How does one beat axe Mesmer as a Druid

I currently play the shoutbow Druid and have real trouble fighting the new meta that is axe/torch Mesmer, does anyone have any tips on how I should be facing them? Is staying on node a bad idea?

Honestly a tough matchup no matter what you do, mesmers just have so many built in safety nets. It'll come down to timing your dodges and praying to god your knockback and burst connects lol. You can try running taunt and it should make your knockback more reliable. Use your invisibility to reposition around them and longbow 5 is good to kill their clones so you can track them. Best burst for shoutbow is longbow 4 knockback into a longbow 2 then pet swap to smokescale for smoke assault, if those connect they are usually pretty low and will back off. If not, invis and reposition. I don't really use staff anymore for druid, takes away from any kill pressure, maybe use sword/x or even greatsword, learn to use the evadesbto your advantage. Other than that, he patient about condi clears and good luck. Hopefully they balance meaner in the next patch.

I find it much easier to manage mirages (those pesky axe mesmers you're talking about) using the bunker meta druid. I found that shoutbow traded away too much evade and cleanse for too little offensive capability in exchange. I like how easy it is to hunt scourges in shoutbow, but I find it harder to pressure far or defend my team's nodes on shoutbow.

I guess what you can do for now is Just learn to time your cleanses, dodge shatters, and reset with CA. I found that if I don't panic and get a sense for when to begin popping heals and cleanses (instead of immediately burning defensive moves at the first sign of trouble) that makes a huge difference. CA 5 in particular helps me repeatedly erase all clones at once, and that forces the mirage to respond, all while my pet no longer has clones to deal with. Chaining CA 2 and 3 helps manage the confusion stacking.

But the key to all this, for me, comes down to making effective use of sword/warhorn. Camping staff alone can only get you so far, you'll be vulnerable in the window between your staff 3 or 5 cooldowns. Of course, if you're running shoutbow sword/warhorn really isn't an option.

The one nice thing about fighting a mirage who isn't bursting you that fast is that they're constantly dropping into stealth, it makes decaps and even full caps much easier for me.

im gessing your fighting condi mes so you need to stay just out of thare reach and slowly kill them but that is realy hard to do becouse of so mutch blinking they have now and the dodge they have is harder to hit them so you will have to play a condi mass burst setup or try to disingage as soon as you can and fight him with a small group you will almost never win a solo fight agenst them no mater how good you are im sarry to say. i hope this helps you see how they a little.

I Can't beat a druid in 1v1 i just out play them and i'm an axe mesmer

@Yukio blaster.9082 said:I Can't beat a druid in 1v1 i just out play them and i'm an axe mesmer

then you must train more, because a good mesmer can beat any ranger (core, druid or soulbeast). mesmer is the most OP class atm, it is a broken class.

@Dragonzhunter.8506 said:

@Yukio blaster.9082 said:I Can't beat a druid in 1v1 i just out play them and i'm an axe mesmer

That's totally not true the most OP class in 1v1 now is the holosmith the only counter to him is a scourge and the top players like misha(mesmer) rotate when they see a druid the same thing about sindrener(thief) , cos druid with the F5 is so op plus the signet of stone super high survivability whit amazing dps from the pet and can hold a point for long time vs 2for my self i'm lvl plat and i have druid friends in plat too i train with them and it's impossible to kill a good druid and yes i can kill gold druids but plat 2 and above you can't with only condi damage, with power dmg maybe but that will take time.and if a druid died to a mesmer he need to change class or train more how to rotate the F5 with the dodges and evades and doing pressure with the pet in the same time .

lol, you made my day. you are the first mesmer who complain about druid, that you can't kill him. I don't know how long you played mesmer, but in PVP (and I am not talking about sPVP, where some classes like holosmith or a good scourge or druid can defend the point due to their particular skills) world vs worl, duels , a mesmer will beat any class in few seconds or in time. Atm it is no class who has so much evade/defense and damage in the same time. Also only thief can compete with mesmer at invisibility and disengage, get out of combat etc. So please don't come here and tell me that Druid, Holosmith are OP. Signet of the Stone is useless against any condi build class and a condi mesmer (a good one ofc) will eat a druid or other classes. Once again, you talk only about sPVP, where are other rules, thats why your friend change from mesmer to other class when he see a druid in enemy team, because in sPVP is not about 1 vs 1 but team vs team and team who can keep more points will won.

@Dragonzhunter.8506 said:

@Yukio blaster.9082 said:I Can't beat a druid in 1v1 i just out play them and i'm an axe mesmer

Not entirely true. S/W and Staff druid should be able to bunker Mirage indefinitely. With 4 evades, 2 ways to stealth, 2 full condi clears and lots of minor condi clears Mirage is not an issue. You can simply out-cleanse them. Not to say Mirage isn't OP, druid just is the one class that can easily counter it. You probably won't kill them but as long as you're fighting on a node you own, you have the advantage. You can even throw in a Spellbreaker and you will still be fine for a while.

@Dragonzhunter.8506 said:lol, you made my day. you are the first mesmer who complain about druid, that you can't kill him. I don't know how long you played mesmer, but in PVP (and I am not talking about sPVP, where some classes like holosmith or a good scourge or druid can defend the point due to their particular skills) world vs worl, duels , a mesmer will beat any class in few seconds or in time. Atm it is no class who has so much evade/defense and damage in the same time. Also only thief can compete with mesmer at invisibility and disengage, get out of combat etc. So please don't come here and tell me that Druid, Holosmith are OP. Signet of the Stone is useless against any condi build class and a condi mesmer (a good one ofc) will eat a druid or other classes. Once again, you talk only about sPVP, where are other rules, thats why your friend change from mesmer to other class when he see a druid in enemy team, because in sPVP is not about 1 vs 1 but team vs team and team who can keep more points will won.

Are you serious this may be true in gold but plat 2 and 3 never dud i guess you never did fight with a good druid to know the real cancer . and i destroy gold druids they are like candy to me but plat 2+ are impossible to kill in 1v1 withing less than 1min if they don't kill me and misha is not my friend he is a rank55 player (ESL champions) and he is the best mesmer in gw2 at this moment and he is a streamer too. so it's obvious you don't have a clue about sPVP,when you don't know the top players of the game.

@Yannir.4132 said:Not entirely true. S/W and Staff druid should be able to bunker Mirage indefinitely. With 4 evades, 2 ways to stealth, 2 full condi clears and lots of minor condi clears Mirage is not an issue. You can simply out-cleanse them. Not to say Mirage isn't OP, druid just is the one class that can easily counter it. You probably won't kill them but as long as you're fighting on a node you own, you have the advantage. You can even throw in a Spellbreaker and you will still be fine for a while.

@Yukio blaster.9082 said:Are you serious this may be true in gold but plat 2 and 3 never dud i guess you never did fight with a good druid to know the real cancer . and i destroy gold druids they are like candy to me but plat 2+ are impossible to kill in 1v1 withing less than 1min if they don't kill me and misha is not my friend he is a rank55 player (ESL champions) and he is the best mesmer in gw2 at this moment and he is a streamer too. so it's obvious you don't have a clue about sPVP,when you don't know the top players of the game.

Like I said in my first comment:

@Dragonzhunter.8506 said:but in PVP (and I am not talking about sPVP, where some classes like holosmith or a good scourge or druid can defend the point due to their particular skills) world vs worl, duels , a mesmer will beat any class in few seconds or in time. Atm it is no class who has so much evade/defense and damage in the same time. .... Once again, you talk only about sPVP, where are other rules, thats why your friend change from mesmer to other class when he see a druid in enemy team, because in sPVP is not about 1 vs 1 but team vs team and team who can keep more points will won.

Seems you both didn't read what I written. But was my bad too , because @YAOYE.4380 talked only about sPVP perspective. I am sorry.

@Dragonzhunter.8506 said:

Seems you both didn't read what I written. But was my bad too , because @YAOYE.4380 talked only about sPVP perspective. I am sorry.

Fair enough. I don't play WvW enough to know how it is there, and I certainly don't duel when I am there. Just saying, druid is the one class that counters mirage, and honestly don't see how it would be different for WvW. Druid might have an even bigger advantage there. But I don't claim to be an expert on this.

Avoid getting interrupted, and make sure you can cleanse at the same rate they can shatter burst condis. It doesn't even take Druid to do it, a Core build with WS/NM/BM with double cleansing sigils can eat the shatter burst and then weapon swap/pet swap at the same cadence as the shatters and remove most if not all of the damaging conditions, and coupled with WS+Troll Unguent and Leadership Runes+Entangle, you have all the tools you need to go toe to toe with mirage.

Druid just cleanses and heals a little more in the same timeframe, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Beyond that, melee cleave when you don't have confusion on you and they're dropping targets, LB burst when the target drop is on cooldown (and you don't have confusion). And again, play passive until you can bait out interrupts.

@Yukio blaster.9082 said:

@Dragonzhunter.8506 said:lol, you made my day. you are the first mesmer who complain about druid, that you can't kill him. I don't know how long you played mesmer, but in PVP (and I am not talking about sPVP, where some classes like holosmith or a good scourge or druid can defend the point due to their particular skills) world vs worl, duels , a mesmer will beat any class in few seconds or in time. Atm it is no class who has so much evade/defense and damage in the same time. Also only thief can compete with mesmer at invisibility and disengage, get out of combat etc. So please don't come here and tell me that Druid, Holosmith are OP. Signet of the Stone is useless against any condi build class and a condi mesmer (a good one ofc) will eat a druid or other classes. Once again, you talk only about sPVP, where are other rules, thats why your friend change from mesmer to other class when he see a druid in enemy team, because in sPVP is not about 1 vs 1 but team vs team and team who can keep more points will won.

rude

Can confirm that a Druid(that I play) can quite successfully kite and kill mesmers/mirages. Not saying those people might lack a bit of pro skill but still the point remains.

@jcbroe.4329 said:Avoid getting interrupted, and make sure you can cleanse at the same rate they can shatter burst condis. It doesn't even take Druid to do it, a Core build with WS/NM/BM with double cleansing sigils can eat the shatter burst and then weapon swap/pet swap at the same cadence as the shatters and remove most if not all of the damaging conditions, and coupled with WS+Troll Unguent and Leadership Runes+Entangle, you have all the tools you need to go toe to toe with mirage.

Druid just cleanses and heals a little more in the same timeframe, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Beyond that, melee cleave when you don't have confusion on you and they're dropping targets, LB burst when the target drop is on cooldown (and you don't have confusion). And again, play passive until you can bait out interrupts.

since this thread has already been necroed, I guess it wont matter if I say ^ and that's why you ended the season at Rank 65.

Since you dont play lb atm, do you think it's easier or harder (after the nerfs/meta changes) to do the same thing

@EnderzShadow.2506 said:

@jcbroe.4329 said:Avoid getting interrupted, and make sure you can cleanse at the same rate they can shatter burst condis. It doesn't even take Druid to do it, a Core build with WS/NM/BM with double cleansing sigils can eat the shatter burst and then weapon swap/pet swap at the same cadence as the shatters and remove most if not all of the damaging conditions, and coupled with WS+Troll Unguent and Leadership Runes+Entangle, you have all the tools you need to go toe to toe with mirage.

Druid just cleanses and heals a little more in the same timeframe, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Beyond that, melee cleave when you don't have confusion on you and they're dropping targets, LB burst when the target drop is on cooldown (and you don't have confusion). And again, play passive until you can bait out interrupts.

I stopped playing LB for a number of reasons. The majority of the reason being that I didn't see my sidenode matches being any different with or without LB.

Generally speaking, squishy classes died, tanky classes with damage like Necro and Warrior and subsequent elite specs took the point and you couldn't kill them in a reasonable time without stalling, and classes like Eles and other Rangers/Druid just stalled over a neutralized point.

But primarily, I made the swap to staff because of mesmers. I was so so sick of the phantasm spamming clone spamming monster ANet has allowed persist and how LB was constantly being body blocked that I just abandoned the weapon altogether in favor of the utility and higher mobility and tankiness of staff, and just relied on the idea that Chronos couldn't push me off a point without Defender up and Mirages can't sit on a point with me without eating Jacaranda nukes.

With that in mind, I played pure sidenode annoyer and secondary support, focusing entirely on creating favorable situations for my team with good rotations and resetting teamfights with burst heals. I was purely in the mercy of who I got queued with/against though because I couldn't carry, I could only create favorable situations where the damage on my team had to actually act on the opportunities.

But yes, I don't believe Chrono can surprise you with burst damage enough to kill you anymore, and Mirage is all about dodging the clones running at you and cleansing the burns, but in Mirages case their so squishy they'll die to staff autos. Chrono is just like any other annoying tank class you have to whittle down now.

@Dragonzhunter.8506 said:lol, you made my day. you are the first mesmer who complain about druid, that you can't kill him. I don't know how long you played mesmer, but in PVP (and I am not talking about sPVP, where some classes like holosmith or a good scourge or druid can defend the point due to their particular skills) world vs worl, duels , a mesmer will beat any class in few seconds or in time. Atm it is no class who has so much evade/defense and damage in the same time. Also only thief can compete with mesmer at invisibility and disengage, get out of combat etc. So please don't come here and tell me that Druid, Holosmith are OP. Signet of the Stone is useless against any condi build class and a condi mesmer (a good one ofc) will eat a druid or other classes. Once again, you talk only about sPVP, where are other rules, thats why your friend change from mesmer to other class when he see a druid in enemy team, because in sPVP is not about 1 vs 1 but team vs team and team who can keep more points will won.

He's also the guy begging to not nerf mesmer any more in that other thread you can probably find in a few seconds

With my support focused Druid i normally don’t have issue with Mirage in 1v1 scenarios, as long as you dodge the shatters you should be totally fine against them.

Where they really fuck me is in team fights, where they just smack me with an interrupt and burst my face when I didn’t know they were there.

1v1 is managable, but for me shoutbow is harder to fight mes compare to staff bunker druid. If you miss your lb4 and lb2 combo (it’s hard to land with all those clones) then it’s diffcult situation. With staff you can make more mistake and less punished by doing so..

This thread got necro'd so hard.