Originally Posted by The Josip

snip

Originally Posted by the josip

* mesmer heroes will refuse to even cast some skills, or cast them very, very rarely. Example: Chaos storm. Another example: Pi. Pi has strong spammable effect, but if hero uses that once every 30 or 60 seconds or rarer, it's pointless.

Don't take those spells then.

* mesmer is not straightforward damage or heal class. Mesmer damage spells, as well as mitigation spells, require tabing, require precision in casting time, require prediction, require timing, etc. Heroes are not good at this. If you call a target, they'll throw whatever they have on that target, regardless of whether it will do anything or not. If you don't call targets, you're losing in efficiency. Example: Calculated risk which is a great skill, if you cast it on off target. If you cast it on called target it won't do much, if anything, and it will have antisynergy with clumsiness, ineptitude etc.

Call when needed and don't put skills that have anti-synergy between them on your bar. It's not a problem that heroes act at random because mobs act at random too. If you don't interrupt one strong spell, it won't be game changing anyway because pve is easy.

* theorycraft vs practice. In theory, mistrust does a huge amount of aoe damage, and recharges fast. in practice, mistrust won't be used on recharge, and often won't trigger, or will trigger but on a lone enemy so aoe will not be present, or it will trigger on near dead enemy so full damage won't happen. Which brings us to real average damage per zone a skill does as opposed to theoretical damage.

You are still theorycrafting. In practice, you can't accurately predict anything to such an extent. These things may or may not happen.

* antisynergy. Panic. Panic and entire series of best mesmer hexes - complete antisynergy. Mistrust, clumsiness, wandering eye, guilt, interrupts. What does panic do? It's a one-skill-mesmer. The rest of your bar needs to be full of non mesmer skills. In my opinion, lame. Every other profession has skills which synergize with skills of that profession and other professions. Mesmers have skills which don't synergize with other profession skills and skills which antisynergize with other mesmer skills. Horrible. This is how one of the biggest buff hopes ended.

Panic has nearby range, chances are it will affect most of the targets you are fighting. Also, don't use it with skills that cause epic anti-synergy. Regardless, it's still a stupidly OPed skill which makes any anti-synergy irrelevant.

* mesmer heroes refuse to spam skills. Their fast casting is completely useless. What good does it do if even when you have energy, you don't spam skills. What good does faster recharge do, when mesmer heroes refuse to recast these skills?

They can still cast the skill earlier thus benefitting from FC.

* their attributes are tied. They lack cross-profession versatility. You need some fast casting (otherwise why use mesmer anyway), you need high domination or illusion, and you need some inspiration for energy. And even if you do want to use second profession, being mesmer doesn't help you at all after recent change to fast casting. It's worse than before.

How is it worse than before? Ne FC update killed Me/X gimmicks that used all secondary skills and gave an extra buff to mesmer spells. Much better imho.

* there are some skills such as power drain etc that look tempting on heroes. Forget it. Try monitoring your heroes and you'll see they are not efficient at casting these skills, they will often miss, and often won't use them. It's good on paper. That's all. Compare that to minion bomber. Have you ever seen a necro hero not raise a minion after something died? I sure didn't. I've seen heroes get more energy with drain enchantment than with power drain (provided area has enchantments of course).

There was nothing to interrupt probably.

* mesmers lack passive non-self skills. Why are ritualists and necros so good? Because they both have great passive skills. Rt casts a spirit and that's it. The rest of the time he can spam those few fast-recharging heals or damage skills. Necro will have minions around him, without the need to keep clicking on some skill each time he wants minions to do damage or to body block. Now, here's a fun part. These passive skills act like fast casting. They offer a form of fast casting, except better one. To picture what i mean: Imagine a mesmer casting spiritual pain every 2 seconds. Now imagine ritualist putting down sos. Ritualist will use.. What, 1 second of casting time per entire mob. A mesmer, with 16 fc, will need seconds of recasting the skill, over and over.

Rits are good because they got imba spirits, imba redbar, imba splinter weapon and imba ancestor's rage. Necros are good because they have broken soul reaping and hero AI. That stuff is simply more useful most of the time but it doesn't make Mesmer skills any less useful. Rest of the stuff you said makes no sense, some random theorycraft/nitpick probably.

* too much of the same. A domination mesmer might want to take surge, spiritual pain, wastrel's demise, unnatural signet, energy burn.. These skills really do same thing. Except you need many of them because of the recharge. Now compare that to rt or n skillbar. Their bars are compressed. Each skill is unique and has a very specific and strong role. You can dislike discord all you want, but it's a good example of compressed skillbar. You have 1 direct damage skill - discord, with almost instant recharge and high armor ignoring damage. You don't need 4 domination skills to do the same thing. Sure it's conditional, but that's why you have a *team* build. Synergy. What's next - aegis. Great anti-melee skill. What then, protective spirit perhaps, or maybe pwk/life - party heal. What then - a minion / spirit. Passive skill. What then, aoe/poison with death nova and also enchantment distraction (so critical enchantment doesn't get removed). What then, putrid bile, hex with aoe effect. For flavor. What then, a direct heal or two. Antimelee with enfeebling in the form of condition. What then, perhaps a splinter for those who need that, or perhaps frozen soil or some other utility. Perhaps fall back.
And what's your choice on mesmer skillbar? 4 anti melee hex skills, 4 anti-caster skills of which none actually shuts caster down or does significant damage, 2 energy-gain skills. Then a bit random. Zero party skills.

Wat. Why are you comparing 3 Hero team to a Mesmer bar?

* delay. Mesmer skills have delay. Because they are mostly reactive skills. Damage these skills do, combined with the inability of heroes to cast properly on off targets, makes most of these skills near useless.

Heroes have superb reflex. You start killing with the most rupt-worthy target anyway so who cares if they ignore off-targets sometimes?

* rough competition. It's not that mesmer heroes are bad - i believe they are as good as heroes should be in hard mode. Enough to win, but with some challenge. But spirits are just ridiculous, and minions / soul reaping was always too strong in pve. Mesmer hero would need to compete with some strong gimmick, but recent buff brought nothing but "there, mesmers are now fine" sense of satisfaction for anet. In reality, ap spammer is still best build for a player, and mesmer heroes still offer nothing to the party that others don't do better. I'm not saying there are no ok builds (such as ineptitude), but from elitist point of view - of what is the best of the best - it's really ap for player and rt's and necros for heroes.
Agreed. You could have just written that and skipped the rest.

Originally Posted by The Josip

The contents of your mind hurt my head. Must.. distance..

Originally Posted by Myotheraccount

Butthurt rebuttals only prove that you know I'm right but don't want to admit it. It's OK, feel free to fall in denial.

Originally Posted by Myotheraccount

Butthurt rebuttals only prove that you know I'm right but don't want to admit it. It's OK, feel free to fall in denial.

Originally Posted by The Josip

Practical feedback on why mesmers are not good heroes
I have vanquished few areas in Desolation with two mesmer heroes (three, counting me).

Originally Posted by Foxbat

Spirits are near the best DPS machine, but sometimes are abandoned due to their difficulty keeping pace in fast battles. They can also have trouble with mass AoE without slow and careful flagging, or mowing down masses of enemies. Minion bombers are about irreplaceable assuming you're in an area with corpses. If I therefore have a condition that is making one or the other of these options not work, then a mesmer is a likely place to turn

Originally Posted by Foxbat

Hero 3: Psychic Instability, waste not, power drain, leech sig, MB&S, spirit light, PwK, life.

Originally Posted by Jeydra

After my last run through Ooze Pit I think I can safely conclude that in areas where I can't run the MM (lack of bodies), I'll use by default a Panic Mesmer. Panic is powerful; it's a pity however that the other spells available to a Dom Mes aren't that good.

If I'm playing with 2 players I pretty much will use a Mesmer hero for sure. MM, 2 Rits, Smiter, Dom Mes (VoR) and a pure healer - used that for DoA NM and it worked well. I do wonder though if the Dom Mes does more damage than a Necro. Given that the Necro is played by a hero and there's already a MM in the team, what's the best Necro damage build?

Originally Posted by Klance

Well considering you already have yourself as a SY! spammer, a ER prot hero, 2 hench monks and a hench mesmer, i really wonder how much mitigation an extra two mesmers give?

Originally Posted by Klance

Well considering you already have yourself as a SY! spammer, a ER prot hero, 2 hench monks and a hench mesmer, i really wonder how much mitigation an extra two mesmers give?

Originally Posted by Jeydra

It's awfully difficult to keep party bars above 90% when you have 3 healers, an Ineptitude Mesmer and "Save Yourselves!" /fistshake!!

And of course saying that party bars never dropped below 90% is an outright lie, because 10% of a person's health is about 60 at most and Feast of Corruption (which the Dryders have) does well over 60 damage. BUT I'M SO PRO I MICRO PROT SPIRIT ON ANYONE THE DRYDERS CAST IT ON **** YEA.

The only thing that screenshot proves is how overpowered physical damage is, because despite having low damage on everyone else it still manages to return a moderately fast time.

Originally Posted by Me

Bars almost never tropped below 90% until the boss fight.