Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I’m back from plating my DD since the release of HoT and only touched my Mesmer now and again (for guild JP’s etc). But I’ve decided to play it again - only one problem. I suck at it, bad.
I have a full set of Zerkers and also an offset of Condi/tough/vit. And after reading posts and guides and metabattle I’ve taken up s/s +s/s. biggest issue is being kitten squishy and dying from everyhting when i pull more than 2 mobs, but fighting 2 at a time is slow (this is compared to being a DD which are kitten squishy but hell that staff hits hard). The mesmer just feels underpowered.
I can’t say what I’m running with because I’m constantly changing things around to find something that I’m comfortable with. I mostly play shatter because phantasm feels a waste when the phantasm dies or I shatter forgetting that 2/3 were phantasms, not to mention they aren’t worth it against normal mobs imo.

for now I’m just doing the Hot PS and after I’ll probably just do the TD, AB, DS etc and the odd bit of WvW and fractals too, so I’d like a well rounded build I don’t feel squishy or underwhelming with... My DD staff dps has a build i’m comfortable with doing any aspect of the game on, don’t see why a Mesmer doesn’t have the same!?

TLDR: I want to play mesmer, I suck. I need some shatter advice (power/condi) for PvE and WvW! Or not just shatter, something well rounded for a noob!

Thanks :)

The builds on metabattle are typically instanced PvE (dungeon/fractals or raids) and are not nearly as good in open world PvE.

In open-world PvE, you probably want one ranged weapon on top of the sword-shield, typically GS. Then, shatters will indeed be a larger part of your damage in most (short) fights, especially with chronophantasma allowing you to shatter once without loosing the phantasms. You will start to want keeping your phantasms alive if you expect the fight to last at least 10-20s.

For the utilities, you don’t need the wells and the alacrity nearly as much when playing solo, so I usually go for at least blink and usually decoy as a good way to avoid getting aggro.

This will increase your survivability a lot.