Guild Wars 2

So in my guild last night a player that usually plays a thief (if his main user name is what I think) was playing as a guardian in PvP and I guess he got beat hard by a mesmer. I main a mesmer and this was one of the first times I have heard a guardian player actually rage about losing to a mesmer. Now I know that bunker guardians are hard as hell to beat but doesn’t mean they are impossible. Do any of you guys perceive mesmer fights as a problem? His main complaint was that he felt the mesmer was able to heal to much and I kept trying to ask him if he knew the kind of build the mesmer was running be it boon stripping or condition damage but he was so livid at how he lost that I couldn’t get a square answer out of him. Me as a mesmer have a VERY hard time taking down guardians but I have to try a great deal to get past all the boons and the “block, block, block, block”. So I come to the guardian community. Do any of you guys have an extremely hard time fighting mesmers? If so is it because of the clone generation (no more than 3 active at a time) or something else? I want to try and give him advice from a guardian stand point rather than listen to another rant about how my favorite class in the game needs nerfed into the ground then brought back up and be beat with a whiffle ball bat.

I don’t know about them having too much healing, but thats no doubt spec dependent and I have less play time on my mes than my guard. Saying that though I find guardians pathetic in 1v1 vs most of my classes. Probably has alot to do with me being so aware of their weaknesses from playing my own.

Mesmer is an amazing duelist. Vs your average joe I never lose vs anything with staff, except ofcourse the dreaded D/D ele.

Alot of it depends on player and environment really, some guardian specs are a bit antiquated I feel these days and go down really hard, having virtually done nothing the whole fight. I find the dps spec problematic when he denies clones and teleports about like a crazy person, but bunker spec in my experience suffers way too much on the mobility and damage to pose any sort of challenge to anyone.

Team Paradigm call mesmer a ‘cheese’ class for a reason :P but in short if you want to deal with mesmer it can be luck of the draw, his build vs yours. As a guardian with 1k+ hours though I find my only chance vs mesmers to be a mobile/dps burst effort.

Bunker lasts but unlike ele, simply wont kill if you are against a smart player who knows how to exploit it. That and conditions stack really fast at times, can cut you quick if you dont have the removal skills but then.. how are you keeping in range? you’ll kack alot of tools to deal enough damage in the short time the mes gives you chance.

Tl:dr it is a hard fight for guards and mostly I dont try and 1v1 competent mes at all.

And see I am not sure if he was built bunker which as I understand the build isn’t necessarily to kill everything you come across but just to simply not die. He wouldn’t divulge details of his build with me because he was so mad. And Every class in this game can fulfill any role some not as well as others. I still think that dealing with thieves is way harder than other mesmers.

I’ve fought a few mesmers and as a bunker, I won’t be able to do much. As a dps, if the player is good, i’ll get destroyed. Guardians right now aren’t very good duelists. We stay in one spot, hold a point or a few enemies until help arrives. That’s what we excel at. The only way you’ll be able to have a solid win against someone is if they stay in your symbols. Scepter misses too much, as does the swords abilities.(i’m looking at your zealots defense) And unfortunately, since our wards can easily be run through, that doesn’t give much room to utilize said symbols.

I find that the thief doesn’t really have alot of options with some fights tbh, you either lolburst and get called a exploiting noob, or you try and make it hard on yourself and die still way to easily without the satisfaction of a kill (not including the silly culling bugs). Many do make other thief builds work ofc but they arent as IWIN mode and fall short against the high skilled players of other classes at times.

I feel like alot of classes have scaled overtime and many guardian abilities have been left behind, particularly their elite skills but yeah bunker always dies in the end and I dont get much satisfaction from it knowing I just baught time but didnt kill. Ele can do the job way better and still get the kill in the end.

As mesmer thieves lost alot of their scare factor when I stopped being stubborn and switched to staff. It really is amazing when you get used to it and kills the D/D spammers quite easy if your good on the trigger and dont mindless waste cd’s.

So it could be that my guildie was looking at it wrong as his build may not have been designed to kill but just live longer? I mean I have a hard time with guardians a lot of times especially if they wind up getting every boon in game at once (don’t know which skill that is.)

Yeah the boon one is ‘’save yourselves!’’ personally I dropped it a long time ago since its nerfed in proper pvp, but in wvw the duration is a pretty decent 11seconds or so best to just kite it off since it has a cd like anything else and is then them -1 utility.

Bunker guardians are quite poor vs bunker ele in that they cant really deal any effective burst and as we know thats what ‘kills’ those with the damage to crack bunkers. Combine that with a lack of mobility and guard bunker can get lead around like a donkey following a carrot.

I do have alot more luck vs mesmers by falling back slightly, identifying my target and then blowing them up as efficiently as I can. As arken says though, its hard because a decent mes still has way too much escape at its disposal and in order to deal damage you forgo alot of healing and defence on guard. Meaning the many dps mesmers can own you really fast.

Using a good volume of speed, control abilities and trait synergy can net you a kill though and thats primarily a dps orientated spec with gap closers like Judges intervention (which is also a meditation and can be traited to heal you at the same time)

Tl:Dr though your right, he needs to switch it up a bit, bunkers cant hope to kill duelists effectively if they are on their A game. Best hope is to overwhelm their often limited HP (and need to use cooldowns quickly) with a mix of clever thinking and good control useage + damage.

Okay thanks for the advice. I just couldn’t give him anything from a guardian perspective I will pass some of this on if i can.

Mesmers are one of the hardest classes for me to fight right now. I am improving though and have noticed that going with more of a damage build is much more effective than trying to build tanky. Mesmers are too mobile and you need to be able to do some damage once you’ve caught them, otherwise you’ll never even get close to winning.

Right now I’d say I win about half my fights with mesmers, but a good one is nearly impossible to beat.

That’s where alot of bunkers fall down yeah, they simply cant really dish out enough threat. I’ve seen some poor guards, probably packing about 2.6k attack being tanked by alot of the scholar classes as they blow them up while facetanking them..guess they get bored of kiting lol.

The heavy tank really serves no purpose the majority of the time and just because ’you’re alive’ doesnt mean your actually contributing, well outside of point denial anyway. Even with shouts and other things most people would prefer you to be dishing out/dropping+stomping then healing and buffing the sort of damage than can just be dealt again in seconds.

I think many are taking spvp builds and trying to make them work in free roaming stuff like wvw as well. Not going to happen and bunkers are mostly useless if your aiming for anything but wasting someones time.

sPvP? try spirit weapons once.
I’d like to see the mesmer who can live through 3sec KD, 2x immobilize and area denial.
I also like to combine hydromancy on my hammer for even further CC.

WvW? run the same, minus spirit weapons +1 more immobilize.
Yes, that’s the trick in 1 v 1 with guardian, hold down that opponent, cast smite and throw a torch at him, then start smashin’!!!

When you see their summon animation dodge/block/blind them (no illusion even appears when you do this). Doing this starves the mesmer of heal/f-key fuel… and they shouldn’t have any endurance because it forces them to dodge for their illusions. Start with a hammer. Mighty blow on the mesmer will pop all dodge roll illusions with the aoe and keep you on the mesmer with the short leap. Keep using leap weapons/attacks to stay on them and it should be np.

If you’re having issues trying to figure out which is the real mesmer… it’s the one that moves and/or doesn’t have a pause between auto attacks. If they stealth, it’s the one with a black dust swirl at their feet (this animation shows when stealth ends). If you’re in a party you can always call target on the mes to help you keep track.

Well I am glad that a good bit of these posts are from guardians on how they deal with mesmers specifically. I’ll try telling my guildie he normally plays a thief I think but he got facerolled by a mes when he tried guardian and wouldn’t take any advice I would give him. It’s things like that leading to nerfs and so on. I don’t want any class in this game to suffer horrendous damage/survivability decreases when someone rages over losing. Which seems to happen a lot. :/

Guardian is a weird class whose only function in pvp is really to stall as bunker in spvp.

From a WvW viewpoint

Theres not much to do when you see a mesmer besides walking back to your tower and guards. The only mesmers that you should be killing are mesmers which spec heavily in offense. Nobody really kills bunker specced thieves, mesmers or elementalists.

Their defensive stats pretty much makes null all your efforts to pump up your offensive stats. The kicker is that they have much higher mobility than you and have more panic buttons to press when they are actually about to die. Ensuring their survival.

Against more tanky thieves, mesmers and eles. Really the only thing you could do is either to run defensive and stall them out forever. Or run offensive, scare them away with some spike damage and then run to some guards and towers cos youve used your cooldowns.

It doesnt help that 90% of thieves, mesmers and eles run with other thieves,mesmers and eles in WvW to form those elite, all skill roaming gank groups.

Then all you can really do is cross your fingers and pray that the 5-6 pugs you are with doesnt suck. (But what am i talking about? 5-6 puggers means 2 upscaled 80s, and 2 rangers on your team according to WvW norm)

Most of the time you watch all of them go down 1 by 1 ……… but like I said, you should know better by now. You pretty much inch your way back to your tower and throw a few Greatsowrd swings every now and then to put on the show that you are actually fighting hard.

Then you can let out a bit of a sigh as you stand at your tower looking at the bodies of all your pug teammates.

TLDR

Guardians as an awesome defensive class is unmatched in surviving Thieve/ele/mesmer roaming ganks squads in WvW by running to your nearest tower asap. We make great rezzers to all your other teammates who actually stand around to fight and die trying.

Agree that a team of the premier 1v1 duelists is pretty much king in wvw, you dont really need the soldier professions a lot of the time as in 90% of pvp they are worthless vs anyone competent.

They work well as a heavy rush force ofc but anyone can zerg, which is mainly what wvw is anyway. Basically in current game state play a duelist for wvw roaming or if you’re one of those trying to do guerrilla squad tactics bare in mind that the guardian is primarily support – any other class would perform the role better with dps/utility alot of the time / your team will have to make up for your poor dps, and mobility.

Oh, please; the guardian could be utter garbage in every aspect and people would still bring him for the aoe stability.

Stick to a group.

The bunker ranger is likely the best 1v1 class, but what does it matter when this is a team game and they bring nothing besides good 1v1 ability. Play with people and get over your vanity that you need to beat everything 1v1.

Well that does it, I’ll revive this thread again when I’m done with my personal goals, and show you all how this class is supposed to be played.
sPvP, WvW and PvE.

Much I’d like to say about all of you, but all infraction worthy.

In GW1 terms, this is like a group of Wammos discussing why their class is gimped.

If 1v1 isnt important to you you’re simply a different type of player. Be as insulting as you like, im not affraid to admit that im more than happy being able to fight fairly or better than another 1v1. Those who cant duel can hide in their zergs and if they enjoy that as a class then clearly the large volume of fotm classes are an illusion.

Being gimped in 1v1 makes you a liability in that field. Sure theres more metrics than that to a game and you are entitled to enjoy whatever you do, nobody mentioned otherwise. When you are caught 1v1 and die though, yeah GG to you indeed.

There really is no need to attack people purely for voicing opinion. Sounds like some people have a consensus on the forums that their word is law. It isnt.

I base my answer on the op. Pretty sure he’s talking about 1on1

And I just think that there’s little reasons to fight the more tanky mesmers. Outside of bunkering in spvp

If all the 5+ minute fight club 1on1 guardian vs Mesmer matches I see are anything to go by

@Icc Yeah that’s what I was talking about… But as a Mesmer I know its hard to pump out clones that fast and still be tanky. The Guardian in question normally roles a thief and he has facerolled other guardians on his thief then saw me lose to the guardian he fought when I was playing my mes. So maybe he was under the assumption that all guardians should beat mesmers no matter what. I just hated that he based his disdain for an entire group of players of that one fight.

Mesmers and Thieves are difficult to face 1v1 because that is where they are most capable. This can be made a lot harder with the Guardians lack the mobility of other classes. However I don’t find fighting these classes any harder than any of the others since at the end of the day it is down to the skill and what build people are facing each other with. I run a high mobility build to keep up with the more speedy classes but I lose some defence due to this so I am more vulnerable to glass cannons.

There will never be a build to beat all and if there was it’d feel the wrath of the nerf hammer pretty quickly because no one likes a ‘easy mode, kill everything in 1 hit and be un-killable class/setup’

I’ve never lost a duel to a guardian on mesmer, maybe I’m just decent with the class since I played twitch pvp heavily in aion and have less to manage in this game but overall only the ones that put the pressure on hard really phase me. Its just too simple to repeatedly cripple them and gain large distances. You cant play like a an idiot against them and they have strong builds. Its just that the physics of overcoming so many mesmer gimic’s coupled by the factor guardian does alot of his business in melee range all stacks against him. Even if he burns my clones, on a squishy build thats just dooming him with confusion.

Generalization is bad I agree. Player skill varies alot, and a great player can do wonders regardless of his class. Some things are just a natural advantage however and coupled with a great player can give you an unbeatable edge.

ErraticFaith.9142:

I’ve never lost a duel to a guardian on mesmer, maybe I’m just decent with the class since I played twitch pvp heavily in aion and have less to manage in this game but overall only the ones that put the pressure on hard really phase me. Its just too simple to repeatedly cripple them and gain large distances. You cant play like a an idiot against them and they have strong builds. Its just that the physics of overcoming so many mesmer gimic’s coupled by the factor guardian does alot of his business in melee range all stacks against him. Even if he burns my clones, on a squishy build thats just dooming him with confusion.

Generalization is bad I agree. Player skill varies alot, and a great player can do wonders regardless of his class. Some things are just a natural advantage however and coupled with a great player can give you an unbeatable edge.

I’ve had the total opposite experience. Never lost to a mesmer since the no illusion on dodge/block/blind patch.

I just remove the conditions + heal myself + damage the mesmer at the same time when I see confusion stacks (monks focus ftw for solo)… and they never really get many conditions on me in the first place (1 wiped every 10s and anti-condition duration food). I have little problem staying on the mesmer with 2 leaps on gs and hammer, a root, a pull, JI, and SY.

I did used to main a mesmer though… which gives me a very good edge. I know how bad some of the mechanics of the mesmer class are and how to use/abuse them. It’s really kittened up that mesmer is the only class that has aoe/multi hitting attacks that don’t even occur due to a single dodge/blind/block.

I always know what’s coming next… down to what phantasm they are casting because of the different animations etc. I can’t remember the last time I was actually hit by iZerker >.>

What a LOT of PvP down to in this game is knowing how and when to dodge. The last game I plaid before this one (Dragon Nest) had that same setup… if not more so. You mess up a single dodge in PvP in DN and your opponent can juggle/wall bounce you from 100%-0.

Oh granted once you have that extra class knowledge under your belt you can really step up your game against classes you know well. Same thing I did to master assassin in aion – have a go at all the classes and find those exploitable gaps in their offence/defence.

Makes a huge difference.

See alot of people blowing their dodge rolls in a panic which makes most players really easy to deal with if you’ve held back on the cooldowns. Im not sure how I feel about the dodge roll system and a few of its flaws. At times its great, at others feels quite cheap and almost like it ‘caps the skill ceiling’ too much.

Hoping they can improve the game in the future to address that ‘feel’ but not sure how.

Definitely have alot of respect for skilled melee, closing the gap vs kiting can be so kitten annoying lol.