Guild Wars 2

Anyone but me feel like this when fighting Mesmers?

Sorry I don’t really have anything constructive or otherwise to say exept that…

:D

was fighting one earlier in wvw, even those thief hit stupidly hard and ele are a pain the class i say hate most fighting is mesmer. They dont hit me as hard and we actually had a nice battle, i killed him once, he kill me more but still confuse me, is ridiculous.

When you are in a group, mark them for assist. Then you’ll see them permanently, and be able to go straight for them.

Even when I roam solo, I group someone just so I can do this.

Do our pets stay on the “real” player or do they get confused by the clones? In WvW there’s so many bodies (groups, zergs, etc.) I can’t tell what I’M hitting let alone what my insane pet is doing…..

-Thor

Thorson.9218:

Do our pets stay on the “real” player or do they get confused by the clones? In WvW there’s so many bodies (groups, zergs, etc.) I can’t tell what I’M hitting let alone what my insane pet is doing…..

-Thor

If they do not stealth, the pet sticks to them like glue.

Thorson.9218:

Do our pets stay on the “real” player or do they get confused by the clones? In WvW there’s so many bodies (groups, zergs, etc.) I can’t tell what I’M hitting let alone what my insane pet is doing…..

-Thor

Rule of thumb
If your pet hit it and number appear ,most properly you are hitting a clone.
PS: I lost control of my pet in zerg fight as well. I doubt I alone.

Since mesmer is still my main (though I’m leaning more and more towards my Ranger lately) … I’ll speak up on this.

A Mesmer’s defenses are more often than not active defenses.

• Blurred frenzy: 2 sec of invuln, does melee damage, and roots them in place
• Distortion shatter: 1 to 4 sec of invuln
• Scepter block
• OH Sword block
• Staff phase retreat

What bothers most Mesmers? Sustained damage. What is Ranger great at? Sustained damage.

The mesmer’s this won’t work on are those running things like Pyroatheist’s immortal build that takes advantage of confusion + retaliation and being tanky in order to get you to kill yourself hitting them. Against those, take advantage of the fact that your damage is split between you and your pet and let your pet apply a good bit of your damage.

Many mesmers are running the glass cannon Osicat build or one of its many derivatives. I urge you to take a look at the Mesmer forums at the sticky’d thread by Osicat to learn more about how it works. Depending on how “glassy” they are playing it, those builds can crumble when it. They definitely do not appreciate sustained damage as they are not built for it. You do, however, have to be aware of what the mesmer burst looks like as it can hurt quite a bit.

Spotting the real Mesmer:

• If using 1h weapon, the clones won’t have an off-hand weapon equipped (been like this since beta)
• The clones auto-attack slower then the real Mesmer
• The clones will ONLY auto-attack and move to stay in range … or run at you when told to shatter
  • Note: if ranged clones stop auto-attack and run at you, that’s because they are coming to shatter on you
  • Note: if one of the Mesmers makes any other movement than the above, it’s the real mesmer
• Mesmer stealth only lasts for 3 seconds (4 traited w/ 30 points in Chaos).

Pets are AWESOME at staying on the real mesmer.

If you start your fight with a Mesmer by telling your pet to attack the correct Mesmer, then the entire fight your pet will stay on the real mesmer no matter how many times they make clones or invis

Your Ranger pet is a Mesmer sniffing bloodhound (even if they’re not a dog!).

Sebrent.3625:

Pets are AWESOME at staying on the real mesmer.

If you start your fight with a Mesmer by telling your pet to attack the correct Mesmer, then the entire fight your pet will stay on the real mesmer no matter how many times they make clones or invis

Your Ranger pet is a Mesmer sniffing bloodhound (even if they’re not a dog!).

That’s a key advice to fight all kinds of Mesmers. Most Rangers let their pets to passively attack (you press a weapon skill and your pet goes to attack your selected target), if you tell your pet to attack the real Mesmer (by pressing F1 or whatever keybind you assigned), it will stick to the real Mesmer the entire fight, this will allow you to even track the Mesmer.
If you are some kind of BM bunker, if you play it smart, you should be able to beat any kind of Mesmer, even those cheese retal stacking faceroll bunker Mesmers, who seem to be the FoTM as of late. Although, honestly, if you are a BM bunker, you shouldn’t consistently lose to any class/spec right now.

Look wepon type in Mesmer hand.

-2Hsword get close 2Hsword mesmer is powful when leave distant but lack of selfDef.
-1Hsword kite them they good to rip you close combat.
-Staff most hate CC/condi stick condition bleed/burn you to dead and a lot of escept skill.
-Scapter no idea for this.
-About clone/phantomass only3clone/phantom at once if pop 4 or5 no.1and2will out.
-Careful about confuse some mesmer not kill you but you kill yourself check status effect when fight.

I wouldn’t recommend just getting close to a Greatsword Mesmer. They often are shatter specs and being next to them means you eat an extra shatter from illusionary persona.

1H sword, definitely kite. Look out for the clone that leaps at you as the Mesmer can swap places with it, rooting you in place for a shatter and blurred frenzy.

Staff requires clones in order to do decent damage. It’s more of a defensive weapon, but with some specs can be leveraged to also have your target kill their self via hitting you if they don’t understand what is happening.

Scepter can be used in power and condition builds. The beam is 5 stacks of confusion, you want to avoid this like the plague. The auto-attack puts a clone in your face every 3rd hit. It also has a block that, if hit while channeling it, will create a clone and hit the enemy up to 900 range away. It can be activated a second time for a 900 range straight line, piercing blind.

Focus, in the hands of a good mesmer, will interrupt your movement and/or reflect your projectiles. The Warden is largely stationary, but a good Mesmer will use Temporal Curtain to pull you back into it for some pain.

Torch has a pretty weak phantasm but allows them to stealth, which blinds when first cast and does a powerful AOE explosion + burning after 3 seconds.

Pistol is your Duelist Phantasm and the stun. Straightforward and effective.

OH Sword is your Swordsman Phantasm which is the hardest hitting of them all. It also has a block that will create a clone and jack you in the face HARD … like the scepter. It does not have a 900 range on the strike though. It also has a secondary activation that is a straight line, piercing daze.

If you dodge roll, line-of-sight, etc. the Mesmer when they are summoning a clone/phantasm, it will fail to be summoned and the skill will go on cooldown.

So, if you are fighting a Greatsword Mesmer and you see him raise his weapon in the air, dodge roll. You just ruined his cast of his Phantasmal Berserker.

There is no ranger build good mesmer couldn’t kill. That would be it. I’m serious.
If you manage to kill mesmer, most likely you’re half godly-ranger and he is semi-skilled or you’re above average and he spent on proffession less than 5h (not couting exp).

For me, the biggest pain are confusion mesmers (410dmg+ per confu stack + other conditions) even with empathic bond and signet.
2nd worse are the ones with sword burst and who know how to apply confusion right before it (confusion before direct damage burst).

Regarding confusions, you can active signet to immediately remove the confusions, so they have to wait a while before stacking them. You also want weaponsets with built-in evades so that you can easily dodge their many bursts without relying solely on dodge rolls.

I’ll agree with you though that if they are skilled, you have to really know what you’re doing. It’s not even about being a godly ranger so much as being a player who is very adept at reading his opponent. To beat a mesmer, it’s more than just being good at ranger. You have to be very knowledgable as to what the cues are for when they are going to hurt you. You also need to have good foresight of what they where they will go when invisible while still being able to kill their phantasms between bursts.

There is so much more skill needed to play a ranger well than is needed to play a mesmer as effectively.

I would say that the Mesmer has a lower skill floor than the Ranger. However, they both have exceptionally high skill ceilings. Mesmer probably has the higher ceiling due to the Ranger being hindered by some issues (i.e. bad pet AI, lack of viable utilities), but working through the current issues makes you a better Ranger (in my opinion).

I don’t think that it’s so unheard of for a Ranger to kill a Mesmer. I do it all the time. I’m likely aided by the fact that I’ve played most Mesmer builds since beta so know what they can/can’t do and when they are likely to do various things.

If you are having trouble against mesmers, you would benefit from at least checking out the videos available on that subforum from Osicat, SevenMirror, Pyroatheist, etc.. You’ll learn how they function.

The fact that I’m able to burst people still by doing swap + blurred frenzy + shatter + mirror image + shatter this late in the game still surprises me. The good players know when a shatter is incoming and they know how to handle it.

I’m also surprised that so many are still confused by my clones.