What am i doing wrong?
Sun Tzu said: ( James Clavell’s English Translation of The Art of War . This is my favorite version )
“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”
There are quite a few situations in-game that cannot be solo’d. They are expressly designed not to be solo’d.
Again, Sun Tzu; “There are armies that must not be attacked, positions that must not be contested, commands of the sovereign that must not be obeyed.”
Here is the really critical point:
This is the final sentence of chapter 6, “Weak points and strong.”
“He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent, and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven born captain.”
If all that Taoist language turns you off, I can quote Bruce Lee: “When my enemy expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand.”
I suspect that your basic issue is that you are trying to create an optimal or “meta” strategy. There is no such thing, really. Read the situation and react accordingly.
Think about what you will do if it goes bad. Think about whether you should really engage at all.
Can you “pull” part of a mob to you from extreme range? Will the mob situation change over time?
Mesmerising Girl
(edited by Ithilwen.1529)
Build looks solid, do change you Inspiration mastery trait to Illusionray Inspiration.
Signet of the Ether is trash, exchange with either WoE or Ether Feast.
I haven’t used GS in a long time unless I need long range tagging. Against stationary pve enemys focus with pull and warden will outperform.
You’ve unfortunately run into the problem most experienced mesmers call: we are kitten at damage.
If your main was a necromancer, ranger or warrior this will hit you the hardest simply because you might be used to running in, hitting some skills and watching things die.
Mesmer play works differently. You try to group your enemys, cycle through your phantasms and let them attack 1nce, shatter and then rinse and repeate. The cooldown time inbetween you need to manage with your evades, blocks, invuls and dodges. Especially timing the shield phantasm for blocks to get in a 2nd one is quite useful.
As Ithilwen said, as mesmer you’ll also have to be flexible and exchange utilities and weapons (mostly offhand) as needed. If there is something close to an all-purpose weapon set it would be sw+sh/sw+focus (lacking longrange ability) with sw+sh/sw+GS being the long range alternative (which will be weaker for close range and groups of enemys unless you plan to kite a lot).
Now you might ask: why all this work when other classes have it way easier?
The answer being: because we are mesmers.
….I’ll try to provide a bit more directly useful advice than quoting sun tzu.
The build is generally decent, but I usually use sword/focus + sword/shield instead of the greatsword. The reason for that is the pull on the focus. When you engage a clump of enemies, you can yank them together, immob with the focus phantasm + iLeap, burst damage with blurred frenzy and shattering, and then chain cc for a bit longer while still dealing damage with shield 5. After all that you can chain some blocks or run around a little and wait for blurred frenzy to come back off cd.
A lot of mesmer defense is active, and the white mantle mobs tend to have a lot of nasty stuff that needs to be avoided. Try to make sure you’re using blurred frenzy or a block to avoid the high impact things like the seeker condie spins and the knockback chains from knights.
Try to learn how to do quickness buffing rotations. When I’m fighting in the open world, I’ll generally do mini-buff rotations to keep quickness up for the majority of my fights by using well of action, shield 5, weapon swap for concentration, and signet of inspiration + proc signet. This boosts your dps by a pretty substantial amount and lets you mow through those tough mobs a lot faster.
I quoted Sun Tzu because I thought the OP would relate, given there name. I think buffing rotations are a fairly low learning priority, particularly for a new Mesmer in PvE land.
My point was to be flexible. A gw1 friend calls me mouse.. the point being to remember I am squishy and slip in and out of combat. Good advice for Mesmers generally.
Mesmerising Girl
I quoted Sun Tzu because I thought the OP would relate, given there name. I think buffing rotations are a fairly low learning priority, particularly for a new Mesmer in PvE land.
My point was to be flexible. A gw1 friend calls me mouse.. the point being to remember I am squishy and slip in and out of combat. Good advice for Mesmers generally.
And you were rigth. It seems to me i have to be more flexible. After changing my playstile now in a more closed range it works much better. I pull one or two mobs out of the group wich are hard for me to burst down together wit the others. So i kill them before i get into the rest of the pack wich are no problem now after killing the hard hitter or blocker.
Also the sword/focus and sword/shield advice was awesome. The sustain is much better, the shield gives a good aoe too. So i carry my GS with me for Farmtrains or if an encounter needs it.
It’s interresting that i mostly see GS camping mesmers around me. So i thougth this MUST be the way to go.
Thx for your advices.
Ps: Woul it be more effective to drop Domination for Duelling if i mostly use Sword Focus/Shield?
The thing about Duelling is, it’s a decent trait line, all the others used (Domination, Illusions, Chrono) are just better.
Giving up Domi means:
- you give up vulnarability plus bonus damage against it
- distortion on signets plus reduced signet cooldown
- 15% more illusion damage
Your gain from Dueling will very likely not cover those losses, not even the pure damage one.
Most mesmers (myself included way way way back when the game launched) enjoy the idea of having a greatwsord wielding caster. That and for a majority of the game no one was checking damage dealt, rotations, boon uptime, etc. This all changed with raids and damage meters coming from those. Many mesmers are stuck in their old habits (though sw+sw/sw+f was better pre HoT already) and refuse to try melee only weapon combinations.
Things to use together when possible:
- Tides of Time + SoI
- Continuum Split after summoning 2 phantasms (2x shield or focus+shield) and a clone (sword 3) early allows you to use all your wells on the hopefully focus pulled enemys
- F2 and F3 can be used on cd when no illusions are out or you plan to resummon anyway. Free alacrity. F3 is an interupt though, useful especially when clearing wvw camps to prevent their heal.
- portal+mimic allows for a free portal every 90 seconds pre alacrity. Place entrance portal, active mimic before placing exit portal.
Those are some of the more basic and easy things. There is tons of stuff mesmers can do some of which you can see here in action: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Advanced-Continuum-Split-Tricks-VoD/first#post6648909
You also can try a more defensive non-shatter-build like e.g. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW8clsnhC1YHawANwtGLCHkZBaQAQbROOx5H+8oB
The purpose of this build is survival by duration and mobility, not by power. With this build you can swap targets and assign each of them one illusion only to keep them away from you. If you directly face a mob and do not move after staff 2, a ranged attack will hit the clone instead of you. Sword-Clones are more likely to grab attention than Staff-Clones. Phantasms will give you Regen and Protection every 3 seconds, so basically you’ll have it the entire time they’re up and you get it with Staff 4 too. The goal is to keep the illusions alive as long as possible/necessary and to not shatter them at all (or just at the end of a fight). Additionally you can eat some buff-food that increases your defensive stats. If you need more illusions available in short time, swap one Signet for Mirror Images. With Master of Manipulation (T1 Chaos) Mirror is your fastest healing skill and Mass Invisibility your fastest elite skill.
It’s interresting that i mostly see GS camping mesmers around me. So i thougth this MUST be the way to go.
Most players are bad, that’s just the way it is. GS is a really low effort way to deal enough damage to get kill credit without actually contributing anything useful to a fight.
It is worth noting that the staff phantasm actually has a niche use for open world bosses. Since the phantasm attack scales per unique condition on the boss, it’ll do enormous damage to open world bosses that are getting zerged down. Having a staff around to swap on before fighting a large boss can be useful.
Ps: Woul it be more effective to drop Domination for Duelling if i mostly use Sword Focus/Shield?
No. Dueling is primarily illusion generation and utility functions. It doesn’t really bring anything for most PvE builds when you have chrono providing all the illusions you need.
Hey guys,
just want to say thanks to you for all your advices. I love and enjoy the Memser playstyle so much that i decide to main him. Never thougth the game will so much fun again. It feels like the days i started to play GW2.
So thank you all again!