Guild Wars 2

Edit: On doing some more search, this is clearly a lockdown build (20/20/30/0/0) using halting strike, bountiful interruption for the boons, and chaotic interruption. I am not sure how to out-play instant-stuns that immob me for 2.5 seconds (from mantra of distraction + chaotic interruption) and leave me vulnerable for the full shatter combo + any extra phantasm damage if not dead. Perhaps more random-dodging? The boons to survivability were coming along with all of the damage from bountiful interruption.

Original post:
Hello everyone,

I have been playing a lot of pvp lately, and running into the increasingly popular PU burst (power) mesmers on my s/f burst ele. Everytime I land my full burst I barely seem to do any damage, even being careful to avoid their dodge/clone spam (and these guys dodge a TON). I am not really sure how to do a decent amount of damage to these guys, even though they very much have the capability to burst me from 100-0%. I’m unable to dodge the 1/2 s magic bullet which stuns me forever and makes landing illusionary leap insanely easy (and the accompanying forever immob from swap). Coupled with that, I can’t dodge the phantasm burst when they use it from stealth, although that usually isn’t enough to kill me.

So, my question is, how do I actually do damage to these guys during the few times they aren’t invis/dodging and not protected by aegis?

wait a second…. u said they are running PU… so i assume its a 20/20/30 build, which is usually running a sword/torch weapon set + GS, then u say that they kill you while stunned from magic bullet….so that implies they got a pistol offhand…. which means 2 possibilities:
1) they are going s/t s/p, so their only ranged attacks are with pistol offhand…. at that point u can just kite them and stunbreak the magic bullet and gg.
2) they are not using torch… in that case PU effectiveness is greatly reduced, cause their only source of stealth will be decoy on a 40s cd, which is awfull. If they slot in veil to get more stealth they are just crazy and wasting an utility slot.

using a s/f ele you should harass them with lighting strikes to make them pop stealth, once they get out and try to burst u down, pop obsidian flesh and do your burst aswell (not on their blurred frenzy ofc), your burst is lot stronger, cause they dont have iPersona on that build, so a fll shatter will be at most 6k dmg.

Best counter to pu mesmers is to totally ignore them and go for your business, they can’t cap, they can’t kill, you can get their node just standing on it doing nothing…trying to fight them actually brings you to kill clones and get condis from them, seriously just ignore them…in midfight if pu mesmer shows up we usually wipe everyone else leaving him 1v1 vs bunker guardian forever..not even worth wasting a single skill, most useless pvp spec ever, just good for 1v1 without nodes if you must fight each other…but that’s not a game mode so noone cares..

Oh and anyway..if they stun you, ileap and shatter they’re shatter and not pu…pu is a condition build and will never burst something 100-0..well not even 100-90 lol

Try to figure out who are you fighting against first of all, just because he goes stealth it doesn’t mean he’s a pu mesmer -_-

He is not talking about pu condition, he said actually PU power, but i’m not really sure they were actually using PU, most likely they just stealthed.
Anyway the OP is probably referring to hotjoin, cause i rarely see mesmers in tpvp anymore, not even soloQ

cuge.5398:

He is not talking about pu condition, he said actually PU power, but i’m not really sure they were actually using PU, most likely they just stealthed.

Probably just a shatter mesmer running veil and mass invis (Not torch offhand since he said he stunned him with pistol) …in that case you can just 2 shot him once he goes out of stealth during revealed.

To be clear, it is a PU build that has high burst, in soloQ and teamQ. I know it was PU because of the regen and prot uptime, as well as length of stealth.

Weapon-set is usually GS and S/P.

Edit: on doing some more search, this is clearly a lockdown build (20/20/30/0/0). I am not sure how to out-play instant-stuns that immob me for 2.5 seconds. Perhaps more random-dodging? The boons to survivability were coming along with all of the damage from bountiful interruption.

If u are running the glass ele spec s/f 0/30/x/x/30 with arcane surge u can just spam ur burst while on air so u will also spam blind on him, this way he will eventually fail his stun and daze, while you’ll be landing crazy dmg on him.
I do run 0/30/10/0/30 so that i gain armor of earth under 50% hp, that way u also get stability and u can heal/attack without being interrupted.
Anyway… most of ele burst is isntant…. what is him actually interrupting on you ?

cuge.5398:

If u are running the glass ele spec s/f 0/30/x/x/30 with arcane surge u can just spam ur burst while on air so u will also spam blind on him, this way he will eventually fail his stun and daze, while you’ll be landing crazy dmg on him.
I do run 0/30/10/0/30 so that i gain armor of earth under 50% hp, that way u also get stability and u can heal/attack without being interrupted.
Anyway… most of ele burst is isntant…. what is him actually interrupting on you ?

If you are playing s/f you are always using skills (even if its the auto-attack to proc fresh air) on top of your instant-cast burst skills. Also, just spamming your instant blind is bad-form, as its best timed to actually blind an important skill. Against 90% of players, using any interrupt skill will interrupt something because at least auto-attack is being used.

The burst occurs due to chaotic interruption combined with the interrupt mantra (instant cast) that applies 2.25s immob + another cover condi. Follow this with your shatter wombo combo and your glass ele is 1-shot unless you have an invuln, which has a much longer CD than their interrupts (manta + pistol 5). I seriously think this matchup falls into the “hard-counter” area.

And now mantra. Was it a 30/30/30/30/30/30 shatter mantra pu mesmer? /report him! He obviously hacked the game.

Sergoros.4398:

And now mantra. Was it a 30/30/30/30/30/30 shatter mantra pu mesmer? /report him! He obviously hacked the game.

No it was 20/20/30 lockdown mesmer with halting strike, something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAR8alknpGtlpxTNUrNiY6Rv5bCHJFmGrVSxsdhA-TsAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFN+Y9xuAA

There was no PU, he was getting his boons from Bountiful Interruption, and the instant-immob from the mantra + chaotic interruption, chained with the immob from iLeap swap (that is ~5s of immob) is what repeatedly killed me.

I have learned that my only counter is to invuln through the shatter, as the instant immob cannot be dodged.

How did he deal any damage? He have practically no damage traits whatsoever…. I dont even see any profit in shatters in this build. Going phant lockdown would have been so much more effective.

Sergoros.4398:

How did he deal any damage? He have practically no damage traits whatsoever…. I dont even see any profit in shatters in this build. Going phant lockdown would have been so much more effective.

You can do both phantasm damage, but shatter damage is still very high, enough to 1-shot another glass target, esp when you eat the entirety of the blurred frenzy. Also, halting strike makes up for the loss of illusionary persona as it does just about as much damage itself.

I have been trying this build out and its really strong.

Edit: to clarify, I am not sure of all the traits, but I do know the build has halting strike, deceptive evasion, bountiful interruption, and chaotic interruption. Other traits can be played with. It seems desperate decoy is popular as I lose target while trying to burst them the few times I was able to.

BlackBeard.2873:

Sergoros.4398:

How did he deal any damage? He have practically no damage traits whatsoever…. I dont even see any profit in shatters in this build. Going phant lockdown would have been so much more effective.

You can do both phantasm damage, but shatter damage is still very high, enough to 1-shot another glass target, esp when you eat the entirety of the blurred frenzy. Also, halting strike makes up for the loss of illusionary persona as it does just about as much damage itself.

I have been trying this build out and its really strong.

Edit: to clarify, I am not sure of all the traits, but I do know the build has halting strike, deceptive evasion, bountiful interruption, and chaotic interruption. Other traits can be played with. It seems desperate decoy is popular as I lose target while trying to burst them the few times I was able to.

Well…that looks like a ltp problem to me. Play with this build yourself and learn its weaknesses. Stability sounds like a perfect solution to me. I have no idea how elementalist builds works, but this mesmer build is very weak and easy to counter with skilled gameplay. Its basically a “fun” build. Just to troll some newbies.

Go to the Kind of the Hill hotjoin arena and try to use it there. I believe people would show you its weaknesses.

Sergoros.4398:

Well…that looks like a ltp problem to me. Play with this build yourself and learn its weaknesses. Stability sounds like a perfect solution to me. I have no idea how elementalist builds works, but this mesmer build is very weak and easy to counter with skilled gameplay. Its basically a “fun” build. Just to troll some newbies.

Go to the Kind of the Hill hotjoin arena and try to use it there. I believe people would show you its weaknesses.

That wasn’t really a suggestion, as my glass ele doesn’t have access to high stab uptime (ele stab is very infrequent). This is just a matchup that is lost, even saving lightning flash, arcane shield, and earth 5 on focus don’t really solve the issue. I understand this build has some challenges with tankier condi builds, so I guess just hug one of them and don’t get caught alone.

Unfortunately for you, a lockdown mesmer pretty much hard counters eles. Fortunately for you, not very many people play them.

P.S. 20/20/30 isn’t even the best trait layout for a true lockdown build.

Nettle.9025:

Unfortunately for you, a lockdown mesmer pretty much hard counters eles. Fortunately for you, not very many people play them.

P.S. 20/20/30 isn’t even the best trait layout for a true lockdown build.

Yea…adding another build to the list of things that hard-counter ele. And we were once considered OP…sigh.

BlackBeard.2873:

Nettle.9025:

Unfortunately for you, a lockdown mesmer pretty much hard counters eles. Fortunately for you, not very many people play them.

P.S. 20/20/30 isn’t even the best trait layout for a true lockdown build.

Yea…adding another build to the list of things that hard-counter ele. And we were once considered OP…sigh.

But who would play such build in tpvp? U can just /afk and he wouldn’t kill you and decap point fast enough.

Sergoros.4398:

BlackBeard.2873:

Nettle.9025:

Unfortunately for you, a lockdown mesmer pretty much hard counters eles. Fortunately for you, not very many people play them.

P.S. 20/20/30 isn’t even the best trait layout for a true lockdown build.

Yea…adding another build to the list of things that hard-counter ele. And we were once considered OP…sigh.

But who would play such build in tpvp? U can just /afk and he wouldn’t kill you and decap point fast enough.

The build deals a lot of burst damage. A LOT. You can’t just afk and live. This isn’t clone-spam PU.

BlackBeard.2873:

Sergoros.4398:

BlackBeard.2873:

Nettle.9025:

Unfortunately for you, a lockdown mesmer pretty much hard counters eles. Fortunately for you, not very many people play them.

P.S. 20/20/30 isn’t even the best trait layout for a true lockdown build.

Yea…adding another build to the list of things that hard-counter ele. And we were once considered OP…sigh.

But who would play such build in tpvp? U can just /afk and he wouldn’t kill you and decap point fast enough.

The build deals a lot of burst damage. A LOT. You can’t just afk and live. This isn’t clone-spam PU.

I guess a lot of dmg was coming from interrupting your skills. If u wont use em – he wont deal much dmg.