How do you deal with spell breakers?

I play scepter Condi mirage and can handle most classes or it least draw them out to a draw til it turns into a plus one. But spell breakers just give me the worst time. It's like the very nature of Mesmer just feeds them with the full counter proc. Sure I can stop attacking when he pops it. But my clones won't. So how do you guys deal with them in PvP when they push ur home node in the start of a match.

People keep telling me that mirage should be able to handle them easily. Even got flamed by a dbag dude who was like "Ur Condi mirage spell breakers should be EZ mode."

Spellbreaker is a tough one for mirage. It is definitely no free win - for the reasons you pointed out. Don't worry about that. :wink:

I often see it end as a very long duel, often a complete stall. Maybe abuse portal for superior mobility, depending on the situation. But I am no expert on mirage, so I will leave constructive feedback to others. :smile:

Yeah this is the problem - there seems to be a lack of appreciation for some of the difficulties of mesmer vs spellbreaker, given the general perspective of "mesmer OP", especially when the usual advice for l2p is "don't hit fullcounter/dodge fullcounter" etc.

Even Jazz notes in his new (and excellent) warrior matchup guide that certain builds for mesmer have a more difficult time vs spellbreaker.

From my personal experience as someone who runs DE with EM and axe/staff, it is difficult to prevent fullcounter from hitting clones (unless you shatter to clear in anticipation, but DE will mess with that - funny the clone spam is counter productive in this case), and very difficult to prevent clones from triggering it, which means the spellbreaker often gets free buffs (ie resistance) which grind the fight to an endless back/forth. This is vs good spellbreakers - of course many spellbreakers can and do melt if they don't manage their cooldowns well. But if anything this highlights a bit of joke in the gameplay - I don't want to be able to faceroll a spellbreaker that doesn't manage their defences well, but equally I'd like the tools to have control over what is meant to be the counterplay to spellbreaker, ie the ability to proc/not proc fullcounter.

It's a funny case of mesmer being overpowered in the wrong way, but at the same time not having general mechanics that enable skillful counterplay of this - it sort of cancels itself out to a 50/50 indefinite encounter where either can win depending on the individual players - and above a certain skill it can just be stalemate. I'll harp on again that if stow weapon also applied to clones it would make a huge difference in this matchup, as you could then stow to cancel all clone attacks.

(for the record this is all wvw as I don't play normal pvp anymore)

Glad to know it's not just me. Seems like spell breakers are the best duelist now. Even mediocre ones are pretty hard.

The first thing to understand is that Spellbreaker is a hard counter to "caster" classes, because they punish excessive use of trickery, which casters rely entirely on, and of them Mesmer is the worst offender for relying on trickery to win fights.

The silver lining is that Spellbreakers rarely run much Stability because it cuts into their Resistance uptime, and usually there is more of a need to counter conditions and soft CC than hard CC due to Warrior's natural meatiness.

What you have to do is destroy your clones beforehand, wait until FC is down, then pop clones and stunlock and confuse him, If you get lucky, he won't have stunbreak and you can down him before he is able to recover, or using stunbreak will heavily damage him from Confusion. The real risk from this approach comes from him having traited into passive defenses which will activate and ruin the combo, forcing you to reset.

The good news is that Mesmer is very good at resetting, so if you are careful, you will only stalemate at worst.

Isn't Full Counter instant cast? How do you "stop attacking" when they do it, in 90%+ of cases something will already be queued on the server to be applied next, no?

You can't reliably prevent Full Counter from being activated due to clones (especially if it's sceptre or staff clones), so it's a case of just making sure it doesn't hit you by evading or moving out of range. There's a lot of resistance on Spellbreaker to contest with and quite a lot of condi removal too between Shake If Off and traited Full Counter so you'll have long periods where you're simply not putting any pressure on the Spellbreaker at all and you'll either reach a stalemate very quickly or die whilst trying to contest a point. With a sceptre build, your best bet is to always be the +1 yourself after a Spellbreaker has blown a few key cooldowns against a Holo or Reaper.

I tend to avoid Spellbreakers when playing a Sceptre condi Mirage myself. Although I do find a well timed Arcane Thievery works surprisingly well for stripping resistance at key moments.

@Simonoly.4352 said:You can't reliably prevent Full Counter from being activated due to clones (especially if it's sceptre or staff clones), so it's a case of just making sure it doesn't hit you by evading or moving out of range. There's a lot of resistance on Spellbreaker to contest with and quite a lot of condi removal too between Shake If Off and traited Full Counter so you'll have long periods where you're simply not putting any pressure on the Spellbreaker at all and you'll either reach a stalemate very quickly or die whilst trying to contest a point. With a sceptre build, your best bet is to always be the +1 yourself after a Spellbreaker has blown a few key cooldowns against a Holo or Reaper.

I tend to avoid Spellbreakers when playing a Sceptre condi Mirage myself. Although I do find a well timed Arcane Thievery works surprisingly well for stripping resistance at key moments.

Yeah I agree Arcane Thievery -> burst at the right time is good. And of course Shattered Concentration - but that's only for builds taking Domination.

you could play something less cancerous than condi mirage :Dpvp/wvw population would be happy and you could prevent FC procsi say its a win-win

@Zawn.9647 said:you could play something less cancerous than condi mirage :Dpvp/wvw population would be happy and you could prevent FC procsi say its a win-win

Based on your icon I'm guessing ur an Engineer/Holo main. YOU ARE THE LAST CLASS that has any right to talk about any sort of cancerous type of build.

Seriously the last classes that should gripe about Condi mirage are Holo, spellbreaker, and core guard.

No room to complain

While harder than other classes they are still not that problematic. For me it normally comes down to how well the other player plays their class that makes them difficult. With that said, when fighting Spellbreakers I tend to "kite" them more than other classes, jaunt in and unload shatters then get away. As said earlier, try to stay out of their Full Counter range, as soon as they use it, jaunt in, unleash what you can then get out again. I find shatters work well on them.

@jportell.2197 said:

@Zawn.9647 said:you could play something less cancerous than condi mirage :Dpvp/wvw population would be happy and you could prevent FC procsi say its a win-win

i play scrapper on wvw sadly... spellbreaker and core guardian cant complain about mirage? HAHAHAHAHHAHA oki won't even try to reply anything after this HAHAHAwhat a joke