How do we kill condi mesmers?

How do we kill condi mesmers?

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Posted by: All Matters Fecal.9560

All Matters Fecal.9560

I’m switching between S/D and D/P in spvp and having trouble when I find a mesmer. Before I know it I’m loaded with like 15 stacks of confusion with 3 or 4 cover condis that I can’t get rid of in time to save myself.

I’ve been told dodging is the key to winning against a mesmer, but I’m not exactly sure on what I’m specifically supposed to be dodging…as soon as their clones spawn they shatter and condi bomb me. I’m surprisingly finding mesmers harder to beat than DHs, which I’m strangely finding easier and easier to deal with while using S/D. Also, even if I do successfully dodge their shatters, it seems like there’s 3 more clones ready for me 5 seconds later.

Please help.

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Posted by: ich.7086

ich.7086

If you don’t play Improvisation, play it : it’s nearly mandatory against condi mesmer because the stolen skill gives you all boons (minus quickness) with ~2s resistance (so you can heal through poison or spike with confusion+weakness+blind) being the more important and aegis, stab, protection , regen and vigor all adding to your sustain … this stolen skill is really helpful and you want to have it twice. Plus the random cooldown reset can save your life.

Don’t panic shadowstep when you get condi bomb’ed, sage amulet got no condition duration and the condi will likely be gone in like 5 sec so stay cool, plasma and you will see that you have taken like no damage while you can still be “full” aggressive. If you need to heal, use your signet of agility to get full endurance if not already the case, and you get a condi clear on top of that, to get full heal.

If you are S/D you should be playing EA and then the matchup is way easier since mesmers have an hard time to attacking you because of the clones so you can do some random dodges into clones attacks to get rid of conditions. With EA i even think you can not use the #2 return

On D/P, you should take PI so no EA for you but you have shadow shot for blind and headshot for rupting. Try to “taunt” their shield 4 and stow your weapon and blind it so it’s wasted (or better hit with basilic venom so you destroy it + PI proc + burst opening). Try to interrupt the signet of illusions so they don’t get another distorsion or burst ready or the heal, 0,25s cast time so you have to predict it but if you miss it you can AA to poison the heal tick so they get less. Remember that they cure conditions on shatter so don’t be too confident about your blind.

I don’t think you are supposed to 1v1 condi mesmers but you have enough tools to take the damage and force them to use their cooldown and you have the damage to kill them fast when they got no cooldown (+1 situation) as long you are not afraid to eat some condi stack.

I Am An Intruder – War 80
Ich Bin Marc – Thief 80
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] (Fort Ranik)

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Posted by: Azukas.1426

Azukas.1426

As a mesmer main I can tell you the staff acro build is what you need to look into.

That being said it’s not meta for a reason and you could be severely gimping your team running it.

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Posted by: ezd.6359

ezd.6359

As a mesmer main I can tell you the staff acro build is what you need to look into.

That being said it’s not meta for a reason and you could be severely gimping your team running it.

When i see staff thief i just teleport (or 2 on staff) and autoattack. He will die from auto after losing all initiative. As a mesmer i dont see good solution in this situation for thieves.

English is not my native language, sorry :<

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Posted by: Azukas.1426

Azukas.1426

As a mesmer main I can tell you the staff acro build is what you need to look into.

That being said it’s not meta for a reason and you could be severely gimping your team running it.

When i see staff thief i just teleport (or 2 on staff) and autoattack. He will die from auto after losing all initiative. As a mesmer i dont see good solution in this situation for thieves.

No that’s not going to work. That build clears condi on evade. The amount of evades you get from Daredevil, Acro, and staff 3 &5 will keep your conditions off. Then the staff skill 4 is a ranged CoE blind that will kill your clones while blinding you. The dodge they use bound will not only clear condi but also kill your clones while hitting you for harder than shadow shot.

A good player on thief will keep you blinded, dodge tons of your & your clones attacks to shed your condis, and also pump out some serious damage. Now if they use D/P as their secondary weapon they are now able to chain stealths.

Also you also fail to realize you can chain your attacks/dodges for some serious invuln frames. A really common tactic is dodge > 3 > vault. The thief is literally only vulnerable during the end of the vault meanwhile you’ve taken 4k Bound, 2-3k dodge skill, and have the potential of facing a 5k bound.

Now the really good thieves won’t even use bound in a 1v1. They’ll just negate all your damage with evades and blind while pumping auto chains into you.

Staff is legit

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Posted by: ezd.6359

ezd.6359

I don’t know how you can clear all conditions and kill all clones =) Just can’t imagine. Only possible way to kill me as a thief is: one “disable” attack with some autoattacks, i use F4, then run away, wait, use venom and attack me again. Or pray to a.net gods for lucky critical hits. In another way staff thieves are more hopeless, because they can’t reduce the distance fast enough.

English is not my native language, sorry :<

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Posted by: Wargameur.6950

Wargameur.6950

I don’t know how you can clear all conditions and kill all clones =) Just can’t imagine. Only possible way to kill me as a thief is: one “disable” attack with some autoattacks, i use F4, then run away, wait, use venom and attack me again. Or pray to a.net gods for lucky critical hits. In another way staff thieves are more hopeless, because they can’t reduce the distance fast enough.

I don’t know which game mode you play but in pvp you basically play on a point and your clones are quite packed. It’s really easy to kill them with one or two vaults.

When I play staff I use dash, I don’t think you can out run a dash thief on mesmer no matter your game mode. phase retreat + blink is basically the same range as dash + shadow step.

With d/p to avoid hitting the mesmer shield is really important, he can’t cast it again which mean 1 or 2 phantasms less and an important skill on a long cooldown. You need to watch for both signets and interrupt them if you can ( at least dodge the moa )

main ~ Esper Jace (Thief )/ Ellundril Jiluan
(mesmer ) – EU [Teef]

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Posted by: Azukas.1426

Azukas.1426

I don’t know how you can clear all conditions and kill all clones =) Just can’t imagine. Only possible way to kill me as a thief is: one “disable” attack with some autoattacks, i use F4, then run away, wait, use venom and attack me again. Or pray to a.net gods for lucky critical hits. In another way staff thieves are more hopeless, because they can’t reduce the distance fast enough.

We’re not talking about WvW. Game isn’t balanced around it.

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Posted by: ezd.6359

ezd.6359

I don’t know how you can clear all conditions and kill all clones =) Just can’t imagine. Only possible way to kill me as a thief is: one “disable” attack with some autoattacks, i use F4, then run away, wait, use venom and attack me again. Or pray to a.net gods for lucky critical hits. In another way staff thieves are more hopeless, because they can’t reduce the distance fast enough.

I don’t know which game mode you play but in pvp you basically play on a point and your clones are quite packed. It’s really easy to kill them with one or two vaults.

May be it is you play on a point, i prefer to leave the point to survive and return to it 10 seconds later when that thief is dead or ran away

I will repeat, only possible way for a thief with staff to kill me is when my skills on cooldowns. Kill all clones, clear all conditions and kill me in same time is not from this reality.

English is not my native language, sorry :<

(edited by ezd.6359)

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Posted by: ich.7086

ich.7086

Accro staff got perma swiftness + the usual ports (steal & shadowstep) + vault being a 600 units gap closer means that an accro staff thief got a better mobility than you and will catch you up if you don’t portal. If we are speaking of DA staff it depends if he runs UC or Bound but he got at least 50% swiftness uptime.

Just a vault inside the clones kill them all + clear a condi + eat >33% of your health if you got hit by any chance and it crits. Or bound followed by steal does about the same thing (damage on you is less unless if thief is DA).

Most staff thieves run impact strike and not venom because the #2 has perfect timing for dodge through you (finishing clones and damaging you if bound) → daredevil runes proc → vault guaranteed crit.

When on staff don’t stay back like on d/p where you can punish with PI and insta gap close with SS, always stay on target only moving back when you need to. Staff has the best AA damage-wise and the #3 projectile reflection is glorious once you start timing it.

And yeah ofc apart surprise burst you only kill people when their defensives skills are on cooldown but the point is that staff thief put a really good pressure on the mesmer AND doesn’t get pressured back (ez cleave, clean on dodge) that he doesn’t have to be preservative as others builds has to thus forcing the mesmer to blow his cooldown quicker. And since you got less clones you get less sustain from shatter and lower f4 uptime.

For some staff gameplay : see Min Scherzo youtube channel

I Am An Intruder – War 80
Ich Bin Marc – Thief 80
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] (Fort Ranik)

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Posted by: alccode.1297

alccode.1297

If you need to heal, use your signet of agility to get full endurance if not already the case, and you get a condi clear on top of that, to get full heal.

Can you explain this a bit? Are you saying the signet provides heal through some trait or something? Because I know of no such ability, so I must have either misunderstood or you may have meant something else. Only thing I can think of is that you meant to say to use the heal skill after condi cleanse to then get “full heal”, right?

And thanks for the advice… I generally find mesmers not a problem whatsoever as thief (mainly D/P) but it’s a good reminder to run Improvisation more often for that crazy stolen item that I love to get from mes. So juicy.

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Posted by: Wargameur.6950

Wargameur.6950

If you need to heal, use your signet of agility to get full endurance if not already the case, and you get a condi clear on top of that, to get full heal.

Can you explain this a bit? Are you saying the signet provides heal through some trait or something? Because I know of no such ability, so I must have either misunderstood or you may have meant something else. Only thing I can think of is that you meant to say to use the heal skill after condi cleanse to then get “full heal”, right?

And thanks for the advice… I generally find mesmers not a problem whatsoever as thief (mainly D/P) but it’s a good reminder to run Improvisation more often for that crazy stolen item that I love to get from mes. So juicy.

The point is that channeled vigor gives you back endurance instead of health if it’s not full. Using the signet means your endurance is full, providing the extra heal from channeled vigor. wiki

main ~ Esper Jace (Thief )/ Ellundril Jiluan
(mesmer ) – EU [Teef]

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Posted by: All Matters Fecal.9560

All Matters Fecal.9560

Thanks for the help and discussion, everyone!

I played a few games with my stick instead of a shortbow when mesmers were present and it worked out pretty well. Just seeing it from a staff build’s perspective put it all in line for me and I know how the usual common flow of a mesmer duel goes and I find myself putting up a somewhat fair fight instead of getting blown up instantly. The improvisation tip helped immensely.

I started this season late (like a week ago…just hit silver) and I’m finding success and entertainment with an S/D & SB marauder build with Fist Flurry to make up for lack of burst. It seems that S/D is so uncommon that people don’t know how to handle all the teleports, cripples, and immobs. Juking and teleport-dodging makes fights insanely satisfying.

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Posted by: Chapell.1346

Chapell.1346

It’s difficult alphabetically; shatter is a bit tricky (condition or power), who knows. the thing is, one or more illusion its the same (unless has been change without prior notice), as long as one clone manage or went thru before destroying them to hit their counterpart, while there is a possibility or miraculously manage to ignore other illusion/clone (probably by dodging) but you’ll still suffer and get the full effect raw burst including their condition applied.
Yes, dodge management can help as well as coop with other profession that specialize at condition cleansing if self condi cleansing fails you, the most common and possible solution would be stay away on their tool tip radius which i believe 200? or as someone mention, nuked them first. Scepter is also different page of the book, since Mesmer was a masterpiece perhaps some of the mesmer main here will try to educate us and learnt their way how to counter them?

[Urge]
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.

(edited by Chapell.1346)

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

If it hasn’t been mentioned, it’s important to know that if you’re using EA as a cleanse, it only removes conditions when dodging the real mesmer’s attacks; dodges on clone attacks will not cause conditions to be cleansed. Confusion also applies its extra damage on dodge, so it’s important to dodge at the right time and not frivolously use them trying to cleanse off clones; you’ll kill yourself this way.

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Posted by: ich.7086

ich.7086

Well i may need to check again but i’m pretty sure i get cleansed when i dodge a clone attack and have sometimes purposefuly dodge only that because i needed a cleanse and got cleansed. As long you see the “Evade” and that the icd is over, you should get cleansed.

I Am An Intruder – War 80
Ich Bin Marc – Thief 80
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] (Fort Ranik)

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Posted by: Chapell.1346

Chapell.1346

Since confusion was already on the table and technically its been there to prevent spamming virulently while we’re at it, if by chance got struck with a condition called Torment a counterpart of Mobility which i believe Thief also excel at.
May i also suggest that take Hard to Catch to prevent their you know dazing abilities and maintain its cooldown if possible, judging if you run Daredevil which is almost “mandatory” Unhindered Combatant is way to go. long story short nothing to afraid of since we have the tools, have you tried running Condition against them aswell? I’m not saying you must just to balance things out.

[Urge]
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.

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Posted by: Third Degree Ember.6430

Third Degree Ember.6430

If you play the metabattle d/p build, you shouldn’t be taking 1v1s against chronophantasma. Your role would be to rotate to +1 fights to quickly end them and decap points. Unless the mesmer is really bad you’ll be in a losing match up or a fight that takes way too long. That said, shadow shot to blind shield 4 from mesmer blocks clone generation if you do +1 a fight against a mesmer. The stolen ability gives you some resistance too.

If you’re doing a custom build, then all this goes out the window of course, and you should play to the strengths of your build.

(edited by Third Degree Ember.6430)