(edited by DargorV.8571)
PvE Mesmer, my clones die too easilly
Their toughness scales off yours so they’ll take more hits as you level and get more. Also, eventually you’ll be able to make them so fast it wont matter.
Damage comes from shattering, or retaining phantasms.
Mesmers are very difficult to level. This is because they are very reliant on Master and Grandmaster talents.
The recent nerf to Chaos Armor really hurts clones. That being said, Signet of Illusions gives your Illusions a bit more health, which is beneficial.
If you put phantasms out, you want to make sure you have the aggro. If you put clones out, you want them to get the aggro.
So if they scale with my toughness, would stacking some toughness at the cost of power/condition while leveling be a good idea?
I get that I’ll be shattering them anyway, but its just so facepalm worthy when they die before i even get to shatter them.
There are leveling builds on the forums if you want to maximize your potential.
Mesmers are very difficult to level. This is because they are very reliant on Master and Grandmaster talents.
The recent nerf to Chaos Armor really hurts clones. That being said, Signet of Illusions gives your Illusions a bit more health, which is beneficial.
If you put phantasms out, you want to make sure you have the aggro. If you put clones out, you want them to get the aggro.
The recent change to chaos armor is a strict buff to clones. It is only a nerf to staff 4 which clones could never get. So using sword 3/3 through chaos fields gives double buffed chaos armor which now gives a chance of protection and blind (it didn’t before).
Going sword/sword early with 10 in dueling for sword mastery helps a lot for leveling. Your p.swordman evade leap attacks in and out which helps it live through cleave attacks. You will also have two active defenses on low cooldowns and and two clones on relatively low cooldowns. Vigor will help a lot as well. The focus is a nice speed buff and anti ranged phantasm.
I highly recommend going full zerker/precision while leveling in open world pve. It forces you to learn all of the active defense that mesmers have and you kill things a lot faster. At higher levels, you can try new builds.
Don’t worry about your clones dying, as long as only it gets hit and not you.
Actually, for pve levelling, i was doing extremely well with staff. With the level of survivability you can have no matter what level with staff and a lot of utilities and whatever ur second weapon set is, you can level in places higher level than you, and solo multiple mobs, and even solo-ing some bosses
The trick i found with staff levelling, is unconventional compared to most, i found that the clones are vital to dps, they stack conditions like crazy even without proper traits or gear, but the most important trick was to get agggro on urself. Your clones remain stationary, while you pop ur chaos armor, chaos storms on them and urself, to gain defensive boons, while you kind of run around in circles, dodging, kiting, and let ur clones and phantasms do the work. Staff is very defensive and keeps u alive, but the clones and phantasms also can build up a lot of damage after a few seconds.
While levelling i found that i had to assign a clone to each mob i’m facing, if its multiple mobs, and then kite them around. While our clone production at lower levels is slow, I always had to keep a Mirror Images slotted, which keeps those clones going
But I would autoattack and tag them FIRST, so they’re aggro’d on to me. Clones can’t dodge. We can. With our play skill, we can stay alive while the clones do some damage. I prefer them to go after ME than my clones in PvE. I don’t die easily lol and since I’m not a shatter build, I keep my damage dealing phantasms and clones up.
(edited by takatsu.9416)
I’ve been kiting with greatsword since when I first got one (meaning at lvl7).
Stay ranged, use iZerker for cripple and OP dmg and, when your target is in melee range, blink away and repeat. During the first levels I hardly ever shattered as I needed clones to pick up my target’s attention. Later on, with clone on dodge, shatter became more viable (meaning at 40), but nothing exceptional, really.
Mesmers start to shine at lvl 80 with full exotic. I’m currently levelling a warrior and it’s being such a cake compared to the hell mesmer was.
Clones are supposed to die, each hit they take is a hit you are not taking. GS/Staff is perfect for leveling, just chill and enjoy. My sig might have some tips you can find use for.
Clones are shatter fodder. They have neither damage or hitpoints. The bleeds they are apply are only usefull at 80 with condition gear, when levelling your condition damage blows.
My phantasms on the other can often solo mobs at 80. When running around Cursed Shore I usually pop one on mob #1, another on mob #2 and attack mob #3 cause they are dreadfully boring to meet and barely take any HP from me anyway unless its like 10 of them.