Whats a good Anti-Touch build?

EvaUnit01

EvaUnit01

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: May 2006

Reading this makes you gay

Mo/Me

Just wonder what skills I should use to take these mofos down. Right now I have been using {E} Crippling Anguish, Ethereal Burden, Conjure Phantasm, Conjure Nightmare , Mantra of Persistence, Inspired Hex, Distortion.

16 in Illusion +3 rune
The rest in Inspiration and w/e is left in fast casting.

It's been working pretty good just wondering if there is something better and faster to kill off Touch rangers in AB for a mesmer.

Yanman.be

Yanman.be

Banned

Join Date: Dec 2005

Belgium

[ROSE]

A/

You can always PP/SD them for a deep wound.

Ole Man Bourbon

Ole Man Bourbon

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta

GONG

W/E

Diversion is nice vs TRs

EvaUnit01

EvaUnit01

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: May 2006

Reading this makes you gay

Mo/Me

Diversion is but i'd rather keep my skill points out of Dom

Legolas Ravenwood

Legolas Ravenwood

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Oct 2005

England

N/R

Could an IW Mesmer take down a Touchy? Not sure..

Yukito Kunisaki

Yukito Kunisaki

Forge Runner

Join Date: Mar 2005

Chicago, IL

W/N

As long as you can keep them away from touching you [aka: anti-warrior tactics], you'll be fine.

A touch type is just another type of warrior, one that feeds off of energy and armor ignorance...

Just keep them low on energy and NOT near you and I don't see the problem...

My warrior has a tendency to eat these players for dinner... [hard to heal yourself when I skill lock 3 of your touches off the bat... yay disrupting chop!]

M'Aiq The Liar

Academy Page

Join Date: Oct 2006

Neck-braska

Me/

Your build seems like you're doing too much degen. Really, unless you're planning on taking on three at a time, Conjure Nightmare is overkill. You only really need to do snare one while you pick off the other and make sure you kite properly.

Besides, if you get three people on you as a mesmer in any PvP, you're in trouble and probably need your team to help bail you out.

Here's something similar to what I use in ABs, since that seems to be the main touch ranger hotspot. It seems to do well against touch rangers.

Illusion: 12+3+1
Inspiration: 9+1
Fast Casting: 6+1

Crippling Anguish (E)
Conjure Phantasm
Images of Remorse
Distortion
Spirit of Failure
-
Illusion of Weakness
Drain Enchantment
Ethereal Burden

The last three slots are flexible to whatever your playstyle is and are just my suggestions. I'd include Spirit of Failure though, because Warriors, Rangers, and especially Assassins will make a point to single you out even in a touch ranger-less game, and getting an energy boost of 3 or 4 for every time they whiff is a huge benefit.

EvaUnit01

EvaUnit01

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: May 2006

Reading this makes you gay

Mo/Me

Well the only reason I am using Inspired Hex is cause sometimes the R/N's use {E} Life transfer so it helps A LOT. Anyways thanks for all the input =)

Effigy

Effigy

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Aug 2005

Illinois, US

Heroes of Talia [HoT]

Mo/

Diversion is the number one skill to beat them, since they rely on spamming in order to be effective, and they really only have 1-2 spam attacks. Even diverting one of their vamp skills will cut their damage and healing in half. If you can get both, they are useless. Energy drain/damage skills might also help, but many of them having emanagement from OoB or a pet skill.

Snares help also, but they tend to be expensive and not used much for other purposes, since you already have Distortion to help against melee attackers. So your best bet is to just put Diversion in your build, if it wasn't already there.

Hella Good

Hella Good

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Oct 2005

None, free and clear

If you want to stick to Illusion and Inspiration, I'd recommend taking one of the following: Crippling Anguish, Etherial Burden, Kutah's Burden. But again, Illusion and Inspiration don't really have good anti-Touch solutions. All the good stuff is in Domination.

LouAl

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Dec 2005

It is true, the only thing you can do to a toucher in Illusion is degen them, Which is not bad but you are better off stopping their stupid spamming than waiting for them to die. It seems to me that if you take Illusion to counter a toucher you are using most of your skill bar to combat one type of enemy but if you use Dom you can do it with 2 skills.

Try using Diversion for the touches and I really like using Arcane Theivery since they usually only run with 1 spell. If you steal their OoB they are really screwed, and if you run a Me/N and have points in blood you can use that extra elite e-mgmt spell to your advantage (I wouldn't bank on always getting OoB everytime you use Arcane T, but if your build happens to use blood it is a happy side effect of going against a TR).

A toucher that diverted even one of his/her touch skills and has lost OoB is less than worthless to their team. All they can do is wand stuff and throw off an occasional touch, which will get diverted eventually.

EDIT:

on a side note, does anyone know the effects of echo'ing Arcane Thievery? most notably, after 20 seconds when echo returns to echo does the opponent get their spell back or is it still disabled? I know the chance of catching the same spell, but was just wondering if anyone had any definitive knowledge on that other part of it.

lightblade

lightblade

Forge Runner

Join Date: May 2005

The Etereal Guard

Me/Mo

Blackout!!!

XvArchonvX

XvArchonvX

Forge Runner

Join Date: Nov 2005

R/

Crippleshot with interupts works well. Even if they start plague touching, you can always start spamming interupts to shut them down. Distracting Shot FTW!

*edit* Doh! just realized that I'm on a mesmer forum. >.<

Effigy

Effigy

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Aug 2005

Illinois, US

Heroes of Talia [HoT]

Mo/

CS ranger is good at countering touchers, but as you might have noticed this is the mesmer forum.

Franco

Franco

Banned

Join Date: Jul 2006

England

VoB

Me/

Ok first of all take Conjure Nightmare of your skill bar, It is a bad skil.

And Diversion works good on touchers, or just slow them down and degen to death, since they have no self heal besides touching

Dean Harper

Dean Harper

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Dec 2005

USA

The Killer Clan Musketeers [TKCM]

Me/E

Honestly, i love domination, and diversion/blackout, even though it disables ur skills, coupled with a slow down skill pwn those annoying kurzick touchies (not trying to make kurzicks mad, but its true that they use touchies more that luxons )



-Dean

Redfeather1975

Redfeather1975

Forge Runner

Join Date: Sep 2006

Apartment#306

Rhedd Asylum

Me/

As an Me/Rt I use binding chains/bloodsong, echo, degen and two interrupts.
I know binding chains seems out of place since I am using illusion for the degen and illusion has it's own slow down skills, but I like binding chains 'anti-attack' hex that doesn't break on degen or life stealing. It helps to shut down any ranger attacks as well as making kiting easier.

Hella Good

Hella Good

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Oct 2005

None, free and clear

I think the OP had a pretty good build in place for his/hers particular request and that is to keep it withing Illusion/Inspiration/Non-attribute.

Contessa

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Mar 2006

I love taking down touch rangers in AB.

I never enter an alliance battle without two things, a good interupt and a snare. If you can't slow the touch ranger (or warrior) down, no matter how many time you black them out, they will eventually catch up to you. Crippling anguish is a good skill though.

Ethereal Burden (15 energy, 3 sec cast) and Imagined Burden(15 energy, 1 sec cast) take too long to cast and cost too much energy when I do alliance battles. I want to slow something down as fast as possible and for the lowest cost when I'm getting targeted by touch rangers.

I usually run an ele secondary. I take something like grasping earth (you don't need high earth attributes for it to be effective). It'll give you and your teammates time to get away to start the damage. Grasping earth is also a good skill if two warriors decide to team up on you.

Grasping Earth
Hex Spell. For 8...18 seconds, all nearby foes move 50% slower but have +24 armor against physical damage.

Energy: 5
Cast time: 3/4 of a second (really fast with fast-casting)
Recharge: 30 sec

Damage is up to you at this point. I try to take things that will knock down, or disrupt once I get away.

Saphrium

Saphrium

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Oct 2006

Granite Citadel

Post Searing Ascalonian Merchants

N/Me

counter to touch

1. snare, movement slowing spells
2. heavy degen
3. shutdown
4. spike damage
5. e-denial

for the illusion mesmer build, i would bring some e denial stuff for the kicks.

blakecraw

blakecraw

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Nov 2005

Austin, TX

to stop a toucher i'd first go domination, then take diversion (for obvious reasons) and e-denial.
e-denial is deadly against touchers since they rely on expertise to make each point of energy go further; this also means that each point of energy removed is more potential damage diverted. surge/burn takes away about a third of their energy right away, so they're kinda screwed if they try to take that on. i'm not sure the exact effect of lvl 16 expertise, but it probly about halves the energy requirement on skills, so e-denial should be about twice as effective against a toucher as it is against a normal caster.

Lambentviper

Lambentviper

Banned

Join Date: Nov 2005

Noobs Just Took Halls [WTF]

Mo/E

anything that cripples them, and even more favorable, adds degen to them pretty much shuts them down.

There are a few that bring vamp gaze and sometimes even life siphon, so a domination is usually the best way to go

Swinging Fists

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Mar 2006

W/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by Yanman.be
You can always PP/SD them for a deep wound. Then they can always Plague Touch it right off. Diversion and blackout are good, but degen, snares, and kiting are the way to kill them. Also, it helps that your team is smart enough to stay away. Nothing is worse than having one of your buddies run up to the touchie, only to save its life.

I Brother Bloood I

I Brother Bloood I

Banned

Join Date: Jun 2006

Good question

"Cant Touch This!"
Empty Slot X7

Kriel Drache

Academy Page

Join Date: Mar 2006

Order of the Lady Renee

Me/Mo

One Skill combo I've found to be quite effective with Inspiration and Illusion Magic is to use Mantra of Persistence, Imagined Burden and some degen spell. Illusion of Pain is my ideal choice since with Mantra of Persistence you can cast it immediately after it recharges to keep it going so the target doesn't get the healing brought on by the end of it. Though Imagined Burden doesn't give you Energy like Ethereal Burden does, it lasts longer and with Mantra of Persistence it could probably last long enough that the toucher would be dead before it wears off. I was actually able to put this combo in with my Ineptitude build.

zling

zling

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

as others have said here Mesmers have so many tools against touchers, the key is to combine anti toucher skills inside a build, not the build itself.
what I mean is, if you take the illusion line you're either anti melee or degen.
if you go anti melee there isnt much you can do against touchers besides snare them , unless you mix degen in your anti melee build. with degen it's a lot easier as snare+degen will kill them

here is an example of a good degen build that works well against touchers as well...

Illusion Magic 11+1+3
Inspiration Magic 10+1
Fast Casting 10+1

crippling anguish{e}
conjure phantasm
images of remorse
phantom pain/accumulated pain
imagined burden
mantra of persistence
channeling
res sig

Lets Get to Healing

Banned

Join Date: Dec 2005

You want see?

True Gods of War [True]

Mo/W

If your build caters to stopping one, you seriously need to get a reality check.