Guild Wars 2

As a glorious and lovely Mesmer, I try to do my best in tPvP matches, and as a power shatter mesmer, I do pretty good against other classes. But it’s those kitten squishy, hard to catch thieves that always focus on me. I can’t stand it! It’s so upsetting that Mesmers can’t really do much when facing them.

Earlier today I fought one, and caught him before he went into stealth. Shattered my clones and myself as he landed a few hits on me, and I got his health down to at least 55-60%. Then he reappeared out of stealth, attacked me again, at this point I used decoy and then he entered stealth. I was at 45% HP, but I was quick enough to use my staff then GS shatter on him, just as he began to use blinding powder and HS. He then reappeared out of stealth in the down state. Lucky me I guess.

This is highly upsetting that Mesmers have a hard time with them. When I play on my S/S – LB Condition Warrior, I have no trouble fighting any class 1 on 1 and even some 1 v 2 depending on the player. I always seem to score the highest score on my team as a warrior, getting kills, and I have even downed 2 players at once a few times. I’m rank 75 btw.

So why is it easier to fight all the other classes as a warrior but when it comes to Mesmers, they need to watch their back, specially with thieves.

Tbh, I’m really tired of engineers – there’s an attitude with that class that just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I’ve just run into real kittens, but to me it seems that there is a higher proportion of arrogance in the engineer playerbase than any other class – ok I sincerely apologise to all the friendly engineers out there, but I’m just calling it as I see it.

Thieves at least most of them being glass, I always have a chance of winning as it only takes landing one solid burst. But then, that’s the difference between using sword(traited)/torch instead of staff – 9s BF, swap (using terrain) and prestige make life a lot easier vs a thief.

You played well.

We need the duellist playmode. That sure would reveal in long term what profession is best – if any. I have seen thief to win 1vN easily – regular WvW players as opponents.

First of all unlike you said, its not easy fighting any class as a warrior. Condis wreck warriors and given average skill, a warrior is crushed by any mesmer build because of kiting. Every build has hard counters to it. Wouldnt mesemer be OP if it could beat EVERY class including thief? (I know u guys have hard time against condis too but kiting is very very handy)

I usually don’t sPvP, and in WvW I tend to bait thieves. My GF plays a condi Thief, me a phantasm Mesmer, and I seem to always appear to be nice fodder to thieves. Only… they can’t really survive it long, then they need to run away. But between her DoTs and my phantasms, they won’t make it.

Yet they try.
So many try…

thief→> Stun—→ intant dead.

I was roaming with my guild in WvW yesterday and we were taking on numbers twice our size which is something we’ve become accustomed to and have experience dealing with (because that’s basically all there is to fight now). Unfortunately they had a S/D+D/D Thief who completed removed me from the fight for the most part. The effort it took me to remain alive, contribute to the team fight and try and kill the Thief was considerably high. Anticipate and dodge the first backstab only to have to blow another important cooldown or dodge to avoid the immediate second backstab chance. I even dodged Steal twice, but S/D allows the Thief to instantly gap close me anyway and Withdraw allowing him to easily avoid my burst. I honestly felt like a burden on my group just because of this one Thief and am considering switching class now for this activity.

I’m okay with natural counters existing in the game, and it’s important that Thieves have an edge over Mesmers so we’re not running rampant, but somewhere between the buffs and nerfs to the two classes, it feels like its gone a little too far.

As far as I can tell, if you run a power build against a good S/D,D/P or S/P thief you are probably going to lose hands down. Playing a power mesmer against a good thief is one of the most frustrating experiences in the game: there is almost nothing that you can do, and you become an instant liability to your team if the enemy thief knows how to hunt you down. Lockdown builds may fare better against thieves than shatter, but a good thief will still eat a lockdown build alive.

If the enemy team has a thief and my team doesn’t have one to peel for me I basically just switch to another profession. Yes, that’s running away from the problem, but I play the game for fun, not to get frustrated. Less drastic options would include switching to condi builds, which fare better against thieves, at the expense of making you less useful to your team.

Purecura.1795:

As a glorious and lovely Mesmer, I try to do my best in tPvP matches, and as a power shatter mesmer, I do pretty good against other classes. But it’s those kitten squishy, hard to catch thieves that always focus on me. I can’t stand it! It’s so upsetting that IP Shatter Mesmers can’t really do much when facing them.

I fixed and highlighted your entire problem for you.

This is a learn to build to play issue. Or to put it another way, don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.

Thieves are the anti mesmer[countering illusions] and the anti glass cannon[killing quickly]. IP Power Shatter is both, so it’s too be expected. Condi Shatter, Condi PU, and CI Lockdown can handle thieves to a certain extent, though they still counter us to a lesser extent.

It is very possible to beat thieves, if you using staff/gs simply hop on staff and pop 4 then 5 and hide in 5 when it nearly runs out use 2 through it, thieves don’t like chaos armor, then use decay for a quick stealth and use a gs shatter burst, if your burst only gets them down to 60% you need to practice timing.

Good luck beating thieves in the future!

If consume plasma was nerfed, thieves would be a fair fight. Enough said.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

If consume plasma was nerfed, thieves would be a fair fight. Enough said.

I know right. As if it isnt enough that they have more stealth uptime, blinds coming out of their wazoo and a mechanic that allows them to spam their skills if they make a mistake but they get allllll boons for 10seconds… it should be RNG based like almost all mesmer boon traits or alternatively give use the same skill.

Theives are a natural counter to ip shatter builds especially double ranged but you can even the playing field more with lockdown traits. Heartseeker is easy to interrupt with mantra of distraction and interrupring their smokefield stealth really buggers up their rotations. It also puts their skill on cd for a few seconds so they cant spam another one strait away.

fluxit.8247:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

If consume plasma was nerfed, thieves would be a fair fight. Enough said.

Backstab is easy to interrupt with mantra of distraction.

Please teach me your ways of how to interrupt a stealth skill with a targetable mantra. I would really love to know how to do this.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

fluxit.8247:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

If consume plasma was nerfed, thieves would be a fair fight. Enough said.

Backstab is easy to interrupt with mantra of distraction.

Please teach me your ways of how to interrupt a stealth skill with a targetable mantra. I would really love to know how to do this.

I’m assuming this is BP+HS for the stealth to trigger BS. But If this BS, please do teach me too.

Sorry ladies I meant heartseeker. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.

Here is a 27 minute guide on tactics as a mesmer against thieves. http://youtu.be/3tcjVz12Ago
Thieves hard counter you but no reason to just give up when there are so many weak thieves out there.