Guild Wars 2

Hi,

My mesmer is now at level 71, quickly approaching the point where I’ll be going to get my exotic gear. However, as I’m pretty poor (I don’t like CoF and hang mostly at WvW which sadly nets me little to no gold), I have to think about which armorset I’m going to get. The goal would be a set which has maximum flexibility so that I can play multiple builds in WvW/PvE dungeons with it.

I did something kind of similar with my guardian who is equipped with a soldier’s set with lyssa runes for additional precision and the elite boons. As a result, I can play a few different builds with him by swapping the trinkets and weapons (DPS = berserker, sustain = cleric) alongside the traits. Now i’m looking for something like this with the mesmer.

I have about 1200 AC tokens banked so it would be very easy for me to buy a soldier’s set. But is that a viable set for the mesmer? Power is of course the main stat but would the damage still be too low for condition or crit builds? Soldier’s would be good for dungeons though, I think. I’ve been running some AC with level 65 green berserker’s gear and I feel the conditions are hurting me way too much at the moment (the cleanse mantra helps a bunch, though).

What are your opinions? If I can go for only one set of armor, which one should it be If i don’t want to be stuck with a very specific build?

rampagers

Unfortunately you’re going to have to choose between either condition damage or direct damage. I would recommend doing direct damage since direct damage is viable in both wvw and pve while condition damage is viable really only in wvw.

A good compromise between surviving and damage is a set of soldiers armor with berserker trinkets and bersker weapons. I would recommend slotting it with runes of the centaur for the perma swiftness that’s useful in wvw and general pve map exploration. It will also give you enough survivability in pve to start off with. As you get better in pve content, you should buy berserker armor to wear in pve so that you can kill stuff faster.

I personally run with 3 sets. A set of full soldiers (when I need to get a portal into lord room of hills), a set of full berserkers for pve, and a set of full rabid for a confusion wvw spec. When I’m solo roaming with a shatter build I wear soldiers armor and berserker trinkets.

armor soldier>all. trinckets/guns as u wish

Thanks for your opinions.

Seems like rabid/rampager are out of the question then. I hate confusion mesmers in WvW and they don’t really do much in PvE (not to mention WvW confusion is probably being nerfed soon).

So it looks like soldier and berserker are the choices here. At the moment im thinking that the best way to go with would be getting the AC soldiers armor with zerkers trinkets and weapons. Centaur runes could be pretty good for WvW, too. I’d like to be able to play without a focus (GS/SW+SW is my preferred style) so they seem like a must.

I have a bunch of armor sets and I’d have to say my favorite and most flexible set is definately my knights set with centaur runes. I run a variety of different builds with this set just swapping out weapons/trinkets (soldier, valkyrie, or berserker) to compliment whatever build I’m doing.

The one thing that is good, but can be frustrating with mesmers, is it seems like you really cannot have only 1 set. I have every weapon, and lots of armor sets and change them all the time. I find that I like having a rabid and beserker sets the most. I can go from shatter and then condition build with them.

I would say do not go into a mesmer thinking you can get away with 1 armor set and 1 weapon set… invest in multiple you will more than likely use them all.

I always run with full Precision/Toughness/Condition stuff.

Main weapon is a staff (what’s not to love about the staff as a condition mesmer? NOTHING.), secondary set is Sword/Pistol, largely for the stun/daze and invincibility.

My bouncing attacks bounce and additional time so my staff stacks up A LOT of conditions very quickly, especially with 3 clones spamming the same attack.

Rampagers

Probably the widest amount of spec’s possible since mesmer’s can make good use of all those stats.

I’ve actually been running a full rampager shatter build of 0/20/20/0/30 lately and wrecking people with it. Staff Sword/pistol

IMO Soldiers is teh single worst mesmer set. I used to have a full AC set but broke it down because I simply never used it.

Mesmer’s have low base damage and really need at least 2 of the 3 stat’s of a armor set to be offensive imo.

Soldier’s just turns you into a wet sack of noodles that can’t actually hurt anyone.

ELE’s and Guardians make use of Soldiers because of their high base damage.

Same concept of building Tanky dps in LOL. Characters that have high base damage can get away with building tanky.

for defensive purposes, use knights (phantasm) and apothecary (shatter/immortal builds).