Mesmers and Bosses

I've noticed throughout the game that any hexes I toss on a boss last exactly half the time it says it should on the skill. I recently helped a guldmate through Moladune because they wanted to get some new boots infused. Shortly into the mission, you fight Slonak Copperbark, a dwarven warrior boss. I tossed Empathy on him which should last for 20 seconds. It lasted 10 seconds. I know because Empathy has a 10 second recharge and the little down arror saying there's a hex there disappeared a split second before Empathy came back.

I also noticed that the effectiveness of skills that disable bosses skills are also halved. For example, I Power Block Coventina The Matron, the mursaat monk boss in the Ring of Fire mission. Any healing prayers skills should now be disabled for 16 seconds. They come back at exactly 8 seconds. I even timed it. Backfire lasted a paltry 5 seconds.

So to my fellow mesmers, have you noticed this? Do you think it's a bug and, if not and it is intentional, is it fair?

Hex durations on bosses are halved, no matter what class you are.

Interesting. Any idea what the reasoning is behind that?

They're bosses. They got it like that, is all.

Bosses have substantially higher AL than normal critters, which makes them tougher against DD. Halving the duration on hexes is there to keep the bosses hard no matter what your party composition is.

If that was the reasoning for it they failed. Energy burn/surge, chaos storm, cry of frustation, power spike, along with a few necro spells like grenths are crazy overpowered against bosses, enough to make the fight completely trivial.

They should have went the route of really high hp instead of really high armor lvl and hex resistance.

Do they also have totally unlimited energy? I was in a group fighting the Mursaat monk boss in Ring of Fire (forget his name) and he stayed alive For-EVAR by healing himself over, and over, and over, and well... you get the picture. Our group was down to 6 by then because of people who had capped and dropped. It took us literally 10 minutes of constant combat to kill him. His heals simply never stopped. Our casters would have to stop for a while and regenerate... he never did. He was almost always casting something all the time. Really lame if you ask me. :/

Morganas, I'm going to agree with you but I'm highly biased. I'm of the mindset that hexes should last 75% - 100% of the stated time on the skill, if only because it might encourage the average PUG out there to perhaps grab a mesmer and/or necro instead of that 3rd or 4th monk. I can see where the devs are coming from with balance issues but it really does relegate primary mesmers to a PVP position.

Aracos, the monk boss you're referring to is the same as the one I spoke about. Killed it with myself as Me, two E's, and Mehnlo and Lina. Came down to coordinating meteor showers, a chaos storm, and power blocking orison. My gosh did that battle last a long time though. Might've been shorter but you've got all those other enemies before hand to worry about.

Mesmers have the same problem rangers do for PUGs... despite being extremely powerful, we're never wanted.

Rangers have taken to simply grouping with one another, mesmers could easily do the same, it's just there aren't enough of us.

However, I'm certain of the fact that nothing needs to be done to buff our pve abilities, except one thing: Give us flashy graphics to let the other players know we're doing something.

I can't say that. My mesmer is a lvl19 by now and I never had any significant problems getting or staying on a team to do missions or quests.

Yesterday I had 2 mesmers on a team.
On another mission, already 6 or 6 in the team there was a call for kicking one member and replacing it with an additional warrior, and I thought: Ok, the mesmer (me) will be lucky and get kicked. I wasn't.

I think people are beginning to realize that any class can pay tribbute to a sucessful mission.
A lot of times when we had enough monks, but wanted an additional henchmen, I always suggest Claude, and I get the usual "Who? What the heck is he good for?"
But in the end people agree, that Claude is a good choice.

I have no clue as to why I never had mesmer-trouble with teams. Maybe it's her name, or her gorgious looks in that purple enchanter's attire with green enchanter's stockings or the slightly redish hair, or the combination of it all.
I will find out because I bought new armor in Amoon and dyed it yellow/orange.
It looks less slotty now.

I do know that I will save those 2 vials of black dye for my drognar armor.

Female mesmers are much nicer to look at than their pot-bellied male counterparts.

I actually used my mesmer as a fire nuker throughout most of the game, and had no trouble there, and went to domination to get through the desert missions (ran those with henchmen, and found that I needed dom for some bosses). I pretty much henched the rest of the game after that.

Unfortunately, now that I'm trying to get in on FoW and UW runs, I'm having trouble getting into groups, and it seems everyone has some sorta ideal team, and mesmers aren't in it. I'm probably gonna have to go back to being a "nuker" to get invited on them.

Sad but true. I liked my courtly attire until I took a good look at it. :\

Ashley, I think things may be different on the Euro server, judging by your location. I have never been invited to a PUG except in the sole occasion a Mo joined my Me/Mo in Thirsty River to cap Word of Healing. Thank goodness she said she'd leave if they kicked me. I was very grateful for that.

As such, I'm pretty much relegated to doing things on my own on Me unless the two people in my very small guild are at the same point in the game I am and want to play. On the plus side, I think having to do so much with henchmen has made me a better player but I do wish there was some incentive for me to be in a group every now and then.

And what was the composition of your group?? You know that in every last missions, you're going to go up against a monk boss at some point, so just bring 1 or 2 mesmers with spellcasters interrupts and it's a piece of cake. In a funny way, people complain about this but I've never seen a group shouting "looking for 2 interrupt mesmers", it's always "warriors or monks" ;P

And then there's these groups entering Fissure without any mesmers,, and then you see them reappearing 5 min later. "What happened man?" ""/$"/%? we got 3 monks, it was impossible! $%&%/?" I think Anet should really consider putting more often these 3 monks monster mobs in different areas, then people would 'really' start shouting 'Need Mesmers' :P

Well, I have no experience with my lvl19 mesmer yet, in the ascension missions, but I do hope that people still invite me.

I don't want to encourage any flames, but may (just a itsy bitsy tiny little bit ), europeans are more openminded when it comes to giving minorities a chance.

Just yesterday I had a team that wanted a monk. Some gal whispered me, saying she wanted to be on the team. I asked: Can you heal? Reply: Yes. She was a W/MO.
Everyone on the team had a bad feeling, esp. when, 20 minutes in the mission (the one where you get the scepter from Dinas) the W/MO16 said something like "My energy is 11 out of 11"
And even though she dropped out before we could finish, saying something about dinner being ready, we completed the mission WITH the bonus.

So, what people might need to learn is, that despite the team on 1st sight looks like it's not going to survive a single Hill Giant it's mainly the teamwork and the teamspirit that makes a team good.

And I don't have a problem having people on my team whose lvl is obviously a tad too low for a certain mission.

The power of monks. Everybody wants them, so they can pretty much lay out the terms.

Bummer. Maybe you can switch to eurpoe to see if you have more luck there getting invited.

Like I posted on another thread: I, speaking no french, got welcome on a french team with my mesmer, and we kicked butts.
Maybe it's really the enchanter's attire that's turning men's heads.
Maybe they think: To hell if we loose, at least we die in the company of a beautiful mesmer.

Hey Ashley, or any mesmer around. If you're looking for PvE adventuring, I'm not on a euro server, but I'm always up for exploring/helping folks out and considering that I'm a Mo/Me, I do have an inkling of what Me's are capable of and would certainly never turn one away on my team. So if you see me online or want to throw me on your friends list, I'm usually around as Ashryn Spiritwill.

Peace out

Claude shows me much love with his Blood Ritualing. I usually take him over Reyna or the enchanter, whatever his name is.