Guild Wars 2

Really, the question is in the title. How do you handle Mesmers?

Answer first for an ideal situation (say, WvWvW where you can change out skills accoridngly), then for sPvP.

I found that with my bunker bomber, I could hold out vs Mesmers, but with a P/P condition build I stand little chance.

It’s even worse when they get the jump on me, as the 6~seconds I have to spend finding the Mesmer is time s/he’s taken to wipe a big part of my health.

Thanks (preemptively) for the comments/advice

I can only offer generic advice without knowing what build you run, and I’ve answered the question previously in a generic fashion. If it were condi-burst, I’d just say AoE the stuff down. This all assumes we know the Mesmer is a Shatter Power Mesmer.

Ayestes.1273:

MatyrGustav.6210:

any Suggestions?

The Mesmer in this case is a Shatter Memser, not really a melee mesmer. It’s unlikely they will stay in melee the entire time. The reason being, they are incredibly squishy when they aren’t pulling off their burst and when they are in their Sword set. This changes a bit when they are with the Staff, but in general there are fantastic set of tips when dealing with them. Keep in mind though that if you are pure melee then the odds aren’t in your favor, but that doesn’t mean you auto-lose.

• Dodge roll into the clones when they shatter. This triggers their explosions. A Shatter mesmer’s damage is mostly in these shatters. Mitigate them and you mitigate the vast majority of what they can do.

• Move away from the Mesmer if possible. Mesmers need you to be close to deal their real damage. Unless they have a Greatsword they have no real way to deal damage in this long range case, and without the Staff they are incredibly weak defensively beyond the trickery. AoE slows in particular can make it very easy to pick off Mesmer stuff.

• Move all the bloody time and learn to recognize the leaping clone. This leaping clone is the very beginning of the burst combo that you are going to be hit with. If you can keep away from it and/or dodge the follow-up then you have fully mitigated the combo. The other way to start the combo is with the Magic Bullet stun, so dodge roll that projectile if possible as well and stun break it if you get caught while having that cooldown up.

• AoE is pretty key in dealing with clones in general. This won’t stop the primary combo of clones if you get caught in the burst cycle, but beyond a Mirror Images burst while you are Immobilized it’s completely feasible to cleave them down. If you do get immobilized, make sure you use whatever invuln options you may or may not have.

• Recognize Distortion. They are invulnerable during Blurred Frenzy and their Distortion Shatter. Don’t waste valuable cooldowns during this period. I’ve seen far too many people try to burst a Mesmer I have targeted with Quickness for example. They are literally invulnerable during their burst combo, keep that in mind.

Best advice in general though, is to go play one. Start with a Phantasm build for a few hours to ease into the profession and then pickup the premier Shatter build once you have adjusted to the profession. Easiest way to learn how to beat something is to play it, and in GW2 it is incredibly easy to do that. If you are too stubborn to learn how to do that, then just watch Mesmer some streams on twitch.tv. Experience and knowledge of what a profession can do and usually does is the vast majority of skill in any MMO. Targeting nightmare is accurate though, they can be pretty frustrating without tons and tons of practice.

Totally depends on how good they are, but in wvw I just magnet pull them/prybar switch to pistols and unload every condition I have which alot of the time is enough. Use elixir S if they set up a good stun/shatter on you before they can trigger the shatter, if you see them cast illusionary zerker just do you best to dodge, and if your on cd with elixir s make sure to roll through the clones so they waste their shatter and don’t hit you, if you roll backwards they will keep coming at ya. Other than that just keep the mesmer focused and if he is a gc he will go down. They are a tough fight for me as well and sometimes a win/loss will just come down to how good I they are.

For spvp I run a power grenade build so their clones aren’t a huge issue, main thing is to dodge that sword/pistol stun combo and keep their clones killed with grenades. A good mesmer is really just a hard fight on engineer.

Anyway goodluck,

Zaragoz

I wouldn’t plan an ability combo on a Mesmer. Their entire kit is designed to mess up preconceived plans. Especially when it comes to Burst combos it’s very unlikely to land them without juking through multiple defenses. Just know what they can do and when they are likely to do it. That’s the best way to beat a Mesmer.

Kill the deulist.
Dodge its first volley then kitten it.

The class is an utter pain to fight, one of the few I had intense 2~ min deuls with on my ranger back when I used to play allot, but yeah you have to just watch out for the deulist, watch for that swap/imob buff on them and have a way to kill that clone or evade/block/teleport out of their imob/shatter deal; oh with still some decent consistent cleansing for the random other adds.

Your going to have hell though, without a pet to 2s knockdown and great quick cast conditions (i ran axe for a quick 5 bleed stack lasting 10s and geomancy sigil for 3 more over 10~, then spike trap for another 3 stacks over 15s~, fire trap and of course and dagger offhand for 3 more over 12s~) to throw on during… I’ve just never been too big of a fan of bombs since most of the important ones (confuse/burn/big-bomb) can be avoided or even cleansed if you’re fighting someone decent.

I’m not too big of an expert on the bunker bomb setup though, I’ve only fiddled with a few entertaining engi builds, nothing all that competitive just fun might stacking/crit-condi setups. Everything is situational enough that it blows the skill cap threw the roof (and the only hastle is, of course, swapping to flamethrower for an instant every 3s to keep the might stacking, only reason the t3 trait doesn’t blow).

Thanks for all the advice, have already taken in the simpler points and will work on the more difficult ones over the next few weeks.

Cheers

Clones keep getting in my way too, body blocking shots and stuff. One solution is to use rifle or coated bullets, which will at least pierce the clones. Grenades and bomb kit can also be a solution since you can dish out some AoE damage to nuke the clones and get at the mesmer.

Some condition removal will also be required if they are confusion stacking spec and its just a matter of learning what needs to be dodged.

A good bit of advice is to spend some time playing a mesmer spec (I’m not that familiar with them myself) and learning how they fight, what they’re good at, and where their weaknesses are. That can help you deal with them.

Unfortunately we’re not like eles that have a one-size-fits-all spec, but learning how your opponent plays can at least help you get a bit of a leg up on them.

If worse comes to worst, just spray and pray.

Static shot is very important to get off, I’ve found. Since both of you have confusion and probably neither of you have great condition removal, a lot of the fight kind of depends on what lands first. That doesn’t necessarily mean to open with static shot. It’s pretty easy to dodge because it moves so slow, so you may have to dodge a phantasm and then static shot, or wait to see if the mesmer blows both of his dodges for clones.

Make sure you don’t have any turrets in your build, since they’ll just fire at the nearest clone, making them effectively useless. Toolkit is very good, since mesmer’s melee burst is immobilize—>invulnerable burst. You can swap to gear shield real quick and mitigate at least some of the burst. It’s also great for negating shatters. And of course, elixir S is good to have.

“Just aoe” does work occasionally, but only against bad mesmers. If we’re talking bombs or grenades, you’ll have to get in so close that you’ll be in huge shatter danger the whole time. At the same time, you can’t afford to let the mesmer kite you through his phantasms, so you’ll have to dance very carefully. Even just autoattacking keeps a little pressure on, and it’s better than missing with grenades from long range.

I think mesmer is the most difficult profession to learn to fight against, and I am far from mastering it. Our hgh condi nades spec in PvP, or a variant of it in WvW, is probably our best build vs. mesmers.