Guild Wars 2

Do you have any tips on doing dungeons (AC, CoF, HotW…) on a Mesmer? I’ve only just started my Mesmer in December, before that I played only a Guardian for a year. So, since a Guardian is rather useful in dungeons, I’m always running it there, but it does get a little boring. So I’d like to take my Mesmer there instead, but I’m hesitant. One thing I have noticed about my clones is that they’re always running off aggroing random mobs in the open world. Therefore, if there are any crucial tips that you could give me, like “take off DE” or “don’t use this/always use that”, I’d be most grateful. Some jobs seem less favoured in dungeons, like Rangers or Necros – are we among those?

As far as I know Mesmer are welcome in dungeons – primarily because of Timewarp. As for tips, phantasm builds are generally better in dungeons than shatter builds. Because of our quite effective active defences it is possible to run with full berserker gear and still survive easily.

The only “problem” phantasm builds have are high amounts of trash mobs, because illusions die when the corresponding mob dies. On the other hand phantasms become very powerful against a single enemy. When there are three iDuelists shooting the same target, we deal quite high damage.

For ideas/builds look in the stickied topics, the one from Fay is a collection of builds which are mostly updated. (I think the only one which is no longer vialbe is Pyro’s Immortal Mesmer)

Greetings and welcome!

DE is pretty bad in PvE dungeons since it’s a waste of a slot. You should go for Fury, Sword trait and Mantra damage, since you are most of the time are using at least one mantra (condi cleanse).

Mesmer are awesome in dungeons because:

• Time Warp (~125’000-500’000 passive damage)
• Reflection (Feedback, Warden, Focus trait, ress players (traited))
• Condition Cleanse
• Pull (Focus 4)
• Utility (buffs, Portal, invisibility)
• Best single target damage

If you got 3 ISwordmen, IDuellist or IWarlocks out, you are currently dealing the highest damage against a target. Noone will be able to outdamage that. Ever seen critting 25k with IWarlock on Dwayna? <3 (yea open world, still fun)

How about no clones? If you have shatter build then shatter clones right away or go with phat build.
Timewarp is very good skill for Zrked good group otherwise it is waste. When COF P1 was farmable 1 mes and 4 Zerked wars with Timewarp signet of inspiration feedback null field and illusion of life could run it very fast. Now i feel like Timewarp is a waste of space with pugs. For TA and Arah runs mass invis is must to have especially in groups with no thieves.
Feedback always good in dungeons. Decoy is a life line. Illusion of life can be helpful sometimes. Do few runs and see which skills are most useful for you and group. I recomend to use GS and Sword/sword or Sword/Pistol and Phantasm build for dungeons. Scepter is underpowered tho i like it against some bosses when it is 100% ranged fight Scepter/Pistol. Staff useful only with signet of inspiration to transfer chaos armor and boons to whole party.

Mesmers are good for dungeons not because of Time warp, but because of reflects and utility/support (read: no healing, but real active support such as condi cleanse & stability).

You might consider going minimum 20 in Inspiration for Warden’s feedback. Only effective build is phantasm. 10 30 0 20 10 or 0 30 0 25 15 (first for damage, second for reflect heavy uptime).

For armor, Berserker. For weapons, Sword mainhand + Focus and Sword/Pistol or Sword/Sword. Greatsword is a bad weapon and you should consider learning the tells of the mobs/using active defense (Reflects, Blurred Frenzy, Blind, Distortion, Clones to line of sight) to mitigate damage. Only a few fights need a greatsword (Some FoTM enouncounters).

Reflects can mitigate 100% of the damage dealt to your whole party by ranged projectiles (nb: some Dredge’s/Ettins earth attacks are projectiles too, even tho they are comming from the ground).

DE is not a necessity, you should however have the Sword CD + Fury for phantasms traited always. Third slot is either Mantras +4% dmg or Pistol CD recharge (if you run pistol).
If you run mantra +4%, take the Heal, Condi cleanse/Stability/Daze + Feedback. The mantra you need depends on the dungeon – AC = Stability and Condi cleanse but CoE1 = Condi cleanse and Daze.
If you do not run +4% per mantra, take Signet of the Ether, Feedback, Blink + (depends on the encounter) Nullfield (AC) or Disenchanter (CoE) or Portal (CoF1 and 2) or Veil (Skips in Arah and SE) or Mimic (FotM).

Rangers and necros are terrible dungeon classes in a pick up setup. Most are trash players and will only slow things down. Rangers how ever are in a good spot in experienced parties (I don’t mean LFG parties, I mean speed clear guild runs).
On the other hand, any party needs a mesmer, two mesmers is bad, one is perfect, 0 can be overcome by having a guardian but having both guardian and mesmer is still the most convinient way of playing.

Oh and, to Ptolemy, best setup right now is Mesmer Guardian Warrior Warrior Ele for most dungeons, stacking warriors never was optimal, the CoF1 effect is due to warriors being easy to play.

Edit: NEVER use the staff for the following reasons:
The chaos storm hurts your party’s synergy,
Chaos armor is a terrible finisher in PvE, a might stack with a fire field is the best you can have.
Chaos bolt is condition based and innefective/slow/whatever, same goes for the clone summon
Iwarlock, even if scaling with power, is not worth the waste of a whole weapon set (4 skills wasted).

I run a couple different builds in PvE

DPS – Mantra/Phantasm Sw/Sw Sw/P GS 25/30/0/0/15 -or- DPS with a bit more mantra support 30/30/0/0/10

Reflect Support – Sw/Sw Sw/P n Sw/F 10/20/0/25/15 -or- Sw/F GS 20/10/0/0/25 (if you like GSword) Has decent DPS if you run zerker gear. These are a lot more forgiving and may be a good place to start.

*To do good damage keep as many Phantasms on the board as you can, watch the encounter, you can time them for max board time in most cases. 0 phantasms = crappy DPS no matter the build.

*Sword main hand will give you the best DPS. GS is lower, some like it some hate it. I run it when I want a solid ranged option.

*As you’re a guardian I’m not gonna talk to you about the awesomeness of reflects, you already know. Focus and Feedback in x/x/x/20/x FTW

*Never had issues with clones/phantasms aggroing in dungeons less you target the wrong thing.

*Shatter does low sustained DPS. Good on trash, bad on prolonged fights. But its really fun. Doesn’t support reflects well.

*Time Warp FTW

*Deceptive Evasion isn’t good for these 2 builds. You have much better options that don’t eat Phantasms.

*Toughness effects Phantasms. Knights is a decent set for Mantra/Phantasm. Lowers DPS but I can tell my guys stick around longer.

I run with a couple guardians most of the time so I’ve been running 25/30/0/0/15 lately and I love it. Its really geared for DPS and I get some surprisingly nice numbers. With might i’m seeing 10K+ auto chains and 12K Blurred Frenzy with Sword. Phantasms hit hard too. Guards take up the reflect duty though.

Some people will expect you to run Focus/Reflects though so be aware if you pug.

I’ve only been playing the game as an 80 mesmer for a bit over a month but I feel like that the focus offhand is overrated for most of the time. I really now only use it for the swiftness more than anything else. Here’s why I think that:

1.) It needs to be traited to reflect projectiles.

2.) The #4 skill requires accurate placement (i.e. right where the projectile will make contact with your character rather than in its path).

3.) Focus #4 doesn’t last very long (5 seconds).

4.) Phantasmal Warden is buggy and won’t attack sometimes.

5.) Phantasmal Warden has a longer cooldown than any other Phantasms.

6.) Phantasmal Warden requires the target(s) to stand still for it to deal its full damage.

Of course, I’m not saying the focus is completely useless, there are times when the reflect is useful but I must say a large majority of the time, I think it’s overrated. The Warden is pretty good for AoE’ing things but a lot of the time, it dies before it can finish its full attack. The pull effect with #4 is scarcely used and is rarely necessary.

Currently, I run 0/20/10/25/15 with Scepter/Pistol and GS for most boss fights and use S/S and GS for the boss fights that I know I can stay in for the majority of the time or know that ranging isn’t an option. I’m running full Assassin at the moment but I think I’ll switch over to Knight armors for when I make my ascended and modify the build to be 10/10/10/25/15 and stick with S/S GS. It’s a more defensive build than the more standard DPS builds but the way I look at it is that if I’m downed/dead, it not only means that I’m not dealing damage but so aren’t the people who are rezzing me, not to mention I look and feel like a total noob. Illusionary Defense and the 100 toughness helps out a bit in terms of survivability and with the ability to generate illusions rather quickly through Illusionary Leap and Illusionary Riposte combined with Blade Training and Illusionist’s Celerity, having a constant supply of illusions should rarely be an issue. Metaphysical Rejuvenation could be better but it’s better than nothing and I don’t rely on it being an effective lifesaver anyway. The rest is pretty self-explanatory I think and I would use Temporal Enchanter/Persisting Images since I won’t be using a focus.

However, in terms of utility skills though, I almost always take Ether Feast as my heal; Signet of the Ether just doesn’t heal me fast enough in a pinch and when it’s on cooldown, I’m just screwed as I have no heals for a very long time. The other three are Feedback, Mantra of Resolve and Null Field and of course, Time Warp. I will sometimes take up Blink depending on the fight since I don’t always need to remove conditions/boons and likewise, I will switch out Mantra of Resolve for Mantra of Concentration.

By the way, I feel like that Deceptive Evasion is overrated for PvE, in most situations in which you have to dodge, the clone is just going to die instantly anyway so it’s rarely beneficial; as usual, there are exceptions to this such as fighting the golem in CoE where your sword clones’ auto attacks are very useful. In fact, more often than not, because DE will always create a clone, I feel like it destroying one of my phantasms happens much more often when I don’t want it to so I eventually just got rid of it completely and I haven’t missed it since.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84947-mesmerizing-the-enemy-guide-to-mesmer-swordx-dps-builds/

1) Mesmer is not a DPS class. Even if you build for DPS, your damage output will be miniscule compared to any other dungeon meta class. Guardians, Thieves, Eles, Warriors… all of these classes outdps a mesmer quite easily, and by quite a large margin, not to mention their damage is faster to build up and easier to maintain.

2) Mesmers are a utility class. The true dungeon support. I’d even go as far as saying that mesmers offer as much, if not more (under certain conditions) support as guardians do. This is achieved via the following:

i) Reflects. The true reason people take mesmers in their parties are those sweet sweet reflects. They are also the best way to boost your otherwise small DPS. Most mesmers build in such a way so as to maximize their reflect damage output (0/30/0/20/20 for example). That includes traiting their focus and learning how to make use of it.

ii) Mantras: each readied mantra (with 30 in dueling) provides a 4% damage boost. If you feel confident on your mesmer, you can have up to 3 different mantras up at a time (although utilities used differ from dungeon to dungeon). The important part is, that you can give stability to your party in crucial moments, cleanse conditions or daze at will once those mantras are up regradless of your current character status (stunned, knocked down, casting a spell…).

iii) Time warp: is an incredible ability that boosts your team’s DPS. Learn when to use it and your party will love you

iv) Portal: in many dungeons this utility can make or break a speedrun. Watch some speedrun vids in the dungeon forums and learn the tricks. This is the trademark ability of good mesmers and good teams.

v) Damage: while it is true that mesmer damage doesn’t soar high up in the sky with the rest of the meta dungeon classes, it doesn’t mean you should neglect it. Sword AA (which is the only weapon you should be using in main hand unless struggling with high level fractals or extremely difficult bosses) stacks vulnerability all on it’s own and rips boons off of enemies (useful on it’s own) and phantasms do deal a decent amount of damage considering just how much team utility you pack as a mesmer.

If you wanted to hear how good mesmer damage is, then I am sorry to tell you that you have picked a wrong class. Staff ele and meta build thief can easily top mesmer damage (lava font + meteor shower + ice storm from ice bow or just FGS rush against a wall make mesmer damage look obsolete, but the same ele would be hugging the floor were it not for the mesmer who reflected that malrona AoE).

You couldn’t be more wrong … Seriously …

Even with 3 phantasms up (which doesn’t happen that often), your damage output will get outshined by other classes.

Are you playing condition damage or what? There is actually no class that can oudamage 3 iSwordsmen/Duellists/Warlocks against a single target.
Sword aa hits pretty hard too. It’s just that the Mesmer shows many tiny numbers, however if there would stay the 7k damage of a full aa rotation he suddenly would be strong …
But ye, it’s ture. A huge part of the Mesmer’s damage is passive damage wich never makes it into calculations. TW hits for 125’000-500’000 ~, Reflection hits not only directly, it also prevents damage = no dodge / heal = ally rotation keeps going. etc etc etc.
However to say “Mesmer deals miniscule damage” is just wrong.

@Xyonon: Yes, I have realized that specific part was an overstatement and edited it out about 1 minute after I have submitted the post. You must have caught it before I could submit the edit, so let’s just drop that topic.

However, I still do stand by my statement that mesmer is not a dps class and their dps output (in terms of active dps, not passive DPS boost) is largely dependent on reflects and passive boosts/party boosts, which are always situational.

While theoretically mesmers could and should have good dps output, there is a number of conditions to reach that, most of which are never met at the same time. DPS is not measured, and should not be measured by theoretical damage values. If you believe mesmers can compete in terms of damage with other classes, I suggest you watch some veteran risen giant damage tests to see just how far behind mesmers’ DPS actually is. By the time a mesmer actually manages to build some of his DPS, a pantasm dies or some other problem occurs and most importantly, other classes are usually done killing the giants by then. DPS in this game is about loading it up fast and bursting the boss down, not maintaining a steady high number.

Mesmer has some of the highest DPS if you have 3x phantasms on the board and you are built for DPS. Even maintaining 2x phantasms brings you on par with ‘average’ zerker dps that most classes can push. With practice and experience maintaining 2x phantasms is not hard in most cases. I’ve done the in game testing, I am basing my conclusions off of that.

The problem is if you run the meta focus reflect builds you’re not optimized for DPS even with full Zerker gear. Your missing 5% to 18% damage increases through traits.

I won’t argue the the damage output or utility of reflects, they’re great but you need someone shooting at you to utilize them for DPS.

Also don’t forget that the fiery greatsword mentioned, or the lightning hammer or ice bow that eles drop can be picked up….by the mesmer. Then you get all the dps from those AND your phantasms.

Bloodgruve.6038:

I won’t argue the the damage output or utility of reflects, they’re great but you need someone shooting at you to utilize them for DPS.

They’re amazing when someone is though; I hit the Legendary Archdiviner for about 80k every time I put a feedback on his ring attack in my last fractal 50, and that was without even being particularly buffed.

Valarauka.2719:

Bloodgruve.6038:

I won’t argue the the damage output or utility of reflects, they’re great but you need someone shooting at you to utilize them for DPS.

They’re amazing when someone is though; I hit the Legendary Archdiviner for about 80k every time I put a feedback on his ring attack in my last fractal 50, and that was without even being particularly buffed.

And 120k every time it’s used on bloomy. <3 feedback.

Unbuffed mesmer with 3 swordsmans does exactly same dps as unbuffed axe/mace warrior. Unbuffed pure mantra dps build with 3 swordsmans will do 13% more dps than an unbuffed phantasm heavy build also with 3 swordsmans.

The reason mesmer kills veteran giant the slowest is because other classes have much better burst. Mesmers need at least 5 seconds wind up time to reach our max dps.

It seems that I rubbed you guys the wrong way, even if unintentionally. I am not trying to say that mesmer is not an awesome class, I love it just like any of you, and it is honestly amazing, but it’s not amazing because of the damage it could theoretically do, because that damage has way too many ifs, and many dungeon boss fights just don’t last long enough for mesmer to build up his DPS high enough to catch up with the rest of DPS classes that just dish it all out from the start. Mesmers are taken for their team utility, the moment you leave that utility out, mesmers will lose their place.

Also @ Pyroatheist: yes, that’s true, but at the same time that damage is brought to your team by the ele, not the mesmer. It wouldn’t matter one bit if anybody else picked up the weapon. It’s the same as calculating time warp damage increase as the mesmers’ passive damage, in which case the other weapon’s damage should be attributed to ele, and so should the damage increase from might stacks ect and we’d just end up arguing about variables. By my original statement I only meant to say, that mesmer’s active damage output throughout most boss encounters isn’t on par with other classes because of how short the boss fights actually are (and being affected by the wind-up time and the possibility of phantasms dying) and becomes worthwhile only by adding in the group utility stuff.

Feel free to argue with me guys, I am not saying you aren’t right (many of you in fact are right), but from my point of view the important part of DPS is how fast it gets the enemy killed, and mesmer doesn’t excel in that area unless you factor in reflects and time warp.

Silferas.3841:

It seems that I rubbed you guys the wrong way, even if unintentionally. I am not trying to say that mesmer is not an awesome class, I love it just like any of you, and it is honestly amazing, but it’s not amazing because of the damage it could theoretically do, because that damage has way too many ifs, and many dungeon boss fights just don’t last long enough for mesmer to build up his DPS high enough to catch up with the rest of DPS classes that just dish it all out from the start. Mesmers are taken for their team utility, the moment you leave that utility out, mesmers will lose their place.

This is exactly right. The DPS ~can be great~, but that’s not why you take a mes— you take a mes for the reflects, time warps, and portals. This is why the meta builds are more like 0/30/0/25/15, or 10/30/0/20/10 (both with Empowering Mantras). These are the builds that maximize your reflect uptime (thanks to spec’ed iWarden and Temporal Curtain, and Glamour Mastery giving faster Feedbacks) while giving great DPS at the same time.

“This is why you take” is such a stupid sentence … I’m sick of reading that >_> It’s allways better to have as many different classes isntead of 2+ times the same one, so everyone can get everyones buffs and reflections and heals etc. As long as everyone knows what they are doing… In the end everyone deals about the same dps, this is how gw2 works. Some do it active and some do it passive.

Xyonon.3987:

“This is why you take” is such a stupid sentence … I’m sick of reading that >_> It’s allways better to have as many different classes isntead of 2+ times the same one, so everyone can get everyones buffs and reflections and heals etc. As long as everyone knows what they are doing… In the end everyone deals about the same dps, this is how gw2 works. Some do it active and some do it passive.

I mean, ok, at the end of the day it won’t be a large difference. But 2x ele is simply better than ele + mes on some paths, like ac p1 and p3. I main my Mesmer, so I love playing her! But she doesn’t bring anything necessary to those fights, while the ele brings insane deeps with FGS and more might. ACp2, on the other hand, is awesome for mesmers, since two feedbacks are often enough to kill the boss. 2x mesmers on Lupi? Yes please, for the same reason.

I don’t think bringing Mesmer is ever really ~bad~, it’s just that there are some paths where we are omg amazing! and others where we are just average.

Xyonon.3987:

In the end everyone deals about the same dps, this is how gw2 works.

no… no, they absolutely don’t. it’s very clear to see if you’ve played a bunch of classes and tried a bunch of builds.

Well I actually have played everything except endgame ele and guard. And yes – they all do about 20% of a party damage.

There are some places the mesmer just can’t do that though. For example, Subject Alpha: your phantasms are going to die every time he AoE’s, and there’s little you can do about that. If you use Signet of the Ether, you might be able to get 2 out again just as he launches his next set of AoE’s, wiping them again… and all the while you’re summoning instead of attacking, and your DPS is tanking. Meanwhile, the ele is spamming LH aa’s or fire staff 2 and doing full damage the entire time, with no wind-up.

Mesmer DPS is god-tier when the phantasms can stay alive. But every time there’s a lot of AoE’s which conspire to take them out… game over man.

Xyonon.3987:

Well I actually have played everything except endgame ele and guard. And yes – they all do about 20% of a party damage.

i don’t think you’ve been toying around with gear and trait setup enough, then. like, you can make builds within the same profession that does double the damage of other builds in there. meaning, some builds do awful damage. compare across the board, and it should be clear that some players might be running stuff that’s absolutely terrible dps, while other are running very high dps.

sure, support, buff, heal, control, whatever… but the damage component is not that uniform. at all.

I’m not talking about the damage the mesmer does, I’m talking about the damage the mesmer creates when he’s present in a party. Subject Alpha for example: The more exact it dies right when TW ends, the more % damage of your whole team have you done.

Let’s say Alpha has 405’000 HP. Everyone deals 6000 DpS but you. The “weak” mesmer goes for it’s 3000 DpS without phants (since they die). Now you cast TW and Alpha dies at exact 10 sec. Everyone did 9000 DpS and you did 4500 becuse of TW. In this scenario TW itself dealt 135’000 damage, the Mesmer alone did 30’000 wich is 165’000 damage = 33% of the damage the party does was yours. The mesmer. If the party needs longer than 10 sec the % damage the mesmer TW did shrinks. However it will still be 20%~ together with the mesmers dps. And Alpha is a bad scenario without phants.

Same goes for Engi vulnerability, Ranger frost spirit, spotter, warr banner etc. In the end it’s better to have ’em all.

I believe each class has at least 1 build that is competitive DPS. Ele’s break this curve a bit though. As in every MMO different classes/builds will be better in different encounters. DPS tends to drop quickly if you don’t build/gear for it though. If you have a Soldiers, Knights, etc.. in the group he will definitely be lower DPS.

We can be competitive on Alpha with a good DPS build and Phantasm management. With this, even with a Sword and a single Phantasm up you are doing respectable damage. Throw on TW like Xyonon said and we’re sitting in a good spot.

IMHO.. aside from my comparative tests I don’t have empyrical data to support this though so take it for what it’s worth.

Blood~

Just as a quick note about alpha. If you’re stacking properly, the vast majority of alpha’s aoes will not damage your phantasms. Alpha is actually one of the few bosses where you can truly maintain a full 3 phantasms of damage output.

1. please don’t pick conjures up as a mesmer. mesmers have jack kitten for damage modifiers compared to a lot of other classes. let those pick the conjures up; you should only be picking up conjures if there are more than enough for whole party (FGS/ice bow) or in very short fights (picking up LH when fighting COE starting trash). otherwise you’re just wasting the damage of conjures.

2. mesmers really aren’t that much of a speed increase in most groups. I’ve heard the statement about “3 swordsman highest dps” but that’s hilariously impractical since phantasms tend to die/boss dies before you can even summon 3 phantasms. in many dungeons you can easily phase out mesmers; in speedruns their biggest use is to do splitting gimmicks with portal.

3. and if you say that class diversity and not stacking classes is best you clearly haven’t tried double/triple ele in runs. in AC you instakill bosses since you fiery rush most things, and in other dungeons you still get great dps because of eles being OP. it definitely isn’t always better to have 1 of each class.

I’m not saying that mesmers are bad. they’re very nice utility and are great for making dungeons easy and convenient (lupicus), but their DPS isn’t very good because most fights are short or hostile to phantasm spawning. you don’t always benefit from adding a mesmer to the group, unlike some classes (ele warrior ranger for e.g.)

Xyonon.3987:

bunch of numbers

was this supposed to illustrate how all classes do “about 20% of a party damage”?… (it didn’t)

a few words…. DON’T MESMER DUGEONS

xXJonoDXx.3061:

a few words…. DON’T MESMER DUGEONS

Lol

Pyroatheist.9031:

Just as a quick note about alpha. If you’re stacking properly, the vast majority of alpha’s aoes will not damage your phantasms. Alpha is actually one of the few bosses where you can truly maintain a full 3 phantasms of damage output.

I’ll have to see if I can figure that out! I didn’t manage it a few times, and then just switched to ele (since FGS >>> all). But if 3 phantasms can stick around indefinitely, that and timewarp can be quite nice.

Anyway, my point is that it’s based on the fights of the dungeon. Mesmer is never bad, that we can all agree on~

Xyonon.3987:

Let’s say Alpha has 405’000 HP. Everyone deals 6000 DpS but you. The “weak” mesmer goes for it’s 3000 DpS without phants (since they die). Now you cast TW and Alpha dies at exact 10 sec. Everyone did 9000 DpS and you did 4500 becuse of TW. In this scenario TW itself dealt 135’000 damage, the Mesmer alone did 30’000 wich is 165’000 damage = 33% of the damage the party does was yours.

• 1st Alpha – 481,719 health (he escapes at 50% health)
• 2nd Alpha – 722,578 health (he escapes at 25% health)
• 3rd Alpha – 963,438 health

I managed to kill 1st Alpha in 120 seconds with my mesmer (video). This means that I averaged out to 4,014 DPS. My blurred frenzies were averaging to roughly 4k so I can assume that without proper party buffs I was at 50% of my DPS (my BF usually does 8k to 10k). This means a fully buffed a mesmer with 3 phantasms will be doing 8k DPS. A mesmer without 3 phantasms will be losing 50% to 70% of his DPS depending on the build.

A proper zerk party will be doing 30k to 40k DPS. This means a 3 phantasm mesmer will be responsible for 20% to 25% of total DPS under ideal conditions (rarely happens). Without any phantasms you’re contributing only 10% to 15% of total DPS (much more realistic).

Lol @ Mesmer being the best at single target damage. Not even close, guys.

@ frifox:

Phants are not 50%-70% of a mesmers damge, more like vice versa. However yea, nice video showing the mesmers damage. Now image you would have been using sigil of battle for +10%~ dmg by yourself, or didnt spam BF if not needed would increase your damage too btw. Mesmer sword deals pretty good damage, yes.

According to my tests, 3 phantasms vs 0 phantasms:

• 25/30/0/0/15 – 59% loss (3 mantra)
• 10/30/0/20/10 – 58% loss (3 mantra)
• 10/30/0/20/10 – 63% loss (0 mantra)
• 10/20/0/25/15 – 65% loss

The only way a mesmer will do more damage than 3 phantasms is when you stack scholar runes, force/night sigil, slaying potions, and similar damage modifiers that do not apply to your Illusions.