Guild Wars 2

I would like to point out that Mesmer’s aren’t weak in PvE. It’s just most Mesmer’s don’t spec for dps. With my current gear I can hit anywhere from 1.5-3k on an auto attack, and burst mind wrack combined with blurred frenzy for well over 10k damage.

But I think I’ll try leveling another profession. It could be fun.

ArenaNet plz address this issue. Been a huge fan since GW 1 and I would hate to see it die. I think a major reason people aren’t playing as much, or seem to be less active at the very least, is because content scaling. There are essentially 2 lvl 80 zones. That’s where the majority of players will spend half their time, until they have essentially burned themselves out. What this game needs is an expansion with nearly all level 80 content, but first they need to address the bugs in the current game. Don’t let gw2 die!

Hi guys, I play a Mesmer. And I asking you guys from a PvE and WvW perspective if I should level another class. I’ve already got full exotics on my main, and I’ve tried leveling other classes and even though I enjoy them (particularly the theif and guardian), I just am not sure I can see myself leveling to 80 or devoting half the time I spend on my Memser (been playing this class for years in the first game). I’m just worried the mechanics of it might change or be nerfed, and once again this is from mostly a PvE perspective. Should I level another class? I get this is a personal decision but I’d like to see if anyone else had a tough time deciding. I have tons of friends who level tons of toons but never really master one. But then again, if one gets nerfed they have something to fall back in. Besides, I don’t feel like getting map completion all over again, but I’m OCD and feel constantly compelled to get every vista, point of interest, etc. over again. But what’s the point of wasting time in other characters when I just get more armor sets on my main and focu in achievements. . . Decisions, decisions. Then again, playing a different toon now and then gives the game a variation of pace.

TeaTime.2418:

Doesn’t that include you, as well?
Like you said it’s very glass cannon so aren’t you susceptible to those kinds of condition builds? What’s it like running around WvW without condition removal? Is the general plan to nuke them before they nuke you? (or rather, you nuke yourself =P)

This is pretty much the same thing I’m running, and I’m actually thinking of taking just a couple of Valkyrie/Knight gear, just to make myself a little less squishy. The build’s damage output seems to be high enough that you can spare a few critical % damage, no?

What Wad said is exactly correct. Few people bring condition removal or bring condition builds, which means two things. 1. Condition builds are very strong if played right. 2. Condition removal is only viable in the rare situation you encounter someone using a condition build.

Also you’re right about being susceptible to other glass cannons, but the mesmer and the thief are among the professions with the highest survivability. In the video I talk about the two stealth skills, blurred frenzy, and the ability to chain distortion for up to 6 seconds of invincibility. Also, warriors and most other glass cannon are predictable. For a thief, open with blurred frenzy or distortion for him to waste his initiative then blow him up. On a warrior, stun break then blurred frenzy a d shatter combo for 2 seconds of invincibility and over 10k damage. You have the tools to escape unwanted encounters, or render yourself immune to damage for a short duration, making you durable though squishy. Plus people panic when a bunch of mere images pop up.

In the video is a great example of a glass cannon vs. a glass cannon. The ranger and I go toe to toe, but he out bursts me in the end. I was too eager to get the kill that I failed to go invisible when I had decoy on hand. But the build instead is relatively tough. How many other people can blink into a group of fifty guys, stomp the downed player while invincible and get safely away while invisible?

@curtegg, I used to PvP against Almost Famous (ALFA) during the beta, stress tests, and early release of the game. But then I really began to enjoy PvE and now I prefer the WvW aspect of PvP as opposed to structured PvP. In sPvP I typically focus on shatter builds and weapon or phantasm damage, letting the phantasm use its attack and then shattering it with along with 2 clones. Not to say that condition builds are bad.

I typically run a staff support / condition build for dungeons. Also, if you WvW at all, staff condition builds are incredible. A lot of players run glass cannons, meaning they spec purely for damage and neglect to bring utilities for condition removal. Condition builds melt through opponents like this. In sPvP, however, people are generally smart enough to have some form of condition mitigation.

You mentioned PvE and dungeons, and I would highly recommend Mr. Pormetheus’ build. It’s excellent for dealing condition damage. In dungeons, however, I’ve recently taken to running a glamour support build (if my team has substantial DPS already) and spec’ing my glamours to have longer duration, shorter cooldowns, and to blind enemies withing in the radius. Its very useful combined with the boons / debuffs provided from Chaos Storm.

I typically use the staff as my main weapon in almost every encounter (PvE, PvP, WvW, etc.) while focusing on condition damage and support. I decided to try making a more aggressive style build that can go toe to toe with against warriors and thieves while not compromising on ranged damage. I’m not much of a youtuber but here ya go.

Kind of ironic because I just had a 1v2 versus a thief and a ranger in wvw. Best way to take down thieves is to use distortion right when their big attack chain is coming. You negate incoming damage and waste their initiative. After that, since their in melee range, I burst with blurred frenzy and shatter combo with 3 clones plus the additional effect that it has on myself, making it effectively 4 mind wrack shatters, and boom. You have a dead thief. And anyone else in range will have taken some of the AoE damage as well.

The reason I went with Superior Sigil of Strength was to couple its effects with the #2 skill to try to get might stacks up higher, unfortunately it doesn’t stack as quickly as I would like it to.

I’ll give that one a try, thank you very much.

Just wondering what kind of sigils go well for DPS, particularly on the Greatsword. I was testing a superior sigil of strength in WvW, not sure it woks well with the GS. As it doens’t stack might nearly as fast I need it to, even with full beserker’s gear. Kind of regretting the 3 gold I spent on it, but also no wanting to switch it out until I get some feedback since I did drop a decent amount on it.

Mesmers are actually the least played profession according to ArenaNet. People complain they’re OP, yet few people play them because it’s a hard class to figure out. Thieves are one of the top three classes played, because they are straightforward and do insane damage without requiring remarkable skill. Not saying thieves aren’t skillful, I’m merely stating an average player can easily pick one up and do heavy damage without having to think. Whereas many people drop the Mesmer before theymreach level 20 because they don’t understand how to deal damage with them. That being said, Backstab is not what needs a nerf. Invisibility rendering needs to be fixed, but unfortunately that’s an engine problem. I’m a relatively skilled player. I’ve won 1v5’s in WvW against other lvl 80’s. However, I’ve been downed in WvW by Backstab thieves in 2 hits without ever seeing them because the rendering is crap at the moment. If ArenaNet can’t fix the rendering then backstabe may need a slight nerf while upping the health or general survivability of the thief. 2 shotting an opponent would be perfectly fair if I could see them. For example, hundred blade warriors have some of the highest burst potential, but I can actually target them before I die. How is it fair for a class to kill in 2 hits while being essentially invincible from invisibly. The frequency of stealth doesn’t bother me; it’s the fact that a profession can land 2-3 hits that do 10k damage without me being able to target them. I have full exotic gear, including armor, accessories, and weapons; I have over 250 skill points after unlocking all my skills. I’m not just some noob QQ. I’m merely pointing out that it doesn’t take skill to 2 shot someone while your enemy can’t target you.

swinsk.6410:

Fjandi.2516:

No offence dude, but YOU look like a whiner here. I really think they should do something about the thief. Do i think the class is op? Lol absolutely not. The problem is there are too many of them. Most of thief builds are really easy to play (ofc some ppl play them better than others), so lots of players do not wanna invest their playtime learning to play well an ele or a necro, they simply choose the easiest solution.
It`s not really a “thief problem” imo, would be pretty much the same if there were for ex. too many mesmers or too many necros.
Oh and more class variety means more fun which means more players, so i doubt they care if u quit.

You really think because a class is popular it should be nerfed? Are you serious?

Stealthing classes are always the most popular because they are the coolest. Everyone likes sneaky classes.

There are plenty of mesmers. If something needs a nerfing it should be that moa transform that is pretty much IWIN.

BS ability is not a fight winner. You have to combine it with playing skills and a ton of other things for it to be effective. The MOA transform all you need to do is hit 1 button and you win.

You can’t simply hit backstab and win. You might be able to before assassin signet nerf, but not anymore.

There is no need to for BS nerf. Simply saying you want to nerf a class based on popularity is stupid.

sPvP people probably favor thieves for the mobility in such a small map. When I sPvP I notice tons of thieves, when I do WvW I rarely get fights vs. thieves. I encounter warriors, guardians, mesmers, rangers mostly, occasional necro and last the thief…

That’s probably because you need all the best stuff to be effective as a thief but not so much with the other classes.

Here’s a link a thief did to assess the damage capabilities of each: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/66879-rune-and-sigil-testing-for-glass-builds/

I use the the same spec you do (20/20/0/0/30) for WvW, and I usually can easily take on a group of 3 lvl 80’s unless they’re thieves. I have full bersker gear and exotic ruby accessories. I decided to go with the Runes of the Scholar, since a lot the damage I do initially will be at ranged with my Greatsword while at full hp. I haven’t regretted using them since.

What Nsidious is proposing is exactly what our sever needs right now, an alliance of sorts. People leaving the sever just because we had one bad run is pathetic, not too mention bad for the guild wars community as a whole. The very essence of WvW is to band together, not flee. It’s the time for us to muster our forces together and fight back, not hang our heads down in defeat. The servers should be the most active right now; there should be wait time getting into the WvW servers because everyone is doing something to help claim our server victory. I saw we all rally back and fight.

Could someone please post a youtube link to their build and gear setup for those of you hitting 9k with iSwordsman and iBerserker, and getting 2-3k with GS autoattack?

I’m glad I’m not the only Mesmer who’s still crazy enough to use a staff! I totally agree with you. In the first Beta weekend, I liked the GS simply for its look (a caster wielding a massive sword is pretty freaking sweet). But when it comes down to it the staff offers skills that make it invaluable in almost every situation. Teammate goes down in a dungeon, cast chaos storm over him and give both of you aegis as you rez him; a boss is about to one-shot you, use phase retreat and get out of range; the possibilities go on and on. I like the GS for the damage, but people should really give the staff some serious consideration. Every Mesmer I’ve done a dungeon with used the GS the entire duration of the dungeon. I always have the staff as one of my two weapon sets. Always.

The LOS for this phantasm needs to be fixed, and it will be. However, the iBeserker itself does not need a nerf. Mesmers just got nerfed in the October 7th update, and now you want us to get nerfed again? Will you people stop complaining about our class; I don’t want ArenaNet making my PvE experience more difficult. I do to want to have to reroll characters. ArenaNet please fix the bugs with our profession before you Nerf us anymore, thank you. That includes iBeserkers ability to bypass LOS

Maybe part of my rage was that I was hoping for bug fixes and instead I get my skills nerfed. If ArenaNet had spent their time fixing the bugs with our class first, I would have been just fine with them “balancing” us. Right now we are not a strong PvE class. I’m saying were terrible by any means, but there’s a reason fewer people roll a Mesmer for PvE. I’d appreciate having the bugs in my class fixed before rendering my skills less useful.

I never complained about hundred blade warriors, or heart seeker spamming thieves, etc. All of which were at one point considered overpowered. Every class can be OP if played correctly in PvP; however, in PvE it’s a different story. Mesmer’s were awful in PvE in guild wars 1 unless you were in a large group and ran Panic. The amount of control Mesmers have now is even less, their damage is mediocre, they are squishy. I wasted a month getting map completion to 100% on a a character I won’t use until there’s a buff. Warriors will still get all the loot from tagging mobs, and we still have to wait for our phantasms to tag a single mob and now the recharge times are even longer. Play a PvE Mesmer. I dare you. This class isn’t fun to play anymore.

It is if you PvE primarily.

I can’t believe I made my PvE main a Mesmer. What a waste of time! Warriors can smash 1 while were left with longer cooldowns for phantasms AND one of our only AoE’s. I thought they needed a buff. Screw you people that think we’re OP because they own you in PvP; try leveling one in PvE as a solo character. Guess I will be leveling an Engi now. Or just giving this game a break considering there’s no knowing what will waste my time next. Great patch ArenaNet. I’ve always been so supportive of this game, but every thing keeps getting nerfed to my disadvantage. Keeping phantams alive in dungeons is hard enough…now I can’t even rely on quick recharge times. Fanatastic!

Thanks for the responses guys. You made me aware of the some of the factors I over-looked. So is it still the general consensus that Mesmer’s suck at PvE? Do you think ArenaNet will be buffing this class eventually, or will we all have to play the profession everyone else is playing (Warrior) for farming?

A lot of people were complaining about Mesmer’s not being able to “tag” well in dynamic events. While playing the Mesmer may have its limitations in such circumstances, they’re still capable of efficiently tagging mobs. I used a sword / pistol with a staff set-up. Of course, there are even better builds for doing this, like running an AoE mindrack / confusion spam build with illusion high potential for illusion generation or using the berserker phantasm from the greatsword for AoE damage. Please share your farming builds! This was just what I was using at the time, and would love to try experimenting with some of the ones that you found to be useful, thanks

I wouldn’t mind the cost of travel so much if I could guarantee that the purpose I’m traveling for is accessible. I have to pay 2-3 silver to waypoint to a skill point that may or may not be bugged? That’s just ridiculous. I don’t have time to travel back and forth or the money.