Guild Wars 2

Besides berserker stats, what combo would increase defense the best and still maintain reasonable offense? I feel too much like a glass cannon in full berserker gear.

I think Zerker is still the way to go. Instead of changing your stats, change your traits instead (much cheaper): I found that going Chaos for Illusionary Defence, Chaotic Dampening and Bountiful Disillusionment works wonders for survivability.

Sinister and you can go complete glass cannon without chaos traitline duel, illu, chrono

staff + scep/pistol.. you’ll have a lot of survivability with chaosstorm, chaos armor, magic bullet and shatters while every shatter adds dps.

Inspiration with Restorative Mantras, Mantra of Recovery+Pain is another good glasscannon sustain setup. Run MH sword in at least one weapon set and abuse Blurred Frenzy to dps while you evade, use MoR while CC’d, using BF or when afflicted with conditions when your main cleanse is on cooldown. Spam MoP against melee-unfriendly enemies and when you need to retreat a bit and heal.

Generally speaking Healing Power is worthless, Vitality doesn’t help much in PvE as conditions are rarely a threat, and Toughness draws additional aggro which can actually get you killed quicker. Classes like Warrior or Necro can get decent use out of defensive stats, but most of our “survival” skills don’t scale with gear at all. If played well zerker gives a greater increase to killing speed than its sacrifice in durability.

Yeah I tend to switch between Chaos and Inspiration depending on the situation. Both are great for sustain while in Zerker gear.

Overall I don’t see any reason not to go Zerker as a Power Mesmer unless you’re extremely allergic to Chaos/Inspiration.

Sinister is interesting but Confusion and Torment simply don’t work very well in PvE, and camping Staff is going to get you nowhere. You’re better off with Ferocity IMO.

Not exactly, many mobs in HoT keep moving, charging, attacking fast.. confusion and torment are good.. i played zerker for a while in verdant brink and decided it’s pretty useless in most scenarios, low mobility, low defense, harder to solo veterans, champions, low on interrupts since you dont want to lose your phantasms with shatter.

Confusion and Torment were meant to be bad earlier cause the mobs didn’t move a lot and attacked slow.. that’s rarely the case now, not to mention the fact that we have a lot of quickness/alacrity uptime cause of shatters which deal damage in sinister gear and spec compared to zerker where mind wrack is the only worth while shatter.

Also, you dont camp in staff, infact staff is only a start out weapon.. you will be on scepter after dropping chaos storm, phase retreat, warlock. quickness on shatter is very powerful on scepter.

Keep in mind that HoT added new stat prefixes to PvE, including Marauder. I’d say stick with Zerk or Assassin for your weapons and trinkets, but maybe substitute in some Marauder and Wanderer armour pieces to augment your survivability. Or else go with the old filler standby of Soldier.

I also want to add to Tobascodagama’s post that Commander’s stat prefix with Chaos trait works very well. I heard Viper’s an alternative to Sinister/Rampager.

I’m thinking of going for a mix of Marauder/Commander/X setup, with X being Berserker, Assassin, Wanderer’s, or Vigilant (depending on how much crit I’ve already obtain).

I got hit for 13k by a champion in HoT when I was running full berserk, now I use soldier armor and the rest still berserker.

kitten armor, berserk weapons and trinkets + chrono runes seem to be the best option.

Xyonon.3987:

kitten armor

That stat must be new. What’s its layout?

The primary stat is Adorability, with Fuzziness and Playfulness as secondaries.

tobascodagama.2961:

The primary stat is Adorability, with Fuzziness and Playfulness as secondaries.

hahahaha