Guild Wars 2

Good morning all….

I am just coming back and decided to try to remember HOW to play I was going to start a mesmer from level 1 and look for an “easy” guide to get the feel back on how to play…

I found this website off of a suggestion:
http://qtfy.eu/build/Mesmer

and was looking at the “Condition Mesmer” since its one of the easier rotations – However I have no idea how to spend my hero points as i’m leveling… Could someone provide a generic outline on how they would spend hero points first? (do I max out Illusions? go to a specific point then swap over to signets? etc)

Thank you guys.

Ok, so general caveat: leveling a mesmer sucks, don’t do it. Level with tomes of knowledge instead. Leveling a mesmer sucks because so much of what it can do is locked behind combinations of traits and utilities. Until you have most of the class unlocked, it feels awful.

Ok, disclaimer out of the way. You’ll want to avoid conditions at all cost because, surprise surprise, mesmer condition builds do not function at all without significant trait setup. The best way to level is going to be basically a slight hybrid of phantasm and shatter. You’ll want to use sword/focus+greatsword with signet of inspiration (for swiftness), blink (for mobility), and probably feedback or something for utility. You’ll want to get mostly through inspiration first, followed by domination and then dueling I guess.

The playstyle is basically summon phantasms -> yank mobs with focus -> blurred frenzy -> shatter. On veterans or other larger mobs, just leave out the shatter and let the phantasms chew on them. It’s pretty straightforward, but your damage will be fairly low compared to other classes. There’s nothing you can do about that, that’s just how mesmer is.

Edit: It’s also worth noting that QT builds are endgame builds primarily designed for challenging instanced content like high tier fractals and raids. While they will generally work to some extent in open world content, they’re not optimized for that and contain absolutely no consideration for leveling. Iirc a good leveling guide is Lazy Kai’s build, which is linked somewhere around here in the stickied guide list at the top.

+1 for tomes of knowledge.

I do spvp to get tomes and free exotic gear for each class, you can even to map completion whilst waiting for pvp games to load. It’s definitely worth doing for the exotic gear at least, saves you a ridiculous amount of money on zerker gear. Also if you get bored and have all the exotic gear you need then you can clear low level maps after consuming all your tomes so it’s ezpz and you don’t need to worry about build

FYI the reward track to do is arah because the armour box itself has zerker stats and the vendor for tokens also has zerker stats. There’s only one other track you can do which I have forgotten the name of, the other ones armour boxes don’t have a zerker stat option which obviously you want for the chest/legs as they cost the most tokens.

Edit: we are also on season now so you can get one free ascended armour/weapon and also get ascended shards of glory which you can spend to get free stat selectable trinkets and pvp reward tickets which if you get 100 you can buy a free ascended back piece too. (hint; dont use the ascended shards for armour as you can buy armour for the same price of marks in fractals so you don’t need to spend laurels for amulets and accessories, also dont use them for rings as you can get rings in fractals for 10 pristine relics xD)

I just finished leveling a mesmer the hard way and I had a lot of fun doing it. I haven’t leveled anything else to 80, though, so maybe I don’t know how difficult it was compared to other professions – but it wasn’t hard at all. You have clones and phantasms to take aggro from you, you have sword-2 to evade big attacks, you have greatsword-5 to interrupt big attacks…I didn’t try to, like, solo champs or anything but is Mesmer really that much worse? What professions are flying through the levels that much easier?

BrunoPuntzJones.5348:

I just finished leveling a mesmer the hard way and I had a lot of fun doing it. I haven’t leveled anything else to 80, though, so maybe I don’t know how difficult it was compared to other professions – but it wasn’t hard at all. You have clones and phantasms to take aggro from you, you have sword-2 to evade big attacks, you have greatsword-5 to interrupt big attacks…I didn’t try to, like, solo champs or anything but is Mesmer really that much worse? What professions are flying through the levels that much easier?

Power Mesmer has pretty much the lowest damage output of all classes.

Mesmers are capable of delivering a great burst, but after that our damage over time is average at best, while most of the other classes can keep dealing solid power damage constantly. This is bad for PvE; you fight multiple mobs spread wide all the time, and you can burst one or two down in a second, but killing the rest is initially slower than the other classes, making them faster to level in the long run.

Condi mesmer doesn’t work well in leveling either. In order for condi mesmer to function properly, you pretty much need all the exact traits equipped, which won’t be happening until close to level 80.

So in a nutshell, Mesmer is a bit slower to level than the other classes, because we rely on our opening burst, and after that our damage output is quite low before the burst combo comes off cooldown.