Guild Wars 2

What’s a good trait build for a Staff|Scepter/Pistol Asura Mesmer… Also looking for some suggestions and advice regarding Utility skills and Healing Skills.

I’m considering using Signets and Mantras… Not sure though.

I dont have much advice for you on it then because i would never use scepter for pve since its a confusion weapon and mobs only attack like every 3 seconds. but the build i would use if using those weapon set would be

[url]http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1|6.1b.hf|b.1b.h5.a.1b.h9|1b.714.1b.714.1b.7v.1b.7v.1b.7v.1b.7v|1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d|0.p29.p5a.0.k5a|30.d|31.3k.3l.3j.0|e[url]

Your main source of damage would come from your conditions from either your staff or your pistol proccing bleeds on crits. Your staff clones now have condition dmg at your lvl so should be able to stack around 15-18 stacks of bleeds using 2 staff clones and one iduelist. Also your staff clones also has a good chance of proccing burns too and with this much condi duration (if you’re using food buffs as well) burns that last one second now last around 2sec which is basically permanent burning if your lucky enough where all your clones and you attack. You can shatter for the occasional confusions, but confusion isn’t as strong as these bleeds/burns in dps. Also your staff has great support for boons as well when it bounces, and not to mention chaos armor, which can be activated 2x if you use the combo field to get it.

For your utilities personally you probably don’t need to use both of the signets i suggested, just one of them depending on your preference, (i prefer domination over illusions but thats because i can summon illusions faster than this build does though so maybe illusions might be better for this build.) I would replace one of those signets with probably decoy. I would take mantra of resolve for condition removal over arcane thievery because pve doesn’t tend to have much boons to steal, so a 45s CD skill for condi removal is pointless except during certain boss fights that gives 25stacks of might. You could take null field as well, but it has a similar problem as i stated above, no point in ripping boons of enemies. (its good for groups though, and another source of chaos armor with combo finishers).

fight style would just be keeping illusions up as long as possible, your illusions will do most of your work. not really sure where your scepter would come in here, because if you use the autoattack itll get rid of your other illusions which will be your main source of damage.

Strange coincidence. I started playing with that exact combo, today. It has only been for maybe 15 minutes or so, and I am only level 25, but it seemed to work out okay. So I would be interested in the answers to these questions, also.

Switch the Scepter out for the sword. Using a scepter even in PvE is like swinging a feather at the enemy. This is honest advice not just hating on the scepter here. I used to be a scepter mesmer when I was leveling cause the clones from the auto attack made me able to solo harder veterans but really once i switched to sword I could still do it and it was lots faster.

Hexxen.7216:

Switch the Scepter out for the sword. Using a scepter even in PvE is like swinging a feather at the enemy. This is honest advice not just hating on the scepter here. I used to be a scepter mesmer when I was leveling cause the clones from the auto attack made me able to solo harder veterans but really once i switched to sword I could still do it and it was lots faster.

I will not switch to sword. I can’t stand the sword Mesmer abilities. Scepter works excellent for my play-style. I appreciate the advice, but changing up my weapon combos will not happen.

are you looking for a pve build? or wvw?

PvE primarily… I don’t WvW much

A better question: do you prefer shattering consistently or making phantasms and having them stick around?

If the first, you’re probably going to want to aim for 0/20/20/0/30 and focus on being awesome with Staff and shattering all day every day.

If the second, you’re probably looking at 0/20/20/25/5 or something of that sort. iDuelist will hit like a truck and cause a ton of bleeds while iWarlock will spike for good damage after Chaos Storm or somesuch.

Either way, your first 5 trait points should go into Illusions and stay there.

As for utilities, it really depends a lot on what sort of gear you’re looking at running. Blink, Decoy, and Feedback are what I usually look at as the ‘default’ PvE utility setup, with whatever for the Elite – probably Time Warp, but the others have their places – and either Ether Feast or Mantra of Recovery for the healing skill – MoR if traited for excellent Mantras or Mender’s Purity, Ether Feast otherwise.

I do tend to keep my illusions around as long as possible… though I do shatter them when I see a good opportunity with F2 for applying quick stacks of Confusion. (Despite what I’ve heard from a lot of people, confusion is extremely viable in PvE.)

Bones.5762:

I dont have much advice for you on it then because i would never use scepter for pve since its a confusion weapon and mobs only attack like every 3 seconds. but the build i would use if using those weapon set would be

[url]http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1|6.1b.hf|b.1b.h5.a.1b.h9|1b.714.1b.714.1b.7v.1b.7v.1b.7v.1b.7v|1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d.1d.9d|0.p29.p5a.0.k5a|30.d|31.3k.3l.3j.0|e[url]

Your main source of damage would come from your conditions from either your staff or your pistol proccing bleeds on crits. Your staff clones now have condition dmg at your lvl so should be able to stack around 15-18 stacks of bleeds using 2 staff clones and one iduelist. Also your staff clones also has a good chance of proccing burns too and with this much condi duration (if you’re using food buffs as well) burns that last one second now last around 2sec which is basically permanent burning if your lucky enough where all your clones and you attack. You can shatter for the occasional confusions, but confusion isn’t as strong as these bleeds/burns in dps. Also your staff has great support for boons as well when it bounces, and not to mention chaos armor, which can be activated 2x if you use the combo field to get it.

For your utilities personally you probably don’t need to use both of the signets i suggested, just one of them depending on your preference, (i prefer domination over illusions but thats because i can summon illusions faster than this build does though so maybe illusions might be better for this build.) I would replace one of those signets with probably decoy. I would take mantra of resolve for condition removal over arcane thievery because pve doesn’t tend to have much boons to steal, so a 45s CD skill for condi removal is pointless except during certain boss fights that gives 25stacks of might. You could take null field as well, but it has a similar problem as i stated above, no point in ripping boons of enemies. (its good for groups though, and another source of chaos armor with combo finishers).

fight style would just be keeping illusions up as long as possible, your illusions will do most of your work. not really sure where your scepter would come in here, because if you use the autoattack itll get rid of your other illusions which will be your main source of damage.

That does look like a pretty functional build… was talking with a guy in game who gave me some informative tips about Mantra of Resolve… if I were to get 20 points in Inspiration and take Mender’s Purity and Restorative Mantras, I could create a very efficient mantra based build… beyond that though he gave me nothing… I’m a bit curious as to if the two builds could be merged somehow.

That does look like a pretty functional build… was talking with a guy in game who gave me some informative tips about Mantra of Resolve… if I were to get 20 points in Inspiration and take Mender’s Purity and Restorative Mantras, I could create a very efficient mantra based build… beyond that though he gave me nothing… I’m a bit curious as to if the two builds could be merged somehow.

doesnt sound functional, because you would have to put alot of points into those trees and you would lose out on some skill traits, but i dont know for sure, its hard to create good hybrid builds that are really functional without losing alot.

Bones.5762:

That does look like a pretty functional build… was talking with a guy in game who gave me some informative tips about Mantra of Resolve… if I were to get 20 points in Inspiration and take Mender’s Purity and Restorative Mantras, I could create a very efficient mantra based build… beyond that though he gave me nothing… I’m a bit curious as to if the two builds could be merged somehow.

doesnt sound functional, because you would have to put alot of points into those trees and you would lose out on some skill traits, but i dont know for sure, its hard to create good hybrid builds that are really functional without losing alot.

The minor traits in Inspiration at 20 would also cause my illusions to have Retaliation and my Phantasms to grant Regen in an AoE.

Panda.1967:

Bones.5762:

That does look like a pretty functional build… was talking with a guy in game who gave me some informative tips about Mantra of Resolve… if I were to get 20 points in Inspiration and take Mender’s Purity and Restorative Mantras, I could create a very efficient mantra based build… beyond that though he gave me nothing… I’m a bit curious as to if the two builds could be merged somehow.

doesnt sound functional, because you would have to put alot of points into those trees and you would lose out on some skill traits, but i dont know for sure, its hard to create good hybrid builds that are really functional without losing alot.

The minor traits in Inspiration at 20 would also cause my illusions to have Retaliation and my Phantasms to grant Regen in an AoE.

you could give up the whole entire skill tree for illusions and put it all into inspiration i guess, but youll have 200 less condi dmg, and you wont have phantasmal haste to make your iduelist attack faster. also instead of using the pistol CD skill trait, u could take deceptive evasion for more clone summoning too. its all trial and error, to find somethign that suits your gameplay i guess.

Bones.5762:

Panda.1967:

Bones.5762:

That does look like a pretty functional build… was talking with a guy in game who gave me some informative tips about Mantra of Resolve… if I were to get 20 points in Inspiration and take Mender’s Purity and Restorative Mantras, I could create a very efficient mantra based build… beyond that though he gave me nothing… I’m a bit curious as to if the two builds could be merged somehow.

doesnt sound functional, because you would have to put alot of points into those trees and you would lose out on some skill traits, but i dont know for sure, its hard to create good hybrid builds that are really functional without losing alot.

The minor traits in Inspiration at 20 would also cause my illusions to have Retaliation and my Phantasms to grant Regen in an AoE.

you could give up the whole entire skill tree for illusions and put it all into inspiration i guess, but youll have 200 less condi dmg, and you wont have phantasmal haste to make your iduelist attack faster. also instead of using the pistol CD skill trait, u could take deceptive evasion for more clone summoning too. its all trial and error, to find somethign that suits your gameplay i guess.

It’s really tricky to figure out… The traits you selected in Illusions I understand exactly why you selected them, and quite honestly would hate to lose those traits… but I dunno really… guess I will just have to do some trial and error to figure something out… the build you posted should prove as a good base to work from though