damselfish | This is a Post About Guild Wars and Sharp-Dressed Men

I have to say I'm impressed with whoever designed the armor in GW2-- they know their business. The women's stuff is nice, but it often looks better than men's armor. But the men's armor in this game... /fans self.

GW2 may be the first MMO I've played that actually knows how to dress caster men. I've RPed lots of WoW, and almost all my male mages end up in pants and fancy coats when I can describe in text what they're wearing. Most dudes are just Men in a Blue Dress because apparently men in cloth only wear dresses and not anything else made from textiles. Never mind that most people in the real world wear cloth, not armor. GW2... puts them in coats and pants and stuff.

Given that I'm saying this, you may have guessed that I made myself this GQ motherfucker:

I actually took this picture for that dress, but you can also see how damn fine my mesmer looks. It's flowy, it has the same movement and weight of a robe, but no one will ever write a song about its resemblance to women's wear. This is how caster men should look and dress-- and it's a starter outfit.

Though much as I love the way the boys are dressed, I am all "hnnggh, waaaaant" over the lady's dresses. I don't even care if they're no good for combat (weird! I always care!) they are just so pretty and swishy and

omg look at Jax in her ballgown with a flamethrower

Are you seeing this.

I see women running around and get these pangs of "I have made a mistake! Must roll a lady, immediately!" Except my dude is still pretty damn fine.

I spent a lot of time messing around with a few different classes, learning the game, reaching level 5 and then deleting compulsively. I have an elementalist who is cute as a button and has all the cute clothes I could ever want

but I hit a point around level 12 where I was frustrated and angry and dying and said to my buddy "you still want to RP right? What class, I'll roll a boy." My buddy didn't care, though mesmer had a lot of RP potential, and since I like boys with pistols, that's what I rolled.

I have since learned that:
1) mesmer is hard
2) I don't suck as much as I thought I did because this game is hard
3) and sure, I bought a new mouse to put some strafe buttons on it because you can't strafe and use actions at the same time from the keyboard (you try to press Q+F1 at the same time!) but it isn't as sensitive as my old mouse and moves like it's got an anchor built in despite being from the same company.

I would go back to playing something else because omg mesmer is hard, but I'm way behind all my friends in levels so I'm struggling to play catch-up. I've never been a fast leveler, so this is hard! So since the mesmer is level 18, he's probably the main. Whoops. Should've thought that one through.... I also realized, last night, that at some point during character creation I made him into a freakish giant and had no idea because once you leave the "body scale" menu you have no frame of reference for shrimpy shrimp or gargantuan hulk. Too late now to fix that.

Mesmer has a rough skillset, no real AoE, and a ton of weapons I can't really understand. I get two sets, but that's not enough.

Staff: I love this because it has 2 clones, my armor, and my only real AoE. Main nuke is so slow as to be worthless.

Greatsword: only good for events because it does more damage the further away you are. Lots of mesmers seem to love greatsword and I do not understand why, and it makes me feel dumb and incompetent. Has a limited AoE that doesn't go very far.

Sword+pistol: the combination that got me to play mesmer in the first place because it's so sexy looking (shallow!) It's a lot of fun, except it requires you to melee as a caster and it's a real PITA to kite while meleeing. I find myself turning away from the mob too often and ceasing autoattack, then having to turn around while it's hitting me. No real AoE.

Scepter+pistol: a combination I never, ever see anyone use so I'm sure it secretly sucks but I find pretty awesome. Every third autoattack you get another clone, which means I can shatter them faster than my shatter skills come off cooldown, you get the sexy pistol skills, and you can keep out of melee range. The scepter's skills are kind of boring though (confuse beam is nice but the one on the 2 button never seems to do squat). No AoE.

The reason I focus on AoE is for events: if you don't tag things right away, they're dead and you don't get the exp for them.

So I mostly go with staff and scepter/sword+pistol and carry everything in my bags. At least now I've dropped my second sword and the torch so that's some bag space? But my guy is still lugging around more weapons than any caster should.

The game continues to be fun, when it isn't so hard I want to throw things.

And occasionally it'll bug out, like dropping me beneath the land to swim under a mountain while monsters attack me.

Also it seems that once you hit about 13 and leave the main newbie areas, events are less populated. I did a lot of events alone, which makes me guess that I'm not as bad at mesmer as I thought if I can solo five enemies at once and not die. Sure I scream and flail and curse, but I'm alive at the end!