but I sort of feel crippled in HoT when I try to get things done in a reasonable timeframe…

I’m aware of that of course, see my earlier comment:

Fay.2357:

‘Strong’ is an unlikely feeling to get from solo Mesmer in PvE. ‘Not garbage’ is a better milestone, and ‘reasonably workable’ is going to be a more achievable goal.

I keep reading that Chrono’s have a bunch of reflects but I don’t see it. Can anyone let me know how to set up those skill chains for high reflect uptime?

What does a mesmer do about Mordrem Snipers?

Morte.5916:

What does a mesmer do about Mordrem Snipers?

Keep moving and burst them down. Never understood the drama about those npc glass cannons.

Oh, I don’t know…, perhaps the ‘cannon’ part? Don’t most people here think that glass cannon is the best way to go, hence the popularity of berserker everything?

Morte.5916:

What does a mesmer do about Mordrem Snipers?

Block with shield? Kite? Stay mobile? They are not that hard to deal with, just keep in mind reflect doesn’t work.

redcomyn.4651:

Oh, I don’t know…, perhaps the ‘cannon’ part? Don’t most people here think that glass cannon is the best way to go, hence the popularity of berserker everything?

Attacking a sniper should be priority. When a crosshair appears over your head, start circling around the mob. After the special attack fired off, you can stop circling the sniper again.

Don’t stand in the fire. Dodging helps so does Blink.

There are way more annyoing mobs in the jungle, at least in my opinion.

I have never used anything else but berserker gear on all of my characters for all of HoT. It worked fine for me.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Morte.5916:

What does a mesmer do about Mordrem Snipers?

Keep moving and burst them down.

That’s what I do too.

RabbitUp.8294:

just keep in mind reflect doesn’t work.

… and that’s where I finally started to fall out of love with mesmers.

If I’m running mesmer solo in open world or story instances, I tend to end up with a basic tanky wet noodle build based on sword/shield, greatsword, mantra of recovery, chrono/duelling/inspiration as specialisations, restorative mantras, harmonious mantras, and that covers all of the important things.

This all works well enough in berserker gear — you have a decent base health pool, there’s space on your bar for a stunbreak or two to help avoid being juggled to death, you have a lot of defensive skills on Sword/Shield to hopefully avoid extremely hard-hitting attacks, and mantra of recovery gives you a huge amount of healing per second if you’re not being kept from using it. It’s far from invincible, but you can survive a lot of things using it.

The downside to all this is that you will hit like really overcooked pasta.

Grenix.3762:

I keep reading that Chrono’s have a bunch of reflects but I don’t see it. Can anyone let me know how to set up those skill chains for high reflect uptime?

Chronos have no reflects. What they have is a bag of tricks that let Mesmer reflects be used a lot more.

You can force phantasms to respawn and perform their attack again immediately by shattering with chronophantasma traited. Alacrity itself lowers cooldowns of all reflecting abilities, and Continuum split lets you burn some reflects without actually sending them into cooldown.

My personal go-to combo when reflects are necessary (say uncategorized fractal) is to start with a warden, drop temporal curtain as the warden finishes its attack, then shatter the warden 1.5s before the end of temporal curtain to get a respawn and another attack. This will last long enough to drop a second warden. Normal mobs (harpies) are dead at this point, so move to the next one and do it again. On bosses just use feedback to fill the space between the attacks of the 2 wardens that comes up, and then drop a 3rd warden to complete the coverage (if necessary).

Don’t use focus it just slows you down. Use a pistol for interrupt and a better phanta, it’s damage you lack afterall. With right utils/skills most mob groups won’t give you a bigger issue.

What you want to do is spread your phantas across mobs if there’s a group, don’t pop all on one unless it’s a bossy type. Make sure you get the chrono trait for respawning phantas when shattering. Try to keep the mobs grouped up if possible, GS #5 can help with this.

The utilities I’m using are blink for getting away from melees, decoy to get mobs off me, and well of calamity for more reliable AoE. Elite – use whatever.

Now there are still groups that can give you a lot of grief, large raptor packs for example. Just gotta get used to it and figure out a good order that works for you. Sword #3 for example is as much a defensive tool as it is a source of damage

If you wanna try something a bit more fun you could try going condi with staff and sword/torch. Burning does a lot of damage plus it’s aoe it’s kinda weird and you’ll have to re-gear somewhat but great fun in a weird way :P

Let us know how you get on as you continue!

Crowley.8761:

Don’t use focus it just slows you down. Use a pistol for interrupt and a better phanta, it’s damage you lack afterall. With right utils/skills most mob groups won’t give you a bigger issue.

What you want to do is spread your phantas across mobs if there’s a group, don’t pop all on one unless it’s a bossy type. Make sure you get the chrono trait for respawning phantas when shattering. Try to keep the mobs grouped up if possible, GS #5 can help with this.

The utilities I’m using are blink for getting away from melees, decoy to get mobs off me, and well of calamity for more reliable AoE. Elite – use whatever.

Now there are still groups that can give you a lot of grief, large raptor packs for example. Just gotta get used to it and figure out a good order that works for you. Sword #3 for example is as much a defensive tool as it is a source of damage

If you wanna try something a bit more fun you could try going condi with staff and sword/torch. Burning does a lot of damage plus it’s aoe it’s kinda weird and you’ll have to re-gear somewhat but great fun in a weird way :P

Let us know how you get on as you continue!

Forgive me but. . . ., “Focus slows you down”? I can’t even think of a response for this. And using gs 5 to “keep mobs grouped up” whaaaat? And torch burns doing “a lot of damage” In what world? Pistol is alright-ish. But OP please use focus for your own sake.

Khyber.1284:

Forgive me but. . . ., “Focus slows you down”? I can’t even think of a response for this. And using gs 5 to “keep mobs grouped up” whaaaat? And torch burns doing “a lot of damage” In what world? Pistol is alright-ish. But OP please use focus for your own sake.

Yeah it’s crazy right? Using GS#5 to knock mobs into a wall to group them up, whaaaaaaaat? That’s too hard to figure out? How about mobs packs that are spread when you run into them where some are ranged? Whaaaat? Yeah this is serious rocket science right here. Weird thing is that this is even more important if you’re using focus as mobs will frequently be out of range of curtain, so this being a “whaaat” situation baffles me.

Burn doesn’t do damage, whaaaat? Sigh… I can’t even.

As for focus – I was totally wrong. Last time I played this was in 2013 and that phantasmal warden had some issues with simply not popping up, but he works fine now from what I’ve seen.

Crowley.8761:

Khyber.1284:

Forgive me but. . . ., “Focus slows you down”? I can’t even think of a response for this. And using gs 5 to “keep mobs grouped up” whaaaat? And torch burns doing “a lot of damage” In what world? Pistol is alright-ish. But OP please use focus for your own sake.

Yeah it’s crazy right? Using GS#5 to knock mobs into a wall to group them up, whaaaaaaaat? That’s too hard to figure out? How about mobs packs that are spread when you run into them where some are ranged? Whaaaat? Yeah this is serious rocket science right here. Weird thing is that this is even more important if you’re using focus as mobs will frequently be out of range of curtain, so this being a “whaaat” situation baffles me.

Burn doesn’t do damage, whaaaat? Sigh… I can’t even.

As for focus – I was totally wrong. Last time I played this was in 2013 and that phantasmal warden had some issues with simply not popping up, but he works fine now from what I’ve seen.

I’m just looking at that 2013 you added in. . .that number just really stood out. Anyway don’t try to flip s**t please, I’ve seen the pointless vortices you’ve trapped people in on other threads so I’m just gonna end this with a simple.
“Ok”
Edit: PS vortices is the plural of vortex.

Khyber.1284:

I’m just looking at that 2013 you added in. . .that number just really stood out. Anyway don’t try to flip s**t please, I’ve seen the pointless vortices you’ve trapped people in on other threads so I’m just gonna end this with a simple.
“Ok”
Edit: PS vortices is the plural of vortex.

Yeah and don’t bother with these veiled insults and attempts at “establishing your dominance” or whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, it’s boring, it’s old and to be honest I see every other person on the internet as a bot anyway because personalities are so generic that nothing like this bothers me.

Other threads yeah, I think people blindly follow a meta build that is designed for a specific purpose and then blatantly deny everything else being playable even though a lot of people, including me, are having good results from it. I refrain from using terms like L2P or insinuating that they’re simply not good enough to play them – The problem is a mindset of one thing and one thing only. And where will that end up? An inevitable nerf to chronocondi causing forums to be spammed with tears of anger, anguish and despair. Something I think we would all like to avoid.

Edit: Sorry for derailing the thread even further – this what we do as true forum heroes.

Now that things have been sufficiently derailed I"m going to bring us back on topic.

At what point should i think about working on Ascended gear in HoT? I’m fully exotic now and the extra stats might be helpful making HoT easier. In fact, I’m finding that literally every little thing helps in these maps. A few stat boosts here and there, while not a major game changer, will go a long way towards (1) accomplishing the goal of getting ascended gear and (2) making myself just a little more resilient. Would spending some laurels be worth it as a starting point (I’m thinking amulet)?

Grenix.3762:

Now that things have been sufficiently derailed I"m going to bring us back on topic.

At what point should i think about working on Ascended gear in HoT? I’m fully exotic now and the extra stats might be helpful making HoT easier. In fact, I’m finding that literally every little thing helps in these maps. A few stat boosts here and there, while not a major game changer, will go a long way towards (1) accomplishing the goal of getting ascended gear and (2) making myself just a little more resilient. Would spending some laurels be worth it as a starting point (I’m thinking amulet)?

“At what point should i think about working on Ascended gear in HoT?”
Trinkets are easiest to get and low cost, go zerk or go home.
Then work on weapons as they will actually give you the biggest increase.
Forget about armour unless you use another light armour class. Mesmer is fine in exotics and being able to get back expensive runes through a BL salvage kit is better. The performance increase in going exotic armour and all ascended to full ascended is something like 1%. It is not worth it most of the time.

“A few stat boosts here and there, while not a major game changer, will go a long way towards (1) accomplishing the goal of getting ascended gear and (2) making myself just a little more resilient.”

Resilience comes from trait choices, utilities and experience. Getting more stats (in this context going ascended) most of the time won’t help you at all. If you find yourself dying a lot to something ask here stating the following:
1. What killed you.
2. How it killed you.

A classic example is elementalists. I see a lot of them running around full zerk, signet of fire, thinking they can blast through everything by camping fire and pressing 2,5,2,111. When they get hit, they die and stay dead. The reason is they usually don’t have the experience and knowledge of the ele, when to kite, when to switch elements and take a back seat on dps or use survival utilities while you have aggro, and you will have aggro with that much dps.

They die because they try to play something that needs experience to play but lack it.

Blink, decoy, mass invis and the chaos line (PU) will make you extremely survivable, just learn to know when to run and when to come back for more. As in, if you only have 1 escape tool ready, if you need to use it, you get out.

Grenix.3762:

Now that things have been sufficiently derailed I"m going to bring us back on topic.

At what point should i think about working on Ascended gear in HoT? I’m fully exotic now and the extra stats might be helpful making HoT easier. In fact, I’m finding that literally every little thing helps in these maps. A few stat boosts here and there, while not a major game changer, will go a long way towards (1) accomplishing the goal of getting ascended gear and (2) making myself just a little more resilient. Would spending some laurels be worth it as a starting point (I’m thinking amulet)?

Ascended gear priority:

1. Rings
2. Amulet
3. Backpiece
4. Accessories
5. Weapons
6. …
7. …
8. …
9. Armor

Rings can be easily obtained from fractals without a lot of time and effort. Amulet is bought with laurels. Backpiece is easily crafted from fractal drops. Accessories are either semi-expensively bought with laurels and ectos or purchased with guild commendations (I recommend going the latter route). Weapons are either crafted or picked up with a lucky chest, but don’t count on that one. I refuse to craft ascended armor as a matter of principle and so I’ve been buying that with magnetite shards from raids.

So I recently spec’d for the defender whenever I block or evade and wow what a difference that makes! I basically have unlimited phantasms now with shield4 and can now melee most mobs. Looks like I’ve come a heck of a long way from when I started this post!