Try and think of a skill more useless than this.

Spinal Shivers - Hex Spell
For 12-26 seconds, whenever target foe is struck for cold damage, that foe is interrupted and you lose 10-6 Energy or Spinal Shivers ends.

Because I just have TONS of energy to spend on something as useless as an interupt like this. Oh, gotta love the duration of it too. Useless...

Have been thinking about this skill, not tested it, but was wondering if the plague signet (elite skill ) worked with this.
The you could cast this on a caster, and use plague signet to transfer energy drain effects then just keep firing a cold damage wand / staff at them. Watch every spell get interupted, and their enegry get zapped. (very very deadly PvP skill if you can, when you cast a few curses on them as well.)

Plague Signet transfers conditions, "Spinal Shivers - Hex Spell".
My vote for most useless skill is Otyugh's Cry (should have been summon an animal with level equal to your own or something).

Otyugh's cry works on devourers, just try it. I admit, though, that sometimes it's hard to find out what counts as animals, and what doesn't. Spiders do, but trolls and stalkers certainly don't seem to count as animals (seems logical).

Also, Otyugh's cry seems to end when your current target is dead, so it doesn't switch to your next current target, even though it's still in it's 30-second activity period. So, when you're surrounded by a large group of animals/monsters, it usually only helps to kill one of them very quickly.

Problem is cost vs damage output. I'm not complaining about spamability, I'm saying this should ignore armor and at least do more damage than I intend on sacrificing.

My complaint on this is that it's an elite. I know, I know. There are a lot of suckass elites in the game. 5 seconds is crap though.

Never thought of using an ice weapon. Was thinking just ice spells.

A lot of these are intended for the W/N who has little to no need for energy. Run up to a caster, cast spinal, then hack away with your ice weapon to shut them up AND kill them at the same time.

Obviously you have not been on the receiving end of a sacrificial necro using dark pact+dark aura+touch of agony

A blood+death necro buffed with superior runes can deal 100+ damage using either dark pact or touch of agony to a target, and 50+ to any adjacent target at the same time. As long as your monk can keep with with your health sacrifices, your enemy will die very quickly. Especially good against warriors since all of these spells/skills ignore armor.

I believe it does - at 12 blood, 12 death (dark aura can be cast from an external source, say a minionator from your team) you'd spend 5 energy for 41+40 shadow damage, sacrificing 10% (48) +17 health - using superior blood would improve the ratio, but at least the damage output is larger than the cost. If you can deal with the health hits, you end up with a roughly 80 damage spam skill that recharges every 2 seconds, which is at least decently efficient energy-wise.

I imagine with a physical attack-heavy group the amount of health you steal (damage them, heal you) in those five seconds is quite worth the 10 energy spent - at 1 attack per second (rather slow considering swords/axes) four attackers would steal around 260 health. You can be one of them, easily making up for the initial 17% health sacrifice I think - could also combo with Order of Pain for double that damage output if you're in an attacking team setup anyway.

Have you ever tried using Minions and Order of the Vampire together? Calculate 20 bone fiends with OotV on them...how much damage would that be?

It is totally worth it as an elite skill.

Illusionary Haste and Illusionary Weakness are both very useful skills.

With the first, not only do you get a 33% speed boost, the spell is able to be recast before the spell even runs out, allowing the spell to be continually used. Sure, it comes with a Crippled effect, but when you need a speed boost (to run crystals, to avoid aggro, to LOSE aggro), it's a nice touch.

Even more, with a necromancer, the condition can be plague sent. I think that's some lovely icing on the cake.

I've used Illusionary Haste on my Nec/Mes for a number of things, including Aurora Glade and Riverside. it's fun stuff. I'm curious how fast the recast would be on a fast-caster primary mesmer.

Did I mention Illusionary Haste -moves- faster than Sprint, and has a quicker recast?

As for Illusionary Health, you.. cast the enchantment.. and then heal yourself full..

.. voila. You now have an extra +X health.

While I can understand confusion on the first, I figured the latter was a given.

Oh, as for the dark pact/touch of agony+dark aura thing, that's actually where I used Illusionary Health. I'd cast the enchantment, heal up, and then run in.

Was a nice way to keep myself alive a little longer while I ran around stabbing stuff in the face.

It's a -real- nice way to do damage if you have a way of staying alive long enough.

Say...humans are animals, no? Would be pretty funny if Otyguh's cry worked in PvP XD

You can always carry soul feast to regain all the hp you lost from sacrifices. After 5 dark pacts, it's hard to imagine someone will be still alive.

:nods: I used Soul Feast as well.

Just Illusionary Health was to be maintained as an, "Oops, I forgot to use Soul Feast" precaution.

Hi just thought id add my 2 cents


Frenzy is a wonderful skill i have equiped all the time as for building adrenal skills nothing else seems to come close. 33%faster attacks for 8 seconds is damn nice when somthing has to go down quick. As for "Fear me" yea only one person using it dosemt amount to much . . but 4+ people using it destroys mage energy regen and keeps it pinned down.(wasnt there threads posted about this skill being spammed?)

My vote for most worthless skill has got to go to "Mind Wrack" search out the many posts about this slot waster :P

Order of the Vampire works with minions?! SWEET! Do you have confermation on this?

~Firax

Wastrel's Worry is another one I can think of.

I mean sure sometimes you'll get lucky... but how much can you rely on luck?

Edit: Though I wonder... would a Wastrel's Worry -> Shatter Delusions work?

Really? I don't find it to be all that useless, although it is admittedly very conditional.. but for mesmers, causing those conditions to occur is the name of the game

+
So in PvE, what I do is cast Spirit Shackles on enemy rangers, count a second or two to let the energy de-gen set in, then hit them with Mind Wrack. They're plenty dumb enough to tear themselves apart this way


At the moment, Ortyugh's gets my vote for most useless skill, but I'm intrigued now by the possibility that it works on more than just the 'charmable' kinds of animals.. I'll have to do some experimenting with it when I get home later, although I just can't see it ever being more than a 'novelty' skill at best...

I don't know about Mind Wrack being useless. It regularly burns me when I'm killing mergoyles. Mind Wrack + Spirit Shackles = each attack costs me 5 energy and when I run out I hurt. Of course, I've also found a solution to killing the mergoyles without feeling the burn. Poison them and then dodge their attacks. Reapply as necessary

Otyugh's Cry is very useful in the following quite common situation in PvE: You have a high-level boss surrounded by a large number of lower-level animals (devourers, spiders, etc.). Use Otyugh's Cry when targeting the boss, and all these animals will attack the boss, and the boss will be killed very quickly.

Counter to expectations, Otyugh's Cry does not affect the non-aggresive, charmable animals that roam most zones. It only affects the aggessive monsters that ANet has classified as "animals".

Because Otyugh's Cry doesn't work on pets of opposing rangers, I don't see a use for it in PvP. Though having it affect other rangers' pets would be fun, and fit in with GW's paradigm that there must be a counter against everything, and currently there are no specific counters against pets (although requiring an extra skill for pets, blocking your skill bar, can be seen as a "counter" against pets).

How to lose 10 energy:

Divine Spirit (Enchantment Spell) For 1..9 seconds, Monk spells cost you 5 less Energy to cast. (Minimum cost: 1 Energy.) 10 Energy/.25 sec cast/60 sec recharge

Considering after-cast and spell-cast times, you're lucky to break even and this is at level 12. It is utter trash at anything less and yet it is one of the first Divine Favor skills you get. I pity the person that equips this with a DF less than 12. Then look at the recharge - 60 seconds....I guess that's there so you have a full minute to dwell on the idiocy of this skill. They need to make it elite so that even the not so bright among us won't even use it.

It's just sad because this used to be the best monk skill in the game. Now it's the worst. If I was Divine Spirit, I'd want the icon changed so that people would remember my former glory.

yea i was aware of that combo, but as a w/r it never seemed to do much . . but how you apply it to ranger primaries . . . .now it just sounds evil

*runs to draknars forge arena's*

Yes, it does.

But now people are telling me that it works on non-charmable "animals" apparently. This I did not know.

i think in PvP the pet is it's own counter, anytime i have a pet attacking me, ill poison + dismember + axe twist + executioners strike / power attack / "thrill of victory" . .(whatever of those three i have on) 9 times out of 10 thats 8 seconds with no skills (skill bar blacks out) for Mr. Ranger followed by a sprint + frenzy and thats it for Mr. Ranger . . its only really good if the ranger is right close by though

Wastrel's Worry will only work if the opponent doesn't use any skills. It's great for elementalists and monks, as they have near to none skills. The 5 energy cost helps a lot too.
Just uh, if Wastrel's Worry is "Shattered", you won't have the Wastrel's Worry damage added to your Shatter Delusion's.

Mind Wrack is a good hex btw. You can fill your skill bar with energy drains (mesmers have at least 3) and add spirit shackles.

Yeah, Mind Wrack works great with Spirit Shackles. The Gargoyles near Kryta use it a lot and it really gets annoying >_>

My pick would have to be those stupid mesmer mantras, with the exception of recovery. They change all damage to certain elements (or something like that :P)...way too specialized for my tastes.

Ohh.. but I do like Mantra of Concentration. Makes Healing Spring very workable in heavy combat

I can't believe I forgot about this one, I think I mentally blocked out its existence after trying it out. I can't think of a skill more useless than that one.

I don't think those Mantra's are really that useless. Think about this.. R/Me: Mantra of Frost, Winter, Greater Conflagration. ALL damage becomes cold damage and you are abosrbing X% cold damage and gaining energy every time you get hit. You see a problem with that?

There aren't any useless mesmer skills, most of them just require some creativity and a specific build to work. Sometimes a little trivial, but definitely not useless.

Yes, that you've spent three slots including your elite for defense like what you could get from simply using a skill that gives you more protection like Armor of Earth and far less energy than you'd gain from something like Channeling (I've used the Mantras and the energy gain they give you is pitiful. It's one energy a hit so you need to get hit by the correct elemental damage at least once a second to even double a Ranger's regeneration and the protection against that elemental damage isn't very much unless you have something else to protect you too. Unless you plan on getting hit a lot of times for a little damage then yyou're pretty much planning to get killed before you can gleen any effective energy gain). And, for it to be effective for your team, everyone's going to need to be a Mesmer of some sort for Mantra of Frost because you can't guarantee that you're the foe that the enemy is going to target. Plans that require your enemy to play along usually aren't going to work very well, after all.

That said, if you could get everything to focus on your taking Ran/Mes with your setup and if they had solid support from a healer, then you would have a lot of energy and not a lot of damage even though you'd only have five slots to do anything with that. There are no "useless" skills now that JokeSig is out of the game. Each and every skill can be put to some use in some combination in some situation that makes it worthwhile. It's just a matter of finding those uses, combinations, and situations where that particular skill is more optimal than anything else. Not all skills are equal and not everything is perfectly balanced - meaning there's broken things to run that don't require a lot of skill - but for any given skill there's some way of taking advantage of it. The challenge is finding it.

Really? I was under the impression that spells were considered "skills" in Wastrel's Worry's case. I was also under the impression that ending the hex any other way but through using a skill would do the damage - but I see the hex needs to go the full three seconds first.

Well, that's good to know.

theres no useless spell apart from the developers joke.

Any damage done by Wastrels Worry is a bonus, but that's not what the spell is for.

A Mesmer's most potent offense is his hexes, so the thing he has to be most careful of is hex removal. Casting Wastrels Worry on top of a cast hex protects the important hex from removal. As Worry is spammable, if it is removed, chances are you can put it back on faster than the real hex can be removed. Cast Backfire + Spirit Shackles, then drop Wastrels Worry on top, and your target can't do anything without taking a hit.

I use wastrels on those running targets.

Mr. Warrior starts running, he sure isn't gonna be using any skills while trying to save his arse.

So run after him with wastrels, cast it a few times, and he's dead.


Sure you can poison him and leave it but if he's a W/Mo too then you got a problem.

Sausaletus: The guild I'm in is currently working on team builds, so this is just something I came up with and thought I'd mention. As for Armor of Earth reducing the damage more, are you really sure? 46% Reduction from max inspiration on Mantra of Frost, 115 Armor against Cold from the Ranger Fur-Lined armor, and if you REALLY felt like it you could throw in that Elemental resistance stance, dont remember what it's called right now. Now I do highly doubt that Armor of Earth is going to reduce damage more than that. My post was never meant to say "this build is godly and can't be beaten", it's just something I'm working with and thought I'd mention it since someone decided to say that Mesmer mantras are useless.

I'm not so sure. With the quick casting time of some of the monk 5 energy skills, I can rattle off a lot of heals for 4 less energy each, atleast 3 within that 10 seconds to save me 2 energy. Most of the time I can save more than that. Also, if you do some quick heals then start a longer casting spell right at the end, you still get the energy bonus, which could be nice on skills such as Healing Seed. Granted, its long recharge time makes it less useful, I wouldn't call it completely useless. I have used it once or twice in a pinch when energy is getting low to fire off some massive healing.