[Dev Update] Soul Reaping and Mesmer Issues

Thank you, but we will agree to disagree. I think that buffing FC will make Mes a better-viewed primary without harming any of the other classes. Right now it seems that Mes is the most popular secondary because the skillset is awesome, but FC appears less useful in PvE than other primary attributes. So why be a Mes when you can be a monk for example, and get all the perceived benefits of being a mes as well? If FC was viewed as more useful in PvE by buffing it carefully so that PvP is not unduly upset, then Mes will become equal to the other classes for PuGs etc. Win-Win all around.

We are throwing around suggestions, and I was hoping that you had a few as well.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

My suggestion is that FC does not need to be buffed. If people take a specific primary profession to get the advantage of that primary attribute, then that primary is fine.

People take Primary's for three main reasons:

AC and Energy Regen

Ability to have 13-16 in Attributes

Primary Attribute


For example, I can make a Necro fire nuker who gains energy by killing mass enemies, but he will not be able to out-damage a Primary Ele with 16 in fire in the short term. (In the long term he could, because eventually the Ele will run out of energy, but usually in PvE the Ele has enough energy to kill a mob!)


So, in the Mesmer case, I could be taking Mesmer to get a 13-16 in Domination, Illusion or Inspiration. Oddly enough, the Primary Attribute may not be the primary reason for taking a certain profession...

Do you read the thread at all before posting?

What about FC curses, FC nuker, FC air spike, FC orders....

Do I need to elaborate further?

Well I'm beginign to think mez desperatly needs some improvement, just to make it playable, I've been taking my favorite character out and about in Hard Mode, and all of a sudden its impossible to interupt. My favorite thign to do, The creatures are so fast at casting its like interupting a mesmer


So my plan was to change to the illussion build i like and try serious hexing, but that mostly sucks due to the lovely skills of dervish to prevent spells and the monks do the same,

I have created a new build for this, and is wrks better but n where near as good as the other builds did in normal. If im quick enough i get off a couple of hexes on the casters to slow their casting down, and then I have a signet interupt, which i can echo, and for the dervish i use signet of clumsiness, the build is weaker but does help,

most importantly while my heroes have not died I have and im usually at 60dp, can cast the skills easilly and dont lose much energy. so it is workable, but Its not how i envision working on the vanqisher title, half dead all the time gettign slaughtered in order to make the rest of my team capable of interupting and dealing with extraordinary fast skills.

Maybe i'm just awful at doing builds

Ive read alot of this thread, and many of the arguments against mesmers seem to come from the fact that they cant obliterate people, or deal reasonable damage.

I come from a guild that has a seriously strong backbone of Mes primaries, I think people need to turn their ideas of mesmers on their head.
They are NOT damage dealers, they are support, much like Paragons, Ritualists or Monks, they can do damage, however, their primary purpose is to negate that damage or deal it back to the source.



To quote from my alliance leader Shan:

"It may seem obvious but the purpose of an interrupt or a shutdown(I&S) skill is to deny your enemy the use or effect of that skill/s. So what? you may say, when we can just overwhelm with damage. But we’ll come to that later.

Let’s take an example from PvE. The Ruby Djinn’s in Elona will cast searing flames at your team. If allowed through, this will equate to around 90-120 damage per affected team member, plus the heavy degen of burning; which at -7 degen equates to a health loss of 14Hp per second for around 6 seconds. Giving a total affected team damage if unhealed of a minimum of 174 damage(assuming normal caster armor). Regardless of the numbers, the point being is it will hurt..

Now of course the monks will heal this off, but that costs them energy and a skill downtime If it costs energy it increases pressure on the team, which in turn increases the chances of a characters death. Get enough pressure and the team will wipe.

Now what if stop the searing flames from hitting?

Players won’t get hit for 174, the monks won’t need to use energy and skill and the net effect is a reduction in pressure for the entire team.
Remember, it’s not damage that kills a team, its pressure. Especially pressure on the energy and skills downtime of the monks.

Killing before being killed is now prevalent in PvE. Steam roller AoE is now pretty much cookie cutter mandatory in some elite places, DoA for example. However stopping that spellbreaker cast by a Margonite monk, Invoke lightning from an Ele can make a team’s chances of surviving the quest substantially greater."

.................................................. ............


Think about that...

We are support, and mesmers are extremely good at it. Mesmer builds require a MUCH more in-depth knowlege of what you are up against in each mission/explorable area to be effective, it is entirely possible for an ele or warrior, (and i am sure many are guilty of this) to bring the EXACT same skill bar for every mission in all 3 campaigns and just wade through on damage alone. i) this is a bad habbit to get into (your not developing as a player) and ii) your not taking into account the mesmers/monks in the background that are keeping you alive by varying their skills to the situation and trying their best to prefvent/heal through the damage you are receiving while you take this approach.
A bad mesmer is a mediocre damager at best, but a good mesmer, through interrupting and shutdowns, will give the monks, and therefore the team, a much easier ride through any higher level area.

I know to many, the argument against us Mesmers goes that, "all PvE enemies come in mobs, therefore Mesmers are useless as they are mainly 1v1 folk." To answer this, im going to use Margonites as an example (the reason being they have a good mix of professions per mob) while you guys (im talking to the nukers, mainly) are AoE'ing the hell out of the mob, you should be thinking "hmm, why havent i been hit by invoke lightening?" or "why is that Margonite executioner swinging wildly at me but hitting air?" the answer is usually... mesmer's, during this battle we have also saved the monk in the party needing BR after every mob or 2 by negating the damage through subtle spells like ineptitude or powerblock. Also, we will never be running out of energy, nor will we be spending 2-3 seconds waving our arms around trying to get off 1 spell. In the time it takes to use Meteor shower for an ele, we could, concievably, have made a few interrupts to casters, gained 15-20 energy in the process, stuck empathy on a warrior and blinded a mele attacker. the TAB button is a wonderful thing, we are selecting specific targets all the time, not finding the center of a mob and hitting SF/SH/Meteor shower. Nobody is denying that nukers have their role, but for people to say we are usless because we are not AoE is just plain wrong. Having 1 or 2 mesmers in a party (in FoW/UW/high level we usually bring 2, one anti-caster one anti-mele) is predominantly, not a bad idea.

Please think twice before condemming us mesmers, and PLEASE try them out for yourself, you will learn to love them.

I hope Anet will understand that most people playing mesmers do not want to be Leeroy, or nukers, they prefer to be more refined, to take a step back, take into account which foes they will be up against in each area and adjust their skill bar according to the situation with which they are faced. Please Anet, consider our experienced mesmer opinion, and not those to which the mesmer is considered a useless profession, to be honest, we are happy as we are, many would rather wait for a party that says YES to mesmers as opposed to falling in line with the other A-B-C preofessions in exchange for being accepted in otherwise boneheaded, "holy-trinity" orientated parties.

Speak for yourself. After two years of this, I have no inclination to wait for an enlightened group to deign to pick me up because people are too stupid to figure out what mesmers add to the party because the effects are invisible, infrequent and overly specific in nature. There are a few simple things that could be done to correct all of these problems without upending the function of the profession or giving mesmers roles that others already have. Such options have already been presented numerous times in the feedback threads, so I'm not going to list them for the eight millionth time here; we know what they are.

Since I don't feel like putting up with idiots, I simply do not play my mesmer (when I play at all, which has been less and less frequent as the utter incompetence of Anet has been made more and more obvious since the release of Nightfall). I have other characters who don't need to wait around for a group and whose participation in fights does not half the time resemble lighting a match between someone's toes while the other party members hit him with a Buick.

Also, not sure how relevant the experience of DVDF is going to be regarding the difficulty mesmers face in anonymous pve; if there is any group mesmers would be welcome in, that would be it.

Excellent points. Mesmers are great, and this is very apparent in HM. The point about nukers / warriors being able to go through all three continents with very little change to skillbars is especially interesting. Nothing against any other class, I have 8 characters and play them all and love them all for their different styles. Mesmers just take more skill to be effective with. And btw Arcane Echoed Ineptitude FTW, particularly in HM opening areas, where alot of mobs have a few melee chars, which can be tough on a 4 man party.

Mesmer is my favorite prof, by far the most fun to play. But I think fast-casting is one of the least useful primary attributes. I usually just dump left-over points there. The advantage to mesmer primary now is really just to get attribute raising runes, and the cool mesmer animations. So if they want to help mesmers, making fast- casting more useful would be a good way to start.

I don't play nec much anymore, but I often use my nec hero as mm. He seems to be as effective as he ever was. So was he affected by the nerf, as a real player would be? And if he is still doing ok, maybe the nerf was not as bad as it might seem.

Depends on build.

The OP has this wrong. Playing a mesmer is not harder than playing other classes--it's that fast casting is not as useful in the pve environment. There is no instance in the pve game where it is absolutely vital to fire off a spell in half the time as normal.

When the SR nerf happened and necs starting screaming to high Heaven, Gaile's response was, basically, "Tough. Get over it and get used to it".

Now she's saying "Umm, maybe we went a tad overboard and we're looking at possibly tinkering with it some more" which I think translates to "umm, not only did it NOT fix the problem it was meant to fix but we also now have a lot of really p/o'd necs (customers) screaming bloody murder - so we're trying to figure out a way to fix it back in a way that doesn't entail admitting we made a mistake with the first fix".

So, I guess, that's some progress.

If necs have come to rely on full E bars, well, that's because anet made the prof work that way (it even says so in the player's manual). Believe me, there've been plenty of times when my bar WASN'T full, but maybe I was just being too liberal with those high cost spells.

(BTW, my Para, once I get my echoes up, pretty much runs with a full E bar, too - getting 6E returns on 5E cost skills tends to do that, I've discovered. Of course, stopping every 10 steps (seconds) to give a shout is kind of a PITA, but if that's what it takes to keep +3H regen going on my entire party of H&H, I suppose it's worth it.)

> To the person who said they felt necs were there to "mop up" towards the end of battles after the other players have already inflicted most of the damage: my experience (or, perhaps, it's just my playing style) has been almost the complete opposite of that - my curses nec is there to inflict massive amts of dmg (SS, MoP, Suffering, Barbs, etc) in order to make the other player's (the Holy Trinity) jobs easier. Not saying your way is wrong, just that this is my way of playing.

> Regarding what are basically single-class chars: yes, this is the way I play my chars, I take Mo 2nd on all of them, just to get the res skill (since it doesn't req any att pts to work), so I can put all my points into my primary. Again, it's just the way I like to play them.

Only exception had been my W - once I got Hundred Blades, I added Vigorous Spirit to the mix to give him a little H return. And now, with my Ranger, since I got Barrage and gave up Wilderness Survival, I put those points into Healing and run VS and Orison of Healing; seems to work pretty well and lets the Mos concentrate on the other players.

> Regarding the person who lamented the cap on minions (and similar postings), I agree totally with that sentiment. In the beginning, GW was a game which you could pretty much play the way you liked. We had builds we liked, that were effective for us and THAT WE HAD FUN PLAYING. Then it seems that anet would always come along and say, "Sorry, you're having TOO MUCH FUN with that build, here's a nerf - try one of these cookie-cutter builds instead, everybody's using them."

Anyway, just my random 2 cents.

Yes, if your build is bad, you will have trouble running it.

Try the new soul reaping primary attribute...

Spawning power would just like to pipe in here and say that you should quit whining. Strength would have come too, but it was overcome with feelings of worthlessness and couldn't get out of bed.

Meh i never relied on SR to get me my energy anyway.

Signet Of Lost Souls

That's all you need

Exactly. SR was pretty out of balance compared to the other primary lines. Those you listed are nice examples. Additionally, unless I need another attribute point to hit a break point on GoLE or another ES skill, I often don't even use a minor energy storage rune (oh boy, another three max energy) on an ele.

That is my question!?!?!??! I just do not understand the fascination in ANet to "lowering" things.

Balance can be achieved by "raising" things too.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Actually, this is quite misleading. The aftercast is .75s, so even at 16 FC, your reduction in actual "casting cycle" is actually only 28% faster with a 1s spell. That's not even close to cycling twice as fast.

As I recall, FC rate was set before the aftercast was added, so perhaps a slight buff to the percentages would help quite a bit.

Making fast casting a bit faster (so that a 12 got you 50% reduction) wouldn't be all that horrible: especially if the inspriation line got a bit better. I'd rather have an extra .5s to may of the skills there if they actually were more energy efficient.

If by bad you mean "if your build is not minion master or SS spammer", then yes. You are correct.

Mesmers:
I had a lot of fun in PvE with my mes, there was no need to buff him, thank you. It's not the char you want to use to play through a campaign for the first time, but great when you know what's coming. Remember which monster types were there, think up a counter build, pwnage.

The only reason I'd consider valid for a mesmer buff now is hard mode. Sure, mesmers do very well there if they bring backfire, empathy and spirit of failure, but that's terribly boring. And you can't do twitch interrupts there without a casting speed debuff, which was a lot of fun (IMHO) and a major mesmer primary advantage: no matter your build, you could almost always fit in an interrupt and stop key skills.
So if you'd want to introduce more powerful PvE-only casting speed debuffs, i'd like that (tho I don't know all balance implications) . And if you want more player mesmers rather than more hero mesmers, it might be a very good idea to buff the mesmer via player-only skills. Hero interupters already are recognized as useful due to AI reflexes.

Soul Reaping:
A nerf was waranted, the 5s rule is unelegant, I don't know a better way. What irks me is that the 2 cookie cutter builds (MM and SS) got their skills buffed in the process so they'd stay as viable as before (and SS got buffed by hard mode again), while everything else loses out. Blood, non-ss curses and non-minion death were hardly overpowered before and don't deserve the same hit to energy management as necs (ab-)using soul reaping to fuel their secondary.

It's easier to change one class than to change nine of them, would be my guess.

Not that I agree with this particular implementation, but if SR was in fact overpowered, it's a much better solution to rebalance one class against the other nine than to try to rebalance nine against the one.

(And if they had solved the problem by buffing every other class, it still would have looked unfair to necros. Pretty much a lose-lose situation.)

SR was exploitable. Overpowered is level 28 and halved casting times and skill activation times. We as players do not get overpowered, we get exploitable. If anything was overpowered, then the community is pretty efficient at finding those things. For evidence, see all the new exploitable gimmicky builds of the month that ANet did not see from the start. This efficiency would have had teams of Necromancers running roughshod over PvE if that was the case, right? It did not happen.

There are a bunch of exploitable skills in all classes, they are that way because they have a stacking effect. When together they are greater than the sum of the parts, that is the basis of every gimmick build of the month.

If the exploit to SR is closed, say by way of making spirits only give a benefit if they are yours, or none altogether, then SR is suddenly not exploitable.

Problem solved, without having to re-calculate skill costs across the entire Necro class.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

I believe i saw this in another thread, that they were looking into the lessing of skill costs for some of the necro skills in exchange of this "nerf" I personally dont care for this nerf but am dealing with the change, what i still dont understand, is that they changed the cost for an elite "Flesh Golum" down to 10 where technically you can only have one at a time. and however "Animate Bone Fiend" which in my MM build is my primary devence is still hanging at 25 en for each i cast.
Now i understand there are some other skills that can help in that but personally i speak for atleast 3 necros in my guild when i say we would of kept the 15 for FG and lowered the bone fiend would of been a better option.
of this is IMHO

They're not useless, no, but of all my chars it's clearly the one which does the least amount of damage. Sure, I can make life miserable for one enemy with my mesmer before I run out of energy, but with my necro or my ele I can make the entire enemy *group* miserable, and have better energy management.
The main problem with mesmers is that they have no multi-target capability. I've always felt, and argued, that Spiteful Spirit should have been a mesmer skill, as it's basically the elite version of Empathy. Just that one skill would've turned everything around.

I have a year old mesmer I play from time to time, but I wouldn't make a new one. Mesmer is great as secondary class in PvE, but not so great as a primary.

It also depends a bit on where you are. Mesmers work a lot better in Prophecies and Nightfall than in Factions, where everything carries multiple hex removal skills _and_ will interrupt any cast longer than a second.

Sorry for rambling but I guess my point is that yeah, Mesmers need some AoE damage spells. Spiteful Spirit would be choice. Alternatively the spells should be 5 points cheaper across the board so the mesmer could spread the love around manually.

I never thought about spiteful spirit like that. It would make a lot of sense on the mesmer side, where an aoe skill is much needed.

need aoe ward-like skills for mesmers that implement skills like backfire and empathy with chaos storm. like a war once up they are argueably annoying and some people think of them as over powered. Of course just an idea but a large aoe (nearby range or so) where all foes in that area take -- dmg while attacking....while another one causes -- dmg each time they cast or even while casting. another one kinda like a well where everyone in the area this spell was cast sufferes - however much degen etc etc. that would make mesmers useful in support and still dealing dmg. my main problem with a lot of mes skills in pve (since right now i happen to be working on my mes) is the recharge time of the useful dmg dealing skills. energy burn, energy surge, spiritual pain, etc. 20-30 seconds is long when your sitting there spamming wastrels worry just to feel like your actually doing something useful. i was also thinkig skills that will actually screw with the controls of a character. i.e. a hex that reverses the controls on a characters movement (pressing up or w will cause them to walk backwards same with strafing and walking backwards) i mean...how many warriors would find that annoying against a kiting monk. of course its a hex easilly overcome by just selecting a target and pressing space to auto run, but this is obviously not an option if your a monk and trying to kite a tiger sin and a cripslash shock war. mesmers are essentially supposed to be illusionists so why not give them illusions n such. in one of the stories at tahnakkai temple the mesmer (whos name i dont recall) made a cloud of illusion that made herself and her squad look like an army and fend of an attacking force. (yeah i spent the 5 minutes to read the lore....work is boring -_-) sooo why not have a skill that replicates yourself to have dopplegangers that follow you around...soo basically to even do damage to you theyde hafta hit the real you and pretty much just guess which one of the illusions is actually an illusion. that kinda weird trippy stuff. also why not a spell thats the opposite of shadow stepping....a spell that returns an enemy to the spot they were at -- seconds ago or a random spot in radar range (but not into enviormental effects such as lava and ice and whatnot)...now that would make mesmers fun...er.....funner to play and even feasible in HA as a staple.

I did not care for the nerf to Soul Reaping, but not for any of the reasons I have read so far on these forums.

I didn't care for it, because I don't like walking around with the word 'nerfed' on my forehead.

In a strange way, I feel violated. One of the core fundamentals of what makes a Necromance a Necromance, is Soul Reaping. Now, I'm half the Necromancer I use to be. In the same way one of the main things that makes an Elementist an Elementist is Energy Storage. If we all of a sudden decided that having an attribute to boost your overall power pool was 'too much' and 'nerf' it to ...let's say you only got 1/5 the benefit per point in Energy Storage as you use to, all the Elementist would feel just as violated.

And I am so happy for the Minion Masters out there that had their Animation Spell Costs lowered. But, I am not a Minion Master and I got nothing to help 'ease my pain'. Not that a reduction in spell costs would have made me feel any less violated.

Next to Elementists, Necromancers have some of the highest cast timers around, without the high end damage. For the pure Blood Magic Necromancers among us, we do not get fancy spells that kill out right. In most cases, I have to use 5 or more spells to bring something down far enough that degen can finish it off. I am rewarded for this effort by a kick back in the form of Soul Reaping power regen.

To add insult to injury, Necromancers are liberally labelled as a 'support class'. As some have already stated, this was mostly because we can add skills from a second profession to help the team because we have a constant, if unpredictable, power source. A good Mesmer on an opposing team cut the big overpowering benefit to Soul Reaping (pre-nerf) to nil. But we aren't talking PvP we are talking PvE, aren't we? And there aren't any Mesmer crits out there, huh?

Has the nerf made me useless or unable to do things I use to be able to do? No. I can still go out and PvE just like I did before. I just don't do it as effectively and I have to build my team to support my new handicap. I also have to consider the logic in putting points into Soul Reaping. Why bother with Signet of Lost Souls when I can spend those points in a Mesmer Attribute to manage my power? It's not like there are many Soul Reaping skills other than SoLS that I'd need to worry with fueling.

I use Monk as a second profession because I like Rebirth. Nothing more. I started as a N/E and switched to Monk after I ascended Prophecies. Maybe I'll go back to it, what's the point in playing as a pure class when the mechanics of the game changes to outright prevent it? Or if not prevent then at least retard it to tediousness?

Soul Reaping Pre-Nerf overpowered? Maybe. For the Minion Masters, most definitely. Blood and Curse Necromancers were still married to their casting and skill recharge timers. What good is having the power when you are waiting for your skills to recharge? Versus anything with Spell Breaker and all you can do is wand it until it wears off then hope you can interrupt it when it comes up again. Nevermind you still spend the power while Spell Breaker is active and...well it's not dying so your power isn't building up anytime soon.

My point is, if you are going to take something as fundamental as Soul Reaping to a single profession, and change it because you suddenly realized it's 'overpowered' because of a certain type of build, maybe you should have first considered just re-making the entire profession. Start from SCRATCH to find a more 'elegant' way of fixing the problem.

For instance, instead of putting a timer on how often you can 'soul reap', keep it the way it was. But in lieu of the 6 minions cap, tie that in to the ranks of Soul Reaping. 1 Minion per every 2 ranks in Soul Reaping (6 Max). This means the Minion Master would have to invest in Soul Reaping to get the most Minions. Then give the Minions a maintainence cost (lose .5 energy per second per minion). So, at 6 minions you would only regen 1 energy per second. Then change Minions and Spirits to only half the energy gain per death for every rank in Soul Reaping. And to mitigate the 'harshness' of this 'change' add a Soul Reaping (or Death Magic) Skill that gives the caster 1 point of energy every time one of thier controlled minions lands a critical hit.

Anyway, I am tired, that's my 'two cents'.

Well, the silence from ANet is not necessarily a bad sign - there was no notice about the SR nerf, so maybe there will be no notice on their badly needed fix.

But they may also be just waiting for the furor to die down and for us to give up like sheep.

That is why we all need to keep posting. If possible, have your friends come in here and lets all have discussions about how SR is broken. If we keep the threads on how SR is broken alive and on top of the stack, that makes it much harder for them to ignore us.

I like necros, but this timer is just bad and wrong.

Wanna see a reaction? Lets talk about how Zhed is better than Olias as a necro, that really gets them riled up. Just load them both up with Soul barbs, SS, Insidious Parasite, Reckless haste, SoLS or GoLE, Mark of Pain, and a rez signet. Top them off with Curses and SR/En Storage only, and see who does better!

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Soul reaping is still the best or second-best primary in the game (after expertise).

It's just not "the best by a mile" anymore, and that's hardly a reason to complain.

Riddle me this: What do Soul Reaping (old at least), Expertise, Critical Strikes, Leadership, and Mysticism have in common?

Free, conditional energy regenerating. That's 5 of the 10 primary attributes, based on bringing back energy. All 5 of those professions never had to invest in energy management to play effectively. Occassionally Necromancers would, even BEFORE the nerf, just because sometimes things just wont die enough!!! Coincidently, each has something to do with the profession:

Soul Reaping: Necromancers thrive on death, so they get energy on deaths.
Expertise: Rangers use many attacks, skills, and nonmagical things- all of which cost less thanks to expertise.
Critical Strikes: You get energy back FOR ATTACKING. That's a pretty good deal.
Leadership: Get energy back for shouting.
Mysticism: Get energy back for using enchantments.

So why aren't all these things limited to one activation per 5 seconds? You could say that it is because they aren't overpowered (which is very debatable, as leadership, critical strikes, and expertise provide similar returns to soul reaping- of course the real reason is because of the soul reaping exploit, but shall we continue?). Well consider this Mr. Nerf-Necros:

Leadership, Mysticism, and Critical strikes have some of the best skills for their respective classes IN THE GAME bound to them. As does expertise to a lesser- yet still notable- degree. Now here comes the difference. What does Soul Reaping have different than the others?

-2 non-elite skills bound to it. Two. 5 skills in total. And of these 5 skills, arguably 2 are useful. Maybe 3. So while every one of these "infinite energy" attributes has amazing skills bound to it, soul reaping barely has ANY.

-Soul Reaping provides more of a return, but is OUT of the player's control. Soul Reaping happens when things die and things don't die when you need them to. This is why Soul Reaping was balanced before. What made it imbalanced? The ability to control it. Soul Reaping is not overpowered at all in any way shape or form until you add in the ability to trigger it on will. Yes, I'm talking about spirits and minions.

Using a spirit and minion to activate your team's soul reaping makes your team overpowered. Soul Reaping is not overpowered at all compared to other primaries until the ability to manipulate it comes into play.

The only solution: Remove the ability to manipulate it. You no longer gain energy from summoned creatures you did not create (broaden to include allied pets if you wish?). Can I get a gg? This solution perfectly solves the problem with soul reaping in its entirety, removes the possibility of any exploit of soul reaping ever again, and makes all the players happy. Happy players is still a good thing, right?

gg Awesome post sir.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

In my opinion the fundamental problem for mesmers is the energy management, a result of that the role of the mesmer has changed.

Originally mesmers were intended to steal their energy from the enemy, and originally that was a viable way to fuel up. After the mesmer energy denial nerf that is no longer the case - leaving mesmers without effective energy management.

Necro energy management is far superior. Not only do the necros get a decent amount of energy from (nearly) every kill, but they've also got the godly Signet of Lost Souls: 8 energy + 80 health every 8 seconds if there's enemies below 50% health - and it's tied to necro primary attribute.

Compare that to Leech Signet: 13 energy every 30 seconds provided you succeed in interrupting a spell - and it's not tied to mesmer primary attribute, so while it's a good skill for secondary mesmers it's not a reason to make a primary one.

Signet of Lost Souls is as good as the mesmer Mantra of Recall, but non-elite. It's godly. Use it.

IMO, mesmers need:
1) shorter recharge times on many skills, especially interrupts and energy management spells to make them comparable to, say, their ranger counterparts, and especially considering that hexes get removed much faster than mesmers can apply them OR
2) lower cost. Pretty much everything costs 10-15 energy, and mesmer energy management is the worst of all professions.

Or a combination of both. Also,

3) a viable AoE spell - like I've said, Spiteful Spirit would be choice. It is out of place in the necro profession, but would make sense in the mesmer profession.

As for Necros - I still don't get what people are complaining about. My minionmasters function just as well now as they did before the nerf. If you need 2-3 more pips of energy, just bring SoLS.

You know, I like your ideas to buff Mesmers, so we agree. Anything to make them better is just grand in my opinion.

But you are wrong re: soul reaping.

This quick and dirty is all from the 1900 post thread.

1) SR energy return when compared to other classes passive energy management (like say rangers) is equivalent in terms of EPS
2) SR is inferior vs other classes passive EN management because it requires you to be winning and killing enemies to use it properly
3) Obviously SR triggering off of friends going down is a losing situation, so that leaves:
4) SR can be exploited by artificially forcing minions and spirits into a death-state by repeatedly summoning them.
5) Close the Exploit, and PvP is satisfied, PvE is untouched. PvP was the only place where the exploit was used, as PvE monsters are targets that die just fine. PvP had to "cheat" to get greater numbers of deaths.
6) PvE balance is a joke, what with the lv 28 "half skill time for use" monsters

All this is summed up by Carinae Dragonblood. "Do not punish us for knocking down PvE bot-enemies efficiently", or something like that.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

If things aren't dying left and right (they usually are)... then you aren't hitting the timer.

when bones faces enemies lv 24 what will happen .
the MM is so weak in Nf

when i get interrupted lets say be a dryder or a mesmer while trying to cast a minion which happens more often then not, my energy depeletes. I usually try to exploit all the corpses now but i'm just not fast enough, or i don't have enough energy and when everything is dead how do i sols then. My pug is already moving on so i desperatly try to keep my minions alive along with healing my self. with uh little to no energy. my minions die pretty quickly in battle when i am front line usually i try to be, i'm saccing my self to near death and yes i do use healing breeze, i find it to be the best heal for a necro but not anymore because of energy costs. anyways there are mobs that steal corpses from me faster then i can rez minions i still lose that energy. I used to have 4 different kinds of minions just so i could rez them faster but now not so much i gotta bring energy management and i gotta time it just right. Sorry but i'm not that 'elite' of a player i don't feel that i should have to be. I just think gw is fun necros were my favorite class now not so much. I just like to unwind at the end of the day kill some mobs. the sr nerf has made this much slower and much more painful. sigh can't they just not gain the energy from spirits? we didn't have spirit energy gain before in prophies why do we need it now? i hate waiting every 5 secs. 5 secs in a game seems like eternity when your a clutz and you can't get your sols timed right. oh well w/e i play rappelz now but i would like to start playing my necro agian once they have a more "elegant" solution.

What I don't understand is why Necromancers are whining so much about this Soul Reaping "nerf". You mean they actually have to pay attention to energy now? Wow, what a concept! Welcome to the "Every Other Profession Club" Necros!

There really isn't a problem here. The fact that they are actually lowering the Necromancer's skill costs slowly but surely reinforces that idea. As if the Necromancer wasn't powerful enough already? Let's drop SS to 10 energy!

I just find it difficult to fathom where they are coming from exactly in this mass whining I see. Even after reading posts lambasting the nerf to Soul Reaping I do not see it. So you have to wait 5 seconds between deaths to gain energy. Imagine that... Look at some of the other energy management skills, a lot of them have a LONG recharge time and the net gain is something around what Soul Reaping offers, except yours is "free" and things die a lot so that's not a condition you have to worry about not having around to fuel your energy.

It's OK people! There are other games out there!