New Mesmer needing advice on gear and build

Hi everyone!

I've been a casual player since GW2 was released but only recently started delving into the game more. I've just "boosted" a Mesmer and have read a lot about gear and builds but it can get pretty confusing which is why I'm asking all of you for help.

Right now I'm just concerned with standard world PVE - not doing Fractals or PVP yet. I'm looking for a good standard build that will do get damage while still providing decent survivability. I ended up with Soldier's Exotic Gear (not sure if I just picked this or not...don't remember) which seems to be ok but I always like to check with those who have played the class and know what works best.

Thanks very much in advance!!

EF

Do you have any expansions? I guess you do if you boosted a mesmer so i'm gonna assume you have acces to elites too, so here's some tips.

You really have to play the class a bit to understand what it does and how. That's true for all classes, but especially true for mesmer.

Your primary mechanic is creating and shattering clones. Depending on your build, you'll either use this constantly or ignore it entirely (weird, i know). Clones look exactly like you and other players can't differentiate them from you and they deal 1 damage, but can deal conditions, especially Mirage ambush skills (if you have the right trait). So if you primarily want to do conditions, you'd choose a build with clones and shatter them a lot. Phantasms look like ghosts and deal a lot of damage, but unlike clones, it's not wise to shatter them (although you can if you need to daze a boss to break its defiance bar etc.). They do more damage the longer they stay alive.

So there's a shatter build, and a phantasm build going on basically.

Shatters:

F1: Power shatter, scales with power, does damage and nothing elseF2: Condition shatter, scales with condition damage, applies confusion (which deals damage + extra damage when the enemy uses a skill)F3: Daze shatter, good fro breaking boss defiance barsF4: Panic button, use it when you're about to dieF5: Chronomancer only - Shatter clones and make a "copy" of your current cooldowns, health and some other stuff. then after a few seconds (depending on how many clones you shattered, you return to the exact place you used it with exact cooldwons and health you had prior to shattering. It's extremely tricky to use, but once you get the hang of it, you basically get free skill casts and can even revert to being alive after being downed.

Weapons:

Sword: Good power weapon, has distortion (evade) while dealing damage, and the off hand sword phantasm is the highest damage dealing phantasm mesmers have. Duals swords is great for core mesmer and chronomancer. Has a block.

Greatsword: Ranged power weapon, doesn't apply conditions, kinda lacking all around, but pretty good for farming trains and when you need to keep your distance, because the farther away you are from your target, the more damage you do. GS phantasms hit an area, but are slow.

Staff: Power weapon (although you'd mistakenly believe it's a condi weapon because it applies conditions - that's not why you use it). Great evade skill, not much else. Staff phantasm deals more damage the more conditions the target has so it's great for world bosses that have players apply thousands of conditions on them, but it scales with power, not condition damage. Chaos storm can provide a combo field (axe 2 will apply more confusion if executed inside a chaos storm) but is on a long cooldown. Staff is kinda all over the place and people don't use it generally, but it's fun to play with when you're not required to do damage of for world bosses where no one cares what weapon you're using.

Axe: Condition weapon. Can apply around 30 stacks of confusion with a proper combo and has a lot of mobility, Mirage only. Axe 2 generate clones, fastest clone generation weapon mesmers have.

Scepter: Condition weapon, autoattack slowly generates clones, has a block, and scepter 3 skill applies confusion. Unremarkable otherwise, but good to combo with the axe when you want to apply more confusion than you'll ever need on a target.

Focus: Utility weapon. Phantasm it creates is weak but it reflects projectiles and looks cool. Not very useful a lot of the time, but sometimes it can be. Focus 4 gives you a field you pass through to get haste, and the second time you activate it pulls all enemies to it's center. Pretty handy for focusing minibosses (like golems in chaos fractal), so that your party can decimate them faster and all in one place.

Torch: Good off hand for power builds because the torch phantasm gives you and your party ferocity (critical). It also burns stuff and focus 4 has stealth which is not that useful in PvE, but it's good for WvW and PvP. In PvE, stealth is ok for legging it when your other survival skills are on cooldown or for initiating fights since it burns enemies when it ends.

Pistol: Power/Condition weapon, depends on your build, but if you use sinister or viper's (power, precision, ferocity +- expertise) gear, it's critical hits (along with a proper dueling trait), will cause bleeding on targets, so it will utilize most out of that 3 stats, it scales with power, needs critical chance to start bleeds on targets and that bleed is then affected by condition damage and expertise. Pistol 5 is a good breakbar skill and good for dazing trash mobs because it jumps from one to another.

Shield: Chronomancer only, has more utility than i can count especially due to Shield 4 giving you 2 blocking chances, and it summons a phantasm for each block that gives Alacrity or quickness to you and your party (skills cooldown faster - cast skills faster). Shield 5 gives stuns and quickness i think. It's really good if you're a chronomancer and you should always have it in any chronomancer build.

Aquatic weapons: Both are useless and not worth talking about. Spear is kinda power weapon, trident is kinda like staff but meh...

Specializations:

Domination: Good for interrupts, applying debuffs to enemies like weakness and vulnerability.

Dueling: Great for power builds and phantasms since you'll be keeping your phantasms alive most of the time and won't shatter then. Then traits like Fencer's Finesse combined with a sword/sword combo can really hurt the longer your sword phantasms are alive.

Chaos: Focused on condition damage and shattering clones, gives you boons for shattering, condi damage the more toughness you have etc. Tanky shatter specialization.

Inspiration: Help your party with magic. Don't use this solo, it's not really for solo play, but it has a trick. Restorative mantras will heal you and allies when you finish preparing a mantra. Then just put Mantra of pain on auto attack and GG you're invulnerable because that mantra will damage enemies, deplete after 2 casts and you'll automatically prepare it again which will heal you. I don't know if this still works, but it worked great for core mesmer builds.

Illusions: Kind of a must have for either shatter or phantasm build, but which traits you take depends on what you want to do. If you want to keep phantasms then you'll take Phantasmal Force which will increase their damage the longer they're alive. If you want to shatter you'll instead take Master of Fragmentation which improves your shatter skills.

Mirage: Confusion, shatter, confusion, shatter, evade, evade, etc... You get ambush skills different for each weapon, but the best ones are from axe and scepter for condi and sword for power. You get mirage cloak which means you can evade while standing still or reviving someone (it doesn't break your actions so wether you're attacking or reviving or whatever, it will evade unlike a regular dodge that will interrupt whatever you're doing. Generates tons of clones with Self Deception trait and makes all your clones use an ambush skill if you have Infinite Horizon trait selected. Best for condi builds, but great for power too (albeit a bit specific, power mirages are kinda more PvP oriented).

Chronomancer: Can use wells, has Alacrity, and is generally a support role. Use this if you want to raid, but the rotation for the chronomancer has ungodly amount of complex steps so beware. Complex to learn, focused on party support with low personal DPS, but great breakbar skills.

I won't go into detail about utility skills since this is already too long but just a few notable ones:

Signet of Humilty: Completely depletes a boss' breakbar in most cases. Or turn someone into a moa, whatever...Signet of Ether: Heal and reset phantasms so you can cast a second one right away. Use this in phantasm builds.Other signets give you condi damage and duration or boons.

Portal: If you played the game, you know what this does. People will love you then discard you like trash when they're done with you. You get used to it. Sometimes you'll get money for portaling people to difficult jumping puzzles, just don't ask for money, it's not cool. If they donate, great, if not, it's ok. Use mimic before you cast the exit portal to make it refresh faster.

Blink: Your best friend in WvW.

Jaunt: When you have Self Deception trait, Jaunt (and any deception skill) generates a clone as long as you have at least one active. You can also use it to get out of AOE and stuff.

Feedback: Reflects projectiles. Extremely needed in some situations.

Mantra of Pain: With Inspiration specialization, can heal you as you deal damage (if that trick still works). Since it will be on auto attack, after a while you'll start to notice the brain damaging sound the mantra makes when prepared, and if you didn't turn off player chatter, you'll want to strangle your character after just a few hours of using this because they'll constantly spew the same lines over and over. That's the tradeoff of being constantly healed i guess lol.

Gear:

Core Mesmer: Berserker (power, precision, ferocity)Chronomancer: Commander's and Minstrel's gear because of boon duration, or berserker's if you're on a budget.Mirage: Viper's for Phantasm mirage or Trailblazer's for confusion shatterer mirage, both have expertise (condition duration). Trailblazer's will bankrupt you, but you can use dire instead.

Here's the build i use (with sample gear, you can use dire instead with nightmare runes, the gear i put there is expensive):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAna7anELD1LjNoBWoBMMjlhjyMA2sGCd0KtTzf67+vH-jBSoABfp/JmnUAAqC8maP1s/gMnUBJVC+nyv1BIAnr5aumr5O35O3H4AH4AH4AGgDM35eg5O3DcgDcApAgZnG-e

This build will make you just make clone after clone, and shatter them for tons of confusion. Plus, you're tanky.If you want, i can make a few core mesmer builds in this tool, if you need help.

Thanks so much Veprovina for taking the time to explain all of this to me. I know that the Mesmer class is very complex which is why I'm interested in playing it and have been for about a week now. I have 2 other level 80's (Ranger and Necromancer) which seem to be more straight forward with their play styles than the Mesmer which is the reason for my post.

I'm about 45% done with Chronomancer (I only have HoT atm but will be getting PoF soon) so I haven't played that aspect of Mesmer yet but plan to. All of the information you've provided here is awesome but I'm not familiar with the class enough to know what I'll like so several different builds would be very helpful so I can try them out.

Please keep in mind that I'm a beginner and need to work up to the more complex play styles and builds.

Thanks so much for your help!

EF

I wouldn't recommend Chronomancer to a beginner to be honest. I played mesmer as my main since i started the game and i still can't "properly" play it. I mean, you can play it and it's fun, but if you want to do fancy stuff with it (like keep your parties alacrity on all the time, constant boons etc.) then it's hard. It's good for general PvE though and i'd recommend using it like that for a while until you feel comfortable with it. Chronomancer mechanics are very tricky.

If you want something straightforward and easy to learn, you can use my Mirage build. It's based on shatters and stacking confusion. Has a lot of survivability and if you use dire gear instead of trailblazer it's not even that expensive to gear up. You'll have to do Twilight Arbor for nightmare runes though, nowhere else to get them.

As for a core mesmer, here's a build i used until i got some elite specializations:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhIQRAsc8fnsIClohdoBGoBMrhlVDCdLnpKnHJJRvcDjIAA-jBBXgAPKB7V/BQ5Xo+HA-e

So a bit of an explanation:

**Party play that focuses on healing and defending others***

This build focuses on keepeng your phantasms up and attacking enemies. This is mostly useful for bosses as most trash mobs will die from a few hits of your sword or some shatter skills. Don't use F2 shatter with this build, it's useless. Use F1 (Mind Wrack).Use berserker everything for gear. Power, precision and ferocity. You don't need defense here, you can dodge and use sword 2 for evading as well as F4 distortion.

Inspiration specialization (for party play):Put Mantra of Pain on auto attack (Ctrl + click it or something, idk). This will heal your allies constantly as you cast it, this applies to your phantasms too. Whenever you gain distortion, everyone in your party will gain distortion too. You can save some lives with this, and your phantasms will grant everyone regeneration. So now you're a nice team player mesmer and you and your party have some more survivability.

Dueling:Use sword phantasm for this one. So with Dueling traits set up like that, your phantasms have fury (crit chance), bleed targets when they crit, you gain crit chance when hitting enemies below 75% health, you and your illusion stack ferocity (crit damage) as they and you hit, and your crits do more damage. Not sure if this applies to phantasms too, that last trait, but with this you're a crit whore kind of character. Your every other hit will crit. It's kind of ridiculous.

Illusions:

Your shatter skills inflict confusion. Not that needed here, but it's the first automatic trait so you'll live with it. You gain increased damage and crit damage for each of your active illusions, so keep as many clones/phantasms up at all times, plus, illusion skills have reduced cooldowns now and your phantasms attack more often (each attack they pull will trigger sooner). Last trait favors keeping your phantasms alive (Which is not hard as they regenerate each other lol, kinda broken, but good for us :sweat_smile: ), meaning the longer they're alive and doing damage, the more damage they will do.

Utility skills are set up for fractals, bosses and strong enemies. Signet of Illusions makes your phantasms have more health and stay alive, signet of inspiration gives you haste and random boons, plus it copies boons to your party, and signet of humilty is for breakbar damage.

This build uses Sword/Sword, and Sword/Torch combo.

Example of a boss fight:Start with torch 5 to summon a torch phantasm that will give you and everyone fury. Switch to sword/sword. Summon a sword, phantasm, use Signet of Ether to recharge sword phantasm and summon another. Now you have 3, 2 that attack, and 1 that buffs you and your party.

And that's about it, use sword skills and torch skills while your phantasms do their jobs. Shatter them for breakbar damage with F3, or for distortion with F4, and resummon when on cooldown.

Solo play or party play that focuses on damage, not on healing and defending others

Just swap Inspiration with Domination

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhIQRAsc8fnsICdqhdoBGoBUrhFVDiMAjo4ldoEDAtLp5KA-jBBXgA9q/Ao87RJYouHA-e

Domination

Apply vulnerabilty, activating a signet gives you distortion (evading), phantasms do more damage, etc, everything like the above build, only slightly upgraded damage without the party utilites.

As for chronomancer, i won't detail much about it because chronomancer is a meta raid build and there's plenty of guides on it here: https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/builds/

Hope this helped!If you need me to explain how the mirage build works, just say so.

Thanks again Veprovina! I appreciate all of your information and the time you take to help me out. I set up my build like suggested from your core build before the elite specs and it's working great. I find that I like switching back and forth between dual swords and Greatsword better for my play style but everything else is set up like yours. Damage is better and my suvivability is still excellent.

I'm getting the new expansion for Christmas so I'll try out your Mirage build then.

Thanks again for all your help. I've played Wow since 2005 and Guild Wars 2 has blown that game away in every way but especially with it's community :)

EF

For basic PVE: Mesmer has a lot of active defenses that you can use to make up for defensive stats; Distortion on Signets from Domi, Sword 2 and the like, plus F4 shatter as a panic button.Marauder is a fairly good casual set for power builds and since it has high precision especially benefits you. Assassin is also good (very slightly better than zerk especially if you build for on-crits) but glassy.

Most of your offhands offer some survivability as well: Sword has a block with cc, Torch has a stealth, Focus's swiftness curtain also doubles as a pull if you need to gather enemies or run away and buy time, Pistol has cc on 4 targets. Staff also has a blink, Greatsword has a knockback.

Mantras are often derided but they can be godsends (the daze mantra is aoe, for one). Knowing how to use blinks to increase evasion is also useful. Reflecting on ranged enemies can often make a huge difference.

@echolynfan.2049 said:Thanks again Veprovina! I appreciate all of your information and the time you take to help me out. I set up my build like suggested from your core build before the elite specs and it's working great. I find that I like switching back and forth between dual swords and Greatsword better for my play style but everything else is set up like yours. Damage is better and my suvivability is still excellent.

I'm getting the new expansion for Christmas so I'll try out your Mirage build then.

Thanks again for all your help. I've played Wow since 2005 and Guild Wars 2 has blown that game away in every way but especially with it's community :)

EF

Yeah, you can definitely use greatsword with that build. You don't need to be only melee, and the GS phantasm does a lot of AOE damage (it's just that it's slow), so there's that too. And as @Cwnannwn.7681 said, you can also use Assassin's gear if you want more critical damage, both are fine but you don't need defensive attributes on gear as a mesmer, we have a lot of evades built into skills so it shouldn't be hard to stay alive, even if we are glassy.

Mirage is different, in a shatter build, the Chaos trait line has Chaotic Transferrance trait which gives bonus condition damage based on how much toughness you have. So Dire gear and Trailblazer's gear is great for that. Trailblazer's is insanely expensive though. You can also use Viper's for mirage and instead of Chaotic Transferrance pick something else from that trait tier. But you'll see what i mean when you decide to play mirage, it's quite different than core mesmer.

The main thing is, just have fun with it, and don't be afraid to experiment, use builds as guidelines, but if you see some synergy from a trait you want to use, try it out, you can always switch traits for free, so experimentation doesn't hurt.

@Cwnannwn.7681 said:For basic PVE: Mesmer has a lot of active defenses that you can use to make up for defensive stats; Distortion on Signets from Domi, Sword 2 and the like, plus F4 shatter as a panic button.Marauder is a fairly good casual set for power builds and since it has high precision especially benefits you. Assassin is also good (very slightly better than zerk especially if you build for on-crits) but glassy.

Most of your offhands offer some survivability as well: Sword has a block with cc, Torch has a stealth, Focus's swiftness curtain also doubles as a pull if you need to gather enemies or run away and buy time, Pistol has cc on 4 targets. Staff also has a blink, Greatsword has a knockback.

Mantras are often derided but they can be godsends (the daze mantra is aoe, for one). Knowing how to use blinks to increase evasion is also useful. Reflecting on ranged enemies can often make a huge difference.

All great advice and info - thanks so much Cwnannwn!!!

EF

@Veprovina.4876 said:

@echolynfan.2049 said:Thanks again Veprovina! I appreciate all of your information and the time you take to help me out. I set up my build like suggested from your core build before the elite specs and it's working great. I find that I like switching back and forth between dual swords and Greatsword better for my play style but everything else is set up like yours. Damage is better and my suvivability is still excellent.

I'm getting the new expansion for Christmas so I'll try out your Mirage build then.

Thanks again for all your help. I've played Wow since 2005 and Guild Wars 2 has blown that game away in every way but especially with it's community :)

EF

I just got PoF and I'm super excited about the mounts and I'm in the process of training for Mirage so I can try out your build. You've been awesome - ty!!!

EF

Nice! Hope you have fun with it like i have! :smile:

I actually converted my viper's armor to dire (+toughness, +vitality, +condition damage), and slotted runes of the undead in it. The trailblazer's + Runes of perplexity combo is still a better option for PvE, but like i said, that's gonna bankrupt you. If you already have ascended armor, just converting it will cost you around 300 gold, and 6 runes of perplexity are 45 gold, so in my build, go dire! :smiley: Unless you're super rich, but trailblazer's isn't really worth it just now, too much investment for not enough gain.

Dire stats actually has a lot more condition damage than trailblazer's minus the condition duration, and since you want to maximize the damage then, runes of undead are actually ok for that build since they convert your toughness (which you get from dire stats) to condition damage, in addition to giving you more toughness, condition damage, AND the trait from chaos specialization that also gives you condition damage based on toughness.

The up side of dire is that you can use it in WvW too.

It is funny when your trailblazer gear gives you more total condition damage than your viper gear (with Chaos trait which converts 10% toughness into condition damage), want to know what goes even better for pve with this? Mirage runes (only if you are running trailblazer. In case of Dire you definately want the condi duration).

Have to agree about the trailblazer price tag not being worth it gold wise (unless you have legendary armor, then just stat swap to it ;) ). Go with Dire as allround set for wvw and pve. Trinkets you can pick trailblazer again from the Living World Season 3 ones, then use a condition duration rune setup.

With the current condition damage performance (even before mirage as chrono) I'd absolutely recommend a condi build for pve. Condi chrono was already unkillable in open wirld, mirage just adds a ton of damage, movement and evasion on top of this. Very fun to play.

@"Veprovina.4876" said:I wouldn't recommend Chronomancer to a beginner to be honest. I played mesmer as my main since i started the game and i still can't "properly" play it. I mean, you can play it and it's fun, but if you want to do fancy stuff with it (like keep your parties alacrity on all the time, constant boons etc.) then it's hard. It's good for general PvE though and i'd recommend using it like that for a while until you feel comfortable with it. Chronomancer mechanics are very tricky.

If you want something straightforward and easy to learn, you can use my Mirage build. It's based on shatters and stacking confusion. Has a lot of survivability and if you use dire gear instead of trailblazer it's not even that expensive to gear up. You'll have to do Twilight Arbor for nightmare runes though, nowhere else to get them.

As for a core mesmer, here's a build i used until i got some elite specializations:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhIQRAsc8fnsIClohdoBGoBMrhlVDCdLnpKnHJJRvcDjIAA-jBBXgAPKB7V/BQ5Xo+HA-e

So a bit of an explanation:

**Party play that focuses on healing and defending others***

This build focuses on keepeng your phantasms up and attacking enemies. This is mostly useful for bosses as most trash mobs will die from a few hits of your sword or some shatter skills. Don't use F2 shatter with this build, it's useless. Use F1 (Mind Wrack).Use berserker everything for gear. Power, precision and ferocity. You don't need defense here, you can dodge and use sword 2 for evading as well as F4 distortion.

Inspiration specialization (for party play):Put Mantra of Pain on auto attack (Ctrl + click it or something, idk). This will heal your allies constantly as you cast it, this applies to your phantasms too. Whenever you gain distortion, everyone in your party will gain distortion too. You can save some lives with this, and your phantasms will grant everyone regeneration. So now you're a nice team player mesmer and you and your party have some more survivability.

Dueling:Use sword phantasm for this one. So with Dueling traits set up like that, your phantasms have fury (crit chance), bleed targets when they crit, you gain crit chance when hitting enemies below 75% health, you and your illusion stack ferocity (crit damage) as they and you hit, and your crits do more damage. Not sure if this applies to phantasms too, that last trait, but with this you're a crit kitten kind of character. Your every other hit will crit. It's kind of ridiculous.

Illusions:

Your shatter skills inflict confusion. Not that needed here, but it's the first automatic trait so you'll live with it. You gain increased damage and crit damage for each of your active illusions, so keep as many clones/phantasms up at all times, plus, illusion skills have reduced cooldowns now and your phantasms attack more often (each attack they pull will trigger sooner). Last trait favors keeping your phantasms alive (Which is not hard as they regenerate each other lol, kinda broken, but good for us :sweat_smile: ), meaning the longer they're alive and doing damage, the more damage they will do.

Utility skills are set up for fractals, bosses and strong enemies. Signet of Illusions makes your phantasms have more health and stay alive, signet of inspiration gives you haste and random boons, plus it copies boons to your party, and signet of humilty is for breakbar damage.

This build uses Sword/Sword, and Sword/Torch combo.

Example of a boss fight:Start with torch 5 to summon a torch phantasm that will give you and everyone fury. Switch to sword/sword. Summon a sword, phantasm, use Signet of Ether to recharge sword phantasm and summon another. Now you have 3, 2 that attack, and 1 that buffs you and your party.

And that's about it, use sword skills and torch skills while your phantasms do their jobs. Shatter them for breakbar damage with F3, or for distortion with F4, and resummon when on cooldown.

Solo play or party play that focuses on damage, not on healing and defending others

Just swap Inspiration with Domination

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhIQRAsc8fnsICdqhdoBGoBUrhFVDiMAjo4ldoEDAtLp5KA-jBBXgA9q/Ao87RJYouHA-e

Domination

Apply vulnerabilty, activating a signet gives you distortion (evading), phantasms do more damage, etc, everything like the above build, only slightly upgraded damage without the party utilites.

As for chronomancer, i won't detail much about it because chronomancer is a meta raid build and there's plenty of guides on it here: https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/builds/

Hope this helped!If you need me to explain how the mirage build works, just say so.

what runes/sigils you using with that basic build?

Can't provide much more than above comments. I have both a combo chrono and a mirage mesmer. I mostly play chrono because i like playing a more support role. Mirage is interesting and you can have fun with interrupts (if you use Teq's rune) with the elite skill (3 interrupts is great).

@Veprovina.4876 excellent information and big thanks for this. I am also trying to learn from scratch so I am slowly map exploring, doing story and leveling a mesmer. What would you propose for an Open World power based burst, high cleave core mesmer build? Could you also please give a very basic skill rotation as well? Thank you in advance.

@Veprovina.4876 Hey man, thanks for the time you took to write all this information down. I've just started playing and the mesmer was the only class that attracted me to the game (I've played everything in the MMO genre so I needed something different, although it was not recommended to play Mesmer as a first character). I loved the concept but as I'm just starting there's a lot of information to take in, and the fact you were able to condense it in one single thread was amazing. Thanks again for your hard work.