Guild Wars 2

Mesmer are dead…anet keeps nerfing the profession…no point loosing more time on it.
Roll thief. End of story.

the only “+” of mesmer profession is when you will good at it (but still suck due to game disbalance) and reroll – you will beat everything in semiafk mod.
Confirmed

It´s pretty much the same for all zerker builds vs thieves, but other classes don´t rely on zerker amulet like mesmer.

Well as long as we’re talking about standard shatter mesmer without weakness on clone death or a lot of stealth and stuff your main defense mechanic is running/porting away and outranging stuff. You can’t run from a thief because he always has one port more than you have. Go figure.

Also shortbow autoattack bouncing on clones is… something.

Thief basically needs to be less lethal to other zerker professions. Perhaps if they could bypass additional armor somewhat and have their base dps toned down.. So they maintained dps vs high toughness classes whilst not being able to rince all other zerker professions.

Or just tone down the damage coefficient of on proc sigils for thief…

Just nerf petma evade broken mechanic

Thief is for sure the hardest fight and while the situation is ridiculous this game isn’t balanced for 1v1.

In fact it’s balanced so that thief ALWAYS has a good chance to win any 1v1s because of his class role.

Keksmuffin you’re clownshoes.

Darnis.4056:

Thief is for sure the hardest fight and while the situation is ridiculous this game isn’t balanced for 1v1.

In fact it’s balanced so that thief ALWAYS has a good chance to win any 1v1s because of his class role.

Keksmuffin you’re clownshoes.

k

Hey guys, just wanted to chime in!
First of all thanks for watching my stream toutatis

So yeah I mean this topic has been beaten to death, but I just wanted to kind of give some perspective. Mes has a hard time vs. Thief. It’s glass vs. glass which is always volatile, except thief have stealth advantage. This means it’s more of a guessing game for the mesmer, meaning higher statistical chance for thief to win – plain and simple. This also means it’s possible to mesmer to win, but this chance drops dramatically once you start playing against good and consistent thieves, who also have their teams.

I mentioned pistol whip because as they do damage, they’re also evading. So against mesmer specifically it’s the perfect concoction of stealth, burst, mobility, escapes, and invulns/evades. Even if you run staff and phase away from the whip, it’s extremely hard to return damage against that spec in the matchup.

Anyway, luckily you don’t see pistol whip as much because s/d is better currently! If anyone is wondering why, it’s basically because the mobility/high base damage on larcenous means you can go 6 trickery 6 acro and still do enough damage, allowing for crazy utility/mobility/and gank potential.

I would also like to mention that the necro vs. engi matchup is arguably worse than mes thief. The way it works out in team play though is that the role of necro/engi is such that more often they have the support of their team. Whereas a roaming role that is generally assigned to mes/thief gives the mes more opportunities to get ganked or end up in a disadvantageous 1v1 with the thief. Basically as a team you have to play around the weaknesses of the mesmer more than a team has to play around the weaknesses of a thief. – And the strengths of thief are so good that even portal on mesmer doesn’t make up for mesmer’s weakness to thief.

As a concluding thought, currently I do play thief in competitively play. It’s statistically a better choice than mesmer. For s/d, the relationship of skill required to success payout is low/high relative to mesmer, and of course I still try to be the best I can be even at thief regardless of how cheese it is. If you already have a thief on your team, you could consider running mesmer, but you could also just consider running another warrior or staff-support ele. I love Mesmer and would like to see it be more viable

Edit: Just saw Bazzoong’s post below. He definitely has a point about sword cleaving clones. That’s another reason why pistol whip is so strong – it can kill your clones even while the clones are shattering and the thief won’t take damage. Shortbow is also really strong vs. mes: bouncing shots that kill clones and hit you while stealthed, and point black clusters that insta cleave all clones.
sword does way too much damage though. I hit and get hit by 12k+ auto attack chains from sword very often against glass, it’s just ridiculous.

Blackjack.5621:

It´s pretty much the same for all zerker builds vs thieves, but other classes don´t rely on zerker amulet like mesmer.

This guy knows what’s up.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Darnis.4056:

Thief is for sure the hardest fight and while the situation is ridiculous this game isn’t balanced for 1v1.

In fact it’s balanced so that thief ALWAYS has a good chance to win any 1v1s because of his class role.

Keksmuffin you’re clownshoes.

k

Sarcasm? You do realize that glass v glass is often a quick duel if one-sided; something zipping around rinsing glass classes is very limiting to diversity.

Tbh though i don’t care what they do to thieves as a whole, just nerf Sizer plz thx

I only have fun playing 1 shot mesmer, use scholar runes go invis get point blank and use gs 2 clone and mindwrack for ~12-15k damage. Other than that mesmer feels pretty dead, but ya if the mesmer lands a rupt during the pw precast and the thief still ports onto him he can eat a pretty heavy mindwrack burst due to immob. So it is pretty much all up to the mesmer to not suck.

Darnis.4056:

Thief is for sure the hardest fight and while the situation is ridiculous this game isn’t balanced for 1v1.

In fact it’s balanced so that thief ALWAYS has a good chance to win any 1v1s because of his class role.

Unfortunately, I believe this is true. However it is not always bad. When I find myself in a 1v1 against a Thief I know I can take a quick break from playing and go get some coffee or something as I do not really need to waste my time trying to actually win against Arenanet’s “balanced” mechanics.

Take the good with the bad. Silver lining and all…

Thanks.

Pen > Sword

Sword > Mesmer

Therefore?
Pen > Mesmer

pirate bird > mesmer

You got it wrong, it has nothing to do with stealth or evades or lacerous strike, the reason why S/x is so hard to beat for mesmers is the fact hat the sword cleaves through your clones.

Mesmers depend a lot on the clones soaking up damage once a thief equips a sword he can destroy your clowns and still hit you, basically sword thieves win by spamming 1 you can perfectly deal with the teleports and the hard hits and you will still lose because of the cleave on the AA chain.

The sword AA chain also does to much damage for the fact that it is an AoE skill, but that is a general problem with all AoEskills in the game on all classes (especially with swords and greatswords).

Insert AoE spam rant here…

In my opinon mesmers waste time if they 1v1 in spvp anyway, sad but true your job is to stay with the pack.

Ya mesmer’s strength is in mobility through portal, evasion with decoy blink and phase retreat, and high spike damage thanks to mind wrack. They are a support class like in gw1.

Also dagger thieves have an even easier time with mesmers because all it takes is 2 backstabs, and it is really easy to prevent phantasms from spawning. But tbh thieves only need a shortbow to beat zerker mes, all of their attacks are so easy to dodge unless they do a stealth shatter or blink slap combo.

Bazzoong.7145:

You got it wrong, it has nothing to do with stealth or evades or lacerous strike, the reason why S/x is so hard to beat for mesmers is the fact hat the sword cleaves through your clones.

Mesmers depend a lot on the clones soaking up damage once a thief equips a sword he can destroy your clowns and still hit you, basically sword thieves win by spamming 1 you can perfectly deal with the teleports and the hard hits and you will still lose because of the cleave on the AA chain.

The sword AA chain also does to much damage for the fact that it is an AoE skill, but that is a general problem with all AoEskills in the game on all classes (especially with swords and greatswords).

Insert AoE spam rant here…

In my opinon mesmers waste time if they 1v1 in spvp anyway, sad but true your job is to stay with the pack.

I think this is completely ridiculous, this is basically what Anet told us in their livestream, that Thief counters Mesmer because a Thief stops a Mesmer from keeping his clones up. Lets break it down as to why Thief > Mesmer.

1) Teleports, for every one you have a thief has one more.
2) Stealth, Thieves have a much more reliable stealth than Mesmers do.
3) Steal and more importantly the 5 point minor that poisons on steal, this stops a Mesmer from healing.
4) S/D evades mostly nullify our damage, a shatter Mesmer can hit way harder than a Thief, but you actually have to hit them. S/D and S/P both utilize evades in their melee attacks meaning your best bet at bursting a Thief is when he is out of range, which can lead us to wasting utilities.

Hence if you are a Mesmer, in a tournament you can beat the thief by catching them off guard, or you can outplay them if they are D/P. Most of the time however, fighting Thieves as a Mesmer in particular is a lost cause.

^It is not because the sword hits and destroys clones it is because the sword cleaves through the clones and still hits the mesmer.

Honestly d/x is not better against mesmers (at least 1v1) since a good mesmer will let the clones soak the attacks, clones can even stop shadow shot on d/p by placing them between you and the thief the bullet wil get stopped and the blind and the gap closer go to waste.

Even against stealth and defence heavy mesmer builds the sword is a no brainer the cleave cone makes it way easier to hit invisible targets than the dagger attacks.

People do not even understand what kills them.

Benjamin.8237:

I think this is completely ridiculous, this is basically what Anet told us in their livestream, that Thief counters Mesmer because a Thief stops a Mesmer from keeping his clones up. Lets break it down as to why Thief > Mesmer.

1) Teleports, for every one you have a thief has one more.
2) Stealth, Thieves have a much more reliable stealth than Mesmers do.
3) Steal and more importantly the 5 point minor that poisons on steal, this stops a Mesmer from healing.
4) S/D evades mostly nullify our damage, a shatter Mesmer can hit way harder than a Thief, but you actually have to hit them. S/D and S/P both utilize evades in their melee attacks meaning your best bet at bursting a Thief is when he is out of range, which can lead us to wasting utilities.

Hence if you are a Mesmer, in a tournament you can beat the thief by catching them off guard, or you can outplay them if they are D/P. Most of the time however, fighting Thieves as a Mesmer in particular is a lost cause.

+1, and great post of Supcutie too.

Sword cleaves through clones?.. What is this.. I can’t even..
You couldn’t be more wrong.

As Benjamin already pointed out:
Thief Teleports Sustain and Burst(Sigils) and almost permanent evades and On demand stealth grant him the ability to hard counter a mesmer, also that 4 seconds of stability+allboons he steals is pretty disgusting.

Also the devs were really high when they did that podcast.

Wait, this is bad matchup for mesmer? As a thief player, a zerker shatter mesmer is one of the scariest things for me to fight. (not as scary as dps guard tho) If he catches me in 1 shatter im kittening doomed.

I feel with mesmer vs thief (perhaps its different versus pistol whip spec, i dont play that often) whoever spots the other guy first has the advantage

I’m sorry but as a thief, i didn’t know that D/P thief was still a thing. i see them more in wvw the pvp now a days since they upped the cost for the skill. With the seldom time i’ve spent playing a mesmer i can’t really say this is a L2P issue but as someone who’s never had much of an issue with them i guess my suggestion would be burn your invuns while they pretty much spam 2 and 3 after about 2 rounds of that they will burnt about all their initiative.. then condi burst or blow your clones up? I guess don’t let it be discouraging and watch for their casts most people don’t know that I’ve noticed is the sword has to hit you in order to immobilize someone. hope this helps a bit and you can find a good counter besides switching your build completely around because of some spammers.

Both the cleave spam and the evades contribute to the thief being an incredibly hard counter to shatter Mesmer.

The evades mean that it’s very difficult for Mesmer to actually land burst on the thief. Since weapon evades can even be used while immobilized, you can’t rely on that to land burst. It means that more careful setup is necessary to successfully land damage.

The cleave means that the Mesmer isn’t able to do that more careful setup. The thief cleaves and evades while on the offensive. This means that not only are they avoiding incoming damage, they’re actively destroying the resource that Mesmers need to do damage at the same time.

This is also why clone-death condition builds are highly effective against thieves. Clone-deaths ignore evades, and so that cleave spam just means the thief will be loaded up with condies after a couple seconds.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Well as long as we’re talking about standard shatter mesmer without weakness on clone death or a lot of stealth and stuff your main defense mechanic is running/porting away and outranging stuff. You can’t run from a thief because he always has one port more than you have. Go figure.

Also shortbow autoattack bouncing on clones is… something.

Ye go figure

The problem is that thieves dominate in the roamer/decapper role of tPvP. No other profession can do this role as well. The mesmer is especially hurt because that’s also its primary role in tPvP. Mesmers can’t bunker because they are frail and rely on stealths. And they are weak in group fights because of AoE and their lack of AoE. So as a 1v1 profession, they are tailored toward the roamer/decapper role, where they are destroyed by thieves. The roamer/decap role is currently like rock, paper, scissors with no rock.

Since teams only need one roamer, they should always take a thief (maybe a ranger who can contribute to middle too and take care of certain bunkers). I’m interested in how the next ToL turns out. I expect to see mesmers rarely played, and those teams that do, will do poorly against teams with thieves.

PVE heros up in this thread, First the guy who was talking about thieves killing clones, or cleaving through clones , now a guy that’s talking about Clone spam Builds ?

Uw0tm8? CloneSpam builds ?
So viable at mid to high end play, OH WAIT NO THEY’RE NOT.
While shatter may be hard to play and requires group help Clonespam brings absolutely nothing to the table.

Maybe we should discuss Prismatic Understanding builds too?

Thief should mimic Mesmer in that in should be a roaming ganker, however trading its ability to 1v1 for more mobility, where Mesmer stays with a slightly higher potential to 1v1, but inability to stealth repeatedly.

Also the cleave comments… wut? Thief just does high unavoidable burst, which a mesmer can’t keep up with and can’t out maneuver or out stealth them.

DaShi.1368:

I’m interested in how the next ToL turns out. I expect to see mesmers rarely played, and those teams that do, will do poorly against teams with thieves.

Teams with mesmers will probably still do good in ToL, portal is the reason for bringing one.

Cam Ron.4170:

Wait, this is bad matchup for mesmer? As a thief player, a zerker shatter mesmer is one of the scariest things for me to fight.

Maybe the old sword/x shatter which sometimes ran mirror images. Against that it becomes a game of who bursts who first.

As for those believing the 2/0/0/6/6 build is the only problem, take a look at these SS. S/D thief will still be around if Anet nerfs that build, they’ve been “nerfing” s/d since they redid the 3 skill and it’s still good.

data.4093:

DaShi.1368:

I’m interested in how the next ToL turns out. I expect to see mesmers rarely played, and those teams that do, will do poorly against teams with thieves.

Teams with mesmers will probably still do good in ToL, portal is the reason for bringing one.

Cam Ron.4170:

Wait, this is bad matchup for mesmer? As a thief player, a zerker shatter mesmer is one of the scariest things for me to fight.

Maybe the old sword/x shatter which sometimes ran mirror images. Against that it becomes a game of who bursts who first.

As for those believing the 2/0/0/6/6 build is the only problem, take a look at these SS. S/D thief will still be around if Anet nerfs that build, they’ve been “nerfing” s/d since they redid the 3 skill and it’s still good.

Please post the full context of screenshots, that’s obviously with 25 might stacks and berserker. But other people will think 2/0/0/6/6 does that as soon as a fight initiates.

Shockwave.1230:

Please post the full context of screenshots, that’s obviously with 25 might stacks and berserker. But other people will think 2/0/0/6/6 does that as soon as a fight initiates.

My last paragraph tells you this isn’t 2/0/0/6/6, I said it’s not the only problem and nerfing it won’t remove s/d from the meta(maybe high level pvp, idk). You’re right though, the SS are from a signet build using 15-20 might stacks.

After playing a considerable amount of sPvP recently as a mesmer I can confirm that thieves are a hard counter to mesmer. Pretty much only a condition build can effectively deal with a average to good thief. I roll with 3000 toughness (so not glass) usually with a reduced power build and a thief can completely circumnavigate a mesmer’s defences.

Thieves can constantly dip in and out of stealth and have extreme in-combat mobility with a fair amount of evades, and can jump to target. For most mesmer builds this combination pretty much means death in a 1v1 and 2v1. Going into stealth means there is no target to put phants up most of the time, low mes combat mobility means little chance to get much distance, and the burst damage is ridiculous. Getting hit for 4000 heart seeker with just over 3000 toughness is silly, and what clones you have up are ripped to shreds in no time (even with the + illusion health signet up). Going zerker in PvP with a decent thief is suicide. To make things even worst, thieves know this and specifically target mesmers. On some occasions I’ve had thieves seeking me out throughout a match trying to kill me.

Before anyone says L2P, a dev pretty much admitted how easy it is for a thief to put a mes down due with burst damage in the balance ready-up. I’m not angry with thieves, just why devs have allowed this situation to occur in the first, and allowed it to persist for so long. I’ve played mes since the start in PvE, WvW, and sPvP, but it is so broken in so many ways I wouldn’t recommend it to a new player, and have thought about re-rolling another class. Thing is a lot people have invested quite a bit of time in the mes class (takes a while to master compared to some classes) and maybe reluctant to start from scratch.

Darnis.4056:

Thief is for sure the hardest fight and while the situation is ridiculous this game isn’t balanced for 1v1.

I’d like to just note from a previous Ready Up Live about Class balance goals. Mesmer is indeed only balanced around 1v1 combat… the only class balanced around just 1v1 combat as far as I can tell..