Guild Wars 2

sure, we all know that we’re pvp orientated but i don’t agree with the line of thought that we have to be severely handicapped at PvE just because of that
lets face it, very few people are going to PvP their way from level 1 to 80 and we’ll gonna have to do some PvE nevertheless

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

Rhyno.7084:

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

maybe shed some light on how we aren’t? i’m sure i’m not the only one who think this way since there are other posts on the forum about how useful we are during DEs..

I do fine in PvE on my Mesmer. I kill things faster and get hurt less than on my Flamethrower Engineer.

I guess I’ll just shill my guide

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Dungeon-Builds-With-Tips-and-Tricks/first#post58449

If you’re only worried about tagging creeps in a zerg just grab power and tag them with crappy AoE. I don’t find zerging to be interesting at all.

I don’t agree I have no problem with my mesmer in PvE. Sure I don’t use my sPvP build which relies on shattering and confusion because I feel like confusion is too weak on mobs but my phantasm build is great when it comes to PvE and WvWvW.

TheKommissar.2483:

I do fine in PvE on my Mesmer. I kill things faster and get hurt less than on my Flamethrower Engineer.

I’ll elaborate on my post. Chaos/Illusions/Domination Staff and Sword/Focus build is perfectly capable in PvE and has been my levelling build since day 1 and can both burst damage, ranged damage, melee damage, and survive like a champ and is more than able to fulfill every need I have for quests, farming, PvP, levelling, and events.

In what way is it underpowered? the strength of mesmer is its specialization of role. while there “are no roles” in GW, mesmers can be built to be some of the best off-tanks i’ve ever seen, can play offensive support, ruining the enemy’s chance to attack, and overall is extremely versatile. You have to find a niche for yourself, as the mesmer doesn’t truly have one.

In PvE, my mesmer drops mobs faster than my ranger or engineer. This includes what starts as a one on one and get adds of three and four mobs. If you aren’t taking advantage of weapon swaps between range and melee weapons you are only hurting yourself. Drop a seed turret, back off, and watch the mobs swarm it setting up some AoE attacks. It’s a toss up between my guardian and mesmer as to who handles greatly outnumbered mobs better.

I think Mesmer illusions die too quickly in PvE. It would be wonderful if they had some kind of passive ability that reduced damage taken by non-humanoids by 50-75%.

I also have no problems at all in PvE. Currently i use a greatsword/mantra build with great success, killing mobs fast and safe.
Before i used a zepter build with glamour abilities that blind and confuse. As the first two shatter skills are aoe this build can easily kill several mobs at once while reducing the dmg to a minimum. Only drawback is the slow killingspeed. Even if confusion can deal over 2000 k dmg, PvE Mobs attack just too slow :/

One great advantage of the mesmer is the Illusion which can tank all the dmg, especially as you have stealth to lose all aggro yourself(and carry it over to Illusions)
If you have a scepter you often have already a new illusion, when the old dies, so you never get aggro

I think he’s referring to the fact that in any sort of group setting in PvE, your illusions are pretty much useless. Unless there’s 1 boss to fight, there’s no point in using an illusion on a target because it dies so quickly.

So in group settings, Mesmers are forced into support role. You shouldn’t have to be forced into any role just because you want to partake in a dynamic quest.

Even fighting regular mobs by yourself, the creatures die to quickly for any illusions to do much good.

How would Rangers, Engineers, and Necros feel if their “pets” died as soon as their current target was killed?

Sure, when a target doesn’t die instantly, Illusions are great. However, most PvE isn’t about fighting a single target. I’d rather not have half of my abilities be useless or having to be forced to play support. No other class is forced into a specific role. Why should Memsers be punished?

In terms of group events, you just can’t expect build a to work as well as build b. A rapid shatter build in group events is godly.

On the flip side a rapid shatter build is rubbish against strong single targets.

darqwonders.5308:

I think he’s referring to the fact that in any sort of group setting in PvE, your illusions are pretty much useless. Unless there’s 1 boss to fight, there’s no point in using an illusion on a target because it dies so quickly.

At least, if you have the 5 points for less illusion cd and improved weapon trait the cd is so low you can use it for every mop just like every other skill.
Or you can use your shatter skills even when you have just one clone to get the kill even quicker(or activate disortion). The first attack of a phantasm is the moment you summon it, so if you use chaosstorm you can also activate a phantasm(and these phantasm do some crazy dmg)
Example: I once hit an enemy with a staff attack for 80 dmg, the phantasm dealt around 800 oO

On the flip side a rapid shatter build is rubbish against strong single targets.

With traits you can enhance this build to a confusion build with glamour skills that blind and confuse. These blinds are really effektive in PvE as the mobs attack so slow and the mob recieves a lot of dmg for that…

He doesn’t specify group or solo PvE. I’ve used the same build/weapon sets for both, no changes to a support role, and have done just fine. If I know a fight with a boss is coming up, I’ll change out one of my utility skills with Illusion of Life. If I think about it, I may switch out my melee weapon set for another ranged set, but I rarely think about that until after combat begins.

djones.4751:

In terms of group events, you just can’t expect build a to work as well as build b. A rapid shatter build in group events is godly.

On the flip side a rapid shatter build is rubbish against strong single targets.

What’s a rapid shatter build? I looked through the skills and couldn’t find anything about rapid shatter.

Mesmer is the last profession that was released in the game. It’s certain that Mesmer needs further fine tuning and polish of its skills and traits. The devs acknowledged this fact during the beta. Currently there are many bugs associated with certain Mesmer skills and traits. I’ve gone into details in other thread and wrote bug reports in the bug forum but I’ll not delve into it here.

The game has only been released for a little over 2 weeks, I know that there are bigger issues for them to handle right now like security issues, progress blocking, performance issue, server stability issues and other related core functionality issues of the game.

To be quite honest, I’m a little disappointed in the fact that certain skills and traits are bugged and causing Mesmer not to be able to perform at its best.

15 years ago when game developers can’t purely rely on the Internet to patch this or hot fix that, games were meant to be “ready” out of the box literally. That doesn’t mean the fact that games released before the millennium weren’t having issues. However the principles back then was that official release date IS the final date of everything in production.

I understand that games nowadays especially in MMOs are a lot more complex, but we don’t like to pay the full retail price of a game and doing non-paid beta testing for them. I don’t mean I’m a selfish person and I love the community and I like to give help to them and the devs. It’s why I’m here, but I’m finding myself spending way too much than I should submitting in game bug report and writing full detail bug report with screenshot on the forum than I should be playing instead.

I seriously don’t know how many eyes are monitoring these thread and I don’t know if any of my reports and posts will ever cross path with the devs.

They’re very busy handling major cases but there are so many issues that players are experiencing atm and it really depreciates the enjoyment out of the game.

ArenaNet is still my favorite developer of all compares to others and I believe they’ve a great team and their QA has been phenomenal since the legacy of GW1, but I don’t think I’ll be ever purchasing any game on release. It seems the trend in today’s gaming industry is that if a game is passing enough to go through the press and it functions “normally” then it’s ready for release. Internet has proven to be very useful and an essential tool in our daily lives, but it shouldn’t be purely rely on as a tool to fix for our mistakes.

oh wow ok so im sorry i didnt seperate group PvE or solo PvE
i thought since almost everything in the game requires you to be in a group, i didnt need to specifically state that mesmers are terrible at group PvE

darqwonders.5308 pretty much hit it anyway, and yes there is no “speed” shatter

Rhyno.7084 i have not tried your build but i did come up with something similar before i was 80 where i would churn out tons of illusions but even at level 80, the damage from triple illu f1 does not do much

apart from the traits you picked and cd reducs, i had mirror image and decoy for my utility/clone generation. but the shatter cd did not allow me to shatter as often as your guide claims i would beable to

several things i want to add of how a shatter mesmer is bad,

while the conditions from shattering are pretty good, they dont do much against bosses and like darq said, in group PvE, the mob is gonna die within 2second flat.

majority of our damage is gonna come from or phastasms, so right now shattering is something i would like to avoid

also after the first burst, you will be unable to sustain chruning out so many illusions even with a scepter due to the long cd of our utility skills

ok now on to the weapon choice
i DO NOT, want to play a staff mesmer
so why am i being forced to play a staff mesmer just to beable to tag mobs in PvE? that makes no sense

even a melee warrior is able to tag so much more mobs then me even thou i out dmg him

Bolt.1736:

Rhyno.7084:

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

maybe shed some light on how we aren’t? i’m sure i’m not the only one who think this way since there are other posts on the forum about how useful we are during DEs..

we are very useful during DEs, the issue is not with us but how event contribution works.

mesmers pwn in pve, its almost impossible to die, and you can take whole groups of mobs easy, sure our immediate nukes are low, but you can stack conditions on multiple enemies at once and the dmg ramps up.

Could you expand on why you think mesmers are lacking in pve?
]
edit- ok your last post was nto up when I started mine!
An option for on demand burst woudl be nice, but I dont think thats really the issue, I think the main issue is the way contribution works (its a stupid system as Rift proved and thankfully ditched entirely).

Cameirus.8407:

Bolt.1736:

Rhyno.7084:

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

maybe shed some light on how we aren’t? i’m sure i’m not the only one who think this way since there are other posts on the forum about how useful we are during DEs..

we are very useful during DEs, the issue is not with us but how event contribution works.

mesmers pwn in pve, its almost impossible to die, and you can take whole groups of mobs easy, sure our immediate nukes are low, but you can stack conditions on multiple enemies at once and the dmg ramps up.

Could you expand on why you think mesmers are lacking in pve?

Their unique feature, illusions and shattering, are practically useless in group PvE because every illusion is attached to a single target that dies when the target dies.

Now, if the illusions automatically shattered when a target dies… that would be really awesome.

Cameirus.8407:

Bolt.1736:

Rhyno.7084:

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

maybe shed some light on how we aren’t? i’m sure i’m not the only one who think this way since there are other posts on the forum about how useful we are during DEs..

we are very useful during DEs, the issue is not with us but how event contribution works.

mesmers pwn in pve, its almost impossible to die, and you can take whole groups of mobs easy, sure our immediate nukes are low, but you can stack conditions on multiple enemies at once and the dmg ramps up.

Could you expand on why you think mesmers are lacking in pve?

i think what darq says pretty much summed it up
this thread also talks about it
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/General-concerns-about-the-Mesmer-class/first#post58571

but anyway what i noticed is that in group PvE, the mobs often dies before we can get anything off
yes we can get gold contribution easily but often i get so little loot its just sad

darqwonders.5308:

Cameirus.8407:

Bolt.1736:

Rhyno.7084:

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

maybe shed some light on how we aren’t? i’m sure i’m not the only one who think this way since there are other posts on the forum about how useful we are during DEs..

we are very useful during DEs, the issue is not with us but how event contribution works.

mesmers pwn in pve, its almost impossible to die, and you can take whole groups of mobs easy, sure our immediate nukes are low, but you can stack conditions on multiple enemies at once and the dmg ramps up.

Could you expand on why you think mesmers are lacking in pve?

Their unique feature, illusions and shattering, are practically useless in group PvE because every illusion is attached to a single target that dies when the target dies.

Now, if the illusions automatically shattered when a target dies… that would be really awesome.

i dont know if that would be the correct way to fix tagging in DEs as the illusions often spawn near us..
tbh i would like more control over shattering, like if we could shatter 1 or 2 instead of just everything..

Bolt.1736:

Cameirus.8407:

Bolt.1736:

Rhyno.7084:

Mesmers are not handicapped when it comes to PvE.

maybe shed some light on how we aren’t? i’m sure i’m not the only one who think this way since there are other posts on the forum about how useful we are during DEs..

we are very useful during DEs, the issue is not with us but how event contribution works.

mesmers pwn in pve, its almost impossible to die, and you can take whole groups of mobs easy, sure our immediate nukes are low, but you can stack conditions on multiple enemies at once and the dmg ramps up.

Could you expand on why you think mesmers are lacking in pve?

i think what darq says pretty much summed it up
this thread also talks about it
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/General-concerns-about-the-Mesmer-class/first#post58571

but anyway what i noticed is that in group PvE, the mobs often dies before we can get anything off
yes we can get gold contribution easily but often i get so little loot its just sad

Sword/focus, in DE I can pull entire groups to me, before anyone else get a chance to attack them. Then Warden, then immb them then BF, and they dead by then, are close to it. Really high damage.

Mesmers are nearly perfect right now, they’re only missing a main hand pistol to have a reliable main hand range weapon that doesn’t destroy your phantasms.

I’ve really noticed just the opposite. Compared to playing my elementalist or my necromancer, mesmer and it’s ability to create distracting clones on mind-bogglingly short cooldowns is the easiest class I’ve played in PvE after guardian. It’s almost stupid how often mobs will waste so much time trying to kill all your clones. I’ve never even had to learn to properly kite things until I tried the other light armor classes.

Ooooh, oh. You mean group PvE. Yes, you’re almost required to use a staff or one handed sword/torch. If you’re very good, you can run up to the group with the torch invisibility for that aoe fire, and then use the 2 skill to hit multiple targets without danger. After that you’ll need some good escape skills if they’re not dead, but it’s a rather strict build, has long cooldowns, and is admittedly difficult in practice. I agree that shatters do not help that much unless you desperately need tags. But in situations that you do not have companions with you, or where most of your friends are down, I found mesmers ridiculously easy to play.

A fix to the shatter skills destroy phantasms would really help our PvE capabilities.

Learn to use your clones and phantoms, I love playing mine.

Sarelm.8317:

Ooooh, oh. You mean group PvE. Yes, you’re almost required to use a staff

That’s also the case for necromancer and elementalist because of the AOEs and group buff/heal abilities the staff gives for these 3 classes.

My mesmer doesn’t have an issue killing or tagging mobs in pve but… I have noticed in WvW when there are swarms of people attacking my illusions drop before they can take a single step due to aoe. Im not sure how other mesmers are tackling this problem but my build that focuses on quick shatter combos tends to lose a lot of its dmg once a crowd starts to form. I know illusions are meant to be weak but something feels wrong when the major dmg and survivability component of the class is rendered useless in large-scale battles.

Sarelm.8317:

Ooooh, oh. You mean group PvE. Yes, you’re almost required to use a staff or one handed sword/torch. If you’re very good, you can run up to the group with the torch invisibility for that aoe fire, and then use the 2 skill to hit multiple targets without danger. After that you’ll need some good escape skills if they’re not dead, but it’s a rather strict build, has long cooldowns, and is admittedly difficult in practice. I agree that shatters do not help that much unless you desperately need tags. But in situations that you do not have companions with you, or where most of your friends are down, I found mesmers ridiculously easy to play.

yup. When it’s just you and the enemy, Mesmers are great. However, for most dynamic quests, there’s always a bunch of other players around, meaning everything dies too quickly before you get to use your illusions.

Mesmer is by far the worst class in PvE. Our main profession mechanic (illusions) is rendered completely useless in Dynamic Events because mobs die too fast for Mesmers to use illusions.

Limnage.9581:

Mesmer is by far the worst class in PvE. Our main profession mechanic (illusions) is rendered completely useless in Dynamic Events because mobs die too fast for Mesmers to use illusions.

no it not, it just one of the many things they have. There is multy builds where illu plays almost no part in it at all.

One handed sword offers every move as a cleave. On fights that have a lot of mobs rushing in, Mirror Images and an instant mind wrack, and go to town cleaving what’s left. If Mind Wrack’s off cooldown, I’ll summon another add.

The Lack of AoE only really hurts if you’re running a Greatsword or a Scepter. And on a bajillion little adds, I daresay that it’s power builds that just tear through everything that tend to matter more than finely-tuned class mechanics. So cleave, cleave your hurt out.

no it not, it just one of the many things they have. There is multy builds where illu plays almost no part in it at all.

Just not a good build which isn’t illusion (or phantasm) based.

Malakree.5912:

no it not, it just one of the many things they have. There is multy builds where illu plays almost no part in it at all.

Just not a good build which isn’t illusion (or phantasm) based.

God wrong, my build is semi phant base, but even that is secondary. Which in Dgn ive always been the control and so far. Tons of people really like my play style and thought I was a great control.

Also I see CD base builds, where phant, and clones have nothing added to them in traits are anything.

yes in all builds you use them in fights, but in all builds you use some conditions as well. That does not make all builds that.

I’m not mocking you or anything but can you really start typing in proper sentences and stop using abbreviations…it makes your posts really hard to read and even harder to understand.

I’m sort of getting something about a semi-phantasm build but that’s about where I lost you.

They’re absolutely fine. I use Staff + Sword/Sword with Power/Precision gear and can’t say I’ve ever struggled at any point. I also use Nullfield, Mirror Images and Decoy or Blink. Oh and Timewarp.

Need more work? Yes.
More work than the other classes? No.

Everyone has their fair share of balance troubles, gives the devs a minute or two. :P
For now I prefer my AH functional and my guild emblem working over my Scepter having a faster animation.