Guild Wars 2

I am a fairly recent newcomer to GW2, but a GW1 veteran that was there pretty much from the launch.

Does anyone else think the Mesmer Profession in GW2 has been really totally messed up?

My favourite profession in GW1 was always Mesmer, I loved the class through and through, I loved the way that they were so versatile and stylish, but all the good points of the class from GW1 seems to have been taken away, and replaced with rubbish.

For a start I totally detest the f1-f4 shatter skills I would love to see it replaced with something that actually works, something more along the lines of boosting original Dom/Illusion/Fast casting/Inspiration setup instead of this idiotic clone nonsense which to me just seems to be completely dysfunctional.

Maybe its because I haven’t reached high enough levels yet to really see the profession fully develop (currently lvl 32), but I am very disappointed so far, and find myself longing for my old Mesmser skills and builds, and find myself just really disliking the way the class has been done in this game.

Anyone else feel the same disappointment?

lvling a mesmer is tough as mesmer as probably the most traitheavy proffession in gw2, and as lvl 30 u barely got some traits, mesmer can be fun at max lvl, when u can actually get traits wich work properly together w shatters

anyway, lvling a mesmer is hell, i am glad it was my first proffession

Am I disappointed with the complete “idea” of the Mesmer as ArenaNet made it?

No, I am not. I am unhappy with the way they have class balance with the mesmer.

I didn’t play GuildWars much. I didn’t like it. Maybe I would have if I hadn’t of been playing another mmo at the time.

I think your feelings are natural though.

This Mesmer is completely different from the Gw1 Mesmer, honestly I do like this Mesmer, it’s just the direction the devs seem to be taking with it aren’t quite what I, nor from what I gather many other Mesmers agree with (along with some beyond infuriating, class crippling bugs). Currently as it stands, yes, I think the profession is totally Messed up.

Mesmer itself takes a long time to develop, the class will properly begin to unravel after lvl 60ish(When you start to unlock key traits), you will feel broken before then, that’s just the way the Mesmer is.
Honestly, despite the broken bugs and dev’s slowly making the Mesmer as unMesmer as possible, it is still an incredibly fun class. I say you stick with it, it’s not Gw1 mes, but it’s still a great design in the end.

Neptune.2570:

Honestly, despite the broken bugs and dev’s slowly making the Mesmer as unMesmer as possible, it is still an incredibly fun class. I say you stick with it, it’s not Gw1 mes, but it’s still a great design in the end.

This ^^

I was a GW1 Mesmer since its launch too, you’re right it has been changed dramaticly – almost unrecognisable. However it does become a really fun class to play and the Shatter skills are the things that make it dynamic – you are making choices when to sacrifice your resources for burst/boonstrips/rupts/invuln.

The trouble you’re feeling atm is down to your level – its completely understandable and I’m sure many mesmers here will agree. Once you get Deceptive Evasion (Dueling X) the class opens up and becomes so fun. Stick with it, it won’t be the Mesmer you know from GW1 but it definitely has a uniqueness and playstyle that keeps it apart from the other GW2 classes imo.

As a GW1 veteran I’ll tell you this.
You will not find any skills that are so much fun and punishing as you had in GW1! There are no hexes what makes the character of the mesmer rely on these (imo) dump pets that get killed all the time and do nothing else than dealing damage over time (clones included). It doesn’t offer options to play smart or use combos like it was possible in GW1.
In early beta of GW2 they wanted the iMage (torch phantasm) to attack every time the target uses a skill. That is a great mechanic but it turned out to be the most useless phantasm because it just adds a few stacks of confusion.
As a mesmer in GW2 you won’t ever think “HAHAHA he just killed himself with my hex!” Confusion as damage source was nerfed by -50% and in PvE the mobs just do not attack often enough.
Regarding the next fun aspect from guild wars 1: Interrupting!
Interruption Builds exist but they are harder to play since you don’t have a skill monitor in this game and are countered by all professions that use instantcasts and stability.
In PvE the dangerous attacks are just dodged and bosses have these defiant stacks that prevents interruption!

But here we have pink butterfly effects :>

I like the active gameplay in Guild Wars 2, but I constantly keep logging back to Guild Wars where the Mesmer profession is much more interesting. There’s just so many Mesmer abilities that’s gone out the window in the Guild Wars 2’s implementation. We do have interrupts, but there’s so much instant-cast, it would be nice with a interrupt Hex that last for 2-3 seconds here and there.. you know, to put on your enemy instead (clever players will just auto-attack it away and/or wait). There’s absolutely no type of skill cloning/stealing in Guild Wars 2. That was a fun mechanic we have in Guild Wars.. what ever happened to those? I want them to take the devs on a proper playthrough of the first game (as a Mesmer) and get inspired for alterations/additions to this new implementation of theirs. It’s fun, but it could be so much more.

This game also no longer puts any requirement on the opponents to learn when to-, and when not to attack. It’s been simplified so much. It’s all about bashing buttons and the skill ceiling is basically left down at your ankles these days.

If I could have a vote, I’d say start by re-working Confusion as a whole. No longer should it be able to trigger multiple times as-is, but rather once, and that one time for quite a bit of damage instead. The duration for which it stays on your opponent should be short as well, only 2-4 seconds. That way it would also be useful to us in PvE, as we would place it on the PvE target before an attack was going to be done, basically giving us something to time on our own and raising the skill ceiling by an inch.

Me Games Ma.8426:

But here we have pink butterfly effects :>

I think this is the reason I keep coming back to the profession. Those silly, purple/pink butterfly effects are so entertaining! Now if only I could put Dreamer on my mesmer, I’d be one happy mes.

But on topic, yes it’s mostly your level at the moment. Leveling a mesmer before the April patch was a pain in the kitten but after, oh my dog I can’t even imagine starting a new one from level one. This is a very, very, very trait dependent profession and I don’t know what the devs were thinking. Like someone else mentioned, once you get access to that Deceptive evasion you will start to get into the mesmer groove. Hang in there and remember, we have the butterflies!

Thanks for your replies. Its nice to know that I am not alone in my thoughts.

My problem I think, is with this whole idiotic clone system (although that may be because it just doesn’t seem to function at all properly at my level? ~ although even if that’s the case it seems just messed up; all other classes that I have played are fun and seem to work whatever level you are at).
Some people have mentioned bugs…I presume they are referring to the fact that quite often the clones do a whole lot of zero damage to any target (watching the damage counter registering a whole ream of 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0’s with an occasional 14 or something? the only clone that seems to guarantee consistent damage is the pistol clone) and also clones particularly those summoned with staff just stand there and don’t bother to attack at all (presumably because they would do zero damage anyway?)

At this point I don’t think I will ever get on with this class the way that it is structured at the moment; I would certainly like to see an almost complete reworking of it, and bring it much more into line with what the Mesmer class used to be like in GW1).

My main point of consternation is as someone else brought up, the lack of any real interruption. One of the strongest points of Mesmer, and one of the reasons I used to like it so much in GW1 was the interrupt specialisation of Mesmers. (That excellent and satisfying feeling of being able to take control of how the battle went via tactics and finesse rather than brute strength).

Overall I feel greatly saddened by the demise of such a unique class, and yes one can only but wonder at what on earth the developers were thinking of when they redesigned it like it is now.

Shatters….either you shatter them or you dont. How are you using them? I would advise watching some youtube videos on proper shattering, even if you dont intend on playing a high damange shatter build, its still useful to know the mechanics of it and what they can do for you. Yes, they are a huge departure from GW1. There’s nothing you can do about that.

Secondly, clones (not phantasms) do very little damage. They are meant to confuse opponents or stack conditions (if traited) with their attack or on their death (and shattering does not mean death). Good players in wvw / pvp can tell the real player from a clone quite easily. Perhaps not working as intended but there’s not much to be done about that.

The staff clone attack stacks a random condition and bounces back to you as a boon. Very useful in condition based builds.

There are interrupts. There’s shatter 3, weapon interrupts on your focus, gs and pistol, signet and mantra interrupts too! And you can trait yourself to take advantage of interrupts when you land them.

If PVE is what you are mostly doing then a mesmer is a tough grind until the higher levels. But in WVW/PVP it’s still a great class, just in need of some fixes and tweaks.

Lastly, dont feel saddened. Its just a game.

Learn the nuances of the class by playing more or………….dont.

Sadly, they were never going to be able to do justice to GW1 mesmers. Mesmers interacted primarily with energy bars and skill bars. They took out energy. In PvE, interacting with skill bars would trivialize too much, because enemies only have a few attacks at most. In PvP, they wanted to get away from interrupts because they rely too much on ping, and they wanted to get rid of hexes (which were mesmers’ punishes and disables) because they required new players to learn too many different skills and abilities.

Perhaps one could also point to Scepter 2 ( Illusionary Counter – Counterspell ), that feels a little like GW1 punishing, even though it is reversed. Applying the Confusion condition is also quite similar to GW1’s Visions of Regret. So yeah, I see some similarities – but GW2’s gameplay is much less tactics, perhaps apart from smaller scale WvW battles.

I don’t see why people complain that mesmer is extremely hard to level. I started my mesmer without any previous knowledge of them, and played with GS/Staff pretty much until 80 with no issues. With illusions I found that there were few champs in my exploring that I COULDN’T solo. I hit 80 and wizened up and dropped ranged mesmer completely, and immediately found out how useful sw/sw sw/pistol or sw/sw sw/focus can be. I can only imagine mesmer being difficult to level up if you’re using the worst PVE weapon known to man, mesmer scepter.

Gw1 mesmer is anet most original work. Until mesmer, there was nothing like mesmer. A profession that works by making a mess of it’s opponents skills.

Gw2 is in it’s own way unique. I haven’t seen or played anything quite like the gw2 mesmer in other games, yet the dynamic of playing via disrupting, interferring and ultimately ruining someone else’s play feels kinda gone. It is now essentially a DPS profession just like all the rest. The gw1 mesmer could defeat without actually hitting with any damage once. The more you got interrupted or ignored hexes, the more you defeated yourself.

This is why I’d love to see a Mesmer set-up that focuses on endurance manipulation. Similar to energy manipulation in GW1. It would be absolutely bonkers, to blow a Thief up based on how much endurance he has.

Howdy OP. I too was a pretty hard core gw1 player who migrated over to gw2 during beta and was started at head start. Initially I passed over the Mesmer as I seemed really unimpressed with how they worked compared to my old Gw1 setup.

Well, after a year and 80ing out warrior, Ranger, Necro, and Guard.. I finally decided to work on the mesmer. I absolutely despised it. Leveling it was a pain in the kitten all the way to kitten near 80. The clones hit for less than nothing, I seemed to implode when an enemy so much as looked at me, and I was a wreck. I was determined to finish it though as I wanted all 8 professions at 80.

Something changed at the upper levels of the profession though. With the grandmaster tier of traits unlocked, and thus a new plethora of builds available I suddenly found myself playing one of the most fun and versatile class of the game. I could run a lock down build in wvw, or add some utility, or even break out full dps is small scale battles while adding a lot of disorientation to my opponents not just helping myself, but my team as well.

Before you know it I was addicted. Mesmer may not be the class it once was… but I encourage you to stick it out. It really does get a hell of a lot better.

I agree that the GW1 Mesmer was more interesting, but for two reasons I consider such an implementation very unrealistic:

1. Everyone already cries bloody murder if Mesmers get the tiniest buff or don’t get 2-3 nerfs every patch.
2. GW2 has no dedicated roleplaying classes. GW1’s Mesmer was a hybrid between Controller and Debuffer. Neither role actively exists as a classes’ basic purpose in GW1, and as such the whole implementation wouldn’t make sense.