Guild Wars 2

Would you like to tank a Risen Champion in Orr…solo?
This is for I’m so tired of dying in solo play. :x
If you really don’t want to die, this tank mesmer build will work:

Tank Mesmer

This build isn’t tuned for raids, fractals or PvP, it’s a open world PvE/dungeon build. Equipment is ordinary Exotic gear (Nomad’s, but Settler’s or Givers armor will work).

Survivability:
* 2464 Toughness, plus kill streak toughness from the sigil.
* All illusions are very tough, and they provide good distractions. It is easy to keep 3 illusions up.
* High health regen. Heal signet and runes replenish your health all the time. (over 445 health/sec. with 3 illusions up).
* High damage reduction. Keeping up a phantasmal defender reduces damage taken by 1/3 – one gets created on dodge as well as the utility skill. Another 9% damage reduction comes from having 3 illusions up, plus damage reduction from chaos armor.
* All shatters heal (over 1000 hp), remove conditions, give a boon, and give stability.
* Both the 2 and 4 skill for scepter/sword are blocks and create clones.

Notes:
* The signets in this build are for the passive effects, using them hurts more than it helps.
* If you’re running solo, switch out Time Warp for something else (like Moa for the CC reduction).

While I’m sure your build excels at survival, as the OP of the linked thread I still feel the need to speak out and say that I’m not currently experiencing any problems with survival in the open world as Dom/Insp/Chrono in full zerker gear.

I’ve learned to distance myself from the importance of passive defenses that’s prevalent in other MMO’s (vitality, toughness) and also accept that Heart of Thorns is a good deal tougher than the core game. Survival in this game is based on avoiding damage through active skill usage and/or dodging, and this was ramped up in HoT to the point where you dodge the boss, or you instantly die.

Still, it’s nice that you took the time to develope this. I’m sure there are players who come from guardians/necros and are flabbergasted at our squishyness.

I cannot claim credit for developing this build – my son made it for his mother’s fabulous Charr mesmer, RuPaw. Glad you’ve found your feet, and are enjoying your mesmer!

Just to be clear, this isn’t a tuned build or a build for really experienced players. It’s for people who want excruciatingly high survivability, high enough to simply face tank instead of using dodges and other mitigation. Easy mode, and kind of fun, in a “god, I didn’t know you could do that” way. It’s oddly enough better than many other professions’ version of the same (not that you would want to use any of them for efficient play.)

Daulnay.4971:

RuPaw.

What she did there. I see it, and I approve.

After playing all sorts of variations. I feel this is a terrible build. Especially once you used scepter and sword over Sword and sheild.

Sword offhand phantasm is used for damage, and while sword has a block, there is zero sustained blocking. Because unlike Sheild, you dont get a double block.

Scepter is awful unless you are going full condi, why even bother? It has one block? Just use sword, it has distortion, boon strip, and immob.

If this build is meant to be without chronomancer, there are way better options, like a mesmer version of the distortion chrono tank. Which has ridiculous evade time.

Not only is this terrible in pve, for damage, even for the tanking aspect, the only saving grace is keeping yourself alive. Mesmers are a utility class. This provides almost no party utility.

To be quite frank. If someone came into my dungeon run using this, I’d kick them without a second thought.

Of course you’d kick them, its not a good dungeon build at all. Its designed to eat damage from mobs, allowing you to not have to dodge to survive.

Its a decent build for people who are struggling to stay alive, but ultimately I feel that stuff like this may hurt people in the long run, because it teaches them to eat damage.

If you can block/evade every attack going full “recovery” isn’t necessary
Try this build if you want

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre8cncfCFqhtfC2fCEgilnjCdC+gD4sACgEr+PT0FF-TRCFABXpEsQ1fQS5HAHBA2eAAppfogDCA87P8wJAAA-e

OriOri.8724:

Of course you’d kick them, its not a good dungeon build at all. Its designed to eat damage from mobs, allowing you to not have to dodge to survive.

Its a decent build for people who are struggling to stay alive, but ultimately I feel that stuff like this may hurt people in the long run, because it teaches them to eat damage.

Not only does this teach people to eat damage rather than block or evade. Also the set up is terrible even at what its trying to do. Like for instance hamfisting a scepter into a build that supposed to eat damage when sword does a better job. Or using sword offhand, when sword offhand is used for damage, while sheild is the tanking offhand.

Im of the opinion that a build should supplement good play, not the other way around.

If you are struggling to stay alive, a build wont help that, because it too will be used improperly.

Open world is hard and i struggle with its difficulty.

I don’t want to be rude, but can you actually kill anything with this build? I have a hard time imaging this to be fun for open world. Imagine you want to kill a fly. You have to tank that fly god knows how long and wait for some else to pass over and press #1 once to kill it for you. Idk, man

Playing this in open world is a horrible idea. A regular Chrono probably kills a Stonehead in the time you’ll kill a Pocket Raptor… :P

Most of the time you will struggle because you have to deal with foes over a long period of time. What you kill faster, won’t try to kill you any longer. Where do you struggle exactly? Maybe we can help you out so you can actually outplay the enviorment instead of getting ultra tanky wich slows down any progress you want to make in this game.

Did people miss the part about this being designed by a son for his mother who was having problems using active defenses and just wanted to play around without the extra effort of ACTIVE defenses?

bearshaman.3421:

Did people miss the part about this being designed by a son for his mother who was having problems using active defenses and just wanted to play around without the extra effort of ACTIVE defenses?

Sure, but this build is objectively bad even considering that. This is a case of doing your best to hammer nails using a screwdriver. Mesmer is a class of active defenses, trying to use it as a purely passive sustain build will be bad no matter what. They should be playing tempest instead to accomplish that goal. Indeed, even in this build a significant amount of it is very active sustain and active defense. The OP discussed how the scepter/sword have active blocks. The healing comes in a large part from shatters that have to both be actively used and actively set up by producing illusions.

On top of all that, this isn’t even the best way to get passive defense! Staff is a defensive weapon that requires very active use to be effective. Why not take greatsword with the cripple trait to just passively cripple everything while fighting? Why take offhand sword and illusions when offhand shield and chronomancer would offer far better blocks and passive defense from the slow the phantasm apply?

Lastly, a build needs to do more than survive to be a successful build for open world content. Unless you want to play the entire game as a pacifist without killing anything and instead contribute to events by doing non-combat actions, this build doesn’t have a purpose. Full nomads on mesmer will be truly and completely unable to kill anything in a reasonable amount of time in the base game, let alone HoT where tankier mobs are very common. So many events in HoT require mob cleanup and a reasonable pace or they’ll fail. This build is categorically incapable of completing a significant amount of content in this game, and by that measure it is a failed attempt at a build.

To add to Pyro’s point about passive sustain, don’t play ele it’s not as passive as people think though it can stack them high and take a while to kill.

Best classes for “passive” play is and always will be ranger followed by minion master necro, you have to actually try to die on those two unless you just run straight into a dozen mobs and afk.

I’d vote for necro, it’s a fun class and one of the few that has a decent risk-reward balance in the mess that is HoT….if you ignore how silly deathly chill is.

Necro is absolutely fantastic at innate, passive survival. It really shines in HoT maps. I almost akitten my way solo through every HP that gave me trouble on my mesmer when I was running through with my core necro. Almost managed to solo Champ of Balthazaar as well before I messed up and forgot about the OHKO fire floor attack :/

This build isn’t going to kill anything…..
If you really want this build to work i’d suggest going full celestial. It would have better synergy with staff / scepter and offer okay-ish raw power damage with okay-ish crit chance and damage…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNArcWnsICtqhVqBeoBUrhleDC91DZFmB4CZ8MFlY1A-TxxGABE/EA+SfAAnCgwU/Zj9HuTJ4TK/AA-e

Maybe go Runes of Dwayna instead of Rune of the Dolyak, as the Dolyak rune barely does any healing per second and Dwayna adds extra duration to your regen + another proc.