Guild Wars 2

Hello guys,

What weapons should I use in PVE and in PVP?
Is there any good guides ?

Metabattle still good?

Thanks :-)

They have updated metabattle. Now I think the new “meta” is matter of debate: currently, it’s just the old meta adapted to the new traits, the actual meta will slowly emerge by itself.

The dungeon mesmer build on metabattle is up to date yeah. It’s still the build to go for 5 man group. For solo / low manning, condition might be better now but I didn’t do any calculations regarding that.

I think sinister is far beyond assassin and zerker right now but we’ll see

So far I only did calculation based on DPS (assuming a group environment) and sinister or rampager won over berserker by about 15-25%. However, as Jerem said in metabattle, the damage from conditions take more time to build up. I am planning to do some calculations to model a fight starting to see how long it takes for condition damage to equal and then beat direct damage. If this is below 10s (which I currently expect) I believe we could say that the condi is as viable or even better than zerker. Above 10s, I would opt for zerker as best.
I wanted to do these calculations earlier, but seeing how people complain about conditions, I am not sure how long those results will hold. I really hope bleeding won’t get nerfed, and the community seem to mostly want to buff bleeding but nerf burning applications which would be perfect for our PvE mesmers.

Silverkey.2078:

I wanted to do these calculations earlier

Last night I updated the attack-rate/coefficient spreadsheet with new data (see my sig). Most phantasms had their attack rates tweaked (swordsman with PH now attacks ~12% faster!). The coefficients however stayed the same for all so there is no changes there except now you have a baseline 15% modifier (tooltip doesn’t account for it).

This evening or sometime tomorrow I’ll take care of the condi part, ie attack rates, coefficients, and applied durations for staff/clones/phantasm. This will come in handy for those “calculations” you mentioned.

You are obviously more used to those calculations than I am, so you may as well perform them, I would trust them better than mine
As you may know, the build I have most hope for is a hybrid which uses the same weapons as power builds, so what you have is probably good enough for me to start. On the other hand, you’ll have to explain me what those numbers mean

Xecuter.4295:

Metabattle still good?

Metabattle was NEVER good, especially not for mesmers.

For general dungeons, the way to go changed slightly. It depens on how max efficient desired you are. SF/-S is still great, yet for example scepetr #3 deals more damage now than the sword aa or #2. So you can summon the phantasm, use scepter #3 and swap immediately and stay on sword until the boss dies. Depending on what allies you have, if they apply many different conditions, even a staff to open with a better damaging phantasm COULD be worth it. Yesterday I used the staff on Tom in fotm, who recived tons of iwarlock’s 18k crits.

But most important is to use mantras. Mantras for +20% dmg, you want the healing mantra and probably mantra of pain. Trait into:
Dom 233
Duel 131
Insp X13

But keep in mind, ALWAYS adapt to the situation, traiting for wardens feedback and using a focus is a bad idea when there is nothing to reflect. Just an example Swap traits and skills and weapons all the time, experiment with them, learn your class!

gl hf¨!

Xyonon.3987:

Metabattle was NEVER good, especially not for mesmers

:(

check the revision history for the meta mes build:

• http://metabattle.com/wiki/index.php?title=Build:Mesmer_-_S/S_/F_/P&action=history

90% of contributors on it are well known mesmers who know what what they’re talking about. Why would it be “not good”?

I was one of the people who worked on one of Metabattle’s Mesmer articles.

But.. Haters gon’ hate. =[

Metabattle never good guyz, rip logic.

Is the recommendation of assassins stat gear a holdover from pre-patch builds?

No real math was done for direct dps just yet but for reflect builds yes, assassins is still the meta.

I did it… I did an estimate start of fight
berserker: warden, swordsman, signet ether, swordsman, AA….
rampager: warden, duelist, signet ether, duelist, AA….
Doing so, there is hardly any difference between both. Berserker starts above and after about 8s has a 12000 damage better than rampager (computed assuming 2200 armor for enemies). From then, the spread reduces and at 11s, both build are identical.
The converged DPS in both those cases is essentially identical, the rampager is better only if you can replace the warden with the duelist when cooldown is finished. It would then beat the berserker with 3 swordsmen. However, swordsmen is off-CD sooner assuming you don’t interrupt anything with pistol. Another important part is that I assumed you maintain the 5 charges from mantras, but after about 10s, this is unrealistic.

So overall my conclusion is that both build are very similar in damage output but berserker has a small edge for fights shorter than 10s. So we can keep the berserker meta

If they bring back the bleeding formula they advertised first, things will most likely be different.

Silverkey.2078:

I did it… I did an estimate start of fight
berserker: warden, swordsman, signet ether, swordsman, AA….
rampager: warden, duelist, signet ether, duelist, AA….
Doing so, there is hardly any difference between both. Berserker starts above and after about 8s has a 12000 damage better than rampager (computed assuming 2200 armor for enemies). From then, the spread reduces and at 11s, both build are identical.
The converged DPS in both those cases is essentially identical, the rampager is better only if you can replace the warden with the duelist when cooldown is finished. It would then beat the berserker with 3 swordsmen. However, swordsmen is off-CD sooner assuming you don’t interrupt anything with pistol. Another important part is that I assumed you maintain the 5 charges from mantras, but after about 10s, this is unrealistic.

So overall my conclusion is that both build are very similar in damage output but berserker has a small edge for fights shorter than 10s. So we can keep the berserker meta

If they bring back the bleeding formula they advertised first, things will most likely be different.

Shouldn’t you test with sinister and assassin? Also what runes and sigil were you using? I also don’t think mantra use is most beneficial for a hybrid set up

Hi
I first wanted to write a code to do the calculations for me (currently my code only gives me the stats + damage for each skill), but I ended up doing it manually with excel, so it takes more time and is less accurate :p
Sinister did not seem promising, the lack of crits reduced too much the amount of bleeds, which more than made up for the extra condition damage. Assassin why not, but I’m too lazy.
Else I used
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_S/S_/F_/P (except that I used berserker + ranger rune)
and
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Dungeon_Hybrid
I did not put any food. I assume 25 mights, 25 vuln for the minor in domination (not for the overall damage, but just scale it by 25% for both condi and damage). No mantra for the hybrid, passive signets instead.

I will most likely make my program and then everything will be accurate with maybe even food and I will be able to try more combinations.
This is to get a first idea only, I don’t pretend this is 100% accurate or relevant.

Silverkey.2078:

Hi
I first wanted to write a code to do the calculations for me (currently my code only gives me the stats + damage for each skill), but I ended up doing it manually with excel, so it takes more time and is less accurate :p
Sinister did not seem promising, the lack of crits reduced too much the amount of bleeds, which more than made up for the extra condition damage. Assassin why not, but I’m too lazy.
Else I used
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_S/S_/F_/P (except that I used berserker + ranger rune)
and
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Dungeon_Hybrid
I did not put any food. I assume 25 mights, 25 vuln for the minor in domination (not for the overall damage, but just scale it by 25% for both condi and damage). No mantra for the hybrid, passive signets instead.

I will most likely make my program and then everything will be accurate with maybe even food and I will be able to try more combinations.
This is to get a first idea only, I don’t pretend this is 100% accurate or relevant.

I’m very interested to see how this works out. I still think sinister is superior but I’m not as good a number crunches as some of you. Ranger runes are fixed btw

Doing some napkin math, a Mesmer and a Guardian could “burst” more than 50 seconds’ worth of quickness at the start of a fight on the group, using Mimic, Signet of Inspiration, Illusionary Inspiration, Time Warp, Feel My Wrath, Hallowed Ground and boon duration nourishments. Excluding Mimic, Time Warp and Hallowed Ground, that’s still roughly 20 seconds of quickness on the entire group every 30 seconds. Personal DPS be kitten ed when you can get that much quickness uptime by going down Illusions/Chaos.

Even without trying, my Mesmer can get almost 12-13 seconds of Quickness on the group when the Guardian uses Feel my Wrath. Think about it for a few minutes: a group that pulls pretty much every trash pack and every boss with perma Quickness.

Silverkey.2078:

Hi
I first wanted to write a code to do the calculations for me (currently my code only gives me the stats + damage for each skill), but I ended up doing it manually with excel, so it takes more time and is less accurate :p
Sinister did not seem promising, the lack of crits reduced too much the amount of bleeds, which more than made up for the extra condition damage. Assassin why not, but I’m too lazy.
Else I used
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_S/S_/F_/P (except that I used berserker + ranger rune)
and
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Dungeon_Hybrid
I did not put any food. I assume 25 mights, 25 vuln for the minor in domination (not for the overall damage, but just scale it by 25% for both condi and damage). No mantra for the hybrid, passive signets instead.

I will most likely make my program and then everything will be accurate with maybe even food and I will be able to try more combinations.
This is to get a first idea only, I don’t pretend this is 100% accurate or relevant.

Question. I built a similar build such as this that I built on my own, however in the build I made instead of wielding a sword I wield a scepter/pistol. The question that I have is would a scepter work and also could the rampager’s armor be switched for sinister ascended armor?

Well to be honest, calculating the damage of the scepter is not as trivial, because it applies confusion and torment which deal damage according to the enemy’s reaction. When I did DPS calculations, the scepter beats the sword for the DPS in rampager/sinister BUT overwrites a phantasm. Assuming no movement (so only base torment) and one enemy attack per second (so 1 tick active confusion per second), the increased personal DPS almost make up for the loss of the warden (not a duelist). So scepter + clone + 2 duelist is approximately as good as sword+warden + 2 duelist. But I wonder if 1 attack per second isn’t optimistic in most cases in PvE…

The main problem in sinister is the lack of crits since we don’t have phantasm fury. With some precision boost from a spotter-ranger + some crit food, it can be better. The other advantage from scepter is that since we hardly need power, the bonus from domination are not so great so this gives one spot for a potentially more defensive/supportive role using chaos or inspiration.

frifox.5283:

Xyonon.3987:

Metabattle was NEVER good, especially not for mesmers

:(

check the revision history for the meta mes build:

• http://metabattle.com/wiki/index.php?title=Build:Mesmer_-_S/S_/F_/P&action=history

90% of contributors on it are well known mesmers who know what what they’re talking about. Why would it be “not good”?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

I was one of the people who worked on one of Metabattle’s Mesmer articles.

But.. Haters gon’ hate. =[

What I meant is that, regardless that the content is correct and good, this site turns most ppl visiting it into some sort of short minded zombies who will NEVER try something different than what they’ve read there and IF somone tries to tell them different, oh boy the rage of those wanna be experts is real, i tell ya.

I suggest the site for newbs, and for gathering information one might not know. But for players beyond the basic stuff, it’s pure poison.

I did write the small code (not as ambitious as initially planed, but it works). Assassin-scholar vs rampager-krait. Both builds converge to nearly identical DPS, but assassin is faster to get there. Overall, this corresponds to a 1s DPS loss (0.2s if you assume a group of 5 with same DPS). I didn’t include the damage from mantra of pain which obviously adds to the assassin DPS since it’s instant cast. On the other hand, I did not include the loss of DPS after the charges of mantras run out (so after about 10s).
In non-ideal situation, assassin has an advantage as it relies less on phantasm damage and the swordsman has a lower cooldown so you can respawn it faster if your phantasms die. On the other hand, the scholar bonus may not be that easy to keep. So here, I guess
I believe the only reasonable conclusion from all of that is that both builds are perfectly viable. The assassin build is better, so more “meta” but people who want to use rampager should not feel that they are sacrificing much.

Below is the damage over time for both builds.