Guild Wars 2

Mesmer is one class that requires a high skill cap to play well. The two Mesmers representing are two of the highest skilled, and best, players in the game.

Ryan.9387:

Benjamin.8237:

Ranger is definitely not bottom tier. Mesmer + Necro are bottom tier at the moment, but of course you will disagree because they are both “op”.

Necro is very good, noscoc is a clear example of that.

Mesmer is also strong provided the player has a decent team to back them up. Plenty of top teams use them for their unique tools.

There is like 2 good mesmers and 2 good necros in the top teams. I’m assuming this post was directed at general pvp? Top Tier any class will work depending on the team composition and skill levels.

Prysin.8542:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Benjamin.8237:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Benjamin.8237:

Ranger is definitely not bottom tier. Mesmer + Necro are bottom tier at the moment, but of course you will disagree because they are both “op”.

I don’t know, Lich Form carries bad players and Transform Moa is a win button. Just like Thieves Guild. Rangers are just too darn cool for a win button I guess.

No one uses moa though, and you can escape really easily with it. Lich is a useful skill but you can just strip stability and reflect back at it.

I realize this. 1v1 the skills are quite balanced. It’s when you get into a team fight where you have more important things to worry about that those abilities become a problem, with the exception of Thieves Guild. That one’s always been OP in any 1v1.

Not if you run Axe Axe power build. It just destroys thieves guild.

Moa is kinda, “SUPRISE!!” but you can infact kill the mesmer if you learn how to play as moa. I’m not quite there yet, but iv’e seen a few people get moa’d then turn around and just wreck the mesmer.

In a teamfight where we had a phalanxe warrior I got moa’d and my 3 skill hit their thief for 14k.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Benjamin.8237:

Ranger is definitely not bottom tier. Mesmer + Necro are bottom tier at the moment, but of course you will disagree because they are both “op”.

I don’t know, Lich Form carries bad players and Transform Moa is a win button. Just like Thieves Guild. Rangers are just too darn cool for a win button I guess.

No one uses moa though, and you can escape really easily with it. Lich is a useful skill but you can just strip stability and reflect back at it.

The f2 skills between both pets share a cooldown however, so it’s useless.

Ranger is definitely not bottom tier. Mesmer + Necro are bottom tier at the moment, but of course you will disagree because they are both “op”.

But you guys wanted progress

I’ve had 10 ascended drops so far heheheh. I had 2 berserker rings but they were the same one so I couldn’t use em both on the same alt, I also got two mellagons whurls or whatever it’s called alongside about 3 cleric amulets XD

Burning Guardians are certainly viable because people don’t know how to fight them. I play a FULL GLASS condition damage guardian and I sit on about 2600 condition damage. I basically can only 1v1 with it as it’s not designed whatsoever to take on multiple opponents and it has awful survivability. But it’s fun as hell.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Some of us do more than PvE, and DEEPS warriors are far from the meta in WvW and PvP.

Feel free though to try your DEEPS warrior roaming in WvW and I’ll be sure to have him say hello to my 2200 condi damage necro.

I met a full zerk warrior in WvW without berserker stance. My 2600 condition damage Guardian with 1300 burn ticks dropped him incredibly quickly.

Niah is the only ranger on there because he is the only ranger that actually plays competitively and because he’s been in the game for so long. Promote the class and wait out a bit and you will see more rangers crop up in teams.

Sevans.4619:

My Sweet Lily.1952:

Looks similar to my 1v1 pvp power ranger build :P

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8YjEq0yaHL+rQ1agDhq9K8BBLrAw9Q0CV9FXcUF-TZBFwAMOIAIeAAVLDA4KAMf/BA

I think the shortbow really makes the build.

Actually it is a personal preference of kite vs chase in nyms case. Nym is a very good ranger and uses greatsword effectively in this build.

There is not really a common strategy but I can comment on your team comp. You have a Mesmer, Engineer and Necro which all need to be “looked after” in a sense as they all get easily focused (Thief especially will punish the Mesmer and Engie). The Necro is MM so I guess he can hold his own pretty well but he’s slow so he can’t get to mid to support team fights quickly.

Also with the objectives don’t go for them unless the other team does is always a good tactic, Mesmers and Thieves can still very well so keep an eye on them. Also as a Mesmer If he wants to go far instead of him going there and just getting outnumbered drop a portal and peel away to mid, maybe kill someone and portal back to what is usually an empty far.

You have way too much survivability with beserk, bark skin and evades is enough you will ever need. Celestial doesn’t kill things quick enough for my liking and there isn’t one class that can burst you down quick enough on this build. It is literally so cheesy that my track record with the best Thief EU is 1-1 hahah.

I love the whole no top ranger thing when people like Niah, Kenny and Azron all play exceptionally well as Ranger.

That looks like the hybrid between the carrion and berserker version. Like entangle isn’t really needed nor is sigil of geomancy. On my ranger (Benailim) I use air + fire and rampage as one.

Cough your downstate carries you.

Deadnight.5948:

Oh, so now i see. This kinda makes sense now.
If you guys don’t normally hotjoin, then what do you guys normally do to play pvp?

Yeah this is why people leave hotjoins. I hotjoin while I queue and so do many others.

Yeah I only hotjoin inbetween team queues so it was a minor inconvenience, but that can happen hahah.

I joined a hotjoin this morning where Red were triple capped so I joined them and helped them cap all three points until it was 300 Red – 150 Blue, I then got auto switched to Blue and proceeded to carry blue to a 500 – 450 win. Because I team switched though, I didn’t get the Blue team win but a red team loss, despite the fact I carried the blue to victory XD. But still the auto balance works fine.

12 Might isn’t a lot and I sustain that just with greatsword 2. When I say might stack I mean permanent 20.

Anyway Anet stated way back before the game came out Elites were meant to be game changing skills that can change the way a fight plays. Lich, Crate, Spirit, Banner are all good elites in that regard.

SaintSnow.6593:

Graendall.4765:

Strength got nerfed btw

They got shaved a tad, no way near a nerf. They still are still very good and the go to rune in pvp besides pirate.

Rune of the Pack now has a higher EP.

I could probably say the same likewise, fighting the best thieves in the game really teaches you how bad of a spot the Mesmer is right now. Anyway enough arguments, nice to hear someones input.

Mesmer as far as PvP goes at the moment is in an interesting situation. High risk / High reward comes to mind. If you play badly as a mesmer, you will get wrecked. If you play average on a mesmer, you will get wrecked. You have to play good to be successful with the class. You need to use your f3 every time someone goes to heal, you need to strip stability at the right moment, you need to know the blink locations, know how to kite, fluently 180 phase retreat 180 and no when to peel and who to avoid. You have to support your team with a spike at the same time as keeping your eye open to tackle far.

We’re an interesting class with a lot of skill plays such as portal stomps and chaining teleports, interrupting heals etc but to do well we have to sort of know everything and do it at once. A bunker guard knows his job, and he can stick to it hoping his team mates will finish the job. Mesmer isn’t quite like that and whichever build you choose to play, be it shatter or phantasm you have got to do it all.

Also remember on the scale of 1 to high skill cap Mesmer is pretty much at the top with Elementalist at the moment so it might not just “click” right away, I’m still learning new things with 680 odd days as a main on my Mesmer and over 2000 pvp matches.

Dirven.3021:

Benjamin.8237:

Dirven.3021:

It is actually very easy to fight a thief. Always use staff, it will drive them crazy with your number 2 skill, if you play it right they can never land a burst on you. Put atleast 4 in chaos magic and 3 in shatter so you got lowest cooldown possible for skill 2 and 4 on staff, then the next set of traits depend on what you run as second weapon set.

You have literally never fought a decent thief have you, staff is literally THE worst weapon to fight thieves with, they always have one teleport more than you and your phase retreat is merely an inconvenience into their rotation. If you truly want to beat a thief play a really good PU, plain and simple. With Shatter even if you outplay them they may still win, and you can’t burst them in melee range due to their evades. If staff was so effective at fighting good thieves then how come players such as Supcutie, Helseth etc who are top mesmers, lose frequently to average thieves.

It sounds more like you have either never fought a thief on a mesmer or you just did not pay enough attention to your class.

Anyhow, Fay pretty much sums it up, but let’s not forget how useful staff is for blowing up your clones for AoE conditions. The damage outside stealth from a thief is not that bad, that’s why staff is so great, it has so many ways of removing any chance of landing backstab or a burst on the mesmer in general and you’re still being able to provide damage + condition pressure.

I should also note that my information comes from dueling thieves in the obsidian sanctum arena and not from dueling thieves in spvp.

Ok what Pyro said is correct, but he also said that staff alone wont win you the fight. I know for fact that it won’t and it’s a downhill battle fighting thieves as a Mesmer. Is it impossible? No. But kitten hard. Also most thieves in WvW play D/P which is the easiest spec to counter as a Mesmer and the numbers game is slightly different. I’ve met WvW Mesmers whose mind wracks hit for 3k each and while a thief equally hits as hard, due to the way thief vs mesmer fights play out the increased damage seems to benefit mesmer more.

Also I’m a PvP player and I haven’t yet found a thief that is bothered by my staff skills, however (and I hate sounding elitist too) the PvP players I’ve played with are generally of a much higher skill than those I’ve met in WvW (however the two game modes are completely different so you can’t directly compare them).

Sure staff works a bit, but try beating thieves such as Sizer, Chozen, Red Levin, Collero, Astrastea etc “easily” using a staff shatter build. It just doesn’t happen.

Hybrid builds such as Celestial work great on classes that can stack might easily, so Elementalists, Engineers and Warriors especially. Mesmer might stacking isn’t as good so going celestial isn’t as effective. Have you tried a mix of 70% carrion 30% assassins and then take a sigil of accuracy on each weapon maybe? You will have very high power and condition damage still, while maintaining a decent crit chance.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR7fnsISjaWmGmqB3aGB4AMNBypkA-TFDBABus/QsKBrRnghaCaSZzUKlA4BA4j6PacEAYw8XGHEAtvAAkCwPhVA-w

Carighan.6758:

Hrm, I need to try Shatter again. My issue is that every time I do it, I have to go down to 10 in Domination because I got used to having -fallingdamage on all my chars (and I love the flexibility it offers in WvW).
And then the GS-CDs start to annoy me. :P

To be honest if you go 4 in Domination you shouldn’t really need to be taking the Gs-CD reduction anyway. Halting strike + Shattered Concetration or Halting strike + Mental torment would be better options.

Dirven.3021:

It is actually very easy to fight a thief. Always use staff, it will drive them crazy with your number 2 skill, if you play it right they can never land a burst on you. Put atleast 4 in chaos magic and 3 in shatter so you got lowest cooldown possible for skill 2 and 4 on staff, then the next set of traits depend on what you run as second weapon set.

You have literally never fought a decent thief have you, staff is literally THE worst weapon to fight thieves with, they always have one teleport more than you and your phase retreat is merely an inconvenience into their rotation. If you truly want to beat a thief play a really good PU, plain and simple. With Shatter even if you outplay them they may still win, and you can’t burst them in melee range due to their evades. If staff was so effective at fighting good thieves then how come players such as Supcutie, Helseth etc who are top mesmers, lose frequently to average thieves.

Bazzoong.7145:

You got it wrong, it has nothing to do with stealth or evades or lacerous strike, the reason why S/x is so hard to beat for mesmers is the fact hat the sword cleaves through your clones.

Mesmers depend a lot on the clones soaking up damage once a thief equips a sword he can destroy your clowns and still hit you, basically sword thieves win by spamming 1 you can perfectly deal with the teleports and the hard hits and you will still lose because of the cleave on the AA chain.

The sword AA chain also does to much damage for the fact that it is an AoE skill, but that is a general problem with all AoEskills in the game on all classes (especially with swords and greatswords).

Insert AoE spam rant here…

In my opinon mesmers waste time if they 1v1 in spvp anyway, sad but true your job is to stay with the pack.

I think this is completely ridiculous, this is basically what Anet told us in their livestream, that Thief counters Mesmer because a Thief stops a Mesmer from keeping his clones up. Lets break it down as to why Thief > Mesmer.

1) Teleports, for every one you have a thief has one more.
2) Stealth, Thieves have a much more reliable stealth than Mesmers do.
3) Steal and more importantly the 5 point minor that poisons on steal, this stops a Mesmer from healing.
4) S/D evades mostly nullify our damage, a shatter Mesmer can hit way harder than a Thief, but you actually have to hit them. S/D and S/P both utilize evades in their melee attacks meaning your best bet at bursting a Thief is when he is out of range, which can lead us to wasting utilities.

Hence if you are a Mesmer, in a tournament you can beat the thief by catching them off guard, or you can outplay them if they are D/P. Most of the time however, fighting Thieves as a Mesmer in particular is a lost cause.

This adds a certain skill element to the game though, timing a warbanner or spirit to go off as soon as you down. And as far as I’m aware you can only use these res skills on yourself on Warriors, Rangers and Engineers.

Is this a troll post? Top 100 and Minion Master? Dueling Arena and Soldiers Amulet?

If you didn’t know you can rebind escape which will cancel everything reliably.

Zach.3264:

I reckon “Engineer” would be quite fitting.

One of my Engineers is called Bengineer.

Want to win EVERY 1v1 you fight?
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Take the pet damage trait, go with two birds. Take pirate runes. Go shortbow and Sword/Dagger. Fire + Air on each weapon. Survival of the fittest and Barkskin. Lightning reflexes and mud trap thing. Take the signet that passively cleanses conditions.

You are super tanky, have tons of sustain from fire + air and your birds will 1 shot thieves.

I beg to differ, no other class can spread aoe boons like Sensotix’ boon share build with a staff sword/focus weaponset.

A game today my team had 10 pts and their team had 450, they went for lord and 1 dc’d. We triple capped then held it until 350, then we got a lord kill. So you can win if you’re lucky.

I don’t even understand this, Eviscerate is such an easy skill to see, even on an Asura.

The Mesmers are angry at the “bugfix” because we created an official list of 35 bugs, none of which have ever been addressed. Instead they fixed this “bug” which no one has reported, and has functioned since the first beta weekend event as such. It was most likely a tooltip error on their behalf, but they “fixed” it.

Take whatever pets you want, now the AI is updated they are all good choices (except maybe scorpions)

isolatedchimp.2510:

The problem is that A.I. builds should not be as effective/more effective than a non A.I. build and with less effort and skill.

I agree completely, but the Pirate Rune doesn’t make the build A.I based, what I would do is change the parrot cooldown to tick after it dies, not when it is summoned. As a ranger I always get flamed when I beat people, which I think comes down to the class. The difference the rune makes is it allows me to beat builds which I consider equally BS. No rune, I will beat all thief builds except S/D, with the rune I can now beat S/D easily. So in my case it makes my build more effective, because I already have another bird and it puts lots of pressure…but I don’t see how the rune is bad on any other class yet.

Right now, in the forums there isn’t anyone I consider, influential. I’d Say JCbroe is brilliant and Durzzla also, but the state of our forums is a little quiet at the moment. I look up to Rangers in game, but I mostly play PvP and all the Rangers I know from there I would consider to be “top” rangers. Try and find people in game rather than those who post on here.

Also you can always message me in game to ask about the class, I consider myself experienced enough.

I currently use Runes of the Pirate on my ranger because they turn an already good build into one that wins 90% of my 1v1 fights, perfect for rushing home or far. I’ve used it a lot in Angz dueling server and the reason most people lose to it is they don’t kite my pets, they just “tank” it. If my bird is traited to do a lot of damage, why don’t you avoid it like you avoid an eviscerate for example. Dueling with Leeto he eventually started to kite my birds and he eventually started beating me. I think this is a L2P issue, as I haven’t found a build yet where the bird is ridiculously OP.

blitzkrieg.2451:

the difference between you and the top tier mesmers that currently play is that none of those mesmers are here on the forums kittening and whining, why? They adapt. That’s the difference between good players and whiners. Adaptation vs crying.

Funnily enough most of the top tier Mesmers I know have whined quite a bit about this and most of them stopped using sword before this update, now they have just deleted their swords.

Silent Avenger.6928:

Well looks like threads opposing this change are starting to disappear. To all the mesmers out there it was fun it really was sadly this might be the final nail in the coffin for the class unless Anet can quickly shrink that bug list for mesmers in half.

This thread will probably be deleted come the morning, which is a shame because it shows truly how we feel about this “bugfix” and the dev’s actions.

I always run full glass because;

In a zerg I have all the people ahead of me to protect me while I longbow at the enemy. When I roam I pretty much just end up in 1v1s or 1v2s on my server, and I basically never lose 1v1s even in zerk so…. I see no reason not to take it.

Some things were changed. Mostly other classes got nerfed however, the Heal buff + Strength Runes + Fire + Air sigils with Fresh air trait make S/D or S/F extremely powerful even though it’s based on RnG. I was dueling an Ele earlier, I think it may have been Intigo, and he switched to air and hit me with one auto attack and I then took 4 k damage from air + fire sigils.

It’s alright though guys, because Mind Stab will be buffed.

It’s more than a disconnect, it’s as if they don’t even know it exists. Soon they will delete our npc in the mists like the Ranger one. Pyro you can uninstall now by the way, no need to follow this “class”.

No, sword mh now only has an auto attack. In a teamfight sword 3 will always die to a guardian symbol to quote helseth, and sword 2 does leave you with 10k retaliation damage.

Mesmer was only nerfed, sword is no longer viable outside PvE.

Discuss.