Newbie question for PvE Me/Mo

Hi ... this is my first post here so if anyone can tell me where to find these answers please let me know.

I'm starting GW for the first time this beta weekend, and so far the Me/Mo sounds most exciting to me. My wife plans to play an Ele/Nec and we intend to primarily play PvE.

So far I expect to put attrib points in Domination, Inspiration, Fast Casting, and Healing Prayers (most likely in that order). But I notice that Domination is mostly anti-caster disruption, and I don't want to make myself completely useless against melee monsters ... especially since we won't be packing much healing as a duo. I've considered going Mo/Me instead, but frankly I think healing sounds a little more boring than disruption.

So my question is this: Can anyone suggest some Domination skills that are good for multi-tasking against both melee and casters? Or should I go with Illusions instead for PvE? I don't think I should take all four Mesmer attributes cause that would spread me too thin ... right?

Thanks for any info.

you need to specialize or you are spread much to thin 3 is spreading it a bit

a mesmer expert will hopefully be along soon

edit

here is a mesmer/warrior

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...eer-id1170.php

and you might check out the other builds that incorporate mesmer in them

Mesmer / Monk for PvE

Shatter Hex
Backfire
Chaos Storm
Energy Drain
Energy Burn
Healing Seed
Orison of Healing
Power Drain

10(+2)inspiration 10(+2)domination 10healing 5(+1)fast casting

here you can deal a lot of damage, stop spell casting, interrupt, steal energy and benefit from melee harassment. I think it would be pretty effective for PvE even in a 2 man group.

May I suggest having your wife's necro to deal with melee enemies instead of your mesmer/monk? Necros are much more suited to deal with melee characters than mesmers or monks. A combo of Shadow of Fear and Enfeebling Blood (from the Curses line) can effectively neuter melee character(s) that are ganging up on you.

Added: Another good option would be to use Ward against melee on the Ele/Nec. If you really want to use the mesmer to deal with melee chars, the skill Ineptitude or Signet of Midnight can also be used.

Do you want to play something that's going to steamroll through most PvE areas? Or are you looking to play something more challenging where you'll have to adapt your tactics to the mission you're doing?

First, mesmers are generally not good PVE characters, because they are built to disrupt/shut down 1 or maybe 2 other player characters, and mainly casters. They are flat out bad vs large mobs, and in PVE melee mobs are the most frequent enemies you'll encounter.

Conversely, Necromancers (the ones who use minons) struggle in PvP because against a limited number of enemies there simply aren't enough corpses for them do do what they want.

In any case, for PVE, I'd suggest using a Monk/Mesmer and do your best to keep your team alive. Let your wife bring the destruction in the form of high soul reaping, death, and fire magic.

The more things die, the more energy she will get. That means you can use things like Lava Font and Flame Burst liberally. Firestorm is fine in PVE because monsters will stand it in to attack you. As long as you have the healing to stand there and take the punishment, the monsters are going to stand in the firestorm/flamburst/lava font and slowly or quickly die. And when they do, the necromancer will have the energy to raise minions.

Once you've dropped a pack of monsters, the necromancer can then raise a small army using things like Animate Bone Minions. Keep a bunch of them alive using Heal Area while you run from 1 group of monsters to the next. When you arrive at the next group of monsters, let your skeletal friends be your "meat shields" and absorb the initial damage for you while your wife unleashes more AOE fury. Don't bother healing the minions once they're in a fight, concentrate only on yourselves. When you win that fight there will be plenty more corpses to raise more minions from. Also, Soul Reaping kicks in any time something dies, including minions, so you actually want some of your minions to die during each fight so they give more energy to your necromancer.

It's a pretty good pairing, Mo/Me and Ne/El. Both necromancers and elementalists have trouble defending and healing themselves, so the monk can take care of that. At the same time, neither the necromancer nor elementalist can do much to stop casters, so that's where your mesmers skills will pay off- against that monster that keeps using troll unguent on itself, you need to bring diversion. Or the one that keeps spamming orison of healing, you can use power leak or backfire or another creative solution.

Remember to have fun and come up with your own solutions as well- these are just general principles that should help, but each map has it's own characteristics and the fun part is devising your own strategies to overcome them.

I've played a Me/Mo before, mind you the char was built for PvP, but in PvE I found I could do very little to help my team when it came to my mesmer skills. From what I've read monsters have infinite energy, so they can't be drained dry.

I would also recommend a Mo/Me, not only can you provide healing but also buff your teammates with skills such as judge's insight. If you want to ease the amount of damage they take you could put a life bond on them. You can pair this with mesmer skills that steal energy from monsters or you can invest some points into smiting prayers and do some damage, a %200 bonus if you're fighting undead creatures, which you definately will.

Hey whiskas, what's this about monsters having infinite energy? I'm planning on trying a Mo/Me build this weekend but if that's true it I'll have to rethink using that build.

Obviously these guys don't think so but I think illusions mesmers are great PvE. I loved having a mesmer around. So if you are mainly PvE, I'd go with illusion, inspiration,fast cast.

I don't think monsters have infinite energy. I've always use a phantasm + "energy leeching" combo and it's worked everytime for me.

I actually prefer illusion mesmer to domination also. Just made him a simple build that encompassed his listed attributes.

Thanks everyone for your input. There's a lot of great ideas here and it just makes me ever more anxious for tomorrow to come ... LOL.

So it sounds like the majority of PvE mobs are melee ... not surprising. Maybe I will consider Illusion instead of Domination. Mind you, we're not looking for any sure-fire method to "plow through" PvE zones. The focus on creative solutions and tactical thought is what attracted us to GW in the first place, so a challenge is welcome. We just don't want to make the game impossible for ourselves.

If anyone else has any opinions, or any suggestions for Illusion skills that are useful in PvE, I'd love to hear ...

Thanks!

Best skills for PvE from Illusion would be:

Conjure Phantasm
Clumsiness
Phantom Pain
Illusion of Weakness

Also, bear in mind that being a Monk isn't all that boring- trust me, sometimes it can get very fast paced. And if you want to do some damage, you could take along a second profession like, oh say, Necromancer, and you could do some damage that way. Let the wife do primary damage, combining Elem/Nec spells, and keep her alive, (Not an easy task, usually, to keep people alive) and be ready to take out a mob or two.

Just my suggestion.

Don't let anyone else mislead you; Mesmers are bad vs groups of melee enemies.

The simple fact is that Domination and Inspiration have almost 0 AOE spells and the damage on most is mediocre, with long recharge times. i.e. You can't kill anything reliably with those spells, let alone multiple enemies.

Illusion is a little different; it has some damage spells, but none are good vs multiple enemies. Conjure Phantasm is a starting skill and at the beginning of the game it's really good, but because the way the game works, it gets weaker as the game goes on. Phantom Pain works the same way. They are both DOT spells, Conjure does -5 pips of health (-10 health per second) and Phantom Pain does from -1 to -3 health per second and adds a deep wound at the end. (-2 to -6 health per second.) The way the game operates, a level 1 monster will have around 100 health. That means with conjure phantasm you only have to cast it on them for 10 seconds to kill them. Conjure casts quickly and recycles quickly, so if the first one doesn't kill them, the second should.
Conjure loses power over time because enemies gain health with every level. By the time you hit level 10 (which should happen fairly quickly) those monsters will all have around 300 health. That's 30 seconds for one Conjure Phantasm to kill one monster.
Furthermore, you're never fighting one monster. If you were, then you could easily outwit them. Ineptitude, Clumsiness, Power Leak, Backfire, and a whole bunch of other mesmer skills do a great job shutting down individual enemies. The problem is that you'll be fighting groups of 3-6 and sometimes more enemies at once. You can't afford to sit there for 30 seconds to wait for the first one to die.
That's why I recommend you focus on your monk skills- 1 monk should be able to keep 2 people alive easily vs 3 to 4 monsters, and it's very possible to hold out vs 5 or more with the right skills and a way to kill groups of monsters quickly. Elementalists can drop packs of monsters quickly. Monks and mesmers cannot. The elementalist just needs enough time to get their spells off without being slaughtered as they stand there defenseless.

Note: All of the above is advice intended for the PvE missions.

Also: I have no idea where Whiskas got the idea that monsters have infinite energy. This is the way rumors get started. To the best of my knowledge, monsters have energy pools just like ours and regenerate it the same way. It's possible to get a monster down to 0 energy, but the trick is keeping them at 0 energy. In general it's not as effective a tactic vs monsters because again, you're normally outnumbered and it takes effort to keep 1 monster at 0 energy, and most of the time the monsters are identical, so one does not pose more of a threat than another. In PvP energy denial is a valuable technique because It can quickly disable high-threat targets from the fight during a critical portion. Most of the time you want to drain their monks of energy or drain their mesmers so they can't do something horrible to your monks. Monks and mesmers are high threat targets at the beginning of the fight, so it's a good idea to disable them early and pick off the now-vulnerable targets.

If you're fighting 5 moss scarabs, why do you want to drain moss scarab #3s energy? He's going to keep chewing on your leg just like he did before, with or without energy.

Oh I thought he wanted a challenge that wasnt impossible... Of course he will need a few good monk skills, but if his counterpart is playing a Blank/Necro The single target Dots help get the first kill which is all the necro needs to get the party started. The necro also can aoe deal with melee(enfeebling blood, etc.).

I've been playing a Mesmer/Monk for the last few beta's. I've only played the PvE, and have yet to take part in one PvP. So far I have been able to solo every single mission (a few I've had a couple henchmen) For the most part, I have had very little problems with multiple enemies, you just have to use strategies that keep you out of harms way. Of course if you just stand and let the enemies close in on you, you will probably get beat down pretty quick, but as long as you keep moving you should be alright. Granted I'm only a lvl 13 but don't let people scare you out of playing what you really want to play. It all comes down to what tactics you use.

Vaelin

I'm not trying to scare anyone away from playing what they truly want to play. In the end it will always come down to whomever is creating the character. However, the original post specifically said he was afraid he'd be ineffective against groups of melee monsters if he focused on domination.
And he's right.
Healing is going to be far more effective than the damage you can get from the few domination spells that are useful against melee attackers. Cry of Frustration, Energy Burn, and Empathy are about as deep as the line gets for damage against melee attackers, and after having spent a lot of time evaluating the skills, I wouldn't pick any of those as "go-to" skills for killing a group of monsters.

Spells like Orison of Healing, Healing Breeze, Healing Seed, Healing Hands, Shielding Hands, Reversal of Fortune, Rebirth, and more are going to see far more use in PvE than the mesmer skills I listed above.

Monks are crucial to sucess, both in PvE and PvP. If you're not interested in playing one, then don't. But the healing power of a monk is going to pull you through a lot more situations than spells like Energy Burn.

Any character can have success in the early missions in a small group or even solo. Mesmer is one of the trickiest classes for a newcomer to pick up, but even a mesmer shouldn't have much trouble early on. (Conjure Phantasm > Old Ascalon). A lot of characters can even run through missions with minimal fighting- in some cases that is the best tactic because you can't win. If your goal is to avoid fighting enemies, then good luck with that, I recommend Illusion of Haste. If you expect to fight anything, then having some good monk skills will always be useful.

Excellent ... You've all given me a lot to think about. At least it's not long now before I can try my character out and see where it takes me.

One thing that is really getting me excited about this game is totally apparent in this thread. It's obvious that there are many, many ways of getting through a single mission ... very refreshing.

Well, just a few hours now ... thanks again for all your help and maybe I'll post here on Monday to say how well it all worked.