Mesmer skill buff- Lyssa's Aura

GW has given us the Mesmer class. A class built in with Illusion, Domination, Inspiration, and Fast Casting. Unfortunatley, Inspiration was hit very hard in a nerf a while back, and now many of the skills are obsolete.

[skill]Lyssa's Aura[/skill]

The problem with this skill is, well, the energy gain and the duration. Most people carry ~7-9 Inspiration Magic if Mesmer is their 2nd profession, which means this skill lasts 6-7 seconds, provides 4-5 energy and gives you a very small window of opportunity to steal the energy.

This means you spend 5 energy, to steal up to 5 energy.

Now, as an energy mangement skill, this phails, you would have a net gain of -1 to 0.

As an offensive spell, it phails here as well. It lasts for a very short amount of time, and therfor, doesn't allow much time for an enemy to cast more than one spell in order for you to steal that energy.

My suggestion, change to:

Lyssa's Aura {e}
Enchantment Spell. For 5...17 seconds, whenever you are the target of an enemy Spell, you steal up to 1...6 Energy from the caster. For every 3 ranks of Fast Casting, you gain an additional 1 energy.
5 Energy 1/2 Second Cast Time 28 Recharge

With this change, this spell now lasts ~13 seconds with 8/9 Inspiration, and provides primary Mesmers a small additional amount of energy, that is gained, not stolen. As well as giving it a 1/2 second cast to use an offensive spell right before a spell is cast targeting you, allowing this to actually be considered for an offensive/defensive spell.

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Another idea I had for this spell is:

Lyssa's Aura {e}
Enchantment Spell. For 5...17 seconds, all nearby foes lose 1...2 energy every second, and whenever you are the target of an enemy Spell, you steal up to 1...6 Energy from the caster.
5 Energy 1/2 Second Cast Time 28 Recharge

With this buff, this spell is directed into an offensive spell, which would persuade people to invest more atts into Inpiration to use other skills.

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What are your guys' opinions/suggestions? I would love to hear them.

The idea of this skill is not necessarily to gain energy, but rather to not get targeted by enemy casters by discouraging them to not target you through heavy energy denial. Personally, I think this skill could have a longer duration.

I say increase the duration, make it a fixed amount of energy stolen every hit, but set a limit on the max you can steal. If they keep it as it is, the only use this spell will be for is when you know you are going to be the target of a caster spike, in which case you have more important things to worry about.

For exampe: for the next 30 seconds, whenever you are the target of an enemy spell you steal 5 energy up to a max of 5...25 energy.

It's still shitty that way. I'd suggest something like:

Lyssa's Aura.
For 1...10...13 seconds, whenever a foe in the area casts a spell, you steal up to 1...5 energy from those foes.

15 Energy
30 Recharge
1 Sec Casttime

It could have increasing energy stealing, like Savannah Heat hit with damage.
The more they cast on you, the more energy it steals.

"For 10 seconds, whenever you are target of an enemy spell, you steal up to 1..3..5 energy from the caster, and 1..3..5 aditional energy for each second theis enchantment is in effect on you."

I cant say that ive noticed any devistating nerfs on memas. I've been playing through HM with my elemental for the last 2 or 3 weeks, and ive only one mission in tyria left.

But the mesmas in HM are oober strong. They steal all my energy, remove my enchantments and interupt my casting.

If the AI can manage to do that effectively, I cant see how the mesmas class isnt able to hold its own.

That skill you mention, which you feel is useless, could do we quite a bit of frustrating damage as an ele. You might not think its effective, but it would annoy the hell out of me.

Lets say you have this spell on.

You get hit by a flare from the same person three times in a row. Because of this spell, instead of losing 15 energy from casting flare three times in a row they lost 30+. Tell me this shit isn't powerful.

Well your forgetting to factor in the bonuses of hard mode all of the direct energy denial skills of mesmers take at least 20 seconds to recharge and the interupts apart from power return which has an ineffective side effect to the mesmers energy denial capabilities.

and if you factor in the HM monsters high attributes(fast cast) with the bonus to casting times and AI reactions they can interupt alot(quicker recharge times) and effectively the same goes for E-denial.

as for lyssa's aura you can just change targets to stop the E-denial but it does need a buff to raise its effectiveness. Its should be 1...6 + an extra 3 each time a foe casts a spell to balance it the extra woulden't be stolen.

My 2 cents:

Cost: 10
Cast: 1/4
Recharge: 30
For 5 seconds, whenever you are the target of enemy spell, that spell fails and you gain 20..100% of that spell's base cost.

the problem with this skill is that it only applies to you, and not to anyone else... simply make it a targetable enchantment, cast on any ally and you still steal the energy, not that ally.

Since it is an "aura" how about having an AOE around the caster? Kinda like [skill]Channeling[/skill]. So any foe that casts a spell that targets an ally at your location then you steal energy.

^ Agreed, thats the kinda thing I was thinking of ~ always wanted to use it in a build.......but then Power Block called and things change

I agree a sort of inverse Channeling would be nice. Instead of gaining energy when you cast spells with foes near you, you gain energy when foes near you cast spells.

Or making it a targeted enchantment would work as well. Would be a Mesmerish version of Spell Breaker then.

I liked this idea. Reminds us of Channeling, but in a badass version.

The problem is that while mesmers annoy, the elementalists destroy.
Yea, mesmers are supposed to annoy, but not that only, they should be as effective as a meteor shower nuker or a minion master at PvE (in pve i said).

But lets wait, a.net said they would be doing something about this... now the only thing we can do is wait

I wonder how this skill could work for monks...
Energy regeneration wise...
Interesting.

The only problem with inverse channeling idea is that (most) spellcasters are usually not 'in the area' but at your aggro circle.

well, since spells are normally cast by speaking some sort of incantation it could easily be changed to 'within earshot'... and to prevent monks from using this for e-management which I would not like... just make sure the duration scales sharply

so... 1 second at inspiration like 1 through 5.... and 3 seconds at 5 through 10. and then it really goes up to the full potential of 10 seconds at 16 inspiration. This should prevent abuse from secondaries which was the reason for the inspiration nerf.

This is a good point.

You are with a Monk, enemy elementalist decide to spike the monk, you use Lyssa's Aura on the monk, and drain the elementalists a bit, or target the a tank in PvE, staying out of sight and danger.

That could really work.

I agree that there is some work that needs to be done with this skill. If it wasn't an Elite, I think it'd be fine th way it is.