Guild Wars 2

So, I gotta say… it’s CRAZY playing Sword/Sword at the lower levels. You pop clones all over the place… they seem available pretty quick after the Shatter… and having 4 copies of myself running around, all midriff-bare an’ all, is just fun to watch.

I know with my Ranger, though, I really started getting hit HARD in the low-20s, so much so that the range from my bow was a real God-send. I’m wondering if there are any Mesmer players out there who leveled their Mez primarily using S/S, how you did it, what techniques you found useful (or essential) in the “slump” period between the low-20s till your Elite opens up?

Don’t get me wrong – GS is fun, too (more fun than I expected, really, given how much tearing-of-hair and rending-of-garments has been going on since the Great Black iZerker Nerf of Late 2012), but there’s just… something… so absolutely nuts about S/S that I’m wondering how other people fared.

I have planned out my indestructable melee tank PvE build which includes S/S.
As soon as I have all the gear together (will take some time) I will post feedback. Personally I really love the idea of a melee caster wielding two swords.

I’ve run S/S with a condition build toughness/precision/condi gear and it works out pretty well. I do like to use other offhands though the block is nice but the phantasm itself is a bit lackluster.

Nice thing about sword clones with sharper images and a condi build is since sword auto attack and blurred frenzy generally hit AoE in a small area they’re applying bleeds on a aoe group of mobs can end up with 15 stacks of vulnerability +15% damage for everyone and along with 8-15 stacks of aoe bleed going on it’ works out surprisingly good. So w/this kind of set up you actually to have a reason to let them “live” and do dmg instead of just shattering them right away. With Debilitating Dissipation in chaos when they do die in melee range(due to natural causes or summon beyond limit) it’ll apply more conditions(the weakness is nice). I will occasionally run focus off hand for warden the aoe dmg helps in pve and you can use temporal curtain to “pull” mobs into it’s aoe before shattering it. It’s aoe will also be procing sharper images. For single targets pistol off hand is generally going to net you more dps. I may get some hate on this but Sword/Torch for a condition/melee build works great too w/the prestige you get AoE Blind & AoE Burn along with a way to “drop agro” momentarily can be great in pve/dungeons or for soloing supply camps in WvW. The phantasm synergizes well for the condi build with the confusion dmg if you’re meleeing since the mob is going to be hitting something to trigger it.

Tip: With a condition setup I’d recommend having blurred frenzy off cooldown when you shatter with F2 you’ll have about several stacks of confusion up pop it for invulnerability and the mobs will generally hit you once or twice for rather large dmg while you yourself take none.Then you can get your clones back up.

I’m sure it works great with a pure power/shatter crit build too if not better in a lot of cases and would require less “work” to achieve some things. You just have to know when to weave in and out of melee range with either setup.

For secondary weapons staff for chaos armor / chaos storm is nice for defenses when in melee range(protection/aegis) Great Sword is nice to not only for ranging when you “have to” GS 5 is good for making some distance between you and the mobs if you need to heal all be it staff phase retreat is good for that too. As a power build if you take staff as your secondary weapon most of its damage is going to come from iWarlock which scales very well with power and still gains the +10% dmg per condition on the mob bonus.