Guild Wars 2

So, I have narrowed down my main character choice to Mesmer or Necromancer. I played the necromancer, and, while I understand they don’t really hit their stride till later, I enjoyed it. That being said, I really like the asthetics of Mesmer more, I have always liked illusionist/enchanter classes and this was no different. But, I am struggling with the Mesmer right now and really having a hard time liking it, even after looking at the class at 80. These are the main problems I am having:
1) Almost every class, including Necromancer, has a signet or something to allow increased movement speed. Mesmer only has Temporal Curtain on a long cooldown. I’m having a hard time getting around with the slow movement speed. Am I missing somthing here?
2) I knew going in that there wasn’t much AOE on a mesmer, but I didn’t realize how bad it was till I played one. I’m having a hard time tagging mobs in events. I was using Greatsword for the AOE attacks on it, but I think I am not doing enough damage for it to count, as I don’t get the xp when something dies. What are you guys using to tag the mobs?
3) Perhaps this will get better later, but I am struggling to take down enemies of any level. I prefer to stay at range, and since I MUST bring a focus to solo/level I have to use the scepter, but it attacks rather slowly and doesn’t do much. I can switch to Greatsword, but even then things aren’t really falling very quickly. Besides melee sword, what’s a good weapon to level with? I tried staff, but had the same problem as Greatsword.
I have watched the comprehensive Mesmer guide (which was fantastic BTW) but can’t seem to get over the hump and into level 40 where everyone says it gets better.
Should I just play Necromancer instead?

Our lack of swiftness is a minor inconvenience, but you’ll get used to it. If you run in a pack, we pick up enough swiftness that it’s not really a problem. Pick up Blink ASAP to help alleviate the issue of speed/travel.

As far as our AOE is concerned, we might not be as versatile as an elementalist but we have pretty good AOE skills. Staff skills offers the most, with chaos winds and chaos storm. 1h sword AOE is amazing and gives us invulnerability, if you spec 10 into Dueling traits you reduce the CD on the sword by 20% so Blurred Frenzy is back up quickly. The greatsword’s phantasm/clone does amazing AOE but with a long CD, but if you spec 20 into Domination and 20 into Illusions, the CD goes down dramatically.

Think of us less of a raw DPS class (though we are capable of some good DPS, especially bursts) and more of a pain in the butt. We are very hard to kill, with our ability to bounce around, disappear, clone etc. Once you get used to the class (it has a bit of a learning curve) it’s amazingly fun to play.

You’re right, lack of movement speed is just a minor inconvenience. I think I just got so used to it with my other characters that it just seems so very VERY slow on this character.
I’ll look into sword. I know you can port into range, and then use Blurred Frenzy for invulnerability, but I wasn’t aware that was an AOE attack. I may just have to play sword even if I don’t like it very much.
I was aware of Chaos Storm but Winds of Chaos only has the two bounces, so I didn’t see it as an AOE. Conversely, all but the 1 ability of Greatsword is AOE, and even Mind Stab is a bigger AOE than I expected.
I think I understand what you are saying about traiting. It seems cooldowns are the bane of Mesmers and traiting helps that a lot. That would explain why level 40 is when things open up for us, although even at 15, I will get a cooldown reducer. I experimented with the cooldown traits though, and it seems like they can only be stacked twice. In the Mists, I did as you suggested and traited Illusionist’s Celerity, Phantasmal Haste, and Greatsword Training, but the cooldown remained at 12 instead of dropping to 8.

Just two things:
Level 40 is for Deceptive Evasion
Phantasmal Haste shortens the the time between hits of the Phantasm not the CD.

1.) Our movement speed is pretty awful. If you just don’t play anyone else until you hit 80, you’ll forget and become used to it. That’s the only work around. Having said that, you do not NEED focus. You’re already slow, if you feel another offhand will suit you better, then whatever, just use it.

2.) Our AE is awful. When I play DE’s with any of my alts, I relish how easy it is to tag mobs and get drops from almost every one. You have to work your tail off to have half the efficiency a Necro has with DE tagging.

3.) But you know what? It’s not the end of the world, and the Mesmer is a lot of FUN to play (at least for me). I enjoyed and had a lot of success building toward a condition / survival spec (Illusions, Chaos, Dueling traits and stats). I carried a Staff since ~level 4 and still carry one. My swap weapons have changed regularly, but that Staff has been a constant. It’s slow, but it’s hard to die using one.

But as most folks say, once you have enough points, the class starts to get efficient and you see a large power gain. I’m not entirely sure every class doesn’t suffer from the same, but perhaps Mesmer is hit a little harder than others. The short of it is, if you’re not having fun, play something else.

1.) If you’re talking about moving around parts of a zone then yes, mesmer is slow but meh. As for combat, between Phase Retreat, Temporal Curtain, iLeap, Blink, as well as quite a few stuns, dazes and vanishes, we have a lot of mobility and manipulation of combat to get both into and out of harm’s way.

2.) Most of our AoE is from shatters and Chaos storm. If you’re just looking to tag mobs it’s probably easiest to drop Chaos storm and spam staff 1 or using Sword/Focus drop temporal curtain and run through spamming sword 1.

3.) Well there’s only 4 main hand weapons and you basically ruled out all 4 of them lol. I’ll tell you what I used to level and why:

Primary Weapon – Staff > Scepter > Sword > Greatsword
A.) Staff – best at low to mid levels. Decent damage, bounces to multiple targets and can buff you, impressive AoE, decent shield, the phantasm isn’t the best for soloing but it still puts out decent damage. Lots of boons when grouping with other people is always helpful as well.
B.) Scepter – clone generation, scepter 2 blocks an attack, deals dmg AND creates a clone. When paired with the Deception Evasion you’ll be unloading shatters pretty fast. Scepter 3 is pretty effective in solo pulls as well.
C.) Sword – Nice damage, vulnerability debuff, and cleaving AoE damage. It does however make you melee, obviously, so you run the risk of taking more dmg/having to heal more.
D.) Greatsword – I did NOT like greatsword for leveling one bit. Logically when you pull an enemy it aggroes on you and runs towards you to kill you. GSword 1 does less damage the closer you are to your target. The Phantasm is great, even the damage/snare of Gsword 2 is nice, but I didn’t like the rest of the skills enough to find them worth it for leveling. Greatsword shines better in pvp imo.

Offhands – Pistol > Focus > Torch = Sword
Which offhand you use pretty much depends on how you play. Many people pick up a trait that makes your illusions cause bleeding when they crit (The skill name escapes me atm), so for this the phantasms from pistol or focus are best since they can throw up more bleeds than the sword and torch phantasms. I wouldn’t, however, be too picky on phantasm damage while leveling and suggest considering which utility would you prefer to have; stun, temporal curtain, vanish, or block. I do generally prefer focus for movement speed and pulling mechanic of temporal curtain or pistol for the bleeds and that if find ranged illusions die less frequently than melee ones.

5.) My final point – Mesmer is a fairly technical class. It is not a faceroll class, not even at 80. We’re slow, squishy, and lack the burst of other classes. But with practice and proper traiting we can be relatively annoying to fight against. If you want more survivability, maybe necro is your calling but either way find what you like. Who knows maybe your true calling is a Guardian or Ele :P

The more you play your mesmer the more tricks you will learn.
There are so many combinations with weapons and traits that totally make your character play different.
No 2 mesmers you see are really thesame.

Those 3 points your brought up are all valid and we also feel them as a limitation, just read the countless topics about our slow movement.
Tagging mobs can be difficult, especially in big farmzergs in orr, i get the best out of my skills in a farmgroup under 7 ppl, stay away from the big zergs.
Our most potent aoe’s are shatters, as they are the only aoe we have that does any decent damage.
Then we have some pseudo aoe’s like chaos storm, feedback, mindstab, and some bounce skills, these are very situational and you can’t just throw em somewhere and hope it hits someone.

And why things get better at 40.
Well iirc (its been a while :p ) thats when you can get your second skillbook and open up master traits.
There are some nice ones inthere, and it allows you to specialize more.
Since a mesmer is not about raw damage but usually about creating chaos in the battlefield, we need all those traits that do add some special abilities to our character or skills.

All in all, mesmer is really fun and diverse to play, we got a bit of everything and nice utilities, it takes a while to become good with a mesmer and get the feeling, i still learn every day.
But there are also people that just hate to play a mesmer for the same reasons we like to play them.
It’s all really a personal thing, all i can say is, keep playing and maybe you’ll find it was worth it

1) Almost every class, including Necromancer, has a signet or something to allow increased movement speed. …

Well only 4 of 8 classes have such a signet. That’s not really “almost every”. I did all my leveling at normal running speed without feeling slow but it was my first character so …

I solved the problem with the Rune of Centaur + Mirror (healing skill). I’m now happily running through maps like a pony :-)

2) What are you guys using to tag the mobs?

Greatsword! Maybe you should invest more into Power and Precision. But let face it. Mesmers are awesome in 1vs1 but can’t deal with big groups of mobs like an Ele/Necro. Especially in crowded Orrh events during which mobs lifespan is about half a second.

3) Perhaps this will get better later, but I am struggling to take down enemies of any level.

First leave the scepter in your bag. Confusion is too much gambling for PVE (Will the monster attack now or in 5 sec?). Don’t use staff as main weapon on regular mobs because it takes ages to take them down (on the other hand staff is perfect against elites and for group play).
Greatsword OR sword+pistol is the way to go (or greatsword AND sword but I’m feeling too squishy without the staff). Trait your phantasms, buy berserker stuff and use clones generating utility skills to start every battle with some pets.

Mesmer leveling is a journey that keeps getting better as you progress. Hope you’ll get through this boring phase and eventually enjoy your character :-)

yes you should play something else instead.
it’s either you love it, or you change it.

1. true … mesmer sucks at perma speed
2. true and false … with staff / greatswort or sword it is possible to tag mobs but it is way harder than on other classes … try melee mesmer with shatter combo ^^
3. absolutly false … mesmer are able to bring down 1on1 normal enemies 5-10 lvl higher and veterans of same lvl with no problems … in fact mesmers are in pve on of the strongest 1on1 classes (if you play condition staff it takes some time but your are nearly invinceble; if you play power krit … it is in fact easy)

First off, you’re lucky you’re not in my boat: With this being my first MMO, and me playing the Mesmer to 80, all of the other classes put me to sleep in this game! I now have the opposite problem you do; I can’t find a decent class to play with after my mesmer!

But on to your questions:
1. If you’re at a low level, there really isn’t much you can do about movement speeds. Later on, you will get access to Runes of the Centaur, and they are very good at keeping you in swiftness at all times. Early on though, it’s just Focus and Blink (Take the time now to learn how to target Blink’s maximum distance quickly! Important skill at higher level play).

2. Your AoE’s come from you shatters, specifically Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration. This is why everyone says the class opens up at 40, Deceptive Evasion becomes available, and that make generating clones for Shatters WAY easier. Honestly, I was content with getting Gold level particiaption in DE for max Experience, since most of my upgrades were dropping regularly from other enemies or the Trading Post.

3. First thing you need to do is dump the Scepter, it’s really only useful on confusion/condition builds. Early on, I would tell you to get a Greatsword, since you’ll probably be using Power/Precision gear. Use iBeserker for the cripple to keep them away, Mirror Blade for an easy Clone generated next to them, while Spatial Surging them from far away. I would pick up a sword as well, besides being extremely good for boon stripping (Skale used to give me a hard time without it), you have invulnerability on a super short cooldown.

All in all, my progression was I played with the Greatsword/Sword and Focus up ’till 50, them switched to a confusion/condition build all the way ’till 80, and then had enough gold saved up to buy a full set of Berserker gear with Staff, Sword, and Focus.

Good luck!

Okay this has been really helpful, thank you.
First off, I will get over the movement speed. I didn’t know about Runes of the Centaur, that’ll be nice later on.
I very much believe that it is a matter of playing other classes (Guardian was my frist 80 but it wasn’t really very fun for me and I tried Necromancer after that) and expecting the same from Mesmer. Now that I have put a little more time into it, Mesmer is the most fun profession I have played. Staff is incredibly fun (but is a slow killer), especially Phase Retreat, and having played more with Greatsword, that’s really enjoyable, too.
I have to admit, though, Mesmer won’t cover everything. I struggle to tag things in Orr even with my Guardian, and it’ll be more difficult as a mesmer.
I think what I need to do is just have fun playing the mesmer and use other characters to run Orr/etc. Mesmer isn’t going to give me everything I am looking for, but it is going to be the most fun to play. I’ll just use other characters to support the non-gameplay aspects of the Mesmer.

Runeseeker.9304:

1. If you’re at a low level, there really isn’t much you can do about movement speeds. Later on, you will get access to Runes of the Centaur, and they are very good at keeping you in swiftness at all times. Early on though, it’s just Focus and Blink (Take the time now to learn how to target Blink’s maximum distance quickly! Important skill at higher level play).

If you’re just running around in PVE (and have access to the Centaur runes), a nifty trick is to use the healing mantra. With a 10sec CD, and with it working each time you cast the mantra (whether charging it or using a charge), you can have pretty much permanent swiftness without ever using a focus at all.

The only downside is if you actually need to heal – having the mantra slotted is a bit substandard when it comes to heals.

Ramiah.5648:

Mesmer isn’t going to give me everything I am looking for, but it is going to be the most fun to play. I’ll just use other characters to support the non-gameplay aspects of the Mesmer.

This. Mesmer might not be for anyone, but man, it sure is fun in both PvE and WvW. We may not be mobile when running point A to point B, but we’re all over the place when combat starts. :-)