Curse

Dyeeo · May 18, 2005, 06:05 AM // 06:05

I really want to play a mesmer but I have come to the realization that I have no idea how they do any damage at all in pvp. So, I whipped out "The Edge" and started to make a build.

My first try was Me/Nec. I remembered that conjure phantasm was a really annoying skill so I put that on, I also put on Life transfer and Life Siphon. Testing it on a wa/mo build, I got the life regeneration down to -15. I was appaled when I saw that it was only doing about 10-20 damage a second.

I looked at all the skills and realized that I really could not find anything that would work. Previously I had played a monk in pvp and I knew I could counter a phantasm easily. Same with backfire. All I had to do was remove hex. How is a mesmer good at all?

Any suggestions for a mesmer pvp because right now, I am really really confused :/

wingedcoyote · May 18, 2005, 06:24 AM // 06:24

If you want to do straight damage, don't play a Mesmer. They can do some, and with some secondaries they can use dirty tricks to do a LOT, but that's not the point of them. They're for shutting down the enemy by preventing them from acting.

In normal circumstances, taking down a Monk with a Mes/Nec shouldn't be too hard. Rend his enchantments and use Arcane Conundrum with the 1/4second Mesmer interrupts to keep him from casting anything new. At that point you can use some kind of Necromancer mojo to take him down (can you tell I don't play one?

) or wait for one of your team's damage dealers to do it. Backfire would certainly be useful, but it's more of a side-dish than the main course, and you'll want to time it carefully. For a similar effect but probably more useful here, try Scourge Healing.

Rajamic · May 18, 2005, 06:45 AM // 06:45

Mesmers are intended to control the battlefield, not by brute force, but by shutting down opponents. Sure conjure Phantasm can do 5 pips of health degen, which is killer at low levels, but with no way to increase the rate (only the duration) it quickly falls off.

As to your degen example, the maximum degen a character can have is -10 pips. For health, this translates to -20 HP/sec. Had someone cast a regen spell on your target, it would have been reduced by whatever of your degen wasn't doing anything.

Mesmers primarily do 2 things, but they do them extremely well: inturrupt skills, and drain mana.

Dreamsmith · May 18, 2005, 06:49 AM // 06:49

Most Mesmer players don't concentrate on doing damage. They concentrate on shutting down opponents so that their teammates can do damage. However, if you want to make a damage-causing mesmer, that's quite possible, too. It's just not going to be as effective a character as it could be, IMHO.

For straight up damage, the Mesmer really only has a few options, and none of them are spectacular. Conjure Phantasm is godly at low levels but it doesn't scale well -- by the time you're dealing with level 10+ opponents it's become more of an annoyance. Energy Burn is cool, but the cooldown isn't. Energy Surge, same problem, and it's elite to boot.

Beyond that, doing signficant damage as a mesmer usually requires some sort of trick. For example, Mind Wrack can do quite a bit of damage, but only if your opponent is drained of energy, so to use it effectively, you need to combine it with something like Spirit Shackles. Then you've got spells like Power Spike, that can do good damage but only with good timing. Then you have things like Backfire, Empathy, Clumsiness, etc. Great against the right opponent, useless against the wrong one.

The best way to approach building a mesmer is (IMHO) to start by deciding who you're going to screw over (e.g. I'm going to screw over warriors, or I'm going to screw over monks). Then make the build that will leave that person helpless. Don't try to figure out how to damage them, that's the job of warriors or elementalists or other damage dealers. Any damage you do should be more a side-effect of you keeping them shut down, not a main objective. Your main objective is to keep the other players from doing their jobs. The other team falls quickly if their monks can't keep the healing up. Your monks stay alive if their warriors can't touch them. As the mesmer, its your job to ruin the other team's strategy for dealing with things, so that the rest of your team can walk all over them.

Eclair · May 18, 2005, 06:55 AM // 06:55

If you want to do direct damage, you could go with Illusionary Weaponry and slap on a superior Illusionary magic rune. Maybe go with Warrior or Ranger second to get some increased attack speed skills and defensive skills.

Red Locust · May 18, 2005, 05:47 PM // 17:47

I decided to build my mesmer with the intent of screwing over warriors, since they are one of the major threats to your team's monks. A Me/E is excellent at this: soothing images to remove adrenaline, enervating charge for weakness, energy tap and energy drain to completely remove the warrior's energy, and you're left with a useless lump of armor that's hitting for single digits. And all this takes about 6 or so seconds with a fast casting of about 8.

That leaves me with 4 skills with which to cause even more hell to the warrior. I chose lightning orb and light. strike for the armor penetration and great dmg, as well as conjure phantasm to finish em off and ether feast just in case. There is also the added benefit of lightning attacks totally chewing up softer targets, and energy tap + energy drain + ether feast drain a total of around 35 energy, which cripples everyone except an ele.

Erasmus · May 18, 2005, 08:19 PM // 20:19

Maybe, but a group of warriors is nothing without thier monk

My main damage comes from Backfire + wastrels worry, and shatter enchantment/hex.

Shatter hex is only used when my monk is backfired. Of course, all the warriors are piled on the monk, and sometimes, they are all fans of frenzy. Thats a quick 280 dmg AoE ( if they are frenzied... 140 normal).

backfire + wastrels is fun too. Backfire them, interrupt thier remove/smite hex, then spam wastrels on them. Power spike interrupts and deals 110 or so. Then all of thier casts do 140 to themselves. If they want to avoid casting during backfire, wastrels does 70 dmg every 3 seconds.

Add in Diversion between backfires ( or on the other monk) to really hamper thier healing efforts too.

Wastrels worry is great for tearing up fleeing enemies, because they probably cant use a skill when running.

Shatter Enchantment is good at removing healing breeze type spells and defensive enchantments, whicle dealing 100+ dmg.

Soul Monarch · May 18, 2005, 08:53 PM // 20:53

I've got a lot of playing time in on a Mesmer at the moment. I've been playing them since the WBE event onwards.

My advice is to start by considering what your second class is. Second is to consider wether you are at low-level PvE, high-level PvE, or PvP fighting. DoT and Life Drain is good for low-level PvE, but it fades out considerably by the later sections. I find that few things in the game are more irritating than a Domination/Curse/Fast Cast Mesmer.

Mesmers are certainly capable of causing massive damage, but as you pointed out: Most of those skills are dispellable. In my opinion, the true strength of the Mesmer doesn't lay with the hexes. There are many enemies, players and monsters alike, that cannot remove hexes, and so the hexes can be quite powerful.

But Mesmers can do things that no one else can. In many situations, this is far more useful than simply haven't yet another damage dealer.

zemelett · May 18, 2005, 09:25 PM // 21:25

I would agree with the things that have been posted regarding the mesmer, but would like to add my two cents. I would have to say that playing the mesmer takes a really skilled player as most everything your gonna wanna do requires impeckable timing. As stated before the mesmer is really ment to counter the magic user, by disrupting them, makeing the oppenents skill take longer to recharge, burning their energy, stealing their energy, and keeping them from gaining adrenaline.

There for in my opinion the mesmer is one of the hardest and least rewarding profession and heres why I belive its the least rewarding; when you target an enemy you know how much HP they have left so a player can see how their effecting the enemy, however, you have no idea how much energy or adrenaline that enemy has left.

As a monk primary I can't tell you how annoying the mesmer is, with out energy I can't cast my heals then my team dies and blames the monk..."Why didn't you heal me"...or "You suck as monk"...

Gerbill · May 19, 2005, 12:04 AM // 00:04

I play as a Mesmer/Necromancer just became lvl 17 today.

I must say I really enjoy playing a Mesmer/Necromancer, I haven't got that many skills yet since I've sort of skipped a lot by just doing most of the coop missions.

Today in pvp I became lvl 17.. I gained like.. 1500 exp before our party got beaten, it was quite nice, I was in a party with 3 lvl 20's and me being the only one lvl 16 I thought I'd be a burden for them, but it turned out to be different.

versus casters I mainly use energy drains and of course backfire, backfire works best against Elementalists.. since they aren't much without their spells, monks fall for it sometimes aswel and the nice thing about the necromancer skills is the life stealing, it's instant cast and deals quite some damage, if you have blood magic at a reasonable high stat. I often use that to finish them off.

Versus melee characters I use Empathy and energy drains, and vs W/Mo who use a lot of heal.. they often don't have their healing signet in their list because they have their Monk's healing spells, but spells can be countered with backfire, that's a real killer for the healing prayers based W/Mo.

And keep in mind that a mesmer.. isn't melee based, so whenever you need to regain a bit of energy don't just stand and attack if you're being attacked, your staff weapon only does a bit of damage compared to what you can cause with your spells, if you're being hit, run..

PieXags · May 19, 2005, 12:33 AM // 00:33

Mesmers can be great, their only main problem IMO is that they die pretty easily, you get a warrior or two on you and yer screwed, you've got to depend on your team and play smart from the sidelines to hit it hard with a mesmer.

It's not that the mesmer can't deal damage, it's just that the mesmer deals damage all in the background, or in indirect ways. Backfire can do some awesome damage and rend the caster in a really bad position, power spike is a good interruption+damage spell as well, but it requires some good timing. Also something like conjure phantasm, then shatter delusions at the end of it's time, you can deal a fair bit of damage that way as well. Chaos storm is often difficult to see in the heat of battle if you've got warriors fighting, and that can screw some people up a fair bit.

Mesmers just good support characters, and their main weakness that I've seen is, well whenever I've faced one I managed to kill it simply because it didn't have the defense to defend itself.

Depending on yer secondary class though, be it a monk to keep you alive longer or an elementist for the damage, it can be pretty good.

Freyas · May 19, 2005, 02:04 AM // 02:04

The only places where I'd worry about dealing damage with a mesmer are arena and PvE- if you're doing tombs or GvG, forget about damage and go straight disruption. The thing is, GW is about countering your opponents. Healers are the counter for damage, while Mesmers have the best options for countering healers. A good healer can counter somewhere around 2 damage dealers, meaning if you've got 2 warriors, a ranger, and an elementalist for damage, 2 healers on the opposing team can nullify your damage-dealers. Likewise, a good mesmer can counter 2 healers, so if you've got one mesmer concentrated on shutting down their healers, your damage-dealers become effective. However, the opposing team could have a mesmer shutting down your mesmer.

Mesmer's aren't really a damage-dealing class. Yes, there are some nice skills to do some pretty good damage with a mesmer, but they're generally pretty conditional. Mesmers are great at disruption, with lots of skills based around stopping the enemy in their tracks, rather than killing them. If you're looking for a class to send your enemy into early graves, take a different class, but mesmers can be essential in tipping the scales of a match into your teams favor.

Red Locust · May 19, 2005, 07:16 AM // 07:16

That's the thing with mesmers: whatever build you use, you're always gonna have a very apparent weakness. If you go for anti-warrior, very effective but you are easy prey for spellcasters or enemy mesmers. If you go for anti-caster, once again you're very effective but you get eaten alive by warriors. Tough class to play right. I think most mesmers opt for an exclusive anti-caster role, and are appalled by how quickly warriors can take them down.

shawn23233 · May 19, 2005, 01:50 PM // 13:50

Dont play Mesmer. Hehe I think they are support role, stiffle, not really about damage.

RepinsMirg · May 19, 2005, 02:03 PM // 14:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

That's the thing with mesmers: whatever build you use, you're always gonna have a very apparent weakness. If you go for anti-warrior, very effective but you are easy prey for spellcasters or enemy mesmers. If you go for anti-caster, once again you're very effective but you get eaten alive by warriors. Tough class to play right. I think most mesmers opt for an exclusive anti-caster role, and are appalled by how quickly warriors can take them down.

You aren't going to be eatten alive by anything because you are going to be surrounded by 7 other people who hopefully compliment your skills. And if the other team wanted you dead it wouldn't matter if you were spec'd vs warriors or casters you are going to die unless you get lots of healing.

Yukito Kunisaki · May 19, 2005, 03:21 PM // 15:21

Mesmer...

I'm sure u could go pure anti-class but if you simplifiy things a bit, diversified at the same time, you can be harder to counter...

example, Domination / curses [I was gonna go domination blood for dot imagined burden, but from what I've read, yeah, it sux late game]

3 anti-warrior skills

imagined / ethereal burden
Spirit Shackles / Enfeeble
faintheartedness / Empathy

3 anti-caster skills

Energy Drain / Power Spike
Mind Wrack / Power Leak
Backfire

2 defensive/bonus skills

Ether Feast / Spiteful Spirit (the bomb on any class for that tiny bit of dmg)
Plague Sending (I was thinking to use plague touch but why get that close?)

Less focused/effective, but obviously harder to predict and counter... You be the judge ^_^

They blend well too if u run into a class that does both to a degree. W/M = fighting caster. Well, Spirit Shackles + Mind Wrack = dead w/m... PBAoE Elementalist/Warrior kamikaze to ur face? Imagined Burden + Power Spike/Leak. This would pretty much be an anti-anything class that's hard to counter... ^_^

When you really get down to it, you need to know what makes what class tick: Warrior - up in yo face, hit ya to death, little to no energy for use. Caster - far away (usually) bomb ya using lots of energy... Countering is easy if you think of it that way.