Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one that has difficulty in defeating skilled Mesmers with S/D? Basically any other profession is mincemeat except for Mesmers.

Anyone have tips?

I made the same topic on the mesmer forum. There are some nice tips there, I guess.

But I digress, it’s pretty much impossible as S/D imo.

Unless if it’s some weird, semi tanky phant spec, I don’t see how you can have problems. Keep chaining cloack from clones if you are taking pressure.

Ive run into a few mesmers who I couldnt down even after fighting them for 5-6 minutes. You’ll run into these people sometimes, the best thing you can do is start to recognize them, and then ignore them and go do something else. But I find s/d vastly better for fighting them than d/d or d/p or p/d.

I dont stealth much though for the super tanky clone mesmers, just use 2 to move in and out and auto attack them from behind where they cant fight back while bound. Just doing things that are out of the ordinary generally throws people completely off, and is good for lulz.

I just started playing S/D quite a bit a few days ago, loving it so far, and I either haven’t run into any good mesmers…or this is a great mesmer killing setup. You gotta change things up depending on the situation though…for some mesmers what I end up doing is chain cloak and dagger off clones and wait for opportunities to daze and then do some burst, cloak n dagger, daze again before they get a heal off, repeat it until they die.

The important point is to learn how to track the mesmer, use C&DN of the clones and watch when the clones start to move towards you, because they will blow up and it will hurt like hell (so dodge it). If you do that, you have a good chance, and remember to steal their vigor because mesmers are way too dodgy with it (and quite so without it).

To me, mesmer is easier if you adapt your traits to fight them.
On S/D I enjoy the fights against mesmers the most. You can evade shatters and remove conditions like a baus. Also as soon as they swap away from staff, you will stunlock them forever.
Use sigil of paralization and giggle over 3s daze.

Zunhar.4079:

Am I the only one that has difficulty in defeating skilled Mesmers with S/D? Basically any other profession is mincemeat except for Mesmers.

Anyone have tips?

Yeah, I hate skilled Mesmers also especially the ones using S/P and S/F weapon sets, especially the S/F because of IttV and Warden.

All I can tell you is that I feel your pain.

Regarding WvW:

Oddly enough, there is only one Mesmer I have dueled that I couldn’t beat. . . but he couldn’t beat me either. The thing is, a bunker Mesmer (and I use the word “bunker” here loosely) should never be able to kill a S/D thief. In order to beat you, the Mesmer has to be able to do some kind of burst to kill you.

Your abilities to move around the battle field and re-position yourself at any given time allows you to be patient and only strike when you know the Mesmer has no means of escape and has spent his burst.

A Mesmer’s burst will usually come just after a third clone arrives. He will pop Illusionary Leap, then Swap, followed by Blurred Frenzy. While in Blurred Frenzy he will finally shatter doing the maximum amount of damage to you. Here are tips I find useful:

1. Always have Shadow Return up. Always. This is a given, but you’d be surprised how many thieves don’t do this.
2. See #1. Always make sure your Shadow Return is far away from the Mesmer.
3. As soon as you become immobilized, hit Shadow Return. You’ve just kittened the Mesmer’s burst from Illusionary Leap. He can’t do it again for 12 seconds. It’s time to strike.
4. Stealth doesn’t help you much, because as soon as you un-stealth, the clones will be on your nuts quicker than human reaction. The best thing to do is always keep extreme distance between you and the Mesmer, while killing clones as they get close to you and further from the Mesmer.
5. Wait for the Mesmer to make a mistake and capitalize. You may not be able to kill him in one burst, but you’ll come close and put him on the defensive. Try to use that to your advantage.

Phantoms and Shatters are rough, as is Confusion, since we are so skill usage heavy.

What I typically do is switch to SB and bomb their clones while locating the real guy (being in a group and having the target over them helps, but is kinda cheap, unless you ARE in a group :p).

Find the right time and steal+cnd+tacstrike and just go bananas. Skip the 3rd sword swing, cast basilisk, and then finish an entire chain or cnd again. If it gets too hot, switch back to SB and evade backwards.

Certain bunker’s are hard. I had one I couldnt beat, but like all bunkers, that meant he couldnt hurt me, either. He used ranged clones, which hurt against my SB tactic, but I dodged most of their damage in between unexploded cluster bombs.

S/D is a pretty hard counter to Mesmers right now. It’s impossible to land proper CC on anyone who’s dodging and stealthing and evading that much, while still maintaining ridiculous damage output.

SharadSun.3089:

S/D is a pretty hard counter to Mesmers right now. It’s impossible to land proper CC on anyone who’s dodging and stealthing and evading that much, while still maintaining ridiculous damage output.

That’s the thing I hate about them, their illusions deals so much damage on top of the confusion stack on you.

The good one who run tanky are hard to kill. The most annoying are the ones who are smart enough to shatter the phantasms to prevent cnd and use mostly zerker clones.

Very hard to kill as S/D, imo. P/D wrecks mesmers though. That’s why I run it ^^