Mesmer needs PvE-useful Fast Casting skills (actually, need PvE buff overall)

I would be shocked if anyone uses any of the FC skills in PvE. Of the few mesmers we even have in PvE.


(I know that some of the skills look like they could be fun, but they are not good.)



Actually, to be honest, entire class needs a serious buff, much like the one Rt spirits got. Mesmer was always weak in PvE, and ever since Prophecies it got weaker and weaker because of PvP-related nerfs. Now PvE and PvP skills are split, so there's no reason why Mesmers would not have some fun in PvE. It's about time.

Might I suggest being more specific?

My mes is alright in PvE. I use some Echo Esurge + Ether Nightmare and CoP to just deal massive armor ignoring damage. I'd like the recharge reduced on Esurge and a few other skills, but just PvE only. It would be nice if there was more aoe rupts or something to make interupting in PvE semi useful.

mesmer is a caster, whats there to worry about? just load up on ele and pve-only skills.

Make mesmer more pve useable and re work tactic/hammer then I'll be back full time :P

See, and this is exactly why I suggested being more specific.

What needs to see a change are traits that make the mesmer a unique playing experience. If that will not be looked at, then any change just doesn't make sense.
You are already able to win PvE as a chaos nuker.

I kinda don't want to make a suggestion because I don't want this thread to turn into another thread for the suggestion forum, where it becomes entirely unnoticed while all the SF whining threads with no clue of the core problem and offer absolutely no constructive suggestions stays....oh well, might as well offer something before the thread gets moved.

I would just say that interrupting skills should be made NOT timing dependent in PvE due to how fast monster skills cast and recharge. They all should function similar to the skills shame and guilt and diversion. Either that or the mesmer skills should be reworked so that they have less effect but more spammable and allow the mesmer to have a more sustained DPS.

God what's with the conservative,narrow midned people. Mesmers suck in PvE beyond a few,fairly gimmicky at that builds. Therefore things definitely need to be changed to make them more flexible.

They are a narrow class, and the fact that you have to(not may, have to) use the PVE skills to feel less like your just staring at your heroes doing all the killing, it really says something. Either way, am I the only one who hasnt bothered to log in since the last "skill update"?

No kidding, but how do you do that?

Mesmers lack party support or deep synergy of their sister class: Necromancer. They do not scale well, and do not work well with party.

The only skill they currently can bring to party to synergize with rest is Fragility because:

Reactice hexing sucks. You depend on mod to kill itself
Degen sucks. It is capped damage that costs too much.
Interupts suck. 1s cast skills are 1/4 on hm bosses, why?
Selfish defence mantras suck too.

And that covers pretty much all of mesmer abilities.

They only have limited direct damage, and this are so bad in DD department that arcane echoing energy surge is considered good.

PvE is basically won by:
Direct Damage.
Amplifying party members direct damage.
KDlocking currently killed mob.
Laying defence layers on party.

Mesmers do not do much of any of that.

let's be honest, most classes are terrible for HM general play unless you rely on a secondary profession and pve only skills:

if u only use the skills from primary, almost all classes look like shite
war - defy pain tank? not my cup of tea. apply deep wound to one target? who cares
rang - traps? slow as arse. bow attacks? lol. beast mastery? good luck
mes - hex, degen or rupt 1 target? blows
monk - can pump heals or prots, but heroes and hench play terrible if you play as backline. you can play a rezbot (UA) or ROJ. how exciting.
derv - woo scythe attacks and pbaoe dmg! not.
para - 1 build and it relies heavily on pve skills
sin - sux nuts without SF, or AP caller capabilities

rit - excellent as we know
ele - good array of nukes
necro - MM or discord is decent

mesmer can do many things if you don't limit yourself to having to "play like a mesmer should":
600/smite for farming or running dungeons, FC ele nuker, AP caller for VQing, AP sin spam for VQing, spirit spammer for farming, FC MM, VoR deepfreeze spiker in DoA/Deep/Urgoz, FC ROJ for VSF, FC MoP for FoW, me/a perma using candies for UW, the list goes on...

FC nukes for a cleaner spike, VoR, CoP (used to be meta, still strong)

FC ebon standard, weaken armor, MoP

FC meteor shower, meteor, deepfreeze

First off, shouldn't that be moved to teh campfire?

Technically I know I use Mantra of Recovery and POwer return, but... I'll admit we could use a buff or a tweak to make us unique as upier said.

That's worth an edit :
HB/MoP? Wirling attack if you,re not affraid of a pve skill that not broken? SplinterWep/aoe axe?
Actually Bow attacks cna hold their own with conjure/ brutal weapon. Plus D-shot who can be useful for shutdown and spike
well you said it yourself : RoJ smite
wasn't there a couple of good attack chains for derv. Beside conjure/3x.25sec activatin attack
Elem nuker in HM? ind if I ask what kind?

In response to the original post (I think we've all gone off on a tangent now) fast casting is rather useless, skill wise. Mantra of Recovery isn't bad, and Symbols of Inspiration is a lot of fun (but completely useless). The Fast Casting effect can sometimes be useful, but you need to be specific with your build in order to get the full effect. You barely even notice the effect on 1s spells. For a comparison, look at other professions primary attributes.

- Soul Reaping? Awesome, almost limitless energy, pretty OP in PvE but fairly balanced in PvP. Also, skills such as Signet of Lost Souls rarely leave my bar.
- Strength? Pretty awesome. Strength's effect isn't mind blowingly imba but the skills are plentiful and powerful.
- Energy Storage? The ele would be dead without it. Also, Aura of Resto, GoLE are extremely useful.
- Expertise? Brilliant. Allows a great amount of synergy with secondary profession attack skills. The attribute also homes such great skills as lightning reflexes and dshot.

What am I getting at?

Fast Casting is useful at times, but comparing to other professions primaries, looking especially at the skills, it seems awfully stale.

the OP sounds like he doesn't like using pve skills or skills from other classes because he wants to play a "mesmer". the days of prophecies are over. the days of overpowered gimmicks using pve skills reign.

i see pve skills and skills from other professions in all of those examples. and as much as people love RoJ, it really is subpar.


weaken armor and you're set

what skills are that great for pve? defy pain? SF sins, obby flesh eles, 600 monks, VoS dervs, 600 mesmers, 330 rits, are all much better tanks for group play

what about divine favour? pretty weak for pve
mysticism? unless you're an enchant spammer, its not amazing
leadership? good skills in it, but paragons are forced to put points into it to maintain their energy
critical strikes? +1% chance per point
spawning power? it was buffed but still does not excite me. only good for spirit spammer
expertise? its just their so rangers can use the e-costly skills of their own class.

i'd take fast casting on my monk or ele if i could choose their primary attribute.

you are right about soul reaping however, it's amazing.

but really, caster classes and anything that can maintain SF are the meta atm in group play. mesmers definitely have a spot. warriors, dervs, paras, rangers are all in far worse shape than mesmers.

caster spikes are much faster than 'manlyway' (see FoW record, DoA record). its nice that the pug meta for FoW is manlyway, but its slower, harder and more risky than using caster spike.

Fast Casting is a great attribute line. The skills may suck, but guess what? Each class has its own Pros/Cons. Mesmer are made to interrupt/shutdown enemy casters, and apply degen/punish enemies to doing actions.

Try casting VoR on a target and watch it explode, or Backfire on a caster and watch the numbers fly.

Mesmers are 1 of the most versatile classes in the game to be honest. And honestly outside of maybe an Ele, what profession really uses skills from it Primary attribute?

Fast casting is horrible and completely worthless in HM. Then on top of that the other classes get it with a HCT mod on a 40/40 set so its not even unique. Then long cast times like 3 sec backfire negates it completely. FC is BS.

VoR doesn't do anything, you are lucky if it even triggers once before the rest of the party kills the mob.

Mindbender: For 10...15 seconds you have 15 Fast Casting.

Why pay for the cow when the milk is free?

My first class was a Mesmer and through the first half of Prophecies it was a blast playing it. But as monsters grew stronger, and their attacks more powerful, most Mesmer skills became less and less important to the outcome of a battle. The real strength is to disrupt enemy team play over a period of time(pressure play), which is next to non existent in PvE. Either you spike the mob, or the mob spikes you. The core issue is of course human against artificial intelligence, but this problem can't be addresses anymore because of GWs dwindling support. Buffing degeneration skills to target additional foes as the attribute level increases would be a possible way to increase the effectiveness of these pressure skills in spike gameplay with minimal (coding)effort. Interrupting, well, it works, in normal mode, but it is far less important than dealing damage or preventing it. It's probably a good idea to interrupt some high profile spells such as "Argo's Cry", but with PvE-only skills like ymlad, any class can take over that job. If you need to shutdown a specific foe completely in PvE, you're better of knock-locking or dazing/snaring it. After 3 seconds, everything is dead anyway. Oh, and although human interrupt Mesmers can target smartly, they suffer from an additional natural disadvantage to their artificial likenesses, namely reflexes. To counter these problems, again with minimal coding effort, one could add a mechanic that allows Mesmers to focus on their target, slowing down its casting time by staring at them(targeting them) if being in aggro range. The target would be getting notified by a visible effect like you get with "Tengu's Gaze". The longer the Mesmer focuses on its target, the slower the target skill/spell activation time gets. This, coupled with other activation time decreasing skills like Arcane Conundrum or Migrane could give Mesmers a strong tool to take out specific classes via interrupts, even in HM. Of course this mechanic needs it limitations, mainly by binding it to the FC attribute.
I'd also like an elite that lets target foes next x spells fail with a chance of y%.

Apart from "Spirit Shackles", the e-denial concept is more or less a paper tiger, both in NM and HM. I can't think of anything but certain skill buffs, mainly recharge time decreases, so I'll shut up now.

1) FC nukes are not reason to bring mesmer, if anything, they are weaker, VOR is like SS, except worse, and SS is, well, not exactly good, CoP is half degen, not really strong anymore.

2) Neither is mesmer skill, neither actually needs to be FCed or benefits.

3) Terrible recharges, costs and casts even with FC, enemies can die before you finish your combo, and you can use it ever seccond/third group.

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But your post shows you do nto really know strenghts of any classes, or how they are used. Blanket dismissal of physicals (warrior is no1 dps, assassin is no2), claiming that discord on necro is powerfull (no, it is weak sht, only used because as hero build because of how hero ai works) and not mentioning curses at all, or that eles have good array of nukes.

Seriously, eles haveing good array of nukes?

And i fear your claim that Rt are excelent does not encompass splinter weapon.

Only reason caster spikes set record is because they actually had sf tank to ball everything and spank it, aggro half map and few basic nukes will work faster becuase they can actually hit more than one target, making them fairly efficient, take that sf-balling-tanking ability away and see teams strugge for speed. It is no secret that presf tankways were weeeeery slow compared to physicalways.

Mesmer are just not ment to be for PvE , the only thing they rock at is interupting but most enemies in PvE are allready dead before they get off a skill

wernt u the people who wanted CoP nerfed...now they done that u want more mes buffs???...whats gonna happen next...6 months down the line wanting sin buffs back?

I take Power Return as a N/Me for a cheap, fast-recharging interrupt, has proven very useful several times.

I think in PvE, mesmer skills are very useful as secondary profession. Mainly Inspiration with skills like Power Drain, Leech Signet, Either Signet and a few mantras for 600 and lolwtf signet smite. As a primary they lack the punch to make the difference in a team, especially in HM.

Maybe give mesmers the ability to shine in life degen (illusion) if the cap of -10 regen gets removed and some mesmer spells can do -15 or more and a few aoe life degen spells. Mesmers could potentially become real boss killers and wanted for their aoe damage. The drawback of those skills could be long casting times so Fast Casting becomes more important again.

this pretty much covers up everything ^

i think some people here dont realize one buff thats need or changed completly.... mysticism.

^^This^^

I can understand Rangers needing to time interrupts with their weapons, but I've always felt that mesmers should have spammable hexes that that sit on an enemy until triggered liked the aforementioned skills. While I understand that could possibly be overpowered, I also say that humans don't have the godly reaction times NPC AI have. Throw the Mermers a bone here. I might even make one if this were done. I'd love to have a toon that I can just shut people down with.

Whatever you change on the player side can have vast repercussions to monster behavior as well. They already receive sheer numerical advantages and insane reaction time. Give them even more broken skills to play with and we go right back to square one. You can't fix what is fundamentally wrong with Guild Wars by continually upping the ante to "balance" professions out.

I'm not saying Mesmers can't use buff. I am saying don't buff them just to keep them in line with the overwhelming power creep already plaguing the game.

yes you are right curses is OP and i didn't mention it.

but i must ask how often is warrior or assassin used for dps in high-end pve teams (i.e. speed clear etc)? 'tank, nuker, monk lfg' has been the general organized pve meta since i can remember, being sorrows furnace. the only exception being ursan era (maybe you are accustomed to that) where everyone was a tank and now manlyway spike, but caster spikes are faster and safer. a mesmer can make it onto almost any speed clear team. a warrior cannot, nor can a sin who doesn't use SF (sins are trash in pve without it, idc what anyone says). dervs as of yet, haven't received much spotlight either. rangers got splinter barrage, but again casters can generally pack more damage. rangers most used skill atm is a spirit. paragons are cool in their own way, but they generally are only used for one skill, "save yourselves". mesmers may feel at a disadvantage to eles and necros, but they still have many more options than other classes.

feel free to do your physical ways/orders/ursan in DoA and i'll do my obby flesh tank and spank.

True, but they can keep the -10 regen cap on players, just remove it from the creeps.

Lulz, this makes me retract my first statement. Totally forgot the monsters would get the buff too, lol. Human caster would NEVER get a spell off then if it weren't timing dependent, lol.

Here. How about making Pain Inverter an AoE spell with a recharge of 10sec.?

The mesmer is fine in PvE. It's the other classes that need nerfing . Shan has never felt underpowered or useless in any area I played. If anything it's a pleasure to play a class with such potential and interest.

Buffing/nerfing mesmer skills will do nothing except create even more imbalance in pve. If you really want to fix PvE for the mesmer, then it needs to be done for all classes. Here's my humble suggestion
1. Analyse the players skills when forming the instance.
2. Give the monsters skill bars that provide a reasonable counter for those skills.
3. Make mob composition and placement random.

Thats how you make PvE Challenging and varied and make the best use of the skills based combat system.

OFC it's much too late for GW1, but a system such as that above would be great for GW2

My suggestion...make it so you can actually deplete monster energy reserves. That's the single biggest advantage they have vs player controlled Mesmers. It seems to me Anet got a little wild with energy pools at some point and decided everything needed to have 20 Energy Storage in addition to whatever else they get.

You realize with a 40/40 set you still don't cast as fast a mesmer right...Even then run in DoA with a N/Me in FoCway, and then run the same Me/N Tk bars, and tell me how FC is bullshit. Come back once you have tried that.



Again, go throw a VoR on an Earth Tormentor, or on a Dementia titan, or a Stygian Hunger, and tell me how VoR doesn't do anything. VoR can single handedly take out a monk/assassin/derv with all of their skill spamming.

Why waste a skill slot on something that you can spec into for free? Any Mesmer with half a brain with spec atleast 9 into FC. Plus why waste a PvE slot on Mindbender when you can bring EVAS/Pi/Technobabble/etc.

The mesmer is fine in pve if you like to work 5 times harder than everyone else to get 1/3 of the results.

Who said anything about using it on a Mesmer? P.S. 7 is a far superior break point considering the only thing the primary does is reduce activation time. That leaves you a lot more attribute points to put into places where you really need it, like energy management.

Considering the title of this thread is Mesmer needs PvE-useful Fast Casting skills (actually, need PvE buff overall), one would think it would be run on a mesmer. As for energy management, it is PvE, you don't need energy management on a mesmer, and if you do, chances are your running a fairly bad bar. GoLE is all you should honestly need, and if worse comes to worse, run Energy Tap.

7 points reduces casting time by 28%, while 9 points takes 33% off. That extra 5% is worth investing in.

Mending is one of the core skills in a 55 build.
Does that make Mending good?
No. It just means it fulfils a role in a farming build.
Same thing with FC.
Play the game normally and FC completely loses it's point.

You are spending 20 attribute points for 5% you will never notice. GoLE gives you essentially 2 free spells every 30 seconds. In 30 seconds the fight is over so did you carry your team or did your team carry you? More importantly did they even notice you were there.

I love my mesmer, theres lots of stuff it can do when you actually learn how to play it properly. Admittedly there are lots of skills that are under used but i'm suprised not to hear any mention of skills like IW, SV/AV, channeling, etc so far. Signet of Illusions is probably one of my most favourite skills in the game, you don't even need to worry about maxing your titles out for alot of the pve skills, SoI will do it for you. Slap SoI on and follow up with some empathy, backfire, pain invertor on someone and see how quick they drop. Lots of potential with mesmer is a fantastic class to play with. 55 mesmer is great fun wether your IW/SV/Mantra of choice or Echo/SoJ with some fast cast or CoP or w/e.

Mesmers aren't dead characters at all just not as appreciated as much as they probably should. They pwned many a day in Urgoz and DoA and still do. The CoP nerf just moved the attention back to Esurge but CoP is still in there.

so ele and necro have almost always been preferred over mesmer for pve. mesmer is not the bottom class by far. if you enjoy playing on your mesmer, you can find spots on teams. yes, you may have to prove your worth over an ele or necro (titles, personal cons etc.) but at least you can get a spot.