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Is GreatSword Viable ?


waxx.3619

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It's too build dependant, you almost can't play greatsword without taking domination line. That's why I can't say if GS is good or not but I can tell you this: power mesmer of any kind is currently pretty bad in wvw.

I think some fractal/raid builds use GS but the main choice is sword or axe.

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Talking about PvP but this can be extanded in WvW.GS lack temporisation or mobility when you compare it to global meta weapons on every class.0.5 sec evade on 3 should do all the difference for example.Mean not even looking at ranger GS who just have everything, when you look at gard GS for example it gives damage + mobility + a CC where mesmer GS only gives damage and a CC.Even comparing to distance weapon like ranger bow, they have a stealth sustain tied in.So IMO GS lack either a sustain option or a mobility option to compete with other meta weapon.Now in WvW GS is the only ranged pressure we have.

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Please don't use it in fractals unless you can't melee on sword. Damage in PvE is essentially from the phantasmal berserker and that's it , mirror blade is more for might. In addition because power clones do more or less no damage, having ranged clones means they take longer to get to your target when shattered.

In WvW it only became used when some people were wanting ranged power pressure with portal/veil/null field; it's underwhelming overall as targets hit is lower than revenant hammer and staff weaver cleaves with fireball. The advantage is you don't get reflected. Phantasmal berserker is not very reliable and mind stab had its boon rip removed.

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As others have said don't use it in fractals or raids.

In WvW it's probably fine as a poke when running with zergs, split surge on mirage can (inconsistently) help secure kills. But in Skirmishes and sPvP it's your best power burst weapon... Except it demands you to be melee with a ranged weapon that has no substantial defense. (which is another double standard from other classes; Thanks A-net.)

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In wvw what viq said.It has damage and range, and weak CC.Counterparts of other classes have same if not more damage, better CC and usually some tools to survive built in, like evade/teleports/blocks/stealth.GS is kinda lacking in that aspect, but its the best option we have anyways.For pve, Fractals its a really good weapon, GS4 is the best power skill for trash mobs, along with quick clone gain from GS2+shatter. For fractal bosses power chrono is OK.If you like it, and are good with it you will do wonders and have nothing to worry about in fractals, its just harder to use then other classes, you gonna have to put in extra effort to reap the same rewards other get for free.

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In WvW, it's still one of the most effective weapons at 100-0ing relatively squishy people instantly with its trademark mirror blade -> mind stab -> mind wrack combo backed up by mantra of pain all at melee range (when properly executed it does 20k+ damage in under a second). The problem is, if you want to have any impact on a skirmish, then you have to dedicate your entire build to that combo cause everything it does beside that burst is lackluster. That means full berserker gear with at least domination and dueling traitlines equipped and either scholars, pack or fireworks runes. Along with mantra of pain, stealth utilities such as mass invis and decoy/signet of midnight is a must to reliably land the gs burst. Trust me, the moment you start delving into defensive options such at vitality/toughness gear or even going for marauder stats, the gs will fail to provide decent results.

Burst hard, burst fast, and most importantly, burst first my friend!

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@K THEN.5162 said:In WvW, it's still one of the most effective weapons at 100-0ing relatively squishy people instantly with its trademark mirror blade -> mind stab -> mind wrack combo backed up by mantra of pain all at melee range (when properly executed it does 20k+ damage in under a second). The problem is, if you want to have any impact on a skirmish, then you have to dedicate your entire build to that combo cause everything it does beside that burst is lackluster. That means full berserker gear with at least domination and dueling traitlines equipped and either scholars, pack or fireworks runes. Along with mantra of pain, stealth utilities such as mass invis and decoy/signet of midnight is a must to reliably land the gs burst. Trust me, the moment you start delving into defensive options such at vitality/toughness gear or even going for marauder stats, the gs will fail to provide decent results.

Burst hard, burst fast, and most importantly, burst first my friend!

sad part is that it only works against other glass cannons, if you meet a necro with some toughness you gonna burst for 50-60% hp and thats it.and let me tell you other builds with wreck you, had rangers hit me for over 6k rapid fires, PER SHOT, thats 60k+ dmg from one ability, feelsglasscannonman

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:sad part is that it only works against other glass cannons, if you meet a necro with some toughness you gonna burst for 50-60% hp and thats it.and let me tell you other builds with wreck you, had rangers hit me for over 6k rapid fires, PER SHOT, thats 60k+ dmg from one ability, feelsglasscannonman

I feel that! It's always nice to get outplayed by a ranger that pressed (the unevadable) sic-em and rapid fire from more that 1500 range! I wouldn't exactly say they have to be completely glass themselves to be 100-0ed as there's a lot of ways to increase the base burst damage such as activating the diversion shatter before your mirror blade/mantra of pain charge hits to increase damage from the Superiority Complex trait or throwing in a weapon swap to proc a sigil of hydromancy. You're by no means deleting a trailblazers scourge or minstrel firebrand, but you can definitely throw out enough firepower to burst through a full marauders reaper or a full trailblazers thief from time to time!

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Update: I am level 35 now, Did quite a few WvWvW by now. My Server is OK since WvWvW is mostly zergfest anyway. But so far the damage seems so low compared to others. But then again I am low level. Hopefully it picks up a bit more at 80 with atleast exotic gear

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@waxx.3619 said:Update: I am level 35 now, Did quite a few WvWvW by now. My Server is OK since WvWvW is mostly zergfest anyway. But so far the damage seems so low compared to others. But then again I am low level. Hopefully it picks up a bit more at 80 with atleast exotic gear

And boom! It never did even on lvl 80 hehe. Game of thrones ending right there.

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Regarding open field fights in WvW, most well designed builds are viable. Especially greatsword mesmer due to the AoE.

Closed spaces, well I hope you have enough experience to not get oneshot as mesmer. Nullfield+illusion of life+blink+gravity well, Id say.

I do have to warn you that not many people are able to make mesmer work in this WvW meta. It is hard to survive on despite having quite a bit of boon removal, CC and ress ability. All other classes have ways to sustain themselves.

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@Threather.9354 said:Regarding open field fights in WvW, most well designed builds are viable. Especially greatsword mesmer due to the AoE.

Closed spaces, well I hope you have enough experience to not get oneshot as mesmer. Nullfield+illusion of life+blink+gravity well, Id say.

I do have to warn you that not many people are able to make mesmer work in this WvW meta. It is hard to survive on despite having quite a bit of boon removal, CC and ress ability. All other classes have ways to sustain themselves.

Yeah man I have now played WvW enough on the Mesmer to unlock a warclaw. I mostly PvPd on this toon. I have a thief main. I would say shattering clones so hard on WvWvW. Since they get killed so fast even before I can blow them up. And when they do damage is so low. Compared to like Ranger or Theif with their massive burst. But I am still only lvl 39. Maybe at 80 with Berserker or Marauder gear.

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@waxx.3619 said:

@Threather.9354 said:Regarding open field fights in WvW, most well designed builds are viable. Especially greatsword mesmer due to the AoE.

Closed spaces, well I hope you have enough experience to not get oneshot as mesmer. Nullfield+illusion of life+blink+gravity well, Id say.

I do have to warn you that not many people are able to make mesmer work in this WvW meta. It is hard to survive on despite having quite a bit of boon removal, CC and ress ability. All other classes have ways to sustain themselves.

Yeah man I have now played WvW enough on the Mesmer to unlock a warclaw. I mostly PvPd on this toon. I have a thief main. I would say shattering clones so hard on WvWvW. Since they get killed so fast even before I can blow them up. And when they do damage is so low. Compared to like Ranger or Theif with their massive burst. But I am still only lvl 39. Maybe at 80 with Berserker or Marauder gear.

You shouldn't play WvW until level 80, but once you hit level 80 on 1 character, you will get so many tomes of knowledge from WvW that you never need to level up manually again. You need 3/4-stat exotic, and preferably even ascended gear. If you run 2 stat greens, you won't even scale up well.

Anyways, mesmer is definitely a cool class. Do try to get chrono for largescale so your shatters can get superspeed when traited.

But yeah, id say run full marauder, it isn't that big of a DPS loss (10-15%) but the extra vitality allows you to deal more damage due to surviving longer/tanking retal.

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@Threather.9354 said:

@Threather.9354 said:Regarding open field fights in WvW, most well designed builds are viable. Especially greatsword mesmer due to the AoE.

Closed spaces, well I hope you have enough experience to not get oneshot as mesmer. Nullfield+illusion of life+blink+gravity well, Id say.

I do have to warn you that not many people are able to make mesmer work in this WvW meta. It is hard to survive on despite having quite a bit of boon removal, CC and ress ability. All other classes have ways to sustain themselves.

Yeah man I have now played WvW enough on the Mesmer to unlock a warclaw. I mostly PvPd on this toon. I have a thief main. I would say shattering clones so hard on WvWvW. Since they get killed so fast even before I can blow them up. And when they do damage is so low. Compared to like Ranger or Theif with their massive burst. But I am still only lvl 39. Maybe at 80 with Berserker or Marauder gear.

You shouldn't play WvW until level 80, but once you hit level 80 on 1 character, you will get so many tomes of knowledge from WvW that you never need to level up manually again. You need 3/4-stat exotic, and preferably even ascended gear. If you run 2 stat greens, you won't even scale up well.

Anyways, mesmer is definitely a cool class. Do try to get chrono for largescale so your shatters can get superspeed when traited.

But yeah, id say run full marauder, it isn't that big of a DPS loss (10-15%) but the extra vitality allows you to deal more damage due to surviving longer/tanking retal.

Thanks for the great information brother/sister. May I ask you what's the best way to get some marauder gear fast at lvl 80 ? I have about 100k karma saved up and close 400 badge of honor. Had some decent gold to until I decided to lvl LW to 500.

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@waxx.3619 said:

@Threather.9354 said:Regarding open field fights in WvW, most well designed builds are viable. Especially greatsword mesmer due to the AoE.

Closed spaces, well I hope you have enough experience to not get oneshot as mesmer. Nullfield+illusion of life+blink+gravity well, Id say.

I do have to warn you that not many people are able to make mesmer work in this WvW meta. It is hard to survive on despite having quite a bit of boon removal, CC and ress ability. All other classes have ways to sustain themselves.

Yeah man I have now played WvW enough on the Mesmer to unlock a warclaw. I mostly PvPd on this toon. I have a thief main. I would say shattering clones so hard on WvWvW. Since they get killed so fast even before I can blow them up. And when they do damage is so low. Compared to like Ranger or Theif with their massive burst. But I am still only lvl 39. Maybe at 80 with Berserker or Marauder gear.

You shouldn't play WvW until level 80, but once you hit level 80 on 1 character, you will get so many tomes of knowledge from WvW that you never need to level up manually again. You need 3/4-stat exotic, and preferably even ascended gear. If you run 2 stat greens, you won't even scale up well.

Anyways, mesmer is definitely a cool class. Do try to get chrono for largescale so your shatters can get superspeed when traited.

But yeah, id say run full marauder, it isn't that big of a DPS loss (10-15%) but the extra vitality allows you to deal more damage due to surviving longer/tanking retal.

Thanks for the great information brother/sister. May I ask you what's the best way to get some marauder gear fast at lvl 80 ? I have about 100k karma saved up and close 400 badge of honor. Had some decent gold to until I decided to lvl LW to 500.

You get 1 stat selectable exotic armor piece per week from pips (Warlords armor box, at the end of bronze pip rewards) and can get more from triumphant reward track, you can do some early HoT story achievements for ascended marauder trinkets or LS3/LS4 reward tracks for map currencies to buy stat selectable asc trinkets. And exotic marauder isn't that expensive to craft if you want to level tailoring to 400 https://gw2crafts.net/tailor_fast.html but just leveling the crafting discipline might be little too expensive for a new player.

For berserker/knight ascended trinks (until you get the marauder): Accessories are quite easy to get from guild missions (until you work on marauder), using 20 + 250 badges of honor laurels for amulet or do fractal dailies (even low easy t2 dailies give 6 pristine) for 10 pristine for rings.

Overall id prolly just buy https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nika%27s_armor (berserker) stats from TP as soon as you hit level 80 and throw some cheap statheavy runes with vitality on them (Durability or Divinity) and play with those until you get proper marauder stuff going (then swap runes). You will be still quite weak but it is cheap way to get your first gear. Do note that ascended weapon is like 10% boost on damage compared to exotic so you shouldn't except to be strong as DPS without ascended weps (or trinkets).

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@Threather.9354 said:

@Threather.9354 said:Regarding open field fights in WvW, most well designed builds are viable. Especially greatsword mesmer due to the AoE.

Closed spaces, well I hope you have enough experience to not get oneshot as mesmer. Nullfield+illusion of life+blink+gravity well, Id say.

I do have to warn you that not many people are able to make mesmer work in this WvW meta. It is hard to survive on despite having quite a bit of boon removal, CC and ress ability. All other classes have ways to sustain themselves.

Yeah man I have now played WvW enough on the Mesmer to unlock a warclaw. I mostly PvPd on this toon. I have a thief main. I would say shattering clones so hard on WvWvW. Since they get killed so fast even before I can blow them up. And when they do damage is so low. Compared to like Ranger or Theif with their massive burst. But I am still only lvl 39. Maybe at 80 with Berserker or Marauder gear.

You shouldn't play WvW until level 80, but once you hit level 80 on 1 character, you will get so many tomes of knowledge from WvW that you never need to level up manually again. You need 3/4-stat exotic, and preferably even ascended gear. If you run 2 stat greens, you won't even scale up well.

Anyways, mesmer is definitely a cool class. Do try to get chrono for largescale so your shatters can get superspeed when traited.

But yeah, id say run full marauder, it isn't that big of a DPS loss (10-15%) but the extra vitality allows you to deal more damage due to surviving longer/tanking retal.

Thanks for the great information brother/sister. May I ask you what's the best way to get some marauder gear fast at lvl 80 ? I have about 100k karma saved up and close 400 badge of honor. Had some decent gold to until I decided to lvl LW to 500.

You get 1 stat selectable exotic armor piece per week from pips (Warlords armor box, at the end of bronze pip rewards) and can get more from triumphant reward track, you can do some early HoT story achievements for ascended marauder trinkets or LS3/LS4 reward tracks for map currencies to buy stat selectable asc trinkets. And exotic marauder isn't that expensive to craft if you want to level tailoring to 400
but just leveling the crafting discipline might be little too expensive for a new player.

For berserker/knight ascended trinks (until you get the marauder): Accessories are quite easy to get from guild missions (until you work on marauder), using 20 + 250 badges of honor laurels for amulet or do fractal dailies (even low easy t2 dailies give 6 pristine) for 10 pristine for rings.

Overall id prolly just buy
(berserker) stats from TP as soon as you hit level 80 and throw some cheap statheavy runes with vitality on them (Durability or Divinity) and play with those until you get proper marauder stuff going (then swap runes). You will be still quite weak but it is cheap way to get your first gear. Do note that ascended weapon is like 10% boost on damage compared to exotic so you shouldn't except to be strong as DPS without ascended weps (or trinkets).

Wow thanks this is a lot of good information. I am definitely going to refer here as I level along. Thanks a lot! Also it's best to craft the ascendant weapons first before gear ? In terms of DPS those are the biggest upgrade ?

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@Tayga.3192 said:

@"waxx.3619" said:Wow thanks this is a lot of good information. I am definitely going to refer here as I level along. Thanks a lot! Also it's best to craft the ascendant weapons first before gear ? In terms of DPS those are the biggest upgrade ?

Trinkets > Weapons > Armor

Wow thanks a bunch for this link. It lays out the roadmap nicely. Certainly going to be using this along with the other guide. You guys rock!

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raids: completely fine, but outclassed by focus (and rotation is harder than focus too), has use on a somewhat obscure quickness build that is technically meta to do with focus, the room for error is literally 0.1 seconds or something with focus and so the clone generation of GS gives you more leeway. if you find GS more fun, go for it IMO- its still pretty good when done right.

fractals: not okay, only if the other 3-4 dps have awful builds will it perform good- as the way it is with fractals, worse builds perform better the worse the group overall is.

this is because, all variants of power mesmer take like half a minute before they can burst, and while that burst is pretty big, in fractals most of the bosses should be dead at that point (as well, mesmer kinda struggles with cleave, which is also something you want in fracs), but it is fine in raids (most of the time) because the boss has a tonne of hp and will very much be alive to experience your burst most of the time (has a weird relationship of very good and sometimes very bad when it comes to speedrunning.)

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I know where the question comes from. Many new players like a lot using ranged weapons. They have a false sense of security when they are further from enemies. While at some rare cases mostly in open world it could be a viable strategy, in places like wvw or fractals you should mostly be in melee range AND stacked with your team. When I use greatsword on mesmer I mostly find myself at melee range so I get all buffs and heals.But as already mentioned above you shouldn't really play mesmer neither in wvw nor in fractals.. it isn't a very beginner friendly class anyway.

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@Armen.1483 said:I know where the question comes from. Many new players like a lot using ranged weapons. They have a false sense of security when they are further from enemies. While at some rare cases mostly in open world it could be a viable strategy, in places like wvw or fractals you should mostly be in melee range AND stacked with your team. When I use greatsword on mesmer I mostly find myself at melee range so I get all buffs and heals.But as already mentioned above you shouldn't really play mesmer neither in wvw nor in fractals.. it isn't a very beginner friendly class anyway.

I agree with you that so far from my experience GS plays best at close range even though its designed as range. It's easer to shatter and confuse foes. Problem is I find damage is just not good enough compared to thief, warrior and as long range you can just poke with 1. 2 and 4 is good but harder to utilize the clone damage. But I am lvl 41 now and so far this has been my experience. Theif, and Ranger have really good damage long range.

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@"waxx.3619" said:I agree with you that so far from my experience GS plays best at close range even though its designed as range. It's easer to shatter and confuse foes.Confuse ? you shouldn't be using f2 on power chrono much anyway, confusion condi is irrelevant on your build. If you run Greatsword you should be running power stats, not condi.Problem is I find damage is just not good enough compared to thief, warrior and as long range you can just poke with 1. 2 and 4 is good but harder to utilize the clone damage.Maybe I wasn't clear in my recent post, sorry. The reason you wanna go in melee range IN INSTANCED GROUP content is to be stacked with your team so your supports can give boons to you. If you are away from your team your support won't be able to provide boons to you and you won't have any might, quickness nor alacrity so you will be doing no damage. I am not even talking about deffensive boons and heals.. If you are away, your healer won't be able to heal you easily.Bear in mind it is not about mesmer, all classes that use ranged weapons should do the same. Same ranger uses his longbow in melee range.But I am lvl 41 now and so far this has been my experience. Theif, and Ranger have really good damage long range.In lvl 41 there is no fractals yet and your wvw will be also very weak due to lack of gear compared to your opponents. I would say ignore everything here until you get to lvl 80 and have at least a month of experience with mesmer. The problems you think exist are most likely not real problems. pChronos damage is not "worse" than ranger's or thief's damage. pChrono is worse at BURSTING (doing damage fast) and CLEAVING (doing damage to many enemies), and on top of that power chrono requires slow condi to be applied to the enemy to do some good damage, and slow condi is very rare and most likely 5 man groups won't have that in fractals. That is why ppl complain about pchrono damage. In raids however pchrono has the potential to beat any other class in damage. Because phases are long and bursting is not very important and you will have more chance to have someone to apply slow condi on enemy boss in a 10 man group.What about WVW, ranged damage is irrelevant in blob fights it is completely useless.. The only class yo umentioned that is somewhat viable is Thief that can go roam with pistol. However roaming in WVW is not very important. The ranged damage you see in WVW doesn't come from rangers or chronos. You shouldn't be playing those classes in WVW they are not meta and as devs said: they will never be in the future. Nobody wanna see a ranger in WVW.

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