Guild Wars 2

Hey everybody!

I need to ask for some advice among the experienced Mesmers lurking around in the forums. I have a level 80 glass-cannon, full Zerker Phantasm Mesmer. Now I love doing dungeons and fractals, and have been doing so since launch! My Mesmer does a great job with her current build, but here is my problem -

I picked up the Kasmeer staff simply because it looked so pretty. And occasionally I take it out now in dungeons, and the more I play with it, the more I want to play “effectively” with it! So I browsed through the builds in the forums, but I cannot seem to find anything that I like, or some of them seem to be a bit outdated.

What I want to ask is this – What Mesmer build utilizes the staff? I don’t want to drop in DPS as we do high level fractals (in an organized group) and I understand how important it is to burst through mobs and critters. I want to be an effective member of the team, do decent damage but also provide some support.

Thank you in advance!

TL&DR: I am looking for a DPS-Staff build for my Zerker Mesmer that I could use in PVE, Dungeons, Fractals and some WvW. Any recommendations?

There is no such build. Staff is bad in the current PvE meta— the damage is just too subpar. You’ll be hurting your own potential, and your team, if you’re using it.

For PvE, and that’s fractals included, you want maximum DPS and reflects. So that means something like 10/30/0/20/10 or 0/30/0/25/15 with sword+focus and sword+sword. The wardens are critical for reflect uptime. You should be using zerker gear + ruby orbs or scholar runes for maximum damage.

Staff’s iWarlock is actually fairly good DPS, but the autoattack on staff is such trash that you will be hurting your group with it. If you must range, use greatsword or scepter/pistol, or scepter/focus.

If you absolutely insist, you can do something like swap out sword/sword for staff, or replace the focus in some fights where you know you don’t need reflects.

Good luck, but really, you will drop in DPS quite significantly.

You can always run the builds mentioned there but going 20 into illusions for illusionary elasticity. That’s still decent DPS, though obviously not as good as the meta weapons. If your team is competent, you’re running in an organized group and they’re OK with it, it should matter too much.

For more boon share/support and WvW potential, take a look at the Chaos Maestro or Paladin builds in the build sticky. In dungeons, running those builds full zerker is fine in PUGs due to not knowing what you’re going to get (but not in groups advertising experienced only) .

For a DPS staff your best bet would to go an interrupt shatter build with runes of perplexity (confusion requires little condition damage to be useful and 100% confusion duration is easily obtained) with either scepter/sword or sword/sword.

Thank you for the advice everybody!
Much appreciated!

It is such a shame that the staff doesn’t offer much in PVE. I’ve been running dungeons, mostly Arah, HoTW and AC where I had to constantly swap between three different weapon sets. When stacking the staff isn’t a bad weapon. The bounce always works, and creeps are all perfectly in the AOE. Certain spots the staff was actually pretty awesome, especially in AC (without changing my traits from the phantasm Mesmer build), but mostly, like you said, it was sub-par and I was forced to go back to sword + focus which offered a ton more damage.

The sheer micro management, swapping between different weapons before an encounter gets pretty wearisome! Sadly it seems like I won’t be making that much use of the staff then.

Did anybody perhaps run some figures on DPS for the staff, say with three clones out, attacking with the Winds of Chaos; if you are traited for the extra bounce?

By the way,, I don’t think that the staff is really a long range weapon? At a range of 1200 I barely get the benefit of the boon. Anyways.. what are your thoughts on this?

I really do appreciate your support in this!

You’re not going to get high dps with the staff. The staff serve other purposes like

• aoe dazing/interrupting a group of mobs while stacking,
• applying vulnerability on them in the process,
• giving your team aegis so they can continue to attack for longer without needing time to recover.
• gives you another level of kiting ability when your other team members are down and needs to recover
• chaos storm + bountiful interrupt trait + chaos armor (if you’re decently tanky) + signet of inspiration works great for sharing boons with your team.

The staff isn’t that bad, It just deals more passive damage than big fat numbers except for iWarlock. A 2k dmg aa isnt that bad, if it bounces even 4k. However it is very situational.

It is a good choice if you don’t have to dps that much and are more supporting, like the wall fractale (2 sigils at burning area) where you summon your stuff and heal with mop since your personal damage is not worth attacking aslong as you prevent allies from dying. It’s not a general rule, but I learned how much 800 Heal per seconds are in order to reduce my own damage down to phants and a few attacks, especially with iDefender.

The staff is also awesome against dangerious enemies where you have to escape (2) or just a great dd if you got some condifreaks around, like engi or ele. 4+ conditions and your iWL dps is the highest. The aa also buffs allies for passive damage, however again invisible for you.

In general yea – there are often better options. Scepter + Pistol or sometimes even GS. But the staff is a weapon every good mesmer has to carry around … Actually every weapon

As for a build I still suggest 10/30/0/30/0. Traiting in Illusions isn’t that awesome as everyone thinks imo.