Guild Wars 2

I’d say Elementalist is the more adaptive and reactive one, given how quickly you need to pick the right attunement and know what the skills do in it when you click it.

But personally I find Mesmer much more fun (I have 3 Mesmers at 80, and one Ele that I ground to 80 much later despite making her at launch). I don’t claim to play them brilliantly, or even to specifically choose shatter vs. phantasm builds, but they seem quite effective in all the PvE content I do. Different weapons will give them significantly different play as well. And the key tapping is just the standard 1-0 + F1-F4. (I fully understand your Engi complaint, believe me, far too much piano playing needed).

Ele traits can be game changers. Builds are basically trait-focused. Setting up water and arcana traits will get you a reactive bunker build. I don’t know of anyone running a fire or air zerker trait setup, but you can check the ele forum. I’m sure someone’s tried it.

Again, I’m not the be all and end all when it comes to mesmer. But the flavor of it as I play it is that you keep on creating clones and phantasms via weapon and utility skills, you can trait to be more effective with more of them out (max 3 at a time I think) and/or to make them do nifty things when they shatter. Your F1-F4 are the shatter command keys and each has a specific thing to do to the enemy on shatter (damage it, confuse it, interrupt it, or make you invulnerable to damage briefly). In PvE, my bailiwick, mobs tend to aggro the images rather than you, and timing the shatter is fairly important so you can get more images up in a hurry before you get swarmed. In PvP I understand a good mesmer can emulate clone activity and make it very hard for other players to target the real one.

They also have a portal skill that I suppose works in combat, but has prime use in getting up JPs. Either you plunk one down when doing a tricky leap that gives you problems, so if you fall you can hop right back up, or you get to the end and then can portal other people up if they need a boost. And Decoy is a permaskill for me on all three of my mesmers, I love a stun breaker that makes me invisible and drops a clone to taunt mobs while I keep on running. And underwater, mmmmm. I used to go out of my way to do aquatic fighting on my first mesmer, it really felt like the absolute strongest underwater fighter I had when using a trident, and the most mobile when holding a spear. I still have fond memories of soloing the river drake queen in Bloodtide at level; that was the fight that really taught me fast swapping between the two weapons and how to synergize them.

I will say my first mesmer felt clumsy to me (and this was long before the trait unlock revamp) for a good 30 levels or so. Then she just took off. My other two are both grandfathered in traits as well, I’ve only made one post-revamp alt. So you might have a lot more trouble finding the fun until you can gather the traits.

My favorite is mesmer. I also have 3 while only 1 of each of the others. Since I have trouble with the F1 – F4 keys on my keyboard I have remapped them to x ,c v and b. I also have swap remapped to z so it doesn’t conflict with my “speak” key on ventrillo and teamspeak. I have remapped dodge from v to g (I think). I use double tap w, a, s and d for dodging, which I do a lot (I have my mesmers traited to create a clone on dodge).

I’m not an elementalist expert by any means, but imo the profession isn’t really reactive: sure, you are comboing all day long with your rotations (which i don’t like btw), but regardless of your opponent you’re still going to dodge those few big hitters and pop your cantrips when you need them.
Mesmers instead (along with thieves) are really reliant on defending your own based on your opponent’s actions.
Longbow ranger appears? Drop feedback bubble!
Warrior hammers you down? swap to staff and use #2, when he jump on you blink away!
Also, both greatsword and staff are excelent melee range weapons: the gs provides insane burst at close range, while the staff gives you extra boons while adding extra conditions if you’re close enough, plus you benefit more from chaos storm while being melee(also the staff works both as a condition build or a power build).

By the way, give the thief a try or two in the mists, as it fits your criterias too: mostly melee, requires enhanced mobility, reactive defense (blinds and dodges).
The only ranged options are pistol mainhand and shortbow, the first one is almost always used in condition builds (together with a dagger, the build involves going into melee range too) and the shortbow is a super-awesome utility weapon.
On top of that, the weapons sets have the most flexibility as with initiative you could use all the abilities one by one or use the same one twice, three times, etc.
Lastly, their profession mechanic puts you into melee when used, doesn’t it fit so well?

I find both classes equally fun to play but if I had to keep only one it’d be the Elementalist. I think the Ele is more versatile than the Mesmer.