Guild Wars 2

Lord Kuru.3685:

What are the best (highest DPS) weapons for damage builds? (Specifically for soloing dungeons.) Anyone done some analysis or have a spreadsheet? Thanks!

Sword/pistol and sword/sword are the highest DPS options. Most people sacrifice the pistol for the focus for increased utility from the reflections (which, in some situations, can raise your DPS above the pistol as well).

If you go for maximum personal DPS, full stop, you’ll want 30/30/0/0/10 (or 25/30/0/0/15) with sword/sword + sword/pistol.

If you want maximum reflections mixed with DPS, go with 10/30/0/20/10 or 0/30/0/25/15 with sword/sword + sword/focus.

Axelwarrior.9084:

The problem isn’t caused by the stat, it’s caused by the dungeon imbalance.

Currently, Berserker’s is ALWAYS the best solution to everything (well, maybe with rare exceptions, usually being Assassin’s) because we can bypass the difficulty by stacking/skipping etc.

If “exploits” weren’t possible, then we’d need more survivability in dungeons and thus Berserker’s wouldn’t always be the best option.

Was waiting for the “exploit” comment! Top lel.

knives.6345:

Go to LFG Beta
Create your own LFG
On the description, put in “No stacking, kill everything”
Wait
Play the game.

On the other note, what do you accomplish on killing all mobs? Some blues and greens?

Reward does not compensate on the time spent this way.

Globs of gobbly goo too.

With love to my European friends…

“German run” (mechanical, efficient, ‘soulless’)
“Italian run” (haphazard, bumbling, always about to break, ‘the way life is meant to be lived’)

Bloodyhell.8760:

Improve yourself and no one will ever kick you.

/thread

It almost certainly does not pay off to invest in crit chance with the upcoming nerf.

Azrael.4960:

Another thing to beware is that one burrow spawns in a corner near a big door. If you get knocked back by a stalker you can sometimes glitch through the door and can’t get back in. This can also happen with the warrior’s greatsword whirl skill and possibly with a guardian’s greatsword leap skill. Be very careful at this burrow as it can cost you the fight and slow down the run. One particularly unfortunate encounter resulted in myself and another warrior being KD’d through the door. Luckily a guildie was running ele and ice bowed the rest of the burrows.

FGS skills can also result in getting knocked through the door here. I always angle them away from the door after a few disasters.

We love you Jerem~

So another question: how fast could you do Bloomhunger? It’s an “easier” boss, but no FGS (except with blink), so I would think it would take at least twice as long.

1 or 3!

First or second~

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Woot woot revived!

Lmao.

Gg Anet mods. You realize this was moved back to the dungeon forum by another mod previously, yes?

SisterZealot.7352:

My question is, what gives players of the Arah run the nerve to demand that other players PAY them (in gold) to run the dungeon with them? Some dude tried to charge me 6 gold (6g) and when i didn’t he straight booted me. The game is free to play, now some kid is charging me? The irony is he couldn’t complete the mission by himself anyway! So in essence we are paying him to allow us to help him do what he cant do alone?

I cant be the only one who thinks this right? Shouldn’t the DEVS step in an warn these extortioners?

Not sure if joke or troll…

You do realize that person was at the final boss, after a successful solo/duo/whatever, and was selling the completed path? That’s why his/her LFG said “Selling pX”?

You’ll find once you hit 80 that shatter mesmer, in PvE, is sadly lacking compared to a simple Phantasm mesmer. It’s a bit of a shame since shatter is a more active, interesting playstyle, but you’ll be doing substantially worse DPS. In PvE, your best option is to basically melee with sword and keep summoning phantasms. Keep that in mind. Shatter is great in WvW and PvP because of the high burst, though, which is often enough to take out your target.

Signet of Ether doesn’t lend itself to shatter builds very well, as you observed— you’re constantly getting rid of your illusions. Ether Feast is good, and best if you can time to use it when you have lots of phantasms/clones out. I much prefer Mantra of Recovery to either of these— it’s a mantra, so it has that annoying problem, but it provides two smaller heals which are immediate and you can distribute as you need. It also doesn’t scale with number of illusions, so you can use it whenever you want without fear of inefficiency.

With gear, “as much zerker as possible” is best for PvE, as Shockwave says. In WvW, as a shatter mesmer, the same is basically true, but you’ll probably want at least a few pieces of Soldier’s no matter what to get some durability.

If you really want to kite, use a staff and spam 1 to aggro all the gravelings. Go between the burrows on the right handside and collect all the gravelings that come out, since usually groups will go for the ones on the left first. In a good group, this is unnecessary as the burrows can easily be killed before Hodgins takes more than 10% damage.

As a mesmer for that run, use blink + mantra of concentration for stun breaks. Mantra of Resolve for curing cripple. Mass Invisibility as you run through the fires to avoid the next two groups, if you really need it. If you really, really need it, you can swap to a set of armor with Centaur Runes and use Mantra of Restoration for 100% swiftness uptime.

This is fixed in the April 15 patch, supposedly.

Don’t take it personally that the build is not super original. The Mesmer in its current form has been unchanged for a few months, so most possibilities have been explored. And your build is good— that’s something to be happy about. With April 15 patch flipping lots of things, there will be lots of room for originality then (especially with 5 new grandmaster traits).

Nike proposed something like this in his recent video-editorial about endgame. I quite like the idea, especially the non-linear aspects which would allow people to approach it by splitting up, etc.

This is basically identical to the 10/20 build which is semi-popular in PvE. It’s fine and you do decent damage, but it won’t be as effective as a 10/30 or 0/30 build because of the significantly lower reflect damage. I also recommend sword instead of pistol for the offhand, as the iSwordsman is excellent and the block from sword 4 is helpful in defense.

For PvP, it seems similar to the common phantasm builds. iDuelist is a nice choice in PvP, and I like the utility setup for that as well.

I think it was made very clear to them in the CDI that this was a large issue with fractals. Unfortunately, the only update after the CDI that was supposed to improve drops, seems to have made them worse. We’ll see if they actually took the feedback seriously in the next few months, I guess.

If you can’t see boss tells, you’re gonna have a bad time.

dutchiez.7502:

CureForLiving.5360:

Well in general I’m against anything that’s leads to exclusion and elitism, but even I have to admit that when the description says 80 it’s a bit unnerving to see some low levels in there… I guess this makes me a bad person

This makes you a person who expects other people to have the ability to read.

The most annoying thing is about this, is that normal 80s will start leaving the party as soon as they see a low level— even before I have a chance to start a kick vote. Then you have to wait to replace 2-3 people instead of just the one person who couldn’t read.

Just ask Lilith to open the dungeons when they’re closed, guys.

Ptolemy.5086:

Mesmer personal DPS is crap. All our DPS is in phats or shatter bursts.

This isn’t exactly true. With three iSwordsmen out, your personal damage is a little under half your total damage. So it’s not… good, but it’s still significant.

Zahl.8564:

Ah, too bad then. So, if I don`t want Shatter, Phantasm-build is the way to go and focusing on Power/Prec/Crit?

Yup. 10/30/0/20/10 or 0/30/0/25/15 are the current builds (subject to change with the April 15 patch). Use sword/sword and sword/focus. Trait for damage and cooldowns on phantasms. Use as many mantras as you can to get the most out of Empowered Mantras (but keep feedback in situations where you need reflects, since that is probably your best source of damage and mitigation). Use all zerker gear with scholar runes, or ruby orbs as a cheaper option.

Edit: I should say, zerker gear is still going to be the best option after April 15 almost certainly, so it’s safe to buy that now. I would hold off on expensive runes like Scholar and sigils like Bloodlust/Force until after the patch hits and we know what’s good then.

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

maxinion.8396:

Restorative mantras basically does not scale with healing power, as Xyonon says. Healing power is a full waste on mesmer, since that’s our only group heal.

It gives group heal mantra heals of illusion mantra. Simple u cast, after 2.75 secs den u heal for like 3k. That’s like 1kHP per secund AoE. Better than worrior. Worrir soon hav pocket heal mesma new meta. Trust me. It’s going to be the new meta. Everyone will see… Its OP.

Restorative Mantras is not bad, sure. Xyonon’s point, which I agree with, is that even if you put everything into healing power, Restorative Mantras only improves by 20% or whatever (I don’t know the exact number, but it’s not a lot). Compared to Water fields + Blasts and Guardian healing, both of which scale well with Healing Power, means that mesmers are at a disadvantage as healers.

As for OP:

In PvE: precision > crit damage > power > all

Precision and crit damage are particularly important because they apply to feedback damage, while power doesn’t.

Restorative mantras basically does not scale with healing power, as Xyonon says. Healing power is a full waste on mesmer, since that’s our only group heal.

This was amazing. Guardians are just supposed to spam 1 with hammer, right? Who needs utilities (and even your 3-5 skills).

deSade.9437:

It’s… it’s very green.

That’s plant-ist!

Scholar was still your best choice before April 15 (the 10% bonus affects your reflect damage with feedback, which is the main source of mesmer damage and worth getting 10% on). After April 15, who knows??

How many restarts did it take to get the ‘right’ wisp combination? :P

But seriously, very cool run. I thought, when I read the title, that it’d be a 1:14 Mossman kill… but this is even more ridiculous!

Jeez. It’s tough, but it’s not the end of the world. The cannon phases are annoying, but the rest of the fight is great, and has plenty of room for creative ideas on controlling the flow of the encounter (from tanking with guards, to blocking shadowsteps with mesmer, etc.).

Guess it’s not fun if it’s not a faceroll?

joey the creator.3587:

Trice.4598:

joey the creator.3587:

I have a new spot which i think will make it extremely easy on guardian, I’m really busy with school at the moment so can’t try it out tonight.
Also you can just strafe left and right avoiding all his damage, it is really lame and requires no skill but it is consistent :P

Thank you, and nice video.

My problem isn’t the boss though, it’s the Adds he spawns, he seems to spawn them while I fight him (so I’m not stacked in the corner) and they end up unloading me while I avoid the boss damage :P. Is there any set time or interval at which he spawns them (Like every 1 minute, or every 25% HP) that would help me a lot.

I’d be really interested into seeing that new spots, let me know how it turns out!

It’s ridiculously easy, i think you’ll like the spot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLP2oQ-d21M

private video

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

This boss sucks period! We spent 4 hours in a lv 19 fractal just trying to beat her. We rather have dredge (which we can do rather fast) then this kitten. You get stuck once or in a bad spot, you are done! Total wipe everyone!

relevant: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/06

Like the FAQ says, people generally don’t skip mobs that give sufficient rewards (trash destroyers in CoE are the main example). If ANet went and updated loot tables like this everywhere, you’d see much, much less skipping (but potentially more farming, which is another thing ANet wants to avoid, and what got us into the situation we have now).

Spoj The Second.7680:

Condi, power, precision. Basically what rampager should be. With this you open up the possibility of 1 condi spec being included in optimized pve groups.

Even Power, prec, condi damage could work nicely.

This this this. Would be the greatest increase in variety you could make in terms of shaking up the PvE meta.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

The lag monster is so bad today.

I see me!

…

I’m also dead

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I know I do. That immersion ^.^

Everyone put Lilith on speed dial so she can open CoF for you! ;D

i hope you all like doing the CoF opening event!!!

Lilith Ajit.6173:

maxinion.8396:

Seems like you guys finished already. Next time I’ll try to join, again~

Want to do a 30 right now?

Ahh, already ran off to work. I’ll catch you some morning, someday >.>

Seems like you guys finished already. Next time I’ll try to join, again~

FenrirSlakt.3692:

There we go!
/15charrs

A+++++++++++++++

Mesmer is super-duper slow, but groups have forced me to do it in the past. I did warden-swordsman-signet of ether-sworsdman-blurred frenzy. Not sure if the third phant is necessary, but it wasn’t the slowest I’ve ever seen someone do it.

Ack, totally would but just got to work. Good luck!

Mesmer has tons of active defense. Sword 2 is a several second evade. Sword 4 is a great block that also hits like a truck. Scepter 2 or 3 (I forget which) is another nice block. Perma-vigor is easy to obtain with 5 points in dueling. All of these are great forms of defense.

I’ve had a lot of success with dredge recently, even in pugs. People seem to be getting better at this!

Never Deceptive Evasion (X in dueling) as it is a straight DPS killer. II always instead. Other than that g’s post is correct, I think.

Braham’s legs, deSade.

Good luck!!

Taku.6352:

Kobi Beef.3895:

Im pretty sure aether path isn’t required for Dungeon Master, you might be missing one of the normal explorable paths for TA

It is required.

But if you had all TA paths before Aetherblade was released, I don’t think you have to redo it.