Guild Wars 2

Are there any true ranged lockout builds?? i loved my mesmer in gw1 for the reason i coulds shutdown players and i enjoyed that playstyle. In 2 i havent seen much lockdown abilities which bothers me. Are there any builds that work well for this?? I do noice mesmer gets some interrupts and some dazes… but the cooldowns on them seem like it makes them a waste to use.

You won’t find GW2’s mesmer quite as sinister as GW1’s in the shutdown department, but we do have some great abilities in this area, and good build diversity to boot. Anet provides us many different traits to build around the interrupt mechanic. There is a compiled list of lockdown type builds here if you want to check them out:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lockdown-The-Underexplored-Playstyle

They range from more single target focused to AoE. Single target focused builds generally have a higher skill cap, but if you get the combos right, you can really shut opponents down for lengthy periods. The AoE builds are a bit easier to play and are more RnG in nature. If you hit the interrupts, it can be quite devastating on groups.

Most of the single-minded roles of GW1 don’t exist in GW2, which is really where the full lockdown shined. You could pinpoint a vital role in the enemy team’s combo and turn it off. Full lockdown in GW2’s self-sufficient profession design wouldn’t have quite the same strategic value. Instead, people would just call it stun-lock and rage about it on the forums.

Still, mesmer’s have some decent denial available to them within the context of GW2 mechanics, and the thread skcamow linked is a good start. Sadly, many builds don’t really fly in PvE yet (a matter we’ve managed to bring to the attention of the developers and they are currently taking under consideration) but they can be fun in PvP and especially WvW .