Guild Wars 2

So I’m trying to figure out how to beat against this mesmer. I’m not good by any definition of the word but I’d rather be able to beat him a few times rather than none. He’s running… I believe he said it was a modified 7 swords shatter build emphasizing stealth.

Here’s a video of us going at it from the mesmer’s point of view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8Ooq8sCkLY

We did 10 rounds and I lost horribly, it’s better to just say I lost them all though I fluked out like 2 of them I think. I wasn’t running the same traits nor weapons every run since I was wondering what to do. The runs I actually did manage to do the most or kill was either D/D ( wins ) or S/D.

My traits are 0/15/0/25/30 using the normal bunker traits.

For S/D I switched Zephr’s boon to bolt to heart.

You can pretty much see I was flailing around all over the place. I had a lot of difficulty locating the correct target so S/D didn’t really work out too well. When I did find the right target to burst it did a fair amount of damage but otherwise D/D was superior since it did more AoE.

Major issues include the mesmer’s initial stealth burst. Not sure how to counter that other than in the latter rounds I just ran away until the stealth wore off. Second thing was the immobilizes. Even Fire3 was a trap since I kept getting immobilized then 5 clone shattered on me which kind of limited my options for attacking.

Any tips would be useful of course.

Well, I didn’t watch the entire video, but a few things that you can do are:

-Avoid the shatter combo. You seemed to catch on to this in the later matches.
-Dodge into the shatters.
-If you are stuck and can’t break out of the shatter combo, attune to Earth for protection
-Many Mesmers use a Staff, but here she does not. Mesmer Staff gives a low CD stun break, so this particular Mesmer is more vulnerable to Updraft→Burning Speed. (However, most Mesmers will use a Staff, so this isn’t too useful)
-Stealth has no counter (ignore all the Thieves who tell you otherwise, they are just bad. Many Thieves, including myself, can attest to this). The best thing to do actually is run away until the stealth times out. Mesmer stealth doesn’t even last that long anyway.

Many Mesmer builds do one thing (but do that one thing really well), and here the build is designed to land hard hitting shatters. If you can avoid them consistently, which I’m sure you are already trying to do, you will win more.

I guess you could build more tanky too, since Mesmers don’t have that much sustain. By the way, you’re not that bad. Mesmers are always hard to fight, don’t worry.

Not much you can do tbh. That setup shines in 1v1 and can easily be turned into a phantasm spec just by swapping a weapon. He hits your for 3k from duelist and might not even be running a % damage increase trait to phantasms.

When he opens for the intial burst mist form to make him waste all his clones and blurred frenzy after mist is up then you have to stay on top of him but not for long because everything will be back up shortly and he will burst you again.

Honestly I can’t really say there is anything you did wrong its just a Mesmer. You might beat him a few times eventually but the above advice is good. Really he controls the fight. You could go burst with like 30 air and after he misses the intial you can attempt to burst him back if you can recognize him fast enough. S/D has quick bursts that can compete with a shatter burst and 1 air chain can keep constant pressure on him. Other than that I can’t say your bad its well just a mesmer and its 1v1.

I prefer signet of restoration most times as you can keep constant pressure but ether was a good choice there since you can burst heal the damage. 1 interrupt on your ether though and it would have ended much sooner if he saved his magic bullet until after a quick burst.

Gah, I like the playstyle of the Mesmer so much more than that of the Elementalist, but I hate the illusionist theme.
That’s something I don’t like about this game – many class choices effectively force a personality on your character due to their aesthetics. (You can’t play a mesmer that forgoes illusions for a general focus on warping reality. You can’t play a necromancer that despises death and uses the energies of the living and the dead to combat it, because the class is designed around embracing death.)

…Anyway, that mesmer wasn’t a very good actor with all the strafing and backpedaling, so locating the real mesmer shouldn’t have been much of a problem. Remember that if they’re not standing still and using an autoattack or running directly at you, they’re prolly the real deal.

Aside from “watch for the Illusionary Leap icon on their bar in your peripheral vision like a paranoid lunatic”, I dunno what to say that hasn’t been said.

Thanks for the advice.

Since I was running 25 water I don’t have access to the condition removal for cantrips which was bugging me with the stealth / immobilize shatter. The mes was also using my burning speed to use the leap on me which makes it more of a con than pro.

I think S/D might be more useful if I get more used to it. The few times I’ve used it I did fairly well but due to my inexperience I wasn’t able to burst properly most times. Only bad thing is that if I do I’ll lose 2 escapes if I go with Arcane Power / Burst as opposed Cleansing Fire / Lightning Flash.

-Many Mesmers use a Staff, but here she does not. Mesmer Staff gives a low CD stun break

Just to clarify: Phase Retreat (Staff #2) is not a stun break.

If he runs signet of illusions you can’t beat him. If he doesn’t, kill the phantasms and pressure him.

You need relentless pressure — the moment your pressure drops the closer he gets to a round of new phantasms.

Mesmers like this player only become easy f you have the knowledge about their skills animations, builds, different playstyles and your ability to adjust your own build/play style to counter theirs. I will strongly recommend for you to play as a mesmer in pvp, learn their skill animations (specially blurred frenzy), different strategies/builds they use etc. I always emphasize on the old saying “knowledge is power” in pvp. Once you have that kind of power, you will never be confused which target is the real one (even when they stealth you will recognize the correct target as soon as it comes out of stealth). You’ll be able to avoid blurred Frenzy all the time (unless they cast that skill while you are within melee range and if you are caught your reaction to use utility in order to avoid/reduce its damage will be a lot faster).

Iavra.8510:

-Many Mesmers use a Staff, but here she does not. Mesmer Staff gives a low CD stun break

Just to clarify: Phase Retreat (Staff #2) is not a stun break.

Oops sorry

1) Watch that the mesmers buff bar , it indicates when she’s about to leap
2) Dont run from those clones when they beeline into you , roll into their arms
3) You didnt put ANY pressure on that mesmer , when you remotely hit her she melted
4) She shatters majority of the time when she binds you with blurred frenzy just cleanse and roll into the clones , then you proceed to put pressure on her.
5) You seriously tried the Staff before S/F , the Focus potent defense mechanics are often over looked
6) When she dodge spam like that you should know she has no endurance left , open up with a updraft burning speed ring of fire FG ftw..

Conditions. Most mesmers have very poor condi removals, and it looked like that mesmer didn’t have any.

I could say the mesmer is rather… not optimal as well. Random invisibilities (clone, elite, and torch #4 – this does good damage on appear too) without being used to open Blurred Frenzy (sword #2) or point blank shatter, but instead uses scepter #1 or #3 to break the stealth.

Don’t even use Churning, it’s weird for a mesmer to be hit by it. I agree with everyone else on pressure. If they go shatter → phantasms → shatter as dps rotation, you should push them to use clones defensively as soon as possible.

The mesmer isn’t all that great, but she does have the shatter combo down pat. What you need to do is focus on not eating every single mind wrack with your face.

When the sword 3 skill is used, a fast moving clone will come towards you, and then once it arrives at you, the mesmer will blink to you, immobilize, and then shatter. If you dodge that fast moving clone, making sure to dodge away from it and STAYING away from it, then the swap will not immobilize you, and you will not eat the shatter combo.

That’s really the most important thing there. If you get hit with that immobilize, you are going to eat the shatters. Avoiding the immobilize is the only effective way of avoiding the shatter.

Or simply Lightning Flash out of the root. Or water attunement cleanse out of the root and dodge.

Kirby, I want to see a video in your perspective. You are pretty good at kitting those shatters.
However, as ozii said, his build is a pure dueling mesmer which is OP 1 vs 1

Another video will be up in probably 12-16h I suppose. Still in the mesmer’s perspective though.

I play on a laptop so it’s pretty much impossible to run Fraps unfortunately. I’m building a new comp so next time I match up with that guy I may be able to provide a video from my perspective.

I faced that mesmer a few more times and so far it’s still me losing 99% of the time. I took most of what you guys recommended into consideration and applied a lot more pressure. For the most part I seem to be doing better, at the very least he’s at lower HP than last time.

I switched my build back to 0/10/0/30/30 for the additional cleansing on cantrip and it seems to help out more.

I’m still eating far too many shatters than I should be so I guess that’s something I will need to continue to work on.

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhINPGRpeUM

You ate an abundance of shatters and blurred frenzy…you got off 1 rotation the mesmer was quite wounded…he got off 1 rotation you’re toasted.

Saddest part is , he sooo on the Offensive that he’s not even playing defensively too much at all , whilst you on the otherhand is pretty much 80% on defense and 20% offensive.

Yeah, I can’t seem to dodge his rotation well. The best I was able to do was deflect the initial pistol rotation with earth spikes into burning speed but then I eat either a shatter or a frenzy right after.