Guild Wars 2

Before I start, I want to say I fully supported the Nerfs we got a while back.
I don’t want to see any class overpower another based on class skills alone coughthiefcough.

Don’t fight a battle you can’t win then complain when you lose!

Also

You can’t win them all!

Greatsword

If you see a Mesmer with a Greatsword, it’s gonna try and burst you down. If you’re a glass cannon and you have no way to defend yourself from harm (like if all your cooldowns aren’t ready), turn tail and run. You will be shreded apart before your cooldowns reset. GS Mesmers will grind you to pieces.
If you think you can stand toe to toe with it, stay as close as humanly possible — his damage depends on staying far away from you. If you stay close you effectively reduce his damage by half.
Kill that Phantasmal Berserker as soon as you see it, it will shred you up pretty quickly if left unchecked.
NEVER, under ANY circumstances place yourself between a GS Mesmer and a Cliff. It will push you down to your death.

Staff

If you see a Mesmer with a Staff (like me), it’s gonna try to get in real close and get conditions all over you. If you’re a bunker without any ways to burst someone down, turn tail and run. Condition Mesmers will grate you like cheese. Burst it down.
If you think you can survive its conditional onslaught, get as far away as humanly possible. It’s condition spreading depends on distance, the closer it is the more damage and conditions it can dish out on you. Stay OUT of the Chaos Storm, it will rain down conditions all over you while buffing the Mesmer. Did I mention that it’s boons and conditions come from its autoattack?
It’s boons and conditions come from its autoattack!

Scepter

If you see a Mesmer with a Scepter, expect to be confused with 5 stacks of confusion.
Don’t have a condition remover? Run the KITTEN away! 5 stacks of confusion from a condition Mesmer will do 1.5-2k damage to you every time you do an action (attack, dodge roll, etc). It’s a giant purple beam, hard to miss.
If you think you can stand up to this confusing dood then nuke him down before he gets up 3 clones or expect that 5 stack confusion to be upped to 8-11 stacks (depending on traits).

Sword (main hand)

If you see a Mesmer with a sword, stay away from the 600 mark. Once you’re that close to him, he can and most likely WILL root you in place. He’ll then proceed to pull off a Pistol Whip Rip Off and be completely immune to all attacks when doing it. He can even reflect all attacks back at you while doing it if traited, as if it wasn’t bad enough. If you think you can take him on, just stay away from him and he can’t do jack kitten! Just watch out for the Autoattack which strips boons off you and applies vulnerability.

Focus

If you see a Mesmer with a focus in its offhand, NEVER, under ANY circumstances should you let the Mesmer get between you and a Cliff. It will pull you down to your death. Stay the kitten away from the Phantasmal Warden, it will destroy you in seconds. Luckily it doesn’t move. You can. SO MOVE!

Sword (off hand)

If you see a Mesmer with a sword in its offhand, laugh at it. Laugh until the cows come home. Then stop laughing when you see the Phantasmal Swordsman and kill it before it hits you, it will poke your eyes out. Don’t hit him if he holds the sword up, doing so will spawn a clone. Easy as eating cake (unless your a diabetic).

Pistol

If you see a Mesmer with a Pistol in its offhand, throw down your keyboard and mouse and sit back, you’re not getting away from this one alive. It’ll stun you can spawn a Phantasm that uses Unload, that cheap thief attack. That’s right, Mesmers are part thief! How do you think they go invisible?
If you’re stupid enough to think you can fight this one, kill the Phantasm and stay far away.
May the Pale Tree or whatever deity you trust save your soul if the Mesmer has a Scepter pared with this weapon.

Stealth

If you see a Mesmer go invisible then it’ll either be for 3, 4 or 5 seconds.
If you see a flash of powder, it’ll burn you when it reappears. Run for the hills or the nearest hill like object. If you see it go invisible then spawn a clone, it’s a decoy. Ignore the Decoy, wait for the real thing to appear. Both of these are 3 second stealths.
If you see a line on the floor and crossing makes the Mesmer poof, it’s a 4 second stealth. The line lasts more than 4 seconds, letting him stealth for 8 seconds if he times walking over it a second time well. If he raise an arm for a few seconds then sends out a white wave/line and disappears then he’s used Mass invisibility. It’s 5 seconds of no Mesmer. But guess what?
Mesmers can’t attack when invisible! That’s right, so a Mesmer will either use these to run away or to sneak up on you. Stay on your toes.

Moa Form

And lastly, if you turn into a Moa, run. Run, Forest, Run!
You can’t do anything for 10 seconds, why are you even trying? JUST RUN! WADDLE! FLY! WHATEVER MOA’S DO TO ESCAPE, DO IT!

For Srsly!

Above all else, do NOT complain when you go to fight a Mesmer you’re not sure you can beat then complain about losing.
It drives us all mad. Thieves are the ones who can one shot you from stealth (at least until the 15th which is when Backstab gets nerfed — THERE IS A GOD), all we can do is spawn flimsy clones and turn people into birds.
They dont even stay as a bird long enough to be cooked, believe me, I tried. Been using clones to escape the police for the last week now. I WAS NEVER HERE, IT WAS A DECOY ALL ALONG!

good read… long time since i’ve read something this useful…

Thanks, I’m glad I actually wrote something useful.
I hate it when people call a class overpowered because they don’t know how to counter it, so I felt the need to tell people the basics of countering us Mesmers.
When you fight one they seem overpowered, but I have to say its quiet the opposite when you play one.

What’s wrong with off-hand sword? ;~;

It’s bad and you should feel bad.
I mean it’s good for the block and the Phantasm, but when stood next to Temporal Curtain, The Priestage, iDuelist and Magic Bullet it’s just bad. Why would you want a single block (only blocks one attack, so the first strike with Hundred Blade/Pistol Whip and Unload) or a Phantasm that doesn’t apply a worthy secondary effect?
(iDuelist bleeds every time it crits, and it attacks about 10 times in one ‘attack’, iWarden provides spell deflection as well as secondary effects when in Combo Fields).

YOUR SET UP IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!
-decoys away-

Psh, dual swords look cooler than a sword + a ranged weapon (or a ranged weapon + a ranged weapon … unless it’s dual pistols, which we don’t have)!

I WILL USE IT REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU PEOPLE TELL ME! MWAHAHAHA!
-decoys away-

-cancels stealth-
The block does need a buff, though…
-skips away with my cool-looking dual swords-

both blocks on the scepter and sword is activitable during its block for blind/daze respectively, more useful than it seems, but still not useful enough.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

It’s bad and you should feel bad.
I mean it’s good for the block and the Phantasm, but when stood next to Temporal Curtain, The Priestage, iDuelist and Magic Bullet it’s just bad. Why would you want a single block (only blocks one attack, so the first strike with Hundred Blade/Pistol Whip and Unload) or a Phantasm that doesn’t apply a worthy secondary effect?
(iDuelist bleeds every time it crits, and it attacks about 10 times in one ‘attack’, iWarden provides spell deflection as well as secondary effects when in Combo Fields).

YOUR SET UP IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!
-decoys away-

The why is simple. Backstab thieves!!! If slotted to gain retailiation on block, and timed properly, it is a sweet backstab thief counter. Thief begins skill to steath on hit (forget the name). Thief uses steal from range. Throw up block. Stealth skill is blocked. Next thief backstabs (unless he has a really fast reaction time as his skills are likely queued), which is reflected. In all likelyhood the mesmer has a higher armor and health rating, as well as his main hand damage after this. Thief melts.

Warning: good thief players to not fall for this. This is for the masses of SPvP gank thieves.

I logged in just to say this

Awesome post. Actually helpful. Mesmers may be a hard class to fight 1v1 but they can be shut down like any other class. Whilst I don’t think that sword off hand sucks, I would rather use pistol (iDuelist + ethereal field = KITTEN TONNE OF CONFUSIONS!). So many people have killed themselves cause of that combo >:)

pistol > focus > sword = torch

as far as off hands go

I think mesmers can use some toning down on the kitten amount of stealths, invulnerability and position swapping they have. Melee’ing a mesmer is worse than chasing a frost mage in WoW.

TheRamosOnline

Greatsword

No comment here. Actually decent advice.

Staff
If you think you can survive its conditional onslaught, get as far away as humanly possible. It’s condition spreading depends on distance, the closer it is the more damage and conditions it can dish out on you. Did I mention that it’s boons and conditions come from its autoattack?
It’s boons and conditions come from its autoattack!

You’re overrating Staff damage and boon potential. Boons require bounces from your autoattack, which are unreliable, slow, and have limited range. Onslaught is a strong word for the three possible conditions from winds of chaos that only hits maybe once a second. Otherwise, decent advice.

Scepter
If you see a Mesmer with a Scepter, expect to be confused with 5 stacks of confusion.
Don’t have a condition remover? Run the KITTEN away! 5 stacks of confusion from a condition Mesmer will do 1.5-2k damage to you every time you do an action (attack, dodge roll, etc). It’s a giant purple beam, hard to miss.

This is a gross overestimate of sceptre’s potency. If you get hit by the full duration of confusing images, you’re just bad. Its a blatantly obvious beam of light with a 900 range and a three second channel time. The mesmer can do nothing during this duration except sit there and channel. If you don’t dodgeroll or simply walk out of range, you may as well sit in every giant red elementalist circle because that pretty much what you’re doing.
Also, unless you’re talking WvWvW (which doesn’t count because you can kill anyone with anything there), the only way you’d be taking 1.5-2k damage per attack with 5 stacks of confusion (which were easily avoidable in the first place) is if the mesmer is condition damage stacking, in which case plant your foot in his kitten because he has virtually no survivability.

Sword (main hand)
Once you’re that close to him, he can and most likely WILL root you in place. He’ll then proceed to pull off a Pistol Whip Rip Off and be completely immune to all attacks when doing it. He can even reflect all attacks back at you while doing it if traited, as if it wasn’t bad enough.

This is wrong. Blurred Frenzy does not benefit from Masterful Reflection. You’ll only be rooted in place if illusionary leap works as intended and it has a nasty habit of not.

Focus
Stay the kitten away from the Phantasmal Warden, it will destroy you in seconds. Luckily it doesn’t move. You can. SO MOVE!

Post-nerf Phantasmal Warden has some of the lowest DPS of any phantasm. Destroy you in seconds would only be accurate if you were talking tens of seconds. Yes get out of its way, but it’s really not that frightening.

Sword (off hand)
If you see a Mesmer with a sword in its offhand, laugh at it. Laugh until the cows come home. Then stop laughing when you see the Phantasmal Swordsman and kill it before it hits you, it will poke your eyes out.

You underestimate the offhand sword this time. The block is nigh useless but the phantasm has perhaps the best DPS of all phantasms. It attacks slightly faster than the Phantasmal Duelist and does about the same amount of damage. It also evades attacks while attacking which allows for more survivability.

Pistol
If you see a Mesmer with a Pistol in its offhand, throw down your keyboard and mouse and sit back, you’re not getting away from this one alive. It’ll stun you can spawn a Phantasm that uses Unload, that cheap thief attack.
If you’re stupid enough to think you can fight this one, kill the Phantasm and stay far away.

Huge exaggeration on the duration of Magic Bullet’s stun. It’s really no longer than any other class’s stuns. Hell, hammer warriors get two stuns on their bar. Yes, it’s a kitten to deal with, but two seconds of stun is far from game-over.

Stealth

Mesmer stealth is annoying but very short lived (unlike thief). Also, any mesmer taking Mass Invisibility into battle over Time Warp or Moa Morph is brain dead.

I know this was a troll post/intentional hyperbole for comedic purposes, but there will be people who will believe every word you posted and cry out “See! Even the Mesmers think they’re OP”

Keep in mind that it’s based on my personal experience.
That Phant is good, but not as good as the others in my opinion.
Also, I’m a staff Mesmer. I know how fast we can shred players apart, hence why the advice I gave is to keep your distance. If I get into melee range you’re looking at 2 very quick bounces. Timed, I’m doing 1.4k every second through its blunt damage alone. The Conditions on average buff that up to 3k, and a Warlock throws in an extra 2-3k every hit.
I take down glass cannons faster than they can dent my HP.

But yeah, the original idea behind the post was comedy, but I still wanted to give people a rough idea on how to counter us.
We’re not overpowered, we’re just unique in the way that you do really need to play the class to understand how it functions.
I mean I know how a Warrior plays and how a Guardian fights, yet I’ve never touched one.
I had no idea how to combat a mesmer until I made one.

The idea that the block is useless on the OH sword is simply laughable. I agree that the Pistol or Focus is a better choice, however this week I challenged myself to run with 2×1H swords.

Frankly the block is fantastic in some situations. That backstab thief? Heh. That stun you know is coming, etc etc. It’s perfectly workable in the hands of a decent Mesmer. Keep in mind the block is also a frontal daze if you wish.

It has it’s uses, it’s just not as strong as other options. Situationally however it can be very strong.

I’ve taken a liking to sword offhand over pistol offhand when I’m running GS as my second set.

The daze from 4 has synergy with some domination daze-orientated traits which you don’t get from the pistol, and coolsdown 10 seconds faster than Magic Bullet. With the prevalence of backstab builds at the moment, the ability to hit 4 and have full protection against this invisible attack for 2 seconds is a god send. Even when we consider a foe who is visible, Magic Bullet can be negated by stability; Illusionary Riposte can not. Finally, if you do block an attack the enemy will take 487 base damage according to the tooltip. May I remind you a 3 illusion Mind Wrack only states 492.

So let’s recap. That’s an ability that protects against a key skill which isn’t blocked by stability and works on stealth skills, recharges 10 seconds faster, deals a truck load of damage if successful and can be turned into a daze VS a stun into an unpredictable, and thus unreliable, daze and blind, only the unreliable latter can be used to protect against a stability-backed key skill, none can protect against a stealth skill and it recharges 10 seconds slower to boot.

Then we get onto iDuelist VS iSwordsman. The former may attack several times, which makes it far superior for combining with combo fields such as staff on switch (although it’s supposed to only be a combo finisher 20% of the time), but it has a clear audio cue when it fires. Furthermore, it only bleeds on attack when traited and even then only when it crits. The iSwordsman does not have any clear audio cue. It attacks fast – and I mean FAST. I have found it really hard to dodge an iSwordsman hit, and it hits harder than every other phantasm. When the attack is done, it then leaps back from the foe to a relatively middleish range, opening up an opportunity for a much more consistent spike from Mind Wrack.

The only thing I really dislike about OH sword is the weapon damage. It is more consistent than the pistol, but actually has a lower max value. That seems off to me considering the pistol does provide more utility, generally speaking.

Still, give it a try; I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised

Don’t get me wrong, I have every weapon usable by Mesmers.
But with a Scepter in my main hand, I get a block anyway, so while a second block might be nice, I prefer a stun or a pull.

You are missing the whole point of the of-hand sword.
Riposte does amazing AoE burst damage when triggered, the clone/block is just a plus. If they don’t attack you you can cancel riposte and turn it into a ranged daze, an INTERRUPTION.
iSwordsman may see bland at first, but it has the lowest recharge rate of any phantasm. it can attack twice in the time iDuelist can attack once. The fact that it dodge after each attack make him very likely to get at least 2 hits before he dies.

Of course pistol is much better against fleeing enemies and paired with a scepter, but in most cases I like sword a lot more.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

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Sword (main hand)

If you see a Mesmer with a sword, stay away from the 600 mark. Once you’re that close to him, he can and most likely WILL root you in place. He’ll then proceed to pull off a Pistol Whip Rip Off and be completely immune to all attacks when doing it. He can even reflect all attacks back at you while doing it if traited, as if it wasn’t bad enough. If you think you can take him on, just stay away from him and he can’t do jack kitten! Just watch out for the Autoattack which strips boons off you and applies vulnerability.

I find it amusing you think Blurred Frenzy copied the Thief Pistol Whip ability… just a heads up… Pistol Whip didn’t originally make you invulnerable to damage. Nor did Infiltrators Strike root your target in place. So in fact, the Thief main hand sword abilities “ripped off” as you would say, Mesmer abilities.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

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Sword (off hand)

If you see a Mesmer with a sword in its offhand, laugh at it. Laugh until the cows come home. Then stop laughing when you see the Phantasmal Swordsman and kill it before it hits you, it will poke your eyes out. Don’t hit him if he holds the sword up, doing so will spawn a clone. Easy as eating cake (unless your a diabetic).

You can laugh at me all day with my OH sword, and I’ll be sure to dance on top of your dead body after I completely dominate you. Remember that just because you might not have a clue how to use it properly doesn’t mean others don’t.

Your post for the most part is pretty solid, and it’s nice to see someone trying to actually help others in the community. Other than the 2 discrepancies I pointed out above, nice post.

Really funny and I really liked it!
(Except some mistakes like Masterful Reflection and some others already pointed out by Hildebert)
Really nice guide, you could put up some extra notes about general stuff, like having stun break for pistol or domination signet, Null Field or Feedback and Portal Entre.

I’ll think about that, actually.
I want to make a video guide for combating Mesmers and make it funny too.

I’m taking on board what people are saying and am actually going to try out Scepter/Sword later today to see if I’ve been doing it wrong.

Just to clarify, I’m firmly in the scepters are useless camp, so it’s sword/sword for me

But that’s a whole other debate for one of the hundreds of other threads…

TheRamosOnline.2670:

It’s bad and you should feel bad.
I mean it’s good for the block and the Phantasm, but when stood next to Temporal Curtain, The Priestage, iDuelist and Magic Bullet it’s just bad. Why would you want a single block (only blocks one attack, so the first strike with Hundred Blade/Pistol Whip and Unload) or a Phantasm that doesn’t apply a worthy secondary effect?
(iDuelist bleeds every time it crits, and it attacks about 10 times in one ‘attack’, iWarden provides spell deflection as well as secondary effects when in Combo Fields).

YOUR SET UP IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!
-decoys away-

I prefer dual swords on my Mantra build. It extends the “can’t kill me” factor on me by another 2 seconds or so. If used properly, I can chain it back into my slice and dice and live for 2 more seconds.
Also, it looks really cool. Although pistol does admittedly look very awesome too.

OH sword is a much better weapon for shatters then pistol. When use pistol you need to wait the phantasm unload before shattering him but with an OH you can shatter him right after spawning him. Very usefull. But i do prefer the pistol for its stun though.

The sword daze has a way too long animation.

I’m back!

Sword/Sword – Got creamed.
Scepter/Sword – Got creamed more than I did the creaming
Scepter/Pistol – There is no more room in hell.

Maybe I’m just not used to it. Sword Block does hit for a kitton (ha!) of damage, but in the long run it isn’t worth running around WvW with a sword in the offhand. Having a way to interrupt is far better.
I rarely use a sword in my main hand as well, I prefer Scepter/Pistol.
Stun them then use Confusing Images for an easy 3-5 stacks depending on whether or not they dodge roll.
It also has some very high damage, each “tick” of CI does about 900 a crit on my Mesmer.

Was this a serious post lol? =p

Pretty much every description is like “You can’t fight mesmers so run”

Sound advice.

Knote.2904:

Was this a serious post lol? =p

Pretty much every description is like “You can’t fight mesmers so run”

Sound advice.

They’re all “this is when Mesmer has the upper hand, run for it. If you can break this combo by sticking close/keeping distance, etc, then go for it”.

What Xoco said.
If you charge at a player who clearly has an advantage then you deserve to die.
If I see a thief pop his venoms and signet, I run away.
If I see a Necro with staff and all pets out, I run.

Don’t let yourself get bombed then cry when you die.