Curse

krakenstar · Mar 05, 2007, 08:38 PM // 20:38

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to the game still, and currently do not have Nightfalls. I need help with builds to run for AB. I've tried DOM, but found the diversion/shame/ww etc not working at all in AB, as its basically a brawl fest and quick damage/capping is king.

Currently the only semi effective build I've got is a me/N running the following:

Conj. Phantasm
Image of Rem.
Acc. Pain
Discord
Kita's burden
Price of Failure
Spirit of Failure
Distortion

Burden is used as EM, as well as kiting, stop runners, touchers, or someone on the monk.

Failures for EM and combines well with distortion.

I'm looking for improvements to this build as well as new builds I can run Me/something, for AB. Please keep in mind again I don't have Nightfalls. Thanks in advance.

Syntonic · Mar 06, 2007, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Honestly, I think you should stop playing Mesmer and instead choose a quick spike damage build if that's what you are looking for. Huge damage spikes is what is noticeable. It's not what keeps your damage dealers alive so they can keep killing and capping. It's also not what the other team is cursing about in their team talk probably either.

Yes, chaos is huge in AB but it's one of the main drawing points I believe. Diversion, spirit of failure, etc should be awesome for a mesmer as you can help shut down the high damage classes on the other team like sins and elementalists. You can't cap if you are dead and you can't cap if you are busy running away. I don't really like the illusion line much. Degen caps at 10 - the more arrows simply block healing regen abilities - healing monks aren't all that great by themselves in PvP games where the protect line works far better. Most groups only have 1 healer type if at all. How does that apply to you? Well that means that the monk will probably not have healing breeze or restful breeze or watchful healing etc. They will probably have ZB or some sort of high heal. You might pressure them into using it but you are far better off shutting them down before they can use it or anything else. There are also probably far better tools at your disposal for pressuring.

That being said, the monk probably isn't always the highest priority target. You'll want to lower the other team's effectiveness though. For example, you can choose the sins and elementalists first with spirit of failure and perhaps further blind skills and diversion and even backfire against elementalists can quickly turn the tide of a battle. If they can't deal any damage to your team reliably while your team can get theirs - then you win. The opposing team can't cap if they are dead while you can keep going. If they run away, then they aren't capping either and lose time. Some nonexperienced casters (several monks) in AB have even backfired themselves to death. You get all sorts of skill levels in AB.

This also inevitably gets a mix of good and bad teams. The above really applies if you have a group of friends that like to AB and have set roles. Otherwise, you'll need to rely on some self heal capabilities and escape capabilities. Some people hate taking monks and other healers in to AB claiming that they have no place on that battlefield. I personally beg to differ but you might not always have the optimal group (unless you make your own and get specific people and make them ping their builds and have them switch skills etc. and more or less run it like a TA group) so consider a subclass like assassin to help with quick get aways. However, if you face a group without healers (and sometimes with monks if you have the right team), the illusion line applies some decent pressure. I still think there are way too many ifs for the illusion line even though it is a hex instead of a condition.

You might want to ask the mesmer forums for additional information but I'd imagine the mobbing and the chaos of AB to be the mesmer's real forte especially in the case of melees. I'd like to note: I'm not a great mesmer player so the above may be pure nonsense but I know what I do like when I have a mesmer player in my group.

Morganas · Mar 06, 2007, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Must haves in AB are a snare and a speed boost, and condition removal is a BIG help too. Big damage and spiking are unimportant, as long as it's enough damage to kill npc's solo. Good builds:

-Water ele, snares, maelstrom, attune, aura of resto, and armor of mist. Fast capper and meets the snare/speedboost prereq.
-Ranger w/ burning arrows, natural stride, dshot, pindown, poison arrows, mending touch, trolls.
-A charging strike sword wammo with mending touch and heal sig.
-A ZB monk/assassin, with dash or dark escape and return.
-Crippling anguish mes/A with phantasm, accumalated etc... along with feigned neutrality, dash, and heart of shadow. Not so good at capping but great for picking people off without having to hang around to kill them.

Get the picture? Should be versatile and mobile. As a general rule, anything that makes a good flagger or skirmisher in GvG is great in AB. If you want a good AB build, just watch top gvg matches in observer mode and rip off their split characters.

As far as tactics, besides the usual cap cap cap that people will scream, it's OK TO MOB as long as you're winning. Also, if there's 1 res shrine, try protect it. Otherwise, don't worry at all about scoring kills, focus on snaring and running away like a coward (note the insults that usually get thrown at the winning side). Also, if the enemy has a mob protecting the rez shrine and the other teams are trying to take it back while you're capping do not kill any players you come across, just run from them and keep capping. If you kill them you're hurting your teams attempt to retake the rez shrine.

Riotgear · Mar 06, 2007, 03:50 AM // 03:50

Speed boosts are somewhat overrated, IMO. The amount of time spent clearing shrines, waiting for them to cap, and getting past other groups interfering greatly exceeds the minimal gains from being able to jump from point to point quickly. That and unless your whole group has speed boosts, it doesn't matter anyway, because you're just gonna wind up waiting for them.

"Capping groups" seldom come prepared for an actual skirmish, just force a fight down their throats and they'll either run or wipe. I find the best thing to do is just get an extremely offense-heavy group that can just steamroll everything to keep downtime to a minimum.

Mesmers serve the opposite role, but a good dom build can make it very easy to roll over stronger teams and gimp their offensives. They also have the dubious honor of being good at disposing of crap like E/D earth tanks which most AB idiots refuse to just ignore. The number of monks in AB has also been increasing lately, making caster hate a bit more useful. Hell, I don't feel guilty putting Shame on my AB mez bars any more.

What I usually run if I'm doing that:
Inspiration: 10+1
Fast Casting: 8+1
Domination Magic: 12+1+3
[skill]Shatter Enchantment[/skill][skill]Shame[/skill][skill]Diversion[/skill][skill]Power Drain[/skill][skill]Spirit Shackles[/skill][skill]Ether Feast[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Mantra of Recovery[/skill]

SS can be swapped with Empathy, both work fine with the stupidity level of AB. I suck at making mesmer bars almost as bad as I suck at playing them, but it's proven itself on enough occasions.

Morganas · Mar 06, 2007, 04:59 AM // 04:59

Speed boosts aren't for getting to cap points faster, it's for running from other players. Speed boosts are a bit weaker on a noob team that won't carry them, but they're still worth it. Even if you're the only one left standing, any good skirmish build, except melee ones, can usually easily get kills and cap shrines by themselves, or just meet up and roll with another group.

I'm really wary of the abovemesmer bar, but assuming it does win 4v4 fights, so what? You've just wasted time fighting (alot of time, that mesmer won't get kills on his own), when instead you could have snared their team, speed boosted to cap the next shrine, and fought them at npcs. Also, what about when when of your teammates dies? What if it's your monk. Now you're going down next. In a skirmish build, it's irrelevant, since you're effective solo.

Riotgear · Mar 06, 2007, 05:37 AM // 05:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morganas

I'm really wary of the abovemesmer bar, but assuming it does win 4v4 fights, so what?

Like I said, it's kind of the opposite purpose, it's more for keeping things the shrine composition steady, which works well when your team has a rez shrine and can just branch out to a couple other points. It's mainly there to prevent the other team from capping anything, and works well when everyone just wants to branch off of a single rez shrine and fight zerg vs. zerg if they have to (i.e. Saltspray).

If your goal is to aggressively cap points and wipe groups, why run a mesmer anyway?

krakenstar · Mar 06, 2007, 05:46 AM // 05:46

First I'd like to thank you all for the comments and suggestions.

It is AB after all - there are very few "strong teams" running about. Here are the 5 usual scenario:

1 - random 4v4. The other team has one *really* bad player and soon its a 4v3.

2 - we outnumber them. No brainer quicker killing of the PCs the better. Dom not required.

3 - they outnumber us. As we run away, we might kite a few "Fast runners" out from the mob and make them over extend. I then burden and we spike them. The degens really helps out with the hvy metal types.

4 - PC vs. NPC. Its a no brainer.

5 - come up against an actual decent "strong team". 4v4 starts and the fight must end quickly before someone else show up to completely unbalance the situation again. Otherwise it becomes either 2 or 3.

Problem with a Dom in this format is that with 1 monk, 1 dom, we only have 2 people putting real pressure/damage on a team. The Dom build from Riotgear as an example can only wand and shatter enchantment to damage. It might stop them from doing damage, but even in scenario 5, I found it usually drag the fight out too long and it becomes a scenario 2 or 3. While I agree with everything else Riot said, every time I run a build close to that I can't defend myself other than back the hell up or suck up all my monk's juice. Then they are on the monk.

As much as I think capping is important, we must also kill PCs as we cap (unless they BIG mob). That pushes them back to their res shrines or they can just cap back and its pretty much unproductive.

What got me to my build now is its ability to both spread degen around quickly, along with 50% miss to a couple tanks, slow, and spike while having some survivability. Spiking gets faster especially with somone helping out with putting up a condition or two.

Monks are usually not a priority at all for me.... The front liners can usually keep one busy, if there is one at all.

Yes, I can also look at another primary - but that belong to another topic altogether :P Let me rephrase my question again. Please comment/suggest a ME/* build for AB, or improvements to my existing build.

Thanks again!

Riotgear · Mar 06, 2007, 06:50 AM // 06:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by krakenstar

While I agree with everything else Riot said, every time I run a build close to that I can't defend myself other than back the hell up or suck up all my monk's juice. Then they are on the monk.

You have to hide behind your teammates. There aren't many good self-defense options on a mesmer, and Ether Feast isn't too great, so that's often a neccessity. It's not the kind of thing you want to run in a self-contained group, it's something that's better to stick into those massive zerg-on-zerg fights that frequently wind up on the rez shrines, and is well-suited to holding a shrine lead rather than retaking it.

I certainly wouldn't run that in a lone group with a monk, because it's hard to get competant players with enough damage output to not make the whole group gimped when 2 players can't kill anything.

Unless you're going to do one of those two, there isn't really a reason to run a mesmer though, or any hex build for that matter.

If you are going to run a mesmer build, you'd probably be best using Frustration, some interrupts, Empathy, etc. Or just run cheesy SB/RI.

I'd say drop distortion for hex breaker too, most of the actually-threatening melee in AB are shadow prison sins, and you know what hex breaker does to that. Hex Breaker has other benefits, of course.

Quote:

The front liners can usually keep one busy, if there is one at all.

It takes a significant amount of pressure to crack a ZB monk, which is what has been showing up in increasing quantities lately.

krakenstar · Mar 06, 2007, 10:53 PM // 22:53

Quote:

using Frustration, some interrupts, Empathy, etc. Or just run cheesy SB/RI.

Sorry Riotgear, What is SB/RI?

On distortion vs. Hexbreaker:

While I agree on 1 v 1 situation, there are way too many sins running SP these days in AB. And its not as reliable in fighting on the outskirts of "the mob".

What I like about distortion is when I see the first melee bee-line towards me, sometimes from side or behind: I hit distortion then spirit of failure, then distortion again and price of failure+conjure and remorse. If they don't back up after that and keep at me I'll burden and kite them. If they chase after someone else I have a decent supply of power for me to kill others. Distortion is also good against the warriors and r/ws. Hex breaker is good against spell casters as well though - but I usually don't' find myself near the top target list by other casters. I guess they rather degening the heavy armor types.

I feel the weakest skill might be price of failure. Its no there to do damage, just let me spam spirit/price in spreads for some quick energy management. HOWEVER, a lot of times they don't live long enough for me to recoup the 20 points of energy. Any recommendations to replace that with? I'm tempted to use rend enchantment - but that's seldom required in AB as well.

Thanks for your help and pls keep the recommendation coming!

Yanman.be · Mar 06, 2007, 10:58 PM // 22:58

Soul Barbs/Recurring Insecurity.

Riotgear · Mar 07, 2007, 03:19 AM // 03:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by krakenstar

Sorry Riotgear, What is SB/RI?

[skill]Soul Barbs[/skill][skill]Recurring Insecurity[/skill]

Recurring Insecurity causes hexes on the target to trigger Soul Barbs twice. So you cast Soul Barbs on them and then spam them with Wastrel's Worry and Parasitic Bond until they die.

krakenstar · Mar 07, 2007, 05:19 AM // 05:19

hmm is that a good build? Doesn't seem like the DpS is high enough and very energy consumptive... so its a 4 atk skill bar with self heal via PB. What would the full skill bar look like for a build around those 2 skills?

Div · Mar 08, 2007, 12:17 PM // 12:17

guildwiki.org is your good friend =)

it has a lot of fairly easy to play builds that you can start ABing with, though I will warn that some of the builds there are going to result in others calling you a "gimmick noob"