Guild Wars 2

Aside from Zerker and Knights sets, are there any other very commonly used armor sets for mesmer I should work on getting? Condition seems pretty bad ont hem outside confusion in pvp unless I am mistaken, and I don’t really see much for heal build potential so I am having trouble coming up with anything else to aim for.

When it comes to jewelry, having around half of it Cavalier is pretty good. It grants you toughness while still maintaining the higher +crit damage that jewelry slots offer (especially the ascended variants).

Valkyrie armor. HP is a good passive counter to conditions, something mesmers often struggle with.

I do wonder if they will ever bring out valkyrie ascended trinkets/gear…

Some very tanky builds use PVT armor.

Personally I go full zerker (with an Ascended Cavalier necklace) for PvE and a mix of zerker and PVT for WvW.

I find that Mesmer’s usually want a mix of power, precision, vitality, toughness, and critical damage. This means that you usually want to pick and choose different pieces depending on your desired stats.

As opposed to a guardian who will often go full knight or full clerics. Or an elementalist who goes full Knight…

i use allways soldier armor. tinkets and weps swap on build i use in that moment

Select your traits first to build the core of your Mesmer. Then find the right armor and trinkets to fill in the gaps in your stats.

I have a mesmer with rabid, rampager, knights, and two zerk sets. It was my first character and I went through a ton of builds on it. These days, it’s extremely rare for me to use anything but 100% berserk.

BTW, one thing to think about when picking stats for your mesmer is that your illusions share your stats: except for vitality. Vitality does nothing for your illusions.

Zerker set for PvE.
Soldier for WvW (and PvE, if u have some issues in certain encounters).
Rabid for Condition/Confusion (WvW) or Rampager (PvE).

I second Rampager. I actually prefer it over Berzerker because, with the right traits, it allows my clones to be adequate threats instead of mere distractions. Rabid has its uses as well in WvW. While direct damage output suffers, the mile high condition damage paired with toughness, the right traits and all the active defenses makes one very hard to kill mesmer. Just don’t expect to do anything to walls and gates. You’d be better off manning a siege weapon in that instance.

Rampager
Zerker
Some Knights/Valk isn’t bad
Rabid
Carrion

Those are my personal favorites.

(imo Soldiers is trash on a mesmer) If you feel like playing a annoyance go for it but your damage will be negligible. I want to kill things not dance around them.

On a tangent, my choice in runes has affected the number of armor sets I have more than the armor stats.
Runes of Air is a wvw/speed set with zerker/knights.
Ruby orbs on full zerker for max damage.
Centaurs on PVT gear for when all I want to do is run in circles (Svnair fractal) or max power dmg (Sharpening stones for yellow health bars)
Melandru+Food is an anti-condition set I’ve been thinking about making but haven’t actually.
Ascended trinkets are a bit more expensive though so I leave them all zerker.

Resorative mantras has a base heal of 2.6k. If you max out healing power I think it will be only 2.9k. That is not worth it. It would however bump your regeneration from phantasms to 300 health per second instead of the base 130. Runes of Water would give a bonus aoe heal around 1.3k.
So your heal mantra would aoe heal for 4.2k every 13 seconds and your mantra of pain would aoe heal 2.9k every 4 seconds while your regeneration is at 300 per sec. I think the constant mantra buffs might make mesmers the best healers in the game. If one day we return to the realm of torment and take 2k damage a second for just walking around, this build would theoretically be great… No such place exists yet so don’t do this.

Rabid armor+Carrion jewlery is my gear of choice for any condition mesmer build.

I started out with Rampager, switched to Rabid, changed to Knight’s, and now use a Knight-Berserker mix with Cavalier Trinkets.

It really depends on your traits and play style, in my experience.

It seems like most Mesmers get Rampager armor first. Who doesn’t like the idea of Power/Prec/Cond? Higher critical chance for more bleeds from Sharper Images. Higher bleed damage from increased condition damage. Condition damage also helps all the random conditions we apply from Winds of Chaos, clone deaths, and confusion. Add power to boost damage from our illusions and ourselves? This armor is perfect!

Then again, our conditions aren’t that great. In any group situation bleed stacks get maxed out and true condition builds have higher bleed numbers. You’ll be lucky to see one or two procs of confusion in PvE. Currently condition damage doesn’t damage objects.

This realization brings most to Berserker armor with its higher damage.

Neither Rampager or Berserker help with survival though. If that’s not a problem, stick with Berserker. If you need to survive add some Knight, Soldier, or Valkyrie pieces. Be sure to take into account that Critical Damage isn’t as cost effective on armor as it is on trinkets. For this reason I stick with all Knight’s armor and add critical damage via trinkets, weapons, and food. Food alone gives you an easy +10% critical damage boost.

For PvE you’re fine going all Berserker since you can avoid 90% of attacks via active defense.

For PvP there will be times you need to survive a burst attack through health alone. Start with 1500 Toughness and 20k HP and adjust from there.

I mix Berserker, Knight and power/toughness/critdamage(not sure whakittens called), untill i have the right stats. In pve dungeons i always go full berserker though, simply because passive defense doesn’t matter much there.
For WvW i like having atleast 50%crit chance, 90% critdamage, 1800ish power and 2400 toughness. I add food to certain stats when they’re too low and keep vit as low as possible so heals heal me for more %.
It’s also best to put stat gear (so no crit damage%) on the coat, I heard somewhere that the overal stat gain is slightly higher.

How do you get 2400 tougness

I find that changing Weapons can have a drastic effect of your build with minimal investment.

For example, you can go from a full zerker PvE setup to Shattercat Hyrid 2.0 build by swapping out zerker weapons for soldier and changing your pants from zerker to knights.

TreeSerpent.3176:

How do you get 2400 tougness

Woops, I meant armor, not toughness xD. I was at work when i typed this so I dind’t have acces to my stats there :P.
note: the picture is without accuracy stacks (250 prec), and food buffs, but it includes 20 chaos (200 toughness) and 20 duelling (200prec, 20crit dmg)
edit: not sure why it underlined that part :o