If you want to level through PvE I recommend reading Lazy Kai’s guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Kai-s-Complete-PvE-Compendium/
I will post a pic in the morning, as I am heading to bed now. I will also see if I can find my pics of my male version of the mesmer, before I gave him a sex change … lol!
Guys, any signet that does any passive other than buff you the player is done in 10 second intervals. That is just they way the game is, so this is not a bug and is not going to be addressed as a bug.
I understand how you can feel that this makes SoI useless, but it is not a bug and don’t act like it is. Now if we feel that this power is still unusable then we need to make a suggestion on how to change it.
Also the reason the buff is 200% and not something like 50% is exactly because of the internal cooldown, so don’t gripe too loudly or you might get it nerfed.
They have also said they don’t want DPS meters used, and if the combat log was accurate enough, someone could create a parser and create a DPS meter. As it is now, the meter would be so inaccurate as to be useless, thus I don’t expect this to ever change.
For food, you might try precision based food. That will allow you and the phantasms to proc more bleeding through sharper images.
All the time spent playing mesmer, and I only succeed in deluding myself.
That may be the best line I have ever heard.
Notice it said condition and WvW, you are as of Tuesday 50% less effective. Enjoy the nerf bat.
Also mentioned, but not discussed here, is that they are discussing at least if it is not implemented, shortening the duration of all retaliation buffs. They stated clearly they don’t want to see any more perma retaliation builds. So on top of taking a 1/3 of the damage away, we might also lose duration as well. I think Pyro’s Immortal build will be hit hard if they do this. That eliminates yet another build. All I see them doing is taking away more and more builds and not just from us but from everyone. Why don’t they just give everyone carbon copy characters with the same skill and see who has the best skill.
Try kiting and not relying on Diversion or Distortion. If you want those to do more than a 1 sec duration you have to get really good at placing you clones and phantasms so they don’t detonate at the same time. This will take lots of practice, so in the mean time get good at dodging and kiting. Both will be useful now and even moreso at higher levels. As for mind wrack, you are probably killing things too quickly right now, so focus on learning timing there when you are facing tougher mobs like Veterans. The big key to learn is watching your opponents health bar and keeping an eye on your clones and phantasms. Remember there is a delay before they blow up, according to how far they need to travel to get there. Again practice will help with this.
As for traits, put the first five points into Illusions, then since you are trying to be a shatter mesmer it appears put 10 into Domination and get the increased damage for Mind Wrack. Then it is your choice til you hit level 40.
At 40 if you are continuing a Shatter build, respec and dump 20 into Dueling to get Deceptive Evasion. You will still want 5 into Illusions and 10 into Domination. I would go 5/20/0/0/5 at level 40 and then put the next 5 into Domination. After that things should start to get real easy if you have gotten the shatter timing down.
^ Agree and with a level 80 Ranger, he should have the cash on hand to keep him in appropriate gear til he hits 40. That alleviates alot of the “so-called” leveling issue with Mesmers. From level 40 on, it will depend on what you want to do. You can go build a mini Glamour build and run WvW zergs, build a shatter build and roam WvW and succeed in PvE, and you can begin studying to determine what you want your final builds to look like at the end-game.
The best thing to do is craft as high as you can. Mesmer really takes off at level 40 when we can open our second tier of traits.
I would also recommend reading Lazy Kai’s guide. You can find it in Fay’s stickied post at the top. It was very helpful in leveling and is the closest we have to a leveling guide. The key at the low levels is just to learn the mechanics and some of the unique playstyles we have. Use every weapon, because they are all very different. But primarily use staff or GS for level with a sword/x for you off set. GS if you feel you are good enough at dodging and kiting or staff if you want more defensive outs.
Hope that helps.
Edit: Here is the link to Kai’s guide.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-guide-to-PvE
(edited by pahldus.1678)
The big thing to remember is we are specialists, we don’t have any one build fits all situations. The build you use in WvW zergs won’t be very effective at roaming with a small group or solo, and vice versa. Builds that shine in dungeons aren’t always the best open world builds. Now some roaming builds do translate well to sPvP but you have to compensate for whatever the food was covering in WvW. I have currently 3 builds that I use on my mesmer. One for open world PvE, one for Dungeons and one for WvW roaming. I generally avoid zergs, but if I did, I would need another build for that.
Just remember increased condition time does not apply to the conditions applied by the staff clones.
Because WvW and PvE are joined at the hip. They use the same rules.
Learn to shatter, shatters are our AoE damage. The key to using it to kill groups is just that, get the group together, and then shatter. One other thing is to try to wait to shatter until you are ready to create more clones or phants. If you can do that, then shatter, and if there are survivors, quickly tag them with more clones and phants. Shattering is our best AoE damage. GS has our best AoE phantasm in the iZerker, and sword as mentioned hits multiple targets. Thus I recommend running GS & Sword/Focus. Really learn the focus, it is potentially the best weapon we have and it gets stronger and stronger as you level.
One more trick for handling small groups of mobs. Lay down temporal curtain, stand on it, activate its secondary effect to draw all nearby mobs to you, summon the iWarden and blurred frenzy. This should kill all normal mobs, only veterans are likely to survive that attack.
The GS AA may not be great at close range, but none of its other abilities are affected. Open the fight with iZerker to cripple the enemy. That will slow their progress towards you. That bounce from the GS#2 only gets back to you at medium range, and if an enemy gets to close use GS#5 or switch to the sword/x(recommended focus or pistol).
Honestly I here people always talking about how tough it is at lower levels with the mesmer but I didn’t find that true at all. If this is your first character it might be more difficult, but as an alt, there is no reason not to keep you character in the best armor and weapon up to level 35 at least. And by that time your traits are starting to kick in and then it is just steamroll time.
Mesmer will never be the fastest killing machine, but I died less than anything but my guardian and Warrior in the low levels because of the active defenses. Learn to use more shatters than just Mind Wrack and look seriously at blurred frenzy on the Sword.
Very informative, and anyone nearing end game and trying to decide what way to equip their mesmer for end game should really listen to it.
Been there and done that. We even had similar names with only one letter of difference. Man you should have read the chat that day. It would have made (insert your favorite foul mouthed comic) blush.
This issue is not the scopes themselves, they are just annoying, it is the Molten alliance and its overpowered veteran bosses, and the location of the scopes interfering with other events and map completion.
SO you don’t have any issues with a level 16 gold mob when you are level 8. Please explain how evade is that useful against them, unless you can constantly spam it.
You’re also going to have problems with a staff mesmer. Immobilize is a joke to them, they have staff #2, blink and an number of other ways to just slip away, and all away they will be stacking conditions and hitting you for damage. Thieves are also very slippery with the right utilities and steal. To me, those are the biggest issue you would have, because you will never keep them in place long enough to land your combo.
Server: Jade Quarry
The Molten Alliance are spawning level 16 gold veterans at the periscope and the ice vents event around Talgan Waypoint. This took a coordinated effort of 6 downleveled 80 characters to beat. This can not be acceptable as a norm. It will cause new players to quit the game. Please fix this soon as it is spawning in an area that is nearly impossible for newer players to avoid.
The real problem is spawning a level 16 gold mob in a level 8 area. For those saying a downleveled player will have no problem, let me just say that my level 80 warrior with toughness gear was being 2 shot as I was being KD by the veteran. So don’t BS the guy, this is not fair to a new character in any way. It took a group of 6 downleveled 80s to beat that level 16 mob and all of us were downed several times, because our hits were doing minimal damage, while its hits were 1 or 2 shotting us. This was a coordinated effort of a guild working together. That is not right. Plus the position of this vet made it nigh impossible not to aggro him.
The periscopes are poorly placed, forcing players to have to defeat them in order to complete zones, and don’t just say go to a different starter zone. If I roled a Norn or a Charr, maybe it was because I wanted to experience their zone and right now it is nearly impossible without having a bunch of downleveled players around to handle all this crap. I have been on in the middle of the afternoon PDT, and run into these periscopes trying to complete hearts in the 1-5 area. How does a level 1-5 character deal with those periscopes want to tell me. If I didn’t know the area so well already, I would probably give up on the game. It is ridiculously hard right now.
Before you say learn to play, I have 4 level 80’s, world completion, and am mostly a PvE player, so I know how to play in the PvE world. I did do the instance at level 40 on my squishy thief and survive, but these veteran in the level 8 area are ridiculous and need to be fixed immediately. I have also posted it as a bug but based on ANet’s current response this won’t be fixed until the end of April.
Don’t know how you can say the quickness nerf hurts Warriors the most. It took the only decent elite Mesmers had and made it near useless too. I mean Mesmers have to waste an elite slot and it is on a super long CD and they didn’t get any duration increase unlike frenzy.
If you read the posts by the guys you faced, you would see that they all had chaos armor up, and that is likely where you were getting alot of the confusion from was your attacks hitting them. That and the fact you got focused by three … count them … three mesmers. If I get focused by three players of any profession working together as a team, I am going down and going down quickly. There is nothing about the method of choice that they use that is necessarily OP, it is a team versus one, simple as that.
Edited for grammar and spelling
I don’t expect them to fix it either, since the largest complaint about mesmers is figuring out which one is the real one. Thus they aren’t going to take away a tool from the noobs and make it even more difficult on them. It is just a fact of life we will have to live with.
Well no matter what the case, this is still a learn to play situation. You obviously have not shut off autoattack. This is something I do everytime I enter PvP or WvW. I want to always be in control of when and who I attack. Your shortbow AA is what killed you, not the shatters.
What we need, outside of PvE where we are gods, is to be able to get to and stay in melee combat. We need longer immobilizes and more of them.
^He was talking about P/D and the unload from stealth.
MiLKZz, what about going a glass cannon build with rampager gear or do you hamper your total damage too much?
What don’t people understand!
Passive speed boosts go bye bye as soon as combat is initiated. They are only useful for keeping up with the zerg in WvW and even then there is so much AoE swiftness being dropped there is no need for it. We have ample access to the only speed boost that doesn’t disappear in combat and that is swiftness.
I will give you have the range impacted by cripples and such on our gap closers is an issue.
Hit Points do matter, but I agree we should have some access to protection. This is there real issue is that we simply are taking too much damage.
Since the food nerf, our healing issues are being exposed.
Blocks are fine.
We have some of the best sustained and burst damage in the game, the issue is not the damage, it is getting into melee and staying there that is the issue. Killshot, Eviscerate, and 100B do as much damage as anything in the game, the issue is landing them. Personally I would be willing to take a damage reduction if we could just hit reliably with these skills. Axe AA does nearly as much damage as 100B over the same period(the casting time plus the recharge time), but we still have the issue of getting into melee.
I believe the way the game is going this should be called Ranged Wars.
And if we are going to get a bow, make it shortbows. That way we can use the Dreamer, the only legendary that looks like something a mesmer would use.
1. Don’t spend karma unless you absolutely have to have a certain look. Save it for level 80 and you won’t regret it.
2. Use transmutation stones to keep a look you like and get the best stats possible. Also don’t buy the level 35 rare set, wait for level 39. Level 39 set can use major runes and is cheaper than the 35 set.
3. If you need transmutation stones, just go around and do the exploration of each of the 6 major cities and complete each starter zone and that will give you 33 transmutation stones which is good for 6 upgrades.
4. If you need money, start selling the scales, fangs, etc. Yes they are needed for crafting, but it is generally cheaper to buy what they craft into then the mats themselves. Also if you are not doing cooking, many of those mats sell for decent prices.
Oh yeah, can’t wait.
However we have several good support and bunker(tank) builds.
Check Fay’s guide list stickied at the top of the forum.
Yeah, they didn’t change the tooltip when they changed the skill way back in beta. Getting the tooltips correct seems to be a low priority. Really shows a lack of polish and professionalism in my opinion.
Are 15 into the precision tree, because then your GS clones are proccing a lot of bleeding and the might would be more useful.
In my overall opinion, might is generally always useful, condition or direct damage builds, so when in doubt that is the way I go.
I really like Indigo for a dark purple type color, glory from the starter colors is also a nice light shade of purple for mesmer. I don’t use pinks, but hey to each their own.
You know you have played too much mesmer when you are constantly saying to yourself, “Where is that kitten curtain so I can move faster” or you deliberately step into a real curtain hoping it will make you move faster.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/List-Find-your-Mesmer-Build-Guides I suggest looking here when you reach level 40. There are tons of great builds for nearly every playstyle you might enjoy. There really is no one best all around build for the mesmer, there are just best builds for your playstyle.
GS is our ranged DPS weapon, Staff is the ultimate in defense, Scepter is just meh. Those are our ranged main hand options. Offhand we have range with everything, but if you used the signet to move faster with your ranger, then you would probably want the focus. It is awesome in its own right, but it is also our only consistent source of speed boost aside from runes, sigils and consumables. Pistol is pretty awesome. Torch is mainly used by those doing WvW or PvP, but it still has its uses. Sword offhand has one of the hardest hitting phantasms and a block that does tons of damage. Sword mainhand is our only true melee option, as such it does the best damage, its auto contains a boon strip at the end of the chain really good against some bosses in dungeons and pve, the iLeap can be a bit buggy at times because of the short range and pathing issues, but it is Sword #2 that makes it shine. A 2-second immunity with good damage every 8 seconds or 6.4 seconds if traited for.
Yep, showing just how OP TW was, now it is just a good skill.
It is slightly improved, its #3 skill got a nice buff and that was it. I still don’t think it if viable outside of specific niche builds.
Umm … Stealth did get a nerf. It was mentioned in the general area, not under a specific profession. Revealed was increased by 33% from 3 to 4 seconds.
And I wasn’t so much expecting a shatter nerf as glad to see there was none. Also their comment about the quickness skills was misleading as they said all quickness skills got a duration increase, then I got to the mesmer and guess what TW was the only one that didn’t. Not that it wasn’t expected, but hey they could at least have been honest and said TW is OP so we are nerfing it even more.
Also in the SotG interview they clearly said that beams would not be piercing, and would only hit targets between you and your target.
(edited by pahldus.1678)
We didn’t get the talked about nerf to Shatter, however every other profession that has a quickness skill got a time duration increase except Time Warp. I call BS on that, because ours is an elite, and now just how useful will it be with the reduced ability speed from 100% to 50%.
Check out Pyro’s Immortal build, it is almost precisely what you are describing here. It is listed in Fay’s builds threat at the top of the forum.
Yep, login server is still down for me as well.
Check out the Arah dungeon weapons they are all dripping poison or decay as a special effect.
It is a hodge podge!
Chest, Legs, and Boots are Vigil light armor.
Gloves are Embroidered(the low level crafted stuff)
Mantle is the high level Country set.
Mask is the Necro Trickster demon mask using the transmute trick.