Guild Wars 2

Hey mesmers, I was recently considering leveling a mesmer for some spvp and wvw action. It’s been a class I’ve always wanted to play but have just never leveled all the way. I was curious about their viability in wvw. I seem to get roflstomped by perplexity pu condi mesmers and they aren’t even in sight very long for me to fight back (even with Sic ‘em on my ranger). I’ve seen mesmers that toy with our entire raid(non organized mind you), picking off targets in the back while we’re focusing on bringing a gate down, and stealthing away for 30-45 seconds at a time near permanent stealth. While this seems fun to a degree, I mainly prefer running with the zerg. Pu seems very fun, but I wonder about condi viability in anything but roaming/1vx situations. Perhaps you guys could share your experiences, the reason I play a ranger is so I’m not forced to be a utility bot and can pew pew, would a mesmer alt suit me?

Roaming mesmer is pretty strong, be it power shatter or condi pu. On the other hand, mesmer in zerg is only utility bot, with veil before engaging/portal for golems.

After trying to zerg a little bit i just switched to my necro..much bigger damage+safer. Main advantages of a mesmer(spawning lots of clones, stealth) are largely negated in zerg fights due to insane amounts of enemy aoe’s.

Yeah I would second that zerging is not really mesmer’s place to shine, I run power shatter with mine but thats cause we have a seperate party for ganking and stealth in our guild for backcapping towers and portal plays that plays off to the side of the main (we have 2 thieves, myself, 1 engi and 1 trapper ranger). If you are in the main zerg fights you are there for veil and port openings but thats less used these days with the mainly ranged zerg fights.

however and this is pretty big, when chronomancer comes out I have a feelings mesmers are gonna be loved by zergs again, the wells all seem strong (aoe unblockable attacks, stability, slows, cc’s) and doing things like double Time Warp and portals will allow for some really crazy in-fight situations. I’m seriously thinking of making some tanky gear for my mes next expac so I can run with the zerg better cause theres gonna be plenty for you to do with the new spec. So if you wanna start leveling a mes now, know that in the expansion things are looking good in wvw for mes

Um…I think you’re vastly over estimating how good chronomancer will be in a Zerg. To do double anything you’ll need to drop a sprite which can be very easily cleaved out if near the main body. If you’re not near the main body you’re setting yourself up for being focused.

Wells are used for damage and from what I’ve heard they’re subpar to necros and the benefits they have may in fact be wasted by the fluid movement of both the enemy and your zerg.

Mesmer right now is good for a focus party, pick someone, do a load of damage with a few people to get them down, let your Zerg train over. Repeat till the pirate ship sinks.

Roaming I find Mesmer is still second to a thief in solo and small roaming. When you have 3+ I find mesmers really shine because you can drop attention from you with stealth for a follow up burst on someone being over committed.

That’s kind of how I imagined it would be :‘( I have a necro and do enjoy the bombing capabilities in zergs. Mesmers just stick out to me, especially when I feel helpless in a 1v1 situation which rarely happens! But zergs and gvg is what I do and plan to do most often so I’ll stick to the pew pew classes that I enjoy and try not to get caught alone against a mesmer until I find a weakness in PU condI perplexity builds.

Mesmer can be a great benefit to the zerg though. Veils, portals and focusing on people out of position are all very helpful and if running inspiration with mantra of pain you have a great sustain heal (2.5k every 4s if spamming it) and with protected phantasms you iZerker actually does damage.

Also timewarp is highly under rated in WvW, it can turn a loss into a win and many don’t bother with mesmers or TW.

I just don’t think chronomancy is going to be as big a game changer to what Mesmer currently offers.

Likewise you can run a PU zerker ganking build which focuses on self survivability and less on group support and really pick people off. You might not get all the loot bags a necro would get but you can pull off much more as a Mesmer in an organised group.

Combat-wise, Mesmers excel in small group and solo situations, where our clones and phantasms can do their work. The larger the groups that are fighting, the faster our clones and phantasms get killed. In a zerg situation, Mesmer damage is pretty negligible as a result.

But like some above posters said, Mesmers are still really useful for non-damage things in zerg scenarios, like portals.

I found that I was able to be useful as a zerg outrider. There are always stragglers, and zergs themselves are super-sensitive to potential threats. I’ve lead away up to 8 players from the main zerg on a wild goose chase multiple times, which in a zerg fight is a fair chunk of power loss to the main body.
Add the tower stealth and portal shenanigans, and you’ve got some good utility.

I tend to roam until one of our towers gets assaulted, then head over and do some outriding, dipping into the main zerg for utility when the need arises (they don’t always need portal, and you can get kind of familiar with the situations they are most likely to).

Small-zerg play is hilariously fun, too. A group of 7-10 taking towers is a lot to tackle alone, but I was able to hold off a guild group with another mes and necro when they got inside. Winning a fight 3v9 because they’re too focused on taking the tower to mitigate your dps is lulzy.*

*results may not be replicable against actually experienced guild groups.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

I found that I was able to be useful as a zerg outrider. There are always stragglers, and zergs themselves are super-sensitive to potential threats. I’ve lead away up to 8 players from the main zerg on a wild goose chase multiple times, which in a zerg fight is a fair chunk of power loss to the main body.
Add the tower stealth and portal shenanigans, and you’ve got some good utility.

I tend to roam until one of our towers gets assaulted, then head over and do some outriding, dipping into the main zerg for utility when the need arises (they don’t always need portal, and you can get kind of familiar with the situations they are most likely to).

Small-zerg play is hilariously fun, too. A group of 7-10 taking towers is a lot to tackle alone, but I was able to hold off a guild group with another mes and necro when they got inside. Winning a fight 3v9 because they’re too focused on taking the tower to mitigate your dps is lulzy.*

*results may not be replicable against actually experienced guild groups.

What build were you running? These are the kinds of shenanigans I’d enjoy, especially on off hours for our server where the other servers are trying to maximize their ppt, it could be very fun to run a disruption group. And my guild usually fields about 15-20 and we zerg bust 30-40m groups, so perhaps mesmer would play a decent role in our zerg busting group, with some fun off hour trolling to boot! Interesting…

Mord.9237:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

I found that I was able to be useful as a zerg outrider. There are always stragglers, and zergs themselves are super-sensitive to potential threats. I’ve lead away up to 8 players from the main zerg on a wild goose chase multiple times, which in a zerg fight is a fair chunk of power loss to the main body.
Add the tower stealth and portal shenanigans, and you’ve got some good utility.

I tend to roam until one of our towers gets assaulted, then head over and do some outriding, dipping into the main zerg for utility when the need arises (they don’t always need portal, and you can get kind of familiar with the situations they are most likely to).

Small-zerg play is hilariously fun, too. A group of 7-10 taking towers is a lot to tackle alone, but I was able to hold off a guild group with another mes and necro when they got inside. Winning a fight 3v9 because they’re too focused on taking the tower to mitigate your dps is lulzy.*

*results may not be replicable against actually experienced guild groups.

What build were you running? These are the kinds of shenanigans I’d enjoy, especially on off hours for our server where the other servers are trying to maximize their ppt, it could be very fun to run a disruption group. And my guild usually fields about 15-20 and we zerg bust 30-40m groups, so perhaps mesmer would play a decent role in our zerg busting group, with some fun off hour trolling to boot! Interesting…

Full rabid, Traveler runes, carrion jewels (for exotic accessories, carrion jewels give more condi damage than rabid crests. For ascended, just stick with rabid).
Magic find infusion on the amulet, condi infusions wherever else I have them (not many atm).

Chaos(2,2,2), Dueling(1,1,3), Illusions(3,3,1)
Staff/Scepter+Torch

Skills: Mirror or Signet of Ether; Signet of Midnight; Signet of Domination; Decoy; Mass Invisibility

Super Veggie Pizza, Quality Tuning Crystal

Sigils: Agony and Earth on staff; Corruption on Scepter; Earth on Pistol

I am considering swapping Earth to Malice on both, Agony to Bursting on staff.
I would gain torment and confusion duration (putting me close to cap), gain condi damage on staff, and lose bleed stacks. I’m uncertain which setup I prefer.

Most condi pvp builds you see focus really heavy on confusion with torment minor, because those are the scary pvp conditions. What I’ve found is that by mixing in some decent bleeds via Sharper Images, Sigil of Earth and Winds of Chaos (clone and self) is that I get more sustained dps available to me, and my condi stack is deeper vs cleanse. As a result, I get more dps against heavy-cleanse champs than I normally would, my damage over time is superior, and my camp clearing is faster than otherwise. I’m just not sure that the 4 or 5 stacks I get from the Sigil of Earth offsets the extra confusion/torment duration, or the extra damage I might be getting from bursting.

Bursting and malice are expensive anyway, and since I’m saving for Bifrost, I have put off the decision for now.

*I should note that corruption is on my scepter because this is also my pve setup.
Staff is far and away superior for pve, so in SW and dungeons I stack up corruption on the scepter then swap back to mainly staff play.

If you don’t intend to do much pve with this build, corruption can go on the staff, and then you’ll get the extra sigil on your scepter+torch. It’s easier to stack corruption on staff, too.
It’s an orientation thing, but it’s a difference of around 130ish condi damage between the corruption and the bursting weapon at full stacks.

Depends on zerg size. If it under 20, it is viable to play a PU power gank mesmer and pick off the enemy backline.

However, if it is like a large zerg, 30+ or even 40+. It gets increasingly hard to get anything done. Most of your skill needs targeting while in that blob fight, it’s all about cleave and ground targeting. The best you can do is throwing down glamours, veil, null field, feedback, timewarp etc. But you won’t be able to do too much damage. Mantra of pain can also work. But again, you need a target for that skill.

As a ranger main (until very recently), I just made the switch to a PU shatter mesmer (because I had a lvl 80 one from sPvP tomes that I hadn’t been playing). I’ve mostly only participated in small scale wvw and roaming, but for that I’m not looking back. I’ve been told that zergs can be a rough spot, but I just find the stealth to be too handy to go back to my Ranger.

PS: sPvP is amazingly fun on a power shatter PU mesmer in comparison (though part of that may just be me growing tired of playing the same thing for quite some time).

Throwing a Tides of Time into a zerg has the potential to be pretty devastating.

Knox.8462:

Throwing a Tides of Time into a zerg has the potential to be pretty devastating.

It’s decent but far from devastating. It has short range(600) and small field size. You have to be close to the melee train to maximize its potential. It also moves too slow to catch any of the backliners w/o stability.

I have some footage of Chronomancer in zergs and it’s a lot less effective than you can think.

Wells are sluggish and underwhelming, tides of time is short range and very slow moving, continuum shift is very hard to use in an environment where you basically don’t have illusions…

Right now I’m planning on sitting on my current raid build (domi/chaos/inspiration) for WvW if we won’t see major changes to chrono before the release.

Mesmer is pretty much the most useful profession in the game for WvW.

1. Solo tower and keep
2. Port golems and people into keep, etc
3. Great Roamer / scout
4. Stealth bomb
5. Portal bomb enemies
6. Stealth like crazy and keep enemies busy hunting you inside a keep
7. King of Cheese build in the game for wvw
8. Time Warp
9. Moa
10. Pink Butterflies

Menaka.5092:

I have some footage of Chronomancer in zergs and it’s a lot less effective than you can think.

Wells are sluggish and underwhelming, tides of time is short range and very slow moving, continuum shift is very hard to use in an environment where you basically don’t have illusions…

Right now I’m planning on sitting on my current raid build (domi/chaos/inspiration) for WvW if we won’t see major changes to chrono before the release.

Well, Chronomancer is not that good for you because the build itself is not the best.

- Staff instead of GS throws away a lot of offensive.
- Only using MW makes you less effective.
- I don’t see you using Dueling, so less options.
- Not taking well of calamity, so even less damage.
- Bad stat choice with cele.
- No power stacks from sigil.
- Conservative playstyle.
- No izerker+Protected Phantasms+Cronophantasma.

Basically, you don’t get the crucial offensive things because you think a semi-support mesmer is worth, which is not.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

*I should note that corruption is on my scepter because this is also my pve setup.
Staff is far and away superior for pve, so in SW and dungeons I stack up corruption on the scepter then swap back to mainly staff play.

Sorry for being off topic but i need to ask you how do you play dungeons with Scepter + Staff? Usualy people would just laugh if they see me using condition weapons for dungeons. But i don’t enjoy any more GS + Sw/X so i am wondering is it possible to use my WvW condi gear + Staff/Scepter in pve aswell? I don’t have that much gold to buy another exotic gear with power, prec and ferocity just for dungeons …

Ansau.7326:

Basically, you don’t get the crucial offensive things because you think a semi-support mesmer is worth, which is not.

Basically, you are supposing I wanted an offensive build, which I didn’t
I wanted a large-scale control build and chronomancer was supposedly good at that (a lot of slow application, unlimited target stun, gravity well)… but it’s not.

Ansau.7326:

Staff instead of GS throws away a lot of offensive.

Ansau.7326:

Not taking well of calamity, so even less damage.

Ansau.7326:

No izerker+Protected Phantasms+Cronophantasma.

As I said, the build was meant to be about control and staff is a better option for that.
If I wanted to bring AoE DPS I would go necro or ele, no point in playing mesmer for that.

BTW, I tested calamity as well, but the damage is so bad compared with MoP that I couldn’t really convince myself to keep it.

Ansau.7326:

Only using MW makes you less effective.

I’m using all my shatters when they make sense… problem is they don’t make sense most of the time in a zerg, without clones.

Ansau.7326:

I don’t see you using Dueling, so less options.

Dueling has nothing useful for a control build.

Ansau.7326:

Bad stat choice with cele.

Maybe it wasn’t really clear… everything was berserker, only the gem inside the (exotic) jewels was celestial because there was no other option on the beta account

Ansau.7326:

No power stacks from sigil.

Yep, I was testing different stuff (stun duration, damage on stun, aoe poison, etc).

Ansau.7326:

Conservative playstyle.

Couldn’t do much about that, it was extremely laggy and I wasn’t confident to be able to use my defensive cooldowns in time to survive. “Hopefully” they’ll lower the map cap again before the next BWE since it looks like they can’t fix the lag.

During the next BWE I’ll test different stuff, or test the same stuff again if it has been changed, but so far I am disappointed with chrono in large scale fights.

Menaka.5092:

I have some footage of Chronomancer in zergs and it’s a lot less effective than you can think.

Wells are sluggish and underwhelming, tides of time is short range and very slow moving, continuum shift is very hard to use in an environment where you basically don’t have illusions…

Right now I’m planning on sitting on my current raid build (domi/chaos/inspiration) for WvW if we won’t see major changes to chrono before the release.

Didn’t feel that “sluggish” for me except for Well of Eternity for healing (not easy to put on yourself, while moving around when you also want to position other Wells at the same time during fights). Alacrity did change play style a lot and with Rampager and Rabid gear (outside of cele jewels) as stats to get power, precision and condition damage I did get enough power and condi to do kill Camp NPCs and some players in WvW. For SW it worked also better then my assassin/berserker gear on my Mesmer to kill Trashers, Terragriffs and Husks faster then I normally would do.

I didn’t have enough time how to learn to use F5 (CS) well enough, but did use a lot of Tides of Times as it seemed to do a lot of damage against foes in SW or in camps in BL and when I was lucky I could also get recharge reduction for the next attack with it. Blocking was fun with Shield and in combo with Staff and Scepter it worked to produce fast enough new Phantasm to keep up with pressure. I used Well of Recall to get Alacrity as often I could and Well of Action which both had a good synergy in most cases. Gravity well wasn’t that much useful for the way I played compared to Time Warp (traited), but I kept during BWE to at least try it out and learn how to use it.

My trait line was Time catches up (superspeed for illusions after shatter), Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma. Did use Chaos line to improve blink (CD reduction), staff recharge reduction with protection while in chaos armour (which with all those ethereal fields from every Wells in utility should be easy to get) and Bountiful Disillusionment for shatter (getting Might buffed will make both Power and Condi stats to improve; Vigor and Fury will help to keep up more pressure and be able to move/dodge and those buffs are shared for nearby party with stability). Add to this Might pr illusion from Shattered Strength from Illusions trait line (and shorter recharge from Master of Misdirection) you will be able to improve your power and your conditions without sacrifice the one for the another. Can’t remember which I took from Persistence of Memory or Compunding Power, but both where useful to add more damage and Ineptitude with shields blocking (or dodges from vigor/energy sigil) would provide blind and confusion to this mix.

Inspiration did help to keep each shatter to also condi cleanse and give some more health from Restorative Illusions (and also your healing skill will have more condi removed for both yourself and nearby allies). The most important reason to take Inspiration for going this trait would be for use of TW as an elite skill as you will have both Superspeed, Resistance (condi will be easier to clean before they damage you) and the prolonged time for TW.

In short this trait line form Inspiration is very helpful in those situation like in SW or pirate ship BL where you will have too many sources for condis on you in short time frame and you don’t want to make use of an utility skill only to get rid of condis and with the higher rate of shatter from alacrity you will now both be able to do damage and still keep yourself and nearby allied alive. You will also be able to change utility skill OOC for Portals, Null Field and Feedback or going for Manipulation skills (from Chaos) to take Mimic or MI as the need would arise during fight.

My verdict so far would be that Wells provide a lot ethereal fields for proc protection from Chaos armour, but the radius for each Wells are a bit on the small size. Maybe ANet should make Wells have different radius to make it harder for enemies to avoid or why not make it a trait which would add a larger size for the finishing puls? In that way it would be harder for enemies to predict when to dodge out of it and give a better chance for allies to get the last puls even, if they where to move out of its centre?

Sifu.9745:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

*I should note that corruption is on my scepter because this is also my pve setup.
Staff is far and away superior for pve, so in SW and dungeons I stack up corruption on the scepter then swap back to mainly staff play.

Sorry for being off topic but i need to ask you how do you play dungeons with Scepter + Staff? Usualy people would just laugh if they see me using condition weapons for dungeons. But i don’t enjoy any more GS + Sw/X so i am wondering is it possible to use my WvW condi gear + Staff/Scepter in pve aswell? I don’t have that much gold to buy another exotic gear with power, prec and ferocity just for dungeons …

I put up the math in another thread. If they fix Duelist’s Discipline, condi mes has around 19k theoretical dps without chrono.

Even with just staff clones though, my projected theoretical dps is around 13k, without the windup time you get from phantasm play (or the risk, as resummoning clones is easy peasy). Given that I bring above-average utility, my damage potential is plenty for most purposes outside speed runs (where burst potential is more important than sustained, and where “good” dps just doesn’t cut it).

Swap from torch to pistol for pve, throw up iDuelists when you can, use scepter for mobs that are susceptible to torment/confusion, then go back to sit in staff.

That was the original point of the agony rune, to amp up bleeds. I figured out that you can get to 100% total condi duration without too much trouble though, so condition-specific runes like Agony or Krait are less valuable.