Guild Wars 2

Ahh, I’m sorry. My friend has most of it now and since I’ve seen it on her, I guess I just pick it out of the crowd. It’s sort of the outfit that screams “mesmer” for being totally impractical but absolutely ~fabulous~ looking. And flowery. Literally flowery.
The first boss? The melee one that is absolutely useless at range with a little bit of cripple on her? She should be a cake walk. And if someone isn’t living long enough for people to run back on the spider boss, then your group needs more survivability. The spiders are slow and should only kill you when you’re totally out of dodges, other movement abilities and poison clearing abilities. Keep aoe on the boss only so that spiders only die around him and make the poison clouds there, and melee’s downright impossible. If your warrior didn’t bring a gun/Guardian didn’t bring a scepter, they’re going to be useless this fight besides maybe another distraction for the spiders.
As I found the code for spoiler, here’s this.
[spoiler = Kill rytlock first. He does the most damage and is the worst CC. Mr. Sparkles usually dies with aoe so keeping some of that floating around whenever he’s up helps a bit, and Zojja’s only a minor annoyance without him. Logan is probably the bulkiest, but is usually the second target since he does the second most CC. Eir’s also a viable second option as she does the second most damage. Whenever one goes down Faolain comes down to rez them, so either hitting her enough that she fails to rez them or killing another one so that she can’t rez the second one as well does the trick. As each one goes down the fight gets exponentially easier. But getting that first one down, rytlock, is a nightmare.] [/spoiler]

Take a walk around Lion’s Arch and see how many people are wearing the light armor explorable mode set. Personally, I usually see quite a few. It’s the really floofy petally set that faolain and every sylvari mesmer in existance seems to wear.
Aka, yes, it’s doable and many have done it. The second boss is the spider one, right? It’s a corpse run. You have to go in, keep moving and pop out and run back whenever you die. On the very lucky occasion does anyone get through that entire fight without dying once, but for the most part someone always manages to stay up long enough for the others to run back. Rezzing is simply impossible in that fight. If you’re downed you’re dead. If someone tries to rez you, they’re dead too. Pick a waypoint, start running. It’s the only way.

The last boss is hell yes. But I can’t give you any tips without heavy spoilers. Let’s just say the beginning is just the worse and it gets easier as you go on.

Don’t use projectiles, bring AOE. This will probably help you in fights against any mesmer and their clones. Ground targetted aoe can’t be reflected, clones won’t run out of it, and it just melts them. It’s pretty much the bane of the mesmer’s existence. Besides that any projectiles you use will be thrown back at you. AOE and melee is your saving grace. Watch for confusion if you can too. It doesn’t hit as hard as it does in PVE but if you’re using a fast-hitting melee weapon it’ll start to hurt quickly.

I don’t know if this is a bug or if it’d just be a nice “quality of life” improvement for mesmers. but since our clone and illusion skills do not cast when we don’t have a target, could they also not cast when we are out of range? This would be really nice, especially in awkward geography like some dungeons and bosses. I like to start a fight by throwing some phantasms and/or clones at a boss to take hits, like the iDefender. This usually requires me to try and cast it out of aggro range of the boss but within range of the cast though. And if I get it wrong, no phantasm spawns and I get stuck with the CD which is pretty long on almost all the phantasms now. If something isn’t going to spawn, can it be put on a “Can’t cast” restriction like when you don’t have a target?

It doesn’t scale exactly, just like power doesn’t scale exactly for your damage. If getting 100 power meant every one of your moves did 100 more damage, things would get insane very quickly. On top of that most of water attunement’s healing is from the “regeneration” buff which I really don’t know if it scales from healing, or if it does, it’s like a DoT. To a much lesser degree.

5 mesmers. Watch the boss try to pick a target for the entire fight. Hilarity ensues.

I’ve pugged every dungeon run I’ve ever done. I usually only have 1 guildie with me, if that. I now have TA gloves, SE offhand and the AC staff. I’ve failed to complete… Oh maybe 7 runs? Probably less. Out of however many it takes to get that many tokens. And I got that SE offhand before the token rewards got boosted. I don’t know what you’ve been doing dude, but either my mesmer carries very hard, I’m impossibly lucky, or you’re the pug that people fear.

Angel.4581:

Lt Kholer is a pushover once you see the animation and keep him crippled the whole fight, cripple, kite, dodge..

The second golem boss in SF though… the fire projetiles hitboxes are much bigger than the actual projectile and as a result is kitten hard to dodge, sideways is wrong, backwards is wrong, forward works occationally…

Projectile reflection. I think Warriors and Thieves are the only class completely without it, and they can stand behind someone with it. Like elementalist with their earth bubble up. If that fails, bring a mesmer. Feedback bubble totally nullifies this golem’s big aoe fire bombs. Even throws them back at him. It’s amazing.

Your mistake was just playing AC. For whatever reason, the first dungeon in the game’s story mode is one of the scariest by a long shot. For the most part Story Modes are “easy” mode for the rest of the dungeons but by sanity AC is unforgiving in comparison to say CM or some other story modes.

Healurownbum.8175:

Sarelm.8317:

Healurownbum.8175:

Something harder to play should feel more rewarding and thats not the case for me with my mesmer atm. Just extreemly hard to keep my Iduelists up (which basicly is never) And then when i do have them up i change to staff and they just died so basicly i have no damage for 10s… And dont tell me to go GS i dont want that i want to be able to play a build i want.

I’m a little confused, I haven’t used pistols so I don’t know why you rely purely on iDuelists for damage. And staff, if that is the “build” you want, typically does condition damage. If you’re using Sharper Images so that your iDuelist does lots of bleeding then you shouldn’t be without damage at all because even after they’re dead your bleeding and all your staff conditions are still ticking. But if you went power/crit then… Yes, you need to go GS. Using a staff isn’t “the build you want” if you went power/crit. It just doesn’t scale off those very well.
Either you change your build to fit staff better or you change your weapon to fit your build better, that’s how this game works. You can still pick the “build” you want but you can’t make staff a power/crit weapon just because that’s what you want. That’s just not what it is. None of it’s moves have high base damage, if they have any base damage at all, and they ALL apply conditions.

Im crit/Condition dmg for the trait yea. But the problem is my Iduelists tend to maybe if lucky get one round of cause ppl are constantly running around with bosses so the AoE’s get them or the phantasm runs in to AoE range and dies. And Staff is ok dmg but more so supportive use. I just want more dmg from myself now as Phantasms are a let down for me in PvE. For all i care they can remove them now.

I see. Yes, the phantasms die much faster, but what might help a lot is just spreading them out. I do find that I have a very hard time keeping 3 up at a time, but keeping 1 or 2 up isn’t too bad as long as I’m moving enough to set them down far enough apart that a single aoe won’t hit them all. I’d also suggest the torch phantasm. It won’t survive better, but just because you said you’re a condition build, I believe retaliation scales from condition and the extra confusion isn’t bad on most mobs. Plus the retaliation/confusion sticks for a bit even after they’re dead. Yes, they could use more tweaking, and yes it’s sad that they don’t feel more rewarding. But that’s support in general. You’re not going to see big numbers on staff for mesmer the same way you won’t see big numbers with an elixer gun on engineer. The stuff you’re doing is still very useful. Just very behind-the-scenes.

Healurownbum.8175:

Something harder to play should feel more rewarding and thats not the case for me with my mesmer atm. Just extreemly hard to keep my Iduelists up (which basicly is never) And then when i do have them up i change to staff and they just died so basicly i have no damage for 10s… And dont tell me to go GS i dont want that i want to be able to play a build i want.

I’m a little confused, I haven’t used pistols so I don’t know why you rely purely on iDuelists for damage. And staff, if that is the “build” you want, typically does condition damage. If you’re using Sharper Images so that your iDuelist does lots of bleeding then you shouldn’t be without damage at all because even after they’re dead your bleeding and all your staff conditions are still ticking. But if you went power/crit then… Yes, you need to go GS. Using a staff isn’t “the build you want” if you went power/crit. It just doesn’t scale off those very well.
Either you change your build to fit staff better or you change your weapon to fit your build better, that’s how this game works. You can still pick the “build” you want but you can’t make staff a power/crit weapon just because that’s what you want. That’s just not what it is. None of it’s moves have high base damage, if they have any base damage at all, and they ALL apply conditions.

Cilph.6758:

Heck yeah. I rolled a Warrior to play dungeons with instead of my 80 Mesmer because the only thing I was good for was Time Warp, Null Field and Feedback.

And this is why most people thing mesmers are bad. Because most people do better when they play a class that you can faceroll through a dungeon. This isn’t wrong, this is why those other classes were made.
This isn’t just my opinion either. Arena Net said they released info about classes based on their complexity. Warrior was one of the first to be released. Mesmer was the very last. They MADE mesmers to be harder to play.
But this doesn’t mean mesmers are bad. This just means they are harder to play.

Turtles All The Way Down.5608:

Moa Morph is absolutely overpowered. There’s a reason Guild Wars 1 didn’t have hard cc, and there’s a reason games that do aren’t competitive.

I’m sorry.. What? Last I checked League of Legends, Dota and other moba games were “Competitive” To the point where they have large tournaments every weekend. Name a game of league that there ISN’T cc used.

Welp, lets go over this one at a time.
iDefender – Best damage mitigation in the game, and the tool tip is wrong. You can see it’s effect in a little buff icon on your teammates too. So EVERYONE near it is taking half damage for as long as it’s up.
iDisenchanter – Not the best condition removal in the game but it effects almost your entire team and you don’t have to do anything besides summon it. Without traiting, specializing, or doing anything but taking 1 utility slot you’re already doing more than half the job of a support build. Even if you’re not trying and/or downed.
Feedback bubble – Situational? Yes. That shouldn’t negate it’s usefulness though. I did a ton of SE explorable runs with my engineer friend and nothing amazed me more than it’s use against the 2nd golem on that run. Everytime it raised it’s hands to nuke us all with fire it was Bubble, Nukes itself, Nukes itself,. Heck, if I got caught with that bubble on CD when it started off that move at least one person got downed, if not more. If that doesn’t justify myself on that run, I don’t know what does.
Illusion of Life – Also fairly situational but it seems like there’s a “Survival” part to every dungeon now. Where you’re escorting or just trying to hold off mobs long enough for an npc to do something and this move does wonders then. It gets someone up and almost guarantees that they rally. This is the Warrior downed #3 skill with the warrior’s trait for it on OTHER people.
Finally, the one move I think should justify our spot on a party hands down, Time Warp. This might be from my long-past WoW years but anyone remember Heroism? Anyone? The sole reason a group never went ANYWHERE without a Shaman? Well, that’s mesmers in this game. A 10 second AOE of the best buff in the game with absolutely no downside. You may not do much dps on your own, but the rest of your team will make up for that, at least twice over.

There’s the side stuff, clones do make good distractions, even if they don’t last long. And you can poop them out like no tommorrow unlike ranger pets or other distractions. DPS is okay, just difficult. iWarlock needs a necromancer or heavy condition teammate. Confusion needs mobs to attack at a decent rate, feedback bubble requires a lot of timing and a projectile user. You can do great damage if you’re good. But to say our utilities aren’t up to par with other classes… Name another class that can half the damage of everything in melee range of the mob. Even for a little while.

darkehawke.1269:

Puffin.5436:

darkehawke.1269:

None of these player suggested solutions are viable. Not without destroying the game.
its hard to track people who buy gold. if i send 20 gold to my alt, will i be classed as a gold seller?
All these quick solutions are terrible ideas and i will give Anet credit for going about this the correct way, slowly and methodically, rather then charging in and making more of a mess

Transferring gold between characters should NEVER have existed.

Why not?
transferring money between characters has been a staple of mmo’s as long as i can remember. take that ability away and thats a crap load of content for me removed too

Because mailing gold to other characters in your account is impossible. In order to do this you have to put the gold in your bank and take it out on the other character. You can mail gold to different accounts, but those aren’t alts then. That’s an entirely different account.

I have already noticed a huge drop in gold spammers and gold scamming mails in game. Thank you so much for all the work you put into this Anet!

Vaerah.4907:

In the mean time you can view my PvP videos I made for my past MMOs, I suppose you are going to post your own PvP videos for everyone else to worship your unsurpassable capability.

Because skill in past MMOs makes you good at this one. Just like being good at Poker makes you awesome at Chess.

Please remember, as with any of the classes, the idea was never to survive “longer” than other classes. It is to survive until you kill them. And by the numbers elementalists should still kill other players faster than any other class. Even heartseeker doesn’t outdamage that #1 staff skill until you are below 25% ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heartseeker ) Is it more difficult than most other classes? Sure, I’ll agree with that. But that doesn’t make it impossible anymore than it makes Explorable mode unplayable for being more difficult than Story mode.

Freakiie.8940:

Sarelm.8317:

You’re a cloth class. I main a mesmer and the only direct damage utility skill we CAN get is mantra of pain. If you don’t use utility skills for escapes and.. Well, utility, then I don’t know what else they’re for. “Good” doesn’t allow thieves to teleport to you and HS has a pretty short range compared to other leap skills. If you can’t get out of it with mist form or blink then there’s a bug worth reporting. As for “needing” that many. I’d say you at least need one. If that isn’t enough I can go through the list.
Staff -fire -burning retreat
Staff -Water – AOE chill area
Staff -Air -Ring of stun and a blowback
Staff -Earth -Snare and cripple.
Dagger MH -Fire -Burning charge move.
Dagger MH -Water -Another aoe chill
Dagger MH -Air -Aura of Stun
Dagger OH -Water -Chill Aura
Dagger OH -Air -Blowback
Dagger OH -Earth -Knockdown
Focus -Water -Daze
Focus -Air -Knockdown
Focus -Earth -Invincibility

Now Chill and Cripple won’t get you home free on their own but combined with just one cantrip like mist form or blink should put enough distance between you and the thief to cause problems for them.

Perhaps you should play an Elementalist before coming in here then?

Staff -fire -burning retreat -> Nice
Staff -Water – AOE chill area -> Barely any duration, making it pretty useless
Staff -Air -Ring of stun and a blowback -> Blowback misses more often than it hits, stun is only on the border of the ring and due to startup animation easily dodged.
Staff -Earth -Snare and cripple. Snare that just like blowback misses more often than it hits (a small sidestep avoids these already, don’t even need to dodge) and that cripple is a very small line with again start up duration so easy to dodge.
Dagger MH -Fire -Burning charge move. Eh to use this as gap opener you need to turn your back on the thief. Here’s a hint. NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON A THIEF. Extra dmg when hitting from behind traits will kick you hard. Not to mention I don’t think this would even get you out of HS leap range.
Dagger MH -Water -Another aoe chill -> With very very small range. I’m not sure if I ever chilled someone with that really.
Dagger MH -Air -Aura of Stun -> Nice, to bad it activates after you get hit and therefore still get hurt. Effective against Pistol Whip, not so much against something like HS.
Dagger OH -Water -Chill Aura -> Well it chills when you get hit. Problem is just that a Thief can keep leaping at you and thus doesn’t care that he’s slowed, since he’s already in range anyway.
Dagger OH -Air -Blowback -> With 40s cooldown and rather close range, nice otherwise though.
Dagger OH -Earth -Knockdown -> This is one of the few great CCs we have, no comment on it.
Focus -Water -Daze -> That hangs in the air for an hour and therefore almost never hits.
Focus -Air -Knockdown -> Well it does hit more often than staff blowback.
Focus -Earth -Invincibility -> This one is actually good.

I’m also amused how you failed to mention the one good getaway skill we really got. Ride the Lightning. Deselect your target, turn around (yes in this case you can do this even on a Thief since you get loads of distance) and hit RTL. Then pray you don’t get stuck.

No offense but Elementalists got lowest survivability and toughness and I’ve seen it happen more than once that a glass cannonish Thief just spikes one down with 15k damage. Heck few days ago I saw a screenie in the sPvP forum Thief (glass cannon) vs Necro (with quite a bit of toughness). Went something like this: Steal 5k dmg Backstab 13k, necro dead. You can totally react against a combo that basically oneshots you. Totally.

My elementalist is level 30. I use them more in WvW and I find the leveling has been slow there. I said my “Main” was mesmer which simply means the first character I got to 80. And I mentioned mesmer more importantly because it’s considered the most OP class in sPvP. Imagine that. The most “OP” class doesn’t have a single damage skill in their utility slots 90% of the time. We have 5 character slots, and I use ALL of them. I didn’t mention ride the lightning because I find it very tempermental. Even when I’m not targetting something it tends to find the closest target and throws you at it anyways. I did mention that chill would not stop them on its own, but in combination with mist form it should do the job just fine. I won’t deny that elementalist has the least survivability but it has the strongest base powers in the game to make up for it. Even after the nerfs.
http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/
Assuming these numbers are right, look at their auto attacks even compared to melee weapons of other classes.
Staff #1 skill fire attune = 570 base dmg.
Warrior 2H sword #1 skill = 370 base dmg.

I mostly use dagger/dagger. Staff when I really need range or dagger/focus when I pick up a really good focus. And as I do with mesmer, I expect to be able to fill whatever role my group needs. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to switch a few traits and go from control to support to heavy damage.

theonewhoknocks.8641:

Cantrips are great as they are all instant cast. I hate casting Glyphs or Signets, gotta lift up my hand and draw a sign in the air? That’s like asking to be interrupted and they are not even so powerful that they should be interrupted.

This is a good point. I think the glyph of storms has a decent leg up on say the fire cantrip, damage and sustainability wise, but the instant cast is too much too pass up.

Anyone have a suggestion for what heal to go with it then? Or stick with ether feast and just have ALL the condition removal?

Get past lvl 30. That’s all I can say. Everything you’re saying feels about right until you hit about 30 and then try soloing veterans. For Mesmers it becomes a complete cakewalk. Between stealth, clones and the ability to punish the kitten out of the Mob AI. For Elementalists things just get harder and harder. Even “easy” tasks need a huge amount of caution when you go in as an elementalist. I now have an 80 mesmer and a lvl 30 elementalist and I have to switch to my mesmer sometimes just to relieve the frustration of trying to solo skill points or certain other tasks that most other classes do with half the difficulty.

Weirwynn.2390:

Actually, I imagine a lot of people complaining about the elementalist come from GW1, where elementalists were among the top tier when it came to spike damage. Their class mechanics involved huge pools of energy and ‘exhaustion’ which temporarily lost you max energy for some of the more powerful spells.

Thieves being GW2’s only resource-based spike class, they basically stole Elementalist’s spot. Meanwhile GW2 elementalist spike damage comes in the form of more skills to have on cooldown, which is just less satisfying for most people.

This is an interesting point. I haven’t played GW1 pvp but if the playstyle’s similar, I wonder if a lot of the whining in these forums is as easy as telling them to try a thief instead. I find that works with most people whining about the difference between GW1 and GW2 Mesmers. “If you want a condition spamming class, try necro instead” usually does the trick.

I’ve played Elementalist to about lvl 30 now and I’m curious what way to go with my traits/skills. I’m not a fan of signets. I just feel like I have a terrible time figuring out when to sacrifice them or not and am far to tempted to just leave the passive on for easy buffs. While I could get past this, I find it better for myself just to build around a different set, but I’ve come to a conundrum when it comes to elementalists.
As we all know, at later levels, being able to drop conditions is crucial to dungeon survival. I have a level 80 mesmer and I sometimes take several condition removal skills just to make sure I don’t die of burning, which seems to be a plentiful condition on any boss mob. But with elementalists, you get a lot of options. Cantrips give you a 3 condition removal + burn which I’ve used to great effect when tagging mobs in DE’s. I also took ether renewal to try out. To my joy it’s got an incredibly short cooldown, does a lot of healing, a LOT of condition removal, and even though the channel’s long, you can move during it, easily avoiding most damage. Because I don’t need the cantrip on top of it, I was tempted to take glyph skills, but there’s a healing glyph skill too. And it feels like if I’m going to trait into glyphs I should use that heal instead, but lose all condition removal. At the same time, I could instead trait into cantrips and then use a different heal, but I’m not sure I even like the other heals. The glyph doesn’t heal nearly as much and I already mentioned I don’t like signets. On top of feeling bad for taking either of those but not traiting into them to make signets/glyphs more effective. Any suggestions?

Ooooh, I see. I apologize then. Good luck. I will certainly keep a link to this page when I get back onto the computer with GW2 then to see if I can help.

You’re a cloth class. I main a mesmer and the only direct damage utility skill we CAN get is mantra of pain. If you don’t use utility skills for escapes and.. Well, utility, then I don’t know what else they’re for. “Good” doesn’t allow thieves to teleport to you and HS has a pretty short range compared to other leap skills. If you can’t get out of it with mist form or blink then there’s a bug worth reporting. As for “needing” that many. I’d say you at least need one. If that isn’t enough I can go through the list.
Staff -fire -burning retreat
Staff -Water – AOE chill area
Staff -Air -Ring of stun and a blowback
Staff -Earth -Snare and cripple.
Dagger MH -Fire -Burning charge move.
Dagger MH -Water -Another aoe chill
Dagger MH -Air -Aura of Stun
Dagger OH -Water -Chill Aura
Dagger OH -Air -Blowback
Dagger OH -Earth -Knockdown
Focus -Water -Daze
Focus -Air -Knockdown
Focus -Earth -Invincibility

Now Chill and Cripple won’t get you home free on their own but combined with just one cantrip like mist form or blink should put enough distance between you and the thief to cause problems for them.

I’m sorry. How the HELL do you get heartseeked FIVE times? You have mist form, a shield, a blink, a blind and a stun and that’s only looking at the utility skills you can possibly put on your bar, not the multitude of escape mechanics you have with every weapon and attunement. If you got hit more than twice with that obvious as heck jumping animation then your reaction time is the problem.

I said this in another thread and I’ll say it here, Mesmers are moral breakers. When you kill yourself on a feedback bubble you don’t think to yourself “Oh, that’s a unique mechanic to their class” you think “WHAT THE $%^&!?” When you waste a bunch of cool downs or your elite only to see a bunch of popping butterflies rather than a point added to your pvp kill count you don’t think “That was very clever of them.” you think “SO CHEAP !@#$%!!” So while we might be balanced, we might even be underpowered compared to team fights where our illusions and the majority of our mechanics become useless, we will be kittened about til the cows come home because our moves are annoying. As they are supposed to be.

There’s a really simple reason we don’t. We have clones. And as easy as it is to tell which are clones and which are not, if you could also run faster than clones do, then the difference becomes glaring.

I haven’t managed to pick out “ideal” items yet since I hit 80 only 2 days ago, (Leveled from 75 to 80 on nothing but dungeon runs. Oh yeah.) but the stuff I look for and keep are items with Toughness/Vitality/Condition Damage. Power isn’t bad, nor is Healing power, if you find either of those, but it’s not what you’re expressly looking for either. I take Runes that fit those parameters as best I can but there’s one in particular “Rune of Scavenging” That I’ve loved the most because it’s condition damage and magic find (Very useful in dungeons.)
My favorite weapon sigils are the ones that cause conditions on crit or have a % chance to heal. I believe my Staff has a 30% chance to heal on hit and my one handed sword has a 45% chance to bleed on crit. I don’t crit much at all but the bleed is very worth it the 10% of the time I do.

Mesmer clones don’t have guild tags in WvW because they don’t have their real names in WvW either. Just “Server name Invader” so they’re easy to pick out. They do in sPvP though.

Ahhh, sharper images. I forgot about that. That would make the GS clone a lot more useful. I don’t use that trait as I’m more of a support build. My bad.
Wait, they took confusion off of the scepter #1 skill then? I haven’t used it since I’ve been switching between staff and one-handed sword since release…

I think people are afraid to download it. I just noticed your iwarlock comment and I have to disagree strongly. With 5 or more conditions on a target it does the highest one-hit damage a mesmer can deal. I remember in Twilight Arbor while I was teamed up with an Elementalist and a Necromancer, the elementalist bragged that her meteor storm, even though she could hardly ever get it to hit, was doing 2k damage when it did. And that it was her hardest hitting move at the moment. I quickly noticed that the iwarlock was doing the same amount, on a more reliable basis. Probably because the necromancer on our team was keeping 5 or more conditions on the target at all times with ease.

I consider Tailoring crucial since all the armor crafts let you make bags and Tailor is the one that makes the armor Mesmers can wear. After that Weaponsmithing/Artificing are about the same in helpfulness, and Jeweling is another useful option. There’s cooking too but I haven’t tried it and it’s explained as the must complicated crafting discipline in the game.

Yes, this is very much why most people consider the staff clones the best of the clones you can make. I think it really just makes GS clones the worst seeing as they’re the only ones that don’t apply a condition. GS’s #2 skill has a lot of other good effects though so it shouldn’t stop you from making the clones and shattering them at least.

Yes. All illusions use your 1 skill for that weapon and proc any conditions that it applies. As well as any other conditions you trait them to do like sharper images that has them cause bleed on crits.

Hit both your group and your phantasms with it whenever possible.
If not, have your group move into it, seeing as iWardens do not move.
Problem solved?

I think the auto attack isn’t the thing to think about here. TW makes EVERYTHING go faster. Healing, rezzing, cast times, all 5 of your skills. So while iwardens may put out more dps, that TW might also save the teammate who’s desperately trying to get off their heal skill too. I really just think you should place it as best you can to effect both and hope your allies know what to do with it, or let your iwardens use it instead if they don’t.

Elementalists are burst mages that rely on killing things before things kill them.
Mesmers are trick mages that rely on jukes, stealth and movement to keep from dying as they don’t have the same burst. In my opinion, a lot more of their damage can be attributed to opponents damaging themselves with feedback bubbles, retaliation and confusion.
Necros, though I know you didn’t ask about them, can be compared as a last class that survives from defensive and life-stealing skills as it has almost no burst, more sustained damage through conditions or pulsing wells/casts/etc.

http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3g1000kksql1l5l9bj00ppkcecjcqd1d5l5
(Copy paste the link, do not just click, the re-direct that GW2 forums does erases all the traits.)
The utility skills I think are more important than the traits in some ways. Null field is good, but the Disenchanter continuously takes conditions and boons as long as it’s alive. The Defender’s skill description is also wrong. It does not just effect you, it effects anyone within 600 range of it. Since it runs into melee range it means anyone else in melee range. You can tell this by the icon it passes to people within it’s effect. It’s the only support skill in the game that does something like this and it’s hugely helpful, those two phantasms without any traits alone do the job of a lot of support builds. My traits are then built around keeping phantasms and yourself alive.
Lastly, the feedback bubble is one of the best damage mitigations in the game, when you’re against projectiles. When you’re not, the sigil to increase illusion health is usually what I take instead to further increase my phantasm’s health. Illusion of Life is good too but situations where I have more than one ally downed in the same area seems to be very rare. Null field is more of a last resort for me when I’m in a situation I absolutely cannot seem to keep my Disenchanter alive in.
Debilitating Dissipation can be replaced with Illusionary Defense or Descent into Madness depending on the situation. There aren’t many situations where you’ll fall a ton but the few where that is a thing, it helps. A lot.
Confusing Cry buffs allies but can also be replaced with Masterful Reflection, Illusionary Invigoration or even Master of Misdirection depending on what’s needed. Remember you can body-block projectiles by standing in front of someone even if you’re not the one targeted so Masterful Reflection is very much a support ability when used right. Illusionary Invigoration helps you daze, distort or confuse more often, or you can leave confusion on for longer, since the minor trait in that tree causes confusion whenever you shatter.
The weapon sets are based on buffing and juking. The staff has the best support potential for mesmers, and is ALL condition damage. thus the 25 point minor trait in chaos to help with that. The sword/torch combo is more a basis for survivability. The sword #2 skill is another potential body-block while invulnerable support ability and the torch can force attention off of you if needed. The torch phantasm is also the only phantasm that applies a condition. This build has a lot of condition damage with it, so that’s helpful on top of classes like Necromancer or Guardian which have some abilities that do more damage depending on how many conditions the target has. Also like your Staff Phantasm, which you can use in situations your Disenchanter or your Defender is not being useful.

I’ll take a screenshot of this in game, but I didn’t realize it wasn’t intended until I read this post. Sylvari Female wearing the “Conjurer” pants model. A very fluffy skirt. It hides ANYTHING I equip on my waist. Most back items are fine and unclipped but swords, daggers, pistols, focuses, anything on my hips are almost all or at least partially hidden.

The interesting thing about this is it can be fixed on the rare occasion you manage to get back your above water set and use the “Blink” skill. I think there might be a global fix of some sort if under the map wasn’t filled with water, but that may just be me. To those of you desperate not to spend money on a waypoint, you may be able to find a corner you can shimy onto for you above ground set, as I did in the Oasis in Sparkfly Fen once when this happened to me. I still submitted a ticket and a screenshot, so hopefully that spot is fixed, but it’s the example I remember.

It works, but I don’t think it has a very good “build” behind it. Staff applies conditions. A lot of conditions. It’s #1 and #5 skill is very weak without condition damage behind it. Which then effects both the phantasm and clone on the staff too. GS applies no damage conditions. Whatsoever. Even with a bleed on crit sigil or trait, in comparison it really needs power or crit. So it feels like you’re splitting your stats too much. I’d rather pair staff with another weapon that has conditions on it like offhand torch or scepter, and then GS with something that relies more on power and crit like offhand sword or pistol. But there might be a way to synergize the two I haven’t figured out.

In terms of what synergizes best, I think it’s easier to look at what Mesmers are lacking. The heal skills are a bit hard to pull off. They’re on par with other classes, but need a little more skill to use to their full potential. Ether feast needs all you clones up, which is hard in heavy aoe. Mantra needs time to set up again after the first use which is hard in heavy cc and mirror has a longer cd and heal than other heals for the reflection bonus which is only useful when there’s stuff to reflect. So Blessing of Dwayna (Humans) and Healing Seed (Sylvari) are both welcome easier-use heals.

Second, mesmers spawn lots of pets, but what do they not spawn? Pets that least before and after battles. I understand not all classes have this but when you actually look at the list, technically only thieves and warriors do not have it. And that’s questionable since Thieves do have the summon allies elite, even if that is an /elite/ and going to very rarely have a heavy impact. Replacement? Summon wurm (Norn) Seed Turret (Sylvari).

Now the one thing I think is the most helpful though, is something to shore up our lack of aoe damage. We have one ground targetted aoe damage spell. It’s our #5 staff skill, and it has a long cd. (Yes, there’s the GS #3 skill too but it’s tiny as hell, and doesn’t sit on the ground. It’s one burst and gone.) Asura have the single best solution to this, and that is their poison cloud. Charr have a workable help to this with their shrapnel grenade, but it’s a bit like GS #3 skill and I don’t like it as much for trying to tag mobs in DE.

TL:DR Think about what you hate missing the most and you’ll find at least one race that can fix it.

The mesmers, much like rogues from WoW, are just clearly moral breakers. When a thief in their dagger spin elite kill themselves inside a feedback bubble, that’s not a feeling of “Oh well, I lost because they were better.” That’s a feeling of “!@#$% SO CHEAP.” When you waste a ton of CDs and burst damage on a clone, it’s not a feeling of “Oh. I missed.” It’s a feeling of “WHAT THE $%^&” And it will continue tokitten people off as long as our moves are doing what they’re supposed to do. And more than deceive, apply conditions, or even do damage, our moves are annoying as hell.

Aww, no one’s even mentioned the illusionary defender yet! Seriously. Name one other skill in the game that takes HALF the damage of everyone around it and absorbs it itself. Throw that in with the regeneration trait and the disenchanter and you’ve got more support than most classes can put out that’ll be there even if you’re downed.
Mesmer is /harder/ to play than most classes. There’s no doubt over that. Arenanet even said they revealed classes in order from easiest to hardest and mesmer was notably the LAST to be revealed. That doesn’t make them bad. Just more fun to play.

Yeah, the only way to boost our speed is by equipping a focus, but we’re one of only two classes in the game that can stealth ourselves. And with the amount of utilities, even an elite we get to do that, I’ve found I cross maps much faster than my air-specced (speed boost for air atuement, signet for speed boost and staff skill speed boost.) elementalist friend who seems to attract every mob from miles around… Or she does get there faster than me and then dies as the 12 mobs chasing her finally catch up.

I admit that our ability to punish specific choices is hampered by our options. We either feed back moves or inflict confusion. But I don’t know how complicated the could make it. And when you land a feedback bubble on a thief during the full spin dagger elite for the first time only to have them kill themselves… Joy. Pure joy.

I wouldn’t toss away Warlock just because of it’s low attack rate. Get on a team with a Necromancer stacking conditions galore on something and that slow attack is a freaking truck. Toss in your mage from your torch skill for that one extra unique condition and watch the health get hacked off.
On the topic though, no, regeneration is not a heal. You healing yourself only applies to the #6 skill.

Playing League a lot I kind of see mesmers like a duelist champion. Like maybe Akali. Yes, in 1v1 they will almost always win. They’re just very strong against one other person trying to determine which one is them. Throw in another person or two and some aoe spam and suddenly clones are dying too fast to be effective and at least half of the mesmer’s power goes away. Making them much, much less effective in group fights on central points. I feel like a ranger’s pet in those fights sometimes. A little damage, a little CC, but not a full character with all my clones disappearing as quickly as I can summon them in the mass aoe. Are they good? Yes. Are they over powered? Only if you’re on a private server 1v1’ing them.

I think just underwater. I might be mistaken in other situations since I typically have allies that may give me regeneration, but usually above ground, when I skitten close enough to my phantasms I get the buff. I have to be almost INSIDE of them to work. But it seems to work. Underwater not even being inside of their model triggers it.