Move Inspiration Skills to Fast Casting

Move Inspiration Skills to Fast Casting and un-nerf the skills back to usable levels for Mesmers.

for example: Spirit of Failure... use to have an energy cost of 10, a recharge of 10, and higher energy output.

Yes, because giving a mesmer the ability to invest almost solely in a single attribute to get the effects of what should be spread over multiple attributes is a very balanced concept. See spirit of failure.

Awesome troll thread. Lets move all blood magic skills to soul reaping while were at it too.

Question: Why can't we just buff Inspiration skills to better benefit Mesmers? I find little problem with having ~11 Inspiration and 9-11 FC doing whatever business I have to do with most longer-casting spells. It is, indeed, like moving some Blood Skills to Soul Reaping, an attribute which also has very few skills.

So, better question, can some Inspiration skills (like Spirit of Failure!) be buffed to higher levels of energy gain to better enable Memsers to compete with other class' energy management while utilizing their primary attribute to lower casting times and increase energy gain?

Mesmers have several good energy management spells that compete very nicely with the energy management from the other profs (with the exception maybe of necros). I will admit that spirit of failure is pretty useless, but with skills like power drain, drain enchantment, auspicious incantation, drain delusions, and lyssa's aura, mesmers energy management is good.

Most of those skills you mentioned either don't provide enough due to recharge, conflict with skills, or lack overall synergy with making a functioning build with mesmer skills...that actually do something.

Moving inspiration skills to fc = bad
Crosslinking* inspiration skills to fc = good

*think glowing gaze and energy storage.

Power Drain and Drain Enchantment's recharges are both 20. That isnt bad for the amount of energy they give back. P-drain's energy return is really nice, and interupting 2sec+ spells in hm is really easy (1sec+ if you bring frustration, arcane conundrum, etc.). Drain Enchantment doesnt really lack synergy with any skills, and enchantments are very common PvE. The only skills that I can think of that p-drain lacks synergy with are backfire and VoR, and this problem is easily remedied by P-draining a different target, or by using a different energy management skill in VoR builds (I use Gole for my VoR build). Otherwise, P-drain is a great skill.

Auspicious has a really good energy return. If you use it with a 15 en spell (it synergizes nicely with arcane echo, conjure nightmare, shatter hex, etc.), it gives you a free 15 en spell + around 10 extra energy. Use it with a 25 energy spell and you get a buttload of energy back. As long as you have a high-energy set for emergency use of Auspicious, it is an incredibly easy skill to use for a high energy return.

Drain Delusions is a skill I didnt realize the full potential of until recently. The reason why it is so good in my opinion is because of its short recharge. It doesnt give as much of an energy return as the above mentioned spells, but it can be used more frequently. At 10 inspiration, it gives 6 free energy every 12 seconds, which is good enough to maintain your energy management. Although it may not appear as though it synergizes well with skills, there are a few hexes that work well with it. Weaken Armor is the best skill for use with DD, but fragility (Drain the hex of various other enemies caught in the AoE of Fragility), and Ethereal/Kitah's Burden synergize well.

On the topic of Ethereal/Kitah's Burden, these are two skills that I like for E-management as well. The snare in PvE is useless, but they synergize very well with many other spells. They act as good cover hexes for IoP. They act as another hex when you need one to activate accumulate pain. They combo well with Auspicious or drain delusions. They are also decent energy management skills on your own, and are good for hiding energy in energy denial, heavy groups (windriders come to mind).

Finally, I dont really choose to use lyssa's aura very often because I prefer other elites. I just thought I would mention it because it is very powerful and can easily be kept up indefinitely.

Edit: Oh, and I kind of like the idea of moving some energy management to Fast Casting. The reason for this is because I think there need to be more skills under the fast casting attribute.

You seem to forget that mesmers have fast casting and can easily blow through that energy very quickly. Ethereal/Kitah's Burden cost 15 energy and have a 30 second recharge. Most mesmer builds have 2-3 energy skills where other professions have one or none at all.

I will agree that Auspicious Incantation is a good skill even if it extends recharge.

mesmers have a whole attribute line for energy management. it's not their primairy, so it's easily usable by other classes when they need it, mostly monks. it's not that powerful, since it has three-four useful skills and the rest is just a crap.
it's much inferior to necromancer's soul reaping. i think we can agree that SR is seriously overpowered and kinda broken, being the single best e-management in game, fueling not also energy, but also some of necro's useful skills. i won't even mention BiP and BR, as the mesmer should have skills with that effect, due to their description in the manuscripts about energizing the whole party.
it's much inferior to elementalist's energy storage AND management. bigger energy pool means more possibilities and more energy to start with, so you may need no real management - just wipe everything with 100e and then regenerate it between fights. it's their primairy, with several useful glyphs and spells. in addition to crazy energy amounts, they have e-management that needs no further investment of points. if you're running a fire nuker, you need fire attribute to have an attunement. and double attunement or ER is much better option than any mesmer skills.
paras have great e-management for what they have been designed for. as party-wide boosters and helpers, they rely on shouts and chants. if you can balance your own build over adrenaline and energy shouts/chants, you will never run out of energy. and since there are some cheap adrenaline shouts - namely Go For The Eyes! - it's easily done. also para's e-management is indirect - means you don't have to use any skill for e-management, just grab something useful, pretty much as a necromancer - just the trigger condition is different. even as a non-party-oriented paragon, with GFTE and a few other shouts/chants, you can easily maintain full energy for your spear attacks and other offensive chants.
rangers have another indirect energy management - expertise. it greatly reduces the energy cost of skills they use. it's also indirect - you don't need to waste skill slots to 'gain' energy. it would be pretty fine and balanced if it worked only with ranger skills - now it's kinda broken and allows rangers to run several weird builds being much faster/better/more spammable with them than original classes. it wouldn't be possible if they didn't have that passive e-saver in expertise.
warriors have one elite that pretty much covers all the need for energy a warrior may have. all in all, they're mostly an adrenaline class and they may be missed out, i think.
i have never played an assassin. is it hard to get energy back from the bonus of critical strikes?

people overlook the fact that mesmer's strong profits are 'balanced out' by costs.
they have fast casting - but lots of their skills, not even the most powerful ones, have 2+ seconds cast. loads of the useful ones - like backfire - have 3s.
they have inspiration - a somewhat crappy direct e-management attribute, but let's pretend that it's completely fine - but most of mesmer skills cost 10e, a lot of useful ones - again backfire - cost 15e and there are some with even higher costs. if inspiration was so cool and powerful, they would have no problems with mana, while they often have to rely on BiP. it's also a secondary attribute and is much more used by monks in their farming/RoJ builds than mesmers. it all looks good on the paper - PDrain and Drain Ench ain't the worst when it comes to looking at their recharge, but they're still the least powerful ways to manage your energy outside in pve. unless you wait 20s after each fight to recharge your skills.


however, i do not agree with the OP's suggestion. what mesmer would benefit from is a fc-tied form of half-passive e-management. something similar to mantras, but less conditional.
though at the moment, after the big rant in the other thread, Shayne's and Regina's replies and lack of replies from other Krewe members, i simply have no faith in any changes, be it in two or five months. i don't see a point in posting new ideas and requests regarding the issue. we may argue if mesmers are playable or not, if they are fun or not - sure, that may even be entertaining, a little forum-war on numbers and points of view. if someone doesn't see that other classes can just do much better - as pointed above in terms of e-management - i think he's just blind and sees what he wants to see, not being able to face the truth out there as it would take a lot of fun from playing his mesmer. that's fine - everything is fine as long as you have your fun from wanding or doing something slow

4 pips of e-regen means you can easily grab a pair of zealous daggers, which combined with criticals and the ability to double strike with your auto attacks translates into a SHITLOAD of energy.

On topic:
I think the biggest problem of Inspiration has always been how insanely offensive it can be. This is the line that goes from things like AI or Mantra of Recall to things like Feedback, Spirit Shackles, Signet of Humility and Ether Lord.
So what I would like to see is A.Net moving skills that serve JUST e-management into FC while keeping the offensive aspect in Inspiration. And then buff the skills you moved into FC because they really are shit.

Definitely not true. P-drain, Drain Enchantments, Drain Delusions, Auspicious Incantation, and leech sig are all finely balanced skills that are neither underpowered nor overpowered and therefore do not need any buffs or nerfs. I agree that more skills need to be moved to fast casting to raise its appeal as an attribute but buffing skills that are perfectly fine as they are just increases power creep even more... which is not a good thing.

Uh, yea... thats true, but the fact that fast casting and the high casting balance out has nothing really to do with the energy management skills being in the inspiration line.

Really? I can think of only a couple of the useful skills that cost 15e (backfire, arcane echo, shatter enchantment). Conjure nightmare does too but its short recharge and long duration make it perfect for auspicious incantation (same goes for arcane echo). And really... what mesmer skills that you use cost more than 15 energy. Panic? Do you ever use panic? I cant even think of a second one off the top of my head. Therefore, that leaves mesmer with a bunch of 10 energy spells, several 5 energy spells, and a couple of 15 energy spells. There are many useful mesmer spells like overload, wastrel's worry, power spike, and images of remorse that only cost 5 energy. Mesmer's energy costs arnt all that high really, and managing their energy is easy with two skills, which is the same number of energy management skills many eles have to bring as well. Also, you have to remember that many of the energy managment skills are duel purpose skills that both remove an enchantment or interupt in addition to giving you energy.

lol? really? what kind of mesmer has to rely on BiP? I have never brought a BiP hero with me in PvE nor have I ever heard of any of my friends who play mesmer bring a BiP with them. Mesmer energy is perfectly manageable without BiP.

No, I completely acknowledge that necros have a better form of energy management. However, I would put mesmers on par with rits and eles when it comes to energy management options (with the exception of an SoS/spirit siphon rit). Eles energy management is less conditional than mesmers but is also less powerful (unless you invest in an elite energy management. But if you are going to do this, then you also have to bring lyssa's aura into the picture which is insanely good as well). Mesmers are the type of profession that is a high risk/high return type of profession. Although their energy management is, in general, more conditional, it is also, in general, more powerful.

you constantly mention how much time you spend wanding. If this is the case, I think you need to work some on your build. Here is my VoR build I run, and I find that I rarely have to resort to wanding:

VoR
Empathy
Backfire
Cry of Pain
Overload
By Ural's Hammer
Drain Enchantment
Glyph of Lesser Energy

Overload and Empathy both have short enough recharges that they can be used pretty frequently, thus reducing time spent wanding. I like Overload's synergy with VoR and backfire cause its not an interupt, and therefore, the enemy is going to take the increased damage from overload and the VoR or backfire damage.

What I am trying to say is that mesmer's energy management is already powerful enough. Im all for moving it to the fast casting attribute to raise its appeal, but I really dont think mesmers need an energy management buff at all.

Guys let's just make primary attributes available for all professions!

Out of those only AI can be considered pure e-management and as such that would be the only one out of the bunch you listed that would get moved. Other skills that should get moved would include Lyssa's Aura, Signet of Recall, Mantra of Recall and Ether Signet (I think I didn't miss a single one).
The other ones represent offensive e-management and as such they should stay in Inspiration.

oh, my bad. I misunderstood what you meant when you said offensive energy management. I would agree that sig of recall, mantra of recall, and ether do need buffs, as they are pure e-management skills and yet entirely worse than their counterparts.

you have less options to viably fuel up lyssa's aura than an attunement.

and it's funny that a single non-caster elite skill is much better e-management than the whole inspiration line.

What do you mean you have less options to viably fuel up lyssa's aura? You go for 10 seconds without casting a spell? If so, I would say your lyssa's aura build needs some work.

It would be nice to name this uber non-caster elite skill. Although I dont know what skill your talking about (zealous vow maybe) I would say that if it is more powerful than the entire inspiration line, then it needs a nerf.

Oh, and if it is Zealous Vow, I would say Lyssa's Aura is just as good if not better.

AP.
All the cool kids are using it.

necros have e management and strong skills all in soul reaping, half the time on my nec i only need icy veins and necrosis. i don't see how mesmer's barely decent e management skills being moved to fast casting would break the game. aside from that nec e management is also completely passive, whereas mesmers would still have to devote skill slots just to use it.

necros have e management and strong skills all in soul reaping, half the time on my nec i only need icy veins and necrosis. i don't see how mesmer's barely decent e management skills being moved to fast casting would break the game. aside from that nec e management is also completely passive, whereas mesmers would still have to devote skill slots just to use it.

i like this idea.
maybe reduce recharge on things like p drain based off of fast casting, and possible make some mes rupts work similar guilt/shame in pve since interruption tends to be a pain in the ass in hard mode.

AP is completely broken and needs changing. I think it would be balanced if it read "All Assassin skills are recharged" rather than all skills.

But yea, sure AP is better than the entire inspiration line. It is also better than many, many other attribute lines as well. I would say it is the single most overpowered skill in the game.

The reason Spirit of Failure was nerfed was because it was part of a build that made the frontline kill itself with hexes, not because other professions were taking advantage of it.

Given the choice, I'd take GOLE over any nonelite Mesmer energy management even on a Mesmer primary unless my build disbarred it (by requiring a different secondary profession or I'm not casting many 10+ energy spells - these tend to be gimmicky builds, although to be fair, these days those are the only Mesmer builds that are really competitive). With 0 energy management, GOLE is often better than an Inspiration skill with a decent attribute investment.

Saying that a Mesmer has no problem with recharges because they have Overload is like saying an Elementalist with lots of long-recharge spells has no problem with recharge because it can spam flare/stone daggers/ice spear in the downtime (Lightning Javelin gets a pass because interrupting a physical attack every two seconds is actually useful). Sure, it's better than wanding...vaguely...but other professions (including Elementalists) can instead be doing something that actually matters instead of spamming token damage packets.

ok... uh, yea. I like gole too and I often bring it on my bars as well. still, Power drain and Auspicious generally give a higher energy return. Gole is good because it is unconditional. Power drain and Auspicious are conditional but give a greater energy return. It all comes down to personal preference really.

Overload isnt in the bar for mindless spamming. That would be a waste of energy. It is there b/c 90-95 ar ignoring damage is good. Spamming overload is bad but using it when an enemy is using a spell means that they take the damage from both backfire and overload. That is a hell of a lot of ar ignoring damage right there. It synergizes well with VoR and backfire because it doesnt interupt the spell, thus the enemy takes damage from both sources.