Guild Wars 2

I created 2 Mesmers, but deleted both.
Reason was that I have no idea how to play a Memser in PvE.
Can someone give me some hints?
Greatsword or staff, illusions as minions or shatter?

Got my mezz to 20 with some sort of scepter+x+shatter spam build…
…Then the good girl got deleted, cause I needed to free up a slot and she just happened to bore me…

Might not be for everyone. That said, I leveled mine to 37, quit it for months and went back to it. Now it is 80 and my most played character. Easily the most fun class for me.

Sword + Focus and Greatsword are good weapon sets. I tend to shatter more in groups or as finishing moves, but keep them up while soloing as tanks. Also, throw up illusion on dodge is super useful.

Mesmers are akward and relatively weak at low levels. If you’re rolling one, either perservere through the lower levels or level up quickly by crafting.

As for how to play it, find a build you like and jump in a dungeon with it. Mesmers are much more fun to play in groups than solo.

When it comes to shattering or not shattering, this depends on your build. If you go for a shatter-focused build with 30 in illusions, then shatter as much as possible. If you go for more of a phantasm build, then work on getting your phantasms up and keep them up to maximize dps. There’s always exceptions to this, but you’ll pick up on it after you play the class for long enough.

The lower levels are hell. Once you reach lvl 40 or so it gets actually enjoyable.

I jumped from weapon to weapon trying to find somthing I liked. Finally settled on sword/sword with greatsword alt. I view the mesmer more of a “ninja” type class more than a magician, so because of that the staff and scepter weapons never felt right for me and thus couldn’t use them properly.

You just have to power through the low levels until you get enough traits to be useful and fun. The mesmer seems to rely on traits more than the other classes to function.

I had a blast leveling my mesmer and I didn’t think it was weak. Don’t stick with one weapon set or build. Try them all and see what you like. From 1-20 I used scepter/focus – spamming clones and timing my blocks was great fun. Up until 60 I used staff to stack conditions and sword/pistol as backup. At 80 I switched to greatsword and sword/focus, relying primarily on shatters.

We are not a pet class so don’t rely on phantasms for damage/tanking at lower levels. They die often and if you don’t mind wrack them when they’re low on health, you’ll lose out on the potential burst.

As a person who has just leveled his Mesmer:

I would recommend Great Sword and Sword/Focus. Great Sword has a good phantasm and the #2 ability produces a clone on a relatively low CD. Until you get traits to make clones for you, this is key.

Sword/Focus gives you IWarden. You can use this when you want to hit an enemy in melee range. Pair it with blurred Frenzy to get the best effect. Rule of thumb is to let your phantasms do their entire first attack chain then use the F1 shatter once you have 3 clones.

Like others said, Mesmer is a trait dependent class. You will find that each trait tier you unlock you see a massive boost in your effectiveness. The above weapon combo should get you to that point where you can then specialize via traits.

I am liking the mesmer but I am finding it difficult as well. It’s my first class and only level 20 so maybe it wasn’t the easiest choice to start with. I have read a lot on what weapons to use and what skills, so even though am getting the hang of it with sort of a “rotation”, it sure seems I kill things slowly compared to some of the other classes I have run up against.

My main weapon seems to be the staff and secondary set is sword pistol at the moment. I am mostly trying to kite around till I get 3 clones up and then shatter. My problem is that kiting isn’t really that easy in this game, there are lots of tight quarters and I almost always pick up adds. It can be hard to get 3 clones alive to shatter. If I picked up a ranged add, that’s when I usually start to really get hurt.

If I have Chaos Storm up I can usually kill a mob on the first round of clones, but it has a long cooldown and when it’s down it takes 2-3 times as long to kill, which increases the chance I will pick up adds. What is disheartening is to see a warrior run in and kill a mob in less time than it takes me to even get a couple of clones up.

I know from the forums that the mesmer is a late bloomer. I am in it for the long haul, and I am having fun with it. I just wish it was a little less frustrating in tight areas. I have played a few lower level classes and have mostly found them boring compared to the mesmer so I am trusting that by level 40 things will start to roll. I am just one of those people that hates dying in mmo’s, it just feels like losing.

The Mesmer was my first alt, though I try to play all 8 classes equally (though my elementalist is still my only non level-80, lol).

I’ll share my build with you folks real quick. I use it exclusively for PvE, and it works equally well for roaming PvE (i.e. general hunting and eventing) and dungeons.

The build is a condition based build reliant on spamming clones/phantasms to either autoattack or quickly stack conditions, but you can still use them for extra burst damage (though that’s not its main purpose). It’s 0/20{V, X}/20{V, X}/10{IV}/20{III, VII}. Healing skill is Ether Feast, Utilities are your choice, but I personally use Decoy, Mirror Images, and Nullfield/Feedback/Blink (depending on the situation). Weapons are staff and scepter/pistol. I use Precision/Toughness/Condition gear, and even if my group gets wiped in a dungeon, I am always the last person standing. Using your clones/phantasms as cannon fodder is an incredibly effective way of staying alive, I’ve found, though I don’t see many people speccing for conditions like I do.

I love my warrmes (warrior+mesmer=warrmes) in PvE.

It’s important to learn each boss’s mechanics and know when to dodge. If you’re down all the time (wich in zerker gear can happen in a second of not paying atention) you don’t really help your team.

Then get zerker gear (im 98% zerker except of the 2 ascended accessorys that are knight and i have ptv stats on my sword,amulet and back). Will soon change those for even more damage

I use 20[III,X] / 20[II,X] / 0 / 25[II,VIII) / 5 with GS/sword+focus.

The ranged damage is great, iZerker hits like a truck, sword provides decent melee damage, “blurred frenzy” is realy something I can’t live without in this game, phantasmal warden is awsome and with focus traited for reflects and -20% on focus skills cd you contribute to the team overall success quite well.

Healing is ether feast.
Utility skills are changed depending on the needs, but I mostly run with feedback,nullfield and mirror images.

Elite no doubt is Time Warp but can be switched to mass invisiblity for some parts of certain dungeons (p3 arah wink wink).

zerker shatter dps
GS/Sw+P or Sw+Focus

That is fun….

Its important to take a pistol with you because at some bosses you can keep alive 3 phantasm P/P for massive damage.

Nonfat.8742:

I love my warrmes (warrior+mesmer=warrmes) in PvE.

It’s important to learn each boss’s mechanics and know when to dodge. If you’re down all the time (wich in zerker gear can happen in a second of not paying atention) you don’t really help your team.

Then get zerker gear (im 98% zerker except of the 2 ascended accessorys that are knight and i have ptv stats on my sword,amulet and back). Will soon change those for even more damage

I use 20[III,X] / 20[II,X] / 0 / 25[II,VIII) / 5 with GS/sword+focus.

The ranged damage is great, iZerker hits like a truck, sword provides decent melee damage, “blurred frenzy” is realy something I can’t live without in this game, phantasmal warden is awsome and with focus traited for reflects and -20% on focus skills cd you contribute to the team overall success quite well.

Healing is ether feast.
Utility skills are changed depending on the needs, but I mostly run with feedback,nullfield and mirror images.

Elite no doubt is Time Warp but can be switched to mass invisiblity for some parts of certain dungeons (p3 arah wink wink).

Guess your so-called war mess has been level 80 for so long already, you don’t even think about the possibility, people might actually talk about mesmers < 80.

naphack.9346:

Nonfat.8742:

I love my warrmes (warrior+mesmer=warrmes) in PvE.

It’s important to learn each boss’s mechanics and know when to dodge. If you’re down all the time (wich in zerker gear can happen in a second of not paying atention) you don’t really help your team.

Then get zerker gear (im 98% zerker except of the 2 ascended accessorys that are knight and i have ptv stats on my sword,amulet and back). Will soon change those for even more damage

I use 20[III,X] / 20[II,X] / 0 / 25[II,VIII) / 5 with GS/sword+focus.

The ranged damage is great, iZerker hits like a truck, sword provides decent melee damage, “blurred frenzy” is realy something I can’t live without in this game, phantasmal warden is awsome and with focus traited for reflects and -20% on focus skills cd you contribute to the team overall success quite well.

Healing is ether feast.
Utility skills are changed depending on the needs, but I mostly run with feedback,nullfield and mirror images.

Elite no doubt is Time Warp but can be switched to mass invisiblity for some parts of certain dungeons (p3 arah wink wink).

Guess your so-called war mess has been level 80 for so long already, you don’t even think about the possibility, people might actually talk about mesmers < 80.

Well you have a point there.
But talking about a viable mesmer build under lvl 80 is in my opinion pointless since the class only truley shines when you hit 80 and get good gear.

So my adivice to under lvl 80 mesmers is : get some toughness while leveling and try to hit 80 asap. Then go back to ym thread, try it out for yourself and then judge.

Peace.

Thank’s for your advice everyone. :-)
I would prefer to play with a staff, but condition Memser has the problem that the staff auto-attack only inflects bleeding and burning: bleeding is good, but burning doesn’t stack in intensity.
Would be great if A-Net would change that and allow the other conditions& boons too.

With the greatsword you have the same problem as longbow ranger: the range.
And the auto-attack hits 1 target only but often you are surrounded by a bulk of enemies.

Burning doesn’t stack in intensity because it would tick too high. At 2000 condition damage, bleed does 142 damage per stack per second, burning does 828 (confusion 430 but can be avoided, poison 284 but reduces heal effectiveness).

Iruwen.3164:

poison 284 but reduces heal effectiveness).

Mesmer staff attack does no poison, regrettably.
Would like to see that.
If you ask me, Mesmer class needs a rework.

The GS AA may not be great at close range, but none of its other abilities are affected. Open the fight with iZerker to cripple the enemy. That will slow their progress towards you. That bounce from the GS#2 only gets back to you at medium range, and if an enemy gets to close use GS#5 or switch to the sword/x(recommended focus or pistol).

Honestly I here people always talking about how tough it is at lower levels with the mesmer but I didn’t find that true at all. If this is your first character it might be more difficult, but as an alt, there is no reason not to keep you character in the best armor and weapon up to level 35 at least. And by that time your traits are starting to kick in and then it is just steamroll time.

Mesmer will never be the fastest killing machine, but I died less than anything but my guardian and Warrior in the low levels because of the active defenses. Learn to use more shatters than just Mind Wrack and look seriously at blurred frenzy on the Sword.

a really quick way to level up as a mes is to get the trait that grants you clones when you dodge and a GS. Basically get 3 clones up and just AA, letting your clones do the tanking. I’ve been doing it for quite some time now and I feel like it’s almost cheating. Ofc, we don’t really have the best aoe damage, so that’s the only problem – you usually have to deal with 1 mob at a time.