Guild Wars 2

I am loving mesmer but i am having a hard time finding a suitable build that allows for PvE AND WvW, it may not exsist but this is what i am hoping for. I am still learning the class and don’t understand what is needed gear/runes/sigils/accessories. I can learn a play style though i would like to be GS/Staff maybe because i am hoping to be a more ranged mesmer but i am up for anything.

I use 20/20/0/0/30

You can be shatter or cond/glam with this by just changing trait choices in those lines and gear… very flexible for changing from PvE->solo WvW ->small group/zerg WvW without needing to visit some one to totally re-trait.

Shatter gear is mostly zerk with some knights/valk. Runes of air.
It’ll either use staff/sw+sw or gs/sw+sw.

Atm I heavily favor the staff as izerker is bugged

Cond/glam gear is all rabid other than exquisite chrysocola jewels in the jewelry (very cheap & easy to get rabid gear from karma vendors and just finish off the few pieces you can’t get from them with WvW badge items). Runes of the undead.

Staff/Scepter+focus.

If you were looking for a single set of traits/gear to do PvE and WvW in you can use a shatter build for PvE/solo→small scale WvW… but it’ll be lacking in larger scale fights.

Thanks for the reply Aberrant, this is what i was running with for a while and it just seemed to not do it for me, the melee threw me off as i wanted to be more ranged, if this build im working on now doesnt do anything ill give your ideas a try

Cond/glam with 20/20/0/0/30 is nice with large scale fights too.
With Confusing Enchantments (domination, VIII) + Dazzling Glamours (Illusions, VIII) + Blinding Befuddlement (Illusions, IX), try to Cast Feedback and Nullfield into the blob.

It works in large scale, but it’s not ideal… lacks the longer lasting and shorter cd glam stuffs. The gains from dueling in a large scale fight are small since your clones will almost always die before reaching the targets. The stealth @ 25% is nice though…

wich weapons stats/sigils do you use?
Also is rabid available at arah or other dungeons?

I run with a hybrid phantasm/shatter build. Notice that it will some theorycrafting in my answer cause I still don’t have the proper gear but…

20(I-III)-20(II-X)-0-25(IV-VIII)-5. Greatsword and Sword/Focus. Mirror-Blink-Mirror imatges-Decoy-Mass Invisibilty.

So, 3 breaks stuns, 2 invisibilty sources, 3 projectils reflections, 2 interrupts, you can remove a condition every 15 seconds, sustain and burst damage, not bad AOE… And you can have perma-swiftness with runes of air (checked that in the mists).

As I’m using this for WvW roaming hence I don’t plan to go full berserker. I’d like to have 50% crit change with 75% crit damage, then full power&toughness (I can deal with conditions and my healings are about 4000 points so toughness seems better).

For dungeons, I disvover that Skoteinos was running this build,changing some traits (check Fay’s list Phantasm Build by Skoteinos (20/20/0/25/5 – Gsword & Sword/Focus – PvE), as far as fractals 46.

Good thing is that is very flexible. You can remove the shatter part, be more supportative, change utility slots (usually I change mirror imatges for feedback, or veil or mantra of pain -check Pyro PVE build-). Of course I always at least have a staff on my bag.

Hope this helps.

LordByron.8369:

wich weapons stats/sigils do you use?
Also is rabid available at arah or other dungeons?

For the cond… rabid everything (including weapons) other than the gems which are exquisite chrysocolla (exquisite/exotic rabid gems exist and it’s nice having a slightly larger hp pool anyways)

I like having energy on at least 1 of the 2 1h weapons. I use a corruption sigil on the other 1h then swap it out at 25 (you could do the same with the staff if you prefer). I find myself hitting 25 very quickly when in large battles as the glam fields will tag a lot of players. With so much rabid gear your crit will be decently high so you can use a crit activated one… you’ll also be swapping weapons quite a bit so any of those would work as well… so sigil choices are very open and it just depends on what you want and your playstyle.

Rabid is most easily obtained through the temple karma vendors… but it’s available in TA/CM

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets

Scroll down to “Dungeon armor sets” and you can see what stats are available in each dung by clicking on it (same stats will be on the weapons as well).

If you want to find where the karma versions are you can scroll down to where it says “Exotic Karma armor sets” and then find the temple where that stat is sold. Iirc the only ones you can’t get rabid stats for karma are the chest and weapons. I just bought the WvW versions of these because I’m not a fan of PvE.

I’ll chime in with my 2 cents!

20/20/0/0/30 is pretty strong. You can keep a lot of your gear around (it’s mostly berserker, then swap some pieces out for P/V/T when you go to WvW if you need it). Importantly for me is the lack of significant playstyle changes from one part of the game to the next. All my twitch reflexes stay sharp, no matter where I am. You can also vary it with a 10/20/10/0/30 if you’re feeling squishy. With the initial build, you can also swap out for a rough glamour build if your WvW commanders demand it.

The biggest downside for a shatter build, for me, is that it’s not as effective when played as a pure ranged class. You miss out on the effect from shatter-on-self. Your clones will often die on their long trek to their enemy. I find it works best when played mid-ranged with sword/OH, dancing in and out of melee.

Phantasm builds like the ones pointed out above are very strong in pve, but I haven’t had a ton of success with them in large-scale WvW. My phantasms usually only get 1 volley off before they’re dead or their target is dead. They’re awesome in pve though, so it’s definitely worth a shot to try the playstyle out if you’re ok being strong in pve but occasionally weaker in large WvW encounters.

Until conditions or condition skills are tweaked, I wouldn’t recommend a condition-based build. It just lacks the oomph in PvE to keep it competitive. Confusion is awesome in WvW though, I can’t deny that.

You can also look into some of the support builds. High inspiration gives you lots of healing, and some people swear by Mantra builds. Again, not my taste.

All in all, I’ve tried a bunch of builds I hoped would be versatile. The best I’ve found is the 10/20/0/0/30 with 10 pts either in Domination or chaos. Competitive PvE damage, minimal gear swapping, and no need to swap entire play-styles when jumping from one part of the game to the next.