Hero tier lists

I rarely use spirits, preferring to use targeted AoE and single-target damage over uncontrolled spirits. I wouldn't ever say the rit's are staples, and I dropped my rit for a third mesmer. While the damage is impressive, I prefer to see it going where I want - ie, I'd rather have less damage spiking a healer than a lot of damage going to waste hitting a blinded warrior.

As far as mesmers go, the usage of dom mesmers usually tops out at 2, sometimes 3 in caster heavy areas. The different skill lines means that having two mesmers, applies entirely different utilities through illusion, domination, fast casting, and inspiration. Such as Shared Burden (group DMS/DAS/DCS), Ineptitude (melee punishment), Panic (group punishment), E-Surge spikes, Stolen Speed (caster DCS and team ICS) , Keystone builds (good AoE, effective against E-Denial), Visions of Regret (caster punishment), Psychic Instability (long AoE knockdowns), Mantra of Recovery (extremely fast recharge times), Fevered Dreams (Daze and group conditions), Signet of Illusions (primary skill for someone else? Have fun! Potential for fun for players too with PvE spells like EVAS), Extend Conditions (like Fevered Dreams, but longer condition times and no daze), Lyssa's Aura (fun for spamming wastrel's on a mesmer), Tease (great e-management + interrupts for any use)... That's a heck of a lot of usable elites. Each one has a good purpose, actually a good one, and there's never a time where I can't see wanting at least two. There's at least two that are useful regardless of what types of foes you are going against. Stark contrast to other classes, I'd say.

Any team can use Shared Burden to make kiting easy and take a lot of damage away from the movement speeds/attack speeds/casting speeds. Fevered Dreams is fun for a condition inflicting dervish. PI supports melee and casters alike. Keystones are great to stick SoH on. There's plenty to go along with melee classes, and casters are of course going to have fun with 2 mesmers on a team.

Hrm, in my case, it's not so much that I like SoS - I like Ancestor's Rage and Splinter Weapon. However, the only other interesting option for Channeling is Clamor of Souls, which I mentally file into the "does less damage than Wandering Eye" category, but to be honest - Energy Surge does less damage than Wandering Eye, as I'll repeatedly remind people who think Illusion does less damage than Domination (If it wasn't for terrible hero AI, Illusion of Pain alone would outdamage rather a lot of domination skills) - It's just that Domination's damage is more spikey and immediate and the tree can prevent an opponent from recovering, while Illusion tends to be more subtle and is lacking in terms of interruption.

The main advantage of offensive spirits is that they are mainly a good option for enemy distraction and they're mostly idiot-proof.

Assassins kind of deserve a special layer of bad as far as heroes go - it's not for the lack of trying. They get put into the "like warriors, but squishier" category, they don't chain properly (Blinding Powder!) and they spend more than half the fight putting up self buffs and chasing after enemies than actually attacking and killing things. They don't really bring anything special to the table. I think they could do with a few changes - make scaling with Critical Strikes reduce the cost and recharge of Assassin Hexes and also dramatically reduce the cost and recharge of Shadow steps in PvE (or make stuff like Mark of Insecurity AoE in PvE or just give them a role as party-melee assisting debuffers instead of having that be the Necromancer's forte). I think they'd be pretty unique and actually workable as PvE classes if they ended up as the only melee class without severe kiting issues. Might compensate for their bad relative survivability.

Ah well, just food for thought.

0) God tier - Mesmer, Monk
1) Top tier - Necromancer
2) Middle tier - Ranger, Ritualist
3) Bottom tier - Dervish, Elementalist
4) Garbage tier - Assasin, Paragon, Warrior

Reasons:
Mesmer - Tons of armor ignoring damage, lots of protection from interrupts. Pretty obvious why they are at the top.
Monk - I always bring a healer monk, I think they're a lot better than ritualist healers.
Necro - I almost always have a minion master hero. And my ele and mesmer always have a battery necro in the party, so I can spam without any energy concerns.
Ranger - I sometimes bring a splinter barrage hero to add to the damage of the party. They also have some interrupts to help the mesmers.
Ritualist - I rated them lower than others have... it's because I think heroes are really bad at spirit spamming. I only bring them sometimes. I'll use a soul twisting hero sometimes too, when I don't think ER e/mo will be good enough. But the incompatibility with minions limits the usefulness of it.
Dervish - They can add a lot of damage, and help the minions bodyblock, but you have to be careful with their skills. I don't trust them not to cancel important enchantments, so I usually don't give them any teardown attacks.
Elementalist - I usually use an emo for protection purposes. And I'll bring a fire ele sometimes, if I think they'll be able to do their full damage (NM/low-lvl HM).
Assassin - They don't seem to add much to the party, and I've read that they don't understand dagger chains. I never bring them.
Paragon - A lot of their skills seem useless to me. I do always have "fall back" on two non-paragon heroes though.
Warrior - Same problems that the assassin has. I only bring one if I'm forced to.

Lol Ensign, your experience coincides very well with mine. I'll just add that FoC Nec is nice to have because of several things: ability to spec into Prot Spirit / Aegis / SoA and have the energy to use it; ability to throw out Weaken Armour / Rend Enchants (although with 7 heroes the times I've needed Rend are very few indeed) / Rip Enchant; and importantly the ability to throw out AoE cover hex for AP in Suffering. The more hexes are out there, the less likely AP is to get removed. But I definitely agree the damage output is subpar. That's why FoC Necs aren't top tier.

If you're drunk at 2am you should give N/A Dark Aura touchers a try

@Plutoman - spirits actually follow target calls. I've not studied the phenomenon seriously and they don't respond at once, but to some extent they will follow your instructions. For Mesmers, the big problem is that there aren't many powerful non-elite Mesmer skills. The list is quite short: Shatter Hex and Shatter Enchant to a lesser extent, Mistrust, Cry of Frustration, Fragility (maybe), Wandering Eye and Clumsiness, Accumulated Pain and ... what else? Sure, there are other usable skills, but they aren't outstanding. That's why using Mantra of Recovery on Mesmer spells isn't very productive, and a big reason why Mesmers aren't God tier (for me anyway). Also many Mesmer elites are reasonable but not really worth looking at. VoR is a reactive hex, Shared Burden is a little eh, Lyssa's Aura is easily compensated for by having more energy management same as Tease, Fevered Dreams goes away once the target dies, and so on.

@LexTalionis - I think Dom Mes > Illusion Mes because Illusion Mesmers are necessarily constrained around Ineptitude / Clumsiness / Wandering Eye. You are forced to use them because Illusion Magic is so barren. And all three spells only work against physical targets. Dom Mes will always be useful, but Illusion Mesmers are very mediocre against caster mobs.

Main advantages of offensive spirits are that their damage output is extreme, you can have them placed down before battle starts to make the fight easier and they serve as great tanks in a pinch. All very powerful. Personally I see no reason not to use both Rits in a team, and if a third Rit were available I would seriously look into using it, too.

Casters don't wand very often ...

Don't forget Unnatural Signet, Signet of Weariness, Shatter Delusions, Spiritual Pain, and both Wastrel's skills in the dom line. I count 12 very usable skills in the domination line, all non-elites:

CoF, Mistrust, Power Spike (which is nice with frustration), Overload, Shatter Delusions/Enchantment/Hex, Sig of Weariness, Spiritual Pain, Unnatural Signet, and Wastrel's Worry/Demise.

Some are very niche; you may not need weakness, but it's useful in anti-melee areas. You might not need heavy enchantment or hex removal, but it's good in other areas. Power Spike is powerful against healers when paired with Frustration. CoF/Mistrust/Unnatural Signet, and in some cases, Spiritual Pain, are relatively steady damage skills that don't suffer from being stacked to a large degree. The recharges and AI usage (ie, using mistrust on two different casters) mean that stacking two to three mesmers increases shutdown without a loss in damage to most mobs (imagine 3 mistrusts going off at once, immediately after a mob is hit by two e-surges and panic).

In Illusion.. Not as many good options. Arcane Conundrum, Frustration is great when micro'd onto healers, Signet of Clumsiness, Clumsiness/Wandering Eye, Calculated Risk has some conditional usage, and Fragility. 7 skills that I would use in semi-general situations, but typically I would only use ineptitude/clumsiness/wandering eye/signet of clumsiness. I wouldn't normally double up on an illusion mesmer, because the skills tend to not go so well stacked up with short recharges. I completely agree that a Dom > Illusion, the uses are so much greater and less niche. I usually run 2 dom and 1 illusion. That's why (imo) they rate at the 'god' tier for me - there's always a use in my party, whether it's anti-melee, anti-caster, general shutdown, whatever else I may need. Inside the shutdown, blinds, interrupts, there's both protection and damage. Almost like the ol' Smiter's Boon, but protecting instead of healing alongside the damage.

In inspiration, hex eater signet is powerful and good energy management alongside.

Don't count Shared Burden short - think on it - 50% slower movement speed means easy kiting for you and heroes - 50% slower attack speed means, quite literally, that melee damage is halved, and either the party needs less healing or more minions stay alive - and 50% slower casting speed means more spells interrupted, less damage all at once. All 3 together, in a nearby radius (which can hit most of a mob generally), is pretty nice.

Overall, I see 14 usable elites, 4-5 of them that don't have a niche, ie, that are good for any general play regardless, and the rest which are dependent on builds, style, and area, but quite effective when used. Alongside that, I see 19 offensive skills in dom/ill, with about 8-9 that are also non-niche. The Insp line has 4 non-elite skills or so that are good e-management, and quite a few other skills that are conditional but have their own niches. It leaves a lot of flexibility and changes in my triple-mesmer groups. Anyways... There's my speech on mesmers, my complete opinion as to why they're important to every group. I do apologize, I type a lot, especially when I'm opinionated about something (and I'll admit that), so forgive the walls of texts.

That's interesting with the spirits, I'll have to do some testing and experimentation. I think I have a hidden bias because of all the times I tried to pug and rit's irritated me because the only build they knew and could use was an SoS. I also dislike the idea of stationary spirits when I'm moving around a map, and in any general play I don't like bothering to flag/set up spirits, which then a rit loses a lot of the effectiveness and usefulness. I won't argue the power of them; I just don't see the use unless I'm in an area difficult enough to require flags and spirit micro.

Illusion is solid damage but it's often not going to be on your target, you are busy messing up casters while they will instead target the attacking melee. Left on their own melees may or may not be balled when chasing around kiting heroes, but even so they often are not balled on the rest of the group, particularly when not playing melee.

Where this is a real issue is triggering AP which I'm finding mez pretty crap for unless you mess with spiritual pain. (Keystone might also handle this well enough..) They will make the whole mob fall over at once but that doesn't leave many AP triggers inbetween. So if you are chained to AP spam illusion is of limited value. (Coincidentally... Jedrya like most eles is always running AP)

The major issue with dom mesmers IMO is mistrust stacking. They only mistrust your target, basically regardless of what is on the target's bar. So even if you pick good targets, there's only going to be one mistrust at a time. This is the highest damage part of their bar so not having that trigger constantly is a limitation, running over 2 even in caster-heavy areas can be a waste. Everything else (cry, unnatural, esurge, shatter hex, spain?) does not suffer as badly, but you get way more value out of a panic or VoR than the additional esurges. (Not that esurge is bad...)

@Jeydra: What you said is more or less true, but Illusion does have one silver bullet - Frustration really screws up Casters. Needs assistance though (Technobabble is usually enough). Most modern Domination builds tend to overrely on Mistrust though... (which is quite definitely a mistake. I guess I should make a post about Mesmer stacking someday).

Edit: Yikes, Foxbat just took the words out of my mouth re: Mistrust.

@Plutoman: You forgot Accumulated Pain, which IMO is one of the best Illusion skills out there. Maybe I really should make that post after all.

The actual class doesn't matter (with the exception of splinter) so I've gone with the reasons that I bring particular attribute lines.

0) God tier - MoP, Splinter, SoA, PS
1) Top tier - SoH, redbarring [edit] Oh and SV/AV how could I forget those gems
2) Middle tier - Spirits, minions, random nukes like putrid explosion or wandering eye
3) Bottom tier - Anything that requires line of sight
4) Garbage tier - Anything melee