Guild Wars 2

thank you as well… I’ve been looking for good builds for ranger.

This is much appreciated. I’ve been wanting to experiment with other builds, and this is a cool one, and gives me ideas…

But which races’ elite skills work with mesmer the best? that’s what I’d want to know.

I’d be up for dungeons, but I don’t do PvP or WvW.

I am using the trait that gives condition removal on signet activation, and it’s working well for me. I switched from using 0/0/2/6/6 prepatch to domination, dueling, and chaos postpatch and its working fine for me. (PvE stuffs though, I don’t do PvP or WvW.)

Looks good. Can’t wait for the next beta. Thanks for all the hard work and patience, Roy.

Thank you very much for the link!

This is probably talked about elsewhere, and I didn’t see it in the game update notes, so I will ask here. Before the June update, you got stat bonuses based on how far down the various trait lines you went for your particular class. I’m tinkering with gear to see how it affects my stats, and checked to see if the specializations that replaced the old trait system had any effect. I didn’t see any, and was wanting to confirm that this did indeed go away. Also, if it did, did it get replaced with anything?

Silverkey.2078:

@DresdenAllblack
Really no, please! I don’t know why everyone thinks that is a good idea. The weapons don’t work that tightly with the legend that you want to switch them together. I gave somewhere else the example that staff actually pairs very well with Jalis and hammer very well with Ventari. There is no reason to switch both at the same time except removing some of the flexibility the weapon switch brings back.

At this point this idea is being offered as an option over no weapon swap at all, which is the stated intention when they presented revenant way back when. It’s not that this is better than normal weapon swap, it’s that its better than no weapon swap at all.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

The second solution sounds like Anet could put that in place with minor stress. Auto swap weapons with legend swap.

That’ll ruin the class. Even plain old weapon swap would be 100x better than that.

Not really. Think of it as a normal weapon swap that now lets you change up the utility skills you have paired with it.

Regardless, I think that they are not going to add weapon swap at least initially to the class. At least not until after we have had time to play around with the finished product. One of the things they said outright when the class was announced (you can go back and read it) is that the class wouldn’t have weapon swap. I went back and read it cuz I was pretty sure I wasn’t understanding what they envisioned for the class.

I did something similar though I went with Chaos instead of Illusions, and focused on bleeds from the staff and the crits from my phantasms. admittedly this was a more general build not specific to WvW. I used Rampager armor with Krait runes, and dish out conditions with interrupts, crits (bleeding on crits for illusions), and staff1, pistol 5, sword 1, mantra of distraction, etc.

Stinja.9612:

No i am literally just saying give them basic weapon swapping no strings attached like several classes already have and not tied to legends…which would be a worse option over the basic weapon swap function. They would only have 2 sets of weapons not 4

I like the idea of weapon swap tied to legend, because it wouldn’t be much different elementalist attunement with their weapons, and the weapons are already obviously tied to a particular legend, that it just saves me the extra button click to swap to the weapon for that legend.

I would like to see access to more than two legends at a time, but that’s just me.

If you want massive damage, you go shiro. If you are tanking, you do with Jalis (who’s ranged hammer lets him pull mobs). you get the idea.

Lore wise, it makes sense too. I like the idea of each legend having it’s iconic weapon type.

I think a lot of people are also forgetting something too. This has the feel of a hybrid class. Yeah it has heavy armor, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna be in the middle of the fight all the time, and we don’t know just yet how the designers have intended this class to feel and play. And we can’t really get a sense for that from an incomplete product. I kinda wish they would weigh in on some of the lore questions and tell us what their intent was with certain mechanics of the class; it would make giving suggestions a lot easier.

draxynnic.3719:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Think of it like an elementalist only backwards…. an elementalist swaps attunements, and gets 5 new skills…

A revenant swaps legends, and gets 5 new skills.

Neither class can weapon swap, and an elementalist can choose its 5 utilities…. the same way a revenant can choose its 5 weapon skills.

Of course the revenant only has 2 legends available at a time instead of 4 attunements… but perhaps they might make it so you can swap between any of the 4… and make the heal skills share a cooldown or increase the recharge on legend swapping or something.

There is a symmetry, but it’s not perfect.

Elementalist trades a bit of build versatility for in-combat versatility. They get twice as many weapon skills, but all of those weapon skills are decided by a single set, while most professions have more control over the individual skills they have. However, elementalists still have the conventional behaviour for their 6-10 skills.

Revenants make a similar trade for their non-weapon skills. They get to have twice as many as other professions, but in exchange, instead of being able to choose them individually, they have to choose two sets of five. However, while the elementalist gets conventional access to their 6-10 skills, revenant does not get conventional weaponswaps in the 1-5 slots.

So while the elementalist is only paying the price of versatility over customisation on the weapon skills, the revenant is paying the price of versatility over customisation on the 6-10 skills but also pays an additional price on the weapon skills. And this is perhaps additionally painful because revenant weapons aren’t as versatile as elementalist skills.

Note quite. I’ll point this out again. This being the playtest, they have just enough stuff in place for people to test the class, but there is much that is missing. But one of the fallacies people keep holding to (I did as well for a while, until I realized my mistake):

THE UTILITY SKILLS AREN’T FIXED!

They only have 1 heal, 3 utility, and 1 elite for each legend available at time of playtest because that was the minimum needed. We don’t know what that will look like in the end, but you can pop up the boxes that let you swap them around. So there will be some flexibility for the revenant on those skills once HoT drops.

Unless the pop up boxes to swap skills still being there is just an oversight, but here’s hoping.

If it isn’t an oversight, then the revenant will have flexibility (not as much per legend as other classes, but swapping makes up for that I think) on its 6-10 skills. And that would balance out I think against other classes, as far as the 6-10 skills are concerned.

That leaves what’s to be done about the weapons skills, because the utility swapping WITH the ability to set up your utility skills for the 2 legends you set as your choices doesn’t make up for a lack of swapping or versatility in general.

I’ve suggested this before, but I’ll say it again. The three options I see for weapon skills is either:

standard weapon swapping,

weapons skills changing based on the legend (similar to how elementalist works, but not as good since you only have access to two legends at any one time, as compared to the 4 possible attunements for an ele),

or tying weapon swapping to legend swapping (with or without the option to decide for yourself which weapon is tied to which legend, though I suspect the weapons may be obviously tied to a particular legend for a reason).

The weapon linked to the legend makes the most sense to me, though since it seems pretty obvious they are going to have more utility skills to choose from for each legend, I think having one that swaps in a opposite option (ranged/melee) would be a good way to give a little versatility to each of the legends, so if someone wants to solely focus on Jalis, they can do that at both ranged and melee.

Guys, the ability to switch utility skills is there, there just are only 3 skills right now, cuz this is an unfinished class (beta remember?)

Getefix.9150:

i think that different utilities should be allowed on the different legends, my reasoning behind this is that despite having access to the different legends, elementalists still have more skills available to use, so, i propose that each legend have a wider range of utilities so you can properly customise your loadout (each bar behaving somewhat like the underwater vs on land skill bars) this would also allow revenants to use racial utilities and elites, as they would be available to use on all legends (kind of like ‘core skills’) i would also prefer there to be new legends and new weapons to use though i guess these are coming in the future seeing how this is still in beta (i assume revenants will also get underwater combat, if not, doing HoTW will be very difficult on certain paths)

in clarification, the extra utilities will still reflect the legend in use (ventari for heals, jalis for toughness and mallyx for conditions respectively) but it will give revenants much needed customisation to their builds

I’m pretty sure this is already in the works. If for no other reason than the fact that the utility skills still have the option of being swapped around. We only have 3 right now to use (this is the beta and an unfinished product), but I think we will have more to choose from for each legend.

Crypt.9062:

I was thinking of maybe having specific weapon skills for each legend just like the utilities. So staff would have different skills per legend. shiro (would be more offensive) or help you be more tanky with the tanky legend.
Or possibly make weapons skills changeable like utility skills are for everyone.

That would introduce a mechanic like what elementalists have now (where skills 1-5 are dependent on what weapon is equipped AND what legend is invoked). Two potential problems with that (even though i like the idea):

1. Game balance. They would effectively have # of weapons times # of legends possible sets of 1-5 skills ALONG WITH skill 6-10 swapping with the legends. Which is spiffier on both sets of skills than elementalist because elementalists only have 4 elements (supposedly there are 5 legends being released but that’s hearsay atm), and no 6-10 swapping at all.
The only way I can see balancing that is if the sets for 6-10 are fixed for each legend (which ACTUALLY isn’t the case at the moment, they just only have 3 skills available to playtest for each of the legends), or if all utility skills are available only with a particular legend, and you can choose your utility skills for each legend from a smaller (1/5 the choices) set, thus allowing a little customization within a smaller set for each legend.

2. Lore. I get the distinct impression they want each legend to have a particular weapon that you use with that legend for synergy reasons. That said, It’s been pointed out elsewhere that some of the weapon/legend combos can be really good even if they don’t synergize as well as far as stats (like hammer and Ventari, giving long range attacks to the healer who would want to stay at range anyway), or vice versa (staff’s melee range and self healing with Jalis’ tanking abilities and swirling hammers).

I dunno. The game designers haven’t weighed in on this aspect of the class anywhere that I’ve seen so it’s hard to address this issue constructively.

Chrispy.5641:

bearshaman.3421:

Basaltface.2786:

stof.9341:

Note that elementalists cannot switch from a melee form to a range form either with their atunement swaps.

…but slot a summon and do it that way…what works great. Ice bow.. lightning hammer..or maybe FGS? All viable ways to change the range of battle on the fly AND that without an attument swap needed.

I have a feeling though that the weapons are intentionally tied to a particular legend. Like an iconic weapon, in the sense of King Arthur and Excalibur. Which means making a weapon usable with a legend that doesn’t use that weapon breaks with the flavor of the class. can you see Arthur running around with a staff?

No, but if you know the story of king Arthur, you know that he ran around with Daggers, Shields, and Spears, and small mentions of other weapons. Historical/legendary heroes from our past aren’t stupid. They know that there are different tools for different situations (Even Robin Hood knew when to use a bow and when to use a sword/staff/dagger/etc.). While 8 Classes got the memo, Revenants apparently lost that common sense.

There are several ways to fix this. The simplest is to allow weapon swapping. You can also restrict the Revenant, by allowing only one melee weapon set and one ranged weapon set, instead of allowing dual melee/dual ranged options, which would still restrict the class more than you see from other professions.

agreed. the one melee/one ranged set idea is one I haven’t seen proposed yet.

and yes, I know they used other weapons, I was more getting at a reason for why the design team may have made the weapons so obviously bent towards a particular legend. that’s all.

This topic (and possible solutions) are being heavily discussed in other threads. I admit to laziness in not rehashing it all here. Apologies.

Silverkey.2078:

Yes but I don’t think you should force the weapon swap on the legend swap. Both should be independent. I think the inherent problem is the design. To my knowledge, no class has such strong tie between utilities and weapons. On the other hand, I still don’t think they go perfectly hand in hand.
For example: using the staff with ventari and the hammer with Jalis make sense. But I think using staff with Jalis and the hammer with Ventari makes as much (if not more sense). You’re already healing yourself with Ventari, so go hammer and DPS a bit, keeping range, reflecting projectiles with Ventari. Then the enemy goes closer, switch staff and use Jalis. Jalis allows you to tank better and stay in melee range with staff and keeping high heal uptime with staff utilities.

And here I switched both together, but my point was just that weapons can combine very well with “non-native” legend so switching both at the same time may not be a good idea.

Fair point, though this assumes weapon swapping is going to be brought into the class. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that will happen, so I’m operating on the assumption that it isn’t.

Of course, I am also operating under the assumption that the obvious tie between weapon and legend is intentional, so there’s that…

I guess the issue is less whether the different combinations would mesh well, and more if they will ever get used. Most of the people on here (particularly those who are primary PvP, WvW players) won’t go for those because it would be weaker than a pure DPS or condition or healing build would be.

I personally love versatility, but I also realize specialization is the preferred route for alot of the more serious players.

Basaltface.2786:

bearshaman.3421:

Basaltface.2786:

stof.9341:

Note that elementalists cannot switch from a melee form to a range form either with their atunement swaps.

…but slot a summon and do it that way…what works great. Ice bow.. lightning hammer..or maybe FGS? All viable ways to change the range of battle on the fly AND that without an attument swap needed.

I have a feeling though that the weapons are intentionally tied to a particular legend. Like an iconic weapon, in the sense of King Arthur and Excalibur. Which means making a weapon usable with a legend that doesn’t use that weapon breaks with the flavor of the class. can you see Arthur running around with a staff?

Well the issue is that you got your king arthur legend slotted and his excalibur equipped, sure it fits cause its his iconic sword…but you also got maybe robin hood as your second legend (yea a stupid example but whatever). Whats with him? His iconic weapon is a bow and lets assume for a moment robin cant really fight with a sword (what he technically can do but like i said its just an example) and especially not the legendary excalibur …so whats with him? Why is he even equipped? Why would you even swap to the “bow-less” robin in battle if arthur got his blade perfectly fine under controll? Yea sure.. the rev is a lore cyrclejerk class…but the rev just channels the legend´s powers and does not fully become it, thats how i see it.

Look at Fiddle Irk’s suggestion, and my response as far as the game mechanic possible fix.

If they are intending your idea on the class (just channeling their powers, not becoming an incarnation of them), then I would go with the elementalist solution, where the1-5 skills are determined by weapon equipped AND current legend invoked.

Oh and I also focus on interrupts. signet of domination, mantra of distraction, you get the idea.

Silverkey.2078:

First, I assume you mean PvE.
Then, I disagree with Jerus. Rampager is the best for mesmer right now (when it comes to condition DPS) because even with scepter, our best condition damage comes from the bleeds of the pistol (or focus) which requires high crits. The scepter-focus/pistol DPS is somewhat fine. To be precise, it would be on par with assassin build if the enemies were attacking more for the confusion to proc (both builds are about identical at around 1 attack/s on the enemy which is more than most PvE enemies). But even in this case, most condition damage by far comes from bleeds.

“To be precise”… I see what you did there.

But yeah, I completely agree. I am using rampager with domination, dueling, and chaos lines, stacked all the crit traits, and am doing well with condition and power, with staff for ranged, and sword/pistol for melee/range. focused on burns and bleeds (I forget the rune set but it adds to burn duration and burns on heal skill), and it’s working great.

Crise.9401:

Re Revenant and weapons I would simply combine a legend and weapon swap into one action. Meaning you would have to choose the weapon to use with each legend in advance.

I think Revenant could work without weapon swap, but not as it is right now. The legend mechanics would need to change for that.

This is the suggestion I made on another thread, in light of the fact that its obvious certain weapons are meant for certain legends to use. combine weapon swap into the invocation, and swap all 10 skills in one go.
And it’s not broken because armor determines the bulk of your stat bonuses, and those wouldn’t change. So you are still only gonna use certain legends, you just have access to the others if you need to do something… suboptimally.

Also, more options for utility skills to customize each legend.

That ol noob.7083:

Revs are still in beta. They may add stuff that will enable them to change stance skills later.

I agree, but that hasn’t been stated either. So we make suggestions to the designers based on the information we have.

Fiddle Irk.9710:

I’d like to see swapping Legends alter the weapon skills themselves as well as the utility. Would be a possible solution to the grief over lacking weapon swap AND give the potential to adapt to different situations, as in range battle vs close quarters. Example: Hammer skills while channeling Jalis are melee and cc/protective, mid-ranged and supportive when channeling Ventari, mid- ranged and conditional when channeling Malyx, Long ranged and offensive when channeling “Shiro” ext.

Ok, after some thought, I think this could work. For one simple reason. It doesn’t change your armor.

Most of the stats you get for a particular build is going to come from armor. So even if we had access to a full set of weapons skills, and a customizable set of utility and elite skills for each legend, autoequiped on invocation, you would still be specced for certain legend(s) over others, and the others would be very suboptimal.

Basaltface.2786:

stof.9341:

Note that elementalists cannot switch from a melee form to a range form either with their atunement swaps.

…but slot a summon and do it that way…what works great. Ice bow.. lightning hammer..or maybe FGS? All viable ways to change the range of battle on the fly AND that without an attument swap needed.

I have a feeling though that the weapons are intentionally tied to a particular legend. Like an iconic weapon, in the sense of King Arthur and Excalibur. Which means making a weapon usable with a legend that doesn’t use that weapon breaks with the flavor of the class. can you see Arthur running around with a staff?

I agree Fiddle Irk, my only concern is this may make the class too customizable. trying to think how to balance this….

Genesis, what do you see as the core problem?

Now I posted this else where but I will say that from a lore perspective, I can understand not wanting to do what I suggested. Each legend has its iconic weapon. That’s fair.

What I propose is instead, have 6-10 be customizable for each legend individually. Then have the weapon included in the swap when you switch legends. That way you have two legends that you are easily able to switch between all the way across.

If this is too customizable, then at least have the invocation change 1-10, even if 6-10 are fixed. Not sure how the weapon would work at that point, but it’s an idea….

It can swap slots 6-10, where everyone else can swap 1-5. HOWEVER….

Everyone else can customize 6-10. Revenant can’t customize 1-5.

Ergo, lower customization.

Well, this is one post I don’t need to make. Completely agree on all points.

I would say that it depends on what part of the game you are playing. I’m using Rampager armor, and getting great results with it, but then I’m playing mostly PvE, and what in PvP and WvW is very different.

While there is truth to what Jerus says, I think it is dependent on this and also on what you want out of the game. Ultimately, if you aren’t having fun, what’s the point?

If you are going to use scepters and not swords, I’d look at Carrion or Rabid.

figured that would be the case.

Let me clarify my last post.

I can see, from a lore perspective, the desire to have iconic weapons for each of the invocations. I can also see why the invocations swapping the utility skills and having a fixed set of skills fits the theme as well. I guess the concern I’m seeing surveying the posts is that the builds for revenant are going to have a stronger meta that can’t be deviated from, limiting build options. I’m not sure what could be done to fix this and maintain the theme of the class.

I’ll say this again here. I would love to see something similar to what elementalist has where each weapon skill changes based on the invocation currently in use. I don’t care for the mechanic you pointed out where the weapon skills of each weapon are obviously tied to a particular invocation.

I personally would like to see something similar to what the elementalist does, where you get different weapon skills based on your current invocation.

I’ve gone with rampager armor for now. a little of both with good crits. I’m gonna stick with that until things settle down and I’ll see what I wanna do then. the weapons are of a type appropriate to the skills they give (so carrion or rabid for staff/scepter, berserker or assassin for sword/GS/focus, rampager for pistol). It’s not optimized but I think it will work decently for a wide range of stuffs. going for versatility for now I think, and I can change traits/utility skills as I need to.

Thanks for the advice Alpha, even though I’m not the OP.

What rune set should you use for a condi build? And what stats?

I leveled using GS/Staff. First character, and it worked well for leveling. I liked the greatsword skills, but staff with conditions built up was better at ranged after the update, and sword/x seems to do better damage up close. Right now I’m considering either having two sets of gear one for condition/support and one for direct damage, or just using rampager and going to staff/sword/x.

Just a guess but it might be that everyone is getting one-shotted so easily that the vitality makes it possible to survive long enough to get the combo off. I’ve seen a lot of people say that damage has outstripped health.

Thanks for the advice. I did notice the sword/x builds damage was higher when I experimented with it. I’m working on having a couple sets of weapons, and changing my armor too. Thanks again.

Bunda.2691:

Just to get in ahead of everyone else: Berserker. For PvE, that’s what you’ll be wanting to run nearly all the time. (Technically, Assassins can be better with high reflect uptime, but Zerker gear is fine all around.) Learn to use your dodges, evades, blinds, and distortions to mitigate damage, instead of relying on vitality and toughness. It will make you a much better player in the long run, and you’ll contribute a lot more to groups with your damage and reflects.

I know it’s hard to believe at first, but group healing and boon support is completely secondary to damage in dungeons and almost all group content. And while conditions have gotten a lot better, direct damage still generally trumps it. There just really isn’t a place for “support” in PvE content.

Finally, while staff is great for PvP, it doesn’t really have a place in dungeons at the moment, as it’s damage is quite low. Sword/Pistol and /Focus and sometimes /Sword are your best friends for dungeons.

After the update, I actually think I’ve done more damage with the staff and Dire (though I’m considering a different one) than I did with GS and Berserker. especially with the bouncing WoC auto attack and Mirror Image. I think I’m not entirely understanding exactly how the berserker build should work or be built… and the guides haven’t been updated since the 23rd.

Before the update, I was bouncing back and forth between staff and GS. Wanted to use staff, but knew it wasn’t doing damage as well. It feels like they’ve fixed that pretty well, and I’m getting gold easily on world bosses…

So I am playing a mesmer primarily for PvE, and looking to do dungeons and fractals once I find a good PvE guild (semi-casual, taking suggestions). Trying to figure out what set of gear to go with for it. Will eventually craft ascended gear, but for now looking at the exotics in the BLTC. Initially was going with Jatoro’s Set (Condition Damage high, Vitality/Toughness secondary), but thinking it would be better to go with Shaman (Vitality primary, Condition Damage/Healing Power secondary). Any thoughts? Primarily looking at probably a staff build (not sure on second weapon set), doing conditions/boons and healing, probably chaos/illusion/inspiration specs.

All suggestions welcome. Kinda new at this.

don’t know if this is still a thing but…

Mesmer name: Hulgin
Server: Fort Aspenwood
Role: Scholar
Times vary but generally afternoon/evenings Eastern Standard Time (US)
PvE almost exclusively (dungeons/fractals too), may try WvW sometime…

I think this is all useless now. Time to start over.

This has been a most interesting thread to read. To start, I’m fairly new to MMOs overall, and GW2 has been amazing for me so far, for more reasons than I feel I need to express. Mesmer was my first pick for a class, and reading this forum does show why I think.

The sentiment, while on some level egotistical, does play out that such a class will draw a more intelligent crowd with critical thinking skills. I don’t say this to say the other players are neanderthals, but you have to have a certain level of intelligence just to deal with the complexities of the class. The desire for balance is admirable, if the proverbial unicorn hunt, even if no one else cares.

The flip side is we are critical thinkers and intelligent. Thus we will weigh in on our ideas on how to fix X, or why Y is over-powered or under-powered, and make suggestions for how to fix these things. We are still individuals, however, so each of us will make these suggestions based on our unique vantage point on the game, be that PvP, WvW, PvE, etc. or just some vision in our heads of what Mesmer should be. And we will proceed to intelligently (and occasionally heatedly) argue over it.

Our strength is our weakness. It always has been, whether here or in a philosophy group or a science lab or the old Greek forums. And no one will appreciate what we do here but us.

Ok, I’m confused. How did condition builds get nerfed, aside from MtD? I am doing more and consistent condition damage than I did before the update.

Note: I only do PvE, and dungeons. I honestly haven’t done PvP or WvW, and have little interest in it tbh.