Guild Wars 2

Sky.9347:

Porkchops.3986:

A couple things:

1. There is no such thing as a “ranged character” or a “melee character”. Every class has ranged options. A class like the Guardian might have fewer ranged options than others, but they also tend to have more control to allow them to get in range.

2. I’m not saying this to flame or to disparage, so please understand that so it doesn’t come across the wrong way… but my advice is to “get better” rather than wait for the developers to add a feature for you. . Yes, ranged shots are easier to land than melee shots. Melee attacks also tend to do significantly more damage. The way you’ve phrased your post makes me wonder if you’re taking advantage of your character as much as you can (weapon swaps, skills to close the gap or to immobilize/cripple an opponent, etc). I’m referring to language like referring to yourself several times as “a melee player”. Even with a move-to-target function, people are still going to be able to knock you back, cripple you, evade your attacks, gain swiftness to sprint away, etc.

Anyway, this post was written with the intent of providing advice, not as a flame or disparagement.

I agree with you mostly, but is that bold statement actually true? In my experience it is not true at all.

Probably depends on the profession. My Mesmer does approximately double to triple the damage with his sword swings per target (and the AE effect of swinging on two of the three hits) compared to his staff’s single target plinking on the auto attack skills.

1) Keep your gear updated. If you craft, don’t let your gear get more than 10 levels behind you or you will start feeling the pain. (Actually this kind of goes for all professions really…)

2) The “best” stat depends on which weapons you use and how you set up your traits, since you could make a case for most stats depending on your configuration. Without that information, there’s no real “best” stat because there’s not enough information to work off of. However, you do want at least some toughness and vitality at your disposal in case you aren’t living through things coming your way. The glass cannon approach gets punished really badly on a Mesmer if you’re trying to learn the class.

Also: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Mesmers-How-do-they-work

Truhan.8912:

It certainly isn’t possible to pull only one or two at a time for me. My character’s mentor uses an AOE attack as his auto attack. It’s not only common for him to pull four or more NPCs in the beginning, but he’s also VERY likely to pull ANOTHER four with his attack. The mobs all go for him first, of course, and he dies in about thirty seconds (I did a second run and counted). Also, I think you missed the part where the enemies respawn. I don’t have much DPS gear or stats. The entire place is respawned by the time I down the second or third pack.

A couple of other instances of incredulity that I forgot to mention but instantly came flooding back to my memory as soon as I started a second attempt:

-When my mentor dies, he resets. Completely. He quits following my character and just stays at the entrance to the ruins, effectively lowering the number of NPCs helping me in the beginning to one.
-Enemies reset at will. Using dodge skills and moving while fighting is an EXTREMELY bad idea as the enemies would run away, get their health set back to full, while I would be stuck at one third of my health. There’s no “skill” in this, I just had to stand and hope for the best while using all of my highest DPS abilities.

I would love to be able to try the wave part again, but the second I reconfirmed that enemies respawning was a feature of this quest in my second run, I immediately quit. There’s no way I’m going to do this Personal Story alone, I’m going to need help from fellow Blackgaters that don’t mind helping out an awful player. I can’t even imagine how bad I would be at dungeons, considering how hard I’m finding one of the “easy” parts of Guild Wars 2. Thanks a lot for the tips though, I definitely appreciate it.

Even though the mentor uses an AOE attack, as long as you keep holding aggro and keep undead moving towards you, he will follow because they will run out of range of his PBAOE. But like I said earlier, you can use the giant fallen wall next to you to completely bypass the respawning groups in the middle. You will still have to watch for the stragglers wandering into aggro range if you hang around the other side too long though.

Let’s say you just got out of the cutscene and the agent just snuck away. To your right, there’s a huge fallen wall that you can easily run up. So you run up west along the wall and south along the not-narrow cliff. Pop out of the bushes and you’ll be right next to the intersection on the OTHER side of the undead horde. The only undead that respawn on their own is the giant horde in the middle of the open area. The ones with the hylek and the other undead only spawn in relation to the current status of the quest, from what I could tell. It is possible to circle around the large group and deal with the undead up the ramp without aggroing the large clearing groups. It’s also a lot easier if you kill off the hylek group first.

I finally completed this quest last night, and doing this helped in keeping the mentor alive long enough to keep his corpse away from the buggy area.

If you jump on the fallen wall next to you after the Agent goes stealthy and follow it up, you can bypass most of the undead on your way to the first checkpoint. Unlike the rest of the groups, some of the spawns in the big first group respawn. This lets you bypass that group if you are careful.

Edit: Also, I’ve found that the warping bug happens if your mentor dies at all anywhere near that first group area. Once you get him to the 2nd survivor checkpoint, he can die as much as needed as long as long as it is not in that undead mosh pit area.

NoFate.3786:

I haven’t pve on Mesmer much cuz I hate pve mostly, so I’ve made lvl 5 mesmer and pvp all day long in arena. Love GS and Sword/Pistol weapon sets. And all those clones make so much distraction. And you can not be finished as fast as other players, cuz you simply switch yourself with clone and sit aside while your enemy tries to figure out which one is actual you GS does decent damage. And you have a lot of stuff to confuse your enemy. I mostly use hide that switches you with clone, brake stun and jump away skill, field that increases skill casting for all your allies. Mesmer is fun. In solo pve it should be fine, in group pve it is not as useful as other classes (like guardians, elementalists, engineers, necros) I guess.
What I’ve figured so far is that staves and scepters do not do much damage, to increase your damage use GS or sword/pistol. Staves and scepters more for supportive/controlling builds.

In Group PvE, Mesmers bring in Ethereal combo fields and possibly a Light combo field to use.

Ethereal:
Chaos Storm (Staff only, Ground Target AoE field)
Feedback (Targeted AoE field) – Ranged Attack user lockdown
Time Warp (Quickness for everyone in the field) – Elite ability
Null Field (Ground Target AoE field) – A combination Purge opponents/Cleanse allies field

Light:
Temporal Curtain (Focus only, Ground Target wall) – Combination Run speed/Cripple wall, affects those who run across it.

I’m also pretty sure the portal will work too, but never tried it.

Light doesn’t feel too impressive but Ethereal causes Confusion and Chaos Armor, which are actually pretty good. Basically turns Time Warp into a killing field.

catopia.2715:

I just logged in to ask the same question,
I am at level 34 and starting to struggle in groups. If there is an event with a lot of players my loot drops to virtually zero as i cant get any hits in to tag the mobs. On a single boss event i often end up as bronze even if i have been hammering on it from the beginning.

I am sure i must be missing something, i am not expecting to be top dps, but it would be nice to feel like I am contributing.

If you are having trouble tagging mobs, use Sword as your main hand weapon. Both of the damaging sword attacks are (short range)conal AEs, and the clone you can pop out with the 3rd ability can double as a short range teleport as well.