Favorite Mesmer Elites

Panic is good for places with craploads of mobs such as The Deep, Urgoz, Domain of Anguish or Slaver's Exile.

Ineptitude + clumsiness + signet of clumsiness + wandering eye is solid if you have the energy to support it (Arcane conundrum) and the area is physical heavy. Sometimes I think Tease is a better elite if you want to spam Clumsiness + wandering eye.

Keystone is solid when you can get mobs in adjacent range and it's more damage than Energy Surge. It's actually the highest sustained damage you can get from a mesmer. There's a reason why Keystone Signet spiking is meta in particular areas. On heroes it's a bit less effective since they don't chain it and you can't have 4 keystone mesmers without using Mercenary heroes.

Energy Surge does damage every 10-12 seconds depending on fast casting and 90-100 damage (99 at 16) isn't anything to write home about for an elite. It's definitely better than Invoke for mobs >3 though due to cost and the fact that Domination has more utility (disenchant, AoE interrupt, hex removal, spell fail, energy steal, etc) than air (blind and single target knockdown). Invoke peaks at 95 (x1.4142 against 60 armor, listed versus 80) so it's not as good in terms of AoE , but better in terms of spikes against small groups of casters due to recharge.

Fevered Dreams and such is dumb on heroes. Anything that requires a modicum of thought is not meant to be run on heroes, IMO.

By Jeydra's logic Domination is a barren line too... Energy Surge, Unnatural signet, Mistrust, Cry of Frustration, Shatter Enchantment, Complicate (against homogenous mobs), Mind Wrack if you spam stuff or as Shatter Delusions fodder.
A bunch of domination skills are okay /situational single target: Signet of Disruption (better on Keystone), Signet of Distraction (better on Keystone), Power Spike, Power Lock (like d-shot/magebane), Diversion (overkill +recharge time), Empathy (takes too long: single target reactive hex; Calculated Risk is cheaper). Guilt/Shame are more for PVP. I've seen people with Overload but the heroes spam anything that's wastrel's/overload. You don't need much more than 4 skills in one line to be useful: see Mind Blast /Invoke /Water Elementalists.

Quote: Originally Posted by Turkey Baster

I agree with everything LifeInfusion said except:

Quote: Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Fevered Dreams and such is dumb on heroes. Anything that requires a modicum of thought is not meant to be run on heroes, IMO. Thankfully the Fevered Dreams description is wrong and only requires 1 condition. I have never, ever had a problem with heroes keeping it spread around. I believe the AI does not wait for the condition to be satisfied and will treat it as a straight on hex (which will reapply the 3 second daze every 10 seconds).

Before ST rit became meta I used to run Fevered Dreams + SoS rit (~4 spirits) + SoGM rit (+~4 spirits x double attack rate) + MM (+8-9 additional attackers) + 8 party occasionally wanding. There were massive amounts of interupts going on. FD synergizes surprisingly well with stuff like Frustration, Fragility, Accumulated Pain (mass Deep Wound), Ineptitude (adjacent=>in the area blindness), etc. all from Illusion. Combine that with typical necro aoe Cracked Armor / Weakness, and there is a constant flow of dmg and preventing damage going on.

Something I want to add: Most of the good Illusion spells have recharges 12 seconds or less and are not interrupt-based. Therefore many builds I run 2 necros with 14 in Soul Reaping and 12 in Illusion.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jeydra

Quote: Originally Posted by Xsiriss

If you look more closely at most other attribute lines, they too only have about 6-10 decent skills with elites. Seeing as you'll also be using at least 2 inspiration/support skills for energy management and maybe a res this isn't an issue. Most lines are like this, Fire and Air for example. There are only a few decent build variants. Hell even Protection prayers doesn't have that many useful skills and is best used as a hybrid. Illusion magic has its place, but like pretty much all other attributes it is designed to go with other lines.[all PvP contexts aside] But those skills are enough to make a good build out of. To build an Air Ele, you only need a few skills, partly because Invoke cools down in 6s and partly because Invoke deals unconditional AoE damage. Even with only four spells on his bar, the Air Ele will always have something useful to cast. Not true for Illusiion Mesmers.

Fire has plenty of "good" skills to use: excluding the elite, there is Liquid Flame, Meteor Shower and other DoTAoE (use with micro), Meteor, Rodgort's Invocation, Mark of Rodgort, Fireball, Immolate, Glowing Gaze. Many of these spells have long cooldown, balanced out by the fact that you have lots of them to use. Protection Prayers is chock full of good skills: excluding the elite, there is Shield of Absorption, Aegis, Prot Spirit, Spirit Bond, Shielding Hands, Mend Ailment, Dismiss Condition, Mend Condition, etc. Domination Magic has plenty of good skills too: excluding the elite, there is Chaos Storm, Cry of Frustration, Mistrust, Overload, Power Spike, Shatter Delusions, Shatter Enchantment, Shatter Hex, Signet of Disruption, Unnatural Signet, Spiritual Pain, Wastrel's Demise. Notice that all these lines have universally useful spells to cast that either cooldown quickly, or there are plenty of them around to cast.

All this does not apply to Illusion Magic, which is a very one-dimensional attribute line meant to take out physicals. It doesn't have the skills to do anything else. That's why Illusion Magic is barren.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jeydra But those skills are enough to make a good build out of. To build an Air Ele, you only need a few skills, partly because Invoke cools down in 6s and partly because Invoke deals unconditional AoE damage. Even with only four spells on his bar, the Air Ele will always have something useful to cast. Not true for Illusiion Mesmers. Yeah, and with fast casting mesmer spells are 3-7/8s recharge with unconditional AoE damage (all enemies in PvE attack often enough for that to be considered unconditional). The reason Air eles always have something useful to cast is because they take 2x as long to cast their spells (1-2s casts vs .5-1s casts). That isn't an advantage, that's just shifting the time burden somewhere else.

The only reason to use more than a single illusion mesmer is by dropping inspiration magic - the same way I did. Without that, it's just not feasible. The illusion line is not flexible enough to be worthwhile running two full illusion lines. The elites are good, but the bar has to be relatively domination focused to run a second, and that means dropping inspiration and running BiP. The basic problem is that an illusion mesmer only affects physicals, generally, and a single one can manage all the physicals. Only a few spells are worth bringing twice. Dom mesmers can stack much better in general, but even then up to a point.

This is with regards to heroes, of course. Shared Burden, in a nutshell, turns off hard mode.

There's too many good mesmer elites. <_> But I like all the mesmer changes, because I feel like each elite has it's own value. There's times where I'd want stolen speed, other times where PI has it's uses. Times to use Panic and other times, not. And a general backup is E-Surge. It's pretty nice to have a full elite skillset that is useful.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kunder

Domination is the key. You can't go wrong with any number of them.

Shared Burden is nice though. Works decently for spikes.

Quote: Originally Posted by SongOf

Thankfully the Fevered Dreams description is wrong and only requires 1 condition. I have never, ever had a problem with heroes keeping it spread around. I believe the AI does not wait for the condition to be satisfied and will treat it as a straight on hex (which will reapply the 3 second daze every 10 seconds).. My whole issue with Fevered Dreams is that once again I believe it's a PvP elite simply because I can bring Technobabble and have a whole group dazed if placed properly for 5-6 seconds and since I'm the one casting it will be used better than heroes. I like Invoke heroes, but I wonder about enchant stripping and energy management without having a BiP (HP saccing bothers me). I can usually do fine with inspiration for extra energy management. If Shared Burden was in the domination line it would be more than worth bringing, I see why two illusions mesmers isn't productive.

Quote: Originally Posted by Turkey Baster

I really don't know why people are so fascinated with Keystone, its shutdown is outclassed by the bar compression of panic and PI, its single-target/AoE potential outclassed by esurge and ineptitude. The only thing it does is keep your bar full of energy, which you can’t invest in, ‘else you lose out on your DPS. It's also only used now with UBway, which has mediocre and messy spikes compared to running ineptitude and melee with splinter

As far as the “best bars” for heroes, there are only four that make bringing them along worthwhile: Panic, Ineptitude, Esurge, and Shared. If you’re set on bringing three mesmers, I second the notion of 3 esurgers.

Keystone is amazing, sustainable, DPS - which is significantly higher than e-surge and ineptitude. The only issues with it are 1) adjacent range, and 2) heroes using symbolic celerity poorly. Keystone has interrupts galore combined with impressive DPS, on it's own.

Quote: Originally Posted by Plutoman

Keystone is amazing, sustainable, DPS - which is significantly higher than e-surge and ineptitude. The only issues with it are 1) adjacent range, and 2) heroes using symbolic celerity poorly. Keystone has interrupts galore combined with impressive DPS, on it's own. Against the MoD @14FC I was barely getting an average of 45DPS with Keystone (wiki bar, attacking target adjacent to MoD). @ 14 Dom With echoed Esurge+cop+unnatural signet I was hitting for 55. Esurge hits harder with a longer recharge, has a much larger AoE, and can actually spike. Ineptitude can outclass both in spiking potential (290 in 2-3 seconds) but has a longer CD and needs a tank to hold agro, as well as it needing to use the interrupt animation exploit on sig instead of just trying to spam it on CD.

Keystone has sustained DPS, smaller AoE, and a much weaker spike. It can't actually damage a called target aside from the signets damage, and requires mobs to be bunched close together for a sustained period of time to actually harness its damage potential or secondary effect- the interrupt. The interrupts can be sustained, however HM mobs can get off spells easily between the gaps of recasting keystone. It has synergy with only spike builds, otherwise clashing with the other mesmer skills. The only saving grace with keystone is that going three keystone mesmers covers the randomness of the interrupts, and can lock down a mob from doing anything (aside from simply moving out of its range).

Keystone isn't a terrible elite, but it's outclassed by other builds.

You're judging keystone on it's own - which is fair enough. Where it shines is the stacking of 3-4 keystone mesmers. The consistent interrupts and very consistent DPS is much more powerful than 3-4 e-surges, as the e-surge has only a single spike skill with the rest of the bar being reactive. A set of keystone mesmers will interrupt and damage without any requirements, and provide consistently high damage without any overlap at all (whereas others cannot stack hexes and interrupt stacking issues).

Keystone is almost a niche skill - it's got enough uses that I wouldn't qualify it as that though. It's powerful in it's own right, though. And an echo'd e-surge is a bit much, too, most hero bars won't have that. Try it without the echo and compare.

Otherwise, I do agree, it's not a spikey skill, and I wouldn't use one. Using multiples (if heroes used it properly, or with humans) however is rather powerful.

Power Leech isn't bad for energy management for heroes, since they interrupt really well. With the reduced recharge of Fast Casting it makes it rather solid, even with a low amount in Inspiration.

Quote: Originally Posted by WarcryOfTruth

Power Leech isn't bad for energy management for heroes, since they interrupt really well. With the reduced recharge of Fast Casting it makes it rather solid, even with a low amount in Inspiration. But there are non elite spells which can manage energy just as well.

Also, wiki says heroes use it as a general hex spell and not an interrupt. No interrupt = no energy gain. With a 20 second recharge and elite status, I'd want it to be more reliable than how it is now.

Just curious - why does Tease keep getting overlooked. I've been reasonably happy running it on a mes hero.

Psychic Instability > Tease at least in PvE for heroes. Knockdown is more powerful than the energy you get back from the other skill.

Quote: Originally Posted by Turkey Baster

Psychic Instability > Tease at least in PvE for heroes. Knockdown is more powerful than the energy you get back from the other skill. You can't really compare then since they are both completely different and used for completely different situations. Tease if you need more energy management, PI if you don't need the e-management but could instead use the KD. Since each one has a different use, you can't really say one is more powerful than the other.