Curse

CailinArian · Apr 08, 2011, 12:36 AM // 00:36

Every single time I run into a hardcore player they have somethin' bad to say about my mesmer build. Honestly, I don't see what's so bad about it.

1. Wandering Eye
2. Clumsiness
3. Conjure Nightmare
4. Shrinking Armor
5. Sum of All Fears
6. Spirit Shackles
7. Lyssa's Aura
8. Comfort Animal (I has a dune lizard

)

So yeah. That's a decent build, right?

Caw521 · Apr 08, 2011, 01:11 AM // 01:11

For one, pets are unnecessary unless running a pet build. Get rid of comfort animal; it'll only be blackout fodder.

If the build is for pve, degen usually isn't that great, especially a 15e one wasted on something that's gonna die in a couple seconds. Also, enemies losing 5 energy whenever they attack isn't gonna do that much in pve. Clumsiness and wandering eye are good, but sum of all fears might reduce their effectiveness, although probably not that noticeably. Cracked armor is good in pve, but you'd have to wait 10 seconds for it to be applied on one foe, and once 10 seconds are over, the foe is usually dead. Lyssa's Aura is satisfactory, but you might wanna bring pdrain or leech signet for hard energy gain and rupts.

If used for pvp, it's a decent pressure build I suppose (except for the pet :P)

Imo, you should replace some of the single target pressure skills to multi-target pressure, rupts, hard damage, or support skills.

Cuilan · Apr 08, 2011, 01:14 AM // 01:14

Pets will make your skills recharge when it dies and doesn't have any real purpose with the build.
No way to pull off Shrinking Armor for its condition.
A stand alone single target degen still like Conjure Nightmare does little, especially in hard mode.
Spirit Shackles is worthless anyway you look at it.

LifeInfusion · Apr 08, 2011, 01:14 AM // 01:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by CailinArian

Every single time I run into a hardcore player they have somethin' bad to say about my mesmer build. Honestly, I don't see what's so bad about it.

1. Wandering Eye
2. Clumsiness
3. Conjure Nightmare
4. Shrinking Armor
5. Sum of All Fears
6. Spirit Shackles
7. Lyssa's Aura
8. Comfort Animal (I has a dune lizard

)

So yeah. That's a decent build, right?

What's a hardcore player?

I'd choose to ditch conjure nightmare + shrinking armor. Sum of all fears isn't a make or break skill: it's single target and the effects are minimal other than the minor snare.

I'd also slot Arcane Conundrum (and/or power drain) since your energy is very tight and you don't have mind wrack to capitalize on Spirit Shackles .

If you're going to keep Shrinking armor, use drain delusions.

It's generally bad to have a pet too.

Wandering eye: good.
Clumsiness: good when energy supports it
Conjure Nightmare: waste of energy
Shrinking armor: waste of energy without shatter delusions/drain delusions --> fodder for drain delusions
Sum of all fears: usually pointless, it has its uses though --> replace with Arcane Conundrum
Spirit Shackles: usually useless
Lyssa's Aura: the only way this build supports the energy or Clumsiness... (needs 8+ inspiration to be useful)

Consider bringing

FoxBat · Apr 08, 2011, 01:22 AM // 01:22

Spirit shackles can be funny for shutting down energy skills on bosses. They'll spend all their time autoattacking instead. If you like you can then spam mind wrack for some damage packets. Doesn't do anything apart from that very limited use.

CailinArian · Apr 08, 2011, 01:28 AM // 01:28

But I love Rexy. D: </3 She's my dune lizaaaarrrdddddd.

So what you guys are saying is:
1. No Conjure Nightmare
2. Get rid of Rexy (</3)
3. Get rid of Spirit Shackles
4. Replace Sum of All Fears with Arcane Conundrum

@LifeInfusion: Uh, I'd say you're pretty hardcore. Which is cool, but a lot of people are jerks about it. Actin' like it's some sort of high school class that I didn't take/failed. Hardcore, to me, is when you have more than 50 plat in your storage at all times and you've got a calculated, super-effective build and when you have all missions on masters and tons of titles n' stuff.

@Caw521: One fourth of what you said flew right over my head. What is pdrain? Pressure build...?

Haggis of Doom · Apr 08, 2011, 01:42 AM // 01:42

I vouch for everyone's comments thus far.

An Illusion mesmer excels at 4 roles: physical shutdown + dmg, condition spreading, slow, and degen. As people have stated, slow is usually not needed, and degen is usually not worthwhile. This leaves us with the first two roles.

Ineptitude, Clumsiness, Wandering Eye and Signet of Clumsiness are staples on a physical shutdown bar. You needn't bring them all, although doing so is not a bad idea at all.

Condition spreading is done on Fevered Dreams and Extend Conditions bars. I know very little about this part of mesmering, so I'll stop talking about it right now ^^

Once the primary purpose of your bar fulfilled, getting energy management is the next step. Arcane Conundrum is in Illusion and is a strong skill, thus most of the time people will bring it. A second e-management skill is often present in the form of Power Drain or Drain Delusions (on human bars).

If it's for a hero, a combat hard res (Resurrection Chant, Flesh of my Flesh, Signet of Return etc) is a good idea due to Fast Casting and the fact that mesmers usually do not depend on secondaries (unless you run FD, which you shouldn't slap on a hero). If it's for a player, PvE skills usually take the filler slots.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CailinArian

What is pdrain? Pressure build...?

Pdrain = Power Drain

Pressure = when you make the enemy's health bar go down slowly but surely (well... slowly in comparison to spiking, which I'll mention soon), basically dealing more damage than the enemies heal themselves. This is in opposition to spiking, where you kill off enemies so fast that their healers don't have time to react. Most PvE builds are pressure builds.

LifeInfusion · Apr 08, 2011, 01:58 AM // 01:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by CailinArian

But I love Rexy. D: </3 She's my dune lizaaaarrrdddddd.

So what you guys are saying is:
1. No Conjure Nightmare
2. Get rid of Rexy (</3)
3. Get rid of Spirit Shackles
4. Replace Sum of All Fears with Arcane Conundrum

@LifeInfusion: Uh, I'd say you're pretty hardcore. Which is cool, but a lot of people are jerks about it. Actin' like it's some sort of high school class that I didn't take/failed. Hardcore, to me, is when you have more than 50 plat in your storage at all times and you've got a calculated, super-effective build and when you have all missions on masters and tons of titles n' stuff.

@Caw521: One fourth of what you said flew right over my head. What is pdrain? Pressure build...?

FoxBat pointed out a neat use of Spirit Shackles, but I highly doubt any normal mobs will live long enough to make it worthwhile unless they're super bosses with 10k+ HP and innate health regen like Shiro, Lich, Glint or the great destroyer. The normal bosses you sill cap from don't last too long (15 energy is super steep) so you're better off with drain delusions or something like that.

I had 60plat when I was only 1-2 weeks in, during prophecies release (during release there was no powertrading or ectos basically for the first week or so). My build was catastophic because at the time skills didn't unlock via PvP (i.e. you had to make it to Ember light camp...but even then it wasn't that way at release, it was changed after release to have all prophecies skills at ember light camp). I was still a noob by today's PvX standards, I ran fireball, firestorm, phoenix and ice spikes. It wasn't until I capped glyph of renewal and did renewal nuking that I had anywhere close to a meta build. It's all experimentation in the end: there was no PvXwiki.

Money isn't what makes someone good at GW. Evidence: someone in FoW aggroing 3 groups and running fiery swords in PVE against destroyers.

If you're new (or just don't care about game mechanics) there's a few things that aren't apparent at first. People tend to be assholes about it, but you figure them out with time.

Intricacies are apparent only after reading wiki+guru most of the time.
Degen is 2HP/sec and is capped at -10. Thus a degeneration of 8 from Conjure nightmare will be 16HP/sec. If your team uses anything like burning/poison/bleed it gets worse, because your conjure nightmare only puts out 7 or less added degen.
Energy regens at 1/3 energy per second per pip , so that 15 energy for spirit shackles takes 15/(7/3)=6.4 seconds of energy regen assuming no other skill is used.
Pets disable your skillbar when they die. It's not a big deal in normal mode or with minions in the team since they don't die as fast due to innate +20 armor that sets them at 80 armor with a 33% damage reduction akin to another +24 armor. In hard mode they're a liability.

As far as skills go, you might want to look at signet of clumsiness as well although it's exponentially better on Keystone signet builds with mantra of inscriptions to lower recharge.

Voodoo Rage · Apr 08, 2011, 02:40 AM // 02:40

I really hate seeing Lyssa's on that bar. Ineptitude is such a great illusion elite to pass on. Also is no one using Cry of Pain anymore?

CailinArian · Apr 08, 2011, 03:13 AM // 03:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by CailinArian

Every single time I run into a hardcore player they have somethin' bad to say about my mesmer build. Honestly, I don't see what's so bad about it.

^ Point and case.

Cuilan · Apr 08, 2011, 03:30 AM // 03:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by CailinArian

^ Point and case.

Nobody in this thread mentioned your build was anything good.

You could use Mantra of Recovery or Psychic Instability with Arcane Conundrum and Glyph of Lesser Energy with Signet of Clumsiness. Frustration with an interrupted attack skill is very rare, but big. Just keep Clumsiness and Wandering Eye.

Fragility, Drain Delusions, and Phantom Pain are worth looking into.

belladonna shylock · Apr 08, 2011, 03:55 AM // 03:55

I say keep the pet. They all just jealous anyways! And if you really love your pet, give it some skills!

ineptitude is a MUCH better elite if this is pve. Power return is a good interrupt for pve. Same with web of disruption if you can use drain delusion on it to get energy back (and gives you a second interrupt)

CailinArian · Apr 08, 2011, 11:40 AM // 11:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I really hate seeing Lyssa's on that bar.

People always say stuff like that to me. I don't even know what's wrong with Lyssa's Aura. Why do they hate it? Beats me. They just say they hate it.

I actually got a pet in the first place to get some rewards for GW2. And then she reminded me of my brother's leopard gecko, and even though she's totally useless there's a stupid attachment there. lol.

Seeeeeeee? I drew it. It's official. : D

I appreciate the constructive comments on my build, although some of the slang is getting past me, and I don't know what a lot of these spells actually do. I guess I'll have to look them up. Wandering Eye is one of my favorites. I'm glad I didn't mess up on that one.

LifeInfusion · Apr 08, 2011, 01:59 PM // 13:59

They hate seeing Lyssa's Aura because mesmers have strong elites and non-elite energy management. When you have the WTF armor-ignoring damage and almost-perma-blind of Ineptitude, AoE knockdown of Psychic instability (PI), cross-class abilities of Signet of Illusions, AoE daze of Fevered Dreams, Mantra of Recovery to make recharge of non-elite energy management stupidly fast, it's hard to justify using an energy management elite.

There's so many non-elite options: Waste Not want not, Power drain, leech signet, arcane conundrum. Auspicious Incantation with expensive, short recharge spells. Drain Delusions with Web of disruption, Shrinking armor (not really), or a cheap 5energy hex like Fragility. Drain enchantment on areas with heavy amounts of enchantments (i.e. Dervishs). Inspired Hex in areas with heavy hexes (although it doesn't get to recharge faster with Fast casting if it's not a monster hex). Hexeater signet in areas with Deep Freeze and other AoE hexes like Arcane conundrum.

Glyph of lesser energy if you spec into Elementalist secondary instead of Ranger. It doesn't do anything offensively though.

Usually if people devote an elite to energy management it is Tease, since it has a higher potential than Lyssa's Aura and does something offensively. If you get the maximum out of Lyssa's Aura that's reasonable, it's 1 energy per second (3 regen), assuming you don't need to refresh it. That's reasonable, but easily attained with the other energy management skills that benefit from fast casting.

In general, energy management on a bar that does nothing offensively/defensively is bad. For example, Air attunement on elementalists just to use overpriced elemental skills that do less than listed damage (the yellow tooltip in the skillbar) in Hard mode.

At the end of the day, how you play is up to you. I ran W/R with a pet for laughs during Prophecies.

Cuilan · Apr 08, 2011, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by CailinArian

I don't even know what's wrong with Lyssa's Aura.

You should always ask why and if you don't like their answer you can either counter it or have them explain better.

Enchantments that tend to renew are easily removed because they're brought to the top of the enchantment stack. That makes it hard to cover and could be why they didn't care for you using it.

I'm also a fan of Tease and would use that over LA.

Voodoo Rage · Apr 08, 2011, 04:49 PM // 16:49

I used to run around with pets a lot too, so I don't have a huge issue with it but you do need to realize that your pet is really just a liability. He isn't going to bring anything to the table other than some piddling physical damage that might trigger one of your necro's mark of pain or barbs (neither of which I personally run anymore). In NM he's going to be durable enough, so I wouldn't worry too much about him screwing you up by dying but ultimately he's using up one of your skills (heck throw in an Asuran Summons there if you want a companion).

CailinArian · Apr 08, 2011, 06:09 PM // 18:09

Okay, so aside from getting rid of Rexy, these are spells that I've been told should be replaced:

Lyssa's Aura --> Tease?
Sum of All Fears --> Arcane Conundrum
Power Drain and Leech Signet are also on the table?
Get rid of Conjure Nightmare
Get rid of Spirit Shackles

Braxton619 · Apr 08, 2011, 06:43 PM // 18:43

^Well generally you should take out your pet bc its going to be useless in HM. It would deal like 2dmg and would die instanty.

belladonna shylock · Apr 08, 2011, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Pet probably isn't negotiable. It stays. But, remember in PVE your skills recharge faster. So the non-elite energy helper skills work BETTER than what you think they do. i still say go Ineptitude. The blind is very helpful.

CailinArian · Apr 08, 2011, 10:13 PM // 22:13

What skill should I get rid of to use Ineptitude?