Guild Wars 2

The Mesmer profession has always been a very intriguing one to me, but I hear horror stories all the time about how squishy they are or how little damage they do, so I normally steer clear when I get the urge to roll one. Are there any high level/experienced Mesmers out there willing to provide some feedback on how they feel about their profession and what they’re able to do? Also, are there any tricks/tips for beginning/advanced players that you’re willing to share?

Just wanted to know, thanks!

Well I love mine, in PvE and PvP! It can play so many roles in PvP and is just great fun

Amiron.1067:

The Mesmer profession has always been a very intriguing one to me, but I hear horror stories all the time about how squishy they are or how little damage they do, so I normally steer clear when I get the urge to roll one. Are there any high level/experienced Mesmers out there willing to provide some feedback on how they feel about their profession and what they’re able to do? Also, are there any tricks/tips for beginning/advanced players that you’re willing to share?

Just wanted to know, thanks!

Haven’t played one but have played against a bunch in spvp. They are tough to beat 1v1 because I can’t tell which one is the real target. If I can get a marker on the real player before he starts to clone I have a chance. But if not I can never get the player targeted and his clones pick me to death. I play mostly melee classes so I don’t know how range classes fair against them.

I’ve been playing a Mesmer as my main since BWE1 and they are right to say that Mesmer’s are squishy and do less damage than most professions. This profession is very much skill based. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone whose new to MMO’s or are below average in general gaming skills.

That said, I also find it the most rewarding profession, Because you are squishy and do medium damage there is a lot of moving about involved to keep yourself from being killed. Dodging, kiting, slowing the enemy down. It’s all about control, support while you and your friends do the damage.

You’re constantly on the move making last minute decisions on using abilities. As a lot of the abilities of a Mesmer are very situational you have to think on your feet a lot. This is also what makes the Mesmer so fun to play. Just standing there casting a couple of abilities or steam waltzing over mobs is not what I enjoy.

As fun as it is to feel all powerful. I find it more fun to really work for my kills and be buzzing about like a bee who drank too much nectar. I’ve always preferred playing the difficult professions in games because I like the challenge and the Mesmer satisfies that need.

So if you really want to push your gaming skills and want a challenge that’s rewarding and fun Mesmers are certainly worth the try. If you like to be more casual and relaxed in playstyle then probably not.

As for tips, That’s another thing about the Mesmer there are so many ways of playing one, many weapon set combinations, trait builds. There isn’t really a right way of playing one. All I can say is to try all weapon combinations and then depending on how you play the game your traits. Whatever works for you, Works for you.

My setup is: Greatsword & Scepter/Focus. I’m traiting heavily in Domination and Inspiration. Some in Illusions. My gear is mostly Power and Condition Damage based. Hope that helps

I only played my mesmer for a few levels, not enough to get the hang of it, but enough to see what it’s all about. It strikes me as a class that requires a bit of finesse to play, and a lot of the mesmer’s success comes from well-timing the abilities that destroy the illusions. Since they explode after you kill your enemies anyway, you might as well pop them early for the added effects. But you don’t want to pop them too early, or you lose use of them for more of the fight than you might want. It looks like timing is pretty crucial to maximizing your effectiveness.

Despite being “squishy” (I have seen mesers that can take a few hits) their defense comes from their illusions……believe it or not its actually pretty hard to tell which one is the real one if they have a lot out. You need to pay attention to things like odd movments, dodges, skill animations and such to pick out the right target (kinda like Assassins Creed)

Personally I find them enjoyable.

I have so far gone extesivly in sPvP with 2 builds

1) Greatsword and Sword/Pistol

I get the Greatsword and Pistol CD reduction traits and I pick up the “+4% damage for each readied matra” talent. I think pick all matras for my 6-9 skills. In addition to the “+3% damage for every active illusion” trait I can hit quite hard.

1) Staff and Scepter/Torch

Pure condition and boon duration/damage build. Load them up with conditions then sick your illusionary warlock at them. If you really up your condition damage and duration your DoTs become VERY deadly

I just logged in to ask the same question,
I am at level 34 and starting to struggle in groups. If there is an event with a lot of players my loot drops to virtually zero as i cant get any hits in to tag the mobs. On a single boss event i often end up as bronze even if i have been hammering on it from the beginning.

I am sure i must be missing something, i am not expecting to be top dps, but it would be nice to feel like I am contributing.

catopia.2715:

I just logged in to ask the same question,
I am at level 34 and starting to struggle in groups. If there is an event with a lot of players my loot drops to virtually zero as i cant get any hits in to tag the mobs. On a single boss event i often end up as bronze even if i have been hammering on it from the beginning.

I am sure i must be missing something, i am not expecting to be top dps, but it would be nice to feel like I am contributing.

If you are having trouble tagging mobs, use Sword as your main hand weapon. Both of the damaging sword attacks are (short range)conal AEs, and the clone you can pop out with the 3rd ability can double as a short range teleport as well.

You might be surprised how survivable a Mesmer can be as a melee fighter. I use sword + focus and staff as my weapon sets at level 60, and it’s been extremely powerful in PvE.

Important things to note:

Your clones can tank for you. They’re fairly fragile, but since you can generate them quickly that’s okay. NPC enemies are fairly stupid and will fall for clones far more often than player enemies, so use them to misdirect attention away from you.

Blurred Frenzy makes you invincible while you do it. If you have the trait that grants you Vigor on critical and a high critical rate, you can spend more time invincible than not. Use Blurred Frenzy (main-hand sword #2) offensively and defensively. It can do great AoE damage and you can’t be harmed or CC’d while you channel it. If you’re fighting in melee you should look like you’re dancing—always be moving!

Shatter, baby, shatter. Mind Wrack, if nothing else, can do fantastic AoE damage, even if you don’t trait it up. Since your clones and phantasms disappear when their target dies, you might as well shatter them often! You can damage other enemies near your target without having to “waste” your illusions. Cry of Frustration is also excellent—Confusion can do great damage if you time it right, and Cry of Frustration is the best way to inflict it on multiple enemies at once.

I haven’t pve on Mesmer much cuz I hate pve mostly, so I’ve made lvl 5 mesmer and pvp all day long in arena. Love GS and Sword/Pistol weapon sets. And all those clones make so much distraction. And you can not be finished as fast as other players, cuz you simply switch yourself with clone and sit aside while your enemy tries to figure out which one is actual you GS does decent damage. And you have a lot of stuff to confuse your enemy. I mostly use hide that switches you with clone, brake stun and jump away skill, field that increases skill casting for all your allies. Mesmer is fun. In solo pve it should be fine, in group pve it is not as useful as other classes (like guardians, elementalists, engineers, necros) I guess.
What I’ve figured so far is that staves and scepters do not do much damage, to increase your damage use GS or sword/pistol. Staves and scepters more for supportive/controlling builds.

NoFate.3786:

I haven’t pve on Mesmer much cuz I hate pve mostly, so I’ve made lvl 5 mesmer and pvp all day long in arena. Love GS and Sword/Pistol weapon sets. And all those clones make so much distraction. And you can not be finished as fast as other players, cuz you simply switch yourself with clone and sit aside while your enemy tries to figure out which one is actual you GS does decent damage. And you have a lot of stuff to confuse your enemy. I mostly use hide that switches you with clone, brake stun and jump away skill, field that increases skill casting for all your allies. Mesmer is fun. In solo pve it should be fine, in group pve it is not as useful as other classes (like guardians, elementalists, engineers, necros) I guess.
What I’ve figured so far is that staves and scepters do not do much damage, to increase your damage use GS or sword/pistol. Staves and scepters more for supportive/controlling builds.

In Group PvE, Mesmers bring in Ethereal combo fields and possibly a Light combo field to use.

Ethereal:
Chaos Storm (Staff only, Ground Target AoE field)
Feedback (Targeted AoE field) – Ranged Attack user lockdown
Time Warp (Quickness for everyone in the field) – Elite ability
Null Field (Ground Target AoE field) – A combination Purge opponents/Cleanse allies field

Light:
Temporal Curtain (Focus only, Ground Target wall) – Combination Run speed/Cripple wall, affects those who run across it.

I’m also pretty sure the portal will work too, but never tried it.

Light doesn’t feel too impressive but Ethereal causes Confusion and Chaos Armor, which are actually pretty good. Basically turns Time Warp into a killing field.

Im almost level 80 in PvP and have done a bit (up to ~R8) of Spvp. In both areas I run a phantasm build which I would say is squishy but in a deceptive sort of way. The big thing about the build I’m running (10/20/0/25/5 +10) is that most of the damage comes from your phantasms. You run large amounts of power and precision with no defences so if left alone you personally can also pump a lot of damage you just don’t need to. This means that in a 1v1 situation as long as you get your 2 phantasms out I find I don’t need to actually do damage, my illusions kill them for me. This is in both areas.

I’ve tried a few condition orientated builds but find them to be weak, essentially you run exactly my build but relying on the bleeds the illusions stack instead of their raw damage.

For PvE I run sword/pistol + greatsword, where as in PvP I use sword/pistol + staff. This combination when used with utilities such as decoy/feedback makes you actually really hard to kill despite your low defences. The one person I ever had problems with was a guardian who charged in and did his stupid spin thing not caring if I was invisible or not, I basically had to be on sword using blurred fury at that point to survive. Although in hind sight I should have used the 4th shatter.

Once you get the hang of a phantasm build mesmer you find that while you really lack the aoe damage and are quite susceptible to pure raw burst the fact you can focus so much on surviving, due to your phantasms being the damage, you really can deal with most situations. There’s several times I’ve convincingly taken a 1v2 or even a 1v3. The combo of sword/staff is the key for PvP I feel since both have an incredibly powerful survival combo. The 20th point in dueling is also mandatory as it spawns a clone when you dodge, this makes it very hard to track you properly and means you always have clones out to use. I find that I under use the shatter skills since I really don’t want to smash my duelists but they can also be quite clutch.

For a specific variation of my build if you are someone who hasn’t come to grips with the mesmer in PvP and feels to squishy I would recommend going 10/20/15/25/0 as this gives you a fair bit of vit/toughness from your trees while also having some really strong survival in there (regen from phantasms+prot on regen/3% less damage for each illusion you have out). Run ogre runes, cos that dog is stupid, sigil of fire with decoy/signet of illusions/feedback. The utilities can be changed but for hotjoin dancing over the feedback line against any projectile based class really rips them to bits, so many rangers will keep pumping into it resulting in them being downed before you even take any damage.

I initially went with Mesmer back in the beta, but the illusions mechanic felt sloppy to me.

Clones are pretty easy to spot, even easier if you have first hand experience playing Mesmer. While they are initially giving people some edges in PvP, this is partly due to the community as a whole not being intimately familiar with the class.

AFAIK, you can’t charge them up pre-combat, once you’re engaged in combat they typically don’t trick anyone already targeting you (save for stealth/swap ones), and they melt to any AoE or cleave attack, which seems at least most competent PvPers will have skills that can destroy them out just as soon as you pop them.

Some of these mechanics may have changed since the game went live and other people may have found better ways to prevent the above from happening, but overall I haven’t really seen Mesmers do very well in WvWvW PvP scenarios. Typically when I find them they run away and personally haven’t seen any that have damage I would run from.

I’m not sure on their overall damagepotential, but I’m pretty sure their core condition Confusion is still pretty worthless since the Scepter nerfs and their main DPS weapon GS requires them to be ranged, which seems super easy to destroy their numbers. Unsure on sword/pistol numbers.

It’s an awesome class idea, but the execution has left me lacking. There are a lot of very skilled players making the most of the class, but I feel any success with Mesmer is from the player being skilled, not that the class.

That Phantasm build Malakree posted could be interesting, although I’m curious how quick the Phantasms will die to people recognizing where the damage is coming from.

catopia.2715:

I just logged in to ask the same question,
I am at level 34 and starting to struggle in groups. If there is an event with a lot of players my loot drops to virtually zero as i cant get any hits in to tag the mobs. On a single boss event i often end up as bronze even if i have been hammering on it from the beginning.

I am sure i must be missing something, i am not expecting to be top dps, but it would be nice to feel like I am contributing.

Use a staff and sword/pistol for group events, drop all the AOEs and clones you can.

Generally I find that a single volley from my duelist chops between 1/3rd and half of someone’s hp depending on how tanky they are. The reason I run with signit of illusions is to stop them just bursting down the phantasms and when you combine it with the inspiration tree, 20% more hp, retaliation (on a power build) then add in the faster illusion summoning from 5points in illusions the phantasms actually become quite hard to deal with. If you focus them it pretty much lets the mesmer do whatever they want since you spend more time killing the phantasms than you do anything else. I’d say to take down both of mine repeatedly means that I will always have 2 dodges and at least 75% of my defensive skills up when you try and switch to me. Combine in the bleeds from illusion crits, not just phantasms, and most ppl have to deal with constantly having 6-15 bleeds on them.

I’d say unless someone is running a full tank build you normally can’t soak the damage that a power/precision phantasm mesmer outputs enough to be able to kill the phantasms. If you are running a full tank build you just can’t kill them.

Oh some mesmer tips and tricks.
1) Dealing with invisibility: Your illusions will only ever focus the target they were originally spawned on, if you get a duelist on someone like a rogue and they go invisible the moment they reappear the duelist will unload a new volley into them thus telling you where they are.

2) This carries over to dealing with other mesmers, especially in the downed state. Drop a duelist on the mesmer as he goes down then when he teleports and summons a clone you merely wait to see which one your duelist goes for, this can save an incredible amount of time.

3) Burst thieves, these are the one thing you WILL have problems dealing with. It took me 3/4 attempts at them before I worked out how to deal with them properly and if you are sub90% hp your chances drop drastically. Basically you get the duelist out on them then do everything in your power to stay alive, when they go invisible make damage sure that you do the same or drop your blurred fury just as they would normally be opening. It’s all about limiting the number of bursts from stealth they get. The one who really could kill me could soak at most 1 round from the duelist, the second +any secondary damage would down him meaning you really just blow stuff as fast as you can to live.

I’ve played Condition build Mesmer currently at lvl 49 (R7 spvp) Staff\Scepter\Torch I find it very good for pve and pvp. Pumping out 9 stacks of Confusion instantly you will the player who tries to burst you drop a good amount of health. It’s good against burst dmg classes especially melee in particular thieves.

Mesmer is one of the better SPvP classes but in WvW we are limited. I usually just use Feedback against range attackers and Timewarp for my zerging allies

I just told my guildmates I nearly gave up on the mesmer for live. I’ve only been playing since the last Beta weekend and a few of the stress tests. Although the class sounded interesting it just felt bleh to me in the early going mainly because I didn’t get it. Well 64 levels later I’m so glad I stayed with it, espeically on the pvp side.

Although I have alot to still learn about other skill sets, trait build, and etc, I’m pretty confident with my staff and swap to 1hd sword and focus. Other skill I use are decoy, signets of inspiration & midnight, either mass invis or my summoned tree (racial elite).
I also like to load portal when I think I can get good use out of it. My traits are chaos 30, dueling 24 (@ 80 I’m looking to be chaos 30, dueling 30 healing 20). I don’t remember all my master skill because they have changed a few times since level 40 & 60 and I forget which are automatic and which you get to select.

If anyone is on Gates of Madness and wants some pointers with their Mesmer feel free to look me up. I don’t normally post on any forums but was extremely board at work today.

>My setup is: Greatsword & Scepter/Focus.

I do that, too, though /pistol and /torch work well for me, too. Whatever you prefer, you may find it helpful to actively swap in battle, seeing one set as your “opener.”

That helps mitigate a lot of squishiness, getting your clones out quickly and applying more debuffs than available from a single slot.

Still squishy. Still not high damage. But good fun.

They really should consider incorperating some kind of tutorial for Mesmers. Coming from a Guardian main, it was like night and day playstyle… which is good, as it adds diversity, but I really did feel like I had to work much harder to do a lot less.

I absolutely hated the “image” mechanic. By the time I got images up, anything I was targeting was already dead if other players were around. If solo, I could get 2-3 up to blow up and do a bit of damage, but… when other classes can just hit 3 buttons and kill anything in about half the time, I’m kinda left wondering why any sort of respectable damage has such a slow ramp-up time with this class. Add in the fact your illusions seem to vanish if you switch targets or your present target dies, and there’s a lot of things I don’t like about this profession.

Didn’t stick with the class long enough to have a very informed opinion, but my experience with it was pretty poor compared to Guardian, Engineer and Necromancer. By far, the least fun of those and – for me – the least effective by a margin.

This may sound like a newbie question, but is there some guidance out there somewhere on what weapons work best with what traitlines/gear stats? I tried a token look at the offical wiki while at work here to no avail.

Like MH sword is best coupled with precision/power and Dueling traits, or Staff is best coupled with condition damage stats and traits that boost bleeds, confusion or whatever (i don’t know much about mesmers, just throwing these out as an example).

I think if people had a starter guide like this, it would help a long way in determing what to gear & what to trait for with the weapons/slot skills you like the best.

Malakree is hitting the best/most fun mesmer builds I know of and have seen.

I jumped into GW2 super excited about the mesmer class. It seemed to me to be a super fun idea and I knew I could make it hurt people bad with some tweaking. Then I played the betas… It was incredibly clunky, weak as can be, weapons/skills completely contradicted each other, etc. I felt all this because I came at the class and the trait trees the wrong way.

I came in expecting to be a greatsword mesmer pumping out illusions and wrecking people in melee with spells and trickery. Turns out it takes a lot more fine tuning than that. Luckily I found the phantasm build/playstyle and have fell back in love with the mesmer.

Tips/comments from my experiences:

-Clones in their current state are completely useless.
– No damage ( I literally mean 0)
– No HP
– Don’t behave like the player and will really fool nobody in PvP, plus AoE wipes them out instantly.
– Can’t tank in PvE and get killed faster than you can pump them out w/o burning CD specifically for them.
– Can’t hold aggro

I wouldn’t bother with regular clones unless you are trying to go with a shatter build. There are some serious problems with shatter builds though and most have to do with unreliable numbers and terrible AI problems. Clones are ranged so shatter abilities aren’t on-demand. They are delayed by a few seconds if not more sometimes if the AI can’t find good pathing, and all they do is auto attack. They also don’t have your offhand equipped.

I like Scepter/pistol & Greatsword for PvE, and Sword/pistol & Greatsword for PvP. I sack a little group utility for more single utility and damage. The scepter for PvE is because mobs WILL go after your phantasms and the scepter will give you some damage and clones while kiting. This is just a bit more useful to me than sword/pistol for leveling, but they are pretty interchangeable.

Where I differ a bit from Malakree is that I really like Bleed builds. Its pretty much the same exact spec and playstyle, you just gem out for condition damage and use the signet for increased condition damage and a stun. Also, from my understanding bleed ignores toughness, I could be wrong though.

The downside to bleed build is that it takes a good bit of leveling for the traits to make it shine. I’m leveling with that build though and have no issues killing/surviving while I get enough traits to make it shine.

Here is a link to a youtube video if you need a guideline on the basic concepts of the build and similar ones like it. *Don’t know if links are allowed so I removed the tt in the protocol.

hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBGIThvhfho&hd=1

Another interesting playstyle/spec is Greatsword & Sword/pistol going with a Mantra build. I liked the burst damage of this spec, but it is obviously limiting in AoE (All mesmer specs lack decent AoE though)

Here is a link to a build for Mantra burst. I would recommend swapping Mantra of Resolve for Mantra of Pain, but you get the jist.

hxxp://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fgAQNAR8alwzCpnRTlGZ9ICqCYHpHqWqtalegbXosB;TwAg0CnowxgjAHLOOck4sKYQxmgJBA

I haven’t done as much testing with the Mantra build, but it was a blast in the Mists and while leveling for a little while.

Ultimately, I really like the phantasm build. It feels like how the whole class should have been designed to feel. Its got enough power to hurt people, VERY useful illusions, consequences for players attacking your clones instead of you, consequences for players attacking you instead of your phantasms, decent survivability, and overall just fun to play.

Get used to swapping weapons.
Get used to kiting.
And most of all, get used to toying with players minds.

I wanted to bring up a mechanic of the mesmer that I really disagree with, but forgot. I would have edited my other post, but it deserves its own post in my opinion.

I cannot understand phantasms disappearing when the target dies. They don’t even shatter, they just die and show the shatter animation. No debuffs/triggers, nothing.

I really believe that mechanic needs some tweaking. I propose a few ways of changing it and would like your feedback.

- Clones shatter when target dies, nothing happens, but phatasms stay alive until you leave combat for 2-3 seconds. Then they harmlessly shatter.

- Clones & Phantasms shatter upon target death, but damage every enemy around them as if using the shatter ability, but only dealing 75% damage. (This would help with our AoE situation quite a bit)

- Clones and Phantasms shatter after 2-3 seconds of being out of combat.

I don’t think any of them would bend numbers or imbalance anything in our favor. Seeing as we are always limited to 3 illusions at any given time.

Thoughts?

Mesmer isnt just about dealing damage. Nd yeah they are gonna be very squishy, but the point of being a mesmer is to literally screw with ur opponents mind. for example, you can create 3 clones of ur self, den stealth, then blink in some other direction which will completely confuse ur opponent especially if its someone like a thief, they would have no idea who to actually attack. The mesmer has his skills but a good mesmer would know how to use them and which skills work well together, also you have so much escape that it is literally almost impossible for you to die at times, for example, in pvp i use a sword and a torch, i have the stealth from the torch+ the stealth from my utility which summons a clone+ my mass invisibility elite skill + i can blink. Also you can dish out so many conditions, stacking confusion is one of my favourites cause the amount of damage that they will take whilst trying to damage u is just staggering. They are one of the best 1 v 1 classes in the game. From my own experience they outshine in pvp rather than in pve.

Netfools.3640:

I wanted to bring up a mechanic of the mesmer that I really disagree with, but forgot. I would have edited my other post, but it deserves its own post in my opinion.

I cannot understand phantasms disappearing when the target dies. They don’t even shatter, they just die and show the shatter animation. No debuffs/triggers, nothing.

I really believe that mechanic needs some tweaking. I propose a few ways of changing it and would like your feedback.

- Clones shatter when target dies, nothing happens, but phatasms stay alive until you leave combat for 2-3 seconds. Then they harmlessly shatter.

- Clones & Phantasms shatter upon target death, but damage every enemy around them as if using the shatter ability, but only dealing 75% damage. (This would help with our AoE situation quite a bit)

- Clones and Phantasms shatter after 2-3 seconds of being out of combat.

I don’t think any of them would bend numbers or imbalance anything in our favor. Seeing as we are always limited to 3 illusions at any given time.

Thoughts?

Also the thing of the phantasms dying and doing nothing, thats mostly done in the trait system.

I personally found mesmers fun. Mostly in pvp trough.

They are unquestionably powerfull in pvp, even with there low dmg.
1,They have lots of tricks (witch you always need in pvp) , confusion is the worst enemy of a player in pvp.
2, They can be range and hybrid.
3,Lots of utility, conditions, boons and other wide area of skills. Witch is rare.

Not sure in pve. I personally found dmg seriously lacking.
Not bad in dungeons, but its more of a combat and game issue, that mobs 2 hit anyone, and you cant even tell when you should dodge, or defend, becouse you CANT SE A THING from all the effects. Not even the mob itself is what or witch one. Since they stack up on the same spot…(some body blocking would be terribly awesome)

So yes surviavability CAN be a hardcore problem in dungeons if a mob gets agro on you and you have to kite him. You will surely get 1 hitten when they reach you.

Besides all this. You have to understand really early for Mesmer : boons and conditions. You have to know witch 1 does what, and know when you should use witch one.
Also better read all the skills and try to memorize witch does what condition. And Make your traits based on that.

Well, personally I don’t see how people play with so much melee in mind. I have played SPvP up to rank 11 and WvWvW quite a bit, and even though I’m only level 30 I feel I have narrowed down my personal playstyle on the Mesmer. Something about the profession just speaks to me.

I use Sceptre/Pistol and a staff and stack condition damage/toughness

I have 10 in Chaos, and 10 in illusions. If you really want to be lazy you never even have to switch off your sceptre/pistol in PvE. Summon duelist, Summon a phantasm of your choice, then spam the first ability creating illusions so fast that they start exploding causing random effects in a group setting. If things get hairy, switching weapons is a must, for the stuns and the blink from the staff, along with chaos armor.

In WvWvW I keep the same weapons and switch out for as many AoE spells as I can, I have found that once I target someone they will usually go down quick with a full set of confusion on them. Usually ticking for 1k-3k every time they use an ability. The trick I use is sometimes switching the pistol for a sword so the phantasm is melee and when Confusion starts to go down you can shatter them for some more confusion, then confuse them some more. The hardest part was learning that casting on the move is THE key idea to a mesmer. None of this WoW mentality anymore where movement cancels abilities.

This thread worries me because I really do enjoy the class (switched from thief because I found it boring), but I don’t want to be useless. If I have to put a lot of extra effort into the profession in order to make it work, I expect to be rewarded and not fall short of someone who pushes 3 buttons.

@Paul

the class itself is every bit as good as the thief, just like a skilled thief can kill enemies very quickly, skilled mesmers are capable of manipulating enemies to their death

it’s not really about putting in extra effort to make a class work in my opinion, it’s more or less picking the class that suits your playstyle

Mesmer have a few issues from what I have played.
AoE of any sort will shut a Mesmer down hard, becuase Illusions can’t take any damage as all, unless the Mesmer wastes a Utility slot on the Signet. Even if they do most AoE still one shots them.
All three heals are worthless. I only have played a Necromancer and Engineer besides Mesmer and both has VASTLY better healing abilities.
All three Elites are situation and have fundamental issues. Moa Morph is useless for pve, because veterans and champions still do a ton of damage of a Moa, and it lasts much less time. Time Warp is useless outside of a massive group, as the lack of cooldown reduction means it only really boosts most peoples 1 (and heal times), but it is still probably the best. Mass Invisibility is worthless unless perfectly coordinated and even then it’s pretty ‘meh’.

I use Sword/Pistol and it’s really lame to have the majority of my damage tied up in my Illusions who die if they are sneezed on. Often times my first duelist will die before even doing their first attack, and then my damage is nothing unless I can make another (and hope it lasts longer). With 3 Duelists out damage is amazing, but any aoe and it all ends.

After leveling to 80 and playing a few DEs in Orr I decided to drop the profession and play a necro instead.
I really cannot understand for the life of me why our clones need to run at a target and be on top of it to shatter. What’s even more upsetting is the shatter damage missing because the target was moving. Did your opponent change elevation in PvP ? No shatter for you.
I would really like to see Mind Wrack and Cry deliver their affects from range and numbers tuned accordingly, maybe if the clones teleport to the target and then pop to give players a window to move away .
It just feels so wrong to see my clones attempt to suicide bomb something only to get crippled on the way and then limp ineffectually after my victim.
Just an aside I think we’re very strong at point defense if we run a phantasm build and shatter builds can work very well if you run signet of domination to set up a spike. However, killing a runner is nigh impossible with phantasms; they simply stand there when their ability is on cooldown before giving chase. And the shatter build exhausts a lot of cooldowns to achieve a smaller burst than other professions are capable of. The reward just isn’t there.
Another thing that really bothered me leveling was how much of our damage is tied into phantasms in conjunction with them vanishing whenever a target had died. In DEs and dungeons this left me feeling very underwhelmed in an AoE situation where other profs can contribute so much more than we can. I’d like to see more damage shifted into our auto attacks.
Speaking of AoE trying to run a phantasm centered build in most explorable is… hellish. Even with 20% health and signet of illusions there is so much AoE flying around that you simply cannot keep them up. Even when I noticed one was about to die and tried to eek out a little more damage with Mind Wrack the phantasm never made it to its target.
Perhaps this profession simply isn’t the PvE/WvWvW profession for me. But while I feel we can shine in structured, most of my experience in the aforementioned has been either spawning 3 warlocks on the champion target and hopping in circles while they crit for ridiculous numbers and sighing when I see this DE consists of waves of weaker mobs.
In WvWvW you mostly just feedback rangers on keeps and hope to god they’re stupid enough to commit suicide. If you’re feeling froggy you can also attempt to pull people off walls using the focus 4 or spawning a warden up there to get some bleeds out with sharper image before it goes squish.
Not being able to place my duelists exactly where I want them is absolutely game breaking when assaulting keeps. When that first Illusionary Unload gets obstructed on a target that I’ve been attacking for the past 2 seconds on a keep wall because the game decided to place him 4 yards to the right it makes me think they didn’t test our profession very much at all.

TLDR : Mind Wrack and Cry need to be a ranged affect. Not turn my clones into suicide bombers if they’re going to vanish when the target dies or die to AoE on the way. I worry about the PvP ramifications in structured and I do wonder if our clones being so killable will be enough with the utility Mirror Images. This would allow us a quick long range AoE spike. Perhaps allowing us to trait for it in a way that we’d be forced to give up some defensive stats for it or tweaking of Mirror Images would allow that change to happen.
Our Phantasms are too frail to be a reliable source of damage in PvE and our auto attacks are boring and pathetic.

Yeah I think the mesmer is not so great atm. IN PVE they can be pretty defensive. But the reliance on the clones and illusions is really krappy overall.The illusions disappear if the enemy dies, not only that shatter does really piddly damage. It meant to be a psuedo AOE skill but god, you can barely control when it happens and where it happens, so usually its just a very weak suicide attack on a single target.

The melee phantasms die so fast its hardly worth it to cast them. So yo kinda get locked into pistol because they might live a few rounds. Then there is the problem so many of our damage skills are tied to clones dying…..which is iffy, and if you have phantasms up you don’t have clones up. Our heals are tied to phantasms, its so weak and situational as to be near useless.

The regen from phantasms is barely accessible. I mean with the pistol phantasms I can somewhat use the regen…but like I said the melee ones suck because the die so fast. This class might be good in PVP but so far in PVE I am regretting roling one. They aren’t even a good support or CC class. And they do piddly damage.

I find it hard to take on small groups as a mesmer, (although escaping from them is cake)
But as soon as I find some on their own, It’s hard to be beat

Cromx.3941:

Yeah I think the mesmer is not so great atm. IN PVE they can be pretty defensive. But the reliance on the clones and illusions is really krappy overall.The illusions disappear if the enemy dies, not only that shatter does really piddly damage. It meant to be a psuedo AOE skill but god, you can barely control when it happens and where it happens, so usually its just a very weak suicide attack on a single target.

The melee phantasms die so fast its hardly worth it to cast them. So yo kinda get locked into pistol because they might live a few rounds. Then there is the problem so many of our damage skills are tied to clones dying…..which is iffy, and if you have phantasms up you don’t have clones up. Our heals are tied to phantasms, its so weak and situational as to be near useless.

The regen from phantasms is barely accessible. I mean with the pistol phantasms I can somewhat use the regen…but like I said the melee ones suck because the die so fast. This class might be good in PVP but so far in PVE I am regretting roling one. They aren’t even a good support or CC class. And they do piddly damage.

Use staff / greatsword for PvE, you’ll find it so much easier

I have the same opinion of mesmers now as I did during the 6 years of playing GW1: They are fantastic for PvP, due to the enjoyable nature of frustrating real people, but incredibly boring and unsatisfying in PvE.

Couple of things.

1) Illusions are seperated into 2 categories, phantasms and clones. Imo a phantasm build is the only viable mesmer build atm, I’ve seen a few others but nothing comes close to just how powerful a good phantasm build is.

2)Clones largely are “useless” but having them out buffs the mesmer quite significantly. Firstly they let you access your shatter abilities, you dont WANT to shatter but if kitten and fan connect then you can always use your 4th shatter for 3 seconds of direct damage immunity. Also one should not forget, clones can crit, this is very important as it applies a stack of bleed. Lastly basically every build of mesmer should be running either 3% damage with each clone, 3% damage reduction or increased movement speed, thus having them out is really useful for that.

3) Always spec for deceptive evasion (20points dueling) that clone on dodge is so strong its unreal, combine with decoy it can make you really hard to track even if they do know which one is real straight away. Its power really cant be overestimated.

4) Learn the ethereal combo fields. These and light are the two that you can drop, learn which skills trigger them, it will give you a huge edge. Nothing is better than dropping a feedback on a ranger, having him shoot himself, having your phantasms all pump damage into him and when the feedback he’s still got ~10 bleeds and 5-10 stacks of confusion, that’s a free win right there.

5) A phantasm build can be run both condition damage or power, both require a lot of precision though. Power/precision relies on raw straight up burst from the phantasms, you spec heavily into illusion damage. A condition damage build still requires precision, this is because when your illusions crit (even your 1 damage clones) they apply a bleed stack.

6) Use a staff. Even if you think it will be bad with your build use it. The combo of chaos storm+chaos armor gives you basically another free escape, if they try and sit on you through it they get a mass of debuffs and you get a ton of free buffs, especially if you go 15 into chaos it makes you basically unkillable. That and the staff illusions/all its abilities are just so great. Switching my greatsword for a staff made my build so much stronger.

7) On any power/precision build the flame blast on crit is such a good rune it can’t be overstated. Try it and love it.

Soothsayer.9476:

I have the same opinion of mesmers now as I did during the 6 years of playing GW1: They are fantastic for PvP, due to the enjoyable nature of frustrating real people, but incredibly boring and unsatisfying in PvE.

This more or less sums up my experience with my Mesmer. In PvP it’s a solid class to run around with, even if the damage isn’t so great, but in PvE it’s dreadfully boring. The class is also ripe with annoying little tics, like how your illusions will just up and disappear in the middle of combat with four enemies because your first target dies, or how shattering your illusions is set to a random delay based on their distance from the target, and even once they reach the intended target there’s an additional delay from the animation, which gives quickly moving enemies time to clear the blast radius, or to really drag this sentence on, how the seemingly most intuitive use of Illusionary Leap is made impossible by your not being able to activate the ability from range with a target you’re not yet in combat with (though the cooldown will happily accept your decision to hit the button, regardless of whether or not anything actually happens).

I was ready for a class that wasn’t upfront about everything it did, but what I got was just… not what I expected. The abilities don’t feel like they have nearly the identity that some skills from other classes I’ve used have. I also disagree that Mesmers require some top-tier understanding of gaming theory to play: I’ve already found longer and more technically complex skill chains on my new Warrior than what I felt was available to my Mesmer, and the payoff is there not just cumulatively, but at every step. With Mesmers, even when you utilize what’s there well, the damage is just weak in PvE.

For some background, my Mesmer is only level 30 in PvE and 5 in PvP (so I do accept that a deeper trait tree might change things, but I’m not going to trudge through boring levels on the hope that this is the case), and though I played around with every weapon type often, I mainly used a staff/greatsword combo in PvE and a scepter-focus/staff combo in PvP. When damage was my only concern, my primary goal was to keep my phantasms up as often as possible, and throw as many Mirror Blades through as many fields as I could (namely the fields created by Chaos Storm and Feedback).

I really, really wanted to like the class. Even though I only got to 30, that’s already 10 levels past when I first started thinking about maybe dropping the character. In fact, if I hadn’t found out that I could help other players with express access to certain harder-to-reach Vistas via Portal Entre, I probably wouldn’t have even made it as far as I did. This is also by no means an exhaustive review of the problems I have with the class.

This is all not to say that there aren’t some fun things about Mesmers, because there are. Portal Entre is awesome as an explorers ability – all classes should have something like it, and I really do like Feedback (which is as interactive and impressive as I was assuming all Mesmer spells would be, instead of so many dealing with tiny icons on my screen that assure me my foe is deeply confused about his or her place in the universe). Temporal Curtain is good fun (and versatile), and the underwater skills are visually impressive and generally effective. The group invisibility spell is also very entertaining to use when a group of allies and yourself rush into a group of enemies; this causes far more confusion than any illusion could.

Minutia aside, I think I can really capture my feelings on the the Mesmer class as it exists now with this: when I rolled my Warrior, I was elated to find that the Mesmer was not representative of the state of the professions as a collective. Now I’ll sometimes attack a mob I’m running by for naught by the sheer joy of executing my combos. It doesn’t hurt that the male Asura “action noise” voice actor is, from what I can tell, the same person that did adult Link in Ocarina of Time.

I’ve really only played PVE so far, so that’s all I’m going to talk about. I hear we Mesmers are monsters in PVP. That said, Mesmers have the best survivability of any class I’ve played that isn’t in heavy gear. We can’t take too many hits, but then again a well-played Mesmer won’t take very many.

Personally, I love playing the glass cannon role because we’re tricky, tricky, tricky. Take stealthy abilities (Decoy is a must imo) to help you stay alive.

Arc.1425:

I’ve really only played PVE so far, so that’s all I’m going to talk about. I hear we Mesmers are monsters in PVP. That said, Mesmers have the best survivability of any class I’ve played that isn’t in heavy gear. We can’t take too many hits, but then again a well-played Mesmer won’t take very many.

Personally, I love playing the glass cannon role because we’re tricky, tricky, tricky. Take stealthy abilities (Decoy is a must imo) to help you stay alive.

I don’t think our frustration comes from being so squishy. I think it stems from the fact that while I’m dancing in a circle around the mob my necro would have killed it and the 3 closest to it. Sure I’m not getting hit but with so much damage tied up in my glorified DoTs it’s not exactly satisfying to watch them melt before they can really lay into something.
That’s all Phantasm’s function as currently, DoTs in the guise of stupid NPCs that love standing in the fire.

Abarcine.7189:

Arc.1425:

I’ve really only played PVE so far, so that’s all I’m going to talk about. I hear we Mesmers are monsters in PVP. That said, Mesmers have the best survivability of any class I’ve played that isn’t in heavy gear. We can’t take too many hits, but then again a well-played Mesmer won’t take very many.

Personally, I love playing the glass cannon role because we’re tricky, tricky, tricky. Take stealthy abilities (Decoy is a must imo) to help you stay alive.

I don’t think our frustration comes from being so squishy. I think it stems from the fact that while I’m dancing in a circle around the mob my necro would have killed it and the 3 closest to it. Sure I’m not getting hit but with so much damaged tied up in my glorified DoTs it’s not exactly satisfying to watch them melt before they can really lay into something.
That’s all Phantasm’s function as currently, DoTs in the guise of stupid NPCs that love standing in the fire.

I really do understand the problems with Mesmers but I don’t really see things this way. I see my abilities as having clones and phantasms attached. I throw my sword, giving boons/ conditions and I get a nice little clone buddy to tank for two or three hits. In terms of the damage we do…yeah it’s pretty bad. But I honestly, honestly think it’s more fun that way. I don’t want to speed through a battle, I want it to be tense. So while I totally get why people shy away from Mesmer, I tend to embrace all the flaws.

There has been made some changes through the last stress tests, so the Mesmer is no that easy to play in pvp, as it was.

From all professions, the mesmer appears to be the hardest class to play in pve, especially on some story quests, where you have to survive many mob-groups alone. To do that, you have to cast many illusions very fast, and just shatter them, in combination with greatsword and 2h staff.

If I am alone, I prefer the sword/pistol – Greatsword or 2h Staff setting. I love it in pvp, because well played, and with about 3 phantasms out (if you manage it good), your oponend has no good cards. The more illusions you have out, the more you heal. And if you use your traits well, you get 3% more damage for each illusion, and the damage dealt to you gets reduced by 3% for each illusion as well.

You can play the mesmer the way you like, either on calling illusions very quick and shatter them, for debuffs or blessings on your alies, or for healing them, or you play it with phantasm focused. That way became harder since the very last stress test because there was a trait that made the skills of your phantasm cast quicker, which is now gone, but its still possible.

I get what you mean in it not wanting every encounter to be laughable but during my brief adventure in Orr it felt like I couldn’t catch a break. With the mob concentration being so high unless you follow the event zerg it’s painful trying to collect skill points or PoIs simply because of how long it takes to kill things.
When trying to get the skill point at Balthazhar’s temple before the DE that flips it ( was unaware of that at the time) the mobs where spawning as fast as I could kill them.
The undead guarding it have the necro staff 1 ability so if you don’t move in one direction all the time and have some way to deal with immobilize you won’t get hit. I sat there for half an hour fighting 2 veterans and 2 trash risen until thief wanders up and demolishes them for me in 1 minute. That was when I made the decision to drop the class. I’d be fine if mobs were just tough and you really had to think to get something done. But I never want to need someone else for something as simple as getting a skill point.

I usually sPvP on my necro or my thief, although I’m starting to get the hang of my Mesmer. Whenever I’m fighting a mesmer, I actually find I easy to identify clones – since they are far squishier than the actual character I switch targets when I see myself doing extreme amounts of damage with basic attacks. Watching where they’re moving helps identify as well, although it does require quick thinking in combat.

Overall I like the profession! I’ll probably end up running a condition build or a phantasm build based off this forum ^_

Just posting to tag this thread, tonnes of useful info to read again later, thanks all! (I’m a low-level Mesmer and loving it at the moment).

I love my Mesmer. I used the great sword for a bit, but I’m about 95% sure they ninja nerfed the damage last patch, so I dumped it. Run with a staff and sword/pistol. For those of you worried about Aoe I am able to do large amounts of AOE damage on mobs by dropping chaos field with staff, it stacks conditions like poison unbelievably fast and destroys multi mobs that stand in it. Also I run up to a group Immediately pop mirror image gives 2 clones and the instant clone phase back from scepter (which gives me 3 clones before anyone has even hit a mob,) then I immediately shatter them LOTS of Aoe. Switch to sword and pistol drop you last pistol combo which is a stun and summon a clone and phantasm from sword skills and you are good to go, after just puttin off a large amount of Aoe.

It’s not a condition build and it’s not an phantasm build either.

I run mirror image, Decoy and the phantasmal shield in pvp which absorbs half of incoming damage.

Pve decoy, mirror image and blink.

I went 19-1 today in an SPVP match I joined halfway through with staff sword and pistol. Have to re look at my spec as I’m not at my comp now but I’ll post it later if anyone is interested.

ToxicToothpick.4396:

Mesmer have a few issues from what I have played.
AoE of any sort will shut a Mesmer down hard, becuase Illusions can’t take any damage as all, unless the Mesmer wastes a Utility slot on the Signet. Even if they do most AoE still one shots them.
All three heals are worthless. I only have played a Necromancer and Engineer besides Mesmer and both has VASTLY better healing abilities.
All three Elites are situation and have fundamental issues. Moa Morph is useless for pve, because veterans and champions still do a ton of damage of a Moa, and it lasts much less time. Time Warp is useless outside of a massive group, as the lack of cooldown reduction means it only really boosts most peoples 1 (and heal times), but it is still probably the best. Mass Invisibility is worthless unless perfectly coordinated and even then it’s pretty ‘meh’.

You cant compare healing skills because they are set up to balance the class kits. You will say WTF did i just do with a mesmer once you get the hang of when to use quickness and how to stack daze on enemies, also mantras are there to pre cast, not cast in combat.

Teknobug.3782:

Use a staff and sword/pistol for group events, drop all the AOEs and clones you can.

I ran a dungeon last night using that setup, and it was much better. Just keeping confusion going and poping Etherial domes over the mobs really made a diffrence.

I still struggled with the twins, but thats what the bolders are for.

I use staff/scepter+ torch and go condition/shatter with max cd reduction on shatters/illusions/glamours + confusion on all shatters + focus on ethereal fields. (got 4 fields 1 staff 3 extra skills). The elite Ethereal skill field is priceless.

I think the 2nd scepter skill is bugged but will need to do more checks on it.

I’m able to chain 3x Chaos Armor and have Decoy + The prestige for stealth.
I try to tank while Chaos Armor is up for the boons/conditions and to keep my clones and phantasm alive. Especially the clone from Phase Retrait to have a 2nd Winds of Chaos running.

In events pop your Ehtereal fields as often as you can to kick off combos (chaos armor and confusion) for your allies. Only this should give you gold medal for contribution and plenty of loo. Just shatter or keep the right clone alive. Having 2-3 clones spamming winds of chaos together with your auto-attack (winds of chaos) is huge against the big NPC’s.

I <3 my Mesmer

Andele.1306:

ToxicToothpick.4396:

Mesmer have a few issues from what I have played.
AoE of any sort will shut a Mesmer down hard, becuase Illusions can’t take any damage as all, unless the Mesmer wastes a Utility slot on the Signet. Even if they do most AoE still one shots them.
All three heals are worthless. I only have played a Necromancer and Engineer besides Mesmer and both has VASTLY better healing abilities.
All three Elites are situation and have fundamental issues. Moa Morph is useless for pve, because veterans and champions still do a ton of damage of a Moa, and it lasts much less time. Time Warp is useless outside of a massive group, as the lack of cooldown reduction means it only really boosts most peoples 1 (and heal times), but it is still probably the best. Mass Invisibility is worthless unless perfectly coordinated and even then it’s pretty ‘meh’.

You cant compare healing skills because they are set up to balance the class kits. You will say WTF did i just do with a mesmer once you get the hang of when to use quickness and how to stack daze on enemies, also mantras are there to pre cast, not cast in combat.

You are aware that Daze doesn’t stack right? Shattering Diversion in melee range is still a one second daze. Mantras are horribly underpowered and a trait pitfall for anyone unfamiliar with the class. The one that dazes can see some use but again I feel a lot of the posts defending the class are coming from people who have not run an explorable.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

I love my Mesmer. I used the great sword for a bit, but I’m about 95% sure they ninja nerfed the damage last patch, so I dumped it. Run with a staff and sword/pistol. For those of you worried about Aoe I am able to do large amounts of AOE damage on mobs by dropping chaos field with staff, it stacks conditions like poison unbelievably fast and destroys multi mobs that stand in it. Also I run up to a group Immediately pop mirror image gives 2 clones and the instant clone phase back from scepter (which gives me 3 clones before anyone has even hit a mob,) then I immediately shatter them LOTS of Aoe. Switch to sword and pistol drop you last pistol combo which is a stun and summon a clone and phantasm from sword skills and you are good to go, after just puttin off a large amount of Aoe.

It’s not a condition build and it’s not an phantasm build either.

I run mirror image, Decoy and the phantasmal shield in pvp which absorbs half of incoming damage.

Pve decoy, mirror image and blink.

I went 19-1 today in an SPVP match I joined halfway through with staff sword and pistol. Have to re look at my spec as I’m not at my comp now but I’ll post it later if anyone is interested.

Couple of things
1: In many DEs with enough people your target will be dead before the clones reach it to actually shatter leaving you with a 45 second CD on mirror image at least half the time.
2: If the target is still alive in a DE you’d have been better off placing our Iwarlock out and watching him crit for 2-5k depending on level
3: No one thinks we’re weak in structured. We’re slippery, we’re annoying and we’re more than capable of contributing there. It’s WvWvW Dungeon PvE and DEs with a lot of weaker mobs where we feel dull.

You feel dull because you’re at 100 000ft away from the incoming mobs while you should be in front, ready to drop an Ethereal field on the incoming bunch, tank while you pop chaos armor, summon phantasm, summon clone -> leap and do your stuff after that.

edit
Meant as a joke of course ;-) nothing personal