Guild Wars 2

Hi!

I’m going to be blunt here and say that when it comes to mesmers, I’m a complete noob. I have 3 lvl 80s (Warrior, Engineer, Ranger) and I’ve had thoughts on making a mesmer since it seems in my guild, every person and their grandmas have a mesmer alt (exaggeration, i know ) but the idea of clones and all these deception-like skills intrigue me so I started an Asura mesmer (why asura? because i love those little goblins! ) . There are literally SO many builds and tips and guides that I feel quite lost as to where to go. And I don’t really have the time to read through ALL the related threads anyways.

I’m not aiming to specifically carbon copy a guide for my build. So I’m here to ask a few things.

1. Conditions vs Crits. In terms of dealing damage, which type is preferable for mesmers. I’m usually a fan of crits over conditions as the latter seems a tad underwhelming, but a few mesmer heavy players tend to focus on condition builds. So I’m curious to know the pros and cons, not simply which is better.

2. Keep clones or kill them. Basically are clones and phantasms better off being shattered at every opportunity, or is there a viability in not using shatter but to keep the clones around (in fights of course)?

3. Tanking. Or survival. Lasting in a fight. My preferred activities are dungeon running and WvW. With my warrior, I stack up toughness until armor rating is above 3k. Somehow I don’t think that’s the way to go here. I’m typically not a ‘all-the-time-100%-perfect-dodge-twitchy’ kind of player, so I’m interested to know how survival is with this class.

4. Better ranged or melee? Sword seems to be the only melee weapon, if i’m not mistaken. how viable is a mesmer in melee?

Ok, thank you for your time.

what’s a toon? Do you mean your Player Character, or PC for short?

Oh my bad. But yes, thats what i meant. In many references, thats what toon usually is for such games so I didn’t really think much of clarifying.

To answer all 4 questions in one go. It doesn’t matter, we have more builds than any other class and they are all seriously flexible. However, Condition is horrible in PvE for mesmers, but great at noob busting in PvP. Crit’s work in both, which is what I generally use. Keeping clones or kill them? Easy, if you are using a phantasm build, (10,30,0,25,2) then you will keep them and use traits to inflict conditions and boons on your crits, especially iswordsman which can hit 4k+ per strike. Use them in a shatter build for that F1 and F2. You can also keep them in a bunker build (idefender is your best friend).

Survival is pretty good for mesmers, in wvw or pvp you can run retaliation builds (imortal mesmer) or you can go for shatter survivability builds…F3 and F4. It’s up to you, as I said illusionary Defender is your best friend, get that utility ASAP. Anyway don’t worry about survivability although a lot of it comes in later levels, (we had that guy that soloed Lupicus in 17 minutes).

Swords have HIGH defense and HIGH damage. Sceptor is kinda meh… Use both!

Thanks @ Benjamin for the info. I’ll certainly look into it

Yeah, Benjamin is pretty spot on.

1. Both are viable in PvP, albeit in vastly different situations and builds…you don’t really need to worry about that until you hit 80 and want to figure out a pvp build. Condition mesmer is a horrific choice in PvE though…don’t do it.

2. Depends on build. I found using a phantasm build for leveling tended to be easier, but shatter builds are also highly efficient. It ultimately comes down to personal choice. In PvE, clones are pretty much primarily shatter fodder while phantasms are the business end of your illusions.

3. Mesmers tank quite well. However, I would never run my tank build in pve. Mesmers bring so much more to a team if built and played right, while the tank build just sorta stays alive. As far as survival goes though, mesmers have massive amounts of defensive utility such as tons of projectile reflects, along with tons of active defense like 2 seconds invulnerability on sword 2 (10s/8s cooldown).

4. This depends on the flavor of the fight. Some fights are better melee, some are better ranged, some you can choose. Mesmers excel at both ranges, as sword is probably one of the best weapons in the game in terms of utility, defense, and damage, and greatsword or staff are both fantastic ranged choices. Scepter sucks hard though, especially in PvE, there is really no purpose for it. Generally, I will carry around a greatsword, staff, 2 swords, a pistol, and a focus, and swap them around based on what I’m fighting.

5. Toon is a common term for character in pretty much every game I’ve ever played. Irena seems to suffer from a bit of term ignorance there.

Edit: Just noticed you felt a bit lost in terms of guides and such. Lazy Kai’s PvE guide is the best leveling guide out there, found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-Guide-to-PvE-Leveling-Guide/first

I think I’ll leave my keys in this thread

Pyro, thanks for that link. That is in fact a very fun read of a guide. The “lazy” concept I think should work well for me

Pyroatheist.9031:

3. Mesmers tank quite well. However, I would never run my tank build in pve.

Do you find it expensive switching between a PVE and WvW spec, or do you tend to do more WvW? I’d like to run Phantasm for PVE and your Immortal Build for WvW (as we discussed in your thread)

To the original poster- I found greatsword or staff with sword/focus a great way to level, focusing on phantasms to do good damage, but also provide great damage myself.

alexparris.3754:

Pyroatheist.9031:

3. Mesmers tank quite well. However, I would never run my tank build in pve.

Do you find it expensive switching between a PVE and WvW spec, or do you tend to do more WvW? I’d like to run Phantasm for PVE and your Immortal Build for WvW (as we discussed in your thread)

To the original poster- I found greatsword or staff with sword/focus a great way to level, focusing on phantasms to do good damage, but also provide great damage myself.

I find that 20/20/0/0/30 flips very well between shatter and glam (although not optimal glam it still works). I can do PvE/small group skirmish WvW/ Zerg WvW just by changing gear and flipping traits around.

Although it’s not expensive for the occasional trait change… if you’re doing it frequently it’ll add up from the 3s50c/change cost. Personally I find myself needing changing my role in a party/group multiple times a day… just in WvW alone.

alexparris.3754:

Pyroatheist.9031:

3. Mesmers tank quite well. However, I would never run my tank build in pve.

Do you find it expensive switching between a PVE and WvW spec, or do you tend to do more WvW? I’d like to run Phantasm for PVE and your Immortal Build for WvW (as we discussed in your thread)

To the original poster- I found greatsword or staff with sword/focus a great way to level, focusing on phantasms to do good damage, but also provide great damage myself.

Well, not quite sure what you mean by expensive. At this point, I have 3 fully unique sets of level 80 exotic/ascended gear, but I get all my gear from running dungeons and such, so it’s not really expensive. If you mean the retraiting costs…hahah no.

I hate how people keep saying, for pve, condition damage on mesmers is horrible. Yes, confusion is but burning, bleeding and vulnerability are not. In nearly full rampager gear (three trinkets are carrion), I’m able to kill faster with my staff than with sword/focus. I thought it was a fluke at first but I tested it a few times around Orr and the results were the same every time. And no, it’s not my runes because they give me 190 vitality and 50 power.

Crossplay.2067:

I hate how people keep saying, for pve, condition damage on mesmers is horrible. Yes, confusion is but burning, bleeding and vulnerability are not. In nearly full rampager gear (three trinkets are carrion), I’m able to kill faster with my staff than with sword/focus. I thought it was a fluke at first but I tested it a few times around Orr and the results were the same every time. And no, it’s not my runes because they give me 190 vitality and 50 power.

I don’t think conditions are all that bad as a few guildies I ran with have quite good condition-build mesmers. I am however intrigued that you say burning, bleeding are fine but not confusion. When I was on the receiving end of it, they seem to kinda hurt Maybe someone can explain to me?

Also I did ran my new mesmer toon up to lvl 10 recently and I gotta ask, clones doing 0 dmg, that is intended? Phantasms are nice btw

generalraccoon.3857:

Crossplay.2067:

I hate how people keep saying, for pve, condition damage on mesmers is horrible. Yes, confusion is but burning, bleeding and vulnerability are not. In nearly full rampager gear (three trinkets are carrion), I’m able to kill faster with my staff than with sword/focus. I thought it was a fluke at first but I tested it a few times around Orr and the results were the same every time. And no, it’s not my runes because they give me 190 vitality and 50 power.

I don’t think conditions are all that bad as a few guildies I ran with have quite good condition-build mesmers. I am however intrigued that you say burning, bleeding are fine but not confusion. When I was on the receiving end of it, they seem to kinda hurt Maybe someone can explain to me?

Also I did ran my new mesmer toon up to lvl 10 recently and I gotta ask, clones doing 0 dmg, that is intended? Phantasms are nice btw

Clones are there to be shatter fodder/to proc illusion # related traits, etc. Phantasms do the damage.

Condition mesmer sucks in pve, is awesome in pvp. Confusion is horrible because mobs attack really slowly, and so you rarely get any damage from it. Conditions in general are bad from mesmer because you rely on the staff autoattack and staff clones (which actually apply conditions). Here’s the problem. The staff autoattack will apply bleeding, or burning, or vulnerability. That means 1/3 of its attacks are useless for your dps. On top of that, the burning is only 1s, and easily overwritten by other classes that will stack much more burning (guardians/eles). That leaves just bleeding, which is ok of course, but you’ll never stack it up like other condition classes can. The dps is just ultimately really subpar in pve.