Guild Wars 2

I’ve been pvping kittenter for quite a while and cant really decide which spec is better… with staff i have much more mobility + chaos storm, on the other hand there is sword2 distortion and iLeap.

Im curious which weapon set is more popular among mesmers? Gs/staff or gs/sword+troch? (or maybe pistol/focus?). Can someone experienced explain pros and cons of each?

The biggest single reason to take staff is phase retreat and using it to teleport to higher/lower elevations on a really cheap cooldown. It gives you very strong kiting/line of sight options in places like Keep on Niflhel or Waterfall on Foefire.

Chaos Storm is strong area denial if you need to push a point hard, force a decap, interrupt stomps, downed cleave etc.

The defense you get with staff is mainly to do with movement and gaining positional advantage from phase retreat or zoning with chaos storm. Use phase retreat on known spots to reach areas that you dont have straight line pathing to. This can completely shut down melee classes with no teleports since they can’t really do anything about it. They can walk half way around the world to reach the ledge you are standing on and all you need to do is drop down and phase retreat/blink back up if they follow you.

Classes that can match you for teleports (like Thief) will be able to follow you most places, most of the time. If a Thief or something similar is sticking to you with shadowsteps and you don’t have line of sight, you can’t get good positioning and you have to eat the damage, then sword becomes invaluable because you can evade through burst with Blurred Frenzy. You never really want to get into a situation where it comes to this but having a sword will buy you more time.

iLeap/Swap gives you juking/feinting options with GS to mix up your burst so it isn’t as predictable. It gives you more opportunities to bait cooldowns and dodge rolls, which can help you land more damage from positions you couldn’t otherwise get away with. The immobilize is also good for rooting targets in preparation for a team spike.

Torch gives you another stealth opener for more mixups. Focus gives you a nice ground target interrupt that you can use to deny angles on people trying to open on you. It also gives you swiftness when moving between points.

One isn’t always better than the other and it shouldn’t be a popularity contest. They are just different tools for different jobs. There will be times and places on the map against certain classes where you can completely neutralize them with staff kiting. There are times and places on the map against certain classes where you can’t get a positional advantage with phase retreat/blink and you can’t range effectively, and then you will wish you had sword.

It becomes a question of understanding the mechanical strengths and weaknesses of each weapon and trying to go where you can make the most impact with the weapon sets you have. If you have staff you have so many points of entry to clocktower and multiple angles on both trebs. So you can make a real difference here as long as, I dunno you don’t get outnumbered vs a thief + power necro. Then its going to suck for you.

My favorite setup for $hatter is Staff/Sword-Pistol. I actually consider this the “training wheels” set since it forces you to look for when to iDuelist/blurred/Mindwrack Spike, and how to make the most of staff for defense. If I’m running with other Mesmers who I know are running boon removal on shatters, I run 26006 and pick up pistol mastery. That ensures that I have an iDuelist every time I’m ready to mindwrack.

Interestingly enough, this weaponset works superbly with CS (Mindcrush -64400). A chaos storm that stuns? Yes please.