Guild Wars 2

I made a mesmer thinking it was going to be this awesome class that I have a lot of fun with with ports and such in wvw, but here I am and I have no idea wtf I’m doing. I dabbled in a PU stealth condi build for a while, ultimately deemed it ineffective for roaming (my favorite thing to do), before switching to a full zerk shatter build and found it to be lackluster. I main thief and love everything about that class, it fits every part of my playstyle perfectly, which sucks because i thought mesmer would be like a caster type thief. It doesn’t have the es-capability thief has, and the damage feels a lot less reliable. Maybe I was just playing it wrong, actually I’m hoping for this because I really want to love this class and make it my main alt.

So remember, focus is wvw roaming! Let me know guys.

Might aswell keep this simple at this point.

You need a solid roaming build.

You need to watch a youtube/instructional on how to play it effectively.

Mesmer is an amazing class. Unlike Thief, but that’s beside the point :p

Can you say why full zerk shatter is lackluster for you? it’s as balls to the wall as a 66200 D/D thief.
I roam on shatter mesmer almost every day, and i get a huge amount of pleasure from killing thieves from 90% to 0 inbetween heartseekers. There’s also picking off the slow eles and necros from the back of enemy zergs which can be enormous fun if you use portals to escape.

Regarding the escapeability, I think you need to get used to the playstyle. With shatter you need to be careful with choosing fights and WHERE you fight, open field is a nightmare, I often hang around cliffs and larger obstacles so I can phase retreat and blink to where they cant reach you. With a glass canon build like shatter you need to go in blast and then gtfo of reach and then back in. If it’s a longer fight all your stealths might be on cooldown and many opponents so you need environment to help you out.
Damage wise we’re ok, I mean you don’t see hits like 12k in ONE hit but maybe several 2-5k hits in a serie, AND they’re AOE. The best feeling is to stealth attack a group of clothies and shatter them to oblivion. Check out how Vash do it on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elvgwG8CCKo#t=68

Ross Biddle.2367:

Might aswell keep this simple at this point.

You need a solid roaming build.

You need to watch a youtube/instructional on how to play it effectively.

Mesmer is an amazing class. Unlike Thief, but that’s beside the point :p

I figured as much, but Thief is an amazing class to me, but that’s beside the point :p

Hamster.4861:

Can you say why full zerk shatter is lackluster for you? it’s as balls to the wall as a 66200 D/D thief.
I roam on shatter mesmer almost every day, and i get a huge amount of pleasure from killing thieves from 90% to 0 inbetween heartseekers. There’s also picking off the slow eles and necros from the back of enemy zergs which can be enormous fun if you use portals to escape.

Mainly because you can see the damage coming from a mile away. The only time I ever get hit by a full shatter burst or even most of it is when I don’t see them walking up to me (which is pretty rare) and basically whenever I play mesmer I think in my head “why am I not just playing thief, I could be doing this way better with thief”

jenzie.4083:

Regarding the escapeability, I think you need to get used to the playstyle. With shatter you need to be careful with choosing fights and WHERE you fight, open field is a nightmare, I often hang around cliffs and larger obstacles so I can phase retreat and blink to where they cant reach you. With a glass canon build like shatter you need to go in blast and then gtfo of reach and then back in. If it’s a longer fight all your stealths might be on cooldown and many opponents so you need environment to help you out.
Damage wise we’re ok, I mean you don’t see hits like 12k in ONE hit but maybe several 2-5k hits in a serie, AND they’re AOE. The best feeling is to stealth attack a group of clothies and shatter them to oblivion. Check out how Vash do it on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elvgwG8CCKo#t=68

Thank you for posting something pretty helpful instead of boasting. That was an awesome video. All that AOE just destroyed those guys. Any idea what his shatter build looks like? I think the main reason why I say I feel like their damage isn’t reliable because you need all those illusions to either be close to the target or they have to run to them, and when they start running to you it’s pretty obvious a shatter is incoming. However I don’t discredit their damage when they can land it and I know it’s superior to thief in terms of 100-0 in one swoop. I play a little more of a sustain thief 2/6/6/0/0 so I know I can get away when I want to and so I can take on groups. I know all about using terrain to your advantage (thief sb #5) So maybe I just need to practice on my escapes.

Osicat has some nice tutorials and build guides that might appeal to your playstyle, though they are slightly out dated.

http://osicat.weebly.com/traitsgear-guide.html

Edit: Lol, I just noticed his guide is stickied at the top of the forum, so check that out too.

reinforever.8902:

Any idea what his shatter build looks like?

Here he goes through his build.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDXWRSKlQec

Check out all his videos, lots of how-to’s and tactics.