Curse

Warskull · Mar 22, 2006, 06:45 AM // 06:45

The E.Denial mesmer has become increasingly popular. In fact Europe's GvG metagame has long revolved around this character. The basic concept of this character is simple and even a poor player can be somewhat effective. However this does mean a skilled player cannot more effectively utilize the character. With a number of things in mind you can play an extremely effective energy denial mesmer in tombs or GvG (or arenas, but they really aren't very popular there.)

The first step to playing a good energy denial mesmer is recognizing when your enemy is at 0 energy. Once your enemy is at 0 energy your skills no longer are effective and if you continue to spam them your efforts are wasted. There are a number of ways to do this. Mind wrack will apply damage when they hit 0 energy indicating this. Second, energy burn or energy surge will do less damage when your target is below 8 energy. Another give away is focus sets. If you see your enemies hands empty (or if they just pulled out a new sword/axe and scroll) they swapped down to a low focus and have 0 energy (I will explain this more in a bit.) Finally if you are on an E.Denial ranger you can estimate enemy energy levels using counting and observing their behavior. You will notice decreases in skill uses as their energy becomes depleted. Once your enemy is at 0 energy you cannot simply spam skills. Wait for them to recover a bit of energy.

Another important facet of energy denial is understanding how focus swapping and negative energy works. There is no free energy in this game. If you swap to a different focus the energy of that focus is either lost or gained. For example, I have a +12 energy focus giving me a total of 42 energy and get burned down to 0 energy. I then proceed to swap to a cane and gingerbread shield. The gingerbread shield gives me no energy so I lose 12 energy when I swap down. This brings me to -12/30 energy. While I am in negative energy my bar constantly displays 1 energy. However it regens normally. Thus in 3 seconds I regen back up to -8/30 energy. If I bring back my focos I gain the +12 energy back going to 4/42 energy. While I regen negative energy I cannot be harmed by energy denial. Thus it is important to recognize when an enemy has entered negative energy and stop using energy draining skills on them. The first major sign of this is mind wrack going off when an opponent hasn't used a skill or hasn't been hit with an e.denial skills. A second sign is your opponent swapping to a set with no focus (an empty hand) or swapping to a weapon and scroll (a negative energy set making them lose an additional -7 energy.) A third indicating is when your skills constantly hit for 0 for an extended period. You opponent may have tapped out a +energy set that looks exactly the same as their normal set and then returned to their normal set to regen energy. I highly encourage you to play around with negative energy and learn how it works.

Part of being a good energy denial character is maximizing your energy denial. When you see your opponent is at 0 energy determine if they are in negative energy or simply at 0 energy. If they are at 0 energy begin a count. Count the seconds, your opponent gains 1.3 energy per second if they are a caster (1 energy per second for boon prots or rangers.) Thus you can count your opponents energy and hit them at an ideal moment to get the damage from energy burn or energy surge. For an E.Denial mesmer I prefer 6 seconds (7.8 energy) I suggest taking into consideration the time it takes to use your energy denial skill also. In addition do not always deny at the same moment, sometime hit them a bit early. This way you don't fall into a pattern that the enemy can react to. If they expect the hit to come at 8 energy and you burn them when they are at 6 you can disrupt whatever plans they had. Sometimes string them out for a full burn, other times hit them early.

Watch your enemy's hands. Be aware of what focuses they are using. If you see your enemy go into a low energy set halt your E.Denial temporarily. If you see the enemy swap up to a high energy set immediately hit them with your quickest casting energy denial (usually) to limit the amount of spells they can get off. If you have an interrupt in your bar an enemy swapping up to a high energy set is almost a sure sign that a spell is coming in the next few seconds. If you are confident you can interrupt this spell you can delay your burn and try to interrupt it. However I do not suggest that until observing 1-2 swaps to higher energy sets and you have a better feel for your enemy's behavior. If they swap up to use Reveral of Fortune you can't interrupt them. If they swap up to use Orison or Healing Touch you have a fairly good shot at interrupting them. Learn your target's focus swapping patterns and use this to control them. Remember this requires you to be able to see your opponent to effectively do. Hitting space to attack (and then possible canceling it) will center them on your screen and help you keep track of them.

Playing a good E.Denial character is all about knowing how your enemies will react to various situations and using this behavioral knowledge to your advantage. Practice these skills and commit this knowledge to memory. This way the next time you join a tombs group and they ask you "Do you play a good E.Denial mesmer?" you can tell "Yes" and prove it. You'll notice that it isn't always possible to completely prevent a target from casting spells, however you can make life extremely difficult for them and cause them to make mistakes or miss heals as a result of your energy denial.

If you have any further questions on playing E.Denial post them and I will try and help you out.

Quote:

Finally a simple E.Denial Mesmer for first timers:
10+1 Fast Casting
10+4 Dom
11+1 Inspiration

Energy Burn
Energy Surge
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Humility
Mind Wrack
Drain Enchantment
Mantra of Inscriptions
Rez Sig

They obviously can come in many different flavours with some being more complex than others. However this build covers all the basics to E.Denial, lets you turn off the enemy elite (often used for energy management) and deal some decent damage with mind wrack. Give it a shot, it should work nicely.

Byron · Mar 22, 2006, 04:16 PM // 16:16

Thanks chief. Being a monk in HA means griefing about e-denial every match, and I'm happy to have a better understanding of my enemy. I'm sure this article would do much good for more than a couple PUG mesmers out there.

Vesital · Mar 23, 2006, 01:38 AM // 01:38

A really great post. Watching the opponents focus swapping a making sure you're not wasting your time/energy on opponents with zero energy are really good points. Watching foucs swapping may be difficult at first, but is a very valuable skill to have.

Bio-Flame · Mar 23, 2006, 03:08 AM // 03:08

You have 0 self-defense or self-healing skills.
How are you supposed to keep yourself alive?
I don't see anyway for you to stay alive if under attack because Kitting will not be enough without any sort of defensive skills. Or do you relly on your monk alone to keep you alive?

And isn't mantra of inscriptions and Mind Wrack a bit of overkill? I mean, it's not like you're supposed to deal tons of damage anyway and E.surge/burn already does a nice damage.
This is really a question,not a critic though.

Siliconwafer · Mar 23, 2006, 06:01 AM // 06:01

That build is usually meant for use in GvG, where kiting with the support of two (or three in some cases) monks should keep you out of trouble.

A few high level guilds run e-denial mesmers like this one (iB does, I think), and I think watching them would probably answer a lot of your doubts as to survivability.

In CA, I would probably drop Humility for Distortion, but obviously in CA you are always at a disadvantage running a set build because you don't know who you're getting as teammates.

Warskull · Mar 23, 2006, 04:32 PM // 16:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bio-Flame

You have 0 self-defense or self-healing skills.
How are you supposed to keep yourself alive?
I don't see anyway for you to stay alive if under attack because Kitting will not be enough without any sort of defensive skills. Or do you relly on your monk alone to keep you alive?

And isn't mantra of inscriptions and Mind Wrack a bit of overkill? I mean, it's not like you're supposed to deal tons of damage anyway and E.surge/burn already does a nice damage.
This is really a question,not a critic though.

Outside of random arena you don't really need to stack your bar with defensive skills because you can rely on a monk. In fact too many defensive skills can hurt your effectiveness. Plus E.Denial is more of an 8v8 strategy where your team has multiple monks.

Mind wrack is more to punish your opponent for focus swapping than to dish out constant damage. Plus mantra of inscriptions works with humility and weariness. This strengtens your ability to shutdown the enemy making weariness available more often and humility able to permanently black out an enemy's elite. Once you drain a target down to 0 burn and surge can usually keep them under control and you can toss out weariness into clusters (it does a lot of drain if it hits multiple enemies.) The build I posted was a basic E.Denial mesmer, there are many different varieties that tend to revolve around burn, surge, and weariness.

icemonkey · Mar 28, 2006, 07:18 PM // 19:18

I have a question, I always wanted to know this but never was able to get intoa good situation to study it. If your oponant goes into negative energy will mind wrack trigger as soon as it is cast on them? Like coul di spam it and they will take the damage instantly until they get back to positive energy?

also this is a fun e denial build for RA that is good for damage against any player.

11+4 dom
~10+1 insp
break point for -3 distortion in illusion
rest in fast cast

Energy Burn
Energy Surge
Signet of Weariness
Mind Wrack
shatter dillusions
Drain Enchantment
Distortion
Rez Sig

the idea here is that while they are low on energy and you are waiting for your burns to recharge you pop mind wrack with shatter dillusions and then reapply mind warck and burn them as its recharged. I find this fun and effective against warriors rangers and monks, not so much necros. But the shatter gives you more unconditional damage.

Lord Iowerth · Mar 28, 2006, 08:51 PM // 20:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by icemonkey

I have a question, I always wanted to know this but never was able to get intoa good situation to study it. If your oponant goes into negative energy will mind wrack trigger as soon as it is cast on them? Like coul di spam it and they will take the damage instantly until they get back to positive energy?

In my testing (and someone slap me if i'm wrong here) but Mind Wrack only deals the damage when you reach zero ... IE, if you're already at 0, or in the negative: Mind Wrack does nothing.

You can test outside Beetletun, by using a Warrior/Monk with 2 maintained enchants ... let the Mergoyles cast Spirit Shackles on you, deplete all your energy, and wait for them to mind wrack you again. You have no regen, and 0 energy

Mind you, this is not negative energy, but illustrates the same point.

JR · Mar 28, 2006, 09:40 PM // 21:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Iowerth

In my testing (and someone slap me if i'm wrong here) but Mind Wrack only deals the damage when you reach zero ... IE, if you're already at 0, or in the negative: Mind Wrack does nothing.

Indeed. For Mind Wrack to trigger you need to have reached 1 energy, and then have gone back down to 0.

Lord Iowerth · Mar 28, 2006, 10:01 PM // 22:01

Alright! I knew having that second cup of coffee today was a good idea

So far I see the score as:

Lord's correct answers: 1
Lord's random babble: 123,423.5

And I <3 my E-Denial mesmer.

Also, occasionally I pack spirit shackles in my build to counter nasy spike rangers and gale warriors ... their effectiveness goes way down with no energy. It really just depends on how many times i've been rolled over by one of the two classes on that particular day that determines whether or not I bring shackles. Also wrack makes a decent cover-hex for shackles in my experience ... and keeping shackles from getting removed from a spike ranger or non-adrenal Warrior will effectively eliminate his energy pool (and thus, his effectiveness) after a spike or two.

Also, I love to be an annoying son of a ... there's nothing greater than knowing that monk you're denying is sitting behind his keyboard cursing your name, and screaming for his team to "ZOMG KILL THAT MESMER!"

psycho854 · Mar 28, 2006, 10:14 PM // 22:14

good guide =) till now ive not come to the idea of switching weapons in battle to bring my energy into the negative to not to get denialed :P but good idea indeed =)

nomed · Mar 28, 2006, 11:33 PM // 23:33

That's a nice guide. What do you think about using a ranger for e-denial? It would be based around Oath shot, Signet of Weariness, Debilitating Shot and Matra of Signets.

Mantra of Signets
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Weariness
Deb. Shot
--- Oath Shot ---
Mantra of Signets
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Weariness
Deb. Shot

That's 56 energy gone without having to stop casting once, and 4 times Signet of Weariness which makes everyone nearby lose 36 energy aswell plus the whole thing will hardly cost you any energy to do because of expertise.

Weaknesses I think would be:

- No damage (but there's 3 skill slots left)
- Bit more casting time for Signet of Weariness
- Deb. Shot can be blocked (but would anybody use their defense skills for blocking this? if so, it makes them vulnerable afterwards)

JR · Mar 28, 2006, 11:41 PM // 23:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomed

That's a nice guide. What do you think about using a ranger for e-denial? It would be based around Oath shot, Signet of Weariness, Debilitating Shot and Matra of Signets.

Mantra of Signets
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Weariness
Deb. Shot
--- Oath Shot ---
Mantra of Signets
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Weariness
Deb. Shot

That's 56 energy gone without having to stop casting once, and 4 times Signet of Weariness which makes everyone nearby lose 36 energy aswell plus the whole thing will hardly cost you any energy to do because of expertise.

Weaknesses I think would be:

- No damage (but there's 3 skill slots left)
- Bit more casting time for Signet of Weariness
- Deb. Shot can be blocked

It's a decent build, but as you pointed out it relies fairly heavily on line of sight. I've played with it myself, and even threw in Serpents Quickness to help pump out the denial a bit faster. In the end though, good monks will just strafe or hide behind terrain to stop your debil shots hitting. And once you rule out them, you may aswell just be a Mesmer.

icemonkey · Mar 29, 2006, 01:54 AM // 01:54

stuff like that can pwn in HoH where on some maps there is very few places to hide from arrows. I have personally been hench spiked by a team supported by 3 of these type of rangers

Hella Good · Mar 29, 2006, 05:43 AM // 05:43

There are many ways you can e-deny... If I can dig out a thread I posted about e-denial options, I'll post a link here. But yea basically you can do nrg degen denial, nrg pool denial, you can combine the two, you can do Migraine denial. Many, many flavors...

Ah here it is:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113982

It's not extensive and it's more arguementative but it has a lot of info about kinds of e-denial in it.

shadex · Mar 29, 2006, 09:15 AM // 09:15

I still prefer a spamable diversion mezer anyday. A good monk now a days will pack edrain and inspire hex. That tends to negate any but the better edenial mez'ers. Sides, diversion has a tendancy to hit on there most used skills. If you hit a boon prot monk with diversion and negate both guardian and RoF you pretty much took him out of the fight. Toss it on a HP e/mo and you negated his draw condtions or his heal party.

Malaise works nicely, coupled with either lord however any monk worth his salt will pack CoP. I still prefer disabling monks rather then out right draining them, as you tend to run into those blood rit groups and i dont think there is a monk out there that doesn't have some type of way to regain energy fast.

Sides, my favoret trick to use on BP monks is to strip boon, then cast diversion, which if you can time it, you can really hurt there build.

Kate Bloodspirit · Mar 29, 2006, 07:11 PM // 19:11

I'd like to add some tricks about playing an e-denial mesmer.

Assuming your bar is this, or something similar:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warskull

Finally a simple E.Denial Mesmer for first timers:
10+1 Fast Casting
10+4 Dom
11+1 Inspiration

Energy Burn
Energy Surge
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Humility
Mind Wrack
Drain Enchantment
Mantra of Inscriptions
Rez Sig

The most important part about playing a e-denial mesmer, is to space out your spells. Watching what spells you target is using will help you to do this, because it will give you an stimated time for regen until the point, increase your next e-denial if your target's bar is based on 5 energy skills, increase if most of their spells are 10 energy.

Remember your moto is to prevent your enemy from casting sensitive spells that will harm you in the long run, not to keep your enemy's energy at 0 (which seems it's a lot of people's perception).

Chaining spells is good under certain situations, like when a match starts, because you know for sure your energy pool's full. Other than that, you're pretty much wasting a skill just to figure out if the enemy's energy dropped.

Make sure you always have at least 1 E-denying skill at any given time. It will give you a strategic advantage at any given point in time it can come in handy, for example, when if your target casts OoB you can apply the skill because you know he has some energy, altought he might have already hided the energy by the time your spell finishes casting.

Your e-denying skills are precission tools, rather than brute force drains. Place them properly with fundament, instead of just spamming your skills.

The most interesting combo's, I've come to realize are those based on draining enchantments. Example, your target casts mantra of recall, drain enchant will remove this enchantment, providing energy to you and to your target, which you can follow up with a surge/burn for the refilled mana pool.

Draining Divine Boons is also a nice trick. But first you have to understand how e-denied monks energy bars behave. Most of the time, their energy will be low, so when they cast spells, they are not losing 2 energy per spells, they are actually roughly losing 1 or 0 energy per spell. The difference in the amount of healing they generate resides on the divine boon, which if sucessfully removed, will reduce their healing a good amount.

Other good enchants to drain are Blood Ritual (watch for mesmer or necro touch casting animation next to your target) or BIP (this one is very hard to spot). Also prot spirit (casting on self animation + cast prot spirit in target monitor) and guardian (same principle).

Don't drain after big spells like prot spirit for example, chances are their energy pool is low atm/not-worth-draining.

Althought the previous skill bar is good, I wouldn't run mantra of inscriptions myself, for I wouldn't expect much better results. Instead you can modify slightly your aproach. For example, versus booners, you can deny after OoB or drain enchant+deny after Mantra of Recall and chain Humility after ~18 (16r + 3c) MoR was casted, for a total amount of at least 30 seconds of no elite energy management skill.

This gives you an extra slot, which you can fill with Shame, which is a great e-management/shutdown skill, Diversion or Blackout which are great all-in-one shutdown/defense skills.

This adds a little bit of more trickysness ot your bar, don't ever deny after the target was shamed. You also get higher levels of spell availability when using shame or blackout.

A few tips on spotting target's energy. Mindwrack triggers will let you know for sure energy is zero, watching weapon sets is usefull too, watching casts is good, if they're casting a lot, means they most likely have energy, and last trick, try to spot the energy-gain animation (still working on this myself =/) which is sort of purple bubbles around the head.

One last trick, always be on your -energy set when you're blackout.

TomD22 · Mar 30, 2006, 11:16 AM // 11:16

A small point of disagreement with the initial and some subsequent posts. You say initially that you should count/estimate when the enemy has regained enough energy for your burn or surge to do it's full effectiveness before using it again. Then the person above says the objective is not to keep your target at 0 nrg. I'd take issue with that. As a monk facing strong energy denial, my tactic is to spend my energy as fast as i can, whenever i have it. My reasoning is that it's better to use the energy myself, than have it taken from me and suffer damage from that as well. E-denial 8 man builds often kill quite slowly, and me getting even one word of healing (for example) off can make all the difference. If you wait until i have regened 8+ energy before denying me again, you'll find that i'll already have used it and saved the guy your warrior is trying to kill. Your primary purpose is to stop me from casting, by keeping me at 0 energy, and dealing damage is a secondary concern. I admit i've only played straight e-denial myself a couple of times, so this is written from the point of view of a monk facing an e-denial mesmer, in which i have rather more experience.

Kate Bloodspirit · Mar 30, 2006, 10:23 PM // 22:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by TomD22

A small point of disagreement with the initial and some subsequent posts. You say initially that you should count/estimate when the enemy has regained enough energy for your burn or surge to do it's full effectiveness before using it again. Then the person above says the objective is not to keep your target at 0 nrg. I'd take issue with that. As a monk facing strong energy denial, my tactic is to spend my energy as fast as i can, whenever i have it. My reasoning is that it's better to use the energy myself, than have it taken from me and suffer damage from that as well. E-denial 8 man builds often kill quite slowly, and me getting even one word of healing (for example) off can make all the difference. If you wait until i have regened 8+ energy before denying me again, you'll find that i'll already have used it and saved the guy your warrior is trying to kill. Your primary purpose is to stop me from casting, by keeping me at 0 energy, and dealing damage is a secondary concern. I admit i've only played straight e-denial myself a couple of times, so this is written from the point of view of a monk facing an e-denial mesmer, in which i have rather more experience.

I think you miss my point. The objective is not to keep the energy at 0, in fact, it's impossible to do that, because by hiding your energy, you can get up to 20+ energy when you switch to your regular energy set. The small gap between you being at 0 energy and less than 5 or 10, depending the what the main cost of you important spells are, is the difference between a good and a button-smasher mesmer.

And that point is exactly the one that the first posts makes. That this build works very nicely for unexperienced players, because the gap between a good and a not so good mesmer is so small, yet the effects produced by an unexperienced player are so devastating.

You have to realize E-denial mesmers aren't a source of infinite spells like a monk is for example, so it's ok to leave a Word of healing leak, for example. And well, I know not of anyone who runs straight e-denial but I do know this guys are great as utility characters, rather than main characters to base builds upon.

Warskull · Mar 31, 2006, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomed

That's a nice guide. What do you think about using a ranger for e-denial? It would be based around Oath shot, Signet of Weariness, Debilitating Shot and Matra of Signets.

Mantra of Signets
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Weariness
Deb. Shot
--- Oath Shot ---
Mantra of Signets
Signet of Weariness
Signet of Weariness
Deb. Shot

That's 56 energy gone without having to stop casting once, and 4 times Signet of Weariness which makes everyone nearby lose 36 energy aswell plus the whole thing will hardly cost you any energy to do because of expertise.

Weaknesses I think would be:

- No damage (but there's 3 skill slots left)
- Bit more casting time for Signet of Weariness
- Deb. Shot can be blocked (but would anybody use their defense skills for blocking this? if so, it makes them vulnerable afterwards)

I alluded to this build a few times, it has some advantages and disadvantages. It can be very bursty when it needs to and excels at wiping a targets energy out from the start. However at the same time it is more difficult to recognize when a target is out of energy. What really make a ranger e.denial build is how you use the rest of your skill slots. You can mix in poison, traps, or some other utility that makes the character worth it.

As for line of sight, you really want that even as a regular mesmer. Seeing what is in an opponent's hands is quite important.

Quote:

A small point of disagreement with the initial and some subsequent posts. You say initially that you should count/estimate when the enemy has regained enough energy for your burn or surge to do it's full effectiveness before using it again. Then the person above says the objective is not to keep your target at 0 nrg. I'd take issue with that. As a monk facing strong energy denial, my tactic is to spend my energy as fast as i can, whenever i have it. My reasoning is that it's better to use the energy myself, than have it taken from me and suffer damage from that as well. E-denial 8 man builds often kill quite slowly, and me getting even one word of healing (for example) off can make all the difference. If you wait until i have regened 8+ energy before denying me again, you'll find that i'll already have used it and saved the guy your warrior is trying to kill. Your primary purpose is to stop me from casting, by keeping me at 0 energy, and dealing damage is a secondary concern. I admit i've only played straight e-denial myself a couple of times, so this is written from the point of view of a monk facing an e-denial mesmer, in which i have rather more experience.

At the same time I can stop you from getting any spell greater than 5 energy off and use other skills to disable you. Plus remember if you cannot choose when you spam off word you cannot properly react to my team's adrenaline spikes. I am already controlling your behavior at that point and limiting your effectiveness.