FoW Mesmer Spike

Over the past few weeks, myself and a few others have been working on an efficient, pug-friendly Mesmer spike for the fissure of woe. The idea was to create bars that were just as fast as manly, but were easier to use and had cleaner spikes. Personally I think the builds we have created achieve this aim and the majority of the people who have run with us have agreed that the spikes are generally superior to manly.

MT - OwBR8Z6AimMCSnB3BAAAIuE
Ineptitude - OQhjAwBc4QwlkApivA2g5ZIgXM
Esurge - OQZDApwTSiOqDpinA2gmOTPAA
Keystone - OQRDAckSS8U/AmO5ZtgTVxk3g
EoE - OAKjQiislSSTXT+glT0gVTQHXM
T1 - OwZSk4PTHQ0klC6M4O8Q5ixl
T2 - OwZSk4PTHQ0klC6M4O8Q5iJD
T3 - OwZSk4PTHQ0klC6M4O8Q5iJD
The builds use a similar framework to manly spike, with an eoe ritualist for support, and 3 spiker roles, an ineptitude caller, an esurge spiker and a keystone spiker. The ineptitude Mesmer acts as a caller for the team, calling arcane conundrum on a central target in the ball, this then signals the other two spikers to use their skill chains on that target.

T3
The T3 goes to the wailing forest and clears it out. The bar for this terra is the same as the standard T2 bar, using glyph of concentration to avoid interrupts. The t3 does something like this:
• Firstly, run to the wailing forest and grab all of the spirit shepherds you can, then sliver down the rock borer worms and the 2 spirit woods in the entrance to the forest.
• Once this is done run to the bridge, sliver the 4 beserkers on the close side of the bridge and then use a bow to aggro the banshees, avoiding the two skeletal groups from the side. sliver the banshees down on the bridge and then take the quest from the wailing lord.
• Next, run up the hill and kill the shard wolf, then death's charge down to a spider, pulling them along the path towards the wailing lord so you can death's charge down. once this is done aggro all the shepherds again and use their aggro to sliver the nearby skeleton group down.
• Once the skeleton group is dead simply ball the shepherds up together and wait for the main team to arrive. The main team should spike the skeleton group in the entrance to wailing forest, spike the group of shepherds and then run back towards the beginning, clearing a way for griffons, when they are ready the t3 will bring the griffons.
This means that the main team spends very little time in the wailing forest, saving the team 2 or 3 minutes, the other advantage of the t3 is that it can easily cover any dead terras.
Video of the t3 role
The advantages vs. manly spike
*The main advantage of this build for me is the range that cry of pain gives the spike. With 2 copies cry of pain hits everything in the area of the ball for around 80 damage, which is easily enough to bring them <90% for eoe. Even the worst ball will die from this spike as long as eoe is up.
*The second advantage is how well this build deals with messy spikes and cleanup, ineptitude and arcane conundrum mean that everything in the ball is casting slowly, and blind, this means that even if the ball comes apart the team still has about 10 seconds during which they take no damage to react, and this is almost always enough time to finish the spike off. The distance from the spike also means that things like caster groups in forge can be spiked without worrying about warriors aggroing patrolling melee groups.
*The cleanup with this build is a LOT better than with manly spike, rock borer worms are generally dead before the main tank has finished balling the next group up and the rangers at the top of forge take seconds to kill with ineptitude and wandering eye, anything that is left over at the end of a spike takes seconds to kill and resses (casting at half the speed) can easily be interrupted by cry of pain.

Tactics changes
Although the tactics are very similar to manly, a few changes have been made:
*After the tower of courage, the keystone and the ritualist should stay with rastigan to kill vogris' group, meanwhile the mt, ineptitude and esurge can ball and spike battlefield.
*During defend, it is possible to pull the foes into the corner in the middle and spike them from the top.
*Using rupture soul on the eoe bar, the ritualist can easily solo the tower of courage, using rupture soul atleast every 10 seconds to keep the abyssals blind and using spirits to block the door.

Thanks to manic for help with creating the builds and tactics and everyone who helped us to test them
current fastest main team time - 11min

The bars have been heavily updated since this post was originally made, the current bars can be found here, we added deep freeze to the esurge bar and mainbarred flesh on the caller, this basically just gives the build even more survivability. even if spikes go wrong (which they rarely do) everything is moving slower anyway and it is easy to kill everything before it reaches the team. anybody who has done doasc will know how strong deep freeze and eoe can be.
i also created a video for the solo rit which can be found here

if your rt is confident then you can get him to solo toc, otherwise the whole team can stay back, although i would emphasize how easy it is to solo toc as rt with rupture soul.

http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_FoW_Mesmer_Spike

The current tactics as they stand are on this pvx page the Ritualist role also has a video that Paranon has done to illustrate them.

Mmmh finding a pug for this one is really hard as more peps use meta builds! make them leave a 100B and not the EoE at Griffs is already so hard!

Any names that runs it with pugs to share?

Thanks Mike for all this and to everyone who participated in the tests. It certainly can help some guilds to change the overused ManlySC in FoW.

we are looking for more people to run these builds, if you're interested then leave your ign in this post or pm me in game
ign : divine paranon

Cruz Anur Kaya

Xlx Nika Xlx

Sparadrap Shenpo // Better add me in friend list due to max character maxage right now

If you need me, and I'm not in DoA, you can give me a Pm, I'll come mes most likely because I'm a horrible tank in FoW, unless it's mt.. And only semi-mediocre at that too. Better than PUGs, but still not ideal^^

Bright Star Shine

ign Ritualist Kamilla

EDIT:

Tried yesterday, it was a smooth and fast run. I am quite inexperienced with FoW and SCs in general, but this build was easy to use.

Thank you guys for dragging me along.

IGN Selina Esther


Did a couple of runs yesterday, really fast stuff, main team was done at 12-15 mins and the whole run was much faster than most pugs. In the 3 runs i was on all the spikes were smooth even with 2/3 mesmers sometimes save for one. Thanks for the invite!

You don't ask me anymore! /cryface

finally got 11min main team , would be nice to see more people involved with this, especially the sos role, leave your ign in this post if you're interested

I'd love to do some, would be fun to use my mesmer outside of DoA

IGN Sir Hullzi Bullz

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