Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

I tried making a thread in the mesmer forums, but wasn’t getting any responses, so I figured rather than overload people with questions, that I’d break them down into smaller threads, so here is my first.

I’m currently playing as an engineer, and while I love the build diversity, I feel some of their coolest utilities aren’t as viable, and the visuals are lacking. (my favorite skill is rocket boots, but when I add that to my build, it just subtracts from the overall strength of the character)

I’m looking to make a mesmer (I currently have a level 29 mes), but I’ve always felt weak as mesmer. I tried pvp and got destroyed, and while fun killing mobs in pve, I found there to be too much downtime between bursts. (unlike static discharge rifle turret, which lets me 1 shot a mob every 7 seconds, on top of my other skills) With clones disappearing between creatures, I find I can’t get a good rhythm for leveling and map completion. I’m willing to tough it out to max level (got 40+ tomes), but I want to know what I’m missing about the class that would make it a viable main.

I like to play 1 profession at a time (usually for a couple months at a time), and am thinking of switching to mesmser. I don’t want to get bored, and I like build diversity, which is why I’m playing engineer now. (previous mains include: ele, thief and ranger)

Thanks a bunch.

Loboling.

Mesmer’s strength is their utility, their damage is very limited and has a lot of practical limitations to it’s use. You never really feel powerful, but that said, you can do a lot of tricky things that are quite powerful but jsut very situational. (Shutting down many bosses with reflects/boon stripping type stuff for example). You can do some nice burst in pvp scenarios but like you said, there’s a pretty decent wait time and prep time between them.

So, map completion on a mesmer is about as slow as possible is what you are saying?

I’ve heard mesmers get better at max level, but I guess not to the extent where they can grind mobs as well as a thief or engineer. (engineer really feels like my favorite class for map completion) As for pvp, I’m going to spend some time this week-end trying some meta builds and see if its any better than last year when I tried mesmer. I have gotten a lot better at the game, so maybe that will help.

I just want a class that feels flexible, while not giving up all mobility (or chase potential), that can map completion ok (I’ve never finished in 2 years now), and has some fun burst builds in pvp. (and viable)

I know mesmers can burst well, and they seem a little faster than a guardian at catching other players. Hopefully they aren’t as boring as Ranger for map completion (way too faceroll), and their pvp burst is viable at higher level pvp.

Thanks again.

Slow run speed, and the lowest damage with highest ramp up. Yup, pretty much going to be the slowest it can be on a mesmer >.<

You do have some move around mobility in your blink and portal, and for swiftness you can go centaur runes + mantra heal, traveler/speed runes, or even pack runes with traited focus, but compared to engi’s just strait speedy kits you’ll surely feel at a loss with mesmer’s speed.

Do mesmers have no abilities or builds that allow them to quickly take out weaker npcs?

Maybe group them up and burst them down in groups? Something to allow fluid play for map completion.

I wonder if norn mesmers feel their racial elites help with their mobility problems, or if they are simply non viable. I am hoping to play as a human male, but I may consider switching. Also, for mobility, I’m less frustrated with moving slowly than I am with having weakened enemies get away from me before I can finish them off. (the old GS/SwF medi guard was stupid easy to run from, if you knew how to counter the build)

You have some mobility tools, but yeah, I’d put them just above guard though because they have a very nice long range weapon in GS, it’s not a projectile so you don’t have the issues that scepter does on guard.

I have no problem with map completion with my mesmer.
If your mesmer is level 80, there is a lot you can do to increase your travel speed. My fav are Traveler runes.
And for taking out weaker mobs, I go with shatter build. I don’t pvp or WvW (I did a little a while ago), so I never really got to play shatter build much, even tho i wish i would. So I decided to play with it in open world a bit and it works for me. It works great on weaker mobs and it gives you some more survivability against tougher ones.

Ya, its funny most characters I try and do map completion as low level as possible, to reduce the fees from waypoints. But Mesmer might be the first I consider getting to max level before progressing with map completion.

Thanks for the help, I’m going to try a build in pvp with traveler runes, just to get a feel for how it suits mesmer.

So far, I’m still leaning towards engineer, but I find the mesmer fun, but I’m not seeing all the build diversity. It seems you can play shatter (direct/condi), or focus on keeping phantasm up while staying alive. Are there more playstyles I’m not aware of?

On the engineer to name a few: I can build a burst static discharge build (which in itself has a lot of variety); go focus on lobbing grandees and playing with a few different weapons (kits) as a damage dealer; I can drop bombs at my feet and turn into a area controller; I can play a medkit healer, where I can throw a bunch of medkits on a point and each heals for 2.5k (I can have about 12 up, when camping a point); I can play a decapper, and force my opponents to increase their numbers at the point I’m at, or lose it; And there are more, (bomb healer, turret camper, reflection spammer, HGH, Mine burst) There may be more, but I cant think of it.

I realize how little I know about the mesmer, but its hard to imagine any class with as much build diversity as the engineer. So where do mesmer’s truly stand?

Thanks again.

I never really understood the mentality of having 1 class as your only focus. I play both Mesmer (which I made early when the game came out) and engi which I got to 80 a few months ago and have been enjoying ever since. Engis do have more build diversity and they are VERY strong in sPvP but mesmer has its moments aswell.

Shatter mesmer is the build most people play in spvp and it definitely has one of the worst learning curves in this game IMHO. You need to utilize your abilities and positioning pretty perfectly to survive, and there’s very little room for error that you might get when playing other burst classes, so you may feel very weak when you first start playing, but my advice is to stick with it! If you enjoy the challenge you can have a lot of fun playing, and the satisfaction of killing someone before they can react is great when you can pull it off.

Sometimes when I’m playing cele rifle engi and I beat someone in a 1v1 I dont feel like I was ever really at risk of dying which makes it less satisfying for me. I feel like I outclassed them rather than outplayed sometimes with engi.

As a mark against mesmer, they have a disadvantage when doing their job because there is one class that simply does it better in most cases; thief.

The roles the 2 classes share in any type of competitive or even casual pvp is extremly similar; roaming, decapping, confusing the enemy as to where your team is and appearing suddenly to +1 and burst someone down. Neither are first choice to go 1v1 but both classes can pull it off with experience and knowing your enemy. The biggest differences are mesmers longer range dps that is an option when melee shatter is too dangerous and PORTAL. Good portal plays are almost necessary to justify having a mesmer, and its very difficult to utilize with unorganized teams. In solo queue portal is mostly used as a survival tool for yourself, because people seem really against moving towards and using the great-big-pink-glowy circle on the ground and often in this situation some condi cleanse or extra stun breaks (or even reflects against mutiple power rangers/shoutbow warr) would be much better.

Overall if you want to play mesmer you do have to focus a bit I suppose. I still posit that playing a little of both and learning both’s strengths and weaknesses will only make you a better play in the end.

*I don’t really pve ever so I really have little experience here outside dungeons and fractals on warr, but I do remember mesmer being really painful to level until around 40 and I got the clone dodge roll trait, im not sure what lvl you need to get to nowadays to get it but once you have that you can use shatter more reliably, and mesmer is really weak below 80 in general.

Like Jerus mentioned; low mobility, highest ramp-up, not to mention rather pathetic low AoE and little self-buffing ability (might/fury.) That being said, get decent at using Temporeal Curtain to pull mobs together, load up a Shatter-build (something like 4 (I-X) 4 (I-X) / 0 / 0 / 6 (I-VIII-XI) equip some Centaur Runes, Blink and Portals (maybe a Toy-Axe) and you’re good to go as far as mapping is concerned. Even then, you’ll never be a Thief or a Warrior, or even a Guardian… Or Ranger, or Engineer…

In sPvP Shatter is kittenual go-to-build, but very difficult to play to a high potential without a decent team, Portal is your best asset, and you won’t be able to survive long if you don’t have a team looking out for you at least a little. There can be some variation in builds with a lock-down build, or a condition build (don’t PU, that’s just a kitten-take, but they’re good condition builds available that actually do stuff.) But you’ll always be this squishy bursty class.

Dungeons/Fractals is kind of the same issue as in sPvP, if you don’t have an organized team using your unique utility, you’re more or less useless; you can do a Guardians job, but without aegis and less personal dps. Timewrap is also rather underwhelming if your team is clueless burst-wise and thus won’t always make up for your low (burst) damage. Portal will be useless unless people take it / a Fiery Greatsword is provided to have the mobility to place it. (If people can skip with you, portal is kinda useless. :p)

Don’t know much about WvW besides trolling around with any build doing some skirmishes.

But to be fairly honest, if you can enjoy Engineer and you can get over a Mesmers weaknesses (lowmobility, low self-buffing ability, low AoE) since they’re not considered meta or optimal either except in sPvP. ^^ I personally adore them (but only in semi-organized groups, if not I’d take a Thief for sPvP or a Guardian in PvE instead. Personal preferance and I’m the type to play anything that would help my team.)

I’m really happy with the constructive posts!

Its very nice of so many of you to write up about the mesmer.

The thing is, I can never commit to playing a character if its not called “Loboling”. It is very silly, and each max level character I’ve had to rename when I’m done with him, to start a new Loboling. I tried to get away with it on my mesmer, by calling her Lobolings, and while funny, I miss playing a male human loboling character…

I’m going to continue to play around with the mesmer in pvp, and with my engineer. If I get tired of engineer, I think mesmer would be a very fun class to learn. It seems to have a lot of useful abilities baked into the class. (invul, burst, interrupt, some condi) Mesmer are a very cool class, and possibly the hardest profession to master. I thought engineer was hard, but you can at least build tanky to learn the ropes, doing so with mesmer is mostly pointless it seems.

Honestly, I wish I could move to mesmer (just for something new), but I know at some point I’ll want to play something that can take a few more hits. So for now, I’m more likely to take my engineer into the expansion.

I wish they would release all the info on specilizations now, so if there is anything relevant to my decision making, I could avoid investing hundreds of skill points and gold into a character I wont ever play. (thank you NPE)

Anyway, thanks again everyone. If I start to get more into mesmer, I’ll probably make some thread about how awesome they are. I already find them really cool, but they feel a little too niche for a main. Hopefully the expansion brings some more flexibility in their playstyles.