Guild Wars 2

So, I really enjoyed Mesmer in GW1. I tended towards playing lockdown builds. I wasn’t the one doing the killing, but I was making it easier to kill the enemies for my friends. I’ve tried twice to make a Mesmer in GW2 and deleted it both times because I HATED the whole mechanic of using clones. Of course I know that I can’t get around that if I want to play the class, but have recent changes make interrupt/lockdown builds more viable?

What I’m looking for:

• PvP/WvW builds
• Lockdown and Interrupt focused
• As little reliance on clones as possible
• Anything I can do to be a support player
• Can i still do this and be viable? If not, I’ll just play something else.

If anyone has watched Log Horizon, I kinda wanna be Shiroe. :p

P.S I’ve read all the traits and came up with some concepts, but I don’t want to buy another character slot to test them out, which is why I came here to ask for a more “expert” opinion. I’ve seen posts about lockdown Mes but I don’t know if they are actually viable.

BurrTheKing.8571:

What I’m looking for:

• PvP/WvW builds
• Lockdown and Interrupt focused
• As little reliance on clones as possible
• Anything I can do to be a support player
• Can i still do this and be viable? If not, I’ll just play something else.

You can do many of these, but absolutely not all of them. No matter what you do, you’re going to be reliant on clones to an extent, especially in a lockdown build where diversion shatter can be really key. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a gamebreaker. I’d look at the lockdown mesmer thread currently on the front page of this forum for some ideas.

Fay.2357:

BurrTheKing.8571:

What I’m looking for:

• PvP/WvW builds
• Lockdown and Interrupt focused
• As little reliance on clones as possible
• Anything I can do to be a support player
• Can i still do this and be viable? If not, I’ll just play something else.

You can do many of these, but absolutely not all of them. No matter what you do, you’re going to be reliant on clones to an extent, especially in a lockdown build where diversion shatter can be really key. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a gamebreaker. I’d look at the lockdown mesmer thread currently on the front page of this forum for some ideas.

Yah, i went and read that right after posting this. I hate the idea of clones but it looks like that 4/4/6/0/0 build focuses on timing which is something I can get behind. I get the thematic idea behind clones to cause confusion, but it still feels like I’m some sort of pet class which I generally only like on Rangers.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Fay.2357:

BurrTheKing.8571:

What I’m looking for:

• PvP/WvW builds
• Lockdown and Interrupt focused
• As little reliance on clones as possible
• Anything I can do to be a support player
• Can i still do this and be viable? If not, I’ll just play something else.

You can do many of these, but absolutely not all of them. No matter what you do, you’re going to be reliant on clones to an extent, especially in a lockdown build where diversion shatter can be really key. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a gamebreaker. I’d look at the lockdown mesmer thread currently on the front page of this forum for some ideas.

Yah, i went and read that right after posting this. I hate the idea of clones but it looks like that 4/4/6/0/0 build focuses on timing which is something I can get behind. I get the thematic idea behind clones to cause confusion, but it still feels like I’m some sort of pet class which I generally only like on Rangers.

You can think of clones significantly differently. Maybe somebody at some point is confused by clones, but no good players are. Think of all illusions simply as damage/utility. Clones are the potential for a shatter, phantasms are both shatter potential and sustained damage, or condition removal, or projectile reflection. They’re sorta like living hexes almost.

Short and long of it is that the Gw1 Mesmer and its many many roles and days of trolling are very much gone and unable to be really replicated in Gw2.

You can still take a more CC type of position up in a team fight with the lock down builds but it takes a lot of work to learn and get very good at.

Theres no returning to Panic or PowerBlock/blackout and Hexes out the kitten .

As Pyro stated, you can look at clones as the worst Pet summons in the game or you can look at them as a Hard to manage resource for your F1-F4 skills to be useable/useful.

Phantasms almost fill the Hex role, the two that fill this in the most accurately would be iWarlock on Staff and iDisenchanter from Utility. the other Phantasms are just DPS or Condition potentials that lack a scaling punishment effect.

If Lock Down ends up not being your thing, you can attempt a Typical IP/Shatter build. and just simply focus on Higher Pressure in rapid fire DPS. Watching the average player start to panic and flail on their keyboard helps me fill that void of playing Mesmer in Gw1 (from the times that the monk could only run in circles as every single one of its skills was on a Massive CD or it had 0 energy)

Short answer: Yes to most of those, no to everything. Feel free to shoot me a PM and we can theorycraft some ideas.

I’ll spend some time trying to to master the class and see if I can enjoy it. Part of me thinks the clone idea fits with what the class was in GW1, the other part misses hexes on both Necro and Mes. The GW1 equivalents don’t feel the same. I think a big part is that I miss the cast bar. Seeing it be interrupted was so satisfying.

Interrupting without cast bar is indeed a lot harder, but it can be done. I play CI lockdown in wvw and a phantasm build in pvp just because to me these builds actually do feel like GW1 the most. The Phants are like hexes that if ignored (if you build for them) will jack your target. So it’s kind of GW1-ish because if they focus me they get screwed and if they focus the phants they probably also get screwed, they just don’t realize its happening until its too late. The phantasm build to me has the best troll factor, it is just very funny watching these purple ghosts chase after and down someone trying to run after they realized too late they were losing.

In WvW CI with MoD can be really fun. Landing interrupts is hard, but it can be done if you really watch and pay attention. You just have to be on the ball. Again it has a little bit of that GW1 feeling when you see someone mashing abilities to escape and you nail a daze and CI roots them in place and they get mobbed down, or better yet someone is coming at you and you nail that interrupt and land a big burst as they stand there looking dumb. But if you aren’t on the ball it can be very frustrating, as if you don’t land your interrupts then you can get walked on pretty hard.

I’m only interested in whatever the GW2 mesmer can offer that is like GW1, which is why I don’t play shatter, it has no resemblance to GW1 mesmer. I can’t say I get a lot of GW1 satisfaction, but I do get some.