Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone!

Lately we have been reading a ton of talk regarding ‘How to fight thiefs’. Well I am a very seasoned ranger with lots of experience by now. I know how to hold my own in nearly any battle. But whenever I am running by myself and a solo mesmer comes along, I lose the battle 9/10 times. I probably have encountered very little number of mesmers who have no clue how to use their illusions. Perhaps that is a bit of bad luck on my side, or perhaps it is that I have focused on how to fight other classes and when a mesmer comes along -splat- and I fail almost every time.

Now you may say ranger class is doomed in terms of fighting mesmers for all the right reasons, or perhaps it has to do with the weapon choice (I gather aoe attacks are great to destroy the illusions, but clearly we don’t have enough of those). I do believe that there are classes who have the upper hand against others, but even I have countered the all time feared thief.

So what are your suggestions and your experiences of success (and failure) in fighting mesmers?

First of all, what build/weapon you are using vs mesmer? If you are running GC build, I won’t be surprised you lose to mesmer coz you simply suppose not to win them 1v1 when equally skilled. If you running some other builds (toughness related), some tips to fight mesmers:
1, never expect to finish the fight soon, the longer it last the better chance you have.
2, Try to fight in a wide open field (you get much better chance in WvW open field than inside a small room in sPVP;
3, Keep moving all the time, their atk has delay(altough not too much), but if you keep moving + dodge/ev wisely, they can hardly do damage to you.
4, learn to recognize the real one all the time, it depends on your pvp experience but there is a very easy way —- mark them (you need to be in a team).
5, use your pet wisely, this is hard to explain coz everyone prefer different pets but the key is keep u and ur pet separated. My way to fight mesmer is I just run around and draw attention from mesmer during fight and let my pet do the job in most of time, I only burst mesmer when his HP going low.

In fact I found that shatter build mesmer is the easiest to beat among all types. What you need to do is avoid his 1st burst(most shatter mesmers like to do it at very begining, but once you avoid that round, your pet will make him busy enough so he has no time to do 2nd round then it’s your turn to counter).
The real threaten is the Moa elite. A good mesmer will save his burst for ur Moa time, so you better make them to use moa as a survival skill but not the epic of burst.

Personally I suffer the same issue mostly, I find using Barrage from the Longbow ontop of yourself to be somewhat helpful at aiding the fight, as it’ll screw there shatters over. But of course that’s on a long cool down and doesn’t last a very long duration.

awge.3852:

CRrabbit.1284:

First of all, what build/weapon you are using vs mesmer? If you are running GC build, I won’t be surprised you lose to mesmer coz you simply suppose not to win them 1v1 when equally skilled. If you running some other builds (toughness related), some tips to fight mesmers:
1, never expect to finish the fight soon, the longer it last the better chance you have.
2, Try to fight in a wide open field (you get much better chance in WvW open field than inside a small room in sPVP;
3, Keep moving all the time, their atk has delay(altough not too much), but if you keep moving + dodge/ev wisely, they can hardly do damage to you.
4, learn to recognize the real one all the time, it depends on your pvp experience but there is a very easy way —- mark them (you need to be in a team).
5, use your pet wisely, this is hard to explain coz everyone prefer different pets but the key is keep u and ur pet separated. My way to fight mesmer is I just run around and draw attention from mesmer during fight and let my pet do the job in most of time, I only burst mesmer when his HP going low.

In fact I found that shatter build mesmer is the easiest to beat among all types. What you need to do is avoid his 1st burst(most shatter mesmers like to do it at very begining, but once you avoid that round, your pet will make him busy enough so he has no time to do 2nd round then it’s your turn to counter).
The real threaten is the Moa elite. A good mesmer will save his burst for ur Moa time, so you better make them to use moa as a survival skill but not the epic of burst.

A while ago I was doing what 90% of new rangers do, which is GC build. I learned from it and moved into an efficient toughness build. I often use greatsword OR sword/axe and a shortbow as other weapon. Wolf/Jaguar have been my main pets lately but I am constantly exploring the different possibilities between pet. I have become pretty adept at using my pet and I feel proud of my progress, however mesmer battles are rarely 1v1 in WvW in my experience. I have however experienced the moa elite/shatter mesmer and perhaps other builds.

For build specifics, 0/0/30/10/30 right now, mostly toughness|power|condition and still improving on it. Weapon choice is highly situational like always, but generally shortbow + sword/axe. Using sick’em, QZ in my skills constantly, while choosing my elite and my other skill slot situationally (spirit of nature/entangle and a signet or lightning reflexes mostly).

Somehow my greatest problem comes from keeping my pet focused on the real mesmer. I mean, you have to realize that there are a ton of things you are doing to both stay alive and deal damage, to throw all the tricks of the mesmer into the equation simply creates strategy chaos, especially if they are good. At this point I manage to have a semi-fair battle against them, but in the end they always end up on top of the situation. I think part of that is because I choose to be mid-ranged to close ranged against them, when perhaps I should do my best to stay ranged and charge in only when the opportunity is prime, but that cannot be planned all the time. Somehow I still believe mesmers are the true bane of the ranger, such as rangers are the true bane of the guardian (I find them super easy to defeat… all of them).

When I was GC build and used longbow more often, my arrow shower skill would pretty much get rid of the first wave of illusions, but even after you have damaged them critically, they have a good many ways to recover if given the chance. It’s not hard to give them the chance, they can go invisible, confuse you, etc.

I would like to know what has given you the most success and what you can consider general no-no’s vs mesmers. Thanks for the advice

mesmer clones wont roll/dodge
mesmer clones don’t have off hand weapons
When mesmer clones rush you, dodge TOWARDs them

If you see mesmer and then two clones, he is NOT one of them.. Wait the 3 secs for real one to appear.

Ctrl T the mesmer also which lasts till he runs decoy or mass invisibility. If you are not grouped, just pick random solo guy in your guild that is in another zone. You can still Ctrl-T that way.

Of course keep f1 the pet on the real one.

Personally I don’t have issues with them as LB/GS (30 in BM). But then I mained one from beta till about 2 weeks ago. So knowing a class inside out, is a huge advantage to have.

1, GS is ur friend , GS4 = same CD as mesmer’s mind wrack (their main burst) when traited;
2, patience, patience, patience. I don’t even bother to destroy mesmer’s illusions(the opposite way is also efficient by destroying them ASAP by using AOE such as a good trap build, it’s all up to ur play style) . If you atk illusions, you might be crippled , you might be confused while illusions do little damage to you themselves, anyway he gonna do it himself (to damage you), but this will also trigger your pet get the real one on target automatically and stick on him unless he stealth.

awge.3852:

CRrabbit.1284:

First of all, what build/weapon you are using vs mesmer? If you are running GC build, I won’t be surprised you lose to mesmer coz you simply suppose not to win them 1v1 when equally skilled. If you running some other builds (toughness related), some tips to fight mesmers:
1, never expect to finish the fight soon, the longer it last the better chance you have.
2, Try to fight in a wide open field (you get much better chance in WvW open field than inside a small room in sPVP;
3, Keep moving all the time, their atk has delay(altough not too much), but if you keep moving + dodge/ev wisely, they can hardly do damage to you.
4, learn to recognize the real one all the time, it depends on your pvp experience but there is a very easy way —- mark them (you need to be in a team).
5, use your pet wisely, this is hard to explain coz everyone prefer different pets but the key is keep u and ur pet separated. My way to fight mesmer is I just run around and draw attention from mesmer during fight and let my pet do the job in most of time, I only burst mesmer when his HP going low.

In fact I found that shatter build mesmer is the easiest to beat among all types. What you need to do is avoid his 1st burst(most shatter mesmers like to do it at very begining, but once you avoid that round, your pet will make him busy enough so he has no time to do 2nd round then it’s your turn to counter).
The real threaten is the Moa elite. A good mesmer will save his burst for ur Moa time, so you better make them to use moa as a survival skill but not the epic of burst.

A while ago I was doing what 90% of new rangers do, which is GC build. I learned from it and moved into an efficient toughness build. I often use greatsword OR sword/axe and a shortbow as other weapon. Wolf/Jaguar have been my main pets lately but I am constantly exploring the different possibilities between pet. I have become pretty adept at using my pet and I feel proud of my progress, however mesmer battles are rarely 1v1 in WvW in my experience. I have however experienced the moa elite/shatter mesmer and perhaps other builds.

Somehow my greatest problem comes from keeping my pet and myself focused on the real mesmer. I mean, you have to realize that there are a ton of things you are doing to both stay alive and deal damage, to throw all the tricks of the mesmer into the equation simply creates strategy chaos. At this point I manage to have a semi-fair battle against them, but in the end they always end up on top of the situation. I think part of that is because I choose to be mid-ranged to close ranged against them.

When I was GC build and used longbow more often, my arrow shower skill would pretty much get rid of the first wave of illusions, but even after you have damaged them critically, they have a good many ways to recover if given the chance. It’s not hard to give them the chance, they can go invisible, confuse you, etc.

I would like to know what has given you the most success and what you can consider general no-no’s vs mesmers. Thanks for the advice

The problem with mesmer class is that their heals have very low cooldown, which means a good mesmer will always use it at least 2 – 3 times in a fight.. with that being said your only heal that can match up with that is troll unguent simply because you can use troll before the fight even started..

after that simply keep putting the pressure on the real 1.. most people lose the fight because they lost track of the real mesmer and stop the pressure. applying pressure is what rangers good at because our crossfire have fast atk speed, add that with pet atk speed and you get yourself a ridiculous dps.

outsurvive mesmer heal with troll unguent and just give additional pressure with burn trap, not spike.. burn trap is our best trap against mesmer cause its aoe burn is continuous unlike spike trap. our 2nd best utility against mesmer would be lightning reflex because s/p mesmer will always do their immobilize – blurred frenzy combo.

3rd utility would be up to you…
shatter mesmer shouldn’t even be a problem to you because they should just drop fast when you get the opening attack on them..

My solution is Elite skill which roots enemies into the ground. If you use it before mesmer can spam his clones not only he will stay still you will know where he is because his clones wont be rooted into the ground.

Since most of mesmers go GS time for which mesmer is rooted down is enough to burst him down.

Kite the mesmer. Most mesmers are shatter melee where their big burst happens.

If you can keep beyond iLeap’s 600 range, you’ll be fine.

Dodge Magic Bullet, it has their pistol raising animation and a sound for the projectile — it’s how they close distance for iLeap.

If you can keep >900 range on them, they have no burst against you and will lose.

Their ranged potential won’t hurt you since you can dodge their phantasms easy. Their ranged autoattacks alone won’t outdamage you and your pet.

Use shortbow+sword/torch. The condition damage will wear them down and you can lay down a bonfire on top of clones to kill them while using evasion if the mesmer does close distance to you. Cripple the mesmer, and Monarch’s Leap away and switch again to crossbow kiting.