Guild Wars 2

Hey guys. This is kind of a 2 part post.

1. I was told that, in general, Mesmer is a weak class in PvE and there aren’t any good builds that keep clones alive that are worth even trying.

2. Regardless, I need a good build. I do Solo, like 99% of the time, and I do PvE, 99% of the time, so I’d like a build that doesn’t focus on buffing the party, I just focus on me.

Thanks for the help.

You shouldn’t try to keep your clones alive.

By solo do you mean solo out in the world, solo WvW, or solo dungeons. Solo WvW and Dungeons are REALLY nitpicky about what you’re doing and where.

Solo out in the world is just whatever you want, mostly focusing on your gear. You can look into Shattercat or Lazy Kai if you don’t want to support at all and focus on yourself.

Hey there!

Who ever says Mesmer is a weak PvE profession, never leveled it to a meaningful stage. It is true that Mesmers are tough in the beginning without traits, especially if you have no experience with the profession. That’s why I actually wrote my leveling guide, to get players to levels, where the Mesmer starts to shine.

Normally you do not want to keep your clones alive in solo PvE. Mind Wrack (F1) will do a ton of damage, why waste this potential. If you solo elites or tough veterans, keeping three illusions up as distraction is perfectly viable, even as a shatter build.

The Lazy Kai guide was written especially with solo PvE players in mind, you might want to give it a try. It covers most situations you will encounter in open world PvE and works fine even with fairly crowded DEs (should be even better since patch).

I hope you will have countless hours of fun to come with this amazing profession.

Kai, I hope you realize that by shattering, you aren’t keeping them alive. That’s why I said you don’t have to worry about keeping them alive, because if they are alive, you’ll shatter them, anyways.

Yeah, I wanted to support your statement in your previous post. No reason to keep them alive, unless you want them as distraction.

Ah, I didn’t read that “not” I was like “WHY YOU BASHING ME WHILE AGREEING”!

Yeah, I’ve started using them as a distraction when facing Champions, but it’s REALLY slow, it just lets me play against Champions without having to have an adrenalin rush to survive. (Staff with no ConDmg is safe, but slooooooooow.)

Well, there’s one build-type that has 3 clones up often, and that’s a condition build using staff clones. You actually don’t even need deceptive evasion for it, as you don’t shatter very often (you mostly shatter to finish mobs quickly when they are at low health, or if you can instantly recast your clones after shattering).

Mr. Prometheus gives an example of how such a build could look like in his second video, which is linked in his guide:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Comprehensive-Mesmer-Guide-all-Parts

For the build in his video, you would want to aim for Carrion-gear (Cond-dmg/power/vit). If you decide to invest in the Dueling-tree later, you can also switch to Rabid (Cond-dmg/precision/toughness) or use a mix of Rabid and Carrion.

Just take a Mantra power build. Any of the mantra builds really. Its what i run, hits hard, and lots of toys.

Rabid gear (Precision/Toughness/*Condition Damage) works better with condition builds since you can use both Runes of the Undead and our trait to convert a combined 10% of toughness over to condition damage, add on a tuning crystal for an additional 6%. Precision is also a lot more useful since you’ll want sharper images to add more conditions faster.

The added bonus of Rabid Gear is that you’ll have a huge amount of survivability from the high toughness combined with the staff’s defensive skills.

With a this kind of build I’m hard pressed to think of much that I can’t solo in open world PvE. Pretty much spam skills to keep 3 clones up at all times and let Winds of Chaos do it’s thing.