Guild Wars 2

I fought 3 PU mesmers last night. The first one killed me cause I tried to go in for a quick kill and made a ton of mistakes. The second one I fought all night (my food kept expiring) and finally managed to kill him after his keyboard ran out of batteries. The third one was a n00b who tried to jump me while I was skullkittening the 2nd one’s dead body so I killed him.

Each time I noticed that it’s not enough to just cnd to gain cloak, it’s a huge effort just to land your backstab. I think it’s kinda dumb that you can’t cnd off clones when they run at you to shatter, but even if you manage to cnd, they have blurred frenzy or scepter block depending on their mainhand, area denial chaos storm, confusion shatter, etc. All of which hurt you if you try to attack them and therefore can be used both offensively and defensively. Then on top of that they have distortion, teleports, and tons of dodges from the vigor. As if having to always watch for aegis isn’t hard enough so you don’t waste the cnd, they hide behind their clones making you waste your backstab. And, if you manage to get through everything I mentioned above and land that backstab, they have protection to absorb the damage. This all happens on top of all the stealth they get.

Do you know what my defense is when I come out of stealth? Try and stay behind the guy and hope he’s too stupid to turn around before my next cnd.

Anyways, I was wondering if there were any strategies against them that you guys may want to share.

PU Mesmers are the incarnation of a cheese build. In that regard they are quite similar to P/D with Dire gear and Perplexity Runes.

My advice would be to simply not fight them. PU Mesmers know they can win any fight if they just make it last long enough. But WvW doesn’t always offer that luxury. Kill speed matters and PU Mesmers can’t kill you quickly and can’t stop you from walking away.

And that’s exactly what I do….walk away.

If they want to kill people they should go ahead and play a build that can do just that.

Love this answer.

The only strategy i could tell you is to have several gap closer skills and never stop presurre them

its always pretty rough, but basically it boils down to
1. not killing too many clones
2. stealth a second or two after they stealth
3. have bountiful theft to get past their protection
4. stick to them as hard as possible when you can, even if you have to hit + dodge their block skill to do it

p/d (both power and condi) does very well against PU mesmers. You outstealth them with CnD, and you don’t need to be in melee range to land most of your damage. Just wait in stealth till they pop out and sneak attack from 900 range. Then CnD off clone and repeat. You have more access to stealth than they do defensive maneuvers, so just be patient.

I recommend traiting into blind on stealth, since you’ll be stealthing a lot, and mesmers can’t summon phantasms or hit their scepter torment while blinded.

Even easier if you trait into trickery, since bountiful theft will strip their aegis/protection, and sleight of hand dazes and gives you a 21 sec cd plasma/gap closer.

It’s a build that can 1v1 people but not much else. Ignore them and do something useful.

Their only downside is that they are slow. I walk away and make sure they see me doing it, it is actually a really good reverse grief ;p

Dee Jay.2460:

PU Mesmers are the incarnation of a cheese build. In that regard they are quite similar to P/D with Dire gear and Perplexity Runes.

My advice would be to simply not fight them. PU Mesmers know they can win any fight if they just make it last long enough. But WvW doesn’t always offer that luxury. Kill speed matters and PU Mesmers can’t kill you quickly and can’t stop you from walking away.

And that’s exactly what I do….walk away.

If they want to kill people they should go ahead and play a build that can do just that.

Pretty much what I do sometimes if I’m alone in wvw. I don’t like wasting too much time on long drawn out and annoying fights when I’m solo, unless the environmental situation around me allows me to lure them into something messy. ;/ Until that’s decided I just do what I always do and beat things with my sword while throwing bow and sword immobilizes at them and nomming boons.

What I do:

/laugh

leave.

S/d dazelock ( x/x/30/x/x) does very well against pu mesmers. At least for me
Just Dont Spam fs, use your shadowsteps wisely, daze them as often as you can (They cannot block/blurried frenzy while dazed)

Dee Jay.2460:

PU Mesmers are the incarnation of a cheese build.

And yet thievs always get more complaints about our gameplay, but this offtopic, couldnt resist.
IMO you got to have patience, try and keep track of the real one and keep ressure on him, have lots of condi clear and mobility. but then again… not worth the effort

I like dueling pu mesmers.

With the casual x/30/30/x/x, I pick up D/D and P/D. During the fight I create a good balance between offence and defence, sometimes sitting a bit extra in stealth for the cond removal and health regen. P/D allows me to create good pressure without standing near the mesmer which protects me from them blowing up clones and chaos storm, and on top of that it has among the worst auto-attack in the game which gives me a quite solid protection against confusion, going in with D/D at 5+ stacks of confusion along with getting hit by illusionary counter for 5 stacks of torment is usually what kills the thief in fights with pu mesmers.

As utilities Shadow Refuge for x2 sneak attacks and lifesteal, blinding powder for emergency stealth, shadowstep for stunbreaker and cond removal. Once the Mesmer is low I go in with D/D if I noted he recently used Chaos Storm. As I run executioner instead of hidden killer, 1 backstab and a heartseeker or some auto attacks are enough to kill a pu mesmer below 50%.

Shortbow, signet of malice, dagger storm. It’s easy. With lyssa runes the Condis from during dagger storm go away and it clears them ALL. Short bow auto as well clears em quick.

My best friend and cousin is a pu mesmer and I can tell you it is the ultimate cheese and that all these guys are right in that you can literally not die if you dont engage lol. They do very little damage to someone who doesnt fight back. Its kind of a depressing build imo.

What I do in WvW as a 30 SA D/D Thief:
Cloak and Dagger off phantasms to put them on the defensive and spread blind
Chain-cloak off clones if needed to remove conditions/heal
Basilisk burst combo when they’re out of stealth and don’t have protection
Finalize with Heartseeker when they stealth if they survive the combo by predicting where they are

The fight is just about keeping them on the defensive and typically all that means is making sure they don’t have more than one phantasm out.

Maybe it’s just me but I spam detonate cluster bomb like I would against other mesmer builds. If you don’t keep dpsing them while they’re stealthed you’ll never take them down.

Pretty much echoing what everyone else is saying, but you have to really take an aggressive stance toward them and be sure that you’re the one constantly controlling the fight and applying DPS.

If you swallow your pride, /laugh and RP walk away.

I take a lot of pride in not wasting my time on stupid fights that don’t help me win; don’t really understand the ‘pride’ argument. Are we supposed to fight every kitten and kitten jumping around yelling ‘DUEL ME BRO!’?

Here’s the easiest answer, our “amazing” backstab meta is mot going to kill a good pu Messer, and will have a lot of difficulties against a decent/average one. There are a few number of specs that can’t be killed by backstabs, and this is why I find it fundamentally flawed that it is such a large part of our meta, especially d/d power build, since I believe that d/d was intended to be a hybrid setup that people have simply turned into a power setup.

My strategy is to find something more useful to do or just log off and find something even more useful to do.