Guild Wars 2

…REALLY difficult and VERY FORGIVING. I had no idea when I rolled a new toon (only my second in game as i am VERY VERY new to the game) that there were balance issues with the Mesmer. I’m finding myself both very challenged and confused at times (this isn’t a bad thing per se but I do find myself lost on some of the skills) and also think that at times I’m getting away with a crap-ton of mistakes.

Anyhow, I’m rolling with a staff (mainly…love the ranged AoE) and a sword/pistol combo…

Started the thread to simply ask…Is the build completely open ended in terms of how you want to approach it? I chose it upon return because I wanted the challenge and didn’t want things to feel grindy….well, challenging indeed.

Take care,
pat!

You should mention what gamemode(s) you are playing.

Ahr sry Lavra…very good point…right now solely PvE…but as I advance the character, would enjoy PvP or WvW, … so eventually looking at a PvX build I suppose

thx!

Staff is great for open world PvE. Really survivable, especially with Chaotic Dampening. I spent most of my leveling time with GS/Staff. You can easily kite around most open world mobs with that weapon set, and fighting outnumbered is even possible.

Using Sword/Pistol is probably good practice for endgame, though. You should spend a lot of time working on your Blurred Frenzy timing. Use it to evade telegraph attacks that you otherwise would have dodged.

The only thing I can say about build direction as you level is to not try a condition build until you are lvl 80.
Other than that, there are lots of different ways to be effective.
Phantasms are great for sustained dps. Shatters are a great way to spike things down.
Learn what skills you can pop all at the same time, and you’ll be able to insta-kill most mobs as long as your gear is within 5 levels of your level, and still get pretty close to that up to a 10 level gap.

Mesmer can be very complicated, but the illusion mechanic is a huge safety net in open-world play.

Wow thank you so much to each of you! Very helpful indeed! I’m spending time trying to walk around and just grab one or two foes at a time to see how each skill works in tandem with the others…I find that my own personal failings and inexperience have me doing okay with mobs but at times not understanding exactly how I survived lol! Thus the “i think i’m just keymashing my way to surviving” feeling I get sometimes!

Again, thanks so much…the Illusion mechanic is very very nice indeed…and I am working on Blurred Frenzy as well as I see it as difficult to master and ultimately a key defensive tactic!

Take care,
pat!

I am by no means a mesmer master, but have played almost exclusively for two years. I love the class and am still finding new and interesting ways to play. As far as I know, there are no balance issues in PvE. The supposed balance issues are only in PvP scenarios.
Don’t feel guilty about some playing some “broken” class.
In PvE open world content there isn’t much that any class will have trouble with especially in group events. You can look for out of the way champions or veteran for a little bit of a “challenge”. But most content will always make you feel a bit OP.

Dungeons and Fractals are where the “challenging” content is. Mesmers are accepted into most groups without issue. In order to be an asset to groups though, you need to master the many support options we have (condition clears, reflects, crowd control, etc.) We can make a lot of combo fields that are not as good as other combo fields. So you need to learn how to place your fields after the most useful ones so as to not steal the blasts. The oldest field takes priority for finishers. For example, fire fields are the most used in dungeon/fractals for might. Wait for the fire field to go down, then you can drop your Time Warp/Feedback.

Reflects are one of the most useful things you can offer a group, so look into what you can reflect and how to maximise reflect damage. Definitely a fun thing to experiment with when running around the open world.

No one here has mentioned the Focus offhand. It might seem lame, but it is a great weapon. So grab one and practice pulling enemies into a stack (Gotta pull into a wall since the enemies don’t collide with each other). Trait Wardens Feedback to get reflects on both focus skills.

Get used to changing builds on the fly, so many different builds for different parts of PvE content. Reflect boss build, Stealth-skip-for-porting, stack and smack build.

I could go on for days…love mesmers.

patemma.3674:

…REALLY difficult and VERY FORGIVING. I had no idea when I rolled a new toon (only my second in game as i am VERY VERY new to the game) that there were balance issues with the Mesmer. I’m finding myself both very challenged and confused at times (this isn’t a bad thing per se but I do find myself lost on some of the skills) and also think that at times I’m getting away with a crap-ton of mistakes.

Anyhow, I’m rolling with a staff (mainly…love the ranged AoE) and a sword/pistol combo…

Started the thread to simply ask…Is the build completely open ended in terms of how you want to approach it? I chose it upon return because I wanted the challenge and didn’t want things to feel grindy….well, challenging indeed.

Take care,
pat!

Hi

For your initial leveling PvE build I very highly recommend staff / greatsword. Get Decoy utility ASAP and Signet of Inspiration ASAP, for healing skill use mirror. Use minor (green runes) that give you swiftness or swiftness duration increase, any of them.

Pros of this build:

2x 2 handers – less weapons and crap to upgrade as you keep leveling and takes up less room in your inventory if you keep weapons to “level into”.

Staff – Inspiration or Chaos spec lines will give you excellent survivability.
Greatsword – Domination Illusions will give you good offense.

You can use both long range or in melee range and switch between them as you like during combat.

For leveling avoid going all out DPS or all out defensive. If you go all out DPS you will limit yourself in what you can do, for example in defensive builds you can easily solo some champs, but they are long fights, which will normally drop you if you go squishy. On the flipside if you run all defensive, then you will take such a long time to killing regular mobs that leveling will become too time inefficient.

Get swiftness, hence, signet of inspiration. When you level it is very important to get from place to place as quickly as possible, in fact, its more important then the speed at which you kill stuff. Travel is the biggest timesink, especially since you do not have all the waypoints etc., so minimize it as much as possible.

you want to have at least 1 reliable condition cleanse, this is very important, and decoy is your best stun breaker because its multi purpose so get it 1st, give stealth to sneak pass things and mobs, provides extra clone for damage or extra defense via shatters, and of course breaks stun.

Try to keep your armor, and especially weapons as close to level as possible, when I level toons I usually keep a weapon and 2-3 armor or jewelry pieces in inventory with me, so I can switch into them immediately as soon as I hit the level requirement.

Hope this helps you out a bit.

Chaos armour traited with protection (33% damage reduction) is very forgiving. I don’t use staff myself, but have played against others using it and it gives them a ton of survivability, maybe a bit too much. Staff is great for beginners, other builds aren’t quite as forgiving.

Holy cow you folks are AWESOME! Cannot thank you enough…so much great info and great advice and plenty to experiment with! I’m finding, I believe, that this class is WIDE OPEN in terms of how to play it…love the input and really appreciate it!

thx,
pat!