Guild Wars 2

Hi, Mesmer Community.

So, I was fortunate enough to pick up some Ascended Weapon Chests in World Versus World and Fractals of the Mists, but am not sure if I can really use them with my Mesmer. Mostly I’m interested in small-scale WvW play, (typically 3-5 person roaming group)

The three I’ve gotten so far are:

Grizzlemouth’s / Rabid (Condition Damage, Precision, Toughness)
Zintl / Shaman (Vitality, Healing Power, Condition Damage) &
Leftpaw’s / Settler (Toughness, Healing Power, Condition Damage)

Rabid is sort of a no-brainer, (Yay Condition Build) but I’m left a little perplexed with the latter two. My Mesmer is the only character I really play outside of structured PvP, so I’m trying to find a way to make these freebie ascended weapons useful somehow.

I’m thinking of building up an Apothecary set to use as a support build for WvW. Rune choice is a little tricky with the upcoming balance patch, but I’m tentatively leaning towards Grove (That Root is sort of appealing). I realize that I’ll have nowhere near the damage potential as a build that isn’t polluting their stat pool with so much heal power, but ideally I’d like to at least apply a little pressure alongside my more DPS-oriented party mates. My main goal though is to survive by being tough / slippery and to offer Regeneration, (Phantasmal Healing) Mantra of Restoration Heals, (Restorative Mantras – Inspiration X) Condition Removal, (Shattered Conditions – Inspiration XI,) Vigor, (Vigorous Revelation – Inspiration III,) and some degree of crowd-control support (Chaos Storm, Temporal Curtain / Into the Void) to the group where I can.

One of my biggest concerns is party make-up though – we’ve got some high mobility warriors and thieves who don’t typically stay very tight on the rest of the group, which I’m concerned will make the majority of my support skills sort of moot. I’m also conscious of the fact that a Guardian is likely to do the job I’m trying to do more effectively with less effort, so perhaps this is all more or less for naught?

Any input is appreciated! Again, main goals are to support and stay alive. Outgoing damage potential is pretty low as a result.

Experimental Build link for reference: http://tinyurl.com/l6lxqrn

Personally i’ve toyed around with support type builds in sPvP using Restorative Mantras and it can work fairly well in a tight group, the heal is fairly chunky and has ok range on it.

The inherent issue with Mantras is the terrible split between Healing and Prec trait lines. as well as the Power line.

But lets face it, 3 charges means you cant use your support aspect as much, so lets ignore Domination all together.

Lets return to prec where you’ll need, if i recall, 20 points to reduce your recharges.

Theres another trait to increase your toughness while Casting (charging) a Mantra, but i cant atm, recall where that is.

Restorative Mantras will require 20 points into inspiration, and will override any focus bonuses for reflection or reduced CD.

We have now basicly maximized our gains from Resorative Mantras.

Regen from Phants is a bonus.

Now here’s where i dont think such a build will really pull together. Shattered Conditions requires Illusions to shatter to be at its most effective. The range is relatively small and the recharge is manageable. However the effectiveness is dictated by Your ability to generate both clones and phantasms to shatter, and keeping them up and around to be useful at the proper moment.

Traveling the mantra line means you will most likely be sacrificing DE and any weapon cool downs on the way, plus tieing up 30 points into Inspiration, to me, does not feel worth the final pay off.

If i were to make a suggestion, you can keep the mantra focus to the build and insted apply 30 into Chaos for Chaotic Interruption (imob on interrupt) for stronger support and breathing room for charging/spamming mantras. Both the Focus and the Staff are fully capable of using this trait via interrupts (Temporal curtain . Vortex and Chaos Storm respectively). This trait can be helpful at removing a Thief from a nearly dead teammate and locking them up just long enough to crack off live saving heals or boons or clustering an unsuspecting group into one spot for a crack on the head.

As for fear of “X does it Better” remember that mantras in themselves offer support in limited quantities, Mantra of Resolve can cleanse your whole group of 4 conditions very quickly and isn’t on too bad of a CD. Mesmers can also bring dazes, small spikes, or group stability (for finishers) as well. this is something a guard cant do on demand.

my last thought would be, play with it a lot and learn to micro manage and read situations. blowing a mantra just to try and get a heal in on the charge can be the saving grace or doom of a fight.

I’ve experimented a bit with mantra heals, and shatter support. Since it looks like you’re going full shatter support I would suggest doing a 20/20/0/30/0 or 0/20/0/30/20 build, but if condi is what you want to do a 0/0/20/30/20 build could still work. I just think you can get a lot more out of the domination tree than you think, namely rending shatter (IV) and crippling dissipation (V). Also if you’re going to shatter a lot you need to put as much into illusions as possible. I liked using mantra of recovery with this build too, since you don’t have to recharge your heals as often. It’s really all up to preference as far as support builds go, but I think the 5 extra points in chaos would be much better spent in illusions. Other then that the build looks pretty interesting.

You may be interested in my glamour support build concept, found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Supporting-Glamour-WvW-Build

As Raunchy mentioned, if you’re sold on shattered conditions, you’re going to want some good clone generation which almost certainly means deceptive evasion. Rabid gear is really only important if you’re going into the dueling line for sharper images. If you’re not, rabid isn’t really necessary.

I’ll throw another build into the mix for more ideas, very similar to yours OP. I posted this a few months back (look at #3 WvW support). Note chaotic revival should be debilitating dissipation. It’s a decent enemy shutdown/reflect/support build based on the concept of spamming blinds. It’s essentially what a glamour build does, but only the dazzling glamours part. Signet of Inspiration is for boon sharing (you’ll have lots of might), or you can go Signet of Midnight instead for more AoE blind.

There’s respectable survivability with high regen ticks and ether signet. In the build I’m taking boon duration runes but you could go with a few other choices such as grove, dwayna, altruism, flock (more blind!), and on and on. There are plenty of pretty good choices for a condition support mesmer.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-The-Utility-Wizard-PvP-WvW/first#post3315608

Thanks for the feedback all! A lot to think about and toy around with.

I’m both elated and disappointed that there isn’t a be-all end-all build for this purpose the same way that there seems to be for Prismatic Understanding or Shatter-type setups. I’ll just hafta tinker with all the pieces and see what works.