Guild Wars 2

So being the poor scrub that I am, I can only afford the gold and time required to make one set of ascended armor for the foreseeable future. And I’ve seen some back and forth between assassins or berserkers and such and I was wondering what the best gear choice would be. I play mantra phantasm damage with sword/sword and sword/focus in PvE and play standard shatter when i dabble in WvW. And before I commit i wanted to know what you guys thought. So best gear choice for a pure damage mesmer?

I think that the consensus is: assassin’s weapons + armor, zerker trinkets.

If you’re stacking, you can get away with zerker weapons + armor and use perception stacks, and that will be good as well. But given the inconsistency of stacking (and the fact that the underwater weapons might be “fixed” at some point), it might not be good to rely on this.

Really?

Was also following this post, waiting for an answer.

I was buying some of the Berserker Ascended Armour recipes, waiting for crafting the full set. Would be this make a big difference?

No, and considering the enormous cost of a LIGHT ascended armor set I would definitely go with zerker over assassins if you have a life and only plan on making one this year.

Go full Zerk and if you die get better. It’s the truth, we have enough active defence you might as well go all out.

@Benjamin I’m not really thinking about using any damage mitigation gear, it was more of a question of Assassins vs. Berserkers but i left it a bit more open ended in case i was missing something

@Alex Why do you recommend going Berserkers over Assassins?

Here are my findings that you might find interesting, zerk vs assassin for mesmers:
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Assassins-vs-Zerk-armor-weapons-for-mesmer/

I’m personally choosing Berserker, for what it’s worth, because I’m betting it will be more resilient to changes in the game from ANet than Assassin’s. And I would really hate to remake it.

Exactly, zerker is a much safer choice while the difference between zerker and assassin is not huge. You could use 1/4 pvt gear and no one would notice anyway. Just look at all the people that crafted celestial sets because of how efficient crit damage was on celestial gear, not fun.

My final justification for crafting full assassins was more simple than that. Mesmer’s main job is reflects and control, not direct damage. To maximize that job assassins is a clear winner and the difference between it and zerk is actually quite noticeable.

But I do have 4 zerk armor/weapon sets in my inv just in case I ever feel like falling back to berserkers (2x scholar, 1x ranger, 1x strength) XD

Something else I have been thinking about is the fact that retaliation cant crit, and that is something mesmers have a decent amount of access to. And while it might not be the deciding factor its just another benefit of berserkers

Retaliation is useless from a damage perspective PvE, and nearly useless in PvP unless you’re specifically built to make the most of it, which involves ultra-tanky gear. Don’t worry about retal.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Retaliation is useless from a damage perspective PvE, and nearly useless in PvP unless you’re specifically built to make the most of it, which involves ultra-tanky gear. Don’t worry about retal.

Retaliation reflects all the damage you take? If so, could a vitality set with healing power but no toughness work out? What about an Asura Mesmer (for the extra pain inverter), could it make a retaliaton Mesmer any viable? Im not thinking about going there (I liked a guide i read, i believe it was yours, that used retaliation but seems that it doesn’t work anymore), but ive been wondering if it could work somehow.

Pokecenter.3548:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Retaliation is useless from a damage perspective PvE, and nearly useless in PvP unless you’re specifically built to make the most of it, which involves ultra-tanky gear. Don’t worry about retal.

Retaliation reflects all the damage you take? If so, could a vitality set with healing power but no toughness work out? What about an Asura Mesmer (for the extra pain inverter), could it make a retaliaton Mesmer any viable? Im not thinking about going there (I liked a guide i read, i believe it was yours, that used retaliation but seems that it doesn’t work anymore), but ive been wondering if it could work somehow.

No. Retaliation returns a static amount of damage per hit. This amount is some base + scaling with power.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Pokecenter.3548:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Retaliation is useless from a damage perspective PvE, and nearly useless in PvP unless you’re specifically built to make the most of it, which involves ultra-tanky gear. Don’t worry about retal.

Retaliation reflects all the damage you take? If so, could a vitality set with healing power but no toughness work out? What about an Asura Mesmer (for the extra pain inverter), could it make a retaliaton Mesmer any viable? Im not thinking about going there (I liked a guide i read, i believe it was yours, that used retaliation but seems that it doesn’t work anymore), but ive been wondering if it could work somehow.

No. Retaliation returns a static amount of damage per hit. This amount is some base + scaling with power.

Just confirmed http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation ty
I was hoping that it could at least decrease the damage you take by the amount that is reflected to the attacker, but just like this doesn’t seem that great.

Over time, I have amassed four full armour sets for my Mesmer: Berserker’s, Rampager’s, Knight’s & Rabid (Ascended). As I play WvW almost exclusively, the Zerker set never sees the light of day. If you plan on spending any time in WvW, then just consider crafting at least a couple of Knight’s pieces to swap in when you need to. It’s not a good sign when someone’s favourite opponent is a shatter spec Mesmer in full Zerk…

Assassin’s.

It’s also better for solo play/roaming in WWW