Guild Wars 2

Sup guys,

An idea for a little psychological experiment hit me and I’m hoping that some of you guys could help out!

What I’m looking to find is what its like fighting against a Mesmer (Shatter, Lockdown, and/or Condi) as a Guardian? I have a few questions going forward:

• What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?

• How do you feel about your odds of winning?

• Strategies and tactics?

• Which type of Guard build do you feel best fights Mesmer?

• What Guard skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?

• How do you feel about Mesmer in general?

Along with anything else you’d like to add. My plan is to make a thread in the Mes forums detailing and explaining how fighting us feels for other classes, and hopefully learn some things along the way. Thanks in advance for any assistance!

I figured I’d also give my experience (4/4/6 CI lockdown Mesmer) fighting Guards:

Meditation guards are interesting.. I often find myself facing off against either very good Meditation guards or lackluster ones; there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. The lack luster ones tend to be predictable: teleporting into a burst, blowing their wads while trying to spin to win, rinse and repeat with some scepter waving.

Now my problem is that Medi guard seems like the sort of build where you really have to take a second to play the spec to understand everything that’s going on. Since I haven’t yet done that.. I merely rely on waiting for the Guardian to switch to their ungodly-easy-to-interrupt greatsword and simply kitten everything with interrupts. Simple, easy, and predictable.
Against really good Medi guards though? Its such an uphill battle that I often wonder if I’m fighting the same build! That predictable burst is suddenly scarey, now I’m timing certain skills in reaction to the Guard (Judges intervention = Phase Retreat!) and praying for the opportunity to interrupt the GS. I used to say that “Guardians can’t beat Mesmers. Too easy of a fight.” But good Medi guards tend to shove that quote right back all over my face. I hate the face shoving, as it often reminds me I gotta try the spec out for myself. =/

1. Oh Kitten! It’s a Mesmer NOOOOO, Quick target him/her!

2. Contrary to Above view I keep my odds equal till I hit the mes a few times. If I can’t really do anything in the first few hits I feel pretty bad about it. If the mes doesn’t move or takes a burst then good. BTW Illusionary Duelist is targeted over you

3. My strategy is to take down the clones first to make sure I can always find the mesmer. I dont focus them just run towards a group and spam my Smite Condition and purging flames which is normally enough to clear them. Then I can know who the real mesmer is and keep on top with immob on scepter and my teleports.

4. I dont really run meta, but I am decent against mes. A bunker mes can use staff fairly effectively to keep down clones but will probably lose to to lack or damage and or condi clear eventually. A medi guard would have a fairly equal odds if they can pop there blinds before there burst

5. Smite Condition, Purging flames to clear Clones. Zealots defense it they kite me, Flashing blade and Judges Intervention to stick on them and Chains of light for immob.

6. 1 will have me trying not to die as hard as possible, 2 + mesmers make me run and cry, and if thier whole team is mesmers then I switch to thief and stealth the whole game to avoid them

Interupt mantra up?
Cast ZD or WW and instantly cancel cast and laugh as no chaotic interuption procs.
Then immediately go ham on auto attacks
Repeat until mantra is completely depleted and just go ham some more.

Ok now Ill answer your questions on the 3 builds you mentioned
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?
Shatter – Hopefully not open field, I have the advantage when able to use LoS (when running sword/focus gs).
CI: Do I know the mesmer? Do they spam mantras or wait for animations? Regardless I dont actually attack until you burn your power lock. I usually will bait WW+ cancel as if you think im going to JI into you and then after you use a mantra I’ll just burst with symbol autos or BB autos.
Condi: Is it super lame bunker condi or shatter condi? Bunker mantra condi I should probably not engage. Shatter condi is easy as I just dodge shatters as normal and blind sword 3s.

How do you feel about your odds of winning?
Shatter: 95%
CI: 80%
Condi Shatter: 95%
Condi Bunker: 10%
Strategies and tactics?
Opening with RoJ+ JI + Sword autos is usually the best opener for all 3. Dodge mirror blades and shelter BF shatters or just shatters I dont have a dodge for. BB when they enter stealth cuz they usually dont have a dodge. Land every smite condition, train with sword autos, usually I win.
Which type of Guard build do you feel best fights Mesmer?
Sw/f GS is probably the best build vs mesmer.
What Guard skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?
RoJ, smite condition, BB. If you land these every time you will win almost every time.
How do you feel about Mesmer in general?
Countered by guardian.

i play both build medzerk and hybrid build

1. with both i like to play against the mesmer in team fight as it push them to play defensively and blink away as if they dont they will get burst to 25% or even 0%.
1v1 king of the hill its different story and 50% win chance

2. team fight 80%. 1v1 50%
3. use the block when he try to shatter and JI to be on his face. against lock down i try to lure the interrupts with AA and if i see 2 interrupt i try to burst him with gs pull
4. both (more hybrid maybe as i like it most with the 800-900 burn which the mesmer have hard time to cleanse even when they run or stealth
5.gs pull #5 is game changer if it hits, time your #5 shield or you can burst down quickly, #3 scepter immobilize which mesmer hate the most, most of our attack are aoe so clone tend to die before they shatter
6. condi shatter mesmer are the hardest. in team fight the mesmer tend to keep distance from us guardian as it fight which even if he win will take time. condi shatter can do huge burst aoe on point thus making me use all my utilities earlier thus leaving me vulnerable

kitten.1685:

Interupt mantra up?
Cast ZD or WW and instantly cancel cast and laugh as no chaotic interuption procs.
Then immediately go ham on auto attacks
Repeat until mantra is completely depleted and just go ham some more.

Ok now Ill answer your questions on the 3 builds you mentioned
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?
Shatter – Hopefully not open field, I have the advantage when able to use LoS (when running sword/focus gs).
CI: Do I know the mesmer? Do they spam mantras or wait for animations? Regardless I dont actually attack until you burn your power lock. I usually will bait WW+ cancel as if you think im going to JI into you and then after you use a mantra I’ll just burst with symbol autos or BB autos.
Condi: Is it super lame bunker condi or shatter condi? Bunker mantra condi I should probably not engage. Shatter condi is easy as I just dodge shatters as normal and blind sword 3s.

How do you feel about your odds of winning?
Shatter: 95%
CI: 80%
Condi Shatter: 95%
Condi Bunker: 10%
Strategies and tactics?
Opening with RoJ+ JI + Sword autos is usually the best opener for all 3. Dodge mirror blades and shelter BF shatters or just shatters I dont have a dodge for. BB when they enter stealth cuz they usually dont have a dodge. Land every smite condition, train with sword autos, usually I win.
Which type of Guard build do you feel best fights Mesmer?
Sw/f GS is probably the best build vs mesmer.
What Guard skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?
RoJ, smite condition, BB. If you land these every time you will win almost every time.
How do you feel about Mesmer in general?
Countered by guardian.

Pretty much. I would like to add one thing though. I won against every single shatter mesmer I faced on the 1v1 server with my offhand-weapons-only-condi-guard. It’s pretty op. c:

Also Binding Blade can sometimes 1 shot mesmers because they bodyblock projectiles that were supposed to hit their clones. Not like you could rely on it but it happens every now and then.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?
If it’s PU condi, I don’t even bother. Otherwise, cool, a fun fight.

How do you feel about your odds of winning?
Depends on the skill of the mesmer, but I’m pretty confident in my ability to beat one since I also frequently play my own mesmer.

Strategies and tactics?
Focus on the player and ignore clones when possible. An illusion will never attack while moving, so I use this to my advantage to lock on to the correct player model.

Which type of Guard build do you feel best fights Mesmer?
With a glass meditation build, you can kill a mesmer pretty quickly, but you also have to be careful of shatters because aegis and blind do not work well because of it being a multi-hit attack.

What Guard skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?
I’m of the opinion that GS is quite lackluster on a medi guard, so I run sword/focus and scepter/torch. It’s more single-target oriented, but that’s fine because once I can hone in on the player I don’t have to worry as much about damaging the illusions, which can end up stacking conditions on me when they’re destroyed anyway.

How do you feel about Mesmer in general?
I love it. I also run a CI mesmer, and it’s a blast to play. It has a bit more of a skill curve than most builds in the game, which makes it feel all the more rewarding when I shut someone down through sequential interrupts.

The only problem with mesmer is that I find an awful lot of people in WvW that play PU condi. It’s just not fun to fight, and it’s even less fun for me to swap to it on MY mesmer and kick their kitten with their own build because of how easy and mindless it is to play.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?
Go for the 1 shot and judge from the damage if they’re bunker set-up whichmeans I can’t be bothered fighting for 10 minutes just for us to go our seperate ways.

How do you feel about your odds of winning?
Condi Bunker: 30% chance of killing 70% chance of fighting to a draw
Anything else: 90%

Strategies and tactics?
For 50% of my fights against Zerker mesmers it usually ends in the first 10 seconds because they didn’t react to my initial burst.

For the other 50% hound them down and force them into using their defencive skills and execute my main burst once this has been acheived.

Which type of Guard build do you feel best fights Mesmer?
Meditation Guardian and especially like my set-up since the healing allows me to ignore anything other than their burst.

What Guard skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?
Greatsword and Hammer due to the ability to do AoE damage to even if they do go invisible you’ll still catch them with a few blows and also because of the CC abilities.

How do you feel about Mesmer in general?
Great class and always interesting to fight one who knows his stuff and runs a build other than a conditation bunker because I can’t kill them and they can’t kill me and the fights take far too long if we do decide to go at it.