Whats a good way to kill a big mes group?

So, I've had repeated trouble whenever i run into a big group of mesmers in pve. I'm sure there's a really easy way to kill them that i just haven't grasped yet, but thats why i'm posting this . In particular, there are 2 locations that i would like help with, but also help with killing multiple mesmers in general for future occasions.

Area 1) The Rangers Path. If you've tried this, you know you have to kill a very large group of mesmers that seem to "shotgun" away from the boss whenever you get within a minimap screens distance. I'm sure someone out there thinks this is the easiest mission ever, so i'd like your help.

Area 2) The Underworld. I've been making expeditions to a new (to me anyway) "eternal" creature for lack of a better term (the first one being the smites), however, this new creature is in an area swarming with those messmers you may have had the distinct pleasure of encountering just after completing the first quest. The new creature is also a mesmer, although higher lvl, which doesn't help things.

Any help is appreciated, i'm sure i'm missing something basic but anything is good. Thx.

Disclaimer: Warning, I'm a GW newb. It's you who should give me advice, not the other way round.


I could think of 2 methods:

1) Mesmers rely heavily on energy draining. The logical conclusion would be to use a warrior and rely totally on melee damage and adrenaline skills. This way 70% of the mesmer spells are worthless against you.

2) Beat fire with fire. Use mesmer spells against them.

Of course, if you're neither a warrior nor a mesmer, you're f*cked.

Thx for the advise, I have used a warrior with success before, but they use a wide range of stuff, from clumsiness to conjur fantasm, empathy, interupts, anti adrenaline, etc. So being a warrior doesn't help as much as it would normally. As for beating a mes with a mes, its your 2 mes vs about 6 - 9 of theirs in UW. Of course we could not attack the mes, but that means not going after the new creature, which is the point.

I'm a Elementalist/Monk... when coming across a large group of Mesmers I quickly cast "Mark of Protection" or "Healing Breeze" on myself... and then take them out using risky but quick cast AoE spells like Lava Front.

However if they have Shatter spells then I tend to run off... since afterall they are the counter class for spell casters like myself.

There's pretty much only one way of killing monsters in PvE....

.... and that's one at a time .

Hmmm ... I could have sworn I saw some "farming" videos of people killing a lot more than one at a time.

Okay okay.... There's pretty much only one *safe* way of killing monsters in PvE...

...one at a time

Happy now?

Actually, don't answer that question lol .

If you've got an E/Me, you could try using mantra of resolve. That'll let you get off nukes even though you'll lose some mana when you get interrupted. Once you get some nukes off, the mesmers should be easy pickings.

The ranger mission wasn't that bad if I recall. Not sure I had mantra of resolve back when I tried it out with my E/Me, but I don't remember having such a bad time. I just took things slow, made sure to clear the regular spawns, then picked off the patrols whenever they became isolated. I might have used hex breaker back then, but I'm not sure.

The ranger path is as hard as you are impatient. My first time I killed one or two of those floaty @$%#ers and thought, "wow these are sissies" and proceeded to charge in only to find out that in groups of more than about two they have this synergetic me-killing effect and I got humbled in a big hurry. Second time around I crept around picking them off a few at a time, patiently waiting on the MANY patrols and timed my attacks. It took a while, but I was pretty safe the whole time.

As for a generic method of dealing with any mesmer type mob, I've found cussing a lot to be quite effective. Not so much in killing the mobs easier, but moreso in just relieving the stress.

In the underworld I have found that have two elementalists using maelstrom to be highly effective, if they don't get interupted (which they often don't if they wait for the mindblades to engage everyone else) and chain them properly they can be constantly interupting the mindblades for nearly 20sec, which is nothing short of a godsend against them.

Use lots of interrupts - always bring along a ranger with distracting shot.
[Society for Advancement of Rangers]

I thoroughly recommend sending a warrior crashing into them, wait for them to ply their wares onto him, then getting your smiting monk (every team should have a smiting monk) to use smite hex. More smiting monks with more smite hexes is even better.

Did I mention that I like smiting monks ?

Always a good thing to do, not only against mesmers!

Well as someone suggested, warrior runs in and get "hexed" , but i would probably then look into using spells like "shatter hex" [mesmer spell] to remove the hexes from him doing quite alot of area damage each time you do it [my one char only got rank 5 in domination and shatter hex already do 70+ area damage]. Now i assume the smite hex monk spells are similar, do not know however which do more damage :P

Since my more interesting build is Mes/Necro, i would also probably look into using some of the Necro curses range of spells. As mesmer with fast casting [hopefully too fast to get interupted :P] i can curse a group which haven't scattered and didn't see me coming , extremely fast with slow/armor reduction/draining spells . Main reason why the curse line is more interesting [to me] is because they last very long compared to empathy/backfire [usually 20-60 seconds vs. 5-30 seconds] and can be turned into "area effects" , giving you enough time to recoup/get away/shatter hexes on allies etc [with backfire/empathy you need to constantly cast on single targets and easily run out of energy to pull shatter hexes etc].

Now of course i am assuming they didn't put backfire on me , otherwise pulling off a spell each second will kill me instantly [of course shatter hex applies here again].

Anyway just my thoughts, i havent gone that far to know if itll work, on the low end of the game with the stormriders [those floating things] seem to be generally weak in the HP department, making them easy kills for warriors [and thus i'm better off simply supporting my warriors instead of cursing the stormriders which do not actually cast backfire/empathy more than once before they die :P].

Last thing i haven't looked into would be epidemic and some sort of poison/burning condition on top of the whole cursing range :P

I used arcane echo and spell breaker to do the ranger's path. This is not, in general, a practical solution to much of anything else.

Thanks so much for all the advise! We were cusing a lot and it did ease the stress a little so i figure i'll keep that one for later as well . Probably the method that strikes me the best individually is the maelstrom idea because there are simply so many of them at this point. However, i believe I will be combining efforts from many of these domains into something that looks like this: Warrior runs in, gets hexed to high hell, Messers get rdy with the shatter. Warrior keeps the enemy messers still so that a E/Me or 2 can do maelstrom with mantra of resolve to make sure it and other aoes get off. This should be a solid base from which to launch an attack requiring the least amount of variation from the plan to get through the first parts of UW. This would also work against most of the air elems on the way there, which had been a problem (you thought smoke phantoms hurt, you aint seen nothing yet). Another thing to note on this they get the jump on us as often as we get the jump on them. They're fast and not set in their location till they fight, so a quick set up time is often required.