Guild Wars 2

So here’s my problem, while I do fine at roaming and killing isolated target I’m doing close to no damage in zerg vs zerg (20+ people on each side).

I’m playing a shatter build but clones dies too fast to be effective, tried phantasm build and same problem, so in the end I can’t really see how a mesmer is supposed to do decent/noticeable damage in such fights.

So how do you other mesmers manage to do decent damage in zerg vs zerg ? and which build would be the best to fit that role ?

Thanks

Pyroatheist has a great zerg build which can also be a great commander build. Here’s what he posted on one of my threads:
“So here’s my Mesmer build that I think is most suited for commanding: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Build-The-Zergmower
The things that you mentioned in your post, such as mantra utilities, signet of inspiration, and other things, are all fantastic things that Mesmer can do. However, you’re talking about a commander build, and that’s a different story.
As a commander, your job description is very specific. You need to not die, be able to lead charges straight into and through an enemy group, and provide a strong point of reference for your group to follow.
The last bit basically means no blinks. A commander isn’t easy to follow if they’re blinking around the battlefield. Not dying and leading charges means that you need hefty defense and preferably some access to stability.
My Zergmower build uses full dire gear to gain strong inherent defense, and uses the stability mantra in conjunction with mimic to allow for breaking through enemy groups without using teleports.”

This is really a great build. My friend used it and it really did tons of damage and survived well.

well mes is not very viable in wvw raids. our job is to veil and portal and maybe boonstrip, but in the current meta there really isnt much u can do. i tried every single build out there and the only one i stick to atm is a pu hybrid so i get to survive and deal a little dmg. my main dmg dealer is gs aa and berserker and then safe the blurred frenzy for survival.
try to not dive into zergs, stay with the casters if u are glassy. if u use shatter then go ganking backlines. but dealing lots of dmg to a a zerg is not possible for us until we get some aoe options.
shatters without ip will fail very often due to illusions dying to fast. in wvw u grab everything that is not ai heavy. so shtterworks because it doesnt require illusions, phantasm is tough atm as our phantasms get cced too often and die too fast, clne death is not viable as the guard,war, ele train cleanses condis too fast, glamour is not viable anymore due to being nerfed to the ground of the grounds, pu hybrid power builds sorta work, zergmower is not bad and u should give it a try, but again condis get cleared very easily.

I run a shatter build, but to do decent damage you need to have less than 2700 armor and focus on crit damage. This will allow to do 4k with BF and ~2k with Mind Wrack/IP (+2k for every illusion).

About other builds, conditions are cleansed quite often, and as we don’t apply tons of bleeds or confusion, is better not to focus on conditions. Also, phantasms die in a second, and require tons of skill to know when and where to land them.
So I see shatters the best and most reliable way to go for DPS.

Just accept that mesmer is not the ideal class for leading pug groups. Even if you spec full bunker, a guardian just has so much more utility and survivability in large fights. More so because others will stay on your tag, which means you’ll be in melee.

Organized groups are a different story, but don’t lead pugs on your mesmer. It’s totally doable, of course, just not as effective as guard or warrior.

Yeah there’s really no way around it. If you want good zerg performance, pick another class. Basicly, your mainhand weapon design is bad for zerg warfare:

Sword – Not enough damage to be used on auto through a zerg
Greatsword – Targetting issues meaning you never know wtf you’re going to hit
Scepter – Just ugh…
Staff – Too long cooldown on the AoE, its an opener and little more

Your offhand weapons are in a little better shape but even when they arent bugged they simple dont have the cooldown for constant AoE pressure.

You do have some skills that are good against zergs, but you will be limited because you also need a certain degree of survivability and cleansing. Null field is the best “omni” skill that’s good both for you and against zergs but the rest are often pushed away from the skillbar by other needed things. For example if you have to be the groups veilbot, you’re left with 1 skill – and that have to be either blink or stability mantra or you’ll die for sure. So you miss out on for example feedback which you really, really want available.

Bah, anyway… For me I mostly used two different zerg builds: the mantra healing glamour support and the heavy shatter. They are exactly what they sound like. The former is a survival/healing tank which runs on the commander, period. The later is a hit-and-run skirmisher that require alot more legwork and skill.

Since no longer running with dedicated raid guilds, I prefer the direct damage shatter build variants in zerg warfare for pretty much all situations. You can wreck absolute havoc on stackers and even if its hard to kill tanky individual players, a single burst often scare anyone away and let you go back to focusing on assisting the commander.

My staff guardian is 100x easier to play in a zerg, but the Mesmer is just so fun

What I think we do well in larger groups is punish the outliers. Also if the enemy has dedicated flanking teams, we excel at deflecting those (though we’re also quite good at flanking with Mirror, Feedback and Mimic).

I’m usually a shatter build and beyond veil / feedback / portal I feel pretty useless in blob vs blob combat. Obvious I avoid the melee train but even among the enemy squishies I find it really hard to set up an effective shatter combo due to random aoes and stability.

Guardian staff 1 makes me jealous

well on a condition build you actually want your clones dead asap so that would work out right? a condition bunker/glamour build should work pretty well, also using scepter has potential to apply 5 confusion stacks to multiple tagets… I’m looking to get into wvw for this 2nd season so I’ll probably go full Dire and post results

Anyone has videos from these builds?
I’m afraid to make an investiment and it not being that good.

lmperdigao.2567:

Anyone has videos from these builds?
I’m afraid to make an investiment and it not being that good.

Here you can find some videos of zerg mesmer builds:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Zerg-Mesmer-POV-Videos-organized-non-Pugs/

PD: When I have time I’ll upgrade some more videos I have recorded (little GvG included).

Thanks for all the answers,

Tbh I don’t really like the idea of being tanky and do medium damage , I’m really having fun when killing people fast , even if that mean being extremely squishy so I switched to full zerk and I’m now focusing on isolated target and people stepping out of the zerg and when I get the opportunity backlines, the squishiest ennemies dies most of the time from GS 1243 F1.

After reading all the answers I understood that , damage wise, we’re not at a good spot in zerg fights, so I decided to act as a roamer in zerg fights finishing wounded ones and quickly killing squishies while using some utilities mentioned in the replys to help my team, while I still feel limited in those fight I must say that I don’t feel useless anymore

thanks again

fighting squishy foes is not the problem… eles, necros, rangers, thieves, engineers – all fine. But fighting warriors and guardians – waste of time on a mesmer these days… gone are the days when we could jump a lone warrior and expect to win – be lucky to do 30% damage now – provided you can get your skills to actually work… and yeh, we are being forced to use full berz or sin armor just to do that much damage.

I run a standard 20/0/10/10/30 glamour build with a little clone death conditions here and there.

Get a GS, stand at max range, pop your feedbacks and null fields where they have the most effect. Spam clones like mad, they instantly die in a zerg and 5 people are guaranteed some conditions.

Get perplexity runes and you’re set.

Sure, it’s not a LOL10KBURST build but it does the job, provides some utility, some dmg and, most importantly, tags EVERYTHING. Really gets the loot bags flowing.

oh well we get bug fixes and no buffs for wvw raids, so be prepared to fullfil your veilbot and portal duty as u will never be allowed to do more than stalth your team and tw them. thats what the mesmer does, veil veil veil, portal, veil, tw, veil veil. u cant deal dmg u cant reall raid. u are standing with the caster, but u dont doe caster like aoe dmg because anet gives us ai and not aoe like a normal light armor class should have.
we are squishy half thief/half rangers pretty much…. u wanna have fun in a raid, go ele, war, guard or necro. dont go mes.

I like to play Greatsword/sword+torch shatter build if I’m zerging. I certainly do not get anything like the number of loot bags that a Guardian, Warrior, Necro and Ele might get, but I find that I can more or less move freely along the edges of a ZvZ picking off shortbow Thieves and poor staff Eles mid-meteor shower (actually very useful that one). I often use Illusionary Leap into a large group with Mirror Images to land a shatter spike, blinking away immediately after and using The Prestige to reset. I find it quite fun.

Simonoly.4352:

I like to play Greatsword/sword+torch shatter build if I’m zerging. I certainly do not get anything like the number of loot bags that a Guardian, Warrior, Necro and Ele might get, but I find that I can more or less move freely along the edges of a ZvZ picking off shortbow Thieves and poor staff Eles mid-meteor shower (actually very useful that one). I often use Illusionary Leap into a large group with Mirror Images to land a shatter spike, blinking away immediately after and using The Prestige to reset. I find it quite fun.

:) down a soft target, pop torch 4 then sword leap to his corpse and blurred frenzy + shatter followed by a decoy and blink out. It’s pretty funny when I pull it of in zergs.

selan.8354:

oh well we get bug fixes and no buffs for wvw raids, so be prepared to fullfil your veilbot and portal duty as u will never be allowed to do more than stalth your team and tw them. thats what the mesmer does, veil veil veil, portal, veil, tw, veil veil. u cant deal dmg u cant reall raid. u are standing with the caster, but u dont doe caster like aoe dmg because anet gives us ai and not aoe like a normal light armor class should have.
we are squishy half thief/half rangers pretty much…. u wanna have fun in a raid, go ele, war, guard or necro. dont go mes.

Well, we got a Gm trait that gives us 3s on ivulnerability for every kill, and with no CD. That is pretty a blast in zerg fights.

Ansau.7326:

selan.8354:

oh well we get bug fixes and no buffs for wvw raids, so be prepared to fullfil your veilbot and portal duty as u will never be allowed to do more than stalth your team and tw them. thats what the mesmer does, veil veil veil, portal, veil, tw, veil veil. u cant deal dmg u cant reall raid. u are standing with the caster, but u dont doe caster like aoe dmg because anet gives us ai and not aoe like a normal light armor class should have.
we are squishy half thief/half rangers pretty much…. u wanna have fun in a raid, go ele, war, guard or necro. dont go mes.

Well, we got a Gm trait that gives us 3s on ivulnerability for every kill, and with no CD. That is pretty a blast in zerg fights.

30 into dueling?im not really convinced with this one yet….. how bugged will it be? what builds will go with 30 in dueling? plus squishy….u gotta tag first in order to get the kill, so tagging is not that easy…. id rather see ip being removed and all shatters working without illusions without trait. now that would make a mes viable in zergfights

selan.8354:

Ansau.7326:

selan.8354:

oh well we get bug fixes and no buffs for wvw raids, so be prepared to fullfil your veilbot and portal duty as u will never be allowed to do more than stalth your team and tw them. thats what the mesmer does, veil veil veil, portal, veil, tw, veil veil. u cant deal dmg u cant reall raid. u are standing with the caster, but u dont doe caster like aoe dmg because anet gives us ai and not aoe like a normal light armor class should have.
we are squishy half thief/half rangers pretty much…. u wanna have fun in a raid, go ele, war, guard or necro. dont go mes.

Well, we got a Gm trait that gives us 3s on ivulnerability for every kill, and with no CD. That is pretty a blast in zerg fights.

30 into dueling?im not really convinced with this one yet….. how bugged will it be? what builds will go with 30 in dueling? plus squishy….u gotta tag first in order to get the kill, so tagging is not that easy…. id rather see ip being removed and all shatters working without illusions without trait. now that would make a mes viable in zergfights

I think the only thing is try it and see how it goes… to be fair I think Illusionary Membrane looks more reliable on paper, but hey, it’s protection (that you can gain in other ways) against diversion, and we can always use more tanky gear if we go 30 in dueling…

Mogar.9216:

Simonoly.4352:

I like to play Greatsword/sword+torch shatter build if I’m zerging. I certainly do not get anything like the number of loot bags that a Guardian, Warrior, Necro and Ele might get, but I find that I can more or less move freely along the edges of a ZvZ picking off shortbow Thieves and poor staff Eles mid-meteor shower (actually very useful that one). I often use Illusionary Leap into a large group with Mirror Images to land a shatter spike, blinking away immediately after and using The Prestige to reset. I find it quite fun.

:) down a soft target, pop torch 4 then sword leap to his corpse and blurred frenzy + shatter followed by a decoy and blink out. It’s pretty funny when I pull it of in zergs.

Yeh, you basically have to pretend you’re a backstab Thief. It sure is lovely when you hit max targets with a full shatter combo

selan.8354:

Ansau.7326:

selan.8354:

oh well we get bug fixes and no buffs for wvw raids, so be prepared to fullfil your veilbot and portal duty as u will never be allowed to do more than stalth your team and tw them. thats what the mesmer does, veil veil veil, portal, veil, tw, veil veil. u cant deal dmg u cant reall raid. u are standing with the caster, but u dont doe caster like aoe dmg because anet gives us ai and not aoe like a normal light armor class should have.
we are squishy half thief/half rangers pretty much…. u wanna have fun in a raid, go ele, war, guard or necro. dont go mes.

Well, we got a Gm trait that gives us 3s on ivulnerability for every kill, and with no CD. That is pretty a blast in zerg fights.

30 into dueling?im not really convinced with this one yet….. how bugged will it be? what builds will go with 30 in dueling? plus squishy….u gotta tag first in order to get the kill, so tagging is not that easy…. id rather see ip being removed and all shatters working without illusions without trait. now that would make a mes viable in zergfights

I’ve been raiding for about 3 months with a 20/20/0/0/30 boon ripping shatter build and with proper gear I don’t find me squishy, while being able to hit up to 3k with Mind Wrack and 4,5k with BF. Then, not much troubles to go for 30 in Dueling.

However, Ferocity will be a huge nerf to our damage. Will need to redo all gear combination to minimize the lost of crit damage.

PD: I’ve seen some of my videos and this new Dueling GM trait would have prevent some of my downed or kills and also some situations where I received lots of damage.

selan.8354:

well mes is not very viable in wvw raids. our job is to veil and portal and maybe boonstrip, but in the current meta there really isnt much u can do. i tried every single build out there and the only one i stick to atm is a pu hybrid so i get to survive and deal a little dmg. my main dmg dealer is gs aa and berserker and then safe the blurred frenzy for survival.
try to not dive into zergs, stay with the casters if u are glassy. if u use shatter then go ganking backlines. but dealing lots of dmg to a a zerg is not possible for us until we get some aoe options.
shatters without ip will fail very often due to illusions dying to fast. in wvw u grab everything that is not ai heavy. so shtterworks because it doesnt require illusions, phantasm is tough atm as our phantasms get cced too often and die too fast, clne death is not viable as the guard,war, ele train cleanses condis too fast, glamour is not viable anymore due to being nerfed to the ground of the grounds, pu hybrid power builds sorta work, zergmower is not bad and u should give it a try, but again condis get cleared very easily.

I think the problem is, many do not think outside the box. Hence why people you see the same things being used again and again. The same issue happened in GW1, anyone remember when Sorrow’s Furnace was released? Mesmers were not well liked – well a group of mesmers got together and started playing together and opinions slowly changed. The same needs to be done now.