Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

I’m kind of still new to the game and I need your expertise for a decision to be made!

I currently have Warrior at 26 and Thief at 36, but I just don’t feel like they are for me. I’ve decided to narrow it down to a Elementalist or Mesmer as a Male Norn (Don’t judge they are AWESOME).

Now, I need opinions. The thing is, I like how both of the professions play, I just really can’t decide between the two. Which is worth leveling up to 80 the most? I like the diversity of the Ele and the four elements, however, I also like how Mesmer’s can summon clones to confuse the enemy. I definitely get confused when fighting against Mesmers.

Also, Elementalists seem to die really quick whereas my Mesmer feels it stays alive a little longer..?

I play mostly WvW, PvP and PvE obviously to level (I haven’t done a dungeon yet :P).

I guess i just need some words of wisdom to make me decide which one :P

Well.. if you enjoy being a more ‘traditional’ support type role, I think Ele is best. You generally use staff in large-scale WvW battles and provide important fire / water fields. You also have some decent CC abilities.

Mesmer on the other hand brings some ESSENTIAL abilities to WvW.. however.. you don’t need a lot of Mesmers.. you only need a couple. Portal/Veil, etc.

The other thing about Mesmers is they don’t have much access to good speed abilities and have very few AOE abilities. The only ones I really know of are staff 5 and iBerserker on GS. The problem with the berserker is that it will die very easily in big team fights.

The last thing I’d consider is whether or not you enjoy melee combat. Mesmer’s sword abilities are pretty high dmg and distortion is always useful SO yeah, that’s my 2 cents.

First of all let me say that I am much more experienced with Eles than Mesmers.

In my experience, mesmers are great at 80, but getting them there is an excercise in frustration. I can tell you I have started over with Mes more than I can count, but I have only had one ele.

Elementalists are not known for their survivability, but they’re not as fragile as one would believe. If traited properly, they can really rock. I can switch attunements on the fly, adding support or damage as needed, and the inability to switch weapons in combat doesn’t really bother me.

The best advice I could ever give to anyone is to make one of each, play them both at least to level 25, and see how you like the style. Keep in mind that neither of them will be at their peak performance until much later, but eles just seem to be much easier to level. Mesmers just don’t seem to have much in the way of the necessary tools until they can be more fully fleshed out.

Also, for comparison, make a Necro. They’re a lot of fun, and leveling them is very easy if you go the minion route. WvW opponents seem to hate them as well.

Cheers from the Old Lady!

Well I have both mesmer and ele and played both quite bit. My mesmer is glass cannonish gsword & Sword/focus, it’s great for 1vs1 or even 1vs2 fights, but in zergs it usually gets slaved for team, veils, mass invisibility, portals etc so in those it isn’t that epic anymore, plus lack of good aoe skills with my setup it doesn’t really get much loots from mass fights either. Still quite fun and agile class.
Survivability is also quite good with mesmer, since those invisibilities, teleports and clones, as long as you keep mind surroundings and wont get surprise jumped.

Elementals are great, though I prefer to play it with staff in supportish role, also it has decent survivality too if you make it to use mostly clerics and some soldiers here and there, thus having decent def and around 16k hp and 1,3k heal. Then using cantrips like mistform, teleport and rock armor for example.
But in 1vs1 fights it’s just running away, since staff and support makes it lack bit in damage side. Unless it’s another support ele, or very tankish guardian etc, then it’s eternal battle to exhaustion. :P
Still I enjoy ele most myself, due it having quite good survivability, okayish damage when defending towers, choke points with static field, stonewall & damaging aoes etc. Oh yeah and area swiftness, might and frost armor is fun extras from skill field combos ^^
Plus all that attument switching gives quite decent amount of skills to use, more than any normal melee class has with one or two weapons :P

Also played some D/D ele, it’s better in 1vs1 and fights like that, but personally it didn’t suit my playstyle and already had mesmer & thief for that. :P

Im currently going through the same, though I have an ele which has been my main for over a year, Im experimenting with mesmer too. I can tell you so far, Im liking how mesmers survive more than eles, in every possible way and scenario. Only thing I dont like about mesmers? Lack of sustain and tagging ability. Any damage done to you sticks like glue, whereas as ele if you are able to (somehow) survive the first round, you might recover some hp back. As for tagging, it is quite hard to tag stuff as a mesmers in big fights, mostly since you lack AoE, staff being a good one but on 30 secs CD and small radius, usually in big fights all you are doing is veil and portal (quite epic and fun in organized play!!) , whereas an ele will wreck havoc if allowd to stand in the back.

As far as PvP is concerned DO NOT roll an ele for that purpose, you will get massacred by just about anything, even critter will be more effective than you. Mesmers are really strong duelists and provide a lot of support to any team.

So this is how it goes;
WvW and PvE oriented? Ele.
WvW and PvP oriented? Mes

I have a staff ele, my first character, and while I had some tricky issues with the story quests early on (and many have been toned down since then), I don’t find I die anywhere ‘near’ as often as my mesmer does, which I am still struggling with.

So I guess it just depends on which seems to feel more right. Hard to say if I had started another character first if that would be my favorite, but I do like my staff Elementalist. Tried the D/D thing. I don’t like that so much. I don’t even much care for wands and focus (foci? focuses-es? what is the plural of focus?), but when I used to WvW (which I don’t much any more), I would use it to protect things when I needed to. Staff is ultimately my friend.

This isn’t related to what you are looking for from a general game play perspective of each profession but I want to bring this up. Mesmers don’t have a passive movement speed buff. Being a Norn Memser while it is an illusion (pun intended) you will look like you are moving slow as heck due to the animation. You can use focus 4 for buffs and with some boon duration keep a decent amount of movement speed uptime. Also you can use some superior traveler’s runes to keep 25% movement speed increase but they don’t have the best stats. I’m just bring this up because I abandoned a Norn and Charr Mesmer because the movement appeared painfully slow due to animations of larger sized characters.

I have an Ele, Necro, Mesmer Warrior and Guardian level 80. I started with an Ele and it took me quite some time getting to 80. I mostly play solo and not in teams or with other people, most of my friends quit and went back to Tera, Aion etc. My characters were always geared and I do know how to dodge, however Ele made it very difficult for me at the beginning. After a while you get the hang of it, but I found it more fun and much faster leveling my other characters. Even tho Mesmer has no speed signal or any passive swiftness skill like all other classes do, it never bothered me. I somewhat retired my ele and hope they make some changes to the class itself besides the basic update on dec 10th, that should of been a part of the class from the beginning. Ele has become very boring for me and I barely use her anymore exception for dungeons or specific map content, but most of the time I play my Mesmer or Necro.

I would recommend you go to the mist and take a look at different builds and play with the mobs before wasting your time. To be honest with you and that’s just my opinion, if someone asks if they should roll an Ele, my answer is always don’t bother.

going to copy in (repost) a reply i gave to a similar question, where a player asked if they should play an Engineer, Mesmer, or Elementalist:

Raven.9603:

Of the three, mesmers are by far the most desired by the people around them (oh hey portal our golems, reflect those projectiles, give us buffs, stealth us through the hard part, give these idiot zerk warriors Haste). The skill cap is very high, but it is for all 3 of the classes you mentioned. For pvp/wvw, almost all specs involve running a staff for defensive purposes, and for me thats not very enjoyable (Greatsword all the way!).

Engineers are an enigma (think World of Roguecraft: Warlocks are “Mushroom”). Static discharge gets you really high burst, albiet it limits your utility slot choices heavily. Kit builds get you ridiculous versatility, but are clunky to use. Probably best condition class in the game atm (yes, better than necros) for pvp. grenade engineers are arguably the strongest zerg ranged dps. On the downside, of the 3 classes you listed, it is the least likely to escape (RTL+Flash, Stealth+Clones+Blink > Rocket Boots). It’s also the least desired in pve farming groups of the 3 classes that you mentioned.

Elementalists dont have much spec versatility. Scepter/dagger burst, staff support or d/d hybrid bunker (PVT+healing). They are not as welcome in groups as mesmers, but they do provide lots of group buffs/cleanses/combo fields and conjure weapons can make some fights trivial. The upside is independence: good self healing, cleansing, damage, mobility, but not particularly awesome at any one thing. With FGS, RTL+flash, has the best escapability of the 3 classes for roaming, though is arguably weaker in 1v1 (especially if not D/D) than either of the other 2.

So there you have it. Do you want to be wanted, do you want to be mushroom, or do you want to be independent?

Base on the feedbacks that i’ve read on the forums, the elementalist is currently in a bad position right now and its getting lots of complaints. The mesmer is somehow if not better, could be somewhere in the middle chart and would soon get a slight improvements. I have no experience with the ele but was also planning to choose between the two class and still looking for more feedbacks.

If you “have” to play as a Norn Male, then I’d go with elementalist. I’ve thousand of hours on my elementalist, and I’ve had great success in all forms of PvP with it. I personally enjoyed playing full healing power in WvW. With around 1900 healing power, and specced for condition clearing, you can be a huge impact in ZvZ, even if it’s just laying down your CC and switching to water to spam auto attacks on your melee train(aoe healing is very strong every 3/4ths second) and your frostbow auto attacks heal for soooo much. It’s very strong for healing ram users under heavy AC fire. I made a D/D build to run in the melee train with to provide auras, boons, heals, and condition removal. I ran sigil of restoration with sigil of renewal with omnomberry compote food. You run a mix of VTC gear with THPC. With sigil of life stacks, you should have around 1000 condition damage, 1100 healing, and that will give you around 1900 hp everytime you tag and enemy and it dies, and around 500 hp everytime you swap attunments(9sec icd) and 3000 hp when you swap to water(stacks with cleansive wave). It was a lot of fun, and it’s a build I do not think would transfer well to the mesmer class. I’m not sure if there is a viable mesmer build that is capable of running with melee train in t1 blob fights(maybe some weird perma dodge clone shatter build).

I recently (passed month) started playing mesmer heavily, and I fell in love with it. As an asuran mesmer, I have very little problems tagging or with AoE in WvW. With new Torment Sigil on Staff, rabid gear, radiation field(asura racial), and chaos storm, I find that I can reliably run viel + blink with radiation field and get dozens of tags in zerg vs zerg. I run sceptor(sigil of doom)/ torch(sigil of earth) as a secondary weapon set, and it’s great for cleaning up small skirmishes/ left overs. I probably wouldn’t like mesmer as much without the asuran racials(technobobble is OP for roaming/ perplexity, pain inverter is very nice with boon duration, radiation field lasts 15 seconds… very strong).

That’s my brief and not very in depth opinions on mesmer in WvW at least. sPvP, they have several viable builds while Eles really only have one decent one(fresh air is pretty dookie in comparison to what other classes can accomplish going glass, like the mesmer).

Both the mesmer and the elementalist are kind of masters are utility, but excel at no one thing in particular. However, if you’re concerned more with sPvP and small group roaming in WvW, I’d go with mesmer. If you’re concerned more with big group WvW dynamics, then having one more staff ele is more useful than having one more mesmer, sadly.

I can’t comment on PvE. I avoid living stories, fractals, world events, champ farming, and dungeons like the plague.

Single target…Mesmer. Lay waste to the masses, Elementalist.

if you enjoy being worshiped in WvW, select mesmer…

So many mixed responses, but so much help so thank you very much.

As one person stated, I’ll get to level 25 and see how I feel with both of them by the time I’m that level. However, you have all gave mixed responses so it’s still so very hard to choose.

I’ll see which game play I like out of the 2, I think I’m edging towards Mesmer at the moment, however still undecided.

Thank you very much for the responses, keep them coming if you can please as the words of wisdom from your expertise is helping very much!

Both require skill to play well, but I think Ele is harder.
Mesmer is less squishy, thanks to clones and good escape/evades.
Mesmer are loved in dungeons.
Ele can stack group might very fast and can group heal well too.
Mesmer is a slow traveler.
Ele has much more aoe, while mesmers are deadly 1v1.

Another point: Whilst I was leveling my Mesmer I found that I rarely used my 7-9 utilities. They’re great in dungeons and large groups for support, but I rarely needed them in open world, using my 1-5 and shatter skills almost exclusively. Ele feels more active and almost requires you to use your 7-9 to stay alive or boost damage.

Mesmer if you like to attack single target more often, be a multitool in dungeons and Fractals, or if you like screwing people around in WvW. Go with Ele if you love to see a lot of damage numbers, aoe, dodging, and putting more effort than you normally would compare to the rest of the classes.

PvE: both very good.
PvP: Mes > Ele.
Wvw, zerg: Ele > Mes. It’s not that Mes is less useful than a Ele, but being a veilbot isn’t my idea of fun, while Ele (staff) has like 15 more skills to mention in a zergfight.
WvW, roaming: Mes > Ele. Mes is a better duelist, just remember to slap something on your armor to compensate the lack of OOC movement speed.

I had a lot of fun with Ele’,more than I thought I would.But had to delete her at level 80,as the Grand Master trait book was bugged and would never unlock.

I gave up on the Mesmer at level 10,just did not fit my play style.

I find when I play ele it’s frenetic, bordering on the chaotic, but satisfying when you can land all your key presses and get you combos off just right. Certain weapon sets will require some muscle memory training to pull off effectively. Mesmer is fast passed in its own way, but it’s more about strategy and mind games rather then quick fingers. In terms of leveling, both can be tricky but the learning curve for mesmer is more like a wall.

Thanks so very much for the replies everyone. You all helped in my decision!

I have decided to roll an Elementalist and having a blast at the moment, only level 7 though ;p!

Thanks a lot, have fun!