Curse

SnipiousMax · Feb 08, 2006, 04:44 AM // 04:44

I've been playing around with Soul Barb and Wrastel's worry. I'll get one beautiful spike, then I've gotta run around and try to salvage something with my other skills. I've found (like most builds) it works best with a balanced group, and it is FAR from perfect, I've only started playing with it tonight so I need some help from the general Mesmer community!

First off Attributes.

My original thought was to pump as much into Curses/Domination and Fastcasting as I could. Ended up something like this....

9 Fast casting
14 Domination
10 Curses

and some left over...Not sure if those are exact numbers (already deleted first few attempts) But I'll get exact ones later. But Question I have is would it be worth it to pump more into Domination (for bigger badder Shatter delusion?) Or do I have too much in domination? And not enough in Illusion or Inspiration? (not wanting to be stretched to thin)

Second Skills selection (particularly Elite skill choice)

Basic build is this

1) Soul Barb
2) Wrastel's worry
3) Phantom Pain
4) Shatter delusions.
8) Rez sig

...Now it should be noted that these were the only five used with any real consistancy....so that leaves us three.

I was using these skills in no particular order, just rotating them in and out....

x) Parasitic bond (now I'm not a big fan of degen...this was meant to be a self heal...but that fell apart cause I remembered you can't shatter necro hexes....but it only cost 5 energy...and when it ended it gave me 90 something health.....)

x)Shadow of Fear (this was meant as a replacement for Distortion...but I also used spirit of failure and empathy trying for same effect. None were particularly useful, but they didn't suck either.)

x) Energy management something or other (Here I tried Guild/Shame, Energy tap, Energy Drain, SoF, etc. again didn't find anything that worked like I wanted it...and energy is a little bit of an issue...)

Now I thought of trying Ineptitude as my elite..but thats an illusion skill. So I'm not sure which elite would fit in this builds pocket, so I'm open to suggestions.

A big overlying question remains, does this build (Me/N) Hold anything over the (N/Me) counterpart?

linkid · Feb 08, 2006, 04:55 AM // 04:55

I tried it with a N/Me in Random Arenas... soul barbs, parasitic bond, wastrel's worry, spiteful spirit, backfire, res sig, and 2 free slots (I tried power spike, arcane echo, empathy, enfeeble <--not a hex). I didn't use it for very long but it worked pretty well. I'd like to stick with 2 attributes (curse/domination) and the primary (soul reaping/fast casting), since soul barbs and wastrel's worry should be triggered pretty often. I say mix and match skills until you find one that you like.

If you're only going to go around wastrel's and soul barbs, N/Me should be better than Me/N (although Me/N would deal more dmg thanks to runes without other skills factored in), since fast casting doesn't really help those skills much (especially the spamming skill, wastrel's). It is if you are going to use longer casting spells like backfire, spiteful spirit, and empathy more often. So again, Me/N would probably end up dealing more damage easier (unless you echo spiteful spirit or something like that).

Avarre · Feb 08, 2006, 07:52 AM // 07:52

So long as the enemy is constantly hexed, I would throw in Feast of Corruption.

Your general tactic would be:

Soul Barbs the enemy target;
Phantom Pain the enemy target;
Use wastrels worry a few times;
When the enemy is around half life, FoC;
Shatter delusions for the finisher.

Other skills that I have seen played in the build are backfire (to discourage target casters from doing anything), diversion (again, insurance on wastrels), shatter enchant (just another little spike of damage), shame (so the monktarget can't help himself, and +energy to you).

This is as Me/N, which is better than the equivalent N/Me for fastcasting and higher domination (where most of the damage is from).

flamingmarmo · Feb 10, 2006, 03:45 PM // 15:45

Try power block as an elite works well with wastrels i find since if you hit the right spell you can pretty much garuntee shutdown and that ww will activate. Cry of frustration might also help against things like res sigs etc. Or even run a couple of enchant removals in 4v4 2 enchant strips can keep most enchants down unless very enchant heavy build.

Jetdoc · Feb 10, 2006, 03:54 PM // 15:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

shame (so the monktarget can't help himself, and +energy to you).

"For 4-9 seconds, the next time target foe casts a spell on an ally, the Spell fails and you steal 5-12 Energy from that foe."

I thought that meant that if the foe casts a spell on one of YOUR allies, not his...

Jetdoc · Feb 10, 2006, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnipiousMax

A big overlying question remains, does this build (Me/N) Hold anything over the (N/Me) counterpart?

Wastrel's is the key to this build, along with the quickness of Shatter Delusions for the kill. Both have a 0.25 second cast time, so Fast Casting doesn't help them at all.

Soul Barbs has a 2 second cast, but it lasts 30 seconds so the casting improvement doesn't thrill me. And you are using Phantom Pain for the deep wound, and not so much for the degeneration.

So, the real key is whether you'd like to have the +1 (or +3) bonus to domination magic or curses. To me, they are about the same, since every time you cast one of the key spells you're increasing the damage with those runes.

I like the N/Me possibilities better with this build, because of the Soul Reaping impact of allowing you to have better energy recovery to continue the chain.

I would have the four other skills be somewhat energy-recovery related. A nice no-energy signet is Leech Signet, since it can provide a quick interrupt of a skill (that would cancel out Wastrels) and gives you a little boost in energy. Diversion is also a very nice one to have to disable any self-heals/hex removals that the target may have.

Draracle · Feb 10, 2006, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

"For 4-9 seconds, the next time target foe casts a spell on an ally, the Spell fails and you steal 5-12 Energy from that foe."

I thought that meant that if the foe casts a spell on one of YOUR allies, not his...

No Avarre is correct. Guilt will prevent a cast from targeting your team, Shame will prevent a caster from targeting his/her team.

As for the build under consideration: I have never played this build or anything similar. But to me I think power spike could be interesting here. Because you are generating Dmg out of Worry, why not spike the target if he trys to cast.

I am also with Avarre on FC, which, in my opinion is better than Soul Reaping. Especially if you want to lay out a hex with a casting time of 2+ seconds or using interupts -- so you can pick off those 3/4 - 1 second healing spells with ease. Energy managment is never a problem with my mesmer. Usually, at the end of a fight I have 20-40e in my bar.

But, take my views with a brick of salt. This build requires too much attention to one character for my liking and i doubt I would ever use it.