Guild Wars 2

I’m looking for an alt (i play engineer) and I like how different the mesmer is so far. But what strengths do you bring to WvW over say other ranged classes?

You can kill siege out of line of sight using Greatsword phantasm, you can pull people off of tower/keep walls with focus, you can portal to expedite supply runs/many other strategies, can portal people for Jumping puzzles.

I could probably keep naming other fun parts, basically a Mesmer can always do something useful at any point in WvW.

Aoe pull (that can be used on walls to pull people off…although only very effective with two coordinated mesmers it still works great on edges of mountains or anything without a lip)

Berserker doesn’t require los- I think this is a bug, but hasn’t been fixed yet. You can get next to a wall with siege targeted and as long as you’re in range the zerker will summon so you can take out siege noone else can.

Abundance of reflect- temporal curtain (your swiftness/aoe pull) can be traited to reflect, same with phantasmal warden (though the bubble is small), and mirrored feedback can all have fairly short cooldowns. 2 Mesmers can almost keep reflect up 100% of the time (not counting warden since it is unpredictable)

Portal- Causes rendering bug in large zerg fights so those porting are invisible. You can hide in a keep and get people back inside. The only mobility option that I know of for golems.

Blink – The longest range, and shortest cd blink other the sword 2 on a rogue.

Decent Stealth – 2 options for group stealth if you need it.

Time Warp – You can’t beat 10s quickness is a bottleneck defense against greater numbers…. it has won an outmanned fight many times for me.

Minor stuff- ground target cleanse field (same type as mirrored feedback so they fit in the same spec well), ethereal fields bring a decent confusion burst to your group, temporal curtain’ swiftness has 50% up time with the cd reduction trait for your group.

As a mesmer that also has a 80 engineer as well… you will find your Mesmer does a lot less in clashes (killing folks) but you will have utilities that will be useful. Unfortunately that also means you get a lot less bags (specially if your engineer is a nades spec).

Mesmer has some situational abilities but your engineer will be far more effective in keep defense/taking. I enjoy my Mesmer but the effectiveness is just way less than Engineer.

Thanks all for your replies.

@Celestian, thanks as well. You’re hitting a chord with me. I’m not really a badge collector per say, but I do collect more than most folks (yes im a nade/rifle engi).

I think what i’m really looking for is a consistent solid single target burst dps character.

Umm, Engineers have nothing on a Mesmer for keep sieging in WvW.

Currently I have a 1:5 badge to kill ratio in WvW. I’m curious if actual damage done to individual targets impacts badge accrual.

I’m curious why you say that Easy? Educate me.

For nade engi’s its wack-a-mole. As soon as I see names pop up on a tower I start lobbing streams of nades forcing them to retreat. There’s always that dude or two that hang in there to try an get that last shot in… i reserve my nade barrage for them. A single engineer can keep a section of wall devoid of defenders. On Defense, i tend to hang out behind our doors and spam nade the door, keeping the heavies off.

EasymodeX.4062:

Umm, Engineers have nothing on a Mesmer for keep sieging in WvW.

Currently I have a 1:5 badge to kill ratio in WvW. I’m curious if actual damage done to individual targets impacts badge accrual.

I think you need to learn how to play Engineers.

1. Do you kill anyone with your grenades?

2. iBerserker > grenades. You shoot people on walls. I nail people almost anywhere inside the tower, and anywhere within 1200 range of the walls of a keep.

3. AOE pull. This alone is > almost any other class at sieging. Not only can you pull people off walls, you pull people TO the walls (so they eat your allies’ AOE, instead of simply running away). You know when you potshot someone with grenade / arrowvolley / meteor shower / <insert random AOE that doesn’t actually kill anything>, and the person runs away to heal? Mesmer pulls them back to the wall to die.

4. Feedback. End of story.

5. But wait, there’s more. Time Warp is godmode. Portal is win. Mass Invis is kitten. Veil is even better.

Engis can unload some AOE, same as Eles, Rangers, and to some extent Necros.

The difference is that Mesmers actually make people die. Compound that with some of the most absurd utility in the game via Time Warp and Feedback (and some Portal in those special moments), and there’s no contest.

Yes… yes… please keep spamming grenades on your gate on defense. The more damage the better. >)

This is exactly why I save my feedback for the gate instead of the wall. Then I throw a Warden in there and laugh maniacally.

Cool, good feedback EasyX. Yeah, i do kill people with nades, mostly the ones that dont know better. Nade spam is very very effective at keeping people off walls. Problem is, it get’s kinda tedious/boring after a bit.

What exactly is iBerserker? How’s it work?

@brogarn….. ohhh, that explains much. there’s been a few times (not many though) where i’m happily nading away and poof… my health goes down by a large margin and i find myself struggling to stay alive. So it’s YOU guys ;-)

I wouldn’t roll a Mesmer based on the idea of iBerserker retaining its ability to ignore LoS.

Banjax.6573:

Cool, good feedback EasyX. Yeah, i do kill people with nades, mostly the ones that dont know better. Nade spam is very very effective at keeping people off walls. Problem is, it get’s kinda tedious/boring after a bit.

What exactly is iBerserker? How’s it work?

@brogarn….. ohhh, that explains much. there’s been a few times (not many though) where i’m happily nading away and poof… my health goes down by a large margin and i find myself struggling to stay alive. So it’s YOU guys ;-)

Illusionary Berserker, actually phantasmal berserker, is a skill on mesmer that creates a phantasm, and doesn’t require LOS for some reason.

More on it here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Berserker

I wouldn’t roll a Mesmer based on the idea of iBerserker retaining its ability to ignore LoS.

True that.

(Ab)using it while it lasts though.

EternalFlamez.9025:

What exactly is iBerserker? How’s it work?

Illusionary Berserker, actually phantasmal berserker, is a skill on mesmer that creates a phantasm, and doesn’t require LOS for some reason.

More on it here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Berserker

This thing gets one hit (and does less than nade barrage) and then anyone with a brain will 1 shot the thing. I am not sure how this is supposed to be some be all end all thing. Sure you can maybe kill someone that just zipped into the keep and is almost dead and do it w/o LOS but 1) that is situational and 2) it will be nerfed, bet your bottom dollar.

Mesmer is great in sPvP but if you want single target burst damage in RvR play something else.

Yeah, iB is pretty weak. It does like 1k damage with my condition gear. I don’t know why I mentioned it.

Let’s stop discussing how flatulent a phantasm that dies in 1-hit is. Nothing to see here.

No nerfs needed.

i see wat u did thar ;-P

Celestian, are you using a trait that gives your phantasm a boon? Phantasms tend to behave rather stupidly if you’re not taking at least one of those traits. With a build taking either fury or retal/regen (same trait line on the last two you have regen you’ll have retal) the zerker will twirl before people can target him. You can typically follow with a shatter if they’re behind something and he’s going to die before another spin.

For what it’s worth, the only thing that can kill me in WvW is a dedicated group of people, or a thief that REALLY catches me off guard with a 10k+ backstab. I really enjoy roaming and small skirmishes, but feel tempted to pull out my Elementalist during big sieges.

@brogarn….. ohhh, that explains much. there’s been a few times (not many though) where i’m happily nading away and poof… my health goes down by a large margin and i find myself struggling to stay alive. So it’s YOU guys ;-)

This reminds me, do grenades actually get reflected back? I was under the impression that AoEs of any kind don’t get reflected back, even if they show as “projectiles” graphically. I’m reasonably sure when I was in the level 65-75 zone I was tossing grenades at those stone golems that have reflection, and grenades didn’t bounce back, while pistol shots did.

I can confirm without a doubt, grenades do indeed get bounced back.

Sell me on Mesmer for WvW

Confusion hits for pve amount of damage on players, which is quite high.

Can fling people off walls, bridges, and most importantly of all : cliffs.

Just a note: iBerserker is not bugged. There is not a single phantasm that requires line of sight to be cast. The difference between Berserker (and disenchanter and warden too btw) is that they spawn on the target rather than next to the player. This can easily be tested in the Mists. Berserker does require line of sight to execute his whirl attack of course, just like any other phantasm attack.

Eurosdown.6072:

Just a note: iBerserker is not bugged. There is not a single phantasm that requires line of sight to be cast. The difference between Berserker (and disenchanter and warden too btw) is that they spawn on the target rather than next to the player. This can easily be tested in the Mists. Berserker does require line of sight to execute his whirl attack of course, just like any other phantasm attack.

iBerserker will execute his whirl attack without line of sight.

alanis.6094:

Eurosdown.6072:

Just a note: iBerserker is not bugged. There is not a single phantasm that requires line of sight to be cast. The difference between Berserker (and disenchanter and warden too btw) is that they spawn on the target rather than next to the player. This can easily be tested in the Mists. Berserker does require line of sight to execute his whirl attack of course, just like any other phantasm attack.

iBerserker will execute his whirl attack without line of sight.

No, he will run after the target if he doesn’t have line of sight to it. However, he will always have line of sight to his target when you cast him, because of his spawn behavior. The mesmer’s line of sight and the berserker’s line of sight are two different things.

Eurosdown.6072:

alanis.6094:

Eurosdown.6072:

Just a note: iBerserker is not bugged. There is not a single phantasm that requires line of sight to be cast. The difference between Berserker (and disenchanter and warden too btw) is that they spawn on the target rather than next to the player. This can easily be tested in the Mists. Berserker does require line of sight to execute his whirl attack of course, just like any other phantasm attack.

iBerserker will execute his whirl attack without line of sight.

No, he will run after the target if he doesn’t have line of sight to it. However, he will always have line of sight to his target when you cast him, because of his spawn behavior. The mesmer’s line of sight and the berserker’s line of sight are two different things.

Oh I see what you were saying. Basically two technically only a little bit buggy things ends up causing one actual significant bug.

What would just need to be fixed is that the iBerserker not spawn on top of the target w/o Mesmer having LoS on the target. Without LoS, it should spawn next to the Mesmer.

Just a note: iBerserker is not bugged. There is not a single phantasm that requires line of sight to be cast. The difference between Berserker (and disenchanter and warden too btw) is that they spawn on the target rather than next to the player. This can easily be tested in the Mists. Berserker does require line of sight to execute his whirl attack of course, just like any other phantasm attack.

Then, iWarden is bugged. iWarden will not spawn if the Mesmer does not have LOS to the target.

What would just need to be fixed is that the iBerserker not spawn on top of the target w/o Mesmer having LoS on the target. Without LoS, it should spawn next to the Mesmer.

I think this would be a fair deal if iDuelist/iWarlock would spawn in (their) LOS of the target rather than always next to the Mesmer, if we are including conditional spawn locations. It’s no end of /facepalm when I have LOS off a keep wall to cast the phantasm, but they get continuously obstructed. They should move for LOS/non-obstruction prior to casting their attacks (at least for beginning their cast).