Guild Wars 2

Hello, I am playing a thief with 18k HP.
Why am i getting like 1 shotted, downed in less than half of a sec from a power mesmer that has alot more stealth than I do?
I dont even have the reaction time to shadowstep when I know he is there. I just listen the noise and I am downed.
Anet developers, you consider this normal?

You mean a build that uses every skill on its bar that requires setting up a huge combo that has multiple activations that can be dodged if you know he is around? It’s no different than a Full zerker Signet Thief. It’s not anone shot it’s a High Burst combo, and the only time it has More stealth than a Thief is if you don’t run D/P.

And this is great since D/P Thief and Staff Thief shut down power shatter Mesmer as a Hardcounter
/thread

“a lot more stealth than I do” is a common misconception people have vs. mesmer

mesmer’s have finite stealth, and as the fight goes on, as long as you’re applying periodic pressure, their buttons just run out. You as a thief have infinite stealth. Landing damage on a thief before you run out of kitten is very hard on a mesmer, maybe you’re running too few stun breaks??

Power mes is really weak honestly, and a properly played thief can lame out that matchup pretty easily.

What they said. I mean, if you don’t want to die on inc go full marauder with exuberance or durability runes. Just compensate for your reaction time with stats.

Mesmer has less stealth then thief if he shatter Mesmer he most likely does not run stab. just spam head shot on him he flop over.

Sly.9518:

It’s not anone shot it’s a High Burst combo,

Aaaand the difference on the victim’s end of things is …. non-existant.

The combat in GW2 has always been about big bursts.
Even now, high condition damage is about landing a big stack so that it downs someone before they can counter (cleanse) it. That’s the same thing.

The game seems to SUPPOSED to be about counter-play, but the builds are about fatal bursts.

Why would you play thief if you don’t have a good reaction time?

Svarty.8019:

Sly.9518:

It’s not anone shot it’s a High Burst combo,

Aaaand the different on the victim’s end of things is …. non-existant.

The combat in GW2 has always been about big bursts.
Even now, high condition damage is about landing a big stack so that it downs someone before they can counter (cleanse) it. That’s the same thing.

The game seems to SUPPOSED to be about counter-play, but the builds are about fatal bursts.

There is a huge difference the fact that there are multiple skills that can be avaoided or negated in that Burst is Huge, while a true one shot only has to deal with one attack skill activation.

But most bads won’t know the difference

High risk, high reward. Had the burst failed the mesmer might as well stop and die.

Sounds like you need some CT FLETCHER MOTIVATION.

apharma.3741:

High risk, high reward. Had the burst failed the mesmer might as well stop and die.

This is true. While the GS burst requires most of the GS abilities activated as well as the strongest shatter (DPS wise), if that fails then the Mesmer relies on the utilities and AA until things are off CD. We don’t know the circumstance in which this transpired (were you afk, or just standing around or were you actively fighting it when this happened?).

If the burst fails (which can one shot a lot of classes/builds, refer to Youtube as there are a few ppl that come to mind for vids) then you have the upper hand to burst them right back and luckily for you, your burst is a bit more reliable.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

apharma.3741:

High risk, high reward. Had the burst failed the mesmer might as well stop and die.

This is true. While the GS burst requires most of the GS abilities activated as well as the strongest shatter (DPS wise), if that fails then the Mesmer relies on the utilities and AA until things are off CD. We don’t know the circumstance in which this transpired (were you afk, or just standing around or were you actively fighting it when this happened?).

If the burst fails (which can one shot a lot of classes/builds, refer to Youtube as there are a few ppl that come to mind for vids) then you have the upper hand to burst them right back and luckily for you, your burst is a bit more reliable.

Not only is it more reliable, but the mesmer was almost guaranteed to have burned through both blink and any stealth skill he had to get that burst off, leaving kiting and distortion as the only defense he would have (and shield if running chrono) until everything else came off CD. If his burst failed he would be an easy target

So you see this Mesmer running away. You chase. Cool. Hey, it’s leaving these things that look like it and then they’re all doing this lifting motion with butterflies coming out.

Don’t faceplant into them. You win by attrition now.

You’re welcome.

And yes I’ve been instantly melted by it before. But since I have 16k health that’s kinda expected.

Thief has less stealth than mesmer…

That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year.

Zintrothen.1056:

Thief has less stealth than mesmer…

That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year.

Someone hasn’t seen the posts from pre HoT where thief mains proclaimed venomously that this was true and post HoT that since chrono got F5 they can maintain 100% uptime indefinitely.

Heck there’s even a post in the thief forum where thief mains proclaimed thief doesn’t counter mes.

mesmer rotation does NOT run out. YOu have at most 2-3, 1-2 seconds windows in which to damage/kill them in every 20 seconds of fighting assuming you can’t strip their stealth. All of their attacks are pretty much aoe as well, worst case scenario the mesmer just uses portal or stealth or blink or any combination of tha to get awway when they get low hp.

Tired of people justifying how OP they are by saying that “WELL THEY HAVE TO PRESSSS ALL THEIR BUTTON TO DO IT, SO ITS NOT OP!!”
plz

Was this a mesmer or chrono? Because most chronos can fail a burst and sustain long enough to try again or even the third time, mesmer how ever has no really much of a chance after first fail burst

As a power mes main who also plays thief, I must agree with most of the reactions. At the moment, thief is the best power build counter to power mesmer.

Yes, the power shatter burst (pre-cast-GS 2, blink to target, cast mirror images, mind wrack; can be murderous if played right. But if you don’t one-shot your target you will be vulnerable right afterwards while you wait for your burst skills to recharge. A lot of thieves play full evade builds that have 5+ dodges, bandit’s defense and D/P can out-stealth a mesmer any day (unless you mess up and get revealed against a moa or something). The only situation in which a mesmer will have more stealth (arguably) is a mesmer with chaos traits and a cannibalized utility bar with only stealth skills + mimic. Which is useless unless you’re hiding in a keep.

Frankly, if a thief can survive the first 10 seconds of the fight vs me, he is more likely to win in the long run, because of vastly superior stealth and evades. Meanwhile, power mes is unforgiving. One mistake, and you’re deader than dead: no passives, no extra dodges, less stealth, longish heal cooldowns.
I prefer mesmer, but I’m under no illusions as to the most versatile class of the two.

tl;dr: a power shatter mesmer hits (very) hard at the beginning, but if the thief survives he will generally win (at equal player level).

I got all excited Power Mesmer had received some buffs when i started reading this thread.

That all PvP teams would be ditching their DD’s and Condi Chronos for Power Chronos. That unranked would be teams of 5 power mesmers vs 5 power mesmers. That zergs in WvW would be 90% power mesmers(why play anything else scrubs). That PvE raid groups would be 100% power mesmers(“Druid lfg”, diaf idiot, mesmer or gtfo). That Anet had made power mesmers gods, akin to Zerkers up until the recent series of nerfs.

Alas no.

Sly.9518:

There is a huge difference the fact that there are multiple skills that can be avaoided or negated in that Burst is Huge, while a true one shot only has to deal with one attack skill activation.

But most players won’t know the difference

Fixed it for you. The simple truth is that the combination of a poor telegraphing system, particularly when LoD or low graphics are enabled, instant abilities, stealth/blinks and lag means that most people haven’t got a clue what hits them most of the time.

Cerby.1069:

mesmer rotation does NOT run out. YOu have at most 2-3, 1-2 seconds windows in which to damage/kill them in every 20 seconds of fighting assuming you can’t strip their stealth. All of their attacks are pretty much aoe as well, worst case scenario the mesmer just uses portal or stealth or blink or any combination of tha to get awway when they get low hp.

Tired of people justifying how OP they are by saying that “WELL THEY HAVE TO PRESSSS ALL THEIR BUTTON TO DO IT, SO ITS NOT OP!!”
plz

Well you have clearly never played a mesmer before

Take acro over DA and take the auto evade trait (first tier first slot) and hard to catch. With that and bandit’s defense, bound and pistol offhand, if you die it really is your fault.

Watch for Mirror Blade and dodge to pretty much negate most of the damage and combo, or take Instant Reflexes and just laugh at the fact you can facetank it with a passive. Power shatter mesmer has the best possible burst in the game. That said, it’s a kitten ed hard build to play and recover from without a ton of practice (or macros, which despite being against the rules, so many are fond of using these days).

Most power shatter mesmers, like power signet thieves, cannot fight after they fail the burst. I’ve only seen a very small pool of individuals who continue to fight well and apply pressure (and survive, albeit mostly from the Chaos line) after their burst fails.

Honestly, aside from the Berserker (and to some extent reaper, though thief will have the advantage a majority of the time), most power burst builds can very easily be shut down by just knowing how it plays and how to beat it by exploiting its weaknesses. I suggest you look at gameplay and theory on how to play power shatter burst mesmer and then give it some practice.

Take and utilize D/P and it’s not too difficult of a fight 99% of the time because most of the mesmers playing it aren’t in the mindset to recover from failing to burst.

As I’ve said for years, and as you’ll see from every highly successful thief, winning on the thief comes from knowing the other professions and what they’ll do. If you care not to study everyone else’s kit, you will lose a majority of your fights unless playing something on the overpowered side.

It’s the condi mesmers that are the ones you need to watch out for, mostly just because of their raw and asinine sustain in WvW from dire/tb when put in conjunction with the rest of their kit negating so much damage.

As a side note, to correct people in this thread, the thief does not innately have superior stealth to the mesmer/chrono. D/P daredevil or SA will, but aside from that, any other thief will see less stealth uptime than standard power shatter.

Just thought I would add in some personal experience fighting a power Mesmer a while back.

The full burst was literally insane. But once he was on cooldown the difficulty for me was that he had just enough stealth to stay alive before his next burst.

I’d say that the difference between a good power Mesmer and a great power Mesmer is how they handle the burst not working out.

One of those rare fights where I let them live after I downed them.

It’s that exact reason why I played and loved D/D signets so much; what made it exciting and demand skill is when the burst failed. You ended up with no utilities, no passives, and very limited stealth. Getting the failed-burst kill is immensely satisfying and is often well-earned.

In similar regard, I fought a power shatter mesmer probably around 16 months ago and still remember the fights; we dueled extensively for a LONG time. He annihilated me repeatedly on D/D (which many argued I was near the tops with), and continued to make a fool of me when I played D/P (which is usually the table-turner for those who simply counter the D/D kit). His play was flawless and the total set of skills that he played into his combo was somewhere around 60k damage within a few seconds. 7k damage on the Prestige alone. There were a number of duels where I straight up did not even touch the guy.

I picked my mesmer back up to test some things out, did some research to get a little more know-how, and the next few times I saw him around eight months or so later we were trading kills pretty evenly. Still really kitten ed good, but that’s the power of having good understanding of your enemy; I went from getting absolutely trashed winning maybe once every 20 fights to pulling closer to 50/50.

Granted, especially now, I would never recommend anyone taking D/D power into any fight against a reasonably-competent player on anything.

DeceiverX.8361:

As a side note, to correct people in this thread, the thief does not innately have superior stealth to the mesmer/chrono. D/P daredevil or SA will, but aside from that, any other thief will see less stealth uptime than standard power shatter.

Sure if we switch DP to something else but then we would switch offhand torch out otherwise it’s going to be a bit of a biased comparison. Even switching out offhand pistol to dagger you get more stealth off it than torch.

I wouldn’t compare the stealth uptime of a PP/SB core thief without stealth utilities to torch, PU, prestige mesmer builds. If you want to compare builds you need to make it an honest comparison, if mesmer has PU, you should compare it to SA builds. If mesmer has offhand torch it’s best stealth weapon you should compare it to DP or at least other builds with a leap finisher for Pistol 5. If the mesmer is taking stealth utilities then the thief should reciprocate in comparisons.

Oh and I wouldn’t recommend taking power shatter against any competent player on anything remotely close to a good well thought out build. Definitely not vs the faceroll stuff around atm.

Dececrator.9021:

I just listen the noise and I am downed.

So why don’t you just press the dodge button after you hear that noise? It’s not that hard. If you face a burst, when you are out of dodges you have problem – but this should never happen on teef.

KrHome.1920:

Dececrator.9021:

I just listen the noise and I am downed.

So why don’t you just press the dodge button after you hear that noise? It’s not that hard.

You dont even need to do that, you can just slot instant reflexes and have the game passively play for you.

are you glass cannon ?

Chorazin.4107:

I got all excited Power Mesmer had received some buffs when i started reading this thread.

That all PvP teams would be ditching their DD’s and Condi Chronos for Power Chronos. That unranked would be teams of 5 power mesmers vs 5 power mesmers. That zergs in WvW would be 90% power mesmers(why play anything else scrubs). That PvE raid groups would be 100% power mesmers(“Druid lfg”, diaf idiot, mesmer or gtfo). That Anet had made power mesmers gods, akin to Zerkers up until the recent series of nerfs.

Alas no.

Haha!! I thought there was also.

OP, As a Teef you should win that matchup if skill being equal. You can’t fight every Prof the same way. PI is your friend. I run a lot of Power Mes in WvW, I’ve learned not to use the AA on GS real quick(unless they’re almost dead and running) after HoT dropped.