Guild Wars 2

Ok, so I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with my mesmer. (Note: I play PVE, pretty much exclusively.) I look around on the forums, and it seems it’s all about chronomancer giving out alacrity and quickness, and nothing else. I know some people have put forth other builds, but it seems like this is the general sentiment, and you will get dropped from groups if you show up with a mesmer that is anything other than this.

Is this seriously what we have been reduced to?

Eh, I don’t think they were necessarily reduced to this. Before they were only brought for time warp, portal, and reflects. Now, its pretty much the same, except we have alacrity as an extra buff. Also, portal and reflects aren’t as useful because the “focus” (haha, ya sorry couldn’t help it) has been shifted towards raids and not many reflects have been implemented in the new content.

Yeah, I take issue with the phrase ‘reduced to this’. We weren’t reduced to this, we were brought up to this level. Previously we were only brought for portal, and time warp was used because it was good, but wasn’t enough to actually have us in a dungeon party at all.

Fay.2357:

Yeah, I take issue with the phrase ‘reduced to this’. We weren’t reduced to this, we were brought up to this level. Previously we were only brought for portal, and time warp was used because it was good, but wasn’t enough to actually have us in a dungeon party at all.

Ranger was the same way, brought for Frost Spirit and Spotter, but still brought nonetheless, and similarly, are brought more now for their increased support.

People wanted trinity-style raids for “hardcore” groups; this is what it comes down to. Some class is gonna have the low DPS numbers and will have high support or defensive capabilities. It’s part of the dynamic that a vocal minority demanded, and mesmer/chrono happens to be the low-DPS high-support/durability-potential build.

Before I recall seeing stuff about mesmers having 5 different kinds of builds (shatter, phantasm, support, interrupt, and something else…)

Now I am only seeing this one. That’s why I said reduced to.

bearshaman.3421:

Before I recall seeing stuff about mesmers having 5 different kinds of builds (shatter, phantasm, support, interrupt, and something else…)

Now I am only seeing this one. That’s why I said reduced to.

Shatter has never been anything other than absolute garbage in PvE.

Support…isn’t a build. All mesmers brought support (read: portal and time warp). That’s the only reason they were there, but you couldn’t make a build out of it.

Interrupt has never been anything other than absolute garbage in PvE with the exception of about 48 hours after a patch one time.

Phantasm has been what the meta PvE builds were always based around. It wasn’t good…but it was the best we had.

what about condi?

I read the dulfy.net guide and I know he doesn’t have the highest opinion of it, but I hear condi is really good at higher level fractals…

bearshaman.3421:

what about condi?

I read the dulfy.net guide and I know he doesn’t have the highest opinion of it, but I hear condi is really good at higher level fractals…

To get a feel for condie, take how garbage each of the garbage builds were, combine it, and use that combined pile of garbage as your judgement call.

Condie for mesmer is still absolute garbage, but it’s a lot better than it was.

bearshaman.3421:

what about condi?

I read the dulfy.net guide and I know he doesn’t have the highest opinion of it, but I hear condi is really good at higher level fractals…

Dulfy is a she. Condi is terrible, not sure why people keep insisting it is good anywhere when people could just ignore you and you never scratch them.

Heya, everyone!

Condi is fine, there is almost no difference to power … At least aslong as you use supportive skills like WoR, Mimic and WoA aswell TW ofc. The only thing that changes in that scenario is that your phantasms deal significantly more damge.

Yet I wouldn’t recommend it in general. You can use it for bossfights in fotm, that’s where it shines. Or it’s good if your party lacks condi in raids. But in an optimal raid group it’s garbage. You could be the ranged guy at Sabby tough, if your pt needs more heal from druid.

Support is the normal Chrono pretty much everyone plays. Max out boon dura, use shield phants and grant 100% quickness and alacrity to everyone in your squad. Your passive damage + your own damage is over 30k per second, wich makes us wanted for every raid and fotm party.

Max DpS is also an option. Either condi or power, both builds get up to 20k dps if done right. Yet since they drop your alacrity and quickness uptime so hard, It would require another Mesmer to be in your party and therefore you’d be better of replacing you with a Tempest. Those builds are only for open world or fotm when you are 2 Mes / or for fun ofc.

Heal-O-Mancer is the best viable option we’ve got for raids next to the meta. A Mesmer is able to support, tank and heal all at the same time. Still 100% quickness and alacrity uptime. And this allows you to replace the druid with a dps profession and prevents anyone to lose dps due tanking. Altough your own dps drops to a minimum, that’s a small sacrifice for what you will gain out of this. I really love this one, did serval full runs as a Heal-O-Mancer! <3

TL;DR: Mesmer is currently the profession with the biggest build diversity, altough there are still only 2-3 REALLY optimal builds for raids, it’s still more than most other professions who are stuck to one build.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Quote “TL;DR: Mesmer is currently the profession with the biggest build diversity”

you can be useless any way you like, its the mesmer meta.

Last I checked my ele has staff dps, D/Wh dps and D/Wh tank with some people having made healer (magi set) work very well too. That makes at least 4 builds, 2 of which do ludicrous dps with the other two doing ok damage to boot. Course that is for raids.

Oh and Madame le Blanc you keep forgetting about cleavage, it’s very important. Nearly every single class cleaves 2-3 targets with their higher damage autos and up to 5 with their other weapon skills. How many targets are mesmers cleaving in their dps builds outside of auto? Yeah not many.

Sorry but Mesmer isn’t competitive while damage is shared to a half baked pet mechanic which has all the down sides of AI controlled damage with added kitten you by dying when the target dies.

• Ele has only staff dps for gorsy and d/wh for rest as viable builds. There is no reason to heal or tank since they loose so much damage that you better replace them with an actual healer / tank. Those are 2 viable builds and 2 fun builds, just like condi or dps mes is a fun build.
• You never have to cleave in raid, you have to focus on one big target and all adds at sabby get cleaved away anyway, regardless how much damage the mesmer dealt to them. Hoever the fight gets shorter if the mesmer deals more damage to the boss itself. With your philosophy we should all play engi and spam bomb auto since it’s the strongest 5 target spam skill there is, and tempest air 5 is according to this garbage… Does this make sense? No, not at all.
• Your phants barely have to die during any bossfight at the raids if you do it right. It’s not like a damage focused Mesmer is gonna deal more damag than a tempest in any way, but he deals more than one if you include the passive damage others deals more because of him. That’s the whole point and if you don’t understand that simple “passive damage – concept” you shouldn’t try to set up any party at all.

desu.2514:

Quote “TL;DR: Mesmer is currently the profession with the biggest build diversity”

you can be useless any way you like, its the mesmer meta.

desu you savage

It needs to be mentioned that the ‘get up to 20k dps’ number is extremely circumstantial. You’ll hit that on VG probably 60% of the time when all is said and done. You won’t hit that on gorse ever, and you might hit it on sabetha 50% of the time, since the bosses swap out there. Additionally, condie mesmer lack of cleave is a HUGE issue for gorse and any FOTM that you run. Yeah, you can stack up damage on the boss once you get there, but you’ll be worse than useless for everything before that point.

Xyonon.3987:

• Ele has only staff dps for gorsy and d/wh for rest as viable builds. There is no reason to heal or tank since they loose so much damage that you better replace them with an actual healer / tank. Those are 2 viable builds and 2 fun builds, just like condi or dps mes is a fun build.

So I take it you were either lying or being facetious in that other thread saying mesmer had more than 1 viable build?

Oh and ele healer/tank isn’t “for fun” it’s when you don’t have a chrono tank/bad chrono tank or when you don’t have a druid for healer.

Xyonon.3987:

• You never have to cleave in raid, you have to focus on one big target and all adds at sabby get cleaved away anyway, regardless how much damage the mesmer dealt to them. Hoever the fight gets shorter if the mesmer deals more damage to the boss itself. With your philosophy we should all play engi and spam bomb auto since it’s the strongest 5 target spam skill there is, and tempest air 5 is according to this garbage… Does this make sense? No, not at all.

Firstly, do not mistake me for an idiot and do not distort what I said and make out that we should spam the strongest 5 target skill. I won’t take anything you say seriously if you continue with that tripe.

As for cleavage, I wasn’t just talking raids but everywhere. Seeing as we’re on the subject of raids though, you do need cleavage, gorseval for spirits, it helps on the way to gorseval, and it’s useful at Sabetha. That’s without mentioning how useful it is in 90% of the game either.

Xyonon.3987:

• Your phants barely have to die during any bossfight at the raids if you do it right. It’s not like a damage focused Mesmer is gonna deal more damag than a tempest in any way, but he deals more than one if you include the passive damage others deals more because of him. That’s the whole point and if you don’t understand that simple “passive damage – concept” you shouldn’t try to set up any party at all.

“DPS focused mesmer” isn’t passively increasing other people’s damage by much, you’ll be getting some alacrity out, maybe some quickness via TW but you won’t be keeping it up as much as a mesmer dedicated to that role which sacrifices personal damage for group damage buff. There is no such thing as “passive damage” with mesmer, you don’t have traits that do damage with no user intervention. I take it you meant damage done by buffing the party but again, that’s buffing party damage, not passive.

Additionally it doesn’t take much to realise that mesmer is borderline not required. Quickness? Well guard with a rev and boon duration food+stones can give you 9s on kitten CD (20% uptime) and comes at little cost to DPS which far exceeds mesmers. Soon as mesmer alacrity is at a point where you’re not overcoming that DPS gain vs packing a higher DPS class like guard that can provide the quickness, well, goodbye mesmer entirely.

Mesmer’s now got the thief spot for raids before the massive AA damage buffs. Although the thief wouldn’t have been allowed in to begin with :s

Such is the nature of a burst/stealth-oriented profession. Unfortunately mesmer can’t get such DPS because of its PvP-centric durability and design for group utility with the Chrono, which is unfortunately now lackluster compared to the Druid.

This is the community ANet catered to by implementing “hardcore” content aimed for a strict meta/group composition per the style of the forced trinity while enforcing a community built among friends and guildmembers rather than opening up to other players/pugs, which is the type of content many other games have traditionally offered, and why many of those games have vile communities or low player counts.

There’s a reason ANet sold this game initially on the principle that all content could be beaten by all classes and builds; following the more traditional/tinity dynamic creates a unsustainable future for the game and hurts the community. There’s also a reason this game was praised for its community before HoT. Raids are a huge backpedal away from this and unfortunately those who had the insight to see this coming to try and resist such implementations were not as loud as the “hardcore” speed-runner-wannabes whining about the “berserker meta” in the old dungeons.

There will always be optimization in games and strictly speaking enforcing a form of optimization in design will ultimately result in less diversity and stricter player decisions while marginalizing the non-mathematically-best solutions to uselessness due to communication opportunities such that these solutions can be given to even the dullest of players who don’t think about optimization at all.

Sad truth. And Anet’s solution has largely been to power-creep the week stuff for PvE instead of applying nerfs to the overpowered stuff or re-designing broken/bad ideas, even if this means the PvE encounters themselves need toning down.

slinkiestyew.6823:

Well, I would’ve liked to think Chrono would provide at least ONE build we could be ‘reduced to’. But after being abruptly kicked out of about five raid fights now BEFORE THE FIGHTS EVEN BEGIN simply because I’m a Mesmer and apparently ‘Mesmer dps sucks —-, play a different —-- class’, I’m starting to think it’s time to leave the class (or the game’s apparently awful community) :/

Yeah, I can bring Chrono to the Vale Guardian where boon-stripping still sees /some/ play. But it’s an inevitable kick once we down that boss because every(any) other class apparently outdoes us at the moment…? Perhaps it’s the awful luck I’ve had with absurdly selfish LFG groups of pricks, perhaps it’s the class. Either way, it’s certainly soured the experience for me.

Chrono is still an unarguable damage boost to the raid if played well. Anyone kicking a chrono on sight purely for being a chrono is just a bad and probably won’t finish the raid anyway.

Fay.2357:

slinkiestyew.6823:

Well, I would’ve liked to think Chrono would provide at least ONE build we could be ‘reduced to’. But after being abruptly kicked out of about five raid fights now BEFORE THE FIGHTS EVEN BEGIN simply because I’m a Mesmer and apparently ‘Mesmer dps sucks —-, play a different —-- class’, I’m starting to think it’s time to leave the class (or the game’s apparently awful community) :/

Yeah, I can bring Chrono to the Vale Guardian where boon-stripping still sees /some/ play. But it’s an inevitable kick once we down that boss because every(any) other class apparently outdoes us at the moment…? Perhaps it’s the awful luck I’ve had with absurdly selfish LFG groups of pricks, perhaps it’s the class. Either way, it’s certainly soured the experience for me.

Chrono is still an unarguable damage boost to the raid if played well. Anyone kicking a chrono on sight purely for being a chrono is just a bad and probably won’t finish the raid anyway.

It’s not uncommon for people to go on LFG for a boss and then between bosses kick sub-optimal DPS.

Why, I have no idea, seeing as you’ll spend more time on LFG/wasted on trash by not having someone there, but stupid people are stupid and they do it.