Guild Wars 2

Hands down

(This is not talking about viability in dungeons/PvP)

Completely agree, I always have fun playing on Mesmer. It’s the one profession I feel engaged 100% on. I don’t snooze and take it easy while playing it (unless I was to play some yawn-PU build I guess), but I rather need to fully focus to perform well and outplay my opponents. I also play with a personal rule of not touching any skills that places me in stealth, so I’ve in that sense increased the challenge a slight bit, as the enemy will never lose their targeting on me. We’re in my opinion the most graceful profession to watch in combat as well. It’s just extremely fun to watch a good Mesmer wreck havoc. It’s.. mesmerizing. Pun intended.

We could use a few buffs in certain departments, e.g., reliable Poison application, not from a Sigil, and the inclusion of Movement Speed on one of our signets (e.g., Signet of Inspiration could have that as a base effect, besides granting a buff every 10 seconds), so that it at least feels a slight bit more optional to run Traveler Runes, but I’m happy that we aren’t easy-mode and fattening from too much cheese. It’s a profession that in most cases requires some skillful play, not a profession that carries the player (not including PU—if you go full stealthard and run PU, the profession build is obviously carrying you). When we do play hard, we can pull off some really impressive things. I can somewhat understand that they are careful about buffing us too much.

I can’t agree more.
As I Always say : “I work three time harder than you!” while I’m dancing and my phantasm do all the work for me

Dack Saris.2418:

I can’t agree more.
As I Always say : “I work three time harder than you!” while I’m dancing and my phantasm do all the work for me

Well if you like dancing…

My Mesmer was my main for a very long time and sure its fun, but there is also so many darn quirks and cons that it makes it unfun at the same time. Since I cant really specify why the Mesmer has been fun to play other than yelling “butterflies!”, I know why its not fun:

- Illusions are kittened. Anet has done very little to improve them and many are still broken (especially those that Anet broke themselves after release). Their AI makes them unreliable and is a constant source of irritation. Its only made worse as illusions are critical for damage, unlike other minion classes that do perfectly fine on their own in addition to the minions.

- No real place in the meta. Mesmer is not bad in any part of the game its just… redundant. Unneccessary. In PvP, its “ok” for day to day play. In WvW, its only desirable in very small numbers (1 in a 20 man raid). In PvE it perform perfectly fine but other classes usually bring something better. Its a utility class (portal, veil) and that’s about it.

- Not allowed to wear pants. Why oh why wasnt Mesmer a medium armor class, sigh.

Its going to be interesting to see if HoT brings something fresh to the table for the Mesmer. In theory the plethora of interrupts a Mesmer has available could be good against stability but in practice… I doubt it.

I absolutely agree with you. Many of the people I have come across in the game are like “never learnt it” “too difficult” whereas when I switch to another class it is more or less easily learnt. I guess the thing with mesmers are, and this has been stressed rigorously over and over again, is that mesmers are a difficult class to master and takes many hours to play proparly. The rewards for playing well eg. 6 clone shatter line up or positioning, is just one of the hallmarks as to why people who do make their mind up about a mesmer as a main, stay mesmers for life practically. The class just has some down sides to it, but it makes it a fun challenge in the class as you can take them on, the mesmer allows us to do that (and we are constantly making new builds :P). The variation of patterns (shatters) in a fight that you can dish out have endless combinations and reasons as to why you would do so. The mesmer I have found has the unique ability to adjust its offence and defence in a fight and can easily oscillate between these two due to its versatile weapon skills and slot skills I find, but that’s just me

For the rest I love the profession 10/10 and can’t wait for HoT!!

Portals, teleports, illusions, and I get to make a psychic dual swordsman?

Sold.

Amen, fellow butterfly.

When Anet broke iLeap, I quit for 7 months. That’s how much I treasured this class.

Dack Saris.2418:

I can’t agree more.
As I Always say : “I work three time harder than you!” while I’m dancing and my phantasm do all the work for me

Agreed

Dawdler.8521:

- No real place in the meta. Mesmer is not bad in any part of the game its just… redundant. Unneccessary. In PvP, its “ok” for day to day play. In WvW, its only desirable in very small numbers (1 in a 20 man raid). In PvE it perform perfectly fine but other classes usually bring something better. Its a utility class (portal, veil) and that’s about it.

For the most part, yeah i agree. Phantasm’s aoe perma regen is just…something nobody cares about. At least if we had aoe 1or2 perma might per phantasm, thats someting.

For utilities, you forget that mesmer is the master of reflections. Even one mesmer can keep up perma-reflection. If your team sux so much (e.g. at grawl shaman), then you ask one to die at the middle, so you can trigger a 8sec feedback every 10 sec by pressing an F on him.

- Not allowed to wear pants. Why oh why wasnt Mesmer a medium armor class, sigh.

Unlike the medium armors, there are 2 light armor pants. Ascalonian, and Embroidered. Maybe Pirate Captain’s outfit?