Guild Wars 2

Let me just say that to everyone not running a staff currently, use one. The Illusionary Warlock really is that good and Chaos Storm is a necessity. Staff is the only weapon propping us up in Dungeons or Dynamic Events right now. I cannot for the life of me find a situation where Greatsword is superior to our other options.

Its damage feels low and its Phantasm feels like it’s trying to accomplish to many different things while being bad at all of them. Need an AoE phantasm (lol because it totally wont get targetted and popped immediately)? Go with Focus. Need a single target burst? Pistol is the obvious choice. Long drawn out fight on a single target? Iwarlock is your guy here.

Greatsword feels like it has too much overlap and while it’d be a nice choice for a secondary weapon, Staff is so powerful and benefits all of our builds you’d be foolish not to take one. That and we need to be able to access our offhands.

Greatsword is the greatest thing since sliced bread for mesmers, strap on some bezerker gear and throw red gems in everything.

I have 52% crit rate and 100% critical damage bonus from gear and talents, plus a ton of power. Mirror-blade into phantasmal bezerker into shatter will wipe the floor with entire groups of people in WvWvW and decimate mobs in pve. Mind stab is pretty terrible though.

Also, who was laughing at mantras? They are so good its not even funny. Off of animations, usable while cced, and u can trait for 3 casts. I run 3 mantras, healing, pain, and self removal of conditions. So when i have all 3 up that’s an additional 12% damage done. Stop trying to outlast your opponents and just crush their face.

It sounds like those having issues with playing Mesmer are trying to do damage directly. I’ve tried a great many mesmer builds to see if that can be done, and I always end up back in the main strength of the class: conditions. If you like powering down a target, whether it’s PVE or PVP, Mesmer is not the class for the job. The Mesmer is a joker that kites around laughing at the target while the target dies never knowing which is the clown and which the clone.

There are a LOT of builds that work well, but condition is the key. Start thinking about how to maximize your condition output and the rest falls into place.

This doesn’t mean you can’t get big hits. I’ve stacked enough condition to take off half a target’s HP in one skill (pve). Stack it up and then dodge the swing. The only downside is that you can’t dodge giblets.

—

BTW, I agree that it’s currently much MUCH too easy for a human to identify clones. They need to be total duplicates, complete with minor variations in movement and behavior. However, I did once witness a real player die trying to save my clone from certain pve-death. So, they can fool nice people.

You’re talking about PvP where shatters actually present opportunities to occur. For the thousandth time,the issues we have are in Dungeons and Dynamic Events and WvWvW though if Mirror Blade spawns a clone per bounce that might make things more enjoyable. The problems there do not translate over to small scale PvP.

I may consider a greatsword in WvWvW but it doesn’t do enough for dungeons vs the other weapons. Staff is too good to replace, pistol wins on single target and Sword/Focus sweeps AoE.

Mantras are horrible horrible horrible horrible. You use up utility slots in the hopes that by the time you need to recharge they won’t be left standing. MoR heals less than Ether Feast; the self removal of conditions is a bad version of Null Field that doesn’t give your team a combo field, doesn’t remove their conditions, and can’t be used offensively to strip boons. Mantra of Pain needs tons of traits to be poured into it to be useful . Unless they built glass cannon they’re still going to be standing and Signet of domination would have been far more useful to allow another shatter, interrupt a heal, prevent a stomp on that downed Warrior over there etc which is easily more useful than more damage. Blink more useful for chasing and kiting. Not worth the slot and definitely not worth the trait investment. The 0 animation casts also lose a lot of power if you find yourself recharging in an engagement where all of your opponents are not able to be 2 shot or up against any boss.

There is not a single situation where the mantras are a stronger choice

Okuza.5210:

It sounds like those having issues with playing Mesmer are trying to do damage directly. I’ve tried a great many mesmer builds to see if that can be done, and I always end up back in the main strength of the class: conditions. If you like powering down a target, whether it’s PVE or PVP, Mesmer is not the class for the job. The Mesmer is a joker that kites around laughing at the target while the target dies never knowing which is the clown and which the clone.

There are a LOT of builds that work well, but condition is the key. Start thinking about how to maximize your condition output and the rest falls into place.

This doesn’t mean you can’t get big hits. I’ve stacked enough condition to take off half a target’s HP in one skill (pve). Stack it up and then dodge the swing. The only downside is that you can’t dodge giblets.

—

BTW, I agree that it’s currently much MUCH too easy for a human to identify clones. They need to be total duplicates, complete with minor variations in movement and behavior. However, I did once witness a real player die trying to save my clone from certain pve-death. So, they can fool nice people.

I feel like you’re not really reading anything that’s been said. We’re already very aware that conditions are our strongest build right now but again solo leveling is being described here. Again solo leveling : NON ISSUE

There are no mobs to fool in DEs because everyone with AoE has already killed them there are no clones to fool with in dungeons because all the packs with AoE kill them as quickly as you pop them out. Your toolkit in a dungeon consists of your chosen weapons auto attack and combo fields. It sucks.

You cannot shatter during keep offensive/defense battles because of the needs for clones to limp after their target and them not having a path down or up. Our defining class mechanic should not be unusable or close to in so many aspects of the game right now.

Null field has twice the cooldown of the mantra, so does ether feast. And they don’t give you 4% more damage each like the mantras do. With the triple cast mantra feat, the mantra easily outheals ether feast. You can also dodge roll, nuke the hell out of your opponent, or dance while using the mantra after its activated. You need that high level triple power, precision, crit dmg berzerker gear for it to come together, but once you do you start crushing people.

Problems in WvWvW? Seriously everything about mesmers in that is amazing. Blinks get you out of bad positions, you can throw phantasmal berzerkers through walls, time warp breaks team fights, and portal lets you do rediculous shenanigans with your team. Need those seige weapons down? portal blink portal exit uh oh look all those guys we had pinned on a wall are behind us…..

I can’t believe you think mantra of pain is bad……. it pretty much reads “before any fight spend 2 seconds to ensure your opponent has half health or less before taking into consideration any other skills you have.”

This thread definitely got away from me…

In PvE you suffer a bit because you have a ramp up time that say a thief really doesn’t. You can solo a lot harder mobs because of your illusions though.

In SPvP we are monsters who eat face easily.

Oh and mesmers have far and away the strongest down state in the game. I’d kill to have any of those 3 abilities on my normal bar. The down state auto attack should be the sceptre auto attack.

Erm problems?
Why are opponents allowing you to recast Mantras 100% of the time? Needing to recast MoR after its initial burst healing is what cuts into its power vs Feast and the fact I don’t have to trait feast up to make it on par with another heal.

Where you finding the utility slot for Blink if you’re running 3 mantras and portal?

Zerker through walls is a nice trick but I already conceded that Greatsword might be amazing there.

Again how the hell are you running portal with 3 mantras and blink? My whole point is that other utility abilities are much more useful in teamfights.

Time Warp is not part of this mantra discussion.

I’m not having problems in WvWvW, I simply feel like a utility bot which is not my desired playstle. Greatsword actually looks like a good way to fix this.

Null Field is always going to win out in my eyes, group utility >>>>>> selfish utility in large scale battles.

You swap out a mantra for portal/blink you immediately lose 4% more damage until it’s off its CD that makes that trait seem much less attractive.

I can’t help but feel your experience with MoP is due largely to the fact you outgear 98% of the player base right now.

Dont take me the wrong way, i’m actually curious to how you’re making that build work because it may make me want to bring the Mesmer over my Necro for larger scale fights.

To clarify the self condition removal is never going to make it onto my bar, the power null field brings to your team isn’t worth the trade imo.

So to make MoP and MoR into useful powerful abilities ( 2 and done is not enough baseline) I’m sacrificing a lot of trait slots to do so for things that are 66% as effective as they should be. The self condition mantra is not strong enough and this makes me not want to spend points for less return. The Daze mantra might be workable but again we’re trading something like feedback for it. The selfish nature of the other mantras are what kills the build for me.

Mantra of healing is a mantra and takes the healing slot and is not a utility slot skill. Thus you can easily have 3 mantras and blink.

Also this is WvWvW we are talking. I swap out my skills and carry extra weapons for the abilties for the right situation. Its not like the zerg of 50 people coming towards your keep just snuck up on you. You get out of combat all the time. I often drop the 3rd mantra for portal in anticipation of needing it. 8% more damage is still a great trait. 12% is a godly one.

They really need to rebalance the traits though, ALOT of them are just really bad, or maybe some of them are just too good. When am I not going to want 15% more illusion damage?

I seriously think you are undervaluing the ability to use the mantra while doing other things, thus not impeding damage, or whatever you are doing.

Honestly my gear is ok but still has a long way to go, I’m using a full rare yellow set of berzerker 80 cloth with ruby orbs in every piece, my rings and earings are cheapkitten green ruby stuff, and my only exotic is my ruby ori necklace which i just made.

Look if you don’t like mantras then don’t use them, I don’t think the 12% damage will make or break the build. Personally I go 30 domination 30 dueling and 10 illusions with compounding power as my illusions trait for maximum damage burst.

mesmers are the king of 1v1’s at the moment, but they do need to be balanced so they are more viable in PvE.

The way I play my mesmer in WvW and sPvP is as follows:

If there is a group ahead of me I start off with my staff, drop my 5 skill on the mob, pop my number 4 and 3 for more conditions, use reaper of grenth then swap to sword/pistol.
I then blink and then use 3 sword skill (or 3 skill on its own depending on my range) to close the gap, 5 pistol skill, then duelist phantasm on a squishier target and then finish off with sword skill 2. after that either everybody is deadly low, or dead.

In a 1v1 i just blink on to them with sword/pistol and unload everything except reaper of grenth. they pretty much die after 10 seconds of trying to find which one is me.

It seems as if i edited the post you were responding to in the middle of your response XD.

I also find my self swapping frequently to other weapons ( more specifically focus) to either speed my group up or rip people off keep walls.

The 8% damage boost is likely all I’d ever see Null Field is great for saving that person burning to death next to you and removing Aegis protection or an entire stack of might.

After the mantra is burned however it needs to be recharged the spamminess of 3 MoPs come with the drawback of now being down to 4% more damage for a hefty trait investment and needing to stop all other actions in order to recharge. You said that you’d often fire all 3 to burn someone to half health. I feel this is inefficient. If running said build you can fire 2, keep the bonus damage until they’re low and use the last to take them down. Your fight would last even shorter than you already claim it does.

My question to you is the 8% more damage worth the heavy trait investment.

Is your secondary weapon a staff ?

DangerMonkey.3158:

mesmers are the king of 1v1’s at the moment, but they do need to be balanced so they are more viable in PvE.

The way I play my mesmer in WvW and sPvP is as follows:

If there is a group ahead of me I start off with my staff, drop my 5 skill on the mob, pop my number 4 and 3 for more conditions, use reaper of grenth then swap to sword/pistol.
I then blink and then use 3 sword skill (or 3 skill on its own depending on my range) to close the gap, 5 pistol skill, then duelist phantasm on a squishier target and then finish off with sword skill 2. after that either everybody is deadly low, or dead.

In a 1v1 i just blink on to them with sword/pistol and unload everything except reaper of grenth. they pretty much die after 10 seconds of trying to find which one is me.

Don’t use staff four that early. Use phase retreat inside of Chaos storm and you’ll get chaos armor.

Also if you pack feedback you can use that and the 3 on your sword to get another chaos armor. 3 chaos armor in a row makes you REALLY hard to kill.

Warlocks crit for a bajillion damage single target and chaos storm is great (and not for its condition damage, which is random and kind of blows, but free team blocks and speed is weeeeee). Greatsword stays on usually but staff and sword/pistol swap depending if I’m expecting a small scale fight or the epic zerg. (pistol is great in duels but falls way short in big fights)

Malakree.5912:

Also if you pack feedback you can use that and the 3 on your sword to get another chaos armor. 3 chaos armor in a row makes you REALLY hard to kill.

Sweet mama I am trying that out :O

Abarcine.7189:

DangerMonkey.3158:

mesmers are the king of 1v1’s at the moment, but they do need to be balanced so they are more viable in PvE.

The way I play my mesmer in WvW and sPvP is as follows:

If there is a group ahead of me I start off with my staff, drop my 5 skill on the mob, pop my number 4 and 3 for more conditions, use reaper of grenth then swap to sword/pistol.
I then blink and then use 3 sword skill (or 3 skill on its own depending on my range) to close the gap, 5 pistol skill, then duelist phantasm on a squishier target and then finish off with sword skill 2. after that either everybody is deadly low, or dead.

In a 1v1 i just blink on to them with sword/pistol and unload everything except reaper of grenth. they pretty much die after 10 seconds of trying to find which one is me.

Don’t use staff four that early. Use phase retreat inside of Chaos storm and you’ll get chaos armor.

I use all my staff cooldowns when im out of range, if I need another escape I use phase retreat. I use staff 4 right before I blink in, so only a minor amount is wasted

All my cool downs take like 2-3 seconds before I blink in

Grave.4523:

Warlocks crit for a bajillion damage single target and chaos storm is great (and not for its condition damage, which is random and kind of blows, but free team blocks and speed is weeeeee). Greatsword stays on usually but staff and sword/pistol swap depending if I’m expecting a small scale fight or the epic zerg. (pistol is great in duels but falls way short in big fights)

Love the Iduelist hate the pistol. It spawns a phantasm then sits at your side till you need a stun. Couple this with it’s horrible AI and often spawning in a spot where it’s obstructed and being too stupid to move 2 steps backward to be useful is frustrating as hell.

I just wish our swiftness wasn’t tied to an offhand, going to be a huge pain to switch back and forth when crossing the map.

And yeah, staff is irreplaceable in my eyes. The lock benefits from power builds. The auto and CStorm from condition builds albeit those conditions are random ( applying 8 stacks of vuln without a single burning or bleed is sokittenannoying) the main draw to Chaos Storm is Aegis and the free chaos armor.

I may tweak the build and go 30 20 0 0 20 for Illusionary Elasticity for Mirror Blade and Winds while taking MoP instead of signet of domination since I don’t need condition damage when running these trait lines.

DangerMonkey.3158:

Abarcine.7189:

DangerMonkey.3158:

mesmers are the king of 1v1’s at the moment, but they do need to be balanced so they are more viable in PvE.

The way I play my mesmer in WvW and sPvP is as follows:

If there is a group ahead of me I start off with my staff, drop my 5 skill on the mob, pop my number 4 and 3 for more conditions, use reaper of grenth then swap to sword/pistol.
I then blink and then use 3 sword skill (or 3 skill on its own depending on my range) to close the gap, 5 pistol skill, then duelist phantasm on a squishier target and then finish off with sword skill 2. after that either everybody is deadly low, or dead.

In a 1v1 i just blink on to them with sword/pistol and unload everything except reaper of grenth. they pretty much die after 10 seconds of trying to find which one is me.

Don’t use staff four that early. Use phase retreat inside of Chaos storm and you’ll get chaos armor.

I use all my staff cooldowns when im out of range, if I need another escape I use phase retreat. I use staff 4 right before I blink in, so only a minor amount is wasted

All my cool downs take like 2-3 seconds before I blink in

You may notice fights being far easier if you simply blink in 5 to get Aegis spawn Iwarlock with 3 and then 2 for chaos armor and then using the staff four after that. The boons that you get from Cstorm are incredible.

If you’ve got feedback you can use the sword 3 to get another chaos armor for a total of 3 as said above. With our burst from sword you can potentially spend an entire skirmish with Chaos armor up. We’ve got access to a lot of combo fields and leap finishers. Might as well use em.

Personally, I think the Profession is almost perfect and I would strenuously object to it being changed in any direction that would take away its uniqueness and versatility. There was enough of that nonsense with WoW – people whining about “our class” not being as good as other classes – eventually everyone can do a bit of everything and it’s all a big, balanced hybrid mush. Enough of that nonsense! I hope Arenanet doesn’t listen to any of that sort of drivel from whiners.

As to the general point, every MMO has to have a class where you push several buttons to do the same job as another guy can do with one. Some of us enjoy multitasking and utilizing situational awareness. If you don’t enjoy multitasking, and like to focus on mowing down mobs, then the Mesmer isn’t for you – there are other Professions where you only have to push a couple of buttons and mobs fall over (and I play a few myself, just for a bit of variety).

Primarily, the Mesmer is a support Profession (a force multiplier, focussed mainly on the application of Conditions – in more standard MMO terms a debuff class), with high survivability and harrassment capability in PvP, and a lot of tools in its toolbox. Again, if this doesn’t sound interesting, then don’t play a Mesmer, and don’t pollute the forums with calls to turn the Mesmer into some other class that you’d like to play.

I’ve been playing a mesmer for awhile now(80) and we are a unfinished class. I challenge anyone to pick a grand master skill that is extremely valuable compared to just putting 20 into a slot.

Mantras are terrible and should be removed.

The synergy between our talents skills and weapons need to be completely rethought. Engineers have similar problems.

Dungeons arn’t to bad I run GS/SS (exotic weps + armor) and generally have more survivability and utility than other melee. That being said I find no use for the pistol since phantasms die the second you spawn them in dungeons.

I won’t comment on WvW but it is fun and if you see me run.

Asthenea.1546:

I have basically tried all the classes now and I have found that mesmers put out a seriously low amount of damage, at least at the lower levels. I am hoping to hear that with trait points or something they get better, I played mesmer in GW1 and it was one of my favorites for sure. I am really drawn to their unique play style and the amount of skill they require but I noticed that when I spawn a clone they hit for 0 damage and the phantasms only attack like once. So someone please tell me they get better and do more damage or something because it takes forever to kill mobs and I really want to play one. Thanks

Yes they do get better, when i hit 80 and started getting some decent gear things took a huge turn for the better. I now kill mobs without them even reaching me.

The berserker phantasm does about 2k-3k dmg each illusion shatters for 2k ( this is in the level 80 zone) so its all good

oh my god… the amount of people not even understanding their own classes in this thread is amazing…
Illusions are supposed to die quickly. You should not land more then 1 of their special attack when you summon them.
Taking berserker (Greatsword 4th spell) as an example… as soon as you summon him he whirlwind right away and will wait around 5 seconds for a second whirlwind. That’s why you shatter him after the whirlwind because he became useless. Combo with the 2nd spell you get 2 illusion at the same time with the berserker hitting hard and the mirror blade hitting hard then boom shatter them for massive damage. If you add to it any other illusion (IE trait that spawn an illusion on dodge rolling) you get a 3 illusion shatter in one shot. Pistol is a ranged illusion which make him less of an important target for anyone in PvP or keep them away of the monsters. Same for warlock. And both of them should be shattered about 1 or 2 seconds after spawning.
Illusions ARN’T meant to take hits.
In PvP, the best way to win with a mesmer is to litterally **** your oppenent mind with massive spawning despawning of illusion. When all your ennemy can see is your character appearing and dissapearing from every sides, it’s really hard to spot which one is the real mesmer in the end. And with decoy, it’s so easy to screw up anyone…
Mesmer ain’t harder to master then any professions btw. It’s actually quite easy to use.

snaplemouton.1294:

oh my god… the amount of people not even understanding their own classes in this thread is amazing…
Illusions are supposed to die quickly. You should not land more then 1 of their special attack when you summon them.
Taking berserker (Greatsword 4th spell) as an example… as soon as you summon him he whirlwind right away and will wait around 5 seconds for a second whirlwind. That’s why you shatter him after the whirlwind because he became useless. Combo with the 2nd spell you get 2 illusion at the same time with the berserker hitting hard and the mirror blade hitting hard then boom shatter them for massive damage. If you add to it any other illusion (IE trait that spawn an illusion on dodge rolling) you get a 3 illusion shatter in one shot. Pistol is a ranged illusion which make him less of an important target for anyone in PvP or keep them away of the monsters. Same for warlock. And both of them should be shattered about 1 or 2 seconds after spawning.
Illusions ARN’T meant to take hits.
In PvP, the best way to win with a mesmer is to litterally **** your oppenent mind with massive spawning despawning of illusion. When all your ennemy can see is your character appearing and dissapearing from every sides, it’s really hard to spot which one is the real mesmer in the end. And with decoy, it’s so easy to screw up anyone…
Mesmer ain’t harder to master then any professions btw. It’s actually quite easy to use.

This man gets it. It should be bleeding obvious due to the loooooooong recharge time for Phantasms’ attacks.

Now of course you can TRAIT your Phantasms to hit more often (and be hardier), and that will be a slightly different way of playing a Mesmer, where you try to get a more sustained damage output out of them.

But out of the box, their attack rate is so insanely slow (in the context of a game in which most actions, buffs, CC, etc., is only a few seconds) that that should be a clue as to how you should most effectively utilize them. You get a burst of damage when you whip them out, and then a burst of damage when you shatter them.

Whip ‘em out, shatter em; whip ’em out, shatter ’em. They are not pets, they are not living things you have to be solicitous about (like a ranger’s pets), they are just … illusions – illlusions in the eyes of your opponents, and your JOB is to shatter your opponent’s illusions

SneakyErvin.3056:

Only trouble I’ve had leveling my mesmer is when I outlevel my items. Other than that its fast kills and all that. The game isnt very forgiving even if you outlevel a zone, since the de-level system seems to set your active gear level lower than your de-level if your gear is lower than your actual level.

Like say you are level 50 with leve 25 gear in a level 25 zone. Even though the gear is at the level of the zone its 50% lower than your actual level, so the game de-levels the gear stats to level 12 or 13… or so it feels. But if you run a level 25 zone at level 50 with level 50 gear it counts as a level 25 with level 25 gear. Atleast thats how it feels to me.

You also need to figure out if you wanna run a condition based build or a power, crit, crit damage build. I personally run a power+crit build, focused on phantasm damage and cooldown reduction, both for the phantasms own skills and the skills to summon them. Running with Greatsword and scept+pistol, works great. Lovely burst, very short phantasm CDs. Using disenchanter, defender(thats the name right?) and mirror image as utility and the chicken as elite currently.

Fully maxed dualist will be on an 8sec CD or something.

Gear does not change, the states the gear gives you does not change at all. Only your natural stats delvl to the area. Nothing else changes.

@OP

It doesn’t get better in PVE and that’s why I’m only level 59 at the moment and not already 80 in big super neat gear.

I still can’t solo big champions
I still can’t solo 2 vets + 4 adds that keep spamming adds.
I’ve problems solo when I aggro or pull more than 5 NPC’s that are 3-5 levels above me.
I hate Kraits under water as I can’t solo 3+ when getting aggrod by them. I want my staff under water, spear is crap btw.

My Mesmer needs a huge buff!

Sorry Nidwin, was that sarcasm? I hope so :P

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Mesmer-PvP-1hSword-Torch-Build-Mass-illusions-to-stomp-them-all/first#post44013

and this also works for pve with slightly modified traits.

Mesmers are fine the way they are.

sAdam.5876:

Sorry Nidwin, was that sarcasm? I hope so :P

Nearly bro. ;-)

I think the peeps struggling with the Mesmer in PVE or DE are probably people that are rolling the wrong toon for them. Mesmer is just a beast in PVE and DE.

My god I come back after being out for a bit and seems like a bunch of randoms have wandered in to spread misinformation O.o

Primarily, the Mesmer is a support Profession (a force multiplier, focussed mainly on the application of Conditions – in more standard MMO terms a debuff class), with high survivability and harrassment capability in PvP, and a lot of tools in its toolbox. Again, if this doesn’t sound interesting, then don’t play a Mesmer, and don’t pollute the forums with calls to turn the Mesmer into some other class that you’d like to play.

In my experience the mesmer is a damage profesion with ramp up time that also brings amazing utility. As a support profession you lose out to guardian, warrior, engineer and ele (providing he’s built right).

I’ve been playing a mesmer for awhile now(80) and we are a unfinished class. I challenge anyone to pick a grand master skill that is extremely valuable compared to just putting 20 into a slot.
Mantras are terrible and should be removed.
The synergy between our talents skills and weapons need to be completely rethought. Engineers have similar problems.

Mantra’s are awful, the trait trees don’t support them either. Grantmaster traits are situational, there are a few times you would use them though again they are in odd places (phantasm based tree with a shatter based GM skill :O). If you think we are unfinished you haven’t played a mesmer in SPvP, we are imo T1 for that.

Illusions are supposed to die quickly. You should not land more then 1 of their special attack when you summon them.

In what fantasy land are you from O.o If you dont have 2 phantasms out at all times as a mesmer your doing it wrong. That or your running a very specific shatter spec.

You people really need to try one of the 10/20/0/25/0 +15 variants and realize just howkittenpowerful a mesmer, and its illusions, truly are.

Malakree.5912:

My god I come back after being out for a bit and seems like a bunch of randoms have wandered in to spread misinformation O.o

Primarily, the Mesmer is a support Profession (a force multiplier, focussed mainly on the application of Conditions – in more standard MMO terms a debuff class), with high survivability and harrassment capability in PvP, and a lot of tools in its toolbox. Again, if this doesn’t sound interesting, then don’t play a Mesmer, and don’t pollute the forums with calls to turn the Mesmer into some other class that you’d like to play.

In my experience the mesmer is a damage profesion with ramp up time that also brings amazing utility. As a support profession you lose out to guardian, warrior, engineer and ele (providing he’s built right).

I’ve been playing a mesmer for awhile now(80) and we are a unfinished class. I challenge anyone to pick a grand master skill that is extremely valuable compared to just putting 20 into a slot.
Mantras are terrible and should be removed.
The synergy between our talents skills and weapons need to be completely rethought. Engineers have similar problems.

Mantra’s are awful, the trait trees don’t support them either. Grantmaster traits are situational, there are a few times you would use them though again they are in odd places (phantasm based tree with a shatter based GM skill :O). If you think we are unfinished you haven’t played a mesmer in SPvP, we are imo T1 for that.

Illusions are supposed to die quickly. You should not land more then 1 of their special attack when you summon them.

In what fantasy land are you from O.o If you dont have 2 phantasms out at all times as a mesmer your doing it wrong. That or your running a very specific shatter spec.

You people really need to try one of the 10/20/0/25/0 +15 variants and realize just howkittenpowerful a mesmer, and its illusions, truly are.

WORD! This one knows what hes talking about.

Malakree.5912:

In my experience the mesmer is a damage profesion with ramp up time that also brings amazing utility. As a support profession you lose out to guardian, warrior, engineer and ele (providing he’s built right).

It’s fundamentally a Support Profession because it’s a massive buffer/debuffer. Also a nifty combat rezzer.

Malakree.5912:

Mantra’s are awful, the trait trees don’t support them either.

Huh? There are quite a few traits that support mantras. You can up your armor while casting, you can bump the no. of instacasts up to 3, and you can up the recharge and damage, and you can autoheal allies when you cast them.

Presumably what you mean is, they are awful for your preferred playstyle.

gurugeorge.9857:

It’s fundamentally a Support Profession because it’s a massive buffer/debuffer. Also a nifty combat rezzer.

It’s called offensif support but that’s a concept that a lot of peeps have problems to grasp.
It also remains to be seen how far we actually support and how far we actually use our allies to our own bennefit. One thing for sure, the more allies around us the more powerfull we become.

Very interresting toon to play.

It’s fundamentally a Support Profession because it’s a massive buffer/debuffer. Also a nifty combat rezzer.

Only if you spec in a very specific way. Personally my build in SPvP relies on the fact that I do incredible quantities of damage that is very hard to stop while also having really good survivability. We run the staff because both the sceptre and the greatsword are bloody awful unless you play a very specific build. That and because it gives you amazing survivability, I run staff because it allows me to get 3 instances of chaos armor in a row which when combined with everything else I have means that I beat thieves 100% of the time.

In order for the mesmer to be a “support” profession it has to spec into it. Under that premise the only none support professions are necro and ranger. Ie. the two weak profs.

Huh? There are quite a few traits that support mantras. You can up your armor while casting, you can bump the no. of instacasts up to 3, and you can up the recharge and damage, and you can autoheal allies when you cast them.
Presumably what you mean is, they are awful for your preferred playstyle.

The cast time in combat is massively prohibative, they do reasonably little and it requires a 100% trait build to not even get all of the mantra traits. You need something like 90 trait points to pick up all the mantras.

One thing for sure, the more allies around us the more powerfull we become.

I’m flabbergasted by this statement. Mesmer gets WEAKER the more people there are around it. The easiest way to show this is the fact in WvW we are probably the bottom prof, you would want an elementalist every time instead. On the other hand in a 1v1 duel a mesmer should never, ever, ever lose. The only prof a mesmer should straight up lose a 1v1 to is another mesmer, if you HAVE lost a 1v1 either your opponent outclassed you massively (which yes has happened to me, only once but still), you kitten up (ie. when you die to a full glass cannon thief) or your build is wrong.

To sumerize. As a support class the mesmer looses out quite heavily to a large variety of other profs, the list currently being 1) guard, 2) elementalist, 3) warrior, 4) engineer, 5) mesmer, 6) ranger. With the bottom 3 being almost equal. This is not to say we don’t bring support esque abilities but these are bonuses to our toolkit which we get for free.

Oh and mantras are bad, ill thought out and poorly supported in the trait tree because of the seemingly random placement of the mantra traits. Try to build a mantra build which is even CLOSE to a phantasm build.

Yeah.
We’re all noobs and badies and only Malakree knows it all.

The more I’m surrouned the more Chaos Armor and confusion pops for my allies on my ethereal fields. The more allies with Chaos Armor are hit the more conditions are put on foes. The more conditions on my foes the harder my phantasm hits.
And so on and so on.

The more foes and the more allies, the better as the bigger my impact is.

Anway,
have fun bro

Yeah.
We’re all noobs and badies and only Malakree knows it all.

Stupid statement, anyone claiming to know everything has learned nothing.

The more I’m surrouned the more Chaos Armor and confusion pops for my allies on my ethereal fields. The more allies with Chaos Armor are hit the more conditions are put on foes. The more conditions on my foes the harder my phantasm hits.
And so on and so on.
The more foes and the more allies, the better as the bigger my impact is.

Every prof gets better the more ppl there are, what you have to consider is how they scale relative to each other. In 1v1 mesmer is basically THE profession, it’s so incredibly powerful its unreal. In a zerg vs zerg situation a mesmer is “ok” at best. Compared to an elementalist who become phenomenal when there are 5-10 players about mesmers simply don’t scale up that well. Hence we say that mesmers, relatively, become worse the more people there are.

The best example of a prof which far outscales us in terms of having more people around is a rifle warrior. All but their number 5 skill are combo finisher projectiles, in a 1v1 situation they will very rarely be procing any combo fields. Add another 4 players into the mix and they are now procing a finisher with every single shot, the addition of any second player that drops a combo field causes them to be WAY better. The mesmer really doesn’t have anything like this.

nidwin.6731:

Yeah.
We’re all noobs and badies and only Malakree knows it all.

The more I’m surrouned the more Chaos Armor and confusion pops for my allies on my ethereal fields. The more allies with Chaos Armor are hit the more conditions are put on foes. The more conditions on my foes the harder my phantasm hits.
And so on and so on.

The more foes and the more allies, the better as the bigger my impact is.

Anway,
have fun bro

You’re misunderstanding all of his points. In Dynamic Events with lots and lots of AoES, you spawn a phantasm, the target dies before it does anything. For a champion mob in open world you spawn 3 warlocks and stand there and auto because it hits for 999999999999999999999999 damage and nothing you can do is better. A phantasm build taking phantasmal haste phantasmal strength etc. crushes a shatter builds damage output if the warlocks get off a second attack.

Again, a shatter build is not limited by its clone factory, but its Mindwrack cooldown. And no shattering after 1 attack is huge mistake. Phantasms have cooldowns, keeping him around and casting a replacement when you want to shatter allows for much higher damage output. Now enter dungeons where the ridiculous AoE flying around virtually gurantees that those clones are dead before they reach melee range to shatter and we have a very passive playstyle.

Can’t use clone generators because they still kill our phantasms ( really bring out 3 locks and attack with a scepter if there is nothing to replace but a phantasm the clone still overwrites it.) Can’t really use shatters reliably either. So what we’re left with is letting Mr Illusionary Warlock deal all our damage because nothing comes close and spreading him out so we can replace him as AoE blows them up.

If you’re trying to play at range with a shatter build in a dungeon, you’re really in for a rude awakening.

Isn’t that where the Mesmer excels?
In dropping those ethereal combo fields in “zerg” mode so everyone and his grandma can proc their finishers popping chaos armor, confusion and confusing bolts.

Meanwhile having clones/phantasm throwing out their boons/conditions with the confusion multiplier from ethereal field combos, retaliation, might and fury from Winds of Chaos and not forgetting the Quickness from Time Warp.

May be that’s the real illusion that we seemingly don’t do anything while …

Who knows.

Isn’t that where the Mesmer excels?
In dropping those ethereal combo fields in “zerg” mode so everyone and his grandma can proc their finishers popping chaos armor, confusion and confusing bolts.

If you compare this to another profession one can easily replace the mesmer with an elementalist (for a choice of fields) a guardian (for massive defensive buffing and the fields) thief (aoe blind field).

The combo field feature isn’t unique to mesmers and outside of it and a few random buffs we actually bring very little to zerg vs zerg battle. We as a prof do very little aoe damage, relatively. In fact the only thing we bring is timewarp which yes is very powerful but compared to moa in a 1v1 is still mediocre.

In 1v1 however the mesmer excels, I would go so far as to say that 1v1 a mesmer is basically unbeatable if built and played properly.

So we go from being literally the be all and end all of 1v1 to this “ok” “kinda useful” aoe buff support class in a zerg. I’m not sure how else I can put this. In a 1v1 we are the top university in the world, in a zerg we are that local university which aint kitten but nobody else has ever heard of.

Interresting. :-)

I build a Tank Mesmer. I am investing heavily into chaos. Scepter / sword (2 blocks), phantom defender as well. I am always shattering something. Need to look at what stats to stack, all out toughness, or supplement the chaos toughness with some +condition gear.

Just gave that mantra build another try. Yeah it’s still god awful and infinitely worse than the phantasmal build while being easier to kill.
MoR has a slight delay between heals, by the time you actually pass Ether feasts healing ether feast is already 6 seconds into its CD and then we have to factor in the 2 second recharge time. It falls behind very quickly and in anything going past a 30 second fight ether feast is so much more healing for much less hassle.

Mantra of Pain really doesn’t hit very had at all. Really try running it structured it’s hilarious how little damage it does vs someone with equal gear. So you spend a lot of trait points to deal less damage, bring less utility, and be an easier kill than a phantasm build.

I tried running a glamour build in WvWvW with the Greatsword and the blind > confusion to blinded target+ condition gear was incredibly punishing for the other zerg.

Greatsword is now my go to weapon for DEs and WvWvW. The phantasm on 4 has his attack come out very quickly. It’s a nice AoE spike definitely, but I feel like we could stand to have the option to trait for more AoE power if it meant losing our God Tier 1v1 status for that build.

I’d like to experiment more with builds at the moment but unfortunately I can longer represent my guild due to some horrible bug. I can mash the represent button till I give myself carpal tunnel but nothing happens -.-

Mantras can be used while CCed, while channeling, while casting, while in global cooldown… Mantra of pain is an added DPS into a burst spec. You can remove 2 conditions at any time with another mantra. You can break stun and get stability multiple times. Healing mantra is good with the 3 mantra trait. And the trait that increase your damage while mantras are active is great. Mantra isn’t made for long fight. It’s better in short fights or in fight where you have to LoS for a couple seconds while the boss channel something (Give you the time to recharge a mantra or 2).

You want AoE? Your shatters are AoE there for it.. And you can even spec into having shatter also explode on yourself working great with the sword build.

There is 2 ways to reset your shatters skills too.
You should always have at least 2 shatters skills in CD if you are doing it right.
For thoses who say having 3 warlocks up all the time is the only good DPS, you are doing it extremely wrong then. Because staff is a support weapon with warlock being the only real DPS. You can summon a warlock or 2 for boss fight, but using your other weapons to throw in some shatters is how it work.
imo they should reduce warlock damage so people start learning how to use their weapons to deal damage themselves and not have passive NPC doing everything for them while theykittenaround complaining.
Because YES. Weapons do damage! From conditions or instant damage. Weapons hit hard.
Feels like every mesmer in here are more confused then the players they fight. jee…

I think the class has serious issues at lower levels. I decided to try it up to level 10 after playing a guardian, elementalist, and thief a fair amount (levels 38, 21, and 12 right now).

I didn’t make it to level 10. I may not ever make it to level 10.

It’s much rougher at the low levels than the other classes. Maybe the abilities scale poorly at the start (that was my main feeling). Maybe the abilities just take too long on the learning curve. Maybe it is too squishy and ought to get a different armor class. Maybe the default heal just isn’t scaled right or designed well.

Before even touching this class, I managed to get acceptable at kiting with the elementalist and the rogue. The guardian taught me the importance of dodging. I even went out of my way to try to read up on how to play mesmers before I touched them, so I have a decent idea of the shatter mechanic.

Playing around in the Norn starter zone was terrible. I made an effort to unlock everything, and I never expected that to go smoothly. I did the full elemental on all the attunements, so I’m used to unlocking weapon abilities and having that be a bit sub-par. But past that? I still have no idea how to reasonably play the class in PVE. Double swords seems to kill things the best in the starter area, and requires no special finesse but also lacks compared to other classes I’ve played. The greatsword damage output was so low that I don’t understand the point of the weapon at all (I’m sure someone thought it was cute to make it distance-dependent – it’s not). I’m fond of the pistol but I don’t know what to pair it with, I suppose it requires a scepter pairing. I hate the scepter. My view may be colored by the initial starter scepter being especially weak, but having it take ages to kill a level 2 while I’m unlocking abilities was just stupid. The staff is fun, for sure, but it doesn’t seem to have a reliable snare.

The clones are neat, but they take forever to run into range for a shatter so I end up missing that frequently. I don’t appear to have any way to handle multiple mobs whatsoever. I’m probably screwing that up somehow, but I don’t really know what I am supposed to do for multiple-target fights other than run in circles while trying to down them one by one. I had the hardest time I have ever had in low-level story quests with this profession because I don’t understand how to handle multiple mobs with it.

I gave up at level 9 because I can’t see the class ever being better than the elementalist in PVE in any way. I’ll use the thief for PVP if I take interest in it. I really wanted to like the class when I picked it up. It beat me, I don’t understand it, and I’m putting it back down.

Sparkie.3465:

The clones are neat, but they take forever to run into range for a shatter so I end up missing that frequently. I don’t appear to have any way to handle multiple mobs whatsoever. I’m probably screwing that up somehow, but I don’t really know what I am supposed to do for multiple-target fights other than run in circles while trying to down them one by one. I had the hardest time I have ever had in low-level story quests with this profession because I don’t understand how to handle multiple mobs with it.

Between greatsword 2/3/4 and sword 2 I don’t have any real issue taking out groups of opponents. I would say mesmer is pretty rough before you get weapon swapping, though, as the #1 abilities are generally quite weak.

I wouldn’t run the build in structured, there are several reason for that but one big one is you can’t gear appropriately for it. The pvp zerker amulet is lacking a huge amount of bonus crit damage compared to what you can gear for normally because someone wanted to put a insignificant amount of vitality on it.

snaplemouton.1294:

Mantras can be used while CCed, while channeling, while casting, while in global cooldown… Mantra of pain is an added DPS into a burst spec. You can remove 2 conditions at any time with another mantra. You can break stun and get stability multiple times. Healing mantra is good with the 3 mantra trait. And the trait that increase your damage while mantras are active is great. Mantra isn’t made for long fight. It’s better in short fights or in fight where you have to LoS for a couple seconds while the boss channel something (Give you the time to recharge a mantra or 2).

You want AoE? Your shatters are AoE there for it.. And you can even spec into having shatter also explode on yourself working great with the sword build.

There is 2 ways to reset your shatters skills too.
You should always have at least 2 shatters skills in CD if you are doing it right.
For thoses who say having 3 warlocks up all the time is the only good DPS, you are doing it extremely wrong then. Because staff is a support weapon with warlock being the only real DPS. You can summon a warlock or 2 for boss fight, but using your other weapons to throw in some shatters is how it work.
imo they should reduce warlock damage so people start learning how to use their weapons to deal damage themselves and not have passive NPC doing everything for them while theykittenaround complaining.
Because YES. Weapons do damage! From conditions or instant damage. Weapons hit hard.
Feels like every mesmer in here are more confused then the players they fight. jee…

Oh lord where to start.

Just going to ignore the mantras at this point not even worth addressing, you want to use em fine.

If I want AoE I should use my shatters? Have you read any of the arguments? Unless you’ve got a sword in your hand the mobs are most likely going to die before the clones attempt to shatter reach it in time. You need to be very close for a shatter to trigger or running a GS since those illusions spawn right on top of the targets and even there we run into the issue of ramp up time.

In a dungeon it is not uncommon to spawn a phantasmal berserk/warden for AoE have them do a bit of damage and then have 30 spiders turn and smash them before you’re done spawning your next clone. Zerker and mirror blade into Wrack is okay when it works

You will not beat a warlocks damage output with shatters for single target. Really the thing crits for like 6k constantly. You never want to shatter a warlock. Unless he’s about to die you’re throwing damage away. That’s with the phantasms actually reaching the target. Pretty good chance they’ll just disintegrate before they make it there in a dungeon.

Abarcine.7189:

I’d like to experiment more with builds at the moment but unfortunately I can longer represent my guild due to some horrible bug. I can mash the represent button till I give myself carpal tunnel but nothing happens -.-

Had the same issue. Fortunately the work around still functions so you can just jump into WvW and select represent from there.

For all you necromesmers (ie. ones who want to throw out a warlock and /popcorn) who tout is as the best build and then moan how they get despawned for every new mob or die to the copious amounts of AoE damage in this game, I invite you to stop being frustrated, build your mesmer to shatter and just try out all those nifty 4 special buttons that Anet gave just to us.

Try to take a utility slot like mirror images or decoy, try taking a trait that spawns clones on dodge, try the trait that casts confusion for every shatter, switch weapons right after your first set is out to pop out all those illusions asap.

You will have succeeded when, attacking a normal mob, you are able to detonate no less than 6 (six) illusions (2 shatters) on it before it is able to close melee range on you (you are allowed to dodge spawn and cripple of course)… and yes it will be practically dead considering how many confusion stacks are on it and that your weapon attack skills are probably still available. You also have enough illusion spawning buttons that the first ones you used will be ready again.

Then you will realize why Anet designed illusions to be so fragile, why all your special keys are shatters, why mesmers are an extremely fast paced and quick playstyle, why if an illusion or two dies to random damage it not only doesn’t matter much, it can be preferable if you are built that way. This playstyle functions in all areas on the game from WvW to Spvp to dungeons and regular PvE. This is by design, it’s not a mistake.

And stop reaching for the lich form key.

Ungh. No one WANTS the phantasm build. It just so much more damage than the shatter build it’s digusting. Clones being fragile are what’s killing shatter builds in areas with copious AoE
It does not function nearly as well as bolstering the phantasm damage so that when they ARE up they hit like a bus.
Shatter builds almost require a sword to run in a dungeon. Your second paragraph describes solo PvE. Solo PvE is not the issue and shatter builds are excellent for leveling/ grinding/DEs

The playstyle does not fuction in dungeons, as many times at least one clone will die to the AoE horror on his suicide trip.

The phantasm build works because you can place them in mostly safe spots and replace them as random AoE smashes them.

Using a greatsword I’ve found actually allows a shatter build to function in WvWvW however since we’re throwing the clones in melee range already.

We get why clones need to be squishy in PvP, we don’t understand why every boss encounter is designed to be so pet unfriendly or why it needs so much AoE that shatter windows where all 3 will make it are very slim.