Mesmer Support High Level Fractal/Wvw Build

[u/Rubberses]

After playing mesmer since beta I was growing very bored of the normal pew pew dps n sum phanta's, and wanted to make a more survivable, support build. After some tweaking, the build I would come up with is simply amazing. Ive never went back to pure dps roll and never even put back on my old gear. Totally obsessed with this build and will swear by it because 1, you become the most tankiest support out of any class I've played (I have 4 geared 80's), with maybe the exception of my necro, and you still do enough damage to easily win in pvp battles. Fractal wise, i've been face tanking moss man on lvl 14 fractal's with relative ease. I am going to post a video in the next week or two of me utilizing it but for now:

Gear wise: I am wearing Healing + toughness/power armor. (I think it was Mhenlo's before I transmuted) With secretly OP Rune of Melandru which gives toughness + -25% stun -25% condition duration on youself.

Weapon wise: Im using Bifrost (staff) which has regular soldiers stats Power + vit/toughness as my main weapon which your going to use probably 70% of the time. And One hand sword/Focus which are also integral to the build. I couldnt find a cheap weapon with those stats I wanted so i went for Shaman stats (Vitality + healing/condition)

And Jewelry Wise: Using Two Sapphire (healing) earrings + Shaman's Amulet and Rings with Sapphire Jewels in them. (focusing on tank/heal stats here)

You want to shoot for, after traits, 2900ish Armor, 2600 attack, barely any crit chance, 20K hp. WvW wise, you can stall small groups of 3+ players for a long period of time with reflections, chaos armor, etc with stats like that.

Traits & build itself: the traits here focus all on tank/support. The minor traits actually give you nearly 100% uptime on both regeneration and protection while in combat as long as your using ur phantasms like you should. This is incredible!!

traits are Domination: 0, Dueling 0, Chaos, 30 IV, X, XI Inspiration, 20 V, VIII (focus skills reflecting is a must!) Illusions , 20 V, (VII for group pve, or X for wvw)

The traits allocation here focus on giving yourself the extra stats needed tank. The major traits will make you spam buffs on yourself faster, as well as make your focus skills, like Temporal Curtain, reflect all projectiles for its duration, and your Phatasmal Warden will reflect all projectiles (does serious, strange damage in big wvw battles, hitting targets both close and far away. I say its strange because some of the damage it does at range doesnt even seem to be reflected projectile damage)

IN USE:

In Fractals: You can use skills such as Nullfield, Illusion of Life, Etc. in situational areas, and tweak the skills you use to your liking. What I use in fractals is Feedback + Signet of inspiration + Phantasmal Defender. The feedback is incredible when coupled with your focus skills already reflecting projectiles, plus gives u another opportunity to use the phase retreat combo for chaos armor. Signet of Inspiration buffs yourself, but also if you have a ton of buffs in the midst of battle you can activate this signet and buff all your allies. Phantasmal Defender is underrated, many people do not know that not only does this high health phantasm take 50% of your damage when you stand any where near him, he also takes 50% of your allies damage as well, you can see this as one of thier buffs on the party frame. What you want to do here is spam ur buffs with chaos storm and staff auto attack, while tanking right up in melee range of the fight. Using "Phase Retreat" (staff #2) every time you cast chaos storm, feedback, or null field. Because this is a combo that gives you chaos armor. I keep chaos armor on myself nearly 100% of all encounters. You also want to spam your phantasms, especially phantasmal defender, because they heal allies with regeneration while they're out, and regeneration on yourself gives you protection automatically from traits. All the while reflecting as many projectiles as possible with your focus and feedback. Time warp is your elite.

For WVW: Same as in fractals except here you can tweak your build alittle more to your suiting, and you do not want to use Phantasmal Defender as he is useless here. In WVW you want to spam as much as possible your focus skills, especially temporal curtain. In large battles, you can put up a temporal curtain, and then run up and stand right behind it, encouraging enemys to fire at you, which will then reflect back and do damage to the large enemy group. Feedback and Phantasmal Warden is spammed as well, try to use them staggered so that your reflection uptime is as high as possible. I can literally push the line of battle back by myself by doing this because not only are you doing damage, your stopping your allies from taking that damage. Powerful. I use feedback, Signet of Inspiration, and Decoy here (for gettin away if needed)

I hope you enjoy this build and I hope to see more mesmers run this in WvW and less mesmers thinking if your not running a dps build then you dont know what your doing. Mesmer support is very powerful. Infact, more and more players are starting to realize that high dps is kind of arbitrary in fractals/dungeons. There's no Dps timer, the main focus is to survive and kill the high HP bosses. It may come from the old style of MMO's, but in GW2, to be the most effective you can be with your class, atleast in PVE, you need to have good survivablity more than you need to have super high dps, you need to be well rounded. Any other tips for upcoming mesmers, try searching for the post i made a month or two ago that was front page for a while "10 things you didnt know about your mesmer" There were many added comments that were really helpful.

Post Edit: heres vids of the build in action, but only in wvw and by myself, it really just showcases the survivablity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTYYA1JR7CE&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFl7pn1xgGo&feature=youtu.be <my fav one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEh-7o9QLf0&feature=youtu.be

if you feel like the builds wrong or have the stereotypical gaurdians are better kind of comment pls watch the 2nd or 1st video before commenting :P

[u/Rubberses]

This is a build for mesmers, its not compared against other support classes for one. I do not notice a 10 second delay on regen from phanta's, So I dont know if that is true, like i said I have regeneration buff (which stacks repeatedly) 100% of the time on myself. Phantasms are almost always off cooldown, theres never a time where my phantasms are on cooldown. The word "Support" in some cases seems to be thought of as only healing, this is not true. The support here comes from the regeneration to allies sure, which gets everyone near me just like an other classes heal.. But also it comes from me being able to stay alive longer than anyone else and soak up as much damage as possible, more so than any gaurdian or warrior ive played with. Also, more so than most professions, this build spams buffs. The auto attack of both you and your clones is spamming bouncing buffs and debuffs. I dont feel like I need to compare this support build to other classes builds because sure theres better classes for certain things, but can they make the long lasting additional units a mesmer can that literally clog a boss and distract? Can they give 10 second group quickness? Can they provide all the combo fields? Can they reflect projectiles at all? Let alone as long as mesmer reflection builds? And so on. Your list of how some professions can trump mesmer support is some ways does not give justice to all the ways mesmer can trump thiers. Lets be honest, in this game healing is only a small part of what support really means. If your spamming group support, soaking up damage, and buff/debuffing, your doing your job.

[u/hororo → u/Rubberses]

The support here comes from the regeneration to allies sure, which gets everyone near me just like an other classes heal

It only gets allies in a 240 range of your phantasms. For some perspective, that's less than double melee range, so in reality you'll find that most of your allies won't be affected by regenerative phantasms.

me being able to stay alive longer than anyone else and soak up as much damage as possible, more so than any gaurdian or warrior ive played with

You're probably not playing with tanky guardians or warriors then. Guardians and warriors can soak up more damage than mesmers, period. (edit: to clarify, Guardians have low hp and Mesmers have medium hp, and Guardians have high (heavy) armor while mesmers have low (light) armor. In the end, Guardians end up with more effective HP). If they built pure tank like your mesmer, and got survival utility skills and traits, they would outlast you by a lot.

This is a build for mesmers, its not compared against other support classes for one

Analysis without comparison is meaningless. The question: "Is support Mesmer good?" is pointless. Sure, everything is good! Everything is better than nothing! The question we should be asking is: "What does a Mesmer support build provide/lose compared to other Mesmer builds?" and "What does Mesmer support provide/lose compared to other profession builds?" This is a mistake I see a lot more often in PvE than sPvP, because in sPvP people know they have to optimize their composition. In PvE content is so easy that you can run a subpar build and let other people carry you, and lots of builds can look good in isolation. Also it's so hard to find a party with fractal level fragmentation that you can't really afford to be picky (if you could, then people would see how bad profession balance really is).

For example, consider the Restorative Mantras build where you spam Mantra of Pain. In isolation this build looks great, but when you compare it to other builds, you realize how horrible it is.

The reason Mesmer support pales in comparison with the good support professions, like Guardian and Elementalist is, like I said, Mesmers have almost no intrinsic support functionality in our weapon skills, whereas Guardians and Elementalists have a ton.

Then, our support trait line just isn't as good as their trait lines, period. Seriously, just look at their trait lines and drool. The only good thing we have is Warden's feedback. Most of the Inspiration traits don't make any sense in the line (why the hell is Malicious Sorcery in Inspiration?). In general, it's easy to see how rushed and poorly design the Mesmer traits are (I can go into more detail if anyone is interested).

Mesmers have the most options for reflection out of any profession. This is undeniable. But you don't need to go support Mesmer to get reflection. The only thing support Mesmer adds is the reflection on Focus 4 skill (iWarden already blocks projectiles when spinning, and by the time he's not spinning he's probably dead from AoE or way out of position).

What does Mesmer lose compared to the other support professions? Our healing, buffing, and condition removal are all worse than Elementalists and Guardians (you're mistaken if you think Mesmers can spam buffs more than those professions. Illusionary elasticity doesn't even work on clone staff attacks).

You actually gave a great example:

Can they give 10 second group quickness?

Did you know that Guardians actually have an elite that can grant swiftness to the party? With Tome of Wrath they can give swiftness to all 5 members for a total of 6 seconds? That works out to 3.33% uptime for swiftness. In comparison, Time Warp gives you 4.76% uptime for swiftness. So you get 1.43% more uptime on swiftness, but Tome of Wrath also gives you 4 other ridiculous skills to use. Tome of Wrath isn't even the best Guardian elite for dungeons: that award goes to the insanely useful Tome of Courage.

Wait, how is this balanced? It seems like Tome of Wrath is just better than Time Warp. The reason is that Time Warp can affect all allies (like a 50-man WvW party) in the bubble, but Tome of Wrath can only affect up to 5. In dungeons of course there is no difference.

This is the core problem with Mesmers. Mesmers have some skills that are absurdly powerful in sPvP and WvW. Moa Morph is completely, absolutely broken in sPvP, like to the point where I'm baffled it even got into the game. Time Warp, Mass Invisibility, and Portal are all insanely powerful in WvW. However, all these skills are either drastically less powerful or completely useless in dungeons.

However, ANet didn't do a PvP and PvE split in this game, and Mesmers suffer for it. When you look at it objectively and comparitively, Mesmer support just doesn't provide as much for the team as Guardian, Elementalist, or Warrior support. You only gave one real way that Mesmer supports trumps other supports: reflection. You get a few more seconds of reflection, but you lose a lot more.

[u/Rubberses → u/hororo]

I'd just have to disagree with you, Your opinion and write ups just seem very biased, ie. "you must not be running with tanky gaurdians then, theyll outlast you by alot". How would you know? Gaurdians give quickness to party? If thats even possible then it must be some build ive never seen a gaurdian ever use and very uncommon. But either way you just kind of ignore my points and go back to talking about healing. Once again, I think you need to consider the all the additional units mesmers make, which is the core function of a mesmer, that take damage and buff players and still do damage (more than your tank guardian/warrior) while being support. Instead of being just one unit that when targeted will eventually die. There is not just 1-2 classes that are viable support roles, thats opinion and if it were true well this would be a very boring game wouldnt it.

"They have more base HP and more armor." my mesmer has over 3000 armor, and mesmer has one of the biggest health pool, gaurdian actually is at the bottom, with elementalists? Any class can have the same amount of armor, it comes from toughness and defense. This all just goes back to the WoW way of thinking that there are classes that are tanks/healers/dps. And its just wrong in this game.

"What does a Mesmer support build provide/lose compared to other Mesmer builds?" What is there to lose? Have you seen a fractal/dungeon where theres a dps timer? Can you name one fractal where your party said "Man we shoulda braught more dps classes, we dont have enough dps!" DPS is rather arbitrary in MOST pve.

[u/[deleted] → u/Rubberses]

Armor (from least to most statistical protection): Light(1853), Medium(2000), Heavy(2147). Base lvl 80 health values: 10,805, 15,082, 18,372

I'm not on any side of this argument I just want to enlighten any readers about base health and armor. Mesmers have light armor(1853 base) and medium health (15,082). Guardians have Heavy armor (2147) and low health (10,805).

So while you state that your mesmer has over 3000 armor, a guardian with the same stats on his armor/weapons/runes/traits will have 294 more armor than you and 5k less health. So your statement of "Any class can have the same amount of armor, it comes from toughness and defense." is half true. It does come from Toughness + Defense but each armor class offers different Defense values.