Guild Wars 2

(It is TIME! After 1.5 years of GW I am finally dedicating several months to learning, exploring, and theorycrafting for WvW. This is a whole new frontier for me, so I’m essentially a noob again. This time I wanted to keep a log of my experiences for anyone else who’s taking a Mesmer into WvW for the first time and has no idea what the hell they’re doing. Any comments, criticisms , or advice is very welcome! I hope these post will be informative and am working on getting a youtube flow going for this year)

Is there anything more embarassing for a new Mesmer in WvW than trying to speed up a supply line with a well-placed portal, only to find that you’re just a bit too far and all you really ended up doing was run up to the commander, drop the portal, and watch everyone stand there shaking their heads before running past you?

That happened within my first five minutes of entering Eternal Battlegrounds.

I /cry’d.

(Btw theres a way to tell portal range. But ain’t nobody got time fo’dat)

Portal range:

1. Be out of combat
2. Have a traited focus
3. Drop 1 end of the portal
4. Drop temporal curtain on top of the portal and run through it at the same time
5. Run in a straight line. When the recharge on temporal curtain hits 8 seconds, you are at maximum portal range.

Shrugging it off as beginner’s inexperience, I eventually joined a little group that went to capture a supply camp. After the battle, I ended up chasing some poor fool to what I realized too late was the enemy spawn… They busted my kitten .

I /cry’d.

AND SOMEHOW WITHIN 10 MINUTES I ENDED UP BACK THERE AGAIN! This time there was no chasing, just aimless wandering and not paying attention to my map. A couple enemies saw me, but luckily I was able to fight them off until I was able to break the hell out of there with some glorious portaling. (their spawn had some wierd-but-awesome undergrown tunnel I was able to pull some shenanigans with) Since I have a lousy sense of direction, I figured this would happen to me pretty often if I didn’t quickly get used things around here.
Later, I found these odd ruin-looking things that seemed to grant some kind of buff when you captured them all. Since no one seemed to be doing it, I took it upon myself to run around attempting to secure an advantage to my team by capping them… Only to quickly realize that everytime I capped two, some kitten on the other team would run up and cap another.
So it was then that I realized that everything I wrote on the Mesmer over the year, all the time I spent dominating kids in PvP, all the dungeons, advice, and anything else I was given meant absolutely nothing: Once again I am a wide-eyed noob in GW2 with no idea what any of the symbols on the maps mean, any of my WvW-skill-point-things mean, or where to go to be effective. So I took a couple steps back and did a quick recap on what I do know: How to make builds. Right now I’m currently running a variant of the Chaos Maestro, since its the only real WvW build I’ve made that’s been tested thoroughly for WvW zergs and small groups. While the original is a full support 0/10/30/30/0 build, I modified my specific version to be a bit better at roaming and 1v1s.

Zerker Gear, Runes of Altruism, Chocolate Omnomberry Cremes
0/5/30/20/15 – Chaos: III, VIII, X / Inspiration: I, VIII / Illusions: VI
Sword/Focus – Staff ; Superior Sigils of Battle (Sword & Staff) Superior Sigil of Fire (Focus)
Blink / Portal / Signet of Inspiration
Playstyle: Phantasm
Role: Support / Scout
Strengths: Constant AoE boon application & all boons shared every 45 seconds, grows more powerful the longer the fight persists.
Weaknesses: Low damage, vulnerable at the beginning of fights.

(Note this build will likely be tweaked into the new build I’m working on. Dat trial&error!)

My goal with this build was to maintain the ability to enact the Boon Storm for team fights while having enough damage to hold my own. As with usual the Chaos Maestro standard, every weapon skill besides blurred frenzy grants me boons, I gain boons on interrupt, and a random boon every 10 seconds. Sword/Focus & Staff is a very hard weaponset to do damage with I play phantasm-style and count on iWarlock, Sword auto, Chaos Storm and Blurred Frenzy for damage. I use focus almost entirely defensively and rarely rely on the Warden for damage (though it’s a nice boost). My “burst” consist of the same rotation I use for the boonstorm to make it as smooth as possible.

I was having a lot of fun with this build, but it’s difficult to use effectively. Luckily, I was able to get plenty of of practice on stragglers (with those adorable rabbit finishers. =P) and random mobs along the way. I really wanted Portal to be one of the signatures of my WvW playstyle, and have been really keen on holding on to it, despite it being untraited. But my current spec leaves me with one major weakness…

Conditions.

The only thing that really screwed me in my time in WvW was condition damage. I may have to drop Medic’s Feedback for Mender’s Purity in the future, but Medic’s Feedback is REALLY strong in zerg fights. Luckily, that first Inspiration slot is very flexibile and I jsut have to stop being stubborn. If that’s not enough, I may swap sigil of fire with sigil of generosity.

So I think I’m off to a decent start. I’ve got my build but I’ve got problems. For one, I don’t know which role to choose. I want to be a scout, as I think that’s an excellent use for portal but I think I’d do well in team fights as well. I have no WvW guild or friends that really dig deep into WvW so I’m sort of out in the waters all by my lonesome and thus I have a few questions:

• From a commander’s perspective whats the most valuable Mesmer skills besides Feedback and Portal?
• What are good WvW skills to upgrade with these points I have?
• Any links to videos explaining a general overview of how WvW works? (the only one I have is Kylia’s interview with Zen
• Why are all the PU Mesmer I ran into so bad?
• What are the “roles” in WvW? Like scout, commander, ect.

Welcome to the Mist War!

I’ve never commanded, but I do enjoy running me some WvW so here are some lessons that I’ve learned. Context: I mostly run in small havok groups and zerg, and rarely do roaming.

1) Communication with the zerg commander is crucial for a successful Portal. Without communication, a Portal can be just as detrimental as it is helpful. (To this regard, having some kind of VoIP service like Teamspeak is helpful).
2) Most commanders will greatly appreciate it if you have Veil with you, when running with a zerg. If the commander doesn’t call for it, drop it right in front of your zerg after the zerg has stacked, empowered, and begin charging at the enemy zerg. Veil has no player limit so your entire zerg can get 2s of stealth by running through it.
3) Which reminds me, Portal has a 20 use limit.
4) If running by yourself or with a small group, escape Portals are wonderful things. Even if you’re just running away and weren’t able to drop a Portal opening somewhere, simply dropping one behind you while you’re running will usually cause some of your pursuers to stop and guard the Portal.
5) Never take supplies out of Towers or Keeps unless told to do so, or else everyone will hate you for it. Those Towers/Keeps need those supplies in order to upgrade their walls/gates. (i.e. In general, only take supply from supply camps.)

Oh, another good use for Portal (one that usuuually doesn’t go awry, but is hilarious if it does) is using Portal to help your team avoid fall damage. Drop the portal at the top of the cliff, fall down and take the damage yourself, and drop the exit portal for all your friends.

If anybody falls down, takes the Portal back up, falls down again, and dies due to falling damage, take a moment to point and laugh.

Also, don’t chase squirrels. They will lead you to death.

Portal is the one skill I feel I am sorely lacking at. I’ve also had that awkward feeling of not knowing when and where are the best times to drop it. I have seen some amazing stunts in some of Osicat’s videos.

Look forward to your postings as I too am doing more WvW and having much fun with a PU/power roaming build. Was in a 3 vs 10 the other night and we killed half of them till they had friends reinforce. When they finally got me down, one who had been there the whole fight and survived danced on my body for about 30 sec. I laughed, must have gotten under someones skin.

Mesmers… :P

There’s another trick for determining max Portal distance. I personally don’t use it much, but it’s something like, if you zoom the mini-map all the way in, and expand the size to the maximum possible, the width/length of the map (it’s a square) is the max distance of your Portal. You can either alt+click to mark your Portal Entre location, or just guestimate where you left it on the map.

1) don’t worry to much about what commanders want on your bar. Stick with 1 or 2 good utilities and finish the rest out so it will be fun for you. The list just since you asked for it goes like. Veil, Portal, Time Warp, Null field, Feedback but not necessarily in that order.

2) I don’t really understand the question.

3) I will try to find something when i get home.

4) because it’s fotm and people don’t really know how to play it. They just picked it up because it was OMG SO OP!!!!

5) This one might take some explaining. There are mainly three different ways to play WvW
*Roaming
*Small Man (Havoc)
*Zerging
Each one of these to ways to play well requires dedicated builds. The roamer that tries to small man will find that the support he/she give his group is not up to par. The small man that tries to zerg will find that he/she is not min/maxed as much as the commander wants. And the Zerger that tries to roaming will be to kitten by min/maxing that it will be a frustrating experience. All that to say find what you want to do, then taylor your build to do it. Scouting and commanding are subsections of those game play types.

I would suggest playing around for a while and try not to pigeon hole yourself yet. Try to play the different styles then focus on that is the most fun for you.

Preacher

This video looks promising:

Firstly, it’s cool you’re willing to share your learning experiences.

Second, I’d completely agree with Preacher in that you shouldn’t single out a build or playstyle right now. 8mo of casual WvW play and I’ve just realized that I enjoy having separate complete gear sets to enjoy Power, or support, or condi play. (After stupidly outfitting a Thief and Warrior with Laurel trinkets that could have gone towards my Mez.)

Short version: Try out many different builds first.

-Oh, and vitality is useless in WvW. Stick with gobs of Toughness. Wish I’d figured that out earlier.

-From a commander’s perspective whats the most valuable Mesmer skills besides Feedback and Portal?

Veil, for the stealth, Null field to put just in front of the ennemy front line, and time warp for burst.

-What are good WvW skills to upgrade with these points I have?

Guard killers and defense against guard, for the stack. Then you will know what to do next, by the time you have all.

-Why are all the PU Mesmer I ran into so bad?

Probably because they play in zerg style, so they choose a build that make them really hard to kill, that can provide loot bags easily, and is easy to play…

-What are the “roles” in WvW? Like scout, commander, ect.

It realley depends of your playstyle. Like preacher said, there are three different playstyle in WvW.
For the roaming, it depends of who you are with, do what you need or what you like. You will need to escape zerg, so have some easy speed in your skill set. You just go where you want.
In guild, you will need to stay alive, to have on your skill bar what your raid lead wants, you play as a team. You can also scout for your raid lead, trying to find ennemies.
In zerg, you just have to follow the commander. You can try to max aoe damages, to provide veil, …

The best advice i can give you to understand faster WvW is to go on your server WvW mumble, teamspeak, …. Then don’t hesitate to ask questions, nobody will blame you for that.

Note: Your Fire sigil is useless right now, if you’re constantly weapon swapping the Battle cooldowns will prevent it from ever proc’ing. The same will apply to Generosity if you use it. Having both a crit-proc and a swap-proc on the same weapon set tends not to work well; I’d stick to a static (Force/Accuracy) or stacking (Bloodlust/Perception) sigil for the offhand.

For scouting you need speed, mobility, and escape capability. Traited blink, portal, veil, torch, PU, Centaur / Traveler runes, etc. etc. Being able to get around the map fast, and spy on the enemy zerg without getting spotted, immob’d and pulverized.

Answers:
1) Veil, Nullfield, and Time Warp are also useful during zerg clashes (or TW speeding up golems busting gates).

2) Depends on what role you want to play. Generally, getting some points in Supply and Build mastery is always useful. 4 points in Supply makes you have a chance to regen some supply when you’re out, which can be awesome when it helps you finish that last bit of a ram. Two points in Build makes you only take 2 ticks to fully utilize 10 supply, or 3 for 15 (since you spend 6 at a time); returns diminish somewhat after that.
Everyone likes to max out the Guard Defense and Guard Killer lines ASAP, it’s a long road (115 ranks for each line) but when you max it out you get a nice chunk of stats from killing guards (+250 vit, +100pow/con). Generally people max Defense first for that tasty 2.5k HP, it’s useful no matter what you’re doing.
Apart from that, it’s nice to pick one of the siege weapons and max it out; ram mastery is nice if you run around capping towers and keeps; AC or Ballista mastery are great for defending. Trebbing is generally really boring for most people but if you max it you can do great things (drain supply from enemy structures!)

3) Hmm, there’s a document floating around somewhere that some TC commanders wrote up, look for that for a good overview.

4) No clue; I haven’t actually met that many oddly enough.

5) Zerg – frontline (melee train, mostly war/guard – most mesmer builds are too squishy to survive it) and backline (squishy AOE damage dealers, staff ele is the quintessential example. 30/30 GS nuker builds can be fun here)
Roam / havoc – solo players or smallish parties running around stealing camps, killing yaks, getting ruins, harassing under-defended towers, reporting enemy zerg positions, ganking stragglers / cutting off enemy reinforcements, etc. etc.

General comment on your build – Boonstorm type boon dispersal has two characteristics: it’s limited to 5 people, and you need to be close to the recipients. This makes it a potentially really strong build for a small roaming squad, but its effectiveness will fall off hugely in a zerg. You’re probably not going to be able to execute your boon combo in the melee train – it’s both too mobile and too dangerous; and in the backline you’re probably more useful contributing damage and boon-stripping.

Welcome to the war, Chaos.

I just ran into the tankiest kitten hambow warrior in our borderlands.

Was running the sw/t sc/f build below – I think even if I’d had say the daze mantra or AT to strip some boons I doubt I’d have got him down to below 50% let alone to 0.

Turned out a stand off – he could barely land much damage on me either. Kept trying to give signals to quit and go separate ways but took a while for him to get the message. shrug

Hey chaos!
Fun to see you start to play WvW.
If you really wanna know the state of mesmer in WvW ’’zerging’’, I’d suggest you to take a look at:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Raid-mesmers-Take-a-look/first#post3501624
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/WvW-Mesmer-needs-to-be-balanced/first#post3500703
And ofc my twitch channel (from today: http://www.twitch.tv/doiidrg/b/495479323) as I’m raiding with RG on mesmer almost every day.
There has been some drama going on about mesmer in the guild but I guess it’s the best I can show you what your job kinda is.

Now your questions:

1. From a commander’s perspective whats the most valuable Mesmer skills besides Feedback and Portal?
Portal is only usefull when you gonna hide in towers/keeps to port ppl in. Anything besides that is useless for portal. Take Null field, blink, veil and time warp. (feedback instead of veil if the commander/leader already got enough stealths.)

2. What are good WvW skills to upgrade with these points I have?
Guard attack & guard defense. Read the last effects of them.

3. Any links to videos explaining a general overview of how WvW works? (the only one I have is Kylia’s interview with Zen)
Erm… you take camps for supply to build siege to defend or attack towers/keeps.. At least that’s mostly the goal for pug zergs. All we do is find enemy zergs to fight.

4. Why are all the PU Mesmer I ran into so bad?
Ppl in WvW are generaly bad. There are some people who know how to play actually, but dont expect 1/2 of them being a real challenge in 1v1 if you run a roaming build in WvW.

5. What are the “roles” in WvW? Like scout, commander, ect.
Well obviously you have scouts running around the map, scouts who sit in towers waiting till the enemy comes to report that, pug blobs sieging keeps and towers and guild raids fighting the pug groups and the other guild raids.

I personally only use portal situationally if I’m in a dedicated group and the commander requests. I really don’t “Run with the zerg” as it is just not fun for me and there are professions more suited to this.

What I do is run in havoc squads, solo roam and scout. You will find you will need multiple gear sets depending on what role you are doing. You will realise how slow your mesmer is compared to other professions, well every other profession with the exception of guardians :P And you will have players that will just run and you will not be able to catch them unless your are gearing specifically to do so.

You can do quite a lot in a havoc squad:

1) Cut off enemy supplies by taking camps, killing dollys
2) Protect camps, help run supply, escort dollys
2) Scout for the main force, backup the main force
3) Be a quick reactionary force to contend a keep/tower before the main groups get there
4) Ninja keeps/towers, surprisingly easy to do if for example the main force is engaged on the other side of the map, you can for example take a keep with 2-3 players.
5) With good organisation/teamwork and people who know their profession, you can take on groups MUCH larger than yours. A well organised small group can defend a keep/tower with properly placed siege for quite some time even against much, much larger numbers.
5) Be a right royal pain in the kitten to enemy

I run 2 main builds in WvW, the standard PU Condition build using either Staff/Sceptre-Torch or Sword-Pistol/Sceptre-Torch. I tend to use this for solo and basically annoying/distracting trolling groups. You will be hard to kill, you won’t be able to catch anyone if they decide to peg it with no access to swiftness outside of runes if you decide to use them. But if you play it right, you should be able to harass havoc squads, take camps solo, hunt dollys and take on 2+ players without breaking much of a sweat.

My other build is an offensive PU variant, using a mix of zerker/valk gear. I use traveller runes, GS + Sword-Pistol. Utilities are Decoy, Blink, Veil, Mass Invis. Your fast, hit like a truck can catch runners and are very slippery due to PU+Stealth. This at the moment is my preferred build for solo/group play as it covers the mesmers main weakness in WvW which is speed. It also works in a havoc squad with veil/mass invis providing utility if your group starts getting pressured or you need to tactical stealth/avoid a zerg. It is however weak to conditions, necros and other heavy condition pressure builds will hurt you, but if you play correctly you can mitigate their condition pressure by bursting them and putting them on the back foot, generally if you can force a necro into deathshroud early, you have the upper hand. I have found though, that using the -40% condition food does help along with the stealth, it won’t save you against a really good necro but it will certainly help with general condition damage.

You can also run an interrupt build! I sometimes use the same interrupt build I use in sPvP/Tournies, the times I’ve run with it, I found it works quite well.

You will come across some really quite terrible players and groups, you will also encounter some of THE best players in the game who are either roaming solo or in havoc squads. Hopefully you will have some good times, it can be fun, it can be frustrating (getting steam-rolled by a 40man blob, this happens a lot)but when you have those amazing fights, not much can top that! I didn’t mean to write so much, hope my blathering on has been of some use, have fun!

I certainly won’t tell anyone how to play, but in my limited time in WvW I have found that running in a small havoc group of 5-10 people is more fun, more rewarding, and is a much better way for my mesmer’s abilities to shine.

Oh, and BlackDevil, just in the last two weeks I’ve been involved in some incredibly clever uses of portal that I never would have imagined. I don’t run it all the time, but I use it far more than you’d think.

Loco: I run a build that sounds like it’s somewhat in between the two you described and would be curious to know more details about what exact traits and gear you use, if you’re willing.

I would say Null Field > Feedback due to the fact that most zergs run Guardians and Warriors and ripping stability off them is important.

Viel, Null Field, Portal
Feedback, Time Warp (for golems)

Qaelyn.7612:

I certainly won’t tell anyone how to play, but in my limited time in WvW I have found that running in a small havoc group of 5-10 people is more fun, more rewarding, and is a much better way for my mesmer’s abilities to shine.

Oh, and BlackDevil, just in the last two weeks I’ve been involved in some incredibly clever uses of portal that I never would have imagined. I don’t run it all the time, but I use it far more than you’d think.

Loco: I run a build that sounds like it’s somewhat in between the two you described and would be curious to know more details about what exact traits and gear you use, if you’re willing.

Well not if you gonna use it in zergs or raids. Maybe in those 5-10 groups it can work quite good.

Portal is great for supply runs where you have to run up around cliffs, make sure to bring friends for the trip. And running golems especially if they don’t have 25% run speed runes. Can also use it for a stomp…

Honestly I don’t understand how Anet can put a number count on the amount of uses a portal has left but graying out the skill if you’re too far for it land… well that is just to difficult.

From reading previous comments… definitely helps if you include the type of WvW youre playing (as described by Preacher).

There is a lot of GREAT info here, and though I haven’t gotten through it all yet I’m really happy I opened this thread and really appreciate how helpful everyone is being. This’ll help fill out the WvW section of the Mesmer guide too (which I desperately need to update x_X)

Edit: D’oh! Completely shoe-horned in the fire sigil without thinking about it. >_<

Had a fun portal trial last night that will seem trivial to those more familiar with using it but it was gratifying. I had just enough time to try and hit a camp or two before I logged for dinner. I saw a camp in one of the enemies borderlands (can’t remember the two servers we are facing) Got over there and went to greens camp. Suddenly as I approach, I see a zerg of blue who caps the camp. Great so now I have to wait for the Sup de-buf to pass. Waited about a minute before I saw the first doly head out, so set after it and killed it while a straggler from the zerg saw and engaged (they soon ran off). I disappear back to the hills behind some buildings. Doly #2 heads out. I dropped a portal, ran out & engaged the doly but here comes the zerg after hearing from their friend. Killed it as they were pouring through the entry and began chase. Dropped exit, poof back outta sight. Watched them for a bit as they searched for me. Left me with a smile. Looking forward to more trials…

I’ll just chime in to say that if you’re regularly running with a large guild that primarily does WvW, don’t be surprised if they “encourage” you to invest more in toughness. In my experience, organized wvw guilds always stick on the commander (that’s why you always see that big red target over the commander’s head!) and are almost always on the move, and it can be difficult to stay alive long playing like that if you’re in all Berserker gear.