Curse

Red Locust · May 14, 2005, 08:52 PM // 20:52

I wanted your thoughts on this build. It's nothing too exciting, just your standard anti-warrior mesmer setup, with fire magic to finish him off. Here's what I had in mind:

Mesmer/Ele:

Energy Drain (Elite)
Ether Feast
Spirit Shackles
Soothing Images
Sympathetic Visage (just in case you get doubled)
Conjure Phantasm
Phoenix
Inferno

attribute points will be distributed among illusion, inspiration and fire, with fast casting at around 4 + whatever runes give.

What do you think? The idea here is to drain energy, throw on Spirit Shackles and Soothing Images, and the warrior is essentially left with his basic attack. Then throw in Conjure Phantasm, Phoenix and Inferno and hopefully he dies. I'm thinking of taking out sympathetic visage in favor of something else, say Drain Enchantment, since it kinda doubles up with Soothing Images, and soothing images' cooldown is only 5 secs. so its spammable.

What I'm worried about is if phantasm, phoenix and inferno could take down the warrior before he takes me down with his normal attack. My mes has something like 350 hp due to those major runes, so I really cannot take the heat, and with his energy being very close to 0, Ether Feast will not always work ideally. Any thoughts? Anything you see wrong with this build? Any additions you would make?

Tiberius · May 14, 2005, 09:09 PM // 21:09

I would just drop the fire attacks and go for Empathy and Mind Wrack. Empathy would give sick damage, and Mind Wrack basically turns into an armor ignoring spamable since Spirit Shackles will continually trigger it as long as he attacks. you should be able to drop him pretty quick with that.

Red Locust · May 14, 2005, 09:29 PM // 21:29

Yeah you might be right. Elemental attacks are resisted by fire, while most mesmer damage spells seem to ignore armor. Mind Wrack along with Spirit Shackles, as well as Empathy, would work, but that would mean totally abandoning fire and my ele.
I'm still interested in incorporating fire magic though, since it would also help out against spellcasters, while wrack, shacles and empathy would be useless.

Does the damage from fire wands count as fire damage? if it does, there might be an interesting combo with Mark of Rodgort and Conjure Phantasm. Let's say MoR lasts 16s. and I could recast phantasm once its 12s duration is over. In 16s., provided the wand hits at least every 2s., I could pump out 16*14 (-7 when on fire) + 16*10 (-5 phantasm). That's 384 dmg over 16s., plus Phoenix's damage. Not too bad, plus it wouldn't depend on the warrior constantly hitting me (since most will run away once they see their life dropping).

Tiberius · May 14, 2005, 11:01 PM // 23:01

With regards to the mark of Rodgort/Phantasm thing, unfortunatly charecters can only have a max of 10 pips of health regen or degen on them at a time so two of those pips would be rendered useless, which isn't a very good idea. It is true that you wouldn't be able to use M Wrack or Empathy damage on casters, but you already have some energy denial in your build, which are great anticaster spells. If you took out either Soothing Images or Sympathetic vissage (you don't really need two spells with such simmelar effects anyway) you could throw in another energy denial spell or anticaster spell such as backfire, and would be good to go. If you wanted caster hate that is.

NiGht_HaWk · May 14, 2005, 11:07 PM // 23:07

Instead of fire, i strongly recommend Air Magic. All its damage spells have armor penetration, which adds greatly to the damage.