Guild Wars 2

So I just soloed my first champion, to my utter surprise. Just poking around Ebonhawke when “[Group Event] Defeat Escaped Seperatist Leader” popped up. I went to poke it, thinking more people would turn up, and I ended up soloing it.

Level 40, with staff/sword+pistol, up to date weapons/armor, traited for dodge clones and extra phantasm health.

I could never do anything like this on my ranger, which I took to about 60ish, and with that being a medium armor with a pet, I thought it would be more durable. Is this normal for Mesmer and can I expect more of the same at higher levels?

Also questions:
Is staff/sword+pistol a good weapon combo for general openworld PvE?
Which stats would be most beneficial for this?
I don’t shatter much, just drop phantasms and go for the kill, unless it’s a boss or vet and it gives time for my phantasms to come off cooldown, in which case I do shatter before I make new ones. Is this ok or am I ignoring the whole concept of Mesmer?
And does my Sylvari Mesmer ACTUALLY have superpowers? Cos I think shes’s awesome!

Ssst, our powers must remain a secret, or we shall get nerfed again.
We must intentionally gimp ourselves to not make the mundanes feel like we could threaten them for world domination

But yea mesmers can solo certain champions, we are quite good at kiting and slowly whittling down the hp of the target.
In pve we are however usually the worst when it comes to killing things, but we are the best at surviving, a good mesmer with knowledge of the enemies and good awareness is near immortal in pve

Staff + s/p is a very classic weaponset, easy to use and versatile.
The staff provides with good defensive abilities, the sword gives you melee damage, a leap and 2s invul from blurred frenzy, and the pistol has a nice ranged phantasm and a nice CC skill in magic bullet.

And lvl 40 is really only the beginning, you start to have some nice traits now that can change your skills. By lvl 80 you will have all the juicy stuff and you will keep learning a lot by playing the mesmer. Don’t be afraid to experiment a lot, switch weapons and traits every 10 lvls or so and try them out.
Early on i also don’t recommend shattering too much, your clones and phantasms will give some distractions that increase your survivability which is something you can still lack at the earlier lvls.

And yes, (sylvari) mesmers are awesome

A mesmer can solo many champions by just doing autoattack and dodge rolls (with Deceptive Evasion trait) while circling around it.

In other words: I press #1 key to start the combat and after that all I need are my movement keys.

Healing? Only needed if I mess up my movement or dodge timing.

It’s fairly normal for a Mesmer to be able to solo some champs, especially due to the fact that clones seem to be targeted a lot (Meaning if you can keep a steady flow of them, you won’t be attacked very often)

That said I’ve soloed champs on my Theif, Guardian and Engineer as well as my Mesmer (Whilst leveling up) so it’s not relegated purely to Mesmers being OP.

Yeah, i always had a feeling of beeing only somehow usefull. But dont know it myself, well. The more time flew away the more i got surprised!
The Mesmer is my main character and i have reached somewhat around 500-600 hours of playing her, but it feels like beeing at the beginning of understanding the mesmer.

Just an example: Once, we were in Arah exploremode and were fighting Giganticus Lupicus. My whole team died at once, because of the phase switch between phase 1 and 2. I managed it to stay alive the whole time that my team needed to get back in fight without letting the boss to reset and you need a lot of time getting back (around 4 minutes).

Its really nice to see what a mesmer can manage alone. And its always worth it to reset your traits and just do something different! Sometime it will be “just 4 fun”, sometime its annoying but more and more often it is just great

And dont believe a mesmer isnt usefull in PVE. Others just dont see what you are doing WHILE doing the things you were expected for. I needed a lot of time myself!

A little story about leveling my mesmer on a low-populated server:

Just as the OP here, at some point I figured out my mesmer can solo champs. Because the server was mostly empty, there often weren’t other players to help with group events, thus I usually started doing them solo. Takes a while, up to 10 boring minutes, to solo a group event champion. Once in a while, another player would come across and joined the fight. I was happy and thought: “Great, this will speed things up.” But wait, the other dude goes down within seconds, I have to rezz him (while tanking/kiting the champ). He goes down again, I rezz him again, he runs strait away for safety, leaving only a cloud of dust behind. Again it’s just me and the champ. What the f…

This little story happened more than once to me

Some champions are just insanely easy to solo, as Snoxx already pointed out. That’s not a mesmer “problem” though, many champions are just dumb and do nothing but beat up single targets. I met the champion corrupted quaggan in Frostgorge Sound after killing the Claw yesterday, he’s clearly one of those that don’t even need special timing since it doesn’t even onehit illusions. Add in thoughtful placement of illusions so you can hide behind them and make the enemy run back and forth.

Sylvari mesmers have goodlooking superpower

and yes .. they are awesome

cheers Xixsa

Critical Infusion and Deceptive Evasion are no brainers. I can solo most of champions.

If somehow I didn’t include these traits, I feel it really quickly. The mesmer mobility in combat is insane (I said in combat, not in running). I can’t live without 20 in dueling anymore. Also, I don’t shatter clones and phantasms when I solo a champ.

Same story as alekelpragh at Giganticus Lupicus. I was the only one alive (many times). Tips : You can blink out of its prisons. Same with Alpha CoE prisons.

Thanks for the feedback, nice to know I’m on the right track.

I did have a couple more questions about illusions. When they “die” as opposed to shattering from the F1-4 commands (either through being defeated, overwritten, or their target being defeated), do they do shatter damage then? Or is damage in that case just going to be from the “on death” traits? And is the radius on shatter damage known?

I’ve been able to solo Champions ever since I learned to be mobile (though some have far too much HP to be worth the time, like giants). Attacks have tells, so you just need to learn at which point of the tell to hit your evasion move (block, dodge, blur or whatever), and you negate it. Once you stop taking damage from champions, then it’s just a matter of grinding down their health.

Admittedly Mesmers have an easier time of it – they have good combat mobility AND clones to pull Champions off them. On my Mesmer, I pop two phantoms for DPS, and use myself and a clone to keep the Champion busy. Heck, I’ve taken on a champion and three veterans at once with that method without going below half health (which is one Champion hit if I don’t time a dodge/evasion right)

For your Ranger, it actually is also pretty easy to solo champs. You have quite a few evasion based moves, OMG abilities for condition stacking, and a chew toy that can soak some serious damage if you want to be lazy and just pewpew while it gets eaten. I’ve even seen my roommate solo champions that were 4 levels higher than he was on his Ranger.

Good luck and nice to hear you’re enjoying the class!

Roxy Painter.3691:

Thanks for the feedback, nice to know I’m on the right track.

I did have a couple more questions about illusions. When they “die” as opposed to shattering from the F1-4 commands (either through being defeated, overwritten, or their target being defeated), do they do shatter damage then? Or is damage in that case just going to be from the “on death” traits? And is the radius on shatter damage known?

They do not do shatter damage when they die. Only the “on death” traits do anything.

TooBz.3065:

Roxy Painter.3691:

Thanks for the feedback, nice to know I’m on the right track.

I did have a couple more questions about illusions. When they “die” as opposed to shattering from the F1-4 commands (either through being defeated, overwritten, or their target being defeated), do they do shatter damage then? Or is damage in that case just going to be from the “on death” traits? And is the radius on shatter damage known?

They do not do shatter damage when they die. Only the “on death” traits do anything.

I’m not so sure about that. I recall a guy posting that if you dodge-roll while 3 clones are out, you’ll shatter one with “on death” traits while creating a new one. I’ll have to test it out more to verify but that seems to be what happens when I do it.

well good for you but it’s quite normal that mesmer can do that. I do it all the tim ewith staff clones…

pop 3 clones, get aggro from boss and then keep running in circle. takes like forever but soloable.

Chipmunko.5870:

Sylvari mesmers have goodlooking superpower

and yes .. they are awesome

cheers Xixsa

Aren’t you an asura mesmer?

Melee champions are very easy to solo with deceptive evasion, even in full glass cannon gear. One of the nice perks of being a mesmer!

I wanted to solo the lvl 80 champion risen king (cursed shore), but it ended up with me one guardian and a warrior taking it down :/

Yesterday I was soloing a champion and it looked easy, but things got interesting when another player joined the fight, because he brought two veteran mobs with him and he died outright …

Dunno if it’s possible to solo a champ + two veterans at once, maybe it is, I didn’t try. I just used Mass Invisibility to reset the fight. Rezzed the other player and told him how crazy insane he is.

Roxy Painter.3691:

So I just soloed my first champion, to my utter surprise. Just poking around Ebonhawke when “[Group Event] Defeat Escaped Seperatist Leader” popped up. I went to poke it, thinking more people would turn up, and I ended up soloing it.

Level 40, with staff/sword+pistol, up to date weapons/armor, traited for dodge clones and extra phantasm health.

I could never do anything like this on my ranger, which I took to about 60ish, and with that being a medium armor with a pet, I thought it would be more durable. Is this normal for Mesmer and can I expect more of the same at higher levels?

Also questions:
Is staff/sword+pistol a good weapon combo for general openworld PvE?
Which stats would be most beneficial for this?
I don’t shatter much, just drop phantasms and go for the kill, unless it’s a boss or vet and it gives time for my phantasms to come off cooldown, in which case I do shatter before I make new ones. Is this ok or am I ignoring the whole concept of Mesmer?
And does my Sylvari Mesmer ACTUALLY have superpowers? Cos I think shes’s awesome!

i play a ranger and i’ve solo’d many level-appropriate group events, it just takes some time.

Since the waypoint-res updates, I’ve found myself finishing off a lot of bosses when the rest of the group goes down. Staff is great for being slippery and whittling down champions.

My “it’s okay guys, I got this, go get a sandwich” list is up to Subject Alpha (phase retreat busts you out of his prison), the Mossman (at around 30% he stopped spawning wolves), Lani Winterfist (a little annoying with the adds), and Tribune Burntclaw.