your first question answered your second question.
to be honest i don't know why there aren't more mesmers in PvE, i have one and she's incredible. there haven't been a lot of build exploits on mesmers for PvE because so many of their skills are focused on taking out one target at a time very effectively, but not as effective in PvE vs. a SS's or nukers ability.
All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
Well the only downside to a mesmer is that their skills are very build specific. By that i mean if you make a mesmer with a specific build it will target a specific build. Like e-denial targets casters and a hex mesmer targets warriors and rangers and so forth so that means you'll be really usefull at some parts and less usefull if not useless at others. Plus..mesmers are usually 1 vs 1 based so even though you do alot of dmg if you meet your target type you also do it to only 1 target rather than to multiple targets.
The Official Self Proclaimed Unofficial Cynic of Gameamp
No, mesmers aren't unbalanced. Mesmers are the genius son of Elementalists and Necromancers. They have the high damage of elementalists and the specified hexes of necromancers. They are the opposite of AoE. If anything, Mesmers are overpowered.
Part of the reason why there aren't many mesmers in the game is because people don't understand them. All the other classes you can see what they are doing. Warriors and Rangers do their physical damage and do good damage. Elementalists you can see the nukes. Necromancers you can see the minions or the massive degen. Monks you can see them heal.
But mesmers are different. Most of their skills are indirect damage. Energy Denial, Interruptions/Shutdown, etc are all extremely useful but extremely invisible.
Another reason is Mesmer damage is armor ignoring, so you can't get massive damage out of them. Example: Energy Burn on a lvl 10 is the same damage as a lvl 20. And when you get up to the higher areas, it doesnt' have the same impact at all due to higher HP.
A third reason would be that Mesmers are the hardest profession to master. Other classes can take a standard build out to any area and do well, but mesmers are different. You have to strategize and prepare for certain things. For example, if the area you're going out to only has melee damage, then you set up for that. All the other classes can pick any old build and use it.
One of the things that I always find funny is enemy mesmers. Out of all the enemies in the game, the mesmers are the most hated and the most dangerous. They are the bane of any class and can destroy a team. And yet despite this, people still think playing mesmer would be weak.
not really unbalanced as they made say a build-specific class. my mesmer can pretty much get into any kind of group in PvE and do wonderfully, there just aren't small farm groups that require a mesmer. for group FoW runs mesmers are very useful and i enjoy doing that a lot :)
i would say that playing a mesmer properly with a good balance is difficult, which is why people don't play them that often.
All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
Not at all. In a way it is unbalanced in PvE since it cant completely shut down an enemy like it can in PvP..but the class itself is quite powerful if used properly. Although it's skills do target 1 opponent at a time, with proper recharge rate increases and energy management you can spread hexed between all your opponenets. The only thing is that mesmers dont do direct dmg and whether they do dmg or not depends in part on the actions of the enemy. On the plus side these actions cause more dmg than a regular attack or direct dmg skill. Unfortunatly many players dont see the dmg being done so they assume that mesmers aren't doing anything...at least that's the common theory.
The main mesmer balance comes in pvp since there are only 2 types of characters. energy heavy characters and those that use adrenalin. 1 mesmer, if played right, can shut down both monks or even do massive dmg in a solo spike.
The Official Self Proclaimed Unofficial Cynic of Gameamp
Another theory about people not liking mesmers is FastCasting. Sometimes I cast spells so fast that my guy's wanding motion isn't interrupted. I could be casting a barrage of interrupts and hexes, yet not move a finger.
A third reason would be that Mesmers are the hardest profession to master.
Yep. not only do you have to know what the skills do and combine them properly to achieve their full effect..but you also have to know what you are going to be facing in a mission before you enter. For example if you go into a mission where a majority of the enemies you encounter are direct dmg warriors or rangers and you use an e-denial or a shutdown build then you'll find that you aren't doing much. But if you use a hex mesmer build then you'll find that you are doing quite a bit of dmg.
you pretty much have to read each skill description carefully and combine skills that work together one right after the other rather than just attack skills and spells where each skill and spell works independantly..and reading and thinking is something alot of players dont like to do..hence..no mesmers :P
The Official Self Proclaimed Unofficial Cynic of Gameamp
04/20/06 00:26
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Druss de Moorch
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RE: mesmer
I think a other reason people dont like mesmers a lot is because of the henchman. You cant cicle trough the enemies and cast you spels without the henchman running all over the place, like headless chickens. So playing alone is realy hard.
sorry for all the mis spelling but my english is not that good (not my native langues).
As said before; mesmers are the invisible reason a team gets annihalated (read fow....) They make monks run out of energy by putting massive HP degen on the teammembers and forcing them to constantly heal. And while doing that, taking huge amounts of damage themselves (yay for backfire). My last character is a mesmer/ele. I wanted to try it since my i always despise mesmer enemies since they mostly are the ones that get me killed (conjure phantasm, empathy and so on). I decided it was payback time and return the favor. And however mesmer never appealed to me; i totally love it now. Teams dont see much effect in real damage from mesmers except for the interrupts itself. That a enemy takes damage as well; loses energy or loses the acces to the skills is never noticed; but yet, these are things that could make the difference between dying or winning a fight. One skill i particularly like is the skill (forgot name sry) to take a hex from an ally and it becomes that skill. I call it the 'return the favor' skill. They put price of failure on a ally or me? i put it back on all of them ^.^
I totally changed my opinion about mesmers since playing one. I think a mesmer is a must to every team. Not for the visible damage, but as a curses; interruptor and degenerator for the enemy team.
Also its the only class that can whipe out a monkboss in no-time. While warriors/rangers struggle to interrupt the healing and see their damage fade away into healing (reversal of fortune and stuff) mesmers can use backfire; shame; powere spike; power drain; cry of frustration to make healing a deathwish ^.^
EDIT: and of course 'blackout' totally rocks. Or at least i think so ^.^
^ your talking about inspired hex, love that skill. i use | it for hex removal with my monk xD i really like having | mes as secondairy, really owns at dmg reduction ^^
Lately, after one disscution with my friend i changed from attacking mesmer to indirect mesmer.
It is hard to explain but when you try to maximize one branch of your spells, you often see that you need other branch to be complete. That makes playing mesmer a real pain in the A$$.
Lately i made illusion mesmer and tried to get into FOW for the first time. When first fight started i saw that my build was totaly inefficient and i could do nothing to help my party.
I just was the fastest rezzer ;) because i had fast casting at 15.
Then after few minutes i was starting to see the pattern in skills used by enemies and next time, when i entered FOW, i was quite nicely equiped, but with domination magic :) - i made myself a hex shatterer with high domination.
Equiped with one "echo", "shatter hex"(this spell removes one hex from an ally and does 120 dmg to all adjactent enemies), "energy burn" and "ignorance" to help destroing self healing enemies i was nice support. After this mission i had two proposals for joining a guild, despite the fact i was in one already :).
Even "blackout" was useful against monks :) i must try the double echoed "arcane thievery" on invicible monk haha.
The hardest part to be a mesmer is that you often need another mesmer to be exteremely efficient LOL. Together you can make out strategy to kill a guy in 10 secs or less.
Especialy when one mesmer maxes his inspiration and illusion and second will bring inspiration and domination.
This class has great ability to clone or steal someone's elite, or one random spell.
Mesmer can do spike of damage, but as stated above, mostly to one enemy. And under some specific condition which you have to predict when equiping skills.
This is the hardest thing to achive. But then ... it is fun to see the terror in the eyes of your oponent ;).
One funny example - imagine you have energy burn making 80 dmg to a guy and he also looses 10 mana. You double it with two echoes => 240 dmg and -30 mana ;), then you know someone else is bringing echo (elite), or energy surge (elite energy burn) so you take arcane mimicry which can clone someone's elite --> so you can do 320dmg and remove 40 mana from a single guy in i would say 10 secs. and you don't worry about his armor at all. But it needs one condition he must have that 40 mana to steal because otherwise he wont get damage, but you just remove 40 mana from him. -- nice way to drain monk :D.
What I'm about to bring foward in this paragraph will be totally nullified if I can be proven wrong about the fact that in PvE, enemies have an infinite amount of energy. I believe it to be true as I heard it from many people and also for the fact that I have tried to reach the bottom off some enemie's energy pool. Of course when I had tried that I was still a low level but in the event that I was right about the infinite energy pool, I think this is also a reason why mesmers are considered to be somewhat a little less effective in the PvE world than the PvP portion is that 1/3 to half of the mesmer's skill library consists of stealing the enemy's energy. So for this reason, many of the mesmer skills only take their full potential out in PvP. Again all this is until I am proven that the enemies DON'T have infinite energy. = )
I also think that since this is such a complex class to use and master. A lot of people give mesmers a bad name by not using their characters properly and in turn showing his party members that mesmers are not so good (wich is completly proposturus <-- probably butchered that word).
But on another note. I agree with everything that has been said so far and mesmers defenately are a force to be reckoned with, specially for casters imo. I have one myself and I always have tons of fun playing it.
Again all this is until I am proven that the enemies DON'T have infinite energy. = )
Well.. i checked this in PvE. I made a build on a basis that attacker had infinite energy. Tested it in Hell's precipie :).
It didnt work mostly i checked that on warriors who have small amounts of energy.
Build is fairly simple - energy burn echoed 2 times + energy surge(elite).
When maxed you strip 40 mana. none of warriors should have that amount.
So first two burns work (both do 80 damage), but third time just goes for something like 24-32 damage- meaning i just removed 20 mana and around 3-4 points left or regened over time.
On the other side it energy burn writes something like this ---> -10 (-3 24) i think it means that energy burn removed 10 energy from target but target had just 3 energy above 0 (zero) so it did 3x8 damage and left him with -7 energy. This way he must wait around 7-9 secs before he will have energy above 0 (zero).
But it works on casters :)
It is like when you have +10 energy weapon in your hand. then you use all energy so you have 0. And when you swich to weapon with +0 energy bonus you will have to wait around 10 seconds for the first energy point to regen.
Edit: changed some typos.
Also you can check something more interesting while farming with elementalist North Kryta.
Try to fight against mergoyles. They cast "spirit shackles" (every time you attack you loose 5 mana) and when you are closing to 0 mana -->they know it <<-- and cast "mind wrack" (when your mana is 0, you get around 90 dmg and hex ends).
I was casting stone daggers, what does not count as an attack, this way i wasn't loosing 5 mana each attack + 5 mana per spell.
But when you get your mana regen spell, like essence bond, you can have more energy due to mana gain per hit. And mergoyles don't cast mind wrack on you (it lasts 8 seconds only i think) when you are above certain level of energy. If you are able to stay above something like 20 energy all the time you will never see that hex on you, but when you start closing to zero they tend to KNOW that it is a time to cast it.
Enemies in PvE don't have unlimited energy in the strictest sense of the word since you can do 0 dmg with an e-denial skill. What they do have is an incredibly huge amount of energy regen points. Back when i had a mesmer me and a few friends that had mesmers as well all made e-denial builds that all had nothing but energy draining skills. So we had 4 e-denial mesmers go out to an area in the southern shiverpeaks and just focus on one target and cast away. What we found is that skills like energy burn will start doing 0 dmg but an enemy will still be able to attack with skill that cost 5-10 energy. This means that either their skills ignore the energy cost or their energy has such a fast regen that 4 mesmers cant keep it at 0.
The Official Self Proclaimed Unofficial Cynic of Gameamp
Hmm, both theories would be plausible, I think I would go for the godly energy regen over the skills ignoring mana cost though or it would be useless for enemies to be created with a mana pool (unless they created that specifically for skills like "Energy Burn"). I also think that option 1 would sound more realistic wich would explain why Shoofar and I were unable to keep the enemy's energy at 0 due to the incredible energy regen since we were working on it without any other mesmers with us.
I usually will cast Poison Arrow, followed by Conjure Phantasm, then maybe Pin Down...then I use Epidemic to cause Poison and Crippling on the group near the guy. Crippling and poisoning a large group of enemies. Then I pick and choose who I want to cast Conjure Phantasm on.
Poison Arrow and Conjure Pantasm pull a steady stream of health degen.
Of course you have Troll Ungent for Health, then you got Energy Tap for Energy.
Backfire and (if equipped) Distracting Shot for Casters (Monks and Mesmers)
Empathy for Warriors.
Sometimes I even take Serpents Quickness to get the 33% recharge on skills ;-)
I find this build for myself to be well rounded, and can take out your pick of type of enemy as you wish fairly quickly.
if anyone says mesmers are nooby, they are a noob themselves and need to go back to pre. :P
Account 1
Mad Man Frank - Lvl 20 W/?
Phatdhad Wyatt - Lvl 11 R/N
Fun At The Y M C A - Lvl 10 Me/E
PvP Slot
Account 2
Heal People My Job - Lvl 20 Mo/Me
S H E L L Shocker - Lvl 12 E/Mo
Spawn a Cookie - Lvl 20 R/Mo
Walk Pantera - Lvl 9 N/Me
due to my oversized sig... i got rid of the ele thing
04/20/06 16:46
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Adine Kara
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RE: mesmer
The funny thing about the mesmer is that most people will take it for a secondary but few for a primary. Somthing i think most overlook in the mesmers arsinal is spells that apply conditions such as phantom pain(deep wound) and Ineptitude(blind). You can make an enemy monk cast so slowly a tourtise could interupt them.remove a casters energy and or interupt them, all with the same build if you wanted.
I finally got a pet for my mesmer, a new tiger from factions. Looks good with mt courtly droks armour all in black. I may trade the tiger in for the crane which would look greeat with my mesmer too or i may return to my 1st plan which was to get a UW spider for my mesmer. I got a junk katanna (faction sword) and it looks great with my mesmer as well.
But the point of my posting to to share my new build which is very much a generalist build that so far works well in missions and farming. I think of course for some missions or quest I will still need to custom my build for whatever is needed, but as a general build this is good.
Skills
Conjure Phantasm
Clumsiness
Backfire
Illusionary weaponry
Leech signet
Troll Ungent/ or pet attack skill like disrupting lunge
Comfort animal
Charm animal
Attribute levels
FC 6
IM 13
Dom 10
inspir 7
beast 7
wild 4
And in one weapon set, I carry a katana and a jewel chalice that needs 7 inspiration which I will replace once I get a different focus which may in turn lower what I have inspiration set at or may lead me to replace leech and inspiration in build all together. In another weapon set I have a illusion casting weapon (Gorrel's staff). I switch between weapon sets depending on how the battles develope.
When I first got GW, I went right into the game and of course made my frist character to my likes. I found the mesmer most appealing, but didn't realize that it's not really recommened for first time players. Well, I'm not getting rid of her...she's my pride and joy :-) I love her, but I have problems with a lot of things and reading over all of these posts have given me some hope, but I still have questions.
1) My mesmer seems to die too fast. I'm not sure if this is because I suck at trying to hide from the enemies while attacking them or I'm clueless about health factors. I have Droks armor, but I still die. The Ether Feast skill doesn't seem to be that great. Any suggestions for trying to keep her alive? I especially die quickly in PvP, and haven't tried GvG yet, but I know I'll die within a minute.
2)I do too have a Me/R and couldn't have picked a better pair of professions...but I never use the ranger skills. I'll try the suggested skills and weapons from above and take it from there. But...with these suggested skills, will my mesmer do better damgae and possibly stay alive longer?
My main concerns with my meser is her health and energy. I seem to never have enough of both. And what about weapons and armor? I went with the Preformers armor...was that a good choice? Weapons...er...I have a jeweled staff that only does 9-17 damage. Where can I get something better? One last thing...what about runes? Should I invest in those? I'm iffy on them because of the nagative health factor. Oh, what about elite skills? I wanna get the Ineptide (sp?) skill from the southern shiverpeak area...is that a good choice? HELP!
P.S.....What do you mean by build? And what are the different builds?
When I first got GW, I went right into the game and of course made my frist character to my likes. I found the mesmer most appealing, but didn't realize that it's not really recommened for first time players. Well, I'm not getting rid of her...she's my pride and joy :-) I love her, but I have problems with a lot of things and reading over all of these posts have given me some hope, but I still have questions.
1) My mesmer seems to die too fast. I'm not sure if this is because I suck at trying to hide from the enemies while attacking them or I'm clueless about health factors. I have Droks armor, but I still die. The Ether Feast skill doesn't seem to be that great. Any suggestions for trying to keep her alive? I especially die quickly in PvP, and haven't tried GvG yet, but I know I'll die within a minute.
2)I do too have a Me/R and couldn't have picked a better pair of professions...but I never use the ranger skills. I'll try the suggested skills and weapons from above and take it from there. But...with these suggested skills, will my mesmer do better damgae and possibly stay alive longer?
My main concerns with my meser is her health and energy. I seem to never have enough of both. And what about weapons and armor? I went with the Preformers armor...was that a good choice? Weapons...er...I have a jeweled staff that only does 9-17 damage. Where can I get something better? One last thing...what about runes? Should I invest in those? I'm iffy on them because of the nagative health factor. Oh, what about elite skills? I wanna get the Ineptide (sp?) skill from the southern shiverpeak area...is that a good choice? HELP!
P.S.....What do you mean by build? And what are the different builds?
1. What exactly is killing you? Warriors and Rangers? Or other Spellcasters?
-If it's Warrior and Rangers, try this: Use Spirit of Failure and Diversion. You'll lose energy with Diversion, but you'll gain energy with Spirit of Failure. And they can't hit you.
-If it's Spellcasters, you need to try and shut them down. Bring interrupts and such. Possibly use the Energy Denying skills like E-burn and E-surge. If they have no energy, they can't hurt you.
-Overall, the best suggestion to your first and third question is to look in the Inspiration Line. Mesmers have the best stances in the game. +40 armor against either Physical or Elemental is awesome. Reduces a specific elemental damage AND gives you energy. And don't forget the Energy Management. Channeling, Energy Tap, Mantra of Recall, Energy Drain, etc are all great forms of energy management.
As to your secondary, I don't really use my secondary either. Mesmers by themselves don't need much from the other classes. But if I had to chose one, I'd say Necromancer; just because there are so many hexes in that class that complement Mesmers.
QUOTE
Me/N combo (for anti-warrior/ranger)
Empathy
Spiteful Spirit
Price of Failure
Spirit of Failure
Diversion
One other survival skill is to take out your enemy before they can take you out.
QUOTE
Anti Warrior/Ranger Spike
Clumsiness
Ineptitude
Etheral Burden
Use this combo especially when they use a skill that speeds up their attacks. If you see a warrior using Frenzy, attack him. Your hexes will do double damage. Example: Ineptitude at 16 dom will do 147 dmg; with Frenzy, it's 249 dmg.
Superior Runes: As a mesmer, your greatest strength is high damage and/or shutdown. And as such, you'll need to boost your attributes as high as you can get them. So yes, get Superior Runes, then place them on your corresponding mask.
Armor: It's up to you, but if you're having energy issues, get the Enchanter's armor. It's extra energy. If you want more armor, get the Rogue armor. If you're in Factions, get a mix of what you like.
Weapons: Mesmers are lucky in that perfect mesmer weapons are the cheapest in the game. Go to Deldrimor WarCamp and buy some greens. Here is a list of all the greens in the game. Look through the mesmer items and chose what you want. Buy the Wand/Offhand sets, just because they are only 1k each.
And Builds are just a set of skills that were put together to do a certain task.
QUOTE
Example:
-Arcane Echo
-Energy Surge
-Energy Burn
-Power Leak
-Signet of Weariness
-Mind Wrack
-Energy Tap
-Ether Lord
This is a simple build that is meant to completely drain an enemie's energy reserves. This is not a good build, as there is no defensive skills, but this is a good base.
I don't have much time to make this post so i will be quick.
1st Mesmers have many ways of killing and controling a foe or battle and you really have to know what you will be facing and make a build that will fit that foe or foes. You may have to rely on other for some parts of a mission as your build maybe set up to deal with a nasty boss in a mission that only you as a mesmer can shutdown and kill.
But as a rule you want to stop them from healing themselves with a interupt while getting them to kill themselves with backfire and cluminess which interupts foes also while damaging themselve and empathy which danages them while they damage whomever. So while they are attacking you they are killing themselves before they can do real damage to you. You out health them.
You may want to look at migraine or powerblock to shutdown foes, and Illusionary weapon deals damage in a melee which when used with empathy can allow you to really out health them. Plus take chaos storm and cast it on closest foe that is attacking you in a tight swarm-this will chase them away and allow you to start casting stuff to control them again and get them to kill themselvs. Being a mesmer is all about controling a foe or battle.
Mesmer theme song-Glamour boy, by living Colour from the 80s: "I ain't no glamour boy, I am fierce!!"
Got to go, hope this helps.
PS-you need to get yourself a junk mellee weapon(cheap, low damage sword or axe that you like more for looks then killing power)for using with illusionary weaponry which you must switch too before casting skill.
I mentioned this before on a different thread.
I think one reason that there's so little mesmers is because they are VERY hard to play if you want to play with the efficiently. Sure anyone can create a mesmer, but it takes some skill to play one. I've tried a mesmer but it didn't really open to me, since IMO it's the most strategic class in game.
When mesmers are played well, they are extremely effective but when you don't know what you're doing with it, you're kinda doomed to fail and I have a lot of respect for those who can play one well. :P
PS. I got 0wned by a guildie today in 1v1 battle. He had a ranger (traps and poison) and I had a warrior(no specific build, made some myself:P). =bad combo -.-
I suck at PvP but when I play with a warrior I suck even more! :P
So, to get to the point: I'm actually thinking of making a mesmer but the male mesmers in Cantha look kinda....ugly and the female mesmers have AWFUL hairstyles! ><
1. What exactly is killing you? Warriors and Rangers? Or other Spellcasters?
Well...just about everything. When it comes to PvP...any class kills me. Warriors, Rangers, Elementalists, Necromancers...that's all I can remember playing against. When in PvE, I usually have a serious problem with bosses or large crowds of enemies. I can do fine with handling up to 4 enemies at the same time...but it only seems to work when they are the same or lower level than me. Bosses I have a hard time because their health is constantly going back up, and I usually use Empathy and Conjore Phantom.
I'll rearrange my skills to have something better, because right now I'm not really switching my skills up, but I need to. So, I'll actually try to handle the mesmer the way they were made to be used.
Another thing...I'm attempting to go to Mineral Springs for the Signet of Capture skill. The one thing that is holding me back is level of guys I'll come up against, especially the boss with the skill I want-level 24. Is there anything else I should know for this trip that hasn't already been said?
I'll try all the suggestions I've read from this thread and reply later with what has worked for me.
Yay! I've changed my armor to the Enchanter's armor and switched up my skills. So far I'm doing great. My mesmer hasn't died yet while getting elite skills and I got 2 so far.
