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Tweak My PVE Build
Swap condi gear to zerker/assassin. Focus on 1 damage type, hybrid is next to useless due to multiplicative damage modifiers and GS is pretty bad for condi.
Switch Scepter to MH Sword and trait Fencer’s Finesse. Even if you stay at range, having 25% evade uptime as a fallback option is great, as is being able to clobber anything that does advance into melee instead of having to port away.
Mantra of Pain deals higher dps than any autoattack barring sword in a power spec. Trait Harmonious Mantras and replace your autoattack with MoP if you can afford the utility slot. Also hits 5 targets instead of 3 for GS (a paltry 1 for scepter…)
The might from Imagined Burden is terrible as other group members do it better and it only procs upon completion of the cast, so you lose out if you have to dodge, interrupt with one of your better skills, or learn to stow-cancel for increased dps (still run MoP if you have the utility slot to spare). You can keep the GS trait since there aren’t any substantially better options.
Malicious Sorcery is bugged and doesn’t increase attack speed. No real gain in switching the trait though, you can keep running scepter if you like the weapon. #3 does a ton of damage and should be your top priority after phantasm uptime.
Consider OH sword instead of pistol since you can’t trait the latter (and really should be running traited MH sword anyway), the block/line daze is better than the bullet and the phantasms also deals more dps. Switch to pistol if you know the target can regularly wipe iSwordsmen, but not iDuelists.
Don’t run those sigils, Energy is way expensive and you really don’t need the extra endurance as a mesmer. Use Force for extra damage. Accuracy doesn’t work on phantasms, you’ll have to use Perception instead (or Bloodlust). Consider a Sigil of Fire for your GS, it’s a dps loss but great for tagging open world events and so on.
Get used to swapping your utilities a lot. Ether Signet->Mantra for sustain or more reflect damage, other mantras for situational utility, Null Field+iDisenchanter against boon spammers, stealth+portal for skipping.
Swap Time Warp to Moa for Frozen Maw to cancel that annoying transform XD
And most importantly, put up a disclaimer so the dungeon speedrunners won’t flame you for daring to run anything other than full zerk all melee copy-pasted off metabattle.
If you do care about max damage go read up that build, for casual runs look to Inspiration for a ton of group support options (AoE Distortion, boonshare on phant summon, boosted glamours, iWarden permareflect, 400hp/s AoE heal+perma regen…)
- Scholar runes outperform Eagle pretty solidly. Assassin’s is effective on mes because of reflects, but also because the precision gain is equal to the power loss. Eagle runes lose 3% damage on the damage mod, which is only useful for half a target’s life bar anyway. Scholar’s 10% can be kept up for 80-100% of most fights, and can be kept up more than half of nearly every fight.
- Mistrust sucks outside some very specific circumstances/builds. It’s certainly not worth taking over Deceptive Evasion.
- Malicious Sorcery is half-broken: it still gives 20% cdr, but it’s not actually increasing attack speed right now. So unless a particular scepter skill is important to your rotation, you’ll get more mileage out of Ineptitude or MoF (remember, don’t think of Ineptitude as a confusion source, think of it as a blind source!)
- Why, exactly, do you feel it necessary to run a scepter? If you’re fighting from range you’ll be spending most of your time in Greatsword anyway, and scepter provides very little relative benefit for a phantasm-based build, especially in pve.
- Scholar runes outperform Eagle pretty solidly. Assassin’s is effective on mes because of reflects, but also because the precision gain is equal to the power loss. Eagle runes lose 3% damage on the damage mod, which is only useful for half a target’s life bar anyway. Scholar’s 10% can be kept up for 80-100% of most fights, and can be kept up more than half of nearly every fight.
- Mistrust sucks outside some very specific circumstances/builds. It’s certainly not worth taking over Deceptive Evasion.
- Malicious Sorcery is half-broken: it still gives 20% cdr, but it’s not actually increasing attack speed right now. So unless a particular scepter skill is important to your rotation, you’ll get more mileage out of Ineptitude or MoF (remember, don’t think of Ineptitude as a confusion source, think of it as a blind source!)
- Why, exactly, do you feel it necessary to run a scepter? If you’re fighting from range you’ll be spending most of your time in Greatsword anyway, and scepter provides very little relative benefit for a phantasm-based build, especially in pve.
Scholar is garbage if you can’t keep up your hp though, which seems likely for a new-ish player camping GS with signet heal. I think Eagle/Ogre/Pack are the substitutes for damage, Traveler/Centaur for movespeed (better for open world/Silverwastes, Pack also helps a bit)
Mistrust sucks, yes, but DE is worse for a PvE phantasm build. Stick to Mistrust if you have 0 mantras on your bar, otherwise HM wins hands down.
Ineptitude isn’t that good for blinds since mobs attack so slowly, or spam multi-hit attacks. Also the confusion DoT puts you in combat if you evade while OOC, which is insanely annoying for open world. Good for trash groups though.
Thanks for the feedback, guys! It really is helpful. I’ve updated the build with your suggestions here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR7cnsIClphloBuqBUrhlUDB976pkDKFo8zpCA-ThSBAB0oLoQNCus/ADHEAzUCelyjIuAADp+DZKxA4JAAA-e
AlphatheWHite, I prefer using scepter over sword MH simply because Confusing Images is a nice damage spike. I just like having two ranged sets to swap between.
I am mostly running Silverwastes, as I play a meta build Guardian for dungeons.
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(edited by nakirush.7531)
You only need 1 Perception sigil, on the weapon you expect to be wielding during most of your kills.
I tend to use GS for opening burst then camp MH sword, hence I put the sigil on the latter. If you want to camp GS and swap to scepter for burst stack up on GS.
If you haven’t bought everything yet consider Bloodlust over Perception since you already have a ton of crit chance anyway, unless you specifically want to maximise reflect damage. Also better for some open world content like renown hearts, Tequatl’s fingers and other non-critable targets.
If you tend to go down a lot use crit/weapon swap sigils instead of the stacking ones. None of them work really well with that build, Generosity could be nice for some personal condi cleanse, but it’s expensive. Avid dungeon runners will have Night/Slaying for most paths.