Guild Wars 2

Lately I’ve been doing high level fractals and dungeons and become acutely aware of how important DPS is compared to support and control (That’s not to deny mesmer’s support, which is incredible, with spammable reflects and whatnot), and been refining my kit and build to make DPS a much higher priority, switching from sword/focus/staff to sword/focus/GS, and managing to tune my GS to routinely land 2.5-3k GS1, 6k+ GS4, 9-10k Focus 5 etc

Seemed like good numbers and I was really happy to be doing so much DPS.

I decided to dust off my guardian today however to see if my new angle on DPS would be useful there too, set it up with very similar gear to my mes (zerker/cavalier/knight mix)…

…am I imagining it or is mesmer really lacklustre in DPS, I mean. I know our DPS isn’t stellar, but GS is a two handed, dedicated ranged DPS weapon – it’s kind’ve our equivalent to ranger’s longbow, or Warrior’s rifle.

Contrast this to Guardian’s sceptre, which is a one handed ranged weapon (Like mesmer sceptre), on the most heavily melee orientated class in the game that has more of a defensive than offensive angle. And yet, the average damage values I’m getting (With similar stats) are:

Mesmer GS1: ~2.5k crit average (1.5 sec channel, 1.6k DPS)
Guardian Wand1: ~1.3k crit average (0.25 second spam, 5.2k DPS)

Now, obviously GS has a great ranged phantasm option on a long cooldown that can hit super hard, but, the sceptre is a mainhand weapon leaving 2 slots free to mix and match and of course Wand2 adds a lot of DPS on static targets so, swings and roundabouts there.

I’m just wondering if anyone could tell me where I’m going wrong with the maths on this, surely the “long range sidearm” option for the bunkery heavy melee class, shouldn’t be over double the DPS of the dedicated long range DPS option for a cloth caster class?

Before anyone pipes up with the obvious “But the sceptre projectiles are easy to dodge” ask yourself, have you ever seen a dungeon boss dodge roll?

While scepter does more DPS, GS1 isn’t the way a mesmer should be doing it’s damage anyways. Once the guardian stops spamming 1, their DPS will fall much more dramatically, while mesmers can keep phantasms up, bleeds up, or shatter. In the end, I’ll take GS anyday. It’s probably useful in PvE though. I may be wrong, but I think that guardian skill can be reflected, while GS1 cannot. Also, GS1 can aoe line targets, thus it can’t be blocked by trash mobs or adds, whereas a common projectile will hit whatever is infront of it’s target.

Ah yeah, valid point – sceptre projectiles can definitely be reflected, GS2’s clone can be freely shattered (along with GS4 if desired) for a fairly significant amount of extra spike damage and of course you have a fair degree of “hands free” functionality thanks to phantasms.

So it probably all balances out once you factor in all the additional damage sources – GS is definietly my preference in terms of usability, I was just kind’ve shocked at how fast I could burn through the tentacles in Jade maw with a sceptre, compared to a GS (Where the tentacle tends to smash your clones so you’re more reliant on GS1) which led me to examine the numbers

Ryuujin.8236:

Ah yeah, valid point – sceptre projectiles can definitely be reflected, GS2’s clone can be freely shattered (along with GS4 if desired) for a fairly significant amount of extra spike damage and of course you have a fair degree of “hands free” functionality thanks to phantasms.

So it probably all balances out once you factor in all the additional damage sources – GS is definietly my preference in terms of usability, I was just kind’ve shocked at how fast I could burn through the tentacles in Jade maw with a sceptre, compared to a GS (Where the tentacle tends to smash your clones so you’re more reliant on GS1) which led me to examine the numbers

I’ve seen guardians do that often, but I have to wonder if they packed most of the offensiveness into that skill, and left the others on a more defensive/utility basis. Spread out, all of GS abilities are offensive, some have defensive/utility aspects as well but the offense is spread out evenly amongst all the skills in my opinion. Looking at the skill descriptions, it looks like skills 1 & 2 are offensive, and skill 3 is more utility based. :o

Yeah, 1 and 2 are pretty much pure offence, they don’t leave much to the imagination (A common trend in guardian skills when compared to mesmer :p), and 3 is of course a root which naturally combines with 2 to keep people rooted in the AoE

Looking up the normalised damage:
Orb of wrath (Wand 1) – 224 damage (896 dps)
Spatial Surge (GS1) – 348×3 damage (696 dps)

So, yeah. It was probably difference in traiting that was throwing the power curve, the difference isn’t as great as it looked on in the field and is almost entirely reliant on the enemy being so kind as to not wander out of Wand 2 to make the DPS difference.

Oh well, pondering resolved

(Now I feel a bit happier that my attempts at hybrid DPS/support on mesmer isn’t a wasted effort)