Guild Wars 2

Yes “Halting Strike” can crit. While I played with lockdown builds in sPvP I hit some GC-thief with 2,5k. ^-^

Hello fellow mesmers,

this is not a whine-thread, I’m just looking for some usefull advice for fighting thiefs in tPvP 1vs1 or 1vs2. I’m running a classic shatter spec with 20/20/0/0/30 and generally have no problems fighting anything – only thiefs give me a hard time. And I don’t mean the long invis or blind, my problem is the constantly out-of-my-sight-jumping and teleporting that I loose my aim, have to turn around, choose him or her again and start attacking. This re-arranging costs precious seconds in which the thief has the advantage and can destroy me.

Any usefull advices how I can solve that problem? How are you dealing with “I’m-here-now-I’m-there”-thiefs?

Thanks in advance.

Before I join the discussion I have to say it’s really cute (yes, I said cute…) how you describe your PvP training with your guildies and accepted the elementalist challenge. ^-^

Now the real stuff: I run a mesmer with various builds in pvp, because I like to try new builds and test synergies of traits and runes and stuff. So warrior with HS were no problem at all, I killed them with shatter-, condition- and lockdownbuild.
BUT: in my opinion the problem is that the warrior has easy access to cleansing, damage immunity, mobility and stability – you have everything nicely packed in one warrior while with my mesmer I have to decide what utilities and traits I choose so I endure enough damage while dealing enough of it. Hell, you can easily block 3s with shield stance, then use endure pain for 4s immunity, berserker stance for 8s condition immunity (and it really sucks when you can’t put cripple, chill or weakness on a warrior) and with that new healing skill defiant stance you have another 3s of immunity and heal yourself for each condition ticking and retaliation damage AND deal a tone of damage.

Sometimes I have the feeling the warrior is a jack of all trades device. >.<

I could have enough cleansing for a condition warrior, but then I lack stun breaker for hambow warrior. When I take stunbreaker, I’m pretty vulnerable to conditions. When I pick one of each and are almost able to kill a warrior – he runs away and the healing signet is doing what it’s doing. Then he comes back, I’m still in fight and he has over 50% life and kills me. THAT is annoying. Not the passive heal, not the damage, but the running away with 1% life and returning for the kill.

You are a warrior, you’re meant to stay in battle and fight till you die – not run away.

Simonoly.4352:

….. but the interrupt bonus should probably just go away now or be made significantly less potent.

Nope, never, nada…that’s what this rune makes so awesome. Give it a cooldown or something like that, but PLEASE let the interrupt bonus. Its great in WvW, if my enemies are too stupid to watch their conditions, not my fault.

And I’m also with Cares Less – confusion was nerved, now I have another source of confusion and I’ll use it to its maximum. You can use stability to avoid the stun/interrupt and so the confusion. Think about how to deal with certain builds and how to counter them instead of complaining about OP-ness.

Oh, and one thing about fairness: I don’t give a f**k about fairness, nobody does. Do you think a Stun-warri says: “Oh, you’re 6sec in stun now, I think I shouldn’t draw my GS and kill him with HB, that would be unfair ‘cause he can’t move.” or the thief, who joins the fight: “I better not spam HS ’cause that would kill him instantly and oh btw, 2vs1 is pretty unfair”?
…. everybody will use every source to gain an advantage, so really don’t bring up fairness.

First time in the english forum yay \(^-^)/

I was in PvP and thinking about new ideas for my tPvP-Mesmer and I saw all these traits ’bout stun here, daze there, stun when dazed…. and I was like: “That sounds awesome, why is nobody using it?”

And so I made a Condition-Interrupt-Build-Thingy (‘cause I don’t like direct dmg … don’t ask me why). Here’s the link to what build I ran:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|6.1b.h16.0.0.0|b.1b.h1l.a.1b.hd.0.0.0|1b.7a.1b.7a.1b.7a.1b.7a.1b.7a.1b.7a|1b.0.1b.0.1b.0.1b.67.1b.67.1b.0|u26c.0.a3.0.u47c|0.0|31.3c.3h.3k.0|e

The “Confounding Suggestions”-trait in Domination is what I really like. During Chaos Storm, you have the chance to daze your foe 5 times! (okay, realistically it’s only 2 or 3 times, but nonetheless, it’s great) and with CS also stun him at least 1 time.
Magic bullet stuns AND dazes and maybe stuns again and with “Imbued Diversion” you can stun and interrupt up to 5 targets and apply a hell of vulnerability – so the idea is:
- take dmg of your group with stun and daze
- strategically interrupt foes (stomp, AoE-Heal of guardians,…)
- support by applying vulnerability so your team deals more dmg
- “Arcane Thievery” – awesome for taking Might and other usefull boons and for taking away stability so you can daze and stun

I must admit, I had a few problems with thiefes ‘cause what you can’t see, you can’t stun and I’m rare with condition remove’s, so condi-builds are a problem as well – but in 2 or 3 vs X it works really well, with good timing and a bit luck your foe is doomed to inaction while you break their whole team.

Even in PvE you can stun most champions when their “Defiant” effect wears out and when you watch (here again, you have to recognize attack patterns and movement) when boss X is starting his AoE attack, so you can interrupt him and your team is safe. That is at least my experience with the build I posted.

You’re right when you say it’s a difficult stile, but only difficult to those who only want to deal a lot of dmg. If you go for lockdown, your primary duty is to stun and interrupt, not deal dmg. Once you get used to the idea of standing in the back (or at least try ^^") and “only” stun and watch out for enemy actions that you HAVE TO interrupt (like I said stomp or AoE-guardian-Heal) the whole Lockdown-Mesmer-Idea is really, really strong.