Guild Wars 2

Since getting back into mesmer for WvW veiling and ganking, as well as some solo q for that champ illusionist title, I’ve been debating about what the best all around offhand for mesmer is for these situations, in either a 4/4/6/0/0 or 4/4/0/0/6 set up with GS or staff as the other weapon.

Sword is a great pve offhand, but since I don’t pve much anymore I’m not considering this really. But the block is a good defensive skill and the phantasm is low cooldown and pretty decent.

Pistol has a great phantasm and a great stun making it a great offensive option. Its only problem is that it doesn’t give you any defensive utility, but that can be alleviated by running staff over GS (for pvp anyway).

Torch provides great defensive utility regardless of running PU or not, and the traiting for condi cleanse can be very helpful. Even in a power build, the burn can add a lot to burst and overall pressure. The phantasm is kinda meh, but its nice if you just plan to get a cleanse from it or to just shatter it straight off.

Focus movement speed is wonderful, but this weapon is bugged as hell, and since the nerf that prevents you from detonating the pull right away, its a bit easy for enemies to avoid. I’ve been using centaur runes for wvw, so the swiftness isn’t as vital, and I find the phantasm to be kind of lack luster and easy for an enemy to avoid and ignore.

Focus has gone from best to worst tbh. TC not in great place, iWarden kittened at the moment.

Pistol has always been in a good position – requires good play to take advantage of stun and make sure duelist lands its burst. I rate it fairly solid, but it’s too easy to miss or waste magic bullet.

Sword is pretty kitten good, with low cooldown, decent damage on iriposte and good phantasm. However I don’t like it in outnumbered situations – yes the riposte is in line daze, but in practice not easy to hit more than one opponent, and the block is only blocking one single attack – not great if being hammered on by two players with channeled abilities.

Torch, despite having one skill (:p), has the most useful skill now out of all the offhands, and being aoe scales well with outnumbered fights – blind, burn, stealth, blast finisher…

At the moment, unless you’re playing a phantasm build I’d rate:
Torch > Sword > Pistol > Focus

If phantasm build, then Sword or Pistol are best.

Alright yeah that makes sense completely. The torch out does sword defensively for the reasons you mentioned, and I feel like it’d be probably the best weapon to use for most situations. I usually play power PU or shatter, which can both enjoy torchiness

A shame about the focus though, do you think Anet would ever make it a decent weapon again? (outside of pve I mean)

And its kind of odd how they never fixed the swiftness bug with focus 4..

I used to run with my beer mug focus (cause beer make you focus) all the time… but then they made the warden go full kitten. The curtain has always been mediocre and after the pull nerf… nearly pointless.

The pistol work decently but is best for condition builds (can build stacks like crazy when shooting into combo fields). Magic bullet has always seemed incredibly underwhelming to me.

Sword is IMO the one that works best and seem to be without any major bugs. It can easily be traited for, making sword/sword an good combo… Except that they have nerfed mainhand sword constantly and iLeap is broken of course.

Torch is one of those weapons that are good for multiple builds, both direct damage and condition. Being an integral part of PU builds, it make it a very strong weapon. Unfortunetly it suffer from generally long cooldowns the inconsistent ranged phantasm that’s about as as accurate as a 1 year old trying to pee in a teacup. But at least the prestige works.

So in short, the best offhand weapon is your hand, which you need to use to to wipe your tears after you realize how badly working the Mesmer offhand weapons are.

Torch…the over all utility is just too good, even though the mage is a bit dubious in power builds.

• Instant PB blind for defensive use
• Setup GS combos in stealth that aren’t telegraphed in a 1 mile radius
• Blast finish / damage / burning in combos
• Mage is ok if you hit the i-leap imob after cast and get a double bounce hit for retal and 6x confusion stacks.
• Stealth stomps
• Synergy with PU

I like the sword and pistol too, but until another main hand weapon is added, which will probably never happen, they are kinda out of the picture for me. Focus is just garbage besides situational pulls in WvW.

If you trait the torch, i would put it above all the others, because iMage can actually be useful then (note that when you are blinded, casting iMage will cleanse the blind and still summon him. His bouncing attack will then cleanse further).

Other than that, it’s between Pistol and Torch for me. Torch is more defensive and better for roaming where you want to get away quickly very often (+ the added cleanses). For dueling, especially against thieves, you might want the stun of the pistol and iDuelist can show you where the thief is moving in stealth.

As a WvW roamer, i also always carry a focus with me for buffing swiftness. Equipping → casting Curtain → Equipping back takes ~1s once you get used to it.

Torch, sword and pistol are in all honesty friggen awesome offhand weapons (focus in theory is, but the unreliability and bugs deem otherwise).
I’ve had equal amount of success with the three in different situations and regularly trade them out accordingly.

Neptune.2570:

Torch, sword and pistol are in all honesty friggen awesome offhand weapons (focus in theory is, but the unreliability and bugs deem otherwise).
I’ve had equal amount of success with the three in different situations and regularly trade them out accordingly.

Thanks for your feedback guys, its really helpful!

Part of the reason why I ask is that I have a penchant for the legendary offhands, and after making howler for my necromancer like 10 days ago, I’m deciding which one I will making after I get ascended weapons for mes/necro. I was considering rodgort, the minstrel, and quip, but since I tend to do the best in WvW and pvp with torch, I’ll probably make rodgort, since its awesome and relatively cheap.

Keep in mind, the swiftness issue with Focus is not a bug. It’s a bandaid that has never been addressed, just like ICD on shatter skills (which was supposed to be removed when they fixed the double/triple shatter bug, even though that’s been fixed with the patch that causes shatters to explode after a few seconds if they haven’t reached their target).

Hey thanks a lot for the replies. I tried using staff/GS but my skill level wasn’t really great enough to phase retreat up ledges and whatnot. I also use mesmer sometimes in WvW/GvG and sword seems to be more useful than staff there just so I can try to lock down targets that get out of their zergball. So far torch seemed to be the best choice for that so I could get enemy gank groups off me, and I’m artificially poor and using centaur runes so I don’t really need the focus but I might switch to a more offensive rune set in the future. Pistol seems like it would be helpful for locking targets down better though.