Guild Wars 2

How do I make a GOOD mesmer fall to the floor?

Not the ones who only know how to dodge for clones or love to standstill for back stabs. The ones who play well and kill you with one mistake?

Today and countless times before I’ve dueled mesmer’s in WvW and countless times I have failed.

It’s not the finding out who the real one is but Phantasms and Shatterbursts that are the main threat. After taking down a phantasm another pops up and if a shatter misses it doesn’t take long to repeat the process as well as faking Shatterbursts with only 8 second cooldowns making it relatively easy to pull off and wasting limited utilities.

And every time I try to put pressure on them with damage they have but too many ways to escape:
Blink, Decoy, Mass invisibility ( not to hard to interrupt), portals, phase retreat, distortion, blurred frenzy.

Or If I go defensive I’m just wasting time and not being any significant threat to the mesmer. I manage to kill clones and evade the shatter bursts but without putting any form of pressure on them I’ve realized that they are impossible to kill in this way.

I have also grinded a phantasm mesmer up to level 80 in hopes that any thieves would counter him (phantasms aren’t really hard to play) but alas once you get two or three berserkers, duelists up and manage to drain him of his cooldowns (heals etc) by playing defensively it only takes a second for those heat seeking missiles to rip the poor thief apart.

So I’ve come to the forums at my lowest point and plead for the some aid in dealing with this thief killing threat.

Here’s a pic to proof I actually have a mesmer at 80.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Vs-Mesmer-in-duels/first#post1783846

Something to help out with figuring out.

I don’t face too many Shatter mesmer to be able to be confident in my tactics, I tend to find myself getting my butt kicked by Phantasm mesmers (Even if I down them, a Phantasm or 2 that are still alive counter down me and due to Mesmer down + Phantasms >>>>>>> Thief down….)

I don’t know about that first video. The mesmer didn’t utilize any of the shatterburst strategies such as blinking behind the target and shattering all the clones at the same time and at point blank range giving you little time to react. He started shattering all of his clones from far away so not sure how effective that is. ( wasn’t much of a burst)

Also I wasn’t to sure that mesmer understood how thieves work such as walking directly towards the area where the thief shadow refuged which was basically asking to be back stabbed. Also most mesmers that I encounter know exactly how to counter shadow refuge and you got to be extremely careful when using it.

I also agree with the other comments on the thread about how it seemed the mesmer was chasing the thief rather then the other way around.

The mesmer overall probably isn’t that bad of a player just lacked understanding of the thief class.

The second video kinda only applies to a spvp scenario. The fact they are fighting over a point means no kiting of the thief over long distances as they don’t really want to leave the node. The shortbow becomes alot more effective as everything is clunched together so it’s kinda hard to apply in WvW where things can have more distance.

Also mesmers in Spvp tend to slot different skills then WvW ones as they have skills that benefit the entire party such as illusion of life rather then skills that just benefit themselves. So it might make easier but no doubt both players in that video are very professional.

I’ve found using S/D and frequently juking them with Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return makes it easier to win out. My best luck vs fight club mesmers has been in a really rugged build using S/D and something like 10-30-30-0-0. Of course, if you don’t stack up enough defensive stats to withstand one of those shatter bursts, any mistake will kill you.

Also, don’t be overly aggressive, keep a close eye on confusion stacks and shed those off. I’ve seen many thieves blow themselves up when just waiting a second and using shadow return to clean off the confuse stack right after they apply it would have won it for them.

I main a mesmer too but loving the thief at the moment but as i play a mesmer there condition removal is not very good, you can spec for it to be improved of course but you loose so much, the best way is to pile on conditions and be VERY patient so it might be a long fight but you can do it.

against the shatterburst you mentioned i am guessing your meaning the 7 mirrors? where it looks like an army is pouncing on you?
the pressure there is first from stacking confusion then using mind wrack, if you see a wave of 3 in front you can generally tank this then the next wave dodge, dodge for your life as the second wave is typically used for mind wrack over the first, of course this is unpredictable somewhat.

Conditions is the answer and patience and only pounce once distortion / decoy is down, decoy can be countered, too if you use shortbow lay a poisson field down first in a bid to rip him out of stealth of or fire the explosive shot thing, a heavy stealth build and a very well controlled thief will be able to take a well played mesmer, not easily mind you.

we have a lot of ways to close in on a mesmer too, f1, short bow, shadowstep, HS, gun, Sword (if positioned right ofcourse)

probably missed some as i am rather new to thief but a mesmers worst enemy i can tell you by far is conditions.

I’ll add the shatter builds your encountering are ridiculous at the moment and as a mesmer myself i want these to be toned down, there’s burst and then there’s execution.

I’ve yet to come across a thief who can even down my mantra mesmer. The fact that I remove all conditions and heal every 1.33 seconds makes it very difficult for thieves to apply their conditions, and combined with the build’s high mobility it’s extremely difficult to burst me down. Versus a GOOD thief I end up in this never-ending 1v1 when the thief keeps steal thing to reset the fight. On a recent encounter I was able to moa them 6 times before they finally ran off, since the fight was going nowhere. I don’t consider myself the best mesmer out there (especially because I main a warrior; mesmer’s just a fun class to play), but I do consider myself a decent player. I’ve yet to fight a dodge bunker thief so maybe that’s my mesmer’s weakness? I don’t know.

as a thief player, mesmers are difficult because they have different builds in WvWvW, and it takes time to pin point what that mesmers build is

and usually our build is just to counter one build of a mesmers build, (we cant change build during the fight of course)

so in a fight if we are fighting a mesmer with no condition removal build, but if we are running a non-condi build we are screwed, and so on.

unlike other classes in which they are built in the same fashion like eles, we can deduce that they all run the same bunker build, likewise to guardians that it is either or dps or bunker, etc etc

tl:dr
mesmers builds has a wide range of builds that makes them hard to defeat, because our build is not one size fits all.

P/d is fairly strong against most mesmers. Only some gimmicky, “pet mesmers” who sit on 3 izerkers can effectively defeat p/d. But those suck against pretty much anything else.

S/d is another strong option. Very effective against almost everything, but it’s not nearly as easy to use as the other thief weapon sets.

I’ll add the shatter builds your encountering are ridiculous at the moment and as a mesmer myself i want these to be toned down, there’s burst and then there’s execution.

The shatter burst loses to good p/d and s/d. But yes, it pwns other mesmers who just try to sit on phants.

In my opinion, the best way to kill a Mesmer is to use Shortbow with Fire Sigil. Watch for their burst, don’t melee unless confident you can burst them down (low health).

Ashanor.5319:

In my opinion, the best way to kill a Mesmer is to use Shortbow with Fire Sigil. Watch for their burst, don’t melee unless confident you can burst them down (low health).

Good tip. Sometimes, when the mesmer doesn’t have powerful phants up, it’s useful to just kite them.

Shortbow is an ok approach against certain builds. If they have gs secondary, it’s much better to just go in melee. I personally would suggest only use shortbow in team fights. If it’s 1v1, just go in.

In general, the 1v1 match-up between a dueling mes and a thf is 5/5. It all comes down to two things

-The initial burst, and whether the mes can effectively nullify it.

-How much of an advantage the inevitable shadow refuge provides to the thief (don’t get pulled/pushed out, don’t get tracked and eat free hits, etc).

Of course there are other factors, but you can more or less judge how the fight is going just based on the above two points.

If you see a phantasmal build though, just run. You are not going to win if the mes is any good. It’s the most selfish of all builds that really has no utility outside of 1v1, but it is extremely powerful for just that particular situation.