Do Mesmers get any better?
Only thing that bothers me about mesmer is that in pve I swear none of those monsters fall for illusions unless I stealth right after summoning them
try sword/pistol and staff offhand I would say that is prob your best bet. There are a few ways to build a mesmer but focusing on phantas dmg is always fun. If people dont focus the illussions and phantas they usually explode while u have quite a few ways to duck out of dmg.
So far I play with sword+pistol and greatsword and it’s working for me so far. I can summon one duelist per 8 seconds so they are easy to keep 2-3 up at most times during many boss fights. Then I go in do my blurred frenzy and roll out. The bleeds stack up quite well for some extra damage with 30 points in dueling with high crit on your phantasms.
Greatsword works for me since i have a power build. I use it for debuffing the enemy and to criple mobs when i need them slowed with the berserker. The auto attack looks to be rather low in damage but it’s not really all that low with a high crit percentage and extra crit damage. If it crits for me with all 3 it does about 1000-1200 damage per shot for me and i’m not lv 80 yet(71).
For pvp I start out with the greatsword and make sure to criple them straight away and then switch too sword for a duelist. If they are melee they will move closer in some way and I will blurr frenzy and then roll out of the way. I tend to have both blink and decoy on my bar so I have many escape options. If it’s a ranged i’ll blink right too them and use blurred frenzy and then I can use illusionary leap to criple them and/or immobilize them.
Anyways overral I got ok damage ranged, great damage melee and strong phantasms that I can summon quickly. I got several ways to get out illusions for damage or confusion.
You missed the part where I said the strength of the shatter build is that it doesn’t matter if the odd illusion dies because it is designed to crank them out at such a high rate.
Your build on the other hand is very vulnerable to pet death.
Don’t confuse one big number being better than lots of small ones. With all the confusion/other condition stack in addition to mind wrack damage and the fact that phantasms will still get a volley or two out, it certainly does add up.
You are somehow envisioning a perfect set up where you have 3 warlocks standing there in one spot, (which takes a long time to set up relatively), safe from harm with no target changing. It’s so far from the reality of GW2 play it’s bizarre.
I should add that yes, the maybe a few situations where the fight mechanics will permit you to /popcorn and let phantasms do their thing but that situation is a rarity to say the least.
Jesus tap dancing Christ, did you really just insult my reading comprehension when you failed to address ANYTHING I said about a shatter build’s flaws. Oh and then the shot at my ability to understand or do math when your own numbers are far from factual. They do not in fact add up.
1: Your build is limited by Wrack’s Cooldown! It doesn’t matter how many useless pets you can field if you have more than you can reasonably shatter. This is a huge flaw in our shatter builds that you need to address
2: You need to prove that Wrack can consistently outpace 2 locks that live to see a third volley. At 80 on a boss that’s about 13k worth of damage
3: Clones can and will die before they reach their shatter target a good percentage of the time. Warlocks have the advantage of ranged delivery. You are vastly understating how frequently 1 or 2 clones don’t arrive.
4: No idiot is going to stand in one place with their auto on and spam 3 on any boss. Fortunately you have these cool movement keys that let you place your pets at safer areas in the room. You can get 3 out on basically any fight. The ones where this is problematic are the also the ones that chunk shatter builds and even still you can usually field two constantly. See above.
5: Confusion is a very poor condition in PvE. Boss attack speed is usually too slow for it to contribute a significant source of our damage.
6: Most bosses have 0 target changing. Other classes can swap more efficiently than we can anyway.
7: Shatter builds do have their uses, Phantasm ones simply cover more bases while being harder to kill
So, lets propose builds that solve these issues shall we?
(edited by Abarcine.7189)
The OPs request is about all aspects of the game. I agree that, on some boss fights that last for a long time and where ranged is pretty much left to their own devices with little AoE worry, going 3 warlock is excellent… however this hardly encompasses the vast majority of the game, does it? No, in fact this situation doesn’t even work on every boss fight.
I’m still scratching my head as to why you think a pack of warlocks dying to AoE, where each and every one takes 12 to 14 seconds to summon is somehow preferable to a shatter mesmer losing illusions, all 3 of which will be up again in 2 seconds (no exaggeration.. and this isn’t even by using mirror images).
Yes there are a few ways to get additional mind wracks and there are also multiple ways to make the other shatters great dps tools including gaining might for each shattered illusion (nice), inflicting vulnerability and confusion. Also, phantasms still always get a volley or 2 out before shattering. Anyhow, at least we see that there is a use for each of our builds but I think when giving advice it’s better to suggest builds that function well in multiple areas of the game.
(edited by Marxo.3829)
You can’t play a Mesmer as a DPS class, because they were not fundamentally designed for high damage; instead, Mesmers are an unorthodox support classes. Most of your abilities and skills create conditions, as well as providing boons (buffs) to surrounding allies.
With that said, it is incredibly easy to kite mobs with a Staff/GS. Constantly pump out phantasms and illusions and run around the mobs. You won’t eliminate them as quickly as a thief or warrior, but you’ll get the job done, just have to be efficient.
You can’t play a Mesmer as a DPS class, because they were not fundamentally designed for high damage; instead, Mesmers are an unorthodox support classes. Most of your abilities and skills create conditions, as well as providing boons (buffs) to surrounding allies.
With that said, it is incredibly easy to kite mobs with a Staff/GS. Constantly pump out phantasms and illusions and run around the mobs. You won’t eliminate them as quickly as a thief or warrior, but you’ll get the job done, just have to be efficient.
I’ve seen you call them a supoprt class twice now, perhaps you could point out where it says they are support class? Because as far as I can see every single class has support skills and I seem to recall the GW2 philosophy was it was about the build not the profession and that any profession could fill any role.
No character essentially gets any better, you more or less have all your abilitys within about the first 10 hours of play, with level capping per area in place also it will always feel the same.
People have started noticing this at about level 40-50 that they are not actually progressing, this is apparently how the game is designed, I cant say im fan of that aspect character progression is the primary point for me in any mmo.
Progression continues through trait acquisition. Access to traits opens up new wrinkles to your current build, as well as new build possibilities.
Mesmer at level 80 is vastly different from mesmer at level 20, due entirely to traits.
No character essentially gets any better, you more or less have all your abilitys within about the first 10 hours of play, with level capping per area in place also it will always feel the same.
People have started noticing this at about level 40-50 that they are not actually progressing, this is apparently how the game is designed, I cant say im fan of that aspect character progression is the primary point for me in any mmo.Progression continues through trait acquisition. Access to traits opens up new wrinkles to your current build, as well as new build possibilities.
Mesmer at level 80 is vastly different from mesmer at level 20, due entirely to traits.
Traits and Skill points, considering that the skill point challenges can give you XP as well.
You missed the part where I said the strength of the shatter build is that it doesn’t matter if the odd illusion dies because it is designed to crank them out at such a high rate.
Your build on the other hand is very vulnerable to pet death.
Don’t confuse one big number being better than lots of small ones. With all the confusion/other condition stack in addition to mind wrack damage and the fact that phantasms will still get a volley or two out, it certainly does add up.
You are somehow envisioning a perfect set up where you have 3 warlocks standing there in one spot, (which takes a long time to set up relatively), safe from harm with no target changing. It’s so far from the reality of GW2 play it’s bizarre.
I should add that yes, the maybe a few situations where the fight mechanics will permit you to /popcorn and let phantasms do their thing but that situation is a rarity to say the least.
Jesus tap dancing Christ, did you really just insult my reading comprehension when you failed to address ANYTHING I said about a shatter build’s flaws. Oh and then the shot at my ability to understand or do math when your own numbers are far from factual. They do not in fact add up.
1: Your build is limited by Wrack’s Cooldown! It doesn’t matter how many useless pets you can field if you have more than you can reasonably shatter. This is a huge flaw in our shatter builds that you need to address
2: You need to prove that Wrack can consistently outpace 2 locks that live to see a third volley. At 80 on a boss that’s about 13k worth of damage
3: Clones can and will die before they reach their shatter target a good percentage of the time. Warlocks have the advantage of ranged delivery. You are vastly understating how frequently 1 or 2 clones don’t arrive.
4: No idiot is going to stand in one place with their auto on and spam 3 on any boss. Fortunately you have these cool movement keys that let you place your pets at safer areas in the room. You can get 3 out on basically any fight. The ones where this is problematic are the also the ones that chunk shatter builds and even still you can usually field two constantly. See above.
5: Confusion is a very poor condition in PvE. Boss attack speed is usually too slow for it to contribute a significant source of our damage.
6: Most bosses have 0 target changing. Other classes can swap more efficiently than we can anyway.
7: Shatter builds do have their uses, Phantasm ones simply cover more bases while being harder to kill
So, lets propose builds that solve these issues shall we?
Can’t really take your build seriously
1. You lose a lot of potential damage to weapon downtime. Other than warlock, the entire staff skill set is crap for someone running power/crit for a phantasm build. You have a lot of time spent in your build just using our weakest attack for a power build (staff auto-attack), and being stuck on a weapon that outside of the phantasm does not have any synergy with your stats/traits. Even when you do swap to your greatsword (really all you can use), you have to avoid using 2 of the skills outright and really the knockback is a dead skill in the boss fights you are basing your arguments on (as they are pretty much all immune to it). So… your weapons consist of a staff which is terrible for power/crit builds, and a greatsword that you pretty much don’t/can’t use 3/5 of the skills on.
2. Your view of what constitutes a successful build is tailored and narrow to absurdity. And even then… you can’t prove it! There are no DPS meters or combat log parsing widgets as of yet. So your build has what… a few big numbers when the phantasms fire, then pretty much NOTHING else. And you assume that this is our best possible DPS build. I’m sorry, but you are mistaken. With good timing and play you can get more damage AND more utility out of just normal phantasm use. Others have tried to explain this to you on these forums. You simply ignore it. So I’m not going to give you the same play by play list on how this is achieved.
3. In your quest to /afk in dungeons you ignore the amazing support and utility your class can provide. I would honestly not even invite you to a dungeon (let alone sPVP or WVW).
You can’t play a Mesmer as a DPS class, because they were not fundamentally designed for high damage; instead, Mesmers are an unorthodox support classes. Most of your abilities and skills create conditions, as well as providing boons (buffs) to surrounding allies.
With that said, it is incredibly easy to kite mobs with a Staff/GS. Constantly pump out phantasms and illusions and run around the mobs. You won’t eliminate them as quickly as a thief or warrior, but you’ll get the job done, just have to be efficient.
I’ve seen you call them a supoprt class twice now, perhaps you could point out where it says they are support class? Because as far as I can see every single class has support skills and I seem to recall the GW2 philosophy was it was about the build not the profession and that any profession could fill any role.
Yes, every class in GW2 do not have specific class roles. You have the freedom to build your character any way you want to; however, the core foundation for each class is still present. A thief is still a single target DPS class, and warriors/guardians are still aggressive melee classes. Although you can build an in-your-face, melee thief using the S/P build, you’re not going to have as much hp and survivability, in comparison to other classes.
Mesmers are support classes if you examine their skills and abilities. Many of the their utilities are structured for team play, such as Moa morph, veil, feedback, null field, illusion of life, and time warp. Many of their attacks plague targets with conditions, while providing allies boons. So by their core defintion, Mesmers are support classes, because there is a huge emphasis on ally assistance.
You can’t play a Mesmer as a DPS class, because they were not fundamentally designed for high damage; instead, Mesmers are an unorthodox support classes. Most of your abilities and skills create conditions, as well as providing boons (buffs) to surrounding allies.
With that said, it is incredibly easy to kite mobs with a Staff/GS. Constantly pump out phantasms and illusions and run around the mobs. You won’t eliminate them as quickly as a thief or warrior, but you’ll get the job done, just have to be efficient.
I’ve seen you call them a supoprt class twice now, perhaps you could point out where it says they are support class? Because as far as I can see every single class has support skills and I seem to recall the GW2 philosophy was it was about the build not the profession and that any profession could fill any role.
Yes, every class in GW2 do not have specific class roles. You have the freedom to build your character any way you want to; however, the core foundation for each class is still present. A thief is still a single target DPS class, and warriors/guardians are still aggressive melee classes. Although you can build an in-your-face, melee thief using the S/P build, you’re not going to have as much hp and survivability, in comparison to other classes.
Mesmers are support classes if you examine their skills and abilities. Many of the their utilities are structured for team play, such as Moa morph, veil, feedback, null field, illusion of life, and time warp. Many of their attacks plague targets with conditions, while providing allies boons. So by their core defintion, Mesmers are support classes, because there is a huge emphasis on ally assistance.
My guardian has more support skills, it also if specced right puts out plenty of damage, also since when is Moa Morph a support skill? If you read the description of Mesmer, you won’t see support mentioned once, because guess what every single class is meant to be able to support, dps, etc.
The reason Mesmer has low DPS is nothing to do with support, it is to do with tPvP which is the primary thing the game is balanced on. In which, Mesmers are the best 1v1 profession in the game (along with thieves)(the clue is in their description they are ‘duelists’) , even with the lower damage output, because they are very surviable and able to keep DPS up constantly even when blocking, dodging, stealthing, etc through their illusions.
Hence upping their damage would result in them being unstoppable in PvP, there are no support, DPS, or any other type of class in this game.
you really need to be 80 and have all your trait points/gear b4 you even analyze if mesmer does enough dmg, lower levels are just that, undeveloped not full potential. You can’t even get a full glimpse of mesmer as a lower level playing in WvW capped at 80 because you won’t have traits or gear.
As a lvl 80 mesmer with all exotic gear I find myself doing a lot of dmg with the right build, and I also have very high survivability with another build. It really depends on how you want to play it, and doesn’t matter at all what you think about it at lower levels.
Cry Of Paine – Crystal Desert – 80 Mesmer
(edited by Paine.2513)
You missed the part where I said the strength of the shatter build is that it doesn’t matter if the odd illusion dies because it is designed to crank them out at such a high rate.
Your build on the other hand is very vulnerable to pet death.
Don’t confuse one big number being better than lots of small ones. With all the confusion/other condition stack in addition to mind wrack damage and the fact that phantasms will still get a volley or two out, it certainly does add up.
You are somehow envisioning a perfect set up where you have 3 warlocks standing there in one spot, (which takes a long time to set up relatively), safe from harm with no target changing. It’s so far from the reality of GW2 play it’s bizarre.
I should add that yes, the maybe a few situations where the fight mechanics will permit you to /popcorn and let phantasms do their thing but that situation is a rarity to say the least.
Jesus tap dancing Christ, did you really just insult my reading comprehension when you failed to address ANYTHING I said about a shatter build’s flaws. Oh and then the shot at my ability to understand or do math when your own numbers are far from factual. They do not in fact add up.
1: Your build is limited by Wrack’s Cooldown! It doesn’t matter how many useless pets you can field if you have more than you can reasonably shatter. This is a huge flaw in our shatter builds that you need to address
2: You need to prove that Wrack can consistently outpace 2 locks that live to see a third volley. At 80 on a boss that’s about 13k worth of damage
3: Clones can and will die before they reach their shatter target a good percentage of the time. Warlocks have the advantage of ranged delivery. You are vastly understating how frequently 1 or 2 clones don’t arrive.
4: No idiot is going to stand in one place with their auto on and spam 3 on any boss. Fortunately you have these cool movement keys that let you place your pets at safer areas in the room. You can get 3 out on basically any fight. The ones where this is problematic are the also the ones that chunk shatter builds and even still you can usually field two constantly. See above.
5: Confusion is a very poor condition in PvE. Boss attack speed is usually too slow for it to contribute a significant source of our damage.
6: Most bosses have 0 target changing. Other classes can swap more efficiently than we can anyway.
7: Shatter builds do have their uses, Phantasm ones simply cover more bases while being harder to kill
So, lets propose builds that solve these issues shall we?
Can’t really take your build seriously
1. You lose a lot of potential damage to weapon downtime. Other than warlock, the entire staff skill set is crap for someone running power/crit for a phantasm build. You have a lot of time spent in your build just using our weakest attack for a power build (staff auto-attack), and being stuck on a weapon that outside of the phantasm does not have any synergy with your stats/traits. Even when you do swap to your greatsword (really all you can use), you have to avoid using 2 of the skills outright and really the knockback is a dead skill in the boss fights you are basing your arguments on (as they are pretty much all immune to it). So… your weapons consist of a staff which is terrible for power/crit builds, and a greatsword that you pretty much don’t/can’t use 3/5 of the skills on.
2. Your view of what constitutes a successful build is tailored and narrow to absurdity. And even then… you can’t prove it! There are no DPS meters or combat log parsing widgets as of yet. So your build has what… a few big numbers when the phantasms fire, then pretty much NOTHING else. And you assume that this is our best possible DPS build. I’m sorry, but you are mistaken. With good timing and play you can get more damage AND more utility out of just normal phantasm use. Others have tried to explain this to you on these forums. You simply ignore it. So I’m not going to give you the same play by play list on how this is achieved.
3. In your quest to /afk in dungeons you ignore the amazing support and utility your class can provide. I would honestly not even invite you to a dungeon (let alone sPVP or WVW).
Not using that build anymore. I’ve been quite sick for the past 2 weeks or so and not thinking very clearly. Most of what I’ve said in this thread should probably be disregarded at this point.
Honestly I think this thread should just fall by the wayside now that we have a class forum, it’s pretty old.
You can’t play a Mesmer as a DPS class, because they were not fundamentally designed for high damage; instead, Mesmers are an unorthodox support classes. Most of your abilities and skills create conditions, as well as providing boons (buffs) to surrounding allies.
With that said, it is incredibly easy to kite mobs with a Staff/GS. Constantly pump out phantasms and illusions and run around the mobs. You won’t eliminate them as quickly as a thief or warrior, but you’ll get the job done, just have to be efficient.
I’ve seen you call them a supoprt class twice now, perhaps you could point out where it says they are support class? Because as far as I can see every single class has support skills and I seem to recall the GW2 philosophy was it was about the build not the profession and that any profession could fill any role.
Yes, every class in GW2 do not have specific class roles. You have the freedom to build your character any way you want to; however, the core foundation for each class is still present. A thief is still a single target DPS class, and warriors/guardians are still aggressive melee classes. Although you can build an in-your-face, melee thief using the S/P build, you’re not going to have as much hp and survivability, in comparison to other classes.
Mesmers are support classes if you examine their skills and abilities. Many of the their utilities are structured for team play, such as Moa morph, veil, feedback, null field, illusion of life, and time warp. Many of their attacks plague targets with conditions, while providing allies boons. So by their core defintion, Mesmers are support classes, because there is a huge emphasis on ally assistance.
My guardian has more support skills, it also if specced right puts out plenty of damage, also since when is Moa Morph a support skill? If you read the description of Mesmer, you won’t see support mentioned once, because guess what every single class is meant to be able to support, dps, etc.
The reason Mesmer has low DPS is nothing to do with support, it is to do with tPvP which is the primary thing the game is balanced on. In which, Mesmers are the best 1v1 profession in the game (along with thieves)(the clue is in their description they are ‘duelists’) , even with the lower damage output, because they are very surviable and able to keep DPS up constantly even when blocking, dodging, stealthing, etc through their illusions.
Hence upping their damage would result in them being unstoppable in PvP, there are no support, DPS, or any other type of class in this game.
No other type of class in this game? really now?
Then what’s a warrior? or a thief? or an elementalist?
You’re saying that AN designed this game with absolutely no class-specific roles in mind; that’s only party true. If it were true, then every class should be able to use every weapon.
Warriors are aggressive melees classes.
Thieves are single-target DPS.
Elementalists are AoE’s
Build a melee elementalist and see how long you can last. By your logic, a melee elementalist should do well.
Moa Morph is a support skill because it turns the target into a helpless bird, making it easier for your group to kill it. How is that not a support skill?
No other type of class in this game? really now?
Then what’s a warrior? or a thief? or an elementalist?
You’re saying that AN designed this game with absolutely no class-specific roles in mind; that’s only party true. If it were true, then every class should be able to use every weapon.Warriors are aggressive melees classes.
Thieves are single-target DPS.
Elementalists are AoE’sBuild a melee elementalist and see how long you can last. By your logic, a melee elementalist should do well.
Moa Morph is a support skill because it turns the target into a helpless bird, making it easier for your group to kill it. How is that not a support skill?
Being able to use every weapon is irrelvant, you don’t need to be able to use a greatsword to do DPS or a long bow to be ranged.
In your simplistic world you may think a warrior is simply an aggressive melee class, the fact is like every class in the game it also has support skills and can fill a support role, or it can be built to do very good ranged damage or it can be made a very survivable control class and so on…
As for elementalist melee, again it is for structured PvP, nor is melee a role, control, support and damage are (genrally a hybrid of all 3), which different classes do in different ways.
The Moa Morph skill is the best 1v1/1v2 skill in PvP as befits a “duelist”, the game is balanced around PvP, Mesmers low damage has nothing to do with your delusions about class-specific roles in PvE, it is simply down to the amount of tools / survivability it has in tPvP.
(edited by Sylosi.6503)
In your simplistic world you may think a warrior is simply an aggressive melee class, the fact is like every class in the game it also has support skills and can fill a support role, or it can be built to do very good ranged damage or it can be made a very survivable control class and so on…
Just as a random aside, at a top level apparently the warriors best role is as a tanky control based support with very little damage.
If Mesmers got any better, we’d have constant nerfs.
Mesmers are already a top tier 1v1 class, top tier WvW class, and can basically fill almost any role in the game.
If you can’t read English, please do not reply to my post.