Curse

sage tank · Mar 01, 2007, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgb

Put Willa the Unpleasant in every mob in PVE IMO.

(not that she is actually that hard to take out, with decent builds/players but the average stance tank and ECHO NUKAR generally struggles).

nah, put MoR on willie, have 2 ele spam SF, he'll go down like a monkey

upier · Mar 01, 2007, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSpirit

Interrupts - Mesmers face serious competition from rangers in this area. Rangers can interrupt more frequently but they need line-of-sight. In PvE monsters are too dumb to hide behind walls, so rangers can be argued to be better interrupters than mesmers at least in the pve stage.

the thing with interrupts is also that daze is just insenly superior to most of the things a mesmer can dish out - especially BHA!
you can spread via epidemic(!!!) it and anyone JUST WANDING the target will interrupt it!
so for pve - theres just no way to compare this to mesmer interrupts!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSpirit

Primary mesmers need to find a role that they are best at without making secondary mesmers over powered.

yeah as ive said it before - the mesmer class really lack a high damage cookie that will require a lovely 16 in dom (since i dont see it happening in illu).

Winterclaw · Mar 01, 2007, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I think everyone pointing to Fast Casting for a reason why Mesmers aren't popular are missing the point entirely. Fast Casting is a perfectly good attribute in PvE. Casting spells faster = things die faster. Ever notice how Elementalists seem to love those fast casting mods? Fast spells are good. Fast Casting is good.

My biggest problem with fast casting isn't that it is useless because it isn't; my problem is that it could be a little more useful. Make it lower recharge time of spells, even by a little, and you've suddenly have a primary that is as useful as DF, ES, or CS.

Quote:

You want to know the real problem with Mesmers?

Arena.net has balanced the game in such a way that against the mobs where a Mesmer should be at his finest - the nasty bosses that stand out as a threat that needs to be tamed with mes effects - a Mesmer is instead an utter gimp, his spells ineffective from a bunch of game mechanics that serve to make bosses more 'mes-proof'.

You want to make Mesmers good? Make there be boss monsters that people want to kill, that are incredibly dangerous unless tamed by strong mes effects. Guild Wars focuses far too much on cleaning out trash mobs - and bosses, for the most part, are glorified trash. In World of Warcraft, everyone designs their characters and thinks of tactics to use to take down the bosses - clearing out the trash mobs is an afterthought. Until that sort of mentality makes sense in Guild Wars, I can't possibly see the Mesmer being an interesting profession in PvE.

Problem is, people are only concerned about bosses only when it is farming time or you need to beat a really nasty one to finish the mission. Another thing is the bosses or where you find them change so I don't know if I will even find a particular boss sometimes.

I'm not against increasing the importance of bosses, but maybe there should be fewer bosses, or more mini-bosses.

Anyways, here are some things I think that are a big problem for mesmers.
1. Overspecialization of skills. I mean you don't see els, monks, or warriors with skills that only work on one class or the other (for the most part). Why does empathy can backfire have to be two different spells?
2. Not great primary. I think that fast cast has some use (I put 7 points into it myself) but if you look at say monks, 10 in DF will increase your basic 5e healing spells by up to 50% and allows you to have healing even with prot spells.
3. Poor elites. Energy surge used to be nice and it's still useable, but not as great as it used to be. Signet of Midnight is one of the worse elites in the game if you ask some people. Tease is kind of useless unless you either have a good knockdown or can TP out. Powerflux at best will cause the other guy to lose about 6 energy over 9 seconds where power leak would double that at once. Psychic Instability is only worth it in some very specific builds. Mantra of recovery should be a non-elite and linked to FC so it's has reduced value to messes.
4. Females need a better /dance emote than river dancing.

DarkSpirit · Mar 01, 2007, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Fast Casting is only good if you have the energy to cast the spell and the spell isnt in recharge cycle right?

If you dont have the energy then you back to wanding, I dont care how much fast cast you have. Fast Casting, unlike the primary attributes of ALL the other classes (besides warrior), does NOT carry an energy bonus. EVERY OTHER primary attributes of ALL the other classes DO help the energy level of its caster! (besides the warrior's which has adrenaline skills and the mesmer's)

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=134

Bai · Mar 02, 2007, 12:47 AM // 00:47

It would be awesome if Mesmers got an AoE interrupt skill that interrupts all actions, not just skills.

Something like this..

Power Surge [E] - 15e, 1/4c, 20r
Hex Spell. Interrupt target foe and all nearby foe's actions. If a foe under this hex is interrupted, that foe takes 5..25..32 damage.

and another idea.. an elite version of Blackout.

Mental Barrier [E] 10e, 1c, 12r
Skill. For 2...5 seconds, all of touched target foe and nearby foes' skills are disabled, and all of your skills are disabled for 5 seconds.

Sorry if they're too overpowered or too unreasonable..
I'm really pro-Mesmer and I really think that they do indeed need a buff in PvE. I've played a Mesmer and it really is fun, but sometimes it feels like I'm ignored and usually when the other classes die in a mission, they don't get blamed for anything and when I die, it's a whole different story. I still love the Mesmer because of the nice armors they get though.

I guess Lyssa's disciples were meant more for PvP rather than PvE.. (Mesmers and Assassins)

Also, I've noticed that all that everyone's been talking about is giving the Mesmer more AoE spells. It's really sad to think about because thats really what PvE is mostly about...Just getting your strongest damaging spells and bombing away on the incoming mobs. When I first played Mesmer(It was my first character.), Sometimes I would take AoE spells like Energy Surge because it did some damage to the mobs. If you compare that damage to the damage that the Elementalists have, its not much at all.

I wonder if there are any ways that the Mesmers can improve by not adding AoE to their spells?

Aigred · Mar 02, 2007, 04:34 AM // 04:34

Don't improve Mesmers in PvE by changing any Mesmer skills.

Improve Mesmers in PvE by changing the monsters instead.

Add more good healers like Mungri Magicbox and Coventina the Matron.
Have more groups with 3-monk backlines, with a mix of prot and healing, so that simply focus firing the monsters one at a time is not good enough. You have to care about shutting down the monks.
Make mobs regenerate energy the same as players, so that e-denial is practical.
Give the mobs ward of stability and balanced stance, so that Echo-Meteor Shower is not as effective.
Add kinetic armor tanks, 55-hp, and 600-hp monks who are difficult to take down by raw damage but can be easily killed by enchant removal.
To encourage interrupts, continue to give bosses double damage but don't give them double casting speed.
To encourage using hexes, don't give bosses Prophecies-style half-hex/condition duration.
If the fights take longer as a result of these changes, then compensate by having fewer fights.

upier · Mar 02, 2007, 07:13 AM // 07:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aigred

Don't improve Mesmers in PvE by changing any Mesmer skills.

Improve Mesmers in PvE by changing the monsters instead.

Add more good healers like Mungri Magicbox and Coventina the Matron.
Have more groups with 3-monk backlines, with a mix of prot and healing, so that simply focus firing the monsters one at a time is not good enough. You have to care about shutting down the monks.
Make mobs regenerate energy the same as players, so that e-denial is practical.
Give the mobs ward of stability and balanced stance, so that Echo-Meteor Shower is not as effective.
Add kinetic armor tanks, 55-hp, and 600-hp monks who are difficult to take down by raw damage but can be easily killed by enchant removal.
To encourage interrupts, continue to give bosses double damage but don't give them double casting speed.
To encourage using hexes, don't give bosses Prophecies-style half-hex/condition duration.
If the fights take longer as a result of these changes, then compensate by having fewer fights.

interesting suggections - but i mostly dislike them.
and its simply because i dont play the mesmer exclusively. i play other classes and even if we are talking about the mesmer class id hate seeing ANY other class expland the holy trinity. with just 8 slots in the party we should be breaking the trinity not open new postions in it!
i dont play with ppl but much rather with hench. and hench currently arent able of doing any other shutdown but interrupting. but are superior when it comes to just brute force interrupting.
as for utility - like ench removal - the thing is that the skill functions as nicely with 16 in that attribute as it does with 0. if the point of the skill is damage = ss, sf, .... - you want the attribute to be as high as possible. if the point of the skill is the primary effect (e-denial, removing hexes, removing enches, interrupts, kds) with damage, e-gain being more of a secondary effect - so these skills (unless the primary effect is scaled like with e-denial) work as nicely with as low attributes in it as they do with max. so this makes the class that focuses on these kind of effect - a superb secondary (and lets not kid ourselves - if the point will be that a foe will require massive ench removal - that necro will grab two ench removals and that nuker also INSTEAD of taking a ench removal messy with them!).
my guess - that the mesmer cant be pve-fixed before c4. because we need new skills - not spike options like sp (since they will be heavily used in pvp which will warrant a de-buff) - but hexes like ss. aoe damage that lasts a long time and triggers on as many actions as possible (at the cost of reduced damage - eg. compare the damage ffrom backfire which triggers on spells only to ss that triggers on everything).
yes - pve should change - but only so much that the mesmer also becomes a viable option and not the only option. and that - i cant see happening without completely reworking some of the skills in the game (which just WONT happen) or till we get new skills. because otherwise a necro with max curses for ss, barbs, mop and something in sr for superior e-management with mesmer secondary for utility is still a better option!

Pakana · Mar 02, 2007, 02:29 PM // 14:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aigred

Don't improve Mesmers in PvE by changing any Mesmer skills.

Improve Mesmers in PvE by changing the monsters instead.

That has been my view from the start of the thread, also. The problem is however, Arenanet does not want to touch the PvE content of old chapters. You might get something like this to new chapters, but those nice end game areas everyone plays (no matter what is the last chapter) hardly get love. Unfortunately.

It would be the nicest solution though, since it wouldn't rock the PvP boat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by upier

if the point will be that a foe will require massive ench removal - that necro will grab two ench removals and that nuker also INSTEAD of taking a ench removal messy with them!).

How would those elementalists and necros feel about taking enchantment removals instead of the skills they now take? Maybe a necro whose only purpose is SS or Order could take those, but generally 8 skills is so few, you usually have problems getting in the skills you NEED.

If interrupting, shut down, life/energy drain, ench removal would be useful and get the enemy team down faster, it would make sense to take a primary mesmer. (I think it already does, in end game areas. But I guess I'm weird that way.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by upier

my guess - that the mesmer cant be pve-fixed before c4. because we need new skills

And so only Chapter 4 mesmers would be useful? If mesmer skills would be changed, that should spread over skills of all chapters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by upier

yes - pve should change - but only so much that the mesmer also becomes a viable option and not the only option.

Not the ONLY option like a monk and a MM are now, right? I agree.

Obey The Cat · Mar 04, 2007, 02:30 AM // 02:30

If a mesmer could spam his hexes around, he would just be great. Main problem seem to be energy and the long recharge times.

GrimWizard · Mar 04, 2007, 02:40 AM // 02:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

Why does empathy and backfire have to be two different spells?

I ask myself that all the time. You could add Shatter Enchantment and Shatter Hex to that list as well. It just doesn't make any sense.

Since we are mentioning poor elites, does anyone else wonder why Spiteful Spirit is a Necromancer elite and not a Mesmer one? Mesmers get the lesser form of SS, but necros get the elite form. Just another elite Mesmers got screwed out of.

Shmanka · Mar 04, 2007, 10:45 AM // 10:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aigred

Don't improve Mesmers in PvE by changing any Mesmer skills.

Improve Mesmers in PvE by changing the monsters instead.

Ok, lets do it your way.

I'll change every single piece of AI in ascalon, you do it for the shiverpeaks, and lets see how long that would take. Hmm? Be reasonable FFS, there is no way that staff could handle a complete vamp on all 3 chapters to suffice such a low cause. People aren't educated on how mesmers work, most of their elite skills are useless PvE wise, just give them some skills and not make them look like Elementalists begging for quarters.

Pakana · Mar 04, 2007, 10:43 PM // 22:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shmanka

Ok, lets do it your way.

I'll change every single piece of AI in ascalon, you do it for the shiverpeaks, and lets see how long that would take. Hmm? Be reasonable FFS, there is no way that staff could handle a complete vamp on all 3 chapters to suffice such a low cause. People aren't educated on how mesmers work, most of their elite skills are useless PvE wise, just give them some skills and not make them look like Elementalists begging for quarters.

Be sensible.

For your information, games today are made with TOOLS. You don't need to write the code of every god damn dwarf in Shiverpeaks from toe to beard tip! They do testing all the time. Adding a new priest in a mob group won't take hours!

And they do AI changes, too. As we painfully know, those aren't always nice. But AI changes have been done every now and then with game updates.

Redfeather1975 · Mar 04, 2007, 10:47 PM // 22:47

How about just giving mesmers more cooler armour choices to appeal to a wider audience.
Yeah.

Mesmer armour is pretty much an acquired taste and I'd like to see more diversity in the future.

Tucks · Mar 04, 2007, 11:04 PM // 23:04

Delete every other class.

Skuld · Mar 05, 2007, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

Power Surge [E] - 15e, 1/4c, 20r
Hex Spell. Interrupt target foe and all nearby foe's actions. If a foe under this hex is interrupted, that foe takes 5..25..32 damage.

Isn't that like a bad, elite version of [wiki]Cry of Frustration[/wiki] o.O

dgb · Mar 05, 2007, 01:30 AM // 01:30

It's all down to PVE design. Currently, mobs are designed such that DPS is the easiest way to take them down. Shutdown just isn't valuable, who honestly cares if a monk is blacked out if I can put four frenzying dragon slashers into it's face, back them up with orders and a GFTE! paragon and do upwards of 400 DPS to it. It's going to be dead before it can get many casts off anyway. Damage mitigation tends to vary from being able to easily be handled by decent monks with some utility skills stashed somewhere else (ie. the entire main game), then it spikes upwards to the ridiculous level that anything that so much looks at you will kill you in DoA.

At the main game level, you don't need mesmer shut-down for defence, what you do need can be stashed somewhere else (Sig of Humility/Mantra Inscriptions on a ranger or something, stronger interupts on other characters D-Blow on melee, D-Shot/Savage-Shot on rangers, leech sig + power drain on monks), while still allowing that class to operate at near peak efficiency. At the DoA level, mesmer shutdown doesn't help because it's surgical, not mob level. Who cares that a margonite is shut down, his mate is doing 200 damage a hit to you. At this level you're better off getting a warrior, buffing him up to an AL ~200, putting bonds on it and letting it eat all the damage.

The answer to this is mob-design. If you keep putting in mobs that can't defend themselves against even a moderate level of DPS, then there's going to be no point in the mesmer. The mesmer excels in surgically disabling defences, but there's no point because it's not worth doing, you're better off just killing the thing instead.

Would I take a mesmer in a PVE build of mine? No, I wouldn't for the most. It's just not efficient. For all those people who say mesmers can effectively deal damage, show some proof - lets see the builds. They are either frontloaded and unsustainable or they don't work IMO.

Reworking the mobs such that surgical disabling is useful would make mesmers useful in PVE. Is this likely to happen? Hell no. Face it, first off it would require a massive rework of three chapters worth of PVE. A-Net won't even make Prophecies/Factions armour inscribable, let alone doing anything more than that. Prophecies and Factions are dead campaigns as far as A-Net is concerned. They throw out a bone with the events everynow and then, but that's all you're going to get.

Secondly it's going to increase the difficulty way beyond what the normal PUG can handle. If you put mobs in that can handle damage such that you need a mesmer to pick through the defence, how do you think the average player is going to do - they aren't going to be running optimal builds, they are just slowly going to bash through and get nowhere - look at all the rage that was generated over Gates of Madness, where a gimpy Shiro was placed who soundly defeated the majority of PUGs going through there. Imagine that experience for the entirety of PVE (not the Impossible Odds, the QQ).

*Darcy* · Mar 05, 2007, 02:08 AM // 02:08

Most posters who keep saying give them more powerful skills or AoE ones are missing the point. Upping the damage or AoE of current or future skills will not work unless those skills are attached to Fast Casting. Otherwise, the new or changed skills will be overused by x/Me PvP players and again the mesmer will get nerfed.

If you want to see more mesmers in both PvE and PvP groups, ANet needs to give them quality skills that cannot be used by a mesmer secondary character.

Neriandal Freit · Mar 05, 2007, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darcy

Most posters who keep saying give them more powerful skills or AoE ones are missing the point. Upping the damage or AoE of current or future skills will not work unless those skills are attached to Fast Casting. Otherwise, the new or changed skills will be overused by x/Me PvP players and again the mesmer will get nerfed.

If you want to see more mesmers in both PvE and PvP groups, ANet needs to give them quality skills that cannot be used by a mesmer secondary character.

Agreed Darcy. It seems the best option that we mesmer players will have in order to be more effective in both PvE and PvP.

dgb · Mar 05, 2007, 02:17 AM // 02:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darcy

Otherwise, the new or changed skills will be overused by x/Me PvP players and again the mesmer will get nerfed.

If you want to see more mesmers in both PvE and PvP groups, ANet needs to give them quality skills that cannot be used by a mesmer secondary character.

So that they can be abused by mesmer primaries in PVP I guess?

darktyco · Mar 05, 2007, 02:20 AM // 02:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrimWizard

Since we are mentioning poor elites, does anyone else wonder why Spiteful Spirit is a Necromancer elite and not a Mesmer one? Mesmers get the lesser form of SS, but necros get the elite form. Just another elite Mesmers got screwed out of.

QFT, it doesn't make sense to me either.