Guild Wars 2

What’s the best way for a Mesmer to counter this Elementalist build?

I fought 3 of them individually yesterday and every battle was long and almost impossible to end. They seem to have limitless healing power, various AoEs that instapop my clones and a huge amount of mobility. Also they seem to have a fairly decent dps from what my combat log said.

I tried stunning or crippling and giving them a full shatter of clones to the face but they seem to be able to escape from battle so easily and heal up. My Mesmer just can’t keep up with them to prevent them from running off, healing and then returning.

I got bored of fighting one of them and tried to blink and swift away, but they were able to close me down so quickly that in the end I just let him kill me so I could go to the pub. XD

Any tips? Maybe I should have gone to the pub earlier?

I’ve had similar battles with those bunker type elementalists but in everyone of them I was victorious. I’m not bragging but simply stating the fact that they can be beaten. In spvp I ran a bunkerish build that let me slowly but surely kill them it’s kinda hard to explain since that bunker build got nerf with the recent patch. But in wvwvw I use a confusion build that makes them kill themselves everytime they attack. I just let my clones get killed instead of shattering them and when they’re around half health I shatter them and give them the max amount of confusion I can give them (usually around 6-8).

With d/d elementalists, I’ve found that they tend to go in one of three paths; pure bunker (e.g. Excala/daphoenix, whose videos you can find on Youtube) which exchange damage for defense and damage mitigation, glass-cannon or hybrid, being part damage, part bunker.

In my experience, I’ve found most d/d eles to have been hybrid builds, having an even mixture of defense and offense.

It is important to remember that there are some skills that will easily counter d/d elementalists; boon removal skills, abilities that immobilise, and abilities that stun. Sustained damage doesn’t really work against them because of their boons and their ability to mitigate damage via the Water Attunement.

My main tactic with d/d eles is to stun/immobilise (e.g. Pistol #5 and Sword #3) them and then follow that up with pure burst damage. That said, shatter builds will generally prove successful against d/d eles.

TLDR: Boon removal (e.g. Null Field, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Arcane Thievery), immobilisers, stuns, burst damage, dodge Ride The Lightning.

EDIT: Somebody once said that d/d eles have a hugely-telegraphed skill chain, which is mostly true. They almost always start with Ride The Lightning, followed by Updraft, which is a knockback ability which grants them swiftness. RTL is so flashy and obvious that after a while, you’ll learn to dodge it. Play against them some more and you’ll see how repetitive their chain is.

Thanks for the tips guys. I’m definitely going to be roaming with a few more stuns and boon removals equipped (I do love Arcane Thievery). I never thought of trying confusion as the Elementalist d/d builds seemed to have pretty good condition removal, but I’m willing to give it a shot. I have been getting quite successful with confusion stacking with scepter/torch/cry of frustration (10-12 stacks depending on traits) which works wonders against glass cannon thieves. So I think I might try it on a few Elementalists. XD

actually most D/D eles will be full bunker with using might stacks for damage. With the fury boon from changing atunements you will get around 10 might stacks with +20% crit chance. 1v1 you probably won’t affect much with arcane thievery since D/D eles get so many boons in such a short time. Also, confusion doesnt really work on its own since every 10 seconds eles can just attune to water to cleanse 2 conditoins(don’t even have to use a weapon skill or a utilty)

The most effective way to kill these eles is to stun lock them so they can’t dodge around and heal them selves and run away. However, mesmers lack the mobility to chase them down after the initial ccs so its pretty hard to kill them 1v1(unless of course the d/d eles are bad and tunnel vision to their death).

In Spvp its different since you want to stay in the cap zone so d/d eles can’t just rtl away, but i’m no expert in the area.

Also, I would like to add that Dd eles have really obvious motions in pretty much all their offensive skills, so make a lv2 ele in spvp and play around with it to see what they look like. Each of these skills have a long cd(especially cc skills) so when you dodge one of them it hurts the ele.

It is very difficult to kill a good tanky elementalist. Thing is, they look like immortal god trolls but in reality they barely do any damage. Either burst them down, wait for allies or crawl away. They can easily follow and catch up with you of course, but again they can’t really kill you (if you are decent).

Alex.9268:

It is very difficult to kill a good tanky elementalist. Thing is, they look like immortal god trolls but in reality they barely do any damage. Either burst them down, wait for allies or crawl away. They can easily follow and catch up with you of course, but again they can’t really kill you (if you are decent).

This. Even with all the might stacking, you might think they have high burst, but after the initiall burst, tanky eles have very little sustained dps because the cool downs are relatively long. So as long as you don’t go full berserkers, its going to take a long time for them to kill you 1v1.

My main is a d/d ele mostly on wvw, when I fight against a zerg, I just rtl straight into the back line where other staff eles or rifle warriors are since they are usually non-tanky. When I hit someone and i see little damage? I just ignore them or hold them until my team comes. So as long as you gear up for some survivality you shouldn’t be dying to one 1v1, but at the same time you probably won’t kill them before they run away.

The only reason I suggested Arcane Thievery is because, though a little buggy, you’re at least getting something out of it in the way of some boons. Phantasmal Disenchanter takes too long to cast, in my opinion, and the range makes it a little unreliable. Null Field is unviable, since you have to target an area. Moreover, the chances of your opponent actually moving through it and staying there long enough for it to have an effect are slim. That said, burst damage, stuns and other CC abilities are more important than boon removal, for me.

I used to have trouble with d/d eles but nowadays, 1v1, it’s quite easy to down them if I’m quick enough. Save for a few exceptions, Excala being one of them, I don’t find myself running away like I used to.

The reason I think most of them run hybrid builds is because they’re far easier to take down than Excala who was, from what I could tell, pure bunker. Someone who was in the same guild as Excala, and who had presumably played alongside him/her, also attested to this. So it was out of comparison that I came to the conclusion that most run hybrid builds; erm, so on a scale from pure damage to pure bunker, I’d say Excala was pure bunker, and I’ve yet to encounter anyone who was quite so tanky as him/her.

Their only “dangerous” burst comes from charging up a longass earth 5 from a distance and then flashing on top of you, which is a very very long obvious cast that you can counter by simply creating some distance. Their only dangerous CC is air 5, can’t really do much about that. Both are on big cooldowns. Everything else they can do is easily fixed with a simple heal, dodge or blink.

Also removing their boons is not really useful. They have extremely easy access to them, and they will have everything on them again after a few seconds.

Burning them down to lowish HP and then going all out in a quick shatter is really the only way to finish them off. Confusion and conditions are pointless since everything slides right off them, including crippled etc.

Confusion at the right time could give you some much-needed extra burst.

stun / daze them as soon as they switch to water attunement.

burst them as soon as they leave water attunement.

what the guy above me said daze is your friend

Shattered Concentration should be all you need if you’re shatter build. It’s broken against bunkers (both ele and guardian, not so much against engi but elixir gun was nerfed so it’s no big deal) so use it while we have it. That said, I run more glass cannon which many people shun for extra defense.

As a cond dmg mesmer I find it rather impossible to deal with them. I can hold out a bit against them but never kill them alone. But hey, good thing to hear shatter covers this area too.

Live commentary

Time your shatters and stun lock combo’s for when they are out of water.

-Seven Mirror

I just copy and pasted this from another thread asking about d/d eles in this forum, sorry didn’t want to type it all again

Dagger dagger ele is my main, and I bunker in tourneys on it. 2 things that will make you life a HELL of a LOT easier when fighting d/d eles. First of all Immobilize, use sword 3 every time it’s off cool down. Our survival on eles comes from being able to move and dodge, if you take that away, we are 10k base health, light armor squishies. Immobilize alone will get a D/D ele to burn his utilities (called cantrips). Usually D/D eles roll with 3 cantrips, which are traited to remove a condition, and grant vigor and regen on use. They usually run cleansing flame, (causes a small amount of burning and clears conditions) mist form or lightning flash, and armor of earth (grants protection and stability). Now the problem with cantrips is that they have huge cool downs. If you use immobilize on a d/d ele they will IMMEDIATELY burn cantrips to get out. Once you get them to blow their cantrips the only condition removal they have is attuning to water (9-15 second cool down), and it only removes 1-2 conditions. They best way to beat a bunker ele is burst, but you have to burst smartly. Wait until the elementalist leaves, leaves!! water attunement, as soon as they leave water attunement, (its easy to see a buff above his head) then burst. If you burst them hard enough (like a 3 clone shatter and BF) they will go into panic mode. They have no way to heal after they leave water attunement so it is usually gg. If they are bunker spec, they are going to be doing kitten damage to you, so they are planning on wearing you down over a long period of time. Decoy works wonders for confusing them and getting them to blow their cc’s on clones while you are safely away re-evaluating the fight.

A few things to watch out for, one is a spell called Churning Earth, it is on a 30 sec cool down, so you will likely only see it once or twice a fight. It has a completely obvious animation and a huge cast time. It takes 3 and 1/4 seconds to cast, you will see the ele crouch down, and raise one hand in the air, and you will see the ground around him pulse. Now, it’s a large Aoe, but you will be able to see a red ring, get out of the way! Most smart eles will combo this ability with lightning flash, so they can channel the ability and then teleport next to the player when it goes off. This is ok! because even though they teleport next to you, the animation time always stays the same. It might take a bit of practice, by all you have to do is wait a bit during the channel and then dodge, no matter where he teleports to the dodge timing will always be the same, and boom he just wasted his strongest damaging spell. Another super easy way to stop this ability is to just pop diversion next to him and it will interrupt the spell and it goes on full cd.

Good luck and if you have any more questions let me know.

Thanks for all the info guys. Always good to have to reassess your play style to deal with a relatively new threat.

Well, new for me anyway.