Guild Wars 2

I’ve met an increasing number of mesmers using this in WvW and I’m having issues in how to deal with it. It hits some severe damage without much indication on how/when to avoid it. It has a charging animation but after that you can blast it without any notice. I can’t find anywhere that says how long you can actually maintain the charge. And getting hit for +2300 critical aoe damage by a skill that shows little/no visual cue when it’s going off 3 times every 1-2 seconds is kinda… frustrating to deal with. Especially when it hits around your target.

My critical thief is getting decimated and I’ve yet to defeat a single mesmer after the patch. I can get maybe 1 backstab through and then end up dead. Since this has 1200 range aswell it’s effectively making ranged solution even less effective. More and more I’m seeing a group of +5 people fighting a single mesmer because any less seem to be ineffective. How are you supposed to counter this skill? I’ve used every trick I can come up with and the only solution I have left is to just run off the moment I see a mesmer. I can’t reflect, dodge, evade or block it with Smoke Screen. My ranger is also having some trouble with this if I cannot keep my distance. And as soon as my guardian runs out of blocks and heals, it’s a loss.

Well, first off thanks for coming and asking for advice rather than a rampaging tirade about how Mesmer needs a nerf!

Secondly, Mantras in general have one major drawback: cast time. Mantra of pain takes 2.5 seconds to charge up, and in that time the Mesmer is pretty vulnerable. If you’re using offhand pistol, try to interrupt the charge and you’ll consistently stuff the Mes.

Easier said than done, of course, with Phantasms and stealth and the like, but Mesmer generally only has two 3-second periods of stealth and a teleport. If they’re doing a lot of damage, they should be glassy as hell, so after that first interrupt you have a 5-second window to force the Mesmer onto the defensive and press your advantage.

Interrupting that charge is gonna be crucial to win, no matter the class you’re using, so save your CC for that very specific time.

Another thing – all charged mantras show up under the mesmer’s target display, so you have an indication they could be used at any time. You can use that to help determine when to stealth, use blinds, etc.

You shouldn’t even bother avoiding it since it does about as much damage as an auto attack from a rifle or longbow on other classes.

Okay, in my opinion a mantra build goes through 3 stages – fully charged, uncharged, and sustain.

Chaos covered the sustain phase well – I’ll also add that a mantra mesmer rarely breaks stealth early, so waiting and stealthing just before it runs out should give you the best chance to reposition. And of course: stealthing first or outranging them is basically giving them a free recharge.

The fully charged phase is a bit unusual because opening with a stun like traited steal doesn’t really hurt it. I suspect your best bet is try to bait heal/pain charges out while dodging some things, potentially heal, then go and burst. In particular if they run mantra of distraction(power lock), opening with a backstab burst is asking for trouble.

For thief, I think s/D works best against mantras because fewer actually land and you don’t get many free recharges.

Hi OP,
I ‘ve been running Mantra of Pain for a long time on my mesmer even before the aoe buff and I must admit its pretty strong due to its instant cast and the mesmer can use it anytime (even when being cc’d).

MoP when it doesn’t crit, its dmg is comparatively low, just like autoattack. However, crit dmg from MoP can hit for 2k+ per charge.

There are two main ways mesmers use this skill:
1) Incorporate it into their normal burst rotation
or 2) Wait until enemy at low health and use it as more like a finishing move.

So like skcamow mentioned above, best strategy is to keep a constant eye on the mesmer buff bar to see how many charges currently available for use and manage your health accordingly.

Save your interrupt for when the mesmer runs out of charge and try to recharge the mantra out in the open. However, most mesmers will use stealth or stability to cover this long recharge time (2.75s) so make use of this time to heal yourself up and take a breather if you can’t interrupt them.

If you have access to Weakness condition, try to keep it on the mesmer as much as you can to reduce the dmg spike from MoP and don’t forget to steal that Fury boon from the mesmer. This is of course in addition to your normal defensive tools.

Hope this helps.

PS: the charges remain for a very long time so don’t count on waiting them out

The charges remain until used or a game mode swap takes place or until that person logs off btw..

Counters to Mantras are pretty basic.

They’re not unblockable so if you have long standing blocks i’d save those towards the end of a fight.

You can dodge them

The AoE is fairly sizable so avoid balling up with others.

Mantra of Pain has a 1s recharge rate between its uses no matter what, so after the first shot with it a lot of mesmers will fire it off again, specially if it missed.

If stun locked or otherwise CC’d a good mesmer with any charges on their bar will abuse them to take shots at you even if you are behind them.

Both offensive mantras require Line of Sight to work.

Once used as mentioned above, the Mesmer needs to spend about 3s of uninterrupted channeling time to get it recharged, they cannot dodge or use the majority of their skills during that time either. Once used a Mantra is kind of self defeating if there are no pauses in the fight for it to get set back up.

My recommendation is typically, just try to either bunker/dodge toward the end of a fight when MoP is popular to use or try to control the fight so they either save it till its too late or wiff with it early on.

Mantra of Pain does not hit for 2300, you should be glad the mesmer is using that skill instead of something actually usefull.

Matron.8013:

Mantra of Pain does not hit for 2300, you should be glad the mesmer is using that skill instead of something actually usefull.

Uh.. It definitely can hit for 2300.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Matron.8013:

Mantra of Pain does not hit for 2300, you should be glad the mesmer is using that skill instead of something actually usefull.

Uh.. It definitely can hit for 2300.

Yes, my fault.. this is for WvW. Im in full power/ferocity right now critting for 1400 (TPVP).

Full assassins + vuln and Might i can easily get past 2k crits in sPvP with MoP

if i remember my biggest shot was nearly 3k on a glass thief and he rage quit shortly after the second spike from it downed him.

You can do 2k+ with stacks of vulnerability, stacks of might, and certain traits. You can even throw a rune of intelligence to guaruntee the crit.. but there are still so many better ways to deliver damage. If Im stacked with food buffs, banners, etc.. 2300 is probably normal crit range.

Cheers for all the constructive responses, my thief is fairly glassy with only some 2200 armor but I’ve managed to interrupt few mantras from off-hand pistol after you suggested it so much, lucky shots I guess. And the fights have went slightly more for my favor. However so far only interrupts have been successful against that it’s definetly more difficult to deal with than what I’ve encountered so far. I still gotta figure out how to handle them with guardian but I’ll manage. Thanks.

Ashtaeroth.3940:

I still gotta figure out how to handle them with guardian but I’ll manage. Thanks.

blind/blocks

MoP basically plays like those instants lightnings from a scepter ele. I haven’t met many mesmers using them, but mantra alone probably isn’t going to kill you. Look for other dmg sources, like Mirror Blade and avoid them, so you don’t have to worry too much about the mantra hits.

MOP seems to hit about as hard as GS3 (mind stab, or is it mind spike? I always get those skill names mixed up). The damage from MOP alone isn’t going to be enough to kill you — usually they need to land it in conjunction with a shatter (shatter builds) or after phantasms have whittled you down (phantasm builds). So if you manage to dodge the main shatter burst, you should be in a good position even though the mesmer landed his MOP (and now he’s down 1 charge).

I’d say keep up the pressure as you normally would on a mesmer, but you need to make sure to avoid his bursts (even more so than before). This includes close-range mirror blade, which hurts a lot due to bounces; mind wrack; etc. On the flip side, the mesmer has one less defensive utility to work with so he should be more vulnerable to your bursts, as well.

If he’s a non-glassy phantasm mesmer who’s also running mantras, you’ll have a much harder time. I think a non-glassy phantasm mesmer is probably one of the stronger 1v1 classes, and unless you also have a high-powered (or cheesy) dueling spec, you shouldn’t expect to win unless you significantly outplay him with LOS and interrupts. These guys are less common in tPvP because they offer less team utility, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of them solo-roaming in WvW.