Guild Wars 2

So since launch pretty much I’ve always loved the mesmer, but I’ve usually stuck to pvp with it. I’m not fond of playing a sword mainhand mesmer, but all the other weapon options were considered non-viable in dungeons. Greatsword has always worked wonders pvp, and with the recent update it can now stack might. Could this make it viable in dungeons in this current state?

Nope. The might stacking is related to your autoattack and the autoattack of the clones. This is problematic for a couple reasons.

If you have clones up autoattacking, you don’t have phantasms up attacking. This means your damage will be awful.

The autoattack does next to no damage at close range, and you can’t have the might without autoattacking.

Lastly, the might stacking is completely irrelevant in a party with a single decent ele or a single warrior of any skill level that uses phalanx strength.

I only use it on 1 or 2 of the fractal bosses with the trait that allows skills 2-5 to cripple enemies (i.e. when you need to kite), or when I want to aoe a bunch of trash like in the Ascalon fractal. Barring those situations, you’ll be better served with the 1-handed sword.

So is s/f still basically all anyone ever uses? I’m not fond of the playstyle which makes dungeon running with my mesmer not as fun as my other toons

If you don’t want to do away with you GS, you can still play it but you will not be effective. You can always try something like this.

S/x GS
Where x is sword or pistol or focus.

Always Summon 2 of your offhand phantasm and 1 GS clone and then melee with your sword. Make sure you take the mantra and sword trait.

Again not the best but you still get to use your gs.

GreenIcey.2456:

So is s/f still basically all anyone ever uses? I’m not fond of the playstyle which makes dungeon running with my mesmer not as fun as my other toons

Don’t expect this to change unless HoT delivers some radically different dungeon content.

Though I do think that S/P might be considered a viable alternative if you don’t need the traited reflects?

The might stacking might be useful but I wouldn’t recommend it in PvE.
Not sure about PvP. I think its quite good if you go for support in WvW though.

I only use my gs for certain boss fights and stuff like that.

Melee will always be king in pve . Carry a gs though. It’s always great to have that option when you can’t melee

Melee will always be king in pve . Carry a gs though. It’s always great to have that option when you can’t melee

GS can be a nice AoE opener even in dungeons, and you can replace the subpar autoattack with MoP. You can use greatsword and lose virtually no effectiveness outside of world-record speedruns in some cases, but you can’t build around it.

You can even trait it as the other Domination GMs aren’t vital to your overall dps, but don’t play like a GS-camp build normally would, i.e. don’t stand at max range and autoattack thinking those paltry might stacks make any contribution to your team.

Also note the might stacks are applied upon completing the skill, that means no stow-cancel to increase dps, and you lose out whenever you have to dodge or one of your better skills comes off cooldown.

For open world always be ready to deploy GS+Sw/F+MoP, 1200 range instant-cast AoE and decent swiftness. GS auto+Sigil of Fire tags a lot too and the entire set is unreflectable, so no need to pay attention to mobs XD

The greatsword is ok for open world. For dungeons it’s only good as an opener for trash due it’s aoe phantasm if you swap to sword after summoning it and stay on that.

The only other place I use a GS, is as a ranged weapon against the arch diviner (endboss cliffside fractal), since everything of it is unblockable. But even then, greatsword isn’t different to any other none sword weapon the mesmer has:
You will replace the auto attack with mantra of pain. That’s what you do for good dps with those weapons. That’s also a the reason why the scepter became much stronger than the greatsword in all other fights (besides the huge #3 buff) if you need a ranged option.

iduelist is your friend for anything you might need range for, just auto with sword after that, blurred frenzy when you need to dodge. It’s not hard if you pay attention to enemy attack patterns and animations.

Also time warp is hilariously strong on bosses if you have a high dps party, trait for +2s and they’re lucky if they get 2 attacks off during the time warp and you can unleash everything on it. Only bosses that isn’t that good on are archdiviner and maybe fire shaman but then chill destroys him.

TBH, I say stuff metabattle.com. If you truly know mesmer, run what you like where you like. I run all sorts of weird kitten in PvE with my full Ascended scholar stuff and still do massive damage. In CoE, I even use scepter just because meteorlogicus looks awesome on my toon, but Confusing Images hits 15k sometimes and that’s more than Sword will ever do. After I use that I switch to my sword set and spam 1 and 2 all day.

Greatsword is fine also, just go 4,3,2,f1, and swap out. Apart from its bad auto, Greatsword has great cleave and I can defend bipass in CoE p1 fine with gs and sword rotations, if you ever take on the defender role use mantra of distraction, it buys you tons of time.

In CoE, I even use scepter just because meteorlogicus looks awesome on my toon, but Confusing Images hits 15k sometimes

and then you remember that confusing images actually has a long cast time

and this guy is a teacher in the mesmer guild, oh my lord.

maha.7902:

In CoE, I even use scepter just because meteorlogicus looks awesome on my toon, but Confusing Images hits 15k sometimes

and then you remember that confusing images actually has a long cast time

and this guy is a teacher in the mesmer guild, oh my lord.

Actually, confusing images got massively buffed. It channels faster than blurred frenzy does now.

That being said…still probably not the best choice to use scepter.

How low does phantasm uptime need to be for a GS4+2+3+F1 shatter rotation out-DPS a sword-based phantasm spec? Assuming 25 stacks of might, 25 stacks of vuln, fury, double banners, EA.