Guild Wars 2

So here’s the situation: I have a level 80 Engineer that’s fully equipped as well as a level 80 warrior who’s about to get full world completion, fully exotic gear etc.

As a result I’m orientating myself when it comes to what class I’d like to play next. Since i already have 1 medium and 1 heavy armour class I’m opting to go for a light class this time around, which would mean either Mesmer, Necromancer or Elementalist.

So to all the Mesmer players out there whose experiences far exceed my own: Why do you think the Mesmer stands out from the other 2 and what made you play this class?

Well, as you i leveled first warrior to 80 then engineer to 80. So as next proffession I chose mesmer because it seemed fun, and it was. Great utilities, skills, many viable builds. Balanced proffession overall.

I was never into the whole dark magic, emo classes. They just aren’t my style. I never had a warlock in wow, I will never have a necro in this game. Too gloomy. :P

The ele was pretty fun and as mentioned above is a bit like your standard mage – on wheels. But I found the playstyle…I dunno.. clunky? I didn’t like attunement swapping very much, and I wasn’t too thrilled about the spells. It was sort of like been there, done that.

The Mesmer was something new and exciting. I’ve always loved the look of light armor so I knew I wanted a scholar class, and I loved that Mesmers could use nontraditional weapons like greatswords and pistols!

I’ve said this many times before but I feel like the Mesmer is the most complete class. There are SO many ways to effectively play a Mesmer that it sort of breaks away from everyone being that cookie cutter build. I have yet to find a wrong way to play a mesmer which is what I think ANet was intending for all the classes when they said ‘play your way’.

Also, I love the trickster aspect of the class with stealth and confuse. There’s even versatility within any spec! We can confuse, burst, daze and even become immune to all dmg depending on how we shatter.

Bottom line: it’s a powerful, versatile class, which is loads of fun to play.
Definitely try a Mesmer!

I agree with Kamata and Snow White above; mesmer is a very versatile, quite balanced and really fun class to play. So far I have tried all the classes in the game, except for the mesmer, which i decided to try a week ago.
My first lvl 80 was a necro, then i kinda tried every other class too (warrior last – and i hated it) but mesmer is really unique. My mesmer’s lvl 32 now and it gets more interesting. Haven’t tried pvp with it yet (i wanna hit 80 first), but i’m already excited for what it is capable of against other players. >:)

What I love of mesmer is that it will give you headaches but as soon as you master it.. it will give you lots of fun XD, go for it!

you kill people with pink butterflies

I tried pretty much every class in game(no all are 80), so far my impression on light class:

Necro(staff minion-mancer): not a bad class, but also nothing really special(other than having 2 hp bar). Con: don’t have many traits that can make the class feel instant awesome.

Ele(D/D arcane water): start out a little bit rough, but gets better and better. Its like multi-kit engineer, but with more mobility and less armor/hp. Con: have to reconfigure my keys just to play this class right.

Mesmer(GS/SwF shatter): start out meh, 25~40 is a hard climb, then certain traits unlock, and the fun begins. Con: move slow.

I liked the versatility of it. A mesmer can do a little bit of what all the other profs can, and then some.

I loved both the Ele and Necro, they’re fine classes. But the Mesmer stole my heart because the theme fit in with my character very well.

The Mesmer is a fun, active playstyle, which I would characterize by the word “mercurial”. That’s how I feel while playing it. If you can handle an Engineer then you can easily handle a Mesmer (and you should also be able to handle an Elementalist). It requires lots of keypresses to do things that other classes can do with one keypress, but the subjective “feel” of the fun of using the combinations of keypresses and getting them down pat, easily makes up for it.

It is squishy, so timing is everything. It’s not the class to play if you just want to relax and kill things – but I always like to have 2 or 3 classes on the go to get that contrast (e.g. my second main is a Hunter so that gives me a bit of a break if I want one).

Timing is important for many other classes like the Ele too, but it’s more in a strategic rather than a tactical sense like the Mesmer. With the Mesmer you have to concentrate moment by moment and change tactics quickly – mercurial, as I said.

Why…you ask?

Portals. I main a necro and have 5 other 80’s. Mesmer is one. When I get bored, I portal people around, goof off and generally enjoy the game as a …game. And that is where my mesmer comes in. In WvW you can be a HUGE benefit whether it’s just dropping entry and exit portals so those lagging behind the zerg can catch up. Or, make the jump puzzle go faster. Or, when babysitting a tower and 30 bad guys show up. You can drop a portal and run away (or so they think), drop the next one and you and all your friends are back inside on siege.

It’s fun.

At first I was going to main an elementalist because I wanted to be a ranged, healing/support class but Anet did away with that. Ele was as close as I was ever going to get. Then I saw a mesmer auto-attack with a greatsword and had a nerdgasm.

The reason I stuck with a mesmer is because I like cute things, I have an itch to be more flamboyant and, underneath my sweet exterior, I’m a sadistic kitten! This class lets me be all those things! The only thing that would make it more awesome is if I could use the Dreamer. When that day comes, I’ll have a very hard time deciding if I should give up my staff or sword/focus.

The most unique and unusual profession in the game.

Because very little beats, watching a foe chase around a clone, while you’re hitting him in the back. The Mesmer can literally confuse people, it’s not just an aesthetic.

One word………..Butterfly’s

You don’t mess with a angry swarm of Butterfly’s.

I’d say it really depends… how good you can get at this game.

When I was solo roaming in WvW with full Glass Cannon shatter gear/traits back when DB was in the lower tiers, I felt pretty kitten invincible in anything up to 3v1.
I am, by no means, a pro at this game. But if you’re competent actually reacting to what your opponent is doing, Mesmers have a lot of fun things they can do. And in the right setup can absolutely melt opponents in small group/1v1 combat.

The glass cannon gear doesn’t hold up as well in larger fights where you really don’t have the option of avoiding everything. I switched to Rabids for a while and am wearing an assortment of equipment at the moment.

If you’re going to be focusing solely on PvE, Mesmer may not be the best out of the Light Armor classes technically, but can still be very useful.
I tend to put my Glass Cannon gear back on in PvE and go for dps. Blink/Distortion/Stealth/Blurred Frenzy/Well timed dodges/CC up the kitten make it pretty easy to avoid damage in pve entirely, so I’ve never seen the need to build defensively for PvE.

As a closing note,
I just reread most of my post and realized how blatantly biased I sound towards glass cannon gear.
There are a lot of ways to build a mesmer, and I’ve exhausted just about all my gold in the past few weeks buying armor/weapons/sigils/runes/skins to test out new builds. You can get pretty creative in what you want to do,

But full GC gear is a nice introduction to getting the class mechanics down and learning how to chain attacks for spikes before branching out and learning the really cool things we can do.

Mesmer and Guardian are the most “complete classes”. Mesmer is fun, all of the weapons in PVE (except the torch) serve a purpose and can work with many different builds which is awesome. PVP and WVW Torch is great too. You can go tanky, support, offensive, pure glass power house… Mes can do it all without losing its play style. With that said, Mesmers dont really get that powerful until levels 40-60. Also, even at lvl 80, we arent as good at PVE as the other classes Solo. In groups, we shine and shine hard. Now as for Ele… its a mixed bag. D/D Ele is the viable way to get with really very little variation to the trait line if you want to play at maximum effectiveness. Basically, you need 30 water and 30 arcane, but some people (few) dont do this. With that said, Ele is also hard to level in the beginning. Staff is good for support damage ingroups, scepter is unbelievably safe. Doesnt sound too good right? Well, when you hit the higher levels with the ele and get your gear right, the D/D build is kitten near unstoppable. In PVP/WVW/PVE its just unrealistic. It is beatable, but its war. in PVE you can solo most champions without needless kiting, just straight up aoe and war. Ele is also the fastest class, except maybe a thief. Mesmer is the slowest. Ele gets my vote as the “Best” class, though its not my fav anymore, I truly like all the classes equally, but the Ranger has been stealing my heart lately. Necros.. well, I dont like the necro, but if you go power/tough/vit at high levels they can tank better than warriors. Cheers and sry for typos

i saw things in this post >____<

I play ele AND mesmer.

Mesmer is way more versatile.

Ele in open PvE is really good (see farming orr)
Ele is a weak imitation of a guardian in dungeon with no DPS capabilities.
In WWW is meh if not ouright bad (the higher the tier the worse ele is*)
In PvP is possibly OP but i don t play PvP that much.

Mesmer is awful in open PvE
Its quite good in dungeons and can dps
Its the best www profession imho
Its really strong in PvP

*about ele in www…without discussing it in depth..
Ill just say that when lag comes you becomes useless…..you cannot change attunement and your 1 skills are the worst in the game officially.

LordByron.8369:

i saw things in this post >____<
Ele in open PvE is really good (see farming orr)
Ele is a weak imitation of a guardian in dungeon with no DPS capabilities.
In WWW is meh if not ouright bad (the higher the tier the worse ele is*)
In PvP is possibly OP but i don t play PvP that much.

Mesmer is awful in open PvE
Its quite good in dungeons and can dps
Its the best www profession imho
Its really strong in PvP

*about ele in www…without discussing it in depth..
Ill just say that when lag comes you becomes useless…..you cannot change attunement and your 1 skills are the worst in the game officially.

I don’t necessarily agree with your assessment of Elementalist, but Mesmer is pretty close, I’d reverse the last two things in they are good in WvW but utterly amazing in PvP, especially if you 1v1 or 1v2. That assessment is actually why I don’t really like playing Mesmer, to be honest. I mostly PvE and dungeons with a little WvW. Mesmer is good in dungeons but lacks a bit when it comes to the other things I like.

LordByron.8369:

i saw things in this post >____<

I play ele AND mesmer.

Mesmer is way more versatile.

Ele in open PvE is really good (see farming orr)
Ele is a weak imitation of a guardian in dungeon with no DPS capabilities.
In WWW is meh if not ouright bad (the higher the tier the worse ele is*)
In PvP is possibly OP but i don t play PvP that much.

Mesmer is awful in open PvE
Its quite good in dungeons and can dps
Its the best www profession imho
Its really strong in PvP

*about ele in www…without discussing it in depth..
Ill just say that when lag comes you becomes useless…..you cannot change attunement and your 1 skills are the worst in the game officially.

I just finished a “healway” guardian last month.

While my mesmer is very useful in pve there’s no comparison that my AOE Buffing machine of a guardian is way way better for pve just because of the aoe buff’s he puts out.

Being able to grant my party 7 seconds of stability every 24 seconds is pretty kitten great.

Having 1500 dodge heals for everyone withing 600 of me is also pretty awesome.

I love my mesmer in pve but I can’t say their close to my guardian.

That Chris Dawnheart healway spec is no joke.

PS. I have a buddy who play’s DD ele as a main and he does pve with me all the time. He does a ton of damage using some Valkyrie and knights with some tough runes (can’t remember which) I have no idea why your’e saying they can’t do great damage in pve. Ele’s have very good base damage as do Guardians. Mesmers are much more reliant on DPS stat’s to pull off decent damage.