Guild Wars 2

Ive been really interested in making a mesmer lately, its one of the few classes ive never tried >.< And i has a few questions!

1) How well can they tag things in a zerg? I ask this, becaus ei play on JQ, and I dont want to never get bags :p I understand the whole Veil/Portal thing. But we have quite a few mesmers, usually, and want to be able to get some damage/tags in!
1b) Which skills/builds do i go to do this?

2) Can they be tanky/in the front lines? if so how?

3) With no signet for movement speed, how do you keep up with a zerg?

Veil/portal bots, sir.
Better use guardian for all zerg needs.
Some wvw-centric guilds punish players by forcing them on mesmer. I think this says it all.

Malpractice.7850:

Ive been really interested in making a mesmer lately, its one of the few classes ive never tried >.< And i has a few questions!

1) How well can they tag things in a zerg? I ask this, becaus ei play on JQ, and I dont want to never get bags :p I understand the whole Veil/Portal thing. But we have quite a few mesmers, usually, and want to be able to get some damage/tags in!
1b) Which skills/builds do i go to do this?

2) Can they be tanky/in the front lines? if so how?

3) With no signet for movement speed, how do you keep up with a zerg?

I would recommend to look through Osicat’s guide.
I believe his mist build is highly mobile and his heavy build has high survivability.

Winds.3087:

Veil/portal bots, sir.
Better use guardian for all zerg needs.
Some wvw-centric guilds punish players by forcing them on mesmer. I think this says it all.

Buzz off lol. Mesmers are NOT just Portal/Veil bots, although those are two very strong utilities that a Mesmer can bring to a zerg.

1. Tagging can be very difficult for a Mesmer as we have very limited AoE abilities. However, this is balanced by the fact that Mesmer can bring a boat-load of reflection to a zerg fight (Feedback, traited Focus, traited f4, Mirror heal).
1b: There are a lot of ways to go about this. I’d suggest just looking around the forums for a build that suits you.

2. YES. I do it all the time on my Mes with this build (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-Glamourous-Medic). However there are a TON of reflect builds out there; ones that focus on crit chance/dmg to boost reflects, ones like the Medic build that focuses on team support, someone has even created an interrupt/Glamour build for zerging. The list just goes on and on.

3. One word: Focus(preferably traited). And Blink if you can fit it in your build. Mostly the traited Focus, since that lets you Swift yourself if you fall behind. Some Mesmers use Centaur or Air runes to get 100% Swiftness uptime, but that’s not always reasonable.

All in all, Mesmer is a VERY versatile class capable of specializing into many different roles in a zerg; find the one that you like, build for it, and dominate!

Aquilus.9423:

Buzz off lol. Mesmers are NOT just Portal/Veil bots, although those are two very strong utilities that a Mesmer can bring to a zerg.

Yeah, well, they are. You need 1-2 mesmers for entire zerg just like thieves, you need as much guardians as you can get.
I also like watching people shooting dark path straight through someone’s feedback and killing poor fella who made it.

1. Mesmers are veilbots, portalbots and against a PUG zerg, just drop feedback in the centre and watch a ton of players just sit there and kill themselves (I put it up on stonemist gate and idiots still fire at it). Tagging mobs yes, is frustrating (theres no beating guardian staff 1) and you’ll get less loot bags than other classes. Your sword cleaves, the greatsword auto can shoot through enemies as well (hitting them all in a line), your greatsword phantasm will hit a ton of enemies provided it isn’t insta-gibbed, and warden cleaves too. I suppose you could include duelist in the same position as greatsword auto since if enemies get in the way of the target the projectiles just hit what’s in front of them.

2. I haven’t found I have much survivability in a zerg. I’ll have to note I do run full berserker, but the AOE and condition spam just melts me so I get on the commander if needed or if we’re running down a routing zerg, but I mostly just linger on the sides. Don’t waste your time in the middle of a zerg if you know the other side has a strong melee train, you’ll just melt pretty much regardless of how tanky you are or even the class you’re playing.

3) With no signet for movement speed, how do you keep up with a zerg?

Running over guardian symbols, receiving warrior warhorn swiftness, temporal curtain on focus. If you don’t like focus, swap it out when you’re near enemies.

Bases on how you worded # 1 I’m assuming that you’re mainly talking about WvW.

You can bring good utility and also be able to tag well. (Not as good as some other classes, but can do well)

Null Field, Feedback, and Focus are the core and the core traits are

Dom 8 – Glamour skills cause confusion,
Ins 2, 8 – Glamour cool down and Focus feed back

You can go deep into Illusions for longer confusion, glamour skill cause blind, and confusion on blind traits. You can go PTV and blitz through enemies to set up a portal bomb, or more condition based. There is a lot of different ways to go depending on what type of Mesmer / and style you want to play.

The main thing is the reflects from feedback, and focus skills, but Null Field is awesome to strip boons off the enemy and applies confusion. A side note on Null Field is the mechanics of the way it works it’s almost limitless in the amount of enemies it will hit.

Malpractice.7850:

1) How well can they tag things in a zerg? I ask this, becaus ei play on JQ, and I dont want to never get bags :p I understand the whole Veil/Portal thing. But we have quite a few mesmers, usually, and want to be able to get some damage/tags in!
1b) Which skills/builds do i go to do this?

2) Can they be tanky/in the front lines? if so how?

3) With no signet for movement speed, how do you keep up with a zerg?

1. You’ll never tag as much stuff as the other classes. 1b. You can get close with reflections, I-zerker, condition on death traits from clones.
2. We can be incredibly tanky but understand, our longevity comes from being hard to hit, not straight up soaking damage.
3. Swiftness runes, blink and focus. That’s all.

As far as the guys here that are saying all the Mesmer is, is a utility bot. Don’t mind the doomsayers. We have access to a huge amount of builds that are more than viable for every group out there. We have more retaliation uptime than any other class. We can get all buffs in game and share them with a group, huge spike damage builds, phantasm builds for good damage while staying back from the front lines, shatter builds (look through Osicat’s stuff) that can front line.
There’s plenty there if you can play it. If. This is a high skill profession. People forget that, lose a fight then say we suck. So like I said, don’t mind the doomsayers.

Samiell.1259:

As far as the guys here that are saying all the Mesmer is, is a utility bot. Don’t mind the doomsayers. We have access to a huge amount of builds that are more than viable for every group out there. We have more retaliation uptime than any other class. We can get all buffs in game and share them with a group, huge spike damage builds, phantasm builds for good damage while staying back from the front lines, shatter builds (look through Osicat’s stuff) that can front line.
There’s plenty there if you can play it. If. This is a high skill profession. People forget that, lose a fight then say we suck. So like I said, don’t mind the doomsayers.

You may be whatever you like outside zerg, if you’re running with zerg, you’re either as tanky as you could be utility bot, either another point of rally. It is zerg that makes your server win at this state of wvw, not roamers.

Winds.3087:

You may be whatever you like outside zerg, if you’re running with zerg, you’re either as tanky as you could be utility bot, either another point of rally. It is zerg that makes your server win at this state of wvw, not roamers.

So by your reasoning, then every class is simply a bot in a zerg, cause in a zerg every class is expected to do certain things. Necros are expected to do Conditions, Eles to drop fire/water fields, Warriors to Banner Supervisors/allies, Guardians to spam 1 buff with Staff 4, cut off escapes with staff #5…

Mesmers are simply more noticeable because the things they do have a much more noticeable effect because they are the only class that can do them. Our poison is that people reduce us to “just Veil/Portal bots” and tell us that if we want to do anything else we should re-roll. I resent that. We do more than that, and I want people to know that we are more than our unique skills.

Aquilus.9423:

Winds.3087:

You may be whatever you like outside zerg, if you’re running with zerg, you’re either as tanky as you could be utility bot, either another point of rally. It is zerg that makes your server win at this state of wvw, not roamers.

So by your reasoning, then every class is simply a bot in a zerg, cause in a zerg every class is expected to do certain things. Necros are expected to do Conditions, Eles to drop fire/water fields, Warriors to Banner Supervisors/allies, Guardians to spam 1 buff with Staff 4, cut off escapes with staff #5…

Mesmers are simply more noticeable because the things they do have a much more noticeable effect because they are the only class that can do them. Our poison is that people reduce us to “just Veil/Portal bots” and tell us that if we want to do anything else we should re-roll. I resent that. We do more than that, and I want people to know that we are more than our unique skills.

Case in point. Zergs in WvW are about who has the best strat or mass #‘s. All classes adhere to whatever synergies best for the Zerg….bot as you say. Where Mesmers make a difference is how many viable builds we can offer to the whole.
Also to say that roamers don’t make a difference is not entirely true. Your right that pvp roaming doesn’t do much but a small group of roamers can cause a lot of damage behind enimy lines. Reinforcement disruption, supply kills and camp capping cou t for quite a bit of frustration when timed with a siege from your servers Zerg.
So, you don’t have to follow a Zerg around either. Get 5 to 9 people and go cause mayhem. This is a Mesmers wet dream. A small organized group and a Mesmer is a nasty machine to have on the loose.
Cheers.

Winds.3087:

Veil/portal bots, sir.
Better use guardian for all zerg needs.

+1

Sad but true.

Add:
Any zerg, even very good organized (such as good PvP oriented guild) need only 2 mesmers – for 2 veils. They also love Null Field and Time Warp (cause it’s ethereal), but that’s all.
In small group fights – such as sPvP or roaming – mesmer show himself much better, but atm – u can look at sPvP section – overnerfed.

1) With real tactics aside for discussion, tagging is super easy as a mesmer in all honesty. I use it to farm all the time even, and I prefer it more than other classes.. i seem to be able to tag everything if i try. But yes, you’l need to try on a mesmer. my zerker, well placed, tags a lot, there’s the knockback on gs 5 that hits everything nearby in a cone front of you and my chaos storm as well, gs auto attack beams are piercing so if you have an enemy selected thats behind other targets, they all will be hit, often i run around with a target thats in the middle of the zerg, and it sweeps through many of them, many mesmers also use the main hand sword, and your blurred frenzy and autoattack are sweeping and will tag people, and even some mesmer videos from good wvw groups like RG, they run around swinging autoattack sometimes. you’ve got shatters in a shatter build of course, and your utilities, like feedback, projectile reflects, projectile reflects and stationary aoe with the iwarden focus phantasm and so forth. But a mesmer is highly versatile and has a number of good build directions to go, so, depending on the situation, your play and uses will vary. Like people have said, you can build a support mesmer for a zerg group and be veil/portal bot as well as boons i.e. chaos storm, boon stripping with null field and dps time warp so on… But if you want to really tag, as I do, I have a balanced build with significant raw dps while supporting the group, even the zerg busting squad i used to run with had no problems with my build, equipped with whatever slot skills they might need, but i don’t always run veil and portal for the group all the time, especially when there’s other mesmers for other purposes.

2) As a light armor caster, there is a limit to how tanky you can be, but you can get pretty tough. I run a balanced build which plays on some of the tanky boons and stuff you can get. But if you go full survival, there’s some really good builds out there, you have can have constant protection, regen, aegist, retaliation, etc + get -condition duration and get condi removal stuff… I don’t know everything about survivability but one of the most powerful lines to take is PU for survivability, boons on stealth, offhand torch condi removals + staff, condi removal on shatters, etc. But… you wouldn’t really go front line with a mesmer… survivability would be mainly for small group / roaming / solo stuff

3) I use centaur runes as we often are forced to, and alot of builds will have. With centaur runes and my mirror heal i have perma swiftness basically and a heal that has less CD and actually is quite useful imo. You could also use mantra heal for perma swiftness. You also have a focus temporal curtain for swiftness and CC and so forth.

Malpractice.7850:

becaus ei play on JQ

ah… you mean SoR 2.0 … i’ll let it slide cuz ur considering mesmer.

As for WvW you can’t go wrong with Greatsword + PU + stealth + clone-kill traits. I also prefer Sword with stealth so you can cleave through the middle of an opposing zerg without much issue. Scepter should work alright as well. Also, I consider Staff to mainly be a roaming tool.

cya on the battlefield