Guild Wars 2

…about playing Mesmer. These forums often get negative and people tend to feel touchy. I figured we could share stories about what makes us happy about why we play Mesmer. Mine happened yesterday:

I was on my really slow climb to Rank 80, where all of my teams were losing ’cause of people fighting off point, 4 people defending lord against 1 engineer, etc. It felt like a hollow climb and like I thought I was a bad player because I was losing all of these matches.

But in one of them, I’m fighting solo at Graveyard in Foefire. I just finish stomping a thief when a necro and ranger appear. All I can do is stall and hope that my team shows up to help me. I’m locking down the necro and avoiding as much of the rangers damage as I can. I’m able to get some nice LoS action in until the necro pops his plague form. I’d been conserving my Moa, and figured now, in this 1v2, would be a good time to use it. When the necro runs away in Moa form, I manage a really sneaky lockdown burst on the ranger and a thief comes and helps me finish them off.

Here is the build that I was playing: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdRlknpGtNqxMNMrNiphY6exyh631nTqAA-TpBBwAAOCAF3fYzJAIzDAocZgAHCAA

(I’m running this build mainly as “prep” for having IP with lockdown builds come HoT.)

Now, I know that sounds like a run-of-the-mill PvP story. But in map chat, a member of the enemy team said: “Your Mesmer is pretty kitten.” And a warrior on my team concurred.

It’s always nice when people recognize what you’re trying to do. Those comments felt great and made me really happy that I’m playing this profession. What are your stories?

So, my mesmer was pretty much forged in the mists. I spend 90% of my time in PvP since my friends grinded me to death on dungeon runs (that weren’t actually runs so much as a collection of dungeon exploits) and I was happy there until I recently upgraded my computer. Now I can roam in WvW without compromising my graphics, so I decided to explore this bold new world that until now I’ve only had very brief ventures in.

So, you often hear that your average WvW player isn’t nearly as good as your average PvPer, and I really wanted to see if it was true. So I’m running around on my PvP build (4/4/6 Staff sword-focus CI pack runes, fire+energy & doom+hydromancy) and while at first the world was barren and boring.. I came upon an enemy supply camp.

I tried to flip it cuz.. Pfft. Everyone else solo-flips camps why not I? .. 3 minutes later in chased out of the camp by like 9 angry NPCs.

.. Right into 3 enemy players on a team.

So I break the eff out, they’re chasing me, and as I’m running I stop to really take a good look at my terrain .. This isn’t PvP, I don’t need to fight on point, these guys are likely bad.. I can take these fools!

And so it began. I turned around vs a guardian, necro, and ele and charged back in. Necro was too slow to keep up, Ele was too tanky to do damage and the guardian was just kinda bad. Even though I was kind of wishing for Greatsword (which seems far superior to staff in WvW) I managed to wreck them all in a way that woulda made osicat and vashury proud.

3v1? The way I was managing my decoy and blinks it may as well have been 3 on 3. It was glorious.

I’m new to GW2 and to the mesmer class. Bought the game at Beta but coming from a deeply obsessed place with GW1 and the initial balance in GW2 put me off. Just came back about a month ago and started with a ranger. Took my ranger to 80 and didn’t understand the ranger haterade. Decided to level another class and went with Mesmer since it was a favorite profession in the original game. Once at level 30 I was able to pull and wipe mobs 3x the size of the ones I did while playing ranger. I literally felt like a maestro controlling these poor helpless suckers that were dying with my finger strokes. I heard angels singing and knew of all the classes in GW2 Mesmer was the one for me. I don’t have any epic tales from dungeons, pvp, or wvw yet….But I will!

I was running a shatter build with Focus. Trying out Focus, which I used for some time very often. I can sometimes nicely pull like 3 opponents on one spot, where they are ripe for a mind wrack… very situational though and doesn’t work often^^

However, I was trying to decap far when I realized, that a thief (D/P, I believe) is standing there waiting for me… And I though… oh god… you are dead… you should turn around. Well, my brain and my fingers weren’t in agreement. And I ran directly into my doom, so I thought.

For whatever reason the thief, who gave me much trouble other times in the match, was very defensive at the beginning of the fight and I managed to get him down on health without even one shatter. Phantasm damage for the win^^ The only thing I was thinking, as he went into SR of point: “You keep decaping and keep calm, you needn’t defeat him… just delay as long as you can”.

I put down a curtain just before I expected him to backstab me. I dodged a backstab, Mirror bladed another and then pulled him off point, where he lost stealth. I forgot how it continued from there. I only remember to have barely moved and with a lucky shatter the thief was downed. And I barely lost any health… boah I felt great.

And just as I expected the usual PvP flame, like: “No1 uses Focus, you do it wrong”, ro something along those lines, the thief actually said: “Well done”. I felt even greater then^^

I just love when I manage to drop a whole group from a cliff (with focus pull or iWave) and when I drop a portal successfully behind the enemy lines :>

I love when I phase retreat up a ledge in a decisive 1v1 in conquest. It makes me feel cool and often helps me win the fight or run away trying!

Chaos Archangel.5071:

So, my mesmer was pretty much forged in the mists. I spend 90% of my time in PvP since my friends grinded me to death on dungeon runs (that weren’t actually runs so much as a collection of dungeon exploits) and I was happy there until I recently upgraded my computer. Now I can roam in WvW without compromising my graphics, so I decided to explore this bold new world that until now I’ve only had very brief ventures in.

So, you often hear that your average WvW player isn’t nearly as good as your average PvPer, and I really wanted to see if it was true. So I’m running around on my PvP build (4/4/6 Staff sword-focus CI pack runes, fire+energy & doom+hydromancy) and while at first the world was barren and boring.. I came upon an enemy supply camp.

I tried to flip it cuz.. Pfft. Everyone else solo-flips camps why not I? .. 3 minutes later in chased out of the camp by like 9 angry NPCs.

.. Right into 3 enemy players on a team.

So I break the eff out, they’re chasing me, and as I’m running I stop to really take a good look at my terrain .. This isn’t PvP, I don’t need to fight on point, these guys are likely bad.. I can take these fools!

And so it began. I turned around vs a guardian, necro, and ele and charged back in. Necro was too slow to keep up, Ele was too tanky to do damage and the guardian was just kinda bad. Even though I was kind of wishing for Greatsword (which seems far superior to staff in WvW) I managed to wreck them all in a way that woulda made osicat and vashury proud.

3v1? The way I was managing my decoy and blinks it may as well have been 3 on 3. It was glorious.

This is an awesome story and a good example of why wvw is pretty awesome. There is just something you can get roaming that you can’t really get in pvp. My friend and I call pvp the “danger room” (like in Xmen) where you go to train and get good, and going out into wvw is the real deal where you take the skills you are honing in pvp and dominate fools, or get into serious battles with others like yourself. Good stuff.

Edit: I agree that roaming without GS is just sub optimal no matter how you slice it.
Edit Edit: Though actually staff probably helped you very much in that 3v1. It’s the eternal trade-off, ability to chase vs increased ability to win outnumbered fights against people who won’t run.

@MSFone, agreed. WvW is a bit better for Mesmers because there’s no need to fight on a point, at least not in roaming. And even in a case like a ruin, you can do whatever you need to to kill the enemy. They don’t have a 15-second respawn.

Keep the good vibes coming!

Why would you have to fight on point as a mesmer? You dont go attack people who arent on points but you do fight around and for them. You’re not restricted to be in that little circle to win. Leave it, win the fight, cap the node.

Do not derail this positivity!

And if I’m already on a point, (and in Yolo-Q) I’m very reluctant to leave it to kill an enemy in a one-on-one situation. I’ve just had a lot of close games where, if the fight was going to be long, I’m going to hold the point as long as possible so my team can still get some points for a minute or so, even if said team is sucking.

Thats a bad thing to do though.. You are out of position then and any decent player will kill you very easily if you just stay on point. Then what will happen
Your team will be 4v5 for 20 seconds which could result in a snowball and a 3 cap or in most cases, a very strong 2 cap.
You will lose the node
You will give them 5 points because you died.

While if you fight off point you will maybe get the point decapped, you will win the fight so then you are 4v5 for 20ish seconds, you got 5 kill points and you get to keep the node.
Either way you really shouldnt 1v1 as a mesmer in PvP you should +1 fights and be in teamfights. Though yes, you do get into those situations.

Not to derail the good vibes train, but it’s refreshing to see someone saying something different than the “fight on point or you a bad” standard line re. tpvp. For example, the most common one: Stealth is useless for a mesmer in tpvp because nodes decap while you are in stealth. Yeah, true it decaps, but as Jurica points out dead players can’t cap anything. I wish people would keep in mind the value of killing an enemy player, it’s 20 sec of outnumbered fighting in your teams favor.

So, good vibe spin: A mesmer build can be useful in pvp as long as you kill lots of players with it.

Mesmer are awesome, today i was chased in wvw, in the ruins by 5 baruch bay.
2pew pew rangers
2elem (1d/d +1staff)
1thief (condi venom share)
So i think that was like 25s imo/person :p +staff cc + 1k5 pewpew
and they have chase me during 5mn without catching me (i was running maim, no condi clear, blink decoy)

And how to survive just with the field advantage, los, brain.
That’s why i playing mesmer.

Like Lord someone say “Mesmer are op”, no we have just to play intelligently

Spiking other zerkers in less than a second from stealth never gets old !

I love mesmer and with hot it’s gonna be so amazing i might put most of my time into it.

My favorite moment happened during stronghold. My team was losing badly, the enemy had 3 members in our base plus a hero and it was only being defended by my girlfriend as neither of us had any idea where our teammates were. My girl truly became a pro that day as somehow she was able to keep them at bay.

Where was I? I was in the enemy base facing off against a turret engi and 3 npcs, one of which happened to be their lord. Even with my awesome condi build, there was no way I could directly take on those odds so I stayed behind the wall near the entrance and kept sending in my clones. With a few reflects and a couple of well-timed stuns inbetween, I was able to spike the engi. That made the fight a bit easier but time wasn’t on my side. Good as my girl is, she was outnumbered and already had to revive our lord twice. They just kept rushing her.

So, even with the other npcs on me, I focused squarely on their lord and went full Leeroy Jenkins. In all the craziness that followed, my girlfriend panicking in the skype call because they killed her pet, condis I not even bothering to remove and the enemy team on their way, I somehow managed to spike their lord and run out just as two opponents entered the base. And just for added swag, I went into stealth and ran out of their camp alive!

By all six, I LOVE being a mesmer!

I killed a dolyak with mantra of pain

Jurica.1742:

Thats a bad thing to do though.. You are out of position then and any decent player will kill you very easily if you just stay on point. Then what will happen
Your team will be 4v5 for 20 seconds which could result in a snowball and a 3 cap or in most cases, a very strong 2 cap.
You will lose the node
You will give them 5 points because you died.

While if you fight off point you will maybe get the point decapped, you will win the fight so then you are 4v5 for 20ish seconds, you got 5 kill points and you get to keep the node.
Either way you really shouldnt 1v1 as a mesmer in PvP you should +1 fights and be in teamfights. Though yes, you do get into those situations.

Remember though that he doesn’t play shatter generally, but lockdown that is more 1v1 focused. Still true however.

K K K KILLSHOT.

Anytime you’re in a game with me and I stop to type out “L L L LOCKDOWN”.

I once reflected a kill shot back at a warrior asking for duels then getting his mate to +1 it in WvW. He stopped running the frenzy kill shot build after that.

apharma.3741:

I once reflected a kill shot back at a warrior asking for duels then getting his mate to +1 it in WvW. He stopped running the frenzy kill shot build after that.

Yeah, yesterday I encountered a Kill Show Warrior in WvW too. I was just waiting for him to use Kill Shot… he didn’t seem to care that he just dropped his own HP to 25%. His kamikaze style of fighting still troubled me a bit, but he still died in the end as he was just attempting another Kill Shot. Thanks for standing still just when I trigger Mind Wrack

I was going to cap mid in forest and there was an engineer holding the point. He got out all his turrets so all I did was use feedback. 5 seconds later all his turrets were destroyed and he lost three quarters of his health without having to push an additional button XD

I realy had troubble playing mesmer lvling was a realy hard. there was no one who helped me accapt my illusions and i was very close to give it up totally. At some point i realised oh in this game you dont have to stand still you can move. Since then it became more and more fun to play.
dungen soloing without dieing, covering behind your clones. I guess i went trough all the so called op things and the: how you can eaven play that.

now i am totally into duelling and i have the feeling i am able to kill everything with my mesmer.
What i like most on the mesmer is that you have the ability to play with your opponents I would say you always have the hidden card. It depens on when you playing it.

Jurica.1742:

Why would you have to fight on point as a mesmer? You dont go attack people who arent on points but you do fight around and for them. You’re not restricted to be in that little circle to win. Leave it, win the fight, cap the node.

You are absolutely right, but that’s not what I meant.

I meant that I didn’t have to limit myself to the point-fighting mentality of staying rather close to where the combat started. I could wander as far and wide as I wanted, which was a really strange feeling.

Also, with sword/focus staff you’re more melee oriented and lose Gs ranged pressure. I’d rarely spam staff auto in pvp but in wvw it works out better

Feel trolly lately so I chain interrupts a warrior (who surprisingly only have stun breaks or stability could be on CD) on 4/4/6/0/0. He turned into juggernaut after that but the juggernaut becomes a pretty bird.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Tealots.6095:

@MSFone, agreed. WvW is a bit better for Mesmers because there’s no need to fight on a point, at least not in roaming. And even in a case like a ruin, you can do whatever you need to to kill the enemy. They don’t have a 15-second respawn.

Keep the good vibes coming!

That OP post is what I was responding to.
When can we do some duels btw? If I remember correctly you’re now on EU as well?
Something positive? Mesmer is in a team that is going to WTS and I think mesmer will win WTS for the first time. (Hope at least!)
Also, protons!

<3 stealing towers from nub enemies !!! Suddenly 15 people appear inside of SM:D
Teaches those mean zergs to bully me 1v20 :P

Heh. My “best” moment of Mesmering?
This’d probably be ~2 years back. I ran afoul of a gang of Sorrow’s Furnace guys while roaming in EB. Luckily for me, I was running a pure Stealth setup. So, I end up chain-sneaking around these dudes for a goodly while until they manage to gang-bust my behind while all my sneak-mojo was on c/d.
Sure, I ended up waypointing … but I can absolutely taste the pure salt they had to be generating.

Hiding behind a wall near enemy spawn, summoning clones and phantasms while they aren’t looking and laughing as they flail around trying to find me.

I just love mesmers….They may lack in certain areas in comparison to other classes but all classes have their disadvantages. Who doesn’t love tricking ppl with copies of your self? (If only those copies would act a little more like me) I love blinking to places where other people (subtract theives) can come to. Time warp, Chaos storm, Phase retreat, phantasmal berserk, and blurred frenzy, all my favorite skills.

Also we look way hawter than everyone