Guild Wars 2

I’m curious if anyone can give a plan for PvE leveling a Mesmer…by that I mean what stats do you focus on, what weapons to use from levels and what trait lines to spec in at each level range.

For instance, from level 10 to 20 what weapon, what stats to focus on, what trait?

Then from 20 to 30 etc..

I’m having a bit of problem with constant dying at level 15 ish solo pve. On early toons I have found that +Power seems to be the best stat due to the way Power multiplies your damage so many fold at that low level. What trait lines should I be spending my first 5 to 10 trait points on? I’ve been trying sword/focus, tried GS, tried Staff. Not having a lot of luck so I tried switching to a condition build using staff and that doesn’t work well at this level.

I know it supposedly gets better at 40+ but what is the plan pre-40?

First of all let me say that at higher levels we are still squishy for the most part. I think your main obstacle at the moment is learning to play the mesmer. By this I’m not referring to traits but actual style.

May I recommend you try using the pistol first instead of the focus. While the latter does give more utility, the former is easier to pick up and would provide more damage.

Let me also advise you to give staff and gs another chance. At the moment the gs phantasm is bugged so here’s a simple combo for the staff. Practice with one creature first. Use staff skill #3, creature should start running towards you. Use staff #5 so that would give boons for you, damage and debuffs for creature. Combo quickly with staff #2 so that you trigger chaos armor on you. By this point you have 2 clones out, you can use your F1 mind wrack and the creature should be low, if not switch to next weapon set to finish off.

ATourist.8359:

First of all let me say that at higher levels we are still squishy for the most part. I think your main obstacle at the moment is learning to play the mesmer. By this I’m not referring to traits but actual style.

May I recommend you try using the pistol first instead of the focus. While the latter does give more utility, the former is easier to pick up and would provide more damage.

Let me also advise you to give staff and gs another chance. At the moment the gs phantasm is bugged so here’s a simple combo for the staff. Practice with one creature first. Use staff skill #3, creature should start running towards you. Use staff #5 so that would give boons for you, damage and debuffs for creature. Combo quickly with staff #2 so that you trigger chaos armor on you. By this point you have 2 clones out, you can use your F1 mind wrack and the creature should be low, if not switch to next weapon set to finish off.

Thanks for the weapon advice.

Any advice on what trait line to put your first 5 to 10 pts into? I put my first 5 into the shredding recharge line to get the 20% faster summons but I don’t think that’s optimal, probably would have been better to put them into +power or vit line.

Also what about stats early on? I have found that Power is the best early but I’m not sure (haven’t ran the spreadsheets yet) of when other stats start becoming better relative to power.

Also does anyone know when a condition build would be feasible at all? It really doesn’t look like mesmer has that many condition building attacks (staff is main and it’s random) but I am curious about a condition build.

For stats, power/prec/crit damage would give you the best damage. I would recommend you use it all the way to 80, putting some minor defensive ones as you see fit. But as most mesmers will tell you, we do get enough “tricks” to avoid damage such as clones, decoy, staff 2 etc.
Condition damage is not really optimal for leveling as
1. aside from random staff debuffs, our source of condition damage is confusion and bleed.
2. Mobs attack too slow to rely on confusion much.

At the lower levels I would look at traits such as:
Domination: Empowered illusions or mental torment (10)
Illusions: Deceptive evasion (20). This skill is quite important in most mesmer builds.
Inspiration

Best weapons for low lvls imho is GS and staff. Both will keep u at long range, staff is nice for defense, GS for offense. GS offers AOE which comes handy in DE events across the map, plus by using the 2 u can perform some nice combos once u get used of them. For example apply Chaos storm, blink away to get chaos armour, switch to GS for mirror blade to apply confusion. That was my best way of handling relatively large groups of enemies (4-5) at once with even sweating. Feedback, null field and veil are other combo fields u might want to experiment, especially when ur chaos storm is on cooldown. As for traits i went for domination (power), chaos (toughness) and illusions (condition dmg). Get crippling dissipation from domination (helps ur kiting) and also the illusions 5 points one (can’t remember the name right now).
There is also some nice guide from Mr Prometheus down the page; u might want to take a look at that. Have fun as a mesmer

Staff is my main weapon, and I alternate between greatsword and sword/focus for the other.

I’m not actually all that fond of sword/focus, but focus 4 really does make world exploration better, and there are times when sword helps finish things off. (I want to like scepter, but it’s worse.)

As for traits, early on I would say Illusions 5 is good to have, and Chaos generally helps with survival… but mostly they aren’t important until you can unlock something that really compliments your weapons and style. (Illusions 20 is great for staff and greatsword, Dueling 20 for shatter builds, etc.) Respeccing traits is cheap, and happens automatically when using the more advanced trait books anyway, so feel free to experiment.

I tend to treat Power, Vitality, Condition and Precision as roughly equal, and choose gear to make up for what isn’t boosted by traits. I don’t think the balance there makes as big a difference as simply keeping up to date gear and using good tactics does though.