Guild Wars 2 Mesmer Build

Note: This commodity is geared towards new players.
Delight proceed its contents to those which new players tin reasonably sympathise and utilise.

Overview [edit]

Mesmers are often called the most difficult profession to play in Club Wars, but if played well, can cause a lot of problem for the enemy. They are best described as the debilitating or the saboteur profession that eschew outright attacks; they instead rely on control-based abilities to sap foes of their strength. They can exist used to their highest potential when played in a grouping.

Knowing your enemy equally well as yourself is the path to victory for Mesmers, whose primary function is to control the enemy's agenda. Mesmers enjoy a vast assortment of tools to disrupt or turn enemy actions against them, too equally more standard degenerative and nerfing skills. Mesmers can push out enormous armor ignoring harm and influence the outcome of the battle with a unmarried well-placed spell. A Mesmer can shut down enemies by interrupting their actions, disabling their skills and removing their adrenaline and free energy. They tin can also cause health degeneration and afflict hexes that contrary the advantages of foes into liabilities, and apply a wide range of atmospheric condition. A Mesmer can even apply someone'south own energy confronting them (with skills like Energy Burn).

Attributes [edit]

Fast Casting (Primary Aspect) [edit]

The primary Mesmer aspect, Fast Casting has the inherent consequence of reducing the casting time of all mesmer spells, signets and non-mesmer spells with a cast time of ii seconds or more. In PvE, Fast Casting also causes mesmer skills to recharge 3% faster than normal. Skills in Fast Casting often allow a Mesmer to bandage spells more oft, such as Mantra of Recovery, or provide skills designed for optimal usage with a Mesmer primary, such as Psychic Instability and Power Render.

Domination Magic [edit]

Skills of this aspect excel at punishing the deportment of your foe, whether it be through impairment (Empathy, Backfire, Power Spike), energy loss (Power Leak, Shame, Free energy Surge) or skill shutdown (Diversion, Power Lock, Psychic Distraction).

Illusion Magic [edit]

Skills of this aspect volition usually exist used to hinder enemies, reducing the efficiency of enemy actions with hexes such as Soothing Images, Migraine or Ineptitude. Alternatively, Illusion Magic may inflict indirect harm through degeneration hexes such as Conjure Phantasm, Conjure Nightmare or Images of Remorse.

Inspiration Magic [edit]

Skills of this attribute are usually related to Energy Management and energy manipulation through maintaining the Mesmer'due south energy (Power Drain, Drain Enchantment, Auspicious Incantation) or adding to the energy denial of Domination Magic (Ether Phantom, Drain Delusions). However, Inspiration Magic also contains the Mesmer'south merely self heals: Ether Feast, Bleed Enchantment, and Mantra of Signets. It also holds skills with unique effects, like Signet of Humility, Mantra of Inscriptions and Mantra of Concentration.

Understanding the Profession [edit]

Mesmer techniques [edit]

Energy deprival is a tactic that attacks caster energy instead of health. This is very constructive in PvP (where casters have strict energy budgets) and often useless in PvE (where enemies die besides fast for free energy denial to be effective).

Prioritize targets based on the current state of the battle. Early on, ease pressure on your team by draining the team'south offensive casters and countermeasures (e.yard. Elementalists). Pressure opponents by draining their defensive measures (Monks and other healers).
Salve interrupts to foreclose enemies from managing their own energy.
Space out the deprival skills, especially every bit casting slows. In PvP, the average player regains 5 free energy approximately every four seconds.
Shut downward free energy users with Mind Wrack, combined with Aneurysm, Images of Remorse and/or Spirit Shackles].

Important skills include Energy Fire and Energy Surge and interrupts that disrupt free energy direction, e.one thousand. Power Leak is a pop choice, every bit is Shame. Chaos Storm is useful to force casters to movement (and therefore interrupt themselves) while denying energy to those who remain.

Skill denial is a technique that renders skills unusable or disrupted; and punishes foes who uses them.

Interrupt selectively: anyone can acquire to interrupt any spell; not bad mesmers interrupt the important ones.
Slowed casting: Utilise the right skill for the right opponent, e.g. Arcane Conundrum or Migraine would shut downwardly healers merely have petty effect on melee foes.
Interrupt groups: Panic causes foes to interrupt each other (use on a skill-spammer in the middle of a group for maximum impact). Keystone Signet causes offensive signets to interrupt and harm foes adjacent to their target. Clumsiness causes attacks to interrupt surrounding foes. Cry of Frustration is an constructive, but manual AoE interrupt.
Slow down recharge: Complicate and Diversion slows down recharge for a single skill while Blackout and Ability Block touch multiple skills on a unmarried opponent's bar. Exist careful non to spam either, and remember that the skills might be more effective if used on two different foes.
Punishing hexes: Empathy and Backfire crusade attacks and spells (respectively) to harm the caster, in effect causing the foe to shut itself downward (rather than commit suicide). Mistrust and Overload punish the allies of foes who take action. Wastrel'due south Demise and Worry punish foes who are waiting for hexes to expire. (Both are especially effective confronting pets and minions, since they do not use whatsoever skills.) Wastrel'due south Worry can also exist used to predict skill activation and see what they have for those who effort to escape it's damage past using skills. Frustration does damage and too rewards the mesmer for each successful interrupted skill.

Threat denial use skills to interrupt, snare, pressure level and otherwise neutralize close-combat opponents. Information technology is not as popular in PvP because other professions provide more than versatile variations.

Wandering Eye and Clumsiness provide relatively quick recharging interrupts that too disrupt or damage neighboring foes, putting putting early pressure level on healers to restore health to the front end line. Await for frontliners to build upwardly energy (watch for Frenzy); hexing them too early is less constructive.
Ineptitude blinds clumps of melee opponents.
While waiting for recharges, spam degeneration hexes, such as Ether Nightmare, Shrinking Armor, or Illusion of Pain
Snare opponents using Crippling Ache, Ethereal or Kitah'due south Burden, or Shared Brunt.

Mesmer energy management

Glyph of Energy will reduce energy apply.
Arcane Conundrum tin restore it speedily.

PvE [edit]

A Mesmer has a flexible position in PvE. They can assist keep the Tank live by weakening the enemy, deal damage as well as any other pulley profession while improving the effectiveness of your melee teammates and lessen the risk to the Healer(s). Unfortunately this versatility that far exceeds any other profession comes at the price that others will not inherently know what to expect from you. So not only be prepared to explain the role you lot wish to fill, but also be ready to adapt your role to do what y'all can practice all-time to compensate for any weaknesses your party has.

Mesmers are all-time used past players who are well prepared in accelerate. Knowing the enemy ensures the Mesmer is as effective as possible, for instance, if a Mesmer takes a skill bar fix for interrupting spell casters, but the area is full of melee based enemies, the Mesmer'south bar is wasted. Playing a good Mesmer requires flexibility, advanced forethought and having a strong knowledge of most skills and enemy types in game.

Due to your Fast Casting ability, many Mesmer skills can determine the outcome of a boxing before many members of your squad have fifty-fifty started their attacks. Many Mesmers are tempted to focus on Domination which has some quite powerful damage skills, i.e. Energy Surge and Chaos Storm; however, these are oftentimes most effectively alternated with skills which weaken your enemy. Alternately, especially in the fast paced mission surround, Mesmers often focus on causing fast damage to their enemies by combining their fast cast and shortened recharge time from Fast Casting with damage causing skills like Mistrust.

A powerful although less noticeable style of play is the interruption Mesmer, using skills to end the enemy from using their spells. These Mesmers usually concentrate on the enemy casters, interrupting healing spells or skills that could injure the team. This arroyo is especially benign confronting enemy bosses and thus many Mesmers will acquit an interrupt skill fifty-fifty if shutdown is not their focus.

Mesmers can also run a conditional build if they wish with past stacking skills such as Visions of Regret with Empathy and Backfire. These skills can cause major harm to any kind of enemy and are an constructive mode to deal with melee and Monk bosses, due to the regularity of their actions (the AI will non cast if Backlash or VoR alone will kill itself - giving your party a window of opportunity to kill the foe without retaliation). Using VoR with Wastrel'south Worry ensures that the target volition have damage no matter what, albeit at the toll of lowering the damage per cast under furnishings of Visions of Regret. These builds are even more than effective in hard mode due to the faster speed at which enemies attack and cast spells.

Finally, the Mesmer needs to remember to take advantage of available PvE only skills. While Mesmers tin utilize the benefits of Fast Casting with secondary PvE skills such as Necrosis or Pain Inverter, their true power becomes apparent when a Mesmer hex is combined with Weep of Pain to interrupt and crusade average harm to all foes in the surface area. Using Signet of Illusions tin can allow you lot to create powerful PvE summons with skills such as Summon (Asuran) and Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support, without needing ranks in the respective races and even at a college level than that with simply the Ebon Vanguard or Asuran Title Track. Also, if running a Signet of Illusions build, using Arcane Mimicry on an ally's elite tin be useful, and the same goes for if you employ Signet of Illusions in combination with stealing an enemy'southward spell using Arcane Thievery, Arcane Larceny, or Smooth Criminal.

PvP [edit]

PvP is the surface area where Mesmers show their full potential, shutting downwards the enemy backline single-handedly, profitable spikes with the other manus by removing defensive enchantments with skills like Shatter Enchantment.

The first affair a Mesmer should learn is to think like the enemy. Effort to get a feeling for the enemy, when does he cast his spells, how much free energy does he have and and so on. A well timed Diversion disabling a Word of Healing might cause the enemy to retreat, panic, or die. Well-nigh people in PvP are intelligent enough to not apply whatsoever skill until Diversion ends; they escape from the effects of this skill but they don't heal or inflict damage for six seconds. Knowing the recharge times on spells can greatly help you time your skills, equally you won't waste a shutdown when the skill is not yet recharged.

The second thing a Mesmer should learn is to detect out what might badger your team most, like "Exercise they accept a Blinding Surge Elementalist preventing our frontline from killing them?", "Is their Mesmer skillful enough to foreclose our Monks from healing the states?" or "We play a status build, practice they have a monk with Restore Condition?". Make certain that your team is communicating to you what they need shut down. A grouping that's communicating well with their Mesmer will utilize their Mesmer much ameliorate. This includes things such every bit knowing when you have disabled a primal skill (like Spirit Bail or Infuse Health) so that your team can act upon that.

While most skills are used in an obvious way, Mesmer skills take very subtle uses that the skill doesn't specify. For instance, using Blackout on a warrior drains all his adrenaline, and using Psychic Distraction goes through anti-interruption skills. You should learn these, and put them to good apply, using your bar to the fullest to help your team. Ether Feast is not usually on a mesmer bar, but if it is, think you drain energy, and utilize that to its full advantage.

Most Mesmer confined in PvP will contain at least i interrupt. Cry of Frustration and Power Drain are two very mutual examples. On a Mesmer, it'southward of import to annotation that fifty-fifty your one/4 second interrupt skills cast faster due to Fast Casting, so you can easily interrupt 1 2nd spells, which some rangers have difficulty doing. If you lot notwithstanding have issues interrupting spells that have brusk time casting, skills like Arcane Conundrum and Frustration requite you lot extra time to interrupt. Since your skills take slower recharge so most ranger or warrior interrupts, you lot should be careful to use them but to interrupt fundamental skills where their effect is about used. It's pointless to interrupt depression recharge spells in general with Power Drain unless you need the free energy, considering it will recharge quickly anyway, unless you are using an interrupt spell with a disabling quality, such as Ability Block or Power Lock. Knowing which key skills to interrupt defines the Mesmer's role; Restore Conditions, Word of Healing, Guardian and fifty-fifty an enemy Mesmer's Diversion are key skills to keep a mindful heart on.

Lastly, go on in listen that while some hexes final only half dozen seconds, a lot can happen in 6 seconds if they are timed properly. Diversion for case, can exist placed on a monk when someone is being spiked, and forces that monk to choose to either divert a skill or let the person die. Its not always possible to close down all the monks, but if yous do information technology successfully, you have a virtually guaranteed kill. By contrast, using the skill randomly allows the monk to just wait for information technology to wear off with no consequence, since nobody is in danger of death.

Acquire to use your bar correctly and efficiently, and you volition soon be a strength to exist reckoned with in PvP.

Staying alive [edit]

Because of the low Armor rating of Mesmers, information technology is best to stay in the midline. Kiting is besides an constructive tactic. Equip a shield for added armor, and don't overextend. Also the mesmer stances (Mantra of 'element', physical/elemental resistance) can help profoundly in reducing the damage done to the mesmer, often up to l%.

Playing in a party [edit]

Equally a midliner, mesmers have to stay close to the action without placing themselves likewise close to the enemy team'due south physical impairment. Mesmers are often used to close down other midliners, and sometimes backliners. Mesmers can cull to focus on shutting downwards key criminal offense on the other team, which in plough can lower the amount of damage their party members may take.

In PvP, a mesmer'south master goal is to not only shut down key members of the opposing team, but also to communicate when they practise so. If you can tell when an enemy monk is out of energy or if he can't apply a particular skill, it would greatly increase the chance of your squad getting some kills. If a detail skill was giving a teammate grief (blinds tin frequently do this), diverting it will enable the rest of your team to perform ameliorate. Mesmers in pvp are not built for direct damage; they are built for overall squad support.

What to avoid [edit]

Impairment: A Mesmer, like all pulley professions, should avoid whatsoever straight contact with the enemy. A combination of a maximum of threescore Armor and weak self-defense force makes it easy to become killed by even a unmarried enemy. Kiting, proper positioning in the mid or backline are crucial to the Mesmer's survival.
Mesmers rely heavily on spells, which is what they excel at countering. Don't endeavour to bandage long activation spells like Diversion if you know another Mesmer (or a Ranger) is watching you to interrupt it.

Play styles [edit]

There are 3 chief ways that the mesmer controls and contains the enemy: shutting down specific opponents, turning the enemy'south strengths against itself, or nerfing the enemy's effectiveness. Shutdowns are tools that the mesmer uses to prevent the enemy from acting at all, including interruptions and disruptions. The mesmer tin plow the enemy confronting itself by causing foes to interrupt/disrupt each other or by dissentious themselves past attacking, casting, or using skills. Finally, mesmers can snare opponents and force massive armor-ignore degeneration upon them.

Anti-pulley mesmers utilize energy denial, skill deprival, or interrupts to shutdown casters.
Anti-melee mesmers focus on disrupting shut-gainsay opponents.
Fast Casters are mesmers that primarily bandage spells from another profession, e.thou. elementalist spells with long activation or recharge times.
General disruption mesmers tend to work on breaking the rhythm and flow of the entire enemy political party, rather than one or two targets.
Shutdown Mesmers hybridize a variety of techniques to preclude skill apply.

Interrupts [edit]

Mesmers take skills that can interrupt a target foe's actions, thereby preventing them from doing impairment, healing themselves, animating minions, creating spirits, inbound a course, etc. These interrupts can too steal energy, cause damage or disable skills. Most break skills only interrupt spells and chants, simply some can interrupt whatever skill, like Psychic Distraction. Other interruption skills include: Weep of Frustration, Power Fasten, Power Block, Power Bleed, Panic and Signet of Distraction. Combined with points in the Mesmer's primary attribute, Fast Casting, these already quick-activating skills are fifty-fifty faster to cast.

Shutdown [edit]

Domination skills put Mesmers in command of a foe's health and energy. They tin can force their foes to cull whether they should bandage a spell or attack, when the consequence is loss of wellness or having their skills disabled (from skills such as Backfire, Empathy or Diversion).

Shut downwards besides comes in the form of disabling spells or spells of an attribute from being used: spells such as Power Lock will disable the interrupted spell for a gear up amount of time, or the elite Ability Block will disable all skills of the aforementioned attribute on the enemy'south skill bar, effectively knocking them out of play for the duration. Blackout will disable the entire bar of an enemy, simply volition also disable the Mesmer's also, and so utilise caution with this skill. While combined with Echo, this skill can close down the enemy'south bar for an entire xxx seconds.

Spells such as Elementary Thievery and Cabalistic Thievery are a unique form of shut downward that essentially remove skills from other histrion's confined and place them on the Mesmer'south for a varying menses of time, sometimes allowing the Mesmer to utilize these stolen skills to their advantage if they steal some other Mesmer's skills, or skills of an attribute they are also using on their bar. In the case of Unproblematic Thievery the Mesmer can steal a Resurrection Signet if they interrupt information technology, giving their team/political party an advantage of an actress res if all sigs have been used or no other res skills are available.

Mesmers can also shut down martial professions with skills such every bit Spirit Shackles and Soothing Images which will crusade them to lose their essential Free energy or Adrenaline.

Anti-martial control [edit]

Mesmers also have potent melee counter skills. These skills can be plant in the Illusion Magic and Domination Magic attributes. They can inflict impairment every fourth dimension the foe attacks, interrupt the attack before it does damage, and reduce the effectiveness of attacks. Some of these skills are: Coma, Clumsiness, Empathy, Ineptitude, Signet of Clumsiness, and Wandering Eye.

Anti-caster command [edit]

Mesmers can be very effective at reducing the effectiveness of spell casters. Hexes like Frustration or Migraine make the foe bandage spells slower, enabling easier interrupts and reduced spamming of spells. Frustration has the added benefit of dealing impairment every time the caster is interrupted. Some of the skills that cause the foe to bandage spells slower are: Migraine, Arcane Puzzler, Frustration, and Stolen Speed.

Control and damage dealer [edit]

Mesmers can exist effective damage dealers in PvE. Illusion Magic includes Clumsiness and Wandering Heart recharge apace and deal considerable damage to multiple targets. Domination Magic includes the aristocracy Panic hex, too as strong damage dealing hexes such as Mistrust and Wastrel's Demise. The Sunspear skill Weep of Pain skill is useful for AoE damage.

Energy deprival [edit]

Mesmers can phone call on Inspiration Magic skills (similar Energy Drain) to steal energy directly from their enemies. By taking the energy of their foes, the Mesmers can reduce the foe'due south effectiveness, besides as provide extra energy for themselves for casting more offensive spells at their foes. Stealing Free energy from a Monk, for case, may severely hinder his ability to heal his allies. Some common skills used for energy denial are: Energy Surge, Energy Burn down, Shame, Guilt, and Free energy Drain.

Health degeneration [edit]

The Mesmers that specialize in health degeneration mainly use Illusion Magic hexes similar Conjure Nightmare, Conjure Phantasm, Images of Remorse, Shrinking Armor, Illusion of Pain, Migraine, etc. Keep in mind, though, that health degeneration greater than -10 volition only cap at -10. Yet, the degeneration over -10 can nevertheless beginning added health regeneration. E.g. an enemy has degeneration worth -15 which is limited to -x. The enemy so casts a +6 regeneration Healing Breeze. Instead of having -4 degeneration, the hidden degeneration reduces the regeneration, leaving the enemy at -ix degeneration. Mesmers using health degeneration hexes can use Mantra of Persistence to make Illusion Magic hexes last longer.

Pick of secondary professions [edit]

Warrior profession can exist used more often than not because of some defensive skills like Disciplined Stance, Protector's Defense force and Sprint, or skills that increment the attack speed or change the attack pattern for Illusionary Weaponry like Flurry. Withal, since near of the Warrior's skills are melee attacks, few of this profession's skills are useful for a Mesmer.
Antidote Signet tin can be used as a quick condition removal that costs no energy, can remove daze easily, and has a fair recharge.
Monk is often used to fifty-fifty out the limited self-defence of the Mesmer. Often this includes a hard res that takes reward of Fast casting. In improver, monks have many powerful signets that synergize well with Mesmers' Keystone Signet, Mantra of Inscriptions, and Fast Casting.
Necromancer about often includes builds that make use of Fast Casting on slow Necromancer hexes. Some Necromancer hexes combine well with Mesmer hexes, like Reckless Haste and Spirit of Failure cast on one target. The Necromancer spell Rend Enchantments is very pop for HA Mesmers, equally most HA Monks utilize multiple enchantments like Channeling and Healer's Boon. Fifty-fifty at low spec, Rend Enchantments is powerful, removing vi enchantments at a time.
Elementalist tin can be used for fast casting slow AoE skills similar Meteor Shower. Some defensive skills like Ward Confronting Melee are very useful when the team doesn't have a chief Elementalist with World Magic. Glyph of Bottom Free energy is also very useful to lower the energy toll of some skills, such every bit Ineptitude. Glyph of Renewal is also popular to bandage multiple copies of spells like Shame and Diversion.
Assassin may be used for some defensive Shadow Step skills and Dash, merely like the warrior, Mesmers are unlikely to be using whatsoever of the dagger attack skills.
Ritualist is useful for the same reasons as the monk: better party-broad back up and a hard res.
Paragon is quite uncommon, since paragon chants do non have advantage of Fast Casting, though some of the Shouts or Chants tin can still exist useful for the team as a whole.
Dervish has few skills which are slow enough to take advantage of Fast Casting and thus isn't a common secondary. That said, some Dervish skills like Pious Concentration help the mesmer forestall interrupts on skills with long casts like Diversion, and other skills provide some additional self-defence such as Armor of Sanctity, Delusion Cloak or Mystic Regeneration.

Guides for all Professions (edit)
Core: Warrior • Ranger • Monk • Necromancer • Mesmer • Elementalist
Factions: Assassinator • Ritualist Nightfall: Paragon • Dervish

Source: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_playing_as_a_mesmer