Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played mesmer in pve in a long time. The last time i played it a couple month’s ago it felt really weak and even though utilities were nice it seemed like having a guard was just overall better.

Has anything changed in this patch pve wise? My main concerns are that reflect time was always subpar to guard, since wardens seem to get killed, and that damage was pretty low.

Also have runes/stats changed at all i.e. assassin’s versus berserker’s with ranger vs scholar vs ??

There’s no reason to play Mesmer in PvE now that Guardian can apply quickness every 30s (24s with shout trait).

Amineo.8951:

There’s no reason to play Mesmer in PvE now that Guardian can apply quickness every 30s (24s with shout trait).

Very much wrong. Guardian may be good for casual runs but mesmer is by far the superior class for optimization. The time to travel throughout a dungeon path is by far the longest part in most cases.

Purple Miku.7032:

Amineo.8951:

There’s no reason to play Mesmer in PvE now that Guardian can apply quickness every 30s (24s with shout trait).

Very much wrong. Guardian may be good for casual runs but mesmer is by far the superior class for optimization. The time to travel throughout a dungeon path is by far the longest part in most cases.

Then why the meta is 2 ele, 1 war, 1 thief and 1 guard?

He’s talking about speed runs… like, real ones. Or record runs, competitive runs, call them however the hell you like.

That’s the pug meta. It’s for casual runs which is exactly what I said. Guardian makes things easier but in a 5 man setting they are suboptimal in basically all dungeons and fractals.

You can’t expect pugs to execute things properly nor can most people be bothered to exert themselves beyond a certain threshold in casual dungeon and fractal runs, and for those circumstances you take a guard.

Also if you go mesmer you miss out on some loots. :<

spoj.9672:

Also if you go mesmer you miss out on some loots. :<

Leechers.

So per Miku, in the specialized case that 99.99% of even serious runners don’t care about, and making several related assumptions about risk/payout (and according to this one person), mesmers are better.

~~~

Mesmers are immensely useful in pve, though, especially after the buffs;

They’re right about that part. Guardian haste in no way negates mesmer haste, and also in no way negates things like veil and mass invis.

Purple Miku.7032:

Amineo.8951:

There’s no reason to play Mesmer in PvE now that Guardian can apply quickness every 30s (24s with shout trait).

Very much wrong. Guardian may be good for casual runs but mesmer is by far the superior class for optimization. The time to travel throughout a dungeon path is by far the longest part in most cases.

Hm thats really interesting, i always hear people saying that guardian is better in most dungeons except like arah because of portals.

Maybe i should dust off my pve set

Yeah, well, portal spots in dungeons. That’s what saves time. Honestly though pugs are too stupid to even click f and get your portal, why would you care. Why would you care in the first place if mesmer is always better than guard or not, casual runs are just that, casual. Mes has always been “viable”, staying on topic of the title, and now they’re more viable because they got buffed. Cool? Cool.
Slow is awesome.
Pugs are stupid.
Butterflies are pink.
Guards are better at carrying id—-serious runners.

You can use portals in basically any path to speed certain parts up, there’s just some paths that don’t really have nearly as much opportunity as others.

Even in one of the most linear paths in the game a mesmer proved to save a ton of time for Hotw P1 record right before the update, and now mesmer is able to use mimic to do portals even more. They also have power block, really fast defiance stripping and of course the OP slow condition that just got implemented into the game with their time warp.

Guardians are great don’t get me wrong, but in your original post you seem to be ill-informed (no offense meant by that).

Mesmers actually have the best reflect uptime by a lot, but guardians have the option of going for near permanent projectile defense should they want to and their reflects are generally easier to make use of and more reliable. It makes them much more friendly to use for casual runs.

One of the biggest differences between guard and mesmer is that guard can provide tons of group-wide stability and blocks whereas mesmer cannot, so it’s easier to carry groups through content with guard than it is with mesmer.

Also guard has moderate personal DPS in groups while mesmer’s is really low, this is true, but you don’t take either class for their DPS. You take them for their utility.

Mesmers dps has actually improved as far as i can tell. Only nerf was the the mantra change. But in most dungeons you dont really have the space to stack loads of mantras for the old dps trait.

Purple Miku.7032:

It makes them much more friendly to use for casual runs.

While this is obv true, you seem to have a warped definition of “casual”. Casual fractals are full heavy pts with multiple guards with both of them in cleric gear. xD

Even a lot of hardcore speedrun guilds use guard in their normal daily non-record runs because as you said, it’s chill + you don’t miss out on rewards because portal.

Who says speedrun guilds don’t have casual runs?

“ca·su·al”
adjective
1.
relaxed and unconcerned.

Not trying to be pedantic hear but I’m definitely being misinterpreted. There is a profound difference between record attempts and people just doing daily runs for gold/tokens. That’s what I mean by casual runs, not runs done by “casuals.”

Purple Miku.7032:

One of the biggest differences between guard and mesmer is that guard can provide tons of group-wide stability and blocks whereas mesmer cannot

3x stabo mantra + 4 stabo on each shatter. I’d say that’s enough…

Oh wow. Do you mean this trait? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Disillusionment

Hmm well it says in the notes “Effect does not trigger for each illusion shattered.”

I do not play mesmer so I do not know… I must be missing something/a lot of things then.

That footnote basically says that a 3-illu shatter will provide same amount of stabo as 0-illu shatter. Unfortunately the trait is in Chaos which means you’ll have to drop one of the dps trait lines, but then if you need utility nobody really cares for your dps…

EDIT: /facepalm. Its PERSONAL stability, not party…

It is quite viable. The slow/resistance/quickness combo of a traited time warp makes everything much easier (especially in those non-speedrun groups that benefit more from slow).

On the other hand, it has always been viable, just that now the traits aren’t a garbled mess anymore and you can have a few interesting options.

Mesmer also has the luxury of mobile stealth for the group. Shadow Refuge forces you to stop in place for 3 seconds, and so does smoke screen blasting.

The real weakness to mesmer is their AI mechanisms, since this game hate AI and murders them with aoe spam, decreasing the practical damage of mesmers and rangers alike.

Moreover, guardian doesn’t bring boon strip which might become of use down the line (and is already useful in fractals like the urban fractal where stripping 25 might stacks off the monks significantly improves your group’s survival; in the dredge fractal null field is effectively a field that grants 33% increased damage since it strips the protection dredge like to spam on themselves).

Mesmer can pull mobs to a desired place from a distance, not needing to surround himself with the mobs unlike binding blades.

The illusions are also not of insignificant use. Many are the times where my illusions in fire shaman have baited a fire arrow that could have hit somebody else or made rezzing more difficult. Same goes for mossman really.

The real frustration as a mesmer is illusion despawning upon mob death (unlike Kasmeer’s illusions who follow her around in Living Story), the phantasm ramp up without AoE damage reduction that is a standard for any other MMO.

And in HoT shatters won’t even be as much of a drawback with chronophantasm trait.

spoj.9672:

Mesmers dps has actually improved as far as i can tell. Only nerf was the the mantra change. But in most dungeons you dont really have the space to stack loads of mantras for the old dps trait.

You’re quite right. Though actually, with mantras now recharging while charged, and harmonious mantras being mixed with empowering, it’s actually a buff to mantra builds too in a sense. the play required is much more active, but you can now keep up an 8-12% bonus by actually doing damage with mantra of pain, while only having to give up 1 utility slot instead of 3. With 2 slots sacrificed this is even easier.

Yeah i havent been able to get used to the mantra spamming yet. Even so ive been enjoying mesmer a lot since the patch. Baseline illusionary persona is awesome. And mimic is just too much fun.

Sanderinoa.8065:

spoj.9672:

Mesmers dps has actually improved as far as i can tell. Only nerf was the the mantra change. But in most dungeons you dont really have the space to stack loads of mantras for the old dps trait.

You’re quite right. Though actually, with mantras now recharging while charged, and harmonious mantras being mixed with empowering, it’s actually a buff to mantra builds too in a sense. the play required is much more active, but you can now keep up an 8-12% bonus by actually doing damage with mantra of pain, while only having to give up 1 utility slot instead of 3. With 2 slots sacrificed this is even easier.

My issue with this is that it is still a more convoluted version of what other classes get.

Berserker’s Power gets a whopping 20% damage boost for 10 seconds, and warriors can luckily use a burst skill every 10 seconds so they get 20% extra damage for using their class mechanic.

Fragility is another example where the mesmer gets a more convoluted version. Before it was 10% extra damage to foes that had vulnerability on them, just like the warrior/thief/ele versions. Now it’s 0.5% per stack of vulnerability, basically an extra 2.5% ove the 10% at the inconvenience of relying on your group to keep vulnerability up for you.

And I have my suspicions this is all tied to the pvp whine around mesmers. I wish they’d just nerf berserker amulets and cap crit damage % in spvp/WvW so the mesmer could stop being held back in competitive damage potential just because they have really strong burst in other game formats.

we’ve already been over this

catering to the 30 people playing pvp is clearly more important than the thousands upon thousands who play wvw and pve

this is why pvp balance is more important

Several of those thousands who play WvW and PvE still use gsword to poke at their enemies.

maha.7902:

we’ve already been over this

catering to the 30 people playing pvp is clearly more important than the thousands upon thousands who play wvw and pve

this is why pvp balance is more important

eh wvw is more with pvp, it would be best if they just balanced those two separately from pve…

Thank you Miku and the rest too, I tried out mesmer again and it was a ton of fun even in fractals. It probably has a fair amount to do with the fact I dont play with pugs anymore so its a little more consistent.

maha.7902:

we’ve already been over this

catering to the 30 people playing pvp is clearly more important than the thousands upon thousands who play wvw and pve

this is why pvp balance is more important

“We’ve been over this. The thing I like is loved by thousands, whereas the things I don’t like aren’t liked by anyone else, it’s only sense!”

what the hell did i just read

I was making a comment about the myopic nature of your jibe about balance, but I’ve since realized I don’t have the emotional energy to engage right now, we’re in crunch ><

good

go cry somewhere else

Miku kinda said everything, just to sum it up with my point of view.

If you want to have fast runs, mesmer was always better than a guard, but the mesmer himself has to skip quite some loot.
For your daily dungeon runs, the loot and rewards are the things why you do them, so why should you skip them?
So here comes the guardian. He can replace the mesmer quite well, with higher self-dps and better support to get smooth runs. And now with the quickness shout, the difference isnt that huge anymore. Ofcourse, one or two portals will save up more time, but you will miss out the aegies carrier.

As a result, you can run mesmer in dungeons, but unless you preskip stuff and use portals, guardian is better, when you want to be fast.

Thorwyn.8469:

Miku kinda said everything, just to sum it up with my point of view.

If you want to have fast runs, mesmer was always better than a guard, but the mesmer himself has to skip quite some loot.
For your daily dungeon runs, the loot and rewards are the things why you do them, so why should you skip them?
So here comes the guardian. He can replace the mesmer quite well, with higher self-dps and better support to get smooth runs. And now with the quickness shout, the difference isnt that huge anymore. Ofcourse, one or two portals will save up more time, but you will miss out the aegies carrier.

As a result, you can run mesmer in dungeons, but unless you preskip stuff and use portals, guardian is better, when you want to be fast.

Bolded for emphasis. That’s basically the TL;DR

maha.7902:

good

go cry somewhere else

so mean :’(

Another nice addition for casual runs is distortion sharing (if you’re running inspiration). You can use this to save people dodging Alpha’s AoE, Tazza’s AoE, Malrona’s poison etc. It does things that a Guardian’s Aegis cannot as it will protect nullify multiple hits in the 1s window.

Avster.1935:

Thorwyn.8469:

Miku kinda said everything, just to sum it up with my point of view.

If you want to have fast runs, mesmer was always better than a guard, but the mesmer himself has to skip quite some loot.
For your daily dungeon runs, the loot and rewards are the things why you do them, so why should you skip them?
So here comes the guardian. He can replace the mesmer quite well, with higher self-dps and better support to get smooth runs. And now with the quickness shout, the difference isnt that huge anymore. Ofcourse, one or two portals will save up more time, but you will miss out the aegies carrier.

As a result, you can run mesmer in dungeons, but unless you preskip stuff and use portals, guardian is better, when you want to be fast.

Bolded for emphasis. That’s basically the TL;DR

Probably only for bad class compositions in a fractal run. The fact is if you run warrior/ele/thief/mesmer/engi in a group (which isn’t even the ideal warrior/thief/ele/ele/mesmer setup), and they have their proper migth and fury stacking builds, defense won’t even be a problem because anything that’s a threat is dying immediately.

Guardian is mostly for carrying pug groups that don’t have a PS warrior or ele, and contain a ranger or necromancer.

All the avove is subject to change if/when there’s actual difficult content.

Clloydio.3524:

Another nice addition for casual runs is distortion sharing (if you’re running inspiration). You can use this to save people dodging Alpha’s AoE, Tazza’s AoE, Malrona’s poison etc. It does things that a Guardian’s Aegis cannot as it will protect nullify multiple hits in the 1s window.

Ive been really loving the distortion sharing and the signet of inspiration on phantasm cast, although it does get annoying chaining wardens cuz of the sig inspiration slowing down other casts