What's your first character going to be?

[kildorn]

Mesmers seem to require a dickload of trait points to feel awesome. Mine is by far my favorite (to the point that I have trouble leveling alts because I think my mesmer could do this better), but it was a slog until ~60.

All the cooldown reductions on illusions make a huge difference. My main complaint with the class is that a number of the weapons are worthless entirely because their phantasm is shit. But right now I can happily spawn 2-3 illusions, shatter, spawn 2-3 more rapidly, shatter again and walk away from a dead pack of risen.

What I will never do is burst something down in seconds, which kind of sucks for overpopulated DEs. Berzerker is my one contribution farming button and he has a decent chance of dying in a zerg before doing much damage.

[Maledict]

I would agree there re Mesmer. I love mine, glad I made it my main, but the class is truly awful in DEs because of the tagging issue.

Entire waves of undead can attack and I'll tag *maybe* one if lucky. Even a double shatter (F1 then F2, with me acting as an illusion) will often not work. Everyone else seems to have some form of spammable or combo of Aes whereas the mesmer only has Chaos Storm (huge cooldown) or Mind Stab (tiny reticule, casting time).

[tazelbain]

No extra tags for bronzing with Staff #1?

[Maledict]

Nope - tagging requires a certain % of damage or a certain number of hits (don't know which). The staff auto attack is so slow you'll get one off if you are lucky before the 10+ undead are melted in the Ae everyone else flings around.

[Mattemeo]

I have no trouble tagging mobs in DEs with my Mesmer. 2HSword, Staff - both have ample AE and chaining opportunities and the spread of phantasms is decent. I want a big cloud of floating numbers, I drop Chaos Storm after unleashing Phantasmal Berserker. I've also gone for traits and signets that increase phantasm HP so they're not so easily gibbed straight away. Mesmer is awesome, I'm really rather surprised it's the least played profession.

[Severian]

I also use staff #5 (Chaos Storm) for DEs and it's consistently productive, which I believe is credit from the ethereal combos everyone creates. I know trying to compete via burst damage is a non-starter. I'm early 40s, though, so untested in Orr.

Generally, good luck to anyone if players are so concentrated that mob stacks are melting in 2 seconds.

[sachiel]

I also use staff #5 (Chaos Storm) for DEs and it's consistently productive, which I believe is credit from the ethereal combos everyone creates. I know trying to compete via burst damage is a non-starter. I'm early 40s, though, so untested in Orr.

Generally, good luck to anyone if players are so concentrated that mob stacks are melting in 2 seconds.

Even in the claw of jormag I was missing many mobs on my staff ele shit was dropping so fast, though I was leading with 2 instead of 3 fire.  The dragon also bugged last night at 40%. Some bullshit about him being fixed in the patch notes... right, right.

[Ingmar]

My only complaint about contrib is that healing and rezzing currently don't seem to count for it enough. I've spent the entire time running around being useful by rezzing people and healing and such and come away with a bronze for my trouble, when I could get gold just by spamming my basic low damage scepter attack on the champion monster instead, despite that being less helpful for actually winning.

[kildorn]

The contrib complaint seems to be a design error, and shows up mostly in Orr due to population concentration.

If there's 10-20 people doing a DE, doing 1 point of damage gets credit. If there's 100 people doing a DE, you seem to need to be on the top contributors to the death to get credit (this is why it's worth grouping for Orr DEs by the way: more credit). This has little to do with bronze/silver/gold as much as getting XP/Loot from the kills. I'll get a mess of credit if I drop a berzerker or chaos storm on a spawn instantly. if I show up when they're at 50% health, I'm probably not going to get xp for any of them. It's a bit silly, and it's why you see people playing WAY ahead of the zerg in crowded DEs.

[Bzalthek]

I'm finally trying out different classes.  After a whole lot of Warriorwarrrgharbl AE die die die, some of the other classes feel... distant.  Elementalist is pretty nice so far though.

[ezrast]

Thief is fun after I got used to initiative.  Gap closers, easy aoe, bleeds make damage numbers sprinkle out of everything, the blind on pistol off-hand lets me facetank and the 25% speed sigil is great for exploring.

Man, thank you for posting that. I didn't realize the smoke field continuously kept blind up; my dagger+pistol switch just got way more awesome and I actually make regular use of it now. It's good for saving chumps who jump into swarms of melee mobs, too.

[Outlawedprod]

Mesmer is ez gold if the event is a boss fight.  iWarlock x3 will swag to victory.

[kildorn]

iWarlock hurts like a truck with DE levels of debuffs up, but I found that Pistol deals a crapload more damage due to attacking far more often. I don't get silly 16k crits anymore in DEs, but I feel like my damage output is far higher with GS and Sword/Pistol.