Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone!

I’m currently leveling my mesmer and plan to play a heavy burst GS/S+T shatter build that I’ve been using in sPvP. My question though is about what armor choice I should pick for WvW. I almost always solo roam or will sometimes be part of a 3-man group. In my past experience, I have always heard that you need at least 2.8K armor for WvW which means I’ll need mostly knights gear (PPT) to get those stats.

However, most of the others I’ve seen playing a similar burst build either go with a few knights and the rest zerker or a few assassin with the rest being zerker. With all the stealth and tricks of such a build, is armor really that important? Should I just go all out and get a few assassin items and then the rest zerker? I’m going for the “high risk, high reward,” fast paced play style.

Thanks for the advice!

-Laura

I agree with your general intuition: mesmers need pretty good Power/Ferocity/Precision (or Condition Damage, depending on the build) to really do much.

My recommendation is to get mostly Zerk gear, then water it down with a few Soldier/Knight/Cavalier pieces as needed. In my experience, the best way to do this is by swapping out trinkets, rather than armor, because:

• More stats per piece than swapping shoulders/gloves/&c.
• Don’t have to buy another rune for your swap items.
• Ascended trinkets are relatively easy to get with laurels and guild commendations. (If you do WvW, remember you can use the WvW vendor to save on laurels a bit, too!)
• It’s really easy to move ascended trinkets between your various characters.

(If you’re a dedicated PvE optimizer, using your Assassin gear in place of the Zerk gear for WvW is probably fine, too, at least for the time being.)

As a roamer, you can go full zerker/assa and just be fine (personal taste, some roamers like to have ~2.1-2.3k armor, some wanna go full glass), but if you wanna join the “zerg”, maybe first you need a bit more armor
(Ofc CP-team mesmers can go zerker, but they’re experienced and know where to stand )

Sounds great folks! Thanks for the help!

I currently have a crap-ton (that’s a lot) of trinkets for zerker, knight, etc. so it should make it pretty easy to build a few stats as needed.

ye all dps, the best defense of mesmer is not getting hit , no pt loading up on defense stats when you run a burst build.

Mogar.9216:

ye all dps, the best defense of mesmer is not getting hit , no pt loading up on defense stats when you run a burst build.

Totally agree on this, the high dps is instead of defence too, the idea is to just push them down early in the fight, kick them out of their routine, if you don’t do that you enable their play and you have a fight that is a lot harder.

I like to mix in some assassins to pump up the crit chance. If you fight thieves the best way to win is to just explode everything you got ASAP. An super early 2-clone shatter can get a thief out of rotation and go defensive and do all kinds of nice mistakes. AGGRESSION is they key.

Like people said already, it really depends on your play style. If you want to run around in zergs all the time, it may be useful to get some knights and berserkers. If you want to roam around (like I do) you should go with berserkers and 3 armorpieces + weapons assassins

This is what i found to be working good in 4/4/0/0/6 GS + S/T shatter for me:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQNAR8flknpMtNqxINcrNSrxg6wOrMSGQBlciqB-TVDFAByt/wSKxA4BAUoaAXpEUgLAASKPQRVnM0IQwBBINdBJqSwCHBASBUuWL-w

I usually try to get 2.1 – 2.3k armor when playing with a good amount of stealth and 2.5k+ when not.

That said, Furious Sharpening Stones are amazing (even more so for guardians/warriors, but still).

For zerg stuff, Zerk is fine, too:

If you’re a Veilbot, you don’t need to stay on the tag for very long, and Blink covers for a lot of positioning mistakes. Zerk won’t really hurt you, though you may not need it if your role is mostly to lay down Veil and Null Field.

If you’re picking or driver-sniping, Zerk (or Zerk/Assassin’s) is necessary to do your job.

I’m wary to go full zerk. Thieves are main reason. 1 unexpected combo burst of glass canon thief can one shot you (up to ~18k in 0.5-0.7 s). It less hurdle in teamfights (when teammates can peel / ress you), but for solo I would think twice.