Guild Wars 2

I wish canine companions had a scent trait that allowed them to attack the real enemy and not fall for the illusions of the mesmers.

Have you guys killed a mesmer before?
Please help! O_O

I thought about using ground-targeting traps to limit their range movement. But they stealth for too long and use illusions to get out of my range, wait for the traps to disappear, and keep spamming their magic on me.

You just need to recognize the real Mesmer. One of the Mesmers complaints is that, if the enemy knows the profession mechanics, they cannot use their profession mechanic (deception) to actually migrate damage. The skills that mimic the Mesmer in its entirety are just Illusionary Leap and Decoy (the former because the Mesmer can stand still to mimic being a clone, and the latter because of stealth). Beyond that they have a 3 second stealth of the torch (long cooldown) and Mass Invisibility as possible elite, and some minor utilities. Now that the Longbow has stealth, enter stealth on a clone after the Mesmer does and he will reappear before you do.

If you have doubts about the Mesmer mechanics, play one. They are extremely easy to figure out if you have a bit of experience. Similarly to the stealth mechanic, you can easily experience that (and possibilities of countering) by playing a Thief.

“If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous battles without jeopardy.” — The Art of War

Would using longbow or shortbow be more helpful against a mesmer?
Longbow #5 can kill about 2 illusions, but with a 25 second cooldown time, that mesmer can keep making more illusions.

Shortbow can only kill 1 target at a time and even then, it doesn’t do comparable burst damage against 3 mesmers including their illusions against 1 ranger.

dont be zerker ranger would help :>

as condi ranger its easy to kill mesmer but as zerker it can be realy difficult

The Mesmer moves as fast as possible. Barrage is an amazing skill to throw into a PvE situation of a zerg, but it is limited in area coverage and is painfully slow. Using it is suicide against most professions. You also don’t need to kill clones, they barely do damage, and they really allow easy access to Hunters Shot stealth! Phantasms do damage, you can evade them (animations are painfully obvious) or finish them off, but it is better to focus on the Mesmer instead.

You also want to use Point Blank Shot to interrupt mass invisibilty and berserker phantasms when you get the chance, and channel Rapid Fire as often as possible (It will continue hitting someone in stealth). Like I said, the Longbow change makes it really easy to enter stealth after the Mesmer does, and being on the same timer you will always have the advantage (with 20% CD reduction, 33% uptime of stealth… it is A LOT).

Playing a Mesmer will really teach a great deal. Put some hours into that, it works better than a lot of reading and theorycrafting — experiencing it first hand does wonders.

Why would I even touch a mesmer…
I’m dedicated to my ranger 24/7!

Õ3Õ AWOOOOOOOO!!!!

If you can’t anticipate how your enemy works, you’ll die (and rage on forums).

Nobody is waiting for that. Teach yourself. If you aren’t open to that, why even post?

Fine. e_e

I’ll learn how mesmers kill.
And then I’ll get revenge.

I kill them all the time with a berserker build, 30 30 5 5 0.
I have Npc names and off player names on, that helps spot them if they already popped clones.
the extra range on LB helps if u see them first. Pets usually return to attacking the Mesmer after they de-stealth as long as u don’t attack another target/clone
interrupt after they used some abilities because chances are they gonna try n re-stealth and channel #2 LB as much as possible because this will destroy them in or out of stealth.
Dodge incoming clones and if the fight goes pair shaped, or he is shatter bombing switch to GS turn run with sword #4 blocking hits, Escape then #3 to swoop 1200 units away, return for round 2 if u feel like it.

I play an axe torch sword dagger spirit ranger in PvP. Mesmers have very apparent annimations and playstlyes that allows you to counter them with skilled play.

You have to evade the berserker and the leaping clone. Watch for when the mesmer raises his greatsword, then evade. Watch for the weapon set that the mesmer is using, and keep your eye out for the leaping clone. If you can’t dodge it, use skill based evades.

You also have to counter the main source of damage. If they are running shatter, you can usually evade only the first phantasm attack before they shatter. You mainly need to evade the leap → blurred frenzy combo. For phantasm and condition builds, you need to make an effort to kill phantasms without dropping pressure on the mesmer. The active from storm sprit and a sigil of Geomancy proc will kill all phantasms, as will a bonfire.

Mesmers do not have great condition removal on their normal builds. Most will cleanse 1-2 conditions, which you can take advantage of by stacking conditions smartly. A simple spike would be axe 2 swap dagger 5 for 11 stacks of bleed, which you can cover with poison, immobilize, cripple, weakness, vulnerability, and blind. Use your skills smartly to avoid the condition removal, and they will die very very quickly.

That is just about all I do against a mesmer, and if done well, you shouldn’t have any problems fighting mesmers.

Your canine actually does sniff him out as does every pet, when you initiate the fight make sure you don’t let your pet just engage automatically because you start attacking but send him in with F1 command doing so will make your pet always stick on the real mesmer aslong as he isn’t stealthed, stealth will not break this command either your pet might start chewing on a clone if he goes invisible but as soon as he comes back your pet will switch back to the real one.

Thanks for the help e_e

The mesmer I fought was an extremely skilled one. He killed all THREE of us. It was in wvw.

If you are talking WvW then here is some advice.

We Mesmers, on most of our most popular builds have limited condition removal set. The build I run is not among that lot but I don’t run a popular build (at least not yet). You must get as good as you can at foresight. Our stealths do not last long but we have a far amount of them and they drop target. However, unlike a thief you cannot assume we are going to backstab you (cause we can’t). What we do in stealth is usually 1 of 4 things: 1) gain distance on you (if you see a GS Mesmer this is a safe assumption) 2) summon a phantasm (our phantasm summonings especially the two that hurt the most iDuelist and iZerker are VERY obvious and easy to stun, summoning also doesn’t throw us out of stealth is this is a possibility) 3) Prep for a shatter spike (if you realize you are facing a shatter and they go stealth watch for a mirror images mind wreak from stealth, they will be trying to get close to you for this so all of the shatters hit hard and fast) 4) I don’t run shatter but I to like to get close to the enemy when in stealth (I won’t tell you why because well gota keep some secrets probably already going to get flamed for writing this much.)

When facing a Mesmer keep your camera zoomed as far out as it can. We are probably the most mobile class inside of combat rivaled by S/D Thieves.

Clones do NO damage until we shatter them. Clones are the ones that look identical to us except they attack much slower and don’t have an off-hand weapon (we still can’t decide if this is a bug or if Anet really does hate us that much). When the clones start ALL running at you get ready to dodge as that is a shatter and it will hurt you but it can be dodged easily.

Phantasms have longer cast times and the summoning it self can be interrupted easily. It can also get interrupted by a freakn pebble in the road as it requires line of sight and well apparently Mesmers have really bad depth perception because seriously a freakn blade of grass can cause it to not go off and it goes to FULL CD.

That should cover a basic way of handling the average Mesmers running the popular builds. There are those of us who run unique builds that personally I have no found a counter for mine yet other that 1v4. There are also exceptionally good and I mean ridiculously good Mesmers out there that you will simply never beat in a fair fight.

The build in my Signature is not my WvW build btw.

Good Luck ^^

My tips on defeating mesmers:

1. Very quickly identify what type of mesmer they are. Just looking at the weapons they are using will quickly tell you what they will plan on doing to you. Be prepared to counter that.
2. Always look out for the real mesmer, keep your pet on top of them, keep yourself away from the fake ones (some mesmers use very strong clone builds).
3. If you have a ranged weapon on you, kite and kite and kite, mesmers excel at medium range combats so staying further away from their range will keep their clones and their skills away from you, while you rain hell on them.
4. Lead them to your traps AND your pet. If you cannot get that mesmer off of you make sure you teach them a lesson.
5. Most if not all mesmers will use this combo: spam a lot of clones – stun you – swap to sword – use blurred frenzy – blow up all the clone skills on your face… and bam a good chunk of your health is gone. You can dodge out of that with lightning reflexes.
6. Never ever attack a mesmer from range when the use their feedback skill (small purple bubble on them). Every time you hit them, you will be hitting yourself (reflects projectiles).
7. Remember that they are sneaky, save your heals, save your stuns for that moment when they are in big trouble, be wise of when to dodge and not to dodge.
8. Mesmers have very good ways of combing back strong from almost dying, so as a ranger do not underestimate them. Why as a ranger? I have learned the very hard way that just like in nature… bugs < frogs < snakes < birds < cats … in the gw2 universe, rangers < mesmers, some kind of evil natural selection, but if you train hard enough most mesmers can be easily overcomed, dont give up!

I ran a trapper build with greatsword recently, it felt so nice to get in their face with it. I found that most mesmers love to hide behind their clones, which makes them a problem for ranged rangers. You could also use the terrain to let the phantasms/clones run up and down hills. Did that on my thief, having lots of shadowsteps sure helps, but mesmers also seem problematic for thieves. I hate mesmers… grrrr.

Rangers are actually one of the best classes to play against mesmers. Your pet always shows you which is the real one (even after stealthing and getting revealed). Condition builds are more or less uncounterable for most mesmers and power builds have the option to kite us for all eternity with bows.

If a mesmer killed 3 of you, that’s a L2P issue, in all honesty.

Iavra.8510:

Rangers are actually one of the best classes to play against mesmers. Your pet always shows you which is the real one (even after stealthing and getting revealed). Condition builds are more or less uncounterable for most mesmers and power builds have the option to kite us for all eternity with bows.

If a mesmer killed 3 of you, that’s a L2P issue, in all honesty.

It all depends on the mesmer who you are fighting against. Any ranger can tell you that a good mesmer can be a huge threat, however it all depends on how fully you understand how to approach a mesmer fight and how well you can play your ranger. Once you are a very experienced ranger, its only a matter of time before you can competitively face off an experienced mesmer and come out on top; but to say that fighting a mesmer as a ranger (on equal grounds) is a sure win is clearly an understatement.

No class has a sure win against any other. I just said, that rangers got the tools to deal with mesmers (and honestly…those pets are a pest ^^).

Keep the mesmer at range and he’s dead.

Some facts about mesmers:

1) For most players, it’s getting caught in a ileap>swap>blurred frenzy>shatter combo that kills them or puts them in the defensive.

This is easily avoidable by staying above 600 range.

2) Shatters are easier to dodge the further you are away, because the clones telegraph it by running to you, thus you can dodge into them and ruin the shatter.

3) Shortbow and longbow will outmuscle any of the mesmer’s ranged weapons. You’ve got better heals, you’ve got a harassing pet that will keep him moving while you kite him, and he will be eating 2-3k autoattacks to the face without being able to do much to you in comparison.

Dodge his iBerserker.

4) If he stealths, turn 180 and run away. What a mesmer does with stealth is 2 things — he either kites away from melee with it, or closes in. In the case of a ranger, he will use it to position either a phantasm spike or a swap shatter spike on you.

You can waste his stealth by using monarch’s leap and doing the second leap for extra kite distance as well.

5) At this point, his only other closing tool will be Blink. This is when you either hunter’s shot stealth away or point blank shot him back.

Seriously, all you need to do to kill a mesmer at any range is to kite him. When he stealths keep kiting and kill his clones until he reappears. If he blurred frenzies for some immunity, switch and kill clones then switch back to him.

Mesmers have very weak ranged combat. They need to land their shatters or phantasm hits to do any real damage. And if you’ve got vigor and know what to dodge and keep kiting they won’t be able to do much to you before you kill them first.

I agree with lavra and Zenith, Rangers just have exelent tools to deal with any kind of Mesmer. Even better if you have some kind of anti spike and sustain in your spec. On one side you have Mesmers that just rely on pure burst and others that whittle you down slowly. Your best weapon against any of those is your pet, press F1 (yes, you have to press it) on the right Mesmer and your pet will attack it the entire fight, even with stealth (as it no longer drops aggro), showing you his position after stealth and of course pointing you towards the real one (trust me, this is more crucial than it looks on paper).
The ones that can pose you a real legitimate threat should be phantasm mesmers, but then, with careful positioning and cleave damage, you can deal with those too (Shortbow Rangers without Piercing Arrows trait are definetly going to have a harder time). As long as you keep dealing with those phantasms, you should outsustain the Mesmer’s damage but maybe not kill an overly defensive one, although he surely wont kill you either, he doesn’t have your disengage capabilities, not even close. Also, be careful on droping a Barrage on 3 phantasms each one with retaliation.
Ether Feast is a pretty overpowered heal in terms of HPS, so if you manage to interrupt that twice, you win. If it’s Mirror, he has drastically reduced HPS so you can play more agressively, save your Greatsword’s Hilt Bash for that.

Sword/axe the sword actually keeps a lock on an enemy. So you keep following and tagging, plus the axe has whirl. So when they pop confusion or something you can reflect all that damage back. Mesmers drop easy when you are in their face, clones matter none. Sword/axe works great on thief also, plus carry longbow barrage follows them in stealth I always love when they come out of stealth and are downed after barrage. Works on the new ranger stealth also. A lot of rangers are trying that trick and get burst down from barrage while in stealth. Good luck

^Mortalitas, I think you meant Rapid Fire instead of Barrage.

Khenzy.9348:

^Mortalitas, I think you meant Rapid Fire instead of Barrage.

Yes sorry it’s late for me been up since early morning.

Just want to add my 2cents.
The key to win against a mesmer is to recognise the real one quick and burst them down. As to counter their own bursts, as most people already mention, best way is to stay at range. In fact, you want to stay well away from the mesmer and clones as well so you can dodge the shatter or condition bomb.
Also when you do your burst watch out for 1) retaliation and 2) projectile reflect.

If you are running a condition build, it might be easier to take down a mesmer since mesmers have limited condi cleansing without specced heavily for it (which most mesmers don’t do).

Hope this helps.