Guild Wars 2

I haven’t been back in the game for too long and of course have been busy trying to catch up with the current situation, and Mirage is coming

I have a simple question for your builds, what is your DPS, i.e. tested on golems in the raid training area? I’m talking about all builds, power, hybrid, shatter, condi, chrono, whatever, for wvw roaming, solo pve HoT PoF content, solo-ing champs, dungeons/raids, different versions of builds that you run for most challenging situations.

Have you tested your DPS for the different game play styles/types and how does it match up? What is your DPS flat without boons/ideal group situations? What is the necessary amount of pressure in your rotations and builds for different situations?

This isn’t a DPS brag, simply what is realistic. If you need toughness or other forms of survivability in certain situations, what is the DPS like then? I know not everyone runs the same thing or follows the Meta or prefers certain play styles so what’s the optimal results you aim for?

Curious!

I feel good being the Commander tbh, even if the name just stuck and npcs can’t shake that habit, I think that’s realistic. racial thing aside, it just bothers me that we don’t sound as smart as we should be, both the VO, the lines, the interactions, I think the content feels unrealistic, sometimes unprofessional and stale. as the commander of the pact and having been through so much, we should have character development and rank reflected in the content our character delivers not like hey guys we will do this. WHAT? this happened? Wait come back! we aren’t boy scouts anymore. in the early days when we didn’t know what we were doing and were somehow thrown in the day yeah sure but this is years later in the timeline. we’ve seen the most horrific disgusting warfare situations and led entire fleets and armies

Oh! Wow I don’t remember that line and don’t know my memes… hahaha ashamed

I love Star Wars and am a huge nerd of movies, novels, games! but not sure I get the reference/link with mesmer? lol

Holosmith, Mirage! I can’t wait for the lightsaber and hoping that Mirage will be my playstyle bc chrono wasn’t really

I’m basically a retired player, what’s not to like about the new stuff? You can glide pretty much right off the bat, you can ride a raptor mount right off the bat with both new expansions. You don’t have to farm much or do the raids or dungeons if you don’t want to and just chill, socialize, have fun with some group events when you feel like it, run past mobs, just build for a bit of survivability. If you’re skilled, go solo some champs and events, no prob to keep your muscles warm. Have friends port you into new maps and just explore. Some places i can’t reach without certain masteries and im like oh well. I’m too lazy to grind for more ascended gear or max out masteries these days, my intense days are over, but i’m still enjoying myself. I think eventually i’ll complete most of the content over a long time. How is it bad to play casually? You can definitely play casually if you want to

Agree on unidentified having rarities, it’ll still save space, which is important and frustrating, because there will be like… 4/5 types of stacks. But i do want these stacks

Added the mount scaling realism issue mentioned by Shiren.

Can we compile feedback into one organized thread to make it easier for devs and ourselves as well? There have been quite some issues and feedback with the mounts discussed. Some of which I’ve seen personally and on the forums – some more high priority, some extra desirables – were:

- Too much dismounting/mounting when interacting, such as talking to NPCs or viewing vistas and bounty board: Thread

- Motion sickness due to camera/graphic effects while using mounts: Thread

- Being stuck on terrain, such as slopes, and slight obstacles, also while jumping, due to run up space/momentum, etc. (Mentioned in various threads)

- Some jump glitches, jump not triggering at the right time (somehow)

- Inability to strafe / suggestion to allow strafing: Thread

- Look Behind or 180s not possible on mount

- Mount feeling clumsy and heavy (which is for a lot of players desirable as it feels realistic): Thread

- Realistic mount size scaling between different character races i.e. Asura vs Charr, smaller vs larger character creation: Thread

- More dye options: Thread

- Ability to name your mount?

- More mount emotes including commands such as /sit /sleep /dance : Thread

- Ability for character to be in tonic form? Probably interprets to something about compatibility with more character model options/movements while on mount? Not sure how this one goes

- Mounts (all unlocked) appear in home instance? Play/feed with mounts? : Thread

Thanks to everyone who has contributed these suggestions and I hope you don’t think I’m stealing your ideas! Credits go to those who have posted these. Just compressing things.

Feel free to elaborate and add more concerns, but let’s try to make a comprehensive and simple list and try not to do too much back and forth as we’ve covered a lot of these in separate threads!!

Personally I’ve been enjoying the mounts so far, and thanks to Anet for this great addition to the game, and its realism

So we discovered the real reason why Mirage mesmers, a style from the Crystal Desert, don’t dodge roll/jump!

Apparently, they don’t like getting their clothes covered in sand.

Haha talk to Elite Nasrin Davis in the demo in Crystal Oasis for an intro to Mirage…..

tbh even horses can sort of side step if you’ve ridden one before. strafing would help but I do also like how the raptors feel currently though (like a motorbike someone said) it’s interesting and fun!

I would spend TONS of gems and irl money on these:

- unlimited permanent makeover kit / hair style (could have a cool down like once per day or something)
- more possible mounts in the future
- more teleport to friends / unlimited permanent teleport to friends
- infinite bottomless backpack! (though I understand if that creates server problems, how about a large enough inventory that dwarves the current max at least)

The Golem and Coztic was solo-able imo without too much effort, some other ones like Wyvern and Mushrooms were also fun to do, just make sure you are constantly mobile, plenty non-stop ways of escaping and kiting, but it’s not often that you actually get to do the whole thing alone because eventually someone comes along, so enjoy it while it lasts, but yeah, open world PvE in general shouldn’t be hard anyway

Mesmer has always been one of the best classes to solo, the constant mobility, stun breaks, blocks, evades, utilities, and you can design for condition removal too, while sustaining damage (of course its not as high of a dps burst than other classes) But from my experience, I’ve seen a lot of classes go down doing a lot of things but as a mesmer, it shines playing solo and staying alive, and just keep on going. At the very least you should be able to get away no problem even if you can’t finish something. Lately, in HoT, i’ve been soloing things by switching in the gs+staff and just running around, kiting, super boring, til it’s all done haha

Armor skins in game are always limited. Look at standard medium armor with all the trenchcoats and padding? And light armor for female characters are often revealing. If you’re talking about availability, this is a game-wide situation that can’t really be addressed unless you want Anet to change all their designs and intentions. If you’re talking about people’s choice, that’s something up to the player to decide right? I personally prefer looking pretty and misleading and dancing around enemies Not too many classes are like that, mesmers have alot of survivability and tanking ability too, especially with new elite specs, so it feels pretty impressive to have a dainty looking mesmer block a lot of hits. If you’re talking about Anet’s class mechanics, skills and designs, then that’s a totally different story that has been discussed for so long. Mirage is coming though, and we have to see how that feels. However, the simple answer is use outfits. There are heavy armor looking outfits, and something like a ninja, even a sci-fi exo-suit? there are selections available if you want to achieve a certain look, you shouldn’t have any problems!

Thieves.

Lol jk, thieves are np

I use a variety and tried various builds but my typical things for wvw are:

sword/sword + staff
sword/focus + staff
greatsword + staff

normally in undemanding environments it would just be standard gs + sword/focus

Imo, the mesmer is a versatile class and brings different specialities to the table and adapts to situations depending on what you’re going for. All mesmers should have every weapon in their inventory at their disposal whenever necessary

It’s an interesting question and I’ve ran various builds. I think i lean more on the aggressive side. Even when I run PU which is my lazy fallback build, I use stealth just for boons, untargeting and getting even closer and more attacks in, typically don’t sit around for the full stealth length. When using longer range weapons, the kiting still feels aggressive. Rather than kiting away, I kite into them and past them and around them? I want them to come after me with just as much aggression, bc that’s when I can most easily take them down. If they are cautious on the other hand then they may have more up their sleeve and it would be wise to. In most cases, people seem to try to “eat your face” and I’m like right back at you because I can do it better on a Mesmer xD I don’t feel I’m really at a lack of mobility or low on CDs, I guess if your management of usage is on the spot, you don’t have to actively hold back that much

I’d like a Charr as a pet.

LOLOLOL.

Feeling like the Starks with my direwolves lolol

As mentioned the strong and variety of builds possible. Melee ranger is too fun. Enemies are think they will win getting close and in your face and you’re just like sure, and get in their face instead lol

Ranger and Mesmer are my main classes, nothing else provides all this constant tricky mobility and quick multitasking finger work

Log Horizon and SAO fans! haha ^^

In-Game Name: Galaxy Idol Tetora

As for myself, I was active on WvW/commanding, PvE/community/guild events, and on OMFG a while ago, took a break and I’m back in game now semi-retired from serious gameplay, so I would love to lend a hand in helping/talking with newer mesmers or new players to the game in general if there is room!

In-Game Name: Erina Saeki
Role: Instructor
Home: TC
Play: PvE/WvW
Time: EST NA weekday afternoons/late evenings, weekend afternoons

Thanks!

I was so sad when I returned to game and saw how they messed up the Mimic skill…. It sometimes used to be part of my WvW zerg busting, I was invincible with it and could be a driver right through things loll argh

I see lots of valid points, I would opt in for ranged main hand too. But just the comment about shield for dueling, I personally believe the concept of dueling ought to be dancing around with minimum armor and just a minimalist weapon and prodding and feinting and parrying, not really hiding behind a big plate of armor hahaha.

Seriously this had never made any sense – the concept of a mesmer totally does not include a shield lol. Daggers are more appropriate I think… but a SHIELD??? haha I just don’t get it!

Great points and a good reminder! Largos would make a lot of sense, I was actually wondering about Bubbles (sea dragon) and them, I feel they had been driven away from their home too. And of course we’ve been waiting for the tengu area forever

Levetty.1279:

Just want to warn you that if your main focus is going to be living world/open world stuff then you will find Mesmer is significantly slower then other classes and can’t tag mobs as well. The speed issue is particularly annoying as new level 80 maps are being made with fewer and fewer waypoints (the newest map only has 2 and one of them is contested most of the time) so you will always find yourself at a disadvantage when trying to run to events.

I don’t have issues with PvE at all, constant swiftness with certain methods and so on and aoe is fine too, it’s not easy of course but there’s no problems with it honestly, you can still do it all fine and have fun with it. If people want something that’s the easiest and just need optimum results or efficiency then yeah maybe not Mesmer but it is not difficult at all. I’ve used my Mesmer to farm quite a few times lol. It takes some work but you can achieve decent or acceptable results. As a commander aside from wvw I’ve actually led a few farming trains and big group events in the past and was always the first in line, knowing where to go or when to start running and moving, staying faster than the warriors who were always rivals in speed – speed for mesmers from my experience has never been an issue. This includes the traited range blink and centaur runes and focus. Never had an issue myself. If you love Mesmer play style, it becomes a part of your instinct, you adapt and stretch your limits and boundaries

Good luck and have fun! Feel free to ask if you have questions – especially during the levelling journey, I loved my levelling experience and preferred doing it solo a with the biggest challenges possibly personally with staff and s/f and power and condi even without traits it was super fun

Just based on the personality in your post I think you’ll love the Mesmer LOL
Jokes aside, Mesmer requires a lot of crazy finger tap dancing, it’s not a class where you just sit around sipping tea while auto spamming stuff. The Mesmer is a super active class and super fun to play and look and feel like a boss.

It’s also not a class where you should be comparing NUMBERS. Like in PvE people say mesmers are bad bc it doesn’t dish out the direct dps that other classes ramp up like crazy. They say levelling is hard. But this is only the case if you don’t seek the thrill of PvE and challenge yourself. I had a blast levelling my Mesmer unlike any other class levelling in places 10 levels higher than me and soloing champs and entire group events with a ton of mobs. That’s what the Mesmer is good at, over stretching limits and never dying if you play your cards right. The damage is decent enough in PvE to not be an issue. If you don’t consider PvE a grind fest, farming, race, etc then you’ll have fun if you want to have fun. You can solo dungeons as a Mesmer and it will be a blast.

Mesmers in dungeons are great fun and you feel like a star when you consistently carry your teams through everything or even skip entire parts of it etc. mesmers are extremely useful and honestly I’ve seen requests for good mesmers to go dungeon run with them. Idk which servers or where or when people play but I’ve never had any issues with PvE Mesmer, in fact after using all the classes, Mesmer is the only class for me and it has been so incredibly fun on all fields. From my experience and several great Mesmers, we basically are the last standing in some tougher situations actually when we had to pioneer and break through new dungeons. The incredible mobility and escapes and utility we have makes us almost invincible if you do everything right. Mesmer can always keep going. The Mesmer is good at pushing the limits. But it’s really all up to player skill which makes it a great class imo.

They are not the king or queen of dps or hard farming or something but they are the class you want to take if you want to show off, stretch your boundaries, challenge yourself and have a ton of fun feeling great.

But of course Mesmer play style is not for everyone. And yes there are things or builds you can’t do in PvE with Mesmer.

What is least played is reserved for the special and the elite :P I am proud of being the least played class – even though it all seems pretty easy and second-nature to me xD Sometimes it’s all about play style, none of the other classes really did it for me. The satisfaction of all the crazy finger work and mobility and besting your opponents is just ahhhhh

I don’t understand the reasoning for giving Mesmers shields…. lol~

Pistol yeah or at least daggers or something? They’re duelist/deceptive/ninja ish right?

Haha great thoughts here but the issue is in our current world, weapons are not common occurrences. We are expected not to own weapons – it isn’t necessity for daily life or necessary for common professions. In a fantasy world, some form of weapons would be far more accessible and widely distributed, just even for hunting and defense against raiding centaurs or wild beasts and so on. As a poor example, rifles in some places in the Middle East would be cheaper than the weapons we can get here as prized possessions. So I believe that exact comparison would not hold up too well. We would have to think of a 1g basic weapon as say an iPod or something? LOL it’s hard to make the comparison. I guess just maybe a sort of a middle class basic item to have

Awesome, thanks so much for the recap! Yeah I left just before Scarlet began her finale, just a bit after the Tower of Nightmares stuff. (I’m not sure if I can remember the significance of that thing either) I feel bad that I’m asking questions here, but even playing the new maps and stuff hasn’t yielded that much info on what I missed (or I don’t know how to get to it). Few questions if I may:

- Do we know what Scarlet did or attempted to do with the ley line?
- How was the Pale Tree wounded? By the awakening or what we did?
- What was in the Pale Tree’s vision briefly?
- So as we all had speculated the Sylvari is linked to Mordy, anything on the difference between them and the Nightmare Court?
- Approaching Mordy, the Sylvari Pact members turned on the rest of the forces? Is this due to Mord’s corruption/influence?
- What’s this Divine Fire stuff from?

Forgotten and Mursaat is particularly of utmost interest! Yeah I’m looking forward to the expansion. Can’t wait for the sea dragon stuff either!

Thanks for the info!

I’ve been away from game for about a bit more than a year, and as a fan of the story and lore, I’ve been trying to catch up on what’s missed. So far, research and digging around has been difficult and I’m only catching glimpses, overviews, trailers, some gameplay video, speculation and stuff, sorry I’ve been unable to find anything!

Is there anywhere with a nicely compiled full recap/timeline and some decent detail about the actual lore implications in the past seasons/episodes (what we already know)? Or is there anyone who can fill me in personally? Should we have an official or pinned thread with a brief recap and lore talk if there isn’t any already?

Any links or anything would help!

Thanks!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Trial-Error-has-led-me-to-this-mesmer/

Mine is a power PU build, there’s been many threads asking for such in the past two weeks ! lol I think itd be nice to tweak my build to have more might stacking. Also nice to stack up bloodlust prior

Nevertheless they’re in my sig, and I usually swap out the bladeart one for diff weapons. Pretty versatile from my experience, i dont need to go specialized on any particular OH weapon stuff. And the traits are tweakable enough. I like my builds bc they’re stable, steady and lasts long. Not really for bursting and so on, when you go pure power with 30 trait points in for PU tho

But overall most power PU builds will be similar, there’s only so much you can do being so focused/niche. I liked one that i saw recently with the might stacking 23k health, 2.9k armor and 3.7k attack? and no Deceptive Evasion on our forums though. Was interesting

Valarauka.2719:

Check out blackdevil’s thread, it’s a better version of this.
Moving 20 points from Domination to Dueling gets you Deceptive Evasion, Phantasmal Fury, and both minor traits (Critical Infusion and Sharper Images) in that line are super valuable too.
Harmonious Mantras isn’t getting you much and GS training can be lived without pretty easily.

Also, full soldier’s is wayyy too tanky given how much stealth and protection you have. I would go Cavalier/Knight/Berserker mix if you want to stay power-focused, or mix in some Rabid if you want more condition damage at the cost of power.

I run a similar build but pure power ( that i made before reading his thread ) lol, it’s nice, but I’m trying to get away from deceptive evasion. it feels like a crutch that we all use, and it might open up other possibilities not using it. I agree that it’s bit too tanky, but you can tweak it to have even more damage. But I think the tankiness helps when there’s no deceptive evasion.

It looks like something I want to try haha. Imo, it’s not like a super new concept, but i like the numbers and effects. I want to see it in action. Imagine if you stacked up bloodlust stacks in WvW mobs before going to fight people too lol I’m going to try something like this. It has some insane survivability for sure. I’ve been trying to abandon clone dodges, but it’s been tough, because it’s such a big habit and feels so much slower without it. This looks like it can maintain pressure and survive while being a bit slower. Also agreed with Chaos, perhaps it can be switched out for something, possibly more situational

Staff is great for defense, mobility and stunbreaks. It’s a weapon of synergy to your other weapon set. I levelled in PvE exclusively with staff sword focus but i only use staff now if I’m caught in tougher situations like some crazy LS tough stuff or harder dungeons or events and champs i’m solo-ing etc. It keeps you and your illusions alive. Go in melee, drop phantasms and clones and burst, drop chaos storm all over yourselves and phase retreat out, it’s great damage when grouped with burst, But it’s really more of a pvp/wvw and survivability weapon. If you’re opting for pure damage in PvE, and you just don’t need the survivability at the moment, it’s not so much for a good choice. However, it really is a wonderful weapon. It is just great. Fun, useful and versatile.

going power than condition, though it has same/similar traits makes it different fundamentally but still it’s not a new idea

But OP, i can’t see how you’re having trouble with conditions, unless it’s a necro like you said, but necros is a diff issue altogether indeed lol. You can’t have enough condi removal to go against necros haha.

I’m always complaining about condition builds, but I’ve never had a problem with other classes or builds. with heal skill condi removal esp now with 2 condi removed, or slot in a disenchanter while roaming. I don’t find condition duration reduction that important.

Mesmers are based on evasion, damage mitigation, mobility, escape, etc. Don’t get hit by the conditions in the first place, getting good at prevention should be the first priority

The only way you can have speed is through runes honestly. it’s our only way about it unfortunately.

on the other hand i haven’t had any trouble with warriors. if they’re tank bunker etc, they’re probably getting from one place to their zerg… they dont pose a threat nor would i want to try to take them down. With the build i’m running it doesn’t have enough burst sometimes against a pure tank, but if the fight lasts longer I take them down slowly. It’s not often though because someone would likely join. In duel arrangements I took down a bunker regen warrior made for zergs and CC after like idk 20 minutes? lol but any other builds that’s not focused as a tank, yes it’s no problem really. It’s just a matter of time xD

Just abbrievate the most common skills and traits LOL

DE (deceptive evasion), IC (Illusionist’s Celerity), IP (illusionary persona), MI (Mass Invisibility), TW (Time Warp), MoD (Mantra of Distraction), MoC (Mantra of Concentration) , etc

PU is commonly referred to because it is becoming a popular build. Mainly it was often used for condi PU builds, which are heavy hitting condi but tanky, stealthy, hard to kill. PU is a trait line so it is used elsewhere too. I decided to use it on a phantasm build couple months back. It gives max toughness trait line and has a lot of stealth + boons making it super tanky. People think it is OP (especially the condi PU builds) or whatever.

It’s no glass for sure. I run a PU phantasm power build. it’s really nice decent steady damage and great to outlast harder fights. I use centaur runes for speed and bleed duration helps too. or use travelers!

Why do you need the melandru runes? You can easily switch to lemongrass poultry soup if you need it, or slot in a Disenchanter or null field etc in place of veil if there is need for it. Having 2.4k toughness is more than enough for wvw

you can see my builds in my signature for reference. I have a sword/sword gs and a gs/staff kiting machine, but it’s generally versatile to equip whatever u want, i often go with diff things like sword/focus staff, sword/pistol, whatnot, but i don’t like torch. i also stack bloodlust if i hv time to. I have a heal condi removal, with mantra or mirror its quite decent condi removal. However scepter/x, sword/x has been on my mind for consideration

scepter/torch is nice and defensive in this case, you can hang back, while you have ur other set for nice damage and pressure. I’m not confused by it

1. too OP
2. too fun

I just let them hit me with CC and then i stun break them… lol I don’t need stability with so much stunbreak and ^ yep @corey/pyro on mesmers xD

lol wait, nov a year ago? not nov a month ago? XD wow

(i never had issues with thieves at all really… as soon as i see a thief pop out on top of me, u immediately react… we have so much active defense.. even just a blink or phase retreat will get you out of immediate harms way, distortion, blurred frenzy, decoy, theres a million things you could do to a thief xD)

I run mirror primarily. The short CD, condi removal and perma swiftness on centaur runes but without having to worry about charging mantra and so on, even though the mantra is more non stop swiftness lol. The short CD is great, it feels like i have a crazy regen going on, i’m almost always spamming it, when my health is even slightly past perfect and it keeps me at full health all the time. Sort of like the new signet except manual lolol. The reflection is great as well. I don’t feel i’m missing anything by choosing mirror over the others.

Durp

fifteen chars

it’s a mesmancer!

Some good players are able to take down such a build with some work. I think it’s good that we have such a strong build because if you look at other classes, there are some that are considered OP, easy to use but easy to win. We do need some strong mesmers there that are just solid and an actual threat and frustrating to face. Mesmer already takes a good amount of work compared to some classes, even with an “easy build”. And as said above, it doesn’t work in ALL situations. It’s great for roaming pretty much.

That would be the case of wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mass_Invisibility

lol xD

Qaelyn.7612:

Yeah one hotjoin was enough to convince me not to bother with that. The mantra is too slow and the disenchanter too unreliable for the current meta.

Thanks takatsu, sounds similar to Blackdevil’s hybrid.

Yeah, I realized it was similar traits after i was running it for a while xD blackdevil does get some condi. which might be nice but i was never one for hybrid-ing

I think my build would be better if you arrange it to gain more might stacks. I just prefer to go steady. I reckon it could do a lot more damage if you get might or even grab a few bloodlust weapons and farm mobs then take it into action