Guild Wars 2

As a player on tier one world, I rarely encounter 1v1’s. Of course this this is expected. Many of my fights involve two to three players. Now it usually isn’t too difficult to handle, due to the fact that these duo’s or trio’s consist of zergers who quite frankly play very poorly. Now, recently I’ve noticed that many players have switched to dire/rabid condition gear orientated builds, celestial builds (engi/ele) and of course some berzerker builds (rarely). Due to this, solo roaming becomes a lot more difficult. As a glass cannon shatter mesmer, 25 bleed stacks literally melt me.

Now, i’ve noticed that many other classes with burst specs have some type of “outnumbered” build. This build usually consists a well rounded stat base with considerable mobility and power.

Examples of this include:
-Glass thieves with perplex runes and around 1.2k condition damage.
-Elementalists of course have their D/D which doesn’t need much change.
-Celestial engineers which hit as hard as a static discharge build, but also have considerable condition damage and toughness.
-Rangers with their condition damage, easy access to evades and regeneration.
-Carrion guards, with their heavy burns and considerable damage, and due to specific trait lines around 1.2 toughness.
*I’m not so sure about necromancers and warriors

I would like to know what builds do mesmers have available to them In these circumstances. Do they involve switching to PU or simply traiting more toughness orientated gear? Also, do they lack mobility?

Mesmers, so very either or, no cross specs for them, but I will keep an eye here.

I’ve seen some outnumbered mesmer builds (try to google/youtube it btw, they’re old tho) and they are either based off an abuse of light and ethereal fields or effects when clones die.
For example, using iLeap on a temporal curtain gives a light aura, then swapping to staff and applying a chaos armor will lead to high damage reduction, many boons and many conditions on your enemies.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

I’ve seen some outnumbered mesmer builds (try to google/youtube it btw, they’re old tho) and they are either based off an abuse of light and ethereal fields or effects when clones die.
For example, using iLeap on a temporal curtain gives a light aura, then swapping to staff and applying a chaos armor will lead to high damage reduction, many boons and many conditions on your enemies.

You’re probably referring to my old Immortal build. It worked exceedingly well for outnumbered fights, but it’s no longer viable.

The current outnumbered mesmer builds are all PU variants. There isn’t currently really any good way to build that has enough defense while maintaining a strong enough offense to accomplish anything at all.

I personally much prefer PU conditions, as condition gear (rabid) doesn’t sacrifice defense while having the necessary offensive stats. PU power is going to be less tanky than PU conditions, while at the same time having a somewhat less potent offense

In a PU condition build, you can expect to have around 1900 armor, 1800-2000 condition damage, and extremely good in-combat mobility between phase retreat and blink. I usually run it with perplexity runes, but I’m definitely not convinced that they’re the best choice, so you could experiment with other things. Ether feast provides incredible sustain when combined with that much toughness and protection, pDisenchanter provides boon stripping and condition removal along with the traited torch skills. Your damage comes from a combination of clone-death bursting along with skillful landing of the scepter block. I also take doom sigils to add poison into the rotation. The build allows you to play aggressively in bursts, even against 3-4 people, because the combination of blink and a couple of stealths allows you to both stomp someone you’ve downed and escape to a safe location without getting killed.

Glass cannon shatter mesmer is probably the single worst spec in the game to solo roam on. You have extremely low defenses against the current roaming meta. On the other hand, it’s a great choice for a 2-3 man party, especially if you’ve got a guard or something to engage for you. Shatter mesmers can instantly kill even quite tanky specs if you set up your burst properly, so if you can find a roaming buddy it’s absolutely a great choice. Take a look at some of bamf Joe’s videos for some of that sort of playstyle.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|1.1g.h17.0.0.0|c.1g.h1j.f.1g.h2.0.0.0|1g.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m|2v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0|k39.k4a.u57c.0.0|54.2|0.0.0.0.0|e

My friend used to run this. Keep in mind PU was nerfed a bit since this video was made.

Now, I have attempted a PU build with full zerker gear, and even with some knights trinkets where and their but the results aren’t as impressive as expected. Now, I’m leaning towards a condition build. Is it possible to find a condition build with high mobility ( for escapes or to catch up to a target)* and provide condition “burst”?*

*Mobility does include phase retreating with staff.
*Condition thieves and some necromancers do have access to high condition burst.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Now, I have attempted a PU build with full zerker gear, and even with some knights trinkets where and their but the results aren’t as impressive as expected. Now, I’m leaning towards a condition build. Is it possible to find a condition build with high mobility ( for escapes or to catch up to a target)* and provide condition “burst”?*

*Mobility does include phase retreating with staff.
*Condition thieves and some necromancers do have access to high condition burst.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-Vid-Chaotic-Perdition-WvW-PvP

Mobility is sick – between curtain, 1200 blink, phase retreat, and interrupts/torment, you can run away from most situations, and chase many situations.

Of course, PU is better in 1vX, so the difference with this build is knowing when to stand and fight and when to run to more advantageous terrain. The good thing is, if the situation gets too hot and you want to run away, you can.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Now, I have attempted a PU build with full zerker gear, and even with some knights trinkets where and their but the results aren’t as impressive as expected. Now, I’m leaning towards a condition build. Is it possible to find a condition build with high mobility ( for escapes or to catch up to a target)* and provide condition “burst”?*

High mobility can mean several different things. It can mean in-combat mobility, being able to maneuver through a fight effectively. It could also mean pure in-combat ground speed, how fast you can turn tail and run. It could additionally mean out of combat ground speed, your maximum possible speed swapping weapons and such to make yourself speed from point to point.

Mesmer has generally awful in-combat ground speed. Our fighting weapons are not generally our mobility weapons. On the other hand, mesmers have quite decent out of combat ground speed, between swapping on focus and using blink and phase retreat swaps to cover ground quickly. Lastly, as I mentioned in my first post, mesmers have fantastic in-combat mobility with pretty much every spec. Phase retreat, stealths, and blink allow you to cover ground within a fight rapidly and safely.

PU condition burst is a bit tricky to pull off. Most people simple say it’s not possible and leave it at that, but those people just aren’t good players. The burst has a lot of aspects that all need to work properly in order for it to execute effectively. You need to have 3 illusions up, preferably at least a couple clones. The clones need to be close to your target, as do you. This means you need to be skirmishing in melee range. You need to be able to successfully block attacks to apply the torment from the scepter. I like to do this reliably by baiting attacks using confusing images. This has the side-effect of adding confusion to the combo.

Confusing images applies confusion. The torment block applies 5 stacks of torment and produces a clone. That clone causes 1 explosion. At this point you can use the prestige, dodge roll (explosion 2) and swap to staff. The prestige applies blindness, the swap to staff triggers your doom sigil and energy sigil. Chaos storm applies the doom poison and potentially dazes (interrupt = confusion), chills, and poisons. Another dodge roll and then phase retreat produces 2 more clones (4 explosions in total). The prestige explodes for burning.

This combo will apply between 3 and 10 stacks of confusion, 5 stacks of torment, poison, cripple, weakness, burning, blindness, chill, vulnerability, and 2-8 stacks of bleeding. Consider that your target already will have a couple stacks of bleeding, torment, and potentially burning. This is a phenomenal condition burst when executed properly. Bonus points for somehow working in a third chain scepter auto and applying aoe chaos armor with the prestige blast, since each chaos armor has its own internal cooldown for conditions.

Glass cannon shatter mesmer is probably the single worst spec in the game to solo roam on. You have extremely low defenses against the current roaming meta. On the other hand, it’s a great choice for a 2-3 man party, especially if you’ve got a guard or something to engage for you. Shatter mesmers can instantly kill even quite tanky specs if you set up your burst properly, so if you can find a roaming buddy it’s absolutely a great choice. Take a look at some of bamf Joe’s videos for some of that sort of playstyle.

That I disagree with highly, a well played shatter mesmer can hold it’s own just fine in solo roaming. It is far from being the worst choice in solo roaming, while not being the most optimal for sure and may not be as good as other builds.

Don’t even need to go glass cannon to see alot of damage either. You can easily have 2,300+ armor (far from glass cannon) and still burst down tanky targets. That’s the beauty of inflated stats in WvW. 2,200+ power, 215% crit chance, 2300 armor, 50% crit chance are very attainable values.

If you have trouble with conditions you can easily grab the mantra, or put some sigils of cleansing in your weapons. Or use a torch and grab the trait that removes conditions when used. Torch can also be great because it grants you more stealth to set up bursts while help yourself escape.

Reason why people have trouble with soloing as a shatter mesmer is that they literally roam out there with no armor, and literally have zero condition removal. In that case you are pretty much food for any condition build or zerker thief that comes at you. Also, it also doesn’t matter the build, if you are fighting 2 or more quality opponents, you are going to lose no matter the build. The only thing you can really do is escape, which PU might be able to do a little better.

To answer your question though, I don’t necessarily think there really is a clearcut "best" build for outnumbered for the mesmer. Different roaming builds present their advantages and disadvantages in certain situations. I don’t necessarily think that PU is all that necessary either for outnumbered fights, and there are other options, and PU IMO really kills your DPS, especially for power builds. But again, it depends on the situation.

PU conditions is certainly a decent option in certain situations, but sometimes I feel it is too slow to kill, especially when your opponent runs away from you or likes to use alot of range.. That also leaves time for more people to show up. The DPS revolves around people trying to aggressively attack you and being in semi-melee range. If people choose to ignore you, you aren’t killing anybody. They can’t really pick out a target from a group and "snipe" if you know what I mean. Although it is fun sometimes to have 3 people to no avail try to kill you and troll. Also, it can handle pretty much any build in existence, if you don’t want to die you won’t, unless you get trampled by a zerg or a decently sized group.

I’ve tried non-PU Phantasms and it actually worked really well. iZerker constantly hit 6K on most targets, I didn’t kitten my damage by going PU and it was decently tanky. It allowed me to kill targets alot quicker while dealing with multiple targets. It also allowed me to DPS other targets while focusing on others and DPS while running But the playstyle got boring for me really quick and phantasms builds certainly do have a few weaknesses. Also, with phantasms you don’t ever have to fight melee, which helps you avoid alot of damage.

Also I would recommend giving Lockdown a try. You can play without PU or with PU, but I prefer CI as it coincides more with the lockdown theme.

Sometimes situations call for being able to burst down targets from range in order to better even the odds, sometimes situations call for more direct confrontation. Sometimes PU conditions would be better, sometimes shatter or Phantasms/Lockdown would be better and to me the ratio of these situations aren’t disproportionate. There are times where I wish I had PU condition or times I wish I wkittenter or phantasm.

Experiment and play what you feel gives you the edge and makes you feel the most successful and of course most of all fun. Based on the examples of classes you’ve given, it sounds like you may want to invest in more condition removal to compensate for the perceived increase in condition roaming builds, even if it means compromising a bit of damage. A PU condition mesmer will still melt to conditions like a shatter mesmer, they just have better mechanics to avoid it.

I’m enjoying Osicat’s napalm cat 2.0 build atm, after having tried quite a few builds, power and condi based.

The + change in survivability is nice (and the condi clear is awesome), and I found I have a better fighting chance against most roamers out there.
Against 1v2 is doable (mostly by using terrain obstacles to separate the fights into 1v1’s), but some specs/classes are a no go in 1v2, like 2 thiefs ..uuh…

I also run with the zerg at times, and the spec is nice for deep hostile territory portal bombs, scouting and the usual mesmer utility.

I agree the stats are easy enough to come by in wvw. With guard stacks ascended weapons and armor pushing 2k str 50 crit and 200 crit damage is easy. So at this point for wvw selecting for traits not raw stat points comes into play. The lack of might generating for a mesmer means might stacking to increase all forms of damage to end outnumbered fights faster doesn’t work. The pre pu nerf let us as mesmers have 3 of the best boons for outnumbered fights (allowed us the sustain aegis, protection, regeneration) plus the target drop. IMO pu still allows mesmers a better chance due to having a 1/5 chance to receive a boon that can mitigate damage from multiple people. Dodging is wonderful, with more than one person you need more than just dodging though.

Well, clearly If i want to run shatter in WvW, ill need to obtain more tanky gear. Of course doing this means a loss of crit damage, so, instead of sacrificing a lot of burst, i’ll be looking towards a power or condition PU or Phantasm build and maybe a interrupt build. (Once you go full zerk you can never go back)

Osicats napalm cat sounds interesting, so I’ll make sure to try it out. PU gameplay feels too passive for me, so I may also attempt CI.

Now as far as I know CI can go two ways, condition damage or power. Which one, is something i’ll probably have to figure out.

Power pu is really fun and fast 446 take traits 1 9 in Dom 1 10 in dueling then experiment is chaos line but pick up pu. You burst with gs and shatter aggressively. This discusion has been beat in to death. Taking a trait should have no bearing on play style. Be aggressive and win. With all the food guard stacks ascended gear I have 2k power 60 crit chance and 214 damage. A bunker is just that need to play aggressively to win no matter what you trait. Plus you can chase with gs blink range and I slot stun signet, positioning along with stealth helps with conditions.