Guild Wars 2

Dawdler.8521:

Whenever I look at my Mesmer I think “Man, that’s just so manly! And faaaaaaabulouuuuuuus!!!”

The fact that you would use such fugly holographic dragon wings and the radiant set with such a beautiful bifrost makes me cringe, no offense.

But it is kinda fabulouuuus.

Necromancer is good for dungeons, either conditions if youre the only one applying them, or a power deathshroud build that applies tons of vulnerability and even weakness, supporting the team by applying conditions rather than buffing allies.

I love mesmer to death but it probably has one of the lower dungeon DPSes. Mesmer DPS itself is low, but burst provided by phantasms and shatters, (phantasms more so than shatters right now) is quite high. The only issue is they die a lot and some aren’t very good against moving targets. AoE wise mesmers are fine, between sword cleave, GS phantasm, focus phantasm, and the staff as a whole their AoE damage is fine. Phantasm builds probably won’t get nerfed becuase the class already had the 20/20/0/25/5 phantasm build of supreme power nerfed (illusionist’s celerity).

Thanks for answering my questions. I’m confident that they will drop so I won’t be as distraught. Now I’m more concerned that T6 mats and lodestones will become cheaper. I just hope that ascended armor wont be timed to disrupt the economy like the ascended weapon announcement kind of did.

Hmm, and the be perfectly honest, for many legendaries, including meteorlogicus with its new effects, I doubt that Anet can actually make more beautiful/cool/interesting new legendaries. For focus, rifle, and sword though, I think the new legendaries will be more interesting or sought after.

Just so you don’t go bankrupt, use koi cakes over rare veggies pizzas like someone said to use. Koi cakes are like 87 copper and Rare veggie pizza is 8-9 silver, for the same effect but for 20 minutes instead of half an hour.

You’re welcome

Ahhh my bad OP. I forget that people care about spvp despite its lack of any progression. I can see how that would be bad in spvp, but in WvW its almost a requirement for condition builds. Even in spvp it could work for hotjoin, but I guess in tournament play it could be an issue. The phantasm on torch isn’t useful for confusion but useful for removing conditions (when traited) as with stealth, but the burn is a major source of burst-condition.

Hahaha go to the ele forums if you want to see people talk about a nerfed mess, its like a suicide hotline in there.

Really mesmer is one of the more viable WvW classes in my opinion due to synergy and utility. Whether portal, timewarp or AoE invis and reflect, they do well while either doing decent burst or condition damage. You don’t have to be a tanky warrior or guardian to be viable in wvw.

@OP Osicat’s condition build with sword/pistol (and scepter/torch) is probably the most viable perplexity build, maybe even with mantra of stunning/dazing (forget the name). A GS would be an awful idea for a condition-confusion build.

The AoE cap should be 5, they should stack if the same effect is applied, they will be affected by condition duration, and the radius I don’t know but 240 seems likely.

With scepter auto you can spam clone death and still get the effects from the traits triggering I believe.

Seems like a decent condition build. A couple weaknesses straight off is that not taking deceptive evasion will probably hurt you as you will probably rely on staff clones for general AoE conditions (and the scepter/pistol for burst condition).

The meta condition build relies on synergy between stealth and the torch offhand to deal condition damage while staying alive. Malicious Sorcery isn’t really a needed trait, when things could be put more into chaos, domination or even illusions for the utility they provide.

atheria.2837:

Leviathan.7459:

Hey I’v heard about Mesmer getting a lot of praise so i was thinking about making one. I just have one small problem. This may seem really silly but, isn’t it kinda… girly? I’m afraid of getting laughed at or something for being a male Mesmer.

Some can put up a build here, but none will help if the builds are overwhelmed by those who can pull down 1500 versus our 600 hits.

PvE, only Ranger is easier.

WvW, get a WvW build and stay with the group.

PvP, you need at the very least an ELE or Ranger for a pal.

Haha the OP is concerned with how others would judge him rolling a male character for a professions that seems girly because of all the purple and pink beams, effects, and butterflies, not with how they would perform in each of the game modes. Its an online game, only idiots and trolls would judge you for something so trivial.

I’d say mesmers are one of the harder classes to play well. In PvE, mesmer DPS is bad, but phantasm DPS is high, so you’ll rely on izerker, iwarden, iswordsman, iwarlock, or ipistol to deal burst damage, meanwhile supporting the team through reflects and whatnot.

In WvW mesmer is as strong as the thief for roaming, and potentially stronger depending on the skill level of the player. Of course mesmers don’t try to instagib others as many backstab basilisk thieves do. Thats why mesmer is more about dueling in outthinking your opponent and timing your bursts when your enemies defenses are down. This applies to PvP as well, but phantasm builds (slightly nerfed) can still tear things apart 1v1. I really like condition-stealth builds in WvW, do to being tanky and having good sources of burst-condition application, as in applying many stacks of a condition in an instant (iDuelist bleeds, torch burn, scepter torment/confusion).

Even with my only basic understanding of macroeconomics (taking intermediate this fall), I know that eventually expected inflation will fall, causing prices to return to “normal”. Expected inflation may be part of the price increase now, with all the crazy speculation going on.

Hmm I’ll try out pistol too. Its disadvantage (or advantage) is that the iduelist stacks way more bleeds, which could mess up the DPS of condition builds in the party, or just contribute a little bit of extra damage in the long run.

Phantasms deal all the burst really, and so few encounters will actually have you at 1200 range the whole time, which is why I see a weakness in greatsword.

I dislike Greatswords for anything other that trash or loooooong range fights in PvE, since the phantasm deals all the damage to be honest.

I much prefer scepters and will probably craft meteorlogicus for my mesmer when I acquire sufficient funds (I play condition builds a lot in pvp/wvw). In PvE you can still use sword/focus for melee and AoE, and then use scepter/sword against bosses for the iswordsman burst and and ranged auttoattack that probably doesn’t deal much less DPS than the GS. Plus the 2 blocks are nice for when you gain aggro, and the confuse ray is okay as well. Probably a 10/30/0/30/0 or 10/30/0/0/30 build, with mostly zerker and valkyrie gear. What do you guys think?

@RedCobra, I wish I had your problem. World Exploration is probably the easiest part of making a legendary lol, yet you have everything else. You just need to be systematic and focus and do it! Its actually relatively fun. WvW is the toughest part for sure if youre on a sucky server.

Valkyrie is generally the training wheels for berserker, and gives slightly less DPS but more health, making you slightly more defensive, but without messing with your DPS all that much.

Most mesmer damage comes from phantasms or shatters. Definetly be full or mostly zerker/valkyrie for PvE.

For WvW full zerker will get you killed, so having cavalier, knight’s, and valkyrie pieces and trinkets mixed in will be best for that mode. Unless you go with conditions for WvW, where you’ll want to be full or mostly rabid.

Market speculation and everyone making legendaries is kittening up the market.

My advice: farm ALL of the world bosses each day for a week and salvage them, you should be able to get most of your ectos that way, and for free.

Many of you say that the reason for precursor’s rising in price is due to speculators buying them up and flipping them, which seems pretty apparent and possible to those with foresight and enough starting gold to do so.

As a player that hasn’t played from launch, I feel somewhat behind all the people who either can churn out legendary weapons within a month of work, or have enough gold and flip event items, precursors, etc, to such extent that they will never need or really even want any more gold. But whining aside, what do you guys think will be done to alleviate this.

I can only imagine that craftable precursors will be able to either fix the market or provide an easier way of acquisition, assuming that they don’t need 5000 powerful bloods lol. I hope that their crafting price will be alleviated by being time gated, which I am fine with. My goal is to get a legendary by december (probably meteorlogicus or quip), when I will have had the game for a year, only taking one month long break when I went to turkey in april. I really hope that prices will have settled by then, as the speculation price rise should waver..

So what are your thoughts?

Vol, do you think the precursor prices, for Storm, and other precursors will fall eventually?

As a player that hasn’t played from launch I feel very behind everyone else in terms of acquiring legendaries and whatnot, which is only a problem if I make it my problem.

I have 150 gold to my name, and no idea how to make it count.

I feel kinda pathetic I even posted this. Something so great and valuable should be earned, not handed to. I’m sorry to everyone who rolled their eyes when reading this, its depressingly hard trying to get a legendary, and with the rising T6 mat and precursor prices, I feel like I’ll never get a legendary.

If I knew how to delete this thread I would, but I do not know how to.

People often say that mesmer is one of the lowest DPS professions. Besides getting all berserker gear, what is the best way to alleviate this problem?

I have level 80s of both of these classes but I honestly can’t decide which one I’d like to main. Both professions have great utility through either stealth or portals/reflect, and I originally found power mesmer boring in pve, but the condition builds seem like a blast for pvp/wvw, although I have 0 rabid gear for him right now.

My thief currently is a carrion wvw P/D build, and I’m slowly acquiring a zerker set for PvE for her. What do you guys think would be the best class to devote my money and love to? I’ll eventually get a legendary for this class and ascended weapons and whatnot, so I really need help deciding!

I really like your build. I run a P/D perplexity thief myself.

I run 10/0/30/0/30 for stealth and steal traits, since I typically use steal’s traited daze for interrupts, boon removal, and applying poison.

Right now I run D/P in the offhand for more poison and headshot, but I think having P/P in the offhand would perform better simply due to keeping the bleed pressure while having the blinds and interrupts ready.

Well with ascended weapons coming out, it may be very difficult to acquire them. Getting exotics (the current top tier) weapons and armor is fairly easy, either by buying with dungeon tokens, wvw badges, TP, crafting, or karma vendors in orr.

Ascended trinkets are also very easy to get. You can get an amulet for 30 laurels (or 20 laurels+250 wvw badges). Rings are fairly easy to get from level 10+ fractals, and can be bought using laurels/badges as well. The accessories will either require a guild that does missions, in which case you can probably earn one per month, while the back piece will cost a lot of gold to craft, or ascend from the ones bought with 1300+500 fractal tokens.

So don’t forget about it! The ascended weapons and backpieces are merely harder to get because many predict a severe price increase in the mats required to craft them.

Zaxares.5419:

Can the Desert Rose skin still be obtained? I thought it’s no longer possible to get it from playing Southsun Survival.

I honestly do not know. All I know is I bout it for 2 gold, and just now sold it for 7.5 gold.

My only regret is that I didn’t spend all my money on the desert roses when they first came out, then I could have had 300-400 gold right now.

With next weeks patch introducing new SAB skins, its unclear whether or not the old skins will return as drops/bauble rewards, or if they will only be available on the TP, in which case their price will rise as people will want matching skins and whatnot.

I want the shortbow and sword skins. Would it be best to buy these now? Or later when we know more but risking either a price increase or decrease.

Good idea. We should also not have any more Legendary GSes, they already have 2 that can be combined, so all the others should get similar treatment.

I have both a level 80 thief and mesmer. The Thief I run a condition P/D set up, and mesmer I left as a shatter build, but I’m getting the urge to buy a ton of rabid gear and reexplore mesmer with conditions.

Which of these classes do you think would be a better main for WvW roaming and dungeons (obviously non condition build setup)?

Mesmer was my first main, but I grew bored with it and leveled an ele, necro and thief, and all of them other than necro seem fun to play, but I’m not sure which one I should main, I scrapped ele simply because its hard to deviate from water/arcane builds.

The desert rose skin could be bought for 2 gold during the event, and now costs 7-8 gold on the TP. People don’t really play much southsun survival anymore, so the influx of new skins is lower, so the price climbed.

So I’m getting the vibe that the SAB skins this time around will be too much of a risk to invest in. Which is sad since the desert rose skins and wind catchers from july were veritable gold mines.

Honestly D/D ele would be very bad against S/D thief due to the predictable attacks and boon dependency. A Scepter/Dagger ele in an air burst set up would be a better matchup against in S/D thieves and in Tpvp in general becuase lightning strikes are instant and can be timed in between evades.

Hi a question,

how will the magic find removal be compensated for celestial stat gear?
Will we all the stats be boosted to compensate, or will they remain as is, just with the MF removed?

Hi all!

I was in a foreign country during the first super adventure box release and never got to play it or watch the economic position of the super skins over time.

For those experienced with the first round of skins, do you think a situation will unfold with the new skins where during the month of september they are cheaply priced at 2-3 gold, but rise after september to 10-20 gold due to a drainage of supply and (hopefully) constant demand?

I’m interested in this topic because many peoplemake money off flipping event items months later when their prices go up. I’m interested if the mechanics for acquiring these skins will make this investment strategy a worthy proposition or not.

I’m aiming this post towards the people who are sitting on thousands of gold, and buy thousands of event items like wind catchers or desert rose skins to maintain their great amount of in game wealth buy selling them months after that event, which does require work, luck, and most importantly strategy in its own. If I get a chance I will attempt to do the same as them with the money I do have from playing the game and living story as a normal person. I don’t think theres anything wrong in asking for help out of the blue, because you never know what can happen, even though I don’t expect anyone to help me out just because of this post, but I don’t want to leave any opportunities unexplored. I don’t want to sound entitled, I merely wish to put myself out there in case I get lucky by someone really wealthy and generous ingame reading this. Its not all that different than getting lucky with a precursor drop. I mean this is the players helping player forum, people can ask for whatever help they want and people can help them if they desire to, but in no ways are people obligated to do so and judging ones character based on just asking for help is a bit insensitive in my book. I’m putting my thoughts and wishes out to the universe so to speak and if I’m lucky, I may get what I desire, which is essentially the Law of Attraction that many people believe in.

And for the records I don’t smoke cigarettes or do any type of drugs lol, so I will try to take your budgeting advice to heart

Well our stats correspond to the weapon equipped in the active hand, and change as the weapon is swapped if that weapon has a different stat combo, so eles and engis will be absolutely fine.

Well if you read the preview announcement, this patch is only having ascended weapons introduced and artificer/huntsman/weaponsmith raised to 500, so dungeon tokens will still be useful for armor!

Tribio.8531:

nearlight.3064:

That being said, I understand the importance of working towards a legendary

Please indulge me.. Why oh why do you HAVE TO get a legendary?

I can’t be kitten with those legendaries, tbh.. Too much RNG, nothing to do with skills, …

When I said that I didn’t mean I HAVE to get a legendary. I was merely responding to one of the comments by saying that if you want a legendary you do have to either be lucky or work your kitten off for it, or both.

First of all I never ask people ingame or in map chat for help. I have a limited amount of time to play, being a college student with limited money to even buy gems.

That being said, I understand the importance of working towards a legendary, but my aquaintances got help with theirs all the time, sometimes by me just giving them 50 gossamer bolts, or in my other case my friend using his and his friends money to mystic forge dawn (he needed dusk) which he sold, and has someone to fund the other half of his precursor. While these guys are my friends, I don’t feel like they’d be welling to help me right now anyway, as the activities to make gold means I can’t wvw wit them as much, and they’re al busy with projects such as the aforementioned one.

Also with the Invasion I’m not getting game breaking levels of gold, as I’m not gonna sell any T6 mats, and lodestone drops from champ bags are rare for me, maybe 1-2gold per event if even.

Te mega wealthy of this game will probaly never need any more gold. I don’t think its a problem if they were generous to others, even those they don’t know, almost like an act of charity.

Well Daecollo I will admit that you are right, and of course formerly maining a necro, I know all about life blast. It’s also the autoattack for Death Shroud, making deciding to create traits for it easier than a skill one can use in a more limited fashion, whether cooldowns or initiative.

Hello people of GW2! I’m in the arduous journey of crafting Quip, the legendary pistol on my thief. Right now I have my mystic clovers and the gift of mastery. I know many people who frequent the forums have more gold than they’ll ever need, but flipping thousands of event items that only drop for a month.

If anyone has more gold than they know what to do with, I’d greatly appreciate any help anyone could send. I’ll accept both gold and T6 mats, and even orichalcum, gossamer, and T3-4-5-6 wood (gifts of wood and entertainment). If theres any other thing you would want in return for your help, let me know and I’d be glad to do so, like if you wanted to regularly run dungeons or fractals or anything like that

Thanks in advance, and feel free to comment or message me ingame about anything. I know this post may open itself to trolls, but I thought I’d like to see how far asking politely could get me

A nice idea, but Anet doesn’t really make traits overly specific to certain specific skills. Traits tend to go towards a whole slot of weapon skills, a family of utility skills or sometimes the profession mechanic skills. An individual weapon skill wouldn’t likely be traited, since it excludes any build that uses offhand pistol over dagger and whatnot.

I agree largely with the SPVP section. There needs to be some sort of rewards for it to be worth more players time.

It would really be a nice addition to P/D builds! Then I wouldn’t be pressured to go 10 into DA for poison on steal.

Trickery is my favorite thief traitline because there are just so many interesting traits available. The improvements to steal are very useful, as is Riccochet and uncatchable for condition builds.

Critical strikes on the other hand feels kind of boring other than the grandmaster traits on power builds.

Lol @Better Luck Next Time. I’m run a confusion P/D thief on kaineng so I’ve gone against people from SOS and BLT..

Its a strong condition build, and to beat it 1v1 you need to outstealth it, since If you stealth before it can, it wontbeable to CnD unless theres a nearby mob/pet/ambient/towerwall.

In D/P every skill is extremely useful. In D/D skills 3 and 4 are only occasionally useful. That should tell you all you need to know.

What is even worse is being unable to see the cooldowns of your heal/utilities whilie in Deathshroud as a necromancer, and being unable to see DS skill CDs outside of DS.

Pick up a lightning hammer (or fiery GS if the boss is pushed against a wall) and possibly S/D for might and fury stacking (30/0/0/20/20), and complain no more my child.

You have a pretty decent build! The only things I would change are that Caltrops>>>Venoms. Venoms are poorly implemented right now and I wouldn’t invest in them or use them when you can pick another stunbreaker or Caltrops. The only other thing I would change is the runes, since Nightmare runes aren’t really that great. Most condition thieves use a 3X afflicted/krait runes, but I use perplexity runes with D/P in offhand and daze on steal for interrupts. Traitwise make sure to get condition removal in stealth.

I personally usually run 0/0/30/10/30

For accessories, using come settlers or apothecary gear goes a great way towards improving your sustain through stealth, my build heals for 400 per second in stealth on top of 167 HP signet of Malice Ticks.

Oh and don’t listen to Zepiedel, he tells everyone that zerkers the only viable gear choice. I posted a video to a P/D thief owning in WvW on one of my earlier threads about P/D thief and he didn’t reply.

One thing I’ve noticed is to pull them out of their supply crate radius when they use it. Most of the times I’ve lost to an Engi is when they drop a supply crate on my head and I’m too bold to not tactically retreat.

Probably full berserker’s if youre skilled enough.

I’d use S/P for trash and then D/P or D/D for bosses. With shorbow in the offhand for ranged.

Make sure to use smokescreen since projectile blocks are very useful in fractals like the dredge and harpy fractals, and shadow refuge is great too.

For traits I’d go full into critical strikes for execution, and I feel like the rest should go into SA and Acro for surivability, but thats personal preference really.