Guild Wars 2

One of the ways I try to improve my Ranger in 1 vs 1 duels is by making a character with which I’m having trouble with(in this case it’s against PU mesmers…only the PU type builds) and learn their strategy’s, rotation’s, trait synergy etc so that I can hopefully become better against them.

So as always, I made the character, grabbed the up to date sPvP build that is being touted from the mesmer section of the forums, brought it into all 3 of the main duel servers and all I can say is….easy mode. I won at least at least 85% of my total amount of duels. And keep in mind, I have never played a mesmer in my life. It was right out of the gate easy mode. I honestly couldn’t believe it.

In summary, it seems like the only safe and reasonable counter to a PU type build is having lots of AOE that is being dished out from a distance and decent survivability……we have the survivability but lack the constant AOE burst.

Pretty sure no class can beat them currently so no big deal. Not even a Warrior with cleansing ire playing condi hambow beats them.

there are two counters to PU mesmers:
1. condi warr (macebow) – they have enough reflection, condition removal, and condition out-put to be able to beat them. I played condi warr for a very long time and always been able to beat PU mesmers though not with ease.
2. s/d thieves – they counter and beat everything…

obviously it’s NOT ok when a build so easy to play and almost entirely passive is so strong that there are only 2 specific specs that counter it…
I don’t know why ANet promotes passive play…

DanSH.6143:

there are two counters to PU mesmers:
1. condi warr (macebow) – they have enough reflection, condition removal, and condition out-put to be able to beat them. I played condi warr for a very long time and always been able to beat PU mesmers though not with ease.
2. s/d thieves – they counter and beat everything…

obviously it’s NOT ok when a build so easy to play and almost entirely passive is so strong that there are only 2 specific specs that counter it…
I don’t know why ANet promotes passive play…

amazing isnt it … thieves … the even easier mode

I’ve tried Mesmers some time ago. I had heard that they’re skill demanding, they’re balanced and fun to play. None of above. When I rolled one, it became obvious that I can just spam phantasms all day, run, do some occassional damage when teleporting around, stealthing and dishing decent condition damage even in power spec. It wasn’t fun. As a new player to mesmer, with build made by myself after a while I was just facerolling, trolling and still killing people 1v1 or 2v1 with no real issues.
People complain about how skillful mesmer is. Complete bulls**t

Sasajoe.1509:

DanSH.6143:

there are two counters to PU mesmers:
1. condi warr (macebow) – they have enough reflection, condition removal, and condition out-put to be able to beat them. I played condi warr for a very long time and always been able to beat PU mesmers though not with ease.
2. s/d thieves – they counter and beat everything…

obviously it’s NOT ok when a build so easy to play and almost entirely passive is so strong that there are only 2 specific specs that counter it…
I don’t know why ANet promotes passive play…

amazing isnt it … thieves … the even easier mode

I would hardly consider Thieves an easy mode especially when compared to spirit ranger, phantasm mesmers and warriors….

@OP: the build is meta for a reason, if you haven’t noticed, not a single kittening meta build is ever difficult to play, and that’s because the masses would say it’s bad and it’d drift into the void if it were… I’ve yet to even see a PU Mesmer though, so I don’t feel like I could give any suggestions on how to kill it, I just know phantasm builds are useless in team fights.

Durzlla.6295:

@OP: the build is meta for a reason, if you haven’t noticed, not a single kittening meta build is ever difficult to play

Just popped by to say that the very definition of a meta build is one which does a lot with players of very limited skill. None of the strongest builds in existence are easy to use, and thus none of them appear in the meta. If you meet one of them while using a meta build, you will definitely die because those are not only stronger, but the player behind them will also be guaranteed to be of a very high skill level. Meta players don’t care about this, because these builds and players are so rare they’ll almost never meet them, so they’ll still win the ‘majority’ of fights against non-meta unoptimised builds.

Exception to this is permastealth thieves. If running one you’ll still definitely lose, but you won’t necessarily die, because that’s what permastealth does.