Curse

lord Ides · May 24, 2005, 09:01 PM // 21:01

Ok, I'm going 11 expertise 10 marksmanship and 10 to a mesmer line.

Is going Domination anti-caster overkill? I'm going for a disruptive build, and hoping for moderate damage. I'm thinking about either Illusionary or Domination line of mesmer.

Here's the lineup of skills i'm thinking about for ranger
Punishing Shot {E}
Debilitating Shot
Distracting Shot
Favorable Winds
Pin Down
Dual Shot or Savage Shot

I was also thinking about going this route as well possibly with necromancer and 10 curses, for mark of pain.

This is for PvE with eventual PVP implications. So probably won't have Pin Down in there for PvE.

CatsPaw · May 24, 2005, 09:09 PM // 21:09

The good thing about this game is you can change your attribute points, say you start with Illusion, and dont like it, you can change them to domination (my personal fav). I am also a Ranger/mesmer. Backfire, and Empathy are nice for PvP, Cry of frustration, chaos storm..all I like. Just have to know what to equip and how to play it, Pin Down, and posien arrows are very nice as well. Pin down, those pesky crawl when they try to run away, or the shaman and get the rest...it works ok in PvE as well for somethings. A good ranger/mesmer can make or break a PvP battle, distrupting the monks and ele's and not to mention other mesmers that are messing up your other players....just try them out and see.

lord Ides · May 24, 2005, 09:16 PM // 21:16

Yea, I'm not sure if I'm doing the smartest thing, jumping into the 2 hardest classes to play(or so I'm told).

But being able to control casters like we can just sounds fun and challenging.

Gh0sT · May 25, 2005, 09:59 AM // 09:59

Well the biggest problem with choosing a secondary class (IMO), is that its very hard to combine it with ur energy...

Almost 80% of the skills from a secondary class cost 10 or more energy and arent affected by expertise... this is troublesome because you'll run out of energy fast, and you actually have to wait for enough energy for that spell to become available again...

Thats why i made a thumbrule for myself, dont take any skill how good it might sound from a secondary class that costs more then 10 energy... so 10 energy spells are the max...

---

I have a mesmer as well, im currently useing mainly ranger skills, and i used to have conjure phantasm in my list and illusion of weakness...

I used the illusion of weakness at the start, to give me a 150 health boost when i needed it ingame...
And i used Conjure Phantasm + Poison Arrow, to give someone a degen of 9 (= losing 18 health per second)...
It was nice, but i got the feeling it didnt work well, since the monk would remove the hex and poison and just heal the person back up...

So i either switch around my skills a bit, maybe go with domination try to disrupt (though i found that really hard to do especially on monks), maybe with help from Arcane Conundrum or some other skill...
Or i'll go looking for something else, maybe im gonna switch to R/N ... the only way you know if something fits you is to just try out...

Makkert · May 25, 2005, 10:38 AM // 10:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by CatsPaw

The good thing about this game is you can change your attribute points, say you start with Illusion, and dont like it, you can change them to domination (my personal fav). I am also a Ranger/mesmer. Backfire, and Empathy are nice for PvP, Cry of frustration, chaos storm..all I like. Just have to know what to equip and how to play it, Pin Down, and posien arrows are very nice as well. Pin down, those pesky crawl when they try to run away, or the shaman and get the rest...it works ok in PvE as well for somethings. A good ranger/mesmer can make or break a PvP battle, distrupting the monks and ele's and not to mention other mesmers that are messing up your other players....just try them out and see.

backfire and empathy are nice, but expensive....how do you keep going?

CatsPaw · May 25, 2005, 12:39 PM // 12:39

I usually only take one or the other, and dont spam it. Timing is everything in PvP, I rarely run out of energy, but I there is a mes skill, can't think of the name, that I can take someone elses energy, works pretty well if I need it.

Leventh · May 25, 2005, 12:52 PM // 12:52

i like your build idea for PvE, but i think you may find a few of thoes skills useless in PvP.

Here is why
Punishing Shot {E} - poison arrow is better for pvp (low cost no cast time) [ditch]
Debilitating Shot - mp will be an issue with a ranger [ditch]
Distracting Shot - very good to stop res. hard to use on fast healings [keep]
Favorable Winds - can be good and bad, depends on how many rangers on each side
Pin Down - very good, nothing like a cripple to spoil a warriors day [keep]
Dual Shot or Savage Shot - not bad, not my fav. but a decent skill

my fav. ranger skills - storm chaser, dodge, frozen soil, barbed trap, and troll unguent.
the mes skills you want to look at (as far as dom) are backfire, empathy, and power block.

oh one last thing, i like to have my marksmanship no more then the bow requires, as thoes points can be better spent.

good luck.

Vusak · May 25, 2005, 03:55 PM // 15:55

ive been using illusion of weakness and arcane conundrum lately.

the weakness is good because its an enchantment and my current halfmoon grants +11% while enchanted. this enchantment has no duration, it lasts forever (until you go below 25% health), so its an easy damage buff as well as a nice 'save'.

the arcane conundrum supplements my use of distracting shot and savage shot.

basically i start off with weakness + trolls while waiting for PvP to start.

then once getting near range, its time to apply poison.

follow that up by using pin down on the called target.

if they are moving, a quick hunters shot adds bleeding.

if they are a caster, arcane conundrum, especially if they are a monk.

then i just use distracting shot spam whenever i see a skill come up, vs. casters i use savage shot as well.

its not super advanced techniques, but the combo is all about suppressing a healer.

however once i get the skills, im thinking about going into inspiration more, with things like inspired hex and inspired enchantment with spirit of failure.
combined with some good expertise, i could really spam poison arrow {E} and use choking gas as a preparation, freeing up savage shot for debilitating shot spam. that would probably own any 'general setup' caster with -10 energy + interrupts, constant poisoning, and removal of any enchants or hexes

id have to retain pin down, mainly to avoid warriors or to keep those casters from fleeing.

lord Ides · May 25, 2005, 06:39 PM // 18:39

Well, I was thinking going 11 expertise, 10 marksmanship, and 10 for a Me ability.

Would it be more wise to go 10 experitise, 10 marksmanship, 10 dom/insp/illusion and 5 wilderness? You guys all seem pretty high on poison arrows and some of the wilderness skills. Or maybe just 9 marksmanship and 7-8 wilderness?

Vusak · May 26, 2005, 04:26 AM // 04:26

well i think marksmanship and expertise should be invested in based on need.

the idea of using minimum marksmanship is good because those extra few points make a more significant difference in energy management. basically if youre spamming a skill at 3 energy instead of 4 energy, you can pump that out many more times with a 30 energy ranger. same goes for the higher energy skills, and that allows you more use of your spell abilities from the mesmer line.

the trickiest part of using R/Me is burning out on energy. no matter how diverse or useful your skills are, or how much you can concentrate conditions/interrupts on enemy, if you cant keep your energy up you quickly become useless.

further, wilderness has some very useful skills. greater poison duration means you can be doing damage even while youre doing other stuff, that useful because you can poison an enemy, then cast trolls on yourself for 8 pips regen, and be doing damage while healing.

this strategy worked for me vs. 2 other rangers in PvP, it was just me vs. them and they were both R/E damage spammers. my regen was much better than theirs, and my poison lasted longer, so i could keep them both busy, i managed to take one down and was really down to the wire on the second one, i did lose at the end because i chose to distract their prep instead of healing myself (point being you can still out damage the damage focusers by maintaining superior healing and DoT, although if they used interrupts better they might have simply owned me).

but yeah, focus your investment in wilderness to get the highest pip regen you can happily afford. then put in enough marksmanship to wield the best bow you have. then put in enough expertise to reduce the cost on the energy bracket you use the most (refer http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=130 ) ie. if you spam 10 energy skills the most, go for the points in expertise that take you down a notch for 10 energy skills etc. then sink points into your chosen mesmer line. any leftovers put into marksmanship.