Curse

TabascoSauce · Apr 27, 2007, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by spawnofebil

Again, fast casting does not need to be buffed. It is perfectly fine.

Thank you, but we will agree to disagree. I think that buffing FC will make Mes a better-viewed primary without harming any of the other classes. Right now it seems that Mes is the most popular secondary because the skillset is awesome, but FC appears less useful in PvE than other primary attributes. So why be a Mes when you can be a monk for example, and get all the perceived benefits of being a mes as well? If FC was viewed as more useful in PvE by buffing it carefully so that PvP is not unduly upset, then Mes will become equal to the other classes for PuGs etc. Win-Win all around.

We are throwing around suggestions, and I was hoping that you had a few as well.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

around · Apr 27, 2007, 03:04 PM // 15:04

Quote:

We are throwing around suggestions, and I was hoping that you had a few as well.

My suggestion is that FC does not need to be buffed. If people take a specific primary profession to get the advantage of that primary attribute, then that primary is fine.

Mordakai · Apr 27, 2007, 03:14 PM // 15:14

People take Primary's for three main reasons:

AC and Energy Regen

Ability to have 13-16 in Attributes

Primary Attribute

For example, I can make a Necro fire nuker who gains energy by killing mass enemies, but he will not be able to out-damage a Primary Ele with 16 in fire in the short term. (In the long term he could, because eventually the Ele will run out of energy, but usually in PvE the Ele has enough energy to kill a mob!)

So, in the Mesmer case, I could be taking Mesmer to get a 13-16 in Domination, Illusion or Inspiration. Oddly enough, the Primary Attribute may not be the primary reason for taking a certain profession...

around · Apr 27, 2007, 03:15 PM // 15:15

Do you read the thread at all before posting?

What about FC curses, FC nuker, FC air spike, FC orders....

Do I need to elaborate further?

william1975 · Apr 28, 2007, 12:46 AM // 00:46

Well I'm beginign to think mez desperatly needs some improvement, just to make it playable, I've been taking my favorite character out and about in Hard Mode, and all of a sudden its impossible to interupt. My favorite thign to do, The creatures are so fast at casting its like interupting a mesmer

So my plan was to change to the illussion build i like and try serious hexing, but that mostly sucks due to the lovely skills of dervish to prevent spells and the monks do the same,

I have created a new build for this, and is wrks better but n where near as good as the other builds did in normal. If im quick enough i get off a couple of hexes on the casters to slow their casting down, and then I have a signet interupt, which i can echo, and for the dervish i use signet of clumsiness, the build is weaker but does help,

most importantly while my heroes have not died I have and im usually at 60dp, can cast the skills easilly and dont lose much energy. so it is workable, but Its not how i envision working on the vanqisher title, half dead all the time gettign slaughtered in order to make the rest of my team capable of interupting and dealing with extraordinary fast skills.

Maybe i'm just awful at doing builds

munnif · Apr 28, 2007, 02:01 AM // 02:01

Ive read alot of this thread, and many of the arguments against mesmers seem to come from the fact that they cant obliterate people, or deal reasonable damage.

I come from a guild that has a seriously strong backbone of Mes primaries, I think people need to turn their ideas of mesmers on their head.
They are NOT damage dealers, they are support, much like Paragons, Ritualists or Monks, they can do damage, however, their primary purpose is to negate that damage or deal it back to the source.

To quote from my alliance leader Shan:

"It may seem obvious but the purpose of an interrupt or a shutdown(I&S) skill is to deny your enemy the use or effect of that skill/s. So what? you may say, when we can just overwhelm with damage. But we’ll come to that later.

Let’s take an example from PvE. The Ruby Djinn’s in Elona will cast searing flames at your team. If allowed through, this will equate to around 90-120 damage per affected team member, plus the heavy degen of burning; which at -7 degen equates to a health loss of 14Hp per second for around 6 seconds. Giving a total affected team damage if unhealed of a minimum of 174 damage(assuming normal caster armor). Regardless of the numbers, the point being is it will hurt..

Now of course the monks will heal this off, but that costs them energy and a skill downtime If it costs energy it increases pressure on the team, which in turn increases the chances of a characters death. Get enough pressure and the team will wipe.

Now what if stop the searing flames from hitting?

Players won’t get hit for 174, the monks won’t need to use energy and skill and the net effect is a reduction in pressure for the entire team.
Remember, it’s not damage that kills a team, its pressure. Especially pressure on the energy and skills downtime of the monks.

Killing before being killed is now prevalent in PvE. Steam roller AoE is now pretty much cookie cutter mandatory in some elite places, DoA for example. However stopping that spellbreaker cast by a Margonite monk, Invoke lightning from an Ele can make a team’s chances of surviving the quest substantially greater."

.................................................. ............

Think about that...

We are support, and mesmers are extremely good at it. Mesmer builds require a MUCH more in-depth knowlege of what you are up against in each mission/explorable area to be effective, it is entirely possible for an ele or warrior, (and i am sure many are guilty of this) to bring the EXACT same skill bar for every mission in all 3 campaigns and just wade through on damage alone. i) this is a bad habbit to get into (your not developing as a player) and ii) your not taking into account the mesmers/monks in the background that are keeping you alive by varying their skills to the situation and trying their best to prefvent/heal through the damage you are receiving while you take this approach.
A bad mesmer is a mediocre damager at best, but a good mesmer, through interrupting and shutdowns, will give the monks, and therefore the team, a much easier ride through any higher level area.

I know to many, the argument against us Mesmers goes that, "all PvE enemies come in mobs, therefore Mesmers are useless as they are mainly 1v1 folk." To answer this, im going to use Margonites as an example (the reason being they have a good mix of professions per mob) while you guys (im talking to the nukers, mainly) are AoE'ing the hell out of the mob, you should be thinking "hmm, why havent i been hit by invoke lightening?" or "why is that Margonite executioner swinging wildly at me but hitting air?" the answer is usually... mesmer's, during this battle we have also saved the monk in the party needing BR after every mob or 2 by negating the damage through subtle spells like ineptitude or powerblock. Also, we will never be running out of energy, nor will we be spending 2-3 seconds waving our arms around trying to get off 1 spell. In the time it takes to use Meteor shower for an ele, we could, concievably, have made a few interrupts to casters, gained 15-20 energy in the process, stuck empathy on a warrior and blinded a mele attacker. the TAB button is a wonderful thing, we are selecting specific targets all the time, not finding the center of a mob and hitting SF/SH/Meteor shower. Nobody is denying that nukers have their role, but for people to say we are usless because we are not AoE is just plain wrong. Having 1 or 2 mesmers in a party (in FoW/UW/high level we usually bring 2, one anti-caster one anti-mele) is predominantly, not a bad idea.

Please think twice before condemming us mesmers, and PLEASE try them out for yourself, you will learn to love them.

I hope Anet will understand that most people playing mesmers do not want to be Leeroy, or nukers, they prefer to be more refined, to take a step back, take into account which foes they will be up against in each area and adjust their skill bar according to the situation with which they are faced. Please Anet, consider our experienced mesmer opinion, and not those to which the mesmer is considered a useless profession, to be honest, we are happy as we are, many would rather wait for a party that says YES to mesmers as opposed to falling in line with the other A-B-C preofessions in exchange for being accepted in otherwise boneheaded, "holy-trinity" orientated parties.

fripple · Apr 28, 2007, 03:06 AM // 03:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by munnif

stuff

Speak for yourself. After two years of this, I have no inclination to wait for an enlightened group to deign to pick me up because people are too stupid to figure out what mesmers add to the party because the effects are invisible, infrequent and overly specific in nature. There are a few simple things that could be done to correct all of these problems without upending the function of the profession or giving mesmers roles that others already have. Such options have already been presented numerous times in the feedback threads, so I'm not going to list them for the eight millionth time here; we know what they are.

Since I don't feel like putting up with idiots, I simply do not play my mesmer (when I play at all, which has been less and less frequent as the utter incompetence of Anet has been made more and more obvious since the release of Nightfall). I have other characters who don't need to wait around for a group and whose participation in fights does not half the time resemble lighting a match between someone's toes while the other party members hit him with a Buick.

Also, not sure how relevant the experience of DVDF is going to be regarding the difficulty mesmers face in anonymous pve; if there is any group mesmers would be welcome in, that would be it.

P A L P H R A M O N D · Apr 28, 2007, 04:01 AM // 04:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by munnif

Ive read alot of this thread, and many of the arguments against mesmers seem to come from the fact that they cant obliterate people, or deal reasonable damage.

I come from a guild that has a seriously strong backbone of Mes primaries, I think people need to turn their ideas of mesmers on their head.
They are NOT damage dealers, they are support, much like Paragons, Ritualists or Monks, they can do damage, however, their primary purpose is to negate that damage or deal it back to the source.

To quote from my alliance leader Shan:

"It may seem obvious but the purpose of an interrupt or a shutdown(I&S) skill is to deny your enemy the use or effect of that skill/s. So what? you may say, when we can just overwhelm with damage. But we’ll come to that later.

Let’s take an example from PvE. The Ruby Djinn’s in Elona will cast searing flames at your team. If allowed through, this will equate to around 90-120 damage per affected team member, plus the heavy degen of burning; which at -7 degen equates to a health loss of 14Hp per second for around 6 seconds. Giving a total affected team damage if unhealed of a minimum of 174 damage(assuming normal caster armor). Regardless of the numbers, the point being is it will hurt..

Now of course the monks will heal this off, but that costs them energy and a skill downtime If it costs energy it increases pressure on the team, which in turn increases the chances of a characters death. Get enough pressure and the team will wipe.

Now what if stop the searing flames from hitting?

Players won’t get hit for 174, the monks won’t need to use energy and skill and the net effect is a reduction in pressure for the entire team.
Remember, it’s not damage that kills a team, its pressure. Especially pressure on the energy and skills downtime of the monks.

Killing before being killed is now prevalent in PvE. Steam roller AoE is now pretty much cookie cutter mandatory in some elite places, DoA for example. However stopping that spellbreaker cast by a Margonite monk, Invoke lightning from an Ele can make a team’s chances of surviving the quest substantially greater."

Think about that...

We are support, and mesmers are extremely good at it. Mesmer builds require a MUCH more in-depth knowlege of what you are up against in each mission/explorable area to be effective, it is entirely possible for an ele or warrior, (and i am sure many are guilty of this) to bring the EXACT same skill bar for every mission in all 3 campaigns and just wade through on damage alone. i) this is a bad habbit to get into (your not developing as a player) and ii) your not taking into account the mesmers/monks in the background that are keeping you alive by varying their skills to the situation and trying their best to prefvent/heal through the damage you are receiving while you take this approach.
A bad mesmer is a mediocre damager at best, but a good mesmer, through interrupting and shutdowns, will give the monks, and therefore the team, a much easier ride through any higher level area.

I know to many, the argument against us Mesmers goes that, "all PvE enemies come in mobs, therefore Mesmers are useless as they are mainly 1v1 folk." To answer this, im going to use Margonites as an example (the reason being they have a good mix of professions per mob) while you guys (im talking to the nukers, mainly) are AoE'ing the hell out of the mob, you should be thinking "hmm, why havent i been hit by invoke lightening?" or "why is that Margonite executioner swinging wildly at me but hitting air?" the answer is usually... mesmer's, during this battle we have also saved the monk in the party needing BR after every mob or 2 by negating the damage through subtle spells like ineptitude or powerblock. Also, we will never be running out of energy, nor will we be spending 2-3 seconds waving our arms around trying to get off 1 spell. In the time it takes to use Meteor shower for an ele, we could, concievably, have made a few interrupts to casters, gained 15-20 energy in the process, stuck empathy on a warrior and blinded a mele attacker. the TAB button is a wonderful thing, we are selecting specific targets all the time, not finding the center of a mob and hitting SF/SH/Meteor shower. Nobody is denying that nukers have their role, but for people to say we are usless because we are not AoE is just plain wrong. Having 1 or 2 mesmers in a party (in FoW/UW/high level we usually bring 2, one anti-caster one anti-mele) is predominantly, not a bad idea.

Please think twice before condemming us mesmers, and PLEASE try them out for yourself, you will learn to love them.

I hope Anet will understand that most people playing mesmers do not want to be Leeroy, or nukers, they prefer to be more refined, to take a step back, take into account which foes they will be up against in each area and adjust their skill bar according to the situation with which they are faced. Please Anet, consider our experienced mesmer opinion, and not those to which the mesmer is considered a useless profession, to be honest, we are happy as we are, many would rather wait for a party that says YES to mesmers as opposed to falling in line with the other A-B-C preofessions in exchange for being accepted in otherwise boneheaded, "holy-trinity" orientated parties.

Excellent points. Mesmers are great, and this is very apparent in HM. The point about nukers / warriors being able to go through all three continents with very little change to skillbars is especially interesting. Nothing against any other class, I have 8 characters and play them all and love them all for their different styles. Mesmers just take more skill to be effective with. And btw Arcane Echoed Ineptitude FTW, particularly in HM opening areas, where alot of mobs have a few melee chars, which can be tough on a 4 man party.

michelle mal · Apr 28, 2007, 02:09 PM // 14:09

Mesmer is my favorite prof, by far the most fun to play. But I think fast-casting is one of the least useful primary attributes. I usually just dump left-over points there. The advantage to mesmer primary now is really just to get attribute raising runes, and the cool mesmer animations. So if they want to help mesmers, making fast- casting more useful would be a good way to start.

michelle mal · Apr 28, 2007, 02:44 PM // 14:44

I don't play nec much anymore, but I often use my nec hero as mm. He seems to be as effective as he ever was. So was he affected by the nerf, as a real player would be? And if he is still doing ok, maybe the nerf was not as bad as it might seem.

Series · Apr 28, 2007, 03:29 PM // 15:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelle mal

I don't play nec much anymore, but I often use my nec hero as mm. He seems to be as effective as he ever was. So was he affected by the nerf, as a real player would be? And if he is still doing ok, maybe the nerf was not as bad as it might seem.

Depends on build.

Spazzer · Apr 28, 2007, 04:25 PM // 16:25

The OP has this wrong. Playing a mesmer is not harder than playing other classes--it's that fast casting is not as useful in the pve environment. There is no instance in the pve game where it is absolutely vital to fire off a spell in half the time as normal.

free_fall · Apr 28, 2007, 08:14 PM // 20:14

When the SR nerf happened and necs starting screaming to high Heaven, Gaile's response was, basically, "Tough. Get over it and get used to it".

Now she's saying "Umm, maybe we went a tad overboard and we're looking at possibly tinkering with it some more" which I think translates to "umm, not only did it NOT fix the problem it was meant to fix but we also now have a lot of really p/o'd necs (customers) screaming bloody murder - so we're trying to figure out a way to fix it back in a way that doesn't entail admitting we made a mistake with the first fix".

So, I guess, that's some progress.

If necs have come to rely on full E bars, well, that's because anet made the prof work that way (it even says so in the player's manual). Believe me, there've been plenty of times when my bar WASN'T full, but maybe I was just being too liberal with those high cost spells.

(BTW, my Para, once I get my echoes up, pretty much runs with a full E bar, too - getting 6E returns on 5E cost skills tends to do that, I've discovered. Of course, stopping every 10 steps (seconds) to give a shout is kind of a PITA, but if that's what it takes to keep +3H regen going on my entire party of H&H, I suppose it's worth it.)

> To the person who said they felt necs were there to "mop up" towards the end of battles after the other players have already inflicted most of the damage: my experience (or, perhaps, it's just my playing style) has been almost the complete opposite of that - my curses nec is there to inflict massive amts of dmg (SS, MoP, Suffering, Barbs, etc) in order to make the other player's (the Holy Trinity) jobs easier. Not saying your way is wrong, just that this is my way of playing.

> Regarding what are basically single-class chars: yes, this is the way I play my chars, I take Mo 2nd on all of them, just to get the res skill (since it doesn't req any att pts to work), so I can put all my points into my primary. Again, it's just the way I like to play them.

Only exception had been my W - once I got Hundred Blades, I added Vigorous Spirit to the mix to give him a little H return. And now, with my Ranger, since I got Barrage and gave up Wilderness Survival, I put those points into Healing and run VS and Orison of Healing; seems to work pretty well and lets the Mos concentrate on the other players.

> Regarding the person who lamented the cap on minions (and similar postings), I agree totally with that sentiment. In the beginning, GW was a game which you could pretty much play the way you liked. We had builds we liked, that were effective for us and THAT WE HAD FUN PLAYING. Then it seems that anet would always come along and say, "Sorry, you're having TOO MUCH FUN with that build, here's a nerf - try one of these cookie-cutter builds instead, everybody's using them."

Anyway, just my random 2 cents.

Avarre · Apr 29, 2007, 01:42 AM // 01:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Series

Depends on build.

Yes, if your build is bad, you will have trouble running it.

cyberjanet · Apr 29, 2007, 08:22 AM // 08:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelle mal

But I think fast-casting is one of the least useful primary attributes.

Try the new soul reaping primary attribute...

Dr Strangelove · Apr 29, 2007, 08:25 AM // 08:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberjanet

Try the new soul reaping primary attribute...

Spawning power would just like to pipe in here and say that you should quit whining. Strength would have come too, but it was overcome with feelings of worthlessness and couldn't get out of bed.

Master Sword Keeper · Apr 29, 2007, 08:53 AM // 08:53

Meh i never relied on SR to get me my energy anyway.

Signet Of Lost Souls

That's all you need

Lynnrose · Apr 29, 2007, 12:48 PM // 12:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Spawning power would just like to pipe in here and say that you should quit whining. Strength would have come too, but it was overcome with feelings of worthlessness and couldn't get out of bed.

Exactly. SR was pretty out of balance compared to the other primary lines. Those you listed are nice examples. Additionally, unless I need another attribute point to hit a break point on GoLE or another ES skill, I often don't even use a minor energy storage rune (oh boy, another three max energy) on an ele.

TabascoSauce · Apr 29, 2007, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by free_fall

In the beginning, GW was a game which you could pretty much play the way you liked. We had builds we liked, that were effective for us and THAT WE HAD FUN PLAYING. Then it seems that anet would always come along and say, "Sorry, you're having TOO MUCH FUN with that build, here's a nerf - try one of these cookie-cutter builds instead, everybody's using them."

That is my question!?!?!??! I just do not understand the fascination in ANet to "lowering" things.

Balance can be achieved by "raising" things too.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

cce · Apr 29, 2007, 02:26 PM // 14:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by spawnofebil

I don't care if a primary ele can get 4 more points of damage from Flare or something - I can cycle flare in twice the time he can.

Actually, this is quite misleading. The aftercast is .75s, so even at 16 FC, your reduction in actual "casting cycle" is actually only 28% faster with a 1s spell. That's not even close to cycling twice as fast.

As I recall, FC rate was set before the aftercast was added, so perhaps a slight buff to the percentages would help quite a bit.

Making fast casting a bit faster (so that a 12 got you 50% reduction) wouldn't be all that horrible: especially if the inspriation line got a bit better. I'd rather have an extra .5s to may of the skills there if they actually were more energy efficient.