Curse

Personette · Mar 05, 2007, 02:35 AM // 02:35

Ok, so I have a question.

If it's really all about damage per second, and you can just have four warriors, a necro, and a paragon (six people!) attack a monk at the same time, deal massive damage, and move on..how is that the most efficient use of damage per second when you could have one (one!) mesmer shut down the monk while the other six people go kill everyone else?

Because a statement like that confuses me. It really amounts to, "Why would I use one person to do this job, when I could use six different ones instead?"

dgb · Mar 05, 2007, 02:40 AM // 02:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Personette

Ok, so I have a question.

If it's really all about damage per second, and you can just have four warriors, a necro, and a paragon (six people!) attack a monk at the same time, deal massive damage, and move on..how is that the most efficient use of damage per second when you could have one (one!) mesmer shut down the monk while the other six people go kill everyone else?

Because a statement like that confuses me. It really amounts to, "Why would I use one person to do this job, when I could use six different ones instead?"

The answer is, it is all about DPS. What do I lose by turning a physical into a mesmer? Probably around 50-60 DPS, maybe a little bit more.

What do I gain? Shutdown? The monks are shutdown 5s into every confrontation allready because they are on the ground.

When you get something that has the tools to hold up to the physicals, then I might be interested in the mesmer to disable those tools. Until then the mesmer doesn't do the same damage and it's shutdown is irrelevant.

To give you an idea what I run with in PVE if I have a full organised group of friends, it looks something like one Monk, one Orders Necro, One Paragon, One Barrage Ranger, Four Dragon Slashers. If you want a mesmer in there, it has to contribute more than any one of those characters, which I just can't see it doing.

Personette · Mar 05, 2007, 03:26 AM // 03:26

If you have six people spend five seconds on one monk, then that means by your calculations you have 400dps, 2000 damage total, & 5 seconds on a single AI character before you can move onto the rest.

Your individual characters are doing approximately, by your estimation, 65 dps. OK, take out one character and you've now got 335 dps for your 5 remaining characters. Add in a mesmer.

Now, let's say with the monk dead or out of the way, and a group of four foes remaining (generally, you'll find a single monk in a group of 3-7 foes, so average out to a group of five) that you spend, say, a little more time than it would take to kill a monk on each of these other foes - say seven seconds. So then you have seven seconds times four, so a total of 28 seconds.

With your group you have 5 seconds for monk + 28 seconds for everyone else so a total of 33 seconds, & a total of 13,200 damage done.

Subtracting one of your party, you can only do 335 dps. In the 28 seconds the first group was dealing with the non-monk characters, they did a total of 11,200 damage. Assume the same total damage needs to be done, divide that by 335 and you get 33 seconds.

That means that if a mesmer does nothing at all but deal with a single monk in a party of five, and doesn't contribute to the group in any other way shape or form...you come out exactly even.

dgb · Mar 05, 2007, 03:35 AM // 03:35

Sigh, they were approximate numbers. I don't even know why you're bothering to run calculations based off them.

The end point is, you say shutdown is useful. I say between high DPS and distributed interupts it's not, because what you're shutting down gets interupted and then dies anyway. If you don't beleive me or don't trust it, then that's your choice but at the end of the day, just about every player who I think is *good* at the game thinks mesmers have no place in PVE, for the reasons I point out. In short, you don't need shutdown and what you do need of shutdown can be acheived on physicals.

Ensign · Mar 05, 2007, 03:49 AM // 03:49

You still need to kill the monk after wiping the rest of the mob, whether it's shut down or not.

...duh?

Peace,
-CxE

Personette · Mar 05, 2007, 05:03 AM // 05:03

The mesmer kills the monk...so he's dead.

I didn't say anything about shutdown. Straw man argument there. & if all the players you emulate & admire in the game think the way you do...that just means you hang around with a bunch of like-minded people, which is normal but doesn't prove anything.

My point was just that the damage per second argument isn't sufficient. It's not a bad method, it's just not definitively superior.

Domon Kasho · Mar 05, 2007, 05:09 AM // 05:09

i only grab a mesmer when i know i have a hard target to kill (boss) and i believe that a few well placed failure hexes will benefit my group as a whole. but otherwise no mesmers in PvE for me.

Pakana · Mar 05, 2007, 03:34 PM // 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrimWizard

why Spiteful Spirit is a Necromancer elite and not a Mesmer one?

While you have a point there, I'm just so glad it isn't a mesmer skill. Then every team you joined with a mesmer would ask "R U SS?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgb

What do I gain? Shutdown? The monks are shutdown 5s into every confrontation allready because they are on the ground.

Every time someone says "mesmer", everyone thinks "monk". Like these were the two magnetic poles. What applies to a monk, applies to all casters. It's not only a monk your mesmer deals with. It's the nasty SS/whatever-necros and the elemetalists as well. Some of the skills your mesmer carries even when an anti-caster build, may also be against melee fighters. So what else you get except shut down? You also get less load to your monk. Less damage to your team. If that counts. And in some high damage places I know it counts. Especially if mobs have enchantment removals.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgb

just about every player who I think is *good* at the game thinks mesmers have no place in PVE, for the reasons I point out.

Heh. Either your friends aren't good, or your thinking has something to improve. Or you all just play farming trolls and griffons.

-----

What I'd like to see, is more mobs that would use the dead corpses (or no dead corpses at all). So your team couldn't trust on minion body blocking everywhere. Add that and enchantment removals, and interrupting would be very useful there to reduce the damage team gets.

And what comes to these give mesmer AoE damage spells, I'd just hate to see mesmer becoming another (boring) elementalist.

Lopezus · Mar 05, 2007, 09:01 PM // 21:01

I dont know hot to make mesmer more wanted in PvE except telling my own testimony of how great is to play with mesmer in the team.

Not long ago i've finished prohecies campagin playing ranger and my guildmate played mesmer we wre playing with his heros as i haven't got nightfall at that time and henches. Game went really smmoth and we stormed through missions with ease getting masters in almost all of them. Later on i bought nightfall and finished it with my dervish character. So then agian me playing dervish and my guildmate playing mesmer went for a bit more chalange and go to FoW and UW. Playing with heroes we finished all quests and completly cleared Fow and in UW we cleared it as well and made all quests excpet the The Four Horsemen and Servants of Grenth ( but not saying that we wont complete them in futere as these two needs some more practice). From my experience mesmer is great class in PVE and great addition to the team.

noblepaladin · Mar 05, 2007, 10:23 PM // 22:23

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.

The problem is that people will just bring one Broadhead ranger and solve all the problems. Mesmers have optimal long-term skills, which is why they are so good in PvP. E-denial is weak unless the fight lasts long, in which case it takes a severe toll on the enemy casters (try denying an enemy Elementalist in PvE, they always die before they hit zero energy). Shutdown is useless unless the enemy has a chance to wait for 1 cooldown at least (i.e. why use diversion to disable a spell if the enemy will be dead before he can cast it again?). All the Mesmer degen skills are second rate compared to Searing Flames, which due to the stupid AI bunching together, puts an entire mob into -7 degen. All the mesmer hexes such as backfire and empath are second rate to Spiteful Spirit.

If the AI is smarter, then people will have to focus on long term strategies rather than "spiking" all the enemies to death with high DPS skills before they can do anything. However, making a good AI is very difficult.

What Mesmers need are PvE specific skills, skills that take advantage of the stupid AI. All the popular PvE builds depend on skills that do that (Barrage, all forms of nuking, SS, etc).

GrimWizard · Mar 05, 2007, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pakana

While you have a point there, I'm just so glad it isn't a mesmer skill. Then every team you joined with a mesmer would ask "R U SS?"

What? You mean as apposed to when i join a group with my necromancer and they ask "SS or MM"?!

Personette · Mar 06, 2007, 05:04 AM // 05:04

You CAN drain an elementalist's energy in PVE, but it's usually not smart playing. Elementalists have the largest energy pools, mesmers don't, and you end up using up all your resources on one character.

IMHO, when you have a strong elementalist foe and you're playing a mesmer you stop them from using their skills at all and then let the warrior go in and bash up the soft target quickly and painlessly.

On the other hand, you can kill warriors quickly PVE with energy denial, then spamming mind wrack and wastrel's worry on them.

Incidentally: the point of using diversion is that the enemy will be dead before he can cast his spell again. That's my ideal situation.

Terra Xin · Mar 06, 2007, 11:33 AM // 11:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by noblepaladin

All the mesmer hexes such as backfire and empath are second rate to Spiteful Spirit.

Non-elite, non-elite, elite. Backfire deals alot more damage than SS, and be aware that scatter occurs as well.

I agree with Lopezus:

Quote:

I dont know hot to make mesmer more wanted in PvE except telling my own testimony of how great is to play with mesmer in the team.

because that's the only way that a person can tell whether or not they have actually had a good mesmer in their party, because once the battle is over, the mesmer gets praise.

I've played with my own mesmer through all three campaigns. I honestly have no trouble at all with getting into mission groups, albeit, the groups that I don't get into, aren't really friendly people to begin with. FoW is easy to get into, because mesmers are more popular in that area now^^.

Anyone who truly believes that the campaigns can be run with Nuker + Tank + MM + Monk has some serious boredom issues to deal with.

Avarre · Mar 06, 2007, 11:52 AM // 11:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pakana

Heh. Either your friends aren't good, or your thinking has something to improve. Or you all just play farming trolls and griffons.

A person who utterly and confidently thinks a mesmer is a legitimately strong class in PvE is incorrect.

I say this, having advocated mesmers in PvE since I started the game, having PvE'ed near-solely on mesmer through the mundane and elite areas. Time have changed. The structure of PvE creates only niche uses for mesmers where other classes are more effective. Increase in enemy health has raised the demand for direct damage and firepower, while effects such as degen and conditional damage hexes lose potency in relativity. Mesmers likewise cannot be given spells that mimic the firepower capability of other classes, for reasons of imbalance.

The fact that mesmers should even require such skills to be on a level field is a testament to the structure of PvE being a pure DPSfest. Yes, skills that deal shutdown and damage work. You can run multiple mesmers in areas and get away with it. In a few situations, a single mesmer can even outdamage an additional ele (echo/mantra'ed shatter hex targetted a tank in hex-heavy zones beats meteor shower), but this tends to be the exception, not the rule.

With the increasing AoE and damage options, as well as monster power (Compare shadow warriors and Abyssals to Anur mobs) makes the vast majority of mesmer skills redundant. Rangers (broadhead/epidemic, or conc/epidemic/barrage) are more capable at caster shutdown and interrupts. Elementalists can throw out more disruption and damage with chained meteor showers. Larger mob packs make old staple PvE skills (empathy?) largely useless - the focus is now on the spamming of heavy nukes (shatter hex, chain backfire, etc). With the current trend, mesmers will utterly lose their place in a PvE context.

It's not like that's unexpected - the pinnacle of PvE is to gather, group, and wipe mob packs in the quickest possible time. Very rarely does a mesmer fit into this tactical plan (shatter hex and dom aoes). Disruption is better dealt by other classes that are also capable of stronger dps and versatility.

Mesmers work, but so does everything. This is PvE.

How to make them more wanted? Step back from the number/stat pumping of Factions and Nightfall elite areas. Areas like FoW and UW used more variety without rediculous number raising, and mobile patrols to create a challenge to PvE players. Make the maximum mob level for standard packs 24, 28 for bosses, 30 for superbosses. Give real skillbars to the monsters. Vary the content of the groups so that even when all on a single target, they don't stand so close together. This wouldn't solve the fundamental problem - the PvE objective does not include a mesmer. However, it would increase the effectiveness of the mesmer's skills in comparison to the situation now. Groups that used counters to end-all effects like daze and knockdown would result in a higher demand for mesmer hard shutdown.

You can't effectively make mesmers truly wanted because they can't fit into the standard structure of PvE. Mesmers are there to make killing things easier and more effective - but 'efficiency' in PvE is how far you can spread AoE damage and mulitply the efficiency of your spells. In PvP, when people balled up, you didn't need a mesmer - you'd blow them apart with hero SFway. In no circumstance will mesmer shutdown be able to surpass taking a spell of X damage, and multiplying it by 5-10 on several targets.

The mesmer was an inventive class to put into the game, but it doesn't fit with the methodology of PvE. When you block skills and capability, you reduce the effective intelligence of the enemy, as they can no longer do complex of efficient things. PvE mobs are already at 0 effective intelligence, and need very little shutdown - the only example is ridiculous single skills (300hp Orison on Willa the Unpleasant -> Diversion). Disruption is easier caused by Eles and Rangers. That's not going to change without an immense fundamental overhaul, and I don't see that coming.

Estic · Mar 06, 2007, 02:07 PM // 14:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

That's not going to change without an immense fundamental overhaul, and I don't see that coming.

Another thing that I won't see coming as well, but might make Mesmers more wanted is toning down the party size in high end areas, combined with fewer enemies who are more spread out.

Max party size 4, most enemies in one pack 6. AoE gets less effective and a backfire is now more interesting then a meteor shower.

Granted, this would require the complete game to be redesigned just for one class. But there's a million to one chance it might work. And if I have learned anything, a million to one chances always come true.

Pakana · Mar 06, 2007, 03:54 PM // 15:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

A person who utterly and confidently thinks a mesmer is a legitimately strong class in PvE is incorrect.

First, a player who says that mesmer has no use in PvE, is incorrect.
And second, you quote me but put words in my mouth that I didn't say.

As I've said in my earlier posts, my emphasis is on the end game areas. Namely UW, FoW and Tombs. An interrupting+shutdown mesmer there is a very, very good team member. A mesmer there doesn't need to be a better interrupter than a ranger is, since they have other functions what make them different professions. I've played hundreds of trips as a mesmer to these places (as well as many other professions) and there is no way in hell I will admit there is no use for mesmer there. If one looks only the damage output, then one doesn't see mesmer's role right. If one sees only monks as mesmer targets, then one doesn't see mesmer's role right. In the high damage areas that have hours of play time, there is value with someone who is preventing damage and reducing team mortality. As I've said before, sometimes a mesmer can reduce more damage from your team than a monk can heal. That's not useless. Mesmer is not a monk, but protection is one of mesmer's dimensions!

Still I strongly feel and agree that PvE mobs (AI and group composition) should be touched to make mesmer more popular.

Braggi · Mar 06, 2007, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgb

The answer is, it is all about DPS. What do I lose by turning a physical into a mesmer? Probably around 50-60 DPS, maybe a little bit more.

What do I gain? Shutdown? <snip>

When you get something that has the tools to hold up to the physicals, then I might be interested in the mesmer to disable those tools. Until then the mesmer doesn't do the same damage and it's shutdown is irrelevant.

Yes and no. The mesmer doesn't have to do 50-60 dps. Your warriors spend at least part of their time running around, he can just cast away.

I see your point, as you want a dedicated spike team. Still in PUGs I found the mesmer to work very well - I can shut someone down, and weaken other enemies significantly before the heavies arrive, protect an ally under pressure - so I swap raw damage for flexibility.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

Larger mob packs make old staple PvE skills (empathy?) largely useless - the focus is now on the spamming of heavy nukes (shatter hex, chain backfire, etc). With the current trend, mesmers will utterly lose their place in a PvE context.

It's not like that's unexpected - the pinnacle of PvE is to gather, group, and wipe mob packs in the quickest possible time. Very rarely does a mesmer fit into this tactical plan (shatter hex and dom aoes). Disruption is better dealt by other classes that are also capable of stronger dps and versatility.

It is hard to argue with you, as you have more hours on your mesmer than I on my account. Large uniform mob packs are a significant part of the problem.

So is hex removal - one of the areas a mesmer should excel. Only he doesn't - monk spells are usually superior because they also heal, and a mesmer can't deal with mass hexes anyway. He has some more ways to shatter them, thats all. Enchants - no real advantage. Weapon enchants - helpless. Conditions - helpless.

agrios · Mar 06, 2007, 04:05 PM // 16:05

As said before, only people who aint got a mez underestimate them. IMHO, they are good enough in both PVE/PVP. Its all about that little thing behind the keyb..

dgb · Mar 06, 2007, 05:14 PM // 17:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by agrios

As said before, only people who aint got a mez underestimate them. IMHO, they are good enough in both PVE/PVP. Its all about that little thing behind the keyb..

I've got a PVE mesmer. After monk it's the class I enjoy playing the most in PVP. I am fully aware of how they work and they are not a first choice class in PVE. Do they work? Yes. So does a warrior with an empty skill bar - who really cares?

Croix_Raul · Mar 06, 2007, 07:07 PM // 19:07

Well PvE mesmer are still by far limited to certain roles but pale in Comparison to all other class as they are even more conditional now with spike nuke nerf

Limited to Boss killing
Fast cast Resing
Interrupt <-- still pale compare to ranger spammer interrupt,
as compare to hero mesmer human still lacking as human limited to players reaction time thou there are some spell to aid this but extra slot and energy require to operate still by far not a solution.

PvE mesmer still rate second last being welcome by General PvE public and with all the bad mesmer around its easy to understand why they aren't very welcome and have lesser need in PvE context

even DoA by design support the holy trinity