Guide

Mesmers are masters of illusion, misdirection and control; they subvert and disrupt foes to achieve their personal goals. The fabric of reality warps at the mesmer’s command, reflecting attacks, slowing down casters, and inflicting devastating chaos damage.

The mesmer is a specialist; using the arcane arts of domination, illusion and inspiration, it can prevent or punish action – or inaction. With the ability to cast spells faster than anyone else, a mesmer can drain energy, shatter enchantments, and interrupt spells in quick succession. By twisting the ether, a mesmer can steal enemy skills and buffs, and use them for itself. 

Abilities

A mesmer’s skillbar could include skills such as…

• Conjure Phantasm: You’ve got some mesmer hate coming.
• Backfire: If you use a skill, you’re screwed.
• Wastrel’s Worry: If you don’t use a skill, you’re screwed.
• Migraine: Your skills now take forever to cast.
• Power Leak: You tried casting, but I interrupted it and destroyed your energy.
• Blackout: You can’t use any skills for a while.
• Arcane Thievery: Your skill is now mine. Haha!
• Distortion: Good luck hitting me.
• Shatter Delusions: Let’s convert that Phantasm into a nice bit of damage.

The mesmer uses mantras and signets to enhance its battlefield presence. Mantras are like mystical trances or chants, allowing the mesmer to absorb damage and evade harm. Signets are skills based on rings (as in, worn on one’s finger) and eschew various skill conventions, but often at the price of high recharge times.

Style

Mesmers have style. The most elegant and impressive suits and dresses are matched with fancy and scary masks. To a mesmer, every battle is a masquerade ball. The standard weapons are a cane and chakram, but they’re also comfortable wielding mirrors, roses, flutes and fans.

Hexes vs. Conditions

In the original game, mesmers used a skill type called a “Hex spell”. Each hex spell placed a unique debuff on the enemy, taking effect over time, or waiting for certain conditions to be met. In the example skills above, the first 4 rely on the hex mechanic. Most buffs and debuffs in this game had unique durations, triggers and effects, with hundreds if not thousands of them, making the game difficult to play effectively when you’re always reading skill descriptions, to understand what’s happening. In addition, different hexes stack, meaning you could put 5 punishment hexes on a single target, and they all act at the same time.

In Guild Wars 2, almost all buffs and debuffs have been boiled down to a limited list of boons and conditions. The list is flexible enough to allow individual skills to have distinct effects, while making it easier for players to understand and developers to balance. These effects also have stack limits, so you (and your allies) can cause 9 instances of Bleeding on a target, but only 1 instance of Blind. Overall it’s a much cleaner way of doing things. Unfortunately, the unique and specific nature of hexes does not carry over to this new system.

For example, in GW1, all of these skills could be stacked onto a single target:

• Ethereal Burden: Slow movement by 50%. When it ends, you get energy.
• Ice Prison: Slow movement by 66%. Ends if target takes fire damage.
• Hidden Caltrops: Slow movement by 50%. When it ends, applies Cripple.
• Binding Chains: Slow movement by 90%, deal damage each second while moving.
• Crippling Shot: Causes Cripple condition.

In GW2, these skills would simply cause the Crippled condition. 

Conditions which can be used to control enemies:

• Dazed: Prevents skill casting.
• Blind: Next attack/spell misses.
• Chilled: Slows movement, disables dodging, lengthens recharge times.
• Crippled: Slows movement, disables dodging.
• Fear: Runs directly away from caster (necromancer-only).
• Immobilized: Prevents movement.
• Vulnerability: Increases damage taken.
• Weakness: Effect unknown.