Guild Wars 2

EasymodeX.4062:

1. Pretty sure it would do enough damage.
2. If the target is going down in the next 0.75 seconds, you may not get enough Spatial Surge damage. One or two ticks of SS + the Mantra will guarantee a tag.
3. There’s not really much else in terms of utilities that would help with mob tagging.

I mean what, Mirror Images? You will typically have more than enough clones from abilities + DE to blow full MWs on cooldown. Still, it’s an option but that leaves 2 utility slots left.

Feedback is theoretically an option for the combo field to get damage on random stuff, but the damage is so low on the confusion it likely won’t tag anyways.

As I said, Spatial Surge might not be fast enough. Thats why I normally prefer Mind Stab for those situations. No need to switch the target, guaranteed tag, AoE.
Sometimes, everything is on cooldown, and sometimes, a single mob is just not worth all the trouble… ^^

Kai I want to thank you for being lazy (and this great guide).

Valior.4712:

Kai I want to thank you for being lazy (and this great guide).

Thx, I am happy if it helps people to enjoy the class.

ok i got the staff-…..

Now for the sigil <.< i’d like something to get some heal if needed.

And i saw i have a superior sigil of water and a sigil of blood ._. in my bank

Well, you have the choice beween:

Superior Sigil of Water:

30% Chance to Heal Nearby Allies (Cooldown: 10 Seconds)
Heals for 370 at level 80, and an additional 1 health for every 10 Healing Power.

and Sigil of Blood:

+30% chance to life steal on critical. (This effect cannot trigger more than once every 2 seconds.)
Deals a fixed 452 damage at level 80.
Heals for 453 at level 80, and an additional 1 health for every 10 Healing Power.

I’d go with blood any day. It heals like for seven times more (over 10sec in a best case scenario) on you and does damage. The group heal for 370 at 80 every 10 sec on Sigil of Water just doesn’t have much impact.

STOP!

Sigil of Blood bugs:

Player tests suggest a five-second cooldown, although the tool tip says it is two seconds.
The superior sigil does not work on two-handed weapons.

Is any Sigil or Rune in this game actually working as described? Has anyone tested the Rune of Blood on a staff?
I will try with a lesser one when I am back to my gaming laptop.

Update: I won’t be able to log-in today and probably for the next few days (RL in good ways). If someone could give feedback on those bugs, I would be thankful.

I just wanted to say: Awful, awful guide.

Following this guide has made me loose so much money I could have made farming Orr or running braindead speedfarm dungeons with my 80’s. Instead, I find myself having way too much fun and spending way too much time on my mesmer – a char which I used for storage until a few days ago. This also means I’ll have to spend gems on a new character slot soon to get my storage sorted out again. Extremely disappointing.

PS: for those who don’t get it: I don’t blame you… sarcasm takes effort and I was too lazy to try harder..

Oh, and thanks Kai ;-)

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

I just wanted to say: Awful, awful guide.

Following this guide has made me loose so much money I could have made farming Orr or running braindead speedfarm dungeons with my 80’s. Instead, I find myself having way too much fun and spending way too much time on my mesmer – a char which I used for storage until a few days ago. This also means I’ll have to spend gems on a new character slot soon to get my storage sorted out again. Extremely disappointing.

PS: for those who don’t get it: I don’t blame you… sarcasm takes effort and I was too lazy to try harder..

Oh, and thanks Kai ;-)

Hahaha, too bad I made you enjoy playing the mesmer… ^^

This might not be the most popular guide around the mesmer forum, but as long as people enjoy it and it helps new players to get a grip on the class, I will keep it up-to-date and eventually expand it.

Thank you for your feedback!

This is genius. It’s been a huge help for me leveling as a new Mesmer. They ought to stick this thread for others to use.

NightfallRob.3762:

This is genius. It’s been a huge help for me leveling as a new Mesmer. They ought to stick this thread for others to use.

Thank you very much. I think it would already help, if Fay put up the leveling guide on the Mesmer list. If builds get stickied, it results in monopolization, which I am not a big fan of.

No bigger changes will be done to my guides for this patch, as not much has changed.
I will keep an eye on the following changes though:

- Changed the way monsters react to players using stealth.
- Using stealth no longer resets NPC aggression tables.

I love this guide; thank you for helping the mesmer community!

I’ve started to use signet of inspiration as my third dungeon utility slot; double-stacking everyone’s boons at the right time can quickly amp up the might. Have you done the same?

Yeah, ever since Signet of Inspiration got buffed to work out of combat, it was on my third utility skill slot. I have mentioned it several times in this thread and others, but I still hesitate to change my guide from Feedback to the signet.
The reason is that I expect people anyway to adapt the utility skills to their preferences and if they level with my guide, they will know that Signet of Inspiration is a great addition.

We will see, maybe I will change it in one of the next updates though, but people with less experience might have a hard time with ranged mobs without Feedback.

For solo play I tend to run blink/decoy/feedback; survivability is king. In group dungeons personal stealth can be traded for team boon doubling via inspiration. All in the eye of the beholder, of course..

I’m a total noob to GW2, having just started playing this weekend. I looked through a lot of guides trying to get a feel for what first character to play — this is by far, FAR the best leveling guide I’ve stumbled across. Descriptive, clear, concise, and easy to understand for the acronymless and clueless. Thanks much, Kai. Trying this out tonight after work.

Hey!

Sorry, I have been afk for some days (and enjoyed it at least as much as playing GW2). Thank you for your feedback on the leveling guide. Actually, this is exactly the way I wanted my guide to be seen. Might have worked out… ^^

Fun fact: I started another Mesmer, just to go through the process of leveling again. I will probably refine some parts and make an additional post with alternative ways to approach situations and setups to face especially challenging encounters.

Oh my!

I have been thinking about creating a mesmer alt for a bit, and this is my first time in this sub-forum to get some ideas about the class, and I read this guide/thread!

Kai, thank you for this! Brilliant guide and humorous …
Makes me more convince to try a mes despite the fear of winding up like poor SadieDeAtreia …

Thank you Kai for this guide. It has been immensely helpful.

To players new to GW2 (like me): I found mesmer to be a great class in concept. After trying various things with mesmers (and deleting), I finally settled in and got rolling.

Still low level but have found myself following your guide to the letter so far, since it quite simply works great. And it makes sense. I still keep a staff handy for certain situations, but mostly use GS and Sword/Focus.

Nothing really to say about the build. I just wanted to say I find it a great guide because I think the humor you introduced is really funny. Entertaining and knowledgeable, nice.

How do you find event mob and wvw player tagging after the recent changes?
I just returned ankittenhinking about picking up my Mesmer but i don’t want to lose out on all the loot.

fadeaway.2807:

How do you find event mob and wvw player tagging after the recent changes?
I just returned ankittenhinking about picking up my Mesmer but i don’t want to lose out on all the loot.

I find it much easier. I would recommend running with GS or staff + sword/focus.

GS is good for #2,#3,#4, staff is good for #5 and the bounce. Sword is great because you can spam #1 without seeing the mob yet + #4 if you need to pull the mobs towards you before they are destroyed lol.

I had no problems since patch with DEs, nor did they feel easier, but I didn’t play too much lately.
Having a staff in your bags is always a good decision, especially for dragons and co.

Thanks for this guide, Kai. I had been playing a condition/boon bouncy staff build, but it just felt so sloooow to take out a single target. This is so much easier. I wish I’d been using it all along instead of waiting until level 73 to switch :P

Foosnark.1784:

Thanks for this guide, Kai. I had been playing a condition/boon bouncy staff build, but it just felt so sloooow to take out a single target. This is so much easier. I wish I’d been using it all along instead of waiting until level 73 to switch :P

Well, I leveled my first mesmer with a staff + condition build, before the GS buff (back than, GS was not a real option) and change around level 75 to a more DD build. At this time there weren’t too many guides around though and as it was my first character, I didn’t mind it to take some time (as I had no comparsion to other classes).

Everyone who leveled another profession before the mesmer would not understand how one can level a character like this. Gladly things have changed a bit… ^^

Some GS buffs and shatter nerfs on the horizon. While I obviously appreciate any buff made to GS #1, shatter nerfs won’t be helpful in PvE at all… ^^

Hopefully this builds will still be viable after the next patch(es)…

I think I switched to this at 80. When I discovered I was blowing up clones a lot everywhere, I figured 30 points in Illusion, why not? Learning Centaur runes were pretty much the speed buff from focus was icing, as I much prefer the staff. Frankly found myself doing 2k+ or more just with iZerk. In rares. I now own the entire Zhed set, just haven’t put it on.

If there’s a shatter nerf and GS buff, the second build might be a better option. At least in dungeons.

i levelled 30/30/0/0/10. just as viable as what you are using here. regardless of your spec it’s all bout high precision, clones on dodge and high damage, low cooldown burst.

guides are pointless imo. the bare minimum to level a mesmer effectively is 0/20/0/0/5. after that it’s all about what weapons you prefer to use.

btw, you don’t NEED to shatter to level quickly. my mesmer hit 80 in 57 hours played with zero crafting. yes it was my 2nd character, but my first asura and a different faction so it wasn’t an exact clone of my ranger (which hit 80 in only 72 hours played).

i rarely shattered unless i was in wvw or the phantasm is about to die. this is still how i play it.

ty for your lvling guide, but really, its not that hard to level a mesmer…. i were even faster in lvling my meser (1.5w to 80) then my ranger (nearly 4w to 80). Why dont yiu just do map completion and wvw.
IT IS REALLY EASY!

best regards,

There have been some statements in the two posts above, I want to give some feedback:

If you feel fine leveling a mesmer (or even easy), simply skip my leveling guide. I highly disagree that the fun to play a mesmer starts at level 40. It gets easier for sure, but even before, the profession works fine.

You do not have to shatter, in fact you probably can level a mesmer by just using auto attack. But why wouldn’t you utilize a mechanic, that offers a great damage boost and utility every time it is off cooldown, unless the mob will be dead without it in a heartbeat. If you still run 30/30/0/0/10 and do not shatter when you have clones up and F1 off cool-down, than you do not play very efficently (at least in PvE), you will just waste a lot of dps potential.

You can level any class in this game pretty fast (even without crafting). There are many ways to earn experience. If it took you longer to level a ranger than a mesmer, you have probably just not played as efficiently with that class.

If it is easy for you does not mean, that it is easy for everyone else. It is easy for me to read Japanese literature – so it is easy for everyone else. Nice, so I won’t have to translate all that lines. Makes sense to you? No.
Saying it is really easy (caps lock) doesn’t make it true for everyone does it. Think about it.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

There have been some statements in the two posts above, I want to give some feedback:

If you feel fine leveling a mesmer (or even easy), simply skip my leveling guide. I highly disagree that the fun to play a mesmer starts at level 40. It gets easier for sure, but even before, the profession works fine.

You do not have to shatter, in fact you probably can level a mesmer by just using auto attack. But why wouldn’t you utilize a mechanic, that offers a great damage boost and utility every time it is off cooldown, unless the mob will be dead without it in a heartbeat. If you still run 30/30/0/0/10 and do not shatter when you have clones up and F1 off cool-down, than you do not play very efficently (at least in PvE), you will just waste a lot of dps potential.

You can level any class in this game pretty fast (even without crafting). There are many ways to earn experience. If it took you longer to level a ranger than a mesmer, you have probably just not played as efficiently with that class.

If it is easy for you does not mean, that it is easy for everyone else. It is easy for me to read Japanese literature – so it is easy for everyone else. Nice, so I won’t have to translate all that lines. Makes sense to you? No.
Saying it is really easy (caps lock) doesn’t make it true for everyone does it. Think about it.

i not once used the word ‘fun’ in my post

for me, efficiency = fun. the mesmer is not efficient until it can unlock it’s 2nd tier of talents. it’s not alone in this regard.

the first tier talents dont offer much since you can’t complement them with clones on dodge or additional weapon-specific cooldown reduction traits. the class changes drastically after 40.

guardians are in the same boat imo. they don’t become truely efficient until they can get renewed justice which – wow look at that – comes after 40

The playstyle obviously changes post 40, which is reflected in my leveling guide.
But leveling itself means using what you get and being effective with what you got. That’s more or less what’s my guide about.

So efficiency with the tools available at time = fun? That’s how I see it… ^^

Have to thank you for this guide, even though I’ve been using it for a long time now. I did change it up a bit (Staff for more defensive/team support in high level fractal/dungeons over S/x) but I really love this build. It works very well end game with a daze/vun based shatter build (20/20’s calling card, IMO) being able to pop 25 stacks of vulnerability on a boss then time warp will see it die so much faster, it’s amazing.

Thanks

Thx for 50k+ views, I think I should celebrate this with some giveaway…
Can I send stuff to players on other servers and between NA and EU?

And patch day just around the corner, as always, I appreciate help to adapt to new circumstances afterwards.

The guide got a bit lost in time and might be a bit hard to find (espcecially the leveling guide), time for a push. ^^

Kai I reallyl ike this build It helped me to get the mesmer feeling

1. thing i actually want to point out. As runes your say centaur. Powers isn ice, swiftness isn ice.. but the bleed doesnt do a thing.
Let me explain: bleed ticks once every second. So you need full seconds to make it work. with 20 in domination you ll get 0,2 condition duration. The trait that gives illusions bleed gives a 5 second bleed on crit. 1,2×5 is 6 seconds bleed so 6 ticks.
The rune in amror gives 15% on your bleeds. So it goes 1,35×5 = 6,75 seconds of bleed makes still 6 ticks only. Therefor the bleed duration on the rune is wasted unless you take a sigil or sumthing on your weapon to get it up to 7.
But you said you use sigil of air.. Makes me wondering if you knew this and jsutl iek the centaur urnes for the speed and not for the bleed effect? Or if you didnt.. isnt mesmer runes a better go?
Or if you like the swiftness.. runes of the pack? good power.. swifness dura some more precision and fury might and swiftness when struck?

Does the greatsword phantasm bug not really annoy you?

Great guide but what about “Illusionary Elasticity”?
And what do you mean by “Focus, now you can have the runspeed buff up 24/7”. It has still a 13 second cooldown, even with “Blade Training” I think.

Thank you very much!

This guide helps me a lot.

I’m 31 & I’ve been doing what the leveling guide says before even reading it. Which means I am either intuitive and am grasping the mesmer concepts….or I’m a lazy sob.

However, I just can’t get behind the GS. It feels lackluster in so many ways (single target damage, wasted #3 skill, long CD pushback). I’ve been using staff instead and it’s amazing for my purposes (large aoe ethereal field, bouncing auto, short CD escape/clone, chaos armor). Just seems to work better at spamming illusions than GS too. I know that staff is a condition weapon, but at this level it’s getting the job done.

I also rock sword/focus with great recklessness and can get away with it thanks to the staff’s esape & chaos armor.

How is this build post patch?

TheDemon.4705:

How is this build post patch?

Shatter builds are more or less not affected, so I’d say it’s still perfectly fine.

Hey there, I’m still alive.

On the builds after this mess of a patch:

- Lazy Kai should be working as intended, even better than before with bouncing and zerker fix + zerker hp.

- Leveling guide needs some updates, works sort of though.

- Go Go Power Ranger build needs a slight update.

Just realized I’ve switched to this build this evening, after the patch kicked in

Updated the leveling guide in regards to the latest trait changes. There might now be a slight gamplay change felt at the transition to level 60 (as you will miss the shorter GS cooldowns) but overall you will do fine.

Still reflecting on how to adapt the Go Go Power Ranger build.

This made me lol but also helped me through the dreaded starting levels! Thanks (for being lazy) Kai!!

This is the guide I -always- recommend to my newbie Mesmer friends, and to a man, they always say ‘wow! Thanks! This made it so much more fun!’.

Hooray for Lazyness!

Thanks dude, i really like your guide.

Yes! Finally found a newbie-friendly guide! When I decided to play as mesmer and visited “Find your Mesmer Builds & Guides”, I was ready to run and hide. I don’t know much about GW2 yet, and there is so, so many guides and builds and NONE of them has explained the basics in such detail (if at all).
It would’ve been easier to find this if the Guide List had included the magic word “LEVELING”, it’s just “Lazy Kai’s PvE Guide” instead.

And this topic shouldn’t be buried, it should be highlighted and glittering.

Thanks Kai. Tested it over the weekend and you have saved me about a hundred thousand key presses and hours of frustration.

All guides should be Lazy guides. Let me know if you do one for other classes. Thief, Guardian and Elementalist need one as well… hint, hint….

Hey there!

I am very busy in RL and for now, I won’t do any other Lazy Kai guides for other classes, sorry. I still play Guild Wars 2 from time to time though and update this guide if needed.

I still think that going power and GS/Sword, Focus for leveling is the best way and that the Lazy Kai build is working great for PvE.

I am happy if the guide helps you out there to enjoy playing the mesmer. To be honest, I have no idea why the leveling guide never made it in Fay’s list but maybe someone should simply ask for it. So feel free and let Fay know if the guide helped you on your sometimes rocky way to 80. ^^

I made the request to get the build added.