Guild Wars 2

I need to choose what expensive armor/weapons to buy, and for that I first need to choose the build I like the most.

What PvE build would you say is fun – at least for you? I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of dps for fun because you know, PvE. And by PvE I mean mostly HoT events in (chaotic) groups. I don’t mean soloing, I don’t mean dungeons, and I don’t mean fractals.

Few things:
- I don’t like GS. Just can’t stand the “1” sound anymore. And “5” feels useless in PvE compared to WvW.
- No Focus either.
- No Shield. I really dislike the “4” animation. A clock shield? Really? Yea I get it, because Chrono. But I’m not a Swiss clock maker; tone it down.

Staff I’m undecided on.

Sword, Scepter, Torch, Pistol – all good. Wasn’t a huge fan of Scepter before but now that it received a buff I’m ok with it as well.

So.. weapons? Traits? Utility skills? Runes? Sigils?

What combinations of these would you say are fun in HoT?

And is there some “tank” version of Mesmer that would work well in this scenario and that would be fun? Anyone playing with max Toughness etc or it’s just pointless?

So I’m not sure you realize what you just asked, so let me clarify it.

You want a fun PvE build. You want to use it for open world events where substantial amounts of aoe power on rapidly dying mobs is necessary to even start actually making a contribution to events. Lastly, you don’t want to use any weapons that have aoe.

Just…wanted to clarify that.

That’s exactly it.

What I want is a PvE GW1 Prophecies Mesmer. You know, that style you choose because it’s cool and you love it, even though it’s more optimal to be a nuking Elementalist or just about anything else. GW2 Mesmer is nowhere near as fun as GW1 but gotta work with what we got.

So, what I need is a build for sword + pistol/torch, and scepter/sword.. something like that. The most optimal one, the most fun one.. I’m aware of the benefits of GS, been using it for a long time but I don’t want to anymore.

You could probably do well enough with a condition damage build using scepter/pistol and whatever else. Using the trait that gives illusions bleed on crit, and phantasmal fury. Its the highest single target damage we can get.

But… for open world pve? This is going to suck tremendously. You have sufficiently high DPS for champions and bosses (like anyone really cares) but your aoe tagging abilities are reliant on you shattering as your only source of AoE. And since your clones die when things die, realistically you will use f1 with you as the only clone up to tag stuff.

Not saying this cant work, but open world isnt exactly the strong suit of the mesmer. Imho the best idea is to use some quickness sharing build with two wells timewarp and signet of inspiration, and work your way from there to a weapon set you like.

Heaving optimal DPS is of secondary importance if you are in the optimal setup a mesmer can have in pve.

Eh…

Scepter/Sword. Trait Mantra, Sword, Scepter, Quickness on Shatter. Have fun spamming MoP.

Or Calamity + Recall on Utilities should help you for tagging.

ianervan.7915:

That’s exactly it.

What I want is a PvE GW1 Prophecies Mesmer. You know, that style you choose because it’s cool and you love it, even though it’s more optimal to be a nuking Elementalist or just about anything else. GW2 Mesmer is nowhere near as fun as GW1 but gotta work with what we got.

So, what I need is a build for sword + pistol/torch, and scepter/sword.. something like that. The most optimal one, the most fun one.. I’m aware of the benefits of GS, been using it for a long time but I don’t want to anymore.

My point isn’t that it’s not going to be optimal, my point was more that it’s going to be miserable trying to do things that require aoe without any aoe. I suppose if you get raw enjoyment purely from playing the build without that build actually succeeding at anything then that’s ok, but I haven’t met someone yet that enjoyed doing open world events without good access to aoe.

For survivability in HoT you can’t beat a signet build (4 condi cleanses and 4 evades with mimic). It’s a juke and plink type with less dps, but you stay alive for the long haul (prior to patch was able to solo camp defend in HoT – note it takes awhile :-). I flip back and forth between that and chrono using s/p or shield or pistol or even focus if I want to burn them down faster but it is less survivability. Don’t discount shield avenger as being a big helper. I wear viper using berserker runes.

Fay.2357:

My point isn’t that it’s not going to be optimal, my point was more that it’s going to be miserable trying to do things that require aoe without any aoe. I suppose if you get raw enjoyment purely from playing the build without that build actually succeeding at anything then that’s ok, but I haven’t met someone yet that enjoyed doing open world events without good access to aoe.

I get your point, but for tagging and AoE in general don’t I get that from:
- Mainhand sword
- Shatters
- Utility skills such as Wells if Chronomancer
- Pistol skill shoots more targets also, although longer cooldown

I don’t get enjoyment from ineffective builds, true, but I also don’t get enjoyment from boring builds no matter how good they are.

Now, I’ve been testing some stuff and here’s what I came up with: I actually like scepter. I also like main hand sword. I like off-hand sword. Fourth piece of equipment I’m not yet sure of. I see the downside of each whether in style or usefulness, but I would consider them all (pistol, focus, shield, torch) based on suggestions here.

I expect to do a lot of shattering since I guess scepter losses a lot of potential without that. This I feel would give me some AoE.

Do I go for condition damage or power? Right now I’ve chosen Dueling, Illusion and Chronomancer trait lines, but feedback is appreciated.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAsc7dlknhy0YjawTNQtGL4GVZAkA/CaQsb1QdsWr9KA-TRCBQB1Y/hzoEMAPAAJcQAwoyAEq+Te0PAgzAAWU6BA-e

This is what I use for open world PvP. It’s not the highest damage in a group environment, but playstyle wise, it’s one of the most fun builds that I’ve ever played, and it works well for solo play.

Scepter is the ranged weapon, which generates clones at an incredible rate allowing you to spam 3 illusion shatters. Meanwhile, your shatters are stacking up vulnerability on your opponents (Especially F3), and stacking might, quickness and alacrity on yourself, which in turn reduces the cooldown on your shatters, and allows you to generate clones more quickly. The focus allows you to pull clumps of enemies together in order to strike all of them with your shatters, or, alternatively, to cast phantasmal warden, swap to sword/sword, and use phantasmal swordsman, then 3 twice to reach 3 clones before swapping back.

Heavy burst damage is also possible by using continuum shift with 1+ illusion, followed by immediately hitting mirror image and phantasmal warden/sword 3 or 5 followed by mind wrack, then doing it again.

In solo play, near 100% might, quickness and vulnerability uptime goes a long way toward helping to compensate for the lack of phantasms in terms of sustained damage, and the extra burst and AoE from shatters helps to deal with the large numbers of small enemies that you will encounter in HoT from time to time.

Go signets with mimic make a fun play. Kite and juke your way to victory.

So.. I’ve been trying to work around the AoE issue and maybe I lack experience with other classes and their strength, but I think I’m just fine. What I do when mob spawns in HoT is I just run through it spamming sword 1. If I’m too far or mob would die too fast, I tag it with a Well or two. That’s without using any Shatter.

Again, I don’t know how much worse I do like this compared to what I’d do with GS or Staff, or another profession, but it seems ok.

Why do people even ask for help with a build when they very intentionally don’t want to be given an optimal build? If your weird personal biases are more important than being optimal, just experiment on your own and do whatever.

tobascodagama.2961:

Why do people even ask for help with a build when they very intentionally don’t want to be given an optimal build? If your weird personal biases are more important than being optimal, just experiment on your own and do whatever.

Of course my personal biases are more important. I don’t play Guild Wars to “work” and do “hard labor” like some say it in the forum and elsewhere.

My question was not “give me the most optimal build that exists in the game for open world” because that wouldn’t be a Mesmer build anyway. My question was “give me a fun build” and THEN “make it optimized”. Not the other way around.

So, if someone says “I like playing a tank Mesmer, that’s fun for me”, my follow up question is “so what is the optimal Mesmer tank build”.

Your reply to me is utterly useless, it’s basically “but tank mesmer is not optimal, you’re not listening to us”. I didn’t ask you if tank mesmer is optimal, I didn’t ask if scepter is optimal. I can easily see what’s optimal by what people use. If I wanted to be like everyone else I would just shoot myself in the head before slowly dying of boredom. My personal biases are more important to me because my personal biases are who I am. If I didn’t have personal biases I would be a clone, not a person.

I use this http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_PU_Condi_Roamer
and have a ton of fun in HoT pve.

Never die, full Dire condi. You can use staff to aoe tag and also have chaos storm. If you dont like torch, just run a pistol off hand instead. I personally prefer the torch due to the aoe phantasm and extra stealth.

Also works great in WvW.

Enjoy