How To Murder Time

Continuing on with an attempt to find Mesmer Comedy Builds in Guild Wars 2!

My standard runabout build has developed over a month or two of trial and error and mostly uses the Greatsword in the Primary Weapon slot, For Massive Damage! The Secondary Weapons can be important too, and possibly a way of exploring a more in-depth complexity than initially seems present in the game.

At L7, the Weapon Swap button unlocks (Unless you’re an Engineer or Elementalist, who get some different mechanics instead) and from there, a press of the tilde key can instantly change half the skill bar, even during combat with a 10s cooldown. A useful and complementary Secondary Weapon set is clearly an important part of the build, effectively turning 10 available skill slots, into 15.

Being so gleefully destructive with the Greatsword, I tend to use the Secondary set more for utility than straight fighting and typically go with Sword and Focus. Continue reading →

Any attempt to create Comedy Mesmer Builds in Guild Wars 2 must begin with an understanding of the weapon slots. In Guild Wars One terms, a weapon sort of translates as a kind of preset unalterable ‘half-build’, presumably with a particular kind of purpose and gameplay style in mind. In this case, the weapon becomes the starting point of any Guild Wars 2 Comedy build.

I particularly like the Mesmer Greatsword and use it almost exclusively as a default weapon for almost all activities, only switching in the Sword/Focus for particular specifics.

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One of the things I loved about Guild Wars (and still do!) was the dizzying complexity of the basic Skill Bar Build game. Although everyone had a single hotbar with only eight slots, there were hundreds of skills which could be put in those slots, opening up endless vistas of elaborate theorycraft, clever interplay and intricate sequence building. Check out this dedicated wiki for a mind-boggling sample of this fascinating secondary gameplay!

I used to dabble myself, and if I can ever work out where all our historic posts vanished to, I’ll re-add all my old Comedy Mesmer Build posts back to the site! With a bit of work and without switching to an alt, I could be DPS, Tank, Healer, Crowd Control, Buffer, Debuffer and all sorts of crazy concept gimmick roles of my own devising. Some builds worked very well and others were more in the nature of abject lessons in the perils of Things Looking Good On Paper; exercises in Overdesign. I suspect this reflects many people’s experience with the system during GW’s heyday. Was it too complicated? Did most players shun the theorycraft and just run around with the same eight skills from their primary profession, forever?

Arenanet seem to think so and the system in place in Guild Wars 2 is a far less complex beast.

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