Guild Wars 2

So, I am really struggling with my mesmer for a really wierd reason. I find myself hating my mesmer most of the time. He walks slow with a long-cooldown swiftness and is relatively fragile. He doesn’t dish out the damage I am used to from other professions and I almost die on him often.
However, there are times when everything comes together perfectly and I have more fun than I have had on any other character. Watching myself throw a Mirror Blade at the pack of enemies approaching, damaging and making them vulnerable, then calling out the Phantasmal Berzerker to tear through them, and then shattering against that same pack, and then using mind stab to mop up the stragglers… is… awesome.
And then I sit and wait on cooldowns. And I auto-attack for a while. And I watch the other people at the event continue to do neat things… and THEN I am ready to go again.
The reason I’m struggling is not that I don’t like Mesmer. It’s because Mesmer is the most fun I have had playing an MMO, but only in short bursts. It’s not fun to play very often, but when it is fun, it’s the most fun ever.
So I have a question: Do the moments of awesome come more frequently the higher level you get? I hear people talk about how fun their Mesmer is, and based on my experience, I could see how that would be possible, but how often is it fun, really? Do I just need to push my way through these levels as a fledgling mesmer and forge ahead to the really fun stuff?

I am playing mesmer since beta weekend 1. In the beginning I really loved the class, was really different to the other classes, however later in PvE en especially PvP I started to HATE the class. Warriors were still zerging everything at that time (I was really jealous because they had more power, more crit and more armor) however these days I can’t play without it. I tried multiple characters in pvp but never live as long as I do with the mesmer (even though I’m full berserker and dueling and power traits)
But yea in PvE we can lack a bit, but you have to almost make every fight perfect to get a nice damage output, but when you’ve mastered it the profession is just great

Mesmers are really fun when you get used to the class, you can struggle in some situations but, as you said, when everything comes out perfectly you have tons of fun and can do amazing things, you just gotta keep playing, don’t give up on the class, the more you master it the more often you can pull off awesome things :].

I’ve been playing a mesmer since beta weekends too and I’ve loved it from the start and still love playing it now.

I hated levelling as a mesmer, but I hate PvE full stop so regardless of the class, I would have hated it. Ended up quitting the game for a while because I was too lazy to level and tournaments got repetitive.

Having said that, I later reached level 80 due to a friend who sponsored me and I’m now having a ball in WvW running solo or in a small group. Mesmers are a great class and you’ll have fun with it once you find a build that suits your play style and there are MANY play styles as a mesmer imo.

You can check out my vids if you want – maybe they MIGHT inspire you? lol

Sounds like your playstyle will be pure joy on 80, if you follow my guide:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-guide-to-PvE/first#post850116
This moments you talk of will not stop, cooldown times are short. Enjoy.

You know? Those videos and guide did help me quite a bit. I am having trouble deciding between Greatsword Power build (which I didn’t even know was possible for a mesmer until recently) and Staff/conditions. Staff is very VERY fun with the shortest cooldown summons and the constant shattering, but doesn’t kill very quickly. I think Greatsword might be the way to go until higher levels when I have more points to give to condition damage/etc.
Thanks for the encouragement. I look at what is possible with Mesmer and know this is the class for me, but I just struggle with it since I have played other classes and had more fun from the beginning. Mesmer will eventually be the most fun character I have, but that word “eventually” shouldn’t be understimated, hehe.

@Ramiah, you ever tested s/p -staff or s/s -staff kittenter build? The “wait periods” are shorter and you can keep a constant preassure while peaking at high bursts. condition dmg is not neglectabe eather with 2k+ confusion hits. Work well in pve and extremly strong in wvwvw.

Latest vid Hybrid:

Latest “Shatter Cat”:

Guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat/page/9#post1094160

/Osicat

I will definately look into that staff build. There are many MANY things I want to try with Mesmer, but it feels like I have to set everything up “just so” in order to get what I want. For example, Runes of the Centaur will be must-haves for my Mesmer because I really miss the swiftness, and they won’t help till level 60, so I really have to build toward really having fun on the character. I think eventually, though, it’ll be a really fun class with many choices for playability and I hope I can hold out long enough to get there.

@Ramiah, I would not say Centaur is a “must have”. They good y but Air offer better dmg and even more important a superb protection vs glascannons and a good swiftness. For mesmer movment we got some unknown powers that take alot ppl in wvwvw with supprice, even thiefs. If you have any doubts about movment or want some good tipps just se this vid.

It show a extremly good tactic for sprints and catch enemys at >2000 yards range.

/Osicat

Thanks for the encouragement. I have stuck it out and really like the class now. I think I just had to basically relearn the game when playing as a Mesmer. The more comfortable I got with Shattering (which I hated to do before since I hated giving up my Phantasms) and clones, the better I was doing. I can now contribute respectably to events, and it’s quite fun.
The only thing I may change is going with Staff. I find Staff to be more fun, but Greatsword more effective for leveling, especially during events. In the future, I may switch to staff and go from there when soloing and doing dungeons, but will have to keep a greatsword build for events.