Guild Wars 2

Just how the hell do you guys deal with those mesmers? Now PvP is filled to the brim with mesmers that just lock you down and burst you into pulp from within stealth in just two seconds (5 seconds if I use all my dodges and all my life force).

I’m mostly talking about a team fight situation rather than 1v1. In a 1v1, I have a better chance because I can focus my attention on them.

Even if I supposedly catch them off guard, they just stealth or jump away and do their burst from out of stealth.

For reasons you all know, I’m not going to ask this in the mesmer forums of course. I am also not starting a “mesmer is op” thread. I want opinions of those who are able to deal with this.

What kind of build are you using for starters.

The only way you are going to beat a mesmer as a power necro right now is if the mesmer is AFK or started playing today.

Shatter mesmers are really annoying and do insane burst right now. There’s really not much you can do lol

I don’t have much of a problem with them at all, but yeah, if they catch you off guard in a tea might…well that’s their job and you’re gonna have a hard time. So does everyone else though in that scenario. 1v1 they pretty easy though.

This is a hard matchup for us (no ports, immunities or invisibilities). They also can kite us indefinitely and our ranged output is feeble and easy to dodge.

You will have to learn what clones look like & what the Mesmer shatter looks like so you can dodge it.

If you have staff your fear & chill marks are useful here

Most people of all professions are complaining about it. The problem may be fixed with a general nerf of damage, making sure that everyone can survive the first burst. And the current stealth duration of mesmer is also likely to get nerfed (100% PU was a bit overkill).

They’re OP and they’ll win most of the time, but you stand a chance: use scenery to block their line of sight while using your aoe skills (marks etc) to stack conditions on them. They can still spam clones without LOS, but their phantasms require the attack to hit to spawn, so blocking LOS will slow down how quickly they can generate illusions, as well as protect you from the GS damage. Their mantra also needs LOS, and what the good ones will do is try to stun you to ensure their shatter lands. Dodge when you see the clones running to you (shatter), and if they’ve spawned a lot of them but haven’t shattered use DS4. After you’ve eaten at least 1/3 of their health while LOSing try to fear-lock them by chaining Reapers Mark and Doom while spamming life blasts. They’ve only got 15k health in zerker gear, and if you’ve killed the clones with aoe they can only do a 1sec distortion. 3 life blast crits (2 if you get lucky with a sigil proc) and they’re downed.

tl;dr: staff is your best friend. If you’re out of life force don’t even bother engaging.

i try to use staff i get stunned see clones pop up get stunned again watch clones run towards me, now i have immob on me clones running towards me and a mesmer hacking away at me dead.. not much i can do if lf is low :|

I also have a lot of problems dealing with Mesmers on my power necro. As you said, in a 1v1 it’s a bit more fair. The issue seems if you get hit with really just 1 shatter you’re so far behind and you’ll never recover.

I agree that with a lot of foresight you can dodge shatters effectively, but sometimes even the best get hit. The shatters are just doing insane damage right now if setup properly. To top it off, they’re very hard to kill if the Mesmer uses his defensive tools correctly.

As others have said – the mesmer is out of CDs, they’re quite squishy. It’s usually about playing as tanky/defensive as possible till you know you have an opening.

It comes to innitiation. Were you fighting, and a Mesmer came and brought you to half-health immediately? Do not stick around, try to LOS and let your team peel – you cannot win the engagement anymore. When you are OOC and regenning you are free to return.

When you see them coming, look for the engagement. Usually, good ones try to poke you with GS and let you come to them. Stand out of range, or use LOS. It is perfectly acceptable and needed to win the brawl. Bad Mesmers, of which there are many now run to you and use The Prestige (Torch #4) to stealth themselves. A popular combo is where they follow up with Illusionary Leap and Swap (Sword #3) two times, swap for GS and burst with Mirrorblade (#2), Mind Spike (#3) and sometimes Illusionary Berserker (#4) into dodge for an extra clone and finishing with a shatter. When you train yourself you can do this quickly – but it is predictable. Since the Mesmer came close, you can anticipate his movements in stealth – count the seconds where he is in stealth, and prepare Reaper’s Mark for the innitial Illusionary Leap clone – once that one is dead or gone, the whole combo will be shattered. Alternatively, train yourself to quickly use Plague Signet after getting immobilized.
I call these bad Mesmers for one reason – the Necromancer only loses from range, where the Mesmer is superior due to a lack of sustained range damage. Once close and depraved from stunbreaks, it is easy to lock one down and keep the pressure on. This however only counts if the innitial engagement went right. Be aware however that in close combat it is easier to shatter – so look out for when the clones come looking for you.

The most important skills to dodge in general are Mirrorblade and I-Zerker, since there are a lot of bad Mesmers around, these usually get spammed, and can easily be dodged.

Look out for the mantras – if it uses the Healing Mantra, the sustain is incredibly weak for anything but 1v1’s, so if you got the chance, lure the Mesmer towards a teammate. Mantra of Distraction destroys Necromancers, but it can be baited. I do not use Consume Conditions anymore, but if you do, then fake-cast it by stowing your weapons, and chances are that the Mesmer will spam the living hell out of the Mantra. Other Mantras are not as important and can be mitigated rather easily.

To completely negate a Mesmer’s burst, it is a good idea to put weakness on them somehow. I am of a rare breed who prefers to use off-hand Dagger, but this tool is easily the best one to deprave the Mesmer from their strong bursty ofense. Plus, with Enfeeble, you got another skill to fake-cast.

I have to say, it is rather annoying now, because with all the bad Mesmers running about, you will sometimes find yourself either overestimating them, or underestimating the good ones. Just remember to not panic – because Panic has been the strongest utility from a Mesmer since GW1

I still belive in Robert Gee but yes its wierd that the main Dev for the 2 classes in this thread has managed to get Mesmer to TOP-spot ingame currently and Necromancer now widly regarded as bottom (no not just on this forum). When I saw yesterdays Chill and pre-Reaper Nerf I actually tought it was a joke but then quickly remembered that I play a Necro and kinda shrugged it off…. used to it by now.

Tho its funny cause in most ppls view and the talk on sites,forums and chat noone was saying ooh plz Nerf that Chill its wrecking us in PvP, WvW. The talk is much more about the 100% PU stealth buff from last week, and the insane dmg and synergy between some traits in Domination line for Mesmers.

So how come a Dev who handles both classes think a Chill Nerf is needed when 100% Stelth duration is ok ?

These 2 classes in so far a part on the ladder atm, they cant even see each other yet somehow they share the same Dev….

Counter to Mesmer: I would say Block but we are the one class of 8 that lacks it, so Devs would say DS and yea that seems to be the Devs anser to all soultions for Necro, problem is its scales so badly and is so easily depleated its a joke. SoL is a good clone killer…Weakness and Conditions in general but since we talking Power Necro well hope good team m8’s and wish for Dev to wake up.

Team and field awareness, I use cele and can put uptime chill and weakness but it mostly depends on how much LF I have just don’t blow your skill and time his it’s honestly the reason I’m using cele over condi I don’t want to call OP but their impact is major.

First off, always have Flesh Wurm port ready.

I could maybe stream some 1v1s vs. Mesmer later this week, it’s hard to write down guide for it.

Power Necromancer doesn’t have it that bad against Mesmers, certainly millenia better than Condition. It’s very much about first seconds and who spots the other first. If you plan on using Wells, they won’t do much against Mesmer though.

You are still very likely to lose against best Mesmers, but honestly, with the amount of bandwagoners after the recent patch, you should be able to kill most of Mesmers.

Totally not helpful, but I find playing a minion mancer against mesmers is the most viable build so far. You can sustain just so much while still dealing out fair DPS and fears to break up their rotations.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Just remember to not panic – because Panic has been the strongest utility from a Mesmer since GW1

Actually it was an elite! :p

Sorry for the derail

jax.5679:

Totally not helpful, but I find playing a minion mancer against mesmers is the most viable build so far. You can sustain just so much while still dealing out fair DPS and fears to break up their rotations.

Also don’t forget you canm use your minions for los.

You ga afk and write something nice map chat.

Its always been hard/semihard counter.

Mesmer OP fullgod level atm.

Nothing u can do really, yesterday even double energy perfect dodged all his stuff i could vs a bad masmer (he said he was new to it after)…… Result? A draw with both of us down at same time…..didnt nerf necro enough i guess

Mesmer got huge buffs but I still don’t think they’re meta for anything. They may be the best solo roamer though, not sure yet

Every team in the recent pvp tournament had a Mesmer, including teams that don’t normally run Mesmer.

In a just world, this means Mesmer is due to get Dhuumfired.

Sadly mesmer can use just random build and push buttons like a donkey and still win unless you’re lucky enough. Of course there’s some extreme cases who just don’t know how to play Computer games at all, those you can handle easy. That’s how it has been since betas.

I disagree.

Not too long ago, Mesmer was in such sad shape that a major tournament was an by spawn camping Helseth.

But even then, the problem wasn’t “Mesmer is really weak,” but was “Mesmer is hard countered by thieves and thieves are in every Pvp team”. (thief dagger 5 makes Theif basically immune to all shatters).

Since then, mesmers got huge buffs & finally show again.

I play mantra mesmer, a very powerful build with a bit less burst than the torch PU burst builds you guys seem so sad about.

Basically don’t try to 1v1 a mesmer unless you have >60% life force. Life force, especially on a power necro is how you sway 1v1s in your favor. It won’t be easy, just know that if your autoattack gets interrpted, like life blast, you don’t have to worry about powerblock putting it on a high cooldown. So yeah, stick to high damage autoattacks and short, fast casted immobs and marks most of the time.

Mesmer only needs a slight shave. I think it only needs a slight PU nerf and confoudning suggestions having a slight raise in ICD, and making it per target. Other than that its totally fine, as the powerblock nerf has already been sufficient in making its damage output reasonable.

Mesmer is broken. You can’t.

They can always escape if things go bad for them, so don’t bother.

Use LoS, time your fears and pray for a mistake from his part.

The problem isn’t just the high damage, it’s that it can be delivered from maximum range at a very short recharge. I don’t have a problem with a profession that can burst half my health off almost instantaneously, I have a problem with a profession that can do it again and again and again faster than your endurance refills, faster than your other defences can recharge, and without giving you a window to fight back (since obviously you’re not attacking while you’re dodging). If there’s enough scenery around you can fight back by LOSing them, but if you get caught in the open it’s gg.

If the mesmer is ci and is decent, you’ll just get chain interrupted and die. If you try and heal, it’ll get put on a 15 sec cd. You basically dont have a heal against this matchup unless you use spectral walk or flesh wurm, so good luck. Stow wep canceling your heal or anything long casting in general will bait most mesmers into using mantra, but for the very good ci mesmers they will still interrupt it :P. There was a chance to beat mes pre patch, but now its just almost impossible with how much damage/survival we got.

If the mesmer is PU, the mesmer will come out of nowhere and burst you for 80% or more of your hp then retreat into stealth for another 10 seconds or so. Yea i got nothing here lol. If you can kill a mesmer with about 25+ seconds of stealth then you are good and they are bad :P

Only way you’d beat a mesmer was if he was AFK.

Mesmer is insane right now , alot of classes couldn’t kill a burst PU shatter mesmer or even a good mantra shatter mesmer now. They’re pretty strong at the moment.

Well I make a point of flashing shroud to get some FITG stability before healing. That protects against Mantra of Distraction just fine, but not against Diversion, because that’s 1 stun per clone shattered, and FITG only gives you 1 stack of stability.

Burjis.3087:

Just how the hell do you guys deal with those mesmers? Now PvP is filled to the brim with mesmers that just lock you down and burst you into pulp from within stealth in just two seconds (5 seconds if I use all my dodges and all my life force).

I’m mostly talking about a team fight situation rather than 1v1. In a 1v1, I have a better chance because I can focus my attention on them.

Even if I supposedly catch them off guard, they just stealth or jump away and do their burst from out of stealth.

For reasons you all know, I’m not going to ask this in the mesmer forums of course. I am also not starting a “mesmer is op” thread. I want opinions of those who are able to deal with this.

As a DPS squishy power necro ? you cant. It is a hard counter build, so unless you run into a new player or someone that makes serious mistakes, you just cant. As a bunker lifedrain necro, or bunker AOE condi necro, with ease, they cant burst you down enough and the clones serve as a good source for lifeforce and drains. These are the necro counters to them just like they are to the power necro builds.