Guild Wars 2

At first I thought of keeping it simple and concentrated in my issue but once we solve it, there is no point to limit the thread so much, so you may follow the title as the subject.

Simply put! I want to upgrade the weapons on my mesmer. Staff vs S/S vs S/P

With more words: I am a zerker, shatter build and staff seems too focused on conditions which gets anything but benefited from my gear. I have an exotic zerker sword and recently a pvt pistol dropped.

Should I better use the staff? (Accommodating the gear and spec to conditions is far from where I m willing to reach with this)

Should I wait for a sword to fall in my hands and give the pistol to some other class (I have all but ranger)?

Is there a reason to prefer one from another at this situation?

Take note, I am not interested in maximizing output. WvWvW is not something my PC can handle, and I like fractals at low level so competitiveness is not what I hold in my thoughts.

What I do care about is versatility. To be able to be adjustable while keeping my efficiency and output intact. To that end a single pvt item is not a catastrophe to me.

If your goal is versatility, you keep all the weapons. You need to swap between them depending on the situation, and that gives you the versatility.

I play a shatter build myself. personally I like Sword/Sword or Sword/Tourch. But my off-set is always the staff. Even though it is more of a condition inflicting weapon, its the most defensive wep we have. This is with WvW in mind. PvE, I will run with the staff and switch it up sometimes with Scepter/Focus. I would try them all and see what fits your style. But, if you want a solid defensive wep, go with staff.

Pyroatheist.9031:

If your goal is versatility, you keep all the weapons. You need to swap between them depending on the situation, and that gives you the versatility.

I ‘d say this is the obvious solution but then again it is apparent that specific weapons favor specific set-ups. Having them all might bring versatility but it’s not necessary the level at which I am interested for.

What I m looking for is to be able to respond in most situations in a pve scenario. Toch for example suits better pvp set-ups with it’s stealth and retaliation.
Focus too, as swiftness is rarely required for an event or a dungeon. It’s only good to have for roaming then.

In a case where I m mostly required to maximizing my damage while staying alive against a scripted fight, all I need is to adjust between long and short range and respectively most damage and more defense. If you are catching my drift.

So, if I go with s/p will it suffice in melee range in terms of damage and defense?
If not will s/s do better job at balancing these two outputs?
Or is it better to lose all damage for the condition-applier staff?

Sorry that I forgot to mention my other weapon choice is GS, which makes it even more stressing to have a counter-melee set-up.

Well, torch is pretty much completely useless across the board in pve. Focus is fantastic, but primarily if it is trained. You should always have a focus, but as a secondary weapon if untraited. Sword will probably be the most versatile, as it has strong defensive and offensive options, with a great ohantasm and good clone generation. Pistol is similar to to the sword, just with slightly weaker phantasm.

One thing I do is run rampager gear. Every weapon we have will make some use out of power, precision and condition damage. Another thing you have to keep in mind is not to discount anything about a mesmer on face value alone. Almost everything has at least a duality. While a lot of people use focus for swiftness, few tend to remember that it can cripple too. When traited properly, it can do a LOT of projectile reflection! In many dungeons and CM specifically, that is invaluable.

A third aspect is sigils. Earth on a greatsword has a chance to proc bleed with every damage proc. That means 3 times per blast. With 57% crit chance and Sharper Images, I can keep 6 to 8 stacks of bleed from my and my illusions auto-attacking. Eventually I may try fire and air together just to see what kind of chaos they can bring.

Don’t discount the staff as a ranged only weapon. It actually works better in melee range. While one strike might be weak, the bounce will buff you and likely hit your target again. The clones do the same so that’s a lot of buffs and some decent condition damage, if you’re traited for it.

But then again we run into the problem of re-gearing if not changing the whole build to accommodate, which I want to avoid due to high cost.

The reason I don’t like the staff is exactly the above. If I keep my zerker-valk gear conditions and boons will be pointless. If not my wallet will cry its leather out…

Plus, my clones die like an army of Yamchas when Bosses have an AoE attack which is almost always the case. So it’s more efficient to spec into on-kill effects and mind wrack rather than trying to keep them alive for buffs.

A quick update:
I tried the sword pistol combo but it felt too alienated. Little harmony. Thus to my understanding for those who are in my position – the mesmer is an alt you don’t care much about, you want to be at least decent at damage, and don’t want to carry GS/staff as your only options – a good solution appears to be sword/sword for melee range (since it is fairly balanced between offense and defense) and scepter/pistol for bigger range. All while in zerk gear.