Guild Wars 2

Ok, I recently started leveling a mesmer and have to say, the damage is lacking quite a bit. Both my thief and warrior are full glass cannon just because I prefer melting face and using my reflexes to keep myself alive. Is this just not possible with a mesmer? I thoroughly tested every GC build I could find online and came up with several on my own but none seem to be able to do more than a quick mediocre spike then flat-line.

Don’t get me wrong, the mesmer is fun, but fun is defiantly not worth sacrificing raw damage for. My thief could annihilate a packs of 6+ appropriate level mobs in a few seconds with cluster bomb or pistol whip. My mesmer can do the same thing but it gets really messy and slow once you blow your very limited aoe.

I’m just wondering if there’s anything special about mesmers in pve that I haven’t tapped into as far as sheer damage. If this is the best they can do, I would feel bad joining a group with one in a dps spec when my other characters would put its damage to shame.

It’s gonna be tough to match the DPS a warr or thief can put out, but you can do great damage with a mesmer. The difference is that it won’t come from just one or 2 simple button mashes like some some other classes you are used to. For a mesmer it’s a complex rotation of phantasms, shatters, and direct attacks that you have to line up and watch CDs to achieve great DPS. Much higher learning curve.

The other difference is the other thing you ask for: what’s special. What’s special is that unlike those simpler classes, a mesmer can melt faces while providing a ton of utility to their team and with great survival even in glass cannon gear that those other classes can’t match.

But you won’t get it until you are pretty high level; 40 is where we take off and 60-70 is more likely for spreading out your talents effectively beyond what warr and thief can do.

Yeah low lvl mesmer sucks and is slow to lvl but once you get past the turning point! There is definitely a learning curve and different gear/attack styles for various builds. Mesmer damage isn’t as straightforward as other classes. Go check youtube for videos to get an idea of what you might like. There are some builds that will work better for some people than others, there’s also builds that you’ll find much better for pve than pvp. Osicat’s build is cool and I love his videos but the play style is not for me! I much prefer power/gs build or confusion/glamour. You’ll just have to mess around to find what suits you.

Mesmer spike can match the warrior or thief’s, but it is backloaded (meaning there is a ramp up delay before delivery in the form of getting illusions up).

Mesmer sustained damage, however, will not match a warrior or thief’s sustained damage. All their attacks hit for significant damage — their autoattack hits harder than ours.

Warrior does not just do damage with 100b; Blade Trail also does significant damage. Only Phantasms and Blurred Frenzy are abilities in our weapons that do any significant damage — Mirrored Blade and Mind Stab both do lower damage than your autoattack, and for the mainhand sword your block is dependent on mob hit delivery and hits only a single target.

As said by others, it’s just the way the class is. I think the biggest reasons a lot of people stray away from their mesmers is the obvious lack of aoe and my biggest gripe, which is all the downtime. By downtime I mean the time before illusions and CDs are back up as no matter which weapon I use the auto attacks feel worthless. The visuals and utility, however, are helping me stand by.

you can’t match thieves/ warrior dps due to cd’s of our potential dps…

You’re thinking is wrong if aoe brute damage is how you’re playing your Mesmer. We are the masters of the art of war. Control is your biggest friend. Mesmer play is a subtle dance between cd’s and damage spikes. Low levels will break you if you’re trying to power grind mass mobs.
The learning curve from playing a thief to a Mesmer is the difference between math 101 and trigonometry. Stick it out though and you’ll find the class has more to offer than meets the eye. Granted with bugs and broken abilities its less effective in some areas, Mesmer remains a solid class.

@Near, in pve think of us as enchancemet shamansns in black temple days of wow, ot top dps but good dmg that we make up for by be a wery good team support class. Our utilitys and team helping abilitys is as big as our flexibility. We do thu have a extremly strong burst and often is the last class to lick the floor du to many acctive survival abilitys.

For wvwvw solo and even more in smal group roaming we trulu shine thu, here we are in our right element wher our avoidance help to maximum and our in combat movment combined with extremly fast and on demand burst melt faces. Our utilitys is gamechangching and can turn a whole battle. in a 20 vs 20 a team with agood mesmer can outplay the other team if organiced.

For spvp and tpvp we seem to be strong exept a bugg now in tpvp, ask Nero or a spvp mesmer for feedback in this area.

Here is a vid from my guilds wvwvw fights and how we in a 10 man team with 4 mesmers use this as a advantage.

Here is one about our solo play as mesmer.

Link to my guide

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat/first

/Gl on your mesmer, Osicat

Thanks guys, I’ll definitely get my mesmer higher and see how it goes. I may just not be suited for a class that doesn’t have the option of forgoing support for pure damage. Maybe it’ll grow on me though =D