Guild Wars 2

I want to like my Mes again, but it’s getting more and more difficult to. I am leveling a few alts atm. The problem is, I rolled a D/D ele, and with a mix of toughness, healing, power and condition damage, he’s a beast. He can tank and do pretty crazy damage all in one. No, this is not a “nerf eles” discussion, btw.

What I am struggling with is, I want my mes to do that kind of damage and be durable too. I know we use illusions etc for distracting, but the bottom line is, they aren’t 100% and getting aggro on a mob, especially multiples, you WILL take damage.

I respecced in to more of a toughness build to see if I could replicate my Ele’s build, but I am lacking in a ton of damage now.

So, am I asking for too much in comparing the Ele to the mesmer in this regard? I feel like, on my mes, I have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off to survive anything at all.

1st of all, if you love what your Ele is doing for you right now. then stick with it.

I want my mes to do that kind of damage and be durable too.
• I don’t use ele so i think i don’t know that “kind of damage” that you are talking about. but finding your right build(don’t wanna spoon feed) can came up for a durable and powerful in damage mesmer as well.

I know we use illusions etc for distracting,
- Using clones and phantasms are not only for distraction. Depends on your build.

By using shatter build, Usually you use it to shatter and deal significant damage.
By using condition damage build, you usually maintain your phantasms (not clones) alive to help you dealt more damage.

By looking at this, clones nor illusions are built for mesmer damage output.(Thats why Anet boots its damage in the latest patch note) actually in my point of view, being a destruction for clones/phantasms is just a bonus for mesmers. But, remember. Skilled enemy player no doubt can easily track you by Ctrl+T. <— Its OP Anet pls nerf it..

they aren’t 100% and getting aggro on a mob, especially multiples, you WILL take damage.
- In my opinion as a mesmer, you should never give your phantasms aggro at all. Why..? they are not like Ranger’s pet that will tank for you. They are built for damage output, and not capable of taking that damage to keep you alive. Its a matter of positioning your self well in battle, Maintaining your Clone and Phantasm cooldown on track, avoiding by using Dodge and using your invi. (Decoy)+ other utility skills well to put your self out of danger.

I don’t know if i helped you for your issues. But as a fellow mesmer, kindly let me fix some of your misconception about the class as i know it and for those pro-mesmer users out there. kindly correct me if i’m wrong. Thanks.

Xuthus.8103:

1st of all, if you love what your Ele is doing for you right now. then stick with it.

I want my mes to do that kind of damage and be durable too.
• I don’t use ele so i think i don’t know that “kind of damage” that you are talking about. but finding your right build(don’t wanna spoon feed) can came up for a durable and powerful in damage mesmer as well.

I know we use illusions etc for distracting,
- Using clones and phantasms are not only for distraction. Depends on your build.

By using shatter build, Usually you use it to shatter and deal significant damage.
By using condition damage build, you usually maintain your phantasms (not clones) alive to help you dealt more damage.

By looking at this, clones nor illusions are built for mesmer damage output.(Thats why Anet boots its damage in the latest patch note) actually in my point of view, being a destruction for clones/phantasms is just a bonus for mesmers. But, remember. Skilled enemy player no doubt can easily track you by Ctrl+T. <— Its OP Anet pls nerf it..

they aren’t 100% and getting aggro on a mob, especially multiples, you WILL take damage.
- In my opinion as a mesmer, you should never give your phantasms aggro at all. Why..? they are not like Ranger’s pet that will tank for you. They are built for damage output, and not capable of taking that damage to keep you alive. Its a matter of positioning your self well in battle, Maintaining your Clone and Phantasm cooldown on track, avoiding by using Dodge and using your invi. (Decoy)+ other utility skills well to put your self out of danger.

I don’t know if i helped you for your issues. But as a fellow mesmer, kindly let me fix some of your misconception about the class as i know it and for those pro-mesmer users out there. kindly correct me my info if wrong. Thanks.

100% right. Mesmers do not need nerfed into oblivion And it is a class that is tough to play because sometimes dropping enough clones to do anything is hard if they get killed before you can shatter/heal (ether feast is awesome) We do have some amazing group utility and I have had ppl try to counter this but from my experience mass invis CAN stealth more than 5 people. It is just the range. So enjoy the D/D ele. And we mesmers will try to decieve you enough to do some damage. Btw I think ele’s have it good because they have more weapon skills due to attunements than you can shake a stick at.

Thanks for the feedback. I have spent the last 3 hours respeccing, re-gearing etc and testing each spec. I am only level 25, so the process wasn’t as grueling. I also did some more reading, and I read that mesmers are far more dependent on traits than Eles are, so an Ele will see far more in gearing than with traits early on, where as the mesmer will see a ton more from traits later on.

I switched to Domination 10 and Illusions 5, and changed around my utility skills. I think what was happening was, my clones were dying really fast and not getting the time to attack, then let me shatter. Now I have Signet of Ilusions and Feedback on my utility bar, giving me both a lot more defense and offense. In fact, I watched an enemy literally kill himself and his turret with feedback then I focused on the two melee which went down a lot faster, and I took barely any damage.

Glad we could help. Mesmers for life.

ok…now I remember what was so painful about my Mes. It’s a human, and these were by far the hardest story quests of any of my other alts. I am getting destroyed in them. I just died 4 times in a story quest because every single enemy in the area came straight for me, even though I never even attacked them. They hit HARD too.

Anyone else have a human mes and have a lot of issues in the story quests? This is ridiculous. I just had one where there were 10 combined NPCs, clones etc, and every single enemy on the screen came after me, and they were too fast to kite.

well at level 25 you dnt have much flexability in your build choice but mind if i ask what you are running for your build and what weapon sets you are using?

Advent.1387:

well at level 25 you dnt have much flexability in your build choice but mind if i ask what you are running for your build and what weapon sets you are using?

Sure! Any help is appreciated. Using Staff/GS, with a Vit, Prec, condition based build. I have attempted toughness, but it doesn’t seem to make as much of a difference at this level.

Just FYI, I have a human thief and Engineer too, and those too have mega issues with the story quests. I have several norn alts, and those are a walk in the park compared to the humans

well gs/staff is imho the way to go for early leveling so good on that xD as for your gear i would look for toughness as your main stat with either vit or power or more toughness slotted i believe malachite jewels add toughness at the lower lvls if you are takin too much damage and need some extra defense.

A condition build is gunna be a lil tough to pull off at your level since you dnt got access to all our cool traits yet. I focused more on putting trait points into chaos for def and domination for power, also if you get 10 on chaos u can go for major trait #4 Illusionary defense and it will reduce dmg received by 3% for each illusion(clone or phantasm) you have on the field so with 3 illusions on the field you are reducing dmg by 9% which helps =P

Another thing is the staff is very defensive so when things get hairy use chaos storm on your self(it will give you a ton of buffs, i find its more useful to drop it on your self than to use it as an attack) and chaos armor then you can cast warlock, phase retreat, switch to gs use illusionary wave for knockback if the mobs are still to close to you and then wipe em out xD

Ok, I am going to stack a bit more toughness, and pull the points out of illusions and put them in to Chaos instead. Will see how that goes.

i keep saying this but try toughness/rune of the undead/rabid gear. its far from squishy and always wins 1v1 against anything (d/d ele included)

dolyak and engi runes work as well since they add toughness and vit but cant remember what the lvl req is for those runes are tho

Nuka Cola.8520:

i keep saying this but try toughness/rune of the undead/rabid gear. its far from squishy and always wins 1v1 against anything (d/d ele included)

Rabid gear is pretty high level, so that wont quite help me atm, but I will def keep those in mind when I get higher.

Soooo, I just tried the Runes of the Dolyak, which gives +10 toughness, and replaced some marks that gave +5 toughness, and it made my toughness go down!!?? My health didn’t go up either, instead, it stayed the same. WTH is going on, are these bugged?

So I found out that Runes of Dolyak don’t stack, unless they’re bugged.

um u might have to unequip everything then reequip it sometimes armor stat increases get buggy, i find that more often than not when i replace my runes the armor will read 12/6 for the number of runes on my gear but eventually it fixes its self, and the minor dolyaks do stack i believe its 4 of them for the max bonus

Advent.1387:

um u might have to unequip everything then reequip it sometimes armor stat increases get buggy, i find that more often than not when i replace my runes the armor will read 12/6 for the number of runes on my gear but eventually it fixes its self, and the minor dolyaks do stack i believe its 4 of them for the max bonus

Tried and had no luck. These are minors, so they are 2/2. I was trying to use 8 of them. lol

Troponin.4081:

I rolled a D/D ele, and with a mix of toughness, healing, power and condition damage, he’s a beast. He can tank and do pretty crazy damage all in one

Tanky D/D elementalists are indeed beasts, verging on immortal troll gods.

However they do not do crazy damage. As a matter of fact they do crap damage. Zero killing power. No way they can kill even an equally skilled glass cannon 1v1.

Troponin… you really can’t compare low lvls of anything to what they’ll be at 80…

Kazhiel.8194:

Troponin… you really can’t compare low lvls of anything to what they’ll be at 80…

Yeah, I am coming to realize that. What I dislike about that is the fact that you can like something at low levels, get high, then suddenly, at end game, it’s not so great. :/

Troponin.4081:

Kazhiel.8194:

Troponin… you really can’t compare low lvls of anything to what they’ll be at 80…

Yeah, I am coming to realize that. What I dislike about that is the fact that you can like something at low levels, get high, then suddenly, at end game, it’s not so great. :/

That’s not really true, each class gets better as they lvl, if you liked them as a low lvl you’ll like them more later. If you didn’t like them as a low lvl chances are you’ll like them better later also lol. I was really frustrated with my mesmer for the first twenty lvls or so, and then I started getting the hang of how to play it and it only got better and better from there. Different traits really really affect game play more than a person would think, then you add in all the various stats of armor, weapons, and accessories. There’s a lot of options. At high lvl I was frustrated with my mesmer again trying to do wvw… till I sat back and read forum and found some different builds to try more suited to wvw and tadaa no more frustration.

Kazhiel.8194:

Troponin.4081:

Kazhiel.8194:

Troponin… you really can’t compare low lvls of anything to what they’ll be at 80…

Yeah, I am coming to realize that. What I dislike about that is the fact that you can like something at low levels, get high, then suddenly, at end game, it’s not so great. :/

That’s not really true, each class gets better as they lvl, if you liked them as a low lvl you’ll like them more later. If you didn’t like them as a low lvl chances are you’ll like them better later also lol. I was really frustrated with my mesmer for the first twenty lvls or so, and then I started getting the hang of how to play it and it only got better and better from there. Different traits really really affect game play more than a person would think, then you add in all the various stats of armor, weapons, and accessories. There’s a lot of options. At high lvl I was frustrated with my mesmer again trying to do wvw… till I sat back and read forum and found some different builds to try more suited to wvw and tadaa no more frustration.

I have gotten the hang of this prof, I really have. I am a quick learner and have tended to play the most difficult classes/specs of any MMO I play. I am a bit an elitist too, so I read a lot, research play styles and specs, and fine tune everything to a T.

The biggest issue I have now is just the pain story quests though. I get mobbed in seconds and can’t lose aggro at all. These quests are the death of me and although the experience is good, they are just too difficult for some classes (human quests, at least). I really wish I wouldn’t have started a human now. I think it would have been much less of a headache. :/

You don’t have to do your story quests right away, you can always lvl and gear up and do them later. There are oodles of ways to get good xp and lvl quickly.

Mesmers need some work, i’d like to see them being able to create more combos by themselves.

I think that alone would make the mesmer more fun to play if we could aoe buff people as well as provide aoe chaos armour frequently. The elementalist has a lot going on at once and is really flexible, in comparison to the mesmer which isn’t. I’d like to see more flexibility added to the mesmer but our mechanic doesn’t allow that at all.

Well dnt have any human toons but in the beta the human and norn seemed pretty hard for the story quests…as for the runes, oops my bad if they are 2/2 they wont stack past 2 but there are other runes that grant toughness other than dolyak, engineer rune is one that i can remember at the moment. oh and dnt buy 8 runes xD 6 is all ya need =P