Guild Wars 2

only buff is from focus and its like a 10s speed for 30s cd…. why is this?

That’s one of mesmer’s weaknesses, especially in WvW. Knowing how to play around it is a mark of a good mesmer.

I think it’s fair to say Mesmers have the worst movement capacity in the game, in between a lack of haste abilities and a teleport that can’t traverse gaps, he has next to nothing going for him mobility wise.

@Sarabi which class actually have teleports that work over gaps? I know for a fact all the thiefs shadow steps is blocked by gaps and such too (so pretty sure they work technically the same way as the mesmer teleports)

@Gummibear Other class don’t have gap traversing teleports, however I believe a fair few have leaps. My point is that Mesmers arn’t very good at getting around either quickly or through difficult terrain.

Thief’s Infiltrator Arrow used to cross gaps. Engineer’s rifle jump still does.

Aside from that, the lack of passive movespeed (One with Air, the Thief signet, etc.) really hurts. It’s not terrible given how much uptime the Temporal Curtain can have, but it still sucks.

There is a trait that gives you increased movement speed for each active illusion.

You can also (unreliably, I know) use Chaos Storm to get yourself a quick Swiftness buff.

I will agree the profession is weaker than most on passive movement however.

There’s a really simple reason we don’t. We have clones. And as easy as it is to tell which are clones and which are not, if you could also run faster than clones do, then the difference becomes glaring.

I already can run faster than they do. Because they don’t move.

The class is weak on both passive & active speed buffs, even more so than the Guardian. However, it can teleport, so I’m not complaining.

Terrant.2903:

There is a trait that gives you increased movement speed for each active illusion.

I wouldn’t count this since you cannot summon clones without an enemy target, so while this is a “passive” movement speed increase, it does require putting yourself into combat which slows your character movement anyhow.

It’d be nice to have a signet that provided a passive movement speed increase or a utility skill that gave swiftness.

Currently, whenever i’m running from point A to point B in WvW or around Tyria, I usually have to take off my actual weapon preferences to equip a focus for temporal curtain, and while that’s on CD, I use Blink, and then I swap to staff and pray that running through Chaos Storm gives me a swiftness.

Blink, Temporal Curtain, and Phase retreat. Saying movement for mesmer is terrible is incredibly incorrect. Sure getting from point A to B may be a little less fluid but as far as being able to move around in combat we have it made.

Well I hate being slow so much I actually went with a set of Centaur runes… I play WvW so being able to be swifted a lot is important to me. With a little extra boon duration I end up with a 13.5 second swift everytime I cast a heal on a 15 second CD. This has finally allowed me to drop the focus and go with an offhand I actually like (pistol). Even when I know I need the better heal so I go with the 20 second CD, I still have a lot less downtime on swift then with the focus. If you keep the focus, you end up with more then 100% uptime using either heal as long as you make sure to use the focus swift THEN the heal swift because the focus swift is bugged and doesn’t stack on other swifts properly, but other swifts will stack on it.

This post is a little misleading. I think the OP is only referring to non-combat movement which feels slow for any class when you don’t have swiftness.

We’re not the only class without passive movement buffs (Guardian is another). We only have one non-combat skill dedicated for swiftness (focus 4). We make up for it in combat though where we are movement machines! I think I’d rather have latter rather than the former.

Between Blink, the Focus-speedbuff (remember unlike the passive movement speed you’re talking about, this one works for your friends!), the +9% movement speed while illusions are up trait, and the often overlooked Portal, I would argue we really just don’t need it.

For example, we’re the kings of jumping puzzles. Portal.
We’re also the undisputed masters of organizing defensive reinforcements into a sieged area (breaking through the siege), or making a flanking maneuver against the attackers. Portal.
We can speed up West/East keep takings substantially. Portal + Curtain.

We really aren’t bad off. True, we have no passive runspeed, but tbh I’d rather see the current signets improved than one of them scrapped for +10% runspeed.

Seriously. Mesmer has Portal in WvW.

If you want to kitten about Mesmer run speed for PvE exploration / world completes, that’s one thing.

But WvW? Sigh …

Wrong.

Underestimating Swiftness in WvW is a huge mistake.

Any good mesmer is either wielding focus, rune-ing Centaur, or having a friend who can buff swiftness.

I was talking about for PvE and world completion, somehow morphed into WvW, haha

Portals. Thats why we don’t have many self speed buffs.

Portals are a one of a kind ability and nothing compares to it strategically.

If Areanet are stupid enough to think out of combat movement speed for exploration/getting places is something that should be used to balance a class then somebody should have smacked them and forced them to put mounts in.

You’re right Levetty, I would remove passive runspeed from ~3 more classes. Or maybe 1 more, actually.

We definitely need some sort of signet or passive movement speed increase.

Trailing behind in groups in sPvP isn’t fun at all.

It’s called balance. We simply don’t need it.

“Thief’s Infiltrator Arrow used to cross gaps.”

Um, no, it doesn’t.

Snow White.9680:

It’s called balance. We simply don’t need it.

It’s all about traversing the zones. EVERY class need to get from A to B asap when we’re done over at A. So if we pretend that this game is more than WvW and PvP balance — getting around faster has nothing to do with balance. Traveling on foot is boring and as far as that goes, Mesmers jog while the rest run.

Musty.3148:

“Thief’s Infiltrator Arrow used to cross gaps.”

Um, no, it doesn’t.

Past VS present – what a tense fight ;-)

If 10% movement speed is such a huge difference to you, gobflinger, I’m not sure getting it would satisfy you much. It’s a minor difference tbh (Thiefs are the real winners with their +25% passive).

Plus, we do get a PvE-Traversal niciness in return for not having +10% runspeed, and that is Portal. As soon as you group up – which frankly you should since well, MMOs tend to have this second M in their name :P – then Portal saves oodles of time and frustration, especially with regards to having to re-do sections of jumping puzzles. Plus you can cheaply troll players trying to interact with a Vista with it. Worth the trade IMO.

People can be so narrow-minded sometimes…

Look, Portal is nice. But it’ll get you to where you were, not where you need to be. That doesn’t count.

We have Temporal Curtain and Blink, but swiftness uptime from that is 40% untraited, 50% traited? (if I remember right) Blink is very short and on 30 sec CD, again untraited.

Compare that to Engineer with permanent 33% movement speed, plus Super Speed from Slick Shoes (100% boost for 5 seconds).

Compare that to Thief, with passive 25% from Sigil, plus blinks from the bow. I think you can do 3-6 blinks, back to back, before you run out of initiative, depending on spec.

Compare that to Elementalist. A slew of abilities there, like Ride the Lightning and swiftness-granting abilities. Pretty sure you can have permanent swiftness, not sure.

Etc., etc.

When it comes to travel (from A to B, not from B back to A), Mesmer is ridiculously slow. You can remedy it somewhat (Runes of Centaur), but bottom line is this class is VERY difficult to get back into after you played classes with permanent swiftness. Feels like driving a wheelbarrow loaded with gravel.

Is it “balance”? I guess you could say so. But after this class gets nerfed even more due to all the crying on PvP forums, just remember to ask for more mobility as a tradeoff. Because I’m pretty sure it’ll end up being mediocre at PvP AND still slow as a brick.

signet of midnight’s 10% boon duration passive should be switched to 10% run speed… would actually make it useful.