Guild Wars 2

So, after reading all these posts claiming that Mesmer aren’t efficient at tagging end game DE mobs, and then getting there thinking that I didn’t need to do that in order to progress (I was wrong, I need tier 6 crafting mats) I have decided that since I love my mesmer to death perhaps I should just roll an alt! This is actually the first game where I played a class that I loved so much I didn’t roll an alt to play along side it right away.

I am OK with mesmer not being the A1 farmer that other classes are, but my question to you guys that also love mesmer. What other class should I roll next? I’m kind of stuck between necro and engi I tried Guardian as well but they seemed too easy to me.

I love my mesmer too, but like you, I’ve given up on pve. Some dragon fights I can spend the entire fight nuking the dragon in level 80 endgame gear with green gems, and I’ll get bronze and no chest. That’s extremely disheartening.

I’m glad we’re good in pvp — that’s what I enjoy anyway — but it’s too bad that our DPS is so bad against large “boss” mobs in both DEs and in dungeons. I feel kind of bad letting my team carry me in dungeons when I could be a second elementalist or something more useful.

I’ve taken place in two dragon events and gotten gold each time, whiis good for some random greens and maybe a yellow so far. but no T6 ingredients which is really what I’m after. Did you roll? If so, what did you make?

I’m glad we’re good in pvp — that’s what I enjoy anyway — but it’s too bad that our DPS is so bad against large “boss” mobs in both DEs and in dungeons. I feel kind of bad letting my team carry me in dungeons when I could be a second elementalist or something more useful.

DEs is arguable, especially if you’re referring to zerging in Orr (I’ve actually never had much of a problem getting credit on dragons).

Mesmers do perfectly fine in dungeons. From the explorables I’ve tried, while there are some cases where having illusions flying around causes problems such as accidentally aggroing mobs you were trying to avoid, in most cases we’re quite good.

We’re able to take awesome utility skills such as Feedback, Time Warp, and Null Field that help you’re entire party, even when specced completely for DPS. Our reflect skills alone make certain explorables absurdly easier.

Yep, I’m having GW1 flashbacks. My mesmer was painful to play in normal PvE until the eventual buff, so I created a warrior to farm the money needed for my armor since PvE was painful.

the recent change to karma dr has made most zergs dry up.

even with that, even being concerned about this as i levelld up my mesmer – it’s become a non-issue. drop an izerker and blow it up – just tagged everything. throw mirror images adn blow it up – just tagged quite a bit. drop chaos storm. (roll asura) drop radiation field. tab+1, tab+1.

rolling a warrior isn’t going to get you t6 mats any faster right now, not until they start to tweak the dr. i took my ranger to my usual farming spots last night and in less than an hour was capped – nothing was dropping, not even grey stuff. i got one powerful blood. that was it.

your best bet is not to roll an alt and put money into it as you level it up. your best bet is to continue on, gathering everything in sight and selling what you don’t need. you will eventually be able to just buy the mats you need.

tomlinas.4395:

I love my mesmer too, but like you, I’ve given up on pve. Some dragon fights I can spend the entire fight nuking the dragon in level 80 endgame gear with green gems, and I’ll get bronze and no chest. That’s extremely disheartening.

I’m glad we’re good in pvp — that’s what I enjoy anyway — but it’s too bad that our DPS is so bad against large “boss” mobs in both DEs and in dungeons. I feel kind of bad letting my team carry me in dungeons when I could be a second elementalist or something more useful.

i see a lot of mesmers with this problem. hint: they are all wearing rampager/carrion gear

you can neither crit nor get more than a stack of a bleed on claw of jormag. just not gonna happen. if there is trash around you, drop an aoe’ng phantasm like izerker on it. those hits/kills count towards the event.

stop using the staff in these two events. use a greatsword. both iwarlock and iduelist work at around range 600 and are very vulnerable in these events so you need a powerful auto attack between clones and phantasms and shatters.

I don’t use staff almost ever; I pretty much play GS / sword+torch or scepter+pistol. I do understand how to drop an izerker and ipistoleers :P And let me be clear that I don’t feel completely useless. However, even a rudimentary parser among friends will show you that in large events where bosses have frequent, high damage AoE, our dps is not great.

In some events (Kol comes to mind) the ability to keep sending in hordes of clones at a steady pace can be a useful tanking mechanic. Against ordinary mobs I have no problems whatsoever. In PvP I absolutely love my class. However, like OP, I find myself hard pressed to want to pay the money to port over to a dragon where I do nothing but spam DPS skills for little to no reward. I also find many boss fights a little depressing — the best role I can play there is often an accessorry role, where I’m the extra condition damage / buffs from staff or mirror blade, with some minor DPS as well.

I don’t know how it is on every server, but it’s a telling sign that many of the devoted dungeon runners on Darkhaven have told me flat out that they don’t want a mesmer because we don’t bring much that’s compelling.

The first time I did dragon I didn’t place anything, the second time I got bronze. Every time since then, I leave clones on the dragon while beating adds and barriers and only swap to the dragon when anything else in the area is dead/destroyed, always get gold since then.

For other DE’s, I tab target through mobs and try and drop a clone on 3 different mobs and run through shatters to tag things. It’s really not bad, just have to be really active more compare to just dropping AoEs with my Necro.

To be fair, the mob tapping issue is only a big problem on high-pop servers where a lot of event farming is going on. And only in DEs, really. If you don’t really care about either one, or move to low pop server, it won’t be (much of) an issue.

Having said that, my first alt was an Engineer. Precisely with DE farming in mind. The class is an absolute AoE beast. Grenades with 1500 range and spammable, turrets, flame walls from the flamer, etc. I’m not sure about others, but so far Engi farms insanely fast. With my build, there’s absolutely no difference between fight 1 mob or 5, the rotation is always the same. The only difference is at the end of the fight you’re looking at 1 corpse or 5. Speed doesn’t suffer one iota.

I actually found this difficult to do on the Mesmer, or not as efficient, because we really have no control over illusion positioning and aggro. As an Engi, I know mobs will all come at me, they won’t get distracted by illusions which tend to go every which way (especially evident with iBerserker). So mobs don’t spread out and are really easy to just AoE down.

Imagine if you will if you could shatter every second, pretty much. That’s Grenade build Engineer. And your shatters have 1500 range, and you can aim them anywhere. Oh, and they can burn, blind, slow, etc. Sound good?

Besides that, the class gets my absolute highest recommendation so far for both complexity and skillcap required. IF you spec for challenge. You can absolutely build a rifle Engineer that plays just like rifle Warrior – just spam 1 and run around like a dolt. Or you can go with a build using 3+ kits, resulting in 20+ abilities including toolbelt. Really makes a Mesmer appear childishly simple by comparison. So, if you’re into that, it’s a nice class to try.

I really like my Mesmer, but lately when I log in I tend to play an Engineer. One word of warning though – Engi is nowhere near as cheesy or easy as Mesmer in PvP. You will have to work for your kills. But at the same time, you can make hilarious survival builds that are just supremely annoying – like running around crapping bombs that also heal you and everyone around (a little bit, but you drop a minimum of 1 every second, plus 1 more on dodge, plus a bunch more if you drop below 25%) on top of damage, and with great regen and excellent survivability. And if push comes to shove, pop Super Speed (+100% speed for 5 seconds) and get the heck out of Dodge. Mesmer is annoying to deal with in PvP, but unnoyingly built Engineer will make you bite the keyboard.

Thank you for your input! I think I’m going to go engineer. I had a 29 engineer that I retooled from Norn to Asura anyway, ill just keep leveling that up as I am having fun with that class as well.

Some ways I find it easy to tag mobs as a mesmer (in priority order):

1. GS iBeserker — fast cooldown, fast cast, lots of aoe dmg in the 1000+ range
2. Mirror Images + F1/F2
3. Staff 2 + F1/F2
4. GS 5
5. GS 3
6. Staff 5 (chaos storm)

I get gold.
People are playing around with lots of these utility builds that do little or no dps.
They are also specced deep into toughness/vit.

Clue- High power, High crit and High crit damage = dps
So what if you get a shiny perk deep in the healing tree. That will only hinder dps.

It’s easy to get gold. Anyone can do that, but when an engineer pulls an extra $4k XP than you from kills on top of the event XP, plus loot from all those kills. It adds up. DE’s need to give kill XP and loot from assists (like when your staff bounces and buffs an ally that kills the mob).

tomlinas.4395:

I love my mesmer too, but like you, I’ve given up on pve. Some dragon fights I can spend the entire fight nuking the dragon in level 80 endgame gear with green gems, and I’ll get bronze and no chest. That’s extremely disheartening.

I’m glad we’re good in pvp — that’s what I enjoy anyway — but it’s too bad that our DPS is so bad against large “boss” mobs in both DEs and in dungeons. I feel kind of bad letting my team carry me in dungeons when I could be a second elementalist or something more useful.

Were you in those fights from the start?
There are time frame perimeters that determine whether or not you can get a chest from a world boss.

Also, I have a really crappy processor so when I get around large groups of people, I go from a nice 50-60 FPS to a grand 3-8 FPS. This makes it impossible for me to be on front lines.
So in world events I tend to sit back and fight the lesser mobs/objectives while others bum rush the dragon.
Doing this I get gold without ever even attacking the dragon.

So in world events I tend to sit back and fight the lesser mobs/objectives while others bum rush the dragon. Doing this I get gold without ever even attacking the dragon.

You have to understand that getting a gold medal is just the tip of the iceberg. Classes with high mob tap percentage get, on average, as much XP from kills as they get from the gold medal award. And way more than the award in loot.

I kid you not. Make an Engineer, carry both grenades, bombs and at least one AoE turret. Do events with tons and tons of mobs. And just watch your XP bar leap forward. Do NOT loot until event is over. Just stand there and look at piles and piles and piles of sparkling corpses as far as the eye can see. For me, it’s not uncommon to start an event with totally empty bags (currently 12-slots, I think) and by the end of the event there’s not enough room for all the loot. And this is after I deposit collectibles, it still isn’t enough room. That’s how much loot and cash I get. This is really not an exaggeration.

People who say “I got gold medal” and call it a day are really missing out on a ton more XP, loot, money, etc., compared to other classes.

Interesting. I love my Mesmer, too, and for the past 3 weeks after hitting 80, I’m beginning to feel the same. DE farming is way easier on my first 80 level character, my thief. I adjusted things and start just farming smaller DE events with my Mesmer but still it kind of bothers me that I have to do that. With my thief I just spam my SB attacks and I get tons of loot. With my Mesmer, I have to change my build spec and do a lot more work for less loot.

So lately, I’ve just relegated my Mesmer for WvW play and use my Thief for everything else.

It’s a bit sad since I love playing my Mesmer. For a game that relies so much on DEs post level-70 zones, the AOE tagging system to get loot and more XP really need to be looked at.

What’s funny is that at launch, I made 3 characters, Thief, Mesmer and guess what? And Engineer. I really enjoy that class. I start leveling it up now. Still love my Mesmer though and will continue to play but will rely on my Thief (or 3rd alt) to generate funds to all my characters.

Sabbathius.1465:

So in world events I tend to sit back and fight the lesser mobs/objectives while others bum rush the dragon. Doing this I get gold without ever even attacking the dragon.

You have to understand that getting a gold medal is just the tip of the iceberg. Classes with high mob tap percentage get, on average, as much XP from kills as they get from the gold medal award. And way more than the award in loot.

I kid you not. Make an Engineer, carry both grenades, bombs and at least one AoE turret. Do events with tons and tons of mobs. And just watch your XP bar leap forward. Do NOT loot until event is over. Just stand there and look at piles and piles and piles of sparkling corpses as far as the eye can see. For me, it’s not uncommon to start an event with totally empty bags (currently 12-slots, I think) and by the end of the event there’s not enough room for all the loot. And this is after I deposit collectibles, it still isn’t enough room. That’s how much loot and cash I get. This is really not an exaggeration.

People who say “I got gold medal” and call it a day are really missing out on a ton more XP, loot, money, etc., compared to other classes.

all true, and when mobs aren’t stopping all drops after less than 100 kills it will matter.

sadly, today, it really does not.