Guild Wars 2

And in short it is very, very bad. When I reference “open-world PvE” I’m mostly referring to dynamic events taking place in the overworld in zones like Frostgorge Sound, Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore. Many characters rely on these events as their primary source of income – not from the event reward itself, but rather from the loot dropped by the copious amounts of enemy NPCs fought in these events. Without a sizeable head start in damage/tagging, Mesmers can hardly grab a scrap of this loot. This can apply to dynamic events of almost any size, from 2 players to 40, depending on the build of your fellow player.

So what’s the problem? AoE & damage are king, and the Mesmer has none of it.

You can easily point to half a dozen skills with AoE components to prove me wrong, but only half of those work with any effectiveness in this context. In fact, in my experience, the sword is the best weapon for getting loot in end-game dynamic events. And that is depressing.

The staff is often billed as the AoE weapon of choice because of Chaos Storm. But that’s all it has, on a sizeable cooldown. Winds of Chaos isn’t worth jack. By the time the granny-gear projectile actually reaches the enemy, they’re dead, and you’ve done 500 damage compared to the greatsword warrior who sneezed on his keyboard and did 15k in Hundred Blades crits. You get no loot. And shame on you if your Winds of Chaos bounced to allies instead of enemies (it always will); not only do you still get no loot, you’re just helping their contribution over your own, because support means (as with many Mesmer skills in this part of the game) very little.

But hey, if you’re lucky, Winds of Chaos bounced to your clones. They’ll deal 12 damage instead of 11, now, thanks to the Might buff.

What about phantasms? They’re one of the other forms of AoE damage, primarily found in the Berserker and Warden. And they work. They can burst up to 4k or more in a single attack. But they have so many caveats it’s frustrating:

• You have three seconds to find an enemy NPC among the swarm that is near full-health, so it doesn’t die mid-cast or attack.
• You need to spend another second and a half to actually summon the phantasm.
• The phantasm might drop dead before even finishing an attack. It’s guaranteed to drop dead once its target is down, and by the time the next wave of Risen hits it probably won’t be on cooldown.
• You may eventually come to the sour realization that you need Phantasms to deal any damage – damage that other classes can perform in their autoattack chain and then some.

Having the Mesmer be the only class that has to meaningfully invest in any given fight is making most end-game stuff highly toxic. While the class performs fantastically against dungeons and bosses, it gets beat out by the many Elementalist bots standing around near Penitent Camp or Shelter Gate to auto-farm events.

This is just one of several problems with the class in PvE – it just happens to be the most concerning to me, especially since dungeons have stopped working on my server. Again. So I’m stuck either giving up and playing an alt until the next server reset, or working mykittenoff in DEs only to receive little for it.

If you want pve aoe, go shatter build. Mesmer can kill # mobs at once in seconds.

-edit-

To elaborate a 3 stack Mind Wrack + 3 stack Cry of Frustration will pretty much instant aoe kill any sized pack of normal mobs.

Chaos Storm
Phase Retreat
Phantasmal Warlock
Roll
Cry of Frustration
-switchweapon Illusionary Leap (or just roll again)
Mirror Images
Mind Wrack

If anything happens to be still alive chuck a Blurred Frenzy. You can easily farm 6+ mobs at once doing this.

I find pvp aoe more depressing than pve.

I do agree, most of our damage in aoe comes from phantasms unless you go sword and start chopping things. With that said, we are the only class where our aoe can get “killed” before it does damage. I feel like shatters are still unreliable and clunky and they really need to do more damage and not die before they do so.

Mesmer is a GREAT solo duelist, we have great control but we lack in the aoe department very hard. We also have a high “set-up” time before we can reach our good damage output. With that said, in fights with a lot of weak(er) enemies which die fast, we tend to be sub-par.

I feel that shatters need to be a lot more reliable, as it stands, shatters for me are more of a “oh, my phantasms are low on health, might as well shatter as it MIGHT add some damage”, rather than a class mechanic on which i can rely.

What I’ve found is that you have to build to get around this.

There are several ways. As others have already said, a clone factory shatter build can get a lot of AOE damage in fast. You can work out some simple rotations to get 3 clones out and shatter right away.

So can a sword focused build. Sword + Focus has a lot of AOE potential, and the added bonus of being able to pull mobs OUT of other players AOE so you can get your damage in. Be sure to grab both blade training and the focus cooldown trait, along with 5+ points in illussions to get warden’s cooldown even lower.

The biggest trick to handling Dynamic events and aoe is using a shatter build and focus targetting those shatters into clumps of enemies. Because your clones lock onto their target upon creation and will shatter on that target regardless of your current target you can send 3 clones in seperate areas to do some nice splash damage, and that 1.5-2k splash is usually enough to tag.

I’m not saying it’s easy, and it’s certainly not as easy as say warriors or elementalists. But it’s doable.

I found Illusions XI to be very effective. Just jump right into the action and ‘spam’ Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration without summoning illusions. Combined with a mainhand sword and a offweapon staff for the occasional Chaos Storm i’m doing fine. But yeah, i think we Mesmers really have to ‘specc’ for that, it’s not as easy as with most other professions to tag mobs in AE events.

Sigh what the OP means is we HAVE to spec in a special direction to get “oke” results in AOE. While EVERY other class have this build in on one of their weapons, with a 100% guarantee (their AOE doesnt die) and a relitive low cooldown with a high initial damage.

Maybe the only other class who shares our problem is the necro

yup. As a Mesmer it is much more rewarding to NOT run with the zerg and try some Special Ops Missions

You can zerg but the AoE doesn’t work too well. I run a build with +random condition + cripple +confusion when my illusions are killed and spawn clones like crazy. Thats not mass dmg but it confuses and cripples the enemy zerg.

Like Irilith said the Illusions XI is great, too. Combined with a half decent shatterbuild and you can get burst AOE. Im not specced for that atm but I liked it for sPvP (yah, much smaller scale than WvW).

All in all I really don’t think that the mesmer is inferior in WvW. He is no elementalist or necro (or ranger or engineer if we are talking ranged AoE). He does other things and does them quite well.

When it comes to dynamic events, I have found the most effective method to get tags is either to stay at range and spam greatsword attack 1, or switch to sword M/H and simply wade in and start swinging like a warrior.

Neither method utilises the subtelty of the mesmer, which is the thing I really love about this class but it gets the job done.

Can you imagine if shatter also granted swiftness and an increase in movement speed to the clones and phantasms? It’s frustrating to just watch them leisurely jog after their shatter target.

Teror.8940:

Can you imagine if shatter also granted swiftness and an increase in movement speed to the clones and phantasms? It’s frustrating to just watch them leisurely jog after their shatter target.

If you roll with the focus, you can drop the skill that grants swiftness to allies that pass through it. The swiftness goes to your illusions and they get to the target faster. And if you place it just right, you can suck enemies through it so there is no need for illusions to go the entire way.

Just avoid the zerg. That’s what I do. Try to find events where there aren’t a crapton of people and just do those. As a mesmer you’re awesome at events that involve killing champion level mobs. You won’t do so well if you’re just running the typical Cursed Shore zerg circuit though.

I thought the same as you, maybe it needs to be changed. But to be honest the way the DE’s are going in Orr just doesn’t seem like the intended design of the game. People camping two spots, tons of bots etc. etc. It’s just not pretty. You’ll do well at the Lyssa events as a mesmer though, those require people to actually pay attention and we tend to have abilities that favor us there.

I have no problem in AoE.
You have to play around with different builds. My build is crit build. Staff and sword/focus. I aimed Chaos Storm on top of the big crowd, swap weapon, place Phantasm warden at Veteran (he has more health and will last longer before your phantasm crumble.) I had ton of loots within that crowd alone. Rinse and repeat on different crowd.

Mesmer no Aoe? Excuse me?
Go 1hsword and focus offhand. In level 80 zones my focus does 40k in one burst in an AoE around it, that’s more than most players have. Add in blurred frenzy and chaos storm or a GS phantasm, pff mesmer has amazing aoe.

Bibidiboo.6409:

Mesmer no Aoe? Excuse me?
Go 1hsword and focus offhand. In level 80 zones my focus does 40k in one burst in an AoE around it, that’s more than most players have.

No…no it doesn’t.

All about staves, generating a boatload of illusions, and shatters.

This won’t address situations where you need to kick out some DPS fast (such as popular farming spots where you’re competing with 10-20 other people for kill credit) but it does address AOE situations pretty handily.

Well… reading this thread was, forgive the pun, really disillusioning. I was generally happy with how my level 20 something mesmer was doing but hearing how badly they’re doing in DE’s at higher levels is discouraging. Bleh. :/

I do feel it though, as early as now. In DE’s where the mobs keep constantly moving, the only recourse I have to is to throw a chaos storm then switch to sword/focus. The warden does not last more than 3 seconds though as people would be killing the mob the warden was tied to. I just rely on sword no 1 and 2 for the “AoE” damage and hope for the best.

I did see MrPrometheus’ video and that’s the build I’m running with right now. I’m very happy with it when I’m the only one killing stuff but the moment heavily populated DE’s happen, I just really feel useless.

Uggh.

agree completely with the OP.

Go staff.

Chaos wind bounces up to 3 mobs if traited. Chaos storm is an aoe field that is far more damaging than anyone gives it credit for. You have access to a quick cooldown clone for shatters for aoe.

Levetty.1279:

Bibidiboo.6409:

Mesmer no Aoe? Excuse me?
Go 1hsword and focus offhand. In level 80 zones my focus does 40k in one burst in an AoE around it, that’s more than most players have.

No…no it doesn’t.

It does.
It hits 11 times AoE.
First 5 hits do 1500-3000 damage
Last 6 hits do 4000-7500

Depends on amount of crits.

Full lvl 80 exotic berserker gear.

There are two different things —

1. open world PvE, and
2. DEs

DEs require AOE tagging, not necessarily the ability to kill lots of mobs.

AOE tagging = Illusory Persona + GS. GS can tag lots of mobs, Shatters can tag lots of mobs (both F1 and F2 — F2 has a direct damage component in addition to applying the confusion).

For killing … whatever. Staff works, Focus is solid, GS is great for open PvE.

Bibidiboo.6409:

It does.
It hits 11 times AoE.
First 5 hits do 1500-3000 damage
Last 6 hits do 4000-7500

Depends on amount of crits.

Full lvl 80 exotic berserker gear.

Protip: your iWarden is hitting for 350-700 damage per hit.

EasymodeX.4062:

Bibidiboo.6409:

It does.
It hits 11 times AoE.
First 5 hits do 1500-3000 damage
Last 6 hits do 4000-7500

Depends on amount of crits.

Full lvl 80 exotic berserker gear.

Protip: your iWarden is hitting for 350-700 damage per hit.

I’m not sure what builds you use, but ill happily film it if you want.

Go ahead and film it, post it, and be sure to link it here, on gw2guru, and every other forum you can find. Also make sure you in-game character name is visible, along with an indication of which server you play on.

If you are willing, please title the threads “45k damage iWarden”. Perhaps in all caps.

Thank you.

Bibidiboo.6409:

EasymodeX.4062:

Bibidiboo.6409:

It does.
It hits 11 times AoE.
First 5 hits do 1500-3000 damage
Last 6 hits do 4000-7500

Depends on amount of crits.

Full lvl 80 exotic berserker gear.

Protip: your iWarden is hitting for 350-700 damage per hit.

I’m not sure what builds you use, but ill happily film it if you want.

For iWarden, and any other chain attacks like it, the increasing damage numbers are not individual hits becoming increasingly more powerful, but rather the damage is being added together. If your iWarden hits for 45k, then the final number you see before he finishes his spin is 45k. I highly doubt you see this.

Honestly Greatsword has great AoE potential for tagging mobs (I liked mind stab when it was single target with splash though) to bad the damage on it is so lame… I use it to tag mobs none the less. But if the an event starts while I’m chilling in another waypoint waiting for one and no one is around I end up wishing I had my staff equipped… seems preferable to dot everything and live, as opposed to sub par damage till mobbed > crippled > everything on c/d’s > dead. (though maybe I just suck with GS)

but yeah Sword is currently the best tagger killing one mob at a time, I feel sorry for anyone playing Mesmer in Orr who’s comp has FPS issues.