I can’t think of #1 and #2 but #3 should definitely be called Bullet Time. It creates a pbaoe field where mesmers do something similar to “Hail of Bullets” from City of Heroes. Allies in the field have haste while enemy animations and cooldowns are slowed by 50%.
Actually that makes things even more muddy. I don’t see how someone from a different server can help with WvW when the whole point of it is putting servers against each other.
The only npc I would ever escort is Halla and, in all honesty, it would be more like she’s escorting us!
What, exactly, does this post accomplish? Your suggestions are nonsensical, uninformed and incoherent.
Sorry for assuming that every one must have noticed that there is only an average of 5 people per Heart of the Mists.
Yeah, I’m sorry about that. It’s hard to notice them over the hundreds in Lions Arch overflows. In fact, I’m moved to overflow so much, I was actually shocked the one time yesterday when it didn’t happen.
To all those whom say rifles aren’t part of the nature aspect, Sylvari have rifle cultural weapons and you can’t get more “natural” than sylvari. So there’s really no reason rangers can’t have rifles.
By that argument, we should give Engineer access to every weapon in the game since every Charr weapon is mechanical.
Only the mechanical ones. You know, rifle, pistol, speargun… Oh wait…
But to be fair, they should have access to bows too. The mechanics may be primitive but they are still mechanics. Hammers would be a good fit too.
To all those whom say rifles aren’t part of the nature aspect, Sylvari have rifle cultural weapons and you can’t get more “natural” than sylvari. So there’s really no reason rangers can’t have rifles.
I can give you a few more tips.
Know your enemy! Mesmers that primarily use a staff mostly likely have rabid gear. I would say it was a given since the guy also used a scepter and torch. Both are good at pumping out confusion. Rabid mesmers have high precision, toughness and condition damage. The staff is also great defensive weapon because of Phase Retreat (a get out of jail free card that spawns a clone), Chaos Armor (the purple bubble that gives you conditions and mesmers boons when you hit them) and Chaos Storm (an aoe field that sounds like a hurricane screaming and does the same as Chaos Armor without hits). Scepters are designed to spawn a clone on every 3rd auto attack, has a block and a channeled ray that gives confusion. I don’t know much about the torch but I do know it has a stealth ability that ends with a fire blast. It can be pretty nasty if used in an ethereal field while you’re standing in it.
Now for tactics. I want you to know that I’m not bragging when I say this. If you don’t have consistent condition removal, don’t even bother fighting a rabid mesmer! The staff’s auto attack and staff clones can stack burn and vulnerability. If the mesmer took the Sharper Images trait, their high precision will stack bleed as well. Any skill they use with the word “Chaos” in front of it pretty much throws the book at you while buffing them.
And then there’s confusion!
Always remember that you have a great chance of getting away. In fact, you’re safest tactic is to run. While Mesmer have great “in battle” mobility, they are snails out of it, save for a few tricks an/or distinct rune setups.
You can expect rabid mesmers to either be all over the battle or pretending to be one of their clones. Learn to recognize which is the real one and you’ve already won half the battle.
Against this build, direct damage isn’t going to help much. If you can’t burst them down in the first few seconds, expect a long, drawn out fight. Your best weapon is, ironically, condition damage. Toughness can’t do jack against it and it will force the mesmer to either heal often or burn their condition removals. Most mesmers powers have a “good for me, bad for you” theme so if you force them to use it solely for defense, you limit what can be thrown at you.
Never fight a rabid mesmer in melee range! The staff’s auto-attack is slow but it bounces between you and them. This can be traited to bounce even more. Clones have bouncing auto attacks too. If that wasn’t bad enough, shatters are almost impossible to dodge if you’re standing right next to illusions because they are pretty much instant-cast. There is an animation but clones can blow even before it’s halfway done. All shatter damage is front-loaded too. The first to go boom will do the most damage to you. If you stay at range you can avoid most of this and you’ll see the clones kamikaze attack from a mile away.
Another thing you can do is toss out blinds whenever they are off cooldown. Anet, in their infinite wisdom, decided that blinds, blocks and loss of line-of-sight should be able to block clones from spawning and put the skill on a full cooldown. This won’t stop mesmers from popping out more clones than Kamino but it will slow them down.
Be very weary of when you use daggerstorm. Some mesmers will pop out clones excessively, just to get you to use it. They are looking to cast Feedback on you (it’s the dome that forms around you and hums). This reflects all projectiles and WILL reflect every single dagger you toss out! If you can break the daggerstorm animation, do so. If not, find a way to use retaliation before Daggerstorm. Due to weird game mechanics, that will cause all the hits to hit the mesmer.
Last but not least, when you stealth, immediately change direction. Way too many people make the mistake of traveling in a straight line and thinking they are safe just because they are invisible. This can be predicted and AoEs can be laid in front of you.
I too believe it was intentionally left out so that it couldn’t have trait benefits I find it quite sad as it would be awesome to lay it over an enemy, watch them hightail it out, only to get confused (and what’s ironic is I don’t think Timewarp affects enemies at all) and you can jump in and pump out dps like no tomorrow.
Now that I think about it, why doens’t timewarp slow enemy’s cooldowns by 50% when used on them? That would rock!
if you want to deal damage, the only 2 armor stat combo’s you should be looking at is berserkers for GS or rabid for staff. rampagers if you’re really adventurous, but not recommended for someone new.
I can’t agree with this. I switched from Rabid to Rampager when I was almost always the last one standing in boss fights but did pitiful damage if my clones were killed repeatedly. Now, with runes and other addons to buff my toughness and vitality, I’m personally doing most of my damage. Anything the illusions add is icing on the cake.
I tried this a little while ago and ran into a huge brick wall. Basically everyone wants to have the guild base on their server so they don’t have to move. With transfers costing around $25, I don’t blame them. I’ve thought of doing it guesting alone but guild perks are server locked so none of the influence earned on Crystal Desert will help those on Blackgate. That fact alone has killed most of my ambition.
O.o Did you just change your post? I swear it said something different a minute ago.
Anyway, you can try dungeon token vendors. Each one sells 3 different stat sets. Just find the one you feel is worth your while and go for it. If you’re concerned about looks, you can always use fine transmutation stones to get the look you want.
I give that thief much respect too! Not everyone can play a mind game on a mesmer.
0/20/30/0/20 for me with a focus on glamour and manipulation skills. I also run full rabid gear, undead runes, staff, sword and focus. Main utilities are Blink (which NEVER leaves my bar), Feedback, Null Field and Time Warp though i often swap feedback for portal, when the situation requires. I’m primarily a supportive distraction. When my clones stay up, it rains condition ticks everywhere. If a party member is downed, I blink to them and start reviving. If they gain conditions or bosses have too many boons, I use null field. Chaos Storm is also great protection because it always casts aegis on me first. I think it does for party members as clones as well but I’m not sure.
Since I’m going for Sunrise, I’ve been up against Subject Alpha a lot and I can honestly say mesmers are the best class to fight him with. Blink and Phase Retreat will allow you to escape from crystal prisons. Sword #2 is good for evading aoe and saving endurance.
This necro may be the best mesmer I’ve ever seen! I find myself resoundingly befuddled at his decision to rant about Mesmers being overpowered ON THE MESMER FORUMS! That !@#$%^&* blows my mind!
I almost wish Mirrored healing could do that. It would be awesome to see mesmers protecting walls but with such a short cooldown, it would make trebbing painful.
I use to think mesmers were too frail to get in anyone’s face. Since then I’ve been farming CoE for cores. If you’ve ever fought Project Alpha, you quickly learn that mesmers excel at getting in, doing tons of damage and getting out of harm’s way before an enemy can retaliate. The reason is because we have so many “get out of jail free” cards. We can blink, phase retreat, blurred frenzy, decoy, mass invis… It also helps that we can produce a clone on dodge!
I truly understand what Mohamed Ali meant by, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”.
Human “female”: Shinticre. A name I blatantly stole from a girl I use to know long ago. I am developing a backstory for him so I plan on adding a noble family name later. Maybe Beoulve, Deveroux, or St. Croix.
There is a Prec Tough Cond set from the Orr merchants. Ive been picking them up as i go, for an off spec set.
I second the rabid set. I’m getting the exotic versions while slowly working on the ascended versions.
Malice (so much easier to say that condition damage)/toughness/precision for me! Though I may work on upping my vitality. I’ve been one-shotted way too many times lately.
:: perks an eyebrow and smiles villianiously ::
CM path1. Decided to play legit for once as I was showing a few newbies the ropes. We had just defeated the female boss and was staring at the huge mob of silvers. I tell my group to wait and swap feedback for portal. Then I lay down a portal, mass invis, toss out a temporal curtain and run to the right side. Sadly the group was bigger than I thought as I popped back into focus smack dab in the middle of them.
What happened next was truly epic.
On reflex I aim halfway up the ramp and blink and then I burn my first dodge. I know I had over 20 on me because I instantly got my daily dodger achievement from that alone! I didn’t have time to celebrate that small victory as the enemy in front of me takes a cheap shot. Ugh! Now I’m in combat and crippled, moving slow as molasses! The With the angry mob making clear reload sounds, I dodge again. Some of my life is cut but I’m still sitting pretty. A quick null field returns my mobility but I’m still too slow. I know I’m not going to make it unless I think fast. Stray bullets are ticking away at my health, I get crippled again but I can see where I need to go. Half the floor is clear because they’re chasing me up the ramp. I just need to jump down and head for the exit. There are two snipers with push back abilities ready to deny me but they are no problem! I’ll just use feedback to give them a taste of their own medicine!
Ora? Where did that portal come from?
Oh hell! I forgot I had that set!
And it’s lighting up! My team! Oh shi-…!
I was knocked back into the middle of the angry mob which made short work of my befuddled teammates soon after.
Six months and I still haven’t learned…
It takes a LOT of work to be a good mesmer. Be ready to put in overtime hours.
Before level 40, you will pretty much suck. Deal with it.
While leveling, if you see any trait that allows you to spam illusions faster, get it.
Always be weary of nerfs. We’re Anet’s favorite punching bag.
Half our skills don’t work as advertised. Best to come here to see what they really do.
We are divas! Don’t you DARE wear anything sensible!
If you’re not driving friend and foe alike out of their minds, you’re doing it wrong!
That covers the basics. You can look up builds for the rest.
I run around in heritage armor. I use to see a few others wearing the same when the game started. Now I see to be the only one. By the way, heritage light armor is based off of what GW1 mesmers wore.
There is one leveling trick that makes condition mesmers shine. Normally, when you hit an enemy way higher than your level, you’ll get a glancing blow at best. That lowers your normal damage by 50%. However, critical hits will still have their full strength and conditions will always apply their full strength on hit, glancing or not. Coupled with their high survivability, this means condition mesmers can handle higher level mobs easily. I’ve gone as far as 8 levels over my head. At that point, one good hit could kill you but kiting works just as well as even level mobs.
i was in a CM attempt this morning. (some of you may have seen a brief mention of it earlier). Granted, it was my first time in there, but wow… i’m so very glad the whole game isn’t like dungeons. if it were, i never would have made it past my first few levels before setting the game aside. we managed to get thru the fights till almost the end with a reasonable amount of difficulty… some deaths, some frustration, but no stonewalling. and then… “the gauntlet”. que big frig’n room chock full of bandits that, if we choose to try and fight, they zerg rush us like sharks at a feeding frenzy… OR we can try to run thru.
numerous deaths and 6 silver worth of repairs for me later, we gave up.
giving up IS NOT FUN
i feel like i wasted my whole morning.
fortunately Teq was up right after and i was able to take out my frustrations on him.
i swear i don’t know how i’ll get my monthly dungeons at this rate >.>
We’ve all been there. Nothing in open world even comes close to preparing you for dungeons. On the other hand, they are perfect for pushing your limits and truly learning the subtleties of your class. Not to mention they are a lot more profitable. Once you become proficient at it, you may end up like me and start playing with Frost, just to see what you can and can’t get away with.
When I go dungeon crawling with a thief, I expect two things. One: you butt better be hot! I don’t care of you’re male or female. You wear leather armor! You best be working it! Two: spam those poisons! If you see a spider, poison it! If you see a dragon, poison it. If you see Jack Thompson, backstab, bleed and then poison! I don’t care if it is a stone wall, poison it!
On a serious note, being able to spam attacks with little concern for cooldown may make thieves the best class for interrupts. It’s just a theory but if thieves can stop bosses from doing 1-hit kills, they could be the best support class ever.
I always swap portal with feedback when running past dungeon mobs. Of course I always forget to swap it back when facing bosses. I’ve been revived over many portals.
Many, many portals…
And for some strange reason, there’s always a teammate wham stands in the closed portal, waiting for it to open up.
If I coudl change my phantasm’s appearence, I would choose Pinkie Pie with the Dreamer. I dare you to think of anything scarier than that!
So CoF p1 farm speed runs now require 2 mesmers and 4 warriors. .
No one caught this at all :I
I did about 16 hours ago.
and if we have NO mesmer, then what ?
it is just easyer to glitch the kitten thing because is next to impossible to do it otherwise…
I’ve seen guardians do it. They coordinated their skills (I don’t know hat that particular skill is called) so that enemies couldn’t get past. I’m betting necros could stack chills. The rest I don’t know yet as I’m not yet familiar with their class mechanics.
Giving each dungeon a single, solo path that offered less rewards would be nice. Sometimes I want just a few more tokens but have a problem gaining a party even with gwlfg.com.
While this would be nice, bank tabs only hold 250. There are a lot of items that cost more than that so it would be pointless. The tokens would need a better system.
Because the Legendaries and many exotic weapons have themes surrounding them specifically in regards to colour.
Sad, but true…
Example:
What’s the point of there being Twilight and Sunrise if you could dye Sunrise to look exactly like Twilight? LOL
Naturally some parts should stay uneffected. I wouldn’t dream of touching the blade or the awesome paintbrush effects of the swings. However, it would be nice to dye the handle of those swords.
Stealth is a major part of the thief mechanic. For us, it’s just another mindgame in a grabbag full of them.
I have noticed some odd things two. While practicing on the dummies in Lion’s arch, mine would bounce from one to another. However, when I made a clone, all bounces came to me instead. After shattering, it went back to bouncing between the training dummies.
I don’t want to go Yenkin’s route but I do agree that there needs to be a sure-fire way to gain aggro. I would be more than willing to take on every attack a boss throws at me if that gives my team time to revive a downed player. I would also like resurrection skills to be changed. For instance, Illusion of Life would be awesome if I could turned a defeated teammate into a phantasm. While they would still be able to use their own skills, they would get and give all the buffs my phantasms do. After 10 to 15 seconds, they would shatter and become themselves again. Make it an elite skill, put it on a 3 to 5-minute cooldown and sign me up!
It has also caused a lot of new problems. Ever tried rezzing someone whom was defeated by a boss? Ever got hit and downed in the middle of a dodge? Ever got hit by a projectile that curved 90-degrees in midair to where you blinked? Ever used a mesmer’s downed skill #2 and ended up in an more red rings of death or directly under the boss you had targeted? Ever seen projectiles go straight through your reflection skills? Ever gone from full health to downed and have no earthly idea what hit you? Ever die in a place that your teammates couldn’t reach? Ever been dead and unable to revive because, even though none of your teammates aren’t fighting, the game still says they’re in combat? Ever had an npc wipe your party because it trained another group of enemies on you while you were already fighting? Ever had to wait and twiddle your thumbs while the camera panned around your dead body until the rest of your team finished a boss? Ever have your team do everything right, get the boss down to a sliver of health and then one thing go horribly wrong and watch your entire party wipe?
And you do know that if the boss dies while you’re defeated, you get nothing from it, no matter how much damage you did.
When we could res-rush, these things were just a nuisance. Now they can be frustrating enough to end dungeon runs.
There’s a point where I scratched my head about laurels. We have karma. Lots of it. It serves the same purpose as laurels and it’s already deeply rooted in everything. People have wanted something else to spend it on and this would have been perfect. Just put some high numbers up like 250k for a backpiece. Yes people would have complained about having to grind karma but they do that already. I personally would have told them, “you wanted something to spend it on and I gave you new shinies. Shut up and enjoy. Freakin skritt…”
I also expected to buy cores and lodestones with laurels. The lack of them is why I’m giving the evil eye.
Tell them to go to Kessex Hills. There’s a village by the water that’s constantly attacked by krait. Even when it’s not being attacked, npcs drop dead all by themselves. You can easily get your daily heals there.
I’ll be honest. I just glitch and be done with it because that part isn’t fun. The uphill battle against snipers and cannons, on the other hand…
You know, for as much as I play, I’ve never seen anyone use the new broom mount. I’m still hoping for a Asuran/Tron lightcycle though.
I think this would take a considerable amount of work, especially with all the effects some weapons have. That being said, there have been many times when I say a weapon and would have jumped at the chance to use it if only it were the right color. The Priory’s greatsword would be awesome for mesmers if the crystal was purple instead of green.
All I’m going to say is, if you guys whine enough to get Anet to remove, “by Ogden’s hammer, what savings,” I’m going to spatial surge you all WITH THE HUBBLE!!
I would love to know how managed to stuff 6 people into a 5 man dungeon.
The OP speaks the truth guys! I found a mission that allowed me to speak to the old asian masters of GW1. I was taken to Cantha where I trained rigorously, meditated under a raging waterfall and ate my vitamins everyday. The result is that I can now make 10 copies of myself, summon the spirit bomb and finally use a bow that allows me to shoot rainbow unicorns! This guy just happened to be my first victim.
There will be more! Oh, there will be more…
In my opinion, personal stories start out very hard for new players because they aren’t in-tune with the mechanics yet. This really becomes evident when you’re up against a boss whom has conditions while you’re still learning your weapon skills basic functions. I’ve been playing since pre-launch and I’m just now finishing the main story for my main. I had given up on it because I faced far too many daunting challenges. Now that I have a good grasp of what mesmers can do, it feels too easy.
My advice to you is first, calm down. I KNOW it’s frustrating! I’ve been there, however, letting your emotions get the better of you will not help your situation. I can promise you that. Once you’re calm enough to see things logically, ask yourself 2 questions. What’s hitting me and how can I avoid it. Take a good, hard look at your skills and then take a harder look at your skill traits. One skill may have a blind but you can have a trait that dazes enemies you blind. There may even be yet another trait that causes daze to do more damage. Learn these powers and “trait trains”. Learn how to use them more effectively. Practice on the dummies in lion’s arch or, even better, the golems in heart of the mist. When you feel more confidant, try it against low level mobs in the world map. When you’re up to it, try it against something harder. Eventually you will become comfortable enough to take on the story missions again.
I give the same advice on dodging. Timing is everything. Some people dodge as early as possible and get that ingrained in their muscle memory. I personally feel this is the wrong way to go as I have often dodged into an even bigger mess that I didn’t realize fast enough. Now I wait until almost the last possible moment to dodge so I’m fairly certain that the direction I go is safe. It also helps in learning the timing of attacks. Some are instant. Some have very obvious tells. Some have no tells on their own but are often used right after another attack. Some you can simply walk out of the affected area and save your dodge for more crucial moments. Learning when you walk away and when to dodge out of the way is mandatory for dungeon runs. It saves your endurance and you will need every bit of it for later challenges.
Finally, don’t be afraid to die while learning. I know it sounds silly but there are people so focused on staying alive at all costs that they panic and spam keys, which can cause some undesired affects. It will also increase the frustration of dying because you feel helpless. For your own benefit, you need to step outside your comfort zone. Take on challenges in the world that you know are over your head. Push your limits. Find out just how much you can deal with and learn to stay calm under pressure. Once you’ve properly pushed yourself to the limit, you’ll have a better idea of when to commit to wining a fight and when it’s better to run and try again later.
My last bit of advice is never be afraid to try new builds. For the longest I was all about being a phantasm mesmer with high power and health. I read about those whom go with precision, condition damage and clones. I thought it was insane because clones were ridiculously weak when I was leveling. Sometimes they don’t even do damage. Now that I have tried the build, my survivability is insane. While my direct damage is laughable, I’ve learned when I can “burst” past the usual 12 stacks of bleed and have sustained 25 stacks against bosses.
Oh, one footnote on this learning process. Don’t expect to do it all in a day or a month. Pace yourself and let it come to you. When it becomes ingrained and new challenges arise to test what you know, you’ll mentally be better equipped to deal with them than others.
The tl;dr version is calm yourself, learn your character, learn your enemy and try again.
Thanks for the feedback, nice to know I’m on the right track.
I did have a couple more questions about illusions. When they “die” as opposed to shattering from the F1-4 commands (either through being defeated, overwritten, or their target being defeated), do they do shatter damage then? Or is damage in that case just going to be from the “on death” traits? And is the radius on shatter damage known?
They do not do shatter damage when they die. Only the “on death” traits do anything.
I’m not so sure about that. I recall a guy posting that if you dodge-roll while 3 clones are out, you’ll shatter one with “on death” traits while creating a new one. I’ll have to test it out more to verify but that seems to be what happens when I do it.
Case in point, I did CoE path 1 today. I hadn’t done it since October. Three other members of the party have never done it. Everything was pretty smooth until the Project Alpha fights. We died… a lot… There was one moment when the earth attack downed a teammate. I blinked over to him and started reviving soon as it happened and there is NO faster mode of travel than Blink. In the process of that, he started using a fire attack. My health was too low to eat the attack and I couldn’t revive my teammate in time either. I had to let him die or end up downed by his dead body. When he went down and I was the last one standing, there was just no way to revive anyone with the current game’s mechanics. Alpha just throws out too many aoes for the slow revive to work. He also seem to hate me because twice he put me in another crystal cage right after I teleported out of the first one.
We all know Illusion of Life sucks for boss battles because you need a kill to stay up. There’s no guarantee that minions will be in boss battles so I never slot it. I also feel it’s a waste of a skill because it has such a hefty limitation. Now, if I could use it to rez a teammate from defeated, it would be on my bar every time I go into a boss battle I don’t know much about. If it worked in that particular situation, I may have been able to distract the boss long enough for my mate to get the rest of the team up. We had done that quite a few times.
This isn’t a lrn2play issue as I have soloed events in the cursed shore. I’ve killed risen giants on my own, for fun. I’ve fought 3 players and 2 veterans at a wvw supply camp for several minutes, only running afterwards because the rest of the zerg should up. Before the dungeon patch, I held off a room full of silver level bandits while my teammates died, ran back from the waypoint, died again and one decided to approach slowly and gt the others up while they watched me in awe.
I may not be as good as Osi but I kitten well make him proud! But, even with my masochistic sense of challenge, there are mechanics in dungeons that just feel cheap. Being able to instant revive defeated players would take an edge off that.
I’m not going to quote Cassie because he said quite a mouthful but he has a point. If we were able to instantly revive someone whom had been defeated, even on a 5-minute cooldown, dungeons would be easier. The way things are now just places too much risk on anyone willing to revive.
I also agree that Twilight Arbor sucks balls!