Mesmer vs Ritualist

I've decided that these two classes, in my opinion, are generally considered to be the worst PvE classes. So I'm wondering, as I'd like to play one (Go Underdog!), which is the worst (With reasons) and which is the best (With reasons) for:

1) Farming

2) Damage

3) Teamplay

4) General PvE

Allow me now to thank everyone in advance for their responses!

Mesmer's are actually pretty damn good now with Cry of Pain builds.

Mesmers are not one of the worst PvE classes. They are just different from other classes

1) Mesmers - range of 55hp farm (vaettirs, fire imps, raptors can be done...), they can smite for monks at DTSC or CoF runs.

2) They deal Armor Ignoring damage and have a wide range of degeneration skills.
They are superior at HM with Empathy, VoR, other stuff like this, double Ebon Assassin, double CoP even triple can be done easily :P

3) It's good to have a Mesmer on your side

4) With hexes, few conditions, damage spells, good e-management, and mesmers are more flexible than Rits IMO

Rit...

1) 330hp Halcyon Job farm, Ministers Cho Estate

2) Only few good builds dealing decent amount damage... :/

3) Rits can heal, be MM, buff party with weapon spells.... Two words - flexible support

4) Only good. Rits need a buff ^^.

As said before ... mesmers have cry and rule high end PvE.
And last but not least: They got one of the most abused primary attributes (only necro beats them)

Ritualist are typically a support class with this jack-of-all-trades skills which are used better by caster professions going secondary Rit in 95% of the time .
The builds that actually work are usually pretty boring to play especially Hero/Henching.
Spirit Strength builds can give ya some action now and then but that is about it.

Make a Rit.

Other than the obnoxiously long cast time of some mes skills, mesmers dominate PvE. 16 in domination will rape just about anything lol. I will never understand why people believe them to be a weak or horrible class. They can shut down casters and render melee foes useless.

Rits however are difficult to master, while they do use both healing and damage skills, they don't excel in really either area. Which makes them easily overlooked when it comes to joining a party. So if you want the true underdog, go Rit.

Let me give you a realistic answer:
Ritualists were nerfed to hell and have a useless primary attribute.
And necromancers are better ritualists than ritualists.
Spirit spam just sucks any way you look at it.
The most you can do with a rit is the Spirit's Strength gimmicks, or physical support, in which, necromancers fill the physical support role just as good, if not, better.

My opinion on the rits? Wait until they're buffed. They're on the lowest tier in GW!


Now, mesmers, on the other hand, is the "Skill Buffer's pet"
Izzy apparently has a sexual fetish for bufffing mesmer skills and are part of the dominant meta.
They have a useful primary and some of the most powerful armor ignoring skills.
Let me list some of its uses:

Firstly, the illusion line.
Fragility was now made AoE, there for making it one of the most useful hexes for general PvE. On paper, it sounds weak, but in the heat of combat, it's amazing.
There's just tons and tons of things possible with it. Say you're running discordway and have conditions flying all over the place. Bleed from jagged horrors hits. Poison from explosion hits. Weakness from enfeebling blood hits. And you cast ineptude upon an enemy which both deals 135 armor ignoring damage and inflicts blindness. But you also have a hero spamming burn, specifically Cynn, and Talon Silverwing is spamming Cripple.
Each time one of those conditions applies and finishes, an enemy loses 20 armor ignoring damage. Count all the conditions and you have one amazing spike on the screen at once.
Not only that, but fragility is a spammable, cheap aoe hex that has amazing efficiency with Cry of Pain spikes.
As for non fragility based strategies, Clumsiness and Wandering Eye are just plain great aoe damage
The illusion line also has access to Illusionary Weaponryy and Signet of Illusions, which, although are sub-par, are semi-efficient and very fun gimmicks!
Illusionary Weaponry allows you to attack an enemy "indirectly" with armor ignoring damage, there for taking you to the front lines, and Signet of Illusions makes your next 3 spells use your illusions attribute. This is VERY useful because it includes PvE spells, spells of other primary attributes, and spells of pretty much ANYTHING! Its drawback? It's an elite!

Now for the domination line.
Domination is often known as the main "damage" line of a mesmer.
You have access to a variety of powerful hexes such as Visions of Regret which is an aoe hex that makes enemies suffer 90 damage whenever they use a SKILL!
Visions of Reget is a very popular elite for the "caller" build of the imfamous "cryway"

Besides the illusion and domination attributes of a mesmer, they can efficiently use skills from other professions as well!
Tactics is amazing for sword-based illusionary weaponry builds. Deadly riposite and a variety of stances that allow you to be in the frontlines will help you out a lot, also taking into consideration the tactics requirement of a shield, and you also have Flurry, which is a no-drawback IAS for Illusionary Weaponry.
You can also use necrosis, which is a constant source of fast-dps on a mesmer due to the fact enemies will be hexed or suffer from conditions almost all the time.

Last but not least, I'm going to explain Assassin's Promise Cry of Pain.
Ever wanted to summon 6 ebon vanguard assinssins at once?
Thanks to fact casting and being a mesmer primary, it is beyond easy to to just spike an enemy with a chain of the mesmer hex of your choice, Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support, Cry of Pain, Finish Him, Assassin's Promise, rinse and repeat until you have an army of assassins!
The only drawback is that it requires a lot of title grinding

In conclusion, mesmers are too awesome. They have better armor too!

Quote: Originally Posted by Saph

Mesmer is NOT one of the worst classes in GW. Rit is.
mesmers can 55, smite, CoP, mesmers own.

I pity the fool who told you that Mesmers are weak in pve.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kain Fz

Let me give you a realistic answer:
Ritualists were nerfed to hell and have a useless primary attribute.
And necromancers are better ritualists than ritualists.
Spirit spam just sucks any way you look at it. I maxed 27 titles on my ritu and he's my primary char. And sadly I couldn't agree more. The only thing ritu has is the best looking obsi armor, but if you can live without it, go and create a Mes .

Mesmers are easy to play but not easy to play well
Once you work out how they function they can be one of the best and most interesting to play.
If however you never master the mesmer you will really struggle with that class


I find Ritualists a reasonably good class to play in pve in normal mode but not great in hard mode.
They really need a good reworking of skills to be a fun class to play.
You can blast through much of pve with a straight lightning damage build or use them as a Rit/Necro MM

So I guess its Ritalist if you want the weakest of the two or Mesmer that will give you the most fun after you get past the learning curve.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kain Fz

Quote: Originally Posted by KiLLi4N

The only thing ritu has is the best looking obsi armor, but if you can live without it, go and create a Mes . You really like the cow armor?

I find Mesmers better. Ritualists have cool Luxon and Kurzick armors (1,5k, not 15k) and have a nice concept, but they were nerfed too many times to be useful.

Spirit spam was nerfed, healing nerfed, support nerfed. Mesmers are fine in PvE.

Rits are great for farming..330/600/Wvk...just name it..i personally dont farm much..but when i do..i use my rit.

You know, for all the people jumping to the defense of mesmers and rits, I'd like to point out that the OP called them the "worst PvE classes", not "abominations that should go die in the corner." Yeah, they still work great in PvE, but can anyone honestly put forward two classes that are worse at PvE than these two? Anything they can do that I can think of, necros can do better, particularly CoP.

There is no real reason to play a primary mesmer.
There is one single reason to play a primary ritualist.

Just reinforcing what has been said: in my opinion, Mesmers are much stronger than Ritualists at the moment, and more fun to play, too. Fast Casting is a blast! And Mesmers look pretty damn good.

Quote: Originally Posted by upier There is no real reason to play a primary mesmer.
There is one single reason to play a primary ritualist.
Wrong.

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_DoA_Ether_Cryway

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Team...way_Deep_Group

The list goes on, though its fair to say that these are "just" wiki builds its also worthwhile noting that its far easier to get into a PUG if you run "meta".

Any of those above builds you linked to can be run just as well - in some cases, better - by using the secondary profession listed as your primary. A good example would be the RoJ mesmers on the Deep group. It can't be argued that Fast Casting is relevant to the spike since all but two (edit: I can't count, it's actually four) characters have Cry of Pain, including monks and the permasin. A 14 (or 16) Smiting Prayers along with 12 Inspiration would run that build far better. The thing even says use an Essence of Celerity, so Fast Cast is basically redundant.

I'm not arguing against the mesmer - hell, my main is a mesmer (I refuse to run Cryway BTW). What I'm trying to say is that using Cryway to defend the primary mesmer isn't really a good argument.

If you consider GW a team game or at least a party based game then Mesmers are without doubt superb team members.
I am not going to go into builds and strategies you can find those for yourself if you want to.

The reason they are considered bad in pve is due to the fact that
1 people don't know how to play them
and
2 the effect they have during a battle isnt always obvious.

Mesmers are more about stopping something happening rather than flashily blowing something away or healing or protecting by reducing damage received.
The fact that the party wasn't blown away by a meteor storm or a boss didn't do a mass resurrection on his followers isn't that obvious to many.
Doesn't mean the Mesmer was sitting on his ass during the fight.

Quote: Originally Posted by upier

There is no real reason to play a primary mesmer.
There is one single reason to play a primary ritualist. I think Fast Casting is good enough reason to play a primary mesmer.

Whereas Spawning Power just makes your summoned creatures live longer (allows skills like Displacement or Shelter be able to take abour 3 more hits before they kill themselves) and just makes weapon spells last about 2-3 seconds longer. For the first one, Spirits aren't -that- good, as they require long casting times and have no mobility and weapon spells duration is just something nifty but nowhere near the usefulness of Fast Casting. I think it's pretty much general knowledge that Spawning Power desperately needs a buff because of how bad it is. Just look at those Elementalists and Necros making better Resto healers than Rit themselves.