Guild Wars 2

Let me start this by saying this will NOT be a rant post,
Nor it will be a nerf this or buff that post, it’s just a compendium of the general feeling I’m getting, aswell things perceived by the community.

Also, I’ll be fairly direct to the point and try and avoid any personal preferences regardless of my playstyle/build, etc..

And I’m not speaking for the class alone, many other classes might share the same problems, this is not a purely “Mesmer is the worst at this” thread. Some issues are reccuring to most classes even, this doesn’t mean they cannot improve.

Bad Things:

Mob Tag
- Mesmers are on the down slope of the Dinamic Events (and WvW for that matter) of mob tagging, this means that the AoE possibilities are rather limited, with fairly larget cooldowns (Staff #5) Slow Animations and tiny AoE (GS #3). Which ends up limiting the choices for running dynamic events (and WvW) if you want to tag and receive XP and loot from mobs. Ex: I like the GS / Scepter+Other option, but I feel that the Staff is a MUST if you want to be efficient in dynamic events with mob swarms, that means the difference from looting 15 mobs to 5 mobs. Is it doable? Yes, But takes much more effort and it’s much less forgiving then other specific classes. I cannot stress how my thief can spam a bit of Short Bow poison and loot all the mobs in the event, while my Mesmer has to sweat really hard so it can receive a fraction of the bounty. Worst thing is, I end up “having” to use the staff so I can have more fun in PvE, which goes agains free will of weapons choice.

Animation
- GS #1, GS#3 and other have cancellable (is this a word?) animations that can improve the DPS if you cancel it. This is unfun and ends up with a neurotic gameplay a là Dota. I’m NOT asking for a shorter animation, specially in GS#1 I’m just asking for the possibility of canceling to be removed. This hurts the gameplay fun.

Weapon Skills
- GS#3 is a bit of out of place, it does nice damage, but the animation, rooting and AoE range makes it unusable in any serious situation. That be PvE or PvP, any serious mesmer player is just not using this skill or canceling the animation, both options are terrible.

-Torch#5 is not worth it also, put it on par with other phantasms/skills and it’s just too weak. We do not necessarily need more DPS, so maybe it could act more like a utility phantasm or a defensive one.

Teleporting

- Mesmers teleport left and right, be with Staff#2, Blink, etc… and they more often than should end up underground and stuck. This happened with me on a tourney once, and I was useless for the rest of the match, broke my team.

Good Things:

- Illusions management are really fine. That’s a playstyle thing, not a broken system.
Yes, Clones replace Phantasms (sometimes, thanks to the changes made of priority on clone/phantsm summoning ANet made). You just have to be smart about when to use what. Or pick a different class.

- DPS is fine, it’s not huge… if you don’t spec for it. If you do, you become a bit glassy. That’s the game.

- Survival/Support, same as above.

Limbo Things:

- Moa Elite: Some people hate it, I don’t use it on my Mesmer, but I can see how it is not an overpowered ability, and I also can see why people hate it. A 10 secs daze is a unique silence on the game but it IS on par with most of the elites in the game that can change the pace of the battle. It’s just off the dazing curve of the game. (I personally think that it is a silly thing to bring to battle, but I’d give time to let people realize that by themselves.)

But overall, I love the Mesmer and if I had to pick one thing to change it would be the mob tagging issue, which could be solved with some AoE option, maybe an overhaul of GS#3 so it could kill two birds with a single stone. Stressing this point: Played other classes, the Mesmer is really hard to tag and profit as well as other classes in dynamic events, and on the course of 80 levels, it brings a gap.

And again, I wouldn’t touch the Mesmer much right now, the skills, traits, gameplay and etc make it a really fun and viable class, even with its drawbacks, but half of the fun is overcoming the drawbacks.

Hope this was useful. Pink power.

ITS PURPLE. ITS PURPLE AND I REFUSE TO ADMIT ITS PINK.

Sorry, had to say that. I agree with a lot of your post, especially the teleportation thing. I swear I’m down at leas 20 silver having to use a waypoint due to being stuck under the terrain after that #2 staff skill.

But I really disagree with Torch skill #5. I’m a control build with a dash of condition damage and this is easily the second most useful phantasm I have after the phantasmal defender. Confusion’s gotten a pretty nice buff in it’s damage and this is the most reliable way to keep it almost constantly on a mob. Throw it in with the defender and you’re easily taking the hits the mob makes as the mob takes heavy retaliation and confusion damage every time. Make your third phantasm the staff one and then you’re even getting bonus damage on it for the almost constant confusion condition on the mob. It’s worked out wonderfully for me at least.

Good to hear.

To be fair, I rarely use Torch#5 myself, it just don’t fit too much my playstyle and when I used it, I felt it was a bit pointless. And hearing people complain about it en masse I added to the list.

Good to hear you find it useful, one less concern!

The torch phantasm (and the weapon in general) really is awful. I like the concept of the phantasm mage but he needs to apply multiple stacks of confusion, given how slow he fires. I’ve tried and tried to fit the torch into my builds but I always find I’m better off with the pistol or focus.

Mesmer has some annoying bugs atm. Phantasm fury/retaliation traits don’t stack, so if you have both only Fury applies (you lose retaliation). Signet of Illusions and Phantasmal Regeneration also don’t apply for several seconds after summoning them, which is bad. Those are my main Mesmer concerns at the moment.

While I agree with most of your post there are some places that we differ. I honestly still believe that the illusion/shattering mechanics of our class have some serious reworking that need to be done. Ranged illusions requiring melee range to shatter and having next to no HP to make it there is a constant issue. That being said, some of the utility shatters are pretty weak in my opinion.

I too hate being forced into using the staff for events and wvw. I also agree that GS #3 Mind Stab is pretty useless in its current state, animation time and area size. I also have problems with it not starting up my auto attack after using it. I have to manually start using auto attack each time I use it.

I have heard a few people complain about Moa on some curse PvP forums, but fighting against mesmers as my guardian and such has never been an issue. I wreck bad players and have a tough time against good players. I win some and lose some.

I would honestly like a ranged main hand option that doesn’t create clones on the attack chain. They could use pistol or something, but other than that I’m digging it.

We are purple, not pink btw.

I think if they tweaked GS3 to have a bigger AE radius and not root, it’d be a large improvement. I used a combo of Staff and GS for dynamic events to tag as many mobs as possible. Sometimes it works out, sometimes (mostly) it doesn’t…

tbh GS#3 is our only hope of actually getting some loot in PvE DEs right now
since i dont use staff i will not comment on that but since it bounces i believe it is a little better?

i have no problems with GS #3 as well in pvp, while the small AoE does make it a tad difficult to target but hey, nobody said playing a mesmer was gonna be easy
from BW1, we already said that mesmer would require much more work/skill to be on par with the other classes.

as for torch, it seems like a really good offhand in theory, but i dont know how it is so bad… and shattering really needs ALOT of work

and Moa is actually a rather worthless elite..since they run faster in Moa and is able to get away…but somehow people just rather force themselves into thinking they are “stunned/dazed” as a moa and just people kill them…

Why does everyone always overlook the Sword/focus aoe. It can easily be the highest aoe dam for the mesmer.

So plz tell me how does everyone overlook it???

It’s not about damage, it’s about tagging mobs.

Warden is static once he attacks, and he takes too long to start attacking.
By then the DE mobs have already died.

And sword AoE suffers from a shortter AoE range than other classe while needing you to be in range, ranged AoE is far superior because you can reach bloats of mobs spread up with ease. ex: AoE on group, far away, AoE another group with another skill far away, switch to sword and AoE mobs near you. That would be efficient…

BTW, just want to point out that GS#3 is a instant AoE, not a persistant one, which also is worse for mob tagging, against, lets say lava AoE from the elementalist.

What I find weird with the Torch is that we have a combo finisher on a 3s stealth skill.

Not sure it’s not the case but it would be nice if the combo finisher kicks of after the 3s stealth or when the stealth is interrupted.

nidwin.6731:

What I find weird with the Torch is that we have a combo finisher on a 3s stealth skill.

Not sure it’s not the case but it would be nice if the combo finisher kicks of after the 3s stealth or when the stealth is interrupted.

From what I observed earlier today, the combo finisher activates when it explodes on the burn effect. As long as you activated the skill while the combo field was up, even if the combo field disappears, the finisher should still go off. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or a bug, but that’s what was happening.

I don’t suffer that much of the shattering distance as I tend to stay close to the mob(s) when popping my illusions. (PVE)
In DE, depending on the situation of course, I often try to be in front of everyone to intercept the incoming weave to drop a ethereal field on them (mostly staff 5) to aggro most npc’s.

Dungeons is a different story and I would really apprectiate they fix our 2 healing traits properly and fast. At the moment the only reason to have my Mesmer in a group for a dungeon is for the combos from my ethereal fields. For dps and single target dps other toons are much more efficient and their healing stuff does work properly it seems.

Xfraze.1704:

nidwin.6731:

What I find weird with the Torch is that we have a combo finisher on a 3s stealth skill.

Not sure it’s not the case but it would be nice if the combo finisher kicks of after the 3s stealth or when the stealth is interrupted.

From what I observed earlier today, the combo finisher activates when it explodes on the burn effect. As long as you activated the skill while the combo field was up, even if the combo field disappears, the finisher should still go off. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or a bug, but that’s what was happening.

That would be great. Will check it once back home from work. I also don’t think it’s a bug as I wouldn’t see the benefit having a combo finisher on a 3s stealth.