Guild Wars 2

While I love my mesmer I also love hard hitting fast killing classes so I’m finding it a struggle to kill fast enough. At level 17 she’s slooooow, or am I doing something wrong?

I really want her for my main. Honestly I do. But atm I’m feeling frustrated at how slow it’s going and so tempted to run a warrior or guardian at the same time.

How do YOU cope and what do YOU do to speed up the fighting?

Thanks

you level up, it gets easier as you get more traits in. mesmers are very trait dependant. 40 is the milestone~

^ I agree with the above posters, but will add this:

The reason you can kill things faster at 40 is because that is when you can get the trait “Deceptive Evasion” (20 points in Dueling), which gives you a free clone on dodge. With two dodge rolls, that means you have 2 more clones to throw around. This trait allows you to do a lot more burst damage through shatters, as combined with other skills like “Mirror Images” and the clone/phantasm generating skills on your weapons you will be able to do two full (three clones/phantasms) shatters within a few seconds of each other, possibly even three. This allows you to kill ordinary monsters MUCH faster.

You should look at some proper guides to really learn how to maximize your burst, or you can experiment on your own (which is what I love to do). For now, struggle to make it through these early levels, though it may go faster if you work with others.

Good luck out there, fellow Mesmer!

Def for leveling. Am almost tempted to craft her up but that costs a lot and don’t learn the class that way. The only weapon that feels really good is sword but cloth isn’t supposed to melee lol.

I don’t what a sigil is so will go wiki that.. as for foods I keep forgetting cos they don’t last long enough.

I don’t understand meditations at all. a skill to unlock a skill or does it mean something else? I’ve avoided them so far as I haven’t a clue and someone in previous guild told me to ignore them until near endgame as they were too complicated.

Oh and what’s with so many NPC hostiles completely ignoring the false me’s? Insisting on running for me instead? seems to be working 50/50 or worse so far.

Thanks for any help

I found the key to leveling the mesmer is to always get power on your weapons / armor / and trinkets. At level 17, you can buy all of them from the TP.

Most people disagree with me, but I love sword / sword & staff for leveling. Here is the rotation I used.

Phantasmal Swordman (Sword 5), Illusionary Leap x2 (Sword 3), Blurred Frenzy. Depending on the attack pattern of the enemy I would either do Illusionary Riposte (Sword 4), or the auto attack chain. By getting between the phantasm and the enemy, I could usually keep focus on me, leaving the phantasm free to attack.

Staff
Chaos Storm (Staff 5), Phase Retreat (staff 2) for clone generation and chaos armor, run back into the chaos storm while hitting (Staff 3) (phantasm). When the chaos armor ends (Staff 4).

TooBz: I’ve just been watching Mr Prometheus youtube guide 1 to mesmer weapons and decided to try sword/sword and staff so your timing was perfect

I never think to get just power tbh as I think I’m always worried about being too squishy without toughness, BUT if the kill is much faster I guess I won’t need so much toughness lol.

Trinkets I had forgotten about, oops.

Shimmerless: That’s very very kind of you however I am in a guild and chef myself so can probably get anything I need once I remember I need it LOL. Forgetting is my biggest problem. Darn these old brain cells

Sword is the only weapon I really love on mes but I thought I was ‘doing it wrong’ as usually clothies die in seconds in melee range. Have watched the videos and read the advice from you guys I’m now ready to go full steam ahead with that sword and go buy it a partner instead of the torch.

I’m feeling a lot more positive now so thank you all very much

I’m also leveling my Mesmer. I just passed the level 40 milestone, and I can assure you that it gets better. I run Greatsword + Sword/Sword with all of my equipment giving Power and Precision. This is what I’m currently running at level 50:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-N;4VPVz0z6cVV71;9;49J;090;039;50;9;7FW0-g2vJ

The general idea is to have a ton of burst damage available on demand through phantasms and Mind Wrack. I generally have a Greatsword equipped for entering combat, but I switch weapons very often in combat.

If you’re only fighting one normal mob and you aren’t in a hurry, open with iBerserker and Mirror Blade, use the auto-attack until the mob gets down to ~33% health, and then Mind Wrack.

In situations that demand more burst, an opener that is absolutely deadly is;

iBerserker -> Mirror Blade -> Roll towards the mob (continue running at the mob throughout the next attacks until you reach melee range)-> Cry of Frustration -> Weapon swap -> iSwordsman -> Illusionary Leap (and Swap if you’re out of melee range) -> Roll through the mob -> Turn around and use Blurred Frenzy and Mind Wrack at the same time

Any non-veteran or champion mob in the game will be dead by now, and the same combo can be used against tight groups. For bosses, you can open with this, and then dance in and out of melee range, swapping between weapons depending on where you are. Use Mirror Images for more on-demand Mind Wracks if your weapon skills are on cooldown, use Decoy for defense and/or clone generation, and use Blink to help either close or open a gap.

Best of luck to you, and I promise that it gets better.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, if you are having a difficult time surviving a particular boss or encounter, use Staff. Between kiting, Chaos Storm, and Chaos Armor, the survivability increase is pretty noticeable.

I play, not to win but to kitten people off ^^
Of course i could go Bunker ele or something or Broken Thief but i like a CHALLENGE and Thief is just smash your face on keyboard and win kind of pathetic.

Plus, Torment when its lands is serious sick!

It was sorta slow when I started…

Don’t worry though, it definitely does get better, esp if you’re running a Shatter build for instance. I am, and I noticed a large kill rate increase after I got level 60 for the GM Illusion trait Illusionary Persona.

When i was levelling in pve, i found it actually pretty fast haha. Honestly, and mesmers are so powerful solo in pve levelling, imo. I was levelling in places level 5 – 10 higher and the mobs melt.

For me what was crucial to my levelling was the staff. Not only cuz its defensive but once you have your clones out and phantasm, everythign stacks and they melt really fast. It’s also not a super long range weapon, stick relatively close range so it bounces fast, and just keep running around the mobs. I’d suggest you to get the mobs to target you, like initiate the attack first with ur autoattack, once they’re on to you, then pop all ur clones and phantasms, bc they are necessary to staff “dps”, i found it super fast to melt mobs when i simply run around dodging and kiting while they chased me, and all the conditions from my clones, chaos storm, phantasm would stack up really fast. For the first few seconds it will be slow, but then once things stack, the dps is terrific.

Your second weapon set is up to you, but I do recommend the staff for pve levelling. It IS fast, even without the right traits or gear. it was super fast for me and great for survivability and so on…

on the other hand, without clone on dodge, I used mirror images a lot. It really kept those staff clones stacking all the time. very useful. I also had Decoy and Blink, will get you out of tricky situations but decoy will keep those clones going. Phase retreat also creates your clone and chaos armor combo, so you have great staff clone condition spam/stacking generation between all that already, without mentioning your second weapon set.

I don’t know but it’s really get in sync with the mesmer style.

Heh, i feel you OP. Just got my mesmer to level 21, and its going really slow compared to the other classes iv leveled.

If i might just ask the mesmers here, what do you guys do to keep swiftness going? Most classes get a run speed bonus from a sigil or otherwise passive skill/trait. Im not 100% sure but i cant seem to find anything that match that with mesmers, is focus the only access to a speed bonus?.

I love Mesmer and loved leveling it up the normal way but I always suggest to people who post these kinds of threads that if it isn’t their first character to level it up to about 40 with crafting and then do maps.

Glog, we mesmers have 2 ways to give us Swiftness, but both are not unreliable: Focus #5 and Signet of Inspiration.
Many lvl80 mesmers (including myself) will use full set of centaur/air runes to help with movement speeds.

I just leveled my mesmer to 80. I got to level 23 or so and was thinking…no I’m not going to do this for 17 more levels. So, I crafted (like you’re thinking of doing). Took me around 6 gold to get to level 30 or so.

Most classes seem to scale SEMI-linearly as they level up. Mesmer scales exponentially as you level up. The difference between level 23 and 30 was night and day when I went back to the field. As I hit 40, level 23 seemed like a bad joke.

The advice above is really good. I used Lazy Kai’s leveling build (which isn’t terribly lazy) and would affix sigil of bloodlust to my greatsword and sword. Worked really well. If you are having survivability issues, you can eat a pie which allows you to leech health on hit.

I leveled using the GS/Staff combo. I agree with stacking precision at low levels until you are at about 50% crit. Then go power with bloodlust sigils.

GS/Staff is a really nice combo and the only real combo to play full range (granted staff is more effective at around 500 range).

I tag 3-4 mobs with GS, wait till they are clustered then use 4-2-3-dodge-f1. Usually things melt in that. If not, go to staff and use – 5-2-3-dodge-f1.