Curse

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 12:26 AM // 00:26

Chain Lightning: 10-82 3 targets, 25% AP Causes Exhaustion (10,2,20)
Energy Surge: 32-72 AOE, Remove 4-9 energy (10,2,20)

With ALL decent groups running Zephyr recast time isn't a problem.

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 12:49 AM // 00:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaylee Ann

lol...

Maybe not all, but at least half are. And if you dont plan on using it, or being able to get around it then you will be stomped by it.

Jul 24, 2005, 01:17 AM // 01:17

I'm not talking about the recharge times, I'm talking about the casting times.

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 01:21 AM // 01:21

Gotta love quoting yourself

Quote:

Originally Posted by ICURADik

Chain Lightning: 10-82 3 targets, 25% AP Causes Exhaustion (10,2,20)
Energy Surge: 32-72 AOE, Remove 4-9 energy (10,2,20)

With ALL decent groups running Zephyr recast time isn't a problem.

arredondo · Jul 24, 2005, 01:55 AM // 01:55

After all this time if people don't see that Mesmers have so many ways to spike just about as hard as an Ele I don't know what to say. If you open up with these ES/EB on a caster, you will likely always get full damage. It's AoE pain PLUS AoE energy burning? I don't see how one can think it's not at least worth considering. All builds/skills have counters, but this one is by no means at the bottom of the barrel.

Jul 24, 2005, 02:03 AM // 02:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by ICURADik

Gotta love quoting yourself

What does Zephyr have to do with the casting times of those skills.

Dudededu · Jul 24, 2005, 02:07 AM // 02:07

If your lucky hell just re-quote his quote of himself.

Kaylee Ann · Jul 24, 2005, 02:51 AM // 02:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

After all this time if people don't see that Mesmers have so many ways to spike just about as hard as an Ele I don't know what to say.

Problem is eles can keep doing it consistently, and a lot harder, and a mesmer can't. Also, the range of adjacent is a joke.

Using the line of thinking in this thread, why don't you just use 8 air eles and arcane echo chain lightning, fireball, meteor, christ anything but energy surge....

Cyan · Jul 24, 2005, 03:05 AM // 03:05

IW is worthless in tombs. You can get away with using it in arena but definitely not anywhere else. Teams do have enchantment removals as seen by the current nature's renewel craze. Teams also have rends. If the character build is centered around IW which it certainly would be, 1 natures renewel or a rend would completely render that target ineffective. Why bring something that everyone has a counter for?

*edit*

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

After all this time if people don't see that Mesmers have so many ways to spike just about as hard as an Ele I don't know what to say. If you open up with these ES/EB on a caster, you will likely always get full damage. It's AoE pain PLUS AoE energy burning? I don't see how one can think it's not at least worth considering. All builds/skills have counters, but this one is by no means at the bottom of the barrel.

Mesmer's cannot spike as hard as eles. Once that targets energy supply runs out, so does your damage. An ele doesn't have to worry about that problem. Maybe initially but after that, its safe to assume they are gonna be worthless. Energy burn and Energy surge both do 8 damage per point of energy burned. that means you can only do about 360 damage to a monk assuming he has around 45 energy. Hate to say it but monks have more than 360 hps not to mention there are gonna be other monks around healing him. You would also need 2 mesmers to do that damage in anything resembling a spike, 3 to do enough damage to kill someone assuming they have enough energy for it, and 6 to do it instantly. If your team is ANY good whatsoever, then the enemy monks will never have full energy, lowering the effectiveness of EB and ES. If you decide to target an ele instead with their increased energy supply, your leaving the monks unharassed so they could easily drop a prot spirit on the ele and heal him.

A chain lightning does well over 100 damage with 16 air magic... around 116 if i remember correctly on soft targets. If your using lightning surge then you can do double that almost instantly. 232 damage all at once looks a lot better than 160 over a 2 second period. The ele can also follow up with a chain lightning or lightning orb, whichever you didn't use after surge, which would add another 116 damage while your energy burn/energy surge mesmer would have to wait 20 seconds for the recharge.

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 05:17 AM // 05:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackace

And an Ele can do more damage for cheaper and faster recast with Obs flame. Who cares? Just because something ignores armor doesnt make it good off the bat. Surge and Burn are incredibly bad not only because of their damage levels depending on just how much energy the opponenet has, but also because the casting time between them just makes a damage spike even with Fast Casting pretty horrible.

Obs Flame does not remove energy, causes exhaustion, and isn't AOE.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackace

I'm not talking about the recharge times, I'm talking about the casting times.

So now casting time is the problem? Surge has the same casting time as chain.. faster with Fast Casting..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackace

What does Zephyr have to do with the casting times of those skills.

Zephyr allows you to use those skills multiple times quickly. If those skills also remove energy then the energy removal effect is amplified by the increased cost of your opponets skills.

Zeru · Jul 24, 2005, 05:33 AM // 05:33

If your opponent has 0 energy your energy burn won't do any damage. Ele's don't have any kind of restriction like that.

You mentioned zephyr...which is kinda funny cause this build, bad as it is, is absurdly crappy with zephyr. Zephyr is one of the best energy denial effects there is and considering you need the enemy to have energy to do damage...(not to mention you will need to rely on your secondary for energy gain because you will deplete your own energy extremely fast and won't have good ways of getting it back with mes besides the iffy channeling).

I honestly can't believe we are even debating this. Burn/Surge are in the same level as Mind Wrack is.

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 05:36 AM // 05:36

You people realize, that you enemy not having energy is a good thing right?

Edit:Bolded for effect.

SleepeR · Jul 24, 2005, 06:14 AM // 06:14

Adjacent...Do you realise how little range adjacent is? When i see adjacent it's basically single target, and Energy Surge in that matter is the same as burn, which is a waste of an elite. I'd call it broken.

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 06:29 AM // 06:29

You realize how many skill descriptions on this website are innacurate, or understated. I know me, and most of my team defending an altar have ALL taken the 80 damage at a time. I don't even have the skill unlocked. I plan to get it this weekend with my mes and test it out... That is the only reason I wouldn't consider the skill, if it's range is rather pathetic. But in my experience the range has been adequate when used agaisnt me. I see no reason to equip 3-4 mesmers with this skill ALONG with other denial/debuff skills.

Jul 24, 2005, 06:35 AM // 06:35

o jeezus...

Chain Lightning stomps the hell out of Surge oh so badly. It hits for much higher damage than Surge and is a bigger spike. Even with FC Burn and Surge are bad because you cant reliably spike with them.

Obs flame does more damage than both of those skills ever will, and it's advantage is that it can spike at anytime since the recharge is so short.

As Zeru pointed out why in gods name would you want to run Surge and Burn under a Zephyr build with the exception of Elementalist abuse.

A team of mesmers trying to brute force a team with monks by using Surge/Burn and Shatter enchantment to break prot spirit is going to lose-badly.

Kaylee Ann · Jul 24, 2005, 06:43 AM // 06:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by ICURADik

You realize how many skill descriptions on this website are innacurate, or understated.

Best way to prove your argument ever!!!!

Your right, it has the range radius of a ward, does triple damage what the description says, and is really a signet that recharges in 2 seconds......

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 07:06 AM // 07:06

Your still thinking of it purely in terms of spike. It's energy denial+spike. I hate explaning this to people over and over. With Fertile season, Elemental Ward/Ward against Harm, Winter, mantra's, etc. being used extensively by many teams. Elemental based spikes are very weak and inflexible. Doing 80 damage is nothing amazing, but how much can your average monk heal for 10 energy? 200, 250, maybe 300 with boon? 80 damage along with another 10 energy removal is the equivalent of hundreds of damage. I have honestly never fought a team in tombs that attempted to brute energy deny/skill deny me and my team. And I think it is far underused. Mesmers are so much more flexible than any other class.

Freyas · Jul 24, 2005, 07:14 AM // 07:14

Energy surge has a fairly large radius- something similar to Firestorm.

As for Energy Surge, it's nice if you're wanting people other than elementalists to help with spiking- have one or maybe 2 characters with Surge, and use Elementalists for the rest of the spike. The best thing there is that you're not limited to elementalist primary's plus a secondary profession with limited attribute points from boosting lightning to 12 and energy storage high enough to afford the nukes. You can bring things like shutdown mesmers that can help spike if you need it, which can incorporate other things like fast-cast rez, or enchantment removal, etc.

The problem you'll run into with an 8-mesmer team is that you're pretty weak to straight damage, and your damage output isn't as high as the other teams is likely to be. Mesmer damage tends to be very conditional, and people can choose not to take the damage(backfire, clumsiness, etc), and most all of it is hexes, meaning you'll be pretty powerless versus someone with hex breaker, Nature's Renewal, etc. Also, trying to shut down an enemy team, you'll generally run into a lot of overlapping- wasted interrupts when 2 people try to interrupt the same spell, putting a hex on someone while a teammate does the same, etc. It seems good in theory, but in practice, it doesn't work all that well.

ICURADik · Jul 24, 2005, 07:14 AM // 07:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaylee Ann

Best way to prove your argument ever!!!!

Your right, it has the range radius of a ward, does triple damage what the description says, and is really a signet that recharges in 2 seconds......

Like I said, I haven't tested it. But when used against me it has hit a signifigant number of players. I've run into at least 10+ skills on this website with innacurate or misleading skill descriptions. Resorting to this kind of post is childish and won't get you anywhere. I honestly enjoy coming up with new builds and beating people in completely unexpected ways. I know you think you know everything possible about every possible skill combo/build in the game, but I'm not impressed by that. As usual you abstain from posting your own ideas, and simply telling others they are clueless noobs. Go diaf.

arredondo · Jul 24, 2005, 07:30 AM // 07:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyan

A chain lightning does well over 100 damage with 16 air magic... around 116 if i remember correctly on soft targets. If your using lightning surge then you can do double that almost instantly. 232 damage all at once looks a lot better than 160 over a 2 second period. The ele can also follow up with a chain lightning or lightning orb, whichever you didn't use after surge, which would add another 116 damage while your energy burn/energy surge mesmer would have to wait 20 seconds for the recharge.

It does 106 at L16 I think. Taking your example here, you aren't doing that in just two seconds since Lightning Surge requires a two second cast and then a three second countdown. Yes, once it's sent, you can combo the Lightning Orb or Chain Lightning, but that's still 5 seconds right there. Add another two seconds for the final attack you listed (plus aftercasts) and you took about 9 seconds to do 318 damage for 35E, counting from when you first hit the initial skill cast button.

Now, I was commenting on Mesmers being able to do near-comparable "spike" damage with various setups, but let's try something with the current skills being talked about. If I wanted to get some spiking going with these skills (quick, strong damage), I might build around four skills off the top of my head...

Phantom Pain
Energy Surge
Energy Burn
Shatter Delusions

OK, so I cast everything in the order listed above. My stats are Fast Cast 7, Illusion 12, Domination 16 (5 points left). The initial cast gives me -3 degen. The next two casts gives me -160 damage and -20E. The last cast gives me -79 damage and a Deep Wound for 17 seconds, essentially another -100 for that time period. With Fast Cast stats, that's just under 7 seconds to do 369 damage for 35E (this assumes 5 secs. of PP degen before Shatter, after cast included).

See what I mean? I'm just making up something using these skills and you have to admit, it's at least comparable. Yes there are differences between the two, and ultimately the elementalist is best for pure raw damage over the long haul, but the "spike" isn't as absurdly different as people here want to claim. More damage in less time in this example... and that's not even the Mesmer's best setup for quick damage.

Sometimes criticisms come off as just raw elitism instead of being constructive (not you Cyan). We all want the same thing: defeat the other team before they defeat us. It helps us all if we can spend time trying to milk new ideas for what they're worth before reflexively shooting them down.

There are thousands and thousands of combinations possible with any given two skills like E. Burn and Surge, so why just assume that no combination exists to help your team win easier in certain situations? Burning energy AoE is a great thing - two birds with one stone. No exhaustion penalty is also great.

I'm not claiming at all it's better at all than a spiking air elem in the real world, and there are clear negatives that some have pointed out. I'm just saying it has plusses that are not easily dismissed besides the damage it does. I mean, burning 20%-90% of any target's energy pool is being pretty effective if you also are inflicting around 75% damage in 7 seconds as opposed to doing just 65% damage in 9 seconds. After that, we're moving from "spike" comparisons and into "death combo" comparisons. Perhaps a well thought out team can build around that.