Guild Wars 2

• WvW roaming: Mesmer
• WvW Raid: Ele, however a mesmer is also main in raids due veil..
• Harder to play: Depends on build.
  Roaming on mesmer is probably easier but at raid mesmer becomes a bit harder. (talking about using shatter spec in raid)
• More viable in spvp: Mesmer, but both not really viable
• Bigger burst: Depends on build, but I’d say ele has a more reliable burst.

I made a long reply to this but I got an internal error and lost my post =.=

So..

Mesmers are better in WvW/SPvP in my opinion, Time Warp, reflects and portal are really useful. I’d say they do much more damage aswell.

Elementalists are definitely a lot harder to play.

Mesmers are probably the most tedious to level though, phantasms are most of your damage and they don’t really get good to higher levels. Great at 80 though.

Biggest bursts – Ele on any weapon. staff/scepter/Dagger

Viable for sPvP – Ele more so after the patch i would think but both classes struggle to find a place to be. Ele can offer better support at this time.

More important for WvW – Ele for water fields and large scale AoE for sieges and zerg swatting. Mesmer for Veil or Roaming alone and not worrying too much about getting ganked by the invisible thief.

Harder to Play – Mesmer, it takes a lot more effort to learn when to use what and in what situations as a mesmer than it does to memorize 20 skills in the Ele rotations from attunements.

If we’re talking about full rotations hitting people perfectly I would say ele but not by much.

Zach.3264:

I made a long reply to this but I got an internal error and lost my post =.=

So..

Mesmers are better in WvW/SPvP in my opinion, Time Warp, reflects and portal are really useful. I’d say they do much more damage aswell.

Elementalists are definitely a lot harder to play.

Mesmers are probably the most tedious to level though, phantasms are most of your damage and they don’t really get good to higher levels. Great at 80 though.

Excuse me! But I need to disagree. About WvW large scale (by the examples you gave), elementalists are not only better than mesmers, but they are at the same time the main source of burst damage, burst heals and CC in entire zerg groups. A zerg can live without a mesmer, but is really hard to live without elementalists. In groups with less than seven people, I believe that mesmers are better tho.
But I do agree with you in sPvP, mesmers aren’t really in a good spot but at least before the last patch, elementalists were even worse. Poor eles. But things are still settling down for a bit, and with all those changes, just time will tell.

And about burst, I believe that eles are better at it than mesmers. But while mesmers are good at bursting people too, mesmers can also do some nice sustain damage, what is harder for elementalists.

erm ele by far. just check the numbers between full glkittenter or phantasm mes and full glass staff ele. staff ele meteornado i can spike numbers up to 10k. i got hit by dd ele before patch for 10k too.

problem with mesmer is not that we cant deal high dmg which is less than the dmg from other classes, but its also we cant keep up pressure cause phantasm always on cd and then all u got left is the weak weapons and yes shatter mes is a little better with dmg upkeep but other than that we are far behind other classes. i had a war litterally running in a circle not attacking and i couldnt burst him down with gs + sword/pistol cause he didnt attack me. so yeah mes especially after patch is def weaker than other classes in burst dmg

also no wvw is not for mesmers. the only reason mesmers are allowed in organized groups is for veil and tw! feedback? lol what projectiles u gonna reflect? the war gs ones? or the war hammer ones? mes has no aoe perios, shatters dont hit without going full shatter build. u need ip, phantasms fail and often die before they can hit more than 1 target, single target skills are not good enough and our dmg out side of ai is a joke. ai dies in wvw in seconds so no mes is terrible in wvw. ele is the part of the meta in the gwen trains. u are just there to veil them

The iZerker I summoned died before it can attack large zerg, so that probably explain mesmer’s situation in ZvZ lol.

If mesmer’s glamour build was still around I’d probably give mesmer a good nod for wvw but since it’s not, ele dominates them imo. I main both ele and mes (I even have 2 80 mes). Theyre both extremely fun classes but elementalist dominates in zergs. I do fairly well in roaming as D/D ele. Staff ele provides a kitten ton of CC, AoE heals, fire fields for might stacking, abundance of swiftness and on top of that massive aoe damage.

Mesmer main source of damage gets melted by aoe before they can even get an attack animation off. It’s incredibly difficult to get damage off in a zerg when your clones die before you can even shatter or your phantasm dies before getting half way through the attack animation.

I’m not really a spvp player but in Wvw, I have to give the nod to ele.

Doomym.6182:

IM wondering who has bigger burst mesmer or elementalist ?

Elementalist, no contest. I love mesmer, but elementalist has the gnarliest burst in the game (though Vashury sure does get kitten close).

Doomym.6182:

Also who is more viable for SPVP

I’m going to assume you mean tPvP. Neither elementalist nor mesmer are super viable atm. They’re both sorta ok.

Doomym.6182:

and most important WvW?

It’s incredibly important to have a mesmer or two in any skilled WvW group. However, that’s really all you need. Adding more elementalists is never a bad thing in any sort of group.

Doomym.6182:

And who is harder to play?

Not an easy question to answer in any case.

In wvw ele staff is better as it’s aoe is good, but regardless eles are paper thin and die if you spit at them. Mes is a duelist so much more ideal for small scale roaming. In pvp both solo and team Mesmer is much better over ele. Even with celestial d/d or scepter burst, eles have some decent team support but staff is mediocre since pvp is small scale and the rest are mostly greed builds with little team support. And if you boon strip them they will go down 100%. Most eles faceroll their keyboard and attunement swap with little thought as they always have with d/d ever since they were godly easy to play and win since November 2012 but that was due to triple cantrips being all stun breaks, bountiful power being 2%, rtl on 15 sec cd and water on evasive arcana procing big heals with signet heal. With the recent changes and “unnerfs” to the signets base passive heal and the internal cd on cleansing water that mindless ele d/d spam has somewhat returned though still easily countered. I would easily take a mes over an ele in team comp as they have slot more to offer in both team fights and point holds with lockdowns/boonstrips/ cleansing and even multiple condition spam in a ever increasing condi meta.

Both professions can do good PBAoE burst damage depending on the gears and traits you choose. As light armor classes, however, elementalists and mesmers attack with PBAoE burst damage inherits a lot of risk. If you watch videos of top players from either classes to do burst damage, high mobility is essential to pull it off.

For AoE ground target damage, my Glyphs Conjure staff elementalist can easily sends wave after wave of damages while in group setting. As a staff elementalist, I can pull off a lot of AoE heal too. In contrast, this kind of play style doesn’t seem to be easily accessible in mesmer, even he is my main.