Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

It’s been a good ten months or so since I’ve been on GW, and I’m a bit lost coming back now. I’m currently running a full ascended zerker with a few soldier trinkets thrown in for survivability, but metabattle (is this still a reliable source?) seems to advocate for boonshare armor, which seems to be prohibitively expensive or time-gated. I’m sitting on ~250g, and can probably spend 100g or so on my mesmer. How should I go about changing up my armor?

I’m also a bit confused in WvW on how servers are grouped up and all. I’m currently on IOJ, which had a dying WvW scene last time I was on. I’d expect to be mostly in smaller roaming groups (this is probably relevant info for the above armor question), but now I’m not entirely sure with server groupings. What’s exactly changed? I’d like to not spend money on gems if I could, but should I consider switching servers?

Thanks!

Don’t go boonshare, its only useful in groups and encourages the horrible meta of perma every boon (especially perma stability and perma resistance). There were a few nerfs a few weeks ago that made this significantly harder to achieve, but its still doable.

A lot of people run dire condi chrono. A build that is lowest risk, extremely high reward. I hate it, but a lot of people play it so you could consider rolling one of those.

OriOri.8724:

A lot of people run dire condi chrono. A build that is lowest risk, extremely high reward. I hate it, but a lot of people play it so you could consider rolling one of those.

Alot? I think all are running it, lol. Its pretty much the sleeziest build that you can run in WvW on any class. The only thing close is a dire trapper ghost thief but at least they wont daze/interrupt/stun every few seconds.

Thanks for the tip! I haven’t really run condi before, so this should be interesting haha! It sounds like larger engagements will have perma resistance up, and I’ll be relying on null field to do anything with a dire condi build.

Is dire condi only useful for smaller engagements? Keeping in mind my lack of boon share equips, should I be switching to power or something else if I decide to hop in with a zerg?

Third Degree Ember.6430:

Thanks for the tip! I haven’t really run condi before, so this should be interesting haha! It sounds like larger engagements will have perma resistance up, and I’ll be relying on null field to do anything with a dire condi build.

Is dire condi only useful for smaller engagements? Keeping in mind my lack of boon share equips, should I be switching to power or something else if I decide to hop in with a zerg?

Don’t even bother with group fights. Its horribly boring. Most boons are up near 100% of the time with even halfway competent players in groups, which in turn makes the fights boring because nothing has any effect. All CC is negated through stab, all condis are negated through resistance, power damage is crippled through perma protection and perma recovery makes up for what gets through, on top of people using heal skills. Its possibly the most boring meta WvW has ever had.

Not “optimal” but with luck you can net an almost full set of exotic wanderers armor (pretty much soldiers + boon duration, think a full exotic set gives you something around +20% boon duration) in a single dragon’s stand playthrough if you wanna try it out. I think it more depends on what server you’re playing but on smaller ones playing boonshare is still pretty handy in small group fights even after the signet nerfs.

If you play condi practise with some friends in the guild arena or in a private PvP server first as you will need to get used to it. There’s nothing like playing condi mesmer to get corpse jumped, emote spammed, bled out and generally BM’d every time you die which will be a fair bit if you haven’t played condi before.

This is another build quite a few in EU are running at the moment and it’s OK for longer fights imo, build in description.

I personally am running full glass cannon zerk scholar, domination, inspiration and chrono with improved alacrity and the pretty obvious good traits for PvP in domination. You can take anything from 50 to 100% of a person’s health off if you hit a good mirror blade and mindwrack and is excellent when something needs to die yesterday. Problem is the openings are very small nowadays compared to pre HoT.

As others have said I wouldn’t invest in boonshare, I have a feeling it will be nerfed again for WvW and is only really good on organised groups. It’s insanely broken when paired with AoE boon generator classes for small scale, you won’t be zerg busting but if it’s 5 of you you can take on groups of random players twice your size easily.

apharma.3741:

If you play condi practise with some friends in the guild arena or in a private PvP server first as you will need to get used to it. There’s nothing like playing condi mesmer to get corpse jumped, emote spammed, bled out and generally BM’d every time you die which will be a fair bit if you haven’t played condi before.

This is another build quite a few in EU are running at the moment and it’s OK for longer fights imo, build in description.

I personally am running full glass cannon zerk scholar, domination, inspiration and chrono with improved alacrity and the pretty obvious good traits for PvP in domination. You can take anything from 50 to 100% of a person’s health off if you hit a good mirror blade and mindwrack and is excellent when something needs to die yesterday. Problem is the openings are very small nowadays compared to pre HoT.

As others have said I wouldn’t invest in boonshare, I have a feeling it will be nerfed again for WvW and is only really good on organised groups. It’s insanely broken when paired with AoE boon generator classes for small scale, you won’t be zerg busting but if it’s 5 of you you can take on groups of random players twice your size easily.

I wish I could play mesmer at this level. Most I’ve ever been able to win was a 1v2, and I’m about 90% sure I only won because they thought I was afk and weren’t prepared for an actual fight.

apharma.3741:

This is another build quite a few in EU are running at the moment and it’s OK for longer fights imo, build in description.

I personally am running full glass cannon zerk scholar, domination, inspiration and chrono with improved alacrity and the pretty obvious good traits for PvP in domination. You can take anything from 50 to 100% of a person’s health off if you hit a good mirror blade and mindwrack and is excellent when something needs to die yesterday. Problem is the openings are very small nowadays compared to pre HoT.

Oh wow! This isn’t very different than the equipment I’m running right now. I’ve already starting getting some exotic dire equipment, but I’ll also check this out since it’s closer to what I’m more familiar with. I just didn’t know it was still viable (but I guess I still need to get up to the skill to pull this off haha). I’m kind of surprised this build runs illusions since it’s a power build.

How’s your build working out for you?

Third Degree Ember.6430:

apharma.3741:

This is another build quite a few in EU are running at the moment and it’s OK for longer fights imo, build in description.

I personally am running full glass cannon zerk scholar, domination, inspiration and chrono with improved alacrity and the pretty obvious good traits for PvP in domination. You can take anything from 50 to 100% of a person’s health off if you hit a good mirror blade and mindwrack and is excellent when something needs to die yesterday. Problem is the openings are very small nowadays compared to pre HoT.

Oh wow! This isn’t very different than the equipment I’m running right now. I’ve already starting getting some exotic dire equipment, but I’ll also check this out since it’s closer to what I’m more familiar with. I just didn’t know it was still viable (but I guess I still need to get up to the skill to pull this off haha). I’m kind of surprised this build runs illusions since it’s a power build.

How’s your build working out for you?

My build if I’m being honest takes me a good 30 mins to get into the swing of before I won’t get instagibed myself and like I say openings have gone down substantially since HoT came. 1 good burst and people die though so it’s what you would call high risk and high reward but I’m not going to lie, when I win a 1v2 or higher it isn’t because my build is good it’s entirely because the enemy sucks for bus fair and walks home.

Get yourself some marauder gear to bring you to 20k health and you should be good, the illusions line is there for might stacking and reduced shatter skills cool downs as well as reduced cool downs on illusion summon skills. When you get to 15-20 stacks of might your about on par with mental anguish in terms of damage boost and it gives some extra condition damage which cannot be overlooked. The confusion from shatter skills is a nice supplemental damage source.

Full ascended zerker still works a charm in WvW for some delicious burst. I usually go for zerker or marauder’s or a mix of both with a piece of knight’s to top up my toughness a bit – whatever fits. You’ve got everything you need for that.

I don’t really recommend Dire as much anymore for anything other than making some duels rather trivial. It has little to no impact in group fights, especially when the groups you come against have any sort of idea of cleansing rotations. You can easily focus down Revenants though if they get too far away from their support, but that’s about it. You will of course survive for days but you won’t be offering much support or overall damage so you will often feel irrelevant. A mistrust build can be interesting, but then you have to worry about everything having stability as well as groups cleanses. It would be far more optimal to go for a hyrbid build if you want to use conditions – you can still have great survivability but with actual decent burst and utility too. Dire Mes just doesn’t have much of an impact in WvW anymore.

Boonshare is still a relevant build option for organised group stuff but I don’t think the investment is really worth it anymore. I’d argue that you’ll be just as useful in group now with a good choice of utility and elite.