Guild Wars 2

I can’t pick. So I’m turning to fellow “mesmerers” to ask.

I’m rebuilding my mesmer (new traits, gears, everything). Right now, I have 20/30/10/0/10 traits, with a greatsword, and a pistol offhand. I’ll have berzerker jewelry and weapons, and I’ll be acquiring a full set of knight armor (or maybe I should get Valkyrie? Can’t pick between the two…). So with all that in mind….

What would compliment this best in your humble opinion? Sword or scepter mainhand? I am more inclined to get the sword.

And hey, any constructive critique would be appreciated.

I have to ask, what exactly are you intending on doing with those traits?

Most important question: PvE or PvP or WvW?

20 domination – applying vulnerability and great sword boosts
30 dueling – Deceptive Evasion, Confusing Combatants, Phantasmal Fury/Sharper Images, (Blade Training if I get sword)
10 chaos – fall damage reduction
10 illusion – Master of Misdirection/Illusionary Retribution

Not a concrete one-direction build, but a damage-based build that can run for WvW and PvE. It’s just the play style I’m comfortable with, especially since I’m always switching my offhand weapon – it’s usually pistol, but I use all of them for whatever the situation calls for.

Arikyali.5804:

20 domination – applying vulnerability and great sword boosts
30 dueling – Deceptive Evasion, Confusing Combatants, Phantasmal Fury/Sharper Images, (Blade Training if I get sword)
10 chaos – fall damage reduction
10 illusion – Master of Misdirection/Illusionary Retribution

Not a concrete one-direction build, but a damage-based build that can run for WvW and PvE. It’s just the play style I’m comfortable with, especially since I’m always switching my offhand weapon – it’s usually pistol, but I use all of them for whatever the situation calls for.

Well, the issue is that your build doesn’t really seem designed to do anything at all. You’ve got deceptive evasion for shattering, and I guess rending shatter, but mind wrack won’t really hurt much without mental torment or IP.

Confusing combatants is useless in this build for sure, that means nothing. Phantasmal fury and sharper images work well together certainly, but you again have no condition damage, and without either of the phantasm damage boosts, your phantasms will leave something to be desired in the damage department.

10 points in chaos for fall damage reduction is a massive waste of 10 points. Same thing for 10 in illusions for master of misdirection or illusionary retribution.

You need to figure out what this build is doing, then tweak it to do that, because right now it’s doing a lot of not very much.

Thing with those two weapons is, they’re not really comparable. They do totally different things. Sword gives you an amazing defensive move with Blurred Frenzy and allows you to “catch” targets on flat terrain. It also continuously removes boons, as do the clones.
On the PvE side, the cleaving is also pretty powerful.

The Scepter gives you good condition pressure between #2 and #3, while also giving you solid-enough direct damage, mostly from #3. It’s AA is very very weak, but in return it gives you a lot more range than the Sword.

So it depends on what you want to do.

It might make more sense if I link this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Attempting-to-create-a-true-mesmer-build/first

I wasn’t aiming for a shatter build – I just didn’t want to limit myself from shatter utility. But if the confusion stacks are too minimal to do anything significant (especially since I’m not focusing any gear on condition damage), then I’ll just move the 10 points to another trait. I wanted to harass opponents without cutting away from my damage.

And I’m keeping fall damage. I find it too useful to give up.

Nothing wrong with having your own build that suits your preferences. The only time you really need to worry about optimizing your build is in speed runs or high level fractals anyways.
Go with sword, scepter does terrible damage outside of condition builds.

I take both. Good times.

Well, I grabbed the sword as my main choice. (Mostly needed to ask because I was picking skins).

Besides, this trait setup is also really easy to switch out to something else on the run.

Your WvW traits/gear should be different than your PvE traits/gear which may be different than your Dungeon traits/gear which may be different than your Fractals traits/gear.

There is no one build/traits/gear that is good for all of them.

Why not both?

Scepter/Pistol, Sword/Sword works extremely well, but is in the realm of builds-people-don’t-even-think-to-try.

I would suggest something along the lines of what Xavi said. I actually have two full sets of gear, in PvE I run a much more glassy build, where as in WvW I switch to a much tanker condition based build. At 3 silver per trait relearn it’s only a one time investment on 2 sets of gear and you can run optimally in two area’s of game play.

As for which weapon, in PvE I would go sword, in WvW I actually run Scepter/Torch and Sword/Sword, so I can only say both there.