Merry Xmas Bomb

Just nitpicking, but he's not suggesting use of meteor shower or firestorm. Sure there are numerous issues with fire in PvP.

Its interesting that he's including the use of shock to start this off. Almost makes sense to use this build as a trap of sorts. When the enemy comes up to you thinking they can take out a soft mage, you might be able to rip out Shock and a few more spells to cause some extensive damage.

So DarkAynjil, take a sec to read his post and understand it before deciding to drop your own flame onto it.

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If you can control movement speed well, as most good guilds can, Meteor Shower can be very useful.

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Fire does certainly not suck for pvp. As far as the ability to deal damage goes, it's at the top of the heap.


For reference: my Tombs build is Fireball, Meteor, Phoenix, Flame Burst, Armor of Earth (or a ward), Fire Attunement, Elemental Attunement, Res Signet.


Fire's main asset is that nearly all of the spells do splash damage. This won't help you spike a single target out, but every point of damage you deal is a point that the enemy monks have to heal. If smiting teams have taught us anything, it's that AoE damage is worthwhile.

Compare Fireball to Lightning Orb. Lightning Orb does 137 damage to a single Armor Level 60 (reduced to 45) target at Air Magic 16, costing 15 energy.


Fireball does 119 damage to the same target, costing 10 energy, with the possibility of doing splash. As you can see, you don't have to hit that many targets with Fireball splash to out-damage an Orb-slinger -- for 2/3 the energy.


Lightning has many other skills that are conceptually similar to Lightning Orb: Lightning Strike, Lightning Javelin, etc. Fire, on the other hand, has different sorts of damage spells, allowing you to pick the best one for a circumstance.

Meteor is amazing: for five energy you get a fireball that doesn't require line of sight and knocks down. The uses for a targeted, practically undodgeable AoE knockdown that also happens to do 119 damage should be obvious. The only drawback, of course, is the cooldown. If youi don't use other exhaustion spells, the exhaustion from this spell will recharge just as soon as the spell does, giving you no cumulative exhaustion.

Phoenix has three uses. Sometimes you'll have warriors in your face who need to be chased off: feeding them a point-blank phoenix followed by a flameburst (with a fireball coming 2 seconds later) usually gives them the message. I tend to run Armor of Earth, so I can tank a warrior for a bit while I convince him to go away. It's also a good substitute for Fireball when FB is recharging; you'd be surprised how many times people wander into the secondary (point-blank) blast and you get free damage on a passing enemy. Finally, many characters (E/Mo smiters are the worst) like to stand still. You can walk up to them, or groups of them, and cast Phoenix: you'll do good damage anyway, but if they don't see what you're doing and leave (abandoning whatever they were casting), you'll do over 200 points to them.

Another Phoenix trick is to meteor a monk near you, and then walk up to him and start casting phoenix as he goes down. Monks' normal reaction, when hit by spell damage, is to heal themselves. The monk will usually oblige you by standing up and healing himself, only to eat a 210-point phoenix followed by a 120-point flameburst -- making them go into monk panic mode.


You won't always get the full benefit of Phoenix, but the spell is good enough anyway, and you get double-hits often enough, to make it worthwhile.


Flameburst is another nice little spell. I usually cast it in between Fireball/Phoenix/Meteor shots if there's a target and if I have Elemental Attunement up, letting me get quick damage before I cast my next long-range spell. The area of effect is bigger than you might think; this spell absolutely shines on altar maps or in tight quarters. It's also a good followup to Fireball or Meteor (or, even worse, Phoenix) against close targets: with two spells resolving a second apart you can strip off half of a caster's life.


Meteor Shower has its moments, against tightly-packed groups, on altars, or in combination with other snares, but it's admittedly rather situational. I may start running it more often against the fad IWAY groups, though, with their clumped-up melee characters. (Usually you want to blast them with Shower after the pets die, to force them to waste their IWAY while you take free fireball/flameburst hits as they scatter. These guys do lots of melee damage, but with phoenix, flameburst, and meteor you can convince them to back off.)


Immolate makes a good quick-cast substitute for Flameburst if you want to focus more on whomping single targets and less on spraying damage all over the enemy team.

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Fire may be less attractive in Arenas, but in 8v8 pvp there are enough people running around at random that you'll get plenty of splash damage. Splash damage is hard on monks: they've got to wonder if your team is switching targets, split their attention, spread out their protection spells (they can't seed everyone!), and in general work harder. The Damage over Time spells (like Firestorm and Searing Heat) tend to be less than spectacular, but the basic blast spells in the fire line do enough damage to enough targets to be a serious threat.

Ah, the fire noobs vs. the fire pros...

Fire does the MOST damage of any skill set in the game. On non-moving targets...

What's a non-moving target? A Guild Lord...

Why do you think fire sucks? It's because...

YOU SUCK!!!

What's non-moving targets have to do with it?

Fire Storm and its cousins aren't that good for pvp.

now THIS is what you calll a bomb:


that was so funny especially since when we put it down we didnt realy want that to happen, we were ahead. lolz. (oh em gee my skill bar!!11)

why did it come out so small and crappy. lol. wtf. oh well if you look closely you see all the teams dropping. im never using photobucket again.

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Well, yeah. Allowing any character to use 18 seconds and 80 energy to do whatever they want, with no healers, will generally hurt.

Fire certainly shouldn't be ignored -- see my big post up there talking about why fire is the strongest direct-attack element.

I think, however, you overestimate the effectiveness of targeting Guild Lords while other targets are still around. If you're able to -- using firestorm or any other method -- kill a Guild Lord while the other team is present and fighting you, then chances are you have enough of an advantage over them that you could have just killed their team, and then killed the lord at your leisure. But dealing with a Guild Lord and his retinue at the same time as you fight a competent team is very difficult.

On the flipside, if there are no defenders, you should be able to take down the Lord with whatever method you used to kill their team. Granted firestorm and meteor shower are reasonably efficient means of dealing with an undefended Lord, but firestorm isn't that much more efficient than other skills -- skills that are also effective against mobile targets.

Meteor Shower is a special case, since it is both more damaging than firestorm and does knockdowns. With good snaring, you can keep your victims in the shower. Still, its use is situational at best: usually I'd rather have a sharper knife, so to speak.

When I said "firestorm and its cousins", I was referring to Firestorm, Searing Heat, and Eruption, and to a lesser degree Meteor Shower and Maelstrom. Fire as an element is brutal, but firestorm really just isn't that good.

Merry Christmas. U have received some spam

straight glyphs + meteor shower ftw. steal the monks glyph of energy and it gets even better. you can unload like 3 meteor showers without getting exhausted/using energy/in like 3 seconds with that. it owns altar maps.

water ele>fire spike

My only question regarding the Me/E from the OP is energy management...It doesn't seem to work on paper, so to speak.

i used a fire me/e for a long time in CA, but i did much better with a fast cast lit me/e
arcane echo lit orb and let the goodtimes roll

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you want to own with a fast cast fire mesmer? heres my perfected build

Meteor
Meteor Shower
Rodgort's Invocation
Fireball
Phoenix
Fire Attunement
Elemental Attunement
Res Sig (Or if your a selfish bastard, mantra of resolve/concentration)
12 Fire, 16 Fast cast::

Cast Meteor Shower on a currently still target, then immediatly cast regular Meteor,(unavoidable because of a fast cast on meteor) 2 Meteors will hit doing 182 damage, follow it up with a Fireball (273 net damage) and rodgort's (pure damage: 364 + 42 dps from catching on fire= 406 net damage) that is nearly unavoidable. follow it up with another fireball or the next thing that recharges for 497 damage which is more than most player's life. All damage is AoE so it can have even a bigger impact on a team. Phoenix can also be used to deal good damage while upclose or serve as another fireball; or it will enable you to spike attacking warriors and kill them before they kill you. [use meteor shower>meteor> phoenix>fireball>rodgort's in that order for attacking warriors or upclose foes, because you want to get phoenix off to get the extra damage for being close]