Guild Wars 2

Hi, new player, LOVE the mesmer!!!

For all the geeky reasons: love harlequin, love creating illusions, love blowing up illusions, it’s just a game mechanic I LOVE LOVE LOVE.

I am currently level 14, and while I feel quite strong one-on-one, but then when there are more than 2 mobs, I feel so so weak

I am currently using scepter/dagger and staff, thinking it would be a good idea to use great sword for better aoe?

Any other ideas for how to level a mesmer before reaching level 80?

For example, where should I place my FIRST 10 trait points?

I believe you mean scepter/sword. Try the main hand sword for some aoe damage. One of the best weapons we have. Shatters are also aoe that hits 5 targets vs 3 from most melee attacks. The focus and gs phantasms are aoe. We don’t have much else on a short cool down.

If you love the sword then 10 dueling is the best way to go. In general, I recommend trying to be a glass cannon mesmer while leveling because it teaches you all of our active defense. 10 Domination is a nice follow up. 20 Dueling once you have that unlocked for a lot more clone generation.

At higher lvls your options open up a lot more and traits will depend on your preferred play style. So stop by again when you get to 40/60 and have decided what you like.

Sorry, I clearly had an alt on the brain.

I am using sword-pistal + staff.

So, I find it interesting that you mention sword because I find it’s stronger in terms of single target and I’m not the biggest fan of a move that works as long as people stand exactly where I am doing the animation :L

I will admit to having good success, but I am also feeling quite squishy. This becomes especially clear when trying to take on 3+ enemies. I’m basically op outside of events tbh. I’m totally unable to solo events though and it seems to always be when I can’t handle a swarm.

Example: A veteran + 3 mobs is basically death for me.

I think I will try sword/focus + GS

@mtl:
First of all, i second what DuckDuckBOOM said about being a glasscannon. Mesmers have a lot of tricks to survive andmost (if not all) of them are active in nature (unlike Guardian’s passive ones). Master them quick.

Secondly, I always find that Sword + Focus / Staff is the best weapon setup for lvling for numerous reasons.
Looking at each weapon:
Staff: amazing defense utilites and AoE attacks (bouncing autoattacks and chaos storm)
Sword: melee cleave and built-in evade/burst
Focus: AoE pull and swiftness for fast travel.

Looking as a whole:
Given this weapon setup, maybe try this combo
Temporal Curtain/Into the Void to clump mobs together.
iLeap/Swap/Blurred Frenzy/Chaos Storm/Phase Retreat
with iLeap and PR alone, you can dance around enemies while they’re dropping dead.

Have fun, be happy!

The focus and greatsword have an aoe phantasm, the sword is pretty good for aoe auto attacking, but it does put you at more risk of getting hurt.

If you feel like you die too easily with a sword, you can try the staff and greatsword combination for kiting ^__^.

You can put the first 5 points into chaos, the regeneration really regenerates a lot at lower levels, as soon as you reach elvel 40 you should get deceptive evasion on duelling 20.

If you use precision gear ( critical chance), you can use 5 duelling to get vigor (dodge recharges 2 times as fast) nearly permanently. If you dont ahve precision gear you can get inspiration 10 Vigorous revelation, which gives 5 seconds vigor each time you shatter (so you can start the fight with clones to shatter and then use phantasms for damage).

Hope this helps :D

sword 3 sends clone, 3 again, ports you to your enemy and chains them (so they more or less have to stay in your attack), 2 attacks while you evade. to dish out nice damage while not taking any yourself.

focus is highly underappreciated imho. if you have trouble fighting against groups, most often your problems come from not being able to hit them all at the same time (especially ranged enemies). find the next corner/tree/wall and use #4 directly on it twice – every mob gets pulled to this point. after some practice you’ll realiably pull your enemies together, usually you’ll follow with 3-3 to jump after them and then 2 to attack. #5 on focus has really high damage output and destroys projectiles, so you’ll be safe from attacks while you stay in/around this phantasm.
kill the weakest mobs first, go after the veterans later (preferrably pull them all to one spot and burst down the normal mobs while also damaging the vet).

sword/focus really is a great weapon combo. after traiting focus, projectiles get reflected, helping your enemies kill themselves.

you’re always squishy, learn to live with it. F4 gives you invulnerability, sword#2 evades for 2 seconds, you can have constant vigour and your clones/phantasms soak up quite a bit. if you make use of these defensive skills, you’ll no longer feel that squishy.
greatsword as secondary weapon is nice if you had to eat a high-dmg hit and want to get some distance to your enemies.

^Focus is not underappreciated. Its probably the most used off hand for mesmers and not only to stack swiftness or farm cof.

As a lot of people pointed out, GS and sword/focus is the best choice for aoe damage.
Dont forge mind wrack, its strong aoe damage and thats why you should aim for deceptive evasion, 20 dueling.

edit: oranisagu, it seems you have a really bad luck when you run alts then.

I also use focus for condi removal, drop a warden then drop curtain on top of the warden and voila! Basically drop the warden on the ranged enemy and run to him bringing all the melee mobs with you, blurred frenzy the whole group and profit. Obviously this only really works in pve with mob ai as any player in pvp is not going to just stand next to the warden.

Levitas.1953:

^Focus is not underappreciated. Its probably the most used off hand for mesmers and not only to stack swiftness or farm cof.

As a lot of people pointed out, GS and sword/focus is the best choice for aoe damage.
Dont forge mind wrack, its strong aoe damage and thats why you should aim for deceptive evasion, 20 dueling.

actually, it still is underappreciated, because I very rarely see people use the pulls to their full potential and hear a lot of complaining how they have to use it for the speed. when I run dungeons with my ele, guard or warri and see bad mesmers and ask them to use the focus (nicely, by explaining what it’s useful for) I often get answers how bad the focus is and how pistol > all etc.
there are still a lot of people who don’t like the focus because they don’t appreciate or know how much it can do – mainly because it takes practice to gauge the pull distances etc so you can reliably pull two or three far apart mobs to the exact same spot.

^ What people said above about the focus is really great advice. Mesmer GS is one of those things people are either absolutely love or absolutely hate (I personally am not a fan although I certainly see its utility – I don’t like how moody the GS autoattack is as it is based on distance from target, but the GS 2, 4 and 5 are fantastic skills).

Sword/focus and Staff I think is a very good choice for leveling up, the S/F is your main damage dealer while you swap to staff to put up some defense and kite. The focus 4/4 takes a little getting used to, as the AoE pull is pretty unique, extremely potent when you know where the mobs will be thrown. The combination Keenlam mentioned above works well for me, the only thing I have to add to that is to shatter immediately after you phase retreat it get some nice AoE spike damage since the mobs are so clumped up!

EDIT: If you were asking about how to generally level your mesmer to 80, it is a good idea to go to lion’s arch so that you have access to all 5 worlds, and do map completion on all 5 starting areas. You will be around level 27-30 by the time you’re done, and have a ton of SP to open up a lot of your slot skills. Crafting is another great way to level (leveling any craft from 0 to 400 is scaled so you will get +10 levels by the time you are done, but it is expensive if you don’t already have the materials, unless you’re doing food or artificing. Those are the 2 cheapest).

Use Sword + ? + Spam 1 = Profit!

For leveling up, I am currently using this amazing guide, with some variations because of personal preference;

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-Guide-to-PvE-Leveling-Guide-Update/first
(second post)

It basically goes with what everybody else is saying. Greatsword + Sword/X (Usually focus) are your weapons of choice. Once you get to a level where you can produce clones quickly, your basic shatters become great sources of AoE damage. It’s a very efficient and powerful build for leveling. There are some better builds for when you’re at level 80, so I’m going to have to learn an entirely new playstyle then, but I find it worthwhile for how great this build is for leveling.