Why are there so few mesmers around in PvE?

Why not primary, why N or E primary and Me as secondary:
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Weapon: pink globs aren't really that nice looking

Armor: male mesmer doesn't look as nice as a necro (IMO), female mesmer looks like a ballerina/ice skater instead of a RPG character, runes do not really help as much as for other classes

Skills:
How does having a disruption/interrupt at 9 or 12 attribute any less good than 16 attribute? You still INTERRUPT them. Plus, distracting shot, disrupting chop, disrupting lunge are faster recharge. The problem is most mesmer skills only target spells.
Inspiration Magic doesn't really help mesmers as much as monks or trappers or elementalists.
Most people do not want to sit there and wait for the exact secodn to press that 1/4 of a second interrupt. Diversion used to be good, but now it takes 3 seconds just to cast, and unless you have about 10 fast cast it is pretty bad for cast time.

Energy Management:
Unless you go part inspiration, you will have a horrible time with energy. A necromancer in PvE with soul reaping has a way easier time. An elementalist has a larger pool.

People playing them:
Many people do not use mesmer properly. Their idea of interruption is bringing backfire. Also, many do not have the timing that is good enough to disrupt the 1 second cast time of many caster skills. That is why diversion was so popular before.
Also, the mesmer hench only uses distortion, crippling anguish, drain enchantment, empathy, imagined burden, and shatter hex. He has NO INTERRUPTS. All his skills are situational. This makes palyers think that mesmers a bad class.
Many people do not change skillsets per situation. This means in a melee heavy area, mesmer skills need to be changed to illusion in comparison to caster heavy area which domination is more useful.

Unlocking:
For unlocking, if you have a mesmer secondary, it is pretty complementary with every class, whereas some professions uch as warrior are not.

Pink glob as a weapon? I don't what you are talking about. Since when did Mez start using Ecto as a weapon? You gots some esplaining to do Lucy!

The first part of this statement is really just a matter of taste & but I will agree some Mez armors are kinda silly looking(Enchanters nightie anyone?). As for the runes statement... I don't know where you got that idea. IME Mez runes are very helpful indeed.

Well as for the "9 or 12 attribute any less good than 16" question... some 'rupts not only 'rupt but deal damage, steal energy & drain energy. The more points you have in the particular attribute the more damage you will deal, the more energy you will steal, the more energy you will drain.

As for the recharge time..I can't speak for Warrior or Rangers skills being that I have never played either profession but Mesmer can speed up thier recharge with their offhands & weapons as other characters can.

As for targeting only spells... yea most Mez 'rupts are for spells but their are actually more than you would think for skills.

Inspiration doesn't help Mesmer as much as Monks, Trappers or Ele? What you been smoking? Inspration helps a Mesmer gain the energy they spend casting back. With a Mesmer I can place a higher amount of points in Inspration than a Monk or Ele can. I don't what I would do if Mes didn't have Inspration.

Exact second? Well I use Migraine or Arcane Conundrum a lot when I play as a 'rupter. Slows down the casting time of the enemy. Makes 'rupting simple as pie. Ele are nice juicy targets even w/o Migraine or AC but cast Migraine or AC on a Ele & you can take a nap, come back a hour later & that Ele will still be casting his MS. Makes 'rupting soooooooo easy.

No disagreement here.

Weapon: there are more than pink glob weapons around these days, willcrusher anyone?

Armor: Female Rogue armor solves your problems.

Skills: sure, rangers know how to interupt, mesmers do so and do damage/drain energy at the same time. btw, to interupt, you don't need fast casting (primary attribute) all that high, but.. if you have inspiration or domination up high, you can either gain lots of energy or do lots of damage, the higher the attribute, the more effective, even if it 'only' interupts a skill. btw, if most people don't want to wait to interupt skills, what do rangers do about interupts?

Interupts... yeah, backfire means you don't interupt and your team gets fried if the mesmer put backfire on something which casts firestorm or other goodies like ss, but is effective against that prot. monk who casts too fast to interupt.

But then, not every mesmer runs interupts, those that do, help the team by negating damage. And you need to look at the entire mesmer line sometimes, I do fine playing domination/inspiration, it kills meele and casters suprisingly well. (empathy, energy surge, mind wrack....) although, empathy doesn't make it onto my skill bar too often these days.

I suggest you play monk sometime, make sure you have a good mesmer on the team, and watch what skills they're using.

btw, Durnham isn't all that bad, him having drain enchantment is a nice thing.

-Pink glob that flies out...when you attack. Plus, my name isn't Lucy.
-Rogue armor isn't too great either, especially when you lose energy pool. Most male mesmer armor look like suits more than "armor".

-Recharge focii only activate 20% of the time
-There is only ONE fast casting skill, and it is an elite.
-If you use mesmer to deal damage, it is not that great of an idea since interrupts like Power Spike/Power Leak/etc. usually have 15-20 recharge time and are situational.
--> only Leech signet (45 recharge) and cry of frustration (15 energy) interrupt nonspell skills
-Interrupt spells do not need that much energy, the most is cry of frustration with its 15 energy cost
-I don't smoke. How often do you see inspiration on PvE charatcers? A lot. Most times it is on Mo,E,N.

-I use arcane conundrum/Migraine/soothing images/ignorance/etc. on my necro/mesmer just as good as a mesmer primary can. I have all the mesmer skills on it.


I have nothing against mesmers, just mesmer primaries...because they do not have that much benefit over secondaries unless you are running high cast skills like ressurect

I appologise for picking on you.. but.. 1 skill as opposed to NO skills for soul reaping...

I haven't read the entire thread, but I really question the usefulness of fastcasting in PvE and the need to shut down characters. Mesmers are good at breaking something that you can't outdamage, but you can outdamage most everything in PvE.

Rangers are also strictly better than mesmers in PvE settings. You have a higher base damage and good/cheap interrupt and energy drain. A ranger can crack the really tough nuts like a prot monk, but you don't find all that many top end prot monks out there.

Anet has from the beginning said that mesmers are a bit more of a specialty class. While a good mez can likely solo many pve areas and add greatly to a group, it is hard to argue that they are as flexible as an interrupt ranger or warrior. While the masses may be wrong in there reasoning there is some wisdom there.

Mesmers are extremely specialized characters even as a secondary profession choices. you have to know exactly what you want to do. If you want to take out casters better load up on domination magic. Warrior types? Gotta be Illusion. Inspiration is a route to go if you need some energy management stuff. Still you have to have a plan in mind before you make a mesmer. It's not just some random thing you can do and if you try to do one like that people will notice because your skills will be sloppy and your tactics will be sloppy and your flexibility will be non existant.

Soul reaping is good as is, because it is so useful in pvE. Fast cast is not as useful in PvE.

Also, its being an elite is detrimental to its usefulness as well as the requirement of high fast cast for its effectiveness.

My UW build..

Domination: 15 (sup rune + head piece)
split points between inspiration and fast cast equally, and put a few points into whatever you're using as res if needed.

Energy Surge
Spirit Shackles
Mindwrack
Empathy
Powerdrain
Leach sig (or cry of frustration)
Power spike
Re-usable res

There, that gives me something against aataxes and something against dryders and every other caster without touching the illusion line.

When you're used to having fast casting, you definately notice the difference when you don't have it anymore, especially with spells that have 5+ second casting times.

Mesmers require runes just as much as any other profession. Some of you may not appreciate having a 7 second blackout (14+ dom only) or being able to disable a skill for an additional 50 seconds (13 dom) with diversion. That's fine, henchmen are better party members most of the time anyway. Having access to runes, however, will allow a mesmer to be more flexible. While monks and elementalists can make an effective build by maxing out only two attributes, a mesmer may be better off with 3 attributes at around 12 plus some fast casting with the help of runes and headgear.

Only res, spirits, maelstrom, firestorm, meteor shower actually have more than 4 second cast.
With 16 fast cast, 3 second spells are around 1.5sec. I do no think many people use 16 fast cast, because that would mean only one maxed attribute other than fast cast.

At 16 Dom Diversion is 59 seconds. At 11 Dom it is 44 sec and 38 sec at 9 Dom...But the recharge is 10. So that means you could've just recasted if you were N/ME or E/Me.
Certain skills just work better on their primaries, like minions so blackout is a mesmer oriented skill. Yet W/Me's use it because they can get damage done while blacked out. Mesmers cannot do anything while blacked out besides attack with a wand.
Like all professions, anything over 11 attribute usually gives less of a increase in duration/damage, etc.

I do concur mesmers work better with a few attributes rather than specializing, that's one of the reasons why mesmer secondary is effective, you do NOT need that high an attribute.

There is more to a Mesmer than only shutdown, just like there is more to a Necro than Minion Mastering. The most classic prejudice seems to be that a Mesmer can't do damage... Well, so lets talk damage, since to most of you PvE seems to be all about damage output anyway:

Power Spike: 100 damage
Energy Surge: 80 damage
Energy Burn: 80 damage
Shatter Enchantment: 100 damage

That's 360 damage a Mesmer can inflict on a single caster target in the matter of like 6 seconds. As a nice "side effect", you will not only have damaged your enemy to the brink of death, but also sucked like two thirds of its energy, interupted a spell and drained an (important) enchantment.

Name me ANY other class which can do that!

And there are quite a few PvE environments where shutdown is just as desireable as raw damage output is. A Mesmer can handle 2-3 Priests of Sorrows with ease, they can disable the Chaos Siege Wurms in Tombs and keep at least half of the Meteor Showers there from raining down at your group. The Shadow Monks in FoW are a non issue with a Mesmer on board, just as the Mursaat Elementalists and Bosses are in the Ring of Fire missions.

Yes, you can outdamage pretty much everything. That's the brute force approach. Mesmers are the clever approach. Personally, I prefer cleverness over brute force. Different styles of gameplay. Both work. It's just not the case that Mesmers are inferior to any other class. They win their battles in a different way than a Warrior. Sadly the Mesmer way is unappreciated by most GW players. Can't help that. *shrugs*

I love playing Rangers. And it's true that they have more DPS than a Mesmer. To say that a Ranger is on par with a Mesmer in terms of interrupt or E-Drain capabilities is kinda funny, though. Of course they are not.

well guys, thanks for all the good ideas, but now a question:
-How many times have you ever been on a team with a mesmer male, and how many times have you been on a team with 2 or more mesmers on, in PVE???

i have like 3 times been with a mesmer male and, 2 times with 2 and more mesmers....

I see another mesmer in groups (PvE) quite rarely... and I've never been impressed with the build they're running

It is my sworn duty to exterminate all male mesmers on charges of;

a) the Riverdance
b) spinning in the air
c) waving a wand to fire pink orbs daintily at foes
d) still having the gall to expect others to take them seriously

I refuse to comment on accusations that mesmer primary is 'useless' because talking to these people gives me a headache. It's clear there is an ideological difference in gameplay between them and me, and so that shall stay.

I'll sign that!

Yeah...useless...people who say that crap usually get killed facing a group with strong healers/casters....tanks rush in, enemy healers run away. The second one still heals though...until I shut him down. Combine it with a secondary spike (personally I'm a nuker) you got yourself a solid caster-killer. After that enemy tanks drop like flies...and nobody gets killed.

The problem is that many ppl like to take only "direct-damage" classes...tanks, nukers, spikers, etc. That's just boring and uninventive. Thinking like that would never got my neccro in Diablo 2 anywhere:

A team with 3/8, 4/8 or even 5/8 mesmers would probably really rock if 1) the players were good players (non-rushing and working like a team) and 2) the mesmers sorted out their skills a bit so that the final composition would be well balanced. Like, having 4 mesmers in a group and ALL of them casting phantasm might not be so good as having some mesmers robbing energy while some do damage while some do interrupting.

There are a lot of neat Mesmer builds for PVE and a lot of people just don't realize that. My current favorite is to take two spell interruptors (power spike and power leak which give me energy or deal damage while interrupting) along with clumsiness, ineptitude and empathy. At a fairly high illusion and domination level, say 12 to 14, these last three skills are fairly effective at shutting off a range or melee foe while killing him, and deal a lot of damage to spellcasters (who attack inbetween spells).

What better way of stopping those irritating ether seals from casting chain lightning than to simply steal the spell away from them with arcane thievery? Ok, its random what you steal, but most often I have gotten chain lightning from them.

Shatter hex is such a nice way to deal an instant 126 or more damage to all surrounding enemies! Think about 2 Mesmers casting that on either the same tank with two hexes or on two nearby tanks with a hex each. Add a touch of energy surge to one of those tanks, and all the surrounding foes on the radar will instantly turn from red to black dots!

The point is, there are so many ways to play a Mesmer, that a team could do quite well with 3 or more mesmers on it, providing the skills among them were arranged wisely enough.

offtopic

Bone nec : 10k+ spirit and spear
Blizz sorc: 17k+ blizzard
fire sorc : 20k+ fireball
hammerdin: 15k+ dmg blessed hammer
FoHdin : Huge FoH + conviction
trapassin: 10k+ damage lightning trap
wind druid: LOTSk+ twister
javazon: 50k+ Lightning strike
barbarian: 5-10k whirlwind, multiple strikes, poison

The direct damage archetypes dominate Diablo 2, you know

/offtopic

I've always wanted to run a 5 mesmer 3 monk team or so for 8v8... that would be fun

1 migrane
2 energy burn with wrack
2 illusion / curses antiwar (cripple anguish, price of fail etc)

or whatever

Avarre,

/diablo2_offtopic

Assasin traps...put my sorc to shame

But necro is still weakest in the direct-damage department....sweated alot killing
bosses solo - always hated that sob Duriel - talking about close quarters (and cold dmg)...

/end_diablo2_offtopic

Y..You have fought REAL bone necs in pvp right? The kind that have 500+ vitality, or 350+ vit and 75% block? The kind that teleport faster than sorcs do, and kill you in 2-3 spears? They could tank duriel and eat him alive...

Imho the most powerful among them is hammerdin (although a very good smitedin is invulnerable) and javazon. But enough offtopic

Regardless of others' opinions, there is always hope that anet will listen to the unenlightened and buff mesmers in PvE (maybe even give us Spiteful back...).

I was actually talking about single player 1st pass (fresh char) .... sorry for misunderstanding!