Guild Wars 2

Hi i recently started leveling a mesmer and i just wanna ask a few things maybe someone can help

Is staff support mesmer viable in dungeons and fractals or is it more for pvp? I love playing support characters in pve but ive heard mixed things about gw2 dungeons being like zerker or gtfo essentially and it makes me nervous

Also hows chronomancer? Will it do well as support? Which main hand is good with shield

Ty for any help

Most “standard” builds are “viable” in all pve content, and a lot of non-standard builds besides, as long as you define “viable” as “can do the content without getting your group killed or really really angry at you”.

That said, support mesmer currently (as in, boonshare mesmer) is not part of the “meta” for dungeons, as it brings little to the table that isn’t better provided by someone else.

If it doesn’t get changed between now and then, Chronomancer support is going to be a must-have for meta groups in HoT.

Value mesmer brings to pve content right now:

• Reflects. Guardian arguably does it better, but there are many places where mes is better.
• Portal. There are a number of skips that can be done with portal that can’t be done another way.
• A warm body. If you’re playing with a guild or any casual pug where you’re not trying to speedrun a dungeon, most thought-out mesmer pve builds do just fine. Just don’t try to bring interrupts to a boss fight.

If you’re trying to run with optimized groups, you’ll just have to get used to being zerker/assassins, and knowing exactly where your portal/reflects are needed. They won’t bring you otherwise.

If you’re waiting for HoT for serious pve play, there isn’t a chronomancer build besides alacrity/quickness support that will be taken by serious groups. So learn Pyro’s well rotation, and figure out which “secondary” role you want your support chrono to play (power damage, boonshare and even condi have all been shown to have distinct advantages/disadvantages of their own).

Owlite.9456:

Hi i recently started leveling a mesmer and i just wanna ask a few things maybe someone can help

Is staff support mesmer viable in dungeons and fractals or is it more for pvp? I love playing support characters in pve but ive heard mixed things about gw2 dungeons being like zerker or gtfo essentially and it makes me nervous

Also hows chronomancer? Will it do well as support? Which main hand is good with shield

Ty for any help

I’m no metahead, but I’ll do my best.

Staff is largely for condition damage builds and is not entirely a support weapon. The boons it provides are nice and numerous, but not reliable. Random boons are random. Still, it’s the most supportive two handed weapon mesmers have right now. Main hands are both not too supportive, but in this case I would say sword wins with its high vulnerability application, boon strip, short cripple and immobilize.

As for off hands:

Sword & pistol = not too much. just a little cc.
Focus = pull (very useful), cripple, swiftness, whirl finisher, light field, projectile block
Torch = aoe blind, blast finisher, fury from phantasm
Shield = projectile block, stun, ethereal combo field, slow uptime on foes, quickness and alacrity for allies.

Note that one of these took up more than one line

Chronomancer is pretty amazing for support. Wells are godly and provide a ton of group utility and can be traited for alacrity for your group. You have a few ways of helping your group keep Quickness on them too, which is a blessing. The best part is you can do everything twice with the new shatter!

Yeah, dungeons are pretty Zerkery right now. Not all groups are like that though. With the addition of heart of thorns it’s hoped that more roles will become viable and wanted in the new more difficult content. In the existing content, as long as you’re still useful and don’t join a group in LFG specifying Zerker and/or experienced only, you should be ok. Just make sure you’re useful.

If you want to play a support mesmer, chronomancer is the way to go!

What kind of support do you want to play though? Chaos line will give you a lot of boon support, Inspiration will help with a bit of healing, condi removal, and glamour skill improvements. Chronomancer pretty much just gives you wells and alacrity, which are both reasons enough to want it.

Here’s a link to a build maker that I find useful. Hopefully it’ll prove useful to you in your theory crafting. http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Here’s something I threw together very quickly to showcase chronomancer support:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWncfC9fi1fCuqBUrhlej6cDKhQwMAugMqeUb1XF-e

I did play a condi shatter boonshare recently using staff, but this was because I was in a casual full mesmer party and the might generation was close to 0, so I thought I could help. I managed to stack 15-20 might fairly consistently.

Now let’s be clear, most classes would do a better job at it (maybe not necro), and my personal DPS was not sky high (even for a mesmer).

The key is to be able to do what is needed in the current situation, but staff will rarely be what you need.

Thank you for the fast responses after taking what you guys have said into consideration im thinking about trying sword focus and sword shield? Right now ive been using greatsword and sword sword to level but i liked using staff when with friends although its damage was really bad for solo leveling I’m just trying to figure out whats fun while at the same time being useful