Guild Wars 2

So I’m pretty new to the Mesmer class and am pretty low level at the moment. I was curious if using a sword/pistol + sword/sword setup would be viable. I haven’t seen it used any where from my lurking. The obvious downside to the setup is you are technically losing out on 3 skills by overlapping the 1,2, and 3 skills from having sword as main hand on each. The upside as I see it though is you always have access to Blurred strikes no matter what weapon set you have up, as well as the combination of both iDuelist and iSwordsman (the two best illusions in my opinion). Blade Training also gets full use with this setup, since it won’t deactivate if you swap weapons.

Anyone think an Illusion build would work with this weapon set? Is there something I’m missing that would make this setup not work well?

well it is viable, but you have already identified one of the issues (buttons 2 and 3 sharing cooldowns) and the other issue is your lack of ranged power imo. It depends what you are going to be ‘doing’ with this setup? if its sPvP or WvW you may find it a bit suboptimal, however PvE you should be fine with it.

Normally, at least for me, I change weapons when I have a lot of skills currently on cooldown. When you change weapons, you still have blurred frenzy/whatever skill 3 is called on cooldown. It can work I guess, but I wouldn’t say it’s optimal.

It’s a viable setup for PvE when you spec for phantasm damage. Having the sword up all the time is often better than switching to scepter. However you’ll be missing on the iWarden which can be imba vs the AI.

I run a phantasem build with 3x Sword Pistol and I do decently with it.

As stated before, you run into trouble with ranged damage and the shared cooldowns on your 1-3, however, given the low native cooldowns on all of them, you don’t commonly run into cooldown problems for your mainhand. Alternatively, however, you can mainland a scepter for added range damage.

I wouldn’t call it ‘non optimal’ so much as highly specific. You’re doing a lot of hit-and run tactics with the build, only sticking to targets you’ve got a signifigant advantage over. When using that build, you’ll have to balance the decission between bonus critical damage and Bleed Damage from Sharper Images. I tend to error on one side and have been contemplating a more balanced approach for better performances

I recondite Greater Signets of Battle on offhand for increased damage when you swap, and for mainhand, we’ll, that’s a matter of choice. Superior Sigil of Fire gives me good spread damage and procs dependably, but for single targets Superior Sigil of Air is better. Blood also gives you a bit of survivability but as you’re running primarily melee, your choices may differ. I’ve heard that chilling abilities work well in increasing your defensive abilities, I’m running to test that myself tonight.

If you’re dealing with more people, I’d reccomend doing sword/pistol Greatsword, however. Gives you more versatility for pretty much the same tactics, at the cost of less single target damage from phantasems.