Guild Wars 2

Right, so i’ve tried many many different weapon combos and traits, and i have come to the conclusion that mesmers that rely on illusions or even remotely try to use them for anything other than to dispose of them immediately via shattering or leaving them to die will be useless.

The mesmer feels very very utilitarian, all his utility skills are just that, utility, they don’t really help much in direct combat, but rather very reliant on the enemy’s skill, WHICH IS GOOD, because that’s what the mesmer is supposed to feel like, a deceptive class that turns yourself on you.

But it is also a bad thing, since whatever weapon you use, you will always have 1 skill that summons a clone and another that summons a phantasm which usually constitute a large portion of your damage, and with the current horrid survivability of illusions ((even giving them the best shot with traits and the signet)) they don’t live enough to be of any use, so you basically lose 2 skill slots.

The utility skills are not sufficient as long as illusions fill that role, which they’re not supposed to.

Now to the elites, the mesmer has 3 elites:
1. Time warp: it’s pretty good for teamwork and synchronizing with skills like tome of courage/wrath and other long cast skills, most suitable for WvW.

2. Polymorph: 10 second of a near useless enemy to wail on, sounds good for sPvP.

3: Mass Invisibility: the most useless elite skill in the game, taking into consideration the cooldown and the skill point cost that is, 30 skill points for a 90 second cooldown invisibility skill that works on 6 people for only 5 seconds?, i expected an elite of this sort to have 12 players minimum and a little more duration., most useless skill imho unless used in very few spvp comps.

Now to the traits:
I generally have no problem with the distribution of the traits for the mesmer, the Illusions line is pretty awesome (except the illusions themselves are rubbish), the Domination and Dueling lines are pretty good too.

The Chaos and Inspiration line are only good up till master major traits, then comes the grandmaster, a couple of them are pretty low tier at best, like Bountiful Interruption (grants a random boon when you interrupt a foe) and Shattered Conditions (removes a condition on shattering illusions), and Prismatic Understanding (1 second longer stealth) are all at best Master tier traits.

From my perspective all this can be fixed by making illusions more resilient, maybe take 95% less damage from AOE, because come on, the mesmers are EXTREMELY reliant on illusions, every build uses a phantasm and a clone, you’re just destroying the fun for WvW for us, signet of illusions is not enough.

I hope this gets to the devs somehow, whether you agree or disagree i’d like them to know all people’s opinions.

please reply if you have any suggestion or have anything constructive to say about the matter.

edit: one other thing, there are traits that reduce weapon cooldowns by 20%, and there’s the minor trait that reduces illusion summoning skills’ cooldowns by 20%, but they don’t stack, why this redundancy??, make them stack!

I’ll say like I said in another thread…
Mesmers illusions are made to be shattered right away. Not to be kept alive in the world as long as possible.
There is a reason behind the phantasms shooting their first attack as they appear then waiting 5 seconds for the next one. Because they arn’t meant to reach the second attack. You should already have blown them up a second or 2 after spawning them.

Try using greatsword Power crit damage precision.
In WvWvW if you reach about 100% crit damage with high power you can basically wipe a group of people by pressing 2, 4 and F1.

I agree, but again a suggestion forum should be made. Cuse this is players helping players

I’ve noticed this issue aswell.
Yesterday I had my first big run in WvW, where there were some large battles.

I know mesmers aren’t supposed to do any real AoE, so I just focused more on the enemy backline, confusing the elementalists & rangers that were just wailing freely on our group.

Because of the distance, I have no other chance then to take the staff or the scepter, as trying to go there in melee is rahter suicidal.
Now I cast some normal basic staff attacks for random conditions, cast a choas storm, then my Iwarlock (as this is the main damage dealer in a staff-setup).
However this one just instapops. I switch to my sword/pistol setup and cast the duelist, who instapops to random AoE placed all over.

Maybe I should stick to my scepter, to create random illusions to shatter them. But I need to be at 900 range for this, which again is suicide.

So I’m a bit at a loss here, just auto-attacking is rather pointless.

snaplemouton.1294:

I’ll say like I said in another thread…
Mesmers illusions are made to be shattered right away. Not to be kept alive in the world as long as possible.
There is a reason behind the phantasms shooting their first attack as they appear then waiting 5 seconds for the next one. Because they arn’t meant to reach the second attack. You should already have blown them up a second or 2 after spawning them.

Try using greatsword Power crit damage precision.
In WvWvW if you reach about 100% crit damage with high power you can basically wipe a group of people by pressing 2, 4 and F1.

some skills benefit from having more illusions out like the heal, plus illusions are meant to be deceptive as well, wiping them as soon as they’re summoned defeats that purpose.

I use clones in PvP to confuse others and avoid damage while my other damage/avoidance cooldowns are up, because you actually get a very small stealth whenever you summon a clone, unless your target has a large amount of AoE, you can escape a lot of punishment and confuse the hell out of the enemy to boot. The trick is to keep them alive long enough to confuse, but detonate them before they die to get the maximum potential from them.

Kalara.6901:

I’ve noticed this issue aswell.
Yesterday I had my first big run in WvW, where there were some large battles.

I know mesmers aren’t supposed to do any real AoE, so I just focused more on the enemy backline, confusing the elementalists & rangers that were just wailing freely on our group.

Because of the distance, I have no other chance then to take the staff or the scepter, as trying to go there in melee is rahter suicidal.
Now I cast some normal basic staff attacks for random conditions, cast a choas storm, then my Iwarlock (as this is the main damage dealer in a staff-setup).
However this one just instapops. I switch to my sword/pistol setup and cast the duelist, who instapops to random AoE placed all over.

Maybe I should stick to my scepter, to create random illusions to shatter them. But I need to be at 900 range for this, which again is suicide.

So I’m a bit at a loss here, just auto-attacking is rather pointless.

not to mention that the skill 1 with scepter takes quite a while to reach that final attack, and it won’t summon an illusion if it misses, plus you won’t have time to get all three illusions out that way since they will pop right away as you said.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Mesmer-PvP-1hSword-Torch-Build-Mass-illusions-to-stomp-them-all/first#post44013

Give it a try =)

Dungfish.7509:

I use clones in PvP to confuse others and avoid damage while my other damage/avoidance cooldowns are up, because you actually get a very small stealth whenever you summon a clone, unless your target has a large amount of AoE, you can escape a lot of punishment and confuse the hell out of the enemy to boot. The trick is to keep them alive long enough to confuse, but detonate them before they die to get the maximum potential from them.

that works in pvp becuase there’s WAAAAY less players than WvW, in WvW you have a minimum or 40 players on your screen most of the time.

Deepblue.1237:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Mesmer-PvP-1hSword-Torch-Build-Mass-illusions-to-stomp-them-all/first#post44013

Give it a try =)

i’m currently using that same tactic to farm, but i’m telling you it’s no good for WvW.

What about making your illusions a bit hardier with Persistent Images (Inspiration Adept V), + make them hit more often (Illusions, Phantasmal Haste Master X), then make yourself and team faster with Compounding Celerity (Inspiration Adept VI)? Build some kind of regen and heal on top of that? Just a thought (some build options I was thinking about the other day).

gurugeorge.9857:

What about making your illusions a bit hardier with Persistent Images (Inspiration Adept V), + make them hit more often (Illusions, Phantasmal Haste Master X), then make yourself and team faster with Compounding Celerity (Inspiration Adept VI)? Build some kind of regen and heal on top of that? Just a thought (some build options I was thinking about the other day).

i already am using it.

Try a Reflection Mesmer. Warden’s Feedback + Phantasmal Haste, conjure iWarden into enemy Zerg. Watch the ensuing pain. Feedback and reflecting Temporal Curtain to make Rangers and Elementalists cry. Medic’s Feedback for potentially spammable area Reflection.

How many points into illusionary trait do you have? That makes a world of a difference, I do pretty good in world vs world and I often use a staff with +condition mods to most of my gear.

Embolism.8106:

Try a Reflection Mesmer. Warden’s Feedback + Phantasmal Haste, conjure iWarden into enemy Zerg. Watch the ensuing pain. Feedback and reflecting Temporal Curtain to make Rangers and Elementalists cry. Medic’s Feedback for potentially spammable area Reflection.

i tried this too, it worked pretty ok, but still, illusions hardly survived because of AOE.

Teknobug.3782:

How many points into illusionary trait do you have? That makes a world of a difference, I do pretty good in world vs world and I often use a staff with +condition mods to most of my gear.

30 points in illusion.

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