Guild Wars 2

I’m newly back to GW2 (after being away since the first couple months of the game being out). …and I’ve never messed with the upgrade slots in my armor or weapons – when leveling I just switched stuff out too often to really focus on them.

My Mesmer just hit 80 and I have plenty I still want to do on the character. I do not have HoT. I have some gold saved up, but I’m far from ultra-rich.

What would you suggest I put in my armor and weapon upgrade slots on my new level 80 gear? I’m currently Dueling / Illusions / Domination – using Greatsword and Sword/Focus (might experiment with other non-focus off-hands now). Berserker gear setup (power/precision/ferocity).

Any info greatly appreciated – I’m kinda clueless on the inner-workings of upgrade slots…

Since you are using Berserker, typically Superior Rune of the Scholar (armors) and Superior Sigil of Force/Night/Air (weapons). They are a bit pricey though…

I believe this is the typical DPS build for dungeons pre-HoT. You might also want to get off hand Sword, since its phantasm is one of the best for DPS.

Hmm… thought sword phantasm was lower dps than focus (though of course the focus one is stationary). Will check it out

Any other suggestions? I’m looking for the best upgrade slot things I can get for a few gold apiece.

Hmm… Are your armor pieces ascended? If yes, the second slot is called infusion slots, which is mainly for agony resistance for fractals, and I suggest that you ignore that for now.

If they are only exotic, then there should be only one slot…. AFAIK
However, two-handed weapons do have two upgrade slots.

Anyway, the way how superior rune works is that a certain type (eg, Scholar, Pack) has 6-tiered bonus. For each superior rune of that type you are currently equipping, you activate a tier. For instance, if you are currently equipping 3 Superior runes of the scholar, that means you will get +25 Power, +35 Ferocity, +50 Power.

Also, note that you cannot equip two identical sigils at the same time. For instance, you cannot equip two Superior Sigil of the Force to your greatsword.

Hope this helps.

“Hmm… Are your armor pieces ascended?”

No… no clue how that works.
Thanks for the other info though… very appreciated.

Any other suggestions?

P.S. Force is waaaaaaay too expensive, darn….

An equipment piece will have a rarity rating: Basic, Fine, Masterwork, Rare, Exotic, Ascended, Legendary.

Once you reach level 80, you should get at least exotic gears. Don’t worry about Ascended/Legendary for now.

Another suggestion that pops into my mind:
Once you used an upgrade component to a gear, you can get it back (with 100% certainty) by using Black Lion Salvage Kit. This is especially important if you have a very expensive upgrade, eg Force

Also, you can play around with the build editor here. In that link, I have provided the DPS build that I was referring to. Note that when choosing an equipment, the orange colour indicates Exotic, while Red/Pink indicates Ascended. For now, just use Exotic.

Also, here is a guide on how to use that build.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Ah… Ascended is just a rarity rating then. Thought you had to do something to ascend gear or something. No, I have no ascended or legendary gear. Exotics are even a bit expensive for me, but I’ll look into it… at least for my main weapons.

What are you planning to do? Open world?

Focus is by far my favorite secondary that regular mesmers have access to. Not quite as strong as sword phantasm, but when traited to reflect projectiles its much more useful and also gives you easy access to quickness and stacking enemies.

For your actual gear, one of my guildmates suggested running knights gear on a mesmer. It boosted her survivability way over that of my full zerker mesmer and she didn’t really lose that much damage out of it either. I’m in the process of switching now, but really if you plan on sticking to regular PvE it shouldn’t matter that much because the mobs are easy to kill.

Upgrade slots depend on whether you want to focus on power or condition damage. I like condition damage in PvE so I use nightmare runes because they are dirt cheap and provide a nice condition boost. Greatsword is a good weapon because of its range, scepter is also a fun main hand weapon in general PvE.