Guild Wars 2

We’ve just returned to GW2 after having played for about a year after launch and are enjoying the game but could use a little advice.

I play my Mesmer almost exclusively as a duo with my partner whom playes a Warrior. We are fairly casual and mostly just run open world content and story missions but occasionally do low levels FotM and some dungeons.

I’m having a hard time setting up a build that helps me synergize with her warrior. Any of the builds I find by searching the forums and metta all seem highly dependent on Boon Sharing via the signet of Inspiration. To my knowledge, that signet has been nerffed and thus boon sharing like that doesn’t work anymore. I’ve searched and searched but can’t find an alternative. I’d like to play as a support for her, but don’t really know how to set it up.

I’m sure many would just say something like “play any build, the game is easy” but try to understand that what may be easy for some proves to be a kittenallenging for us. And that just because we can beat a missions it would be more fun to do so smoothly. It’s wonderful to get good at a build and win a mission with finesse.

Long story short, can anyone recommend a support-like build that would synergize well with a warrior? We’re also open to build suggestions for her warrior that would synergize well with my Mesmer. We both have the elites fully unlocked.

With two people I wouldn’t recommend a build that is overly heavy on support, as you’re only buffing one other person (if you give up 50% damage to buff your partner by 25%, that’s a net loss). Try and balance your own survival and damage, while picking a few skills and talents that complement the current weaknesses of your partner’s build.

With the open world AOE that you see in a lot of HOT content, I’d recommend using the great sword in one of your weapon slots. This weapon lets you put out respectable damage at a distance. The other weapons are by preference. The only other good power main hand is a sword, with the of hand dependent on your fighting preference (sword for single-target damage, pistol for ranged phantasm single target, or focus to block projectiles, buff, and do some AoE). If you use the focus, be sure to take the talent that reflects enemy projectiles.

The inspiration line of traits is useful for gaming yourself and your party white questing. The other trees friend in whether you want to focus on phantasms, shatter, mantras, etc. Chronomancer could be useful in a group with the area-of-effect wells and double-dhatter phantasms. (I’m ignoring condition builds here, as they would seem to be too slow for a duo.). I

personally solo map content using sword/sword and great sword with berserker gear, dueling, inspiration, and chrono traits. Swapping in some healing, vitality, or armor would make for more robust play.

There is no wrong answer, and I would encourage experimenting until you find what you enjoy. Ignore most builds and guides; they are focused on PvP or organized raid content.

God luck and happy questing. Feel free to reach out in game if you’d like a questing buddy or help with content.

I suggest the commander armor for starts. This is the zerk and boonsharing armor. This keeps damage high and allows you to boon share. The SoI nerf was more of a change and you can EASILY reach 100% boon duration and keep almost all of the boons shared by SoI up nonstop as long as you have a second application. Such as Shield 5 or Well of Action being the second application of Quickness.

This allows you to do a small rotation to apply quickness and alacrity to your warrior, which boosts its attack and recharge speed. Warriors attacking grants might which will share to you, boosting your own damage. This allows synergy between the two classes.

A second selection would be the minstrel set. You are now Nomad + boon duration. Healing, tanky, large health pool. This means you’re more of a healer towards your warrior. You support by the same Quickness and Alacrity, as well as some strong heals and pulsing regen. You can take the healing mantra and another mantra of either Daze or Stun break to keep your warrior from taking damage, healing its damage, or getting it back on it’s feet. You remove conditions from it. It grants you might, but you wont deal more damage as the benchmark for minstrel mesmer is 2k dps, compared to a 10k-17k on commander (with all boons and perf rotation).

These two would be the best bet, both of which use a near similar build set up, just different heal/third utility, and armor sets. You get a ton out of each.

If it’s just you two, doing pve content, I HIGHLY suggest the first option.

Next thing I could think of would be a condi mesmer with a focus on disrupting. Take mantra of daze, gravity well, focus pull. You apply a lot of aoe condi and extra confusion when you interrupt them. It’s less support for the warrior, but damage prevented is damage healed! This is more the warrior supporting you with might, but with pulls of focus and gravity well, things are now nice and clumped for your warrior friend to WRECK UTTER HAVOC!

Enjoy!

Sorin Noroku.5342:

with pulls on focus and gravity well, things are now nice and clumped for your warrior friend to WRECK UTTER HAVOC!

Enjoy!

This was all I really had to contribute heh, the pull on focus is really satisfying in pve and your warrior partner has any number of great melee cleaving options to take advantage of it with. I imagine that gravity well is just as satisfying if not more so.
Another thing I find really satisfying in pve is the power block trait in domination. Between the interrupts themselves, the weakness from that trait, and all the fun support options from inspiration, I feel supportive even without any kind of boon sharing.

Sorin Noroku.5342:

I suggest the commander armor for starts. This is the zerk and boonsharing armor. This keeps damage high and allows you to boon share. The SoI nerf was more of a change and you can EASILY reach 100% boon duration and keep almost all of the boons shared by SoI up nonstop as long as you have a second application. Such as Shield 5 or Well of Action being the second application of Quickness.

This allows you to do a small rotation to apply quickness and alacrity to your warrior, which boosts its attack and recharge speed. Warriors attacking grants might which will share to you, boosting your own damage. This allows synergy between the two classes.

A second selection would be the minstrel set. You are now Nomad + boon duration. Healing, tanky, large health pool. This means you’re more of a healer towards your warrior. You support by the same Quickness and Alacrity, as well as some strong heals and pulsing regen. You can take the healing mantra and another mantra of either Daze or Stun break to keep your warrior from taking damage, healing its damage, or getting it back on it’s feet. You remove conditions from it. It grants you might, but you wont deal more damage as the benchmark for minstrel mesmer is 2k dps, compared to a 10k-17k on commander (with all boons and perf rotation).

These two would be the best bet, both of which use a near similar build set up, just different heal/third utility, and armor sets. You get a ton out of each.

If it’s just you two, doing pve content, I HIGHLY suggest the first option.

Next thing I could think of would be a condi mesmer with a focus on disrupting. Take mantra of daze, gravity well, focus pull. You apply a lot of aoe condi and extra confusion when you interrupt them. It’s less support for the warrior, but damage prevented is damage healed! This is more the warrior supporting you with might, but with pulls of focus and gravity well, things are now nice and clumped for your warrior friend to WRECK UTTER HAVOC!

Enjoy!

Your reply was very helpful and I will try out your suggestions the next time I play.

I think im a little confused on boon sharing though, i thought that signet was the only way we had to give boons (aside from the shatter perk and wells). How does the signet help now? doesnt it only give one buff to allies?

Also, the warrior gives me might, can i signet share it back onto her?

So the way Signet of Inspiration works is if you have any of the boons on you, you share what the signet says. The way a boonshare chrono would benefit a warrior is with two buffs primarily. Quickness and Alacrity. Quickness is 50% faster activation of skills, including auto attack, and alacrity is 33% faster recharge of skills. This means that your warrior will attack more often, which will give you more might. It also means their headbutt, f1, banners, any other skill, recharges faster. Which your warrior will LOVE! At the same time, you’re giving those boons to yourself, so your own rotation gets faster! It’s possible to have 100% quickness and alacrity uptime on stronger bosses. With that, both you and them will do more damage in a shorter timespan.

Yes, if you have might you will share might, HOWEVER, you’ll only share 1 might. On the flip side, if you get protection from something, you can share that to your warrior!!! Runes of the herald is one supply. A lot of mesmers can upkeep near 100% protection uptime from those runes alone. Which means warrior takes less damage and their heal Signet is more useful!

Common boonshare chrono a use inspiration 122, domination 222, chronomancer 333, sig of inspiration, well of action, timewarp/grav well. This means whenever you summon a phantasm, you share boons (24 seconds cooldown), and whenever you use the active Signet you share AGAIN!!! (Same cooldown). With continuum split, you can reach four uses of the boon share (2 inside with trait and active, 2 outside)! This is also 24 seconds of quickness from the signet and trait alone. With both signets being 24 second cooldown (faster with alacrity!!! 33% faster! 24 seconds is without!)

Yes the Signet is all we have (besides shatter and wells) to share boons. Boonshare is a build that goes I HAVE PROTECTION!!!! NOW YOU GET PROTECTION AND YOU GET PROTECTION!!!! Etc etc with all the boons. You only share what the Signet will say, so max you share is 6 seconds of protection, however this is PER USE of the Signet!! You also share 6 seconds even if you yourself only have 1! You have 1 sec protection, you use Signet, you now have 7 seconds and they have 6. Use phantasm, you now have 13, they have 12! Obviously, time of cast takes time away, but as long as you have protection, you share the 6 seconds with 100% boon duration. This is where it’s nice! You can do the same with aegis, resistance, stability, anything that the Signet says!

Although boonshare builds are still fun to play with I have to agree with other posters in saying the added utility you get in a 2-man party just isn’t worth it, at least in a roaming context. Two things Warrior lacks and Mesmer is able to provide are boonstrips and access to stealth. I think learning how to play a decent Shattered Concentration build with access to stealth might be the most effective option for your situation.