Guild Wars 2

Hammer for fractals, gs/s+f for dungeons.

Reflection is based on your prec + ferocity, and the target’s power. You can read the guide in my sig for the current meta gear recommendation, which optimizes for both direct damage and reflect damage.

This changed on April 15.

Why would you copy [DnT]’s builds (incorrectly) when DEKeyz has a sticky at the top of the forum? O.o

Anyway no one should use that second build without LH, scepter has no sustain otherwise.

And Berserker gear is better than Assassin’s after the ferocity patch. See DEKeyz’s thread.

Mesmer DPS with your phantasms out is good, especially if you get all 3 out. Problem is that it takes 10-15 seconds (assuming you’re using signet) to get them all out. Bosses can be dead by that time (depending on the group), so the ramp up time is really annoying. On top of that, phantasms die all the time and force you to resummon, again lowering your DPS. Guard DPS is solid out of the gate, with no conditions attached to it.

Portal can be super useful in fractals. Cliffside (you can portal, blink to the top of the stairs, portal, to bring your party up; you can also make the arm seals much easier by portaling people left and right), dredge (you can use portal to make sure that all 5 party members are in the main room for the pressure panels), harpy (stealth with a thief and run to the top of the jumping sequences, then portal), etc.

Anyway don’t feel bad about mesmer being “worse” than guardian. If you do the right things, you’re still contributing good DPS and group support in pugs and casual runs. It’s just that at the super high end speed running in organized guild groups, mesmers don’t contribute outside of portal.

Guard brings better boons— aegis, stability, protection, and can also keep up a lot of blinds. With a good guard popping aegis and blinds at the right time, it’s like having 2-3 extra dodges per battle, and that’s a lot. They have enough reflections and condition cleanse as well— maybe not quite as good as Mesmer, but enough (and wall is easier to use and longer lasting than feedback).

But yeah, we can’t compete with aegis and blinds, basically, and guards can compete with the things we do well.

Thanks again everyone!

Since you don’t get Empowering Mantras till very late, I wouldn’t do the mantra builds for leveling. I think the 2/4/0/4/4 is your best option, since you can get access to all those traits fairly early.

The best build for fractals is probably DeKeyz’s dagger/focus build, described in the sticky above (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/first ). I highly recommend watching her video guides on each fractal— she spells out exactly what you need to do for pretty much every fight.

Lol, thanks Iris.

@MotherKitten: thanks for the nice name. With regards to your points:

Yes, healing is not good in PVE when you can dodge or block every attack and not need healing. 4 in water can be good for some builds because of the DPS traits in water, but healing ripple itself is no good.

I also suggest you reread Zelhyn’s post. The third post in the guide (here, I’ll even link it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/first#post2333430 ) is entirely about how Fresh Air is at the heart of dagger builds. I then suggest you watch DeKeyz’s videos and figure out how you can do her rotations without fresh air. Without it, you’ll be stuck in low damage attunemets for way too long, and contribute much less to fights.

And for scepter: you offset the weak auto by using LH, not fresh air.

Ropechef.6192:

Dont feel bad Pulse,

I am pugging my way to 50. I am at 40 and have never run with the same group twice. and to the best of my knowledge, outside of an insane low level run (thanks lilith!!! ) i have not done fractals with anyone of the dungeon forum regulars. And barring one lucky (for me) chance to pug with some DnT runners. (which they were amazingly patient and VERY instructive)

as terrible as it sounds. I may just keep at it. and say that i actually did it. the only problem that i have with it. is i am now awash with the “pugging tactics” and my only source of “good” running knowledge is via Nike’s twitch stream…

I am a guild leader in a guild with 250 people. ( and growing) and to the best of my knowledge i am the only one that runs “DpS” ….. * sob *

I’ll invite you for some runs when I see you online. My group is hardly pro, but they’re not pugs at least!

JJBigs.8456:

hendo.1940:

About serious discussion, does anyone know why mesmer’s who reflect alphards bomb pull with feedback/curtain deal like 4k damage, but when phantasms reflect it, they deal about 24k damage? Been trying to figure that one for a while now, yet can’t come up with any logical reason.

Is this patch update line the beggining the end for Reflect Way dungeons/tactics : The Great Jungle Wurm in Caledon Forest no longer does full damage to itself from reflected projectile attacks. A certain number of the projectiles are no longer reflectable.

What if that was instated in dungeons? :c

Then we’d use untrained wardens and block everything like we already do on many bosses? Obviously would not work on some, like lupi, but tons of bosses are already unreflectable.

Hamfast.8719:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Hooray! I’m excited to see everyone’s screens. And although I will not be biased…. I hope to see some Asura fashion!

This one is not for the contest (since it’s not in a Dungeon), but I posted it on another thread and thought it was fun. Since you asked, I thought you’d like it anyway.

My character Hamfast Hornswoggle is a youngster who loves superheroes. In picture number one, he poses as “Hadron Hornswoggle”; average, ordinary, everyday gazillionaire banker and his ward “Rockford”. In picture number two, we see him in his alternate identity, the Incredible “Supercollider” and his trusty sidekick “Particle Boy”.

I hope it gives you a great big smile!

(He definitely supports the initiative for Guild capes!)

A++ for particle physics references

GS is fine in open world, because the range is helpful in tagging mobs and kiting, and your performance matter much less (you don’t have 4 other people counting on you for damage in the party).

draconx.3102:

Remember also that out of combat you can switch to Harmonious Mantras, charge up 3 charges on your mantra, then switch the trait to something else.

It’s a bug which benefits mesmers! Fix incoming in 3… 2… 1…

There is no good staff build. The damage/utility is too low to be useful. It’s a super survivable/selfish weapon, and therefore is not great in dungeons or fractals.

If you insist, use one of the standard builds (or tweak it slightly). Start with staff, cast iWarlock, (double cast iWarlock if you have Signet), switch to sword/focus, melee as normal at that point. Minimize your time with staff as much as possible— that’s the only way to keep your damage at decent levels. iWarlock is pretty much the only skill worth casting.

Jeremlloyd.6837:

Seras.5702:

Great Guide!! I took a bit of a break from GW2 and now I want to get back on my Mesmer, thanks to you.

The build links confuse me because you don’t change the utility skills (and I understand why) but you’ve still got Signet Mastery (Dom VI) traited in all of them. What else would you trait if you’ve got no signets and running Mantras.

Also, the 6/6/0/0/2 build is described as max-dps single target, but I don’t understand the Blurred Inscriptions choice, especially with no signets. I would think Harmonious Mantras with maybe MoP would be better for some extra spike damage and more reliable Mantra charge uptime.

About Signet Mastery, this is mainly because there’s not really another good trait in the Domination traitline, but you can take Mental Torment to finish off a boss / Halting Strike, but it doesn’t proc when a boss has Defiant stacks, or even Crippling Dissipation for boss fight when you want to keep them crippled.

About the 6/6/0/0/2 build, that might be a typo, because Blurred Inscription is mainly for survivability. Harmonious Mantra or Duelist Discipline are definitely better options there, or Deceptive Evasion for fights like Lupicus.

I’ll switch it to Harmonious Mantras, that’s what I end up using most of the time, absolutely.

Nike was advocating Blurred Inscriptions for when you have Signet Mastery and are using the healing Signet, as it gives you a bit better survival. Harmonious Mantras is a nice convenience but not a huge improvement IMO… if you’re using the Signet, Blurred Inscriptions might be nice as well.

Anyway, for Signet Mastery… yeah, I’m usually lazy and just keep it there in case I need to switch to Signet. Nothing else is good there, so it’s not a real loss

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Enaretos.8079:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I prefer “Lady Lilith” unless I’m beating you with a whip.

Haaaaaaa.

Master Lilith all the way :>

Let’s go to Ebonhawke and procure the whip environmental weapon. As a Tarnished Coast native I know where All these goodies are.

is it just me or did it get hot in here

(ps yay i’ve been on this forum long enough to get flood control)

Hi Winter,

30 in fire is useful for the might stacks and fury, which is why I recommended it (you seemed to want boon support, and this is the best way to do that). 20 in Arcane is a rather defensive choice, especially with the traits you’ve chosen. This is somewhat selfish (not saying this in a negative way): your own survivability is better, but your contribution to group buffing is reduced. That’s a trade-off you have to decide on, but most players (like Zelhyn, for example) go for more group support + DPS over survivability.

If you want gear to make you tankier, consider full knight’s or soldier’s armor (zerker weapons and trinkets). Generally runes are best when used all 6 at once, in order to get the 6th rune bonus, so I strongly recommend that (and with full soldier’s or knight’s, you should be survivable enough).

Hope this helps~ Do keep trying to dodge and learning to take advantage of your defensive skills, and one day you might be able to move to full zerk

It was marginal before the April 15, so people used to recommend it.

MotherKitten.6795:

There are several things I don’t like about your build. Fresh Air is mandatory for scepter builds and useful for builds which put no points into Arcana. You have a dagger build and points in Arcana, no reason to take Fresh Air.

What I dislike the most is taking is taking Shard of Ice when you already have so much vulnerabilty from Weak Spot.

I’ve run similar builds and know from experience that if you take points from air and put then in water to get Healing Ripple you build will be better.

Fresh Air has two main purposes. Increasing dps on Scepter builds and diminishing the negative impact of putting no points into Arcana. It can do other things but those are the main benefits.

Fresh Air is the key trait to PvE D/F builds, so it is absolutely the right trait choice. Please read any of Zelhyn’s or DeKeyz threads in the stickies before you give bad advice. Healing ripple is also close to useless in PvE.

S/D Fresh Air is only applicable to PvP/WvW, which OP didn’t ask about.

maxinion.8396:

dlonie.6547:

Does the bone wall trick still work? Every time I’ve tried it she chills at the starting position for a little longer than usual, but still starts teleporting after a while.

Works for me the past few times I’ve tried.

Tried again last night. It was a very slow kill (mes solo) and she didn’t move.

rip pyro

I mean, if you want boons + damage, nothing beats a 30/30/10/0/0 scepter + (focus or dagger) + LH build. You can maintain 15-20 might and full fury by yourself while doing top tier DPS, and applying a decent amount of vuln. Since might/fury are basically the best boon in the game, if you want to be playing boons, might stacking is the way to go.

Anyway, d/f is decent at stacking might as well, but without 30 in fire for persisting flames, your boonsharing is going to be suboptimal.

maha.7902:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-How-To-Mesmer-in-Dungeons/first support builds

Build 2 and Build 5 in that link are the support options that a Mesmer can bring, yup. This is mostly in the form of condition cleanse + full reflect uptime. Depending on the dungeon, both of these things can be quite important/useful in carrying your team.

Xenon.4537:

Why do people buy runs through arah? Dungeon Master achievement? Or do they still come out with a profit?

Tokens for skins.

P2 sells for 5-6 gp, you get 3.3gp back, so 2.5 gp for 60 tokens. That works out to 10-ish gp for a weapon skin, which isn’t bad.

P4 is the exception— people buy that for Dungeon Master, so the price is much higher (15-20 gp).

dlonie.6547:

Does the bone wall trick still work? Every time I’ve tried it she chills at the starting position for a little longer than usual, but still starts teleporting after a while.

Works for me the past few times I’ve tried.

Jeremlloyd.6837:

1337 6060

with 1337 team compo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHVXdpKUM5s

Jerem is the winner!

party in the dungeon forum~

Purple Miku.7032:

I agree with spoj.

I was pretty kittening mad when I found out they changed this too. Every single change yesterday was for the better EXCEPT this. Making me hit kitten damage is not going to make me happy.

Warrior meta build is probably least hurt by this. Camp Greatsword with Slaying + Force, offhand is sword+warhorn with a stacking sigil. The build never swaps to offhand anyway, so the loss of the sigil on it doesn’t matter at all.

The 30/25 fast hands builds, or the axe meta builds, obviously do get nerfed by this.

Jeremlloyd.6837:

Well we had Bloomhunger yesterday and they added red circles for the Poison Rain attack. The fight is just trivial now

Yeah, we had this yesterday as well. I mean, I don’t mind the change (clear telegraphs = cool), but he was already incredibly easy and this just makes it even more ridiculous.

Pyroathiest.4168:

maxinion.8396:

Thanks all for the comments and feedback!

With the nerfing of stacking sigils, I’ll adjust the gear section shortly… pretty much always makes sense to run Assassin’s + Ranger now (can’t justify to yourself that your perception stacks will pull Berserker gear to higher crit), which means I have to toss my ascended armor and start over. Oh well, that’s life.

Note that in some dungeons you can take a quick dip underwater and revert the stacking sigil nerf. Not all dungeons, but some.

I guess this will be useful for absolute min-maxing, but for general purpose, it’s just getting way too inconvenient to stack :\ Single stacking was already of marginal utility in most places (hard to get to 25 stacks reasonably quickly), and this makes it even more of a pain. But yeah, will still be possible in some situations.

Thanks all for the comments and feedback!

With the nerfing of stacking sigils, I’ll adjust the gear section shortly… pretty much always makes sense to run Assassin’s + Ranger now (can’t justify to yourself that your perception stacks will pull Berserker gear to higher crit), which means I have to toss my ascended armor and start over. Oh well, that’s life.

sartanman.4710:

Slurpee forgot to mention one change about the Molten Facility we noticed: the stacking spot during the cannon barrages is no longer safe. We were gearing up to ice bow the Thermal Core and got blasted. We nearly wiped because we were laughing too hard.

lolzzzz. Sad that I missed this!

3/10 chests tonight for my guild were ascended boxes, and 3 more were rings.

Maaayyyybe?

Edit: 29 and 38

ahahaha and they nerfed the queensdale champ train

A++

maha.7902:

Purple Miku.7032:

That’s true I suppose yeah, we don’t quite have a dungeon like that though… thankfully ^^

SC did cm with 2 ele/mes/thief/guard

RIP warriors

mesmers >>> warriors

oooooh yeah

awww back when you were a noob, sam! and now you’re teaching the next generation

Enaretos.8079:

maxinion.8396:

Oy, what a bad Arah run last night. Die, die, fail, die. That’s what I get for not stepping foot in it for 2-3 months

Thanks for your patience Sam! <3

No problem bromax. It shall be done again :>

Btw wasn’t Azreel the guy who was supposed to play with Dub ? In the stacking topic in the GW2 discussion his name shows up :<

One day I won’t be a bad (or I’ll be less bad)!

And yes, that’s the one and the same. Good times.

Oy, what a bad Arah run last night. Die, die, fail, die. That’s what I get for not stepping foot in it for 2-3 months

Thanks for your patience Sam! <3

deSade.9437:

maxinion.8396:

Did a 38 with group last night: fractal rifle, one weapon box, one infused ring. Not bad.

You got the hair dryer?

Not me, but a guildie

Did a 38 with group last night: fractal rifle, one weapon box, one infused ring. Not bad.

Enaretos.8079:

After having given it much thought, I’ve decided to :
- change my ranger’s look
- change hodginsam’s gender
- basically invest 1Kg into skins and kitten

Lilith, you got me :’(

I just spent 800g on skins, inspired by these threads.

riiiiiip

spoj.9672:

Maybe its because when you reflect with feedback it just uses the mesmers personal modifiers and stats. But when its reflected with wardens it uses the clones, which includes empowering illusions and phantasmal str, and then makes the bomb yours so it also uses your personal mods aswell. So you get it increased twice. Thats the only reason i can think of.

That could explain 50% more or something like that, but this is 600%. Something is weird. I certainly can’t explain it, but it’s probably related to something like this.

NoTrigger.8396:

mesmer deals dps the way you want

if only

spoj.9672:

Anierna.6918:

hendo.1940:

Anierna.6918:

If he didnt die before he could leap, I’d help you test this.

Gl killing him before he could leap if his first attack is such.

Fear Me! to the ice-wall slightly behind him and to his left. You can CC him with that before he leaps, or even aggros, and still get him to that wall before the fear runs out. 4x Fiery Rush, dead. 100% success rate in preventing him leaping at all, assuming the war doesn’t screw up the Fear.

This is exactly why people complain about “zergburgers” bypassing boss mechanics. You really do set a great example for the rest of us! The best advice is to teach someone how to deal with the situation when things go wrong or you dont have a perfect group. That means dodge.

Anyway to answer the op. It probably is to do with terrain clipping. I witness it almost every day on abom in arah p2. Probably because he clips the rock when doing the leap. I always assumed it was lag or just an animation bug though. x)

A++ to this. We’re not scrubs, everyone knows how to FGS the thing into the ground and is happy to do that most of the time. Asking a question about the detailed mechanics of a boss is interesting and deserves a better response than “lol fgs.”

Thanks to OP for starting the discussion and others for the points. I’m learning something~

Jacklinger.2908:

When I join these “Zerker” parties, often they get one-shotted by bosses and I’m the only one left standing, then I sometimes solo the boss and they STILL blame me for not being in full zerker gear! It’s like an irony sandwich.

Photoloss.4817:

And how you glitch the spider isn’t important, fact is you can completely negate a massive area denial attack the fight is built around without much learning, personal skill or preparation. At the current state of the game it’s pretty much impossible to tell apart intended design from oversights or even outright bugs, but at least the Fyonna example was rectified in the Aetherpath, which locks the arena once you enter.

Yeah, I love glitching Lupi by staying out of range so he can’t kick me and one-shot me that way. Totally haxorz to recognize that some attacks are only done at certain range.

Photoloss.4817:

many don’t even want to be.

This is fine. But when people ask for the “best” builds, GS isn’t going to come up because people actually are trying to do better. I don’t think anyone disagrees that GS is fine for casuals (as is pretty much everything except Torch).

And please, Spider Queen? You can trivially get the same effect by standing inside of her, the wall stack is just a simpler way of making sure your pug stays near her.

Your turn, Sandy!

absolutely insane. crazy that the first encounter was amongst the hardest!