Curse

yendornotact · Sep 13, 2005, 07:49 PM // 19:49

I like my working girls drok enchanters..

Sentao Nugra · Sep 13, 2005, 08:04 PM // 20:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cat Tabby

This is a bit of the point, but i really dont like the female mesmer fissure armor. Not wanting to be too crude, but it makes her look like a 'working girl'. I think the 60k virtuosos set is much better, and cheaper too.

i believe LBS meant to leave it as, "look how far my mesmer has gotten along, i have to be good", not how the armour actually looks

Cat Tabby · Sep 13, 2005, 09:10 PM // 21:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sentao Nugra

i believe LBS meant to leave it as, "look how far my mesmer has gotten along, i have to be good", not how the armour actually looks

sorry, i misunderstood. but he did say it had to be female so i thought he was making an aesthetic point.

Blue Steel · Sep 13, 2005, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cat Tabby

sorry, i misunderstood. but he did say it had to be female so i thought he was making an aesthetic point.

The point is both: fissure armor shows you have played A LOT (or scammed a lot of people or spent a lot of money on eBay or got extremely lucky at being online when market prices were reset and able to get hundreds of ecto for almost nothing, but either way people will assume that you are much more familiar with the game mechanics than someone without fissure) and it is generally agreed that female mesmer armor looks great. As for my opinion? I think it is immodest, but not nearly as much so as the enchantress or all the elementalist armors. It actually is much more modest and sophisticated looking than those. I plan to pick up fissure armor for my mesmer, and have had the supplies sitting there for a long time, but have not had the time to go get it.

Katari · Sep 13, 2005, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeXuS8

Mesmers still good but not for PvE they arent to required
-Hard to Heal (since they dont have much healing spells unless there monk)
-Take dmg

Ha. Have you played with 90% or more of PUG eles? They're all fire eles, with fire atunement, and a skillbar full of damage skills. Few that Ive seen carry defensive skills, or heals outside of Aura of Restoration.

On another note, I'll take anything over a third warrior in my party. I see no reason to have the three warriors that so many PUGs insist on bringing. Even more so if I can actualy find a good minion based necro.

Unless one is a support ele (Hydromancer, some Geomancers) theres no good reason to bring three, and even two is pushing it. I'd rather have a mesmer, necro, or ranger on my team than yet another fire ele.

Alias_X · Sep 14, 2005, 12:50 AM // 00:50

having a mesmer on the team is somewhat essential. I usually wont start a mission without one.

Ensign · Sep 14, 2005, 01:06 AM // 01:06

Honestly I don't even see the point of the second Warrior in PvE. Do PvE Warriors know how to deal damage? No. They're tanks. Multiple tanks just divide up the aggro. Two Warrior teams, IMO, are strictly worse than one Warrior teams.

I agree with Katari about Fire Elementalists - all they do is cast Meteor Shower on a mob, the strength of that skill is the knockdown, so stacked Meteor Showers don't actually do anything besides add a bit more damage to the pile. Not exactly what I would call ideal strategy.

I have to think that teams bring multiple fire eles and multiple Warriors in hopes of finding a single competent one to carry the entire team.

Peace,
-CxE

cagan · Sep 14, 2005, 01:36 AM // 01:36

Indeed, diversity is the key, taking multiples of the exact same build is rarely useful in PvE (exceptions do exist of course)

KaPe · Sep 14, 2005, 01:38 AM // 01:38

"And for people who despises the Mesmer -- recall the Mursaat Mesmers. They can take apart a team in seconds."

Oh, can they? Maybe un-infused one. Elementalists are far more dangerous, chain does lots of damage, even though it is easy to interrupt.

Please, people, stop repeating yourself and continually saying that Mesmer is *the* class, expect we are too "noob" to see that. Mesmer is not well suited for PvE. He has too many skills focusing on single targets, which is helpful against bosses, but don't work very well against group of 4+ enemies. Trying to make you a damage dealer is difficult and you'll never match true damage dealers anyway. For interrupts - well, plenty of interrupts in other classes, including fire elementalists. Energy denial - this isn't PvP, denying single caster energy won't change much.

Unless Anet introduces some more caster heavy(especially monks) monster groups, Mesmers *will* be underused. There's not much stuff worth interrupting and not many opponents worthy of Mesmer hexes. Most of the time it's simplier to blast them apart with high damage spell, than wait 20 seconds till they kill themselves with empathy.

Last but not least : It is annoying seeing as you glorify Mesmers yet bash other classes. Typical attitude of "We choose worst possible examples from other classes and best from ours". Naturally, in such comparision, Mesmers come on top.

Edit: Actually, enchant heavy opponents could help, too. Making one mob specificially with protect spells, which you would have to remove(for necro, too) to deal some reasonable damage - like some monks mobs using Mark of Protection, but nastier.

lg5000 · Sep 14, 2005, 02:56 AM // 02:56

Heh, it's just the in thing at the moment... before that, it was another class, after, it'll be someone else all together.

Offtopic: Why can't I find decent mesmers in the desert? The only ones I seem to find are lvl 5 or someone who is mesmer only for fast casting.

Slimcea · Sep 14, 2005, 03:56 AM // 03:56

The key problem I see with Mesmers is that their primary attribute, fast casting, offers little for PvE compared to other lines except maybe when dealing with bosses. Fast casting helps interrupts, but in PvE, the need to actually constantly interrupt your opponent's actions is by far much less.

Compare a full Mes to an Ele/Mes. The Ele/Mes has access to all the same spells that a Mes has, but has a much higher energy pool to play with. All the Ele/Mes loses is Fast Casting and the access to a > 12 attribute, of which the lesser damage from the hexes/spells can be easily made up by specing in an Ele line.

QuixotesGhost · Sep 14, 2005, 04:05 AM // 04:05

Actually Fast Casting offers very little to interupters. Reducing a .25 cast spell to .17 doesn't make a lick of difference. The longer casting you spells the more benefit you get from it. Energy storage does give you more inital energy, true, but fast casting makes if far easier to slip a 3s cast energy tap in between spells. Fast casting gives a mesmer the ability to quickly hex several enemies, an ability many mesmer builds need.

Quote:

Offtopic: Why can't I find decent mesmers in the desert? The only ones I seem to find are lvl 5 or someone who is mesmer only for fast casting.

Definately, Mesmers are THE class to have in the desert. With all my other characters when trudging to the desert, I say to myself, damn I wish I was playing my mesmer.

A good way of looking at it in my opinion.

Warriors "tank" melee as in reduce the damage thereof
Mesmers "tank" spellcasters as in reduce the damage thereof

Why double up on one and ignore the other?

Warskull · Sep 14, 2005, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sentao Nugra

i believe LBS meant to leave it as, "look how far my mesmer has gotten along, i have to be good", not how the armour actually looks

Sadly I have seen plenty of people who have fissure armor or I was escorting to get fissure armor with next to no skills. We were dumbfounded by how they could have possible gotten the resourced to get the armor being that bad.

The only real mesmer problem I see is fitting two into a single group can be very tricky due to their high specialization. Usually you want to run certain skills/builds in certain areas and two good mesmers will almost always overlap.

With the heavy amount of hexes in SF a mesmer can often drop 250 damage in the matter of 3 seconds with arcane echo and shatter hex (and then your eles meteors start falling after everything is dead.)

KaPe · Sep 14, 2005, 11:40 AM // 11:40

"With the heavy amount of hexes in SF"

Two mesmer hexes and one necro is not heavy amount.

Cat Tabby · Sep 14, 2005, 11:55 AM // 11:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warskull

The only real mesmer problem I see is fitting two into a single group can be very tricky due to their high specialization. Usually you want to run certain skills/builds in certain areas and two good mesmers will almost always overlap

Very true, but you can run an illusion and a domination magic build togther quite well. Generally speaking, the illusion mesmer deals with melee enemies and the domination with spellcasters. Its probably not the best approach though. A good team needs a mesmer, but only one, and that should be a domination build.

I have been working on a balanced build for my mesmer; aimed at having something for spellcasters and melee alike; while remaining effective with both. I have come up with - fc 9; dom 16; insp 11. I use backfire; empathy; shatter hex; cry of frustration; wastrels worry; chaos storm; energy drain (elite); and ether feast. Works quite well in sf. And I know; mesmer shouldn't have to go for a general build in a good goup. I use this build when going with henchmen mostly.

Cat Tabby · Sep 14, 2005, 12:01 PM // 12:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by KaPe

Two mesmer hexes and one necro is not heavy amount.

The variation of hexes is not the point; the enemy mesmers and necros spam them much more in the update than they did before; at least i think they do; providing countless opportunities for shatter hex. Watch your party list and u will note it is not uncommon to have 3-6 members hexed at once.

octaviancmb · Sep 14, 2005, 02:05 PM // 14:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by KaPe

Please, people, stop repeating yourself and continually saying that Mesmer is *the* class, expect we are too "noob" to see that. Mesmer is not well suited for PvE. He has too many skills focusing on single targets, which is helpful against bosses, but don't work very well against group of 4+ enemies. Trying to make you a damage dealer is difficult and you'll never match true damage dealers anyway. For interrupts - well, plenty of interrupts in other classes, including fire elementalists. Energy denial - this isn't PvP, denying single caster energy won't change much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KaPe

Two mesmer hexes and one necro is not heavy amount.

Please, people, stop spreading ignorance.

There are far, far too many hexes cast in GF/SF for a Mesmer with Echo, Shatter Hex, and Inspired Hex to get rid of them all. I know because I go down there virtually every day with those three skills on my bar and my group of henchmen (since I can't find a PUG, ever). Often I will be unable to rid my party of hexes simply b/c of cooldown times. There will be the occasional group of enemies that won't be hexing my party, but that's generally when I Echo some other skill on my bar to deal with that group. But those groups are the exception rather than the rule. Also, in the spirit of honesty, I'm working with henchmen who are really smart and follow my target calls, so I keep the hexing enemies around the longest (usually 30 extra seconds!) because they supply me with nuking power. But surely you're also going to do that if you have a Mesmer in your group...

A Mesmer is *not* an "interrupting" profession. Yes, certainly it can interrupt, and it's very, very good at it, as it contains the best of the interrupts: interrupts that *do something*. For the record, here's the list of Mesmer interrupts: Guilt, Shame, Clumsiness, Spirit of Failure (sort of), Leech Signet, Cry of Frustration, Power Block, Power Leak, Power Spike, Power Drain, and Hex Breaker (sort of). That's eleven whole skills (nine discounting the pseduo-interrupts) out of a list of 72. While that constitutes what we might call a "significant minority," please don't write off the 61 other Mesmer skills that have nothing at all to do with interrupting. I do feel compelled to point out that if you want to take skills that give you an advantage while also interrupting, the Mesmer is the profession to take. Sure, others can do it, but lets see them cause 100+ points of damage, a drop of 25+ enemy energy, or interrupt and damage everything in a large AoE radius at the same time, please.

Too many skills focused on single targets? Ok, you have us here. But if this disqualifies classes from being useful I think you need to take a look at Warriors, Rangers, Necromancers, Monks, and entire skill lines of Elementalists before you use this critique in a real discussion about the efficacy of Mesmers. Mesmers, just like every other profession, have numerous area effecting skills. I'll add that it's generally acknowledged that a Mesmer's single target killers are *better* than other professions (noting the amount of laurels given to the Mesmer's ability to slaughter bosses; this boss slaughtering efficiency follows through to non-bosses as well).

A damage-Mesmer is difficult and will never match true damage dealers, anyway??? Yeah, the Mesmer doesn't have that neat Meteor Storm that does 50-90 damage (maybe) against sometimes *three* whole enemies in SF three times over several seconds, nor do they have that neat Fire Storm that can sometimes reach heights of 13-20 damage against the armor levels you'll see down there. Now I'll grant you that a Mesmer's damage is conditional -- enemies have to attack or cast spells to be damaged by a Mesmer, but a Mesmer's damage is HUGE, especially in GF/SF.

Is it the *greatest* amount of damage that can possibly be output by any profession combination? I dunno; all I can tell you is that my Mesmer's 250 armor ignoring AoE damage is a heck of a lot more than I see from my fire Elementalist (and, btw, perfectly fine against groups of 4+ enemies), and that doesn't even count the Empathy/Backfire/condition spreading damage I tend to inflict just by way of having to wait 15 seconds for my Shatter Hexes to cooldown.

I'm not saying that Mesmers are the single greatest profession *ever* in the history of online gaming, all I'm saying is that most groups are asking for the wrong nuking profession when they get fire Elementalists for runs to GF/SF. I could be wrong, I always can be; if you think I am, please show me how a typical fire Ele is going to do 250 damage in the area of a shout every 15 seconds and I'll get off my soap box and just play that from now on (I have to, anyway, if I want a group of real people -- misguided, ignorant fools or not). I don't enjoy living in ignorance of some other means of achieving staggeringly high damage potential in this game.

I will close this post with one (perhaps) controversial claim that I normally wouldn't make because I despise those who attack professions rather than focus on strength. Fire elementalists' damage is negligable in Sorrows Furnace. It's only when you get THREE to FIVE of them together that their marginal and pitiful AoE DOT gets up into a useful and noticeable level. (This does not apply to the other flavors of Elementalist: they have *useful* and non-trivial influence on battles.) It saddens me that the vast and sweeping majority of PUGs don't realize how trivial the typical "nuker" is. Truely it is the furnace of sorrow.

I now end and await the flames.
cmb

Symbol · Sep 14, 2005, 02:38 PM // 14:38

Uh, which version of shatter hex are you using that does 250 damage? I mean, I'm not going to contest that it's a (much) superior AoE when hexes are around-but it's not THAT much better.

And yeah, I agree, most fire elementalists are pathetic. I've yet to see one that doesn't do anything but mash the "firestorm" button when enemies appear. But that's really more a symptom of the general retardation found on the internet than anything else.

Pelias · Sep 14, 2005, 03:05 PM // 15:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Honestly I don't even see the point of the second Warrior in PvE. Do PvE Warriors know how to deal damage? No. They're tanks. Multiple tanks just divide up the aggro. Two Warrior teams, IMO, are strictly worse than one Warrior teams.

I agree with Katari about Fire Elementalists - all they do is cast Meteor Shower on a mob, the strength of that skill is the knockdown, so stacked Meteor Showers don't actually do anything besides add a bit more damage to the pile. Not exactly what I would call ideal strategy.

I have to think that teams bring multiple fire eles and multiple Warriors in hopes of finding a single competent one to carry the entire team.

Peace,
-CxE

Uhm, one get aggro, second one hoard enemies off from soft targets?

Sigil · Sep 14, 2005, 03:12 PM // 15:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

Uh, which version of shatter hex are you using that does 250 damage? I mean, I'm not going to contest that it's a (much) superior AoE when hexes are around-but it's not THAT much better.

And yeah, I agree, most fire elementalists are pathetic. I've yet to see one that doesn't do anything but mash the "firestorm" button when enemies appear. But that's really more a symptom of the general retardation found on the internet than anything else.

I'd guess he means 126 * 2 (shatter at 16 dom and echo or arcane echo), but correct me if I'm wrong cmb.