Mesmer is the best in PVP ( both Wv3 and sPvp ) OP OP
decoy and blink, shatter, and glass cannon thieves are dead
or use a tanky defensive build with staff, in which case they cant do anything, but its not as useful in wvw
I play a tanky defensive build, and I disagree that they aren’t as useful. The amount of utility you bring along with you is amazing. Sure, you can’t burst down players and it becomes more of a war of attrition, but if you play your cards right, an enemy will never escape a mesmer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hunted down players running from me- blink, temportal for cripple, temporal again for knockdown + pull, signet of domination for stun, sword #3 for cripple, sword #3 for 2s immobilize, chaos storm for chill/cripple, and then moa if you have it equipped. Hit moa right, and you win.
Then, for large scale battles, you can alter your setup to have feedback, time warp, etc. I never feel like I’m never being useful because I’m always doing something- pulling groups of people off walls (or at least off siege temporarily, choas storming defensive equipment, allow my phantasms to do most of my damage while rezzing people, creating constant streams of clones to tank damage and eat heavy aoe…
In all honesty, I feel more useful than any glass cannon build in a large group.
-Look, look with your special eyes!
-My Dragonbrand!
Proper use of distortion + blurred flurry goes a long way to killing thieves. If you get decent enough, it’s very possible to predict when they’re gonna strike from stealth and activate accordingly.
If you’re using a Staff, you should have no problems kiting one. Spamming Chaos Armor will negatively affect the Thief’s onslaught easily.
If you’re using Greatsword, it’s very easy to have a lock down combo from Wave > Magic Bullet > Swap > Flurry/Shatter Daze. Most thieves will not take kindly to that at all. Especially if your iBerserker is spin2winning on their butts.
Thieves using the gimmick backstab build will kill you instantly from 900 range unless you are very tanky.
That said, still winnable if you instantly hit BF/Distortion/dodge when they are at 900-ish range to evade their 30k damage opening sequence.
The hard part is predicting what spec they are, since you need to identify it before they attack, because if they attack, you die.