Guild Wars 2

Out of all the classes I face, stealth is what makes a class unpredicatble.

Same for a mesmer. Whenever that PU mesmer stealths, You do not know what or where to expect it.

I know you need time to be able to learn to adapt and anticipate your foe’s attacks.

But what if we reverse the situation,

Let’s say you are running a build without blink, decoy, DE, or MI. (Not necessarily all of em at the same time)

How do you become deceptive?

Without the DE, I feel so bland.
Without Blink or Decoy as an escape utility, I think the chances of me getting dropped are higher.

So does it mean that every build should atleast have of the above in order to be deceptive?

eheh… this is exactly what I have come to realize.

I thought it could be a L2p issue from my side but frankly, I wish it was… and your 3D is the proof. And tbh, all videos out there showing great (or even those not so great) battles, always rely on high invisibility with at least 2 means to achieve it (often decoy and MI) up to 4 (decoy, torch, MI and veil and PU to top it off).

Yes, I think all builds show have at least 1 of these, plus blink and/or DE. Else we wouldn’t be able to be deceptive at all. Without all these “tricks” we would be like a thief without stealth… which is its main defensive tool.

PS: talking about pvp and wvw here, ofc

I think doing builds that are good in 1 vs 1 is not difficult, the hard part is making a build that allow you to escape when you are focus fire.

Stealth is great in this case because it allow you to stop taking dmg and give you a chance of reposition yourself making hard to focus fire on you when you get out of stealth.

If you don’t have stealth you need to have immunities and probably be a bit bunker since your immunites will not last forever.

Another option is to have high HP recovery like Eles had with the bunker build or some Condition Engy/Rangers have, this pared with good mobility to allow you HP regeneration to take effect.

I play tPvP without blink, decoy, or Mass Invis (or DE!). Truth is, without those, you really aren’t deceptive at all. A good player can easily find the real mesmer.

In order to make up for the loss of those, your build needs to bring something powerful to offset it. Mesmer doesn’t have much else to make the sacrifice worthwhile, but in my case it’s an ungodly amount of dazes/stuns.

Without these tools, you also need a very strong understanding of positioning and map awareness or you’re going to find yourself out of place and dead more often than not. I would highly discourage any mesmer from going without one of those utilities unless they really know what they’re doing.

I think deception counts in a number of ways, not just being hard to catch/find.

For example, the Immortal Mesmer back in the day used to trick opponents into killing themselves off retaliation stacks from both the Mesmer and iDefender.

So Nettle, I am curious to see how you use your build. I mean it is feasible, I run a build before without DE, but without the majority of the stuff mentioned above, how do you use your build against skilled players.

Btw. For DE, against skilled players, I only use it for the clone production for shatters and clone death and even the clone AAs.

Skilled players can see right through DE.

@Jambas

Exactly, the focus fire will always get you.

I made this argument over the lockdown thread.

So generally to be able to run an interrupt build you have to slot:

MoD or SoD
A Cleanse (mantra, Disenchant, Null)
Last utility slot will go to either blink or decoy or thievery

and that’s it. the 2 slots will actually be a given

Other builds have the luxury or getting Prestige for stealth and therefore freeing a util slot, or even adding 1 more stealth.

As long as i have blink i feel super sneaky with any mesmer build. That being said i almost never fight on open ground, in wvw i stick to places with lots of trees or large rocks and cliffs and juke people.

In 1vx fights if you are in the vast field west of citadel in the bl lead a group into the minotaurs then invis or blink out. or run southeast and kite them around the forest north of runes.

At the west entrance to the bl the large rock is your best bet for juking.

In EB use Oakhearts and champs for nasty tricks and bodyblocks then blink out and pick off the easy targets.

The only way to win a 1vx against >smart< players is using the environment against them because most people are too focused on skill use. Blink and mass invis are enough for most situations and clones confuse ai so it makes it highly unlikely that you will be on the sad end of any of the mob tricks.

I love coming out of stealth, holding still, and just casting scepter 1 acting like a clone. If you’ve got some other illusions in play already it can be pretty hilarious to watch the enemy try to figure out who the real mesmer is.

^I haven’t had this experience. against experienced players, they will see right through it.