Guild Wars 2

When I’m playing on my Ele and running around being an ultimate hotjoin hero, I really dislike running in on a 1v1 and unbalancing the fight, so often I’ll watch and simply keep a lookout for if one of the opponent’s allies are looking to jump in. I often see Elementalists getting rolled by Mesmer and Thief with no idea what just happened. When I play as my Mes in tournaments, Eles are almost always my first target… and the same process ensues. In fact, it seems Mesmer and Thieves are often a problem for many Elementalists, whether it be hotjoin, tourneys, or wvw so I wanted to hopefully give some insight on what’s going on from the Mesmer perspective versus Elementalists.

GENERAL FACTS

• In a teamfight, we’ll almost always focus you first. One of the smartest things for a Mesmer to do, whatever the build, is focus on the squishiest and burstiest target. This usually means we’ll focus Thieves, Elementalists, and other Mesmer before going on to tankier classes. Elementalists are the #1 choice because you offer party-wide boons, high amount of damage, and have very low defenses. A proper shatter burst can melt an ele, melted eles make us smile.

• On average we have 1-2 stealths and 3 stunbreaks Decoy (Stealth and make a clone) and Blink (Teleport anywhere within 900-1200r) are staples of most Mesmer builds. When combined with Deceptive Evasion (Clone on dodge) we can seem really tricky and impossible to pin down, but depending on our weapon, there’s usually a 15 second gap in our defenses that you can capitalize on … atleast, in a 1v1.

• If you see us far away with a Greatsword, you’re fuq’d if you don’t get close. Greatsword is one of the most common Mesmer weapons for a reason: It does more damage the further away you are from an enemy and hits HARD. The best way to handle a greatsword Mesmer is to quickly close the distance and force them to either retreat or swap weapons.

• If you see us in melee-range with a Sword, you’re fuq’d if you don’t back up. Mainhand sword offers us a high damage 2s evade in Blurred Frenzy this usually comes after we immobilize you with our leap (if you see a mesmer send a clone running towards you, DODGE!) and is followed by a heavy shatter, easily eating away more than half of your life and ripping boons in the process.

• You’re predictable… until you’re not. Burning Speed into Firegrab, Churning Earth + Lightning Flash, these common techniques will not work against any experienced Mesmer. Dagger/Dagger and Staff Elementalists are extremely predictable and straightforward combos will usually not work when we have so many ways to evade damage. The best thing to do is try to force our dodges, using AoEs or abilities that you don’t really mind blowing in the first place. Remember, it takes 10 seconds for 1 dodge to recharge ( 5 seconds with Vigor). If we dodge twice within those 10 seconds then we’re open!

• All Mesmer have a weakness to Condition Damage. We usually only carry only one form of condition removal, sometimes shatter builds run no condi removal at all. Burn and poison screws us, so might stack and get smoldering!

• We will become invulnerable whenever it is least convenient for you One of our shatters, Distortion, allows us to destroy our clones in order to evade all damage. This is our “Oh shiizz! Eff this!” card to usually cover our escapes or to avoid a big attack. Some bold Mesmer like to distort aggressively to keep pressure on an opponent without them being able to retaliate.

VERSUS SHATTER MESMER

• We’re something of a one-trick-pony…But that is one swaggin’ steed. As fabulous and complex as we wanna seem, a shatter Mesmer’s damage comes mostly from Mind Wrack. This is a skill that recharges every 11s and does more damage depending on how many clones we have. Shatter Mesmers can produce the shatter effects off themselves too, so you’ll often see a shatter Mes get into melee range, try to surround you with clones, and explode them all on you. You can often tell when this is going to happen because they’ll launch a clone at you, teleport in, and shatter. (As previously mentioned)

VERSUS PU (CONDITION/POWER) MESMER

• PU stands for Prismatic Understanding When people talk of PU Mesmer, they’re speaking of Mesmer that use the trait Prismatic Understanding for their defense. This trait -adding 30% boon duration for going 6 points into the Chaos Line- gives 4 seconds of Protection, Aegis, or Regeneration while stealthed. Often Prismatic Mesmer will run wither 2-3 forms of stealth and be extremely durable and hard to kill, able to take on 4-6 opponents at once in WvW and 2-3 in sPvP.

• All this armor comes at a price In sPvP, you cannot capture points while stealthed. Forcing a PU Mesmer to constantly stealth actually means you’re winning against them. Also, many PU Mesmer carrry a torch and either staff (condition) or greatsword (power). Our torch does barely any damage, and offers us no phantasm, which means we’re very reliant on our offset for damage, especially the phantasms. Versus a power Mesmer, keeping the phantasm destroyed minimalizes PU Mesmer’s damage, versus condition cleansing off Torment and NOT destroying the clones will significantly cut our damage.

• Condition Mesmer can’t really harm you. We want you to harm yourself. Assuming you have the ability to cleanse atleast 2 conditions every 10-14 seconds, a condition Mesmer can’t hurt you as long as you know what conditions to cleanse. Watch for when we wield a scepter, as the two attacks (purple lazer that does 6x confusion and a block that applies 5x torment) are the majority of our damage towards you. The biggest source of damage is Torment, hitting from anywhere to 5-8k (spvp) to 8-12k (wvw) damage, you can see it coming when the Mesmer holds out their scepter as if they’re blocking with it. Either don’t attack, or if they try to proc off one of your AoEs, dodge… Or cleanse. DO NOT destroy any clones near you, as they’ll explode and drop stacks of bleed on you. When the Mesmer switches to staff, they’re generally on the defensive and can only harm you with the auto attack and clone autoattacks.

VERSUS LOCKDOWN MESMER

• Oh you sweet deliciously interruptable Elementalist Lockdown Mesmer hardcounter Elementalists. If you see a Mesmer with This symbol in their bar, know that they’re going to be trying to lock you down and own you. We actively look out for skills like Ether Renewal and other channeled abilities (or if a staff ele, Meteor Shower) to shut down and burst you kitten. Scepter gets it the worse with the air auto.

• We immobilize/damage/condition damage/and gain boons on any interrupt Lockdown Mesmer tend to have about 5 sources of interrupts, each time they nail an interrupt they gain 5x Might + a Random Boon / 2s Immobilize + 3x Vulnerability + a Random condition(Blind, Cripple or Chill) / 2k direct damage to opponent. This is due to our traits:Chaotic Interruption, Bountiful Interruption , Halting Strike and more.

I hope this helps atleast a little bit in give better insight on fighting against a Mesmer. If anyone has any questions I’ll be happy to do my best to answer them in the comments.

Perspective of the ele: if I can weave into the mesmer it’s a sure kill, and a fast one

we try to close gap for greatsword but sadly, ele’s have very weak gap closers (lightning flash long cd, dagger earth 3 projectile+slow, fire 3 don’t get me started)

Jae.5138:

we try to close gap for greatsword but sadly, ele’s have very weak gap closers (lightning flash long cd, dagger earth 3 projectile+slow, fire 3 don’t get me started)

You can’t be serious!

Ele has issues sticking to fleeing warriors, thieves and good staff mesmers (from my experience). Other than that, ele has good sticking power. Remember rtl goes on a 40s cooldown if it’s evaded or blocked and it’s a really telegraphed gap closer.

I only have problem when i don’t focus.Its kinda obvious what a mesmer will do.
I usualy open with a LF+Updraft to make him panic.They will insta use staff skill to back up or blink to go opposite side.I don’t fret i wait for them to reveal.I also count to 3 slowly cause about then an invisible illusion will start hitting me..i dodge it.
He comes out of stealth i try to immobilise with magentic grasp while building my might all the while doing aoe dmg to clones.
Too much condis?Go water.
Immobilise?Cleansing Fire and dodge the dmg.
He lifts the greatsword high?Berserker Animation,dodge.
Too much purple around you..beware Shatter is comming,i dodge
I closed up on him,this kitteny sword move is comming,quick i change to air and do Static Aura.
After all these and with keeping pressure with Burning Speed most mesmers are done for with Daggers.
Ofc there are exeptions and i often time lose to good shatter mesmers.

You forgot to tell us about how GS has the most telegraphed phantom in the world. If the mes goes all he-man power of grey skull, get ready to dodge and kill that mofo. GS is likely to not have Condi on death clone traits, so kill them clones/phants.

PU Condi in a WvW setting is as easy as ignoring them and their clones, they pretty much can’t hurt you enough if you refuse to get frustrated and lightning whip all their clones down. Spvp just do enough to force stealths and sit on that node.

Shatter/lockdowns are the ones to look out for most as an ele. We don’t have a ton of stability sources and getting caught then bombed by shatter, or just locked down is deadly to us. Fortunately shatter has a pretty high skill cap and if you catch them in even half of a burst combo you can knock off quite a big chunk of their health.

In any case, mes is my next WvW toon (already have the most spvp games played on it out of all the classes), but I still love my ele for the moment so that may be a while. Mes is not so scary once you play one, and often times are just as, if not more predictable than we ele’s get criticized for (depends heavily on the player for both classes imo)