01 Apr 2011 at 05:43 - 12
If you're gung-ho on more defense, consider a few things.
- As a caster full of casters targeting the same enemy, you're basically a casterball. That makes you super vulnerable to AoE, so to protect against this you want either shouts, minion or spirit wall; these will do alot more for your setup than an ER prot. The build I'm using runs soul twisting + shelter/displacement for good reason. You can run an MM instead for similar results. Defense can also be shored up if you can fit aegis or SYG on some mesmers.
- Enfeebling blood/enfeeble are very cheap and effective even at low spec. Fit it in somewhere, mesmer is a good candidate, as is an MM or N/Rt healer.
- Shared burden is an very good defensive substitute for ineptitude, both neutering melee and making your panic/interrupts proc more often. Although heroes don't always seem to prioritize using it high enough.
- If that's still not enough defense, you need to consider whether dropping a mesmer or dropping your AP build makes more sense. Eles have plenty of defensive options if you don't miss the big yellow numbers too much. You might even get away with a bit of water on an AP bar, like blurred vision, maelstrom, deep freeze. Or you can play ER prot of course if you trust your heroes to target themselves.
- There's a theoretical alternate mesway, that focuses on PI + wastrels/chaos storm skills. I'm not sure how well it would work, but keeping everything on the ground constantly seems safe enough.