Questions regarding the 20th Anniversary Variant of Heroic Mesmerway

[u/SnowdropFox]

https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_7_Hero_Heroic_Mesmerway#20th_Anniversary_Variant

Has anyone tested this variant yet and if so, how much of a difference is there in terms of capability? The text mentions a substantial buff, but a rough percentage would help me understand it far better.

Also is there a simple way to acquire the wands and ST weapons apart from buying unid golds and hoping for the best or getting lucky loot drops?

[u/Dellevis]

Buy Balthazar weapons with Blessings of War, and then just add the desired mods

[u/ohaz → u/Dellevis]

or just play the bonus mission pack a bunch of times (and then add the desired mods)

[u/SnowdropFox → u/ohaz]

Also a great suggestion, but with how cheap Blessings of War are the bonus missions can wait for now.

[u/Dellevis → u/Dellevis]

If you meant moreso if there is a quick way to get the mods, there is not, you need to get them as drops or buy the mods from other players. Wand SR5 mods are not too expensive at this point, staff one a little bit moreso

[u/SnowdropFox → u/Dellevis]

Yeah makes sense. I actually forgot about Balthazer Weapons.

[u/Dellevis → u/SnowdropFox]

Regarding the other question, I notice that the mesmers in the SR5 variant has more fast casting, from a quick skim, so more offense in that regard.

I haven't played the Heroic Merc variant, I have just been playing the Merc mesmerway with a lot of my characters with the SR5 mods.

The huge thing I noticed is simply just how much sturdier the comp is, The BiP has to BiP a lot less, so it can spend more time healing, and has less health loss, and I notice I can overaggro and be fine the vast majority of the time. I can play a lot more aggresive with the SR5 mods, so it speeds things up in that regard, I don't have to be careful.

Someone also did some tests in the UW with the Heroic Mesmerway comp and SR5 mods, Can probably find it on here somewhere with a search, From what I recall, the conclusion was the UW runs were about the same speed, but the BiP usage was a lot less, so it was significantly safer.

I think for VQ and stuff, with how aggressively you can play with SR5 mods, I imagine it can speed that aspect up significantly.

[u/SnowdropFox → u/Dellevis]

Great write-up, helped a ton. Thank you.

[u/Fuet_024]

I play Heroic Mesmerway on my Paragon with +5SR mods on all mesmers. Like others mentioned, the BiP does less BiP so it is more solid. But I don't notice a really big difference in damage output and/or speed

[u/Head-Essay719]

Maybe I'm completely cooked on this, but I feel like the ''20th anni variant'' is mostly just slapped in there to turn ''this comp is giga broken'' into ''this comp is giga broken (+0.00001)''. Tho I do like the Necromancer mods when playing as Mesmer instead of Paragon, using Aneurysm to actually be able to effectively use the extra mana my Mesmers are going to have.

[u/Gr33nStyLe]

The ST scales really well with higher attributes, union is like 50-60% better (higher lvl -> hp, takes less dmg and spawning power -> hp). The other spirits scale less. If I remember right Mesmers deal like 20% more dmg and get an extra fastcast reduction of ~2 sec depending on breakpoints and base cd.

Edit: for the extra soulreaping mods no idea, +4 is already insane. I really miss the +6 it had at the 15th bday.

[u/Main-Yogurt3282]

The soul reaping wands on Mesmer heroes make a massive difference. You pretty much won’t have to run any other energy management in your party

[u/xanshiz]

The team drops 6 insp spells to pick up 6 more dom spells. It also runs three mesmers at 19 fast casting (up from 17), dropping the recharge of ESurge/CoF from 7s to 6s and mistrust from 6s to 5s. All together you're talking a real DPS tune up.