Guild Wars 2

Hello there, S/D thief reporting in. I currently use Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes and Trickery, and feel as though I at least have a chance fighting every class. That is, except for Mesmers. Now Shatter I can usually at least have a chance, although a well played one is difficult. But PU and other cond specs just absolutely wreck me 1v1.

If anyone has some general Thief vs Mesmer advice, or, better yet, tips specifically for fighting the cond outbreak that has awoken, that advice would be welcome!

This is mainly for 1v1s fights in spvp, but WvW based advice is welcome. I understand that in a actual match, its better to avoid this fight if possible, but I would like to at least have a chance.

Thanks!
-Zoren

PS: Lets keep this free of elitism like “Oh mesmers are easy, my super duper spec can easily win” and not giving any advice. Thanks again!

PPS; I would rather avoid speccing into Shadow Arts if at all possible but that may be needed

If you’d spec into shadow arts, that doesn’t mean you have to take shadow rejuvenation. With shadow embrace/shadow protector and blind on stealth, you have the condi removal you need, blinds are always good and regen gives smaller heal than shadow reju but allows for more aggressive gameplay as you don’t have to sit in stealth to benefit from it.

Sad reality is without pretty constant DoT cleansing, there really is no way to deal with PU condi mesmer at the moment. It’s rather dumb.

I fought a few and it was just a stalemate. I was not going to sit in the open and let him load the condis on from stealth and he was not going to come out of stealth and let me hit him.

This was using SA of course. Using a trickery build and going into acro for things like pain response so as to add to the trickery cleanses AND adding shadowstep was not enough due to constant reapplication. You run out of cleanses easier then he runs out of stealths so as to allow you to hit him.

I find SA/Ac/Trix really good vs condi builds, even PU mesmers.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

I find SA/Ac/Trix really good vs condi builds, even PU mesmers.

Hows that build damage wise?

babazhook.6805:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

I find SA/Ac/Trix really good vs condi builds, even PU mesmers.

Hows that build damage wise?

Considering stats have been pulled loose from traitlines, it’s not too shabby.
It’s just really, really passive.

Not my thing.

I’d personally advice to sit in shortbow more against condi classes. Maintain pressure while staying largely out of range if possible. I noticed that especially with DA/CS, the shortbow puts mesmers in a tough spot. Bait out the utilities, dodges and heals on Shortbow, then burst in with S/D (or D/P for that matter).

But yeah, it’s one hell of a matchup.

That has been my main concern with dropping Damage lines in favor of passive play, which just seems wrong for a s/d thief. I’ll give the SB suggestion a try today, see how it goes and report back

At the moment, unless the PU mesmer is inexperienced. There is no way you can win unless you catch one off guard and your opening combo drop them (which is next to legendary rareness).

6s torch stealth, 6s decoy and 10 seconds invisibility and scepter 3 got a huge buff in direct damage. When i play my PU mesmer i usually stealth to them, pop torch phantasm, dodge to create clone, torch 4 to blind and confuse, if they swing weapons i block to apply torment, if thief doesnt swing weapons, i apply scepter 3 in extreme close range. Then i pop F2 shatter, while he dodge or whatever, i swap to staff, pop 2 n 3 then dodge. Its a downside battle for the thief after that, if thief refuge, i chain my stealth and spread distance. I run 2 stunbreaks, im either in stealth or im in chaos armor when unstealthed.

All sd can do is use a lot sword return and count on stun combo. I thyink sd muct atack form huge distance utilitizing sword return and natural barriers.

pu mesmers… u just run. Its rather pointless.

Shatter mesmers will be beat if you stay in Shortbow…. which kinda sucks but its funny how much easier it makes the fight.

That’s about it for mesmer.

Vornollo.5182:

babazhook.6805:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

I find SA/Ac/Trix really good vs condi builds, even PU mesmers.

Hows that build damage wise?

Considering stats have been pulled loose from traitlines, it’s not too shabby.
It’s just really, really passive.

Not my thing.

I’d personally advice to sit in shortbow more against condi classes. Maintain pressure while staying largely out of range if possible. I noticed that especially with DA/CS, the shortbow puts mesmers in a tough spot. Bait out the utilities, dodges and heals on Shortbow, then burst in with S/D (or D/P for that matter).

But yeah, it’s one hell of a matchup.

The dmg loss is maybe 25-33% (really rough estimate), that’s in exchange for really good condi cleanses. One major complaint thieves have is lack of condi removals, but the class is weak only vs massive condi burst, sustained condi pressure is not a problem if built for it.

Any build can be played passively, SA is still beneficial for those who like aggressive play now more than before. Dmging condi removed when the thief enters stealth + regen which doesn’t require sitting in stealth. Acro is way more passive than SA but it’s not really needed cos SE priorises dmging condis. CS/SA/Trix has a bit lower dmg than DA/CS/Trix but hell lot more survivability (not saying you have to go shadow reju, SE is all that’s needed).

Very few played 6/6/x/x/x before and it was just as the equivalent build now, reliance on high burst and dying when someone sneezes condis on other side of the map.

How do you expect d/p or d/d with sb to clear condi bomb with 10+ stacks of confusion/bleeds and tons of cover up condis. If lucky, shadowstep removes what hurts most, if not, the mesmer can laugh at thief pew pewing with bow when he has confusion on.

Basically PU Mesmer counters all zerk classes.
So gl with fighting PU mes.

They can easily one shot you from stealth (if you don’t outstealth him, which you currently can not do). If you catch him, you wouldn’t be able to one shot him back because he has free invulnerable and evade, further and shorter cd blink, condition cleanse on stealth too.

Btw, if you still think PU is just condition, then you’re sorely mistaken. One shot power PU is more popular now. It doesn’t exist in the past because of trait limitation, now you can go PU + power build easily.

Shadow Arts thief vs PU mesmer, assuming equal skill, the fight wont end. So if you dont even have shadow arts you will lose. But If you take shadow arts you will survive but wont be able to kill the mesmer.

It will just be a stealth war like betwenn 2 D/P shadow arts thief and you both reset until you really mess up your rotation and die from it

The stupid part is that a PU mesmer can still shatter for 20k while shadow arts thief can barely backstab for 7k lol.

This applies to WvW.

I’ve been running torment shatter since the trait came out a little over a year ago. It was decent pre-patch, but post it has been particularly strong, not so much due to the extra stealth (which is nice) but Blinding Dissipation + Ineptitude. Pre-patch I slowly evolved my build to run a pistol OH instead of torch specifically because of thieves. I needed to maintain distance as much as possible, and landing a shatter on a “permastealth” thief was difficult, so the pistol phantasm helped apply pressure until I could secure a shatter with a stun. Even then, that one round of shatter was not usually enough to kill a thief.

The patch changed many things considerably. I no longer have to choose between torment-on-shatter application and PU, and PU is simply too good not to take. However, in fighting thieves, I don’t need to really rely on it all that much. Whereas I used to need to keep my distance, now I prefer to let the thief get in my face, so aside from often opening with a torch phantasm from stealth, I don’t really stealth much, because I want him to try and hit me. As soon as I get either the scepter block off (for 5 stacks of torment) or the scepter 3 channel (for 6 stacks of confusion), I immediately blow all my shatters for a fast application of confusion and torment stacks. Sometimes I add in Pain Inverter for good measure. It’s not unusual to see the thief with 10-15 stacks of both torment and confusion, each of which regularly reaches 3k+ tick.

Usually that’s enough to finish the thief. He scampers away and stealths and is downed. If I fight two thieves, I just focus one of them, and let the other one die from AoE. Just fought a duo yesterday, in fact. I didn’t even need to pop Mass Invisibility, although I did use the torch stealth. I just focused one, and by the time he was down so was the other one. With 3k armor, 28.5k health, and PU boons, even if they managed to hit me it wasn’t for much. Although good luck getting a hit in what with the at-will blind application from shatter skills, blocks, and evades.

However, had they been using shortbow, that’d have been a whole different ballgame. The one specific weakness that any shatter will have is conditions. When fighting power stunlock mesmers myself, I do survive the initial burst even if it comes out of stealth, because I have the armor to withstand it, which a thief ofc would not. But most of them succumb to the conditions sooner or later simply because they do not have the cleanses. I’ve noticed that many of them don’t even run the mantra cleanse, which leaves them with basically just the torch for condition cleanse.

Mesmers need to keep moving. Anything you can do to root them down and load them up with conditions will be in your favour.

In general though, I’d avoid these encounters altogether to whichever degree possible until Mesmer is nerfed back to reality.

1. Avoid them and starve them of fights 1v1. It’s cheese pre-patch and just ridiculous post-patch. If they know what they’re doing with their rotations which is usually the case, they hit pretty hard and smother you with many stacks of condi that you can’t clear in time. That confusing images not only gives stacks of confusion, it hits really hard too even if they are condi built. They have alot of defensive skills to mitigate your burst when they come out of stealth and also escape with mobility when they have to.

2. Bring another thief friend and pressure him to eventually blow all CDs and rotations.

well, a pu mesmer has grater stealth uptime than a thief, (up to 47 seconds without being revealed, and the next stealth skill will be off cd in only a few seconds.)
keeps applying damage to you via klones while he is in stealth.
…

One of the best ways to deal with him is to try to instagib him in a single burst rotation.
But to keep the mesmer in place is the difficult part, blink F3 and F4 are great tools to stop you from bursting him. also due to high stealth uptime it’s verry unlikely to attack him without a cooldown ready to escape your burst, while you need to burn your cd’s to stay allive.
A condition build is also unlikely to win the fight, due to high stealth uptime with decent condi removola on the side of the mesmer. and only a few cover conditions on side of the thief.

But if the mesmer is as skillfull as your thief, and you don’t have enough damage to burn him in a single burst, stealth up, and look for an other target, or freinds to help you (i recommend an engie to kick him out of stealth)