He’s talking about solo levelling. GS is definately not bad in that sense.
Except… it is.
I think im sticking with GS it’s ability to aoe and safe distance phantasm and knockback cast are great. (plus I bought a skin for it)
“My single target weapon is good at aoe” – logic of 95% of mesmers on this forum
Range is irrelevant since mobs will just close distance and illusionary riposte is better than a knockback due to lower cooldown and it’s hard-hitting. The phantasm is average at best.
I use GS, Sword/Focus.
GS is nice, as you are able to stay in range, while doing damage and the knockback + cripple of your Phantasm give you good controal features.
But you won’t be able to stay at range because melee mobs just blindly rush at you. To hell with control, sw/p + sw/sw gives you our two best phantasms, best autoattack, and two hard-hitting evades.
All I’m seeing here is a lot of stubbornness as the people defending GS have yet to give a real reason to use it.
How are
skipping
dodging in to walls
whirlwind in to walls
LoSing mobs
cleaving mobs
ACTUALLY USING MESMER PORTALS
exploits?
your post basically says “playing good is an exploit”
obal, if you read the last paragraph of his latest post you’d see that he’s not interested in playing a good build, he is choosing of his own accord to use bad gear.
And then complaining about his party for being bad.
That’s a weird thing to say.
Don’t run dungeons with apothecary. Get a full set of berserker, and use it in PvE too, you’ll kill mobs so fast they won’t even bother you.
Strange, when I last salvaged ecto I got a stupidly high salvage rate.
It was something like 9 ecto out of 5 rares.
This clearly means the rate has been buffed guys, my 5 rare test sample shows it
No you can’t. Your heals are crap. Hmm, no heal on dodge or 2000 heal on dodge? 120/sec regen or 350/sec regen? Symbols healing for 350/sec or no healing symbols? 250/sec VoR to entire group or 80 VoR to just yourself?
You can claim that healing is inferior to DPS, but you can’t claim that you support just as well in zerker because your heals are trash.
Healing won’t mitigate attacks from bosses well enough, whereas blocks do, which any guardian can use. Reflects do, which any guardian can use. Protection does, which any guardian can use. I don’t even count healing as support, it’s literally just increasing your HP bar, but if you get kicked by Lupicus, unless the heals get your HP bar all the way back up, missing a dodge again will just get you downed anyway.
If you can keep up dodges in zerker gear you can keep it up in other gear as well, even if it takes you 100000x as long to kill him. Dodging isn’t the issue.
Uhuh.
The question is, what comes first, Lupicus dying or RSI?
Pistol
DPS-wise, best phantasm we have. Geared properly you will be dropping 8 bleed stacks on an enemy in addition to around 5.5k damage unbuffed and up to 10k fully buffed with 25 stacks of might, 25 vulnerability on a boss in addition to the bleeding, and if shooting through an ethereal field you’ll inflict 8 confusion stacks too. Magic bullet is a nice way to lure bosses towards your group or it can be used in trash mob fights to take pressure off the rest of your team. Remember as well that mobs attack slower than players, so it means your team won’t be receiving any hits for longer than just the two second stun/daze.
tl;dr – strong phantasm, useful ability. Rating: 4/5
Focus
This is the weapon that basically every mesmer takes in to a dungeon. I’m sure some don’t even know why half the time, it’s just “something you do”. While you shouldn’t be deceived thinking this weapon’s phantasm is the king of DPS (it attacks slower and recharges its attack slower than any other phantasm), it still does solid damage and can stack up to 12 bleeds. The true reason this off-hand is taken though is because of the utility it provides. Temporal Curtain can be pressed again a second after casting to pull mobs in a certain direction (normally towards a wall, or at the very least, grouped up in some way), but in addition to this, if you trait it, it serves as a source of projectile reflection. This has to be practiced, but generally the way it works is that if an enemy with a ranged projectile weapon attacks you, its projectiles gradually make their way downwards as it comes closer towards you. If you place a curtain at a certain distance, the projectile drops low enough that your curtain will reflect it off the floor and back at them. It takes a while to practice, but when done properly is useful as a third reflect. Phantasmal Warden however, is far more reliable and doesn’t care for distance. It reflects projectiles from any range, even adjacent to it and in addition will deal between 10k an 15k per attack in a dungeon. It reflects projectiles (if traited) during its entire attack animation, so if you trait for even more focus cooldowns, having the warden on a 16 second cooldown can give you practically full reflectu up time, with wardens and feedback and curtain.
tl;dr – strong phantasm, strong ability. Rating : 5/5
Off Hand Sword
This is our alternate DPS off-hand. If you are in a situation that requires raw DPS, you want an off hand sword and an off hand pistol in addition to your main hand sword. The Phantasmal Swordsman hits hard (though doesn’t stack bleeds), and leaps in for its attack then leaps back out, and during this it evades attacks which gives it resiliency versus PbAoE, whereas a warden would just sit there and die. The block is situational, but can basically be used as a fourth dodge against a boss and it hits back very hard too.
tl;dr – strong phantasm, situational though useful ability. Rating : 4/5
Torch
Never actually used it myself, but weak damage from the phantasm, long cooldown and a useless utility skill make it look not worth taking at all for me.
tl;dr – weak phantasm, useless ability. Rating: 0/5
Sigils
Sigils for this build you can basically use anywhere. You use bloodlust on your mainhand sword, and you use sigils of battle on your off-hands. If you want a “safe” weapon to swap to after hitting 25 bloodlust stacks, have another sword in your inventory with a sigil of force. If you want to maximise your usefulness in a dungeon though, start off using sigil of night, and then pick up more swords with sigils of inquest, undead, ghost, outlaw, sons of svanir, icebrood, flame legion, nightmare and dredge slaying. I’m not even sure if sigils for all of those even exist, but if you can get them, its worth getting a sword (main hand) to use with them on once you have full bloodlust stacks. It’s more of a min-max thing though, do it if you have a ton of dungeon tokens or gold lying around, but don’t make sure to get swords with all of this on before you even run dungeons, it only makes a minor difference.
Also, run berserker weapons (power/precision/critical damage).
(edited by colesy.8490)
They’ve “fixed” the COE Advanced Boring Golem.
Sigh.
I can’t believe we’re arguing about tagging mobs.
First, most offensive builds will be using 20 domination
Most bad builds you mean.
•Staff: The staff autoattack is an excruciatingly slow bouncing projectile that hits an absolute maximum of 3 targets, but more likely just 1 or 2. Additionally, it is so slow that in DE situations for open world PvE, the mob you attacked is likely dead by the time it gets there.
•Greatsword: The greatsword autoattack is an instantaneous 1200 range 3 target aoe beam attack. There is no travel time, and so it provides instant tags from 1200 range.
To hit three targets you need to align yourself, so let’s say the hypothetical staff mesmer moves in close so the auto can reach its target quicker.
Clone Generating Skill
•Staff: Phase retreat is an awesome skill. Unfortunately, it does nothing for tagging.
•Greatsword: Mirror blade is a 1200 range unblockable bouncing projectile attack that moves quickly and does good damage.
Doesn’t phase retreat make a clone? Get up close, retreat then you have shatter fodder?
•Staff: Chaos Armor is a pretty good skill in PvP…not so much in PvE
•Greatsword: Mind stab isn’t the best of skills, but it is an instant 1200 range 5 target aoe damage skill.
meh
•Staff: The iWarlock does incredible single target damage, and I encourage people to use staff for large champ/boss fights because of this. Unfortunately, we’re talking aoe.
•Greatsword: The iZerker does high aoe damage in a large area around a target very rapidly at 1200 range. It spins quickly and will do its aoe hits fast enough to tag multiple enemies easily. It also hits between 12 and 20 targets.
Hitting 12-20 targets will never happen. More like 4-6. Cue greatsword bads taking a screen cap of it hitting tons of mobs.
So, lets compare things. Out of the greatsword’s 5 skills, 3 are fantastic for long range aoe tagging. 1 is decent, and 1 is meh. Out of the staffs 5 skills, 1 is fantastic for long range aoe tagging, and 1 is meh, and 3 are completely useless.
Greatsword is THE weapon of choice for long range aoe tagging. There is no other effective option for mesmer.
I still can’t believe it. Arguing about tagging mobs.
Is there really that little going for greatsword that the only thing you can write paragraphs on is mob tagging?
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