Can shatter mesmer kill a D/D ele?
The best way to kill a D/D ele as a shatter mesmer (and probably the only way if you 1v1) is to moafy them just before the burst to deny them their healing.
Not even worth using a moa when 1v1ing them given so many of them are using vampirism rune these days.
Basically you moa burst, and he just gets into vapor form to negate the moa. Then he just teleports/RTL away and heal back.
in pvp yes, in wvw no.
D/D ele is pvp god tier, plain simple. WvW allowing inflated stats AND food AND potions further breaks down the balance, as they can take food to heavily reduce condi duration or to proc extra healing.
Well, I’ll say that as a Condi Shatter Mesmer running Inspiration, they aren’t very difficult to kill and not a huge threat to myself either. Confusion is particularly effective on Eles as they’re conditioned to spam their autos for their Signet.
The key I think is to pay attention to their rotations. They almost always open with Air and rotate into Fire, then Earth/Water depending on how much damage you did. Ideally you want to land your burst right after they come out of Water.
1) dodge fire
2) place your burst after their healing
3) kite
It’s that simple. Especially 1) seems to be very hard for the mesmers I fight, despite fire attunement being so obvious. The second mistake that they do is not to kite and run away when they could, instead they are running towards me (not stealthed). An elementalist has some gap closers but fighting someone who keeps running away is a real pain in the *. You need to make him pay with at least 1 gap closer everytime he wants to engage.
This is absurd. Lets go through and see why, shall we?
1) dodge fire
And by dodge fire, we actually mean ’don’t be on the point while the ele is spamming fire spells. You’ve only got 2 dodges, but the ele can cover the point in long lasting fire aoes for quite a while, while hammering with autos/other skills. If you want to ‘dodge fire’, you simply have to abandon the point.
2) place your burst after their healing
Cele ele has fantastic sustain. They only need to go into water for burst healing. If you’re waiting for them to do a water rotation before you burst, you’re going to be waiting an awfully long time, since the only reason they’d need to do a water rotation is if you’ve already bursted them.
3) kite
Kite is such a simple term. Let me translate it to something more descriptive:
‘Lose the point, prolong the fight, and hope beyond hope that nobody on the other team notices their ele 1v1ing a mesmer on a side point and drops by to eat you’.
It’s that simple.
Yes, that simple. All you have to do is lose the point, burst after you’ve burst, and extend the fight long enough for their roamer to +1 you.
Ok, now for some advice grounded in reality…
Technically speaking, a shatter mesmer can 1v1 a d/d celery elery. You’ve got the burst for it and the boon stripping. However, it’s going to take a very long time. They have a lot of healing and defensive abilities, so it takes multiple successful bursts to actually kill them. They can avoid your burst in multiple ways though, so successful is the key word of that previous sentence. At the same time, they’re extremely potent offensively, and shatter mesmer typically is weak on condition removal. If you get up close, you can eat enormous burn stacks really fast, and you’ll die before you even get a chance to extend the fight.
This means that in order to fight a celery elery, you have to play really carefully, at long range to stay away from the nasty meat-grinder that a d/d ele creates, only coming in for a quick burst. This playstyle might work eventually in a 1v1, but it fails spectacularly in a match. It guarantees that you lose a point you’re trying to defend, guarantees that you don’t decap a point they’re defending, and gives their team ample time to rotate and kill you.
Ultimately, it’s not worth your time or effort, because unless the ele is really bad…it’s going to result in your death one way or the other.
Yup. Ele is built to all its strengths. It farts boons out more than a guardian, with 5 second protection on a 10 sec cd. It has the highest sustained and burst condition removal of any class, making it immune to most condi specs that are not engineers. Its arcane line comes with perma vigor in renewing stamina, gives them extra blasting with evasive arcana, and increases the boon duration that they already drown you with.
On top of the high protection and regen uptime, they get access to frost aura for another 10% damage reduction and a self peel. Signet of Restoration is no Healing Signet, but is close enough that with all the native healing skills eles have, they generate as much healing as an adrenal healing warrior with healing signet. Their cantrips cover nicely all their weaknesses — mist form to prevent subsequent bursts on their low health, cleansing fire to provide defense against spike condi application and apply burning, which not only does damage but triggers blind from burning ashes and boosts their damage as their minor gives them a damage modifier on burning targets. Lightning Flash gives them a flexible gap closer/creator in case they do get kited.
On top of that they have 3 gap closers, one that evades and does a metric ton of damage plus burning, one that roots the target before the ele leaps to them (so they can combo the root into a fire grab), and one in air attunement. All of these on top of lightning flash.
Added to these is the amount of combo fields and blasts they have access to in the same builds, allowing them easy might stacks and with persisting flames permafury and long lasting fire fields. So you have bunkers that can achieve bruiser damage by might stacking.
Then you have a class that despite high sustain also has high sustained damage, because unlike the mesmer their autoattacks don’t suck total kitten , so with lightning whip spam they actually hurt and sustain pressure, on top of the cleaving they already do. And on top of their high sustained damage from strong autoattacks and might stacking, they have plenty of high burst skills like burning speed and fire grab into air attunement lightning strike. They also got built in projectile defense on their ring of earth, which also cripples aoe…
In fact, I find it hilarious they thought Blinding Dissipation was too strong and nerfed it while ele keeps blinding ashes as is with their rate of burning application. It’s a farce. Mesmer is purely a burst class with awful sustained damage and nowhere near the potential of sustain an ele has, and yet the QQ train saw them first in the list of nerfs.
The only natural counters it ever had were sword/dagger thief, which was nerfed since it was absurd against other classes, and necromancer (which is also constantly nerfed). With those two main counters removed who could successfully counter the ele’s rampant boon application, the ele is now what it is, a build without its checks. Cele signet necro remains its only 1v1 bad match up, but the ele can easily disengage or contest a point still.
(edited by Zenith.7301)
dont ever waist your time in 1v1 as power shatter in team fight
if you can be sure you can take someone 100-0 in 30 sec than be sure his teammate will come to finish the job
if you can defend or decap the point look for 2v1, 3v2, 4v3 etc…
in even fight burst the ele but dont let him kite you. i have seen good ele doing 1v3 just kiting and making his team doing 4v2 else where.
You can kill him, but with the generic shatter build that everybody uses it can take quite long and like others pointed out, you don’t really want to waste time trying to take him down.
Kolompi has it right, generic shatter build leaves you wanting.
To help overcome the deficient I go the shatter lockdown route. Using mental anguish with CS stuns from MoD price you can assure the landing of your burst with the extra punch you’ll need to get penetration beyond that last 10% HP. If you do fall short dropping your iZerker with a swap to pistol stun + iDuelist can give you some follow up burst/lockdown the torch just will not allow.
An ele might live to face another burst but locking an ele out of his skills with hard CC is a hard biscuit for them to eat.
Finally though, best to +1 on them with this approach as they can’t survive a 2v1 under such burst and heavy CC.
Kolompi has it right, generic shatter build leaves you wanting.
To help overcome the deficient I go the shatter lockdown route. Using mental anguish with CS stuns from MoD price you can assure the landing of your burst with the extra punch you’ll need to get penetration beyond that last 10% HP. If you do fall short dropping your iZerker with a swap to pistol stun + iDuelist can give you some follow up burst/lockdown the torch just will not allow.
An ele might live to face another burst but locking an ele out of his skills with hard CC is a hard biscuit for them to eat.
Finally though, best to +1 on them with this approach as they can’t survive a 2v1 under such burst and heavy CC.
Against a good ele, +1 as a mesmer is usually not good choice either. Good ele should know that he/she can’t handle that 2v1 and plan an escape early. Also vampirism rune is used by a lot of them which can completely negates your cc/moa.
The best way to deal with ele is usually have someone tanky 1v1 him and have thief +1 him when needed because thief has the mobility to outrun dd ele. Skilled thief can also one-shot dd ele when they are low.
I agree with Ross Biddle in that an interrupt shatter mesmer (so really just an interrupt that knows when to shatter) will fair much better.
Thing is it’s kinda like talking about thief winning any 1v1. You could win the fight but you might then lose the war.
If it takes too long you will lose because you’d have been better elsewhere or someone could come and +1 from the other team or just rotate in if the ele died with no gain for your team.
TW is better for +1 D/D ele than moa. It does slow their rotation giving better opportunity to proc Power Block and CI.
It’ll take ages and will not gain your team anything (possibly a decap if you’re lucky), just don’t engage – drop a portal on the point and return to your team.