1) I dont care either way about moa. I’ve never used it.
2) You would think there’s no real lag in sPvP. But the game most so fast good thiefs are globaling me before they render. If mes and do this to or if out cloaking / portal effects are out of whack, I hope it gets looked at.
3) You have to look at the whole package. Staff clones are strong, but their the overall staff dps is low.
4) agreed.
I can spot the real mesmer easy in WvW, but in sPvP – not at all. LoS, speed the game plays, and the fact that you’re really dying to an invisible thief rather than any of the “mesmers”.
I try do play the same game on my mesmer as others play on me. Let the enemy play whack-a-clone while my friends kill them.
I haven’t done much with wells but I did want to point out that condition damage can be fun in zergs with epidemic. You hit someone getting focus fired with a ton of conditions on them and can do a ton of damage. Really good if you can find a vet mob to hit with players around it as well.
Wells will scale off of power/crit though, rather than conditions.
Feedback is really nice it a slot and makes you feel important even at level 11.
It’s really nice to carry a focus offhand because the #4 skill provides run speed.
1) Clones themselves do almost no damage. But I generally try to make everything die at once. Kite in circles grouping up the 3 or so mobs into a clump. Then they can all get hit my one chaos storm, staff auto-attack bounce, sword #2, shatter, etc.
2) If you have 3 phantasm, just leave them. If you have a mix and the c/ds are up, you can shatter. It really comes down to where your point allocation is. Clones are really just shatter fodder, rather than doing much with their auto-attacks.
Melee is extremely gear / spec dependent for doing that type of thing. Because you’re more or less trading blows. A good kiting class (or even a bad one if it has amazing cc) should have an easy time with it.
So you run Earth on a scepter and build up bleed stacks and spread them with epidemic as appropriate.
On the staff, do you use fire, since it’s all AoE anyway?
And the OH dagger could have cond damage stacking, bleed duration, 5% precision, AoE bleed on weapon swap, etc.
Everyone runs around with warhorn for WvW for the swiftness uptime.
I’m still struggling with all of this myself, so I’m certainly not an expert.
But I don’t see how rabid can be a dps gain over carrion for condition builds. Is barbed precision amazingly good? Because with a low crit damage the direct portion of the skills will scale much better with power. And I dont see the condition damage from toughness compensating for the fact that you’re running around with green accessories.
Ya, it doesn’t stack that from what I can tell. You can’t extent the locusts or the actual spectral part of spectral walk with boon duration.
There are a lot of +swift, + boon duration runes. Speed, Ice, water.
I’d agree with the OP, but the staff just blows the doors off all the other weapons.
I really don’t see how I can give up the wh offhand for the run speed.
With the staff recharge boost, I feel like I have comparable dps, with AoE, greater range, and access to a bunch of CC.
Maybe I can mess with runes to stack boon/swiftness duration and trait spectral mastery. e.g. PvP shoes with runes of air
Really I just want the best build that has 20 point in greater marks/staff recharge and near 100% swiftness uptime. Everything else is optional.
I think the dev was attempting to say that a necro’s strong suit is control, if we trait for it. Being “inescapable” doesn’t necessarily mean being able to 1v1 everyone. It means being able to lock people down while our buddies beat them senseless.
Whether or not that’s true is open for debate, but I don’t think it was anyone’s intention for any class to be the king of 1v1 all the time.
Agreed completely. Everything has to be played smart. A build isn’t really a profession, there are choices to make. And if you were king of 1v1, then you’d have do give other classes even more opportunities to escape, rather than less.
You can see rogue classes in other games:
→ I can spec “can opener” ignore armor and kill tanks
→ I can spec poisons and silences to kill healers and mages
→ I can spec parry/evasion to go toe to toe with any melee dps.
(But I can’t be all of them at once.)
I was assuming the class was built around 3 weapons:
staff for good range / AoE
DS for shutdown CC
axe/dagger/scepter for main dps
Depending on point allocation, you’d be much better at one role or another. And a truly skilled player, giving up strong ranged/aoe, should be able to dance in and out of DS being extremely tough 1v1. This could still be countered by kiting at max range or an extremely strong opening burst.
If you’re not deep in dueling, there’s no point to precision. You’d get more power, more condition damage, and more health out of carrion.
If you are going deep into dueling and using the gs primary, then you want berserkers (so that those crits come with some crit damage).
Now I see DS used for a second HP bar and for more damage in a power/crit build. If this isn’t the intended goal of necro’s core mechanic, they should change it.
Poison/chill/vulnerability seem like great attrition debuffs. As does stealing health. Make DS more about this. Make it work with either condition or power. Make these debuffs uncleansable in DS and linger based on traits.
Is the goal to have necros finish people off in DS? It doesn’t seem so as it’s not a burst class. So then a necro should be swapping in and out of DS with DS for the debuffs and normal weapons for damage.
What’s funny is I find it more annoying when they do try to assist me. Without the flesh golem I can pull a dolyak out of a camp. But he will aggro everything. I’d rather he didn’t “help” if someone hits one of my ground targeted marks.
It depends on your build and what you want to do. There isn’t necessarily a bad armor set.
If you have a power/crit build, get that kind of armor, if you have a condition build, get condition armor.
I guess it doesn’t bother me. But I’d block duels, just like I do in every other game. I guess I play PvP for the strategy / tactics rather than who can mash buttons fastest.
To me, a smart player never fights a 1v1. Never fights on equal terrain. Never fights someone without the element of surprise, or while their opponent is at half health with everything on c/d.
You can’t reflect arrow carts. A glamour build for WvW is great anti-zerg, but you’re just going to have to move out of the way of siege equipment. Maybe you can blink, feedback, and portal in your friends.
Mesmers get better at 40 only if you buy the secret book that unlocks special skills. (i.e. put 20 points into a trait line)
The class is very mediocre if you put 10 points in each tree, wear random gear, and slot random skills. The class is incredibly strong when properly built, especially if you can make opponents fight on your terms.
No, lol mesmer is not easier than guardian. Someone would only say this as hyperbole or if they’d truly never played one. Please don’t compare the PvE experience of any other class to a healing tank.
For champions, really hard hitting mobs, or ones with pbaoe, a kiting class may outperform a stand and tank class. But certainly not for trash.
If you bought all the mats, it might take 4 gold. Realistically it’s much less. If you already have all the crafters, then I understand not wanting to do it again.
(The only one I’m not 400 is cooking, spread out across my 5 80s).
I enjoy WvW. You can follow the zerg around and get 1-2 levels / hour depending on how fast things are moving. Crafting takes about 2 hours to go 1-400 simply do to running around, and deciding the most efficient mats to buy.
If you’re tagging for kill credit, you’re tagging for badge credit. They go hand in hand. Tagging is always better in a group. The theory is clearly if you play a support role, you should be in a group. (I didnt make the rule.)
Badges do come slow. It’s seems like 5 kills: 1 badge. But if you dont like the itemization on the WvW gear, it isn’t useful. I could probably complain about the badge drops, but I’ve got about 1K badges sitting in my warehouse and they’re only useful as a way to buy siege equipment.
I am trying to decide between Guardian and Ele. Any suggestions? I also have a thief… All lowbies.
I have 5 80s. For solo PvE I like:
1) Guardian
2) Ranger
3) Necro
4) Mesmer
5) Ele
The order is reversed for WvW where the best solo classes fail to distinguish themselves in a large group. That said, if you make a small, coordinated roaming group in WvW, the more solo capable classes get better again.
About me:
1) Fresh 80 necro. Can craft anything yellow and will work toward ideal gear.
2) I’m not an amazing twitch player. I’d rather have an easy to play, “good enough” build than one where I have to solve a jumping puzzle to do 5% more damage. This also simply gives me more cycles to focus on other things than a sequence of buttons to press.
3) Necro is my 5th 80: Mesmer, Guardian, Ranger, Ele
My goal is WvW:
1) Stuff happens at 1200 range and big AoEs are good.
2) Run speed is a must
3) Slows, tankiness, and escapes are great
4) I don’t expect to be an amazing 1v1 player, and I don’t specifically need a bursty build, but I’d like to burn down a half hp bad player.
5) PvE happens. There are vets to solo, krait and dolyaks to kill.
I fell in love with the necro when I learned to use the staff. So I made an “all in” marks build. I destroyed people in sPvP and WvW but I realize that my build was probably terrible and I beat people because in spvp I was fighting players who had no idea what they were doing and in WvW good green gear scaled to 80 was probably better than average.
I know I want spectral walk and 20 points in death magic for staff recharge and marks. I suppose I could part with either the warhorn or locust for something amazing. (After playing mesmer the runspeed with necro is awesome.)
I realize now that many of the condition oriented skills I thought were weak, are designed to be paired with epidemic spam to make them AoE. I had assumed that Axe #2 was a good burst/burn down skill with my gear / traits. Perhaps there are better ways of accomplishing this.
Am I the only one who screws up death shroud half the time by doubletapping f1?
Any ranged/kiting class can feel easier than a melee/tanking class if you have terrible gear and dont care about kill speed. Because you can dodge and circle strafe for hours just slowly chipping away at your target.
If you do keep your gear relatively up to date you can just chain pull and melt packs of mobs with a warrior or guardian.
I’d love this spec too!
I’m sure amazing players can do anything with any class. But I would say mesmer is not an ideal choice for what you’re trying to do.
Nerco and thief are great solo classed with speed buffs. Thief has better escapes, necro can get very tanky. Necro has a ton of slows, thief has slows and gap closers.
Warrior + guardian makes an amazing duo with guardian maximizing CC and support with the warrior all glass cannon. They can chain speed buffs.
Mesmer really shines more the bigger the group. Either they have someone else buying them time to set up their burst or they go all in support and focus on glamours for anti-zerg.
“Group looking for Necro.”
I actually find the class really strong all around. It is a very good solo class. It really just seems to lack two things to me:
1) I’ve mastered the basics, how do I be amazing?
2) What do I bring to a fight that no one else can?
I think rangers suffer from the same thing.
I’d put mesmer as a top tier class for soloing vets. It’s not quite ranger easy but anything where you have the time to let your conditions tick, you are using all your c/d a few times, you have time to shatter a bunch of clones and then have phantasms sitting there, beating on the mob, etc.
Much of my PvE frustration with mesmer was about how quickly and efficiently you could pull and dispatch 3 mobs. And how bad was it if you pull or had another 3 pack spawn on you. In this case, the slow build time of the mesmer’s damage and the fact that illusions are associated with one mob really work against you.
I was routinely 5-7 levels ahead on personal story with ranger and guardian. I found it a challenge on mesmer are ele playing at par level. (Personal story being a fairly controlled environment where it’s really obvious where you had to retry or now.)
Obviously a second or third character gains a lot of benefit of knowledge and possibly crafted gear. I pretty much leveled all four of these at the same time. My necro feels vastly stronger than everything else, but I acknowledge that I have hundreds of hours of playing and crafted myself gear.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion
Illusions derive the following attributes directly from the mesmer: precision, power, condition damage, critical damage, armor, and healing. Illusions do not gain any benefit from the mesmer’s vitality, condition duration or boon duration. Additionally they are neither affected by the damage of the mesmer’s equipped weapon nor by any of the various non-stat effects of weapon sigils or armor runes.
Everyone plays at different times. Some people “prime time” is the middle of the day. Others work during that time. People work different shifts. Or they play based on when their kids sleep.
I understand separating servers for language or if ping is a huge issue…but having a population that’s stable 24 hours is only a good thing.
The whole point of 3 way matches is the double team. It’s supposed to allow the weaker sides to gang up the the stronger one.
LoS need to be the same as other illusions or other skills from other professions. If everyone can do this or everyone can’t it’s fine.
My assumption was that the “daze” skills were interrupts, we used to have more of them, this was changed to confusion stacks, because it was considered OP. Otherwise I don’t understand why we have +daze duration runes, +confusion duration gear doesn’t exist, and all the interrupt skills you mentioned.
When I encounter a thief in wvw, I immediately hit 2. This creates a clone of your corpse and teleports you to a random location. Then try to target him and hit 1111 this causes a small amount of damage and stacks confusion making it harder for hit to kill all your friends as well.
I funnel all my dyes to characters based on a theme first. Mesmer gets pink/purple, necro gets green, ele gets blue/white, guardian gets all metallic.
I don’t show it. Only cloth has a few helms worth showing.
Focus 4. It’s actually pretty nice, but it’s all we have.
Ya, you rarely see “tanky pet” be the focus of a pet class. This exists in a few games as a crutch for certain levels and certain solo content. As a general rule the master is trying to hold threat on himself, then slow and kite while the pet does dps.
It was clear from the start that GW2 minions weren’t going to be incredibly strong. You you were using them just mess with people’s ability to tab target or to otherwise overwhelm the AoE cap.
I generally just the solo PvE effectiveness of a class by:
1) How quickly and efficiently can you dispatch groups of 3 equal level mobs?
2) What happens when you pull two groups?
3) How well can you handle ranged mobs?
4) How well can you solo bigger mobs?
Mesmer performs well vs range with feedback bubble. Mesmer performs well vs stronger mobs either shattering clones or leaving phantasms. The defensive skills on the staff and the conditions you apply to mobs generally means you get stronger in longer fights.
Against the 3 pull trash, I generally use the sword with the staff for defense. Basically you’re kiting in circles and then tanking for two seconds every time sword #2 is up.
I realize there’s people out there who’ve never died in any game – ever. And gratz you you. But ya, mesmer is brutally difficult to level with compared to say a ranger or guardian. Those classes can pretty much go 1-80 slotting all passives, wearing whatever gear drops, hitting every skill as soon as hit comes off c/d, and never swapping weapons or hitting an F key.
Mesmer is not like this. It requires high concentration to play. You need to have intelligent spent trait points and appropriate gear.
Mesmer is a rough class to solo PvE with. It’s more a class if you’re already beat the game on easy and want to try the hard level. That said, for the people who stick with it, they find the challenge worth it.
Level something else to 80. Farm mats. Craft your way to 80 on a mesmer.
Join WvW. Pick up feedback as woon as possible. Follow the zerg.
Make friends. Follow them around doing DEs, KSing them.
Which is it? Are you lazy or do you hate button mashing classes? Mesmer, like ele, requires full concentration to play or you will die a lot. If you want a class where you can get to 80 hitting the same few buttons over and over, guardian, ranger, or even necro are better choices.
Guardian, Ranger, Ele, Necro (all 80)
Mesmer is frustrating to level, is slow, and is a poor farming class. I like the glamours in WvW, but find the class lacking at everything else.
Actually an OH dagger is completely different from the MH dagger. So it’s the same number.
The nice thing about the necro is that mesmers are trapped into focus OH because it’s there only way to get runspeed. While I like having warhorn on necro, it isn’t a hard requirement, since you do have other options.
Here’s the thing. Both Mesmer and Ele have a difficult time for solo PvE. Both bring huge, game changing utility to WvW. I gave up PvE and just leveled both classes in WvW, where they perform just fine.
You can also PvE in them great in a group.
If’s not that these classes are bad at PvE, you just can’t be lazy. You’re kiting 100% of the time, dodging when it’s up, micromanaging targeting instead of auto-targeting, dodging often, constantly swapping weapons and comboing your skills.
So........mesmer pve complains....do they really only apply to Orr farming?
in Mesmer
Posted by: NatashaK.9418
If you run a heavy support build and you’re not in a group, you will have a hard time tagging mobs. This is true of many classes.
I had to laugh at #3 though. The easiest class to level, by far, is a healing tank – just like every other game.
I’d like one. But the fact is slots come at a very high premium on mesmer vs other classes. So unless it’s passive: 10%, active: blink, I don’t know if it’s worth the slot. The runes are probably giving up less.
Leveling my necro, the class is outrageous fast with 10% passive + warhorn + spectral walk. (and a lot of ranged chill / cripple)
Yes. Because we have no idea what your spec is.
But if you’re using a GS, you may not be doing many conditions so I’m not sure what the Rampager would even do for you.
Oh, thanks for this. I was spec’ing way down this line for the condition duration.
I wasn’t sure if the +10% damage affected the bleed on the marks. The trait was either very good or useless and I guess it’s useless. Probably shouldn’t be a tier 2 trait then. I wish the tool-tip updated.
If Close to Death doesn’t work with the staff either, is the spinal shivers better?
I’m really not set on a condition damage build, I just know realistically I’m going to be using the staff 85%+ of the time in W kittenittenrying to maximize it’s effectiveness.