9 replies to this topic

[Shadow209]

Hi, like the title says, I want to play my mesmer more and I think, I need a nwe build.
At the moment I runn a schatter build, using full berserker gear. I have lvl 80 exotic armor, rare weapons and my trinkets are useless (masterwork). So basically I'm a glass cannon, that does no damage.

I didn't finish my armor, because I lost my interest in playing as a mesmer and went back to my necro main.
But now I decided, to give my mesmer a try again, so I went into WvW and it's awesome, but in PvE a schatter build seems to be quite useless. While high bursts are pretty awesome in a PvP environment (and WvW is one, basically), I find it rather useless in PvE or, more specifically, dungeons. While one high burst can down a player it takes away only a little bit of the huge health bar, a boss has.

I've been playing dungeons with a lot of mesmers and everyone (including me) loves them. Especially Time Warp is awesome. I want to be one of these loved mesmers too, so I'm looking for a new build.

With my necro main, I hav a condition build with lots of toughness, so I want something else on my mesmer. I've been thinking about something llike huge DPS with a little bit of support capabilities. I think, glasscannon doesn't have a bad thing, one of my friends plays a glasscannon ranger and he doesn't really have that much problems in dungeons, so I'd like to give that a go, like I said, try something different, than my necro. The only thing is, I don't like schatter builds for dungeons. I see lots of people running around with greatswords, maybe GS/Staff, but I don't say, it has to be a GS/Staff build.

Would be nice, to get some suggestions, some builds that work in dungeons, so i can try out a few. Just no condition builds, because on my necro I have one already, and on my thief as wel, lol

Thanks in advance

[Obbdot]

I don't do sPvP at all. I do WvW mostly, but I do dungeons all the time with my mesmer. I've almost completed my dungeon master achievement. I farm 2-3 dungeons paths per day, of various dungeons. I've been to fractals lvl 21. I to a crapton of damage and rarely die, as the build is extremely though, thanks to a lot of evasion and vigor (more dodging) and the use of many clones to distract aggro.

It requires some practice to master properly, but once you'll get to it (it isn't that hard either), you'll learn to appreciate it lots.

I know you don't like shatter builds, but you might like this one.

The build is mostly around the sword and the focus and switching often to the staff. The information about the scepter is only there for when I run in WvW with necromancers, because of epidemic. The scepter can also be good against so too-though-to-tank bosses in some dungeons. But I can take most bosses with my sword anyway. The key is to observe very carefully the animations and dodge the attack when it comes or do sword #2 or shatter f4, which can both turn you completely invincible to almost all incoming damage and crowd control. More dodging, while being up close and personal, also means a lot more shatters. Every time you crit, you also gain vigor, keeping your dodge in large supply.

The only thing I'd change so far is the sigil of hydromancy on the staff. It's purpose is mostly WvW related, but it conflicts a lot with the cooldown from the sigil of fire. For the utilities, you can swap them around a lot depending on the dungeon you're in. When I need to cross the lava in CoF I'll go for some condition cure and stealth. I always have blink at any time. Best mobility + stun breaker in the game. Good to pop in or out of combat, either to burst damage with the sword or to save your skin or to port to someone in downed state to revive them fast. The staff is also best up close, for the bouncing attacks will buff you or your allies and you'll want dungeon creates to hit you to prop chaos armor. Chaos armor will be activated whenever you do a leap finisher in an ethereal field. Basically all your AOEs are ethereal field and both your sword and your staff boast one. The focus is extremely good for stacking creatures together in dungeons to AOE them away much faster. The focus #5 traited for reflection is also one of the best skills you can have in a dungeon.

The choice of runes and food buffs, and also sigil on the scepter are all done so for coupling with an epidemic necromancer. If you only want to do dungeons, replace allt he sigils and runes by something more suitable, like runes of Melandru or Mercy, both of which I love.

Carry a greatsword around for the Maw boss in the fractals, other wise its not really useful with this build.

The color formatting of the build is kinda bad, since I simply copy-pasted it from another forum on which I posted it. Not sure how to fix it. It's 5:30 AM anyway. If you do ctrl+a its already better.

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Armor :
6 pieces of Knight (Thoughness, Power, Precision)

Trinkets :
Coral (Rampager) Earrings
Ascended Rabid (Condition damage, Thoughness, Precision)* rings
*Not yet acquired, running with coral (rampager) meanwhile.

Backpiece :
Ascended Rabid (Condition damage, thoughness, precision)*
*Not yet acquired, running with exotic soldier with ruby jewel meanwhile.

Weapons :
Carrion Staff (Condition damage, Power, Vitality)
Rampager scepter, focus and sword (Precision, Power, Condition damage)

Sigil
- Scepter : Frailty (30% chances to apply vulnerability on crits)
- Sword : Flame (30% chances to apply flame blast AOE on crits)
- Focus : Accuracy (+5% crit chance)
- Staff : Hydromancy (freeze nearby foes on weapon swap)

Runes
- 2 Runes of the Lich (25 vitality, 4% condition duration)
- 2 Runes of Lyssa (25 precision, 10% condition duration)
- 2 Runes of the Mad King (25 power, 10% condition duration)

Traits

Dueling (200 precision, 20% crit damage)
5 - 5 seconds of vigor on critical hits, 5 seconds cooldown
10 (I) - The range of manipulation skills in increased
15 - Illusions inflict bleeding on critical hits
20 (X) - Create a clone at your current position on dodge (when in combat)

Inspiration (200 vitality, 200 healing)
5 - Grants retaliation to phantasm
10 (IV) - Cure a condition when using healing skill OR - (II) -20% cooldown on glamour skill (when portal bombing)
15 - Phantasm grant regeneration to nearby allies
20 (VIII) - Focus skills reflect projectiles. -20% cooldown on focus skills.

Illusions (250 condition damage, -25% shatter cooldown)
5 - Illusion summoning skills recharge 20% faster
10 (V) - Confusion lasts 33% longer
15 - All shatter skills inflict confusion
20 (IX) - Blinding foe inflicts confusion (scepter #2, trident #2 and chaos armor apply blind)
25 - Shattering illusions grant 3 stacks of might, 10 seconds cooldown.
30 (XI) - Shatter effect is applied on you as well.

Skills :

Healing : Eather Feast (Healing scales on the number of illusions, 20 seconds cooldown)

Utility :
1. Arcane thievery (manipulation) : Steal 3 boons and send 3 conditions. 1200 range (traited, otherwise 900), 40 seconds cooldown.
OR Portal (glamour), 72 seconds cooldown (traited), range is a radius of fully zoomed minimap.
2. Feedback (glamour) : create a bubble the reflects projectiles crossing it (whether its coming from inside or out), Ethereal combo field, 1200 range, duration 6 seconds, 40 seconds cooldown / 32 seconds cooldown (traited)
3. Blink (manipulation) : teleportation skill, 1200 range, 30 seconds cooldown.

Elite :
Mass invisibility. Invis up to 5 people for 5 seconds. (this one most of the times)
Time Warp. Quickness / Ethereal combo field for 10 seconds. Affects up to 10 people.

Crit Chance :
Without master maintenance crystal : 60% (including sigil of accuracy and ascended gear, forecast)
With master maintenance crystal : 66% (including sigil of accuracy and ascended gear, forecast)

Sigil proc rate (Frailty OR Flame) :

Without master maintenance crystal : .18
Probability of doing at least 1 proc over
1 hit : 18%, 2 hits : 32.8%, 3 hits : 44.9%, 4 hits : 54.8%, 5 hits : 62.9%, 6 hits : 69.6%

With master maintenance crystal : .198
Probability of doing at least 1 proc over
1 hit : 19.8%, 2 hits : 35.7%, 3 hits : 48.4%, 4 hits : 58.6%, 5 hits : 66.8%, 6 hits : 73.4%

Condition duration :
Any condition but confusion, without super veggie pizza : +24%
Any condition but confusion, with super veggie pizza : +60%
Confusion, without super veggie pizza : +57%
Confusion, with super veggie pizza : +93%

Food :
Master Maintenance Crystals : 6% of thoughness and 4% of vitality added as precision (30 minutes)
Super Veggie Pizza : +36% condition duration, 60 condition damage (30 minutes)

Underwater :
Knight Spear with Air Sigil (30% to do a lightning strike on critical hits)
Rampager Trident with Ice Sigil (30% to apply chill on critical hits)
Rabid masterwork water breather from Cursed Shore (costs around 1100 karma) with the same rune the helmet has.

N.B.: I made the mistake of not doing this, but you really should put your LEAST important rune on your helm slot, as it will disappear underwater. I put Lyssa on my helmet, as I should've put Lich. You want this, because when you go underwater and you have the basic breather on, you only lose 4% condition duration and not 10%. If you have the masterwork breather, on which you can apply an exotic rune, you want to apply again the cheapest rune (Lich), not the most damn expensive one (Lyssa).


--

If you really can't stand shatter (which are REALLY good in dungeons), you can try this one. It requires a sword, focus and staff too. It is more tankish and doesn't rely heavily on shatters at all. It uses more the staff than its shatter counterpart. It's also one of the best mesmer build I've seen for WvW too (even if you don't do much). I've done even more dungeoning with this second build than with the first one I'm posting. Vigors on crit are still there and it requires that you move around a lot when fighting. You can face-tank most boss in dungeons, provided you watch out for the animation. Still have a greatsword around for Twilight Arbor bosses and for the Maw in fractals.

Mesmer as a lot of great utilities. I use different utilities for different dungeons. Phantasmal disenchanter is fantastic in CoE all paths or HotW path 1 to rip the boons as they are applied without bothering to destroy buffing turrets, for example. Blink is a must have at all time. Feedback is too whenever you fight ranged opponents. I like a lot the signet that give random boons every 10 seconds and the other signet that extend boon duration, when I'm fighting certain bosses for which I don't really see the use of phantasms, arcane thievery, null field or feedback. I rarely ever use stealth utilities.

--

Weapon :
- Rampager or Carrion Staff. I use Sigil of Ice on this one. The one that does a chance to freeze on critical hit. I would also suggest tht one that does an AOE freeze upon weapon swap.
- Berserker sword & focus. I use the sigil of Flame on the sword (flame AOE blast on crits) and either that sigil taht gives endurance back on kill or on swap on the focus.

Armor :
Full soldier or knight. Soldier are good to mitigate condition damage. Knight is good to reduce raw damage. Considering my pet peeve is CD, I went full soldier. I use the runes of Mercy to help resurrect others faster and with more starting hits. This will make you in a very special way extremely tankish, along with your traits and fighting style.

Trinkets
Full berserkers or spiced with Cavalier ascended. I would recommend the Cavalier ascended (backpack, rings) only if you have chosen Knight gear, as you won't have enough precision otherwise. It is important to locate berserker items on the trinkets rather than on the armor, as the +critdamage% is under average on the armor pieces, but over average on the trinkets, while all other stats are distributed similarly.

Traits:
- Dueling 20 - IV - X.
- Chaos 20 - IV - X. (alternative, especially when defending a tower/keep wall : II - X, II being the reduced fall damage and generates a Chaos Field upon fall damage. Very useful.)
- Inspiration 30 - IV - VIII - XI (alternative, especially for commanders/support-focused : II - VIII - IX)
For inspiration trait line, the first suggestion gives you a large amount of condition removal, making you extremely hard to immobilize, cripple or freeze, therefore hard to catch. The second suggestion that relates more to commanders and support-oriented play, gives longer lasting and faster recharging Glamour skills. These include Portal and Feedback, two skills you might always have with you.

Healing:
Ether Feast - simply the best of the 3 choices. If you have trait inspiration IV, any healing skill will also remove a condition.

Utility skills:
.Blink - A must have. One of the best stun breaker in the game. Allows you to cover more distance when speed is important. Allows you to either dive in or jump out of a zerg or cross over AOE fields.
.Feedback
.Portal - Either for portal bombing or also to escape (if you put the portal down before charging somewhere). A rule of thumb to use the portal well is to zoom the minimap to maximum. If you drop the portal at the center of the zoomed minimap, the furthest point you can reach is the edge of your minimap. Since they increased by a lot the cooldowns, inspiration trait II will come in handy. Inspiration trait IX will make your portal last longer (as well as feedback), which is important if the people following you are not perfectly coordinated.

Elite :
. Mass Invisibility : Best elite skill for this build. Helps reaching deeper into the enemy zerg or again it helps to escape it. I use it mostly as a "gtfo" button.
. Time Warp : mostly useful when doing Golems rush. It makes their attack faster on the door of a tower/keep. Otherwise don't bother too much with it.


Style of play during combat :

Mostly run around with sword and focus on. Focus #4 gives you speed. Sword #3 will immobilize your target and blink you to it, allowing you to use more safely sword combo #2. Sword #2 is one of the best stationary melee skill in the game, as it makes you completely invulnerable to anything except ticking conditions you had prior to using it. If you have some illusions, you can shatter them with F4, giving you extra evade. You can cover your ass from projectiles with feedback or focus #5 (because of inspiration trait VIII). Focus #5 is often way better than feedback, as people don't realize that it reflects projectiles, and it is harder to see, while giving good raw damage as well. Berserker trinkets and Sigil of Flame will give nice boosts to your damage. Use blink often in a fight. If an ally knocks someone down, blink to the target and use sword #2. You can use focus #4 twice to generate your own knockdowns and crowd control.

Alternate often between sword and staff during a single fight. If you use staff #5 and then switch to sword and use #3, you will gain Chaos armor automatically (staff #4). Using sword #3 or staff #2 (or any Leap finisher) in any Ethereal combo fields (Null Field, Feedback, Time Warp, Chaos Field, etc.) will give you Chaos armor. By alternating staff #3 and staff #2 and staff #4 with your combo fields and with shatter F4 and sword #2 for evade, you can make it so that you have nearly at all times Chaos Armor or Evade buffs on you. Doing staff #2 or sword #3 in Fire fields will give you fire armor and in ice field will give you chilled armor. In light fields I think it does area retaliation, but I'm not sure.

Never forget to use staff #5 and focus #5 and feedback during fights, they will help you a lot. Plan ahead an escape to a fight by first dropping a portal before diving in. Make careful but frequent use of blink in both defensive and offensive ways (cooldown recharges kind of fast). Always keep a vast amount of illusions with you. Dodge all the time to generate them (try to time your dodge with enemy attacks as well). Stay close to guardians, water eles and elixir engineers. With these traits, every time someone applies regeneration to you, you also get a few seconds of protection. Shatter your illusion often. Use F4 shatter every time you want to stomp (finish off) someone. When defending a tower or attacking one, use focus #4 all to time to bring people down tower walls or to cast them down cliffs.

When played properly, this mesmer build is one of the "tankiest" thing I've ever seen. Not because it can take a lot of hits, but because it is just so damn good at avoiding damage entirely. It is both extremely mobile and fast.

Edited by Obbdot, 05 January 2013 - 10:57 AM.

[placerhood]

Shatter build works fine in dungeons too. If u wanna have some fun, you could go 20/20/0/25/5, keep your greatsword and sword+focus... aaaaaaand start doing some reflection - which is awesome with curtain and the warden! Trait the focus and reduction of glamour skills. You might even get Rune of Altruism since the regen on Phantasm is working now!

[Shadow209]

The 2nd build, Obbdot postet, seems interesting.

Just one thing: Knight's armor and Berzerker trinkets isn't optimal

Strife025, on 13 November 2012 - 09:52 PM, said:

As far as gear goes, a balanced between knights and berserker is based on the below stat comparison on what you lose per 1% of crit damage (credit to Reddit - paradiselight).
The tradeoff for 1% of crit damage is equal to:

• 5 stat points - upgrade slot of trinkets and backpack
  
• 10 stat points- traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
  
• 12 stat points - glove, shoulder and boots
  
• 12.8 stat points - 1H weapons and amulet
  
• 13.33 stat points - Earring
  
• 14 stat points - Backpack (rare version from guild armorsmith)
  
• 14.22 stat points - 2H weapons
  
• 14.4 stat points - Coat
  
• 16 stat points - Ring, helm and legging

What this means, is that my coat, ring, helm, and legs are knight pieces, and everything else (including jewels in knight rings) are berserker stats. This lets you balance some survivability with damage by losing the least amount of stats possible.

Edit for Fractals:
My rings are now Berserker stats (Crystalline and Red Ring of Death). I did not add anymore knight pieces to offset this since I find I still have the same survivability but more damage. The ratio for Ascended rings are very good and you only lose 8.6 stat points per crit damage % which is the second highest ratio outside of jewels.
/end Edit

Of course, this thread is about a Warrior build, so things might be different on a mesmer, but the info about crit damage vs. stat points apply to all classes.
Since I got a Cristalline Band and an exotic Soldier's backpiece dropped in the fractals (you can only buy rare ones), I'll be using these.

I really don't want to go into conditions too much, so I won't get +cond dmg. I've been thinking about berzerkers gear with as much knights as I need to survive.
This gear should also work quite well on schatter builds, so I can try out multiple builds without buying multiple sets of armor, maybe 1 or 2 pieces, so I can swap out berserkers and knights as needed.

[Impmon]

I made this build.  Seems to be fine in wvw & pve.

15/15/0/20/20

I use sword/pistol & scepter/focus

[Shadow209]

I won't use sword/pistol & scepter/focus, because I like having at least one weapon with 1200 range, when doing dungeons, which is either GS or Staff.

[Obbdot]

Inspiration IV and XI also makes the winged boss of the grawl fractals a breeze, if you've got agony resistance as well. Add null field in the mix and you don't ever worry about being burned.

[Shadow209]

I've been looking around a bit on other threads and I think, I'll try 20/20/0/30/0. I don't really know, what traits to select, I guess, I'll just have to try a them out. Weapons are Sword/??? & GS. For the OH weapon, I'll just carry a pistol, sword and focus around and switch them out as needed.

So this is the build at the moment.

First I wanted to go with 20/25/0/25/0, to get "confusing combatants", but after thinking about it a second time, Inspiration XI and XII both seem to be the better choice. According to this thread XII heals 1.124 HP on schatter, which is pretty nice (though the writer doesn't seem to know, how SI-prefixes work, no offense). XI could replace the condition removal utility, if I need the additonal slot is needed, though I prefer having a less selfish condition removal, like null field, as the whole group can profit from that.
That way I should be able to do a good amount of DPS and a little bit of support, using null field, feedback and the regen, granted by phantasms.

From what I understand, illusions include both phantasms and clones, so domination III (empowered illusions) should increase the damage done by phantasms. Does this stack up to 30% with phantasmal strenght? This trait wouldn't make sense, otherwise.

Should I use Phantasmal Disenchanter instead of null field? It has a lower cooldown and grants regen, since it's a phantasm. But on the other hand it can be killed, schattered or replaced by another phantasm.

And the last question: Does this build even make sense at all?

[placerhood]

Use the Focus, its awesome - especially if traited!

I personally prefer having Illusionists Celerity (Illusions 5) over full 30 points in inspiration... helps you with the cooldowns!

[Shadow209]

My plan it to switch between various OH weapons as needed. The focus is quite usefull, I agree on that, at the moment I'm using focus on myschatter build in WvW and for gathering, mainly for it's speed boost.

Not sure about Illusionists Celerity. I'd rather keep my Illusions up, than schattering them, so I don't need to spam them out.
It could be usefull, if I use phantasmal disenchanter and phantasmal defender, but I think, I'll use null field and feedback, these skills seem to be the glamour equivalent. I think, i shouldn't use too much illusions, since they are  limited to 3 at a time, this is slo the reason, I won't use deceptive evasion (dueling X).
Also points in Illusions provides cond dmg and schatter cooldown reduction, both doesn't synergize very well with this build.

I've even thought about putting only 10 points in dueling, to avoid bleeds from sharper images (dueling 15), as these weak bleeds could potentially override stronger bleeds from group members, that run condition builds, if the bleeding cap is reached.
The drawback is, that I have to sacrifice prec and crit, as well as duelist's discipline (dueling IX). However, if I put the 10 points into domination instead, I'd get +100 power in exchange. Or I get 25/10/0/30/5, since the greatmaster traits in domination aren't really that useful, so Illusionists Celerity could be a better alternative.

Edited by Shadow209, 06 January 2013 - 02:11 PM.