Guild Wars 2

Hi, have a lv 47 mesmer I play with my wifes ranger. We only PVE and while questing together never is problematic, I am a bit of a min-maxer and like optimizing. I have tried all the weapon combinations and traits available to my level and am a bit torn between staff and GS as main weapons.

Since lv 40 i have used staff with 20 points illusion and the rest in chaos. Very survivable and decent dps (with illusionary elasticity).

Am now thinking about going with power/prec/crit gear and 20 points in power trait (GS training), 30 illusion (elasticity and illusionary persona) and 20 precicion (clone on dodge) and shattering after summoning berserker (and clones). So far shatter dmg seems pretty lackluster but I read it should be pretty strong. Is this a viable PVe build? What would be the preferred point distribution as I level?

My personal experience and not saying you have to follow my path of course.

I often duo with a irl buddy and he rolled a dps necro. At around level 60 I completely switched to a full heal build on my Mesmer and never looked back since then. Someone has to bring in some heals, especially when duoing champions in PVE and bigger stuff.

As lvl40 Mesmer the highest DPS build is probable Sharper Images (Duelling 15) build with GS. GS is offense, Staff is defense/ support.
GS with Duelling X and 1~2 illusion utilities can also make for a shatter build, which has to be tested individually (I only shatter on higher HP targets).
To balance the damage sources between bleed and weapon, you could wear Berserkers equips. With 3 Illusions up (GS #2 + #4 + dodge) You should deal 50%+ damage from your weapon and 50-% from Bleeding (except on environmental targets (immune to status effects)).

Staff + additional bounce might be decent, but only works in ~melee range, which makes Mesmer very vulnerable. This is not a needed trait for non-staff mesmers.

But remember, that I only wrote about DPS, not support/ heal or hybrid builds. Nidwin did this.

If you are looking for shatter bursts pick up the trait in Domination that adds +20% damage to Mind Wrack and the trait in Illusions that adds +10% crit to it. Make sure you stack your skills that add vulnerability right before shattering, too. Otherwise you won’t notice a big burst of damage except against trash mobs, tho it can be great if you round a few up and AOE shatter them.

It’s more of a constant rotation of building illusions, making sure your phants get at least 1 attack off, and then shattering when the CDs come around. This way you can keep up a steady rhythm of DPS which is generally more important in PVE except when a single burst can take out your foes. You won’t see big drops in the red every time you hit F1, but you will see it dropping consistently faster than most other builds.

Note that if you go staff and max condition damage and get sharper images, you can do more DPS, especially AOE, than a power/crit GS build, but it’s not reliable since most of your damage is randomized by which conditions get spread around. I haven’t found anything that beats a sword/focus build for DPS, but there is obvious risk there as well.

It should be noted that you level very fast crafting and it’s not all that expensive. There are many guides floating around.

Power leveling through these awkward levels will also leave you with a full set of whatever gear you’re building for. Jewelry makes a huge difference because what you can craft is so much better than what drops.