Curse

Pugs Not Drugs · Apr 29, 2011, 02:41 PM // 14:41

i run melee usually, so two rits/two mes/and 3 necro is perfect for me. razah is build as a st/defensive/offensive rit, and his shelter and union and displacement are extremely useful if my minions die to nukes. i am sure to micro them with soul twisting, so they last forever combined with unfeeling. plus, anguish and pain stack with xandras spirits, so more dps. two mesmers is more than enough imo (panic and ineptitude). also, by speccing razah as st, xandra can sos and bring soh and smite hex, uber buffing me. that allows me to bring a curses/heal necro, which boosts my damage even more.

Kunder · Apr 29, 2011, 02:44 PM // 14:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

On that topic.... this has been working surprisingly well for melee support.

Esurge
Cry
Mistrust
Shatter hex
Siphon Spirit
Splinter Weapon
Ancestor's Rage
FomF / Unnatural Signet

10 channel / 9 FC

Assuming you have spirits on your team, siphons been working better for me than inspiration...

Main problem I have with this is that SW scales so well you have to be insane not to run r14+ if you want to abuse it on a physical. Going from your r10 channeling to r16 will increase damage by nearly 100%. That said, this probably works well if you have 3 of the same build and go for straight quantity over quality, with Splinter Weapon getting thrown on every physical, then every minion, and then everyone who might wand once a battle

As for my Rt/Mo smite build, here it is:

Splinter Weapon/Ancestor's Rage/Bloodsong/Ray of Judgment/Smite Condition/Smite Hex/Strength of Honor/Spirit Siphon.

Contains almost everything (sans orders) you need to buff melee into the stratosphere and clean annoying stuff off them. Can slip judge's insight in there but frankly the damage just isn't worth needing to micro 3 separate skills for 1 bar unless you are fighting undead. RoJ is just the icing on the cake to let you handle SoO blind

As for ST, I highly recommend against using 3 spirits. Heroes just aren't that smart, keep it at 2. Especially when using minions, Union and Displacement do very little (they both prevent chip damage, which BotM already cleans up very easily anyway). Shelter alone is all you need, its the get out of jail free card that can keep your entire party alive or your whole minion army alive from a nuke, getting the hero to chain 2 or 3 of them in a row is the best bet. Personally, I even go so far as to use Recuperation instead simply because it wont interfere with casting Shelter as much as possible.

majoho · Apr 29, 2011, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Not sure why people are so ecstatic over mesmer primaries.

You can run mesmer elites on secondaries pretty well, sure you're missing 4 attribute points but you gain more utility.

LexTalionis · Apr 29, 2011, 03:24 PM // 15:24

I say do whichever makes you feel more comfortable. I do a lot of experimental testing and switch my builds about once every day - and I've found personally that Energy-surge caps out its utility at 2 copies, although that might because I run more secondary Area of Effect damage than the usual Mesway. This is more an AI issue because Heroes do not tend to use Energy Surge the instant it is off the recharge and prefer to wait until it can hit multiple targets before they bump its priority. (AI Issues also hinder the utility of Chaos Storm in PvE)

Instead I find myself needing more "cleanup" single target damage-per-second (clumps aren't an issue). Recently, I've been experimenting with a strict SpiritMes build for areas where you can't depend on large clusters of enemies (Partly due to curiosity piqued by a comment by Jeydra about the speed of Spiritways) and I can say that if you're using Energy-surge strictly for the damage, it is often inferior to Wandering Eye, which is nearly identical as far as utility is concerned except that Wandering Eye requires the enemy to attack, recharges faster, and does more damage. (Energy Surge has the advantage of being in Domination, but Illusion isn't too shabby either.)

Here's an example of my current testing build which I've been using for WiK today - AoE damagewise, I really can't tell the difference between it and 4 ESurges.

Note that this is purely an AI testing build on the vanquish caravan from hell, so many things don't make sense (for example, I forgot to remove Dwayna's Sorrow from the Monk when I kicked out my necromancer) and the apparent redundancy of Protective Spirit and Aegis on the Soul Twisting rit. As far as your question is concerned though, Signet of Ghostly Might does a hell of a lot more dps than a single Mesmer (especially with painful bond) but it's not Area of Effect.

A lot of people will tell you that Blood is Power is bad, but as far as I'm concerned, with regards to Mesmers, that opinion is full of poo. There are very very few skills that basically give 20 energy to target other party member over 12 seconds for the cost of 1 energy and a bit of health. It opens up so many possibilities and flexibility on hero bars because you don't need to glut them down with E-management.

edit: And in reply to majoho, you do have a point that much of what they can do isn't all that exclusive, but the main focus is for Fast Casting. If Energy Surge was a 99 damage nuke every 15 seconds, it'd be kind of ugh. With the potential of casting it every 11 seconds instead, it becomes better. Also, a significant amount of the strong Mesmer skills have semi-long casting times (2 seconds or so) and this is counterproductive when trying to spike the enemy before they get a chance to recover (or do damage to you).

Dzjudz · Apr 29, 2011, 03:31 PM // 15:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by majoho

Not sure why people are so ecstatic over mesmer primaries.

You can run mesmer elites on secondaries pretty well, sure you're missing 4 attribute points but you gain more utility.

Mostly Fast Casting for faster cast and 1/3 less recharge, but the breakpoints (damage and duration) are very nice too.

Compare ESurge and Panic on a primary with 15 DM and 10+1 FC to a secondary with 12 DM:
Esurge
- 1.2s cast, 10s recharge, 90 dmg.
- 2s cast, 15s recharge, 72 dmg.
Panic
- 0.6s cast, 10s recharge, 10s duration.
- 1s cast, 15s recharge, 8s duration.

Both have quite a difference.

Jeydra · Apr 29, 2011, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

In practice it's not quite *that* good, but as promised, better damage if you can ball em. With 6 foes for example it's not even close.

If you can ball 100 foes then Fire Eles deal more damage than SoGM Rits, lol. There has to be an upper limit to the number of foes you can ball.

Why can't the SoGM Rit ball foes too and then have SoS apply Painful Bond, which turns 90 DPS to 180 DPS?

If you're factoring in dead spirits and all that, then dead spirits = damage not gone to your team (which is a BIG advantage of Ritualists in general), spirits not being recasted = work on your micro, Unnatural Signet needs a hex to be effective (AI might use the Signet even if target is not hexed), Mistrust does not trigger on KD'ed foes / foes with no spells, etc.

But this is all theory. Practice is always the more effective test. Interested in clearing some random mission (e.g. Raisu) where we use the same builds, but I use SoGM and you use Mes?

And what Djudz said about Mesmer primaries.

Dzjudz · Apr 29, 2011, 04:42 PM // 16:42

SoGM rit can ball, but it will remain single target, so there's no added benefit to balling (other than applying Painful Bond to multiple targets).

The 100 foes with fire eles is just an exaggeration, but the 3-5 enemies with ESurge is very realistic.

LexTalionis · Apr 29, 2011, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

But this is all theory. Practice is always the more effective test. Interested in clearing some random mission (e.g. Raisu) where we use the same builds, but I use SoGM and you use Mes?

And what Djudz said about Mesmer primaries.

Personally, I find Raisu (or anything with Shiroken) is a bit unnatural with regard to E-surge Mesmers, thanks to Song of the Mists. You might want to pick a more neutral testing ground where enemy energy is actually a limitation when stacking E-Surges.

Edit: Why not try testing with Glint's Challenge instead? It's fairly diverse with enemy variety, awards points based on kill speed and is not really a test of who brings more copies of "Charge!"/"Fall Back!"/"Incoming!".

Plutoman · Apr 29, 2011, 05:28 PM // 17:28

@Above stuff with fire ele's - mistrust + e-surge + CoF will blow away SF's damage output in hard mode with fast casting included.

I'm currently wanting to explore the potential of a 5-6 mesmer team with an Ineptitude, Fevered Dreams, Extend Conditions + rit healing (could be played as a rit, too), 2 E-surges, and possibly a panic. I'm considering dropping the panic for a BiP healer necro, so I could sub out energy skills on the least intensive of the mesmers and add in prot skills.

Theorycraft so far.

I may attempt running a 3 mesmer build, dropping the extend conditions, panic, and an energy surge (and keeping Fevered Dreams + Ineptitude + one E-surge). Basically a 3 mesmer fragway that shuts down through daze and blind.

My opinions of panic are that it's now overrated. With multiple mesmers you can provide the shutdown to a group that you need just through energy management skills and others like CoF and Mistrust. More shutdown is wasted - I'd want to take a more useful elite at this point (in using smaller amounts of mesmers, I'd vouch for it's usefulness though).

Kunder · Apr 29, 2011, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Problem with SoGM is that it takes 10s (estimate) to set up. That means you either wait for 10s before a battle or it takes 10s during the battle before you can get to full DPS. I'll handle these separately.

If a group without SoGM runs straight in while you are camping around setting up spirits, you don't just have to out DPS the mesmer, you have to out DPS the mesmer to the point where the difference equals the entirety of the damage the team with the mesmer put out for those 10s. Assuming battles last 30s on average, that means you have to put out on the order of 5x the DPS of the mesmer. This is clearly impossible.

If you run straight in with SoGM and start casting, you lose a lot of things. First off, you can't use AoU and affect them all. Your spirits can't tank any more. Your spirits' attacks will not be focused like they would if you used summon spirits and/or precast the spirits. That means Painful Bond is increasingly unreliable the more enemies you get. Furthermore, you still lose DPS just as above (though less). Ignoring the problem of painful bond not working, you miss out on about 7s of damage effectively (5s worth because only half your spirits are up on average, x1.5 because you can't cast SoGM until the end). So we are almost as badly off as we were before anyways!

Note: all this goes away as soon as you place summon spirits on your bar. Every battle other than the first for an area will have 0 wasted time and you can directly compare the DPS between a SoGM and Mesmer builds. Pity heroes can't use PvE skills. Personally, I still would prefer the mesmer for most areas, though player-run SoGM builds certainly show their strengths against smaller numbers or as a way to quickly spike dangerous melee enemies with armor ignoring damage while also body blocking them.

LexTalionis · Apr 29, 2011, 05:42 PM // 17:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plutoman

I may attempt running a 3 mesmer build, dropping the extend conditions, panic, and an energy surge (and keeping Fevered Dreams + Ineptitude + one E-surge). Basically a 3 mesmer fragway that shuts down through daze and blind.

My opinions of panic are that it's now overrated. With multiple mesmers you can provide the shutdown to a group that you need just through energy management skills and others like CoF and Mistrust. More shutdown is wasted - I'd want to take a more useful elite at this point (in using smaller amounts of mesmers, I'd vouch for it's usefulness though).

I have a policy of only using Panic if I can micro it. It's not a skill you use very often, but it enables Wastrel's skills and works well with Drain Delusions.

The thing about Panic is that it's very difficult for enemies to remove - with even one or two enemies hexed with Panic in a large clump, the clump will get interrupted often enough to prevent multiple meteor showers or savannah heats from landing, and it's semi useful at countering attack skills (Classic example: Panic will stop the majority of a Barrage Spam while Cry of Frustration will stop it for all of 2 seconds and Mistrust won't do nuts)

Additionally, sometimes things retaliate with Hex Eater Vortex or some other form of Hex removal and then you're screwed. Panic also has full coverage as it is maintainable and can be done pre-emptively, unlike Psychic Instability.

It's not overrated nor underrated, it just... does what it does and it's pretty damn good at it. People that stack multiple Panic Mesmers weird me out though.

@Kunder: The thing about Communing spiritspam in general is that it's a lot more difficult to disrupt than a Mesmer. It's pretty difficult to think of things that spirits don't work well against (Binding Rituals aren't spells, so a lot of spell counters don't work, and spirits are semi-immune to hexes and all conditions except burn - I guess the worst things are Elementalist bosses and splinter barrage/scythe), while the traditional enemies of the Mesmer are things with spell immunity, Daze, Energy-Denial and other mesmers. As a bonus, Spirits are even able to hit Incubi and Wurms when they hide for some strange reason, which frankly saves a lot of time.

majoho · Apr 29, 2011, 05:47 PM // 17:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dzjudz

Mostly Fast Casting for faster cast and 1/3 less recharge, but the breakpoints (damage and duration) are very nice too.

Yeah don't really need an example to see that a primary mesmer will do more damage and more often I already know that, I still don't get what the big deal is.

The faster recharge is as much of a curse as a blessing since it means you'll go out of energy pretty fast so you need to balance your build by taking several long recharge spells to make it work well.

Kunder · Apr 29, 2011, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by majoho

Yeah don't really need an example to see that a primary mesmer will do more damage and more often I already know that, I still don't get what the big deal is.

The faster recharge is as much of a curse as a blessing since it means you'll go out of energy pretty fast so you need to balance your build by taking several long recharge spells to make it work well.

If you look at most good builds of other powerful classes, they have enough energy to pretty much spam their skills non-stop. Cast/Recharge time is the limiting factor in their builds, not energy. Even if the mesmer is running dry and can only sustain a 25% faster cast rate instead of a 50%, they are casting 25% more spells per second and that is a huge difference. Being low on energy in that situation only means that they got about 10s of spell casting at a 50% faster rate and then have to dip down to a 25% rate till the end of the battle. There is no loss there at all.

Or, to put it another way: Being able to spend more energy than you can generate at your choice is better than not being able to spend energy as fast as you generate it, because in the latter situation you are just wasting energy that the other is able to put to good use.

hunter · Apr 29, 2011, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

Sos primaries do more spirit damage but they're kinda meh healers with just siphon, then don't have energy to keep painful bond up when taxed on heals... soul reaping isn't all downside. Either way I'd take the channeling hit to run an esurge versus the usual generic stuff like commandagon, discord, or curses for caster primary...

Bull

The only Energy taxing skill is painful bond. Rest are 5e skills which are easily covered by Siphon. AND SoS is a signet

Out of all the rit heroe builds, the SoS/resto is the most efficient one.

In addition, you lose 16 channeling Splinter weapon if you go SoS/resto on a necro. No matter how you look at it, SoS/resto on a rit is a must. Don't care what build you are running.

LexTalionis · Apr 29, 2011, 06:03 PM // 18:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by majoho

Yeah don't really need an example to see that a primary mesmer will do more damage and more often I already know that, I still don't get what the big deal is.

The faster recharge is as much of a curse as a blessing since it means you'll go out of energy pretty fast so you need to balance your build by taking several long recharge spells to make it work well.

It's not too difficult a concept, because it works the same way as a spike does in PvP: Dead enemies don't do damage. The recharge helps, of course, but it's really a combination of both. If you give two people guns to duel with, the faster shot wins.

Blessing or curse-wise, it isn't that straightforward. Firstly, spells that help with energy management also recharge more quickly, so the main problem is that natural regeneration can't keep up. Secondly, the alternative wouldn't necessarily provide more utility - given the same resources, their output would be identical (except the mesmer benefits from runes, hence is stronger) and the mesmer is better able to front-load his or her spells and signets.

hunter · Apr 29, 2011, 06:08 PM // 18:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

SoGM is bad because heroes don't have summon spirits. Ridiculously bad if you want to actually complete areas quickly (even worse than discord). That is all.

Ap/MoP fanboi has a point

Quote:

Either run 2 channeling builds

wut? (bad)

Quote:

As for Rt vs Mes, I'll probably use rit for my physical characters and mesmer for my casters. 3/4ths of the rit's power comes from using Splinter Weapon well, and when its being placed on something that isn't me it doesn't get used well. The only rit build still obscenely powerful without SW is ST, and you only need to bring an ST for like 5% of the HM game anyway. Mesmers just have so much variety, and plenty of mesmer builds have some amazing synergy with player caster builds just as SW rits add to physical builds.

Bring both?? SoS/resto with splinter is one of the best hero builds you can possibly get regardless of what you are running. If physical its even better. the build can heal and deeps at once (spirits) so regadless of your primary it shines.

ST rit can easily replace the E/MO protter as you prot bot so you can bring an extra mes, smite monk (if physical) , what the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing ever (

majoho · Apr 29, 2011, 06:12 PM // 18:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by LexTalionis

It's not too difficult a concept, because it works the same way as a spike does in PvP: Dead enemies don't do damage. The recharge helps, of course, but it's really a combination of both. If you give two people guns to duel with, the faster shot wins.

I have no problem understanding the concept, I just don't agree that a third or fourth mesmer will make that much of a difference.

No doubt two mesmers is pretty much mandatory, no argument from me there - but I often run my curses necro as illusion/curses with Ineptitude and while the damage is lower he somewhat makes up for it by being able to have more skills since he doesn't have to use at least 2 spells for energy management.

But as I see it this is just when discord became popular, now it's just Energy Surge spam instead, nothing wrong with that.

LexTalionis · Apr 29, 2011, 06:37 PM // 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by majoho

I have no problem understanding the concept, I just don't agree that a third or fourth mesmer will make that much of a difference.

No doubt two mesmers is pretty much mandatory, no argument from me there - but I often run my curses necro as illusion/curses with Ineptitude and while the damage is lower he somewhat makes up for it by being able to have more skills since he doesn't have to use at least 2 spells for energy management.

But as I see it this is just when discord became popular, now it's just Energy Surge spam instead, nothing wrong with that.

Oh, in that case I agree with you a little - there's nothing overly special about stacking huge amounts of Mesmers, I just do it because Mesmers are one of the classes that are better at meta-ing specific areas (they have counters to nearly everything, so it's easy to swap in skills as needed) and because they kill stuff FAST. I've already said I don't see the huge deal of Energy Surge - it's good but as I've already said, it often ends up as an inferior Wandering Eye (the only problem is Wandering Eye doesn't stack well unless cast on different targets).

The only real mandatory job of a mesmer is "stopping bad stuff from happening to your party" and you can do that with mesmer secondaries with Power Drain/Leech Signet/Web of Disruption, etc. Mesmers just happen to conveniently provide this service in spades and lots of armour ignoring damage in the same bundle.

If you're going to take your time and be a bit more leisurely, other classes would work fine - Assassins would possibly kill single targets even faster if certain PvE content didn't have so much melee-hate (and Assassin Hero AI wasn't silly). Unfortunately, Shards of Orr HM made me quit my Assassin long ago since I have a thing against SF tanking.

Dzjudz · Apr 29, 2011, 07:52 PM // 19:52

The third mesmer is actually really beneficial, because it's usually only the second domination mesmer. One illusion and two domination is no overkill. Adding another mesmer as a third domination would probably suffer from too much of a good thing.

Funnily enough, the only mesmer in my team that suffers from energy problems is the illusion mesmer...

FoxBat · Apr 29, 2011, 09:20 PM // 21:20

Did some math. If you are running SoGM + SoS with one rit, you are better off with the SoGM going N/Rt, due to the stacking of painful bond, even though communing spirits scale slightly better with runes. (I'm not counting 5th proc splinters on minions as significant like some are...) Personally am too addicted to shelter though, in a caster team with a minion and spirit wall it sufficies very well as your only prot. Dissonance is also not nearly as useable on SoGM with its short uptime.