Guild Wars 2

I don’t know if this topic has been brought up before, but it is one that really bothers me lately.

As a roleplayer, you see lots of wierd things that don’t fit well into the lore, and very often these are associated to magic and how it works in Tyria.

One of those shady topics is mesmer magic and its ability or inability to control minds. While we do know that direct mind control is very much possible in GW, especially with the Elder Dragons, to my knowledge it has never been linked to mesmers primarily. Their focus lies much more heavily on creating illusions for everyone to see, imho. At least since GW2, less so in the original game.

We do know that they can put pain or even voices in your head (as is done by Macha in Sea of Sorrows), but as far as I know, there are no real examples of them truly messing with the head of a single person, e.g. creating illusions that only that single person can see and/or illusions that show something of which that specific person is afraid of (except of course if the mesmer knows beforehand what that guy is afraid of). And we especially don’t see them straight out commanding people around via brainwashing them with spells.

While I don’t think it is something that cannot be done, I’d rather say it is something that is extremely powerful and difficult to do, and should be a done a lot less in RP.

I’d appreciate your opinions on this topic. And should I have overlooked an example of a mesmer messing directly with someone’s head in lore, please feel free to post it.

Examples off the top of my head:
- Jennah making the population of Ebonhawke and the dragon minions attacking them think that Kralkatorrik came back and branded them all into statues
- The late personal story arc where you order your own allies to be shelled because you saw them as risen, then were mislead by a hallucination of Trahearne, then attacked by an imaginary Flame Legion army and a giant
- The human personal story arc where a device of possibly asuran origin was used in an attempt to overthrow the Queen- the closest to plain mind control I can think of, but notably accomplished by magitech, not mesmers
- The potion in CM explorable that forces the imbiber to tell the truth
-The Nightmare Court spellbinders in Brisban, who are able to take control of the local skritt and cause them to attack their foes

It’s also illuminating to notice where it isn’t used- for instance, despite the spellbinders mentioned above, Faolain never employs that kind of control over Caithe, even though it would make her obsession easily obtainable. The simplest explanation would appear to be that she can’t.

Too tired right now to articulate on what I see as the implications, but maybe I’ll try to whip up something cogent later.

I think that the way Mesmers manipulate the surroundings with Chaotic Magic will make their target’s mind tricked on actually believing that this manipulative magic is real, and the way that it affects someone depends on the level of the spell. Maybe it isn’t easy to get into someone’s mind, so the effects are caused by a determined illusion of something (like an illusion of a simple fear, or an illusion on a big scale that will trick more targets) depends on the Mesmer level and the strength of one’s mind.

Like, you can actually trigger something on someone’s brain that will cause pain, terror, confusion, paralyzation or whatever if you know the ways to do so, but it will depends on your knowledge on how to do it, and your magic strength/level compared with the target’s mind strength. Skirt’s are easy level, humans/charrs/asuras will depend on a lot of other circumstances etc.

As Aaron points out, there are definitely examples of mesmers being able to create illusions that only the target of the illusion can see. It is, however, something that the mesmer community tries to keep quiet about and techniques for doing so are generally only taught to those that they believe can be trusted to keep the secret (the interview where this was discussed was the first indication that there was a Mesmer Collective, although I can’t recall if the name was used).

My impression, from what I’ve seen, is that you can’t get actual mind control with mesmerism. The target is always, in principle, in control of what they choose to do.

However, a mesmer can completely mess up the inputs that someone uses to decide what to do. They can make an enemy appear as a friend, or vice versa. They can also manipulate emotions, pushing a target to feel intense loyalty to someone they would otherwise see as an enemy, or intense hatred to someone they would normally be an ally to or indifferent towards. But the decisions they make with this input are still their own, even if they might be completely different to what they’d do otherwise.

Incidentally, I think this applies even where dragon corruption is concerned. Dragon corruption fills the target with overwhelming devotion towards the dragon and murderous hatred of everything else, but those that haven’t been drained of magic to the point of being a mindless drone are still making their own decisions within the constraints of their forced loyalties.

I don’t think they can do “mind control” like what that typically implies, but they can create illusions to attempt to coerce a person to do what they want. For example, “Imagined Burden”, a GW1 skill, makes the target slower because they are imaged to be burdened by the mesmer. The mesmer is not “commanding” them to walk slower, just giving the illusion that they are burdened, making them walk slower because of said burden.

Aren`t the basic mechanics of the Mesmer illusions that are tied to the enemy they are cast on?
Isn`t that the reason they disperse after the enemy is defeated?

Sure it doesn`t explain all mechanics, for example AoE attacks, that hurt other enemies as well (Phantsm Warden for example), but for me that is an indication that they are messing directly with one particular mind.

Now we could of course say that some particular illusions are a moving AoE effect and everyone who goes inside the affected area is under it`s influence.

Here http://esprits-dorr.fr/node/261 Angel McCoy confirmed that such manipulation does exist but is kept within the Mesmer community, which I believe is Mesmer Collective.

@Jaken: They’re tied to a particular enemy, but they’re still visible and tangible (to whatever extent the illusions are tangible) to everyone. As opposed to the more secret stuff which is only experienced by the target.

Thanks for your opinions on this topic.

Regarding the interview with Angel McCoy – I’ve taken a closer look back at some mesmer skills from GW1 (I never played a mesmer myself, so I had to refresh my memory) and many of them are implying a direct influence or attack on the enemy’s mind. Visions of Regret, Psychic Distraction, Panic, Confusing Images, Fevered Dreams, just to name a few obvious examples.

Most of these skills are hexes and thus directly connected with a single individual. It might not be the same thing as creating an illusion the way mesmers do it in GW2 and only make it visible for a specific person, but there’s a strong implication that mesmers can control minds to a certain degree, I think.
Hexes were a common type of spell back in the original game, and I don’t think they aren’t used anymore in lore just because the combat system in GW2 is a different one. So this seems to contradict Angels statement in that interview.

The thing that I don’t know is when was this ‘Mesmer Collective’ established. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure what has happened to Mesmer in the timeline between GW1 and GW2.

Mesmer in GW1 seems to be different than in GW2 as when you compare them, including the hexes. Moreover, Mesmer symbol/icon has also been changed from that palm icon with eyes on it to a mask with butterfly shape. To me, it seems like they were sort of reshaping their image, I mean I’m not really sure if they really care that much to their publication, but hey, they are Mesmer! But again as we consider their whole profession concept, they’re the least person that can be trusted and probably the main suspect of everything (I think, though). So I think that this organization, Mesmer Collective, tried to fix this up by limiting the spell that is recorded to be learnt for everybody basically (you know, like nerf it :p), including some hexes maybe. But again, that is solely my imagination.

Since I’m not really good at lore, I don’t really know if some strong hexes have ever been mentioned in it. But don’t you thing some utility skills such as Mantra and some Manipulations seemed a bit hex-ish? And don’t forget polymorph skill, turning people into moa has never been that convenient before XD

I can’t speak on what might have changed between games, but I can say that outside the charr, who are also suspicious of magic in general, there doesn’t seem to be any unsavory reputation for mesmers. It’s a perfectly accepted, even comparatively prestigious role in human society, pursued by much of their nobility; the asura and sylvari don’t seem to view it as anything different from any other magic; and among the norn it appears to be so rare as to not have any reputation at all (although that may just be the player/NPC knowledge segregation at work again).

Least trustworthy would probably go to the thieves, whose reputation is such that their membership is collectively referred to as a sort of criminal.

Hmmm that is quiet interesting to me actually. First of all, I didn’t play much GW1 so I have a little knowledge about Mesmer role then. However, I would like to know whether Mesmer is as prestigious in GW1 as it is in GW2 among human society? So far I’m just observing the simbol though. In GW1 it seems more like a group of cult but in GW2 they seems like a bunch of fabs that you want to be friend with XD

As for Asura and Sylvary, they are pretty hard to guess for me. First of all, Asura is quiet objective in regards of magic, they probably only see Mesmerism as a normal sorcery. It doesn’t really matter what organization out there and now matter how care the Asurans are, they will most likely hold fast to their own organized society and then making their little snarky experiment in their lab in Rata Sum, far from most civilizations. Second of all, Sylvary is a pretty new race to the Tyria and subject to any change to the world. However they have previous knowledge, even long before a person of that time has. But I doubt that they also know everything that happened. In case of Norn, well, they just love smash things XD

You have a fair point about thieves though, especially what happened recently in LS lol what is the name of the thieves guild?

Ugh they have to put profession personal story into the game that would be very interesting XD

EDIT: MESMERS ARE ILLUMINATI lol jk

If anything, I’d say mesmers were considered even more classy in GW1’s time. Admittedly we don’t see nearly as much of the nobility back then, but even so one of the major nobles we did see was a mesmer, and even those that were probably common-born were generally acted more aristocratic than members of other professions. The profession was also much more closely associated with the arts as a whole and the theater in particular.

Ha if that is the case then Mesmer lost their sweg along the way :p But honestly then they seem want to have a higher social standard than they actually have. Still genuinely intrigued of the establishment of this Mesmer Collective if they have no issue with their power among non-Mesmer.

EDIT: nvm since we don’t know when exactly this group was founded lol

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I can’t speak on what might have changed between games, but I can say that outside the charr, who are also suspicious of magic in general, there doesn’t seem to be any unsavory reputation for mesmers. It’s a perfectly accepted, even comparatively prestigious role in human society, pursued by much of their nobility; the asura and sylvari don’t seem to view it as anything different from any other magic; and among the norn it appears to be so rare as to not have any reputation at all (although that may just be the player/NPC knowledge segregation at work again).

I suspect this is actually part of the point. Unlike necromancers, which basically don’t give a flying immature feline, mesmers are experts at manipulating how they are seen by others, both on an individual basis and by society as a whole. Part of this could be making sure they hide techniques that might lead to people wearing tinfoil hats (pffft, like that would help anyway) and blaming mesmer conspiracies for everything going wrong.

It probably helps that since GW1, mesmers have developed a range of other combat spells that means that a mesmer doesn’t need to use the more suspicion-inducing techniques to be an effective fighter.