Guild Wars 2

Any advice?

I mean, she’s lvl 10 now, and I want to get her to 80. After reaching 65, I’m gonna craft the remaining 15 levels. But I’d like some advice as to what traits/build to use getting there…

Thanks!

1-30 is rough. I just used greatsword / sword + torch to get to 40 and just WvW’d and did the storyline with last 40 levels.

Sword torch? I thought pistol would be a better choice dps wise? As pve is easy as hell anyway..

And just invest fully in power? What about traits?

I started making another mesmer recently. Granted, I deleted her at level 20 but that did give me a fair assessment of leveling one up since I haven’t done so in months.

The first thing I recommend is going for the greatsword. Mesmers are squishy starting out. If you haven’t gotten the rhythm of dodging, blinking and other damage-negating powers, you had best keep your distance and cripple as often as possible. Go for a power build. It’s easy to dance around enemies at lower levels so you don’t need any defensive stats yet. Also, get in the habit of shattering (F1 or F2 in this case) when an enemy is nearly dead. This will help you gauge the power of your shatters and ingrain it in muscle memory. Your illusions will self-shatter after an enemy is dead anyway so this maximizes their damage.

As soon as you get to level 7, get a second weapon! Seriously! If you’re doing an event, complete it and head over to the TP. If you’re doing a renowned heart, stop immediately and get a second weapon! The greatsword is good for sniping but you will need something better for enemies that like to get up close and personal, which is every single one of them with a melee attack! I suggest staff if you’re not comfortable with evading attacks yet as the bounces benefit from close quarters, scales decently with power and has a bit of condition damage early on. Those few ticks mean a lot against opponents that have little hp to begin with. If you’re more confidant, go with sword and focus. Both have higher damaging attacks but it will take a while to get the rhythm of when to strike and when to evade. The focus will also help you get around faster, which is something mesmers desperately need!

The first utilities I went for were Blink, Feedback and Nullfield. These are my bread & butter utilities. Others may be more useful in particular situations but these are on my bar almost all the time. Your mileage may vary but go for what you know.

Whenever I start a character, I always complete Queensdale. I love the scenery, I know the events, it’s always populated and it’s pretty easy to get around. You may want to do the same.

After that, I start skillpoint hunting while going somewhat out of my way to get waypoints. Both give pretty good experience and you’ll need skillpoints for unlocking more abilities anyway. Start with the starting zones for each race and progress as you see fit. There will be times when you’re still not leveling fast enough though. You can either do story missions (which give goof armor for their level) or grind dynamic events.

The first trait I went for is Illusionists Celerity. It’s 5 points into the Illusion line and 20% of the cooldown off of ALL illusion powers. This includes any that spawn clones and phantasms from weapons and utilities! It’s arguably one of the best traits for mesmers, second only to Deceptive Evasion. Get it!

At level 25 or so, you start getting equipment with two stats so you have a choice. you can go with power/precision and grind low level events until you’re high enough to go after more skillpoints or you can try something that I’ve barely tested. Get a staff, go for precision/condition damage and do renown hearts in high level areas. The latter is a high risk/high reward solution. Power means nothing to enemies 5 levels above you because glancing blows will half your damage. Crits will never be glancing blows and, as far as I know, condition damage doesn’t have anything working against it except a stack cap. With these two stats, you’ll do decent damage against enemies 5 levels above you and possibly damage enemies 8 levels above you. You’ll have to dodge a lot as one blow can down you but, if you can kite it, you can kill it. You’ll also look pro while doing so! It’s a great way to learn when to dodge and when to just move out of the way and save your dodge for something more threatening.

At level 40 and with 1 gold in your pocket, go to any trainer, get the second book and immediately put 10 points into dueling so you can get Deceptive Evasion! Now, every time you dodge, you leave a clone behind. This is stupidly powerful! It will drastically increase the speed in which you can create clones. That, in turn, makes shatters a lot more viable.

Level 40 is also good for one of the best event grinding spots in the game. In the Hirathi Hinterlands, there’s a cave with a champion giant. That the start of a meta event chain that will lead you into the centaur camp. Another meta event chain can be started there which ends with you killing another champion and getting a world chest. When I last played in this area, this could easily be repeated until you were sick of it and you will gain one level for each rotation. A lot of people shy away from it because that first champion has a ridiculous amount of HP and a ground stomp that can and will down everyone within 700 or so units of him. The bulk of your time will be spent taking him down. Once that happens, the rest just flows. If you decide to do this, be weary of diminished returns. I’ve done two rounds without noticing any effect but that could have changed recently.

When you get to 70+ and have balls of orichalcum, you can go to the Cursed Shore with Rampager stats (power/precision/condition damage). You will basically follow the zerg grinding dynamic events but be sure to hang back and focus on tagging as many enemies as possible. You do not want aggro as pretty much anything there can kill you, however, so many people are there that things will always die stupidly fast. You can level up at your leisure and gain some pretty good drops while doing so.

Wow dude, you should put this together i a guide somewhere. Thanks for the effort!

Greatsword seems like a good choice indeed. Do you know anything about this ‘beam’ function I keep hearing about?

II’ve got two other 80s so sword focus shouldnt be a problem.

Thanks again!

Look here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-Guide-to-PvE-Leveling-Guide/first#post850721

You are welcome, as is any critic…

Yeah, just read it! Apart from making me laugh and appealing to my lazy character, quite a useful guide!

I’m all set and decided how to proceed. Thanks all!