Guild Wars 2

First of all, I have barely played any other classes than the Mesmer. because of this, it is difficult for me to say whether this is an issue all across the board or exclusive to the Mesmer. I have been doing a great deal of World-boss farming for a Legendary lately, as well as extensive dungeonfarming. So I cannot speak for the class in PvP.

I currently use a GS-crit based burst-damage build, having swapped from a Staff-based Shatter/condition build, and while the Mesmer has some very interesting class mechanics, I keep finding that it is let down by the implementation thereof. It is entirely possible that I am not playing the class “as intended” and I emphazise that I can only speak for myself in this.

Simply put, the combat lacks synergy. When I fight a world boss, my strategy consists of zapping the boss to death while using my other abilities on cooldown. Depending on whether I use a staff or a GS, I then either shatter, or I don’t, since it’s better damage output for me to keep my phantasms up with the GS. It’s simple, and not very engaging.

And I think a big reason for this is that the Mesmer skills do not synergize very well. Each ability ties together with no others, and while you can concievably put down a combo-field and hurl mirror blade through it, the cooldown on the utility combo-fields makes this a gimmick more than anything. To elaborate, on the GS, your abilities are Spatial Surge, Mirror Blade, Mind Stab, Illusionary Berserker and Illusionary Wave.
Already we know that Spatial Surge deals damage depending on your range, so you are intended to stand at range, which is fine. Then you have Mirror Blade, a small nuke that spawns an illusion you can… Well, you can shatter it. Third, Mind stab, which is a bigger nuke, hits multiple targets, and requires you to put your cursor on your target, Probably for the best. Fourth, the Illusionary berserker. Long cooldown, can’t be aimed, hits like a truck, and again, can be shattered though that is not generally recommended due to his damage output. Fifth, Illusionary wave, pushes foes away.

These are all good abilities, however, they do not ie into each other. They all deal damage on their own and do it well, but you cannot combo them up to be more efficient. Except skill one which requires you to maintain distance, there is no skill involved. You press a button and things die. Granted, on Mind Stab you actually need to have your cursor over them. That said, it’s hardly skill-based gameplay.

Again, I can only speak for my own experiences, and I will admit that the Staff is somewhat more skill-based to use. My main issue with the staff is that it’s too unpredictable to be viable. The DpS is consistently low because you aren’t able to reliably stack your conditions onto your target, and while it’s a powerful support tool, it’s difficult to use due to the element of RNG inherent in the weapon.

But ultimately, the above is intended as an example. These weapons are great for what they do, but they do not synergize, and because of this, it quickly grows stale to use them. You cna adjust your positioning and focus on dodging red circles on the ground all you like, but it’s annoying to know that you cannot really “improve” your Damage by playing well, bar not dying.

I do not know how to solve this, however. And I will reiterate that it may simply be me doing something wrong with the class. The Mesmer has some powerful utility skills, and overall it is an interesting class for a number of reasons. But I feel it is let down by implementation of said abilities. It is admittedly difficult to implement an elaborate combo-system with only five buttons to push.

I have been running with both a Necromancer and a Mesmer lately, and in both cases, I have been working with condition builds. While conditions are quite powerful, they do have a few kinks that are frustrating to deal with.

- Structures ruin your day.

-Stacks capping out.

Regarding structures, while them being immune to conditions is perfectly logical (with burning as a notable exception), it does make dealing with them as anything but direct damage a colossal time sink. While I admit that direct damage is similarly hampered by this (since structures are immune to critical damage), I find that I can barely touch structures at all as a Condition spec.

It would be wonderful if ArenaNet would reconsider making structures at least slightly more vulnerable to conditions, since it slows the content to a snail’s pace when you have to stand and wail at some random gun turret/egg/whatever for two minutes before being able to break it.

Regarding condition stacks. This suggestion applies mostly to bleeding, though it can sensibly apply to any condition. Briefly, it’s only possible for a mob to have one application of a condition on it. If there’s five Elementalists lighting something on fire, only the strongest burn (no pun intended) takes effect. With Bleeding and Vulnerability, it’s slightly different, from what I understand, since every Bleed goes into the same stack to a maximum of 25.
Regardless, my suggestion is that every character be given a seperate stack of conditions. So in the previous example with 5 elementalists, each elementalist would apply his own Burn, and each burn would take effect seperately. Likewise, if for instance there’s five Necromancers inflicting 3 stacks of bleeding each, the mob would recieve 5 stacks of 3xbleeds, not a single stack of 15xbleeds. This would be particularly useful in large world-boss encounters where Condition specs become useless when there’s more than 2-3 of them, since Bleeding/Vulnerability simply caps out at 25 stacks.

Agreed with OP, there’s no need to remove this. Please bring it back.