Guild Wars 2

So I’m a staff player whom is interested in trying out greatsword, with my current staff condition gear I rarely even do more then 1k damage with my auto attack with a greatsword.

I’m struggling to find guides anywhere as to what gear setup, traits and so forth.
Are greatsword style supposed to be played with Berserker gear for power/prec crit damage or?

I see tons of posts in various threads on this forum going on about specific playstyles doing up to 4k damage with auto attacks yet noone ever explaints what gear setup etc they use.

Anyone that can help me with this?

its pretty straight forward.. put everything into damage.

full exotic berserker armor and jewels, 6 rune of divinity or scholar.

traits go 30/20/0/0/5 add whatever else you want. take 15% illusion damage, GS mastery and 20% mind wrack, clone on dodge, phantasmal fury.

use blink, decoy, time wrap
you’re looking at 3.3k-3.6k power, over 50% crit chance with ~100% crit damage.

autoattacks at max range hit for over 4k vs upscaled opponents, usually its closer to 2-3k, iberserker hits for 3-7k depending on enemy toughness, mind wracks crit for 2-3k

Thank you very much. I shall try what you’ve said.

wads.5730:

traits go 30/20/0/0/5 add whatever else you want. take 15% illusion damage, GS mastery and 20% mind wrack, clone on dodge, phantasmal fury.

Thats only 55 trait points spent? I don’t recommend this build.

I’m using 10/25/0/25/10. Works VERY well for survivability and damage burst.

i dont recommend only spending 55 trait points either. thats why i said you should put the rest in whatever you like. as you have all the important major traits already.

I’ve been wondering if getting the GS trait was worth it. Until now whenever I would roll GS sword/pistol was 10/20/0/20/20 build. This ends up with a lot of weapon swapping to get out the right phantasms and when going in and out of range.

Course now I need to see about how to handle WvW.

I’m using 20/0/10/20/20 for the GS trait and the extra bounce from elasticity. I have 20 in the vit line for glamours (with option for focus) and 10 in the toughness line for some survivability. This is mostly a WvW build. I could see variations moving the toughness and vit points around depending upon your comfort lvl. I like to have 20k+ health and 1000+ toughness.

If you go any kind of shatter build (which most people who go GS do), you should really consider 30 points into illusions. Each point in illusions lowers the cooldown on all the shatters, and the XI trait creates a shatter on yourself, in addition to clones/phantasms (meaning you don’t NEED clones/phantasms to get an effect out of shatter, and it can save your life in PvP to pop an F3 to interrupt even if no clones are up).

Feel free to check out my signature for the build I run. You’ll need to swap your gear to full Berserker’s (power/precision/crit dmg) though to be effective.

@Xyrm

You aren’t using the “vigor on shatter” trait in the vitality line — maybe your illusions aren’t near you when you shatter? I could see that with a greatsword so it would make sense with yoru build.

The only problem I have is your build is very glassy with no +vit/toughness anywhere.

Yeah I can’t even edit my post right now — I want to because I realized afterwards you were using PvP gear where the Berserk’s jewel has some +vit.

I find it frustrating that I cannot duplicate the PvP jewel stats easily with PvE itemization. (Example: if you go full zerks on PvE gear you’ll have zero +vit).

juno.1840:

@Xyrm

You aren’t using the “vigor on shatter” trait in the vitality line — maybe your illusions aren’t near you when you shatter? I could see that with a greatsword so it would make sense with yoru build.

The only problem I have is your build is very glassy with no +vit/toughness anywhere.

You don’t need vit or toughness. Vit is almost ENTIRELY useless, because it has only a minor impact to your effective HP (not actual HP, but effective, as in how you fair in extended fights when factoring in mitigation and healing). Toughness isn’t bad when considered on it’s own, but you sacrifice damage that you don’t have to as a mesmer.

25% Immunity from sword 2 alone, Vigor when I crit (Dueling 5 passive — which procs a LOT, so it’s basically always up), Distortion shatter (F4 default). All these lead to extremely high immunity uptime, and when that’s not enough I duck out of melee and go to town with my GS until I have more immunity. On top of that, I run with Decoy most of the time, null field all the time, and blink. I have so many tools to survive it’s almost overpowered. Offhand sword gives a block (which works against almost every boss ability AND smacks them for high damage at almost any range). A heal that hits for about half my HP with a 20 second cooldown… probably one of the best heals in the entire game. I have an easier time in melee range than any “tanky” guardian or warrior I’ve played with, and the list of abilities I just gave you should tell you why.

Juno, at your second reply (since I can’t paste in this box either… wtf?)…

I run FULL PvE Berserker’s gear in dungeons and WvW (I even transmuted my 1H mystic swords into a berserker swords stats, because they had prec/vit/condition dmg instead of power/prec/crit dmg). PvP berserkers gear doesn’t even factor into the discussion here. PvP gear has a higher stat allocation than PvE gear.

It’s great to be a mesmer

Xyrm.5602:

(I even transmuted my 1H mystic swords into a berserker swords stats, because they had prec/vit/condition dmg instead of power/prec/crit dmg)

How’d u do that? I thought the transmutation stones were appearance only. I’m working towards my first mystic wep now and thought I was locked into the stats…

PvP gear has a higher stat allocation than PvE gear.

Different.

I think you’d have a hard time convincing anyone that the sPvP Vitality allocation on the Berserker jewel makes up for the 40% crit damage that the PvE set has.

I’m using 20-20-0-0-30 to great success. Zerker gear with power/Vit/toughness(or cond) for jewelry. GS main with Sword/pistol for melee/ranged harassment. I also use this in spvp to great effect. You’re still killable, but you’ll take down your fair share of enemies before you succumb. The trait that allows you to shatter yourself is crucial for dps/tagging and functions swimmingly for survival.

juno.1840:

How’d u do that? I thought the transmutation stones were appearance only. I’m working towards my first mystic wep now and thought I was locked into the stats…

When you use transmutation stone, you can choose appearance(and name), stats, and sigil(rune) of outcome. So you can have mystic sword with berserker stats. :]

Xyrm.5602:

You don’t need vit or toughness. Vit is almost ENTIRELY useless, because it has only a minor impact to your effective HP (not actual HP, but effective, as in how you fair in extended fights when factoring in mitigation and healing).

Problem with EHP and toughness is that condition damage bypasses toughness. So Vit isn’t entirely useless.

Dracones.9105:

Xyrm.5602:

You don’t need vit or toughness. Vit is almost ENTIRELY useless, because it has only a minor impact to your effective HP (not actual HP, but effective, as in how you fair in extended fights when factoring in mitigation and healing).

Problem with EHP and toughness is that condition damage bypasses toughness. So Vit isn’t entirely useless.

Pretty much every class, including ours, has so many good options for condition removal that even so, Vit is pretty much entirely useless. And again, Vit only has a value for condition damage for SHORT fights… the longer a fight lasts, the less helpful that extra few thousand HP is. In fact, as soon as you take the 4-5k damage required to remove the extra HP, Vit is 100% useless, and you are sacrificing damage for the WHOLE fight for it.

Assuming you are taking sustained damage for the whole fight. The concept of ablative buffer HP is to withstand transient bursts so you can disengage. It’s always going to be weaker than mitigation for any sustained scenario.

Keeping your armor rating at 1/10th your hitpoints is a pretty good rule of thumb, whether you do it with toughness trait or toughness in gear.

Toughness does matter in making you less squishy when you cant dodge/blink/decoy

i see no one using my build. i use 30 in domination. (I, VIII, X)
10 in dueling(I)
10 in chaos (II)
20 in inspiration(II, VII)
(feedback, blink, mantra of resolve)
gsword/scepter/pistol. i’m very effective in wvw and almost as mobile as a thief. it’s very hard to approach this build in a small unit setting. (i’m using Magic Find gear right now and my damage is still pretty decent)
have problems, like everyone else, almost exclusively with thief.
note: this build is very hard for a staff mesmer to deal with. (chaos storm is very avoidable. especially with MoR.) this build also shines in sPvP, going on a rampage 2x per match. scepter is very VERY underrated. and i’ve gotten a handful of mesmer players to switch to either my weapon set up or my weapon setup AND my trait distribution.

i ran a mantra GS build in spvp just for kicks and i gotta tell u it’s really cool. +12% damage from 3 mantras (heal, damage and daze) makes for an amazing sniper in WvW., giving you the maximum dps from 1200.

@Lights
can you tell me a little about the scepter? do you use it for its #3? because 1 & 2 for generating clones seem pointless to me as you can easily generate 3 clones by rolling or with utility skills in less than 3 seconds. ive been looking for a viable alternative to sword/pistol, and i just cant find it (with the exception of focus for wvw).

i use it for number 3 and for it’s effectiveness in 1v1 combat. don’t underestimate the block skill dude.

but sword’s #2 is infinitely better, as youre not just distorted but youre also doing massive dps.

@nerva,
I am thinking about running something similar to that but I can not decide between zerker and rampager gear. The increased crit chance causes a lot more bleeds especially when your illusions are hitting 3 times which would make rampager’s increase to condition damage very valuable but does it make up for the loss of power?

Does anyone know of a discussion between the pros and cons of Berserker Vs Rampager because I am having a lot of trouble deciding.

Rampager is overrated by a significant amount by the public community.

You can do some casual damage tests in the sPvP lobby. Note that the sPvP has slightly different stats than the PvE gear.

Lightsbane.9012:

i see no one using my build. i use 30 in domination. (I, VIII, X)
10 in dueling(I)
10 in chaos (II)
20 in inspiration(II, VII)
(feedback, blink, mantra of resolve)
gsword/scepter/pistol. i’m very effective in wvw and almost as mobile as a thief. it’s very hard to approach this build in a small unit setting. (i’m using Magic Find gear right now and my damage is still pretty decent)

Why not drop the 10 from chaos and go 20 Dueling(IV, IX)?

nerva.7940:

but sword’s #2 is infinitely better, as youre not just distorted but youre also doing massive dps.

with my mantra set up i can get away from it, i’ve had fights with sword mesmers and always come out on top. using blink=no flurry for you. MoR= no flurry for you. meanwhile you have two phantasms hitting you at once while i’m well out of range of your sword. you don’t have to agree with my build, the fact is it works.

Dracones.9105:

Lightsbane.9012:

i see no one using my build. i use 30 in domination. (I, VIII, X)
10 in dueling(I)
10 in chaos (II)
20 in inspiration(II, VII)
(feedback, blink, mantra of resolve)
gsword/scepter/pistol. i’m very effective in wvw and almost as mobile as a thief. it’s very hard to approach this build in a small unit setting. (i’m using Magic Find gear right now and my damage is still pretty decent)

Why not drop the 10 from chaos and go 20 Dueling(IV, IX)?

because i don’t use sword? lol

relax, im trying to have a discussion. try to address the following points concisely:

scepter:

- #1 does incredibly subpar dps, and clone generation is not needed as you can do it by dodge rolling or with utilities, and much faster too
- #2 only blocks one attack. sword’s #2 allows you to evade an entire burst sequence from multiple players
- #3: a good ability, but its channel is painfully slow. 2 dodge rolls can actually nullify the entire ability, and 1 dodge rolle can cut the confusion stack by 2-3.

sword: good dps, good control with cripple and immobilize, and superior survivability.

what does the scepter offer that the sword does not? not counting clone generation, as ive already covered that.

nerva.7940:

relax, im trying to have a discussion. try to address the following points concisely:

scepter:

- #1 does incredibly subpar dps, and clone generation is not needed as you can do it by dodge rolling or with utilities, and much faster too
- #2 only blocks one attack. sword’s #2 allows you to evade an entire burst sequence from multiple players
- #3: a good ability, but its channel is painfully slow. 2 dodge rolls can actually nullify the entire ability, and 1 dodge rolle can cut the confusion stack by 2-3.

sword: good dps, good control with cripple and immobilize, and superior survivability.

what does the scepter offer that the sword does not? not counting clone generation, as ive already covered that.

how did you interpret anything i’ve said to be no ‘relaxed’? you realize that just because a set up is popular that not everyone sees it as so? think of how many other classes you can effectively fight with a sword. they’d sure as heck better be putting out less melee dps than you or you’re fried. people seem to fail to realize that you can dodge flurry. i’ve tested my set up in both spvp and wvw i’m sorry that my tastes aren’t yours. if you can’t kill a target with a scepter you aren’t doing something right. i mean if you really think fighting anything with decent melee abilities as a light armor class up close is smart then…i’d love to see it in action. the fact is i’ve had enemies use sword/pistol on me and have always killed them. not sure what else you need to believe me.
i also never said the sword lacked anything, lol. it DOES have good damage, perhaps i just idk, don’t prefer it? my setup’s gotten me through 80 levels so i think i’m doing just fine.

well youre definitely going on a defensive. im simply trying to understand why anyone would use scepter over sword, taking efficiency, survivability and utility into consideration. im not trying to discredit your build. im asking “why would you choose the scepter over the sword”, and you keep dodging the question. i actually want to like the scepter.

and i told you why i liked it. it keeps me out of the thick of the fight while still contributing to it. i just don’t think fighting something toe to toe is that ..survivable for mesmer. would you use your sword against a warrior? or a ranger? how about a guardian?(i wouldn’t)or a thief? if not, i guess it’s for other mage classes.
scepter keeps melee classes off of you(except thief) and if it doesn’t keep them off of you, you block their attacks enough to get away. the channeling time on is about ~1 sec longer than the gsword beam. since you can move around while casting it, is it really that much of a detriment?

@Lightsbane – Sword is simply better than Scepter. Consider this. Two Mesmers: One using Scepter with a #1 that can potentially remove your own Phantasms due to a limited of 3 illusions (You can’t use #1 if you have 3 phantasms up without lowering your damage) a block that only blocks a single attack, and a #3 that takes too long to channel 5 stacks of confusion, and the second Mesmer using Sword who has a very hard hitting #1 which removes a boon on the final strike (which applies to clones using sword #1) a #2 that negates ALL damage for the duration (allowing the Mesmer to completely negate 100% of all damage done to them even if 10 players or more attack at once) while still doing a ton of damage. Blurred Frenzy is on a 10 second cd untraited. What is the cd for Blink again?… That’s invulnerability for a short duration + a lot of damage every 10 seconds.

Sword > Scepter in every way. This is just the facts. Yes, Scepter is viable, and your build can work for you, but Sword is just all around superior in damage, control (Scepter doesn’t exactly have a cripple and an immobilize like sword does) and survivability.

Lightsbane.9012:

and i told you why i liked it. it keeps me out of the thick of the fight while still contributing to it. i just don’t think fighting something toe to toe is that ..survivable for mesmer. would you use your sword against a warrior? or a ranger? how about a guardian?(i wouldn’t)or a thief? if not, i guess it’s for other mage classes.
scepter keeps melee classes off of you(except thief) and if it doesn’t keep them off of you, you block their attacks enough to get away. the channeling time on is about ~1 sec longer than the gsword beam. since you can move around while casting it, is it really that much of a detriment?

it sounds like you think using sword means you are there in peoples faces spamming autoattacks.

you really only fight toe to toe with sword when you have blurred frenzy up. you go in to autoattack when you have a stun/daze going on the target, otherwise you should be kiting until #2 is up again.

Lightsbane.9012:

because i don’t use sword? lol

Eh. I think I need more caffeine.

so back on topic. here’s my GS build, ive been very successful with it in spvp, but ive yet to do tpvp and make cool vids >.<

-30/30/0/0/10
-GS/sword or scepter/torch
-mantra of healing, damage and daze; mass invisibility for elite
in illusion i do +3% damage per active illusion. and Empowering mantras in dueling. so thats +21% additional damage with 3 illusions and 3 mantras up.

this build has lots of survivability thanks to torch and mass invisibility, which are on reasonably low CD’s. mantra of distraction is absolutely amazing. you can basically stunlock a person with GS #5 and daze, followed by mantra of pain for burst. hands down, the best build i could come up with for long distance single target damage.

for WvW, id replace torch with focus of course. im trying to decide how i feel about scepter vs. sword.

nerva. flurry lasts two seconds, hundred blades last much more than that. a warrior can charge you, a thief can charge you, a ranger can charge you, a guardian can charge you. you have 2 seconds or less to get 1200 away from your target. (also most classes that can charge have some way of crippling or otherwise.) if you call that survivable….idk what to tell you.

Lightsbane.9012:

nerva. flurry lasts two seconds, hundred blades last much more than that. a warrior can charge you, a thief can charge you, a ranger can charge you, a guardian can charge you. you have 2 seconds or less to get 1200 away from your target. (also most classes that can charge have some way of crippling or otherwise.) if you call that survivable….idk what to tell you.

normally when you get charged by anyone, they’ll be trying to burst you down with a quickness combo. in which case in your example, 100b would get countered by flurry completely. plus thats why you have blink, a second way to get out of a charge/quickness combo.

As a Greatsword mesmer, you are one of the few play styles that can get away with playing a glass canon spec with the berserker’s (or explorer’s) gear sets.

As for builds, the only ways we really produce damage is with phantasm or shatter. Phantasms offer very high DPS that can be dispelled(and takes 30’ish) seconds to really get going(typicall for dungeon farming). Shatter offer bursts of damage that can happen about every 10 seconds(more typical of WvW or some DE’s). Either playstyle can work well and there are a number of ways to build both of them in this thread.

i dont shatter my illusions. i use the trait that gives +3% damage per active illusion. Runes of the Scholar and Sigil of Force for another +15% damage, and +12% damage for 3 charged mantras. this is a lot of reliable damage from 1200.

i use mantra of pain. it’s spammable, so with 3 charges, autoattack, #2 and iberserker, you can easily dish out 10-15k damage against high toughness builds in 3-4 seconds. throw in a daze for good measure to interrupt any healing.

@Nerva

I just switched my build to 20/30/0/0/20 with +4% for mantras, +3% per illusion, with valkyrie armor and knights jewelry. My GS is a Mystical Claymore (zerk stats).

I have to say the build is amazing with lots of crits, vigor on crits, high dmg.

I’m very pleased with that trait/gear configuration with the GS. I’ve heard a lot of hate towards mantras, but +16% dmg from them is amazing. Also I find the condition mantra excellent. I’m also using the daze mantra with good results.

Im curious what you guys running Berserker gear are doing. Just sPvP and WvW?

Ive been running EXPs and farming in Orr and I think the toughness makes a huge diffference. I dont think Id want to go without it.

Is it viable?

How valuable toughness is depends on how much you get hit. In WvW, I don’t see a reason to trade damage for armor or health.

It really depends on what you’re doing. In explorable mode dungeons, having a very good amount of survivability is highly recommended. In sPVP, youre going to want to go for extremes, either extreme burstiness, extreme condition build with a scepter (DON’T do this in sPVP, confusion is horrible there), or extreme bunker build (possibly my favorite) with staff/sword+focus and idefender, etc.

As far as WvW goes, it also depends on what you want to do. A confusion build is actually viable in wvw, due to the much higher scaling on confusion, you can do 3k damage a tick with 10 stacks in a condition gear setup. If you are doing a lot of running with a (big) pack, berserkers is most likely your best choice. If you want to do small skirmishes, with a 5 man kill team or something like that, its really up to you. Full tanky gear will let you take a ton of punishment, and the projectile reflects from focus traiting is invaluable when taking supply camps, as well as messing with people on walls. Full berserkers is better if youve already got a few big guardians to go in for you, and you can just stand back and nuke things down.

Take home message is: get multiple sets of gear. Expensive, but worth it. Depending on what you’re doing, and how you want to play, you’ll need/want different setups.

Scepter doe beat sword in one area though, and it matters, range.

In wvwvw, the range on the scepter lets you put out damage when you can’t switch back to GS yet, and 3 works, though the delay before it starts firing does stink

Archaeneoso.8461:

Scepter doe beat sword in one area though, and it matters, range.

In wvwvw, the range on the scepter lets you put out damage when you can’t switch back to GS yet, and 3 works, though the delay before it starts firing does stink

While that’s technically true, it doesn’t matter at all, especially not in WvW. If you are doing some sort of wall defense, then you shouldnt have switched to sword in the first place, unless you really needed your focus offhand for whatever reason. Additionally, the 3 seconds of no damage before you can switch back to the gs are FAR outweighed by the massive damage advantage of the sword, and the massive utility advantage of the sword. If you are doing a power/precision setup, there is absolutely no reason not to pick sword over scepter.

juno.1840:

@Nerva

I just switched my build to 20/30/0/0/20 with +4% for mantras, +3% per illusion, with valkyrie armor and knights jewelry. My GS is a Mystical Claymore (zerk stats).

I have to say the build is amazing with lots of crits, vigor on crits, high dmg.

I’m very pleased with that trait/gear configuration with the GS. I’ve heard a lot of hate towards mantras, but +16% dmg from them is amazing. Also I find the condition mantra excellent. I’m also using the daze mantra with good results.

Nice glad ure enjoying it. I’ll start putting some footage together soon for a vid. I’m wrecking in spvp. The damage is so high from such a long distance and escaping is possible most of the time with blink and 2 invisi, so u can always reposition and nuke. Given how reliable the DPS application and cc are, I think this build would be viable for extreme single target damage in tpvp.

@lights bane
I took your advice with the scepter and started using to more defensively while sometimes pre-empting my escape. It works great. 1 crits for over 1k and #3 has a very nice range. Even untraited confusion is very useful. Torch synergizes wonderfully by giving a free escape. The iMage does suck, giving only 1 stack of confusion, but the prestige is worth it. Offhand sword might be a great defensive tool as well.