Guild Wars 2

So Im a warrior with a Hammer and GS. Pretty much the only class I cannot have any hope of beating in a 1v1 is the scepter torch mesmer. every time I actually manage to deal damage they just poof away and come back at full HP while their clones put like 6 seconds of burning and what not. How the hell do I outplay this. (Im mostly zerker, none of that PVT garbage but its condition damage so armor doesnt even matter just want to point out I have my fair share of damage and still cant put them down before the blink/invis and full hp)

If you came here to find out how to beat a skilled mesmer then your gunna have a bad time. =)

not even skilled mesmers. average/bad mesmers always just poof and escape or slowly multiply into a 1v5. the skilled one ive given up on fighting.

Well, my first piece of advice, as usual, is that you need to play the class a bit. The mesmer playstyle is quite different than most classes, and in order to really understand what’s going on, you’re going to need to play it a bit.

Now, that doesn’t mean you need to master the mesmer, but you need to have a good idea of what skills are going off, and what they’re doing.

Now, as for specific advice….this is going to be a bit hard. Mesmers more or less hard counter warriors, and so while reading this advice, keep in mind that a good mesmer will rip you a new one no matter how pro you are.

However, they do have a limited number of escapes. The most common stunbreak utils will be blink and decoy. On a torch mes, that’s almost definitely PU, so you can count on them having decoy. So, in order to lock them down, you need to bait out those 2 stunbreaks. You can do this by forcing them out, or looking like you’re going to force them out, but they have to be gone before you go in for the kill. Once you’ve gotten those out, you can try to burst them down as hard as you can. However, be wary of overstaying your welcome because…

The next part of killing the mesmer is not being killed. The scepter block applies 5 stacks of torment. That hurts badly. Every clone that you kill will apply cripple, and weakness/vuln/3 bleeds (pick 1 randomly) to you. Since your weapons are cleaving, you’re going to be potentially blowing up a lot of clones. If you blow up too many, you’re going to be in a really bad place, so try to isolate the mesmer from their clones. Additionally, try to bait out the block. Learn the buff icon that it shows, the animation they use, and do your best not to hit it.

That’s pretty much all the advice I can give you. If you follow it, you’ll have the best chance you can of beating a mesmer. However, it’s still not going to be possible vs a good mesmer. Blink and Decoy are on 30/40 second cooldowns, so it’s tough to bait both out. The block is on an untraited 10s cooldown, which means you have to move FAST after baiting that out. Worst comes to worst, they can still pop a distortion shatter and walk out of your combo, and lastly phase retreat will move them out of your attack range during a 100b or w/e, even if they are immobilized or stunned, and that’s on a 10s untraited cooldown. Realistically, a warrior can’t beat a good mesmer.

If you ever do play a Mesmer and take it seriously, the next time you face a Mesmer, you’ll be able to spot the real one in the blink of an eye. Targeting them (and maintaining it), however, is another ordeal.

Other than that, what Pyro says is true and applicable.

Your best bet to beating a Mesmer is to catch them off guard. Either save your burst or just pretend to be bad and whip around.

A lot of the times I die it’s because a Warrior does nothing, then starts thumping me with constant cc and applied dps. Or I turn a corner into a Kill Shot.

Epic.3950:

(Im mostly zerker, none of that PVT garbage but its condition damage so armor doesnt even matter just want to point out I have my fair share of damage and still cant put them down before the blink/invis and full hp)

In other words its pointless to tell you how to kill me because you pretty much cant.

PVT garbage, lol… I usually roll all over zerkers. Sure there are plenty of really good players, but luckily they arent too common. 2 skills and most will have lost 50% of their HP. Easy to go in for the kill. The only classes that can consistently survive no matter their build are Thieves and Mesmers due to evasive skills.

The most dangerous foes by far are hybrids. Tough enough not to get scared by your initial attack, enough damage to equally counter it.

Advice from the other side, what is your warrior build? and is this wvw or pvp? When I’m running hammer zerker warrior, I like to run the 0/10/30/0/30 build. Merciless hammer, dogged march and cleansing ire in the toughness line. Burst mastery to spam F1. With runes of melandru and lemongrass in wvw, you’re basically immune to conditions. So at that point, I just aoe hammer every clone to death. The cripple on clone death lasts 0.06 seconds and gives you regeneration. Each time you spam F1 (7 second cd), you remove the few conditions a mesmer can give you at this point while also having enough passive trait healing/signet/ regen to ignore any that make it through. If that still isn’t enough for whatever reason take berserker stance for even more F1 spam and condition immunity. Since PU mesmers have a lot of boons, destruction of the empowered for more dps. Sigil of impact for the combo burst.

Your goal is to stay on top of the mesmer and burn through their defenses with just hammer 1-3 and the occasional F1. Even if they go invis, keep spamming your auto attack where you think they are. If you see your auto attack cycle, you are still connecting. Save the F1/5/4 combo for when they don’t have staff 2/blink. PU gives the mesmer a random boon every second they are in stealth: 1/3 aegis and 1/3 protection. Chaos armor also has a 1/3 chance to blind. So there is some luck to bursting them down.

Mass invis and veil have pretty obvious tells. F1 the mass invis when the mesmer raises their hand in the air for 2 seconds. Auto attack the line on the ground that makes the mesmer invisible since they will usually try to run through it a second time. Unless the new patch changed it, the scepter block can be dodged. Just dodge as soon as you see the block proc.

Against a great mesmer, you still won’t win but they also won’t be able to kill you if you just walk away. Against the more offensive/unlucky ones, you should be able to burst them down fairly fast but you need to time it right.

A good PU mesmer won’t die to a warrior ever. Best thing for you to do is hotkey “call target” to stay on the right mesmer, because there will at least 3 clones 99% of the time.

This is normally how you beat mesmers in general, but due to stealth mechanics in this game, when someone stealths, you lose the big cross eye on top of their heads, which for PU builds happens way to much to consistently find the real one. Smarter mesmers will move like their clones, and just let you attack the wrong ones waiting for cooldowns to pop, then dodge roll into a stealth and start the process all over again with 100% hp.

It is our cheese build, but don’t get me wrong, offensively? We can barely damage you. A 5 stack of torment usually seals the deal though, the damage is insane.

The fact that scepter just got buffed via reduced cooldowns on the torment block and confusion does not help this matter lol.

I personally main mesmer, and play shatter because I like more offensive/adaptive gameplay.

Hi OP, low health pool = low chance to win against a heavy condition build.
Maybe you should consider getting more health and regen?
Just a thought.

Know what to dodge. People usually randomly dodge vs mesmers and take all burst/condition skills.
Try to fight them in tiny places. Especially corners where they can only run to 1 way.

If you really want to be able to 1v1 a good PU Mesmer successfully, just go for the Warrior hard-condi counter build with -60% condi duration, Healing Signet, Cleansing Ire, Berserker Stance and Dogged March. I’ve been playing as a scepter/torch + staff condi Mesmer since February (pre- torment and pre-PU buff) and this one Warrior build is impossible to kill unless they’re really really bad. I always give it a go just to see how long I can survive but end up having to retreat when I realise they’re health really isn’t going to go below 75%.

If you’re mostly zerker though, well, you’re kind of easy target for a condi-Mesmer.

Here’s a look at what’s going on vs warriors from a mesmers perspective using PU, torch etc

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A Guardian at 10:08

Take note of what Pyro said, and see that in all those warrior fights I never have all my escapes on cooldown at once.

As for hard condi-counter warrior builds, that’s countered by high condition duration plus power/crit blends.

You need to notice subtle changes in movement/appearance to determine quickly which one is the real one. If you use a cleaving skill and one of the targets loses health just a little too fast then move on, destroying it will only apply more conditions to you. If you see a clone/mesmer with different weapons than the rest of them, attack that one because luckily for you the scepter auto attack doesn’t apply conditions or do a lot of damage and the clones spawn next to you, ruling them out as the real mesmer(at least until they cloak) so the mesmer will most likely switch to staff after exhausting torch skills+scepter confusion.

Look for movements that clones wouldn’t normally do such as strafing or small twitching movements. Good mesmers however won’t make many of those mistakes and will do most of their moving when you’re either preoccupied or can’t see them. Chaos armor is a dead giveaway that they are the mesmer(not always true but a lot of the time, especially if they are using scepter/torch and don’t have access to the leave finisher from sword that applies the armor to them and the clone) and many scepter/torch mesmers also run staff meaning they will have access to this armor.