Guild Wars 2

First let me say: I LOVE THIS GAME. I’ve been poopsockin’ it pretty hard and friends and I just hit 80. We just started playing last week but we’re pretty eager to hit the explore modes and farm up some shinies. I’ve read around the internet but most mesmer stuff is from a pvp perspective and, while I’ll no doubt get into WvW, I’m more eager to play the high end pve. So, I was wondering if someone could take a look at what I’m doing and let me know if I’m on the right track. My plan here is to play support/dps.

I’m traited:

20/0/5/25/20

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#...nbmG0VGGcaMVck

I just hit 80 so my gear isn’t what you’d call amazing but its a full set of rare Carrion gear with Mercy Runes. I have an exotic Carrion staff with Corruption Sigil and an exotic Valk GS with a Battle Sigil. My jewelry is all masterwork Explorer’s stuff for 30% MF.

Since staff and gs gears differently I decided to ignore precision to get more condition damage to try to maintain a balance between the two. I weapon swap a lot for Chaos Armor/Storm. My thinking is that Carrion gear would be good for this because it offers both and vitality – and I chose vitality over toughness because I’m pretty good at dodging kitten but when I do fail and get some conditions I just fall flat on my face. We’re all still pretty new at the game so I don’t feel ready to go crazy with a Rampage or Berserker set and the Mercy runes are because we go down a lot and my friends are all toolbags and I find myself doing a good chunk of all the rezzing.

So, how I play it is this – I start in staff and get a warlock out, drop chaos storm and blink out for my 2nd clone. From there I sit in staff and dps until I can get a 2nd warlock. Then, I switch to GS and get max range. I use GS 4, GS 2, and Time Warp for the bumbaclot damage. 20-30 seconds later I’ll switch back to Staff for another Chaos Storm and to get more warlocks out, and so forth. I try to use warlock phantasms as much as possible because they are ranged and live a lot better, plus the conditions and boons are nice. I don’t often shatter for damage unless the phantasms are about dead but I make good use of daze and invulnerability shatters. For straight DPS pulls that I don’t need utility I’ll use Radiation Field to get more conditions, but those seem to be rare based on the few dungeons I’ve played.

I’m wondering, however, if I’m not shooting myself in the foot by not taking Sharper Images and stacking crit. I suppose I could go 20/15/0/25/10 and pick it up, but as it stands now we’re already almost capping bleeds on long fights. The other thing I couldn’t find any solid information on is how condition damage is calculated. My staff has condition damage on it, but my GS doesn’t. If conditions are applied from staff but I swap to GS do they update and do less damage? or are they snapshotted like wow dots at the time they are applied.

Our group is thief/necro/ranger/guardian/mesmer(me!) in case you were wondering.

On champion mobs I’ve noticed that I can pull aggro between 10-15 people, so I guess the damage is pretty good, but I’m hoping some seasoned mesmers could give me some insight into what I can improve or if I’m just playing goofy or what. Thanks <3

Just one thing to say first. Aggro in gw2 is really, really complicated. It factors in things like current hp, armor class, damage, current toughness, and some mobs are definitely attracted by attempted revivals. Drawing aggro doesn’t mean something clear like it does in most games.

Also, I hate to say this, but condition Mesmer is just not very good in pve. The problem is that you have no effective way of stacking conditions. In pvp, it works fine because you can play defensively and whittle someone down. In pve, condition classes will stack up 5-10 bleeds on mobs in the first few seconds and keep them there. Mesmers simply can’t do that.

Now, you won’t suck horribly. That team comp can easily complete any dungeon and high level fractals as long as you all are competent. You just won’t be helping your team as much as you could with a direct damage (not necessarily full gc) build.

Edit: Just realized I basically said your build is bad and gave you no tips for it. Mesmers excel in dungeons because of massive utility and flexibility. To get this, you need a lot of weapons. You need a focus. You need a sword. You also need a staff and greatsword. By using different weapons in different situations, you optimize your build to the encounter.

Your trait setup actually is leaning towards a power/crit phantasm build, though those 5 random points in chaos serve no purpose. Your build link also doesn’t work ( on a mobile anyway).

Given that you all are newish, your playstyle and build seem to point towards a phantasm power build, and you seem to be taking a somewhat supporty role in your dungeons, I’ll point you towards my phantasmal support build that I use for all things pve.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Supporting-Phantasm-Build/

Edit 2: For small bits of technical information like how condition damage is calculated, you could ask in the forums, but the responses will simply point you towards the official gw2 wiki. It has a lot of great information, especially for technical information like that.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Just one thing to say first. Aggro in gw2 is really, really complicated. It factors in things like current hp, armor class, damage, current toughness, and some mobs are definitely attracted by attempted revivals. Drawing aggro doesn’t mean something clear like it does in most games.

Also, I hate to say this, but condition Mesmer is just not very good in pve. The problem is that you have no effective way of stacking conditions. In pvp, it works fine because you can play defensively and whittle someone down. In pve, condition classes will stack up 5-10 bleeds on mobs in the first few seconds and keep them there. Mesmers simply can’t do that.

^ that…ish
condition mesmer sucks in PvE, burn stacks duration; so if theres a guard or ele in your group (who; typically; dont invest in condition duration) they kitten your condition damage, and youll encounter loads of times when your team is hitting condicaps (my zerker mesmer hits 20 bleeds when i have two wardens up due to sharper images, which leaves 5 for the rest of my team… it sucks; but its a minor trait so theres not much i can do about it)

okay thank you for the tips ill read your guide and drop a couple gold on some new gears

crunkfresh.9025:

okay thank you for the tips ill read your guide and drop a couple gold on some new gears

Since you are angling to do dungeons, try to do dungeons that get you the right gear stats, that way you don’t have to spend any money to get your exotics.

I agree on most things said above.

But I find pyro’s immortal build a lot better ( let’s say it’s just insane ) then his phantasmal build. If you want to go phantasmal with support I would go for a 20 (III,X)/20(II,X)/0/25(I or II or IV,VIII or X)/5 build.

I use that build in dungeons myself. Great DPS with healing and glamour support. I main a GS and besides that I use Sword/Focus and occasionally switching out that for a staff. Support wise the staff is better. DPS wise Sword/Focus wins.

Warlocks live longer on a melee boss but on a boss that spams AOE like Lupicus and many others they die just as quick as the rest. So I feel warlocks are only better on some bosses / fights. besides that you are using staff for Chaos armor. But with Sword/Focus you can get Chaos armor aswell :P.

Play with you GS as you normally would. Then switch to sword/focus.
1: Cast warden (5)
2: Put Temporal curtain in front of wardens feet (4)
3: Leap towards the boss trough temporal curtain (Press 3 two times)
Leaping through the curtain is what gives chaos armor
4: Blurred frenzy (2)
5: Dodge out and switch to GS

Rince and repeat. Doing the 5 points above with some practice takes as long as is needed to switch back to your GS. Perfect timing :p

For gear go full Berserker. When you feel you are going down too quick switch out some armor pieces for Knights or Soldiers gear. Till you feel you keep up long enough. For runes I would recommend runes of the centaur or runes of the pack. They provide great speed buffs that really helps you stay alive in dungeon even when build squishy.

For my other spells I use:
Blink
Feedback
Mantra of pain
Time warp

But switching out based on the encounter. Null field, Decoy, Phantasmal defender and Mass invisibility I switch in most of the time.

I feel this build would fit you better. It stays close to what you are using already. You say you rezz a lot blink + medic’s feedback will help you a lot then. I also find that the illusion tree is more for shatter builds. You don’t benefit much from Shatter cooldown reduction when you don’t shatter much :P Also the 2nd minor trait ain’t that usefull. Confusion already sucks on bosses and again you don’t shatter much :P. Condition damage is also not that great as the others already explained above. So basically they stack a lot of points in there to get phantasmal haste. But I feel that I am wasting to many points to get there. And rather put them somewhere else.

But in the end it stays a personal preference. Try different builds out to see what fits your playstyle. You can’t go wrong.

@BartBacardi: You do make some good points. My immortal build is definitely more user friendly than my phantasm build. I found that I wasn’t doing enough damage with my immortal build to suit higher level fractals where you often really need to pump out the damage in places, and it still retains enough durability and evasions that I almost never get killed.

That being said, the immortal build definitely works in pve, and will be far easier to play, as you really have almost no risk of dying.

Edit: On lup, use staff. Phase retreat near an edge of his bubble pops you out nice and quick, and can also get you out of his big jumpy aoe thing really easily, also with his frontal barrage thing. For phase 2, just stack on him and use feedback, and he instakills himself into phase 3.

@ Pyroatheist
You completly right. Immortal build has definetly a low DPS output in PVE. I use your build for soloing dungeons. Works great! And it is definitly a good build for starting mesmers to get a feeling of dungeons. As you won’t get downed fast or even at all :p

Then slowly build up for more DPS as you get better and better. As in the end some fights just become so much easier with DPS. Higher fractals and Simin as an example.

For Lupicus: Yeah Phase retreat works great on the bubbles. But so does the leap from your sword if you pre-cast the first step. (Lot harder to use tough) or what I use most of the time. My all time favorite blink :p

But then again it all comes down to personal preferences. He has to use what works for him. Your not wrong on any of the points you stated above and neither am I. :p

@crunkfresh
After reading you post a 2nd time. Start using Toughness instead of Vitality. Toughness is better for mesmers and especially a phantasmal build. All your clones do benefit from toughness. Making them stronger and last longer. Vitality gives you more HP but your phantams will not get more HP. Your only way to improve phantasmal health is trait in the Inspiration tree or signet.

Besides more HP means you will need more healing. Which ain’t the strongest part of a mesmer. Around 18K HP is enough if your decent at dodging. You just need to be able to survive a single hit.

And the problems with conditions on you melting your face. Well mesmer is one of the best classes to remove conditions :P. So that shouldn’t be a problem at all. Examples: Null Field, Mantra of resolve, Arcane thievery, Phantasmal disenchanter all spells you can switch in if you’re on a heavy condition boss. Then there are also some traits that remove conditions. Most used is propably Mender’s Purity (IV) in Inspiration tree. Remove condition on heal.

wow i really appreciate all this. i retraited based on what you guys said and went full berserker rares with masterwork solider’s trinkets…. just doing some events in Orr I feel like my damage went way, way up… and I only ended up giving up about 1.5k health so in the end i think it was a vast improvement. im sure in the future i’ll give up some of the solider trinks for more damage too, but for now i like the extra toughness/vitality buffer. we’re gonna grind out some dungeons tonight so i’m pretty excited to see how it all comes together since i havn’t had a a whole lot of time to play since i hit 80. any suggestions on which dungeon is the most fun?

Which dungeon is most fun is subjective. Just run COF path 1 until they change it which will likely be next month if I was a betting man. This will get you exotic berzerker armor and weapons plus earn you a good amount of money.

Just practice using blink, and portal and watch a few COF path 1 videos of what to expect.

Once you have a full set of exotics from COF I’d explore more of other dungeons. That’s just my opinion though.

Also use GW2LFG.com to find quick groups unless you have a guild that’s active in dungeons.