Guild Wars 2

Lately i’ve seen too many perm-invisible mesmers in WvW. It’s ultimately super annoying when you have to play hide and seek with a mesmer that neglect to confront you and keep casting invisibility and hitting you from there.
The amount of time the spend visible is not enough to burst them down and that makes the fights really boring and artificially extended.

With the ranger that i usually i play it’s impossible to counter that build. Is there a class in game that could somehow counter the massive invisibility that build has?

A PU nerf is coming on Tuesday. It should have a pretty reasonable impact on the amount of time Mesmers spend in stealth.

I think it’s time we just get it over with and delete mesmer.

Actually ranger is good against those long-stealth duration mesmer.
Just take sic’em. Really put them into panic mode.

Longbow also works great as long as your 2 hits the target, it will continue hit even if target goes stealth.

Traps are another useful tool against stealth gankers. They usually lack condie cleanse. Being hit by a trap is hard for them to recover.

Last but not least, you can use stealth disrupt trap to troll them.

With a nerf incoming and the countless forum titles already on this shows up. Sadly isn’t gonna matter in wvw you will still die to pu mesmers. Sadly pvp will become thief dominated to plus 1 fights again.

Mesmers that are utilizing a ton of stealth rely on a Grandmaster trait called Prismatic Understanding, which gives +100% stealth duration and random boons every second while in stealth.

In addition, there is a bug with a torch trait that allows mesmers to have more access to stealth than they should (hopefully it will get fixed tomorrow.)

There are two major variants of the “PU Mesmer,” a power-based one and a condi-based one.

To deal with a power-based one, go lb/gs with full zerker stats and rune of the trapper with panther pet. Use traps to cull phantasms and heal, and kite the Mesmer around with LB until they die. Heavy condi also works very well.

Condi varients are very difficult to kill; you’re better off ignoring them as the ranger doesn’t have enough tools to deal with them.

In the case where you need to defend a camp against a Mesmer with stealth, you need to cull the illusions and keep your health up, DO NOT TRY AND BURST THE MESMER. If you can limit the mesmer’s damage to its skills, they will never kill camps in time for the guards to respawn.

Alternatively, to hard-counter either of the variants, run with a buddy. Have one person focus on the illusions and the other on the Mesmer. As long as you stick together and res each other when you are downed, it is literally impossible for the Mesmer to score a kill.

Good luck.

Exciton.8942:

Actually ranger is good against those long-stealth duration mesmer.
Just take sic’em. Really put them into panic mode.

Longbow also works great as long as your 2 hits the target, it will continue hit even if target goes stealth.

Traps are another useful tool against stealth gankers. They usually lack condie cleanse. Being hit by a trap is hard for them to recover.

Last but not least, you can use stealth disrupt trap to troll them.

In practice Sic’em is not actually useful against a mesmer for the amount of clones. Is really difficult to target the real mesmer when there are a lot of those around and is a 35 seconds CD shout.

For the the rest of advises actually i play a LB trapper ranger still i can’t burst them down. actually that is the only build that needs 4 players playing hide and seek to hunt one mesmer.

The trap seems my only option i’ll look into it for when a mesmer is inside a castle.

PS: i usually don’t die against a PU mesmer, Axe is a very effective weapon against the illusions clones. Also i have enough condition cleanses to not to be worried about the confusion.
The problem is that is a build i can’t counter in anyway, is not about player skill, it’s about the mesmer stays visible for a second or two and the rest can stay stealthed while healing and such. It reminds me somehow to the turret engi and those fights were boring as hell

To “counter” the perma/long stealth Mesmer, it’s important to know how he achive his high stealth uptime.
Basicly it’s acombinatio of the PU trait and the Torch trait.
First one increase the stealth time by 100%
the second trait reduce the cooldown of the torch by 1 1/2% each second he is in stealth.
The Mesmer uses ~3 skills to gain stealth:
Massinvisibil 10seconds on 72sec CD
Decoy 6 seconds on 32 sec CD
The Prestige 6seconds on 30-12 sec CD (12 seconds while in stealth)
When you are able to kick him out of stealth, (For example with the engie trait or a stealth trap) or you get lucky and you’re right next to him when the second effect of Prestige triggers, his combo is verry likely to be broken and he is visible for up to 30 seconds.

Necros can use their staff to detect the general location of the player.
Thiefs and Rangers can couse great danger to the mesmer via traps.
Engies have great access to the revelaed debuff.

In general:
Always try to fight him a chokepoint, to minimize his escape route.
Conditions are a great choice, as many PU mesmers lack condi removal.
If the Mesmer tryes to stay in stealth, keep killing his clones, to prevent him from applying damage to you while he is in stealth.
If you don’t feel like fighting a PU-mes, run as fast as you can. he will have a hard time to keep up with you, and shattering is not an option, as his clones can’t catch you.

PS: Stealth trap helps a lot

Easy, whine at ANet till they nerf it.

Ok, a more constructive advise is use stealth disruptor traps. Thing is expect to see more ghost thieves appearing which you will never see and can burn a Lord down between 2 of them.

As others have said traps work well for ranger and so does sick em.

In WvW? You have Stealth traps.

Stealth traps aside, defeat these mesmers in 3 easy steps.

• Step 1: Wait for them to come out of stealth
• Step 2: Mitigate incoming burst (Note: may coincide with them coming out of stealth)
• Step 3: Counter burst. Lockdown too if applicable.

• Bonus step: If applicable, outmaneuver by disengaging when they enter stealth. Focus DPS with high range weaponry, particularly power, also utilizing channel skills before sending them back into stealth.

Honestly, all the action happens when they drop out of stealth. When they’re in stealth you might as well be too as everybody’s just chilling out waiting to set up for their next action.