Guild Wars 2

Short disclaimer: OK, I’ll straight up and admit that I don’t think I’m particularly skilled at the game or at this profession. I don’t play any WvW, PvP and I’ve hardly even touch dungeons or Fractals.

So with that in mind, please bear with post and my noob questions:

I’ve read a lot of posts on what are “good” or “best” builds for PvE and the vast majority would say a phantasm build utilising a sword MH coupled with either a focus or pistol. I understand the numbers and that DPS wise, the sword is the best.

What I don’t understand is how to actually play using melee. I find that if I go in on an enemy, I’ll just get hit and have to do several dodges, until you’re out of endurance and end up getting hit more. Whilst the sword has a higher base damage auto attack, I can use a greatsword, stand away from the enemy and continually hit them.

Yes the greatsword auto attack is fairly lacklustre, but I’m always hitting the enemy, whereas with the sword, I’d get in maybe 3 hits in tops (assuming I don’t use Blurred Frenzy) before I’m forced to duck out.

Case in point, in the Heart of the Mists, on the East side of Hall of Memories there’s a Jotun called “Chieftain Utahein” and a bear creature called “Svanir”, both of which hit fairly hard and fast. Using a build focussing on greatsword (i.e. 20/25/0/0/25), I can use a greatsword and kill either of them in around 25 seconds and not having to heal at all. If I use a sword orientated build (i.e. 10/30/0/0/30 or 0/20/0/25/25), not only does it take me longer to kill, but I have to heal up in the middle of the fight simply because I’ve been hit too much.

I am even able to solo champions, providing they don’t do an excessive amount of ranged attacks with the greatsword build that I use, utilising simple circle strafing and the cripple from iBerserker and the Crippling Dissipation trait. Killing them may take 5-10 minutes, but at least I’m confident that I can take them down, whereas if I went in with pure melee, I don’t think I’d stand a chance.

TL;DR How do you melee against mobs of enemies or even single fast hitting enemies and stay alive?

Poke and dodge and evade bigger attacks with blurred frenzy, distortions, interrupts. If you are using a sword, you likely get vigor from crits (or maybe have the vigor on shatter trait). You also weapon swap.

The simple answer is, you are better off with a GS than with pure melee if you are playing solo. Pure melee is mainly used for speedrunning dungeons, but it only works well if:
- the mobs are close together
- you play in a melee oriented group for boon stacking
- if you know every move of your enemy
- if the distance between you and the mobs does not matter (group pulls)

Most of the time the mobs are just dead in the time it would take you to get into melee range anyway. And you take no damage which means no downtime.
Take a sword/x in your off set and you will do fine.

Well if you backroll you can create a clone which can be used for shatters or debuffs if you trait them. Stuns and weapon swaps are for when you need endurance time or blurred frenzy is down. I find greatsword to be boring and avoid it in all builds unless I’m in need of long range (although someone explain to me how it does the same damage in close range as a scepter auto attack and can be through multiple people…that needs a nerf).

Soyboy.3548:

Poke and dodge and evade bigger attacks with blurred frenzy, distortions, interrupts. If you are using a sword, you likely get vigor from crits (or maybe have the vigor on shatter trait). You also weapon swap.

That’s one of the things I don’t quite get, yes you hit a couple of times and back out, but you’ll almost always get hit back in the process. I find that I don’t have enough endurance to last a longish fight against mobs, even with the vigor from crits.

I somewhat touched upon in my previous post, but I don’t see how a sword is more effective than a greatsword when I can be continually hitting an enemy compared to a few stabs here and there with the sword.

As I’ve said, I understand the DPS numbers and theoretically, the sword is better, but that’s like against a golem training dummy where you can just stand there auto attacking away.

I know it’s a matter of skill, but I just find I’m able to take down groups of enemies or even champions with a greatsword far more effectively than using whatever S/* combo. I feel that in open world PvE, the less time you’re waiting for cooldowns and in particular, not having to heal during or after every little skirmish, makes life much easier.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The simple answer is, you are better off with a GS than with pure melee if you are playing solo. Pure melee is mainly used for speedrunning dungeons, but it only works well if:
- the mobs are close together
- you play in a melee oriented group for boon stacking
- if you know every move of your enemy
- if the distance between you and the mobs does not matter (group pulls)

Most of the time the mobs are just dead in the time it would take you to get into melee range anyway. And you take no damage which means no downtime.
Take a sword/x in your off set and you will do fine.

Yeah, I was wondering if that was simply the case, since when some people say “PvE” they include WvW and dungeons and are usually roaming in a group. In which case, I understand how using melee is better and also achievable since you’re typically not the one with the aggro.

I pretty much play exclusively what I call open world PvE, which is just that, no WvW, no dungeons/Fractals and I play solo.

Soyboy.3548:

Well if you backroll you can create a clone which can be used for shatters or debuffs if you trait them. Stuns and weapon swaps are for when you need endurance time or blurred frenzy is down. I find greatsword to be boring and avoid it in all builds unless I’m in need of long range (although someone explain to me how it does the same damage in close range as a scepter auto attack and can be through multiple people…that needs a nerf).

Again, I’m probably just bad at using melee or playing in general, but I find if you’re darting in, do a couple of hits, dodging out and shattering then almost everything is on cooldown and you’re left running away.

At least with a greatsword, I can still be hitting an enemy whilst strafing when things are on cooldown and typically I only use my dodges to actually dodge big attacks or ranged attacks. With a sword, you’re dodging constantly and left with no endurance and you’re getting hit with melee attacks.

As boring as the greatsword may be, I find it’s the only reliable way for me to do open world PvE content.

As one of the people promoting full melee, I am promoting in it dungeons. If you only do open world PvE, the GS serves it’s purpose well.

You are probably dodging too much. Use a dodge and make sure you have vigor up from criticals. I never said shatter. People overuse mind wrack. Phantasms do more dps alive. The only shatters I really use unless I have excessive clones from doing things right are diversion and distortion—which both do the same thing—you stop taking damage. Your offhands, except for the focus, all do the same thing. You avoid damage with the blind on the prestige, you avoid damage or daze with sword 4, and pistol you stun to avoid damage. Greatsword lacks defensive skills completely outside of when AI decides to attack your clones or the 30 sec cd knockback. You can always rotate dodges, interrupts, diversion/distortion, offhand damage avoidance, and your other weapon set is only on a 10 second cooldown, which likely has more damage avoidance/blocks. It’s much more of an active playstyle than greatsword. If you run an interrupt build for a while, you will get good at this.

Consider that every mesmer weapon is range except the sword and even that isn’t designed for sustained melee.

That said, I nearly always have a sword in my build and I make an effort to melee in any setting. You can get away with this for a longer period if you try to have protection and aegis up as much as possible. Dodging and clone distractions are helpful to. Sometimes I will dodge through the enemy and then kite them the opposite way they are turning (like a thief) to avoid damage.

As for those two hotm NPC monsters, they hit very hard and take practice and a high damage build to take down effectively. You simply can’t allow them to knock you down and you need to protect your phantasms (with interrupts) from dying too quickly.

What exactly are you fighting? Trying to do group events solo?

Even in Orr I just walk up to an enemy while casting iWarden, double-cast leap to root them on the warden, then sit in melee range until the enemy attacks again (their first hit usually goes for the warden). At that point I use blurred frenzy and keep sitting until the warden stops spinning, then shatter. At this point up to 3 regular enemies in melee range will be dead.

For veterans run through/around them, making sure they stay in warden range. If you have a decent phantasm in your other weapon set (no torch) a nice trick is to summon one, then immediately switch weapons. You will swap before entering combat, allowing you to immediately swap again if necessary.

I haven’t actually tried soloing champions with full melee, one additional problem is that most of them have devastating aoe attacks, which you want to guide away from your phantasms. Running in a big circle spamming iDuelist on cooldown usually works just fine, though that’s neither melee nor particularly fast. Sword is still better for this than GS because you can use frenzy to negate big attacks.

In general, most of anything that can actually harm me will attack from melee range. If it’s single trash mobs they die anyway, and anything else is rather difficult to kite at maximum range. Once an enemy actually closes in on you GS is absolutely worthless.

I don’t pay much attention to it, but circle-strafing and generally edging away from the enemy seems to make most of them “stumble” and abort their attack, plus quite a few enemy “autoattacks” have a long delay, low cleave area, and don’t allow turning during the “windup”

For general “quality of life” I run the healing mantra with Mender’s Purity traited, which acts as a great instant-cleanse. Very useful against spider webs, confusion bursts, chill and fear. Add a traited focus and most ranged foes will actually kill themselves faster than you can get to them XD

It’s indeed usually not advisable to facetank-melee with a Mesmer; except if you don’t have the aggro for some reason. But even with a 10/30/0/30/0 build with sword mainhand and sword/pistol as offhands, it’s possible to bring Svanir down without bigger problems. Cast iDuelist, daze with pistol 5 when he starts attacking, switch and cast the sword-phantasm… from then on, you should focus on casting your phantasms on cooldown (unless you’ve already got three up), and if you get attacked, you either use sword 4 for a block (+some damage), or sword 2 for damage and evading… or you dodge. If your phantasm gets smacked, you can use sword 4 for the daze or pistol 5. You may also bring in a few auto-attacks, but be ready to dodge out (or use sword 2 as soon as he turns to you and then dodge after). Oh, and try to not get hit by the knockdown… and if you do, dodge away as soon as possible (and probably, heal). It’s not really hard to do, it just needs a bit of practice. You’ll make it.

Oh, and right… you also have your utility-skills if everything goes wrong. Decoy for example. Might just give you a bit of space to heal and cast another phantasm.

As for GS… well, I’ve never liked it. And thus never really used it. Then again, I’m usually playing a condition-build anyway.

Trying to facetank the champs in PvP is a silly mode of testing since most mobs in dungeons do not hit nearly that hard. Also consider that in a group, you will have plenty of defense from allies popping various boons and conditions, the mobs won’t all be targeting you exclusively, and you can easily dodge pretty much anything that is big and slow enough to actually kill you. Most mobs typically do not focus-fire individual players with high-damage, unavoidable attacks, and the ones that do (i.e. Risen Illusionist) typically tend to kill anyone flat-out, regardless of class or whether they’re in melee or not.

You are supposed to be able to melee down most dungeon mobs. You’re not supposed to be able to solo most open-world champs. There’s a reason kiting a champ mob around with a greatsword usually takes upwards of an hour to actually kill.