PVE Illusion mesmer

I've been annoying myself over this build for a while, because it's obviously meta. It obviously works. But is it good?

1. The main build includes Wandering Eye, Signet of Clumsiness and Clumsiness as their main damage, out of those, Wandering Eye is obviously fantastic. But Signet of Clumsiness and Clumsiness has Adjacent range, and questionable effectiveness. None of the skills are direct, and they are all conditional as in that they might not actually trigger.
2. Ineptitude is Adjacent range. Conditional, and brings blind. But in reality with other defences like interrupts, spirit walls and minions. Blind is generally pointless. Shared Burden is allright but brings no direct offence to the table. Psychic Instability is subpar to Panic.
3. Energy management is questionable at best. Sometimes it does allright, other times it completely fails.

What this leaves us with is an Arcane Concondrum and Wandering Eye machine, it really is the only thing this hero brings to the table worth a mention.

I'm not saying there isn't situations where this build shines. There obviously is! But the more I look at it the more I realize that it isn't stable enough to be called a great build. You want a build that performs reliably well in every situation, not one that does good at one group and then sucks at the next.

The only thing you might feel like you're missing by dropping this hero, is Arcane Concondrum. Which can be put on another hero, for instance an Esurge mesmer with a 9+1 fast 8+1 illusion 11+1+3 dom 8+1 insp setup.

Other then that a domination mesmer will reliably perform either on par with this hero or better then this hero in about 80% of all fights. And in the majority of the remaining fights it will not make a real difference anyhow. A second back or forth at best.

I run a PI Mesmer hero with a few variations (no Signet of Clumsiness or Clumsiness), and it works very well. Psychic Instability is a delightful skill, especially when used alongside Panic.

Arcane Conundrum is useful, especially if paired with Frustration.

As for energy management, that depends entirely on whether both Mesmers are going for the same target, which they shouldn't be. Otherwise they should be fine.

Yep, there is a reason why I don't use an illusion mes in any of my teams. I don't doubt that its a good build, but aegis makes melee-shutdown unnecessary and you can get more damage from a lot of other sources.

I'm sure that PI is also pretty good but I would probably rather use it in a dom build.

When I run an Illusion Hero its usually with a Domination hero aswell.

Shared Burden and Fevered Dreams are good Elites, Ineptitude is usually a waste...
Fragility is great for synergy, Frustration goes well with a Domination Mes on the team.
Sympathetic Visage/ Ancestors is used really well by heros(imo) and renders the ememy useless for longer than clumsiness (just no damage).

I usually don't run Full Melee shutdown because it ends up being surplus and if i do run it, its domination w/ empathy.

yeap! PI is also real good, there are too many choices for a mesmer hero .

If you want adjacent damage... you could always try Keystone Signet, i found 1 hero using it lacking though... 2-3 heros would be awesome on balled groups.

1. Heroes don't use keystone signets anywhere near fast enough.
2. Im wondering why it would ever be worth to bring a dedicated illusion mesmer over a second, or even third domi one.

Quote: Originally Posted by Gabs88

1. Heroes don't use keystone signets anywhere near fast enough.
2. Im wondering why it would ever be worth to bring a dedicated illusion mesmer over a second, or even third domi one. Well personnally since the new updates im struggling to find a spot for the Domination hero let alone Illusion :P.

2) If You are running a condition heavy team build, Illusion will be better.

I use mesmer as Shutdown 1st and reliable-direct damage 2nd. So i am talking from my perspective.
In a primarally direct damage build Domination is pretty much always better.

Usually i just tag a mesmer hero on the end with Panic and lots of interupts and forget about them. : /

Ignore the elite for damage. You don't have enough energy to spam Clumsiness, Inept, Arcane Conundrum and Wandering Eye altogether. Take Shared Burden and you will.

There is a massive debate about what is more useful in PvE; dual-Inept mesmers or dual e-surge. This is primarily for damage, however, it's usually discussed as a trio of mesmers, one of them being Panic, generally.

Unless it's a really physical-heavy area where dual ineptitude would shine, I don't like illusion personally. Displacement and/or aegis should be enough in other areas and allow you to take more damage or generic utility on another bar instead of the illusion mesmer.

There are a handful of exceptions however. Shared Burden is fantastic. Convert HM to NM for 5E? Well, not exactly true but close enough! But I usually take it on a mes secondary because it doesn't need a primary mes. It also makes arcane conundrum mostly redundant other than as energy management unless you want them to cast really really slowly.
Wandering eye (without KD spams that negate its conditionality) is great, heavy nearby range damage on a low recharge and with a low cost. If I could have 5 copies of it on a bar I would use an illusion mesmer.
Fevered Dreams + fragility I can see working well in a condition spam team, although I haven't really tried to run this personally.
When I tested illusion mes, I did like frustration when there are a lot of rupts like panic or daze.

The result is two/three great skills on a bar and the rest is just filler and energy management.

A bit of a contrived example:
Maybe it's because of the specific team builds I tend to use, but during the average time including aftercast it takes to cast clumsiness at 10+1 FC and two 20% HCT mods, a mesmer auto-attacking with a spear to trigger splinter weapon and MoP would do more adjacent range damage than a 16 spec clumsiness. So unless the interupt (in the presence of party-wide blocking and/or disposable minions/spirits) or the damage to the actual target (being pummelled by direct unconditional damage already) is more important, I would get more AoE damage and better energy management by having this slot empty instead. Or for less energy even if maintained I could put flurry on that bar and deal even more damage. Doesn't make sense to me. Of course not every team build will have both MoP and Splinter, I did say it's a contrived example, but I think it illustrates that unless you need the anti-melee rupts really badly there's probably more useful/damaging things you could be doing with that hero slot in the context of a team build.

A dom bar with panic when facing huge mobs or a lot of rupts (PI <3) to deal with casters even in normal sized groups, I understand because there's only so much shelter or PS can do with multiple HM casters spamming freely on your party. But unless it's a physical-heavy area where blocking and/or meatshields isn't going to cut it due to overwhelming number of attacks, you generally have two or more of: minions, spirits, party-wide block, weakness, snares. If I really wanted anti-melee, I'd go old invoke bar (RIP) with BSurge instead of invoke. Perma AoE blind and unconditional direct damage.

PI is unreliable for me at least, my heroes often refuse to use it, even with no other interrupts. they'll just watch dryders cast meteor shower.

for my illu, which i do pretty much always run, i take inept/shared burden depending on what i'm doing, then i run wandering eye, and signet of clumsiness. those are pretty much the best 4 skills in illusion. besides that he has energy management, and room for extra utility spells. i even run signet of clumsiness and wandering eye on other heroes because they're that awesome.

I've started just bringing another esurge (I'm on panic, so Gwen and Norgu both get esurge) with arcane conundrum, which seems to work fine. (I guess you could add frustration, but I'm not really sold on it. Or you could throw in wandering eye or something? I dunno.) It's nice against big mobs. Panic plus a bunch of esurge and CoF and stuff is cool.

When the hero update first game out, I ran a Fevered Dreams mes with 2 spirit spammers, 1 MM and 1 AoD derv. The number of interrupts that were constantly triggering was mind blowing (~7 spirits + 9 minions + 8 wands/derv, all chain interrupting)

FD is amazingly comboable, and besides the damage from Fragility, mass Deep Wound lets you score kills faster, mass Cripple means efficient AOE and less physical damage, etc. etc.

(In case you were wondering, I don't run Ineptitude because my ST covers anti physical dmg w/ Displacement)

Hmm FD uh.. that sound very interesting ok I'll try that one tonight with one of my mes hero. hehe

FD is nice but heroes dont seem to use that well. If you are playing a mesmer, then by all means use FD if you like.

One option is to replace the illusion mesmer with a SoGM offensive rit. who has shadowsong for blind. That generates more dps than the Ineptitude mesmer in general, especially if you also have painful bond somewhere.

I don't bring an ineptitude mesmer nowadays unless the area has a fairly high number of melee enemies. But if you need to defend an area, a SoGM rit should be a better choice provided you have enough rit heroes.