Guild Wars 2

Depending on the situation – ditch your gravity well and use time warp I’d say, 10 seconds of quickness for your entire team is worth a lot more than your personal dps, although Gravity Well is a decent CC, it is still possible to get out of it. If you chrono shatter with Time Warp you give your team 20 seconds of quickness, I don’t think I have to explain how insane that is :P

As for your utilities there are several routes you can go down. Null field, Mantra of Resolve and Feedback are obviously more defensive minded (so much so that having all three is probably overkill in most cases – considering you can shatter cleanse allies with inspiration first minor trait) for assaulting keeps or if your team has a lot of ranged in it.

Another fun and useful route (although this one requires more communication) is the blink/stealth/portal play which can seriously mess over the enemies if coordinated correctly.

The next example I can think of just off the top of my head is a support/savior with illusion of life and possibly disenchanter/defender. I haven’t tried that one myself so I can’t attest to how functional it actually is.

As you can see, the roles of a Mesmer can be many and varied, but I do think Time Warp is a great resource to have. Bit of a personal choice perhaps. I think you’ll find gravity well to be hilarious when ran with full wells on utility, it’s pretty funny how badly that can mess up a tight group, not to mention set up for the rest of your team to do some major aoe damage.

Looking at the picture you linked, I am not quite sure what you’re going for. Mirror images doesn’t really make sense to me anymore outside of a pure shatterspam build, suppose if you go solo roaming or something, but even then you have better options. Consider decoy only leaves one clone, but also gives you stealth it’s just more useful for PvP.

Anyway, some of the examples I’ve mentioned are just possible routes you can go down. If you want to be really good at playing Mesmer I think it’s better to have a proper sit down and go through your skills and look at what works together and how they synergize with traits.

You find a lot of help in asking others of course and you should absolutely do that, but bear in mind as your own understanding grows, so does your ability to play your class. And GW2 is a game with a multitude of possible combinations, maybe you’ll be the one to come up with a new WvW build for some hilarious action?

You want fix? 10 dorrah! 10 dorrah prease!

Rarely do I see a game without 2 necros, 2 thieves and 2 guardians all at once. Today I’ve seen most games with 3+ warriors, probably as a result of someone posting they are OP somewhere.

It’s pretty rare to see a revenant now for me, a fellow Mesmer even more rare. Obviously something weird is going on. Oh and getting on a team with 3 thieves… uff.

Why do you even care about the “meta”? It is so unlikely that you’re playing at a level where that would actually matter anyway. When people in amber start screaming about meta it’s just depressing, meta builds depend on a variety of factors, enemy composition and skill being first among them. Just stop thinking like this. Please.

He has a good point, compare the AA damage of sword to that of a Revenant. It’s pathetic. Can we at least do half their dmg?

Jace al Thor.6745:

Sorry not sitting in front of my computer. Stilquestion remains. When did that reflect anything?

I have no idea I don’t think it does but if this guy can prove then great. Not really anything you can rely on though since it’s so easily avoided.

Varezenem.2813:

Crowley.8761:

PadreNike.1803:

I don’t understand the disappintment, Rev (ofc I mean herald in that regard) is #4 class in dps rankings (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/?), 99% of raid teams will use at least 1 rev (for amplifying the chrono boons) and is meta in fractals, bringing boons and amazing reflects in ventari (critical role for say 50% of the fractals) – really, what’s there to complain about?

Guessing people consider anything but absolute top dps to be useless.

Warrior.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

PadreNike.1803:

I don’t understand the disappintment, Rev (ofc I mean herald in that regard) is #4 class in dps rankings (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/?), 99% of raid teams will use at least 1 rev (for amplifying the chrono boons) and is meta in fractals, bringing boons and amazing reflects in ventari (critical role for say 50% of the fractals) – really, what’s there to complain about?

Guessing people consider anything but absolute top dps to be useless.

Jace al Thor.6745:

Since when did blurred frenzy reflect conditions?

Blurred Frenzy is Sword #2, Sword #3 is Illusionary Leap/Swap

I run power mesmer with gs/s+p. Generally I kinda let them stack their condis on me and spam my shatters to cleanse them all, basically resetting their damage. Popping your heal early for traited condi removal is an option too, most likely you’ll have the durability/tools to survive until it’s up again. Obviously you want to build some phantas/illusions prior to this to maximize your shatter impact and waiting 1-2 secs for phanta respawn and hit after first shatter is good.

It’s probably not optimal but I will happily spam my shatters off without phantas or illusions if I really need to cleanse – once you start seeing 10+ stacks of condis you are running out of options fast. I try to save my decoy/blink until after cleanse so they can’t immediately reapply them – at this point in the fight you should have taken most of their condi spam burst and your cds are basically ready to go for another round of phanta/control skills on wep.

Always remember if you run chrono/moa it is virtually impossible for a mesmer to lose a 1v1 with cd’s ready. It is a bit of a furry kitten move, but effective for sure.

Ryou.2398:

Well everyone else has made it sound mediocre in pve. Maybe I should wait and roll thief for now.

Well a lot of people find it a little dull, which I can kinda understand. The main class mechanic with legend swapping is… Well, it is what it is. You can’t mix and match like other classes, you’re stuck in two tracks, ie healing, condi, dmg, buffs etc. Some of the utility skills there aren’t exactly useful for most PvE stuff, especially what you’re doing on your own. There IS a place for each and every one though, but you are kind of forced to specialize and you can’t pick exactly what you want, you take the legend and whatever comes with it.

As for the weapons themselves… Some are ok-ish in terms of fun and entertainment, but considering you do max damage with an autoattack it is perfectly understandable why some people find this class dull.

Congratulations to you as well! You’ve made the 100th thread about this today and you win the right to sit in a corner and cry while I throw slices of spicy salami at your naked, quivering body! Enjoy your prize and keep the posts coming!

The reason our pve damage has to be low is in part because of pve utility with null field – quickness etc, but mostly because of pvp utility and how difficult a Mesmer is to kill. If you increase the damage you have to rework our utility for avoiding incoming damage – that includes blink, decoy, moa, F3 shatter, F4 shatter, F5 (chrono) shatter, entire mechanic behind clones and confusing the enemy.

If I had to choose I’d rather keep the class as a core how it currently is rather than breaking it and rebuilding it to accommodate more damage. Power could use a small buff to its damage but it wouldn’t take much to send it over the top.

Zenith.7301:

Crowley.8761:

It’s great until you need to use a ranged weapon The hammer is ok for solo stuff but try and use it in a group – you’ll definitely notice how horribly slow amd awful it is. Oh and if you’re condi spec for a ranged fight – enjoy spectating it.

That said yeah it’s a fun class. Kinda main it in PvE since my Mesmer has such horrible damage output.

The hammer has one of the strongest autoattacks and damaging abilities tied to it, it’s far from the worst ranged weapon.

What’s more, unlike rangers who need to trait so that their autoattack pierces, the revenant has that baseline. It’s super easy to tag with the hammer.

It’s a terrible ranged weapon because it’s so slow. It’s fine for solo where you actually need the stun and evades (and some bosses granted), but it’s a useless PvP wep sadly.

Edit: Don’t get me wrong, the stun, the evade, the damage – all great for pvp too. But it’s heavily telegraphed and takes a long time to get off which makes it far too easy to avoid.

It’s great until you need to use a ranged weapon The hammer is ok for solo stuff but try and use it in a group – you’ll definitely notice how horribly slow amd awful it is. Oh and if you’re condi spec for a ranged fight – enjoy spectating it.

That said yeah it’s a fun class. Kinda main it in PvE since my Mesmer has such horrible damage output.

I’m glad you’ve found a game that appeals to and hopefully satisfies your masochistic side. Makes the world safer for the rest of us.

Revenant is mid-tier for damage output, really good for boon upkeep as the poster above said.

As for phase traversal, it wouldn’t big such a giant problem if our ranged weapon (hammer) wasn’t so terribly slow and therefore useless in sPvP. But that’s not the point

Generally they’re ok-ish. Not great, not bad. Just mid tier.

cursE.1794:

Trying to play GW2 pvp and deal with stuns these days.

http://www.memes.at/faces/bloody_keyboard.gif

QFT

Fatherbliss.4701:

My experience is likely going to be very similar to this. (I only did three matches yesterday considering I was stuck in the queue for an hour for some reason.)

Yet I have a guild mate who won 21 in a row and lost 5 matches. It was insane. I missed the last two seasons and it is extremely daunting to attempt to fire this up now. For me I’m going to get a group together and at least make the attempt. But I can see and understand the frustration.

I didn’t play S1 or S2 but considering I came from Neverwinter after a 2 year break from GW2 (Not sure why, it’s a great game), I don’t really expect to win even half of my games, but I CAN and that’s what I love about this game. I don’t have to grind for half a year to be able to play PvP, I can jump right in. And that might be a bit of a drawback as well… I played A LOT of pvp back in the early days of GW2 and it’s not too hard to adjust to what’s going on, but since anyone can make a free account and go PvP those of us in Amber kind of get shafted a bit. It’s no more fun to win 500-50 than it is to lose 500-50. Close games are fun, exciting and lets you analyze your own performance and improve, uneven games simply don’t. Either you run over the other team and think of yourself as godlike or you get run over and feel bad thinking you suck.

If they could at least have some sort of class distribution that’d be great, I’m tired of playing every game versus 2x guardian and 2x necro.

The fact that you felt a need to make this post kind of speaks to the opposite of what you’re actually saying though.

Not gonna comment on the build itself as I’ve yet to face anyone competent using it, but generally if a lot of people get up in arms about it there is usually a cause for that. I’m not saying people don’t whine for the sake of whining alone, 90% of “ZOMG OP” threads are just that, but when there’s a trend among half-coherent people stating the same thing you can’t just dismiss it like nothing.

That being said, like most people I think this game is not in a good state at the moment – the old tactical gameplay which made GW2 so fun is completely gone due to gimmicky builds, at least in lower leagues where I am.

I think his beef with them is that they pretty much instagib you if you happen to be low on endurance/already cc’d or without cd’s. Which does happen quite frequently in heated combat. So yeah, understandable frustration, not the only class that can do that however.

Pretty much every game has:

2 Guardians
2 Necros
1 Ranger (and quite often 2)

Seen plenty of games with 4 thieves as well, but every single game I’ve played in S3 has the above.

I think the game itself is toxic in how it’s balanced right now – and that makes people toxic because it is fairly frustrating. A long time ago the most frustrating thing in the game was a mesmer, but I think it’s pretty much been replaced by any class that can cc you from 100% to 0% or take all your hp with 2-3 attacks in 2 secs.

In other words: I understand why the average pvper is frustrated and salty, game balance right now is an absolute joke and because of the insane burst and cc in the game – tactics and careful gameplay doesn’t matter at all anymore, it’s a spamfest.

I came back after 2 years away and I am pretty much flabbergasted by how much pvp has changed. You can easily get cc’d from 100% to 0% and if your one break is on cooldown – too bad. I am equally surprised at the damage you take now. You can die in less than 2 seconds to some classes, the only ability I remember that did that kind of damage back then was 100 blades warrior with quickness (mesmer bf shatter, ambush thief got close-ish) – but the cost of the high damage was that the attack was easy to get away from. Not so anymore apparently – Lots of classes have the ability to blow someone up pretty much instantly if they missed one dodge or their stun break is on cd. I understand how that should affect gameplay but it’s just a complete overkill. I saw three guys get aoed down at a point yesterday. Granted, they probably made themselves easy targets but it was just weird to watch – They literally all blew up at the same time after about 4-5 seconds to one enemy. That stuff like this is possible at all is cool in a way, but it’s just taking it way too far and obviously you have a lot of classes feeling left out since they are nowhere near being able to do anything that even resembles that.

I understand there’s some serious power creep going on, but the game is just a lot less fun now in my opinion. Rarely do you get a good fight where you make actual tactical decisions like before, spam or get spammed and hope everything dies before you run out of cd/endurance.

Wish the hammer wasn’t so freaking slow as to make it useless, it’s a pretty cool wep. I don’t really like the staff that much – it has great utility but lack of a ranged option kinda stresses me out for some reason.

If so many of you are so extremely unhappy with matchmaking why don’t you get teams? Or make teams if you can’t get one. Seems to me pretty much every single person here complains about the rest their respective teams being so awful, why don’t you guys get together and play then?

Personally I wouldn’t play with you guys in a million years but the solution is right there really. If that’s too much effort or you have too much life to form a team and play a couple hours a week but you still want to be #1 or not play then well, the latter is probably the option for you.

Most basic tip is when he stealths, activate your scepter block – they are most likely setting up for Ambush. If not available – distortion.

That being said, remember you can double up your skills with Continuum Split. I suck at this and I forget to use it all the time, but say you have your clones/phantas out – you go conti split – stealth – gravity well. Conti split ends, you have access to another stealth – gravity well. Personally I use Moa cuz… Well probably cuz I’m a kitten. A big furry one. But using this simple strategy it is virtually impossible to lose a 1v1 with cds up since you can double moa someone. Obviously they’ll be desperate for a heal when moa ends if they’re not dead yet – F3 shatter.

As for general gameplay against them – being annoying and frustrating mesmer style usually does the trick. A bad thief in this situation will start spamming heartseeker -just dodge and you’ll be fine, blink in emergencies. A good thief however knows to wait for your blink, will #3 to get at you and keep going. This is where your blink/decoy combo is the most useful and in 90% of cases the thief will waste initiative killing your decoy while you’re in stealth swapping weps or setting up your phantas. Big problem is their constant dodging which will mess you up but you can’t really do much about it with that wep combo.

All classes have unused skills, especially in PvP. Just look at Revenant for example.

Also, next time you make a thread can you just run it through spellcheck to make it a little bit less painful to read? I understand English is probably not your first language but there are plenty of free ones you can use if you don’t have access to Office or similiar software. Just google it

yiksing.9432:

How did the mesmer nerf the stupid hole?

If anything the stupid hole should be more spacious now that you don’t have to put a mercenary amulet in there…

Some yes, others no. I think half a day of playing doesn’t warrant 50 threads about this and it certainly doesn’t make you the authority on whether the system works or not.

You don’t HAVE to use anything. I’m using pistol for power and torch when I got condi on my mes, shield felt like turtle overkill for me.

The Necro did the exact right thing. As others have already pointed out – 3 people following you to home indicate they are completely clueless and by choosing not to participate this person made what would have been a travesty of a game take a lot less time for everyone.

Wish I had the discipline to do the same but I just can’t help myself.

Elementalist weak? Bottom dps? Whaaaat…

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

Power with phanta damage as prio – Demo amulet

Inspiration 3-2-2

Illusions 2-2-2

Chrono 2-2-3 (sometimes swapping to 1-1-3)

Either that or swapping to condi with rabid or carrion with the same basic spec, swapping to Illusions 2-2-1

Don’t be stupid, pro league teams running two of these in pretty much every team and you actually complain about some balancing? That is clearly needed? ….

Zenith.7301:

Condi mesmer, condi rev, and condi thief all share the same feature of being inferior condi specs.

Why? They don’t have access to burning, the only condition that doesn’t suck DPS wise

Mesmers have access to burning through use of the torch, there’s a phanta specifically for burning. Not much perhaps, but it’s something

Mopic.4238:

Hi guy, I am level 80 and i really don’t think i deal a same amount of damage as my teammate did. I know it may cause by their armor or weapons. But i always confused when i was choosing a stats for my new weapons.

There are tons of different stats i can choose. I am playing GS and I dont know which stat i should focus on. Is it power or precision or something else?

Could you guy please tell me which stats should i choose for my weapons and armor?

Power, precision and ferocity for your Greatsword, 2nd wep set and armor. That’s either the Berserker’s set or the cheaper Assassin’s set. If you wanna play condition damage/hybrid you need power/condi gear but doing that in PvE is not a good choice I’m afraid.

Like the guy above me said, we are the absolute worst damage dealers in PvE, we’re a little bit above half as much damage as the 2nd worst according to metrics. Compared to top classes we do roughly 25%-35% of their damage.

I just came back last week after 2+ years away, and honestly it’s not that hard to get into. The mesmer is still a mesmer as you will remember it, but the “meta” of the game focuses on conditions and shatter using the new chronomancer elite specc so yes HoTs is definitely required if you want to… not suck.

Although there is a mob of people trolling through threads screaming at people for suggestion something other than the current metabattle build be used – it is perfectly fine to go your own way in solo queues and current unranked. Generally people that aren’t mindless zombies will find fun power builds to run that are surprisingly capable.

My advice is – test things out. Don’t listen to posts that are gonna show up below me yelling at me for suggestion the current meta isn’t the ONLY way to play it. What a lot of people fail to understand is that the “meta build” is designed around a specific composition, a composition you most likely won’t be playing.

TL;DR – Power works just fine as well as condi, you just gotta know how to use it.

Anyone watch yesterday? Just horribly one-sided games where the biggest thing that happened was that someone brought a warrior. Casting was awful too imo.

I’d really love to see gw2 make it as an esport but this is just ridiculous – specs, classes always the same. And boring.

Azukas.1426:

We aren’t talking about PvE here. In PvE when was the last time you saw a raid w/out a mesmer?

We are meta in all aspects of this game, and have been god tier for a LONG time.

The point is, one affects the other obviously. They have said they aren’t splitting skills and Mesmer needs a damage boost in PvE – but since people are whining so much about our PvP strength we can’t get it.

Azukas.1426:

Dahkeus.8243:

BadSanta.6527:

Mesmer still op as hell. Just not God mode that it . Problem is the Mesmer community always complain about their class while they are actually the strongest , you can see that even in the resent balance patch Mesmer actually got buffed now they got some nerf and you can see how many Mesmer complains .

Yes, because other classes never do this.

/sarcasm

It’s amazing how people try so hard to stereotype others based on the most arbitrary factors.

Nope that fella is correct in his generalization. I’m a mesmer main and hanging out over at the mesmer forums is pretty much spot on to what he just typed.

It’s really sad actually.

The problem is that we have a huge array of utilities for PvP that are useless in PvE – and the damage is adjusted accordingly. If you look at some recent damage meters you’ll see Mesmers are at the very bottom for PvE damage, horribly so. Last test I saw Mes was the only class below 20k on a straight golem damage test with and without boons, we didn’t even reach 15k (got it to 13 with self applied boons iirc). That’s dps not single hits obviously.

So the issue really is the utility, Mesmers are insanely slippery when played right and add to that the confusion because of clones and invis and yeah, Mesmers truly are a source of frustration like no other – hence all the whines constantly posted about the class.

Nerfing the utility and boosting damage to be in line with others in PvE might also even out PvP but to do that they’d have to break and redesign it – which is never gonna happen.

Personally I wouldn’t mind if it was nerfed into the ground for S3 so the biggest whiners and fotm players would move to something else and the class could be played mainly by people that enjoy it and are able to be constructive rather than the people jumping on whatever is strongest at that particular time.

Can pull people off points… if they happen to be standing somewhat on the edge. Or peel melee off your teammates… slightly. Other than those specific situations I can’t imagine a viable use for it as utility. Pretty pointless yeah.

Been testing condi with scepter/torch as a supplement to staff and honestly I find torment to be pretty darn awesome. It’s just a condition you can’t counter without a proper cleanse whereas confusion for example – the better players notice the stacks and stop attacking or at least slow down/cleanse.

Stop moving on the other hand is a death sentence so torment is fun and effective Not sure how easy it is to really stack reliably though… But it sure would be a useful tool against rev since they can’t get rid of it, though they can resist it.

In one of the beta weekends me and 2 friends made identical Norn mesmers named Tom, Tomtom and Tomtomtom. As tall and big as possible of course. We only got into the same game twice but the result was hilarious :P

You have to unlock everything else before you can do the elite specc as well. HoTs zones give 10 points per challenge so the first two zones should net you plenty to get basically everything, maybe you’ll miss out on elite skill but that shouldn’t take long in a third zone. Especially the first HoTs zone there are lots of points in crevices you can just drop into, really easy to get.

As long as you enjoy it and you find a way to make it work then that’s really all that matters Mesmer in PvE suffers from a bigtime lack of damage anyway – using some fun and strange wep combinations won’t be as big an impact as for some other classes.

I think the reason you rarely see anyone saying this is because the weapons don’t really synergize that well with each other or with traits and stat points. Like torch applies burn which is condition damage, whereas pistol is direct damage which is power.

If you’re having fun, keep at it

Heh, this happens a lot.

Khyber.1284:

I’m just looking at that 2013 you added in. . .that number just really stood out. Anyway don’t try to flip s**t please, I’ve seen the pointless vortices you’ve trapped people in on other threads so I’m just gonna end this with a simple.
“Ok”
Edit: PS vortices is the plural of vortex.

Yeah and don’t bother with these veiled insults and attempts at “establishing your dominance” or whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, it’s boring, it’s old and to be honest I see every other person on the internet as a bot anyway because personalities are so generic that nothing like this bothers me.

Other threads yeah, I think people blindly follow a meta build that is designed for a specific purpose and then blatantly deny everything else being playable even though a lot of people, including me, are having good results from it. I refrain from using terms like L2P or insinuating that they’re simply not good enough to play them – The problem is a mindset of one thing and one thing only. And where will that end up? An inevitable nerf to chronocondi causing forums to be spammed with tears of anger, anguish and despair. Something I think we would all like to avoid.

Edit: Sorry for derailing the thread even further – this what we do as true forum heroes.

Khyber.1284:

Forgive me but. . . ., “Focus slows you down”? I can’t even think of a response for this. And using gs 5 to “keep mobs grouped up” whaaaat? And torch burns doing “a lot of damage” In what world? Pistol is alright-ish. But OP please use focus for your own sake.

Yeah it’s crazy right? Using GS#5 to knock mobs into a wall to group them up, whaaaaaaaat? That’s too hard to figure out? How about mobs packs that are spread when you run into them where some are ranged? Whaaaat? Yeah this is serious rocket science right here. Weird thing is that this is even more important if you’re using focus as mobs will frequently be out of range of curtain, so this being a “whaaat” situation baffles me.

Burn doesn’t do damage, whaaaat? Sigh… I can’t even.

As for focus – I was totally wrong. Last time I played this was in 2013 and that phantasmal warden had some issues with simply not popping up, but he works fine now from what I’ve seen.

Hey that looks fun I’m using somewhat the same except I have illusion trait line and I use pistol instead of shield – just don’t find it very useful compared to the added damage as we have do many other ways of avoiding damage + the interrupt really messes people up.

Someone higher up said power thieves wreck us – maybe I’ve just been fighting some really bad ones but they are usually the ones who’ll chase you specifically so you get a lot of 1v1 practice against them. If it’s a pistol thief you can go ahead and pop your dodge and distortion early, often they’ll just look for a quick kill with #3 spam and run out of initiative, good ones might switch to bow and destroy your phantas though while exploiting their great mobility and energy pool. Ambush ones are pesky, totally better with shield/sword OH against those.

What I like about this is that your entire focus should be on being as annoying and frustrating to fight as possible Blinking behind, letting them cc you to set up their combos only to blink out of it, going invis when pillar humping etc :P Damage is nothing to brag about but given time I think you’ll come out on top in most 1v1 situations. Can’t counter everything afterall.

Major weakness comes when your utils are on CD… If you also have distortion on CD when someone decides to open up on you then yeah, goodbye cruel world.