Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,
Since the start of the game I’ve been wanting to get into the Mesmer class, but whenever I join PvP, I get destroyed by thieves. When im on my thief, I eat mesmers. I was just wondering how you’re supposed to counter them. Is there a certain build to use? (Don’t say PU or Phantasm…Im asking for a viable build)

PU condies is a very viable build in tPvP, made more viable by the fact that it counters thieves. This goes similarly for phantasm builds, though they’re much more limited in application.

Thieves are a very hard counter to glassy shatter-based builds. That’s literally their job description: Harass/kill the enemy glass caster. You have 2 options to counter thieves in tPvP:

1. Use PU conditions and/or phantasm when on khylo
2. Get an organized team and have them peel for you

It’s possible to kite around and not get killed by the thief. You can devote all your attention to the thief on a shatter build and not die, and potentially even kill them. Unfortunately, doing this means the thief has succeeded in their job of taking you out of the fight, and you’ve failed in your job of being heavy aoe damage support. Unless your team peels for you, you need to change builds.

No way I’m using PU though. Yes, I play cancer ele and S/D thief, but PU is a whole new level of cheese. Guess my dreams of being a mesmer will never come true.

Elitist.8701:

No way I’m using PU though. Yes, I play cancer ele and S/D thief, but PU is a whole new level of cheese. Guess my dreams of being a mesmer will never come true.

If you’re going to willingly be a scrub then you’ve already lost. Go back to thief.

Fact: you cannot COUNTER thieves as a Shatter build, which is the only TRULY viable spec mesmers have in PVP.
Of course you can listen to PU users who say “hey I rek thieves all day long I use PU i never die 1v1 I’m pro”.

Your attitude is great for pvp though. Don’t join the filth, there’s already too much of it around.

There is skill play with killing a thief, if you can do enough damage or place enough conditions to kill grind them down at the time of their reveal. I’ve killed unexacting thieves with a confusion-heavy build and well guessed dodges. For the simple answer, you just need a way to avoid the initial burst against stealth-heavy thieves and attack when they reveal with high damage/conditions. For more dodge-y thieves or conditions, you need to avoid their attacks and attack at the same time, a benefit of shatter(Dodge for clone-creation and shatter while avoiding damage). Thieves also don’t seem, as aforementioned, used to dealing with confusion and may try to burst you with multiple hits. If you are condition-heavy and manage to get confusion stacks on a thief, you can put them in the red and possibly killing them, assuming they don’t kill you at the same time. In fact, any condition works well against thieves as it doesn’t come off when they stealth.

Anyway, if you want a build that can very perfectly or at least a hard counter a thief, there’s PU. But there are ways to beat thieves in the moments that their stealth comes off, which is the main counter against our AI focused mechanic. Don’t panic when a thief disappears and focus on avoiding their next attack and countering. Thieves tend to have a gap in their attacks, using their stealth for what it’s worth, and then attacking from behind or a side angle, meaning they take time to move and ready themselves before attacking. After the ambush fails, use whatever means to kill them.

And don’t look down on PU. I don’t personally play it, but it is the same as every other “cheese” build of each class. It works.

Elitist.8701:

No way I’m using PU though. Yes, I play cancer ele and S/D thief, but PU is a whole new level of cheese. Guess my dreams of being a mesmer will never come true.

Cheese is a term made up by scrubs who don’t fully understand how play and counterplay works. I don’t call any build in this game cheese because I understand how to counter every single one.

Now, if you don’t want to play PU because you don’t think it’s viable, then you’re incorrect there. It’s perfectly viable, you just have to be good enough with it. When I bother to PvP at all, I maintain higher than rank 200 on both solo queue and team queue leaderboards playing exclusively PU and phantasm. If that’s not generally viable, then I don’t know what is.

Good luck playing shatter in WvW and just get owned by thieves, eles or many other classes. You could call PU easy mode, and yes it is a crutch. Unfortunately, Mesmer needs PU to survive because of all the other stuff that is thrown at you. There are a lot of worse things out there then a PU mesmer – ex. Condi Thief

if you play street fighter you can get a Cheese icon instead of a V icon for winning a round if your opponent blocks your last hit

Jedge.3619:

Good luck playing shatter in WvW and just get owned by thieves, eles or many other classes. You could call PU easy mode, and yes it is a crutch. Unfortunately, Mesmer needs PU to survive because of all the other stuff that is thrown at you. There are a lot of worse things out there then a PU mesmer – ex. Condi Thief

:/ i manage to solo roam glkittenter all the time, just dont do it with lag.

Jedge.3619:

Good luck playing shatter in WvW and just get owned by thieves, eles or many other classes. You could call PU easy mode, and yes it is a crutch. Unfortunately, Mesmer needs PU to survive because of all the other stuff that is thrown at you. There are a lot of worse things out there then a PU mesmer – ex. Condi Thief

Playing shatter is pretty much about outplaying your enemy
Shatter is a build that requires patience and practice,so don’t blame the build if can’t handle it

Best mesmers are hard countered by thieves.
It has been the case for more than one year and I do not see it changing.
They broke mesmer even more on last patch (distortion became an evade)
From what I have seen …remaining mesmers in high level need a thief to support them against other thieves. And PU seems not to bring enough added value to a team at high level. And no to be 200 on leaderboards means nothing (I reached around 300 in dozen of games without being more than an average player)

pretty sure they fixed the distortion bug no idea why people are still going on about it

pu condition is pretty viable btw… i mean, cmon , mesmers dont rly have anything cheese besides that, warriors run hambow, thiefs perma evade (yes i am gonna be hated), guardian bunker is like totally difficult to kill, etc

pu condi is rly awesome in tpvp , its in my opinion a support spec, uu just spawn clones next to ur partners, and enemys cant allow themselves to aoe there, pu conditions r beasts in tpvp..

Ok, explain to me at what role PU is good at. Condi spam? Necro and engi are way better, and necro wrecks guards with boon corrupting. Point holding? LOL Stealth can’t cap. Killing 1v1 fast? Warriors can LITERALLY ignore you. Portal bot is the only thing, but shatter mesmers can portal and have a role. PU doesn’t even counter thieves either, at least not good S/D thieves.

ehm, in teamfights at mostly middle points, if u got a condi pu mesmer there u literally wreck enemys. they cant atk u, then they wont able to wipe ur team.

Wyrden.4713:

ehm, in teamfights at mostly middle points, if u got a condi pu mesmer there u literally wreck enemys. they cant atk u, then they wont able to wipe ur team.

Wow! I never thought about that! Sick advice, thank you, looks really hard and rewarding to pull off! And the stealth! Wow!

Zord.6130:

Wyrden.4713:

ehm, in teamfights at mostly middle points, if u got a condi pu mesmer there u literally wreck enemys. they cant atk u, then they wont able to wipe ur team.

Wow! I never thought about that! Sick advice, thank you, looks really hard and rewarding to pull off! And the stealth! Wow!

i smell sarcasm

Take a look at this
It won’t completely negate the damage always (eg. the place in Quarry where he says that a location cripples SD thief) as they can begin their attack and steal to you to execute it, but that’s only some damage every so often which you should be able to take. Otherwise you need to keep moving along the kiting locations while doing your job (putting pressure on point) but that takes more cooldowns/endurance and is harder to pull off.
If you get like really kitten good with a shatter set (Specifically the staff + greatsword one) you will be able to beat all classes without too many issues, while a s/d thief, you will hardly be able to kill (S/D only, other thieves aren’t as hard). If you’re in a PU condi set, then we turned the tables. You are going to counter thieves so good. The best I managed to pull off was kill 3 thieves in 10 seconds (first one dropped from scepter block, other two from confusion(perplexity runes) and other random conditions from killing clones and sharper images). Those thieves did suck, it was still a 1v3, and even 3 guys that never played a class should be able to kill you if they’re outnumbering you.
Thieves are generally the perfect class to counter mesmers in general (minus PU).

Have a great day!

~Monns

Oh, also to the guy that talked bad about PU right now → PU is great, you have no right to tell people its a ‘bad’ build or too easy to play or that the people that play it are not skilled. Pyroatheist plays friggin PU condi, so does Osicat → that doesn’t make them bad mesmers!
It is easy to pick it up and win a few 1v1s, though once you get past the newbie level of opponents, it really doesn’t matter that much what you’re running. If you aren’t a decent player, you will get wrecked badly by people!

~Monns

Jurica.1742:

Oh, also to the guy that talked bad about PU right now -> PU is great, you have no right to tell people its a ‘bad’ build or too easy to play or that the people that play it are not skilled. Pyroatheist plays friggin PU condi, so does Osicat -> that doesn’t make them bad mesmers!
It is easy to pick it up and win a few 1v1s, though once you get past the newbie level of opponents, it really doesn’t matter that much what you’re running. If you aren’t a decent player, you will get wrecked badly by people!

~Monns

WvW is not PVP.

pyro plays condi pu in pvp. pyro only pvps i think

Osicat plays WvW mainly with a little bit of PvP, Pyro plays PvP mainly with a little bit of WvW. EDIT: Pyro I think is the same, I thought he played PvP mainly, I guess I’m wrong.
It is irrelevant anyway! No matter if you are in PvP or WvW, you will encounter enemy players.
The message I was trying to get across is that the build you play doesn’t determine your skill level, that it’s in a way immature (mostly dumb) to judge people by the build they play, or speak badly about a build if it is easy to pick up and even if it does not matter after you get past a certain tier of opponent skill level, so unless you are a newbie in PvP, you shouldn’t be too concerned about PU or have too many issues with it. If you don’t like it, just shut up about it, leave it be..
Stop wasting our, as well as your own time bashing the build because we, as members of the community who care about the class reputation and what new players think about certain builds, won’t allow a good build to be trashed by someone for stupid reasons and thus have to constantly correct ignorant, in a way, elitist people like you.
No offense intended.

~Monns

Jurica.1742:

Osicat plays WvW mainly with a little bit of PvP, Pyro plays PvP mainly with a little bit of WvW.
It is irrelevant anyway! No matter if you are in PvP or WvW, you will encounter enemy players.
The message I was trying to get across is that the build you play doesn’t determine your skill level, that it’s in a way immature (mostly dumb) to judge people by the build they play, or speak badly about a build if it is easy to pick up and even if it does not matter after you get past a certain tier of opponent skill level, so unless you are a newbie in PvP, you shouldn’t be too concerned about PU or have too many issues with it. If you don’t like it, just shut up about it, leave it be..
Stop wasting our, as well as your own time bashing the build because we, as members of the community who care about the class reputation and what new players think about certain builds, won’t allow a good build to be trashed by someone for stupid reasons and thus have to constantly correct ignorant, in a way, elitist people like you.
No offense intended.

~Monns

Agreed 100%

Elitist.8701:

Ok, explain to me at what role PU is good at. Condi spam? Necro and engi are way better, and necro wrecks guards with boon corrupting. Point holding? LOL Stealth can’t cap. Killing 1v1 fast? Warriors can LITERALLY ignore you. Portal bot is the only thing, but shatter mesmers can portal and have a role. PU doesn’t even counter thieves either, at least not good S/D thieves.

What a PU condie mesmer can do in tPvP is detailed here in this guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-A-Mesmer-Guide-to-Solo-Queue/first#post4060868

However, I’ll go over it briefly. PU condie allows you to contest points for a long time if played properly. The stealth shouldn’t be needed in a 1v1, if you’re a good player. Against multiple players, the stealth allows you to survive. This forces the other team to send several people to contest the point, giving your team a numbers advantage.

You also need to choose your battles of course. If you try to debunk a bunker warrior, you’re doing it wrong. If, however, you snag a decap, and a warrior tries to come and get you off the point, now you can tear them apart, as they are forced to attack on the point to kill you. PU condie mesmers excel at on-point fighting, because the clone explosions will almost completely cover the point. This provides excellent condition load.

A properly played PU condie mesmer counters every build in the game except for a properly played phantasm mesmer, which you probably won’t encounter. If you lose to an S/D thief, it means you got outplayed.

WOW there’s a lot of PU apologists in this thread. To be clear, NEVER use PU in solo queue or tPvP (nothing matters in hotjoin). You’re specing 6 points for a selfish defensive utility that has almost no use for your team.

PU brings nothing valuable to a team fight. The stealth helps you lose agro, which might be useful for the first 15 seconds of a match if the enemy decides to focus the mesmer, but once they realize you’re PU and offer zero counter pressure, they’ll just ignore you and kill all your friends instead. You can’t peel for your friends as PU condi mesmer because your burst damage is non-existent, so you’ll run around in circles spawning clones and auto attacking doing close to no damage while you lose the team fight. You also cannot chase people who are low because your mobility sucks.

1v1 is your absolute best case scenario as a PU mesmer, and your stealth is counter-productive in conquest. You’re certainly not going to be decapping any points as a condi PU mesmer since you have no way of knocking a person off point and you will only lose ticks on the point cap as you hide in stealth. Even assuming you will actually win the 1v1, it’s going to be a slow battle of attrition while you hide and stealth and let condis rack up. So 1+ minutes later you might decap the point and have contributed to your team, but then of course you’ll quickly lose control of it again once the enemy shows back up since one decoy worth of stealth is enough time for you to lose control. The game doesn’t need more cancerous decap engis, and mesmer does a bad job at it anyway.

I have played a ton of sPvP, and I have never been thankful to have a PU mesmer on my team.

To answer OP’s original question, thieves hate both hard and soft CC, and staff. Use chaotic interruption + halting strike with a staff and whatever other traits you want. Phase retreat + dodging can avoid most larcenous strikes a thief wants to go for. They would be stupid to stand in a chaos storm unless they want to get imob spammed and die to halting strikes, and if you imob them enough, they’ll eventually run out of escapes and either die or run away. It’s still hard to kill a thief that doesn’t want to die, but since it’s conquest we’re talking about, you can still “win” by capping the point while they run off. Chaotic interruption is also useful in a team fight when paired with mantra of distraction since you can imob people almost at will if your timing is good enough, and your team can beat down the target while you lock them down.

TL;DR: PU is garbage in sPvP and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about, period. Use chaotic interruption instead. It’s useful in a team fight and is strong against thieves.

Fox.3562:

WOW there’s a lot of PU apologists in this thread. To be clear, NEVER use PU in solo queue or tPvP (nothing matters in hotjoin). You’re specing 6 points for a selfish defensive utility that has almost no use for your team.

PU brings nothing valuable to a team fight. The stealth helps you lose agro, which might be useful for the first 15 seconds of a match if the enemy decides to focus the mesmer, but once they realize you’re PU and offer zero counter pressure, they’ll just ignore you and kill all your friends instead. You can’t peel for your friends as PU condi mesmer because your burst damage is non-existent, so you’ll run around in circles spawning clones and auto attacking doing close to no damage while you lose the team fight. You also cannot chase people who are low because your mobility sucks.

1v1 is your absolute best case scenario as a PU mesmer, and your stealth is counter-productive in conquest. You’re certainly not going to be decapping any points as a condi PU mesmer since you have no way of knocking a person off point and you will only lose ticks on the point cap as you hide in stealth. Even assuming you will actually win the 1v1, it’s going to be a slow battle of attrition while you hide and stealth and let condis rack up. So 1+ minutes later you might decap the point and have contributed to your team, but then of course you’ll quickly lose control of it again once the enemy shows back up since one decoy worth of stealth is enough time for you to lose control. The game doesn’t need more cancerous decap engis, and mesmer does a bad job at it anyway.

I have played a ton of sPvP, and I have never been thankful to have a PU mesmer on my team.

To answer OP’s original question, thieves hate both hard and soft CC, and staff. Use chaotic interruption + halting strike with a staff and whatever other traits you want. Phase retreat + dodging can avoid most larcenous strikes a thief wants to go for. They would be stupid to stand in a chaos storm unless they want to get imob spammed and die to halting strikes, and if you imob them enough, they’ll eventually run out of escapes and either die or run away. It’s still hard to kill a thief that doesn’t want to die, but since it’s conquest we’re talking about, you can still “win” by capping the point while they run off. Chaotic interruption is also useful in a team fight when paired with mantra of distraction since you can imob people almost at will if your timing is good enough, and your team can beat down the target while you lock them down.

TL;DR: PU is garbage in sPvP and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about, period. Use chaotic interruption instead. It’s useful in a team fight and is strong against thieves.

i think u didnt even read half the comments here about pu condi

i wish pyro was here to explain stuff..

All I read was you saying “Mesmer X plays it so it must be good, and here’s why I think it should be good”. I’m telling you from experience that you’re wrong.

fay told most of the good points ._.

pls, as someone who plays shatter mes, i find condi pu mesmers in middle of enemy team rly annoying.

i cant go on and burst someone down cause it would kill me either

when i tried condi pu few times, it worked wonders, easy to play, insanely rewarding, rly low risk

dont go on saying its not viable…

Fox.3562:

All I read was you saying “Mesmer X plays it so it must be good, and here’s why I think it should be good”. I’m telling you from experience that you’re wrong.

And I’m telling you from experience that I’m right. You obviously didn’t read anything that was mentioned in this thread with regards to how PU condie works effectively in tPvP, and I quite honestly don’t have the energy or motivation to argue with you.

I’ll just leave it at if you want to use shatter in tPvP, go for it. It will be very difficult, and having thieves on the enemy team will make your day absolutely miserable. PU condie is very viable in all but absolute top level play, which I know for a fact none of the people in this thread asking for help do. If you want to learn how to do it, just look at the mesmer’s guide to solo queue, and or send me a PM on the forums and I’ll be happy to help you out.

Fox.3562:

All I read was you saying “Mesmer X plays it so it must be good, and here’s why I think it should be good”. I’m telling you from experience that you’re wrong.

Rofl, Fay is Pyro, and Pyro speaks from experience. So where does that leave your argument?

I’ve used PU, I know it’s strengths, I’ve come to know that from my experience, so again to your argument…

Just admit you made an error and move on.

Solo Queue

Rank Name Character Wins Losses Win % World
41 Fox.3562 Potato Plant 533 345 60.71% Maguuma

Everybody else arguing here is either EU, or not ranked on the leaderboards on NA solo queue or team queue, except this guy:

Team Queue

Rank Name Character Wins Losses Win % World
24% Wyrden.4713 Lawyrda 49 39 55.68% Maguuma

Just for some perspective on everyone’s experience.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Fox.3562:

All I read was you saying “Mesmer X plays it so it must be good, and here’s why I think it should be good”. I’m telling you from experience that you’re wrong.

Rofl, Fay is Pyro, and Pyro speaks from experience. So where does that leave your argument?

I’ve used PU, I know it’s strengths, I’ve come to know that from my experience, so again to your argument…

Just admit you made an error and move on.

The issue is that Fox is speaking from the perspective of playing with GF. PU condie is questionably viable when you’re playing with/against one of the like 4 teams that actually are any good in this entire game. That’s about 20-25 people in total. What applies for that level of play doesn’t apply in any other situation.

Fox.3562:

Solo Queue

Rank Name Character Wins Losses Win % World
41 Fox.3562 Potato Plant 533 345 60.71% Maguuma

Everybody else arguing here is either EU, or not ranked on the leaderboards on NA solo queue or team queue, except this guy:

Team Queue

Rank Name Character Wins Losses Win % World
24% Wyrden.4713 Lawyrda 49 39 55.68% Maguuma

Just for some perspective on everyone’s experience.

http://www.gw2score.com/PvP/player/pyroatheist9031

I’ve been enjoying Dragon Nest more than gw2 lately, so I haven’t played much.

i was in na for 1 week

i dont s/tpvp anymore, but was pretty much in rank 200ish…

pls check eu leaderboards to see that i am still above 95% even tho not pvping for a month alrdy.

pls check both worlds when trying to harass someone of someone s rank, its not even hard beeing in top 500…

and Lawyrda is my ele, wich i recently had at lvl 80 like months ago, and only played that in na.

The point was to show you that I’ve lost more games than you’ve played total. And maintaining top 50 means I must be somewhat successful at it.

Maintaining top 300 in a game with the number of competent teams you can count on your fingers isn’t something to brag about by the way.

Fox.3562:

The point was to show you that I’ve lost more games than you’ve played total. And maintaining top 50 means I must be somewhat successful at it.

Maintaining top 300 in a game with the number of competent teams you can count on your fingers isn’t something to brag about by the way.

And giving play advice that only applies to playing with or against those 5 competent teams is also quite foolish.

PU power phantasms with portal easy defend point 1×1 and help mid while portal up.
But Elitist.8701 too eletist to use PU, so he will continue suck vs thiefs. End.

Teaching people bad habits isn’t good advice either. Why would you try to get proficient at a spec that’s only viable against bads? It’s not as if chaotic interruption is some god tier spec that only people with 5k+ hours can play. PU is a crutch, chaotic interruption has value.

why does no1 recommend to use full zerker ele to a new player for dungeons and fractals right away?

it is to get used to the class first, and slowly try harder stuff…

Fox.3562:

Teaching people bad habits isn’t good advice either. Why would you try to get proficient at a spec that’s only viable against bads? It’s not as if chaotic interruption is some god tier spec that only people with 5k+ hours can play. PU is a crutch, chaotic interruption has value.

There’s difference between ‘bads’ and ‘people/teams that aren’t part of those 5’.

Since the vast majority of players do not and will never compete at that level, why bother playing builds and using strategies that are objectively worse unless you’re at that level? Play to win, not to win hypothetically if you’re in one of the top 5 teams.

Edit: Those top 5 teams don’t use mesmer anyway, so this whole discussion is purely hypothetical. If you’re at that level, you’re not playing mesmer, at least in NA.

Fox.3562:

The point was to show you that I’ve lost more games than you’ve played total. And maintaining top 50 means I must be somewhat successful at it.

Maintaining top 300 in a game with the number of competent teams you can count on your fingers isn’t something to brag about by the way.

Perspective, great. Your argument is still fallacious , however.

a t s e.9614:

lol even tho PU is a cancer build , I’d rather have a PU Mes on the OPPOSITE team than my team. Nothing is more useless than a PU mesmer and shadow arts thief in s/tpvp.

While I agree that PU and stealth in general aren’t nearly as useful in tpvp as it is in wvw on the other hand I hardly count tpvp as the measuring stick of gw2 pvp. It’s boring as kitten. Holding a pt and bunker down is boring, spam condis while bunkering down is boring. Force people to fight in a small circle is boring the whole spvp tpvp thing is boring that is why it’s a ghost town.

Sigh OK, lemme rephrase my question. What mesmer spec is there that isn’t hard countered by thieves, isn’t incredibly boring to play and is viable in PvP. NOT PU. ENOUGH ABOUT PU. I don’t care, even if it was viable, I would never play a stealth spam class.

according to ur signature u play thief tho

kind of funny:p

Yeah..read OP, I wreck mesmers on my thief. You would think I would know how to counter myself, but that’s not the case :P.

well, i think shatter is pretty much the only real viable pvp spec besides condi pu

Elitist.8701:

I would never play a stealth spam class.

…mains thief. Ok.

At any rate, what you’re looking for doesn’t exist. Why do you think mesmers don’t exist in the 5 competitive teams?