Guild Wars 2

I am considering trying one but I hear they are weak PvE. Any truth to this?

Tsk, it really depends who you ask. If you ask a level 80 in full exotics, killing easy mobs 1 at a time, Mesmer is fine in PvE. If you ask someone else, especially someone who played other classes (the ones that excel in PvE), the answer would be no.

Common wisdom here says that it sort of sucks until about level 40, when you get enough trait points, and then it gets better. But then, this is true of every class. Personally I give a Mesmer a 3 out of 10 in PvE. There’s nothing you cannot do. But there’s also nothing most other classes cannot do faster, more often, more reliably, to more mobs, or from further away and/or with less risk.

But that’s just me.

It depends on what’s fun to you. Playing a Mesmer is like being the ringleader in a three ring circus. There’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on around you and you have to keep cool and make it all work together. It’s not easy to play, but for me it’s all kinds of fun.

People saying it sucks in pve are holding it to a different standard. They might be looking for fastest, easiest, quickest burst, or something else. It surely isn’t for everyone. But I will say after I team with people, almost always someone comments they want to try Mesmer now.

Is it best at pve? Maybe not. It is good though, and very, very fun.

Early on Mesmer can be kind of tough. I have a few other class that I’ve leveled to 20ish that were easier to start out. The only character I have past 20 is Mesmer which is lvl 80.

The great thing about Mesmer is there are a ton of options for builds. They all have different strengths ans weakness. Some aren’t great for solo PvE but can excel with a group. Some are much better for solo PvE. That goes for weapons too.

IMO the best solo PvE weapon you can use is Staff. Great survivability once you learn how to use combo fields to your advantage. Fairly decent DPS with some AoE potential for large pulls. Leveling up I was doing lvl 70-80 zones at lvl 64 to level faster and I was solo. I wasn’t have any problems. I could take on big groups of mobs with constant spawns, never letting me out of combat and have no problems.

Now at lvl 80 I can still do that easily in magic find gear(rares, not exotic, rares are dirt cheap). My WvW spec revolves around GS/Sword+Pistol. Using that same weapon loadout in PvE I can still do big groups but have to smarter about kiting and there is more risk. If I swap to a staff I can take on constant spawning groups with multiple veterans and never worry about death.

TL:DR – Can they PvE well? Yes very well, but you have to learn the ins and outs or you will get owned. If you don’t take the time to learn the class then you will rocked hard and post bitter BS on the forums like the poster above me. If you are like him and want an easy class that you can spam one button and never have to use any thought. Then don’t choose Mesmer. It’s not for everyone and that is another thing that is great about it. So many people that don’t know how to play them so we are rare.

Edit: Voodoo Tina ninja’d me. The person above I was speaking about is Sabbathius.

I have a necro as my original main, a mesmer, a thief, and a guardian that I play all in PVE. Mesmer was the most frustrating at first and had the steepest learning curve, but I have her at level 52 now and frankly she is my favorite now. The play style keeps me thinking and is just fun, and at this point I don’t feel subpar when running with groups (at first I always felt like the weakest link, but no longer).

Frankly it depends on how you like to play. Mesmer is a more cerebral profession and requires keeping track of what is going on around you and having proper timing a lot more than many other professions.

Totally agree with everyone, even the guy who called people like me bitter.

One word of note, there’s a difference between “easy” and “efficient”. Mesmer, in PvE, is not efficient. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something or never leveled any other class above 20… :P

I can agree with that, and point out that there is a difference between “efficient” and “fun.”

To the OP, one thing that shows the profession is working is that for every person who is down on something about it – shatters, illusions, this weapon or that trait – there is usually someone else who strongly feels exactly the opposite. There are a lot of ways to play the class, odds are good you will find a play style that works for you. Worst come to worst, you decide you like Engineer better.

so far thru level 22 my mesmer does very well in pve. I am very survivable and can handle multiple mobs easy. I start out with greatsword hit two illusions then if I have to I go to staff and pop two more illusions and have chaos armor and storm available if I have to use them. I keep moving and keep refreshing illusions and it works well.

I would say that so far, Mesmer is the most positional and “action-oriented” profession I’ve played. It also has one of the highest skill floors – you have to be very good at how you manipulate the controls and the interface just to achieve basic survivability. For skillful players who prefer faster, FPS-style decision-making, I think this makes them an enjoyable challenge. For others like myself, it isn’t necessarily the best fit.

Often in PvE it can feel as though you must use three times as much time and effort as other professions to achieve no better results against each ordinary mob cluster. If you aren’t a highly action-oriented and skilled player, that can be both wearying and detract from the sense of fun that comes from feeling capable and powerful in the options available to you.

To be effective you must be constantly strafing, dodging, and concentrating on where your illusions are, where your targets and allies are standing, and where your potential placement skills can be dropped at all times. Your actual decisions on which combination of abilities to use is fairly similar from one fight to the next, and there are usually optimal points at which you should use certain skills rather than a choice of different strategies you get to determine based on preference.

I think Mesmer must be fun to some players, it just depends what sort of playstyle you are looking for.

Personally, after switching my main to a Ranger, I find it really difficult to play my Mesmer for very long. On the Ranger I spend much more of my time making interesting decisions about what I want to do rather than where I have to be. With the huge number of combo fields and finishers available, the diverse array of interesting skills and tactics that I can mix up between each fight, not to mention the far lesser amount of in-combat pet management required, Ranger is just more fun for me to explore and relax into. I think that’s a shame because Mesmer is still my favourite concept, but right now I think it’s a profession that appeals to a niche crowd in PvE, and I’m just not the target demographic.

Level 80 Mesmer here, nearly 100% of my playtime is pve.

sword+pistol/greatsword currently, running a phantasm/sharper image build. I can solo many veterans in Orr areas, have no problem with lesser enemies in groups of 3 or less, and have survived larger groups than that a couple times. Solo’d or duo’d (with an ele) my entire leveling experience and never felt weak.

My advice for combat in this game pve is stop thinking you are playing an MMO. Ever played Dark Souls? Or even the God of War series? fight like it’s an action combat game, and you’re trying to get one of those silly achievements for getting through every fight without taking damage. stick and move. use your defensive powers carefully. dodge isn’t your go-to survival power, it’s the one you use when everything else is on CD.

80 mesmer and 80 ranger here. both in exotics

pve is easier on the mesmer. more tools. better condition removal. risen don’t let bears tank them, they run after you always. feedback on a risen wizard is fun to watch. feedback on a champion preservist is even more fun. turning a champion risen giant into a moa bird is fun

both chars have equivalent gear. the mesmer kills faster. the ranger has superior aoe in barrage, which has the same cooldown as chaos storm. rangers use traps because…well..nothing else to put in those utility slots that’s worth a kitten right now. that class needs help. if it didn’t have a water field in healing spring they would really be the black sheep of this game.

but ranger is holy smokes easy mode pve up until orr. i don’t know if this tradeoff is by design or if the fact rangers had almost no utility at all until bwe3 means the class simply was not finished or tested properly.

i predict rangers being overhauled long before they touch mesmers.

Illusions in Orr can get you killed really fast, since the areas are giant clusters of mobs (that respawn pretty frequently) and you have no control over where the heck your illusions go after you bring them into the world. It always sucks when you run into a large group of mobs and desperately try and use what you have to fight them off, for me, I run a shatter build, so I’ll often try to summon clones out quickitteno AOE them down with mind wrack / cry of frustration… This will often pull another group of 3 into the fight, if I can’t shatter quickly enough the illusions I just summoned will often get one shot by the newly pulled extra mobs, then the pack of mobs proceeds to stomp my face into the ground. It’s honestly really annoying to realize that all my damage comes in forms that will pull tons of extra mobs.

Confusion is very bad in pve – you can stack it high and get a lot of damage out of it, but monsters don’t attack often… Even with the 33% increased confusion duration you’ll often see a stack of 8-12 confusion fall off the mob before he attacks.

Our utilities are very combat oriented for the most part, and those that aren’t combat oriented are… mobile, but not in the way that most others get such utilities. I hate that I have to use a focus to give myself swiftness, any other buffs that I can give myself as a mesmer are random, unless I’ve traited into something specific. I often feel very slow, and can’t keep up with other classes. Blink is too short of a range, often too difficult to use quickly if you’re not on flat ground, and it’s got a long cooldown: it’s not a mobility utility, it’s a stun breaker. The portals are the only truly fun, quality of life utility that we have… And even then the real uses for Portals are limited, due to the portals only existing for a short time once both are placed, and it’s got a 60 second cd.

Moa and Time Warp are pretty cool elites… Moa being really fun (not so good in pve), Time Warp being really useful, but our third elite sucks and there’s a utility that does nearly the exact same thing (stealth).

All in all, I do like my mesmer, and it really is the class that I want to main… But I feel like it’s lacking in a couple areas, mostly the shatter mechanic/clones, and utilities. Our traits need some fixing, as a lot of the really fun stuff (to me) doesn’t work properly atm, but we’re not the only class with that problem by far.

Also our downed #2 is a traitorous kitten just waiting to get you killed.

I’m in mostly exotics that give precision/toughness/condition dmg. I run staff/greatsword. I’ve been able to take down champion mobs in Cursed Shore solo, defeat packs of 5-6 enemies at a time without getting downed, and solo WvW camps with no pressure. Having a ton of crit and sharper images means even your greatsword clones can keep 15-20 bleed stacks on an enemy if not more, so PvE bosses feel the pain.

I don’t think pvp is worth talking about seeing as we all know how annoying it can be to fight a mesmer.

Memsers are much more fun in PvP than PvE. They do feel awful weak in PvE; however that’s offset by the PvP abilities.
My Ranger cut through anything in PvE whereas my Mesmer struggles with most and often pulls much more than desired (illusions etc).

I am considering trying one but I hear they are weak PvE. Any truth to this?

No. However, there are weapons / builds that are better at it and weapons / builds that are bad at it. Generally, direct damage power/precision builds (for instance, DW Swords) work best for short bursty fights, Phantasm builds for long fights where phantasms will survive, condition for long fights where you need optimal support and confusion more or less for pvp. That said, even a different weapon/build can be made to work in a different situation.

A perfect example is staff – generally a more defensive and slow weapon, it can be built into a surprisingly effective AoE tool that can push out mindblowing damage. Combining Chaos Storm with DW Swords can unleash some seriously deadly burst and staff’s warlocks, combined with greatsword’s dps shred things apart.

Long story short, the class is definitely powerful in pve. Just remember to leave preconceptions at the door and approach it with open mind.

I can tell you that everybody that say “mesmers are not efficient” “mesmers cant” or “mesmers dont”… They lie. If you play your mesmer with love with prediction, if you can outsmart opponents in PVP, if you can catch the oppoturnities… mesmers are awesome in every situation and in every group.
I personally prefer staff condition and offensive support… and its totaly awesome most times in dungeons I am the stone brick of the party I do the black job while my clones/ phantasms are doing sustain dmg while I am ressing / party buffing.
Just try it…

I lack the frame of reference since I started playing this game 10(ish) days ago. I have a few characters around 10-13 and my Mesmer at 29. – judging by the killing-rate of the people around me; My Mesmer is doing really well. I read up and watched a bunch of vid on youtube which played a big part in the development of my toon. There might be better ways to go about it, but I found that focusing on condition damage gear with a staff and then having my illusions and me build massive stacks of bleed and burn, does the trick. Monsters around my level require that I summon an illusion, pull out the warlock phantasm and then auto attack. They’ll be dead when before they reach me.
I might be wrong, but it seems like you’d almost have an edge while playing GW2, if you haven’t played mmo’s all that much. Seems like a lot of old mmo-vets are looking for a 1-2-3-loot-move rinse and repeat formula. Playing the other professions is much more linear and straight forward — but the mesmer seem to out do them if the player is willing to stay sharp at the reins…hirr hirr – but I honestly don’t know. Its fun though! That should count for something ey?! :-D