Guild Wars 2

(So this is a project I’d like for all of us to get involved in. There are a number of blanks where if anyone with the proper knowledge could fill it, it’d be much appreciated! Not going to add specific builds yet until the patch Tuesday. Anything you feel should be added, please feel free to suggest!)

While it can be difficult to learn to play Mesmer, it can also be hard to teach another player beyond constantly beating them up in duels.

When you decide to take another player and help them out, you’re not just showing them a few things: You’re helping them learn tactics and techniques that would’ve taken quite some time to learn on their own. If you’re going to take the time out to help someone, hopefully these tips will help make the lesson more informative and less time consuming.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION
Sometimes a player doesn’t know what they want from their Mesmer. They just pick the class and go from there. Sometimes you’ve got to do a little prodding not just to find out what kind of build they want, but to help them figure out they playstyle and gametype they’d be most interested in exploring.

• “Do you wanna do? PvE (dungeons, fractals, or open world), PvP (casual or tournament), WvW (Solo, small group, or Zerg)?” Seems like a simple question, but people tend to often just ask “PvP, PvE, or WvW?” this isn’t specific enough to help someone find a build that’s right for them since each of those main cartegories can be broken up into sub-categories. As a general rule…

PvE – Open World Build (Someone halp!) Sword/ Focus – Greatsword
PvE – Dungeons, Fractals (Halp! Haaalp!):
PvP – Tournaments: Shatter, make sure they’re running greatsword.
PvP – Casual: can vary, nearly any build works.
WvW – Roaming:
WvW – Zerg:

• How long have you been playing Mesmer? This’ll help you get a feel for what to expect from the opponent. If they’ve been playing Mesmer for 3 months, they should at least know what each weapon does and how shattering works. If less than that, assume they know nothing. If they’ve been playing for over a year then you shouldn’t need to explain any mechanics to them and should just be able to proceed to dueling.

ANALYZING YOUR OPPONENT
OK, so you guys have decided to run a few duels in order to really assuage where your tutoree (that a word? I felt pretentious writing “student” or “pupil”) is at skill-wise. There are a few things to look out for while you fight, and giving constructive advice will help keep your opponent motivated rather than simply beating them to the ground over and over until they don’t feel like getting back up.

• Do they panic? When you’re fighting someone more skilled than yourself, it’s easy to lose your composure as you flail around struggling not to die. Sometimes old habits like looking at your skills rather than the screen, dodging all over the place, or accidentally cancelling your skills because you’re in such a rush to cast something else will pop up.
  Make sure to tell them NOT to panic, and if they’re particularly new to the class try not to overwhelm them with too much at once. You want them juuust whelmed enough to react properly, even if this means slowing down your bursts or not capitalizing on an opportunity to finish the fight. The more confident the player feels in their abilities, the better they’ll be able to react with a clearer head and learn quicker.

• Are they wasting defenses? Check to see if they’re blowing distortion too soon, or starting the fight with both blink AND decoy. In general, unless you’re a veteran Mesmer you don’t want to start fights using Decoy for a quick stealth burst. It’s far more predictable than you’d think, since the opponent merely has to wait 2 seconds before casting Blurred Frenzy or some other defense.
  Make sure they’re not spamming dodges, and when they do make sure to punish them for it and explain to them WHY they just got blown up. Most people don’t realize that a single bar of endurance takes 10 seconds to refill (5 seconds with Vigor).

• Are they shattering? Here’s a biggie. Most people tend to struggle with Mesmer because they do not know how to use their shatters properly. Make sure to check to see if they’re shattering MindWrack at close range, dodge-shattering either offensively or defensively, using Cry of Frustration either for a bit of extra damage or boonstrip, ect.
  It helps to explain that as a general rule F1/F2 are offensive shatters while F3/F4 are defensive. The latter two shatters are harder to learn to use properly, so force your opponent to practice using F4 just to get comfortable with it. F3 tends to take the longest to master, so advice them to practice Dodge-shattering into f3 either for interrupts or to protect their escape.

• Are they creative? Do they do the same thing over and over? If each time you duel they end up in the dirt exactly as soon or faster than they did before, then something’s wrong. Likely, they’re getting predictable. Mesmer is a class that thrives on creativity, and becoming “average” or “usual” is our enemy. Rangers can spam 2 all day, Medi guards can get away with the same rotation over and over, but for a Mesmer we have to adapt to each situation uniquely. Our abilities are too telegraphed to expect the same thing to work over and over.
  Encourage them to try different forms of attack. Attack from stealth now and then, Blink into a shatter, let phantasms do their job for a little while you spam autoattack, anything to keep your opponent guessing!

TIPS AND TRICKS

• When cloaked, try to get behind your opponent to make it more difficult for them to retarget you.
• GREATSWORD burst tends to be Mirror Blade → Mind Stab → Shatter. Practice that until it all happens near instantly.
• STAFF is great for mobility, practice learning to Phase Retreat up ledges. Also, the staff actually performs better the closer you are to your opponents, this is especially important with abilities like Chaos Storm and iWarlock. Save Chaos Storm for when you’re going to swap weapons and cast it right before you do (such as Chaos Storm → ileap →Blurred)
• SWORD is an offensive and defensive weapon, with both Blurred Frenzy and iLeap having applications for both. Sometimes it helps to send your iLeap clone to a pet or NPC of some sort to give you 5 seconds of a stunbreak/teleport to get out of danger. ileap-swap is also an AOE immobilize
• TORCH does decent power damage with The Prestige when you exit stealth. Use this as additional damage on your shatter bursts.
• PISTOL phantasm makes opponents panic and often waste dodges trying to avodi the rain of bullets.
• OFFHAND SWORD may be a bit lackluster, but does the most damage of any offhand. It’s the hardest to learn and offers the least defenses, but both abilities hit for equally heavy damage.
• FOCUS is great for mobility and pulling people off ledges, obviously, but it’s also good for setting up choke points. The cripple from temporal curtain lasts a pretty long time and often discourages people from crossing it. iWarden omnomnom’s all over any projectile, making it ideal against Engineers, Rangers, Warriors, and Thieves (and soon Dragon Hunters).
• SCEPTER actually does very decent power damage. Confusing Images deals more damage than swords Blurred Frenzy

SAMPLE BUILDS (coming soon after patch)

What’s a Mesmer?

Ok before anyone thinks too much, I mean, except the creative part, what defines what a Mesmer is? What they excel at and the style of play. Are they booners? Do they brain afk most stuff? Are they gods of making people more frustrated than a 16 year old catholic boy who lives opposite a strip club?

P.S. Let me know if you want the post deleting so you can reserve 6 or so for builds.

For PvE (Dungeons) the best would be to explain them how the meta works.
Explaining reflects, runing them through all the instances at least once to get them know the game.

Damage>Defense & Support=/= Less Dmg
In Guild Wars 2 the PvE content is easily done if you know the enemy. Bosses have attacks which should be dodged and attacks you could also just ignore or heal against. It is not required to go for tanky equipment. Mostly it’s best to go all out for offensive stats. If you want to support your group you can use skills that either prevent the damage enemies deal or enhance the damage your allies deal.
Examples are “blinds” which cause the enemy to miss his next attack and might which buffs your allies’ power and condition damage.
Another way to support are reflects. There are a lot of bosses that use projectiles to deal massive damage. With skills like “Feedback” you can reflect these projectiles back to their source preventing them from hitting your allies and dealing that massive damage to your enemy. (not every projectile is reflectable though) (detailed information should be given // isn’t there a thread about when and where to reflect?)

I would not say that dodging the PISTOL phantasm is a vaste, you probably have zerker gear so they will do decent damage, but it might make their behavior more predictable and predictable behavior could be exploited.

Also for Unranked PvP you could adapt your build mid-game. If you see that the opposing team has a lot of rangers, swap on Feedback. Lots of buffs flying around? Swap null field/iDisenchanter/AT.