Nightfall: Improvements to Mesmer, Monk?

Images of Remorse did a lot to improve the Illusion line's usability, actually.

Monks should have "censure" skills that censor the shouts. Other than that, smiting shouldn't be boosted... people already use it to farm undead.

ok ok i see what you mean now, sorry- im sure you can see what i meant tho too right? :0

No, it did nothing. I love IoR and use it often but it didn't actually alter the WarHate strategy- stack instant damage hexes, give them degen, and give them a deep wound. It used to be like Inepti/Clumsi/Conjure/PPain (maybe with Shatter Del), now it's more like Inepti/Clumsi/IoR/Conjure/Cume Pain. Calculate the costs, factor in the results, and you will see little difference.

What so we can see more dual smite, I like the offensive smitting monks skills like sig of judgement and bane signet. Ray of judgement was a nice addition, but most of the other smitting moves seemed to be clones of older skills from prophercies.

I was happy to see they put Ray of Judgement in game. At least, they can do a big holy dmg on multiple targets. Wonder why they mostly dont use it in Alliance Battle to counter the MM?

Wait, there's only 5 core profs?

Also, i can't help the feeling that elementalists are getting worse and worse... with the dervishes playing around with enchantments, elementalists just get more fragile, whilst some skills keep getting nerfed. I really do hope Nightfall will bring a Meteor Shower dupe, or change it to a core skill, or at least provide a new skill that deals a bit of damage and knocks down... I'm tired of seeing people getting flamed because they're factions only (thus not having MS)... and for the record, no, i don't have a primary elementalist in PvE, and i hardly ever play it in PvP... the only overpowered elementalists that i've seen since months are the Canthan bosses.

Enchantments seem to be gaining importance in GW, and the prof suffering from that the most is the ele (with in second place, the monk)

As for the mesmers... sorry, but adapting the game to suit them better won't actually change the mentality of the players itself (unfortunately)... as proven with this elite weekend, ALOT (too much!) of people still think the only thing you need to complete a mission properly are warriors, ele's and monks.
That's just the people that are dumb, it's not the game or the PvE setup

Because good corpse control from 1 person can pretty much shut down an MM. That or one Firestorm or any other similar AoE. Fiends have very little armor and Ele damage rips right through them.

No, most people think that Warriors, MM, SS, and Monks is what you need to beat most missions. Which is technically true, altho u never rly need more than 2 wars and more than 2 monks, so that leaves 2 slots that the other (currently) 5 prof have to fight for. Ele, Me/E front of line, please, rest go to hell. But I do agree that this is a misconception because a good team can win any mission with a diverse mix. Probelm arises from the fact that there is no such thing as good random teams (on the whole), so people want to put their money on the winning team- w/w/mm/ss/mo/mo.

For Mesmer,I would like to see a Shatter/Diversion Enchantment combo,As in remove one enchantment from target for, that enchantment is disabled for X amount of seconds.

Also..as for Mesmer elites in Factions,They are very underwhelming.Psychic Distraction was alright(though not that great,since it was really only good for babysitting targets.

Personally I think mesmers are one of the most balanced classes in the game. Their power is based on skills used against him mainly, that's why you dont see many mesmer in pve; I myself take quite a while to get a group in missions that let me in (have they ever seen what shatter hex can do, or diversion?). I think mesmer need some more self healing and now with nightfall, shout / echo / weapon stripping skills.

I'm not quite fond off smiting monks, never seemed to me there's a need of brain to use one, althought you can find the worst smiters you ever seen in pve. But I do believe smiting skills are well balanced (except for the aoe elite) in dmg terms.

During the short time I had a mesmer, parties really appriciated how quickly I could take out backline spell casters and bosses while they dealt with the melee attackers.

Phophecies kind of sucked for them though, as most mobs aren't as varied as they are in Cantha, most times consisting almost completely of melee attackers and rangers.

Perhaps no brains in pvp, but have you tried to solo smite(not 55) in PvE? Its a challenge to say the least.
Ummm.. And exactly how much undead do we have in this game? the Ring of Fire have some phantoms, Lions arch has nothing but undead, and theres an army of undead in the Underworld or Fissure of Woe. And the odds of getting to that UW/FoW army is slim becasue nobody wants a smiting monk, only healers. Lions Arch isn't exactly a high end farm, so the Undead Army is the only real presence they seem to have in the game. And we can't get to it because people want healers.

My other thread "Nightfall Undead" had someone mention that exact same thing(the UW army), and why we can't get to it. Thats kinda why we're hoping to see more of them. We have to ability to do double damage to undead, but nobody to use it on.

When it comes to smite monks, They have come a long way since factions has come out. With the introduction of Air of Enchantment, Smiters are very useful and provide a lot of aoe dmg when coupled with some sort of melee character.

The main problem with mesmers that i see is that fast casting really isn't all that useful in the first place especially with most mesmer skills only taking 2 or less seconds to cast. What Anet really needs to do is creat a bunch of high dmg aoe spells that have 8 second cast times or something outragous like that so the mesemer's fast casting attribute really comes in handy.

For Instance:

A skill that is 15 energy 20 second recharge and 8 second cast time.
Target Foe is hexed with _____ for 6 seconds. While under this hex target foe moves 66% slower. When this hex ends, Target Foe and all agaisent foes take 150 damage. (The dmg is negated if the hex is removed)

Or:

10 energy 10 second recharge and 5 second cast time.
Target Foe and nearby foes to your target move 66% slower for 3 seconds. When this hex ends, foes are knocked down for 3 seconds and take 50 damage. (the dmg and the knock down is negated if the hex is removed)

skills like this give mesmers a dmg dealing purpose and a slow down snairing purpose so that their only job isnt to hurass monks with e-denial or interupts. In pve it gives them some aoe qualities as well as some slow downs too.

There are a lot of degen mesmer skills too. Why not any good aoe degen skills though. Just another thing to think about.

I play Mesmer mostly in PvP and, let me tell you, I get frustrated when I have to roll something else, say a Monk. Much as I love monking, some spells seem to take sooo freaking long to cast. And truth of the matter is: they don't, I'm just too spoiled by fast casting and being virtually immune to interrupts. I looove FC, it's one of the best primaries. And yes, I've heard all sorts of arguments against it.

Mesmers are pretty balanced. Very balanced in fact. The only thing that is sort of lacking is the PvE side, which can be fixed by adding a few AoEs (dont even have to be spike damage AoEs). This won't affect the PvP side much (AoE damage is hardly what you would want from a Mesmer in PvP) but would help a bit when groups hunting in PvE. But the 8 cast is a bit too much. 3-5 cast is prob max.

I don't have a problem with Mesmers, they are just overly underapreciated. Whenever I play a Mesmer in PvE, my main focus is to take out the backline of casters (which I can do quite well)... of course at times that puts me in range of melee attackers, but that's why you bring distortion^^.

Cantha is more suited to Mesmers, especially on the luxon side where taking an Interrupt mesmer is a Must. Back in Prophecies, well... Empathy and Backfire go a long way^^.

The point of me suggesting an 8 second cast is so the Fast Casting Attribute is much more important. The elementalist has spells that cost way more energy than needed. a good example of this is Rodgorts invocation. 25 energy is a ton for any character class especially when you couple it with things like meteor shower with is also 25 energy. Now, It would be a ton if not for Energy Storage which allows the Ele to Handle these high energy skills. \

Lets Move to a ranger's point of view. Looking at skills like Criple Shot many will think that with it costing 15 energy and all you get out of it is a cripple on someone. That isn't worth it at all on any other character class. Fortunately for the Ranger, he has a little thing called expertise which allows the skill to only cost him around 6 energy whic makes it basically spammable.

All I'm saying is that A-Net has not made full use of the fast castin attribute "ESPECIALLY IN PVE".

I can only speak for the Monks and that is ppl will still want us to heal and protect.

If people continue to see us as nothing but bandaids, soon we'll be in short supply. Because most people will switch to playing Leeroy Jenkins so they can get some action at least PART of the time. (I mean, I know we're primarily meant to heal, but whats the point of having offensive capabilities if its so dang hard to get a chance to use them?)

The Tomb of Primeval Kings monsters are going to be in Elona, from what some of the NPCs said at the Dragon Festival. Plenty of them were undead, it seems. The guy at the festical mentioned that the Darkness was from Elona.... Tomb of Primeval Kings was in the Crystal Desert, near the border of Elona according to newest scribe. Seems very likely that we'll be seeing a lot more undead.

Hmm, mind telling us which class got the cut? Last I checked there were 6 core classes...