Guild Wars 2

I was under the impression that clones did not overwrite phantasms. Or at least, that was what MrPrometheus claimed in his YouTube guide to Mesmers.

I have to say, having gotten up to from lvl 35 to lvl 43 today, I enjoyed the mesmer profession quite a bit. I noticed Necros are more tanky and Warriors dish out better damage.

But I went to Ebonhawke due to the personal story and did a couple of those [Group Event] bosses by myself. The ability to kite indefinitely is simply delicious. I would argue that Illusions spec would be more desirable for 2nd IMO. You get faster illusions, faster shatters, and your phantasms attack more often.

Nefarius.9702:

Is it just me?

I recently created a mesmer because I like the concept a lot..
but.. I feel like he’s lacking a lot of damage in open world / solo play? :|

Im at ~ 20 now, but when I compare my guardian he killed the mobs much faster than my mesmer does (yeah I use illusions and shatter skills constantly).

I hope when I access all the traits that will become better. and I hope the wells (at least the one that is mainly taken for damage) works as good as the nec’s wells.

Another question: Do I play chronomancer still with assassin’s stats to be most efficient?

You’ll find that Mesmers are largely dependent on their traits both to function well and to dish out damage.

I personally felt leveling from 21 and up was faster than anything below simply because of that.

Fennecus.7605:

I’ll try that. I gotta mix up rotation. Used to ranger. 2-3-4-5.

I cheated to Lvl. Started at Lvl 20

Are you new with that as well?

I generally do 2 on longbow, but won’t use 5 unless there are multiple enemies(and if there are, I’ll start with 5). But based on damage(longbow does more at range, but isn’t as good as mesmer at keep them at range), I generally switch to Greatsword and go 3, 2, and 1.

Lol, how much time did you spend leveling? I’ve been on and off for a week and just got to lvl 32 today.

I use Greatsword and Sword/Focus. I use focus #4 to move around. If I see something I want to attack, I switch to Greatsword and use 4, 2, and 3 to attack from afar, then hit 5 when something gets closer. If something gets in melee range after that, I switch to S/F, hit 3, 3 again, then 5, then 2. That spawns a clone, switches my position with the clone, spawns an iWarden, then does a short AoE attack. If there are a ton of enemies, I sometimes toss in 4 and hit 4 again to get them all in one spot before I start that rotation(3,3,5,2). I generally don’t use shatter unless most of the mobs are almost dead, or my weapon swap/phantasm/clone is recharged.

You want the Dueling spec, aiming for Deceptive Evasion(this is great for tough fights). GS and S/F offers great AoE attacks, with pretty much all skills capable of hitting more than 1 enemy.

For solo play, I notice Mesmer dies a lot less. I especially notice this for bosses and toxic mobs(still low level). In dungeons I suspect condition engineer would contribute more as far as damage goes.

Engineer can be great, but especially for condition, the DPS rotation is about as complicated as it gets. You’re going to be mashing keys like crazy, and I notice I can fumble it quite a bit against something tough and I forget to swap kits to use some skills on cooldown. I did that a lot and substituted a kit for a turret to simplify it. And while you can take on tougher mobs, I generally find that only happens under ideal conditions(say, a hero challenge) where you have the opportunity to “set up”(turrets, proper kits, tool belt skills).

Mesmer is more survivable given the constant clones and phantasms that divide enemy aggro. With engi you get blind skills spread across different kits that let you take… 1 hit. It could also be that Mesmers are more forgiving to the ham-handed.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Leveling without DE? Madness!

Isn’t that what everyone does up until about lvl 30 anyway? o.O

I’m liking the GS S/F setup anyway. Greatsword is pretty much absolutely necessary when dealing with mobs at range, especially in events where there are a ton of trash mobs. The damage also isn’t half bad at maximum range(group boss).

I think I might enjoy some utility over damage when you remember that we’re wearing light armor, and your illusions don’t necessarily draw aggro consistently.

Well, given that the 3rd spec isn’t unlocked til 71, I’m not sure it makes a huge difference if you pick the wrong one anyway.

Hmm, I was thinking more along Duelist, Illusions, and Inspiration. It wouldn’t be pure damage, but more phantasm-centered utility.

Faction.4013:

Let’s also remember that a Mesmer is VERY Trait-Orientated. It don’t start becoming powerful until after your second trait line is unlocked.

With a Warrior, a Thief and even an Engineer, I could pretty much smash through anything with one good traitline while leveling. But Mesmer requires the synergy of at-least 2 to really shine.

True enough, but I didn’t particularly enjoy Warrior/Thief. With warrior I found myself running around chasing after enemies a lot, and thief was just plain squishy. Condition grenadier was pretty fun to play however.

I would note however that the Dueling spec seems to have most of the offensive traits and even having part of that(still 30 hero points shy of Deceptive Evasion) seems to up the “kill speed” by quite a bit.

Hmm, I can certainly see some AoE potential with GS & S/F. 4&4 on Focus to yank them in, 5 is an AoE phantasm.

I did actually see that one on the sticky thread. I’m not sure if greatsword might be something I want to stick with once I get to lvl 21 and get Duelist spec that drops cooldown for sword and pistol skills. I can certainly see it being helpful during events with lots of trash mobs, and I have to run around chasing them.

Also not sure about focus because I’m too lazy to keep applying the speed buff on myself constantly. It’s not very mindless in the sense that I actually have to run over the buff line. At least elementalist I could just air attune and hit 4 every so often. I hear the Warden is stationary as well, so it wouldn’t be much help against a mob that moves a lot(anything ranged, which it ironically blocks).

I did try the greatsword thing for a while, but the damage seemed lacking since even with 3 illusions up, the mooks will almost certainly run your way even if they don’t attack you much, which kind of cuts down on damage.

I figure maybe s/s and s/p power build would be good for an offensive set? 3 & 3 should get me into range. I just recall that the phantasm for sword and pistol dish out decent damage.

Hi all,

I started playing less than a month ago, and mesmer really caught my eye is a “flashy” way to play the game, but it never really stuck with me because A) it felt slow and B ) there seemed to be a glaring flaw in the clone/phantasm mechanic.

That glaring flaw seems to be that while phantasms can dish out 60% of your damage, as soon as your current target dies, they go bye bye. Doesn’t matter if there are 3 other mooks in your face, they will skedaddle as soon as your current target is dead. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or some kind of bug caused by my targeting settings in the game UI.

Still, there does seem to be some potential against tougher veteran/champion mobs that last a little longer. But for leveling, it doesn’t sound like I would want to rely on a phantasm build if that’s how the illusion mechanic works(they disappear as soon as your current target dies). It seems like a shatter build with mantra of pain might be the way to go.

Scileen.9574:

Well… I checked the support threads hoping beyond hope that there might be some sort of explanation for why my launcher is, in fact, not launching… Instead, I see that Anet is as usual ignoring the Mac playerbase and our problems. Does anyone have a better suggestion than merely bumping this thread (which they are clearly paying no attention to anyway), and which could actually have a chance at garnering some sort of attention?

(Note: I don’t have Windows installed, and I’ve been using the official “beta” client since launch. Have had FPS and lagging issues, crashes, and since HOT they have been worse and for the last week the launcher won’t even pop up.)

Have you tried deleting and downloading it again?

I’ve had instances where the launcher is slow to pop up, but that usually follows whenever a new patch is available.

WesleySnipes.3917:

Bootcamp is the only viable solution to playing gw2 on mac. Doing so it was the only time i was able to enjoy the game. Sadly my optical drive died and now im limited to os x client

Just download the Windows OS then? I had one of the later iMac’s, so I never had an optical drive to begin with.

Precisely how long will this “beta” period be for?

I would think “beta” is a taboo word with the Mac client being in “beta” status for the better part of 3 years.

Yeah, definitely “piano-ey” given the tool kits available. I’ve fumbled more than once in a boss fight. Medium armor, so it’s not as squishy as ele, but still pretty squishy(as opposed to say, Ranger), and the bomb kit plops the bomb right at your feet.

I have to say, I get a strange sense of satisfaction in running the grenade kit and dropping them everywhere. Kind of reminds me of Mass Effect 3 where I’d run around in multiplayer spamming cluster grenade and multi-frag grenade. Pity there isn’t a physics effect in this game that makes enemies ragdoll into the sky when they die.

I get the feeling this is one class you’d want for a dungeon run when someone else can go first and take the hits for you.

BDave.9386:

Kinda off-topic, but there are two things that I just can’t for the life of me figure out…
1) Why does MS still make non-embedded 32-bit versions of Windows?
2) Why did they fragment Windows into separate 32-bit and 64-bit versions in the first place?

Because some people still use older processors(Pentium) which can’t use 64-bit OS. It’s a shrinking minority, but it seems Microsoft still wants to cater to that minority. Pity Anet doesn’t have the same philosophy for Mac users.

Wouldn’t a native client also mean, as a necessity, that they would have to develop parallel patches? One for the Windows client, and one for the Mac client?

As I understand it now, we’re basically running the Windows client in a Cider wrapper, so they’re still only coding for one OS.

That, to me, is the biggest reason why I think a native Mac client is out of the question.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Uhhh… That’s an awful idea. Because… they already released their mac client back in July with Heavensward. It, like GW2, was powered by Cider. It was so so awful that they canned it and just offered everyone refunds. There was a whole lot of press about it. Was quite the screw up. When I say awful I mean just really really awful. At least GW2 is somewhat playable on OS X… Sort of.

Ah, but here’s the difference:

They actually offered a refund. ~_^

Hailfyre.1935:

This. All of this.

I’m on the highest end late 2013 Macbook Pro and I really don’t feel like I should be forced to play on the lowest possible settings just to get some figment of respectable FPS. Even then, I still get horrendous stutters and drops whenever I even try to get a better camera angle during a fight.

Now with HoT, I crash out every time there’s something I need to be staying for. Verdant Brink, Dragon Stand, etc.

ArenaNet please fix this kitten. It’s gone on long enough.

Did you try the fix noted above?

I noted a massive boost to how “smooth” the game is. The game insists fps is the same as it ever was, but the game runs a lot smoother now, night and day difference. The culprit being that the default settings only utilize 256MB of Video RAM.

I didn’t play too much today, maybe 2 hours at most. But I didn’t crash once, and even stuck around long enough to nab the chest contents after a boss fight. In fairness, the boss was nearly dead and only lasted about 3 minutes, but at least it didn’t kick me right before the thing died like all the other times.

Kylden Ar.3724:

I can’t blame you. I would not try to game on a mac, but that’s just because I work in IT and all my work stuff is also PC.

In fairness, I bought this iMac for college and media viewing(mostly anime). I like it because viruses are more often tailored for Windows OS. Ran Malwarebytes for the first time in 2 years since I had this, didn’t find a thing.

I’m majoring in IT(more programming than hardware), but I suspect I’ll reach a point where running Windows on a virtual machine won’t cut it. Thus far it’s been incredibly convenient having a huge display without the bulky separate case, so it’s not like I find it lacking in any sense until I try to play games on it.

I have to say, as a Mac user I’m pleased to hear that the crashes no longer seem to be isolated to Macs anymore. That’s not meant to be malicious, as when I heard the Mac subforum was done away with, maybe A.Net decided to give Mac users the finger. But if this is bleeding out to all users with the same preemptive problem(maps with large amounts of players), then I’m still holding out that maybe if and when these issues are fixed, it might improve the lot of Mac players, even if that isn’t what the devs intended.

DePhoenix.2819:

Hmm, I’m not having all that much problems as you guys, maybe because I have the latest MacBook Pro? Also, I there’s a little guide a friend of mine sent to me to increase my fps:

“This guide will show you how to take advantage of your Video Ram to instantly boost your fps on the mac client. I’ve been wondering why my mac with good hardware was getting such terrible fps especially in zergs. With this edit I went from average of about 20 fps to about 30 or more fps in LA. In PVE i’m seeing up to 50 compared to about 35 before the edit.
What you will do is edit your config file which defaults your video ram to 256 and change it to the proper amount of video ram your mac has.
(For reference I am using the latest OS X El Capitan)
Step 1: Find out how much video ram your mac has.

• click the Apple menu, go to About This Mac
• click system report
• click graphics/displays in the left-hand column
• find your VRAM (Total) – this is what you will enter in the gw2 config file, mine was 1024 (four times the amount set by default in the config file!)
  Step 2: Edit your GW2 config file
• close Guild Wars 2 if it is running
• go to your applications folder and right click the Guild Wars 2 app
• click show package contents
• open Contents>Resources>Preferences
• open the config file in TextEdit
• find the line that says “VideoRam” = “256” and change the 256 to your VRAM (Total) that you found in step 1
• find the line that says “AGPVertexRam” = “128” and change the 128 to half of your VRAM (Total)
• save and close the file and reopen the Guild Wars 2 app
• enjoy the extra fps!!!
  Hopefully this guide helps anyone else with a Mac who, like me, was frustrated with their low fps!
  Note: You may have to redo this after every patch, not sure yet." -Reddit

Hope this helps!

^^^This deserves a sticky. My client still crashed in Lion’s Arch, but the performance was night and day. I have 4096MB of VRAM. To think the game wasn’t even using 10% of that is utterly insulting. Macs have pretty decent hardware, game developers shouldn’t be shy about using it.

Have you actually played the game to the point where there are about 25+ players on the screen? It has little to do with fps IMO, as I’m using default settings and am getting a comfortable 68 fps. The problem seems to be when players populate the screen, the client seems to blow up after about a minute or two. It’s not laggy or anything, it’s like the client is an anti-social emokid that will have a nervous breakdown if too many people are around. And it’s almost always just before the boss dies, or when I try to roam around in Lion’s Arch for longer than a minute.

Wow, kinda getting buyer’s remorse now. I’ve got a Mac and got this game because it’s one of very few MMORPGs other than WoW that runs on Mac. My Mac isn’t too bad, late 2013, 27 inch, i7 processor, 32 GB, hybrid SSD drive. The crashing seemed to occur whenever a lot of players are around. From what I can tell, WvW and most larger boss fights are out of the question for me, because my client usually crashes JUST before the boss is dead. I get nothing when the boss dies.

When I saw that it was Mac “beta”, I figured “okay, maybe it’s a work-in-progress”.

But 3 years? That’s inexcusable. What you want to tell me is that after 3 years, anyone with a Mac can’t enjoy HALF the game? SMDH