Guild Wars 2

I soloed claw island at 44 without ever being downed. My engineer did it at 46 but had some issues and was downed a few times. Truth is mesmer is practically immortal in Pve if you play right. This is why it doesn’t have top tier aoe damage. The fact that some people have such difficulty shows mesmer steep learning curve. All I can say to them is in this case change the player not the game.

Claw Island is easy on all classes, no idea why anyone would bring that up as a mark of respect.

I agree with people on the tapping issue.

In group events on my mesmer I find it VERY difficult to get a tap in because my damage is back-loaded, while most have a way to front-load it.

I have to gather clones for a shatter.. oops the mob is dead
I toss mirror blade and mind-stab.. not enough damage compared to guardian “spin 2 win”
I toss out phantasms.. Oops, they had to phone their girlfriends before they unload.. mob is dead and they’re going on vacation. (and now, since the change, they’re on cooldown!)

I’m not saying they should change the way our spells work, but they SHOULD change how loot tapping works to reflect the realities of back-loaded or condition-based professions/builds.

They should also give “tap credit” to people who help revive others who may have been downed by what they’re targeting. You helped someone kill something. You didn’t hit it yourself, but you’re just as responsible and deserve reward.

Passive Aggressive.3154:

I am amazed at how many truly bad players there are. Mesmer is obviously not for you. You should probably roll a different class. May I suggest warrior or ranger with a bear pet?

Yay another elitist knob crowing about how awesome they are. Do you troll the boards waiting for players to vent frustrations simply because they havent grasped the class yet just so you can post that kitten stroking garbage?

At least post something constructive or dont click reply dude. You really dont have to click it if frustration venting posts like this bother you so much.

After playing my Engineer, then moving to a Mesmer, end game mob tagging is not balanced.

Hell, even my Thief has better chances tagging mobs with her bow than my Mesmer.

Between greatsword numbers 4 and 3, and main hand swords number 2, and it’s number 1’s innate cleave, not to mention shatters, I have experienced no real issues with aoe fights.

Heck if I really want to, I can go GS 4, 3, 2 swap to sword, 2, time warp, 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 to win.

I personally don’t have much trouble with my mesmer. Took me a while to get used to shattering, at first I didn’t like it either. It felt like throwing away my defences, now however I’m used to it and use it to finish off mobs, and for cc.
Being used to my thief I do feel like I’m killing slowely, but I get downed a lot less.

Aoe’s are plentyfull imo. The staff’s bounce on first skill has an ok range imo. Cs is nice as well as the berserker from GS (though I sometimes manage to tag mobs I didn’t mean to and end up with 3+ mobs on me again)

So err, I don’t really get the problem

Sabbathius is speaking wisely, but I’m afraid we have the same situation as in GW1. “Mesmer is not bad because you can finish the storyline with a mesmer”. With a mentality like this ANet sees that Mesmer players are satisfied and doesn’t matter buffing until they need promotion for next sequel.

Also, ironically, “L2P” people here are the ones who need to “L2P”. When you L2P you see clearly differences in classes. To a newbie, it might all seem ok and fine, but the more experienced and skilled you become, more glaring and obvious imbalances are. Even if imbalance is just 10% and not 50%, no powergamer will tell you “L2P”. They will tell you “This class is stronger”. It is not possible in theory for classes to be equally strong.

lollie.5816:

Claw Island is easy on all classes, no idea why anyone would bring that up as a mark of respect.

It’s a great example actually. Of problems of Mesmer in PvE, and of bad and illogical story.

On Claw Island, enemies spawn out of thin air. You’re in a fort with a line of cannons but.. it’s all useless. Enemies spawn right behind you, on top of you, no matter where you are. Why don’t they just spawn behind the Queen and end the war?

With Mesmer, this is even worse because on Claw Island enemies completely ignore your illusions. Every time they go after you and you alone.

Ianervan.3415:

lollie.5816:

Claw Island is easy on all classes, no idea why anyone would bring that up as a mark of respect.

It’s a great example actually. Of problems of Mesmer in PvE, and of bad and illogical story.

On Claw Island, enemies spawn out of thin air. You’re in a fort with a line of cannons but.. it’s all useless. Enemies spawn right behind you, on top of you, no matter where you are. Why don’t they just spawn behind the Queen and end the war?

With Mesmer, this is even worse because on Claw Island enemies completely ignore your illusions. Every time they go after you and you alone.

Oh man, you totally missed the point >.< GG >.< Point is any class can do Claw Island, that’s so not the worst story quest in the line, that one is the least of any of our problems with this game (and if we’re going to talk mark of respect for surviving a story quest, it’s the many, many bugged super spawn AI story quests that are the worst).

No one brought it up as a mark of respect. Read the original post, he talks about how impossible it is for a Mesmer. We agree that it’s not hard, it points at his own problems playing the class, not that the Mesmer is bad at pve.

Voodoo Tina.4180:

No one brought it up as a mark of respect.

Yeah Evo up there brought it up as a mark of respect, making like he was able to magically solo that quest early on his mesmer thereby showing that mesmers aren’t crap at pve…when truth is that quest is easy for all classes, assuming basic things like you know not to stand still and try to tank the hits from multiple mobs…

Evo Sapien.5298:

I soloed claw island at 44 without ever being downed. My engineer did it at 46 but had some issues and was downed a few times. Truth is mesmer is practically immortal in Pve if you play right.

Way to miss the point. He brings it up to contradict the OP. As did every other person to mention it.

Voodoo Tina.4180:

Way to miss the point. He brings it up to contradict the OP. As did every other person to mention it.

Wow sometimes I guess I overestimate the intelligence of the average person…I got that. You missed the point, I’m saying OP is correct and that other guy stating he managed to beat Claw Island on his mesmer is no great accomplishment, as you’d have to be hopeless to screw that one up. Do. you. under.-stand. now? (that was me typing slowly). It isn’t hard to cheese your way through quests early in this game – all you need to do on any class is avoid hits (something dodge allows). Let’s face it if you do quests 7 to 9 levels early on any class you can’t take a hit or so or you’ll be dead. As for OP, he seems like he’s used to letting his clones take the heat off him…mustn’t have got far through the game if he’s expecting that to happen, as we all know illusions die far too easily (they always feel like they’re 10 levels too low for anything the mesmer happens to be fighting, dying in one or two hits only).

Right.

OP says Claw Island is hard. Evo says its not. You say not way Evo, its not hard at all! Then you say you agree with OP, and say that he’s a bad player, because Claw Island is not hard.

TLDR: You disagree with yourself.

Distractions aside, if you run around in PvE auto attacking and occasionally using Chaos Storm, not shattering and not swapping weapons when needed, you’re going to think PvE is hard. It really isn’t at all.

It is not hard at all to do general pve as mesmer, but DE mob tagging sucks. THE END

Its a finesse class, its not “stand and fight”. I do extremely well in pve. It will sharpen you for pvp as well.

Despite the fact that people can make the mesmer work doesn’t change that the mesmer is comparatively poor at PvE. There isn’t much of a good reason that one would actively choose to have a mesmer over another class when setting up a speed run dungeon group; which is pretty well what the PvE endgame currently is. Mesmer’s are slow to kill and don’t provide enough team utility to mitigate their lack of dps / slow spin up when compared to bringing along a different class.

Mesmer is the worst AOE DPS class in the game. Others can stand toe to toe and spam AOE’s, range AOE’s or in general have multiple options with killing groups of mobs.

AOE Options -
1. Bounce attacks (not AOE’s, but are multi-target)
2. Berserker (can miss and do low damage and isn’t guaranteed, even on your primary target)
3. Chaos Storm (high recast timer now)
4. Warden (which can’t move from where it is cast)
5. Feedback (if they are ranged)
6. Refects from traits
7. Minor cone attacks (one major with Blurred Frenzy on sword)
8. Shatters (which have a really small effect area and miss more often than hit)
9. Traited confusion from glamours or death/shatter from Illusions

Doesn’t mean they can’t handle groups, just that they really suck at AOE damage when you try to compare them to any other class. I’m not saying they can’t perform ok if you are a really great player and understand agro, use skills like Decoy and the like to manage mob agro, but at the end of the day I can’t say the OP is wrong either (although he is going a little overboard).

Mesmers are the lowest front-loaded DPS, with the fewest AOE options of any class in the game. They can do some burst DPS, but then have timers to reset that way above any other class. They can do AOE, but compared to any other class it’s slow, harder to direct, or has huge recast timers.

In return they are one of the most difficult classes to kill directly, can use illusions to 1v1 some really tough mobs, is second in difficulty to lock down in wvwvw and pvp combat when they want to escape.

There are ton’s of locations where a Mesmer shines, but, in PVE, there are more where any other class would be more useful. Dungeons are where I really see this problem the most. The cleave and AOE damage of the trash mobs normally means that your illusions are popping like balloons in a needle factory. Shatter rarely works because they die while running to the target. Now, you get 3 warlocks or duelists in a semi-safe location on a champion or better boss that ignores them the DPS is respectable (if not really high). But, beyond that, any class would be better DPS than a Mesmer and runs are vastly quicker when I play another class. I’ve been on one run with 2 Mesmers in the group and that was one of the longest, most irritating runs ever.

But I also love my Mesmer just for what it does shine at. Surviving, weird and fun options, interesting play options, and I think I have maximized the DPS possibilities so my Dungeon performance is as good as is possible. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like options to do something like turn all my illusions into hexes or direct damage that wasn’t tied to their HP surviving while they run into combat.

+1 to the OP. I too am having the most dreadful time tapping mobs for loot especially in DE’s. Based on observation, there seems to be two different and independent ways the system calculates if you can get loot from a mob:

1) damaging a mob (seems to not matter how much) and having it subsequently killed during DE awards you an invisible contribution towards getting the gold star and some XP. Mesmers don’t generally fare badly in this area UNLESS the mobs are dead even before you can cast a single damaging spell

2) damaging a mob will award you loot based on how much you damage mobs (seems to require that you damage mobs for more than 25% of their health or something)

While the Mesmer is viable in DE’s if you just want to get Karma/Gold/whatevs from the event itself, the glaring discrepancy here is in loot drops.

I am not a PvP player and I do resent the fact that Mesmers keep getting nerfed in PvE because of PvP balancing issues.

For example – people are claiming that zerkers are doing too much burst (I wouldn’t know I’ve never done PvP). From my perspective, these are actually weak in PvP because they go poof in two hits and are basically useless the moment they get aggro apart from the cripple effect. The warden, which is the only decent damaging phantasm, is irrelevant the moment you have a mob that moves or if another player uses a knockback effect on the mob.

There’s a way to nerf a class in PvP and still preserve (or in our case, since we badly need it, increase) viability in PvE and these are what these ANet apologists need to realize instead of just saying “No, the class is fine just l2p”. ANet is really doing a bad job in balancing the different demands and expectations of players from this class. The PvP-ers are probably happy that the Mesmer is pwning in PvP (again I wouldnt know since I don’t PvP) but for people like me who really don’t care a single bit about PvP, the Mesmer is a true pain to play compared to how other classes fare in PvE.

A simple change like lowering zerker damage by 50% but increasing both his healthpool and rate of fire by 25% would decrease the amount of ppl QQing about zerker in PvP and would be beneficial in PvE. Re-designing GS1 to also hit multiple targets by spreading the damage it does now across 3 enemies clumped together would also help alleviate AoE concerns, as well as increasing GS3 radius and removing the cap on the number of targets it damages.

I mean, these are just ideas that I’m literally just pulling out of my kitten and, at least for me, they’re already better than what ANet has been doing to the Mesmer thus far.

If you guys haven’t noticed, we don’t even get a red reply in the Mesmer forums. It’s like they made this class, forgot about it, and remembers it only when people in PvP start demanding the class be nerfed, and then they do a really kittened up job about it.

I died once on claw island because I didn’t read the quest and thought you were supposed to kill the [infinitely respawning] NPCs on the way to rescue that officer chick. This while the treb dropped knockdowns and poison on me, and I couldn’t be arsed to run away.

Also, uncontrolled AOE may pull too much aggro. So, focus a few at a time.

Those two adjustments and claw island was easy. May also have to swap in a condition removal for the boss.

Hell, even my Thief has better chances tagging mobs with her bow than my Mesmer.

Engi I understand, but if you are better at tagging with a Thief, then you are not playing the Mesmer well for tagging.

It seems to me that the biggest arguments used in claiming poor PvE performance are those related to tagging enemies in dynamic events. Instead of altering the mesmer by loading it up with massive area attacks, why not suggest altering dynamic event participation and tagging to add (more) weight to combos and those who facilitate them? Everybody wins, and the classes still function the same.

To those who actually have a problem in PvE, aside from dynamic events, I’m not sure what else to say that hasn’t already been said. Take a step back, look at what you’re able to do with the tools at your disposal, and go at the task from a different angle. There are plenty of builds posted for countless situations, and they can all be tailored to fit individual playstyles and preferences.

To be honest, I think the core issue is that DEs do not scale appropriately to population.

With a large number of players in the event, the mob waves should be comprised of veterans at the least and low-end champions, rather than lots of normal mobs.

That would basically resolve all the issues instantly.

Mesmer is brutal to level, and especially so for the first 20 levels. It just takes so long to kill anything. I think a lot of what you see is people rolling a mesmer alt and comparing it to other classes which you can faceroll and kill things in 8 seconds.

I think one of the problems is drawing too much aggro in pve. I’ve been trying to finish my storyline quests recently and just did that quest where I’m defending hyleks from the undead. So there’s an army of hyleks fighting an army of risen, but if I cast iBeserker, they ALL b-line right for me, like 8 risen. Really have to drop snares and having a cripple on shatter helps.

At level 80 when you’re geared up and have all your utilities/traits, and know how they synergize… it’s fine.

Immediately stopped reading at:
“once you are getting chased by so many mob most of the GS skills are not usable while the enemies are chasing u.”

Terrible post. Would not read again.
1 star.

So I’ll be honest here. I probably died less leveling my Mesmer to 70 (so far) then either my Necro or my Guardian (both 80). It wasn’t necessarily slower or anything, but here’s a few things to consider:

• The most successful (and common) bots run as Rangers, Warriors, and Guardians. I have yet to see a Mesmer bot farmer.
• Mesmers have a substantially harder time accomplishing simple PvE tasks than most professions.
• I can walk up to almost any standard PvE mob and auto-attack it to death on my Guardian.

A Mesmer is not a faceroll class to play in any field, and especially not in PvE. Mobs are not easily “confused” by your illusions, illusions are relatively fragile, the Mesmer is physically quite fragile and doesn’t have consistent self-healing.

A Mesmer is not bad at PvE, but it takes more effort to accomplish the same things. Much of that effort may be juggling very tight timing on your skills or simply kiting a mob to buy time or wait for it to die.

I don’t pretend to know an answer to “fixing” the Mesmer in PvE. Part of me thinks it doesn’t even need to be “fixed”; Mesmers are simply more challenging to play in that style of gameplay.

What I’d recommend, for both practicality and to extend the life of the game for you, is:

• When you want to farm or just roll mobs, play a Warrior or Guardian.
• When you want to have a challenge in PvE or accomplish tasks that would benefit from tricksy skills (or look good in a dress while wielding a kitten monster sword), play a Mesmer.

Other alternatives include:

• When you want to explode people in ~2s in WvW, play a Thief.
• When you want to get that glazed look in your eyes and drool at the keyboard, play a ranger.
• When you want to re-discover your appreciation for any other profession, play a Necro.

Sorry Engies and Elementalists; I really don’t know you that well.

wightnoise.8092:

I think one of the problems is drawing too much aggro in pve. I’ve been trying to finish my storyline quests recently and just did that quest where I’m defending hyleks from the undead. So there’s an army of hyleks fighting an army of risen, but if I cast iBeserker, they ALL b-line right for me, like 8 risen. Really have to drop snares and having a cripple on shatter helps.

Hmm. You must be running quite a different build than me. I LOVE it when that happens. Saves me the trouble of having to run after them. When they all charge, the weakened risen slam right into a Blurred Frenzy + warden + max Mind Wrack = dead risen. It’s when they spread out and only some come at me while the others chase my berzerker that I have to scurry around dodging to round ’em up again.

I agree levels 20-30 or so were well… maybe a little frustrating if not just a little troublesome, but once I hit 40 I haven’t had any problems at all unless I get blindsided by an unseen spawn.

I would argue that while I need slightly (~1s) longer to tag AE mobs in PvE – which can ofc cause issues if mobs simply are dead in less than a single second but despite the rampant exaggerations in this thread this happens quite rarely, and Aurora Glade is not such an underpopulated realm :P – I have it much easier to solo Champions or basically any more difficult enemy.

I just never get hit. I don’t care about how to soak damage or heal it, I just don’t get hit. It’s the perfect killing setup for PvE.

Sabbathius.1465:

Mesmer sucks in PvE. COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING! I cannot stress this point enough.
<snip>

This is my experience as well.
While the mesmer can perform; it’s still outperformed in PvE by the other classes that I’ve witnessed/tried.

It is wonderful in PvP in my opinion; but it lacks in PvE.

Hmmm reading through all the posts it seems those who favour Greatsword are the ones clamouring against. Those of us who favour other weapons see the difficulties.

I agree with the OP, we are not bad in PvE but we do lack in the AoE damage department compared to the other classes.

FYI, I am a Dom, Chaos, Illusion specced out mainly using Staff with Scepter/Torch. So I moslty do condition damage and no I don’t use sharper images again, it’s not how I play and it’s not sub-optimal, I’m mostly a tank Mesmer.

So I don’t use roll+illusion creation, I don’t use a lot of what those who favour GS use. A lot of you keep trying to box how a Mesmer should be traited/played. I’ve played a Guardian, Necromancer, and an Elementalist and if you play them you definitely see the AoE damage differences.

I’ll give a go at Sword mainhand but I am mostly focused on condition damage (for staff/Chaos Storm/Chaos Armour/Shatter+condition on death) and see.

Also my Guardian is again “Tank” specced out and solos champions with all his heals and blocks, yes I do favour the toughness trait lines.

Lucubration.8361:

• When you want to re-discover your appreciation for any other profession, play a Necro.

Sorry Engies and Elementalists; I really don’t know you that well.

My Necro seems to do really well traited in a support roll though lol.

I started up a Mesmer the other day to get a better view of this class. My ENG found them highly annoying in WvW so I wanted to learn more about them. So far on the PvE side of the fence, I’m finding them very interesting once I learned that illusions are not pets, but ticking time bombs. I just reached L12 but for now I’ve been swapping between GS and Staff during events with hordes of mobs and dropping that reflect shield on those annoying ranged mobs. Man my ENG would kill for that reflect shield.

So I think I found my second class to level up with my ENG who reached L60 and got the grenadier trait. It’s a nice change of pace instead of lobbing ‘nades all day. After reading these forums, I guess I’ll start experimenting with sword/pistol instead of carrying two 2H weapons.

Honestly, I don’t get it.

Leveled to 80 with staff/sword+focus without a crit/bleed spec (20/0/30/0/20) and I had no problems at all. It’s really difficult to die, even with the respawn rate of Orr.

I prefer to roam killing anything that moves while gathering mats for a while than farming DEs. This is not a DE mob tagging spec, and I have to be honest, all those guys with IP and shatters of 10k, do you really can tag the amount of mobs you say you can? No pun intended, but lot’s of DEs have all people spamming skills at the exact spot where the mobs stop being invulnerable and mobs die in less than 0.5 sec unless they are an elite. Best way to tag mobs in my spec, is to go 1h sword, choose the right place, put a stone in top of my “1” key, and get out for a while.

I think this is a DE problem, not mesmer specific, and if Arenanet wants to sort out the bots problem and enhance the current DE farming, they have to add other types of mobs into this events (reflectors, kamikazes, whatever), something that makes DE events more interesting and not a “spam one skill feast”.

Dungeons, I think my spec is a very good dungeoning spec, is not top dps’er for sure, but in all dungeons I went I feel useful. The truth is, with all problems that the class may have, I’m still having fun. I may not kill as fast as other classes, but I doubt I die as often as them.

i went with precision/cond dmg/power set at lvl 50 and use GS. With trait that dodge rolls clones with high precision your clones will stack bleed REALLY high. Also when you crit there is a minor trait in that line that gives you 1sec of vigor so you can dodge roll ALOT. However, at lvl 80 im fairly certain im going to change to beserkers but use Rangers rune set (5) and (1) rune for anotehr 25precision. its like 190 precision and 8% crti dmg. You can trait bounces +1 and skill 2 (mirror blade) hits hard when its traited to bounce 4 times. Your target will get pummeled by the mirror blade 3 times. Since mirror blade is an illusion creating weapon skill you get -20% recharge from the GS trait and -20% recharge from the minor trait in the illusions line taking its recharge down to like 4.8sec. It hits so hard you may find you only need to cast it once or maybe you do cast it again at 4.8sec by the time you move to next foe it will be recharged. People use 100b with a recharge of like 6.4sec so 4.8sec is good considering its 3 free hits while you are channeling auto attack. Also i know its a pain to use but consider learning how to drop mind blade. Its a fast cast aoe that hits fairly decent dmg. If you really want to blow stuff away fast then consider learning how to use mantra of pain. its free dmg so long as after a fight and running to next mob you recast it.

Im only lvl 57 atm but it does look promising. If you cant stand berseker then stacking bleed with GS clones and rampagers gear would be the way to go.

thehunt.9315:

So I don’t use roll+illusion creation, I don’t use a lot of what those who favour GS use. A lot of you keep trying to box how a Mesmer should be traited/played. I’ve played a Guardian, Necromancer, and an Elementalist and if you play them you definitely see the AoE damage differences.

It’s not that we are trying to tell you how to play your mesmer, it’s that certain weapons and traitlines are generally designed for certain playstyles. Anet didn’t design this game like most other MMOs where you can pick your skills and talents how you want and then pair them with just about any weapon that looks cool and has great stats. Each weapon was designed from the ground up for certain playtsyles. This is true for all classes, not just the mesmer.

A lot of people here seem like they are using builds with heavy defensive or utility functions (like scepter/torch and chaos/inspiration) and then complaining that they are bad because they cannot kill as fast as an axe warrior. We are just trying to direct those people to a more direct damage build since it seems that is what they are complaining about.

If you want good, solid direct damage, GS and MH sword/pistol were designed for that playstyle (ranged and skirmishing respectively). So don’t try to do it with weapons not designed for that task. If you want a defensive set, scepter and torch are king. Staff, focus, and OH sword are so versatile it really depends on how you gear and trait for how you play them, but even with these weapons certain trait loadouts are better for some playstyles than others.

lollie.5816:

Claw Island is easy on all classes, no idea why anyone would bring that up as a mark of respect.

You seemed confused Lollie so let me help you out.

Claw Island is so ridiculously easy just about any class can handle it many many levels before 50.

Its not a mark of respect, or achievement. its a joke. The Op says that he realised how bad his mesmer was when doing claw island. This simply cannot be possible unless he is just not capable of playing mesmer correctly.

Please read the thread before posting. it will save you these pointless offtopic discussions in future.

lollie.5816:

Voodoo Tina.4180:

No one brought it up as a mark of respect.

Yeah Evo up there brought it up as a mark of respect, making like he was able to magically solo that quest early on his mesmer thereby showing that mesmers aren’t crap at pve…when truth is that quest is easy for all classes, assuming basic things like you know not to stand still and try to tank the hits from multiple mobs…

Evo Sapien.5298:

I soloed claw island at 44 without ever being downed. My engineer did it at 46 but had some issues and was downed a few times. Truth is mesmer is practically immortal in Pve if you play right.

¬_¬
let me be clear.
Claw Island is a joke. It needs to be done several levels early to even be entertaining.
The OP thinking mesmer is terrible at PVE because he had trouble in Claw Island is completely ridiculous. As is your reaction to my statement.

Claw Island can be a problem for a Mesmer if you don’t approach it correctly. You shouldn’t fail the quest — but you may die if you accidentally pull AOE aggro too much and you’re not ultra pro.

mesmers have good utility how is that bad in pve? condition aoe removals, enemy buff removals, haste bubble, mass invisibility, projectile reflections.

I think if they tweaked Mesmers illusions/Phantasms so that they didn’t die immediately with the death of a mob. Change it so that they would stick around and attack a new targt you attack but disappear after 5 seconds of inactivity.

This would solve the problem that everyone has been in with group PVE when the mob dies in 2 seconds.

I’m pretty sure there’s a mercy rule that comes into play after dying hundreds of times on a story quest. I really never figured out what triggered the endings many times on mesmer…there seems to be infinite respawn with nothing dying. I’ve restarted a few times when too many key NPCs die, but generally just keep tapping and coming back.

Running through those quests now on guardian…it’s just pull everything and AoE it. Totally different experience. Killing the dragon was actually harder as a melee. Story quests are hard on ele as well, you just have to put out a lot more damage when an NPC is doing some tanking because your survivability is worse. Everything is easy on ranger.

OP- you’re doing it wrong.

Yes, it’s horrible in pve. Some people have had a horrible time, then they improved their PvE build, and now they are having less horrible of a time. Unfortunately this has convinced them that they are “good” now.

Gaiawolf.8261:

thehunt.9315:

So I don’t use roll+illusion creation, I don’t use a lot of what those who favour GS use. A lot of you keep trying to box how a Mesmer should be traited/played. I’ve played a Guardian, Necromancer, and an Elementalist and if you play them you definitely see the AoE damage differences.

It’s not that we are trying to tell you how to play your mesmer, it’s that certain weapons and traitlines are generally designed for certain playstyles. Anet didn’t design this game like most other MMOs where you can pick your skills and talents how you want and then pair them with just about any weapon that looks cool and has great stats. Each weapon was designed from the ground up for certain playtsyles. This is true for all classes, not just the mesmer.

A lot of people here seem like they are using builds with heavy defensive or utility functions (like scepter/torch and chaos/inspiration) and then complaining that they are bad because they cannot kill as fast as an axe warrior. We are just trying to direct those people to a more direct damage build since it seems that is what they are complaining about.

If you want good, solid direct damage, GS and MH sword/pistol were designed for that playstyle (ranged and skirmishing respectively). So don’t try to do it with weapons not designed for that task. If you want a defensive set, scepter and torch are king. Staff, focus, and OH sword are so versatile it really depends on how you gear and trait for how you play them, but even with these weapons certain trait loadouts are better for some playstyles than others.

Yes I understand that, in my guild there’s another Mesmer who’s more Crit and is GS/SnS and he does more bursty damage but suffers from being far my squishy So relies on the distance etc.

However, both of us hurt when it comes to AoE and I less so… (I’m shatter and he’s phantasm more).

That’s my point… They should give us a Skill AoE IMO and it’d solve a lot.

Evo Sapien.5298:

lollie.5816:

Claw Island is easy on all classes, no idea why anyone would bring that up as a mark of respect.

You seemed confused Lollie so let me help you out.

Claw Island is so ridiculously easy just about any class can handle it many many levels before 50.

Its not a mark of respect, or achievement. its a joke. The Op says that he realised how bad his mesmer was when doing claw island. This simply cannot be possible unless he is just not capable of playing mesmer correctly.

Please read the thread before posting. it will save you these pointless offtopic discussions in future.

I found it very long… and enduring… again because of lack of AoE… Again I speak to using a Staff and Scepter/AoE 20/0/20/0/30. I’m probably the most specced as an AoE a mesmer can get.

I died once because I drew in another mob on me, so my fault. However, I then did the next step with a Guardian and Theif guildy… much faster… more AoE.

Badaboom.4216:

I think if they tweaked Mesmers illusions/Phantasms so that they didn’t die immediately with the death of a mob. Change it so that they would stick around and attack a new targt you attack but disappear after 5 seconds of inactivity.

This would solve the problem that everyone has been in with group PVE when the mob dies in 2 seconds.

It’d help, sometimes the NPCs heroes would kill my target before I could set up my 3 AoE… so I got used to maybe 1 or 2 in there.

Also, people forget some Clone Creation can be problematic, Staff’s for instance is a back TP so if you’re moving and under pressure you can easily tag in another group… or your clones do…

A lot of people are hung on people saying it’s difficult, when no one is really saying it’s difficult but that the lack of AoE hurts in how long it can be to do some of the similar content.

I also agree because we are pretty good at soloing champions… this might be our compensation… though if I have to restate it I will, my Healing/Tank/Zeal Guardian also just does fine against Champions. I’ll watch a glass canon Guardian try the same thing and go kersplat though. Which brings me back to my initial statement, everyone who clamours against this idea all focus on GREATSWORD. Why should we be so cookiecutter eh?

Would it really hurt if we got an AoE Skill?

I found it very long… and enduring… again because of lack of AoE… Again I speak to using a Staff and Scepter/AoE 20/0/20/0/30. I’m probably the most specced as an AoE a mesmer can get.

Are you trolling?

AOE = GS and Focus/Sword and vaguely staff. You’re about as “non-AOE” as a Mesmer can get. Edit: Although you do have IP and I assume Mental Torment, so not completely off-target.

I could see mobs being a problem on a GS build, particularly one where you have focused your traits on power/precision and minimized condition damage.

With a staff/condition damage build, the approach is more straightforward:
1. Switch targets, put two conditions on as many as possible, using illusions, movement + dodge to avoid attack.
2. Once cornered, switch to sceptre/sword, block and shatter (and stealth, if you have torch).
Even if overwhelmed, if there are enough targets with multiple conditions (plus maybe an offensive illusion), you’ll rally and can use illusions to sneak around and repeat the process.

But of course that’s staff. I’ve been playing GS/Sceptre with no condition damage, and could see eventually switching to staff/sword because of the potential mob issue. I think it’s fair to pose the question to the GW2 devs about whether they considered the impact of fairly common build having little/no aoe and little/no condition damage.

EasymodeX.4062:

I found it very long… and enduring… again because of lack of AoE… Again I speak to using a Staff and Scepter/AoE 20/0/20/0/30. I’m probably the most specced as an AoE a mesmer can get.

Are you trolling?

AOE = GS and Focus/Sword and vaguely staff. You’re about as “non-AOE” as a Mesmer can get. Edit: Although you do have IP and I assume Mental Torment, so not completely off-target.

Yes and I use Prestige for some AoE (and breathing room). Sometimes I switch to Imbued Diversions if it’s a lot of AoE (like the Hylek undead raid woulda been nice to have that). I seem to pull aggro like no other…

I think you jumped the gun there… again Shatters… if I am really AoEing hard I switch to Scepter to mass Confuse (using stun/more stacks of confusion/more likely to be able to pop immunity) more so, it seems to work well as a Shatter build. Though my guildies do make fun of how much I switch weapons. My Dom Master Trait one I play with a lot btw too (condition removal if I know the battle has a lot, etc)

To me GS has longer AoE CDs than what I am using plus don’t mesh well with how I play the staff as up close and personal. I count Chaos Armour as an AoE too btw which you can almost have up all the time if you Phase Retreat in Chaos Storm along with popping it.

So … you’re saying that the advantage for staff is that you will be downed and have mobs low from condition damage?

Despite the fact that GS has superior AOE and will probably have most of the mobs dead anyways?

ControllerJacobs.2843:

I could see mobs being a problem on a GS build, particularly one where you have focused your traits on power/precision and minimized condition damage.

With a staff/condition damage build, the approach is more straightforward:
1. Switch targets, put two conditions on as many as possible, using illusions, movement + dodge to avoid attack.
2. Once cornered, switch to sceptre/sword, block and shatter (and stealth, if you have torch).
Even if overwhelmed, if there are enough targets with multiple conditions (plus maybe an offensive illusion), you’ll rally and can use illusions to sneak around and repeat the process.

But of course that’s staff. I’ve been playing GS/Sceptre with no condition damage, and could see eventually switching to staff/sword because of the potential mob issue. I think it’s fair to pose the question to the GW2 devs about whether they considered the impact of fairly common build having little/no aoe and little/no condition damage.

Exactly how I play… actually.