Guild Wars 2

I pretty much always play either full zerker or mostly zerker with a little bit of vital and toughness. However, lately I’ve been trying PVT armor in PvP, and I have found it much more effective. I’m running 10/30/30 Sw/Sw, Sw/P with Condi removal mantra, decoy, and blink. I have found that despite the lack of precision, Phantasmal Fury and Empowered Illusions still gives me plenty of damage. I also take Blade Training so that I can do an iLeap-> BF combo every 9.5 seconds. If I’m feeling lucky, I try to get an AA chain in there. I have been doing better that I ever did with zerker. I’m thinking about crafting a soldier set for WvW so that I can both roam better, and perhaps even be near the front of a zerg.

What are your thoughts on PVT for Mesmer and focusing on sword for damage? 1v1? In a zerg?

I mean, there’s not really any mystery behind pvt, you said it pretty well. It’s just a power based armor set that lacks the other offensive attributes. You’ll be tankier but do less damage.

This will be more effective in zergs than zerker armor since you need that defense to survive. It’ll be more of a mixed bag in roaming and 1v1 fights. You’ll be harder to kill certainly, but you could have a lot of trouble actually killing slipperier or tankier people.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I mean, there’s not really any mystery behind pvt, you said it pretty well. It’s just a power based armor set that lacks the other offensive attributes. You’ll be tankier but do less damage.

This will be more effective in zergs than zerker armor since you need that defense to survive. It’ll be more of a mixed bag in roaming and 1v1 fights. You’ll be harder to kill certainly, but you could have a lot of trouble actually killing slipperier or tankier people.

Playing in PvP alone, I noticed that while my survivability increased significantly, my damage didn’t suffer that much; I still had a 30% crit damage, and fury on phantasms brought them to 41% crit chance. I have died less and secured more kills that I ever did in zerkers.

kaikalii.4198:

Pyroatheist.9031:

I mean, there’s not really any mystery behind pvt, you said it pretty well. It’s just a power based armor set that lacks the other offensive attributes. You’ll be tankier but do less damage.

This will be more effective in zergs than zerker armor since you need that defense to survive. It’ll be more of a mixed bag in roaming and 1v1 fights. You’ll be harder to kill certainly, but you could have a lot of trouble actually killing slipperier or tankier people.

Playing in PvP alone, I noticed that while my survivability increased significantly, my damage didn’t suffer that much; I still had a 30% crit damage, and fury on phantasms brought them to 41% crit chance. I have died less and secured more kills that I ever did in zerkers.

It gives you more room for error in your playing. You won’t be able to kill people as well, but you can make more mistakes.

If it works for you use it
I have few guys in my guild with similar set up. We are pure WVW guild and do a lot guild zerg runs. For mesmer running close to pin PTV or Dire is must have.. I am mixing Dire armor with zerk trinkets in WVW when run with zergs or groups. Gives me some tankines plus nice mix between power and cond DMG.
Solo i prefer Zerk. Kill or be killed.:). To be honest i am not really good with managing my CD’s and zerk gives me option to kill very fast by burning everything.

I personally prefer zerker because, as Pyro said, it will be alot harder to bring people down with PVT. However, if I constantly get ganked by Thieves I sometimes switch to PVT so the Thief can’t burst me down. PVT is also a lot better when holding points but that’s usually not the job of a Mesmer.