(Overview) Mesmer hero AI - general tips and opinionated comments.

@Plutoman - lol, I think most people acknowledge that the only semi-usable Elementalist offensive elite is Invoke Lightning. And yes, I've found that a combination of Eles and Mesmers works out best. There is a point where more damage pales to having more shutdown, after all.

@Josip - for almost all practical purposes, casters don't wand. Illusion Magic being so one-dimensional is a definite drawback, because it means the Illusion Mesmer is quite useless against non-physical mobs. It's like using a MM in Shards of Orr, but different from using a Dom Mes vs. physicals. In that case sure you won't be getting Power Spike / Mistrust etc triggers, but you can still get off ESurge, Unnatural Signet, Shatter Hex (maybe), Cry of Frustration, the Wastrel's spells. Dom Mes still works, it's just a little less powerful. Illusion Mesmer on the hand does not.

Spirits deal single-target DPS but their damage output is so high it overrides their single-target nature. Besides, it's not all the time you'll be needing AoE ...

Accumulated Pain is good stuff. But it's only one spell. Like I said Illusion magic is extremely barren. You are pretty much forced into Wandering Eye / Clumsiness. Neither of them are usually necessary to staying alive - mass casters has so many ways of dealing with physicals already. You use them for the damage, not for anything else, and their damage output vs. non-physical mobs isn't good.

Before you compare Wandering Eye and Accumulated Pain, you should realize the competition - in this case it's vs. Invoke Lightning / Chain Lightning and to a lesser extent ESurge / Mistrust. Now Wandering eye does do more damage than ESurge and (usually) Invoke Lightning, but it's conditional. Melee AI is bad. The AI can choose to run around instead of attack, causing no damage from Wandering Eye. This is not the same as Mistrust - pretty much the only thing that will stop Mistrust from triggering is the monster getting KD'ed. Against Invoke Lightning, you must realize that supported Invoke Lightning does ~90 damage per cast. This is at 1s cast, 6s cooldown, and essentially maintainable forever. Invoke Lightning vs. Wandering Eye or Accumulated Pain (or Spiritual Pain, for that matter) isn't a contest. The damage is superior, sustained, and more reliable ... except against physical mobs, which is when Illusion Mesmers are great.

Quote: By definition you posted, they are. And the only reason you're not running them is, IMO, your religious dedication to elementalist class and the fact that you're elementalist primary who has to run EBSoH and Weaken Armor anyway so Invoke heroes are not *as* bad as they would be without all that but they're still not better than mesmers IMHO. If you were a mesmer primary, trust me, you would find more use in just going with mesmers, and probably the same with physical class because Shatter Hex can be amazing along with some other skills. No, I (occasionally) don't use Mesmers because I get my shutdown from /Me's. Consider - if the only real advantage of Mesmers are the interrupts (which isn't the case, but you did quote only the interrupt part) why can't you put Cry of Frustration / Leech Signet / Power Drain on an Invoke Ele? Other reasons not to use Mesmers: they can't go /P and bring Fall Back @ 9 spec, and they can't use Prot Spirit well. This bites, because like I've said most Mesmer spells aren't spectacular, so you naturally try to fit in secondary-attribute stuff.

If I were a Mesmer primary, I'd probably be running AP Cry and using Invoke Eles anyway

PS: @BiP - I think it's great to have, but generally I can't find the room to use it.

Fall back @9 spec is overrated nice sure, but you can make due with 7 as well. Which is doable with mesmers

Honestly though, I think this mesmer vs ele vs RoJ vs discord thing is all rather silly. More then anything else that choice depends on your primary class

And @ Invoke eles with mesmer primary, I suggest you try it. It's not as impressive as you may think.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jeydra

Other reasons not to use Mesmers: they can't go /P and bring Fall Back @ 9 spec, and they can't use Prot Spirit well. This bites, because like I've said most Mesmer spells aren't spectacular, so you naturally try to fit in secondary-attribute stuff. Huh My mesmers use Fall Back at 9 spec, and Prot spirit is on my EMo

That being said, don't get me wrong, I agree that unconditional damage is good. And I'm well aware that conditional spell might fail (they regularly do). This is what I was pointing out myself when commenting on Wastrel spells.


But it's all about loss and gain, and about playstyle. For example, I use neither minion master nor communing spirit spammer - builds that pretty much everyone uses. Partly because I try to be very mobile, and partly because of personal preference. I use one or none Aegis. All that means I need that damage mitigation is a necessity, not a luxury. That's where my mesmers come in.

I feel that while your Invokers might work well offensively, you need more defense elsewhere. Your eles have Invoke, Chain, and Fall Back - that's it. And can't spam it. My mesmers have Fall Back, E-Surge, and because of BiP/Blood Ritual enough energy to spam whatever else I put on them. So while in 7 seconds you cast Invoke+Chain, my mesmer casts Esurge, Spiritual, Unnatural, and whatever else I put. If Mistrust triggers, I just did 2x more damage than your Chain Lightning, but if it does not, tough luck. If CoF triggers, it's far more useful than Chain Lightning, but if it does not, it's still sitting there.

As for illusion mesmers, I can also say that there are mobs with rangers and warriors and paragons in the game. I'm not sure how much 25% penetration helps, but I doubt damage from air spells is going to be stellar while domination remains the same.

Sorry, was asleep (as usual), I knew I missed a few things (Drain Enchantment), so I'll correct the first post.

Wasn't discussing Signet ways of energy management because they don't scale with FC. I don't usually pull conclusions from a bunch of random opinions, but if you really need an example of a build, I could do one.

Interesting insights some of you guys have - I guess I shouldn't be spending so much time in Kaineng.

@Jeydra: You're semi right again in a sense, I honestly wouldn't use Spiritual Pain as a comparision for Invoke - obviously, Invoke will be better on those. Mesmer DPS takes more work than an invoke elementalist, but well, I guess I'll get pictures to show what I mean and get back to you on this.

Invoke hits 3 targets, yay. Chain Lightning hits 3 targets, yay. Rest of Air Magic? 1 target (and balls damage). Relying on enchantments as well. No enemy shutdown or armor ignoring damage either.

Why would mesmers need to bring Prot Spirit? They are only 2 or 3 character slots, there are 5 or 4 more. There's bound to be a necro in there that can spare 10 protection.

This is just a short test that doesn't prove anything, but is merely meant to be representative evidence.



Since it's very difficult to test the dps on mesmer conditionals such as Mistrust and Wandering Eye, I decided just to use a Shatter build and compare it against an Invoke build.

My only contribution was wanding, a BiP Necro was used, and ignore the Illusion Mesmer, I was testing something else and he's not relevant.

Sample sizes were small (5x) and the test was stopped when the two targets behind the master of damage perished.

Air Magic was set to 16, Domination was set to 15, Fast Casting is at 13.

Air ele Used skills - Invoke, Chain Lightning, Lightning Orb, Attunement, Aura of Restoration, GoLE (GoSwiftness was disabled off for tests).
total 1598 damage over 34 sec, 47 dps 14 sec to death
total 1312 damage over 22 sec, 59 dps, 10 sec to death
total 859 damage over 18 sec, 47 dps, 14 sec to death
total 1456 damage over 31 sec, 46 dps, 15 sec to death
total 1684 damage over 32 sec, 52 dps, 14 sec to death

Shatter Mesmer Used skills - Enchanter's Conundrum, Overload (conditional NOT triggered), Shatter Delusions, Fragility (Primer), Unnatural Signet
total 905 damage ,21 sec, 43 dps - 14 sec to death
total 921 damage , 18 sec, 51 dps, 18 sec to death
total 950 damage 20 sec, 47 dps, 13 sec to death
total 897 damage, 22 sec, 40 dps, 16 sec to death
total 826 damage, 19 sec, 43 dps, 14 sec to death

Observations and generalisations (Flawed, from a very small sample size):
Invoke Elementalist is slightly more consistent in time to death of the primary target and does slightly higher DPS, but takes longer to kill secondary targets.
Shatter Mesmer generally kills secondary targets (barrels) much faster than the Invoke Ele, hence she ends tests faster.
note:Test assumes the following considerations which are patently untrue in HM.
Overload will never get the extra bonus damage (false) Main target will never be enchanted (false) Mesmer needs to prime Shatter herself with Fragility (false) Enemy armour level is relatively low (false) Mesmer will always hit at least 3 targets with adjacent range AoEs (very false) Invoke and CL will always hit 3 targets in HM (somewhat false)
Obviously, the higher the number of targets you can clump and the higher the armour of the enemies, the less effective Air Magic is going to be. It's still respectable by itself, though.

edit: Doublechecked since I was playing around with runes earlier today. Gwen's Domination magic is actually 15, not 16. Sorry.

Damage Ele in HM = Invoke + Chain. 'Nuff said.

Btw, the real gap between Esurge vs. Invoke is the shitty 3 target cap. Esurge have same aoe (large), and maybe cast a bit less, but can hit EVERYTHING in his range. So balls makes it really powerful compared to Invoke that have the same effectiveness against clumped or a bit spreaded foes.

And yes, Air ele is just Invoke and his non-elite version, Chain Lighting. Trow in Attunement, Aor and fill rest with stuff to support the only 2 skills that can give you some damage-not always impressive-and w/o any other utility apart the plain damage.... no, if i can choose and there aren't any particular situations that do not allow it, Esurge will always have my vote. Is smoother to run (1 skill do what eles do using 3 or more) and carry more interesting stuff.

I and Pluto discussed a bit about this point, and this is what i'm thinking afterall.

By the way, I have no idea where the misconception that "the largest rate of reliable AoE DPS Mesmers can do comes from Energy Surge" originated. Pooh pooh. It's -quite- clearly Shatter Delusions.

By this I mean if you're going to AoE enemies, this (shatter-storm build):



is usually superior to 2x Esurge/Mistrust/SpiritualPain/UnSig whatever. (Except in the rare cases when the enemies can't survive 2 Esurges and Mistrusts)

Nobody uses Shatter Delusions because it is adjacent range and removes important hexes?

Re: Important hexes, that's an outdated mode of thinking by the timid, IMO.

It works fine with most Illusion hexes. Shattering one ineptitude activation + having the rest go off is going to do more AoE damage than having ineptitude activate by itself (Ineptitude and Clumsiness are AoE hexes)

Panic isn't an important hex and works fine if you're going to remove one or two hexes every 3 seconds. Shatter stacks well, Mistrust doesn't. One Panic creates enough stuff to shatter well until the next Panic recharge.

Illusion magic hexes like Wandering Eye/Clumsiness/Ineptitude have a 4 second window to go off. If they're lasting long enough for your heroes to remove with Shatter or Drain Delusions, there's a chance they weren't going to go off in the first place.

Also, adjacent range is usually enough. That's like saying nobody uses Ineptitude or Clumsiness or Signet of Clumsiness or Unnatural Signet because they're adjacent range. Let's not even start talking about Mark of Pain, Spiteful Spirit, Splinter Weapon, RoJ, Ancestor's Gaze and 100 blades/Vow of Strength. Shatter is adjacent range, not adjacent to.

Quote: Originally Posted by LexTalionis Re: Important hexes, that's an outdated mode of thinking by the timid, IMO.

It works fine with most Illusion hexes. Shattering one ineptitude activation + having the rest go off is going to do more AoE damage than having ineptitude activate by itself (Ineptitude and Clumsiness are AoE hexes)

Panic isn't an important hex and works fine if you're going to remove one or two hexes every 3 seconds. Shatter stacks well, Mistrust doesn't. One Panic creates enough stuff to shatter well until the next Panic recharge.

Illusion magic hexes like Wandering Eye/Clumsiness/Ineptitude have a 4 second window to go off. If they're lasting long enough for your heroes to remove with Shatter or Drain Delusions, there's a chance they weren't going to go off in the first place.

Also, adjacent range is usually enough. That's like saying nobody uses Ineptitude or Clumsiness or Signet of Clumsiness or Unnatural Signet because they're adjacent range. Let's not even start talking about Mark of Pain, Spiteful Spirit, Splinter Weapon, RoJ, Ancestor's Gaze and 100 blades/Vow of Strength. Shatter is adjacent range, not adjacent to. Heros dont use shatter delusions or any hex ending spell well...thats why no one runs them......They tend to spam them on rc without bearing to what it is actually removing. So unless you are master at microing heros they are very iffy...lottery skills (if u will)

Also noticed a hero using overload...the ai for the skill was nvr updated after the skill got changed. For that reason heros don't use it properly and thus not suited well for use by them.

As I mentioned elsewhere, invokes do tend to trigger AP better than the meta reactive dom/illu, becuase they are definitely hitting your target, and doing so unconditionally and immediately. All the distributed esurge and illusion stuff does not do this job as well, and it's alot of what is coloring Jedrya's judgement IMO. This is not an irrelevant consideration when AP'ing, as it's that many more shouts and vanguards you get off, as well as taking out priority targets, even if your overall hero damage is lower. To compare to mesmer that same role we'd need to investigate directer damage builds like shatter delusions/spirtual pain, or keystone mez.

I gave enchanter's conundrum a try in thommis/rand NM, was fairly easy but I didn't see conundrum actually cast that often, never goes on enchanted foes and 3 drains isn't enough to keep up, and it's low priority even vs non-enchanted guys Shatter delusion, yes reliable if you don't mind saccing hexes... conundrum seemed less so, and I was relying alot on panic/shared burden to be shattered. It also pulled way too many mistrusts so you have to drop that skill when going shatterway. In a full mesway seems I'd rather have a keystone with signet of sorrow for adjacent AoE nuking, near same damage and more interrupts, less energy and key hexes getting removed.

Quote: Originally Posted by FoxBat

As I mentioned elsewhere, invokes do tend to trigger AP better than the meta reactive dom/illu, becuase they are definitely hitting your target As opposed to ESurge+Unnatural+Spiritual which might strike a rock or a tree instead..

@LexTalionis - I repeated that test, using these two builds:

16 Air, 11 Dom, Invoke / Chain / Orb / Unnatural Sig / Aura of Resto / GoLE / Air Attunement + one free slot vs.

16 Dom, 13 FC, Enchanter's Conundrum / Unnatural Sig / Shatter Delusions / Overload / Fragility / Cry of Frustration + 2 free slots.

I did not wand. Ele damage output was consistently higher at between 10-15 DPS. Mesmer did more AoE damage, although that's with no hex on Sousuke's bar for Unnatural Signet to trigger.

I am not convinced Mesmers are better than Air Eles at damage output. But this Enchanter's Conundrum bar did surprisingly well at damage output. I'll give it a try in more serious areas ... hope to God though that AI knows not to Shatter Mistrust, will also need more enchantment removal etc.

As far as I'm concerned any mesmer/ele spells that aren't at least Nearby AoE isn't worthwhile AoE at all. If I'm going to take the time to ball enemies up into Adjacent range I will instagib them with Splinter Weapon and/or MoP, not pew pew away with 50-90 damage spells. Nearby but 3 target limit is in about the same boat, which is why invoke is a joke.

Wandering Eye works just fine, enemy mobs wand all the time. Watch any of your spell casting heroes, even if after casting something half their skills are ready to be used they still have a 50/50 chance of attacking once. It will happen even more in HM, where enemies have IAS/IMS/HCT effects to all give them more time to wand.

@Jeydra: Yeah, most of the time, enchanter's will work pretty well - hitting the hero's current target with hexes that are shatterable triggers the conditional AI for shatter delusions and makes the AI go on a shatter frenzy. Luckily, Shatter Enchantment and Drain Enchantment also have very high conditional priority, so there's a very high chance they'll strip the enemy before starting the enchanter conundrum nukes. Also note that Mesmer DPS will drop sharply once the additional two targets behind the Master of Damage die, while lightning will continue doing higher dps. (this is why I stopped the tests then)

I've tried Invoke a bit after reading recommendations on it and it's not too bad at all. There's places where you don't want to use it, but it's a lot simpler to use than Mesmer dps, which I've said repeatedly needs extra work to get going. Lightning also has the benefit of being buffable with EBSoH, which Mesmers don't benefit from. As far as I'm concerned, both of them are different, but since I'm a primary mesmer that almost always runs anywhere with hex spam on MY bar and 2 other Mesmers, Shatter Delusions gives me great results. If I was on my elementalist, Invoke would probably be more useful in most areas unless I was stacking 3 or more mesmers. The 3 target cap is slightly annoying, but it's enough for many many areas, including nearly all of freaking Tyria.

There's a very easy way to see how often your "vital hexes" are being removed. Play a primary mesmer that spams Panic and Wastrel's Demise to cover everything. Use Mistrust. Watch your pretty numbers from Demise fly all over. You'll be surprised at how little Mistrust actually gets removed.

Edit: Did further testing, Shatter and Drain Delusions will not be used on targets in range other than the mesmer hero's current target (unlike Clumsiness or the like). If your mesmers are on different targets, there's no need to worry about the Shatter mesmer running over and randomly stripping Ineptitude or Mistrust just when it's about to go off, as unlikely as that situation is.

Invoke and it's 3 target limit is a joke. No amount of theory craft will help anyone overcome that obstacle. There's no way I can justify bringing an Air Ele for general use. There's simply nothing in the Air attribute aside from LOrb and Invoke that's worth bringing and even then the damage is CAPPED. This is coming from someone who has all 10 professions fully setup for any situation. Runes, weapons, heroes etc...you name it I pretty much have it setup. So this isn't a matter of me NOT testing or NOT knowing any better or dare I say it............................biased? Theorycrafting and number crunching does nothing for the most part. It doesn't represent real world situations where countless variables are thrown in.

This is off-topic, but while I was updating my previous post, I just noticed people discussiong FoC, and well.

FoC is an elite that does 120ish damage in an adjacent range every 20 seconds. This is less than a Cry of Pain and Putrid Explosion can do approximately 3-4 times more damage than it in the same period of time. Know what also does 120 damage every 20 seconds? Suffering.

If you're going to bother caster AoEing on a Necromancer (i.e. not trying to completely build around Mark of Pain), as far as I'm concerned, minionless Death Magic is the best way to go (any Diablo 2 player which used Corpse Explosion should know this) - Nothing in their other trees remotely compares to Putrid Explosion and Putrid Bile except in -completely- corpseless areas (Well, maybe Ravenous Gaze). It turns single target spike damage into armor-ignoring AoE. Putrid Explosion is also special in that heroes use it even in Passive Mode and they won't randomly waste corpses if it wouldn't hit anything.

I use a Blood/Death Magic necromancer to AoE with Unholy Feast and Vampiric Swarm - I use Blood is Power for the elite (If you don't need this, just use Ravenous Gaze), but if you're majorly worried about Unholy Feast tanking, just set the hero to passive and remove Vampiric Swarm. Heroes will also cast Unholy Feast even in passive mode.

Quote: Originally Posted by LexTalionis

I use a Blood/Death Magic necromancer to AoE with Unholy Feast and Vampiric Swarm - I use Blood is Power for the elite (If you don't need this, just use Ravenous Gaze), but if you're majorly worried about Unholy Feast tanking, just set the hero to passive and remove Vampiric Swarm. Heroes will also cast Unholy Feast even in passive mode. With all due respect, outside certain farming builds Unholy isn't that useful and Vampiric Swarm is just plain awful.

Quote: Originally Posted by Outerworld

With all due respect, outside certain farming builds Unholy isn't that useful and Vampiric Swarm is just plain awful. They get better if you use BiP... oh well. >_>