Guild Wars 2

Hi there.
I am returning to Gw2 to try some WvW in EOTM that is about to be released.
I played a thief back in release, but then i left the game for so long.
Now i have the chance to play a Mesmer, and i would like to try some solo roaming in WvW.
I know i will die a lot, i just want to see how it is.
I have been away from the game for so much time that i literally know very little at the moment.
I am looking for an easy to play build (i don’t recognize character animations and have no idea what skills to block) that will allow me not to win, but to at least fight and die in small fights while evading the zergs.

Can you recommend me one? I heard everybody talking about PU builds and while overpowered, it might serve me well as long as it’s easy for a beginner to play.
My experience with the mesmer is limited to leveling and trying out the abilities in heart of the mists.

If i like the game and the new map enough (IE: i can actually roam alone without dying constantly to zergs and i can find fights, even if i lose) then i will study and learn the class and game properly

Thanks!

PU yes, specifically a condition PU build.
20/20/30/0/0

Pick every “on clone death” trait and then prismatic understanding in chaos. People use different weapons but staff/sc-torch is most common.

For gear just go for condition damage and toughness on everything.

For utility most go with decoy for sure, then toss up between veil, blink or whatever.

The non-condition PU versions are also good, but there is no doubt that PU condition is by far the most survivable.

Natsu Blackwater has a fairly extensive guide.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-The-Blackwater-Mesmer-Condition-WvW/first

The stat combination you are looking for is called Rabid.

One word of caution, movement speed sucks. You have a few options to combat this, If you go with perplexity runes, you are either going to have to swap focus to get around the map well

or you can go traveler. Traveler runes have good stats for the build and a constant movement buff. But, they are VERY pricey.

Your other option, which has it’s downsides as well, is to take Centaur runes and use mantra as your heal. You will have constant speed (enable mantra as auto attack) and the speed will be given to anyone near you—and it stacks with other speed buffs.

The downside to this is the power stats don’t help, unless you go with a power based PU build. You will lose the speed in combat (as opposed to traveler runes). Also one of the biggest downsides is not having ether feast as your big heal once you do fight. But, if you go the focus route for speed, being caught with focus in unexpected combat, can equally suck. And who likes swapping weapons constantly?

I know a lot of people probably won’t be thrilled with the pu-condi build suggestion, but it’s a nice place to start. It will give you more time to get used to the class and observe other classes play style.

Eventually, I think you will eventually get tired of this build and look for something different. Most people do.

I think power phantasm PU is easier and more powerful than condi. Osicat has a build called “hidden cat” on his stickied guide so you can check it out

^That looks interesting. Think I might have to try that myself.

Runes of speed can sub for traveler’s runes for the financially constrained. They’re not quite as good but about 1/4th the price last time I looked. The extra vit just means you can replace a few dire pieces with more rabid if you want. The main thing you lose is the boon/cond duration but instead get a swiftness proc.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNArfWl0zipXQzoGb9IipHBHFCcnUAdSXJF22FC-jECB4iCi0CQk0gkHAZqFRjtYqIasKZER1KlYCBoYNA-w

It is troll build. 1v1 no one can kill you. Can you kill anyone is questionable? Depends on how well they can manage cond and how aggressive they are. In my experience smart ppl prefer to run away. Yourself can run away at anytime during almost any fight with correct skills time management. Of course if you insist to stay and fight to the end there is a good chances to die against skillful player but he who fights then runs away live to fight another day .
Skills can be easily changed for Zerg runs. You can run exelent support with veil mantras and follow commander close.
To be honest i hate that build. Do it only for zergs or with group of thieves. It is boring as hell.

Hidden cat is idd a wery fun build and its ok starter, only part talk for start with a condi PU build Blackwater,s or condition cat if you prefere is that power PU is more geardepending than a condition build. Accended weap do a huge difference for the Hidden Cat build.

/Osicat

20/20/30 PU power/phantasm build using Greatsword and sword/torch is exactly what you’re looking for. Condi PU is also strong, but easily ignored by anyone who doesn’t want to fight you. You will have a lot more fun with a power PU build.

Thanks everybody, i will try the Hidden cat build.
For gear, i have nothing and will buy karma gear (about 1k a piece?) and for runes… well, i have 3 gold so i wont have any of speed or traveler runes.
Anything else that can grant speed?

Nothing else grats speed on its own, although Centaur runes are the other popular choice for mesmers because it helps a lot with swiftness.

Ok uh, i just tried a few battles.
I fought a thief and a warrior.

I have invaders acolyte armor and weapons (karma 1.3k apiece), no food or anything else except leveling jewelery
My full greatsword combo did maybe 20% of their hp.
Me and phantasms auto attacking while the warrior stood still (he realized i was noob) couldn’t even bring him below 95% hp.

Even with the thief i could never bring him under 80% hp.

Was it gear or what? Is there much better gear available than acolyte? What’s the different in percent?

My GS says an autoattack at max range is 516 damage, hidden-cat build.
What’s an autoattack damage for people with gear?

1. Are you level 80? If no youre a walking loot bag for players

2. You’re coming back to the game from a long break. You need time to understand basic game mechanics before you jump right into fighting other players

3. Not only are you coming back to the game, youre coming to a class youve never played before and have no idea about any little tricks or anything really

Make sure your gear is at least exotic quality, correct runes, correct sigils, with the correct stats for what you are looking for.

Holy Hell Scout.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-The-Holy-Hell-Build-s-solo-zerg/first#post3344899

Whatever build you take, I suggest just getting up to speed by watching vids.

Madeiner.9246:

Ok uh, i just tried a few battles.
I fought a thief and a warrior.

I have invaders acolyte armor and weapons (karma 1.3k apiece), no food or anything else except leveling jewelery
My full greatsword combo did maybe 20% of their hp.
Me and phantasms auto attacking while the warrior stood still (he realized i was noob) couldn’t even bring him below 95% hp.

Even with the thief i could never bring him under 80% hp.

Was it gear or what? Is there much better gear available than acolyte? What’s the different in percent?

My GS says an autoattack at max range is 516 damage, hidden-cat build.
What’s an autoattack damage for people with gear?

Well leveling jewelry sound bad. And invaders is bad at roaming too, you need some serious damage (either condition or crit). Karma weapons is bad, you need the badge or bought exotics gear. You can get some 43K (I think) karma armor peices from the temples though.

Both could have been full on tanks, but that should only mean they do very little damage in return.

Thanks for your feedback.
I agree with all those points, i didn’t expect (nor wanted) to win. But to at least bring someone to 50% before dying. Actually the warrior could not kill me (stealth, decoys, blinks) and the thief managed to kill me on the third engagement (i ran the other two).

I know gear is bad, but i can’t really buy anything else as it’s not my character.
Is there somewhere i can see stats of a properly geared power mesmer?
Just to check if i’m off by 20% (in which case im probably just bad) or by 100% or more (in which case i’ll have to commit to a character after i’ve seen EOTM)

In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psxWSg-AuGQ
he’s doing 1.8k autoattacks while mine do barely 500

Here are my stats:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53203062/gw005.jpg

Anybody can compare them to a full geared character?

Thanks again!

Karma gear costs 42k kama per piece.
You need exotics. And replace your trinkets too. Your stats are horrible, you are using blues.

For players still figuring out builds I strongly recommend yellow (rare) gear. Why? If you are patient you can get the gear you need, and then if you decide to change stats or upgrade to exotic, salvage it and get as much $ in ectoplasms out of it as you spent originally. And the stats are fairly close to exotics, not the same but a lot better than blues with no real net extra cost.

In the screenshots above, you have less power, crit chance and crit damage than someone who has geared themselves in full PVT (read tanking) exotic gear with cheap food from head to toe, even without upgrades in their jewelry. And also way less toughness/armour.

There is no way you could beat anyone at all with that stuff.

Unfortunately in WvW there has been some power creep with those who have been playing consistently for the past year and a half able to don themselves in full ascended gear who will absolutely destroy anyone in anything less than full exotics.

I feel your pain when it comes to in game funds but the truth is you will need to get some gold to be able to buy competitive gear.

Qaelyn’s suggestion is pretty good. You can buy rares for very cheap, probably fully gear yourself for less than 10g.

If you look at osicats guide it shows you the exact gear you want. Follow that exactly.

Also to get gold just run some of the really quick and easy dungeons every day. CoF 1, CoE 1, AC 1 and 2, TA up, HotW 1. I get ~15 gold from doing this in about 2-3 hours every day right after reset (so lots of others are doing it to) and you also get tokens to buy gear and weapons with.

Thanks for your comments!
Seeing as this account has barely 3g, i can’t really get other gear nor farm anything on an account that i only borrowed.
I will wait for EOTM and see how much zerg there is there, and then think about commiting to the game if i like what i see.

As a final question, how much time after dinging level 80 does one need to acquire gear sufficient to roam? My own account has a lv 64 thief.
I could spare a week or two (when i bought the game they said there wasnt any grind for gear) but i dont really feel like spending months to acquire gear to MAYBE have fun in WvW.

God i miss daoc.

Doesn’t take too long to get gear you want – in fact you can also gain silver with zero loss in hotjoin pvp (15 per win, 10 per loss? I can’t check at the moment).

By the time you hit 80 you should have enough karma for temple exotics (make sure to do dailies/monthlies for karma and use karma boosters whenever you can) – armour and trinkets.
Fill in the gaps with gold – if necessary run around some world bosses or the champ trains (not excessively, just as a top up – say a handful of world bosses a day using a timer, and maybe a few train loops). Salvage/sell as much as possible on the TP – empty all your mats collection and sell those too.

I’d say you can do it within a couple of weeks – few hours here and there. Maybe even less. Get cheap runes like centaur if really tight on gold.

Madeiner.9246:

Thanks for your feedback.
I agree with all those points, i didn’t expect (nor wanted) to win. But to at least bring someone to 50% before dying. Actually the warrior could not kill me (stealth, decoys, blinks) and the thief managed to kill me on the third engagement (i ran the other two).

Thanks again!

About warriors they are totaly managble in the PU power build And teh tipps about gearing you got so far is wery valid. With 25 stacks + 5 killed guards i have ~ 2550 power, in combat i have a steady uptime of 9-12 might with spikes giving another 350~power so around 2900-3000 power in combat.

Toughness i try keep at 1700, crit chacne with food 50% for me and 70 for phantasms. Latley I been adding a little more vitality so
~18k health in wvwvw, goal is 19k but I lack 5 accended armour (working on it)

PS, Warriors….

http://youtu.be/asExRCMru0c

/Osicat

Even though I find them incredibly boring myself, the easiest ways to get gold are the Queensdale champ train and dungeons. You can get enough to fully gear yourself with rare items in just a couple of hours. And that’s even if you don’t get lucky drops.

PU condition has incredible survivability. Ill chuck a quick vid of mine up – 1v3.
You can see that although I use my heal (only) once, I could have easily killed all 3 enemies without using my heal a single time.

Since you used to play thief, Shatter could be a good build for you. It’s way less forgiving than PU but at least you are doing something instead of watching other people die at your clone spam.

Shatter mes isn’t called “thief with clones” by some people without reason.

@Lavra, would not go so far to say all PU builds watch there clones kill for them. You cant compare condition PU and Power PU gamestyle just cause they share 1 trait. A well played power PU 20-20-30 you need to use vuln from daze shatters to get max potenstal, boonstrip shatters in group fight is fantastic aswell.

/Osicat

You are using the second-lowest tier of armor (blue). You can usually get a full set of Masterwork (green) lv80 armor, weapons and tinkets (next tier) for 30-50s on the Trading Post for all of it. Although recent silk prices has probably pushed the price up.

But if you have the funds, you should go ahead and buy a set of rare (yellow) gear. A full set will set you back some gold depending on stats, but it’s not bad. A few dungeon runs or dailies should net you enough cash to buy rare gear. The stat changes compared to Fine are huge.
If you don’t have enough cash for all of it at once start with weapons, then armor and finally trinkets.

Exotic (orange) gear is better than rare but the difference between gear tiers become smaller and smaller as you progress.
WvW is about mobility and keeping on top of the situation before anything else. If you are outnumbered 2 to 1 by reasonably skilled players you will die or be forced to flee most times. Rare gear is perfectly viable for dealing damage if you don’t trait too tanky and exotic gear will not keep you alive for any longer if you’re already in a bad situation.
It will, however, give you a fair chance against most players since any armor tier above exotic gives only minor benefits to most builds and the majority of players are not running better gear than exotics.