Guild Wars 2

Simply put, I not only don’t think mesmers are “overpowered” in the current meta, I think they have an Achilles’ heel: condition clearing.

Last night I was goofing around in a private PvP server and there was a condition engi who was able to stack up multiple conditions on me in a very short period of time. He was also very tanky and there was no possible way I could take him down quickly.

I acknowledge that he was likely a better player than me in general. But even if we had been of equivalent skill levels, I doubt I would have even come close to beating him.

I’ve had similar experiences with condition necros and now condition warriors are all over the place too.

The torch clear trait for PU builds doesn’t cut it. Mender’s Purity doesn’t cut it, even using the clumsy and cumbersome mantra heal. In fact, it seems like you’d have to orient your entire build around clearing conditions to even survive against these classes, and that would leave you ineffective at doing much else.

This thread is a combination frustrated rant and solicitation for advice. Also somewhat of a reaction to the constant tedious claims I read about how mesmers are “overpowered” and “can’t be beaten in 1v1” and so forth.

I’ve always considered our speed and condition defense to be our only weaknesses of note, but the condition thing is situational.

(Mantra)Mender’s Purity combined with the torch trait should be enough for most cases, it’s really a matter of when you remove the conditions and what conditions you remove rather than just cleansing whenever there’s condis on you. Necros like to stack “throwaway” conditions like Cripple to protect their more damaging bleeds/poison/torment/burn, so you really have to pay attention to what you’re removing and how it’ll affect your gameplay.

For 1v1s iDisenchanter rules all though, hands down. It almost entirely nullifies condition specs.

Edit: Mantras aren’t that bad when you get used to them. Clearing 4 conditions on a 13s cooldown is pretty beastly.

New heal + phantasm mesmer would have destroyed that character, and pretty much any other character 1v1. Phantasms were always strong, but a disenchanter, and other phantasms, with the ability to refresh on command? Anet is being silly now lol.

The problem with timing the cleansing is that he could literally apply more conditions faster than I could remove the existing ones.

As for the mantras, they would be fine except for the 3 second “pseudo-self-stun” and the insane 5 second cooldown when (not if) they get interrupted. They work fine in most situations but they don’t work well enough to counter a condition build, IME.

The new heal is useless in PvP unless you want to play a throwaway berserker build that dies every minute. The disenchanter would have died to this engi’s AOE before doing a thing.

I’m sure I could make a mesmer that would beat a class like this. The problem is that it would lose to just as many other ones that I can beat now. Perhaps that’s part of game balance, but as conditions continue to show up everywhere I think a lot of existing mesmer builds are going to become unviable.

I run Menders Purity and the cleansing mantra on the hybrid PU build. If 6 conditions cleared every 20s isn’t enough for you, especially with our stealth an invuln abilities, you are doing something wrong.

Well, you say that a disenchanter would have died to the engie’s aoe quickly, but did you try it? Remember that the engie is mainly conditions, and the disenchanter will often clear conditions from itself.

Additionally, like all phantasms, you don’t just throw the disenchanter out and hope it wins the fight for you. Its presence allows you to push aggressively against a condition based opponent, which will inherently protect it.

No, I didn’t on this particular opponent. I’ve tried it in the past and just found it evaporates pretty quickly.

To be clear, I’ll happily admit my (still) relative lack of experience in the game, and that may be a factor. I need more practice and I guess I may have to get used to the idea that I’ll have to get rid of one of my utility standbys and devote a slot to extra condition removal.

Qaelyn.7612:

No, I didn’t on this particular opponent. I’ve tried it in the past and just found it evaporates pretty quickly.

To be clear, I’ll happily admit my (still) relative lack of experience in the game, and that may be a factor. I need more practice and I guess I may have to get used to the idea that I’ll have to get rid of one of my utility standbys and devote a slot to extra condition removal.

That may be the harsh reality as you continue to learn, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ll find that eventually you can roll without as much condition removal as you learn to recognize the mandatory cleanses versus the ones you wait out, how to counter the various classes, knowing when to use your stealth and dodging/keeping on the move.

EDIT: It also helps tremendously to watch other seasoned mesmers.

I only play WvW against other players (no PvP), but it definitely took a couple of tries to learn to like disenchanter. Now whenever I see a necro, guardian, ele, or engineer, it’s my priority to get it out right after my first two phantasms (sometimes right after the first offensive phantasm).

I have trouble keeping track of the disenchanter during the fight, but I can see the orb bouncing around. And the fights go well when disenchanter is out.

One small advantage I see in WvW fights – not many people seem to use disenchanter, so I think opponents don’t always know what it is.