Guild Wars 2

Hey, being lazy is no crime… ^^

If you cannot find what you want in the list, it is up to you to support the community by finding a new build.

My tip would be, to go with a tanky build (bunker) and start your journey from there. Let us know the result…

The first time I was in a dungeon and died, I was asked to respawn and run back to the fight. I thought this was very wrong. It felt wrong too. Failing a fight must be an option. Otherwise all the fight is worth nothing.

Some points: If you shatter a lot (what is basically the idea of this build), giving your illusions more life is more or less a waste. Clones die nearly instantly with or without more hp and the phantasm just has to survive its first attack sequence.

Give Decoy and/or Blink a try, you may love them. Both are incredibly good for evading damage and advanced movement. Maybe I’m a bit too adicted to them, but they are surely worth a skill slot.

With berserker armor and stuff, you will do fine, even if you use some other runes. For me it is important to get around fast, but if your priority is different, feel free to adapt. You are not selfish – this goes for the people who wear all MF gear, with very little other stats.

Sigil of generosity is so overpowered, that it is non-existant in PvP. Well, its influx in PvE is certanly not as high as in PvP, but, to be honest, I always play around with the idea of getting another GS just for that sigil. A certain condition remover every 10 sec? Sounds too good. Giving back the favour? Even better.
Unfortunately, I cannot tell you if it will work on immun mobs, but as long as it would get the condition off of you, it should be fine.

Sigil of air does a nice job, if you have a lot of gold you might want to try sigil of fire. Stacking sigils are nice too, but they are all fairly expensive. This are for sure decisions to make, after someone has more experience with the build itself.
I went with air for the guide, as it is easy to afford and good damage.

Hope I could help.

Focus for sure. I couldn’t live without the runbuff…

I wrote this leveling guide, it might help you to get to 40, which is when the Mesmer evolves.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-Guide-to-PvE-Leveling-Guide/first#post850721
You may want to give it a try.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Yeah, nothing of matter changed (officially) for my build, and I couldn’t find any stealth nerfs yet.
Was worried about the patch, after I added a complete leveling guide to my thread yesterday, but kitten, I was bored… ^^

Stealth change, underwater was massively buffed, adding bleeds to the trident autoattack.

Words can not express how little I care about underwater combat in its current state in this game… ^^

How should anyone know yet… ^^

Grenth is soldier accessories.

Yeah, nothing of matter changed (officially) for my build, and I couldn’t find any stealth nerfs yet.
Was worried about the patch, after I added a complete leveling guide to my thread yesterday, but kitten, I was bored… ^^

Orr will get it’s revamp in a view hours.
Southsun Cove will get new content (no clear ETA). It is just an unfinished zone right now.

Would be surprised if ANet could get the patch up in the next 25min… ^^

Nah, it’s always on the next day for me…

Added a complete leveling guide after the Lazy Guide. It aims to get the player used to the IP playstyle on earlier levels.

Ok, patch is dead ahead. I got a feeling that there might be more changes than expected this time.
So if anyone is actively playing this build (besides me of course ^^), I would be greatful for some feedback.
Just wished, I had reserved some posts after the guide, this thing is growing…

Highlighting the up-to-date guides is a good idea, just give us some days to adapt to the changes.
If shatter builds take a hit, at least for my guide, there will be alot of playtesting ahead…

My male Norn Mesmer loves butterflies.

On topic, it is hard to say if you will like it or not. Compared to most other classes, the Mesmer is fairly busy while doing stuff.
There are various playstyles, but as mentioned before, below level 40 can be fairly frustrating.
I’d say play to 20 and see if you like it like with most other classes, but this will simply not work here.

P.S.: Pink butterflies to the face!

As soon as ther is a ; in the link, it will be labeled as bad link. Somehow I got used to copy&paste… ^^

Fay.2735:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

By the way Fay, the link in your signature to your guide is broken, you might want to fix that. ^^
It’s because it includes your guide and the compilation link.

Thanks No idea why that broke it worked before ^^ should be fixed now. Doing a lot of fixing today!

You should become a DEV and start fixing all those broken traits…

Ask me, it is already the 28th over here…
Do not expect any time to be told, ANet avoids to give closer time frames…

By the way Fay, the link in your signature to your guide is broken, you might want to fix that. ^^
It’s because it includes your guide and the compilation link.

Thank you for fixing the typo. Now I just have to hope that I won’t have to completely rewrite the guide after tomorrows patch…

Nice list, was about time, someone wrote up all the guides. Thank you.
I’d rather place my build to the list of Shatter Builds though, as it is not too much about conditions besides bleeding from Sharper Images and more about shattering all your illusions.

Edit: Thank you, just a little typo left, it’s Lazy Kai… ^^

Malice.8439:

Level 40 is around where most Mesmers feel to be a turning point, where we go from slow and clumsy to exceptionally powerful.

Most of us attribute this to the 20 points Dueling Trait – Deceptive Evasion. Taking this trait allows you to spawn clones when you’re doing a dodge roll while in combat.

My advice to you is to invest 20 points into Dueling, for Deceptive Evasion, and 5 points into Illusions, for Illusionists Celerity. I’d also advice you to get a staff, as it’s a very defensive weapon, and it – especially with deceptive evasion – will allow you to take on several foes at once, depending on your reactionary skills and playstyle.

If you decide to go with the staff as your main weapon, look into the Chaos, Illusions or Inspiration trees for various ways of enhancing yourself – but I’d definately pick up Deceptive Evasion and Illusionists’ Celerity for leveling.

Yeah, Dueling 20 for Deceptive Evasion and Illusions 5 Illusionists’ Celerity are pretty much a must for leveling 40+ (unless you really hate to shatter).

Well there are different playstyles. While my guide is mainly aimed for lvl 80 players, I posted some trait advancement from 40 to 80 in one of my last posts.

Guide is in signature, it focuses mostly on greatsword. You can do nothing wrong if you place the trait points as described and use mainly power/precision gear as you level up.

Have fun with your Mesmer, it’s a great class.

My main is a male Norn Mesmer. Not the most common combo obviously.
I set the character to the smallest possible size for I dislike the slow run animation of huge characters and made him as slim as possible. Looks great, like if it was a half Norn half Human, just with all the awesomeness of a Norn.

Mesmer GS animations are really good on a mesmer, and so are the sword ones, which both are parts of my weapon sets.

Sort of a hijack, but…

Is there an inofficial European Oceania server? Playing on a European server, I was waiting for guesting, but it won’t work between the US and European servers.
I really don’t want to switch to an US server (even though it should not be any problem in terms of language), but hey, I am +8 hours to my timezone, which can be a real pain for any group content.

Connection has never been a problem for me.

Henrik.7560:

For max mesmer damage and survival, get all power-toughness-vitallity gear, use superior sharpening stones for extra power, and power food, wield a great sword and dual swords, and trait 20/15/0/25/10. I got max attack (3500) and high health and armor.
My advice

I have some trouble understanding the playstyle behind the numbers, can you give me an insight on your traits? Is it more of a phantasm build?

Sazdek.6830:

When leveling between 40 and 60 and then subsequently 60 to 80, what would you recommend in trait lines? Which Should I max first? Obviously greatsword training in 20 domination would likely be very important as early as it can be taken.

The most important trait is Dueling 20, Deceptive Evasion. Besides that you have some flexibility:

Level 40: 20 Dueling 10 Illusions.
Level 50: 20 Dueling 20 Illusions or 20 Dueling 20 Domination
Level 60: 20 Dueling 30 Illusions or 20 Dueling 20 Domination 10 Illusions

While Domination is obviously for raw damage, Illusions has some advantages too. All Illusions traits, minor and major are great. You also get faster shatters. If you get 30 into Illusion when you reach 60, you get used to your endgame playstyle faster, which will help alot if you have some practice.

I’d say, as retraiting is cheap, try both options and go with what feels more comfortable to you. I’d go with the Illusions traitline over the domination though.

30 in illusions is fairly common to get Illusionary Persona. It is a big boost to your direct damage, especially if you go full berserker.

If you want you can check my guide (signature), great burst, bulletproof utility.

Malice.8439:

I’d get rid of the greatsword and replace it with Sword/Pistol, personally. Sword/Pistol has given me great control over mobs, and sword # 2 is fantastic for dealing damage in close range while waiting for endurance to go up, or blink/staff # 2/decoy/whatever to get off the cooldown. Not to mention that the auto-attack is AoE.

When I main the staff, I usually pop the warlock first, and auto-attack. When the mob charges towards me I’ll dodge to it, and then phase retreat (staff # 2) away to get the third clone up. I’ll then auto-attack till it comes for me or – if it attacks a clone instead- simply run in and Shatter with Mind Wrack.

If it’s still not dead I’ll switch to sword/pistol and dodge away, then using sword # 3 to charge back onto the mob and use Cry of Frustration (Shatter # 2) and that’ll usually be enough.

For tougher enemies, I almost only use the staff – switching to sword to use the # 2 and # 5 abilities to protect myself while waiting for Chaos Armor or Chaos Storm to go off cooldown. Aside from blink, all my utility skills are ethereal fields (Feedback, Null Field, Time Warp) so using Staff # 2 or Sword # 3 inside of them will result in a Chaos Armour combo.

I’m probably not the most optimal shatterer, but this style works for me.

On the other hand, a GS/Staff combo is powerful too, I think it all boils down to preferences. I really prefer the GS over the Staff, as things die a lot faster, iZerker has more AoE damage, and Mirror Blade too, at least on trash. If you have good timing on your movement, you don’t need all the defensive stuff.

Why would they change/fix/nerf anything two days before a major patch? Wouldn’t make any sense…

If you have trouble finding the real mesmer in a PvP game, you have some serious issues.
Your reward is to getting better at finding the real mesmer.
Anyone who is fooled by the mindless clones spamming attack 1, standing in a spot or running straight to the target (depending on the weapon), should not be in charge for class balancing or even think about making comments.

Sorry, if my first post sounded hysterical to you, I just wanted to point out that you have no clue.

Ghertu.7096:

For clarity: i’m not the one, who complains about mesmers overpowered, but I think mesmer’s base health should be smaller.

Great idea. Let’s take away the illusions too, so that it is easier to target the real mesmer.
And yes, you are complaining right there, asking for a nerf is a clear sign for that, isn’t it.

Take this talk to the PvP forums, there you might find some other like-minded. Or you could jump on the D/D ele train, as this class has a low base health, low armor and incredible survivability (without clones).

Sometimes I ask myself how people with so little clue about the game mechanics get the feeling that they might have any capability to balance this game.

HappyHubris.1096:

Would you recommend XI: Illusionary Persona for a GS/Staff user? It would seem like the extra shatter is going to be wasted.

IP is one of the (if not the) best trait available. I recommend to get used to alot of movement to use it as much as possible.

You can also use the F4 shatter without any clones in an emergency situation with IP, this will be a life-saver with proper timing fairly often.

You have probaly seen my PvE guide. Gear makes a fair difference, but you still have some other options:

- F2 shatter does damage, with IP you can do some instant damage, if the mob is very low, or better use mirror images and do some nice damage.
- weapon swap: If you use staff, you can create the clones simply with staff skills for F2 shatter. I prefer sword, as it has some real good damage on attack 2. You can still create two illusions to shatter. The focus illusion does awesome damage on stationary targets, if you are in melee distance anyway, this will finish off most mobs.
- as you do more damage with attack 1 as further the mob is away, use GS skill 5 to gain some distance.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-guide-to-PvE/first#post850116

Here lies Kaiyanwan the Lazy.
He tought he was a the clone next to him and blew himself up.
May he rest in pieces.

Paladin Jeff.9210:

Just rolled a mesmer, only level 6 so far but having at blast. The inspiration signet rocks. Oh one question for leveling which stats besides power do you recommend I look for. Power is obviously most important, and I’m guessing precision?

Back in the days when I leveled my mesmer, GS was not an option (it was greatly buffed in one patch later on).
But if you want to level with a GS+S/? combo, Power is your best bet. Precision would be second best choice, crit proccs and food can help on the way to 80.
Seems like the whole game was built around damage, leveling goes so much faster with alot of direct damage.

This is obviously a “my class first” thread, so buff mesmers for PvE.
Seriously, give us some more options than just shatter cannon…

Diviner.7405:

Orion Templar.4589:

FateZero.8536:

when we arrive there, it was all crickets

I know what you mean. Earlier this week I was at Malchor’s and a group of about 10 of us were trying the Lyssa event. It’s pretty much impossible to keep up with the spawns of multiple veterans much less try to attack the high priestess before the shields go back up and you need to reclaim one of the side nodes with such a small group of players. Clearly the temple events were designed with a larger group in mind, however I’d like to see the dynamic event scaling work even for these types of events so that a smaller group could have a tough challenge but with coordination and skill could still see victory.

All temples can be done with 10 people. One of them is even soloable. If you could not do it with 10 people, then either the people with you were not fully geared or they had no idea what was going on and were uncoordinated.

This.
I did Lyssa yesterday (very early server time as I live +8h to the server time zone) on my mesmer.
Started the first event, and nearly finished it, when an additional player arrived (engi with mad explosion placement skills ^^). We cleared both other spots without any problems and promoted the free wp.
We started the final event with 4 players and finished it with 7.

People got way to deep into that zerg thing. Zerging is most of the time the easiest option, but not the only one.
It helps a lot if you know what’s going on, heaven forbid that people would have to learn how to play in an endgame zone.
Only a hand full of mobs really CC in Orr, most of them you can just run trough. Read the kitten mobs name and avoid ’em accordingly if you do not want to fight.

Ah too late, this sounds way too much like a L2P post. Sorry, wasn’t intened to be this way. But seriously, try to be aware of your surroundings in Orr. And you will be fine.

Well, it’s too late, changes are set in stone. I will just try to enjoy Orr the way it is for the last week.
It is good that they want to make the open world more attractive, but just by adding another token so that people have another way to grind and reducing difficulty of zones, the open world is not getting better, sorry.

Lokheit.7943:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

To be honest, I am a solo PvE player and I like Orr the way it is, all of it. It just misses some population from time to time, but this could have simply been adjusted by better rewards.
Now another three zones will get as easy as the whole game already is…
If all three zones become a cakewalk, what is the reason for still playing them. Some people like a bit of a challenge, and yes, you can do most of the DEs in Orr solo, it is just not brain-dead easy some times.

This. Except for temples nd their pre-events, it’s 98% solo-able.

Even most group-labeled pre-events for temples can be solo’d or at least duo’d. I’d say, the only things in Orr that need more than 3 ppl are the temple events themselves and clearing the path to arah (and the dungeon of course).

Kitten, they change Orr because people had a hard time to farm nodes and whined on the forums. Looking at how power-creepers got their Fractals, whining seems the way to go if you want something in GW2…

90% is actually part of my tanking build, as you want to have protection active all of the time.
Just be creative, you may find some use for it. ^^

To be honest, I am a solo PvE player and I like Orr the way it is, all of it. It just misses some population from time to time, but this could have simply been adjusted by better rewards.
Now another three zones will get as easy as the whole game already is…
If all three zones become a cakewalk, what is the reason for still playing them. Some people like a bit of a challenge, and yes, you can do most of the DEs in Orr solo, it is just not brain-dead easy some times.

Was my 60/60 too. ^^ Some time ago though…

Get both, works quite well – at least for PvE. Right now, shatter is the way to go imo. After the patch – who knows…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Lazy-Kai-s-guide-to-PvE/first#post850116

jazzllanna.1278:

That really stinks. I have always had banks open when I ran guilds.. and for the most part it works well. I have had people steal .. but you know what – yeah it sucks- but think about that person that just stole pixels. I almost feel sorry for them. I mean honestly a person that does that in a computer game must just be sad in real life. It did not happen often though so I felt comfortable keeping my policy in place with the bank. Now I never had it so open that someone that had been there a day could empty it.. but they could take things. So maybe if there is a way to set limits in this game you should.

Sorry that happened to you but just know that the people in your guild that can access the bank from your trust appreciate it and hopefully you will not get someone like that again. I would hate to think that one sorry person would change your view of the game and the way you treat your other guild members.

In the end it is all computer generated crap.. and you will get that crap back :P don’t stress to hard about it.

Truth has been spoken.

As a mesmer you have several skills that will get you out of trouble. Most cloaking skills are like an instant aggro drop. Mesmer is perfectly fine in PvE as full glass cannon.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

aaron.7850:

For all the duel haters… its as simple as “auto decline toggle”, bam, problem solved, you PVErs are happy, and we duelists are happy.

Oh, and then all the whispers and in open chat: I want to duel with you. My blocked list would grow beyond what I want it to be…

I played LotRO, it has a duel feature, I got never asked why I would decline a duel.
You might have some bad exp, but this game might not be like some other…

I am no duelist, but why are people against an additional feature.
Just add an auto block option.

Just by adding more music instruments for free they would offer an awesome “hobby” to the playerbase.

Do it ANet, the code is ready and working, the choir bell is special enough to keep it an achievement. I want to play in an GW2 orchestra…

Nothing you can do but to learn from this honestly.
If he was granted access to the guild bank, you can do nothing against his action.

Here is how it goes. Officers have access to the guild bank. If members need something, they ask for it. At least in a guild with random members this is a must.

Feel sorry for your loss but reporting him will probably not bring your stuff back.