Guild Wars 2

I’ve currently got a Warrior and Guardian at 80. I play a bit of PvE, WvW and sPvP. Mainly the PVE just for some gearing up. Ultimately I’m after WvW.

What I’m really looking for is a ranged damage dealer, with some control. I’ve done a bit of reading, and from what I saw, the Mesmer is probably a class I want to give a try.

How are Mesmers?

Personally, I love my mesmer more than any profession in the game. I can’t speak for end game (as I’m still leveling the mesmer), but I’ve seen a lot of mesmers in WvW using the greatsword (1 auto attack is a 1200 range laser) and they do some work. I like being up close with my mesmer and dodge cloning, rather than using the greatsword.
If you wanna try it out, make a mesmer, finish that beginning instanced part, click on the PvP button and enter Heart of the Mists. You get scaled to 80 and you can try out the profession any way you see fit.

GS/Staff is – when done right – nothing but spacing/control/DPS. An ex-Warrior/DPS Guardian would prolly dig that combo, and heavy shatter. Then again, who knows?
You might try a Mesmer and end up going Condition spec.

Thanks for the Responses.

I’ve been stuck between Mesmer & Thief. Problem with Thief is I see them being rather boring later on, whereas the Mesmer looks like it would be very fun and useful all the way.

From your original description I’d definitely say mesmer over theif. I started out playing mesmer ranged with gs and staff but after lvling have switched to a much more close and personally attack style moving in and out of range and have ditched gs altogether.

So as a ranged damage dealer, mesmers are good ? I’ve seen videos of mesmers using swords etc, but it ends up being a melee kind of build where they do their damage. If I’m going to be doing melee, I would probably pick a Thief. Are mesmer’s higher damaging builds based around melee? Or are there some good ones with Scepter or GS ?

GS Shatter builds are our biggest damage build, that said, keeping the sword/x will help for when enemies get too close. Sword has good defensive capabilities and synergizes well with the high power damage build of GW. For a purely ranged build though I would go GS/Staff, this works very well in W3, check out Osicat’s Shattercat builds pinned at the top of this thread. He specifically deals with W3 and shatter builds.