Guild Wars 2

Thieves I can take, but the 2nd most OP profession in the game is a serious thorn in my side.

Burst, control, condition, nothing seems to work on these confusing mofos.

Tips?

First off, your post is quite vague and doesn’t give any sort of context of the situation that you’re facing. (Build set-up, stats, playstyle, etc…)

Secondly, if you’re going against a mesmer you’ll naturally be in for a bad time, that’s their role.

Tips I can give from personal experience:
Look for pre-cursors, you can differentiate reals from fake from simple give-aways such as dodging, movement patterns, and variation in spell-casting.
Don’t fire blindly, odds are that they have confusion on you or a counter of some sort, so play smart and look at YOUR character and strip off any pesky conditions. Offensively, use AoE to get rid of any illusions/clones; your main objective is to isolate the real player. When you do manage to get them alone make sure you have some sort of CC ready, you should be able to handle them with ease afterwards. ( I recommend cripple since it’s a more obvious visual indicator in case they summon extra clones).

I find that if I target with a rifle, the rifle stays on the real mesmer when I autoattack, unless they stealth. This is useful because rifle autoattack does a decent amount of DPS and most mesmers are glass cannon specced. the real dangerous part seems to come when you get them downed.

Having played both, here are some things you can look out for when facing a mesmer

• When in doubt, kill it. In general, the primary source of dps comes from clones/phantasms. Eliminating them defangs the mesmer’s effectiveness. In this regard, AoE is a mesmer’s bane.
• If you want to target the player, take the time to observe. You can easily spot the player from the clones by the way they move. Clones never strafe or dodge. Some good mesmers are the ones which take great efforts in mimicing their clones to keep people guessing.
• If you see the clones rushing towards you, dodge or press your oh-kitten! immune button.
• When a mesmer is in a down state and vanishes, target the 2nd one to reappear and seal the deal.

More commonly are shatter spec mesmers. While there are a few ways to open a fight, a common one is to;

• Range stun
• Pop the duelist (pistols phantasm)
• Dodge roll towards you (which spawns a clone)
• Sword #3 twice (which spawns a clone that leaps to you and then puts the mesmer in your face + root you)
• Sword #2 (which is the 2sec invul multiple slash)
• Shatter with Mind Wrack

You can screw up the root by opening up the distance and at the very least, avoid the last 2 which tend to happen at the same time.

Remember not to get lost in the confusion of the clones! Once you learn the points above, it almost becomes predictable.

peace

kagemitsu.3657:

Thieves I can take, but the 2nd most OP profession in the game is a serious thorn in my side.

Burst, control, condition, nothing seems to work on these confusing mofos.

Tips?

Press ctrl + T when you spot a mesmer to keep track of the real one. Dodge the phantasm bursts, and like the above poster said, AOE is great.

amiable.4823:

the real dangerous part seems to come when you get them downed.

I think you should try to play a mesmer in PvP and figure out how their downed works. They are easy to finish off once you know how they work. Autoattack a few times on the downed mesmer. If he looses too much health, you need to look around for the real one

Chipster.6713:

amiable.4823:

the real dangerous part seems to come when you get them downed.

I think you should try to play a mesmer in PvP and figure out how their downed works. They are easy to finish off once you know how they work. Autoattack a few times on the downed mesmer. If he looses too much health, you need to look around for the real one

Thats a bad idea since a downed mesmer can spam confusion on you. Just look for the giant red arrow, thats the mesmer.

Chipster.6713:

amiable.4823:

the real dangerous part seems to come when you get them downed.

I think you should try to play a mesmer in PvP and figure out how their downed works. They are easy to finish off once you know how they work. Autoattack a few times on the downed mesmer. If he looses too much health, you need to look around for the real one

I am aware how the mechanics work. the issue I run into is when I down them and they still have all their clones/phantasms up. They can do pretty good damage while I try to spike the initial clone and wait for the illusion to disappear to get to the real mesmer. If I try to eliminate them first I end up slaughtering myself to retaliation/confusion. It is an annoying hobsons choice.

Thanks for the replies and sorry for being too vague on my first post.

The main problem I have is that damn shatter build that keeps you stunned/rooted while the Mesmer goes to town. Either I equip 3 stun breakers or I can’t keep avoiding it forever: they just respawn clones too fast while being immune to everything (Distortion or what have you).

Spotting the real guy isn’t too hard, but a Mesmer teleports around and switches places with clones so often that it still takes some time to find the real player, precious time that he can use to recharge his already low cooldowns.

Even if I wanted to AoE down his clones with grenades/bombs, they’re not so squishy as Mesmers make them sound, and it still takes a few seconds to kill a clone. Both clones and the real guy are quite resistant to direct damage, and for some reason they seem to shed off conditions like it was nothing.

So yeah, I’m hitting a wall against Mesmers and I gave up to the point that I just run away when I meet one, or I make sure to always bring a team mate with me.

Mesmers have few cond removal tools. Some more then others. But they do not have a 409.

Kill phantasms. The glowy ones. In fact kill all clones if you can. dead clones can’t shatter. They also get/give ret, regen, etc.
Discharge, aoe pistols, static shot, bombs, work amazing for this.

Ctrl T to target and help keep sight on him.

Stealth on stomp.
Mesmers need a target in order to create a clone/blink.
They can not use their 2 or 3 if they can not target you.

I have never beaten not bad ele player( S/D or D/D) on 1vs1 in sPvP.
Is it possible to beat good or not bad ele on 1vs1 by using engineer?
Please advise me how to fight them and eng builds specialization for them .

here is my short video(really sorry for very bad quality because of my sub computer used for work) fighting against balanced spec ele. My spec was also balanced spec with toughness about 1400. Usually i was killed faster than this .

I’ll have to search around for the post with the exact build but try going with the invincible bunker bomb/pistol-shield engi. It’s pretty impossible to lose a 1v1 with the boon uptime, perma regen and healing it has.

Can’t remember his name off the top of my head, need coffee, but there’s an engineer in DC running it. Pretty immortal build in any 1v1 situation vs anyone.

Mesmers function by confusing you, the player, so counter this by developing a good eye for the “odd man out” in a mesmer setup. You will never see a clone strafe, dodge roll, or backstep.

They also telegraph their burst tricks fairly obviously at range when they play burst specs. Keep at range from the clones and when they start running for you and not attacking you know it’s time to dodge. Remember that clones have the same goofy AI that every pet has, without the special pathing shortcuts ranger pets can take, so use the terrain to stagger out burst damage so that you have some time to deal with it.

The only specs you really should have trouble against in a 1v1 are these suicide specs that are gaining popularity, where they exploit clone overwrite mechanics to lock you down pretty severely and use spread-out phantasms.

Braxxus.2904:

I’ll have to search around for the post with the exact build but try going with the invincible bunker bomb/pistol-shield engi. It’s pretty impossible to lose a 1v1 with the boon uptime, perma regen and healing it has.

Can’t remember his name off the top of my head, need coffee, but there’s an engineer in DC running it. Pretty immortal build in any 1v1 situation vs anyone.

Find it, please. I’m interested.