Guild Wars 2

A lot of people were complaining about Mesmer’s not being able to “tag” well in dynamic events. While playing the Mesmer may have its limitations in such circumstances, they’re still capable of efficiently tagging mobs. I used a sword / pistol with a staff set-up. Of course, there are even better builds for doing this, like running an AoE mindrack / confusion spam build with illusion high potential for illusion generation or using the berserker phantasm from the greatsword for AoE damage. Please share your farming builds! This was just what I was using at the time, and would love to try experimenting with some of the ones that you found to be useful, thanks

Tip: Don’t skill for retaliation, it will still “override” fury. Check the mesmer bug thread.

Watched the youtube link. Most people farm DEs to get the money for exotics. You have, bar two pieces, full exotic so you aren’t exactly at the starting point of which is when it is most problematic. That said, maybe its only a minor point.

The major point of why I don’t think you have shown that there is not a problem is because you haven’t actually targeted the problem. You have shown a DE with a few people doing it; any one and any class would likely be able to do enough damage in that situation to most of the mobs to get loot.

The problem people are talking about is when a lot of people are doing DEs. Mobs don’t last longer than a heartbeat so running around whacking things with your sword isn’t going to do much. Similarly, chaos storm doesn’t do enough damage in that time to tag reliably (if at all), and is on a fairly long cooldown for how often the waves come.

Aimeryan.1247:

Watched the youtube link. Most people farm DEs to get the money for exotics. You have, bar two pieces, full exotic so you aren’t exactly at the starting point of which is when it is most problematic. That said, maybe its only a minor point.

The major point of why I don’t think you have shown that there is not a problem is because you haven’t actually targeted the problem. You have shown a DE with a few people doing it; any one and any class would likely be able to do enough damage in that situation to most of the mobs to get loot.

The problem people are talking about is when a lot of people are doing DEs. Mobs don’t last longer than a heartbeat so running around whacking things with your sword isn’t going to do much. Similarly, chaos storm doesn’t do enough damage in that time to tag reliably (if at all), and is on a fairly long cooldown for how often the waves come.

Personally, I’ve had little problem tagging sufficient numbers of mobs with Chaos Storm. Or iBerserker. I will agree that Blurred Frenzy/Sword doesn’t work well unless the mobs spawn in melee range. And iLeap is too buggy/short-ranged to be useful.

My personal suggestion if you REALLY care about aoe tagging, Staff/GS is the better choice. iZerker and Chaos Storm are effective at tagging when they are up, and the CD reduction traits will make them more manageable.

I do think Anet could stand to improve the area/CD of some of our other aoes though.

I haven’t watched the video, but based on the comments, it needs to be stated:

The DE problem that people are facing at level 80 is basically the following context:

- 40 allied players
- allied players AOEing continuously on a spot where mobs are known to spawn
- mobs are about to spawn, or run to the point while invulnerable
- mobs spawn / become invulnerable
- all mobs die with ~2.5 seconds

The challenge is to do enough burst damage to tag as many mobs as possible in those 2.5 seconds to get credit for loot.

The best build for this is obviously a power shatter build with Illusory Persona and GS for iBerserker. iB is quick enough out of the gate to tag for damage in most circumstances. IP gives a solid instant AOE damage with both MW and Cry.

Chaos Storm, while nice, has a very long cooldown and is typically ineffective for intense DE farming.

The end.

How to DE farm with a mesmer? Log Out → Character select → Select Guardian/Ranger/Thief/Warrior → Play.

Unless you are specifically Karma farming, mesmer farming is basically useless in high traffic DE farming areas. Most times mobs are dead before they render on my screen.

On my mesmer using well timed chaos storm then blurred frenzy, I get 0 to 2 drops per wave, if I am lucky I get 4. On my guardian, I get 3 to 7 drops per wave.

While I love my mesmer in PvP, it just blows too much in PvE. I will just karma farm in WvWvW on my mesmer. Building a magic find set for my guardian tonight.

Thanks for the responses guys. You made me aware of the some of the factors I over-looked. So is it still the general consensus that Mesmer’s suck at PvE? Do you think ArenaNet will be buffing this class eventually, or will we all have to play the profession everyone else is playing (Warrior) for farming?

Uh, Warriors don’t farm DEs well either. They have good instant damage, but their cleave range is small.

The only classes that excel at easy DE farming are Eles and Engis it seems.

Aside from that, Mesmers do fine in PvE.

Guardian staff #1 >>>>>>>>> chaos storm, blurred frenzy, berserker…
nice vid guide though

Memser only sucks in DEs. At 80, I am harldy able to tag 1 or 2 mobs before they all instantly explode. lol. Very frustrating. Too many people spamming aoe.

I am seriously leveling up my elementalist to make money. I have been playing ele only in sPvP.

For mob tagging I like to use chaos storm first. This only works if it’s not on c/d which it typically is after the first wave passes.

My backup is a quick clone skill (like Staff 2) followed by F1, F2, or F3 to get a quick AoE clone-splosion tag. This is tricky since the clone needs to run in and explode, however it will still do the shatter as long as the mob was alive when you press the F1 key. So even if the targetted mob dies, other mobs may still get tagged with the shatter.