Fragility Counters

After seeing during every comp arena match a revised version of a fragility mesmer that everybody's been using, I've been trying to come up with a fragility mesmer killer...the only builds I've used that countered these well was an interrupt ranger running incindiary arrows and frenzy/tiger's fury, and a mesmer secondary running hex breaker. Has anybody got any other ideas on how to combat fragility mesmers?

Mend Ailment the deep wound.

Edit: Or were you talking about ways to actually kill the mesmer?

Smash faces.

yes mend ailment owns a frag combo. I always get a lol when i see one of those cookie cutter posers try to pull that when im my monk. With my R/Me i pin down the fragger and drain their energy before they can even finish a single frag. Then they'll spend the rest of their short life limping around and helpless.

Ppl shouldnt create to counter, but to kill target before it kills u :P

Elem Fragility builds are pretty easy. they depend on 2 hexes, Mark of Rodgort and Fragility. In order for it to work, their Fire Magic has to be low to trigger Fragility rapidly. And with how long of a casting time Mark of Rodgort has, they will definitely use it first, then Fragility, then a cover hex. A decent sized window to get a hex-removal into before the cover hex. And all you have to do is remove one of the 2 core spells and the other becomes almost meaningless. This is the weakest of the Fragility Builds.

The Ranger build uses Incendiary Arrows instead of Mark of Rodgort. Thanks to Tiger's Fury, they can unload shots extremely fast, doing close to 400 armor-ignoring damage (+ normal arrow damage that can be augmented by bow attacks) without crippling their other skills. Again, this relies on low Wilderness Survival to keep the burn times short (also means the 2 Ranger self-heals are completely worthless). IA also has the effect of interrupting with every hit, so I like using Arcane Conundrum with it. Regardless of which hex they remove, they will be hurting one way or another. While not extremely powerful (usually, the Fragility will get removed), this does make it extremely flexible.

The common one right now is the Necro Fragility build. Fragility, then Phantom Pain, and when it ends (either by timeout, enemy hex removal, or your own Shatter Delusions) causes a Deep Wound which lowers your max health by quite a bit (and making spiking more effective) and triggers a hit of fragility. Then a weak Virulence is thrown on, which adds, 3 conditions (Disease, Poison, and Weakness IIRC), each of which triggers fragility. With 0 Curses, they all wear off 3 seconds later for another 3 hits of Fragility.

This one is a bit of a trick to defend against. Once Phantom Pain is on, there is no reliable way to prevent the first of the 2 big spikes. Most people using this build go Mesmer prime for fast-casting, and can make the window between Phantom Pain being removed and Virulence be under a second. If they didn't throw on a cover hex (and the target will have to tell you this), you can remove hex when the PP ends, and prevent the second spike completely. Or you can just wait for the first spike and then Mend Ailment, which will cause one hit of Fragility (like 35 damage tops), but heal the target up to around 160, which will pretty much counteract the second now-weakened spike. This is probably the best strategy, as it doesn't require much knowledge of the situation, precise timing, and uses a skill that healing Monks should be bringing anyway.

Some thoughts for the frag-mesmer spike:

Mesmer - hexbreaker, energy denial skills, interrupts if you are good with em.

Necro - plague touch/sending the deep wound, vamp skills, fast life regen.

Monk - mend ailment, convert hexes, shielding hands, other heal condition skills or fast big heals. You can outheal the spike. As mentioned above mend ailment is one of the most common counters because many monks carry it anyway and if your prot is decent, you will easily outheal the spike for 5 mana.

Warrior/ranger - interrupts, knockdowns, energy denial

Not sure what would work best for eles, counterspike maybe and let the fastest win, ether renewal for fast healing, obs flesh?

A frag mesmer will generally go very high in illusion so their alternate attrib choices are limited. Depending on their choices either energy denial or interrupts will be very effective.

Keep in mind, when facing a frag mesmer you basically know half the skill bar, after the first few seconds you'll probably know the rest so act accordingly.

Mend Ailment's the easiest counter. As soon as you see the PP icon disappear and Deep Wound get applied, hit Mend Ailment. Hopefully it'll remove the Deep Wound before Virulence hits, and if it doesn't, then it'll give you a pretty large heal due to the 4 conditions on you.

spell breaker

if you are afraid that you wont be able to catch that deep wound..

shielding hands + mend ailment

no you dont even have to worry about the deep wound. Just hit the mend ailment with the virulence.... with 12 prot prayers it always over heals the fragility by a ton.

Ranger: Melandru's Resilience. this skill was practically MADE for frag countering.

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