Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing my mesmer for like 8-9 months, for she’s my main. I’ve read a lot of things about the armor and she’s marvelous in battle, however there’s that one thing which makes me annoyed… I’m saving up for a new set of runes for her. I badly want her to move faster. When we run through a dungeon path, and nobody’s got swiftness, i’m left behind, because i’m too slow to keep up with them. After all, I die, because I can’t really kill all the monsters, which catch me without any trouble. “Blink” is not always a salvation (and for me those “downed skills” are rather useless, but it’s a different issue).

I’m thinking about changing my runes to Traveler’s ones, but i’ve heard a lot of the Centaur’s. I’m only worried about losing a lot of precision and power from the runes I’ve got now, and I believe 30% to all stats isn’t too much. What do you recommend for a mesmer to increase movement speed?

Personally, I like Traveler’s – you can have the added speed in combat as well without putting your heal on CD. Just keep in mind that (obviously) Traveler’s gives 25%, Centaur 33%, so there is that to consider as well.

I just use Centaur runes. You still get the power stat from the runes it’s just that the bleed stat isn’t very useful with the build I run. Its the unfortunate sacrifice mesmers have to make in order to keep up (Literally and figuratively speaking) until Anet decides to give mesmers better swiftness or better rune options with similar swiftness application. Traveler’s runes don’t appeal to me as I feel they aren’t as good for the builds I use.

Honestly, I’ve done every dungeon (Fractals included) without speed runes and haven’t found it an issue. I do use a focus though, so even alone I have more than 50% swiftness uptime. Between Temporal Curtain, Into The Void, Decoy, Blink and Mass Invisibility, I’ve found that I’ve been able to rush past most mobs (alone or not – sometimes even easier alone) without an issue. I’m not a pro Mesmer or anything like that, so it really isn’t necessary to swap to speed bonus runes for PvE.

WvW would be a separate issue entirely. (I -still- am too stubborn to swap to speed runes but I can completely understand why people do.)

Runes of Air give you swiftness on heal. You can also keep a Focus on hand and switch it in and out as needed for when you start lagging behind the group.

Another trick is to target an enemy behind you and use Staff 2 (Phase Retreat) to teleport farther ahead.

Just use focus…

Fay.2735:

I just use Centaur runes. You still get the power stat from the runes it’s just that the bleed stat isn’t very useful with the build I run. Its the unfortunate sacrifice mesmers have to make in order to keep up (Literally and figuratively speaking) until Anet decides to give mesmers better swiftness or better rune options with similar swiftness application. Traveler’s runes don’t appeal to me as I feel they aren’t as good for the builds I use.

I’ve heard that Prec build is better than Power, that’s why I don’t really like the idea of centaur runes, as I use GS/SS build and it’s working very well in combat. Focus gives swiftness, but I’d rather have the movement speed increased all the time

Eleina.5390:

Fay.2735:

I just use Centaur runes. You still get the power stat from the runes it’s just that the bleed stat isn’t very useful with the build I run. Its the unfortunate sacrifice mesmers have to make in order to keep up (Literally and figuratively speaking) until Anet decides to give mesmers better swiftness or better rune options with similar swiftness application. Traveler’s runes don’t appeal to me as I feel they aren’t as good for the builds I use.

I’ve heard that Prec build is better than Power, that’s why I don’t really like the idea of centaur runes, as I use GS/SS build and it’s working very well in combat. Focus gives swiftness, but I’d rather have the movement speed increased all the time

I’ve heard that Assassin’s gear slightly outperforms Zerker gear (we’re talking something like 2% dps increase iirc) but I’m not really sure if prec runes actually outperform power runes, and if they do, by a substantial amount. If you’re using a GS in dungeons anyway, I wouldn’t worry about a 2% dps difference.

Furthermore, what build are you playing? The utility a traited focus brings to the group is amazing (of course when your warden actually decides not to bug), and I see the swiftness as a bonus. Also, no harm in bringing a focus in your inventory regardless. Granted, investing the minimum 20 points into inspiration for the traited focus would probably make you lean more towards a phantasm build which might not be what you want to play.

Eleina.5390:

I’ve heard that Prec build is better than Power, that’s why I don’t really like the idea of centaur runes, as I use GS/SS build and it’s working very well in combat. Focus gives swiftness, but I’d rather have the movement speed increased all the time

I started out using Power stats in my build. Then while experimenting in sPvP I went heavy on the precision/crit stats for a period of time. Now I’ve gone back to power stats.

Power just gives a more reliable sustained damage increase where Precision is more bursty in feel and I simply prefer the reliable damage as it makes it easier to gauge what damage you will inflict.

But I honestly don’t notice a major difference in practice. At least not enough to make a difference as to how well you do which is heavily influenced by how skilful you are so whatever feels best to you should work fine.

I’m sure the number crunchers will say one or the other is the best but Guild Wars 2 is too dynamic for perfect number efficiency to play a major contributing factor for winning versus skilful execution (In my opinion).

Depends on what you are running.

One reason many mesmers favor precision over power is the trait that gives bleeds on crits, which is essential for phantasm builds.

Another is that you can pair precision with condition damage and toughness, but you can’t do the same with power. This matters especially in PvP.

As for the speed issue, I’ve been using centaur, and considering traveler’s runes for PvE/WvW. Speed matters and getting it without fuss is worth the cost to a lot of people (which is why the runes are so costly.)

Qaelyn.7612:

Depends on what you are running.

One reason many mesmers favor precision over power is the trait that gives bleeds on crits, which is essential for phantasm builds.

Another is that you can pair precision with condition damage and toughness, but you can’t do the same with power. This matters especially in PvP.

As for the speed issue, I’ve been using centaur, and considering traveler’s runes for PvE/WvW. Speed matters and getting it without fuss is worth the cost to a lot of people (which is why the runes are so costly.)

Yes if you are running a build focused on bleeds on crit or where crit is important you will obviously want to go for precision/crit stats but for just normal direct damage builds either one is fine really.

Fay.2735:

Qaelyn.7612:

Depends on what you are running.

One reason many mesmers favor precision over power is the trait that gives bleeds on crits, which is essential for phantasm builds.

Another is that you can pair precision with condition damage and toughness, but you can’t do the same with power. This matters especially in PvP.

As for the speed issue, I’ve been using centaur, and considering traveler’s runes for PvE/WvW. Speed matters and getting it without fuss is worth the cost to a lot of people (which is why the runes are so costly.)

Yes if you are running a build focused on bleeds on crit or where crit is important you will obviously want to go for precision/crit stats but for just normal direct damage builds either one is fine really.

By “precision/crit stats” do you mean power/precision/crit armor or precision/power/cond dmg? I switch two sets of them during dungeons, but can’t decide which one works better.

Most of the time precision gives more damage than critical damage and also allows for more stable damage output. For my shatter build i aim for ~70% critchance (+10% for mind wrack, 100% if i can get fury somehow). This is with assassin armor, precision food and at least 20 in duelling obviously.

Regarding runes i’m currently using Traveler. I used to go with Air runes but it somehow felt wrong to use my heal when i didn’t need it and i like the (small) vit and toughness bonus Traveler runes provide.