Guild Wars 2

I’m still fairly new to this class and I’ve played about 50-60 tournaments on my Necromancer. Its the only class I play at the moment and I’ve mostly been using a staff/scepter/focus/dagger. I’ve tried to learn how to fight against most other professions and learn how to counter them and despite the staggering number of bugs necromancer still has, I manage to do fairly well in tournaments most of the time. The one profession I still cannot figure out is mesmer. How do you fight mesmers without coming up with a build to specifically counter them? Is it even possible with the current state of the necro or am I wasting my time trying? I’ve seen many suggestions and watched several videos and they all range from “kill all the clones then the mesmer” to “go all out power build and kill them like a thief or a warrior does”. None of them seem to be able to help with consistent results.

Mesmers are excellent duelists against any class so you should never take them on 1on1.

Basically what Ascii said.

I believe the most important thing is to kill their adds because they benefit a TON from having them up. DS is nice for this.

But their downed skills make it extremely difficult to finish them when they are teleporting all over the place. Slightly OP when ours is an AoE poison and a single target crap fear.

Very frustrating to have the worst downed mechanic

PS: I thought thieves had awful ones? I usually never have an issue finishing a thief off they just sit there.

Protip: Mesmer downed skill will seem ridiculous (and it is better than everyone’s sans thief) if you don’t know how it works. If you’re mid-stomp and they port away, don’t go after the first one that appears, that’s always the FAKE ONE! They will create a clone of themselves on the ground then appear afterwards. They also have a red reverse arrow pointing at them above their heads in downed state.

Be patient and observe, wait for the 2nd Mesmer to pop out then go stomp, they cannot escape your stomp in that window after having ported once. Of course, if they have a teammate around, that’s a different story

Thieves actually have really good downed state skills, them and Mesmers have the most potential to waste your time and stall while downed. Their 2 skill ports them away similar to the Mesmer’s, their 3 skill also vanishes them in stealth.

Necromancer downed skills while aren’t quite up to that level. We’re still at least able to stop the first stomp from one person (which is kind of the standard). Warrior’s hammer only KDs one, Engineers can pull one etc. Elementalists on the other hand must wait for their 3 skill when downed (Mist) to even have a chance of stopping a stomp, which is rarely as it does not always come off cool down in time. Our auto attack while downed also is pretty decent for stalling.

If you’re running the standard condition build, you shouldn’t be killing mesmers 1vs1, unless they are really bad. If you do want to kill mesmers in 1vs1 situations your best bet is to use a tankier build and well of darkness, it still wont be easy but it’s do-able.

Tip: Look for the little red arrow…

The only luck I have had with mesmers is running a hefty vitality, toughness, DS, type build. Wade in dropping wells to kill clones and just outlasting them. Then pray you can actually finish them in there ungodly OP downed state. If they ever do fix necro we will probably end up being the best class to counter mesmers as out dots and aoe are perfect at combating clones, its just right now necro is so broken it don’t work out that way.

I have a bulky MM build and I don’t typically have problems with Mesmers unless they’re just played really well. My minions tend to bust the clones fairly quickly, and as was mentioned above, DS is great at breaking the kitten things (particularly #4).

You just have to play it smart. I can see a condition build having trouble with them, but just use the targeting and observing tips offered above and you should be fine. Just remember that Mesmers are in a really great place PVP-wise right now, so there are a lot of moving pieces to this. Future balancing will hopefully help a bit.

I never had much problem with Mesmers as Necromancer. Conditions work really well against them, and Necro has a lot of AoE you can use to kill off the illusions quickly while still damaging the Mesmer.

As for finding the right one, you should easily see which is the real one, mark it and when they get downed their invis makes a clone of themselves nearby which appears before the real Mesmer, and the real Mesmer has a red arrow above him/her.

In my experience mesmers are harder to kill with a power build than a condition build. If a mesmer doesn’t have any condition anti-skills they will go down fast, use the staff to kill their clones and epidemic works as well.

The trick is to have the mesmer tagged since the battle begins, this way you are putting the conditions on the right one at all times. only stealth breaks tag so when this happens you can go DS or any protective skills you have while the mesmer comes out of stealth. It’s very easy to tell which the mesmer is after a while, of course it takes practice. There’s a certain animation that tells you a player is coming out of stealth and with time you won’t miss it. When you finally know which the mesmer is just call target again and continue.

We have more condition counters than they do so a condition mesmer is also not a big deal, only problem is Moa bird then it’s just a matter of if you’re fighting a good mesmer or not.

Easy to kill them when they are down after you know how their downstate works, usually when you start your finishing move the mesmer will dissapear and a target will spawn instead, at this point cancel your move, 1-2 secs later the real mesmer will appear with a big red arrow under him. Finish him as his fake clone skill is now on cd.

I play mesmer and necro and from my experience its very hard to kill a mesmer with a power build you need very good well placements to pull it of and without LOS its almost impossible. If you play a condition necro its just a damage race which the side with less defensive cooldowns will lose.

Mayama.1854:

I play mesmer and necro and from my experience its very hard to kill a mesmer with a power build you need very good well placements to pull it of and without LOS its almost impossible. If you play a condition necro its just a damage race which the side with less defensive cooldowns will lose.

This is what I have seen running a hybrid build of Power/Conditions.

I believe the duel is there for the Necro to win, but the Necro needs to play better in order to out DPS and survive the cooldowns. Basically I feel the Necro has less room for error but still has the opportunity to win if played right.

AKA I haven’t played agaisnt a Mesmer I was like… woah nothing I could have done would have allowed me to kill that guy.

If the mes is running a survival build, you probably won’t beat them 1v1 (but you can probably stretch it out for a very very long time as well in MM/tank specs… just make sure to have a cover to run to if he’s using moa).

The most difficult time I have with mesmers usually happens in round 3 of tournaments when they camp out by the trebuchet and can see me coming. They have ample time to prepare and sometimes I land on teams that don’t seem to care much for the trebuchet. I know it can easily be dodged and so on but sometimes its a bit too much to worry about a trebuchet and fight thieves and warriors etc. while trying to hold/cap points. To add to it, if all else fails they have the Moa skill which just gives a free kill for the most part (haven’t figured out what animations to look for to try and counter it either -.-)