Guild Wars 2

I have to admit I’d be shocked to see a 4k crit on spatial surge. My current gear is pretty bad (and actually not optimized for power at all), but I only crit up to like 650-700 with that exact build.

I tried the mantra build in the Mists running with pure glass cannon setup (berserker, scholar runes, but no sigil) and with charged mantras and 3 active illusions the maximum damage from Spatial Surge was 3441 which is 1147 per tick on the light training dummy.

Note: 3rd tick on the was doing exactly same damage as previous two.

So it should be possible to get 4k+ cumulative damage in WvW when we add into equation boons and conditions and undergeared target. No 4k single crits though.

I went with Asura. I like the Radiation Field racial skill which type of combo field that mesmers don’t have access to (poison) . And color palette of asura racial skills is matching mesmer palette so it is a clear sign. Main deciding factor was that I like the race itself, of course.

I’m not saying that mesmers are necessarily better damage dealers than other classes, because I don’t have suffient data to say that. My only other experience is an level 80 elementalist, but when I see people feeling “useless” or they are saying that mesmers “plain suck” or “are completely broken” then it is a clear sign that they are not utilizing complete potential of the profession.

Also I don’t think it is safe to assume that every player who doesn’t think that mesmers suck have no idea about the performance of other professions.

xerukm.9256:

I haven’t checked to see if it applies to the clones if they use a leap, but I assume it would, which would also be a benefit.

It applies the effect to illusions.

Examples:
- Illusionary Leap through ethereal combo field -> clone gets Chaos Armor. Swap afterwards and you will get Chaos Armor too.
- The Prestige inside ethereal field and the blast finisher will apply AoE Chaos Armor to everybody near including your illusions.
- Phantasmal Swordsman can periodically leap into the combo fields gaining various buffs (ethereal – Chaos Armor, light – retaliation, etc).

TdcTaz.9703:

Is it possible to overcome the challenges with the Mesmer, sure, but it just takes 3-4 times as long as any other class.

So other professions are killing things 3-4 times faster than this? Wow!

Porkchops.3986:

Can someone test to see if Phantasmal Haste (20% recharge) is working on trident/spear phantasms? I

I tested it right now and it is affecting Illusionary Whaler (Trident) , but not Illusionary Mariner (Spear).

TdcTaz.9703:

- the low DPS without atleast one or two phantasmal up (which takes time and cooldowns)

The main feature of the mesmer’s playstyle is using illusions (not only phantasms), so it is obvious that without them the DPS is lower.

TdcTaz.9703:

- the phantasmals and clones can get one shot by anything, this means if there are many mobs you cannot get any phantasmals up and running OR and this is where it gets really bad, if there is any aoe from the mobs all your phantasmals just dies.

If you are using melee illusions mobs that are cleaving or have PBAoE attacks, then of course they die. If you are spawning all the illusions on 1 place so that everything will get killed at once, then yes, they will die too. It is all about placement and managing your illusions. If your illusions are dead faster than you can recast them and you are not even timing your shatters when you expect them to die, then you are doing something wrong (build or playstyle).

TdcTaz.9703:

The Mesmer is IMHO completly broken in PvE in a very bad way.

It is not broken. I would suggest you to watch/read some guides and get more experience or just move on.

Talking about combo fields .. Ethereal combo field with leap finisher (staff #2, sword #3) is Chaos Armor, with blast finisher (Prestige) it is AoE Chaos Armor which is useful. Duelist can stack confusion through the field and Warden too.

We have also acess to light field too (Temporal Curtain, Veil) and Asura mesmers can utilize also poison fields (Radiation Field).

Here is a good reference about the effects and who has access to which fields and finishers.

Endolex.8327:

Thing is when I use the Focus 4 on where my Warden is (to pull the mobs to him), it pulls the mobs everywhere across the map, but not to anywhere close to the Curtain (or Warden). I don’t understand how to influence the outcome? Or is it a bug?

It should pull mobs towards the curtain but the distance of the pull is constant. If mob is close to curtain it will move to the other side of curtain. If his distance from the curtain is matching the pull distance he should be moved right into the center.

Here is a topic about it.

It is definitely not that easy to use to pull mobs towards the Warden’s AoE – at least not for me at the moment.

I would recommend having a look this video demonstrating big pulls using shatter build. The discussion to this video can be found on reddit.

MrPrometheus is demonstrating his leveling bouncy staff build by pulling group of mobs here.

There is also a video demonstrating some pulls but it feels bit slower than the previous examples.

Try switching to focus offhand for pulls involving multiple mobs and practicing how to maximize uptime of the iWarden on the mobs. Unfortunately I have no videos demonstrating that, but Blurred Frenzy with the Warden next to you can result in a big AoE.

I would say that playing mesmer requires more “finese” to be really effective than just charging and pressing a button but I consider the skillcap as an advantage. You can be way less effective with bad build for given situation, but if you can adapt to the situation you will shine.

I’m currently not that experienced myself compared to lot of other players so that is the reason I’m linking videos instead of writing guides. There are a lot of people that are not satisfied with performance of the mesmers, but from the videos and some comments you can see that there are people thinking that mesmers are fine in PvE too and they are not afraid to demonstrate that.

Fast tagging in zergy DE can be a issue for mesmers but maybe this can help a bit.

Tooltips for icons showing that mantras are charges not correct.

When you charge Mantra of Pain the tooltip will show “Mantra of Pain Ready”. Mantra of Concentration will show “Mantra of Concentration Ready”.

BUT

1) Mantra of Recovery is showing “Power Return” on the tooltip which is not consistent with showing the name of the mantra itself.
2) Mantra of Distraction is showing “Mantra of Confusion Ready”.
3) Mantra of Resolve is showing “Mantra of Removal Ready”.

EDIT: Tested on 20th September 2012.

Endolex.8327:

The video for the comments on reddit is only about PvP, as far as I can see. But yes, this belongs somewhere else.

Last time I checked the video was showing big pulls in Orr and most of the comments are about PvE. There are multiple videos showing bigger pulls (this one, MrPrometheus and partially the one mentioned in the linked video) and everybody is using different build so I guess it shows that mesmers are not that bad in that area and you don’t have to run with single build to be able to successfully pull that off.

You are right, it is offtopic and I’m sorry, but I cannot help myself when I see players thinking mesmers are very weak. The profession has its problems and need some polishing, but it is not THAT bad.

Endolex.8327:

I continue to feel rather weak in PvE, having to struggle with specific weapon sets and rotations to achieve just barely the same results like I got when just randomly equipping weapons and facerolling other profession I played. And groups of normal mobs are a big problem, especially in Personal Story.

Have a look here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/104qhj/re_mesmers_in_orr_no_seriously_its_fine/ .

There are a lot of mesmers than don’t feel weak in PvE. Maybe the playstyle is just not for you or your approach to the profession is suboptimal. Mesmer is a profession with playstyle that won’t suit everybody’s taste.

Endolex.8327:

but you are a proud owner of Portal which he will love everytime you will be doing jumping puzzles

You can’t be serious, of course. The use of the Mesmer Portal is VERY situational at best in PvE, and Jumping Puzzles are neither something I focus on nor can they be compared to general movement (which you do, like, all the time).

Good guess! That was my reply to Aimeryan for “doing things with a friend” in PvE hence the quote and there is a smiley at the end. It was definitely not a serious response to your post.

I have no objections against your suggestions, but maybe you should edit your first post and put your suggestions there to making it look more constructive, because “feels underpowered to me in many other way” and “his seems like just another hobbling flaw” and are making it unnecessarily look just like another QQ.

Good job, but please don’t show it to players of other professions so they won’t QQ even more.

I’m (currently :P) less experienced players than you so I don’t feel qualified to comment on the play and build, but my $0.02:

1) Next time it would be better if you edited your 1st post and added information about the music and build instead of posting 3 posts in a span of an hour which looks pretty spammy and bumping that often is not necessary.
2) Weapons in your linked builds are not correct, you have one handed sword there instead of GS.

Looking forward to seeing more of videos.

That is great.

Guides by Mr Prometheus, mesmermesmerised.com and quite a few informative posts by experienced mesmers changed my opinion about mesmer playstyle and I’m loving it myself.

Levetty.1279:

But why should classes have their out of combat exploration ability be balanced around their in combat ability?

I’m not aware of the existance of “out of combat exploration” labels for any skills/traits in the game, but I may be just unknowledgeable. Drawing an artificial line between something you would like to have improved and the rest is not really solving my concerns because everybody can do that in a way that helps his case.

I have nothing against players that want to have mesmers improved, I just don’t like “but profession X can do that so mesmers should be able to do that” type of argument as explained above.

I’m not native english speaker so I hope I’m clear.

Aimeryan.1247:

All I can say is, it led to situations where I found it difficult to do things with a friend of another class, or it caused him to have to wait around for me. Me and my friend could have had more fun.

Ask him to change his weapons/traits/utilities to help to speed things up a bit by giving swiftness also to you if it is that important and/or use focus offhand and blink. Also remind him kindly that you may not be the Usain Bolt of GW2, but you are a proud owner of Portal which he will love everytime you will be doing jumping puzzles and he will be too tired to jump properly and other skills he will surely love.

Of course I would love mesmers to be faster than they are, but I’m bit afraid that arguing in the style of “Profession X, Y, Z can do that, so we want to do that too” and getting what we want with that argument may result in some kind of precedence leading to profession normalization. Other professions may then want to have something close to our nice elites, Portal, stealth abilities, etc. and I’m not really fan of that. Maybe that is just me being paranoid, but I love “having my niche” even if it means being slower.