Guild Wars 2

Running around in WvW, killing people etc etc… then a mesmer comes.

“Hmm this should go well”
It does, I get him to 10% hp, but then he stealths and reappears with full health.
“Okay, I can do it again, he can’t heal that fast”
He does, he goes into stealth and comes back with almost full HP

Ends with me dieing every time against these mesmers because we both get to low HP but then they use something and get back to AT LEAST 75% hp just before dieing.

How can they be countered?
They spam phantasms, go stealth multiple times and spam their blurred frenzy

Sic’em !

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Oh man, you remind me of some duels I had with one of these guys – every single one lasted about 20 minutes, I won 1 time, he 2 times. What’s even more annyoing than the healing is the condi cleansing… I’m also open for every tip.

Wait til they’re looking beat up, vulnerable, and are probably going to stealth – then use “sic ’em” to apply the revealed debuff, preventing them from doing so. Follow up with a well timed interrupt or stun to prevent them healing, and burst them down.

The thing to recognise is just because the mesmer’s health is low, it doesn’t mean you’ve almost beaten them, they have a lot of tricks up their sleeve to recover (Think of them as un-thieves. Just because you got some good hits on a thief doesn’t mean he’s out the game, he’ll stealth, back off and bide his time.), luckily, rangers are the only class that can actively counter stealth by forcing the revealed debuff onto a character

EDIT: Post sniped by bambula

Generally I’d get a feel of how they burst (how many seconds before the next rotation), then time it exactly when I swap to sword and evade.

As for Sic Em, remember they can use decoy so wait for that and use only while it cools down.

They have a new trait that grants regen, aegis, and protection for every second while stealthed. Will probably need to be balanced in the future.

KevlarZero.6849:

They have a new trait that grants regen, aegis, and protection for every second while stealthed. Will probably need to be balanced in the future.

The trait (Prismatic Understanding) has been in place for a long time now, but yes it’s perceived as very strong.

It sounds like that’s the type of build the OP is referring to, more than likely a power PU build. They are one of the mesmer’s strongest WvW roaming builds atm and difficult, though far from impossible, to beat.

Save your Stalker Strike, Serpent’s Strike, and Quickshot for when you’re rooted by Illusionary Leap > Swap. In your game options, uncheck show all Enemy/NPC names and check Show Players. When the PU mesmer hops in and out of stealth, it’ll be easier to find the real one. if you change your options so you won’t need to retarget with T every time. And, of course, save dodges only for Izerker.

It seems like you do a good job but you’re lacking the finishing aspect. I suggest you re-evaluate how you are approaching the fight. Some mesmers really do have it down and even the strongest rangers will tell you it’s not easy, but its doable. I just save my condition damage spams for after they use their health, especially if I can interrupt their escape tactics, this usually brings down most mesmers or forces them into a corner. I can’t say much about how to avoid their bursts, it really just takes practice and knowledge of how mesmers fight. I asked the strongest pvp mesmers in the guild I am in to fight me in 1 vs 1 and 1 vs 2, until I got down to killing them both, and it took a while.

Combat mechanic wise: mesmers will work against what you do, so you must plan for that so you don’t get killed, but it goes both ways if you think about it. Saving your interrupts to block their heal/mass invisibility is crucial, when the mesmer decides to go melee I like to throw in a bonfire and use dodge mechanics through whatever they do. Also entangle isn’t useless against a mesmer, you can save it for interrupt spamming with canines + condition damage spamming; or when a bunch of the clones are out, use it and stand by the entangle vines, if the mesmer or its clones try to come in they will get re-rooted. Although I think rampage as one will be useful during mesmer’s interrupts. I suggest you keep a solid damage rotation, keep on blasting it on them, avoid the obvious signs of danger (blurr, using ranged damage when their bubble is up, avoiding null fields, avoiding phantasm spamming, relocating to a more compact area where you can dispose of the mesmer and clones in one shot… things like this.

The two ways I’ve figured to beat phantasmers is to 1. Burst them hard and interrupt them. 2. Stay on them and micro manage your pet to kill their phantasms.

Phantasm mesmer is the only other class I play, other than ranger, and what gets me worse than anything is ranged pressure. Always.

Mesmers, and especially phantasm mesmers, tend to be on the squishy side and survive by keeping away from you and letting the GS + phantasms do the work, only coming in close to use blurred frenzy. But against a LB or SB rangers? Or even a rifle warrior? Its very easy to get overwhelmed because you suddenly have very little defense to their unended ranged pressure.

So, I dont know what build you have or weapons you use, but going melee against a mesmer is generally setting yourself up to have a bad time. Get a SB, get a LB, hell maybe even get an axe to kill off those phantasms/clones (which is very important to stop them healing) and you should be able to quite easily and quickly wear them down.

I am not the most hugely experienced pvp mesmer but it is the same with me as for what Cufufalating says, the ranged pressure is by far the most obnoxious since your own pressure just works better if you have easy access to melee range with your opponent. The hardest ranger I’ve ever fought was a SB condi ranger that I just couldn’t control well. If your izerker is dodged, you just have no pressure while they certainly do, and you have to start playing out defensive cards. You can’t always do this but it’s a huge bonus.

I was dying to them a lot with full dire but after switching to rabid and bleed on crit I am doing much better. IMO sustained damage is better because its too easy to miss your burst against them.

first off, I absolutely LOVE fighting mesmers, good ones are extremely fun to fight against as they can be quite a challenge

longbow is an amazing weapons against mesmers, rapid fire can track in stealth, barrage in the general area takes care of their clones, your own stealth helps them lose their target, and the knockback is great to keep them out the range of their weapons (this means, they can’t summon their clones and phantasms against you!)

piercing arrows is a must.

have a good amount of condi clear

sic em prevents them from going into stealth, use it when they start channeling Mass Invisibility, a ton of mesmers use this to get away as a last resort and sic em rlly screws it up for them :P

lightning reflexes is a must when fighting sword mesmers

and sword is always a good idea to have as well

No clue what happens there. Average clone mesmers in WWW are hard to handle.
They are all stealth and targeting between its clones with the bad autoaim is a pain in the… And their clones follow/dmg me in my ridiculous 3s stealth, plus one clone does ~8k DMG to me undodgeable. Is that fair? No, the whole class is as annoying as in GW1 was, but back then they wasn’t so dirty like this…

BTW, yesterday there was a …… mesmer from AM who made 10!!! clones. I don’t think thats “legal”.

Sounds like you were fighting more than 1 mesmer, RoyalPredator. You do sometimes come across mesmers who deliberately dress the same and hunt in packs to do exactly that. 3 is the max clones/phantasms.

Also, unless you’re fighting VS a condi mesmer (which is a different beast altogether), mesmers usually only have 1 stealth, Decoy (excluding their elite). Its usually got a 32s CD so if you just keep the pressure up you should find they cant actually stealth as much as you’d think.

No, it was one, solo capper. Believe me, I’ve saw strange things. But we’re not supposed to talk about those -.-’

This one was the same asura.

Pet always follows the real mesmer…

Mesmer stealth is different than ‘thief’ stealth, therefore when you use ‘Sic Em’ it will reveal debuff the mesmer but they will still be able to stealth. For example, if you use sic em when they’re casting mass invis, they will still invis.

It’s one of my gripes about the skill. According to the bug report thread I made it’s intended and not a bug.

In wvw I wouldn’t really expect to do anything but stalemate a good pu mes. Be smart on your dodges and interrupts and you should be alright.

RoyalPredator.9163:

No, it was one, solo capper. Believe me, I’ve saw strange things. But we’re not supposed to talk about those -.-’

This one was the same asura.

These scenarios are the reason why we need real Hunter skills, where we can lock down and interrupt our foes, mostly these stealth user covards.

RoyalPredator.9163:

These scenarios are the reason why we need real Hunter skills, where we can lock down and interrupt our foes, mostly these stealth user covards.

Or give us a third bow (hornbow?) that does a ton of aoe damage.

Bring back GW1 splinter barrage!!

I main mesmer and ranger, mesmer for wvw and ranger for wvw/pvp. So here’s what I can say: firstly, is that PU and Phantasm mesmers are different, and secondly, Phantasm mesmers are very strong 1v1 (they can’t do 1vX very well), it’s an uphill battle for a ranger to fight a phantasm specced mesmer 1v1 because the phantasms hit very hard. Phantasms like duelist and swordsman can deal insane damage in a span of seconds.
Two strategies I regularly employ is use the longbow, keep the distance and apply pressure on the mesmer, while kiting the sword phantasm (the gun phantasm you can’t do much about). The other, my favorite, is run condi/bunker spec and condi bomb the mesmer, 2-3 cycles of condi bombing and he’s gonna fall. A typical Phantasm spec doesn’t have much condi cleanse because they have to run Signet of illusions, Decoy and Blink for their utilities, so they gotta outlast you while letting the phantasms do the work.
As for PU mesmers, well good luck to us rangers in wvw against a good PU player. PvP though PU is easy work for a well played condi ranger =)

Edit: Seems like you’re fighting a PU variant not a phantasm one. If you’re a power ranger it would be very difficult to beat one because they’re just gonna stealth and re-stealth while wittling down your hp. If you’re a condi ranger then they will have it tough as well. A PU mesmer typically runs 1-3 condi cleanses, which isn’t alot really. 1 from torch, 2 from heal if traited but their dmge would be a bit lower, and 2-3 from mantras if traited (but no one traits for mantras in wvw roaming). I myself run 1 condi cleanse from torch on a 24 second cooldown. The bane of a PU mesmer is condis.

With the health back to full that happened to me once. The mesmer hit viel o 15% health with conditions on him tn after a few seconds I saw him behind me on 75% and regening really fast. He was in range so I hit him but he wad about 100% by then. I just assumed he wasregisteted as out of combat somehow and the health regen you get had started.

The Chosen Link.3247:

Mesmer stealth is different than ‘thief’ stealth, therefore when you use ‘Sic Em’ it will reveal debuff the mesmer but they will still be able to stealth. For example, if you use sic em when they’re casting mass invis, they will still invis.

It’s one of my gripes about the skill. According to the bug report thread I made it’s intended and not a bug.

Only the Mesmer skill called ‘Decoy’ works through the Revealed debuff as intended. Mass Invisibility will not apply stealth if the Mesmer is revealed.

Bambula.3649:

Sic’em !

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Does not work against Decoy