Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, I’m one of those ping pong altoholics. I’ll start with a story that should help you to understand what I liked about the various classes I played, but the focus of this thread is to help me decide about the Mesmer. Feel free to jump straight to my question at the bottom of the post.

When I first got the game, I was planning on running Ranger, but after looking into the game I settled on Thief. I got that character to 34 before deleting him and making an Engineer with the same name. (I really want my main to have my “Loboling” as the name, and I only want to play one class…hopefully)
Anyway, I found the Thief too easy and straight forward and had heard the Engineer was harder and more diverse, which it was, but I hated the look of only rifle and pistol as weapons. (or Hobosacks)
At level 41, I deleted the Engineer and went on to make a Ranger finally, found it fun, in fact it was my favorite class for leveling. Playing around with my pet and being an all around PvE powerhouse was a blast, but I didn’t like the disadvantage my power Ranger was in for pvp. It was fun, but I thought I could do more on another more burst class.
At level 44, I deleted the Ranger and tried Thief again, but was equally disappointed as the first time. I then rolled an Elementalist, and had a blast up until level 46, where I decided that for twitch gameplay there were better games, and overall I had more fun on the Ranger.
I went back to Ranger and now have him to level 20 and I’m asking myself why I haven’t considered the Mesmer. It has good ranged burst, clones that can mimic a bit the gameplay of pets, but I worry greatly about the mobility and general fun/challenge.

Question:

I need to know from some of the Mesmer vets out there how crippled they felt their mobility was coming from classes like Ele, Engi and Ranger. (I know it won’t hold a candle to Thief (which was too easy) or Warrior (which I felt was boring)) Also how fun/challenging are some of your favorite builds, I don’t want d/d ele challenge all the time, I like to switch builds from easy to hard, based on my mood.

I may stick to Ranger, but the Mesmer utilities seem much more interesting. Thanks.

You could always keep your current ranger and make another character as a Mesmer and level that one a bit, (just remember, the class gets a lot better once you get out of the lower levels ~40, and gain the better traits)then decide if you want to keep the Mesmer, or go back to playing the ranger. you could also try PvP straight up as everything is levelled to 80 with all gear provided (although you will miss out on some stats/boosts/consumables which would be available for PvE.

The mobility was never really a problem for me personally, and for PvP/WvW, any lack of mobility can be made up for with traveller runes, and in-combat evasiveness, stemming from clones/stealth/blinks/blocks/invulnerable.

You know there are name-change contracts, right? You don’t need to keep deleting your toons. Seems like a waste of time, doing all that level’ing, then just deleting your toon. Although, since you can get a new toon up to 80 in less than a day via EXP scroll to 20, then crafting + storyline, it’s not too big of a deal.

IMO, everything below level 80 is a waste of time. Anet’s storyline is simply atrocious (FYI, Trahearne is the biggest noob this world has ever seen). Get to 80 ASAP, gear up properly for PvE (or WvW if you prefer that), and then make your decision. Or just head straight into PvP and forget about level’ing up in PvE. If you’re interested in PvE, do some research now into meta-builds, so you can see how you’ll be playing once you hit 80 and get geared up correctly. That way, you won’t be surprised if you roll a guard and end up thinking "wow, I’m just hitting “1” a lot for sword auto," for example.

Now to your questions:

- Mesmer mobility is annoying, you’re right, but there IS a way around it. Buy an extra set of gear w/ Centaur runes, and use your healing mantra. It has a base of 2 charges, and each charge procs swiftness via Centaur runes. That plus Curtain and your boon duration sig will give you perma-swiftness for running around/skipping mobs.

- All meta-builds for PvE for all classes are boring. It’s just something you have to accept. If you like PvE, the question you should be asking is not “which class is most interesting,” but “which class is most useful.” At the moment, the consensus is that every group should have at least 2 wars. So if you want to easily find a group for PvE, roll a war. Other useful classes are mes, guard, ele, and thief. The least-useful classes (at least in PvE speedruns), are ranger, engi, and necro – although there is 1 build for ranger and 1 for engi which are semi-acceptable in speed runs.

- If you’re thinking PvP, do whatever. It doesn’t really matter; the only thing you can be sure of is that the OP class of today will be nerfed tomorrow (or, since it’s Anet we’re talking about, it might take a fair bit longer than that).

I did try Spvp with a Mesmer, but felt it was a class I would really have to submerse myself through leveling to get an understanding of. I think I did 1 game and it felt a lot like my ele in pvp b4 I leveled him a bit. (aka I got owned lol)

ps: won almost every battle on my war first game without an knowledge or practice XD. My Ranger was almost as effective, but I had to learn about positioning and how to take it from behind when a good Thief shows up…lol

edit: never heard of name change contracts lol, but I’d hate to spend real money in something I can do in a couple days of having fun playing gw. But thx for the cool tip.

The most frustrating thing I find about low mobility is when you are with a group of people being chased down. (Pug situation in WvW) And you end up being the slow guy who bites it while everyone else runs away. If I can get away from zergs on the mes at least as well as Engi/Ele/Ranger I’d be happy. I also think I’m going to hop into mists and try mes out again. Ranger is almost the perfect class for me, but the buggy pets and weak power options are a big turn off.

Escaping and ‘not being the slow guy’ should not be a problem with Mesmer :P

We have some of the best in combat mobility, which will fit in any build without haing to trait it.

The reason you owned with warrior in pvp… Is because its easymode :/. Arenanet buffed certain things way too much. You can literally press 1 2 3 4 5 with a meta warrior build and kill most people x.x
Hopefully itll get nerfed someday :/.

That said, we have 4 categories of pvp builds you can try out:

1. lockdown requires extensive knowledge of what all your traits and skills do, aswell as what each enemy’s weakness is so you can counter and dominate them.
2. shatter focusses on very high burst damage and evasion/mobility for defense while your burst recharges. (Yes, Mesmers have really good mobility.)
3. phantasm lets you focus on staying alive, while your phantasms do damage. Very forgiving, and good for teaching you how to survive.
4. condition doing alot of damage requires knowledge of combos, rotations and all that stuff. Youll do much more damage and survive better if youre experienced, but meanwhile: you’ll learn it quite well with this very forgiving, high defense and decent offense build.

Shatter and lockdown are the most difficult, then comes phantasm and the. Consition.

An example shatter build is 10/20/0/0/30. You can remove 10 from domination… But its really very much needed in Spvp
For lockdown, 30/30/10, 10/20/30… Something like that.
Phantasm: 10/0/0/25/0
Condition: 20/20/30/0/0

Sorry for not telling much about pve, but I don’t have much time atm, and still wAnted to help a bit (maybe :o).

I feel like pvp would give a good example of what Mesmer is like, because you have to use all your skills, and are already lvl80 and stuff.

If you want, you can whisper me in game or send me a message here, and you can ask questions in real time, or I can show you things… Like my awesome cat mini :o! (Mesmer things too).