Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

So I’ve played GW2 since release pretty much, with a month off a while back. I have over 600 hours on my Mesmer and have played almost every build style from Phantasm, shatter, suicide clones, condition staff, glamour… you name it.

I recently leveled an Elementalist to 80 and have about 100 hours on her now as well. I’m trying to decide which I want to invest the rest of my GW2 time in, and while I want to stick with my Mesmer, it just doesn’t feel as fun or active as my Elementalist.

Even with both Staff or D/D on Ele, nothing on my Mesmer feels as action-oriented.

What’s the most “exciting” Mesmer build you’ve played, and is there a way to make me love the class again? I’ve got a Dawn and about 85% of my Legendary mats, so I’m trying to decide whether I make a Sunrise on Mesmer and play GS (Phantasm or Shatter), or make a Bifrost on Ele and staff it out.

Anyone played both classes and had similar thoughts? What keeps you coming back to Mesmer?

I half levelled a conjoured weapon ele (axe/hammer/FGS – the bow is awful tbh), mainly to get Vigil armour, but also because I wanted to try it out for myself after reading the pve lightning hammer build thread.

While it is far more “in your face” and action oriented than mesmer, I eventually found it to be lacking in… sophistication. Yeah it’s fun to just smash things all over the place, and the mobility is great. But once the novelty wears off it does become quite repetitive.

If anything it made me appreciate the mesmer even more.
I’m playing a GS/staff mesmer 10/25/10/5/20 with all on death traits and elasticity. Currently in testing stages and deciding which gear to go for, but played very much “in your face” (not full zerker), and the GS is very satisfying to use in mid range (and complements the staff which is amazing in mid range) – you don’t need to be within touching distance of your target as with sword, but likewise you don’t have to play from 1200 range just because it’s supposed to be a “ranged weapon”.

Curunen:
I was playing a “suicide clones” build before I left to level my Elementalist and LOVED it, but found that the damage just wasn’t enough because it was a) Condition Damage and b) unreliable.

Is Greatsword suicide clones really viable? I’d love to rock a GS/Staff build that focuses on more than just letting Phantasms do the work, or just Shattering every 10 seconds. I really enjoyed the Suicide Clones build when I played it but wearing Prec/Tough/Cond damage and having 1400 Cond damage, I still didn’t feel all that useful.

Especially because both staff/GS clones spawn at range on dodge and some effects(staff), thus negating any suicide effects in most situations…

There are a couple of very skill-intensive support/tank hybrid builds out there that make use of 1-2 Mantras and prefer to keep clones and phantasms around. Not tons of damage, but a proper one can give out every boon but Stability to your whole party without terribly much difficulty on a low-ish CD.

As to suicide clones, the build is actually a lot better recently because condition duration now applies to the conditions you’re putting out. How much better I don’t know, but it’s certainly given a major boost to a lot of support and condition damage builds that are lying around.

I have both professions and currently I like the ele a little bit better.

Yeah, you don’t have too many builds for PvP but I love how fast the ele gameplay is. Especially D/D. Jumping into the fight, a few spells, dodging back out, some more spells, jump back in. That’s pretty much going on non-stop. The APM feels pretty high to me and that’s something I really like. You can always use a new skill which just came off CD.

The mesmer doesn’t seem as fast to me but you got a whole different gameplay here. You can play “mind games” and once you pull those off successfully it is the best feeling in the game imo. Sadly they don’t have interrupt mesmers anymore like they did in GW. If that kind of build would be back in GW2 I would play nothing but mesmer.

Really fast gameplay and you can play those mind games. The best of both worlds.

What I’m working on is not pure suicide clones, but a hybrid (very hybrid) build which is a disguised power build.

The suicide clones are there for:
- distraction (explosions are disorienting to the enemy)
- added conditions (for iwarlock damage for example) – vulnerability, cripple and weakness are debuffs so no need for condition damage. Confusion/burning/bleeding are a bonus so I am boosting condition damage by a little bit, but it is supplementary to power.
- has an effect when I don’t shatter – I’m using 3% damage for each illusion trait, so I only shatter when I can get 3 more up immediately, or when I’m being focused and all the clones are too far away.

Most of the damage is pure power/crit from GS with the conditions supplementing that – a few hundred here and there and it does add up.

I would post my build on the calculator, but I’m not happy with armour or trinkets yet (debating soldier/berseker/rampager hybrid).

Key thing is as you probably know to stay near your clones and make your enemy chase you through them, and timing when you hit them with direct damage (could be a shatter if necessary). What I’m doing often is running up to the target and dodging backwards (leaving a clone) followed by mirror blade for example.

Of course, I have mirror images and decoy as utilities. The third is changable – mostly either pain inverter, mantra of resolve or blink.
I do love pain inverter when I can use it – if a couple of clones go boom, you pop mirror images, CoF shatter and pain inverter, the confusion is more of a deterrent but it does give non-negligable damage (in the meantime you pop izerker, mirror blade, iwave or whatever).

It doesn’t really excel in any area – not pure zerker, not conditions, not defense, not shatter… but it does hit in ALL areas (majority power) making it harder to counter.

If it has any weakness it is fairly predictable with weapon/skill cycling and probably more importantly it has very low mobility – chasing and running are tough and require a lot of trickery (stealth, phase retreat, cripple, blink), so picking and choosing fights is important. It is painful to run around. If I had 5 more trait points I’d grab compounding celerity, but I can’t sacrifice any points elsewhere.

Underwater with trident this thing is pure beast mode, and you have the mobility of the spear which makes up for the build’s biggest weakness.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.3|1.1g.h4|6.1g.0|1g.73.1g.73.1g.73.1g.73.1g.73.1g.73|1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61|k5a.k5a.a5.0.k37|0.0|31.35.3d.39.0|e

I am going to try and revitalize my old hybrid/active clones build as well. It sounds very, very similar to what you are trying to achieve with the Mesmer, which I as well hope to play it like. It doesn’t excel at everything 100%, but it’s got some pretty kitten good Power/Crit and Crit %, while also still being great at kiting with the 2 “on clone death” traits.

I went with full berserker + Centaur runes (mostly for the almost perma swiftness), and then berserker + beryl trinkets to give me a bit more HP, but still focus on killing stuff. I think as a Mesmer we have enough in our weapon arsenal (especially with staff as my swap) to stay alive, and if it reaches the point of someone beating on us: A few more vit/toughness isn’t going to help.

I’d keep GS equipped most often, and then Staff when kitten starts to hit the fan and I need some control. Hopefully this rekindles my love for the class and keeps me busy with clone Cooldowns and Shatters alike in a fight.

Nice, hope it works for you again.

Yeah mine is similar, although I went for phantasms having retaliation and confusing combatants rather than GS training, which means I am switching weapons more instead of staying in GS most of the time – in fact I often stay more in staff than in GS. It’s nice to have enemies also punished for attacking phantasms, and confusing combatants just adds one more condition for them to have to deal with – with 3 conditions on death and more from weapons they might waste condition removal and pay less attention to what is really damaging them.

I’m contemplating pieces of sentinel armour because its easy to get off the TP and makes up a little bit of missing health (I like to have over 18k to feel comfortable).
Planning on melandru runes and -condition duration food for this, although not yet bought because I’m umming and arring about armour!
I was also planning to use beryl on trinkets, but if I go with some sentinel gear then I might go full berseker/rampager with some coral and ruby.

I like how fluid it is in combat – compared to say S/x where it is point to point burst.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1|c.1g.h16.d.1k.h1j|6.1o.h1l|1g.a3.1g.a3.1o.a2.1o.a2.1g.a2.1o.a2|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1o.63.1o.63.8g.63|0.k4a.k4a.0.u57b|0.0|31.35.3d.39.3q|e

I’m just working off of memory, but this is kinda close to how my Mesmer looks right now. My general approach is rather similar to Curunen, but instead of hanging back with the GS I get up close and personal with the Sword/Focus. The staff is mostly used to get some breathing room while still keeping pressure with conditions. Then I throw down a Chaos Storm and I-Leap/Swap for the combo.

I really like this set up because it allows a high amount of flexibility. I can easily swap major traits in the Chaos and Illusion lines if I want to focus a little more or less on conditions.

I might try and go 20/25/10/0/15, so I can get Confusion on clone death as well. I’d lose my extra bounce on attacks, but if I’m sitting in GS mostly that only effects Mirror Blade, and I think as a “suicide clone/power” build it’d be worth it to have that extra confusion – especially with how fast I’m pumping out illusions and how fast they’d die. (Edit: then again maybe not, because confusion only tics for 153 with my gear).

I think my general “rotation” would be to have Mirror Blade on constant cooldown for clone dispatching, and I would probably utilize Blink in fights to blink in close, dodge roll out, back to max range so my GS hits as hard as it can. Running in and dodge rolling out when possible would be good too.

Without stacking 1000+ condition damage, I don’t see the Staff auto-attack beating GS in damage, especially when I’m wearing full berserker gear with a 40%+ crit chance and 85% crit dmg. Sure, it would be nice to sit in the fight as Staff and get boons and have my clones right there, but I think the damage potential of the build is higher with a GS on the back lines. In my build at least.

I’m more just discussing out loud to convince myself how I’m going to play this now. comments appreciated

when start playing my main been mesmer with rare bleed build and full rampager set with 100% crit rate. about 400h. then abit bored of mesmer i leveled guard, thief, ranger, then D/D water elementalist. i think “omg, so cool, im cant be beaten. im so strong!!!” but after a while i understand, its double bored against mesmer, ele just spam piano button without any tactics. so i back to mesmer and i happy. try-ed a lot of builds, buy alot of different gears. and change it almost every dayfor more excitement

drongas.4189:

when start playing my main been mesmer with rare bleed build and full rampager set with 100% crit rate. about 400h. then abit bored of mesmer i leveled guard, thief, ranger, then D/D water elementalist. i think “omg, so cool, im cant be beaten. im so strong!!!” but after a while i understand, its double bored against mesmer, ele just spam piano button without any tactics. so i back to mesmer and i happy. try-ed a lot of builds, buy alot of different gears. and change it almost every dayfor more excitement

D/D ele was limited to 2 builds also almost similar…
That not because was OP or anything (outside PvP it wasn t)…

Infact what most players never realizes is that to play www/pve ele needs DAMAGE.
You can’t tank in zergs anyway (unless you pay in tier 8 ) and if you don t kill your target in 2 minutes you are more likely to have your fights interrupted by other players….

Thus if you can show me how you can get away with a balanced/glass cannon D/D ele that is considered by BEST known player as the most difficult and less rewarding profession i’d suggest you to not spread things that any ele players know is just propaganda….

just to explain that and stay IT the best part of ele are combos…
Ring of fire into EA earth + earthquake and Churning or getting fury with a leap finisher….(obviously a decent player would avoid most of that)
So you choose your variant of combos while defending AND attacking its a concentrate of separate actions…..
(unless you play that silly PvP…where game modes are the issues and not the professions).

Despite all D/D died after patch beacuse anyone can run away from you and with the lack of weapon swap even in full zerker you can t kill anything before it flees.

Now there is a mesmer build that feels like the same and is shatter DPS.
You just use different tactics.
the range change between a staff/GS and sword 3 paired with 2 while spamming clones and shatters is as much fin and quite similar actually…

You still have to keep your eyes on many things and instead of combos you balance your shatters/clones/phantasm to get the best result according to situation

As ele is not a fixed pattern its like playing a piano but on a jazz jam session where you adapt and react.

With staff you have a similar issue to D/D ele post nerf…GS if you are lucky and iZerker works you can still do something.

Its not the best build for WWW but its the most similar to ele…and you get more damage on top of it.

You will suffer a lot GS izerker bug unfortunately.

I have both profs and play them both equally.

It’s matter of a base philosophy in how the profession is built imo.

Elementalists can do lots of different things at once. You use traits to improve areas of their build (like condition cleansing or boon spreading with Water/Arcana builds) but you never get rid of the bleeding dmg of earth attunement or direct fire attunment dmg.

So, you have a jack-of-all-trades base, where traits improves a certain area.

Mesmers are the opposite: they can do a lot of stuff equally – sometimes better – than a ele, but they rely totally on their traits. The base mesmer skillset is weak: with proper traits it’s a bomb. This means that you can do one thing at time.

So, you have a “weak” base, but strong traits, which means you can do lots of differet stuff, and very well, but not at once with the same build.

Well to be fair, especially a D/D Elementalist is a very explosive and agile class to play. Other classes can and will appear sluggish by comparison, but this doesn’t make them weaker or less fun, just slower (much like a TBS isn’t inherently inferior to a RTS).

I run 20/20/0/25/5 build mainly pve and with sword/ focus you will spend a lot of time “in your face” and have good mob control as well. Leaps, pulls, blur, blink, etc. will have you moving in and out of melee range a lot. Phantasmal Warden will do phenomenal damage once you get used to it and when/where to place in conjunction with cc.

For a secondary I use GS. Even bugged it puts out decent damage on trash mobs and the cc is nice in places. Switch to staff as pertinent. Times when you need that chaos armor, phase retreat or the hard hitting ranged phantasms on bosses.

Staff is not exciting for me it’s mainly a defensive weapon and condition on mes imho is boring at best.

This is mainly pve advice, but much of it can be adapted to wvw as well, and of course shatter on c/d, when burst is necessary.

Gw2 made phantasms so overpowered that everything else feels weak. I have a build with Mesmer that will shine and is fun to play. But phantasm Mesmer is its absolute destroyer. No skill involved at all with phantasm Mesmer. If they nerf new more fun Mesmer builds can pop up.

Probably just a playstyle thing…go with what you love, I say. I play mostly support with my mesmer, and personally don’t find it boring at all. I find the variable utility really neat, and I like tweaking the build mid-dungeon or in wvw, depending on the situation. But I also like playing my thief to change things up a bit…live on the edge and do tons of damage…they engage different interests of mine.