Guild Wars 2

So, ive got an Elementalist to level 80, LOVING THE GAME, but im not having fun with the class. I like to be the support of the team, i love playing in groups, did some research and lead me to 2 class: Guardians and Mesmers.
I’ve tryed both class and loved them, but since im more into mage things(and also got some “good” light armors) im willing to play mesmer. So my question is about how well can mesmer be as a support, i know they shine when reflect is needed, but and when is not needed? guardians are wellcome in any scenario, are mesmer? what about having both in the same party?

if i havent spent 250k karma with mage armor i think i would go for guardian, if mesmer aint that much of a good support

and about pvp, i see both them can do well, so this part is w/e xD

help?

Mesmers can be okay at support. Their mantras offer some boons and utility, and their reflect capabilities are no joke. However, they tend to fall short when it comes to a non-reflect heavy fight.

Guardians excel at distributing solid boons such as protection, stability, and their signature Aegis. They have various self and group blocking, and they deal well with projectiles be it by reflection or absorption. They also offer unique buffs to the team that increase armor, extend boon durations, and reduce durations of incoming conditions. Speaking of which they have various methods of cleansing/flipping conditions. Offensively speaking, they can be traited for high burst DPS while maintaining a respectable sustain-DPS without giving up their utility.

Mesmer do not offer as much of that same support and what’s worse is that some of their boons distribution can be kinda random. They excel at reflect battles and the meta even has them wearing Assassin gear for higher reflect DPS. Mantras offer reliable utility, but compared to a Guardian the stabilty duration is much shorter and the cleansing caps at 6 (assuming traited). On top of that channelling Mantras mid-battle is very awkward. Their high rate damage is very illusion dependant. Spike damage relies on key phantasms + timely shattering, and sustain DPS requires proper placement of phantasms.

So? Where does a Mesmer shine? Utility. Mesmer makes for excellent utility monkeys on a team. They offer boon high boon stripping (Guard can barely do that), quickness (Guard can manage a lesser version of this awkwardly), and their infamous portals. There’s a reason why we for Mesmers after a heated tug of war over a tower or such. It only takes one Mesmer to open up a back door to let the whole zerg back in. Mesmers also make for great lockdowns when facing enemies or when keeping track of defiant.

In PvP, Guards and Mesmers play different roles so comparing them would be odd.

Effectively, if I want to support a team and protect them so the run runs smoothly I’ll opt for Guardian over Mesmer. If I want to whip out shenanigans and make my enemy hate me I go with Mesmer hands down.

“Support” is a pretty broad term so the answers would be more focused if you can go into some detail about what type of “support” you want to provide.

Note that ALL classes can provide some level of party / team support (some more than others), but FOCUSING your build completely on support will likely NOT be appreciated by other party members. Despite what some players want, this game is designed to reward those that can kill faster than the enemy (a.k.a DPS), and sacrificing potential DPS for unneeded Support is at the very least, inefficient.

Bottom line in GW2, every player should (and usually does) bring their OWN support.

I’d say elementalists have more support than mesmers.

Altair.8402:

I’d say elementalists have more support than mesmers.

You’d be wrong about that.

I see…so mesmers aint too much useful/mandatory in pve as i though, thats too bad, but thanks all for the answers

There have been a lot of record holding speed runs that replace a Guard with a mesmer for the portal, but that’s also because groups in those kinds of runs are supremely optimized and were able to melt mobs/bosses before any sort of mitigation was needed.

For us “noobs” though Guardians are great to have around to help keep the team up and running.

As far as the Ele’s go, they can spec to be pretty powerful heal/recovery bots with all their water splashing. However, Ele support like that is generally more useful in PvP/WvW where recovery tactics are needed. In PvE, players are are best to avoid/mitigate the damage upfront rather than recover from it.

The guardian is only great when they know when to lay down Wall of Reflection, Aegis and Stability. These skills are always Optional, have high cast time/cool down and requires the knowledge of the encounters.

On the other hands, mesmer reflect, interrupt and mantra are parts of the DPS rotation. It’s hard to be ignorant about what you want to do or are doing. In my experience, mesmer is just ridiculously good (though not as god-like like ele) in Fractals.

Here I compare between the average OK guard and mesmer, excluding the loot-stick guard and the pewpew gsword mesmer. Please don’t be like them.