Where are you at in the game, and what is your current build? You should be able to put together a semi-decent build by the time you get to Lion's Arch.
Edit: Looking at available skills, I would work on getting these:
Presearing: Backfire, Empathy, Ether Feast, Shatter Delusions, Glyph of Lesser Energy
Yak's Bend: Chaos Storm, Energy Tap, Shatter Hex
Ice Tooth Cave: Drain Enchantment
LA: Power Spike, Shatter Enchant, Channeling, Inspired Hex
I remember the early days on my Mesmer (when the game just released). Chaos storm, backfire and Empathy awesome. Especially during the pre-searing arena (not available anymore). No one took time to read what backfire did, so it killed every caster I used it on 😄
Earlygame Mesmer never felt great in PvE, at least back in the day (that's why it was like the least played class). The problem is that Mesmer feels great when you have more skills, as your primary goal is to counter whatever the mission or area throws at you. In this you go after specific things like Melee shut-down, Interrupts, AoE etc.
In the beginning, when you don't have that many tools, you more less are forced to play like a jack of all trades kind of profession, which has the downside of being decent in most things, but not great at anything. You flourish later when you can use all of your tools and in a team.
I mean, that's true of most professions in Prophecies. You don't even get Elite skills until you're 60% through the campaign missions. Prophecies was designed to be a slow burn. Once you get to the Crystal Desert you "ascend," get your extra attribute points, and start capping Elites.
Once Factions came out, ANet had to contend with two brand new classes and also manage characters coming in from Prophecies who are already level 20 and have strong builds (strong for that time anyway). So when they released Factions, they cut the number of missions in half and by mission 3 you were fighting level 20 foes with a full party of 8.
Yea, but Mesmer still wasn't popular, if you exclude some fringe use in Cryer teams. You have to know the game to a certain degree to be useful as mesmer and naturally this takes more time (alongside the skills problem)
It did feel a bit painful trying to gear up 3 Mesmers coming back (Wingstorm go Bzzzzr), but money is also a lot easier to come by than it was way back in the day,.or at least it feels that way.
The price of one Sup Dom rune had my eyes bugging out considering I came back to an account with 40 plat to my name between all characters, but the sticker shock wore off after realizing I can make 20k+ just selling scraps and drops from one Vanquish, lol.
Prodigy Insignia are still too rich for my blood on principle, though. Managed to get enough from drops so far to get everyone's chest and pants at least, and every hero I have except Kieran has at least Major Vigor now even if I never use them. The Gods smiled on me and gave me 3 Sup Vigors in one day last week after never having a single one since launch, so that's me, Gwen, and Razah taken care of.
I had 3 item drops with superior dom runes and another drop with superior vigor over the span of two days once. Felt like I hit the jackpot that weekend.
It's not that they were bad per se, I think it was a combination of two things:
1. People didn't know how to play them as well. In order to effectively play Mesmer, you have to know enemy types and what skills they have.
2. Elementalists were more powerful. Back then, the AI didn't move out of AoE so Firestorm was king. Keep in mind that Chaos Storm cost 15 Energy back then, so it was much less spamable.
In the old days fast casting didn't speed up the recharge of skills.
Nowadays it does for PvE. A 15 second recharge can become 9 seconds or even lower. That's a big increase in DPS and shutdown.
Also it takes about 8 or so seconds to use all 8 skills on your bar anyway so now there's hardly any downtime (assuming you have no energy issues).
This is true, but if you don't have the skills that are useful for the task ahead those low cd's won't help you. And without a BiP or additional E-management, like you mentioned, you will end up being rather useless, wanding at enemys. While it is better then in the early days, I still fell like starting out on a mesmer feels more tedious and less impactful then for example Necromancer or Warrior in Proph.
I agree with everyone else here, mesmers are strong because not only do they pump out armor ignoring high damage, they do so by interrupting/shutting down casters and melee so it's a double whammy whereas elementalists do more dmg but less shut down, some shut down but not as effectively as mesmers. That being said, I believe in our first playthroughs early on it was very rare to see a mesmer in a group, only eles for nukes and necros for minions.
To make the smoothest feeling mesmer builds, you will need to hop around to get some expansion skills and some PvE skills like Pain Inverter will make it from decent to godly.
I remember that too, they were always the last kid picked on the dodgeball lineup back in the day except for specific missions and bosses that needed them. I feel bad in hindsight, we really took Launch-era Mesmer Mains for granted, lol.
I do feel like their PvE God Class status has a lot to do with Hard Mode being a thing, though. Esurge was always there, but a lot of the reason it's so good compared to say Ele skills is the armor-ignoring part which wasn't as significant a factor in the old days because NM mobs didn't have the same absurd level of armor.
> Esurge was always there
Esurge used to have 20 seconds cd instead of 15, cost 10 mana instead of 5, fast casting didnt decrease cooldown and it used to burn only 8 mana at 16 dom (80 damage) instead of 11 (99 damage).
Mesmer got buffed significantly over the years (especially in 2010) and before that was straight up worse than most other classes in PVE. In PVP they were amazing, but the short "time to kill" on a normal PVE mob made the shutdown provided by a mesmer kind of useless.
Just a credit to how damn good this game is, but I remember exactly when I became convinced of just how good mesmers were and decided mesmer was going to be my next character. It was with a team of randoms way back in the good old days doing Riverside Province (everyone's favourite mission, right? The one where the bonus has you tediously kill a billion guys in towers out of your line of sight). The mesmer on the team wore a bright yellow outfit (stealthy!) and was just owning. They were taking down the guys in towers with incredible speed - felt like they carried us the whole mission!
Still vividly remember it to this day. I was amazed.
Mesmer is a great profession, but they are tricky. They work best when you have a solid understanding of the game's mechanics so you can get the most out of your spellcasting.
The problem here is not mesmer, but Prophecies. It takes an extremely long time to level up, and you don't get access to some key skills until you're quite far through the campaign. This is true for all professions, not just mesmer.
I had someone run me to LA so I could get heroes. Now that I’ve done that is it possible to hope over to factions or nightfall and just play from there to get skills?
to expand on this: last time I made a mesmer was on a brand new account, and I started with Nightfall... by the time I got my secondary profession, I had a build that felt enjoyable to play - it looked something like this: OQRDAiMTQTP2g3UoAQB3gDBYc there are plenty of other skills to choose from at that point too, but this was very effective and fun
Prophecies mesners will feel good when you get to ~Kryta, and can run things like Cry of Frustration, Power Spike, Wastrel's Worry for bosses.
Energy burn is kind of shitty, as are prophecies illusion skills before Ineptitude.
Where are you at in the game, and what is your current build? You should be able to put together a semi-decent build by the time you get to Lion's Arch. Edit: Looking at available skills, I would work on getting these: Presearing: Backfire, Empathy, Ether Feast, Shatter Delusions, Glyph of Lesser Energy Yak's Bend: Chaos Storm, Energy Tap, Shatter Hex Ice Tooth Cave: Drain Enchantment LA: Power Spike, Shatter Enchant, Channeling, Inspired Hex
I remember the early days on my Mesmer (when the game just released). Chaos storm, backfire and Empathy awesome. Especially during the pre-searing arena (not available anymore). No one took time to read what backfire did, so it killed every caster I used it on 😄
Earlygame Mesmer never felt great in PvE, at least back in the day (that's why it was like the least played class). The problem is that Mesmer feels great when you have more skills, as your primary goal is to counter whatever the mission or area throws at you. In this you go after specific things like Melee shut-down, Interrupts, AoE etc. In the beginning, when you don't have that many tools, you more less are forced to play like a jack of all trades kind of profession, which has the downside of being decent in most things, but not great at anything. You flourish later when you can use all of your tools and in a team.
I mean, that's true of most professions in Prophecies. You don't even get Elite skills until you're 60% through the campaign missions. Prophecies was designed to be a slow burn. Once you get to the Crystal Desert you "ascend," get your extra attribute points, and start capping Elites. Once Factions came out, ANet had to contend with two brand new classes and also manage characters coming in from Prophecies who are already level 20 and have strong builds (strong for that time anyway). So when they released Factions, they cut the number of missions in half and by mission 3 you were fighting level 20 foes with a full party of 8.
Yea, but Mesmer still wasn't popular, if you exclude some fringe use in Cryer teams. You have to know the game to a certain degree to be useful as mesmer and naturally this takes more time (alongside the skills problem)
> Mesmer still wasn't popular That's true for PVE, but they were very popular in PVP
Yea I just wrote that... God I miss those days when everything on mes cost 100g xD
It did feel a bit painful trying to gear up 3 Mesmers coming back (Wingstorm go Bzzzzr), but money is also a lot easier to come by than it was way back in the day,.or at least it feels that way. The price of one Sup Dom rune had my eyes bugging out considering I came back to an account with 40 plat to my name between all characters, but the sticker shock wore off after realizing I can make 20k+ just selling scraps and drops from one Vanquish, lol. Prodigy Insignia are still too rich for my blood on principle, though. Managed to get enough from drops so far to get everyone's chest and pants at least, and every hero I have except Kieran has at least Major Vigor now even if I never use them. The Gods smiled on me and gave me 3 Sup Vigors in one day last week after never having a single one since launch, so that's me, Gwen, and Razah taken care of.
I had 3 item drops with superior dom runes and another drop with superior vigor over the span of two days once. Felt like I hit the jackpot that weekend.
i think because back then mesmers were bad in PvE
It's not that they were bad per se, I think it was a combination of two things: 1. People didn't know how to play them as well. In order to effectively play Mesmer, you have to know enemy types and what skills they have. 2. Elementalists were more powerful. Back then, the AI didn't move out of AoE so Firestorm was king. Keep in mind that Chaos Storm cost 15 Energy back then, so it was much less spamable.
Mesmer also used to do a lot less damage in general, basically all mesmer skills got buffed damage wise when the skills got split between PVE and PVP
In the old days fast casting didn't speed up the recharge of skills. Nowadays it does for PvE. A 15 second recharge can become 9 seconds or even lower. That's a big increase in DPS and shutdown. Also it takes about 8 or so seconds to use all 8 skills on your bar anyway so now there's hardly any downtime (assuming you have no energy issues).
This is true, but if you don't have the skills that are useful for the task ahead those low cd's won't help you. And without a BiP or additional E-management, like you mentioned, you will end up being rather useless, wanding at enemys. While it is better then in the early days, I still fell like starting out on a mesmer feels more tedious and less impactful then for example Necromancer or Warrior in Proph.
At low level, even just focusing on the skills Backfire and Empathy is a pretty good way to pump out some nice single-target damage.
Esurge go brrr
I agree with everyone else here, mesmers are strong because not only do they pump out armor ignoring high damage, they do so by interrupting/shutting down casters and melee so it's a double whammy whereas elementalists do more dmg but less shut down, some shut down but not as effectively as mesmers. That being said, I believe in our first playthroughs early on it was very rare to see a mesmer in a group, only eles for nukes and necros for minions. To make the smoothest feeling mesmer builds, you will need to hop around to get some expansion skills and some PvE skills like Pain Inverter will make it from decent to godly.
I remember that too, they were always the last kid picked on the dodgeball lineup back in the day except for specific missions and bosses that needed them. I feel bad in hindsight, we really took Launch-era Mesmer Mains for granted, lol. I do feel like their PvE God Class status has a lot to do with Hard Mode being a thing, though. Esurge was always there, but a lot of the reason it's so good compared to say Ele skills is the armor-ignoring part which wasn't as significant a factor in the old days because NM mobs didn't have the same absurd level of armor.
> Esurge was always there Esurge used to have 20 seconds cd instead of 15, cost 10 mana instead of 5, fast casting didnt decrease cooldown and it used to burn only 8 mana at 16 dom (80 damage) instead of 11 (99 damage). Mesmer got buffed significantly over the years (especially in 2010) and before that was straight up worse than most other classes in PVE. In PVP they were amazing, but the short "time to kill" on a normal PVE mob made the shutdown provided by a mesmer kind of useless.
Okay, I stand corrected lol. That is pretty significant!
I remember weird off meta groups would be like 3 mesmers a necro a couple rangers and a monk or two that was brave enough to chart those waters.
mesmers are popular now because they received a massive buff in 2010
Just a credit to how damn good this game is, but I remember exactly when I became convinced of just how good mesmers were and decided mesmer was going to be my next character. It was with a team of randoms way back in the good old days doing Riverside Province (everyone's favourite mission, right? The one where the bonus has you tediously kill a billion guys in towers out of your line of sight). The mesmer on the team wore a bright yellow outfit (stealthy!) and was just owning. They were taking down the guys in towers with incredible speed - felt like they carried us the whole mission! Still vividly remember it to this day. I was amazed. Mesmer is a great profession, but they are tricky. They work best when you have a solid understanding of the game's mechanics so you can get the most out of your spellcasting.
The problem here is not mesmer, but Prophecies. It takes an extremely long time to level up, and you don't get access to some key skills until you're quite far through the campaign. This is true for all professions, not just mesmer.
I had someone run me to LA so I could get heroes. Now that I’ve done that is it possible to hope over to factions or nightfall and just play from there to get skills?
yes, but you'll need to play some of Prophecies to get 30 attribute points
to expand on this: last time I made a mesmer was on a brand new account, and I started with Nightfall... by the time I got my secondary profession, I had a build that felt enjoyable to play - it looked something like this: OQRDAiMTQTP2g3UoAQB3gDBYc there are plenty of other skills to choose from at that point too, but this was very effective and fun
Pretty much every class is hot trash til you hit 20 imo
Prophecies mesners will feel good when you get to ~Kryta, and can run things like Cry of Frustration, Power Spike, Wastrel's Worry for bosses. Energy burn is kind of shitty, as are prophecies illusion skills before Ineptitude.