Guild Wars 2

First exotic set I crafted, spending all the money and resources I had at the time: Carrion.

Buying the wrong laurel item… twice.

Messing up transmutations and losing a full set of perplex runes.

Saving up for weeks and buying 10 transmutation crystals, 6 hours later they go on sale.

Spending a BL ticket on a weapon I almost never use.

Light armor and lag does not mix well… if you are constantly playing with that ping I suggest warrior instead. If you’re going to play mes with that much lag maybe do it with a staff condi build so you have good defensive options and can build up dps slowly instead of relying on spikes.

Mantra and/or Lyssa runes. Null Field is nice as well, but it’s slow compared to mantra.

You’re pretty close to full glamour already, so why not go all the way? Get Temporal enchanter instead of PI and maybe Confusing Enchantments. And veil or portal offers so much more than decoy in a group, especially since you already have reduced cooldown. I can see how the lack of stunbreak might be an issue though.

Ardent Heretic.8216:

You can make either staff or greatsword viable. Greatsword is not optimal with a condi build, but it shines with a power build. The major downside I have noticed in WvW is that people tend to target you more if you bust out a GS.

I actually find that tends to work in my favor. People follow the purple beam like there’s a free loot bag waiting at the end of the thing. You don’t want to know how many people have run face-first into a BF that way. I’m equally surprised every time it happens. :/

MailMail.6534:

The passive effect would make mantras a lot more viable, since the biggest drawback is channeling.

But the real problem, at least to me, is not so much that you are channeling, it is the loss of DPS/pressure because of channeling. Mantras were supposed to be used together I assume, but they have next to no synergy. None of them apply any conditions directly, so they do very little for a condition build in terms of offense. MoP offers nothing except low power damage. MoD requires heavy investment in interrupt traits to do anything much, but it’s probably the most viable one in terms of setting up a kill.

Retal won’t make up for these problems, but the general idea is okay. The real problem is that slotting several mantras adds a bunch of micro-managing to your utility skills with very little payoff other than defensive benefits.

I’ve found that with heavy mantra builds I spend a lot of time just making my own skills fire in the correct order while the enemy can usually just 1-1-1-1 and be as effective as me. Running one or two mantras is great because it’s only a little extra work for double-use (mostly defensive) skills that can’t be interrupted. But more than that and you start to bog yourself down in your skill rotations. It almost feels like playing healer in certain other games, always watching skills and bars instead of the actual fight.

If we ignore Healing Power, which is bad for everyone most of the time, I would have to go with Vitality. IMO the only classes that need vit at all are guardians, eles and thieves. And this is mostly because their base health pools are so small.

I prefer Shattered concentration over almost any other shatter trait. I think it’s essential for softening up a target with Diversion, not to mention the fact it rips any boons the enemy applied in anticipation of your burst.
If you can keep on a single target, you can almost shut down a guardian’s boons for a while if you do nothing but spam clones and shatter them on him. Very underrated trait IMO, at least if you prefer an aggressive playstyle.

It also has good defensive potential, just shatter whatever you have out when a warrior uses fury signet, and watch him go

What I feel is perhaps the mesmer’s greatest weakness is that Anet insisted on giving them a lot of unique skills.
No other class can do anything that even resembles Portal. Sure, it’s more or less just a fancy shadowstep but the mechanics and the fact that others can use it changes everything.
Time Warp: Incredibly more powerful than any other quickness skill in the game because it’s AoE.
Moa: 3x longer duration of skill lockout than pretty much any other skill in the game.
Veil: Stealth an entire zerg.

I guess they felt that because Mesmers have so many unique support skills, they had to be adjusted in other places. So we’re slow and hit like a wet noodle when not supported by phantasms or shatters. And constantly have to fiddle with clones in order to maintain the same level of damage as any other class that can just press buttons whenever they are ready and get the full effect instantly.

Lorelei.7809:

But I do want to be more offensive than my Lyssa set from Orr, which I think Rabid would fit.

The temple sets from Orr are completely out of sync with the game stat-wise. They’re from a time when it was assumed that many players would run a lot of mixed stats for some reason. The result is that if you buy a full set (same name), you often get a weird mix of power and condi damage, with random bits of vitality, toughness and healing power (yuck). Strangely enough, the trinkets are all balanced for the same stats depending on the temple.

You can still get good gear from Orr (soldier or rabid), but you have to visit several temples to get the right stats.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor

Try to focus on 3 stats on your gear, either power, precision, crit (ferocity after april 15th) for power or condition damage, toughness, precision for conditions.
If you feel squishy as condi, toss in some dire. If you feel squishy as power there are a lot of options, but cavalier, valkyrie or knight is best at retaining damage output without sacrificing survivability.

Your skills only change if you go under the surface. As long as you stay on the surface of the water (where your skills are disabled), the mantras stay the way they are. But yeah, it sucks. I would like not to be forced to run the exact same skill setup under and above water if I use mantras.

MSFone.3026:

We need a trait to shorten charge time significantly, or just have it shortened baseline.

They should get rid of Furious Interruption and replace it with 2s quickness on completing a charge. Keep the cooldown 15s. That way you get a quick charge as a reward for completing a slow charge, or you can just spend it on some quick auto-attacks or a phantasm.

Looks pretty solid to me. Those last 10 points in Dueling are not doing much for you besides precision though. You could get +10% condi duration and DD instead. Or you could go deeper in Inspiration and be able to swap to a full glamour build on short notice.
I personally dislike going deeper than 20 in Dueling for condi because I feel like I’m already being forced to take the line purely for SI and DE. This is true of any mesmer build though.

I love the pistol and the skills on it, but it always seems to perform slightly worse than other weapons… but magic bullet sure if fun when you get that perfect hit and stun-daze-blind 3 people who thought they were going to jump you and didn’t bother to pop stability first.

I use all rabid for condition builds, nothing else seems to make much sense for mesmer. You can toss some dire in, but I don’t really think you need the vitality for anything smaller than zerging.

For power builds, full zerker trinkets/backpiece is a good place to start, you can mix-n-match zerker, cavalier, soldier or knight pieces until you get a balance you like. I use knight armor with a zerker chest ATM, still trying to find a good balance.

I use speed runes because the price on traveler is ridiculous but if you can afford them, traveler is the way to go.

kyubi.3620:

may i ask how you managed to xfer the headband to a defrent character? id like to have it too

Transmute it onto a white (lowest tier) helmet so it becomes unbound. Then transmute the white item onto whatever you want. So you may need more than one transmutation crystal depending on what you did with the headband originally.

Or you can wait until patch and then can do it with one charge (I assume).

I think you’re making a mistake ignoring precision and Dueling. Dueling X increases clone generation dramatically and precision is secondary stat in most mesmer builds. Condition needs it for bleed stacks and power needs it to for crits. You’re not really getting either and I think your build will suffer because of it. You’re sturdy sure, but you are lacking both sustained condition damage and reliable burst.

The question you should be asking is "why the hell is there a jumping puzzle, one of the worst implemented mechanics in the game (hit the right invisible spot, get dragged onto ledge by the game) in a PvP area? I for one have no answer to that.

DeWolfe.2174:

…. how many professions have a 25% trait/utility or access to swiftness???

Those things are not even remotely the same. One is a permanent, unremovable passive effect, the other is a time limited buff that can be stripped in tons of ways. Permaswiftness is a sacrifice for everyone but engineer and warrior. Two classes that also happen to have passive +25% movement speed traits, but that is beside the point.
I doubt you will ever see a warrior or engi run trav or speed runes, because they have no use for them.
Go check out the newest viable 15 or so mesmer builds for WvW that are not specifically for zerging.
I guarantee you that 99% of them use traveler runes, because there is no other valid option unless you are willing accept the DPS loss from speed runes or run with a group 100% of the time that provides you with permaswiftness.
Thieves and necros can use a signet for OOC move speed, but it’s not as good as the passive +25% which is also on in combat. I don’t know ele, ranger or guardian very well so I’m not sure where they stand on this issue.

Actually it is kind of a big deal. To my knowledge, no MMO on the market to date has ever had any explicit gay content (feel free to prove me wrong, I could be). While KasMarjory is certainly on the softer side of this type of material, it is what I would call explicit (the kiss specifically).

Sure, video games has done this before and even topped it with male gay content, which is so much more dangerous apparently. But MMOs are not like normal video games, they have a large and constant playerbase who discuss the game and devote their lives to it in ways you can’t with most other games. More specifically, they interact socially and discuss and analyze the game and its content within the frame of the game itself.

Now, at first I was a bit disappointed that they chose two supermodel human females as their prime example of Tyrian gayness (all lesbians are either blonde bombshells or exotic beauties right?). It comes off very easily as unrealistic and pandering to the male teen demographic. And in a way I still kind of think it is.
But because Anet/NC is taking a very real and probably financial risk by introducing “controversial” content in their game, I am willing to let it slide.
It’s a first small step, and I think they deserve credit for being willing to take it where so many others would have chosen to play it safe instead.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Hikari Kyoko Ishida (middle)

I like that one. She looks like a real person unlike most characters. The facial features are not perfect and some of them don’t match, which is what most real people look like. Slightly large ears, kinda surly mouth, but big anime eyes. Really good job IMO.

Seerstrange.4723:

This guy posted basically the same thing in the warrior forum whats with your fixation on spears lol.

Perhaps he enjoys the length of the shaft and the shiny tip.

The only mesmer-specific nerfs are doubled CD on Dueling Adept Minor and no clone replacement with DE if you already have 3 clones out. The first one is a bit harsh, but not entirely unexpected. And if they must nerf DE, I this is at least a minor thing that only affects a few builds without breaking them entirely.

New GM traits mostly sound good, though we will have to see how it all plays out in reality…

Okay, Forge is not completely random. But I think most people agree it’s not worth using compared to vendoring/salvaging. The chance of getting an upgraded item is very very small.

Reikan.2908:

ok i am a little confused about gear and what makes a difference.
im not sure what the best way to go about gear is ive just started saving everything for mystic forge and slowly converting things to get exotics. is this the main way for gear?

Don’t use the Mystic Toilet to get gear, it is completely random and unreliable.

Easiest ways to get lv80 exotic gear is buy it on Trading Post, craft it yourself or something in-between.
If you have enough karma, you can get exotic gear from orr temples when they are open (no swords over the temple on the map). Be aware that the stat combinations are pretty limited, no zerker stats for instance.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor

You can also buy exotic gear in WvW for badges of honor and a bit of gold.

If all this sounds too hard/expensive, rare (yellow) gear is perfectly viable for most content and it’s much less pricey. I suggest you don’t buy yellow gear with karma/badges, save it up for exotic gear instead.

Precursors are a totally random drop, they cannot be crafted/farmed. They are the basis for legendary weapons, something I suggest you don’t worry about just yet. Legendary weapons are mostly just a very fancy skin, you can attain the same stats with a non-legendary weapon (ascended tier, 1 step above exotic. Stat difference is minimal either way).

I recommend at least 10 points in dueling and gear with at least some precision. This gives you lots of extra dodges, which will keep you alive much longer. Keep up as many illusions as you can, as this drastically reduces the amount of damage you take. Most PvE mobs will give up and go after your clones instead if you kite them for few seconds. Don’t shatter while all your clone/phantasm skills are on cooldown or you leave yourself open to attack. Bring at least one stealth skill (Decoy works with any build) for times when you get in over your head.

“This game is so unbalanced 1v1”!

… Yep. Surprised?

THB, I have not seen any goldsellers for a long time, except for the last few days. I assume they’re making a push now because season 2 just started. They’ll be gone again in a few days.

Without precision and SI, you are cutting yourself off from your main source of bleeds. So you’ll have to find other conditions to stack damage, and confusion isn’t viable on its own. I’m not sure what’s really left.

Boons are not so much the problem, as clones can have boons too. Sure, the mesmer will usually have more boons but not always. It is possible to create some confusion with this, so I don’t think it needs to change.
The real problem is that clones do not inheret signet/mantra icons. If you use any mantra or signet, you’re basically putting a target mark on yourself. So either remove those from the player bar or add them to clones as well. Mantras pose some problems here because of charges, but adding signet icons to clones should be no problem.

Well DE is getting nerfed both directly and indirectly next patch, though the direct nerf is only to heavy clone-death builds… I’m not sure I even want them to fiddle anymore with it, I don’t think they realize that too much could potentially break every mesmer build.

Guild Backpacks > Guild Capes IMO.

The problem with DE is that ANY build benefits from increased clone generation, and DE is automatic, constant clone generation. Much like heal sig is automatic, constant healing for a warrior. No skill or trait can pump out as many clones as consistently without any real input needed from the player, and because of that it becomes a must-have for almost everyone.

My mesmer is human because my GW1 mesmer was human. I was very tempted by Asura though, everything about them is awesome, especially the voice acting.

More classes just means more balance issues, so no thanks. Perhaps a third soldier class would be interesting, though I can’t imagine what it should do that warriors and guardians can’t already.

As for subclasses, try retraiting sometime? That alone offers more diversity than some games i have played, where subclasses basically means “you can’t use these 12 class skills because you chose A instead of B. Roll a new character if you want to try them.”

Perhaps if they had started with a careful 25 or 30% increase and scaled up slowly from there all of this would have been unnecessary. The 8% nerf is a careful approach, and I think it’s the right choice at this point.

StinVec.3621:

By the wording it uses, it sounds like you must unlock dyes again after the patch goes in.

No. Read it again:

All dyes on your characters will be converted to account-wide. Any duplicates across characters will pop an unidentified dye into your inventory (for a chance at another color). Any dye used after the feature patch is implemented is also automatically account-wide.

If everything reset with the patch, it would make no sense for them to make the whole “unid dye pop into inventory” thing because nobody would ever be able to get the same dye twice.

Because it’s fluff that’s only relevant to like 6% of the world’s population, not to mention the game’s?
Does my character also need to have myopia because I do? No.

Usually on. There’s a pretty good selection for all armor types IMO. Also, starter helmets are mostly awesome.

Norn cultural T2 heavy armor chest. Most of upper body naked.

TA light armor chest (looks absurd)

AC light amor pants are… well not so much revealing as rather tight.

Personal housing would probably take too many resources to implement at this point, but I really feel the lack of Guild Halls is glaring. GW1 had awesome GHs and I miss them.

Nettle.9025:

A problem is that, at least in the current pvp meta, most of the popular builds are running heals that you can’t interrupt..

For the current meta sure, but that’s likely to change at some point. When heal sig gets 8% nerf, the active may see more use, who knows.
Also, this is really mostly true for PvP. in WvW, you’ll encounter a greater variety of builds (well to some extent anyway) because WvW offers different approaches to the game than PvP.

Well, if you have the time for it I think it would be great to dedicate special attention to each type of active heal in the game, how to recognize it and how to best interrupt it. And how to deal with builds that rely more on passive healing/regen.
The ability to deny an enemy direct healing is one of the main strengths of an interrupt build to me.

A simpler solution could be to simply replace the Chaos Armor from Chaotic Revival with Chaos Storm (30s CD maybe?) on your location. You would get Aoe daze & boons and allies could apply their own chaos armor (or confusion) with a finisher if possible.

It would be potentially more powerful, but also require more active player input for maximum effect.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Honestly, I rather like having all the useless traits crammed into one place. Chaos adept has some very powerful traits (fall damage, dissipation, illusionary defense, manipulation cooldowns), so anyone traiting chaos will never be wanting for a good trait to use in that slot.

Since all the useless traits are stuck there too, I never have to worry about dodging them in other slots, may as well stick everything bad together.

It has its advantages, sure, but I feel it drags down the whole line as a result. And Chaos is fast becoming my favorite line due to its huge versatility (power, conditions, boons, interrupt etc.). Like I said, none of the other 4 traits are particularly bad, but they do not really synergize with interrupt, stealth, boons or any of the other things that define the Chaos line.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Would it be too OP

If you have to ask…

Xaylin.1860:

I feel the same way. The thing is that every class got traits which relate do being downed or rally. Every class got a trait which mitigates falling damage. All of those traits are very unappealing for most game modes. Only the falling damage trait might see some use when WvWing or doing jumping puzzles. The issue the Mesmer faces is that all those traits are crammed into Chaos. I can’t think of any other class with a similar trait composition.

They’re not just crammed into Chaos, which is bad enough. They are all crammed into the same tier (Adept), which means half the Chaos adept traits rarely see any use at all. I have literally never seen a mesmer build that used any of those traits.

Well, stealth is the only real escape tool you have.
Shadowstepping is easily countered by any class that can leap. You don’t have reliable swiftness outside focus. Even with all of these, a thief or warrior is usually still faster than you.
With speed/trav runes you are getting there, but you’re still one of the slowest classes overall. I’d focus on build that can take down your opponent instead of running away.
Mesmers tend to get stronger the longer they can fight in one spot, use that to your advantage.

Profanity.6829:

Oh wow, and there so expensive, when will it be fixxed?

When thief, engi and warrior are done exploiting it. So probably never.

8/10 – so kawaii

Well… I don’t usually take the mask off, but if you insist…

chronometria.3708:

What concerned me was the coming ele traits.

“Here, have cool combat stuff for ele-dagger! Oh, you use a staff….well…have heals that only work on others as that’s what mindless group healbots need”.

So use daggers… you can’t really expect them to cater to every possible build choice with every weapon. It’s like complaining that Thief dagger mainhand is not a good support weapon…

Decoy is probably my favorite. Stealth+clone usually fools even experienced players, because it happens instantly. Most people will murder the clone before they realize you are gone, and if you have CD they are now crippled and you are running away laughing.

Blink is also very good. It can really mess with people when used right, which I love it for. Probably my favorite anti-thief tool.