Curse

turtlepoo3000 · Apr 23, 2005, 01:19 AM // 01:19

Necromancer/Mesmer

12 Curses
10 Domination
8 Soul Reaping

This build will mostly be anti-caster and ill use these skills below in this order

Soul Barbs (availability)
Description: For 30 seconds, target foe takes 15-27 damage when an enchantment or hex is cast on that target.
Energy Cost: 10
Activation Time: 2 Seconds.
Recharge Time: 20 Seconds.
Linked Attribute: Curses. Increases damage dealt.
Skill Type: Hex Spell.

Wither (availability)
Description: For 5-29 seconds, target foe suffers health degeneration of 2 and energy degeneration of 2. Wither ends if target foe's energy reaches 0. This is an elite skill.
Energy Cost: 10
Activation Time: 2 Seconds.
Recharge Time: 10 Seconds.
Linked Attribute: Curses. Increases duration.
Skill Type: Hex Spell.

Mind Wrack (availability)
Description: For 20 seconds, if target foe's energy is zero, that foe takes 15-75 damage and Mind Wrack ends.
Energy Cost: 5
Activation Time: 1 Seconds.
Recharge Time: 5 Seconds.
Linked Attribute: Domination Magic. Increases damage dealt.
Skill Type: Hex Spell.

Backfire (availability)
Description: For 10 seconds, whenever target foe casts a spell, that foe takes 35-119 damage.
Energy Cost: 15
Activation Time: 3 Seconds.
Recharge Time: 20 Seconds.
Linked Attribute: Domination Magic. Increases damage dealt.
Skill Type: Hex Spell.

Wastrel's Worry (availability)
Description: After 3 seconds, target foe takes 8-53 damage. Wastrel's Worry ends prematurely if that foe uses a skill.
Energy Cost: 5
Activation Time: 1/4th of a Second.
Recharge Time: 1 Second.
Linked Attribute: Domination Magic. Increases damage dealt.
Skill Type: Hex Spell.

and ill of course spam WW, although what other skills should i use? i need 3 more, maybe anti-warrior curses/hexes? does thhis build look ok? ive yet to play but this game looks amazing and any feed back is much appreciated!

EDIT: I was also leaning towards a ele/mes with...
12 air
10 energy storage
8 Domination
since ive read necro primaries arent that great, plus this would probably work well in pvp and pve, cant decide though i may try both

Insomnia · Apr 23, 2005, 07:34 AM // 07:34

Hmm you are not going to get his energy at 0 with only Wither... If you rly want to be anti-caster i'd switch to mesmer/necro, cause soul reaping is too situational in this build.
If you rly want to use MW/WW, you'd better go for things like power leak, energy drain, energy burn, shame,... I suppose this is for PvP purposes so i would try focussing on one thing, if you like the anti-caster thing, stick to the anti-caster thing and don't go throwing in some anti-warrior skills.
Soul barbs + wastrel is nice, but Wastrel has to work to have some good dmg in this combo, and you only have backfire to shut him down. The man (or woman) can still use things like signets, glyphs, ...
It has got some nice ideas but it needs some work

Apr 23, 2005, 09:22 AM // 09:22

If thats for PvP you're in for a world of pain. Some honest advice:

Lesson 1: Stay away from necro/mesmer mesmer/necro combinations. They are usually pretty bad.

Lesson 2:This goes along with the previous point-do not under any circumstances engage in massive hex stacking on a single target. Its usually a waste of time and resources when you could just put on a few good hexes on multiple targets.

Lesson 3: Wastrels Worry, Mind Wrack, Wither, and Soul Barbs are pretty bad. Combining WW and SB, or WW and Backfire, or any MW/WW combinations exponentially multiply their horrible natures.

Lesson 4: Skill descriptions can be very misleading.

lhurgrokoyv · Apr 23, 2005, 01:59 PM // 13:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackace

If thats for PvP you're in for a world of pain. Some honest advice:

Lesson 1: Stay away from necro/mesmer mesmer/necro combinations. They are usually pretty bad.

Lesson 2:This goes along with the previous point-do not under any circumstances engage in massive hex stacking on a single target. Its usually a waste of time and resources when you could just put on a few good hexes on multiple targets.

Lesson 3: Wastrels Worry, Mind Wrack, Wither, and Soul Barbs are pretty bad. Combining WW and SB, or WW and Backfire, or any MW/WW combinations exponentially multiply their horrible natures.

Lesson 4: Skill descriptions can be very misleading.

dude mesmer/necromancer isnt that bad for pvp if you kno how to play it. i just wouldnt advise using curses or death magic and never go necro primary for pvp, since the primary attribute only kicks in when people start dying and by that point one side is usually guaranteed to win

turtlepoo3000 · Apr 23, 2005, 02:09 PM // 14:09

Ok so necros a bad idea, do you guys think that an air ele would be more newbie friendly?

lhurgrokoyv · Apr 23, 2005, 02:35 PM // 14:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by turtlepoo3000

Ok so necros a bad idea, do you guys think that an air ele would be more newbie friendly?

well if you really want to go necro/mes i ahve a mes/necro build that isnt too bad

11 inspiration magic
12 blood magic (10+2)
10 fast casting

awaken the blood
chirons/grenths balance
shadow strike
signet of agony
unholy feast
vampiric gaze
inspired enchantment
channeling

cast channeling then awaken the blood
use shadow strike followed by signet of agony
this should leave your life fairly low so use chirons/grenths balance to bring your life up and your opponent's down
cast unholy feast to ensure that you wont die too fast
cast/recast any skill as needed while watching your health

Ander Deathblade · Apr 23, 2005, 04:28 PM // 16:28

mesmers and necros, hell even the combination can be good. Just don't use them to do damage, you're wasting them in team play.

cpukilla · Apr 23, 2005, 04:48 PM // 16:48

I disagree mes/nec or nec/mes are bad for pvp. You won't be doing damage, but they make excellent shut-down characters, having rend on your healer shutdown build is great and worth nec secondary by itself.

tektonik · Apr 23, 2005, 04:55 PM // 16:55

mes/nec is bad for most people because you can't build them like you would a ranger or warrior. Other than that it is one of the most powerful combo's in the game with the ability to either do damage or drain energy while still locking down a character from doing much.

Ensign · Apr 23, 2005, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Can a Mesmer/Necromancer be a solid shutdown character for PvP? Certainly. I've run them on occasion. Go heavily into Mesmer for hard shutdown elements and back that up with Rend as a splash. Nothing wrong with that.

The problem with the Mesmer/Necro is that 99% of builds from that combination are indistinguishable from a list of skills chosen randomly. Just because the combination has more obscure skills than any other is not a free pass to ignore all of the rules of good build construction.

Stop overthinking the combination. You are good at caster shutdown. You are not an Air Elementalist. You don't get points for finding bizarre combos that'll deal piddly amounts of damage. Unique does not win games. Good does.

Peace,
-CxE

Apr 23, 2005, 06:36 PM // 18:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by lhurgrokoyv

dude mesmer/necromancer isnt that bad for pvp if you kno how to play it.

You could be the master at playing flare/incendiary arrow builds. Doesnt matter if what you're doing isnt effective now is it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by lhurgrokoyv

well if you really want to go necro/mes i ahve a mes/necro build that isnt too bad

11 inspiration magic
12 blood magic (10+2)
10 fast casting

awaken the blood
chirons/grenths balance
shadow strike
signet of agony
unholy feast
vampiric gaze
inspired enchantment
channeling

Case in point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpukilla

I disagree mes/nec or nec/mes are bad for pvp. You won't be doing damage, but they make excellent shut-down characters, having rend on your healer shutdown build is great and worth nec secondary by itself.

I wont argue that they cant shut someone down, it's just the necromancer part is just as viable on some other class primaries. With the tendency of most players to go into hex stacking when playing necro/mesmer or mesmer/necro its generally better to keep them away from playing the combination till they get decent at knowing what spells do what and some other basic game knowledge. It's a hard combination to play effectively, but it's also not one that you'll see getting alot of use at the current time.

Tsunami · Apr 24, 2005, 02:34 AM // 02:34

consider a necromancer nuker for a second if you would.

shadow damage isn't effected by armor so if pumped some points into blood magic and relied primarily on dark pact, low energy req. and recast time, along with shadow strike, to get some life back. You could be spamming spells quite fast. Use Vampiric Gaze to get some life back as well as Strip Enchantment.

then with the mesmer's inspiration line: ether feast (if needed) to keep your health up and also energy tap or power drain to keep energy up.

If you really wanted to stay with curses and hex stack, a great elite skill would be Feast of Corruption. The target and adjacent foes would suffer shadow damage and you steal up to 34 health for each hex on surrounding foes. Even if you did disperse your hexes, like Blackace recommends, you could disperse them around lets say a group of warriors going after a certain teammate and then hit them with Feast to do some pretty good damage to the group. Or you could in turn stack your hexes on one opponent to make sure that Feast does extra damage to him.

I personally feel that the nec/mes has a lot of options be it dot, caster shutdown, warrior shutdown, or as i listed above, a potentially decent damage dealer using shadow attacks.

Apr 24, 2005, 02:57 AM // 02:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsunami

consider a necromancer nuker for a second if you would.

shadow damage isn't effected by armor so if pumped some points into blood magic and relied primarily on dark pact, low energy req. and recast time, along with shadow strike, to get some life back. You could be spamming spells quite fast. Use Vampiric Gaze to get some life back as well as Strip Enchantment.

It doesnt matter if they are not effected by armor when the dps isnt going to be high in the first place. Necros DO have the ability to do some decent damage, its just that the cost of doing it just isnt generally worth the time.

Quote:

If you really wanted to stay with curses and hex stack, a great elite skill would be Feast of Corruption. The target and adjacent foes would suffer shadow damage and you steal up to 34 health for each hex on surrounding foes. Even if you did disperse your hexes, like Blackace recommends, you could disperse them around lets say a group of warriors going after a certain teammate and then hit them with Feast to do some pretty good damage to the group.

Works like a charm in PvE and Arenas

With the high recharge on FoC though, hard to make it a viable organized PvP damage skill because its not easy to support it.

Quote:

Or you could in turn stack your hexes on one opponent to make sure that Feast does extra damage to him.

If you really have to, make sure they are hexes that are good at shutting someone down. Things like WW, MW and the like can be ignored.

Quote:

I personally feel that the nec/mes has a lot of options be it dot, caster shutdown, warrior shutdown, or as i listed above, a potentially decent damage dealer using shadow attacks.

The shadow damage from most necro skills are pretty low compared to what else is out there. Nec/Mes is good at being a support bot and should have been good at anti-enchantment and all around hate on everything. Problem is that they arent and almost every build involving these 2 classes turn into DoT or Hex bombers.

Tsunami · Apr 24, 2005, 04:05 AM // 04:05

great points blacklace, esp about FoC in PvP, the long recast time does suck. It's true that shadow damage isn't that great in raw numbers, but I still can't stop thinking about how the fact that armor is ignored helps. True in raw damage against warriors, an air ele would be better. And for the casting professions, ignoring armor doesn't help as much.

Personally, I feel that the necro/mes is more suited against warriors. Elite Skills like Ineptitude and Spiteful Spirit are nice disablers/damage dealers. Enfeeble or Enfeebling Blood is nice for weakness. Insidious Parasite and Empathy are great for gaining health and shutting down the warrior from attacking. Ever time he attacks now, he's losing life and giving you life. Clumsiness might be a good option as well as Imagined Burden, and throw in only one DOT like conjure and you should be ok. If I built a necro/mes for PvP I'd probably focus on going against warriors.

As for necro anti-spell casters, like Blacklace said, necro should have been anti-hating on everything, but it seems like if you were to go anti-caster, the necro/mes would have to play secondary as a primarily domination. the only thing that catches my eye in necro is the blood magic line's: soul leech and mark of subversion. The necro is in sort of the midground as a caster. Sort of a Jack-of-All trades.

Apr 24, 2005, 04:15 AM // 04:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsunami

great points blacklace, esp about FoC in PvP, the long recast time does suck. It's true that shadow damage isn't that great in raw numbers, but I still can't stop thinking about how the fact that armor is ignored helps. True in raw damage against warriors, an air ele would be better. And for the casting professions, ignoring armor doesn't help as much.

Well with necros generally having high cast times(2 or even 3 seconds) and long recharge times alot of their hexes have to take a back seat to other options. spammable hexes make FoC look good because you'd be able to load them on the target easily right b4 you cast it-but there arent many good spam hexes in the game efficient enough on their own.

Quote:

Personally, I feel that the necro/mes is more suited against warriors. Elite Skills like Ineptitude and Spiteful Spirit are nice disablers/damage dealers. Enfeeble or Enfeebling Blood is nice for weakness. Insidious Parasite and Empathy are great for gaining health and shutting down the warrior from attacking. Ever time he attacks now, he's losing life and giving you life. Clumsiness might be a good option as well as Imagined Burden, and throw in only one DOT like conjure and you should be ok. If I built a necro/mes for PvP I'd probably focus on going against warriors.

Necros in general have the potential answers to laying down the pain on Warrios and Rangers, with a little bit of caster hate. The problem lies in Curses having little inner-synergy and the Necro class just continuosly getting hit by nerfs either directly or indirectly.

Quote:

The necro is in sort of the midground as a caster. Sort of a Jack-Ass-of-All trades.

By the Way I'm Ace, not Lace

Tsunami · Apr 24, 2005, 03:27 PM // 15:27

sorry for messing up your name blackace.

you're right about the casting time. and even if the character were switched to mes/nec, fast casting wouldn't help that much. A decent amount of points would have to be placed into that skill for it to be that effective. but yeah, the cast times do make the necro less effective than it could have been. for the same cast time, you could be doing more damage using an elementalist. oh well, i'll probably use my necro more for PvE than PvP anyways.