Guild Wars 2

So I’ve recently got into PVPing, to get away from the whole zerg rush of WvW. Yeah silly me, due to how many Mesmers I see.

Maybe it’s due to being new, solo, and other factors. But every match it’s basically won already just based on the team that has the most mesmers. Turn a 8v8 into a 8v20, why not.

So rather than just complain about them more, what can you do to play around them?

Yap hotjoins are dominated by thiefs/mesmers. If its any consolation, the higher the level of play you go the less you will see this.

so if you want to get serious about tourney pvp start quing up and farming up ur mmr. Once you get a high rating teams like this disappear as that sort of team comp will get you destroyed when your facing decent opponents.

daydream.2938:

Yap hotjoins are dominated by thiefs/mesmers. If its any consolation, the higher the level of play you go the less you will see this.

so if you want to get serious about tourney pvp start quing up and farming up ur mmr. Once you get a high rating teams like this disappear as that sort of team comp will get you destroyed when your facing decent opponents.

I’ll keep that in mind. If it helps, I’m an Engineer and not a very good one.

Merlin.4058:

daydream.2938:

Yap hotjoins are dominated by thiefs/mesmers. If its any consolation, the higher the level of play you go the less you will see this.

so if you want to get serious about tourney pvp start quing up and farming up ur mmr. Once you get a high rating teams like this disappear as that sort of team comp will get you destroyed when your facing decent opponents.

I’ll keep that in mind. If it helps, I’m an Engineer and not a very good one.

Ostrich eggs and some other dude have a youtube video up on the current meta build for engies. HGh conditions. theres a couple of variants of hgh but the standard one is listed there.

Here is a link to the video outlying the build.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hx93LdkAOg
Learn it, its got a high skill cap, in particular learning to land the blinds in a 1on1 situation.
But once learnt its one of the strong ways to play in the game.

also ostrich eggs frequently streams on twitch tv, I recommend you check it out if you want to learn how to tpvp on the engy.

Want to do something against elems/mesmers/thieves without playing piano masterpiece on keyboard – play elems/mesmers/thieves. Its obvious, and its what ANET want to see in this game. They also prefer to delete some posts and themes discussing about this problem.

Thiefs and mesmers are NOT op. mesmers are pretty strong. And eles are indeed a little bit strong.

daydream.2938:

Thiefs and mesmers are NOT op. mesmers are pretty strong. And eles are indeed a little bit strong.

I didnt even say that they are op or not. It is still obvious that this classes are much easier to play than others. And yes, i’ve played all classes, just except necro.

Merlin.4058:

daydream.2938:

Yap hotjoins are dominated by thiefs/mesmers. If its any consolation, the higher the level of play you go the less you will see this.

so if you want to get serious about tourney pvp start quing up and farming up ur mmr. Once you get a high rating teams like this disappear as that sort of team comp will get you destroyed when your facing decent opponents.

I’ll keep that in mind. If it helps, I’m an Engineer and not a very good one.

If you spec on condition dmg you can easily ruin pretty much every mesmer since you’re going to face 99% shatters in tpvp and some phantasms in hotjoin…and both of them are really weak against conditions since actual viable mesmer’s specs run with pretty much no condition removal (You can still use null field expec in spvp since you have to drop really important stuff if you want to use it in tpvp…but even with nullfield you just have to wait for it to end then you can destroy the mesmer)

You will always have problems with mesmers and so on. The reason behind this is not that your a bad engineer. I mean you could be the best engineer ingame, but if you don’t know all the mechanics of the other classes and how they work, you will never achieve a high play. It’s like facing something you never seen before in your life and you have no clue how to handle this situation.

What helped me alot with mesmers was really simple. I created one, asked a good mesmer how he play his build (traits,runes,weapons) and then I started playing it. What also can help is when you find a mesmer who will duell with you. So you can focus just on the mesmer and not on other distracting things.

Mesmers have a good numbers of skills that give the the ability to clena conditions from itself. They have a skill that give to your enemy 3 of your conditions and give you 3 of the enemy buffs. And other skills that give them the ability to remove conditions. I’m a Guardian and all I can do against a mesmer is try to survive and hope in my team to join me in the kill. I’ve see in spvp a Mesmer kill 3 palyer all alone. Yeah, that’s not a normal situation, that player was a very good one. But I’ve never see a Guardian survive all alone against 2 enemy. Frequently a Guardian can’t kill a single enemy all alone, depending on the class XD I’ve also find some noob mesmer, inesperienced players that try the class, but a good mesmer is very very hard to kill. If I find a good mesmer or a good Ele I know that I can only try to survive.
The mesmer class isn’t OP, but… it’s very easy to play and extrememly effective in every it’s build. CC, CD, GC, Tank, all.
And hopes not to find two together XD
One time I’ve find in tournament a party of 3 mesmer and 2 thief, all of high level. Yeah, we’ve lost the match XD
A Mesmer is too difficult to hit for a Guardian and give too much damage. I can hope that you can overtake them by Condition damage, because if you try to kill them by direct damage you will die, no more.
(p.s. sorry for my very very bad english XD)

As pointed out, in tournaments a Mesmer has no condition removal. I used to run arcane thievery and null field for this very reason, but its just not enough for the trade off from portal and other utilities, shatter or phantasm spec irregardless.

Best thing to do in this game when having a problem with a profession is to make one yourself. Since we don’t need to go out of our way to level and gear a new character, it’s no problem to get the level 2 alt of your choice to the mists and try stuff out in hotjoins or something.

Not that you need to master the profession, but just have a grip on the mechanics from their point of view. It’ll help a lot with knowing what to expect when after you’re used to cooldowns etc.

Mesmers alone aren’t too bad, but when you have 4-5, who are all rank 20+ as it seems to be every freaking morning… It is just silly… I had been hit earlier today by 12 hits of mindwrack in a single go… Nope… nothing at all wrong with that…. How about a cap for sPvP of x of each profession per team? And rank limits also… ranks 1-13 vs ranks 28-42… In tPvP, it doesn’t matter because your not typically in a pug, but how is anyone supposed to rank up in these conditions?

Mesmers are a bit unfun to play against, imo, because of several factors:
- target breaking with stealth (also unfun agaisnt thieves);
- never-ending illusion generation;
- and the ability to do too many powerful things at instant speed.

When you get immobilized, and then you eat a blurred frenzy + pistol phantasm spike, followed by a massive illusion shattering burst at instant speed, it just feels a bit unsatisfying.

What doesn’t helps, is that you might think that defeating their illusions is the way to go. Afterall, it’s a shatter build right? And shatters depend on illusions that are alive. But killing illusions won’t help: you will be wasting your time, because illusions are generated way too frequently, and because shattering is very mindless at its current state. Unless you have a large amount of aoe skills to use.

This is due to two traits: one that allows mesmers to generate clones while dodging, another that allows mesmers to use shattering when they don’t have clones (for a free rupt or a free distortion, saving all their clones for a mind wrack burst). Those two traits are very creative and very exciting for the mesmer player, but they dumb down the profession, making it more mindless and noob-friendly than, probably, what the developers wanted. This creates a problem: one of the biggest means to counter mesmers (destroying illusions) and one of the biggest obstacles to play with a mesmer (choosing which shatter to use, at the expense of another shatter) become trivial, the profession becomes more one-sided, and becomes more dependent on specific builds to be beaten, intead of depending on the skill of the player only.

Thankfully, mesmers have some unique utilities that are so good, that it pretty much forces them to not use other important utilities, like condition removal.

So, defeating a mesmer depends on your build:
- you either have plenty of condition damage, which they can’t counter;
- or you have plenty of aoe to keep toe-on-toe with their massive ability to spam clones;
- or (which also helps) you’re using a ranged build, which means that their clones will have to run to you to shatter, making their instant burst no longer instant at all, giving you the opportunity to dodge it.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

daydream.2938:

Thiefs and mesmers are NOT op. mesmers are pretty strong. And eles are indeed a little bit strong.

I didnt even say that they are op or not. It is still obvious that this classes are much easier to play than others. And yes, i’ve played all classes, just except necro.

I think thiefs are kinda easier to play at low end but require a lot of skill at high end.
Very few thiefs that are considered truly scary.

Actually the biggest problem I have with Mesmers is all their clones. As I said in my first post, a Mesmer seems able to double the player count. That and how long the clones seem to last. There was one time where I was fighting what I thought was a Mesmer but turned out to be all clones. The real guy had left after making his army.

Throw in that I’m not good at the controls to keep locked onto someone and most Mesmers tend to eat me alive.

If it is more than 1 mesmer or maybe 1 mesmer an necro with full set of pets it gets troublesome. I also have the problem Merlin mentioned but usually I often know where the real mesmer is but controls… I need to change some stuff soon. Have only started to play more sPvP a few days ago and still have the defauld keybinds and stuff which was enough for stupid PvE mobs.

Maybe it could help a bit if at least the pets that are not mesmer clones(that other stuff mesmer can summon like Illusion duelist, ranger pets and necro pets) could be a different color. Text I mean of the name.

I already know from engineer turrets they have yellow text.

Makes it easier to find the real target. Of course Mesmer clones should still appear as if they were a player otherwise it would ruin the purpose.

Well, coming from a mesmer main, I highly recommend that you make a mesmer and play around with it. You’ll start to learn the skills and tactics, which will be easier to counter. It seems to be right now, like you mentioned, your first obstacle to overcome is to figure out which is the real mesmer, after they stealth and come back. If you play one, you’ll start to realize that clones don’t dodge and clones don’t strife or run backwards. You’ll also realize that on the #2 downed ability, the real mesmer is always the 2nd one to appear (unless you have horrible culling, then good luck).

Also, take a stun break/teleport. I’m not familiar with engineers, but a very popular shatter tactic is to stun w/ the pistol, switch to sword, leap (causing immobilize), then blurred frenzy and shatter. If you can get out of there when you’re immobilized and see them open up w/ blurred frenzy, you can negate a lot of damage.

Mesmers are a hard class to beat.

The thing that helps the most is turning off you “Show all enemy names” in your options.

This will make it so that the real mesmer is the only one with a red tag about his head.

Even with this they are very tricky with all the teleporting/invulnerability/etc.

Try playing as a mesmer and learning their skills and how they move around after stealthing on u. That has helpd me the most.

I believe I’m done trying to play Engineer in PVP. I don’t care if we have the ‘broken’ build in the game with HGH. I can’t even get started trying to practice without getting face rolled by Mesmers. So forget it, time to roll something else up and see well I score when I’m just rolling my face on the keyboard.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

Want to do something against elems/mesmers/thieves without playing piano masterpiece on keyboard – play elems/mesmers/thieves. Its obvious, and its what ANET want to see in this game. They also prefer to delete some posts and themes discussing about this problem.

“without playing piano masterpiece on keyboard”

I live for this quote!!

Mesmer isn’t so much easy to play as it is a learn-to-play issue for many newer (and maybe even older) faces. Most mesmers I run into (in hotjoins anyway) know how to break a target lock with decoy and expect you to fumble looking for the real target. THAT is usually when the mesmer sets up for a burst – when you spend too much time trying to find the real one. Lots of people get caught up re-acquiring the target and fall for the iLeap + Blurred Frenzy combo (or Torch #4 + <X>).

Maybe I’m ranting a bit, but I see so many people complain that mesmer is OP and “easy to play” when in reality it is neither – it is the enemy who needs to learn how to defeat them (and trust me – there are plenty of ways, but learning to re-acquire the target as quickly as possible is key).

wookie.8934:

mesmer is “easy to play”

Yes it is. The only easier class to play is thief, lowest skill caps in whole game.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

wookie.8934:

mesmer is “easy to play”

Yes it is. The only easier class to play is thief, lowest skill caps in whole game.

I play mesmer and kill majority of other mesmers 1v1. it’s easy class in that its easy to pick up and kill bads

Sprawl.3891:

it’s easy class in that its easy to pick up and kill bads

Its easy class in this things too. And it does not contradict to what i said.

I have 6 of the 8 professions mesmer is at the top of hard to play. The absolute top as far as hard to play is engi. There is a lot that goes into playing a mesmer especially depending on the build. Thief is easiest

I play all 8 classes and the only one I find easier than mesmer is the thief. Half of the mesmers abilities summon a.i. that hit just as hard as I do, and I can easily maintain 3 at all times. Besides that, I have numerous ‘oh kitten’ buttons (stealth and blink). On top of that, it only takes 5 points in traits to give phantasms retal… wtf. I rarely play my thief or mesmer because they feel too cheap. If there were a visible kill/death ratio these 2 classes would dominate the ranks.

Master Charles.7093:

I play all 8 classes and the only one I find easier than mesmer is the thief. Half of the mesmers abilities summon a.i. that hit just as hard as I do, and I can easily maintain 3 at all times. Besides that, I have numerous ‘oh kitten’ buttons (stealth and blink). On top of that, it only takes 5 points in traits to give phantasms retal… wtf. I rarely play my thief or mesmer because they feel too cheap. If there were a visible kill/death ratio these 2 classes would dominate the ranks.

In hot joins? That’s a given but that is because these classes thrive in chaotic environments and you must not play tourneys very often because usually it is one maybe 2 accesses to stealth for a Mesmer. And if you put that 5 points to give your phantasms retal then you are wasting it because you are ignoring something else that can be very very damaging or controlling…. A phantasm spec is strong for sure but it is definitely not the most useful Mesmer build… Especially for tourneys… In tourneys you want a 20/20/0/0/30 Mesmer because they are the best bet for dealing with bunkers considering that when traited we can remove 3 boons per shatter however most geniuses completely ignore this and take the GS thereby wasting a trait that gives a small increase in damage… Mesmer is one of the most engaging classes in this game and requires much more battlefield awareness than others.

jportell.2197:

Master Charles.7093:

I play all 8 classes and the only one I find easier than mesmer is the thief. Half of the mesmers abilities summon a.i. that hit just as hard as I do, and I can easily maintain 3 at all times. Besides that, I have numerous ‘oh kitten’ buttons (stealth and blink). On top of that, it only takes 5 points in traits to give phantasms retal… wtf. I rarely play my thief or mesmer because they feel too cheap. If there were a visible kill/death ratio these 2 classes would dominate the ranks.

In hot joins? That’s a given but that is because these classes thrive in chaotic environments and you must not play tourneys very often because usually it is one maybe 2 accesses to stealth for a Mesmer. And if you put that 5 points to give your phantasms retal then you are wasting it because you are ignoring something else that can be very very damaging or controlling…. A phantasm spec is strong for sure but it is definitely not the most useful Mesmer build… Especially for tourneys… In tourneys you want a 20/20/0/0/30 Mesmer because they are the best bet for dealing with bunkers considering that when traited we can remove 3 boons per shatter however most geniuses completely ignore this and take the GS thereby wasting a trait that gives a small increase in damage… Mesmer is one of the most engaging classes in this game and requires much more battlefield awareness than others.

Oh come on: I must not play tourneys much cause I don’t use the most powerful build possible? What happened to doing your own thing? Oh yeah, I remember: most of those people quit because it was deemed worthless and noobish. Well, I do play tourneys, and I do it my way. 5 points seems a very small sacrifice to have such a strong counter to aoes, and I really break the mold by not using portal… I’d rather be original, and I win more than my fair share just by thinking differently and being unpredictable. Long story short I still don’t have fun with mesmer because even this build feels like easymode.

Master Charles.7093:

jportell.2197:

Master Charles.7093:

I play all 8 classes and the only one I find easier than mesmer is the thief. Half of the mesmers abilities summon a.i. that hit just as hard as I do, and I can easily maintain 3 at all times. Besides that, I have numerous ‘oh kitten’ buttons (stealth and blink). On top of that, it only takes 5 points in traits to give phantasms retal… wtf. I rarely play my thief or mesmer because they feel too cheap. If there were a visible kill/death ratio these 2 classes would dominate the ranks.

In hot joins? That’s a given but that is because these classes thrive in chaotic environments and you must not play tourneys very often because usually it is one maybe 2 accesses to stealth for a Mesmer. And if you put that 5 points to give your phantasms retal then you are wasting it because you are ignoring something else that can be very very damaging or controlling…. A phantasm spec is strong for sure but it is definitely not the most useful Mesmer build… Especially for tourneys… In tourneys you want a 20/20/0/0/30 Mesmer because they are the best bet for dealing with bunkers considering that when traited we can remove 3 boons per shatter however most geniuses completely ignore this and take the GS thereby wasting a trait that gives a small increase in damage… Mesmer is one of the most engaging classes in this game and requires much more battlefield awareness than others.

Oh come on: I must not play tourneys much cause I don’t use the most powerful build possible? What happened to doing your own thing? Oh yeah, I remember: most of those people quit because it was deemed worthless and noobish. Well, I do play tourneys, and I do it my way. 5 points seems a very small sacrifice to have such a strong counter to aoes, and I really break the mold by not using portal… I’d rather be original, and I win more than my fair share just by thinking differently and being unpredictable. Long story short I still don’t have fun with mesmer because even this build feels like easymode.

I have fun on my mes on my guard on my thief, ele, engi, and necro… I take the class based on what the people I play with want… And playing other classes mesmers glaring weaknesses show through like condition damage they suck at dealing with it… And applying conditions most mesmers do not run a condition on death trait for the clones so they really only have confusion and Mesmer confusion lasts less time than engi confusion even when traited… If they want a shatter mes i’ll do it… I’ll bring portal and blow up their bunker because everyone and their mom seems to think that mesmers require a GS or a Staff I run neither and every shatter I pull makes them bunkers weaker and weaker… IF they want a guard that is able to tank 3ppl for about 3 minutes then I will bring my guard…. Everyone is so set on getting classes nerfed for no reason what so ever other than “I lost too much” It’s like the whole retal argument so that means that all conditions/boons that help damage need obliterated? People need to get over themselves the last class that is overpowered right now is mesmers… the only time they were remotely close to overpowered was when shattered strength granted 3 stacks per illusion shattered instead of 1 and that was hot fixed. Everyone seems to forget that any thing that gets broken on a class not in their favor is usually hot fixed very fast… Remember the hidden killer fiasco… Anything that screws the Mesmer over (iZerker bug) is just swept under the rug while the mesmers are screaming for a fix and anet just /shrugs any bug that makes us better is immediately fixed… So yes I do think that mesmers are nowhere near OP at the moment nor have they ever really been so.

Just now…14k retaliation kills me, with very low power, p/d thief playing, I die because retaliation is 90% of my hp. That’s broken. It’s broken BECAUSE retaliation is broken OP and needs a 25-50% nerf.

Retaliation needs a nerf BECAUSE….unlike bleeding, burning, poison, confusion…you can’t heal it away.

Meridian.8730:

Just now…14k retaliation kills me, with very low power, p/d thief playing, I die because retaliation is 90% of my hp. That’s broken.

But you know that you can see all active boons on your target? It’s more like your playstyle is broken than retaliation.

I’ve been saying this before, but what retaliation needs, is better UI/ visual support. Like confusion. I almost never know if I’m being hit by retaliation or not, when there’s so many multi-attacks, aoes, condition damage, and other numbers popping up at the screen, while I’m trying to watch both the animations and (to a lesser extent) my skill’s UI and health bar. And the boon’s icons are very small, and sometimes professions with retaliation have several other boons as well.

With stronger visual clues, people would know better when they should adapt to retaliation and when they don’t needs to worry about it.

I always hear thief is easiest and you just spam heartseeker but I bet if I just made a new thief now and just spammed heartseeker not doing anything else because I don’t know much about the other skills(I play a bit PvE with thief but not trying around much other skills and only staying with sword) I’d get killed more often than if I stayed on the other classe I’m more experienced with(engineer).

Thief is easy in spvp zergfest, but in a tpvp match where people know what they’re doing it’s pretty much the opposite.

I don’t know about you guys but right now 3 mesmer/2bunker teams are still very powerful/ abundant

Raptured.9307:

I don’t know about you guys but right now 3 mesmer/2bunker teams are still very powerful/ abundant

Really? Do you not see all the ridiculous HGH engis running around… They are the powerful ones currently.

jportell.2197:

Raptured.9307:

I don’t know about you guys but right now 3 mesmer/2bunker teams are still very powerful/ abundant

Really? Do you not see all the ridiculous HGH engis running around… They are the powerful ones currently.

Yeah hgh is probably the most annoying thing a could face in tpvp (Eles are just over everything so i don’t consider them) with both guardian and mesmer, they’re 80% going to get you on the “long run” no matter what, probably even more than rangers..

Archaon.6245:

jportell.2197:

Raptured.9307:

I don’t know about you guys but right now 3 mesmer/2bunker teams are still very powerful/ abundant

Really? Do you not see all the ridiculous HGH engis running around… They are the powerful ones currently.

Yeah hgh is probably the most annoying thing a could face in tpvp (Eles are just over everything so i don’t consider them) with both guardian and mesmer, they’re 80% going to get you on the “long run” no matter what, probably even more than rangers..

Recently the strongest team we have faced was a 3 HGH two bunker team… Doesn’t matter how many condition cleanses you have you can’t keep up with them… Not to mention the boons they get out last boons from ele/guard and so forth.

If you havn’t played mesmer, you havn’t played GW2.
A entry level mesmer can beat any other class 1v2, a good mesmer won;t fight 1v1 coz it’s just simply non sense. You will see many good mesmers in WvW 1v20+ and they alone can hold 2+ mins. They face roll 5-men team like eating cake.

CRrabbit.1284:

If you havn’t played mesmer, you havn’t played GW2.
A entry level mesmer can beat any other class 1v2, a good mesmer won;t fight 1v1 coz it’s just simply non sense. You will see many good mesmers in WvW 1v20+ and they alone can hold 2+ mins. They face roll 5-men team like eating cake.

Too bad here is s-tpvp forum and noone gives a kitten bout wvsw…beat any other class 1vs2…yeah sure….try to get out from hotjoin or wvsw aka zergvszerg aka semi-intelligent mobs pve…

…lol…nothing more to say..

CRrabbit.1284:

If you havn’t played mesmer, you havn’t played GW2.
A entry level mesmer can beat any other class 1v2, a good mesmer won;t fight 1v1 coz it’s just simply non sense. You will see many good mesmers in WvW 1v20+ and they alone can hold 2+ mins. They face roll 5-men team like eating cake.

If that was true wouldnt one mesmer be able to win tpvp all by himself? And in wvw 5 mesmers could wipe an entire map?