Guild Wars 2

So I’ve played mesmer a bit in Wvw as a roamer mostly, and back when I fell in love with the old PU condi roam build with Staff – Scept/Torch more than anything for the easy access to stealth and being able to run around wherever and not feel in much danger.

Now that Chrono is out, I’m running that and I definitely see the dueling ability you can get with Chrono traits + shield.

My question is, is using shield actually necessary to fight effectively or is torch a viable option for Wvw/roaming? Maybe it’s just because of PU that lets you keep such high amount of stealth with torch and maybe it doesn’t work so well without PU, but personally I have had a tough time letting go of my stealth for more ‘power’ because that’s kind of not why I ever picked up mes in the first place.

Anyone felt the same or tried switching back to torch for roaming and had any success? [or this could be a non-issue for dedicated (good) mes, who knows]

I vastly prefer traited torch because I find it more fun than Shield. Torch allows more mind games and I like the fury proc from iMage. The additional cooldown reduction in stealth together with decoy and condi cleanse isn’t bad either. Shield is still too conventional as a blocking weapon although ToT is a nice skill.

Also for example you can unload a condi bomb on say a necro then hit prestige and kite, avoiding any counter transfer.

The big weakness of torch is reveal/anti stealth tools in wvw, but equally Shield can be penetrated with unblockables so neither is perfect in that regard.

You could switch staff for sword and shield for more clone/phantasm production and thus more conditions to apply. The block and blurred frenzy together with tides of time can be used defensively too when in the thick of it. When you feel too pressured switch to sceptre and torch to kite and disappear at will.

Protection on chaos armour is great but you can always pick toughness to condition damage or mirror of anguish to help prevent you from being CC’d and burst by other classes.