Guild Wars 2

Mesmers are magical duelists who wield deception as a weapon. Using powerful illusions, clones, and phantasmal magic to confuse and distract their foes, mesmers make sure every fight is balanced in their favor and their opponents can’t believe their eyes.
-Anet : Basic Description of the Mesmer.

This is a general question to the community.

As of current there are 3 main “Roles” in gw2, being Bunker/CC/DPS respectively. Each has its own subset of types that some classes are better geared to fill than others.

For example, Guardians and Engineers have ample access to Boons and Hard Support (direct healing) Which incline them to fill a Bunker type role much more easily than a Thief, who lacks many options to the same boons/heals/etc.

At the same time, the Engineer has much more access to CC type skills which when used with its Boons give it the ability to bunker, while the Guards access to Condition removals and greater Hard Heals are what make this possible.

So, as a community, What “Role” would you prefer to see Mesmer gain greater footing in? What should it utilize in order to gain said footing (Boons, Conditions, CC, etc..)?

Please Include any Game modes (PvE, WvW, sPvP, etc..) that your preference entails.

Example:

{sPvP} I would like to see the mesmer take on a greater role in Denial/CC in battles, utilizing Boons such as Protection and Conditions like Blind, Weakness, and Confusion. I feel that Mesmers should punish foe’s for mistakes and prevent an easy recovery from said mistakes.

{PvE} I would like to see Mesmers take on a greater role as a sustained DPS class, increasing their access to Condition durations and also granting them more access to AoE / PBAoE types of Skills.

Keep it Civil and Keep it clean.

Also, May the 4th be with you..

To me, the answer is obvious: control and disruption. We should be the best at stripping boons, breaking zergs and interfering with skill rotations. We should have major access to blind, confusion, cripple, chill, weakness and vulnerability; basically any condition that doesn’t cause direct damage; in most of our skills and utilities. On the opposing side, we should have multiple ways of applying quickness, countering attacks and giving our allies distortion. We should also have the 2nd widest range of builds available with the king being elementalists as they are advertised as a “jack of all trades”.

This class should be difficult to learn but those whom master it are seen as gods. Whenever an opponent sees us, they should cringe, not because of damage potential but because they know there is no way to properly prepare to face a mesmer. The only people that should best us are the ones that understand how mesmer powers work and are faster at adapting than we are.

TL:DR; Major in control, minor in damage and the ability to consistently kitten off our opponents.

i dont see the mesmer as a dps class. i would rather see the mesmer going into heavy punishing mode. gw1 mes ws more like that and i think this is what mesmer lacks in wvw and tpvp atm. when confusion and glamours were nerfed, we never gotten anything back that would give us this role back. sure, people wanna just run in and spam buttons or faceroll their keyboard, but glamours was soo perfect and gave us a clear role in those game modes.
atm i feel a lack of that, cause we cant out dps a glass ele, we cant out cc an engi or war, we cant out stealth a thief. we need more aoe kinda punishing skills like glamours were.
in duels i like that we sorta use their attacks against them like clone death and illusinary counter skills. and i think this should be focused a little more, cause if anet gave us more punishing skills and better counters, i think this class could shine again in other gamemodes than just 1pvp hotjoin 1v1 stuff.

i play wvw every day with a zergbusting guild and after this patch i see myself playing necro now instead of mesmer,because cc and conditions just melt me while im not able to do much dmg. i went back to shatter build and tried that, but i still feel like we lack a lot in groupfights. what i would need is more aoe non ai based builds that are punishing, cause that would give me a clear role and not just the veilbot duty.

the roles in our guild and many other guilds are like this in wvw:

heavies:
guardian:boons,stability, pulls, cc, tanking, dmg

war:cc, dmg,cc,cc,cc,tank, condi cleanse, blasts, aoe dmg, bannering lord,

light armor
ele:healing,regen, cleanse, aoe dps, cc, destroying siege on walls

necro:
corrupt boons, fear,condi bomb, dmg, aoe area denial

mes:
veil,tw, portal

medium:

engi:cc, condi, some healing, aoe

thief:
backline ganker

and this is the problem…mes is only there for the utilities, so if we would give the mes the role of punishing again like we had during glamour times, then we would be doing well again. we could actually help countering the heavy trains again.

Short answer: They’re pretty similar to thieves. It’s all about deception.

You fill the role of understanding the prismatic.

a t s e.9614:

You fill the role of understanding the prismatic.

Yeah, shut up. You already have had a thread about this, don’t bring that here.

Definitely Control, with side orders of Support and DPS. Hell, the lore “magic-type” is enough of a clue as to Mesmer’s (and Thief’s) “Role;” namely Denial Magic (IIRC).
Unfortunately, our role is impinged by two main issues:

• Control mechanics being mostly neutered in PvE, due to the Defiant bullkitten.
• The fact that class utility gets right in the way of our punishment mechanics being
  properly set up/fixed. We all know the usual “But, but … you have Timewarp and
  Portal! You don’t need bugs fixed!” whinging.

Advent.6193:

Definitely Control, with side orders of Support and DPS. Hell, the lore “magic-type” is enough of a clue as to Mesmer’s (and Thief’s) “Role;” namely Denial Magic (IIRC).
Unfortunately, our role is impinged by two main issues:

• Control mechanics being mostly neutered in PvE, due to the Defiant bullkitten.
• The fact that class utility gets right in the way of our punishment mechanics being
  properly set up/fixed. We all know the usual “But, but … you have Timewarp and
  Portal! You don’t need bugs fixed!” whinging.

Ty for the honest answer, but For the time being, the topic should steer away from discussing Current bugs/issues with the class and game. Keep the focus to what you would like to see the mesmer as.

Of course there needs to be options, to let the player decide how they want to play – like a bursty thief with butterflies or a guardian with lots of mirrors.

However I do agree that the major missing component at the moment is in the control/disruption area – more things like Power Block.

control , support and more situational damage which requires more awareness for mobs and dungeons .This is for pve .
as for pvp , more counter skills to shutdown certain damage or cc and have chance to against thief , stay as roamer but more team support beside portal and boon removal . give us something which does require more skill and reward that effort .

for wvw i feel i dont want a mesmer zerg or something like that , give us some unique stuff to counter something like stability (boon removal isnt really good enough at all for more than 5 man wvw raid ) give us stuaff which will highly punishe those spammers (dont give us an another confusion spam ),CI with chaos storm has some interesting combo so it could turn into a new thing for mesmer to do beside veilbot.

a t s e.9614:

You fill the role of understanding the prismatic.

atse seriously leve the mes forum alone. u have nothing to contribute constructively here. so just go to your own class forum as this thread actually is all about constructive feedbacks and not whining about pu again!get over it already please.

Can someone suggest a control 1st support/damage 2nd build?

Thanks!

a t s e.9614:

You fill the role of understanding the prismatic.

Absolutely.

Most balanced skill ever. I did prefer Anet’s original name for the skill : Prismatic Tears

TS… You forgot Support/ Healer ROLE ~__~

Hmm Role for Mesmer…
It’s either Carry/ DPS or Support with CC i think.

I would much rather be a control type of class. Dictating how fights go because we can greatly limit the options of our opponents. CI+Power Block is a good start, but we need a couple more minor traits to flesh out lockdown capabilities, and we would probably need a bit more reliable cc methods with our weapons (preferably aoe). I don’t think we’re very far off from having a very intimidating lockdown build, but the fact that our lockdown is greatly less effective against thieves is what makes it such a non-starter. Having such a hard counter, that is already a squishy killer is impossible to work around.

As far as PVE goes, Defiant kind of threw out any form of lockdown in that mode. I don’t even know how to make mesmers more desirable in dungeons/fractals.

yeah i would like some more control type of skills. i would like some aoe non ai non shatter based options, cause in gamemodes like wvw we need those. we have very little access to cc compared to other classes. id like more interrupt traits,skill and utilities…i think we need less ai based traits and more actual control,punishing and interrupt traits…less dueling only skills.
something like glamour was….it forced the enemy to slow down and at the same time supported the team….

Mesmer should be a master in manipulating projectiles. The utility function of Mesmer in reflecting projectiles through Mirror, Mimic, Focus’ skills are obvious. While popping AoE Chaos Armor on allies have a lot of potential in countering the projectiles and exploiting AoE damage during Zerg, and providing CC during retreat/regroup. However, nowadays the application is limited because the only access of blast finisher for Mesmer is limited to Torch, which is very unpopular among Mesmer unless someone running PU. Thus, adding a blast finisher to one of Mesmer’s healing skills as in Elementalist, or one of the ground target AoE skills should help unleashing this kind of potentials.

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

This is why they’re much more viable in Fractals.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

What? Mesmer has incredible burst. If you wanted burst, you’d bring a shatter mesmer. No class is capable of the same massive aoe burst that a shatter mesmer can do. However, burst is entirely useless in PvE, so nobody brings shatter mesmers.

As far as being THE sustained dps class…no? I mean maybe if you’re able to maintain 3 phantasms, which happens incredibly rarely. The sustained DPS class would probably have to be the lords of autoattack…axe warriors.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

What? Mesmer has incredible burst. If you wanted burst, you’d bring a shatter mesmer. No class is capable of the same massive aoe burst that a shatter mesmer can do. However, burst is entirely useless in PvE, so nobody brings shatter mesmers.

As far as being THE sustained dps class…no? I mean maybe if you’re able to maintain 3 phantasms, which happens incredibly rarely. The sustained DPS class would probably have to be the lords of autoattack…axe warriors.

Mesmer shatter burst < FGS into wall burst. Since that’s how most bosses end up dying, and mes has low percentage modifiers and low DPS without phants, and even shatter takes a few seconds to setup, the burst is considered low. I’d be interested in seeing whether a burst/shatter mesmer could contribute a bit more to FGS’ing speed runs. Obviously this only applies to PvE, as burst works very differently in PvP and WvW.

If two/three swordsman are up, than mesmer is competitive with or better than Warrior DPS. Warrior is still probably better in most situations because of banners + FGJ + EA.

I honestly don’t think it is useful to further develop into ‘roles’. It should be a trait choice first and foremost, the class flavour should be in how abilities feel, not what buffs you are able to provide. Mesmer has a fairly close relationship with its advertised style, in my opinion, even if short class descriptions are always pretty ambigous.

The only place where I feel mesmer isn’t quite up to par is the combo fields. We have a lot of fields, comparably, but ethereal fields are a pale shadow compared to for example fire, smoke or water – which is a shame since I think one of our things is ethereal fields. I would love to see something like, blasting an ethereal field adds a random boon(Or picked from a specific list, if too strong), in addition to Chaos Armor. I can’t be the only one that feels like Time Warp is both a buff and debuff since it shuts out fire fields for its duration. Also, I’d love another blast finisher on another source than torch.

i think it really depends on what game mode u play too. yes, in pve u are good at reflecting projectiles, but in wvw u have barely anything to reflect and also i dont think reflecting projectiles is a real role.
blastfinisher sure are nice, but thats not really what me as wvw player needs. wvw for example is about battles. now there we do lack a role as we got very little that is unique to our class. it used to be glam, but now that this one is gone, we are sorta utility and roamers…in spvp everyone hates us cause people dont understand the class.

but what i really wish is that we can spec into the roles we wanna fill. if we wann support=there should be a clear build
we wanna zerg and fight in massive battles=we need a non ai based aoe build option
we wanna roam and duel=well i think we got that one covered sorta.
we wanna pve and join raids=we got dungeon and fractal builds, but we need better tag options for bigger events imo

Un-nerf old glambomb plus power block.

General consensus thus far appears to be Control of some variety.

And to address, the OP contains merely examples to template responses off of. I’m not attempting to say that mesmers do not have good sustain damage or do have good sustained damage.

selan also makes a good point that builds depend on game mode, and effect your “role” to a group.

maxinion.8396:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

What? Mesmer has incredible burst. If you wanted burst, you’d bring a shatter mesmer. No class is capable of the same massive aoe burst that a shatter mesmer can do. However, burst is entirely useless in PvE, so nobody brings shatter mesmers.

As far as being THE sustained dps class…no? I mean maybe if you’re able to maintain 3 phantasms, which happens incredibly rarely. The sustained DPS class would probably have to be the lords of autoattack…axe warriors.

Mesmer shatter burst < FGS into wall burst. Since that’s how most bosses end up dying, and mes has low percentage modifiers and low DPS without phants, and even shatter takes a few seconds to setup, the burst is considered low. I’d be interested in seeing whether a burst/shatter mesmer could contribute a bit more to FGS’ing speed runs. Obviously this only applies to PvE, as burst works very differently in PvP and WvW.

If two/three swordsman are up, than mesmer is competitive with or better than Warrior DPS. Warrior is still probably better in most situations because of banners + FGJ + EA.

Shatter is like nothing. How much is it even worth again? Like 1k base damage I think? That’s like one Jump Shot or half an HB and then you do pretty much nothing for the rest of the fight.

It does so little I usually don’t even bother pressing the button to kill a boss since it doesn’t even take off a sliver in most cases.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

maxinion.8396:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

What? Mesmer has incredible burst. If you wanted burst, you’d bring a shatter mesmer. No class is capable of the same massive aoe burst that a shatter mesmer can do. However, burst is entirely useless in PvE, so nobody brings shatter mesmers.

As far as being THE sustained dps class…no? I mean maybe if you’re able to maintain 3 phantasms, which happens incredibly rarely. The sustained DPS class would probably have to be the lords of autoattack…axe warriors.

Mesmer shatter burst < FGS into wall burst. Since that’s how most bosses end up dying, and mes has low percentage modifiers and low DPS without phants, and even shatter takes a few seconds to setup, the burst is considered low. I’d be interested in seeing whether a burst/shatter mesmer could contribute a bit more to FGS’ing speed runs. Obviously this only applies to PvE, as burst works very differently in PvP and WvW.

If two/three swordsman are up, than mesmer is competitive with or better than Warrior DPS. Warrior is still probably better in most situations because of banners + FGJ + EA.

Shatter is like nothing. How much is it even worth again? Like 1k base damage I think? That’s like one Jump Shot or half an HB and then you do pretty much nothing for the rest of the fight.

It does so little I usually don’t even bother pressing the button to kill a boss since it doesn’t even take off a sliver in most cases.

A fully traited mind wrack will do about 65% of a hundred blades and 136% of a jump shot. Note that this mind wrack is on half the cooldown of jump shot, though slightly longer than hundred blades.

Edit: Actually, if you consider the channel time of hundred blades, that puts mind wrack on a slightly lower cooldown than that as well.

Silas Drake.8946:

Un-nerf old glambomb plus power block.

yeah pretty much if glam was still active the way it used to be during this meta wouldnt be op but actually give mes a way to fight in groups

Pyroathiest.4168:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

maxinion.8396:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

What? Mesmer has incredible burst. If you wanted burst, you’d bring a shatter mesmer. No class is capable of the same massive aoe burst that a shatter mesmer can do. However, burst is entirely useless in PvE, so nobody brings shatter mesmers.

As far as being THE sustained dps class…no? I mean maybe if you’re able to maintain 3 phantasms, which happens incredibly rarely. The sustained DPS class would probably have to be the lords of autoattack…axe warriors.

Mesmer shatter burst < FGS into wall burst. Since that’s how most bosses end up dying, and mes has low percentage modifiers and low DPS without phants, and even shatter takes a few seconds to setup, the burst is considered low. I’d be interested in seeing whether a burst/shatter mesmer could contribute a bit more to FGS’ing speed runs. Obviously this only applies to PvE, as burst works very differently in PvP and WvW.

If two/three swordsman are up, than mesmer is competitive with or better than Warrior DPS. Warrior is still probably better in most situations because of banners + FGJ + EA.

Shatter is like nothing. How much is it even worth again? Like 1k base damage I think? That’s like one Jump Shot or half an HB and then you do pretty much nothing for the rest of the fight.

It does so little I usually don’t even bother pressing the button to kill a boss since it doesn’t even take off a sliver in most cases.

A fully traited mind wrack will do about 65% of a hundred blades and 136% of a jump shot. Note that this mind wrack is on half the cooldown of jump shot, though slightly longer than hundred blades.

Edit: Actually, if you consider the channel time of hundred blades, that puts mind wrack on a slightly lower cooldown than that as well.

Right, I forgot about the silly Mind Wrack boosting traits.

Still pretty useless though.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

maxinion.8396:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Mesmer is currently THE sustained DPS class, I dunno what you’re on about. Where they fail currently is burst, which is why no one wants them in a speedclear. Takes too long to ramp up to high sustain (3-4 seconds) and burst is crap meanwhile.

What? Mesmer has incredible burst. If you wanted burst, you’d bring a shatter mesmer. No class is capable of the same massive aoe burst that a shatter mesmer can do. However, burst is entirely useless in PvE, so nobody brings shatter mesmers.

As far as being THE sustained dps class…no? I mean maybe if you’re able to maintain 3 phantasms, which happens incredibly rarely. The sustained DPS class would probably have to be the lords of autoattack…axe warriors.

Mesmer shatter burst < FGS into wall burst. Since that’s how most bosses end up dying, and mes has low percentage modifiers and low DPS without phants, and even shatter takes a few seconds to setup, the burst is considered low. I’d be interested in seeing whether a burst/shatter mesmer could contribute a bit more to FGS’ing speed runs. Obviously this only applies to PvE, as burst works very differently in PvP and WvW.

If two/three swordsman are up, than mesmer is competitive with or better than Warrior DPS. Warrior is still probably better in most situations because of banners + FGJ + EA.

Shatter is like nothing. How much is it even worth again? Like 1k base damage I think? That’s like one Jump Shot or half an HB and then you do pretty much nothing for the rest of the fight.

It does so little I usually don’t even bother pressing the button to kill a boss since it doesn’t even take off a sliver in most cases.

A fully traited mind wrack will do about 65% of a hundred blades and 136% of a jump shot. Note that this mind wrack is on half the cooldown of jump shot, though slightly longer than hundred blades.

Edit: Actually, if you consider the channel time of hundred blades, that puts mind wrack on a slightly lower cooldown than that as well.

He misread your comment Pyro. You wrote shatter < fgs and he seems to think you wrote shatter > fgs.

No, I was agreeing with him that mesmer burst sucks. I just quoted the last guy to comment on it to keep the thread going.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

No, I was agreeing with him that mesmer burst sucks. I just quoted the last guy to comment on it to keep the thread going.

>.< Carry on then.

As nice as it is to see discussion taking place, a new topic is more suiting for Mesmer Burst/DPS as this thread is a question regarding what role players feel the Mesmer class should be more opened to.

Swish.2463:

As nice as it is to see discussion taking place, a new topic is more suiting for Mesmer Burst/DPS as this thread is a question regarding what role players feel the Mesmer class should be more opened to.

Trouble is that the burst damage discussion happened in the context of PvE. In PvE, fgs into a wall exists. This is what one would refer to as an outlier. Nothing can measure up to fgs into a wall because it’s a broken and silly mechanic. Remove that, and everything else looks a bit more balanced.

Then, when you look at mesmer burst in PvP it becomes very evident that you have to be incredibly cautious about buffing it. Running a standard glassy shatter build, I can do about 14k burst damage in <1 second starting in stealth at 1200 range. This is strong. There are many reasons why mesmer isn’t really viable at top level PvP right now, but raw burst output is not one of them.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Swish.2463:

As nice as it is to see discussion taking place, a new topic is more suiting for Mesmer Burst/DPS as this thread is a question regarding what role players feel the Mesmer class should be more opened to.

Trouble is that the burst damage discussion happened in the context of PvE. In PvE, fgs into a wall exists. This is what one would refer to as an outlier. Nothing can measure up to fgs into a wall because it’s a broken and silly mechanic. Remove that, and everything else looks a bit more balanced.

Then, when you look at mesmer burst in PvP it becomes very evident that you have to be incredibly cautious about buffing it. Running a standard glassy shatter build, I can do about 14k burst damage in <1 second starting in stealth at 1200 range. This is strong. There are many reasons why mesmer isn’t really viable at top level PvP right now, but raw burst output is not one of them.

Thank you for bringing context and the points out of it and bringing back into line then with your last post ^.^ It’s much appreciated.

And I do see the good points, and when looking at PvE vs PvP vs WvW balance should be approached carefully, especially when looking at just boosting raw damage numbers. But I dont, at this time, feel like Mesmer needs help or really should take the role of “best burst damage” in any game mode (thieves need something other than evades and stealth after all :P)

Mesmer should maybe follow the role of rlly Bunkering down, like rrrlllly bunkering.
I mean think about it, Mesmer is an all around class, from Healing constantly to Bursting like a boss.
Maybe make it so that Mesmers would be able to be with the Mele Train in a ZvZ just for the fun of it ^^

Xaurniven.2065:

Maybe make it so that Mesmers would be able to be with the Mele Train in a ZvZ just for the fun of it ^^

You can. See my Zergmower build.

Xaurniven.2065:

Maybe make it so that Mesmers would be able to be with the Mele Train in a ZvZ just for the fun of it ^^

I played WvW frontline shatter builds for months. We can already do that, but we are not as effective as we could be, in that role: we don’t have a 2nd option for melee weapons (would love to use that Entropy I have sitting in my bank…) and our illusions are too fragile and shatter playstyle requires too much “setup” to work properly in that setting.

Anyway, I think we could work so much better as a proper interdiction class, with access to abilities used to mass disable the adversaries and punish them for their mistakes… too bad, the focus of the design team is stuck on sPVP with maybe a bit of PVE here ad there and nobody cares about WvW.