Guild Wars 2

Hey all GW1 Vets,

I never had the chance to play GW1, but I’ve heard multiple times that the GW1 Mesmer was nothing like how it is in GW2. So, my question stands..

How was the Mesmer in GW1? What parts of the old Mesmer would you want carried over into this game?

The Mesmer in GW1 was great but those who say that it was nothing like the GW2 Mesmer are, imho, paying more attention to visuals rather than game mechanics.

Illusions in GW2 are similar to hexes in GW1 but a greater emphasis has been placed on shattering them, while GW1 had just one Mesmer skill to shatter your own hexes (iirc). Hexes in GW1 were mostly fire and forget while illusions in GW2 require more active management.

The GW1 Mesmer was great at disruption, shutdown, and interruption that was well suited to the better defensive options of GW1, but that would be too overpowered (especially in teams) in GW2.

I missed the GW1 Mesmer early on but after settling into the GW2 Mesmer I find that I can do many of the same things as the GW1 Mesmer while enjoying a more active playstyle. Honestly, I’m not sure I’d want anything carried over.

Everything (no j/k)

I feel more like a mesmer when I play my Necro, but I main mesmer just for namesake and this “Illusionist” rep is starting to grow on me.

I do play GW1 from time to time because I miss the class so much. (Sadly only play FA now during the bonus weeks)

They could rename this class the “Illusionist” and make the real mesmer class “Mesmer” but that’s to much work, and I do not want to have to restart a new character.

The GW Mesmer was a master of shutdown. Could interrupt like crazy, make casting spells suicidal, decrease the effectiveness of almost anything, and generally frustrate the crap out of an enemy.

Some of that holds true in GW2. Mesmers can be quite frustrating with all th illusions and teleporting. And there’s the confusion and reflects that can make attacking a mesmer suicide.

But the pure shutdown has disappeared, thanks to what I’m guessing were supposed to be a plethora of interrupt abilities being removed. Our traits clearly indicate that we were initially going to be able to build around interrupts, but that didn’t make launch.

On the other hand, what Mesmer didn’t have in GW was pure damage dealing or heartiness. A nice change in GW2 has been to give Mesmer the capability to deal outight damage and stay alive.

Remember IW-mesmers in GW? Now we get swords without having to be gimmicky.

Seras.5702:

Remember IW-mesmers in GW? Now we get swords without having to be gimmicky.

Warrior sword interrupts/flourish and frustration was another gimmicky melee mesmer I did for duels. I’m so glad we can use a sword now =)

Auto attacks were also a lot less powerful back then so skills like http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Frustration were nice. It was basically halting strike but actually good. It could maybe be a new phantasm. Every time you interrupt a target the phantasm(s) do bonus spike damage. This would be different than the usual cooldown and auto attack of the current phantasms.

Without energy (mana) management in gw2, a lot of the energy denial spells would not be possible to bring back from gw1. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Aneurysm
Would have a team of 8 mesmers (7 heros/npcs) empty mobs energy then blow up by giving them back too much power =). No need for tanks since 6 chaos storms/E-surges and 2x http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Psychic_Instability then aneurysms ment no enemies ever got back up/had energy to do anything. This was despite the fact that enemy mobs “cheated” with super high energy regen.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Arcane_Larceny and similar skills were fun but underpowered. You would steal a skill but probably not have the right attributes to make it worth it. With the current incarnation of skills and power, this would actually be a lot of fun in gw2. Would maybe have to be only the enemies utilities though.

Last thing I miss is http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Clumsiness and similar skills. It would cause the enemy’s next attack to fail and they would hurt themselves. Different to confusion (would have been called Visions of Regret, backfire or empathy back then). It was only 1 attack. So basically, if we got a trait that caused damage when an enemy removed blind from themselves by attacking.

Overall, I’m happy with the new mesmer. It does feel weaker in the control deparment but I think it was necessary for balance.

Edit: If anyone actually looks at the links, keep in mind that max health back then was around 600 not 30k ish.

Yeah, there were many skills that did indirect AoE damage based off specific actions (attacks/interrupts – DuckDuckboom named a few). One of my favorites was Ineptitude:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ineptitude

I loved using frustration with Ineptitude/Wandering Eye/Clumsiness in a build – the Illusion magic line, ahhhh … so you’d hex one enemy and their next action would deal nice spike damage to the attacker, and all enemies around. Empathy was great for this too in the domination line. There’s nothing like that in GW2. It’s all direct AoE effects (that I know of).

I would love to see spells like ineptitude come back to GW2. Heck, just remove all mantras and give us a ‘hex’ utility type! With some tweaking, they could feel like the old mesmer again, while still adapting to the faster pace of GW2.
Think of things like:

Clumsiness: Target is hexed with Clumsiness. If it attacks three times, it is stunned and takes big damage.
Frustration: Target is hexed with Frustration. Its executes skills slower and takes damage whenever interrupted.
Fragility: Target foe is hexed wih Fragility. Whenever it gains or loses an unique condition, it takes damage.
Phantom Pain: Target foe is hexed with Phantom Pain. When Phantom Pain ends, this foe takes part of the damage it took while hexed as an additional damage package.

Numbers would have to be balanced. They might even be able to get a small AoE through traits!

Bring shutdown back !

Putting people in a position where you, as the Mesmer, dictate what they do. They cast a skill, they take damage; they do nothing, they take damage; they do their auto attack, they take damage. In GW1, this was way to fun to watch people w/o hex removal essentially kill themselves.

Oh Confusion, where have you gone?

PBLOCK AND ESURGE! GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME NOW!

Real Diversion, PD and echo/arcane echo. Not to forget Blackout for maximum trolling

GW1 mesmer had a reliable “confusion-analog” mechanisms. And had a lot of interrupt skills, that also increased the cooldown of the victim. So, good mesmer made a game with resurrect and heal interrupting, with a strong anti-melee (or casting) debuffs.

GW2 mesmer also good. But, his interrupt mechanics is lost, and after confusion overnerf – also anti-skills mechanics too.

Power Block, Psychic Instability & Blackout would be the three I would want most, I still log in occasionally and play my Mesmer, she was my main, both PvP & PvE, if GvG (same format as GW1) was bought to GW2 with the awesome graphics and dimensional play of GW2 and give me those skills back I would be a happy camper.