Guild Wars 2

These suggestions are pretty decent. I run a 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build, and while I don’t like the idea of losing shattered strength, confusing combatants is a reasonable replacement.

Dracones.9105:

Xyrm.5602:

You don’t need vit or toughness. Vit is almost ENTIRELY useless, because it has only a minor impact to your effective HP (not actual HP, but effective, as in how you fair in extended fights when factoring in mitigation and healing).

Problem with EHP and toughness is that condition damage bypasses toughness. So Vit isn’t entirely useless.

Pretty much every class, including ours, has so many good options for condition removal that even so, Vit is pretty much entirely useless. And again, Vit only has a value for condition damage for SHORT fights… the longer a fight lasts, the less helpful that extra few thousand HP is. In fact, as soon as you take the 4-5k damage required to remove the extra HP, Vit is 100% useless, and you are sacrificing damage for the WHOLE fight for it.

@Akasuki

If all you’re interested in is getting gear for stats, farming for gold/mats and having a friend craft it for you is by far the most efficient way. Dungeon running is really a labor of love for the skins more than anything else. Why run Arah 3+ times for berserker’s stats gear, when you could craft that piece for less than 2g in materials? (Which you can easily farm for 30 minutes of effort each day just gathering orichalcum, or a little longer farming Cursed Shore events with some MF).

Ah. I was hoping they would reduce the spawn rate or something… at this point they are not a skill check but rather a complete nuisance, and the only effective way to clear them is with a guardian using a staff. As a mesmer I can kill them easily enough with GS or STaff, but these attack SLOWLY. Shortbow rangers/thieves have a better time, but again, it’s just ANNOYING.

Karma gains would be an amazing incentive, especially since dungeons are similar to running a chain of events but with limited people and some modicum of difficulty.

DKP.4196:

- Flowers/nightmare puppies. The flowers I read is being fixed. The puppy zerg is just in my way. Please fix this so there is a point to puppy zergs.

How are the flowers being fixed? Anyone have a link to the dev post?

juno.1840:

@Xyrm

You aren’t using the “vigor on shatter” trait in the vitality line — maybe your illusions aren’t near you when you shatter? I could see that with a greatsword so it would make sense with yoru build.

The only problem I have is your build is very glassy with no +vit/toughness anywhere.

You don’t need vit or toughness. Vit is almost ENTIRELY useless, because it has only a minor impact to your effective HP (not actual HP, but effective, as in how you fair in extended fights when factoring in mitigation and healing). Toughness isn’t bad when considered on it’s own, but you sacrifice damage that you don’t have to as a mesmer.

25% Immunity from sword 2 alone, Vigor when I crit (Dueling 5 passive — which procs a LOT, so it’s basically always up), Distortion shatter (F4 default). All these lead to extremely high immunity uptime, and when that’s not enough I duck out of melee and go to town with my GS until I have more immunity. On top of that, I run with Decoy most of the time, null field all the time, and blink. I have so many tools to survive it’s almost overpowered. Offhand sword gives a block (which works against almost every boss ability AND smacks them for high damage at almost any range). A heal that hits for about half my HP with a 20 second cooldown… probably one of the best heals in the entire game. I have an easier time in melee range than any “tanky” guardian or warrior I’ve played with, and the list of abilities I just gave you should tell you why.

Juno, at your second reply (since I can’t paste in this box either… wtf?)…

I run FULL PvE Berserker’s gear in dungeons and WvW (I even transmuted my 1H mystic swords into a berserker swords stats, because they had prec/vit/condition dmg instead of power/prec/crit dmg). PvP berserkers gear doesn’t even factor into the discussion here. PvP gear has a higher stat allocation than PvE gear.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I think the one dungeon where a more balanced build would be preferable is Arah, just because everything there does enough damage to virtually one-shot even a tanky build.

That’s because you are supposed to dodge those effects!

The group I run with is FULL glass cannon berserker’s gear (or rampager’s gear, where appropriate), and even in Arah we easily down all the bosses. Giganticus is over in less than 3 minutes, with no running back or need to pull him to obscure locations.

I will say having traits/abilities which increase endurance regen or grant vigor is VERY helpful. As a mesmer, I use dodging actively to create clones, so having more dodges gives me the survivability I need back.

Look at my signature. Playing that spec, I absolutely destroy mobs in any zone. In fact, in Orr, I INTENTIONALLY pull 4-6, because it’s more efficient than killing them one by one.

If you go any kind of shatter build (which most people who go GS do), you should really consider 30 points into illusions. Each point in illusions lowers the cooldown on all the shatters, and the XI trait creates a shatter on yourself, in addition to clones/phantasms (meaning you don’t NEED clones/phantasms to get an effect out of shatter, and it can save your life in PvP to pop an F3 to interrupt even if no clones are up).

Feel free to check out my signature for the build I run. You’ll need to swap your gear to full Berserker’s (power/precision/crit dmg) though to be effective.

Vitality as a warrior isn’t very effective. What matters in PvP and PvE is EFFECTIVE health (over the course of a fight, how much health do you lose vs gain when factoring in mitigation, and healing). Once you have enough HP to not get flat out burst in 1-2 seconds (which is never really an issue for warriors, with heavy armor and over 20k base health at 80), extra health adds little to no value. Vitality only offers SHORT-TERM survivability at the start of the fight; once that extra few K health is remove, your vitality is useless for the remainder of the fight until combat resets. Toughness, on the other hand, gives IMMEDIATE and LONG-TERM survival strength. The only downside of toughness versus vitality is that the former doesn’t work for condition damage, while the latter does (but with a heal, signet, and shout options for removing conditions, you rarely end up with the situation that vitality would save you where toughness wouldn’t).

The better option, IMO, is a set of “Knight’s” gear (power/precision/toughness). It actually has MORE toughness than the Power/vit/toughness gear, meaning more mitigation, and you keep a good amount of offensive power (by keeping precision, you keep your “on-crit” effects viable). I know Arah has a set like this, and it’s craftable unlike Power/Vit/Toughness.

http://tinyurl.com/8fjhewc

(Goes to GW2Skills.net, if I linked directly it wouldn’t work)

Above is my Hammer/Rifle build. The hammer would be used almost exclusively, rifle swaps for being outranged for a little (due to lower mobility than GS warriors, but you DO have bull’s charge) or to hit people in towers/keeps in WvW. The hammer offers high damage potential AND control, so it would be used in most PvE situations.

Gear for sPvP would be exactly as listed, and for PvE you’d go full berserker’s (power/precision/crit dmg) gear as well. In WvW, a full set of Knight’s (power/precision/toughness) gear should do the trick, as you’d have to be more aggressive than most. Although, in a pinch, Knight’s should be sufficient for everything you do. Vitality isn’t very useful on a warrior; you already have high base HP, and it does little to affect your EFFECTIVE hp (meaning over a prolonged fight, factoring healing, how much health you’d use in total), where as toughness helps a TON.

I’m no warrior expert, so I’d like some input/advice. Lay it on me! Having trouble finding hammer builds on this subforum so I gave it my best shot in terms of overall effectiveness and utility.

Karast.1927:

Unfortunately your link doesn’t work.

Are you trying a rifle + elixirs build?

Updated. Yes. 10/30/0/30/0.

I was curious what you guys thought of this. I’m new to engineer, but I’m not big on the whole kit thing, and turrets seem fairly weak to me (totally subjective opinion!). Can this be an effective build in PvE and WvW, or is the damage versus utility too low? I figure the heavy use of elixers (+F1-F4 throws to give these buffs to party members when the situation dictates) would offer solid damage. Is this going to be incredibly weak, damage wise, compared to flamethrower/grenades/elixer gun? If not, what kind of gear would best suit this build (my guess is either Power/Precision/Crit dmg or Power/Precision/Condition damage).

http://tinyurl.com/ck57yog

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Honestly, if 25k+ is his dmg (glasscannon) i will never ever invite this useless player on my party for Arah. I’m not planning to put myself in danger continuosly revving a player falling like a leaf on every add group when someone snooze near him.
Much less if 25k+ is his health. Means his dmg is the lower possible, we have to carry a bag. But ye, i would suggest to save his name as an emergency substitution for simin, only event where he would be useful. (If 25+ is his dmg)
Shortly, cap a stat on gw2= fail. This game is made to be balanced, and a balanced character will play and perform way better than a capped one.
This kind of topics about capped guys offering themself thinking a capped stat will make them pro or a better choice, makes me always laugh

Not inviting someone for gearing damage is fine for pugs, but the group I run with (including E Z and Kevin) runs FULL glass cannon gear, and we clear dungeons in ~half (or less) of the time other people say it takes. If you are smart about dodging and ability usage, you can easily survive any situation. I play a mesmer in full berserker’s stats (power, precision, crit damage) gear, and the ONLY time I die is when I make a mistake. When I use my abilities and dodge wisely, I don’t die. This game encourages personal responsibility by removing the holy trinity, but it seems a lot of players still have trouble getting out of the mentality and habits from games like WoW, SW:TOR or Rift, expecting to be able to focus on rotations instead of reacting to the game.

Silly forums, requiring me to post first to see quote options…

Gaiawolf.8261:

What really needs to be done is to give mobs extra health when more players show up, and they should space out the spawn points, too.

It wouldn’t hurt to award tags for assists (CC and buffs) either. That would go a long way to making PVE support builds viable for more than just dungeon runs for all classes.

This is really it. Events need to scale with more people. Currently I think they adjust monster level, but that’s simply not enough. Each person there past say, 3-5, should increase mob HP by 50-100% and damage by say… 10%.

Ryuujin.8236:

Short answer: No

Long answer: With a very specific build built around iZerker/iWarden and illusory persona with phantasm damage bonuses, shatter bonuses, insane reflexes and the clone spawning utility skills the Mesmer can achieve competitive DE tagging by spamming what few AoE’s we have, however the build will be pretty rubbish outside of dynamic events and useless in dungeons and even then it is merely “competitive” you still won’t hold a candle to most other classes being played proficiently.

Uh, what? You don’t need a VERY specific build. IPersona helps, but a GS using 2 and 4 and shatters F1 and F2 does just fine. Running the build in my signature I have NO issues tagging and I do VERY well in dungeons. Also, running around with sword main hand spamming 1 is surprisingly effective as well when combined with blink and Sword 3.

Yes, let’s alter universal mechanics for one TINY piece of the game (tagging mobs in DEs that are overrun with people). (sarcasm, in case you missed it)

Think how this would impact someone who was trying to do one of these DE’s Solo on a low population server that WASN’T overrun with a zealous swarm of elementalists. I have no trouble earning a gold ranking on ANY events I do on my mesmer. Here’s some tips:

1) Run around swinging a 1H sword. You’ll get a surprising number of tags
2) If you are intent on farming hardcore, consider resetting your traits. 30 points into the trait line, pick up trait XI (causes shatters to occur on you as well). This way, you don’t need any clones up to shatter, and can just stand in the middle.
3) Using a greatsword, drop a phantasm ASAP. Usually it will get its spin off and hit a bunch of enemies if you reacted quickly and targeted appropriately. GS 5 is great for tagging a few guys as well.

With trait XI in the Illusions tree, you can shatter on yourself. To implement your first option, you would rob players who have this trait from the ability to shatter without clones when it could save their life, especially with the F3 or F4 shatters.

Neither do asura…

spoonybard.5612:

I rarely use damage builds in dungeons, I find myself being a much better support character. Use traited focus w/ feedback for range denial. Null field/disenchanted for party condition removal. Medic feedback with distortion,chaos storm, veil or decoy are great to get downed party members up safety. Use iDenfender or chaos storm on party members to survive a dangerous attack. You can go a shatter build with 30 illusions to give your party might stacks or vigor if you have the inspiration trait. Perhaps other classes can do similar things easier, however, I have never felt useless as a mesmer in a dungeon. Only thing I can stress is a mesmer needs to be rethinking their utilities and weapon sets for every encounter since as posters have mentioned above alot of our skills are very situational.

Are you sure that shattering gives friendlies vigor and might, not just you?

Compared to other classes, we definitely fall very short in the fury and swiftness departments, perhaps these can be baked into some weapon skills?

The only utility skill I ALWAYS have is Null Field (the other condition removal options, the mantra and phantasm, are woefully inadequate). Decoy is used most of the time when solo, but I swap it for feedback in most group situations and ALWAYS in WvW. Blink is usually the 3rd one, but again in WvW it’s less useful when compared to Portal or Veil.

As for elite, I always use Time Warp. Moa is meh, Time warp is the real “I WIN” button.

Embolism.8106:

You want boon stripping, go with MH Sword; you and your Clones will ensure your opponent never keeps a boon for long.

This is WRONG. Clones only use the first attack in the chain, meaning all they are doing is applying vulnerability. Boon stripping is attack #3.

I agree GS 3 I pretty much garbage. I only ever use it on dense clusters of mobs in PvE, or in WvW against a really packed zerg.

I have no issues in dungeons. Sure, I don’t bring the raw damage of a guardian, theif, or warrior, but the utility at least on par with a support guardian. Null field, Time warp, feedback, Veil, Illusion of LIfe all have a place in dungeons (maybe not in ALL situations for all these abilities, but there is always something). Additionally, clones are GREAT at distracting some bosses (like P3 Giganticus, he pretty much spams his circle ability on them and ignores players). Plus, smart use of shatters for interrupts (F3) and immunity (F4) make you a great contributor to survivability. If your group is smart, they’ll also use leaps + blast attacks in ethereal fields for group chaos armor, which is pretty much the best armor in the game.

Never seen it hit for more than like 5.1k. Even if you throw in a 3.5k shatter (which is the max I saw, and rarely see it over 2.5k), thats still 8.6k dmg. No level 80 would be brought down 90% from that, and the person attacking you had to be in FULL power/crit gear and gotten insanely lucky with crits.

If you aren’t level 80 in full exotics (exotic gear has more armor than blue/green/rare), fighting a level 80 in full exotics, it doesn’t really matter, because the upleveling system does not put you on equal footing and getting exotic gear is not hard.

This is VERY well written. While I love my shatter mesmer, this definitely explains some of the “issues” I’ve had. I wouldn’t pick a mesmer for ANYTHING else, but some of these highlight important issues.

That being said, some of these “issues” would require complete overhauls to fix, and I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to expect now that the game was released. I think it’s fine to leave shatters in place, as they are, but with tweaks. As in, for someone using a GS or 1h Sword (or any direct damage weapon), have shatters continue to work, as is.

For a staff, or even OH pistols (not sure how you would handle Sword/Pistol), have Mindwrack instead put a heavy bleed on the target, F2 do ZERO direct damage and more confusion, have F3 apply an AoE blind instead of Daze on a single target, and have F4 give a moderate-duration protection instead of immunity. Something like this would add more flavor and fit better into class mechanics.

Carighan.6758:

One way this could be alleviated would be this:

• Remove all buffs/debuffs/damage from Clones except for Sharper Images (this is necessary for another step, and ofc would require a fair amount of rebalancing with regards to some weapons.
• Categorize Phantasms into Ranged, Melee (Swordsman, Zerger, Mariner, Warden) and Utility (Defender, Disenchanter) types.
• Change Shatters to be a type of shatter-mechanic, not a payload. F1 is single target enemy, F2 is AE enemy, F3 is single target friendly, F4 is selfdefence and ofc happens instantly.
• Then, give each type of payload (Clone / Ranged Phantasm / Melee Phantasm / Utility Phantasm) a specific effect it adds to the shatter. These can be the same for multiple of the payloads.

I LOVE this idea, much more than mine. Kudos, sir.

Better yet, make them do 1 damage and make them invincible. More health isn’t going to fix the problem that they just get curb stomped by effects that they don’t dodge out of.

Also make it that if no one else is attacking the target, they should stop. They have a knack for keeping you in combat and pulling extra mobs.

The Dude.6942:

i basically agree with you, but this might be the wrong forum

I understand how some of these might be considered suggestions, but clones not showing “explorer stars” at the very least has to be a BUG, as well as not showing offhand weapons.

Aside from other bugs that make clones a joke to spot (spawning with full health when the mesmer isn’t at full health, not dodging, not showing offhand weapons), I just learned they also happen to “ignore” the explorer star, making the real player incredibly easy to spot if they want to be a completionist (actually PUNISHED for playing the game more)

Can we please have clones that are actually believable copies?

• Increase attack rate on clones to match that of the player. Lower damage/chance to apply effects to compensate if needed, but just make them LOOK the same.
• Make ALL clones perform a dodge at the same time as the player. This would also give us some modicum of control over their survivability since they INSIST in standing in every cleave/AoE imaginable.
• Make clones spawn with the same % of health as the player and continue to display this health; give them their own hidden health pool, since they can be one-shot by virtually anything this won’t be an issue.
• Make clones have the EXACT same appearance as the player; title, “explorer” star, ALL weapons (not just main hand). Ideally, have them swap weapons when the player does, as well, at least for appearance sake.

EDIT: So we are clear, I’m talking specifically about CLONES, not phantasms. These serve a different purpose entirely.

It’s really not that hard. Here’s a video of the group I run with trying it naked (no armor pieces)… we got it to 78%, and it started to fall apart at 70%. Keep in mind, with NO armor pieces and jewelery with no toughness, this means we had ZERO armor and could get 1 shot by almost any ability, and even though our jewelry is exotic, without armor our stats were worse than someone wearing all blue gear. I’m the mesmer recording the video.

I appologize for the background sound, that’s not me but our Guardian Ekunn; he’s the one doing most of the talking and he doesn’t like push-to-talk to on skype. It wasn’t intended to be linked (hence it’s unlisted and unedited) but rather for our review to see how we could do it better.

Here’s a video of the group doing the run again without me, but with gear. Since people complained mesmers were overpowered, they did the run with a necromancer.

This is from the POV of an elementalist, which is a VERY squishy class, but you can still see it’s not that hard.

Really, the hard part is staying ahead of the respawn rate. If you pop cooldowns on the first group and have some nice AoE/Cleave damage, it’s really quite easy.

MLieBennett.9031:

I must be missing something here.

I can never get my Shatter for 15k+ damage. That would mean each shatter hit for 3.75k+ damage each with all of them crits. Which with a plus 88% Crit dmg (Which would need 30 Duelist, all Zerker’s exotic, and All Divinity), would be over 1575 per Mind Wrack hit on a non-crit. Step a bit further back without Mental Torment, and its 1313+ per clone shatter on a normal hit when shattering 4x (with IP).

… How? What are you using to get that high of a Mind Wrack damage on a 4x Shatter? I quite literally can’t figure that out.

The easiest way is in PvP. You can’t get QUITE that high in PvE solo (I’ve had upwards of 12k though), but in WvW on an upleveled lowbie you can easily get that. However, if you throw in some nice food buffs (like Curry Butternut soup which is 100 precision and 10% crit dmg) and some might stacks and/or vulnerability in any kind of group play, it’s quite easy (I’ve actually gotten over 18k once in WvW).

I’m going to break your post down, because I disagree with pretty much everything and you seem to feel I’m just being rude and ignorant.

Terrant.2903:

Thank you for your post, but I’ll ask you refrain from assumptions and vitriol.

The “assumption” I made may not be fact, but the vast majority of people who voiced the “concerns” you mentioned were copying this kind of build from someone like Taugrim or Team Legacy or the like. It wasn’t meant to be specifically at you, but since you decided to take up the mantle to represent these people, you have to be prepared to understand WHY they are saying this. Also, it wasn’t my intent to be hostile, so I’m sorry if it came out that way. I’m just frustrated by the continued ignorance on these boards, both surrounding mesmers and dungeons.

Terrant.2903:

Please note number three at the top of my thread, should you read the entirety. Not all of this is even reflective of my own opinions, but that of that larger vocal community here. If enough people say it, there’s something to it even if you or I don’t completely agree.

Nope, that’s not true at all. A lot of rangers are complaining that their pets are a detriment in dungeons, but a lot of them don’t even know that you can set your pet to passive or recall them to you! Most of these posts are borne out of ignorance because the majority of players are unimaginative and look up their builds online and have no idea of the context or purpose, or what the strengths/weakness tradeoffs are for that purpose.

Terrant.2903:

I will agree that you CAN get massive damage from shatters. But you still need that 2.5 seconds of yours AFTER the mobs spawn to get the illusions out. You also neglected travel time from the illusion’s spawn point to wherever the mobs are; or n the case of a melee shatter, YOUR movement to the spawn point. An Ele, Necro, etc can just drop their AoEs where they know the mobs will be, at 1200 range, and do enough damage to get loot. A few dozen of them at an event and they can and will kill mobs before other players can catch up. Sword 2 requires melee range, see my point again regarding run up. Phantasms work great IF they attack as soon as summoned. When they don’t they are likely to die or be dispersed by the target mob’s mob death before they attack.

2.5 seconds is hardly any time at all. As for travel time, we have multiple tools to get places more quickly (Sword 3, blink), so that’s less of an issue. As for clone travel time, it’s nto that bad if you’re on a target; only if they are doing nothing but running away from you is it an issue, in which case they will die anyway from staff or GS auto attacks. Sure, Necro/Ele’s in an event have an advantage, but if there is really THAT much AoE damage, just take out a melee weapon like the 1H sword and start swinging. Regardless, tagging an event that has a ton of people isn’t really a valid balance concern, it’s more important the class is balanced in 5 man pvp/dungeons, and WvW… which it is, if not still overpowered.

Staff 5 is still INCREDIBLY strong, but the problem is even though most people know it, they use it incorrectly. It is a better defensive spell than offensive, in fact it almost always gives Aegis as part of its random buffs. THis means you SHOULD drop it on FRIENDLIES, not enemies (plus this way, it works better with combos to give chaos armor or confusing projectiles).

Terrant.2903:

I’m not claiming the sky is falling; I’m claiming that more pve mesmer builds have become less viable than they were before due to changes that seem largely PvP related. In the mean time, known bugs whith things like Phantasmal haste and Staff#2 continue to plague us but seem to be ignored.

It could be argued the builds that existed before were actually LIMITING diversity by seeming to be the only “right” option in PvP, especially for tPvP. The known bugs are DEFINITELY an issue I’d also like to see addressed, but this post is so steeped in hivemind ideas and misinformation I doubt any ANet employee will actually bother answering.

Best advice I can give is to actually PLAY one. Not long, just until level 5-10, trying different weapons and experiment with the abilities. You will IMMEDIATELY understand where the real mesmer is in PvP if you do this, and even what spec they are running.

Sidu.9708:

yup I’ve just “emo quited” from arah path 3. I was doing it for 3 hours with players that can play cuz they are my friends. But bcuz of bad setup we can’t do it?? I’t lame!! W eall have full exotic. Boss should be nerfed…

This post is everything that’s wrong with this community…

:(

Full exotics is NOT “I WIN” in this game. It gives an edge, but you still have to play smart, and pay attention. If you are used to WoW where the UI played the game for you, and are unwilling to change, you will definitely have a bad time.

Terrant.2903:

Now, about Chaos Storm. This was the change that upset me personally. Spontaneous AoE damage is a place that mesmers struggle when compared to Eles, Necros, Warriors, Rangers….just about anyone. Let me define what I mean by that. Mesmers have three main sources of aoe:

1) Chaos Storm (Long recharge, condition/dot based)
2) iBerserker/Warden (Great damage but doesn’t always attack immediately when spawned)
3) Shatter (Requires illusions to be out, illusions require target mobs to be present.)

snip

Rampup? Have you seen the cast times on abilities? With sword/sword or GS, and proper traiting (see my sig), I can spawn clones/phantasms constantly, between shortened cooldowns and dodges. Our aoe burst is amazing with sword 2 and shatters.

0 – Start
0.75s – Clone or phantasm ability 1
1.5s – Clone of phantasm ability 2
2.5s – dodge complete
2.5s – shatter for 15k+ damage

Meanwhile, sword 2 can drop 5k+ easily. If you summoned the GS phantasm you just did 3k+ aoe damage, or 4-5k with swordsman in one hit. By my math, with some lucky crits, you easily just dumped 25k damage in 3 seconds. I do this ALL THE TIME in WvW and PvE (dungeons, and solo farming), and it’s a freaking joke. Sure, I have full exotic gear, but it’s not hard to get.

Please stop making sweeping generalizations about the mesmer community or the class because you copied a PVP BUILD created by someone like Taugrim and tried to make it work in PvE. Sword/Pistol + STaff is NOT going to work very well outside of PvP, espcially with a ton of trait points in survival trees. Experiment, make up your own mind, and be creative.

Honestly I’m more dissapointed by the apparent “Alliance” between DB and TC. I’ve seen a few cases where a cluster of you guys would each attack a CD castle or keep together, on different walls, well within sight of each other, without fighting. I’m not saying ALWAYS fight amongst yourselves, but I’ve seen this happen MULTIPLE times this weekend.

Additionally, I’ve even seen smaller clusters (20-30) people of both servers sitting in an alcove at garrison together after CD breaks down a wall, turtling, and shooting OUT at CD, without targeting each other.

Malkavian.3751:

Trash mobs in this dungeon are like mini-bosses. In fact, some of the trash is harder than the bosses themselves.

Overall, GW2 is not a hardcore raiding dungeon game. Dungeons should be challenging, but doable by pugs without perfect gear.

They have stated multiple times that it is their INTENT that EM’s not be puggable, but rather require an organized group. Which means that they’ve actually failed on their design intent on the MANY paths in the dungeons which ARE puggable.

Is it just me, or is this all just an issue with people refusing to put their pets on passive and actually forcing them to attack specific targets?

WoW had a similar issue, and the community consensus was that you just always leave your pets on passive. This has been a rule I followed in every game where I played a pet class (and had the option, I know necros don’t), and I have not had ANY issues with my Ranger.

You are not understanding what people are calling weak. Compared to other classes, mesmer aoe farming is a joke. Guardians spin to win, necro’s aoe condition to win, warrior rolls his face on the keyboard to win. Ele spams fireballs. Engineer spams grenades. Thieves spam clusterbomb. Ranger uses barrage once.

And my mesmer gathers a group, drops a phantasmal swordsman, a clone with GS “2”, and a dodge, then shatters. Boom, whole group dead.

Or if you prefer, using sword/sword, I open with phantasmal swordsman on the first target, Sword 3 on the next target, dodge at them, do 1-2 auto attacks to wait for them to group, then do sword 2, and in the middle, shatter.

This is what happens when everyone refuses to think for themselves and copies the PVP builds of people like taugrim who build SPECIFICALLY FOR PVP. What did you THINK would happen running sword/pistol + Staff? My build is in my signature if you can’t seem to think for yourself, but mesmer is AMAZING at clearing PvE, and I do VERY well in dungeons as well.

Not this again.

It’s really not that hard. Here’s a video of the group I run with clearing it:

The video is not from my POV (I’m the mesmer), but you get the point. Sure, our elementalist has a rough time of it because he tends to focus and she is the squishiest person in our group, but it is by NO MEANS “impossibus”. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Monarch.4026:

The boss is NOT on par with the other bosses in this instance and not you or anyone else can say he is. Once again, to try to say he is fine is to make the argument that the other bosses need to be just as hard as he is, if you do not, you’re being a hypocrite, plain and simple. Not being disrespectful its just the way I see it.

The other bosses probably ARE to easy, given it’s the explorable mode of the last dungeon and most of the encounters are quite easy.

Svarty.8019:

Asmodeus.8042:

I’m a mesmer running a 30/30/0/0/10 build

Want to know something silly?

I die last and last longest, while dealing the most damage.

It doesn’t get more simpler than this: L2P Scrublord

I think your example only shows how powerful the mesmer is. The guardian is very difficult to play.

This is a rediculous statement. Melee in this game, in general, has a rougher time, but I play my mesmer both in and out of melee range and do just fine, because I WATCH and dodge, and use certain defensive abilities intelligently.

The group I run with usually has a warrior and two guardians in melee, and they typically survive VERY well by using their abilities wisely and DODGING. Dodging is something everyone, regardless of class, has to be good at to succeed in this game.

For some reason, when I log in I don’t automatically see the “Quote” button or any others. It takes a few attempts of posting and clinking on various links to get them to show up, and even then it’s inconsistent. Am I using this wrong, or is it a genuine bug with the forums?

Shooopa.5632:

Did you finish the event defending the cows from the harpies? You have to do that so he finishes his five experiment launches and then launches three for fun.

I was just there for over 15 minutes, no event. Even if this event DOES occur, how is it OK to make people wait for an event to complete the map? They intentionally disabled a similar situation in Timberline falls, so they INTRODUCED it here?

NOPE, still broken. The catapault is entirely not interactable, I’ve waited here a while.

1 Month in, this stuff is still broken… how is this acceptable?

Hi, I’m the mesmer who recorded the video (you’ll notice my GW2 account name is the same as my youtube ID).

PadmaN.7820:

There’s no such thing as 0 armor. You have 916 base defense @ lvl 80.

True enough. However, there were a LOT of abilities that would flat out one-shot us. I wasn’t using a staff build, which would have been vastly superior for this with Chaos Storm (random Aegis, might AND high uptime ethereal field, hells yes!), and in retrospect I probably should have dropped Decoy for Mantra of Pain. My point being that we were NOT a perfect setup by any means. Sure, the time warp at the start helped a lot (so having a mesmer is nice), but we found that having so many melee was actually making things harder, like avoiding ground effects with all the clutter. And after all of our attempts, we learned that the biggest challenge in the fight was beating the first spawn of 3 before the next two popped out; once you did that, you were in a solid position for rest of the fight.

And after we stopped trying to beat it “naked”, we then proceeded to flat out STEAM ROLL the event first try with horrible, lazy play. The damage difference we took AND dished out was laughable.

It’s not bad, but all the numbers in the tooltips seem off. Is there no calculator other than gw2skills.net that actually has ACCURATE in-game data or is actively updated.

Additionally, it doesn’t have the option to build out gear like gw2skills had.

EDIT: Also, it’s flat out bugged. I can’t even select trait X in domination for 20% GS cooldown?

I was curious if anyone has found as skill calculator as good as gw2skills.net. Unfortunately this site has been down for DAYS and I’m looking for a reasonable replacement. Guildhead and GW2DB have been fairly disappointing.

I appreciate any and all help in advance!

If you’re talking about SITTING in melee, tanking on a constant basis, I haven’t had much success. HOWEVER, I’ve been running a GS + sword/sword 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build (geared power/prec/crit dmg) VERY successfully in EM dungeons, farming bosses with my group that for some reason people deem “impossible” such as the magg event, giganticus, and a few others. Some bosses, unfortunately, you simply can’t afford to melee (Giganticus in Arah). However, I spend a lot of time on most bosses weaving in and out of melee range, swapping weapons often. Getting the sword trait that reduces cooldowns is great for survivability, as that boosts the immunity uptime on Sword 2 to 25%, which is huge. Add in some dodging for avoiding cleaves and spawning clones, as well as the occasional “F4” shatter (distortion), and you’re immune a massive chunk of time. I actually kill some bosses purely in melee with s/s.

If you have specific boss questions I’d be glad to try to answer them.