Guild Wars 2

Having used IL many, many times on the way to 80….

You just can’t use this thing in a clutch situation because unless you and the target are standing on polygons with less than a pixel difference in plane, your chances are iffy at best of actually having the thing fire. I’ve resigned myself to this and only use it PB to roll away from a now-rooted target, but it’s disappointing…sure would be nice if the skill functioned as the tooltip describes.

Oh well, nerf mesmers.

EasymodeX.4062:

A +0 IP (no illusions out) shatter will not do enough damage to earn loot.

Yes, it will. I crit for 3k with it. I hope that’s enough for loot credit, keeping in mind loot is not 100% on mobs.

This is part of this thread I don’t get. The numbers posted by “mesmer is fine” folks seem to be completely out of touch with my experience. Maybe that’s because I’m just wearing rare armor / exotic weapons and don’t have that last wave of armor yet; if the rare→exotic armor upgrade is that amazing, well, perhaps that’s what I’m missing.

Elsewhere in the thread, proponents of “mesmer is fine” have yet to address the fact that 2.5 seconds (for full illusions) is greater than 0 seconds (the time it takes most other classes with AoE to use it), the travel time which Terrant brings up, the fact that event participation code doesn’t seem to attribute confusion damage from CS to the mesmer who spawned it, etc.

I don’t know many Mesmers who are unhappy in pvp / wvw — and I don’t think they were unstoppable juggernauts who needed a nerf beatdown, either. Maybe in arena, I’ve mainly done wvwvw. So the whole “in pvp we rock” is sort of irrelevant to this thread.

The one necro who apparently can’t tag stuff in orr, idk what to tell you. You’re kind of in the minority on this complaint, unlike a lot of the folks here on the board.

One of the suspicions I have that is not expressed in this thread is that damage in general is not counted correctly for mesmers in DEs. Especially in dragon DEs I have found that if I focus on staff, buff allies with CS, stack confuse with scepter and block projos with focus, I’ll often get bronze or nothing. If I nuke my face off with GS + sword/pistol or sword/focus and just go for dps, I’ll get gold…but it doesn’t really feel like I bring anything to the table in that config that another class doesn’t bring more of.

So here’s the good news: on my journey to 80 I played every weapon combo available, and they are all viable for world pve.

Here’s the bad news: You will underperform in dungeons. No matter what build you pick, another class will do it better. I finished CoF EXP the other day with a 3-mesmer, 2-ranger group, so you’re not completely impotent; however, you’ll constantly wish that you had <x> class, that could do a better job than whatever you are doing. People will tell you they don’t want a mesmer and wait for another class to LFG.

In WvWvW people will say you are super OP, but in reality, you are super OP in 1v1, 1v2 and sometimes 1v3 if you are clever and they are not. Otherwise you are strong, but not ridiculous. Your phantasms will get bursted down so fast you’ll wonder if they got damage off.

On the plus side again, yoinking people off of ramparts to their doom using the focus is ultra hilarious. Moa is one of, if not the, greatest small-fight skills in the game. Noobs will be perplexed by your illusions. Sword / torch (my fave) or sword / pistol makes you a really fun and tricky melee class. Using sword’s #3 to create a clone and root, then rolling away and invising on torch’s 4, fools more people than you would really think. Then they’re on fire.

I’m not the greatest mesmer on the planet, but it’s the only class I play and I feel pretty successful in pve and pvp…but in doing so I recognize that I could be a lot more effective if I played classes which are both easier to control and do more damage.

(Also, they don’t get nerfed every patch…unlike Mesmers who still have a ton of broken / incorrect abilities )

I don’t use staff almost ever; I pretty much play GS / sword+torch or scepter+pistol. I do understand how to drop an izerker and ipistoleers :P And let me be clear that I don’t feel completely useless. However, even a rudimentary parser among friends will show you that in large events where bosses have frequent, high damage AoE, our dps is not great.

In some events (Kol comes to mind) the ability to keep sending in hordes of clones at a steady pace can be a useful tanking mechanic. Against ordinary mobs I have no problems whatsoever. In PvP I absolutely love my class. However, like OP, I find myself hard pressed to want to pay the money to port over to a dragon where I do nothing but spam DPS skills for little to no reward. I also find many boss fights a little depressing — the best role I can play there is often an accessorry role, where I’m the extra condition damage / buffs from staff or mirror blade, with some minor DPS as well.

I don’t know how it is on every server, but it’s a telling sign that many of the devoted dungeon runners on Darkhaven have told me flat out that they don’t want a mesmer because we don’t bring much that’s compelling.

I love my mesmer too, but like you, I’ve given up on pve. Some dragon fights I can spend the entire fight nuking the dragon in level 80 endgame gear with green gems, and I’ll get bronze and no chest. That’s extremely disheartening.

I’m glad we’re good in pvp — that’s what I enjoy anyway — but it’s too bad that our DPS is so bad against large “boss” mobs in both DEs and in dungeons. I feel kind of bad letting my team carry me in dungeons when I could be a second elementalist or something more useful.

Internet tough guys rollseyes

Honestly, this is one of the least grindy games I’ve ever seen. I don’t know, maybe the late 70’s will slow down or something, but up through 70 I’m hitting a little more than 1 level per hour, and I am a 100% completionist. Definitely NOT optimizing for xp gain.

You’d be better served learning a variety of class mechanics on your way to 80 so that you can participate in sPvP or WvWvW more effectively, IMO. But to each his own…