Guild Wars 2

it’s pretty bad at times. speaking from my own experience as I got better I try to carry the bad teams. Most o the time it doesn’t work out but it’s pretty cool when it does.
My advice is when you are in a bad match still try to play the best you can just ignore the score. 50% win rate is doable solo que 100% of the time. Maybe better than at as you get better yourself.

I was at 215 or something like that , took a break on the weekend and fell to 251 today. So ye you better grind out a few more matches

depends on what type of play tbh. in a premade v premade ye go for mid. In most pugs there isn’t any real good bunkers to hold pts so the diff. often IS the beast.
This is really the problem with the whole game . GW2 is balanced and designed for high end team v team pvp but the way the maps are setup and how things work like beasts teaches people to play bad.

you’ll be fine in pugs, in a premade mesmer is the weak link.

someone is kitten . Most likely lost to a mesmer and have l2p issues.

Just like to echo what Ross is saying. imo the mesmer is at our best in a match acting like a roaming dps, same role a good thief fills. We have the advantage over thief because we can do ranged DPS into a fight. With the meta full of cele. bunker splash damage build the ability to kill at range and not get hit is huge. The thief has higher dps and better mobility which makes them better at dcaping and stealing beasts or nija lord.

The sad part is no matter how good a mesmer is we can’t carry a whole team on our own where a really good bunker Engi/Guard/Warrior can simply win a match by locking down mid the whole time by themselves.

agroovywalrus.3821:

Mogar.9216:

Lewis Burnell.2493:

It’s pretty impossible for a Mesmer to win against an equally skilled Thief. A single Stealth + Mug can almost kill you. If they re-stealth, you’re doomed the moment your stealth runes out.

I’m not the best mesmer player by a long shot and I have played over 200 ranked pvp matches 99% of them solo Q. So either I’m the luckiest person in the world that I happen to run into all bad thieves or that it is possible to beat a thief with the right setup. I run GS/Staff Assassin amulet and play like a shatter mesmer .
Now in wvw thieves does hard counter me because all the gear + food makes their dps so high that there is nearly no counter. What I find in pvp is that you can tank a thief for a short while with a staff out. If you have ate away a large chunk of their health with GS (range advantage) the slow condi damage from staff + shatter pressure is usually enough to either kill them or force them to flee.

You are not playing against thieves of a high skill level then. A good thief will 99% of the time eat up an equally skilled mesmer in both pvp and wvw.

well if you can get to higher than 300 in ranked pvp and only encounter bad thieves ,what does it matter then even if you are right that somehow after you get into top 150 the skill level of thieves dramatically improves. Heck at least you are covered for the first few hundred matches :P

Lewis Burnell.2493:

It’s pretty impossible for a Mesmer to win against an equally skilled Thief. A single Stealth + Mug can almost kill you. If they re-stealth, you’re doomed the moment your stealth runes out.

I’m not the best mesmer player by a long shot and I have played over 200 ranked pvp matches 99% of them solo Q. So either I’m the luckiest person in the world that I happen to run into all bad thieves or that it is possible to beat a thief with the right setup. I run GS/Staff Assassin amulet and play like a shatter mesmer .
Now in wvw thieves does hard counter me because all the gear + food makes their dps so high that there is nearly no counter. What I find in pvp is that you can tank a thief for a short while with a staff out. If you have ate away a large chunk of their health with GS (range advantage) the slow condi damage from staff + shatter pressure is usually enough to either kill them or force them to flee.

Depends on what you run in pvp. I run a PU power build and I hard counter most thieves unless they are condi spec or extremely good s/d.
The key to mesmer in pvp for me is know who you are fighting and who is fighting with you on your team. For example if I have a good bunker engi on a pt I would stay with him no matter what because I know we can take and team of 2 and most 3. Even if it comes to 4 v 2 we can hold out long enough to let the rest of the team cap the other 2 pts. On the other hand if I’m with a thief or ranger and 2 warrior comes my way I would stay for 1 burst if we didn’t kill one of them I’m gone my dps is far more valuable to the team elsewhere.

The whole meta favors bunkers you get your reward for wining .

ppl get mad when they lose that’s just part of competitive play no matter what game or sport. It really is no different from any pick up soccer game or basketball game there will always be the players who act like that.

very hard to make GS and Staff work in wvw imo.

Generosity an arcane thieve for all condi spamming celes ppl. I always get a kick out of strip all the boons from ele as I burst. I think something like ‘doe not compute , how did I get hit so hard!!!’ goes through their minds when they get melted right after they proced protection.

Go far if you know you can decap it. otherwise don’t bother imo.

I like staff better because you can actually try and hold a pt with it. s/t is better single target burst but I prefer the ae damage of the staff that covers a bigger area. Also sigil of Gen. works better on staff than s/t

pop invis right away and burst in their face. Burst them down to 1/4 and they will pop their invun or invis. stealth yourself again wait it out then burst them down. Do not play defense, it’s a dps race and we should win most of the time.

kitten esports that train as left the station a year a ago.

IMO if they make mantra of distraction insta recharge then mesmer class would be complete .

power build excel at courtyard, play like a ranged dps .
Courtyard is the most mesmer friendly map because we can use RANGE where every other map requires you to stay on the pt .

1 v 1 go with lockdown simply best 1 v 1 build.
wvw go with a pu power build
spvp shatter is the way to go imo

Most of the time I look for buffs , mesmer is the one with the most buff on, combine with 90% of the time mesmer is the one that appears LAST after stealth wears off and most of the time is the one that is moving.

make it bigger. If it takes 30secs to 1 min to get from one spawn to anther then there would be a huge advantage to the side that’s fighting right at their own spawn pt.

The game would be better in general if they just made everything 5x larger in area.

:) do the math, every match there are 5 winners and 5 losers. However the top 10% players will win almost every match they are in . If there are 1000 matches played every night the top 10% of the players most likely take up a large chunk of those wins by themselves. This means an avg player will have a losing record. In fact I would think unless you are in the top 20% you will most likely be below 50% on the win ratio just because the best players takes up so much of the wins.

phantasm have more dps over time shatter have more burst. imo burst is everything, so effective damage shatter >> phantasm. But phantasm build are much less glassy than shatter builds and less depended on terrain. Shatter is better for pvp and phantasm better for wvw.

Arcane is more for boon striping , as a condi cleanse it’s not all that good. Problem with mesmers is that if you want good condi cleanse you give up too much other stuff. The only real setup that works without giving up too much burst or D is mantra build with menders. Recharge on mantra build is a real drag , you are godly when your mantras are up and weak like a kitten when they are down.

I play power hybrid. I like to down a guy wait for his friends start rezing. Torch 4 , ileap dodge swap , mantra of pain , blurred frenzy shatter 1. Then blink out gs 4 + 2 and 3 . It’s pretty fun when it works.
The other combo is like above posted ileap backward on some one who is chasing me and shatter on them.

Zadarh.1932:

Here’s a 4 minute “How to” video of a mesmer fighting 2 thieves!

http://youtu.be/4ECjt_eiq-g

Feel free to ask/pm me any questions, I am happy to help !

lol that’s the world’s 2 worst thief ever. both of them just shot you with short bow the whole time . The best playing out of them was 1 guy who tried 22222 you . I have often beat bad thieves like that 2-3 at a time it means nothing at all.

S/D thief hard counter us. In pvp I find you have to burst and burst in no time should you play defence vs a thief. Shatter as soon as he come out of stealth don’t leave any clones for him to CnD off.

in WvW the key is kite keep moving to screw up their shadow step .

But like the above post says a good thief will own you don’t be discouraged because there are a LOT of bad thieves out there

i bet you can kill ppl with mantra of pain and distraction trait for halting strikes

I map everything around asdwx. my shatters are same as default F1-4.
S – auto attack
R – Skill 2
T – Skill 3
Z – skill 4
V – skill 5
C – heal
B – until 1
H – until 2
Tab Util 3
Y elite
Shift – R for loot

I use mouse 4 for auto run and mouse 5 for about face

Karma is more or less useless
Laurels use for buying ascended stuff.

I know nothing about dungeons I don’t pve.

Phent.9350:

But if you want be the biggest scumbag you roll turet engi bunker, and use your face to hit buttons like boss;)

lol so true esp in s/tpvp

Chaos Archangel.5071:

BlackDevil.9268:

Mogar.9216:

I have been running 6/6/0/2/0 for max damage with mantra of pain, mantra of distraction and halting strike. It’s insanely fun because your burst damage is crazy .

GS zerker
Mantra of distraction
Mantra of pain
GS3
Distract again
GS2
Shatter

That chain lands in 3 seconds or so and it does crazy amount of damage with a lucky crite or 2 you can kill pretty much any glass build. It really catches people off guard oftern they don’t have time to put to any defence before it’s too late.

Impossible, mantra of distraction has a 5 second cooldown.

Yeah, and the chain would have more damage if it looked more like ..

Gs Zerker + MoDistraction + Pain (The instants should be cast at the same time as the zerker)

Illusionary Wave

Mirror Blade (GS2) + Mind Spike (GS3) + Mind Wrack (F1) or Diversion (F3)

GS1 + MoDistraction

/dance

yes, but not wave . Everything in that chain can be done at 1200. The cool part is to burst on people before they even know you are there :P

So 5 seconds. I don’t time my bursts to a Tee you can easily replace it with another shot of mantra of pain
anyhow it’s not hard to try it spvp gear is free .

veil and torch is the line :P if you use both then you are scumbag .

I have been running 6/6/0/2/0 for max damage with mantra of pain, mantra of distraction and halting strike. It’s insanely fun because your burst damage is crazy .

GS zerker
Mantra of distraction
Mantra of pain
GS3
Distract again
GS2
Shatter

That chain lands in 3 seconds or so and it does crazy amount of damage with a lucky crite or 2 you can kill pretty much any glass build. It really catches people off guard oftern they don’t have time to put to any defence before it’s too late.

GS is simply better at deal damage. Outside of GS, Mesmers does not have a way to deal real damage with auto attack. This is why I like GS because it brings max reward for good position and I like doing damage myself rather than rely on clones.

As defensive set It’s hard to beat sword/torch for invis and distortion . If staff had a invis then it would win hands down as best defensive set but it does not.

use mantra of distraction. I play a range burst build in wvw. With the range we have I can burst most glass build to 1/2 before they get into a range where they can do anything. pop mantra of distraction buys time for another round of burst (shatter + GS3 or sword 3/2 combo). In my experience it is often enough to either out right kill them or get them so low that the fight is effectively over.
I would get Dom I over Dom X for more burst damage.

let me explain the relic a bit as GW2 totally tried to steal the idea and screwed up royally.
There are 2 relics to each realm 1 for str 1 for power. Holding your own relics does nothing but if you manage to get 2 str relics then everyone in your realm’s melee attack does more damage if you get all 3 str relics your melee attack does even more damage. Same goes for power relics and spell damage.

But here is the key. Your own relics are kept in relic shrines that is guarded by uber guards. imaging a keep with 3x the guard in SMC and everyone of them as tough as the keep lord and they respwan non stop. Also the relic shrines are closed to attack unless you lose a specific set of keeps in your home land. So as defender you only need to hold on to 2 keeps that are closest to your spawn to keep your relic safe. Remember the map is freaking huge the defenders have a giant advantage when they can run back to battle in mins where the attackers will take up to 1/2 hr to get back if they died and not rezed. So you can see it is not easy to beat down any one side.

On the flip side when you capture someone else’s relic you can’t put them in the heavily defended relic shrine you have to drop it in a regular keep with regular guards and people can attack the keep any time they want.

In response to combat, DAoC combat is by far better than GW2 combat I won’t go into the details but let me just point out 1 thing, in GW2 80% of the combat is determined before the fight even started based on build and gear skill counts for 20% at most. In DAoC skill counted for a lot more.

ok as someone who played DaoC from lunch and none stop for 6 years I will tell you what I know.

At start DAoC had zerg problems, stealth problems, server crash problems, class imbalance problems. Yep it was bad when it started, as time went on things got much better and by the time they came out with classic server the game was just about ‘perfect’ or as good as I have ever seen before and since that time in any MMO.

Back to the answer to your question. The way DAoC dealt with pop and coverage are these.
1 There is no PPT the only thing that matters are the relics. There is little to no pt for the 2’nd place realm to go after the weakest realm who has 0 relics therefore nothing to lose. And the 2’nd and 3’d place team have every incentive to gang up on the realm that’s wining to take back the relics.
2. The map is huge, the dominate zerg simply can not reach everywhere within 5 mins like they can in GW2. This means a small team can run deep into enemy territory and cause havoc and force the zerg to waste 1/2 hr to 1 hr and back track to take stuff back.
3. The more relics you have the easier it is for people to take them which means it is very hard to stay on top.

Get to know your tunnels , ruins and tower design. Find a bunker spot where you can lure ppl into these tight spaces and watch them melt. Avoid open space like plague.

mirror does the trick vs most rangers like 99% of the ranger I face. Lost to a very good ranger who just had too much dps for me after 10+ duels. So I have ditched some defense and became more dps now in my power build. For most mirror heal does the trick.

I have noticed when I have fired 1 or 2 charges of a mantra in a fight and want to recharge it. Rather than fire the last charge and wait out the cool down you can swap the skill out to a shorter cool down skill and then swap it back. Often you get to recharge the mantra you wanted at 1/2 the cool down to no cool down at all. I’m not sure if it’s a bug or just the way it is. But what ever it is , it’s pretty neat trick.

Coldtart.4785:

Given how frequently I’ve seen hilariously bad maths thrown around in this forum I’m going to assume any ‘damage out put and math of various builds’ is invalid unless proven otherwise. Additionally the only numbers I have seen posted to this forum were of a warrior soloing GL in both zerker and rabid builds and taking only marginally longer (less than 10% longer than zerker) to kill it with rabid.

Condition damage is a failure of design. The main observation I’ve made regarding its effectiveness is that the rate of application versus the rate of removal is so much more important than any other factor that you could very nearly neglect all other factors.

The reason I made this conclusion can be seen in things like a recent duelling tournament won by a condi build along with my own experience in picking up a condi build and immediately being undefeatable to a skilled opponent. These observations come from the spvp ruleset, which is not as favourable to condi due to the lack of dire, perplexity or koi cakes. On the other hand, in large scale wvw and gvg combat, condi damage is completely useless. The main difference is that aoe condi clears allow each player to clear significantly more condis per minute than a lone player, while the condi damage is no more difficult to clear due to high intensity or high duration conditions being counted the same as low intensity or low duration conditions.

The reason why this application versus removal factor causes issues in small scale play is that it demands players to stack as many condi clears as they can so they can beat condi, but in doing so they lose out on important utility against enemy power builds. Another problem is defensive stats on gear. Toughness, vitality and healing power are all useful for mitigating burst and improving sustain against power builds, but are nearly useless against a condi build. Toughness does nothing at all, vitality provides a buffer that is only equivalent to one or two cleared conditions and healing power’s effect is diminished by the typical poison that viable condi builds carry.

All of this means that a player of a power build essentially has to decide if they want to be able to beat other power builds or condi builds, with the expectation that, in order to beat one, you give up the ability to beat the other. You could try to find a good mix and you may find that you can do well against both, but most likely only if they’re scrubs (betting on condi players being scrubs is often safer than the alternative, though).

This is spot on. imo dire gear is the root of the problem. There should be a trade off between damage and defense . Dire gear gives condi build the best of both worlds. The problem is that the whole game is balanced around zerg and spvp small scale roaming will never be taken into consideration when it comes to game balance.

pu isn’t great for spvp. you may want to try a most burst build with sword/torch + GS or a condi build with staff .

This is the problem with fourms everyone has his/her version of the truth and really there is no way to tell . What one person consider as avg player another may think as noob or expert. Really there is no way to tell who is right and who is wrong. All I can say is I dueled a friend whom I consider to be a very good ranger after the patch . We fought 4 times and we each won 2 . The 2 I won was because I timed my mirror right. Now it could be both me and my friend are terrible players and I’m just talking out of my kitten . I do solo 99% of the time, I play on T3 server and I show up to OS duels every week. I don’t win them all but I do win more than I lose. IMO mirror heal IS good enough to shut down RF in 1 v 1.

I’m trying CI power build in WvW and I really like it. I’m trying to get a hang of what skills to interrupt for each class. So far the easiest to interrupt seem to be mesmers lol. So to all you interrupt masters out there please share some wisdom and list the skills beside each class that you look for to land your interrupt. Thank you in advance.

Warrior:
Guardian:
Engi:
Ele:
Thief:
Ranger:
Mesmer:
Necro:

Mak.2657:

kaikalii.4198:

I love the ranger buffs. Feedback and focus trait are incredibly strong against them. They melt themselves.

Whut???
Probably reflects are strong against newbie ranger, but not against half-decent one. Just cancel Rapid Fire (through evade, character turn, stow). And repeat RF after 10 sec (while your reflect on CD). Tested longbow ranger at eotm – not feedback, nor reflecting wall (guardian skill) does help. This new trend to slot reflect as solution of ranger problem only makes me smile. Just stop fire and wait or relocate my ranger. As far as i see now – biggest contributor to def against rangers is LOS. Organized party of rangers can be very dangerous.
Seems it is ltl against one of main principles of game – melee fight is more dangerous, but more rewarding then safer range fight.

mirroe heal is on 15 sec cool down I find that it shuts down a single ranger very nicely. Together with interrupts from F3 or if you run the stun signet or the Mantra of Distraction you should be fine vs 1 ranger. When there are 2 or 3 then the only way is to cut los when they focus you. Not much you can do about that atm.

mirror heal . It’s enough to beat most rangers 1 v 1 nothing like making them eat their own damage.

savius.2617:

I actually did consider Celestial gear at one point, but I agree with Fay. Some stats in Celestial gear are not what I want for the build I’m going for so I’ve been mixing and matching. However, I’m having a difficult time finding the mixed set of armor to reach the exact stats in my first post.

I’m making a set for my ele anyway so I’ll try it and see . I think with AA change a hybrid condi/power build might work. The meta for almost every class is going more and more toward a super D setup with condi burst. I really don’t want to go condi so I’ll try 1/2 way.

savius.2617:

What do you guys think are well-balanced stats for a WvW mesmer? I want my mesmer to have decent offensive and defensive power. I was thinking something like 2k atk, 50% crit chance, 2.8-3k armor, and 200% crit dmg. I mostly run with the zerg and prefer burst dmg to condition dmg, but I want to be able to hold my own if I decide to run solo or roam.

I’m going to test celestial gear today. I think anet is push every class toward that .