Thought-Provoking

Now I don't know about you guys, but every time I come here to this part of the forums a small piece inside of me dies. Now I've always thought of the mesmer as being one of the best classes out there that took thought, strategy, and experience to get a good handle on how to use it. To be a mesmer meant you also knew not only yourself, but you knew your opponents in order to properly counter them. Now I'm going a bit off topic by saying this, but I'm constantly seeing people in here who have no mesmer experience and people making only PVE builds or builds that are just not so... thought-provoking or original.

So, I've decided to start up a thread for brainstorming, all you do is just add in personal tid-bits of information that you came up with yourself that turned out to be a good combo. Please don't post builds in here such as E-surge, Eburn, mindwrack, etc... because anyone could put that together. No equinox/arcane langour either.

I'd rather not post any of my ideas simply because it'd just look like was bragging or something, but I will comment on other ideas and possibly share some of my ideas with the community later on to add to the mix, because everyone seems to approach the mesmer differently. I think it'd be great if we all got to see everyone's perspectives to make our understandings overall into good one.

Well maybe you are little exagerating the whole thing but I get what you mean. Whole bunch of "advice for new mesmer" threads are making me sick and are simply boring to read/respond. Actually the last thread I had fun with was the one about rating mesmer elites. On the other hand... there is not much else creative and innovative about mesmers to say. This game has limited number of useful skills after all. Actually bit of originality can be found in GvG/TA but then again - ppl are being secretive to gain some advantage.

As for me... why not to share my idea of build I'm playing in TA/GvG... I'm constantly thinking of improving it.

Att pts:
14 dom
9 FC
10 insp
5 air

No superior runes means 560 health, and it doesn't make any difference in effectivity. I try to keep all my mesmer builds at high health due to being primary target 90% of the time, and I take advantage of fact that most dom skills cap at 14.

The skillset:

*diversion* - probably best mesmer skill now, I try to fit in every build i make. Universal shutdown

*shame* - great skill, yet not used widely. Shuts, drains, and works like semi energy managment. Bane of monks.

*gale* - Diverted? Shame recharging? GALE! and stay down! Good for spike assist, good when warrior chases target, good when being attacked, good for interrupt on spirit spammer, good when waiting for recharge of other skills. Hard to use due to exhaustion... more fun.

*energy burn* - even more spike and stress on poor monk. With shame can deny lot of energy.

*shatter enchant* - how I like to kill people with their own prot spirit...

*drain enchant* - offensive energy managment. With shatter it's a lot of enchant hate. Make boonprot shiver and attunements on ele are just wasted energy. Oh and draining AoD assasin is plain funn... puff! and they are gone...

*expel hexes* - best mesmer elite probably. Just make those hex spammer useless. Combined with other skills in this build it makes one of most versatile mesmers ever. Energy denial, shutdown, spike assist, enchant hate, hex hate... true power of mesmer. Like swiss knife of your team.

*res signet* - no comments.

And here comes variations... Add Glyph of Renewal instead of Expel Hexes. That makes build unable to counter hexes but makes it more effective and versatile in all other aspects. Want to be e-denial? Renew energy burn and cast shame! Want to shut monk? Glyphed shame... and when monk has it removed/expired/cast-through-it he gets another shame... and then diversion... and gale. Frustrating isn't it? You have boonprot to spike? Glyphed shatter ench for 200 dmg seems nice, huh? Glyphed drain for double energy managmnet.

This makes player constantly planning and thinking of what aspect of his mesmer to boost in given situation, as he can do many things and he is very good at them. Playing this build is like playing many mesmer builds at once, and still being effective... and it's fun to do so...

I hope this is thought-provoking enough for you Kai Nui :P

I played a full Inspiration e-denial build with Mantra of Recovery. Unlimited energy for myself while my target had no energy at all. Being able to do damage is one aspect of play, but e-denial is damage prevention, which works similar to blackout if you can do it effectively.

I played around with a build like this in RA, it was really nice^^. I would have considered myself a monk if I could somehow manage to keep myself alive (I couldn't heal with ether feast because I drained all the energy from all my targets... lol)

And with this idea, power return becomes really helpful as well.

I was thinking of trying a Me/A Sig of Midnight build that uses Sig of Shadows, Sin warping adn survival skills, and some sort of combo Me/A hexes and Sigs (under MoI) to do damage. Haven't rly finalized anything yet, but Sig of Malace is also an option to consider.

A part of me dies everytime I see a Mesmer build (PvE or PvP), which lacks any skills from the Inspiration line. Mesmers have some of the best energy management skills in the game - why not use them?

Power Drain, Drain Enchantment, Inspired/Revealed Hex are excellent non-elite e-management which also serves as utility (i.e. PDrain interrupts, Drain Ench is ench removal, Insp/Rev Hex is hex removal). I suggest fitting at least one of the above into any Mesmer build you come up with. There are spells to be interrupted, enchantments to be drained and hexes to be removed - regaining energy while doing those always helps in powering the rest of your skillbar.

I use Inspiration a lot. Mostly Spirit Shacks and Spirit of Failure and stuff like Drain Chant/Inspahex tho. Often times MoI (I like my Sigs). I rarely use E-drain. Not rly sure why. Sig of Humility is pretty good in a Diversion kinda build. But apart from these few skills, Inspiration has a whole lot of useless stuff in it (or shall we say "situational")- all the Mantras vs Elements, Physical and Elemental Res, plain weird skills like Auspicious Incantation and Ether Signet, elites like Keystone, Lyssa's, and Power Leech. The attribute is just clearly a supportive one, it doesn't rly give a lot to center an Inspiration build around. But yea, it should be part of most any Me build, it's wonderful synergy with the other attributes.

On the topic of inspiration, heres a 4x4 build I made awhile back and works quite good in the right setup. Dependent on the rest of the team, but hey.

me/mo
inspiration 16
fc 13
succor -> all three members in your party
the other 6 skills -> mixture between edenial/energy gain, nuisence, etc. Inspiration line has a lot to offer.

Well I guess I should submit my two bits, mainly I was thinking that you don't always have to use your skills 100%, just because you use a skill, the attribute doesn't have to have points in it, as long as the effect is there. Like Hex Breaker for example. Several skills I don't see used are Arcane Thievery/Larceny, Revealed/Inspired Hex/Enchantment. Although I do see inspired hex go around often, it's just that people don't like to use them because they think that they're forced into having to use the skill they take. That's not really true, you can simply use it for energy drain. One good combo is Arcane Thievery, Arcane Larceny, and diversion. After you've taken away 2 of their skills for around 30 seconds, divert them into losing more of their skills. Often times you can steal their Reversal of Fortune or elite skill, and in the case of warriors you can take their only healing skills since it only steals spells. When on the priest maps in TA or HA you can just shut down the monk by stealing it's heal area simple as that.

Besides that, if you're running Inspired Hex and you have leftover points, just spread them out among stats that contain hexes and use a necromancer secondary if you're not using your other secondary. If you're running Arcane Thievery or inspired enchantment get a monk secondary and put in heal and prot so that you can potentially use the skills, even if they are still very ineffective. Also remember that enchantments you maintain that you might have taken will stay on you even if you no longer have the skill in your bar, such as Essence bond or Succor can be used to your advantage, or you can be funny and put Divine Boon on yourself and whenever you steal RoF or other monk skills spam them as a secondary healer if you're really that bored and crazy. Anyways that's just what I have to say. I often see Me/Mo running inspired hex, and although extremely minor, if you're not running any monk skills, swap to necro and make your Life Siphon +2 instead of +1 or whatever. Or maybe I'm just stupid.

And Terra Xin you really got me thinking... the entire team was energy denied so much that you actually gave them energy to steal lol. That's what I'm looking for. TeeGee, thanks for your good contribution, as anti-warrior is pretty much the only RA build a mesmer can run unless they want to be dead, but combining areas from both to do an anti caster is great.

Quote: