Guild Wars 2

my build is kinda weak against these guys, pu or condi. Is there a way to figure out if they are one of those job before fight? But i think these guys are very strong generally in dueling though.

They would be running around wielding a scepter and staff 99% of the time. Some could be as rotten as to use signet of domination or sigil of corruption maybe.

Other than that… not really.

They ride a bandwagon.

You can tell within 10 seconds of engaging combat certainly, but there’s no obvious tell as to what they’re running beforehand. This is the case with most builds in the game of course, being able to tell the build at a glance is definitely an exception rather than the rule.

Look at food and sigil stacks. If you see corruption or +condition duration food 9 times out of 10 they’re a condi mesmer.

As others have said sceptre and staff are other give aways, generally they will want to start with sceptre for that confusion ray. You sometimes get weird people like me that pick a torch that looks like a sceptre on a power build but those kind of idiots are thankfully few and far between.

What class are you running? Some classes can afford to jump in and find out.

If you are dead, they are shatter burst mesmers using PU.
If you are not dead, they are condi mesmers, so you’ll die soon. Oh, forgot to mention, they are also using PU.
Because frig, that stuff is broken and they need to fix that perma stealth bs already

If they cast veil int the first 10 seconds of the fight they probably have their utility bar filled with stuff to abuse Prismatic understanding and you wont see them alot during your duel. In that case, you can still float off safely.

But beware, not every condi mesmer has Prismatic understanding. I for example run bountiful desillusionment, Celestial and Scepter/Sword and just try to abuse my 2 block skills in combination with traited cooldown reduction. It also feels fairer honestly.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

If you are dead, they are shatter burst mesmers using PU.
If you are not dead, they are condi mesmers, so you’ll die soon. Oh, forgot to mention, they are also using PU.
Because frig, that stuff is broken and they need to fix that perma stealth bs already

Ah, good to see we’ve got another mindless spewer of Mesmer vitriol in town. I was beginning to worry we’d driven them all off…

Protip: It’s not PU that’s killing you, you’re just worse than them.

Miroe.2054:

If they cast veil int the first 10 seconds of the fight they probably have their utility bar filled with stuff to abuse Prismatic understanding and you wont see them alot during your duel. In that case, you can still float off safely.

But beware, not every condi mesmer has Prismatic understanding. I for example run bountiful desillusionment, Celestial and Scepter/Sword and just try to abuse my 2 block skills in combination with traited cooldown reduction. It also feels fairer honestly.

This. Venny’s extreme view is rather silly. If you’re in sPvP, excess stealth is generally counterproductive, as you’re losing cap time. Only specific strategies make efficient use of the extra stealth (like constant back-cappers, which requires team coordination to be valuable), and players that found themselves dying too much to be useful without PU.
Power builds see the biggest difference, as going without PU frees them up to grab a dps line. Condi builds generally grab Bountiful Disillusionment to replace PU, as easy stability on stomp is amazeballs.
Either way though, expect mesmers in pvp to have some stealth regardless, just like guardians have blocks and warriors have invuln and eles have god-mode.

Remember: it’s not the stealth that killed you, it’s the mesmer’s damage. Mitigate the damage, and you mitigate the stealth. Kill the mesmer, and the stealth is wasted. I run PU even in sPVP because I’m just not good enough defensively, but I definitely lose caps because of it.

In sPVP, if a mesmer is stealthing too much, punish them by fighting on the point (why aren’t you doing this anyway?). What they gained in dueling capability they will lose strategically.

In WvW, why aren’t you with a group? Solo WvW roaming is only possible on a select few builds, it’s clearly not a play case that Anet is interested in balancing right now…or supporting.

Remember to watch the boons – if they exit stealth with a nice stack of boons, and prestige/decoy are lasting for 6seconds, then it’s PU.

It should be very easy to tell if a Mesmer is using PU with stealth or simply stealth without PU as soon as they use a single stealth skill.