Guild Wars 2

Retaliation Tank Mesmer, to be exact.

Yes, that’s a thing.

TL;DR: WvW Retaliation Tank Mesmer Build And Gear

Detailed version:

Retaliation Tank Mesmer is an attrition based Mesmer with as much utility as a swiss army knife. It’s build around denial and punishment, core mechanics associated with the Mesmer. Plus a pinch of my personal taste: tanky attrition based gameplay instead of twitch burst crits.

Blocks & invuls (sword offhand, scepter mainhand, F4 shatter), punishes careless big hitters
Retaliation (blocks, F2 shatter), punishes careless fast-hitters (guardian whirl & fields, for example)
Confusion (scepter, F2 shatter), punishes careless skill use
Torment (scepter block, auto attack & clones), punishes superfluous movement
Recflects (focus 4&5), punishes careless use of projectiles
Interrupts (offhand sword 4, focus 4 pull, F3 shatter), punishes obviously telegraphed attacks and skills
Spike Damage (F1 shatter, sword 2, coordinated with phantasm attacks), punishes underestimation of my burst capabilities

My tankiness allows me to endure thief openers (the bane of a mesmer’s existence) or even use burst combos AGAINST an enemy, by stacking some confusion on him and dealing damage via retaliation. It’s honestly a horrible build to fight against, you have to watch so. much. stuff. to NOT kill yourself slowly* but surely.
On the other hand, I’m still a cloth armoured class instead of a warrior, so all these zerker burst setups may not one-hit me, but hurt a lot. So there’s counterplay through pure force. Of course, you can intelligently use cleanses, converts or transfers, wait out my boons, attack through the gaps between my blocks and play on my weakness: my low DPS. Anyway, it won’t be a quick fight.

I’ve been playing that build since release (almost three years now), refining and perfecting it, and it’s ten times more fun (yeah, yeah, I know, at least for me) than twitch glass burst or stuff like PU, whose gameplay consists of “stack conditions, hide in stealth, repeat”. And all you need to do to conserve it is to leave retaliation in the trait lines. I need reta on F2 and blocks for a meaningful uptime. The condition changes already weaken my build, but retaliation is essential. I need a reliable source of constant DPS.

WvW Retaliation Tank Mesmer Build And Gear

Please don’t turn my tank mesmer into yet another shatter mesmer.
Have a heart for non-twitch players.

• I could up my DPS and lessen my tankiness if I had more counter-play to thieves. Right now, thieves suffer next to no consequences if they screw up an opener. I anticipate their attack and block it, dodge it, turn myself invulnerable or whatever, and it does nothing to them. There is no cooldown they’ve blown, no initiative lost, they don’t get revealed if their attack connects, only if it does damage. They just can spam 111 until the backstab hits, wich especially in WvW all but one-hits my full zerk mesmer (wich I play whenever I’m too lazy to switch all my gear and build). Worst case, their stealth runs out and they have to restealth – not the biggest problem for a thief. It’s highly unlikely that I get the burst down instantly and I’m dead with the next opener.
  Same goes for perplex pistol condition thieves.
  If there were more reliable counterplay than pure tankiness, I could ease up on armor and health and slot some more condition or crit. Although I would still need to be able to take hits and burst combos to get my retaliation to do its thing.

I hate to rain on your parade here, but retal tank mesmer hasn’t been viable for a very long time. It’s objectively worse than almost any other build you could do. Instead of building for retal, you could build for condition damage in dire or rabid, be just as tanky, and do far more damage.

I’m…a little bit of an expert on the mesmer retal tank. Anet massacred my build a year and a half ago, and despite all of my efforts to make it work…it’s just not good.

Will you be able to kill people on this build? Sure, I guess. You have no real offense though, and anyone that wants to can just walk away, or even just in circles and heal up without you being able to do anything about it. Anyone you kill playing this build simply isn’t a good player.

Another retal mesmer? You’re kittenting me. I’m the only one of my kind.

Edit: For me, it’s not about killing the enemy, it’s about winning the fight. Having them run away is as good for me as a stomp, especially if they do it four times in a row and still don’t win. Best case scenario, they get infuriated and get actually stomped by me.
Major factor for me: I’m no thief food but the other way around.

Edit2: If Robert simply kills me, full dire is probably what I’m going to do. Although I enjoy PVT/Cleric’s ten times more. It’s much more skill based than LULZ CONDITIONS ‘N’ STEALTH.

Phoenix.7928:

Another retal mesmer? You’re kittenting me. I’m the only one of my kind.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Immortal-Mesmer-Build/page/11#post3398077

Bwuh. No wonder that didn’t work out. Your only source of retaliation is Confusing Cry. That’s not enough uptime. And heaven forbid you eat a single enemy cleanse. You got no blocks whatsoever, what do you do against hard hitters? No critical infusion for vigor. You can’t dodge EVERYTHING.

You got no blocks whatsoever. They are the hardest hitters you got and migate a lot of damage if you block the right enemy skills. Especially if traited for retaliation you want to keep those skills on cooldown 24/7.

Your staff is too chaotic to really be of much use, scepter allows you to stack confusion on demand, staff doesn’t. Staff is defensive, but that’s really all it does for you. If you would’ve at least taken illusionary elasticity to get a second bouce out of your weapon.

You got FULL Soldier’s, but for long fights you want some cleric’s, too, that perma regen really adds up and ether feast with some healing power and three clones heals 70% of your health even as a full tank.

You also need different food. Convertion into crit chance for vigor procs are really necessary, you’re going to dodge A LOT especially if you drag out fights. The lemon grass, especially in combination with melandru, is awesome though.

How do you set up burst combos? Staff is useless for that, all you got is sword/focus. The only combination I see is iWarden→root→sword2. That does some damage, but is the only combo available and if you use your sword defensively, you got nothing left.

It seemed like you tried to create a condition/tank hybrid, but I don’t really see how that should work out. You do as little damage as I do (minus setups, I got more of these than you), got very little retaliation and with the total lack of blocks and dodges there isn’t much counter-play left for you either, except reflects and chaos armor.

The post is two years old. Man, you should’ve kept on it. I started out kinda like that, too, but a reta mesmer can do a lot better than that.

Phoenix.7928:

Bwuh. No wonder that didn’t work out.

Didn’t work out? Don’t make me laugh. My build was one of the most popular builds in the game for mesmer until anet deleted it.

Phoenix.7928:

Your only source of retaliation is Confusing Cry. That’s not enough uptime. And heaven forbid you eat a single enemy cleanse. You got no blocks whatsoever, what do you do against hard hitters? No critical infusion for vigor. You can’t dodge EVERYTHING.

If you actually bothered to read the guide…

I had confusing cry and then leap combo finishers on my light field. I had close to 200% uptime on retaliation. It was more or less impossible to strip my retaliation. Hard hitters don’t hit very hard when you have a pDefender, 25k hp, and 3000 armor. Additionally, you can use blurred frenzy for damage mitigation.

Phoenix.7928:

You got no blocks whatsoever. They are the hardest hitters you got and migate a lot of damage if you block the right enemy skills. Especially if traited for retaliation you want to keep those skills on cooldown 24/7.

I don’t think you understand how a retaliation tank works at all. You should watch some of my videos and see how I play. I was able to instakill a lot of people purely through retaliation. Additionally, confusion still hit very hard back then, so that did some serious dps when I burst.

Phoenix.7928:

Your staff is too chaotic to really be of much use,

The staff is the best kiting weapon in the game, and has a leap finisher to provide another stack of retaliation

Phoenix.7928:

scepter allows you to stack confusion on demand, staff doesn’t.

Or, bear with me here, you could use the class mechanic!!111 Shatters apply confusion, and that’s all you need for a burst.

Phoenix.7928:

Staff is defensive, but that’s really all it does for you. If you would’ve at least taken illusionary elasticity to get a second bouce out of your weapon.

Staff has mobility, blinds, confusion, cripple, poison, dazes, and more retaliation from chaos storm. I think it has plenty.

Phoenix.7928:

You got FULL Soldier’s, but for long fights you want some cleric’s, too, that perma regen really adds up and ether feast with some healing power and three clones heals 70% of your health even as a full tank.

There’s no need for it. You have a pDefender soaking damage for you, and anyone that attacks you kills themselves. Additionally, retaliation scales off of power, so the more power you have, the more it hurts. It doesn’t scale well anymore, because they nerfed it into the ground (which is why your build won’t work).

Phoenix.7928:

You also need different food. Convertion into crit chance for vigor procs are really necessary, you’re going to dodge A LOT especially if you drag out fights. The lemon grass, especially in combination with melandru, is awesome though.

I don’t think you understand. I had plenty of dodges and defense, vigor on crit is not necessary. What melandru + lemongrass do is allow me to ignore conditions completely. Immobilize becomes a slight pause, and even longer nasty things like poison drop off very quickly.

Phoenix.7928:

How do you set up burst combos? Staff is useless for that, all you got is sword/focus. The only combination I see is iWarden->root->sword2. That does some damage, but is the only combo available and if you use your sword defensively, you got nothing left.

You’re a retal tank. You kill people by letting them attack you. Your build has 1800 power and 700 condition damage. Your ‘burst combos’ aren’t going to do anything but tickle even the squishiest thief. My burst combo is to stack retal then burst confusion as they engage.

Phoenix.7928:

The post is two years old. Man, you should’ve kept on it. I started out kinda like that, too, but a reta mesmer can do a lot better than that.

I’m not sure what part of ‘Anet deleted my build’ you’re not understanding. They nerfed confusion into the ground, they nerfed retaliation into the ground, and they effectively deleted the one trait that made it all come together. I stopped playing it because it doesn’t exist anymore. It did, it was awesome, and then it was gone. Your build…isn’t going to work against anyone that has a head on their shoulders.

As I recall, the truly potent combo in Pyro’s build was that since Defender takes damage for you it not only made you tanky but double or even triple procced Retal. Once when they hit you, again when your defender takes a portion of the damage, and again if the attack included the Defender. A Warrior who tried you hundred blades you both more or less insta-killed himself

But then they changed the Phantasm Retal trait to not constantly refresh

I think there is plenty of room for tanky Mesmer builds in the changes. In the end, builds such as this suffered from the issue that an enemy could simply ignore you. I think builds with mental defense and ineptitude are much more in the spirit of the Mesmer.

Yes that was the classic Retaliation tank build that Pyro (Fay) created, and it was both very popular and revolutionary at the time.

I had a blast with it too for a while. It’s weird that Anet keeps nerfing builds that almost entirely rely on your opponent playing stupidly, although in this case perhaps it was a bit unfair. ;-)

As for OPs build, you will be able to build far more tanky builds with the upcoming patch. Sure Retaliation will no longer be something we’ll have a lot of, but in return you can now be truly a semi-competent Bunker/Tank with lots of group utility, and still maintain better damage output then you had before. (And you can choose between Condies or Power to deliver it.)

Insp+Chaos and either Illusions for MtD, or Dom for the GS Might stacking & Phantasm damage. (Or throw in Interrupts if you want.)

With the Insp GM to create a pDefender on block/evade, shatters that heal you and cleanse a condition, Mender Purity to AE cleanse and RM to heal when charging a Mantra…pretty redunkulous! Then add in Chaos for silly amounts of Protection, and the BD GM to gain Stability (not much but helps quite a bit) and boons-on-shatter. (And lots of Might from GS GM.)

Or go with Boon-storm interrupts. Get the amazing new CI in Chaos, combine it with Power Block GM in Dom as well as the hugely buffed FI, and then share it out each time you summon a Phantasm via the Inspiration GM.

You’ll be near unkillable in 2v1 or worse odds, and provide pretty stupid amounts of group utility. (Or take Blurred Inscriptions in Dom, and share a 1s Distortion with your team-mates each time you summon a Phantasm or use a Signet yourself!)

The possibilities for (probably) viable tanky Mesmer builds have gone through the roof. (Although in organized group play, I’m guessing only the heavy-support one will be truly viable. The others are a bit more “selfish” and will lack the DPS output of a more damage-oriented build.)

Fay.2357:

Didn’t work out? Don’t make me laugh. My build was one of the most popular builds in the game for mesmer until anet deleted it.

Heh, that’s probably the reason why I think that it doesn’t work out.
I did not go over every single reply, I probably got the gist that it was teh kitten and that I have no clue about what I’m talking about. So I actually am going to watch a video or two, I’m always interested in unconventional combos.
Anyway, sorry to hear that your build is gone. I’d rather like to avoid the same fate.

Kinda agree with the devs when they said they don’t really want too much retaliation on mesmers as they don’t think getting hit is something mesmers should want to do. I mean even thematically mesmers should be deceiving foes into hitting clones.

There are going to be some absolutely fantastic tanky and supportive builds possible now with inspiration. You can then choose to do moderate damage with phantasms or better yet make use of dire/rabid and choose ones of many ways to apply condition pressure.

Well if your main worry is lack of counter-play to Thief openers we have been thrown a bone somewhat with the new Ineptitude trait. You will be able to use your scepter/sword block on an incoming backstab and be able to land the counter-attack without having to eat the next backstab. It’s even better if you have Aegis, because the Thief will miss 2 Backstab attempts without you having to do anything. Shadow’s Embrace could in theory cleanse the blind applied and there’s an ICD for the blind on block so this won’t always work of course.

Also, now that Illusionary Persona is baseline, Blinding Dissipation will enable you to deliver a PBAoE blind on demand. Combining all the stuff I mentioned should provide some decent backstab protection.

Simonoly.4352:

Combining all the stuff I mentioned should provide some decent backstab protection.

True, and I already can protect myself against backstabs. I can pop a stealth or two, block, dodge, and so on. Thing is, in the end I’ already wasting cooldowns and the fight hasn’t even started. All the while Captain McStabby sits on a full pool of cooldowns, a spammable opener and endlessly regenerating initiative.

Phoenix.7928:

All the while Captain McStabby sits on a full pool of cooldowns, a spammable opener and endlessly regenerating initiative.

“Captain McStabby” I like it and I’m totally with you on this one. The amount of times I’ve avoided 1-3 backstab attempts only to have to succumb to another has infuriated me on many an occasion. It often feels a little like the Eviscerate spam before the adrenaline change. I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for the fact that dagger Thieves have incredible cleave to follow up a backstab. Still can’t quite believe they allowed dagger auto-attack to hit an additional target, it’s pretty crazy – fun if you’re the Thief though

I doubt much will ever change to make it more…….rewarding for Mesmers, but luckily we are at least being thrown a bone of sorts. More tools to deal with the nonsense if you will.

That’s probably all we can expect. Sad thing, really.