Guild Wars 2

I’ve been looking to shake things up a little with my mesmer and have been looking with intrigue at sword/sword (I WvW a lot). What’s the general consensus around this and builds that benefit the weapons? Are condition duration extenders useful? Thoughts?

Thanks all!

Are Illusionary Riposte and Counter Blade still bugged as described in the wiki?

Counter Blade is not bugged anymore, inflicts 5 stacks of daze when traited. Not sure about I-Riposte.

You can check out Osi’s shattercat WvW guide – one of the main specs uses sword/sword. It’s a great burst with decent defense.

Leuddian.3057:

Counter Blade is not bugged anymore, inflicts 5 stacks of daze when traited. Not sure about I-Riposte.

You can check out Osi’s shattercat WvW guide – one of the main specs uses sword/sword. It’s a great burst with decent defense.

A shattercat version, eh? Thanks, I’ll try and find that.

Much appreciated!

I tried to roll with S/S as phantasm mesmer in WvW and I do not really like it. IMO, it’s inferior to Pistol.

Sword Phantasm is weaker – it does great damage, but it is not really ranged and it does only one attack so if a target got block or aegis on, that’s all the damage down the drain (sadface) and even if it hits – it may end up not critting which is fail, compared to Duelist who kittens all over aegis and blocks with his 8 attack volley and will always do consistent damage since every attack crits interdependently and on top of that it is great at stacking bleeds and confusion if you have ethereal field (even with no condition damage both can do nice damage when stacked).

Illusionary Riposte can be awesome sometimes, it nukes hard if you block in melee range, but IMO Magic Bullet is just WAY more awesome in WvW. 2 seconds of stun on demand with 1200 range and it has only 20 seconds CD traited??? That’s like WAY better than one block with a nuke attached for just about any reasonable situation.

The only upside in S/S, IMO, is that you can can easily pick Blade Training which is great for blurred frenzy and leap, but IMO it’s not worth losing Duelist and Bullet at least for Phantasm build.

Maybe for Shatter it is a good trade-up, since Phantasmal Swordsman pounces on targets so it’s easier to shatter and hit with it.

Build in my sig link uses sw/sw. Works great for solo/small group and harassing the fringes of a zerg. If you throw in a GS as your secondary you can tag or siege defense; a staff lets you zerg support quite well due to the points in Inspiration and Chaos.

S/s is great for shatter builds as it scales well with power and both the clone from block and the phantasm stay close to your target, which Is where they need to be if you wanna shatter burst someone down.

No point in having you phantasm run 1000+ before shattering.

Pistol is better for phantasm builds.

Sword + sword / staff is a true favorite, use it 60-70% of the time in wvwvw. Feel free to have a look at Shatter Cat Heavy or Shatter Cat Phantasm Hybrid. Link in my desacription.

Heavy:

Hybrid:

Enjoy.

/Osicat

VOLKON.1290:

I’ve been looking to shake things up a little with my mesmer and have been looking with intrigue at sword/sword (I WvW a lot).

Grab an OH sword and go kill some fools with it My view is that it’s an overpowered weapon, I love it.

It shines best in smaller fights (for my play style…), and I find that I use it in smaller W3 skirmishes and xPvP. FWIW, I’m running an Osicat-inspired Hybrid build at the moment.

For W3, I reckon you’ll get the most love out of OH Sword or Pistol. Focus is good for roaming and yanking fools off walls, but fighting loves a good OH sword or pistol. I run MH Sword as well, S/S is quite the combination.

TactualRain.7109:

VOLKON.1290:

I’ve been looking to shake things up a little with my mesmer and have been looking with intrigue at sword/sword (I WvW a lot).

Grab an OH sword and go kill some fools with it My view is that it’s an overpowered weapon, I love it.

don’t even go there.

It’s hardly OP. Not to mention when you consider the slim selection of viable weapons for the mesmer then the OH sword is very much in a good place.

I’m not trying to single you out but people are so quick to say everything on the Mesmer is so OP when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’m not sure I agree that the Mesmer’s viable weapon selection is slim. About the only thing I think is covered in cheese sauce is the sceptre, which really seems to not know WTF it is.

Each to their own though – we all have a different affinity for the game. E.g., despite people thinking the previous Elementalist D/D bunker was OP, I couldn’t make it work for me and hated it.

I run Sword/Sword and Scepter/Pistol phantasm build in wvw. and I love it. S/S is really strong and the duelist on the pistol is nice as well. there is a build on these forums by Pyroathiest and I find it works really well for roaming in wvw.. Its not strong in large group fights but against a few players in a skirmish type scenario it is full of win.

I dont think sword offhand is that great. Well, considering the focus has MUCH better utility. Certainly true when you trait focus for reflect and in wvw reflect is king.

Warden/illusionary leap→swap/blurred frenzy
nasty combo

Justine.6351:

Warden/illusionary leap->swap/blurred frenzy
nasty combo

Yeah it is

Maybe the trick here is that the offhands all have a good place – depending on the situation. I suspect, on reflection, I make more use of S/S in sPvP where fights tend to be smaller. That has a natural carry-over to smaller objective skirmishes in W3, but it’s probably situational.

Pistol cd’s are too long. The trait to reduce pistol to something more reasonable are in the same slot as deceptive evasion… meaning you basically need to go 30 into that tree to reduce the weapons CD’s Vs. just 20.

Sword 4 fills the same role as pistol 5 (cc, although not to multiple targets like pistol, but sword 4 can also block). The phantasms both do a decent job of surviving.

Thus… OH sword > OH pistol in the majority of situations for me.

Focus > sword or pistol for med→large WvW groups.

Aberrant.6749:

Pistol cd’s are too long. The trait to reduce pistol to something more reasonable are in the same slot as deceptive evasion… meaning you basically need to go 30 into that tree to reduce the weapons CD’s Vs. just 20.

Honestly, that’s a Deceptive Evasion issue though.
It should not be designed in such a way that it becomes the automatic pick at 20 Dueling.

Carighan.6758:

Aberrant.6749:

Pistol cd’s are too long. The trait to reduce pistol to something more reasonable are in the same slot as deceptive evasion… meaning you basically need to go 30 into that tree to reduce the weapons CD’s Vs. just 20.

Honestly, that’s a Deceptive Evasion issue though.
It should not be designed in such a way that it becomes the automatic pick at 20 Dueling.

5 in Illusions is also almost always taken…

Same thing happens with 20 into Honor for Selfless Daring and 5 into Virtues with a guardian.

Just part of how they designed the game imo… if you think that’s good or bad… is up to you.

Personally I don’t have much of a problem with it since some one could devise a build that doesn’t greatly benefit from these sorts of traits and would prefer to take others instead.

Yes but there’s a huge difference between 5-point minor trait (doesn’t block a choice slot since it’s a “half pick”, and a 20-point major trait (blocks access to another major by taking a “full pick”, and also blocks out of the then 9 choices of traits for that major slot).

It’s not even comparable in impact, though technically the same issue.

And yes, DE isn’t 100% necessary. If you run a Phantasm-PvE build, you won’t need it. But the thing is, there’s no issue with the -CD trait itself as you said, rather it’s spot is taken up by a talent which is mandatory in most situations. Especially in ones overlapping with situations where you may want the -CD on Pistols.

Two possible solutions:

• DE is too strong, but also too mandatory. Merge part of it’s power into the baseline, then weaken it. Same total power, less reliant on the trait.
• Pistol Trait (and the other ones on the tier) are too weak, buff them until they’re valid picks against DE on average (super-clone-spammers would ofc still use DE).