Guild Wars 2

I’ve been reading a lot of posts from certain individuals in the sPvP forums that seems to suggest we hard counter mesmer, and elementalist and essentially removed them from the metagame.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/This-patch-was-good/first#post2763307

Can someone inform me how we hard counter a mesmer? Last time I checked, mesmer was still top dueling class. Are they really this bad now to easily get rolled by an S/D thief now? I find this hard to believe seeing as I just recently ran into a roaming mesmer and between the 3-4 of us we could not track this mesmer and kill him and I was on my S/D and played aggressively.

Depends on the Mesmers build. If it’s against a phantasm build then they will have the advantage due to the constant evades. But against a confusion Mesmer they’ll have more trouble. Their play style is pretty much about spamming attacks and they rarely stealth to remove conditions, so they will have a hard time against them..

Yea so it looks like they do have builds that can counter a S/D thief.

So I dunno what this is about:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/This-patch-was-good/first#post2763379

He basically said I’m trolling him when I informed him there are builds available to them so that S/D thief is not a counter to mesmer. I dunno what to say, I’m not sure if the meta really shifted that much in recent times.

We counter shatter mesmers easily due to fact that we can easily evade their burst attacks, a few evades and that shatterburst is gone .

That’s why everyone is QQing, same with Warriors and Eles, we can avoid a major burst attack without too much difficulty.

I asked the same question today on http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2pvptv while halseth was “playing”.

His answer was quite funny ..

He needs to run GS + Staff and full zerker gear, otherwise mesmer is not viable.

And the problem, why S/D “hardcounters” it, is that S/D thief can evade everything, so he cannot hit us …

Well, i wakitten often enough by shatters , and if i myself run a basic full zerker setup ( eg. 10/30/0/0/30 ) they can 100-0 me !

But well, i guess i am just a bad thief and all the mesmers that are able to hit a shatter on a thief are just lucky…

Dunno, we had to change our build from D/D zerker to now S/D , why don’t mesmers not change their builds.

Or at least their amulet if they spot a S/D thief in the nmy team ?

Well i guess its just much easier to QQ all the time, so S/D gets another nerf.
However, i am really curious what else they could nerf on S/D ?

If you know the animation, of S#3 you can still easily hit the thief.

From what I noticed, Thieves are getting better at tracking the real Mesmer and that leaves a very bad taste fro the profession. One of the main reason why is because the clone doesn’t carry an off-hand weapon, so this was added stealthily in this patch —-

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

Build: 23,057
Targets can now be called without being in a party.
Clones now show the mesmer’s equipped off-hand.
The monthly achievement has been reset.

This might bring them back in the meta…not sure.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

From what I noticed, Thieves are getting better at tracking the real Mesmer and that leaves a very bad taste fro the profession. One of the main reason why is because the clone doesn’t carry an off-hand weapon, so this was added stealthily in this patch —-

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

Build: 23,057
Targets can now be called without being in a party.
Clones now show the mesmer’s equipped off-hand.
The monthly achievement has been reset.

This might bring them back in the meta…not sure.

I don’t rely on any kind of visual cue or other gimmicks to identify the mesmer. I look at the mesmer that is trying to get away from me, I know that’s the real one LOL

Excalibur.9748:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

From what I noticed, Thieves are getting better at tracking the real Mesmer and that leaves a very bad taste fro the profession. One of the main reason why is because the clone doesn’t carry an off-hand weapon, so this was added stealthily in this patch —-

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

Build: 23,057
Targets can now be called without being in a party.
Clones now show the mesmer’s equipped off-hand.
The monthly achievement has been reset.

This might bring them back in the meta…not sure.

I don’t rely on any kind of visual cue or other gimmicks to identify the mesmer. I look at the mesmer that is trying to get away from me, I know that’s the real one LOL

Or if they stay still I am usually very quick to CnD off of a clone (or sometimes the real one XD) and scan around and find the real one in the 4 seconds I’m given

Excalibur.9748:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

From what I noticed, Thieves are getting better at tracking the real Mesmer and that leaves a very bad taste fro the profession. One of the main reason why is because the clone doesn’t carry an off-hand weapon, so this was added stealthily in this patch —-

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

Build: 23,057
Targets can now be called without being in a party.
Clones now show the mesmer’s equipped off-hand.
The monthly achievement has been reset.

This might bring them back in the meta…not sure.

I don’t rely on any kind of visual cue or other gimmicks to identify the mesmer. I look at the mesmer that is trying to get away from me, I know that’s the real one LOL

This. I look for which one moves or dodges, or is furthest away is also a big indicator. Besides all that, I tend to prefer shatter mesmers and dodge into the clones then immo the real one for the beating he deserves

Well, first of all when they say it hard counters certain builds, they aren’t talking about a 1v1 situation. In team fights, if a thief is speced as a D/P or D/D and is on one of the squishy classes of your team (a mesmer, an zerker ele etc.), your own team can peel for that person to relieve the pressure. The way it used to work was: a mesmer is getting chased around by a thief on graveyard, he calls it and someone from the mesmer’s team starts putting pressure on the thief forcing the thief to use his defensive cooldowns or retreat away from the mesmer while the mesmer can continue focusing the called target. When it comes to S/D thief, there is simply no way of counter-pressuring it. If the S/D thief is on the team’s mesmer, and you call out another player to focus the thief, he’s only going to start evading 8 times in a row, wasting all his opponent’s cooldown while still doing damage to the mesmer. This essentially pushed zerker mesmer and eles (or squishy classes in general) away from the meta.

Shatter uses burst damage, and a single stray evade can nullify practically 100% of it…

Theres very slight luck involved:

1. riposte the flanking strike, 4k crit on a second delay.
2. use mirror images and mind wrack, instant 4 times 2-3k damage. (While tanking larcenous strike). If the thief follows his flanking strike up with a dodge, this melee counter will fail and i have to play defensive for 12 seconds.
3. a sigil of fire can also proc, and it may instant kill if eveything crits. Bad thieves will instantly die alot but when they know what theyre doing, nope :/.
4. sometimes you can get a few (1 or 2) hits from blurred frenzy qfter the mindwrack, but it should really be used defensively, offensively is just not worth it.

The more times this counter fails in a fight, the easier it is for the thief to put pressure on you. So usually i either die, or i win in the first 30 seconds :P.

Hi thieves. I main a mesmer and I play with a S/D friend of mine 90% of the time.

When trying out different builds against him, I find that mesmer’s do have builds that can deal with a S/D thief. However, the one build that is desired in tpvp: The shatter build, is shot down pretty hard by S/D.

As others have mentioned before me: Shatter can deliver a huge amount of burst, but has very low sustained damage. A S/D thief can negate the burst without much effort. The mesmer in return is very vulnerable to physical damage and a S/D thief is not exactly easy to get away from.

If I spec into a condition, stealth heavy build, I don’t have any issues at all, as sustained damage works a lot better against S/D. Unfortunately, that kind of build and that kind of play style decaps the point, and it uses utilities such as Veil/Null Field and decoy, leaving no room for the portal or Illusion of Life.

As fun as it is to play, it is not viable in competitive tpvp. (From what I understand, much the same issue thieves had when they only had viable stealth heavy builds).

Edit. I think that Rome made a good point as well, but since I don’t play as a part of a team I am not used to getting backup no matter how many thieves are chasing me :P