Guild Wars 2

I was just kind of curious what kind of builds & weapon sets people were running specifically for high end fractals.

I’ve been running 0/20/0/20/30 and have become hooked on IP & VR to maximize my invul uptime. DPS could be slightly higher, but I’ve found it to be handy in skipping the first set of harpies, bomb path dredge, staying alive to melee burst lava elementals, doing the bonfire in snowblind if no thief is around, cliffside seal running, etc…

As for weapons, it’s mostly S/F + whatever situation calls for. I’m kind of curious what weapon sets people are using for the boss fights at the end of each fractal.

Try removing 5pts from illusions and putting it in inspiration for 0/20/0/25/25. You gain 15% damage to your phantasms and lose 1 second on invuln when you use it, not too bad if you ask me.

As for the weapon sets, I use the following in the last bosses of each one:

Snowblind: Sword/Pistol and Sword/Sword
Cliffside: Sword/pistol and GS
Swampland: Sword/pistol and scepter/focus (mossman), sword/pistol and sword/focus (bloomhunger)
Urban Battlegrounds: Sword/Sword and scepter/pistol
Volcanic: Sword/focus and scepter/pistol
Uncategorized: Sword/focus and sword/pistol
Dredge: Sword/pistol and GS (I know, I know, many people will say melee is faster, but I have never been in a PuG with the necessary DPS and skill).

If you are in an efficient, skilled group, then you can use full melee sets on dredge and mossman (though I am still not personally comfortable with full melee on mossman and haven’t had time to practice him solo).

Why Scepter/Pistol on volcanic? It’s one of the few fights where I actually find GS to be really useful – the knockback and cripples are helpful for controlling the vets in the first fight and the zerker aoe dmg/cripple/knockback seems to help out a lot during the elemental burn phase. I’ll oppen with focus pull, feedback, warden, BF, switch to gs, zerker, dodge out to avoid getting pummelled, blast through a bunch with aa until cd.

It’s also nice to have the knockback/range on GS if something does go wrong – if someone gets downed and you need to finish off a distant ele for a rally, or need to buy someone a few seconds to rally with a knockback.

I agree that meleeing dredge can be very hard, especially if you have to do it while trying to kite. It’s one of those fights where killing fast just doesn’t mitigate damage like it does elsewhere. But why not Scepter/Pistol? At least then you can get the ranged daze from MB.

Yeah, in volcanic the gs is far better than scepter/pistol in terms of good cc for the vets and strong aoe burn damage in the elemental part.

In dredge, you need sword/focus, not sword pistol. At least 90% of the enemies in that fractal are projectile users. Putting down a warden and/or curtain makes meleeing dredge very easy, not to mention the fantastic control with the curtain.

In Cliffside, you also want sword/focus. The acolytes use a VERY strong bouncing projectile attack, and temporal curtain also provides good control during the arm seals and chest seal.

In the Swamp, I actually take greatsword as my swap from sword/focus, purely because having cripple on Mossman is really helpful. That being said, I don’t actually ever swap to greatsword, I just stay sword/focus and make sure that the axe never hits a teammate with reflects.

In snowblind, sword/focus is really important for the first 2 steps. The first fire has a lot of projectile using mobs, and you want control there. In the ice elemental part, the summoned elementals use projectile attacks, as well as being spread out, so you want temporal curtain to group them up and aoe them down rapidly. For the boss, swap it out to something a bit more damagey.

The spec I personally use in fractals is 10/10/0/25/25, because I value that 15% damage over sharper images and a dueling trait.

Mckeone.9804:

Why Scepter/Pistol on volcanic? It’s one of the few fights where I actually find GS to be really useful – the knockback and cripples are helpful for controlling the vets in the first fight and the zerker aoe dmg/cripple/knockback seems to help out a lot during the elemental burn phase. I’ll oppen with focus pull, feedback, warden, BF, switch to gs, zerker, dodge out to avoid getting pummelled, blast through a bunch with aa until cd.

It’s also nice to have the knockback/range on GS if something does go wrong – if someone gets downed and you need to finish off a distant ele for a rally, or need to buy someone a few seconds to rally with a knockback.

I agree that meleeing dredge can be very hard, especially if you have to do it while trying to kite. It’s one of those fights where killing fast just doesn’t mitigate damage like it does elsewhere. But why not Scepter/Pistol? At least then you can get the ranged daze from MB.

First off, my bad, I thought you only meant last boss fights in each one, so my recommendations are only for those final bosses. For shaman fractal, you definitely want Greatsword for the vets when you fight him in grawl form, it is, as you say, very very helpful with the knockback and cripple. For the elemental, I normally run GS, but I have recently tried using scepter because I often run with a guardian who pulls them all behind a wall, and we melee cleave them down. If I am on weapon cooldown when it starts, the scepter 3 pierces and I have the pistol 5 to control some of them. It’s been pretty successful so far, but the AoE with GS is also amazing on those elementals. It largely depends on your group.

Oh, and I do not use Scepter on dredge final boss because the clones can mess up his aggro in between lava buckets. While you have 4 shatters to burn them, I feel I have more control with the GS. Also, my GS is ascended, so if we get the dredge machine guy, the GS gives me 10 more AR.

Pyroatheist.9031:

In Cliffside, you also want sword/focus. The acolytes use a VERY strong bouncing projectile attack, and temporal curtain also provides good control during the arm seals and chest seal.

Ahh, that was a typo on my part for the final boss, I run sword/focus on the switch. When the archdiviner becomes stunned and hammer appears, you can do 3 things that really help the group: (1) focus pull 1 or two acolytes to you and burn them down. Throw a warden on one of the acolytes that wasn’t pulled and a feedback on the other. This way the hammer carrier is not damaged while smashing the seal.

Lastly, as for everything else Pyro mentioned for sub-bosses and trash, it’s what you should do.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Yeah, in volcanic the gs is far better than scepter/pistol in terms of good cc for the vets and strong aoe burn damage in the elemental part.

The spec I personally use in fractals is 10/10/0/25/25, because I value that 15% damage over sharper images and a dueling trait.

Scepter/sword is the best ranged swap you can take for the grawl shaman, that or just don’t take a ranged swap and go sw/f+sw/s.

15/30/0/25/0. You should be camping mantras the majority of the time in fractals, no point not to take empowering mantras. Off-hand sword is pretty much better than pistol everywhere other than when dealing with tough trash (magic bullet mages in ascalon, for example).

You should also probably take mimic when you do the grawl shaman.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Scepter/sword is the best ranged swap you can take for the grawl shaman, that or just don’t take a ranged swap and go sw/f+sw/s.

Well, that’s not really true at all. Nether scepter nor sword have any good aoe to speak of, and so you’ll be mostly useless when trying to aoe down the mass of elementals when they spawn.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

15/30/0/25/0. You should be camping mantras the majority of the time in fractals, no point not to take empowering mantras.

So that actually doesn’t make a lot of sense either. You’re going 15 points into domination simply for a few stacks of vuln on daze? That’s a very poor choice, and generally only taken for soloing lupicus, nothing else. Stacking vuln isn’t your job as a Mesmer, don’t bend over backwards to do so.

Additionaly, camping mantras is also a poor choice in fractals. There’s no real good reason to do so, since in a phantasm build you’re putting most of your damage into phantasms, and Mesmer normal (non-shatter/phantasm) attacks are comparatively weak. There are many more effective utilities to take in PvE content other than mantras that you don’t intend on actually using.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Off-hand sword is pretty much better than pistol everywhere other than when dealing with tough trash (magic bullet mages in ascalon, for example).

When dealing with tough trash, you’ll be wanting a focus…not a sword or a pistol. Aoe pull/interrupt and a strong aoe phantasm is what kills trash. Both sword and pistol are highly single target.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

You should also probably take mimic when you do the grawl shaman.

I’d probably stay away from encouraging exploits, even if they are hilarious.

He didnt say scepter sword was for trash. You would use pistol and focus for trash. Sword offhand is very good for shaman (block and decent phantasm).

spoj.9672:

He didnt say scepter sword was for trash. You would use pistol and focus for trash. Sword offhand is very good for shaman (block and decent phantasm).

This^

You have your sword swap for the trash at shaman, the ranged swap is simply for the non-bubble phase(s) where you’re presumably just dodging arrows all day (you could just full melee, if you wanted to). Your points for the GS made no sense at all. Using the push on the elementals, seriously? That’s about as counter-intuitive as it gets.

You aren’t bending over backwards at all with that build. You should (almost) always have 2 mantras on your bar for fractals, there are some instances where you’ll have as few as 1 and as many as 3, claiming that mantras aren’t effective just shows your inexperience with the area(s). Vuln buffs the entire teams DPS, if you have the ability to easily apply vuln, you should do so; there is no reason not to (theres also no where else to put 5 points that is actually helpful).

Scepter/sword is purely for the imbued shaman, there is no other encounter that you will be ranging in fractals. Otherwise, you’re camping Sword/Focus+Sword/X, primarily off-hand sword and rotating to off-hand pistol when the situation asks for it. It is a fools choice to put all your eggs into one basket (phantasms), they will not and do not survive for the majority of most of the fractals.

Also; ANet said that mimic’ing agony isn’t an exploit. It’s a clever use of skills.

In closing; Scepter/sword if you plan on ranging something, 15/30/0/25/0, use mantras, sword/focus is always one of your swaps, greatsword is bad. This is all based on tests conducted going from 6-70 (hitting 80 this weekend) fractal level with a mesmer.

spoj.9672:

He didnt say scepter sword was for trash. You would use pistol and focus for trash. Sword offhand is very good for shaman (block and decent phantasm).

I didn’t imply it was for trash. There’s just no reason to leave melee range on the imbued shaman unless you’re killing the trash, and for that you want strong long range aoe. Staying in melee range with sword/focus is both more effective and safer than ranging it, as long as you know what you’re doing.

In 15/30/0/25/0, what do you use for the second tier dueling trait and the first tier inspiration trait?

Also, how do you afford all the ascended weapons you need to swap with the kittenty drops? I’m PR 47, looking forward to hitting PR 48 tonight, and I’m kitten near broke

Pyroatheist.9031:

spoj.9672:

He didnt say scepter sword was for trash. You would use pistol and focus for trash. Sword offhand is very good for shaman (block and decent phantasm).

I didn’t imply it was for trash. There’s just no reason to leave melee range on the imbued shaman unless you’re killing the trash, and for that you want strong long range aoe. Staying in melee range with sword/focus is both more effective and safer than ranging it, as long as you know what you’re doing.

Ok whats this implying then:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Well, that’s not really true at all. Nether scepter nor sword have any good aoe to speak of, and so you’ll be mostly useless when trying to aoe down the mass of elementals when they spawn.

Anyway like cookie said above me. You can melee the shaman if you want. But many groups and pugs range during the non bubble phase so taking a scepter there is fine. The sword offhand block is amazingly good for arrows and the ground slam the shaman does. If i took my mesmer into fractals I would use sword focus and sword sword for shaman. Maybe scepter sword depending on the group.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

This^

You have your sword swap for the trash at shaman, the ranged swap is simply for the non-bubble phase(s) where you’re presumably just dodging arrows all day (you could just full melee, if you wanted to). Your points for the GS made no sense at all. Using the push on the elementals, seriously? That’s about as counter-intuitive as it gets.

You aren’t bending over backwards at all with that build. You should (almost) always have 2 mantras on your bar for fractals, there are some instances where you’ll have as few as 1 and as many as 3, claiming that mantras aren’t effective just shows your inexperience with the area(s). Vuln buffs the entire teams DPS, if you have the ability to easily apply vuln, you should do so; there is no reason not to (theres also no where else to put 5 points that is actually helpful).

Scepter/sword is purely for the imbued shaman, there is no other encounter that you will be ranging in fractals. Otherwise, you’re camping Sword/Focus+Sword/X, primarily off-hand sword and rotating to off-hand pistol when the situation asks for it. It is a fools choice to put all your eggs into one basket (phantasms), they will not and do not survive for the majority of most of the fractals.

Also; ANet said that mimic’ing agony isn’t an exploit. It’s a clever use of skills.

In closing; Scepter/sword if you plan on ranging something, 15/30/0/25/0, use mantras, sword/focus is always one of your swaps, greatsword is bad. This is all based on tests conducted going from 6-70 (hitting 80 this weekend) fractal level with a mesmer.

Ranging at shaman, mwahahaha.

How to be a good Fractals mesmer:
Learn to use your reflection powerhouse at it’s best – Feedback, TC (and master into the void too) + Warden, Mimic – where and when use them.

Booom, done.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

You should also probably take mimic when you do the grawl shaman.

How does mimic work here (in the sense that Pyro would call it an exploit)? I was under the impression that when you use mimic on an agony attack, it was only ridiculously powerful on those without an agony attack (i.e., one hitting Dulfy when you have an agony move stored in Mimic for Echo). Wouldn’t it just hit the shaman for, say, normal 10k damage with minor agony damage?

Or are you recommending it for both Echo on the agony attack and the reflecting capabilities it has for the trash as well?

Hes suggesting storing the agony arrow for a non legendary boss/mob in the next fractal.

I posted the 0/20/0/25/25 first after nerf and was the build intended totally for fractals 40+
You can even go full zerk and carry pugs .

I ll take Bumbler post as reference but changed according to my style.

Snowblind: Sword/Focus and GS:
Gs aoe cripple is awesome….
Focus in a stage based on projectiles is a must..
And the pull is Always good
You may want to remove focus for pistol at boss.
Place 3 iduelist exactly under the Cliff where he goes at phase change and just spam GS autoattack….
NB its not camping….its more the fact this boss is totally uncapable of Killing any iduelist for the Whole fight….so you ll end up autoattacking anyway GS is good to kill ice walls to clear los for your phants (ice walls).

Cliffside: Sword/pistol and GS
Agree for boss.
Focus in other situations. maybe even Sw/sw Sw/focus at arm seal.
(to tell the truth i often switch to ele here so its the only fractal i didn t do hundreds time with mesmer)

Swampland: Sword/pistol and GS (mossman)
You need cripple….GS cripple is awesome.
You need illusion to shatter in case of Emergency ress GS 2 is awesome

GS and sword/focus (bloomhunger)
unless you melee. in that case sw/sw instead of GS

Urban Battlegrounds: Sword/Focus (pistol at boss) and GS
You need aoes so use aoe weapons
You need to range last 30% of boss
You need focus pull in many situations
@boss remember to equip boon strips for retaliation.

Volcanic: Sword/focus and GS
GS for:
-Aoe
-fast clone generations (when boss enters phase just F4 and summon an izerker right after)
Focus for reflect
Just use iwarden and GS2 during main phase.
And burn your utilities at phase change.

At veteran grawls switch focus with pistol.

Uncategorized: Sword/focus and sword/sword
Sword 4 is good
At 4 Champions use the same tactic as svanir boss when only the ettin is left (ie GS and sw/pistol).

Dredge: Sword/focus and GS
Dredge = aoes + antiprojectile.
Maybe sw/sw against rabdovich

…this build has more than 100% uptime reflect or evade.

In all those examples I wouldnt use the gs for any of them.

As i written is intended for pug runs…
“optimized” runs with friends doesn t need any build….you can almost go naked.

But feel free to explain why for example you wouldn t use GS at svanir boss.
There is really no point in using anything else.

You won t be using any OH skill anyway or you kill a phantasm.

When i run fractals we usually have atleast 2 pugs. Which means we cant use certain tactics because pugs dont listen.

There is no space at all in the svanir boss room so camping gs would be terrible (bad damage even at max range and you cant even go max range). Sword mainhand is fine, you can get your phantasms up and then just dps with a superior auto attack while also having blurred frenzy for an extra evade. I also dont understand why you would use a gs there if you are keeping 3 duelists up, the whole arguement as to why people use gs is for the beserker….

Looking at your list its almost as if you just love the gs so much that you cant bare to play without it despite there being other options.

spoj.9672:

When i run fractals we usually have atleast 2 pugs. Which means we cant use certain tactics because pugs dont listen.

There is no space at all in the svanir boss room so camping gs would be terrible (bad damage even at max range and you cant even go max range). Sword mainhand is fine, you can get your phantasms up and then just dps with a superior auto attack while also having blurred frenzy for an extra evade. I also dont understand why you would use a gs there if you are keeping 3 duelists up, the whole arguement as to why people use gs is for the beserker….

Looking at your list its almost as if you just love the gs so much that you cant bare to play without it despite there being other options.

being biased because the leit motif now is GS is for noobs….aren t you?

You want GS because of the silly building hitbox and GS 1 makes easier to kill ice.
You won t be using ANY OH weapon anyway so your main hand sword is more than enough.

If you look closely you will see sometimes GS is the best weapon sometimes is the worst.

Also looking at my list you ll see that GS is because you WANT his skills.
2 pugs is not the same as FIVE (-.- kitten filter everywhere) pugs.
2 pugs will follow instructions
5 pugs won t.

Example
Can you solo ashim with no range options?
What happens if everyone in the party follows your idea and what if you have 2 necros?

One day maybe anet will balance guards and warriors and PvE will have to learn to deal with balanced parties and game mechanics maybe

Spouting nonsense as usual, <3 byron.

Im not being biased at all. It seems like you are. I dont use the gs because the benefits dont outweigh the cons.

And in my experience even 1 pug rarely follows instructions. When you are running with 1 or 2 friends the group will completely fail if you try to los dredge while the pugs sit at the back pulling aggro and getting you killed.

spoj.9672:

There is no space at all in the svanir boss room so camping gs would be terrible (bad damage even at max range and you cant even go max range). Sword mainhand is fine, you can get your phantasms up and then just dps with a superior auto attack while also having blurred frenzy for an extra evade. I also dont understand why you would use a gs there if you are keeping 3 duelists up, the whole arguement as to why people use gs is for the beserker….

I am going to have to agree here. Since you are putting up the three duelists, you can also bring OH sword for the extra block. Using the MH Sword auto attack on the svanir shaman is also rather safe. The only real thing you need to watch out for is the breath, and if it is on you, then just double dodge back out (and not running in a circle and having it hit your other party members!!!!!!) and resume your attacks after. Also, when he ports you to him, it’s a great DPS loss to have to run out with GS.

LordByron.8369:

Example
Can you solo ashim with no range options?

Scepter/pistol is better for phase 2 because the iZerker typically hits only twice, when you could have some iDuelists and confusing images (which is between an 8k-10k burst).

What do people suggest for max dps on maw tentacles? Phantasms seem to die really quick and those tents have a huge attack radius.

Mckeone.9804:

What do people suggest for max dps on maw tentacles? Phantasms seem to die really quick and those tents have a huge attack radius.

Sword/sword sword/pistol. You can go melee range very easily.

The tentacles have 2 attacks that they use back and forth. One is a knockback spin, dodge/bf/sword 4. The other is a slap attack. You can avoid that simply by strafing around the tentacle as you attack it.

I still use GS on maw for pulling / damaging colossi; they reflect projectiles so none of our other range options even work. Sw/F when they get close. Then again, maw is trivial with anything.
Here’s what I usually use for the rest:

• Svanir = Sw/Sw + P for boss, Focus at ice elemental.
• Grawl = Sw/F + GS (GS cripple and push are great in first phase, cleave vs adds rocks for final. Fast clone attacks also help break the bubble.)
• Cliffside = Sw/F + P for boss (Focus vs devourers and acos, Duelists on boss, Magic Bullet for some extra control), generally Sw/F + Staff for seals (Chaos Storm can be nice extra protection for stacking against acolytes). Sw/Sw + P for the first Archdiviner.
• Ascalon = Sw/P + GS at boss, Focus for pulls en-route.
• Swamp = Sw/Sw + F (either boss) – curtain cripples Mossman too, and hiding inside Wardens when he’s invisible is useful. Sword block for when wardens aren’t spinning. Meleeing Bloomy is pretty easy, even when the rest of the party ranges.
• Asura = Sw/Sw + P for champs, Focus for harpies, untraited focus for Tom, Sw/F + P (or GS depending on group) for cat golems.
• Dredge = Sw/F + GS before door, Pistol for rabs (or just sword cleave depending on where we stack). GS again for final (I’ve never been in a group that melees the bucket boss…)

Oh, and I run 10/30/0/30/0 – it feels like better damage than anything with 25 in Illusions, specially when phants stay up. I usually have Blink range as the third Dueling trait when I’m not running Pistol (not much use to the team maybe, but I love blink), unless I’m running a couple mantras for bonus damage. Inspiration has so many good traits the third slot is never useless.

I do miss the reflect uptime from Haste+Celerity, particularly in Uncategorized, but usually someone else in the group can cover the gap.