Curse

mf2 · Dec 02, 2006, 09:32 PM // 21:32

figured id get some tips/advice from Me players that actually know what they're doing hehe.

first of all i made the immense mistake of choosing E as my 2nd profession. it was fun at first with the fire spells, but it wasnt long before i found i liked the Me skills so much more. in fact, i dont use any E skills at all now (maybe thats bad?).

heres my build idea, pretty much based on anti spellcasters. i personally find anti melee builds to be, well, ineffective. in PvP it just seems that even if you have a few skills to help you deal with melee, it simply prolongs the inevitable. once they're close its just a matter of time lol, or at least thats been my experience.

anyhow heres my idea:

1)Ether Feast (cant always rely on monks)
2) ether lord
3) Leech signet
4) Energy burn
5) Power block [e]
6) power leak
7) mantra of conc (not much good interrupting if i get interrupted myself!)
8) res sig (of course)

here's just my general thoughts, other than the ether feast and res sig which should be obvious. i want to try power block, because it can disable the whole attribute. this means that u could strip a monk of most healing abilities, a fire E from incinerating ur party members (I've had fire E's kill me in just a few seconds before - ouch!), and Necros from using their blood magic hexes to lay out health degen on ur party (these are just examples). mantra of conc probably seems a bit wierd but if someone interrupts me it could cause me to lose about 110 health gain (ether feast), keep me from burning up energy and causing damage (energy burn) or from getting energy regen and causing degen (ether lord). this is probably just some drainer or interrupter variant or whatever, and probably a less effective one at that. a thought i had was to replace mantra of conc with arcane echo, and double power block, disabling 2 attributes, which i would think would be pretty nasty (im assuming most characters focus mainly in 2 attributes). but someone pointed out to me yesterday it wasnt a good idea because its recharge time was bad. i flaw i could see is there's not much energy stealing, other than ether lord which gives ya a little regen and leech signet (and even then only if it interrupts a spell). maybe dump mantra for energy tap?

i dunno, not a very good at this game yet. One general question is how do u guys deal with rangers, warriors, and the like? from my experience once i've been targeted i'm pretty much toast if the monk isnt babysitting me hehe.

jesh · Dec 02, 2006, 09:49 PM // 21:49

Ether Lord is a very bad skill, I'm sure you can get more energy out of Glyph of Lesser Energy.

Lady Lozza · Dec 03, 2006, 03:08 AM // 03:08

Ether lord is not an energy management skill, and should not be used as such. Swap it for energy tap.

Mantra of concentration... I've never had to use it as a mesmer primary.

Cry of frustration and/or diversion might be nice skills to include in the line up.

Personally I've found the domination line most useful for dealing with casters, and the illusion line most useful in dealing with warriors and rangers (assassins, dervishes and paragons).

Toutatis · Dec 03, 2006, 04:49 AM // 04:49

Don't discount your E skills. The unlinked Glyph skills can be extremely valuable at times when it comes to energy management. The Channeling enchantment can also be useful at times (inspiration line) although its effective range is somewhat limited and needs you to get in closer to the action.

The way that I deal with enemy warriors and rangers is, to put it simply, almost totally ignore their existance in combat. I will usually cast Empathy on one or two of them, and let the rest of the party deal with them while I focus on shutting down and destroying the spellcasters. While a Mesmer can counter anything that the game throws at you, you don't need to try to counter everything at once when you can counter one type of enemy while the rest of your party counters the rest. It's all about teamwork

Pat_vaynard · Dec 03, 2006, 06:29 AM // 06:29

One would hope you are very good at interrupting flat footed. Without any sort of migraine, frustration, or arcane codundrum you'll have to be very selective on your power blocks, as they are costly, even more so if you miss. Drop mantra of concentration entirely; No one is going to interrupt your interrupt. Ether lord is e-denial, not e-management. As others said, you can dip into your Ele secondary for some useful glyphs with no attribute req, or you can just stick to some standard inspiration spells. Power drain is an excellent interrupt and energy management skill.

Terra Xin · Dec 03, 2006, 06:48 AM // 06:48

I would rather see you using an e-denial skill on the Mesmer line than having to tap into the elementalist line for a skill that soley focuses with energy management - when you're dealing with e-denial, you have skills that are more efficient and will both deny energy and recover energy for yourself at the same time. Take power Drain in place of Concentration and use ether lord best for use when you're low on energy, then recover it with power drain.

*Darcy* · Dec 03, 2006, 02:59 PM // 14:59

It would help to know your level and what chapter/location you are in and which chapters you have. The experienced mesmers tend to have all chapters completed and will suggest builds using skills from any of them unless you tell them what is available to you.

Also, are you talking about PvE or PvP?

For PvP, each team member has an assigned primary role. No one expects you to be able to counter everything.

If you are doing PvE, you should choose a primary role and stick to it. With a mesmer the role can change from quest to quest and mission to mission, but you cannot expect to counter everything that crops up in each one. Spreading yourself too thin will make you ineffective.

Other general to-do's:

When setting up your skill bar, do some simple math to make sure you are not overreaching your energy. There are a lot of 5e skills that work as well, if not better, than 10e ones.

Learn to kite, both to avoid damage and give you regen time.

Practice with your skills until your timing becomes instinctive. Then you don't think about it, you just - 1, tab, 2, 3, kite

Do not sit on one foe until they're dead as a melee fighter does. Spread your damage out.

Read the guildwiki article on Fast Casting which will help you understand why you don't need to fear interrupts. http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Fast_Casting

Keep asking for build critiques. It's a excellent way to learn the ups and downs of skills, especially which ones to avoid.

Try not to wand foes. It does little damage and attracts retaliation.

Pay attention to your clothes. Please don't run around in mis-matched, badly dyed armor. Mesmers are expected to be elegant even in the midst of battle.

And have a great time playing the best profession in the game.

mf2 · Dec 03, 2006, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darcy

It would help to know your level and what chapter/location you are in and which chapters you have. The experienced mesmers tend to have all chapters completed and will suggest builds using skills from any of them unless you tell them what is available to you.

Also, are you talking about PvE or PvP?

For PvP, each team member has an assigned primary role. No one expects you to be able to counter everything.

If you are doing PvE, you should choose a primary role and stick to it. With a mesmer the role can change from quest to quest and mission to mission, but you cannot expect to counter everything that crops up in each one. Spreading yourself too thin will make you ineffective.

Other general to-do's:

When setting up your skill bar, do some simple math to make sure you are not overreaching your energy. There are a lot of 5e skills that work as well, if not better, than 10e ones.

Learn to kite, both to avoid damage and give you regen time.

Practice with your skills until your timing becomes instinctive. Then you don't think about it, you just - 1, tab, 2, 3, kite

Do not sit on one foe until they're dead as a melee fighter does. Spread your damage out.

Read the guildwiki article on Fast Casting which will help you understand why you don't need to fear interrupts. http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Fast_Casting

Keep asking for build critiques. It's a excellent way to learn the ups and downs of skills, especially which ones to avoid.

Try not to wand foes. It does little damage and attracts retaliation.

Pay attention to your clothes. Please don't run around in mis-matched, badly dyed armor. Mesmers are expected to be elegant even in the midst of battle.

And have a great time playing the best profession in the game.

thanks for all the help (thats to everyone). Sorry i didnt specify about a lot of stuff, she's lvl 20 and her attributes are fast casting 7, domination 14, inspiration 11, air magic 5(hehe). 5 in air magic because i have been amusing myself by running around and spamming blinding flash in PvE. Right now I'm at the desert area, not very far along in it though (have done a few quests but taht's it). now, here's where i think one of my biggest problems is...equipment. back when i was even more of a newb, i basically stuck runes into all my stuff. this was back before the expansions (which, until a week or so ago, was the last time i had played GW).

Mask: 30 armor, dom +1 stacking, +1 non stacking
Attire: 30 armor, +4 energy, -50 health, +2 dom non stack
gloves: 51 armor, +5 energy, +2 dom non-stack
hose: 30 armor, +1 energy recov, +1 insp non stack, +15 armor when using skills
footwear: 51 armor, energy recover +1, armor +10 vs. physical damage
weapon: cane 9-15 damage
chakram: energy +10, +1 dom (20% chance when using skills), +30 health

just awful. i hadnt really looked at it til now, but like half of those runes arent doing anything but killing my health hehe. perhaps i should sell that mini bone dragon pet and buy myself some new gear. I need to do some reading up obviously, i have neither of the expansions, and since my gear needs some work, i'd better find out what these inscriptions are all about and how to go about getting some good Me gear.

ether lord is terrible, i agree. the other thing is, all the PvP i have done is the random arenas, which probably explains why i get left high and dry with warriors and dervishes in my face mangling me hehe. regarding the mantra of conc, i know my interrupts wont get interrupted, but not all of my spells are interrupts, and with some of the recharge times on those skills, that would do a lot to hamper my effectiveness. some skills i have liked using in the past are inspired enchantment, shatter hex, and cry of frustration (i like the idea that it can intterupt the nearby foes as well as the target, but how often does that happen?

since im not too far along, i have no elite skills yet, and the build advice was mostly for PvP, PvE isnt too tough to figure out, plus i change skills all the time in PvE.

Thanks again for the tips, and as for the elegant part, whenever i use dyes it doesnt seem to hardly change the look of anything, so for right now i'm a goofy looking green mess, sorry hehe.

*Darcy* · Dec 04, 2006, 02:35 AM // 02:35

Yes, you definitely need new armor. Also, you can only put one of each type rune on your armor. That's what the non-stacking means. You are not benefiting from the additional ones. The new major (purple) attribute runes only give a -35 hp penalty. The old -50hp ones can not be sold to the rune trader, so you can just drop a different on top to wipe out the old one.

example:

mask - inherent +1, minor dom +1 would give you +2 dom attribute
attire - +1 illusion
gloves - + 1 inspiration
hose - + 1 fast casting
footwear - a vigor rune - minor adds +30 (add this rune to cheap piece of armor as it's the most costly and you will always want to salvage it when you upgrade your armor)

The armor insigna only work on Nightfall armor. But all they do is let you mix benefits on the same armor set. With only Prophecies, you'll have to decide which set benefits you the most for your style of play.

Let me know (you can pm me here) when you get the new armor and I will see what I have for runes.