Guild Wars 2

… and what build do you run? (weapons included please)

For me, as a lockdown Mesmer (4/4/6 – Sword+Focus/Staff) I find thieves (of course) and these new & improved medi guards giving me trouble more often than any other.

In both cases it isn’t a matter of winning the fight, but how long the fights lasts. Thieves of an equal skill level always give me hell, but Medi guards are just so annoyingly difficult to kill since all they have to do is time their blocks to my shatters. Lockdown Mesmer survives better than shatter, but that burst damage tradeoff makes it very difficult to finish a low-health Medi guard off.

Engineers are also a pain. They simply take forever to kill, and since I run no condition removal… They’re actually more dangerous condition-wise than Necros.

(Also, I’m ashamed to admit that those ridiculous single-target condi guardians with their 16 minute burn procs are my kryptonite)

Only really playing shatter

med guards by far… good thing is you can get away from them most of the time

Playing your typical 4/4/6 lockdown, (good) Thieves mainly, and yeah Meditation Guardians are a pain in the kitten .

However I run S/P and Staff. I let the pressure from iDuellists burn through the aegis flying all over the place as well as the block they have on focus, and don’t chain-shatter my diversion until I can land my first stun when I know they’ve exhausted their own stun-breaks.
Once you’ve landed that first interrupt to trigger Bountiful Interruption it’s just a matter of time, as your duelists are getting stronger, bleeds and conditions (from staff clones as well) are also getting stronger, and if you can get them into an immobilize though ileap or any interrupt in general and then plop a chaos storm on them, it’ll make it really tough for them to come out of it unscathed.

But by far meditation guardians, I’ve had my most drawn out battles with them.

EDIT: I swear I hardly see any Mesmers running pistol. It’s saved me from the wrath of Thieves so many times.

I mainly run maim shatter and PU condie. There’s really no particular classes or builds that kill me. More often, there are certain situations that do.

If I’m already fighting a couple people and a condie engineer is able to blindside me with a full unload of conditions, I’ll probably die if I don’t happen to have full defensive cooldowns available. The same thing happens with a signet of spite out of nowhere.

Multiple glass thieves can also be a huge problem, if they’re good. Bad thieves will die quickly, so the amount of them doesn’t matter much. Good thieves are hard sustain a fight against though, and difficult to land enough pressure on to kill. Maintaining a fight against 2 thieves with a random third is extremely difficult.

A thief that’s part of a larger (4-5 man) roaming group also turns a potentially approachable fight into something extremely dangerous. Their mobility and potential for sudden spike even in a tanky build means that a single mistake can easily lead to you getting steamrolled by the rest of the group.

Also venom share thieves in a group will kill you rapidly. If I so much as catch a whiff of venom share, the only thing that group will see of me is my rapidly disappearing backside.

Like Fay says, there is no class that kills me. Its the situation. If I cant kite, the medi guard is the class i do struggle most with, if there is enough room a good s/d thief will give me some trouble. Mostly running Phantasm or shatter, in group lockdown shatter or full lockdown.
So, I dont know. If i must say something , I struggle most against D/P thieves and Medi Guards

running any power build with any weapons: Medi Guard for sure. That build (and the whole class imo) is so faceroll I just hate it.

I run power shatter in both PvP and WvW.
The rifle/GS warrior seems to give me a lot of problem(mostly WvW). Their rifle AA hits so hard and they have mobility to kite me forever. Even if I get close, a sudden GS3 can take out chunk of my HP. Also, gaining an advantage means nothing, they can just disengage and re-engage at will.

Its interesting to see that medi guards are a common issue.

@ky: I know, its like our offhands have gone extinct besides torch. How often do you see offhand sword, focus, or pistol in pvp?

pyro: Are there any classes/builds you will not engage or have trouble killing?

shatter sword/torch / gs

mediguards and sd thieves

[quote=5142164;
@ky: I know, its like our offhands have gone extinct besides torch. How often do you see offhand sword, focus, or pistol in pvp?
[/quote]

I don’t even think it’s because they’re that bad in some cases at least (Pistol & Sword), but that they’re a bit more niche and basically overshadowed by Torch TP. I mean it sure as heck ain’t the Torch Phantasm, right? ;-)

Having Decoy and T4 is a staple of a solid defense in many builds, certainly for PU builds, which is the only somewhat tanky build we really have left. (Post Staff #4 nerf! GRRR! Can’t wait to get that back on traited Staff!) Naturally, T4 is also really good when used offensively, but the relatively low CD means that between heals and Decoy, you’ve probably got T4 up again when it’s needed for defense. Then when that’s over, you probably have your heal and/or Decoy up again soon after.

Since both our blocking skills are basically broken from a defense PoV, it’s no surprise they get overshadowed by Torch even with a terrible Phantasm.

As Ross likes to show in his CS build, having 2 strong offensive Phantasms really is a force to be reckoned with, and can in many cases put a real hurting on exactly those classes that we hate the most to face. (Nothing like a Thief getting stabbed for 4+k from iSwordsdude and 4 more from iZerker then shattering both for 4-5k more.) The problem is, without defense you can’t live long enough to make that happen.

The Blind nerf vs. summoning really put a dampener on using Phants vs. Thieves as well. GRRR!

From the looks of it, a lot of things will be getting a bit better soon. /pray

Shatter-

Medi guard, and Thief.

^ we need to set up significantly more than they do to burst. Both can ignore LoS, Both have better access to survivability, Both deny our escape. Our biggest advantage to these two is range and even then it’s very little pressure…

Medi guard isn’t so bad if you go GS/Staff since their low HP pool cannot keep up with the sustain despite their defenses.

I dunno IMO it’s not really fair. I get everything should have a counter but mes’s current consistent meta placement has always gave me the option that it should be a class with no hard counters, but counters nothing itself and it comes down purely to mechanics and skill.

But specializations seem to answer a lot of the hard countered issues for mes (presuming not nerfed to oblivion). Less so for medi guard tho

Not to say you can’t currently kill them but often I find myself backing off medi guard 1v1s (but will always harass them >=3.. thank god they aren’t meta lol) and trying to rotate around thief.

It’s been a problem in the past but not as much recently, and is easy to escape. But old regen BM rangers were not a very fun match up either, Engies aren’t so bad but they definitely contest the point till you kill them or give up and rotate…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

pyro: Are there any classes/builds you will not engage or have trouble killing?

I’ll engage anything, the real question is what I disengage against.

I’ll disengage immediately against a diamond skin d/d ele. It’s possible for me to kill them, but it requires that they make enough mistakes for me to both drop their hp to 90% and apply significant condie pressure at that moment to keep it low. Against any halfway decent ele, it’s not really viable to do.

I’ll also usually not bother with a full bunker healway guardian. Usually if you see them in wvw, they’re just running from point a to point b, and have enough condition removal, toughness, hp, and sustain to make chasing them completely pointless.

I’ll answer as a Phantasm mesmer and a Power shatter mesmer:

For me as a phantasm mesmer, I have the most trouble against warriors and guardians. Warriors, especially those ham/bow ones stun me a lot and the DPS meditation guardians will kill me quickly before I get out my necessary phantasms to fight back. My build’s 4/6/0/0/4. Ironically, I have no problems against AoE opponents like the engi and elementalist. Usually my answer would be to stay back and let my phantasms do the work. They kill it, spawn them again.

As a power shatter mesmer, going against theives is bad. No need for explanation there. My build’s 4/4/0/0/6.

Right now, turret Engi’s & D/D Ele’s are the biggest PITA.

Staff & Sc/P
0/4/6/04

Power shatter GS/s+t.
S/D thieves are my worst nightmares

MtD Condi Shatter.
D/D Eles, most guards (especially medi guards)
Things with tons of condi cleanses pretty much.

Condition/Interrupt (-/4/6/-/4, ot 4/4/6/-/-; Scepter/Focus/Staff)

Good Thieves and other Mesmers are usually the biggest problem for me. Mainly because they know how to combat (and create) good mindgame. I’ve also had issues with D/D Eles and some Guardians.

Truth is, I’ll still take anyone on; even a disadvantageous fight can be turned around, if I’m on point and/or the opponent screws the pooch.

Running a lot interrupt atm: 26600-WvW or 44600-PvP

My problems in PvP are Celestial Engineers.
In wvw I can fight almost everything quite good (doesn’t mean I win everything). There is no specific build I’d run away from all the time.

The thing which worries me most atm (both gamemodes) are pew pew rangers who use rampage as one. I have trouble with their stability (even with the build using shattered concentration). The application of their stability is strong enough that I cannot get rid of it long enough. I mostly try to los these guys until rampage as one is gone. After that they’re almost free kill.

lujate.5432:

Right now, turret Engi’s & D/D Ele’s are the biggest PITA.

Staff & Sc/P
0/4/6/04

L2P :P turrets melt to condis now so it shouldn’t be hard (post turret nerf), d/d eles can out sustain condi pressure for a long time if played properly.

Fay.2357:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

pyro: Are there any classes/builds you will not engage or have trouble killing?

I’ll engage anything, the real question is what I disengage against.

Just quoting this here in hopes that it will be tattooed onto every Mesmer’s backside, because I think it’s the single most important thing, knowing when to disengage and using that 1200 range blink to do so quickly so you can be of use elsewhere, immediately (portal, if you’re playing organised).

@chaos It’s a shame, because the torch phantasm sucks so dreadfully, but the extra stealth is so useful, we’re at the point where if the phantasm was buffed it would push pistol, focus and sword out of the meta entirely (more than they already have been). I’m a huge supporter of diversity and flavour so it’s something that weighs on my mind a lot (oh and I crafted Quip so there’s that >_>)

I can say that honestly, projectile reflection on all focus skills just straight up needs to be baseline. It would give us breathing room against some of the guardian pressure (whether it be scepter auto or flashing blades [I think it’s called? The wiki is an ENTIRE tab away \o/])

Yeah everyone says thieves are our counter as zerk shatter, but at least with them there’s a good chance you’ll win if you play your cards right and interrupt them at the right time.

Medi guard (GS variants especially) are just impossible if they spread out their CDs and dont waste them all immediately (admittedly there are plenty who do this). It’s just an uphill battle the whole time, with so many ways for them to counter shatter or lock you down. They may not be able to kill you as suddenly as thieves during a prolonged fight, but you will lose eventually just due to them having more tools.

Also Condi rangers who spam evades all day and use the pet immob into elite can really mess you up if you dont have a way out (we usually don’t).

Considering I run condi shatter:
1. Dps Guard: they kill my clones so fast. If I don’t get my reflect off when they whirl, it’s an uphill battle.
2. Mesmer: such a cluttered mess especially with the constant Blink/Decoys. I tend to panic, which is a Mesmer’s greatest asset in a fight.
3. Thief: when equally skilled, but most thieves I face aren’t actually good by my standards. #hairflip

On torment shatter:

1) Thieves: unless I take focus I have no way to stop them from using Shadow Refuge to eternally reset a fight and whittle me down. Would be nice if Shadow Refuge had a cast time that was representative of its massive strength so I can actively interrupt it, but oh well I best be building to appease our Thiefling overlords.

2) Mesmer: phantasm builds counter torment shatter really very well. PU condi is just a headache of aegis procs that I can’t be bothered to deal with these days.

Honorable mentions go to: scepter/focus Eles and Medi Guardians.

As someone who plays mostly lockdown or shatter, I will echo everyone else here. Medi guards and thieves are pretty ridiculous to fight. I’m not going to judge my own skill level, I’ll leave it to the opponent to determine if I’m good or not.

But the amount teleports and blinds that those two classes have access to make the fight very difficult. Any good thief gets a free kill versus me. What I think is most annoying that phantasms aren’t summoned if you’re blinded. Can we at least summon the illusion and make it miss its first attack? That really goes more for thieves. Ready access to blind can make them kind of untouchable. And the mechanic is weird. I don’t understand how it can make you miss AoE effects like focus pull.

The bourgeoisie.

::rimshot::

My clones will be here all week, folks.

My biggest build struggle for Mesmer would probably be interruptions. (Sword/Focus. Staff.) And the classes I have the hardest time fighting no matter what build I use… Necromancer, or Thief… And sometimes Condition Guardians.

Currently as 4/4/0/0/6 condition shatter with sword/torch and staff, using traveler runes – s/d perma evade thieves.

Yeah I know, I should take scepter and condition runes – I’ll take both when we can do sword/torch + scepter/shield, but at the moment I find sword more fun.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsaWnsISba2oG2oBzaGp0YMdOzsD5CosnUOA-TJhFwADOFAAeCAf2fwZZAA

Honestly, no problems. The only thing that aggravates me is getting condi-bombed. Short of being 5 manned in pvp, or getting focused during a teamfight? No problems ^.^ Pistol op.

I use to have troubles with medi guards and (obviously) thieves while i am playing shattermes. Ah, and hard pressure condition builds can be hard to deal with too.

Dps guards. Teef, Survival condi ranger. These are bad matchups for any power shatter mes

I hate seeing Guards. Necros are also annoying for me personally, but I think that’s more of a “l2p noob” issue on my part than anything to do with the matchup.

As an MtD Mesmer… none specifically. Sometimes a guard or ele that I just can’t seem to kill, but they tend to be unable to kill me either. Really annoying time consumer.