Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

Alissah.9281:

Fixed that for you. Beginners cant properly use their evades, so they will take alot of damage. As one becomes more experienced, they will get hit less, thus affording to go with low toughness.

I think its up to the OP to decide with how much toughness they can go to not end up on the ground every fight, and how well they can use evades.

Berserker armor and soldier trinkets seemed like a good idea to me, because its easier to switch soldier for berserker trinkets (armor may have expensive skins etc).

When i got my mesmer to 80 (3rd level 80) i went straight for zerker gear. Honestly it was the most faceroll thing ive ever played to survive as a beginner. Yeah sure you are squishy and you go down very easily if you screw up, but you can waste dodges and invulns way more than you can on other classes. Its much easier to learn when you can spam dodges and blurred frenzy until you get the timing/tells right. Also deceptive evasion is very good for survivability.

Guardian is imo harder due to the very low hp pool and requiring good practise with virtue/utility use. Warrior is only safe due to the high hp pool, but it took me a while to get use to not dieing in some encounters. Mesmer I was fine pretty much right from the start and I wasnt even a very good player when i first got my mesmer to 80. As someone whos played most classes in dungeons with squishy builds and teammates, mesmer is definately the easiest to survive with.

But you were already experienced in dungeons, thats different. OP doesnt even have a CoF set yet.

I suggest Thread strter to outright ignore people saying “if you don t do this you are BAD”

It was never proved GS being inferior to other weapons mostly because it can t be true.
You can easily check youtube or in game to see how MOST mesmer disagree with them…players in fotm 80 and in any PvE situation.

Each weapon is situational.

If you can, bring any with you

If you can t
I really suggest you to try GS sw/focus being the most reliable in every situation.

That because they have the most versatility giving you TOOLS for every situation.
You are a mesmer, your dps matters, but its not your primary goal.

When you have more resources start playing all other weapons and you ll see for yourself how clearly:

situational weapons are situationally better than a versatile weapon.
But The difference is not so big and if you misjudge your situational weapon you are instead way less effective.

spoj.9672:

Alissah.9281:

Fixed that for you. Beginners cant properly use their evades, so they will take alot of damage. As one becomes more experienced, they will get hit less, thus affording to go with low toughness.

I think its up to the OP to decide with how much toughness they can go to not end up on the ground every fight, and how well they can use evades.

Berserker armor and soldier trinkets seemed like a good idea to me, because its easier to switch soldier for berserker trinkets (armor may have expensive skins etc).

When i got my mesmer to 80 (3rd level 80) i went straight for zerker gear. Honestly it was the most faceroll thing ive ever played to survive as a beginner. Yeah sure you are squishy and you go down very easily if you screw up, but you can waste dodges and invulns way more than you can on other classes. Its much easier to learn when you can spam dodges and blurred frenzy until you get the timing/tells right. Also deceptive evasion is very good for survivability.

Guardian is imo harder due to the very low hp pool and requiring good practise with virtue/utility use. Warrior is only safe due to the high hp pool, but it took me a while to get use to not dieing in some encounters. Mesmer I was fine pretty much right from the start and I wasnt even a very good player when i first got my mesmer to 80. As someone whos played most classes in dungeons with squishy builds and teammates, mesmer is definately the easiest to survive with.

Where were you a beginner exactly, when the mesmer was your third character at 80? Unless you have never touched a dungeon with any of your other two characters, you had enough experience to just go full melee. God forbid, other players are on their first character and have no idea what’s going on…

I had very limited experience in dungeons at the time. Me and my guildies only really did cof and se. And beserker mesmer was the first decent beserker class i used in dungeons. First 80 was a necro which did become beserker around that time, but I was still bad at it. Second 80 was a guardian but that was when everyone thought AH knights builds were good so…

Next time we do Arah we should all totally roll heal/“support” builds and watch how we can’t kill anything. It’ll be fun !!!

To top it off, range bloodstone shard and wipe.

We were thinking of doing an offhand only 3man lupi kill actually. That will probably involve mesmers and thieves.

If you buy me clerics gear for my mesmer ill see how op it is.

colesy.8490:

Next time we do Arah we should all totally roll heal/“support” builds and watch how we can’t kill anything. It’ll be fun !!!

To top it off, range bloodstone shard and wipe.

… What? What was the point of that?

I make one non-serious post on this subforum and then get called out on it.

I’m just highlighting the mentality of most players in this subforum, who know they’re running trash weapons, trash trinkets, trash armour, bad sigils, bad runes and a leech build and yet still insist on running it.

Mr filthy elitist colesy, I will play how I want and you can do nothing about it, watch as I make my parties suffer because I’m being carried, that’ll teach you!

That’s untrue. Your perspective is just jaded.

Almost nobody in this thread disagree’d that melee is the way to go in dungeons. Almost nobody in this forums disagrees when you present facts. You seem to hold fast to the idea that everyone here disagrees with you when it’s actually the opposite. Its the usual stuff, the majority gets blamed/labeled because of the louder minority.

What people disagree with is the idea that the GS is complete and total trash with absolutely no uses. (And are saying that beginners should pick it up to learn tells.)

colesy.8490:

I make one non-serious post on this subforum and then get called out on it.

I’m just highlighting the mentality of most players in this subforum, who know they’re running trash weapons, trash trinkets, trash armour, bad sigils, bad runes and a leech build and yet still insist on running it.

Mr filthy elitist colesy, I will play how I want and you can do nothing about it, watch as I make my parties suffer because I’m being carried, that’ll teach you!

Yikes. Somebody has some self esteem issues.

For the OP – our weapons are very situational. In my experience GS and sword/focus has been the most versatile and forgiving weaponset and I’d recommend starting there while you learn which encounters you can stay in melee range. Eventually you’ll get comfortable enough to switch out your GS for sword/sword or pistol on certain bosses. Again, it’s situational and blanket statements like “GS is a trash weapon” are plain wrong.

A 20/20/0/30/0 trait setup is a solid PvE build. Just take the phantasm, weapon cooldown and glamour traits and you’re good to go

There is absolutely zero use for it besides situations that absolutely force range (e.g. Melandru in Arah p4), people arguing about iZerker being good at AOE are basically saying it lets you tag loot better and using that as a legitimate argument for a weapon being good (I guess them guardians camping staff are amazing, check out the AOE).

Even then, some people seem to be arguing that scepter is actually better (no opinion on this, I haven’t tried out scepter vs. gs).

I wouldn’t be so condescending about the GS if it weren’t for the fact that there are so few redeeming qualities, the auto sucks, the phantasm is replaceable and the other skills just suck.

colesy.8490:

I’m just highlighting the mentality of most players in this subforum, who know they’re running trash weapons, trash trinkets, trash armour, bad sigils, bad runes and a leech build and yet still insist on running it.

So you insult the majority of the posters in the mesmer forum for not only running with GS, but now they’re running trash everything else? And you wonder why people have a hard time taking you seriously …

That aside, I know you’re just frustrated and let that slip.

I tried running sw/sw and sw/f the other night in a primarly zerker setup. I did great and it was more fluid than I remember previously doing it a few months ago. I hated (and still do) waiting for the sword CD’s but they aren’t that bad. You learn the tells and you dodge, BF or F4 as necessary. It really worked well. See, you got your point across. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to stop using GS in dungeons or tell others to do so. It does mean that I have a keen awareness of my range when using GS and to never stray too far from a warrior, guardian or mesmer in PUGs who might be sharing some boons. Awareness is key. Use your GS if you like but use it smart. The overall DPS loss I have to believe is so minute, I can’t believe there is so much hair splitting on it.

Oh and scepter – I still don’t understand why some recommend that over GS. You’re always going to overwrite one of your precious DPS dealing phantasms if you AA, no way around it.

The difference between GS and sword is actually quite significant. The sword deals about 30% more damage than a max-range GS and enables you to summon phantasms which can output as much as twice the DPS of a Berserker. The sword is also melee so the more boons you are getting at melee range, the bigger the gap becomes. In the absolute worst case scenario, the difference between a sword mesmer getting every possible buff in melee and a GS mesmer getting none can be as much kitten -6x more.

This is also the reason why scepter is generally better than GS as a ranged weapon. The GS basically requires you to stand at 900+ to get any decent damage, whereas most AOE boons only have a range of 600. Using scepter means you can stand behind the group and still be at range, but still receive boons. It’s equally safe and much more effective. That’s true even if you’re only maintaining two phantasms due to scepter clone overwrite, since Berserker is such a such weak Phantasm. It’s also true even if you’re not receiving any extra boons from your party.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that you should only ever run full zerker sword even if you’re just starting out and don’t know the encounters, but GS is definitely a weak weapon with very few uses relative to the other weapons, and I don’t really know why people keep trying to defend it as an objectively good weapon.

Is the 30% difference assuming that one stays with GS at 1200 range the entire time? Most situations wouldn’t be like that. They’re likely going to be 50/50 or best case 75(sword)/25(GS). This is what I mean by splitting hairs. You’re going to be in sword AA at least half the time, and the other – it’s not like you aren’t doing any damage.

And comparing to scepter, GS damage in 600 range damage is still well more than half of what it is at 1200 range, is about the same as scepter’s strongest 3rd attack, provides higher weapon strength (doesn’t affect AA, but increases weapon skill damage. Per wiki, “damage for weapon skills is based on the product of weapon strength and power”), you keep your 3rd phantasm and you still get boons/buffs from your party. Have you done comparisons based on this scenario?

skcamow.3527:

Is the 30% difference assuming that one stays with GS at 1200 range the entire time? Most situations wouldn’t be like that. They’re likely going to be 50/50 or best case 75(sword)/25(GS). This is what I mean by splitting hairs. You’re going to be in sword AA at least half the time, and the other – it’s not like you aren’t doing any damage.

And comparing to scepter, GS damage in 600 range damage is still well more than half of what it is at 1200 range, is about the same as scepter’s strongest 3rd attack, provides higher weapon strength (doesn’t affect AA, but increases weapon skill damage. Per wiki, “damage for weapon skills is based on the product of weapon strength and power”), you keep your 3rd phantasm and you still get boons/buffs from your party. Have you done comparisons based on this scenario?

You are oversimplifying the comparison. Switching from sword to GS doesn’t transition as smoothly as between two melee weapons, since GS requires max range for optimum damage and sword requires melee. That means that when you switch from sword to GS, you’re going to spend quite a while backing away until you’re actually at 1200 range (since backing up is slow). If you’re rotating weapons on swap cooldown you’ll probably never actually be out at 1200 range due to how long it takes to move out that far and back. Compare that to a dual sword setup where you are constantly attacking for full damage and swapping for phantasms only.

As for scepter vs sword, you may be a bit off as to damage. The GS attacks approximately twice in the timespan of a single scepter chain, so it has to deal at least half of the total damage of one scepter chain to be competitive. If you use the tooltip numbers on the wiki (which are for exotic weapons, base stats), those already factor in the higher damage range on 2H weapons. Which ultimately means it’s down whether 2 offhand phantasms + a clone beats 3 Berserkers. And usually the two offhand phantasms win.

And with that.. you just educated hundreds of people.

Its very rare to get a DPS comparison of the Scepter vs the Greatsword. Since not a majority of players here so seriously run & study dungeons, I don’t think that kind of analysis often comes up

Main difference in that sense between Scepter and GS is that Scepter auto actually gets stronger if you’re not at max range, cause the followups trigger on projectile hit.

Again, guanglai, perhaps you haven’t used the greatsword in so long that the last time you used the zerker it was still broken, but the damage it provides is much higher now. The zerker absolutely will come very close to the damage that pistol/sword phantasms provides.

Unless it misses a single hit in which case it drops below both of them.

That’s ignoring the fact that it has a slower recharge than Swordsman.

@guanglai, I was talking about 2 different things, so I’ll clarify:

• Wondering how much damage you’re missing out on by running sw/f and GS together, versus sw/f and sw/sw. This assuming when you’re on GS, you are AA’ing at 600 range, able to receive buffs, etc. Again, sw/f will be the predominant weapon set at least half the time.
• Using Scepter vs. GS – I did multiple tests in the mists with soldier’s amulet/jewel (4% base crit chance), spec’d into 30/0/0/0/0. I AA’d a medium golem down with GS and scepter AA (both at 600 range) and there was never more than a 2 second variance. Scepter mired the results a little due to the small dps the 3 clones deal. For fun, I threw on berserker amulet/jewel and achieved a similar result in variance. So from what I can tell, GS and scepter at 600 range appear to deal the same amount of direct damage over time unless someone can prove that wrong. I suppose if you go 15 into dueling with your build you also have to take into account the izerker bleeds you don’t get with iswordsman (when running sc/sw).

colesy.8490:

Unless it misses a single hit in which case it drops below both of them.

That’s ignoring the fact that it has a slower recharge than Swordsman.

Yeah, but he’s trying to argue that 2 swordsmen/duelists is more than 3 zerkers, and it’s absolutely bogus.

Pyroatheist.9031:

colesy.8490:

Unless it misses a single hit in which case it drops below both of them.

That’s ignoring the fact that it has a slower recharge than Swordsman.

Yeah, but he’s trying to argue that 2 swordsmen/duelists is more than 3 zerkers, and it’s absolutely bogus.

It’s called math.

I can agree that on a AoE pov iZerk has some obvious advantage.
But the issue is: you don’t need that AoE, because in DGs Sword cleave and BF (plus Warden if using focus) will be more than enough.
And anyway, what ppl are trying to say is that there’s no point picking up a weapon where you want 1 skill only and the rest is garbage.
Better work around it (see Sword Auto BF and extra Warden) and pick up better skill wise weapons.

skcamow.3527:

@guanglai, I was talking about 2 different things, so I’ll clarify:

• Wondering how much damage you’re missing out on by running sw/f and GS together, versus sw/f and sw/sw. This assuming when you’re on GS, you are AA’ing at 600 range, able to receive buffs, etc. Again, sw/f will be the predominant weapon set at least half the time.
• Using Scepter vs. GS – I did multiple tests in the mists with soldier’s amulet/jewel (4% base crit chance), spec’d into 30/0/0/0/0. I AA’d a medium golem down with GS and scepter AA (both at 600 range) and there was never more than a 2 second variance. Scepter mired the results a little due to the small dps the 3 clones deal. For fun, I threw on berserker amulet/jewel and achieved a similar result in variance. So from what I can tell, GS and scepter at 600 range appear to deal the same amount of direct damage over time unless someone can prove that wrong. I suppose if you go 15 into dueling with your build you also have to take into account the izerker bleeds you don’t get with iswordsman (when running sc/sw).

I don’t have my spreadsheet open ATM but you should be able to just look at the tooltip for Spatial Surge and see the loss. Assuming max-range GS has 70% of the base damage of melee sword, and <600 range GS deals about 75% of that damage (auto is about 30% weaker but Mirror Blade also accounts for a small amount of overall DPS), a reasonable rough estimate would put 600-range GS at about 50% of a sword’s DPS. If you’re switching to GS on a regular basis there’s no question it’s going to be a clear loss in damage, especially given that Berserker is also weaker than the offhand options.

Other people advocate just going GS+Sword and just not using the GS ever, which I guess means you’re basically using it for the one Mirror Blade and Zerker at the beginning of each fight. That tiny burst at the beginning is pretty irrelevant, and it costs you the ability to quickly rotate and resummon offhand phantasms. For example, going Swordsman > Duelist > Duelist gets you three full-power phantasms up in approximately 15 seconds, and allows you to renew them at a rate of 2 every 12-16 seconds or so, depending on how you manage your swap rotation. Compare them to GS+Sword, which gives you an opening summon of Zerker > Duelist > Duelist in 15 seconds, which is not only a weaker combo of phantasms, but if any of them die you can only renew at a rate of 1 Duelist per 12s.

Neither of those possibilities really justify keeping the GS in a slot for the off chance that you MIGHT want to range. Especially not when you can also cover the “maybe I’ll range” option with a scepter.

I thought you had probably run the numbers and I’d be interesting in seeing them (or link me to another thread where you’ve likely posted them).

I don’t think you’ve quite answered me on the scepter. At the moment I still don’t get why you’d range with scepter over GS given the points I made.

A few points regarding the kill time for scepter vs gs. Your testing was with both of them at 600 range. The scepter can increase its damage by getting closer if possible. So while your test sounds valid, the scepter auto can still come out ahead when used well. I’m assuming you mentioned 600 for the boon range.

If you use gs2 to buff your dps, then the gs and scepter can both have a max of 2 phantasm out at any given time. GS 5 is almost always bad to use in PvE. It’s the main reason I hate the stereotypical noob gs mes, longbow ranger, rifle-butting warrior: they usually do negative DPS for the group when they use the knock back. GS3 is great if used well but I rarely see GS mesmers use it. So you are basically stuck with GS1 and 4 for DPS maybe 3. Basically zero utility.

The scepter 2 is one more active defense skill that can spike 4x harder than the gs auto <600. The s3 will do double the power dps of the gs <600. Both of these also have bonus condition damage that can add up to a lot. It then comes with the versatility of the offhand (stuns/blocks/reflects).

This of course comes down to the problem of 2 phantasms vs 3. For a mesmer in melee training or hard fights, I suspect that most mesmers will not have 3 phantasms up so the scepter wins on the base dps and the extra defense/utility.

As for raw dps, under ideal conditions for both set ups, it’s hard to tell. The condition bonus can be really high or low depending on the fight. The zerker can hit 2-4 times. If you use gs3 perfectly… I don’t think any spread sheet will be able to determine which one is better on dps alone because there are too many variables. Basically I don’t think he is capable of giving you numbers. All I can say is more utility with the scepter and comparable dps. I still bring the gs for some fights but those are the 1200 range ones.

@DuckDuckBOOM: The thing about scepter at <600 range is you begin to question why you’re using scepter and not sword.

As far as gs5 is concerned, if you position yourself correctly, you can generally group up mobs with it. It’s obviously not as easy to do as with the focus, but it does work rather effectively.

Confusing images is really the one saving grace of the scepter. It does actually do a lot of damage, more than blurred frenzy in fact, so you get reliable damage out of that.

Overall though, they’re gonna be pretty similar, with the main difference being that gs is far more effective for aoe damage (which is where I usually use it, clearing trash), and allows you to get up to a full 1200 range while still maintaining damage (which is the other place I use it, when 1200 range damage is important). The scepter can’t do that.

How often do you actually feel the need to 1200-range a mob? Usually if I feel the need to range it’s at around 400-600 range, i.e. where the mob can’t hit me with PBAOE attacks.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

How often do you actually feel the need to 1200-range a mob? Usually if I feel the need to range it’s at around 400-600 range, i.e. where the mob can’t hit me with PBAOE attacks.

Not very often. What I can think of off the top of my head are the ice elemental in snowblind fractal (not necessary, but it helps once you have to kill the elemental spawns for aoe), the ascalonian fractal boss (again, 1200 range isn’t technically necessary, but it makes things a lot more smooth), and either of the final bosses in the dredge fractal, where you’re constantly running away and want to keep up the pressure.

Edit: Lupicus too, almost forgot about him.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Not very often. What I can think of off the top of my head are the ice elemental in snowblind fractal (not necessary, but it helps once you have to kill the elemental spawns for aoe), the ascalonian fractal boss (again, 1200 range isn’t technically necessary, but it makes things a lot more smooth), and either of the final bosses in the dredge fractal, where you’re constantly running away and want to keep up the pressure.

Edit: Lupicus too, almost forgot about him.

Well … to expand your list

FotM:

• Asura – golem boss; if the whole party went melee, you’d not only lose alot D/S due to running, but also health by its poison.
• Swamp – Mossman & Tree
  Tree CAN be meleed, but is still risky. Not to mention killing its minions while staying in melee range.
  Mossman …
• Hammer – Boss, Fire part & two sides part
  I sure wanna see your whole party with only melee abilities to do those.
• Dredge – Boss
  Preboss can be meleed and other parts don’t require fighting. But either final boss needs to be pulled, which is not possible in melee only. Or you lose like 90% DPS.
• Ascalon – Boss
  Are you fighting that guy in melee range ?
• Volcano/Shaman – Boss
  Preboss can be killed with melee, but it’s awkward to get downed every 5s due to lack of stability. I doubt it’s way more effective than switching weapons with GS/ Staff.
  endboss might be possible, but pretty awkward due to large PbAoE and immobilizing tar elementals. You’d lose alot D/S.
• Jade Maw
  The tentacles can be meleed, but I sure want to see you kill them within your 4s stability time.

Basically every shard (exc ice, swamp-tree and underwater) of FotM require longe range fighting (to be effective).

But well, anything fine as long as you don’t go FotM … wrong

Bosses:

• Tequatl
• Jormag
• Golem
• Fire Shaman (some phases)
• MegaDestroyer (usually in lava; possible when everyone’d melee)
• FireElemental

Well, just don’t do 40% of the bosses.

Then dungeons … I haven’t been in dungeons recently. I expect every eliteist to be able to run CoF1 blinded, since that’s the definition of “elite” and “more effective” nowadays. So I suppose you can melee on the full path.

Let’s try

• Twilight armor – any boss
• HotW1 – boss
• Arah

Nretep.2564:

Let’s try

• Twilight armor – any boss

TA is full melee paradise…where OH sword shines….

• Arah

Afaik speedruns are done melee….didn t have much time to see if it works in all paths.

In your list i agree with you forgot svanir boss.
While you don t necessarily need a GS, you want to summon 3 iduelists in the right spot…

So they never die outpdsing swordman by long margin.
your OH weapon becomes irrelevant…GS can be useful, another OH weapon paired with sword is 100% useless.

I don t agree instead with champion rabdovich….
since iwarden (untraited) absorbs his attack if you can trigger and sustain 3 you can actually melee it..even if you can t BF is enough to stay in melee.
Any parry attempt will get you downed instead.

The best part is even in COE/COF etc in some fights GS is better or equal.

if you carefully read “some players” you can pharaprase with “if my party can t los and/or negate boss mechanics we wipe….”

I can do both… i don t need to open posts to find optimized party on the forum complaining of pugs….i m usually wellcome in most parties because i know how to adapt.

For the scepter, despite i admit that is the weapon i really never tested enough, i suggest that this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ether_Clone

Is why i don t want to use it….i still didn t test it…just speculating that having 2 out of 3 skills Killing my phantasms is not a good idea….expecially without getting something good in Exchange like sw3-3.

[quote=2945343;Nretep.2564:]

Im kinda tired and don’t want to tell another clueless individual how wrong they are about their entire post, but I’ll give it a shot.

Fractal level I’ll be referencing is 48 for these ones, the “higher up” one that gets farmed the most. I don’t do them anymore since they’re a waste of time but here we go:

Asura golemn- max melee range makes it fairly simplistic to evenly spread the damage between battery refills / fan. That’s without a guard. With a guard the fight is trivial. So yeah, you’re wrong here

Swamp Tree: Was that a joke? It has the same attacks as oakheart with an incredibly dodgeable agony application / tremor.

Mossman: Any group over 48 thats pugging tanks him in the water, but if you wanted to melee, the one person kiting is the only one that needs be at range. You have plenty of time to dodge his axe agony throw. He looks at you? BF then disengage for the 3 or 4 seconds he’d chase you before giving up after being re-rooted. Better than the 8 seconds you’d spend auto attacking at 3-400 range with an awful weapon.

• Hammer – Boss, Fire part & two sides part
  I sure wanna see your whole party with only melee abilities to do those.

I’ll assume you mean cliffside. Archdiviner is very easily meleed as his leap won’t be happening to you, and if you happen to dodge roll too far back to be lept at, you still have time to evade again.

The rest of cliffside is either stacked in a group on the “fire part”. Or stacked on the corner for the “two sides part”

Dredge pre boss is stacked on, ice elemental / dredge power suit is easily meleed as well. Funny thing since most pugs stand all over the place kiting him (like jellyfish), sending an izerker at him will most times cause him to focus it setting you back. The duelist however, can be optimally placed for maximum efficiency.

• Ascalon – Boss
  Are you fighting that guy in melee range ?
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBdWsz4N92Y&feature=youtu.be is that a naked guardian?
  Meleeing ashym is actually easier for a mesmer than that naked guardian. His oh so damaging staff aoe happens in the same way everytime.

Legendary shaman / grawl: Why wouldn’t you melee the first? You BF the impossible to miss red circle and dodge his knockback. Null field if you’re bad at strafing fire. Shaman is ideal in melee, not only because you have to worry about physically dodging one attack, but the shield part can have the group stacked on with reflects to kill the grubs.

Jade maw: can also be moa morphed and dodging their two attacks isn’t incredibly challenging, especially with a lolmantra

The only two examples where you could argue a group can range would be ashym (for a fraction of the fight seeing as you clearly have no idea how it works, and archdiviner if your group has absolutely no synergy or coordination.

Bosses:

• Tequatl- I have the casualbringer title. I meleed the entire time. You clearly have experience in OF pugs to back this statement up that wouldn’t kill him regardless. A fully organized group RANGING teq would never make the dps timer.
• Jormag- That’s weird seeing as after you get past the gimmick part where your non weapons break the wall down, you melee him to death.
• Golem- I dont know where to begin.
• Fire Shaman (some phases):Why did this guy even post, but it’s like a moth to a light, I just can’t stop.
• MegaDestroyer (usually in lava; possible when everyone’d melee): asdiofmisanfosi
• FireElemental: I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMORE

• Twilight armor – every boss is meleed down
• HotW1 – every boss is meleed down
• Arah every boss but >>ONE<< in all 4 paths is meleed down

Please bring these assumptions of yours to the dungeon forums. I would love to get their insight on this. They do dungeons and stuff. They can help you here.

Dear god and you have a build in your signature. Please go.

Ezzyz.6045:

Mossman: Any group over 48 thats pugging tanks him in the water, but if you wanted to melee, the one person kiting is the only one that needs be at range. You have plenty of time to dodge his axe agony throw. He looks at you? BF then disengage for the 3 or 4 seconds he’d chase you before giving up after being re-rooted. Better than the 8 seconds you’d spend auto attacking at 3-400 range with an awful weapon.

You can have access to a strong cripple that survives a lot… but since other players does all the job lets pretend there is only dps..

I’ll assume you mean cliffside. Archdiviner is very easily meleed as his leap won’t be happening to you, and if you happen to dodge roll too far back to be lept at, you still have time to evade again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7fWSETTFIg

“melee” XD

Also where is mesmer?

I recommend to watch elementalist point of view….
Cripple once again ignored…the party just have an insane DPS due to thepoor balancing of pve we all know…

As said ignoring mechanics with OP profession doesn t prove, mesmer being better at melee…it just proves that mesmer is not even wellcome in those situation.

Better having a permadowned lighting hammer ele…

For any other party, izerker cripple is huge paired with ileap

The rest of cliffside is either stacked in a group on the “fire part”. Or stacked on the corner for the “two sides part”

chest seal….if party can t pull ranged adepts the time loss is huge.
Arm seals…same.

Dredge pre boss is stacked on, ice elemental / dredge power suit is easily meleed as well.

perfect….
Try it replacing 1 war with 1 necro…..
Then try it replacing mesmer with LH ele….or 4th warrior..
Once again proofs of bad PvE balancing….
Being effective here is to leave mesmer home if you think like that.

• Ascalon – Boss
  Are you fighting that guy in melee range ?
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBdWsz4N92Y&feature=youtu.be is that a naked guardian?
  Meleeing ashym is actually easier for a mesmer than that naked guardian. His oh so damaging staff aoe happens in the same way everytime.

……..do you know in ascalon fractal you get morphed?
That is not a naked guardian…

Also once again…where is MESMER?
are we discussing again how BROKEN war can kill stuff in few seconds to get most use of Aegis and invulnerability?

I really dream of more balance oneday so many “elitist” will become suddenly so bad….

Legendary shaman / grawl: Why wouldn’t you melee the first?

Because melee Attacks kill all your phantasms along 3 more targets, reflect but MOSTLY your dps as well?

Again why not leaving mesmer at home if you are talking of being broken OP?
If you melee, mesmer doesn t have a place here.

FYI….aoe attack will 100% kill mesmer after BF due to long duration unless you blink during it.
It trigger one big dive circles followed by many smaller lava fonts.

Jade maw: can also be moa morphed and dodging their two attacks isn’t incredibly challenging, especially with a lolmantra

moa morph is the best way to kill people meleeing tentacles XD enjoy moa on steroids….

As Always this will be ignored or just answere by “you are bad it have been proved GS is bad…”

Giving facts is useless here…

and either of the final bosses in the dredge fractal

This is precisely what I mean by using ranged weapons causing people not to bother learning encounters. The final boss of dredge fractal has the most obvious, blatant tells ever and yet most people range him. If (ice ele) he raises his fist, dodge away. If he stamps his foot, get behind him and melee. Apart from that, evade any other AOEs and then melee him down.

Just to emphasise how unthreatening this boss is, DnT killed it without even superheating, it took like 11 minutes or something.

@Ezzy
Yeah, alot things can be meleed, even from my list, (didn’t know about twilight arbor, ) but you still need to go range a bit of the time and/ or you need other party members to support you and/ or you need others to range the boss so you can melee. Any of those parts does give ranged weapons a pretty valid reason. I’m not saying sword is weak or can’t be use on them, but a sw+x/sw+y build only relies on your group on those.

You seriously fight tentacles with moa morph only ?
The ascalon fractal’s boss can be meleed, but having two guardians with 2 sources of group-aegis is completely different to mesmers BF. Aegis beats invul on random instagibs. And as you can see, the guardian also keeps his distance in 40% of the time, so the 30% (if it were true) more damage from the sword is obsolete again.
The swamp fractal’s tree works in the perfect partysetup and with mesmers you need to be lucky with the pWarden spawn locations, but it usually won’t work.
HotW1’s boss has a REALLY heavy whirlwind. If you’re in melee, you’re dead. BF might help often, but once missed, you’re dead. And don’t expect the whole party to BF at the right time; aegis doesn’t help. And the time you’re ranged, it 0 damage. The + 30% damage from the sword is completely useless if you’re risky in melee range and need to step away 30% of the boss time.

I also melee the most time, but I never use melee weapons only. None of my characters.

@lordbyron’s cut and paste typical response

I’m not sure if it’s my being tired or not, but half of your post made absolutely no sense to me.

From the bits and pieces I could understand, ele’s in melee have it worse off than mesmers so any point you were attempting to make there is kinda, yeah.

Your bit on warrior’s damage is pretty funny. I’m sure, being a GS mesmer that you feel this way. You should try to find those items of the “berserker” and then retrait to a build that does “damage”. You also implied that faster fights make them easier. Kinda contradicts the whole camping GS thing, doesn’kitten

Your reply on legendary shaman. If you aren’t terrible, you have a warden for the focus pull + aoe stacked in melee for shield phases. Your offhand would be the phantasm that has the least chance of dieing here (not the izerker, it shoots guns, I’ll let you look around).

FYI….aoe attack will 100% kill mesmer after BF due to long duration unless you blink during it.

Do you seriously start meleeing the moment you see the grapic appear? So you basically use your invulnerabilty to invuln nothing at all. Great understanding right here.

As always, another clueless GS user posts some more wrong and is again shown to be wrong. Will this stop the simple beast from ignoring any response and just using some typical “elitist” ad h reply? Stay tuned.

On a serious note, Lordbyron, every single one of your posts that I’ve seen posted here (I’ve noticed because they just stand out), have been incredibly wrong, filled with misinformation, or shown a complete lack of understanding of basic aspects of this game. If you look at your replys, they’re usually responded to with trolling, because you really don’t deserve anything more than that. Even the non clueless, but kinda blind to reasoning posters that defend GS don’t back you up. It’s time to move on

So i was right

“i can t tell you why but you are wrong and noob” and “i won t answer because i m tired”.

followe dby more personal Attacks….

So typical….

P.S: …..just avoid proving in EVERY post you don t read a SINGLE WORD.

Proof (just 1 of many):

You also implied that faster fights make them easier. Kinda contradicts the whole camping GS thing, doesn’kitten

colesy.8490:

and either of the final bosses in the dredge fractal

This is precisely what I mean by using ranged weapons causing people not to bother learning encounters. The final boss of dredge fractal has the most obvious, blatant tells ever and yet most people range him. If (ice ele) he raises his fist, dodge away. If he stamps his foot, get behind him and melee. Apart from that, evade any other AOEs and then melee him down.

Just to emphasise how unthreatening this boss is, DnT killed it without even superheating, it took like 11 minutes or something.

I know the tells of those bosses. That is inconsequential besides wanting to keep damage pressure on them while kiting around the room.

You don’t need to kite them at all.

He’s practically the Subject Alpha of fractals, extremely lethal though heavily choreographed attacks which promote you bursting as fast as possible in melee, you can kill him at 48 with one heating.

But if you melee the dredge final boss, when will you pull him under the next crucible? Or is it enough time to stay at the same spot? Has been a while since I went fractale :P

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Almost nobody in this thread disagree’d that melee is the way to go in dungeons. Almost nobody in this forums disagrees when you present facts. You seem to hold fast to the idea that everyone here disagrees with you when it’s actually the opposite. Its the usual stuff, the majority gets blamed/labeled because of the louder minority.

Now that you mention it, including the part where the people labelling don’t get why they’re being met with hate after antagonizing the majority who initially agreed with them.

Xyonon.3987:

But if you melee the dredge final boss, when will you pull him under the next crucible? Or is it enough time to stay at the same spot? Has been a while since I went fractale :P

I will explain better

All his points about sword efficience are made with a party of 3 warriors with perfect rotation and a dps guard.

This makes possible to kill most stuff in few seconds, included an overheated dredge or ice elementals.

That is the core point of all GS haters.
Unfortunately if you manage to play with such groups you will find 2 things:

1) you can melee with greatsword autoattack all time and still nothing changes because mesmer damage % in party dps is so low to not make real differences.

2) with that absurd dps, fights lasts less than 1 minute…..in such situations you almost don t have to deal with cooldowns.

No wonder you don t consider ice elemental’s minions chill spam and Attacks….

If you are used to play with such parties but you get back to pugs you notice that after some time melee you actually need to recover for some seconds…..(that is not camping the fight with GS as they say).

It simply never happen with some OP parties anet refuses to deal with due to pvp.
If you look at videos you see every day more videos with elementalists and 4 warriors+guardian and without mesmer.

people start questioning if TW is enough of a reason to bring a mesmers since in short fights guardian and ele can provide same support with some real dps.

Nobody ever said sword MH is not your primary weapon…..
But many don t agree to go full melee…..or do not think sword OH is Always the best option.

Your post seems to be full of hate … but still – so to melee the end boss means to oneshot him?? o.O Colesy?

colesy.8490:

You don’t need to kite them at all.

He’s practically the Subject Alpha of fractals, extremely lethal though heavily choreographed attacks which promote you bursting as fast as possible in melee, you can kill him at 48 with one heating.

Yes, you can. In an organized group where you know that everyone is aware of the tells and everyone is doing their part to maintain 25 might/vuln stacks. This is rarely the case with a PuG.

On this not, this is also the case with some of the other bosses in fractals such as the archdiviner and mossman. Yes, of course you can melee them, but the group needs to know each other and know when to properly use their skills. So in a PuG, when I am fighting mossman and I have aggro nearly the entire fight, GS is a requirement as I would die if I were the only person melee-ing him, and I can kite him using the GS4 to cripple. If I need a BF, I switch over and use it, summon a pistol phantasm, and wait to switch over.

In standard dungeons, both organized and in a PuG, full melee on a mesmer is best in most cases. Fractals 48 are simply a different story when not in an organized group, and having the GS on swap for when you need to back out is essential.

Actually you can techniquely solo melee mossman and ice elemental even if your group ranges. Archdiviner does require coordination and isnt pug friendly to melee. But thats not the point, the point is GS isnt even good in those situations. Scepter is better.

spoj.9672:

But thats not the point, the point is GS isnt even good in those situations. Scepter is better.

Even popping Duelists at range while doing nothing in a S/P setup probably.

why S/P if you are going melee? S/S is about the same damage but gives a block :o

Personal preference really. Duelist does slightly more damage. And the interrupt on pistol is pretty nice.

Xyonon.3987:

why S/P if you are going melee? S/S is about the same damage but gives a block :o

sword OH 4 if successfull summons a clone that will overwrite a phantasm
You can keep iduelist alive for Whole fights in some fights (while iswordmen will die):

Svanir boss
Tazza
uncategorized ettin/fire shaman
etc

I use Brazil’s DPS/support build. (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83936-the-new-mesmer-meta/). It still does nice damage. I made a quick video to kind of show you sword/focus and sword/pistol. You can switch out Signet of Inspiration for Blink if the situation calls for it. I was using mostly zerker gear with Scholar Runes, but used two celestial trinkets and a knight’s ring to show you the damage with a bit of extra survival. Not my fastest giant kill, but you get the general idea.

The build is…
10-III
30-II, IV, IX
0
30-II, VIII, IX
0

My utilities are typically Blink/Signet of Inspiration, Null Field, Feedback, and Time Warp.

You can switch out a 5 or 10 points if you so choose. I just run this because it’s high utility without sacrificing too much damage. Yeah, it’s not the best damage, but it’s nothing to sneeze at. I also bring GS along if I need to range. People poo-poo on GS for some reason, but it’s a solid ranged option.