My Mesmer/Necro
Crushyg
ok, this isnt a build persay, rather I would like some advice. First of all, my character right now is lvl 11 at yaks bend. What I would like advice on is what I could do with the character... Ive done the curse, and domination thing with soul barbs, it works, but maybe theres some better spells to use for it, or maybe there a better setup all together other than curses. If somebody could suggest something I could play with for where im at now, AND one to work towards in the end, that would be awsome to give me something to work with.
Silmor
Curses/Domination is a pretty solid setup throughout PvE, but requires good teammates to support you, since although you can weaken and/or frustrate opponents, they're not dying simply from that. Enfeeble and Shadow of Fear or Faintheartedness shouldn't leave your bar much - put these on the opponent warriors and rangers and your team has a lot less to worry about. In groups without a healer, Parasitic Bond is a solid way to heal up any stray incoming damage. The nice part about these is they require little investment in Curses to be effective..
If you're pumping Curses a lot, Soul Barbs can be nice in combination with a second hexer to take out priority targets such as monks, but it's pretty much overkill considering most targets in PvE drop very fast when you're simply focus firing already. Mark of Pain can be nice in a coordinated team that lacks standard nukers: you group enemies up, put Mark of Pain on one of them and instruct your physical damage dealers (warriors, rangers) to target that enemy specifically, and everything around the target will typically drop a lot faster than the target itself. Ofcourse the required coordination for this to work is lost on most groups.
In Domination, Diversion is one of the most delightful skills to take along. Whether it's an annoying elementalist you want to stop, or a monk who keeps spamming orison of healing, Diversion will provide you with exactly that. Chaos Storm works nicely if you want to be a replacement nuker to add a little area damage to your team, but typically doesn't really cut it unless used in caster-heavy areas (the energy draining aspect of the skill makes it attractive against casters). Empathy is decent, but doesn't work well if you're using Faintheartedness or Shadow of Fear to slow warriors/rangers down. Power Spike, Power Leak and Cry of Frustration are decent as interrupts, the latter able to stop skills as well as spells at a higher cost and longer recharge - sometimes you just need to stop that enemy from casting a certain spell, and more often than not you'll be the only person in the group with the tool for the job.
Shatter Hex is a nice way to deal damage - it has a decently fast recharge, and does impressive armour-ignoring damage, ofcourse it's conditional in the sense that it's gathering dust if nobody is hexing your team. Shame and Guilt are decent skills against support casters and offensive casters respectively, especially nice if you find you have trouble timing interrupts, or want to interrupt a near-instant cast spell. Shatter Enchantment can become important in the last part of the game, where an enchantment like Mark of Protection, Aura of Faith, Dark Aura or Illusionary Weaponry can really hurt your team; earlier on you can always just brute-force your way through enchantments. Backfire has the potential to take out casters quite quickly, but some monsters know better than to cast through it, have a low casting frequency making this less useful, and usually whichever target you're focusing goes down too fast for Backfire to be too useful anyway. Finally Wastrel's Worry can be nice for some armour-ignoring damage, since monsters won't bother to try and use skills to stop its effect, and with the low casting frequency of some you won't have trouble getting this to work.
Early on though (up to about Sanctum Cay), a death magic specialized minionator can rip through most of PvE just by overwhelming anything with bone horrors. At 16 death magic, level 17 bone horrors will make quick work of most of the monsters while providing you with emergency health through Taste of Death, and energy through Soul Reaping whenever they die. Lateron you can extend your repertoire with Death Nova to make walking bombs out of them, and if you want you can use a Signet of Capture to get Animate Bone Fiends from the necro boss Lord Timot in the Reversing the Skales quest (Scoundrel's Rise), and Verata's Sacrifice from Verata (Kessex Peak, only there when nobody in your party is doing the Galrath's Villainy quest). You can use Deathly Swarm at first to get some corpses going, but it's usually pretty smooth sailing from there. The negative aspect of this setup is that it's pretty boring - all you're doing is raising minions and moving them close to the next group of enemies, which pretty much eliminates any strategic elements from the game.
Blood Magic can be nice to support your team - don't take things like Life Siphon and Vampiric Gaze and think you're helping out your team by keeping yourself alive, instead use Well of Blood to provide healing to others (a decent method of party healing in case your group is lacking a monk), or use Blood Ritual to provide casters with more energy (and the superior Blood is Power lateron).
Illusion Magic stops being effective pretty much early on because most of what it offers is skills that cause single target health degen, and if you want pure single target damage output you have more efficient ways of getting that (or you can just leave it to classes specialized in it while you fulfill your own role). Sympathetic Visage can be nice to decrease the incoming damage from warriors, but as such a specialized skill usually isn't worth taking along. Arcane Conundrum will help you time your interrupts more easily on a single target, but as far as PvE is concerned you can get the same result from some practice, and most targets fold from focused fire anyway, so it's not that essential. Illusion of Weakness is nice as backup health, but then again, you shouldn't be too concerned with your own health.
Finally Inspiration Magic has a few nice stances providing you with protection against physical or elemental damage and offers some nice options to refuel your energy, but with some soul reaping energy shouldn't be much of a problem anyway.
And never forget that Soul Reaping is pretty much the best primary attribute in all of PvE since so damn many things die around you; never leave home without at least some investment in it.
If you're pumping Curses a lot, Soul Barbs can be nice in combination with a second hexer to take out priority targets such as monks, but it's pretty much overkill considering most targets in PvE drop very fast when you're simply focus firing already. Mark of Pain can be nice in a coordinated team that lacks standard nukers: you group enemies up, put Mark of Pain on one of them and instruct your physical damage dealers (warriors, rangers) to target that enemy specifically, and everything around the target will typically drop a lot faster than the target itself. Ofcourse the required coordination for this to work is lost on most groups.
In Domination, Diversion is one of the most delightful skills to take along. Whether it's an annoying elementalist you want to stop, or a monk who keeps spamming orison of healing, Diversion will provide you with exactly that. Chaos Storm works nicely if you want to be a replacement nuker to add a little area damage to your team, but typically doesn't really cut it unless used in caster-heavy areas (the energy draining aspect of the skill makes it attractive against casters). Empathy is decent, but doesn't work well if you're using Faintheartedness or Shadow of Fear to slow warriors/rangers down. Power Spike, Power Leak and Cry of Frustration are decent as interrupts, the latter able to stop skills as well as spells at a higher cost and longer recharge - sometimes you just need to stop that enemy from casting a certain spell, and more often than not you'll be the only person in the group with the tool for the job.
Shatter Hex is a nice way to deal damage - it has a decently fast recharge, and does impressive armour-ignoring damage, ofcourse it's conditional in the sense that it's gathering dust if nobody is hexing your team. Shame and Guilt are decent skills against support casters and offensive casters respectively, especially nice if you find you have trouble timing interrupts, or want to interrupt a near-instant cast spell. Shatter Enchantment can become important in the last part of the game, where an enchantment like Mark of Protection, Aura of Faith, Dark Aura or Illusionary Weaponry can really hurt your team; earlier on you can always just brute-force your way through enchantments. Backfire has the potential to take out casters quite quickly, but some monsters know better than to cast through it, have a low casting frequency making this less useful, and usually whichever target you're focusing goes down too fast for Backfire to be too useful anyway. Finally Wastrel's Worry can be nice for some armour-ignoring damage, since monsters won't bother to try and use skills to stop its effect, and with the low casting frequency of some you won't have trouble getting this to work.
Early on though (up to about Sanctum Cay), a death magic specialized minionator can rip through most of PvE just by overwhelming anything with bone horrors. At 16 death magic, level 17 bone horrors will make quick work of most of the monsters while providing you with emergency health through Taste of Death, and energy through Soul Reaping whenever they die. Lateron you can extend your repertoire with Death Nova to make walking bombs out of them, and if you want you can use a Signet of Capture to get Animate Bone Fiends from the necro boss Lord Timot in the Reversing the Skales quest (Scoundrel's Rise), and Verata's Sacrifice from Verata (Kessex Peak, only there when nobody in your party is doing the Galrath's Villainy quest). You can use Deathly Swarm at first to get some corpses going, but it's usually pretty smooth sailing from there. The negative aspect of this setup is that it's pretty boring - all you're doing is raising minions and moving them close to the next group of enemies, which pretty much eliminates any strategic elements from the game.
Blood Magic can be nice to support your team - don't take things like Life Siphon and Vampiric Gaze and think you're helping out your team by keeping yourself alive, instead use Well of Blood to provide healing to others (a decent method of party healing in case your group is lacking a monk), or use Blood Ritual to provide casters with more energy (and the superior Blood is Power lateron).
Illusion Magic stops being effective pretty much early on because most of what it offers is skills that cause single target health degen, and if you want pure single target damage output you have more efficient ways of getting that (or you can just leave it to classes specialized in it while you fulfill your own role). Sympathetic Visage can be nice to decrease the incoming damage from warriors, but as such a specialized skill usually isn't worth taking along. Arcane Conundrum will help you time your interrupts more easily on a single target, but as far as PvE is concerned you can get the same result from some practice, and most targets fold from focused fire anyway, so it's not that essential. Illusion of Weakness is nice as backup health, but then again, you shouldn't be too concerned with your own health.
Finally Inspiration Magic has a few nice stances providing you with protection against physical or elemental damage and offers some nice options to refuel your energy, but with some soul reaping energy shouldn't be much of a problem anyway.
And never forget that Soul Reaping is pretty much the best primary attribute in all of PvE since so damn many things die around you; never leave home without at least some investment in it.
Crushyg
well thanks for all of that , but your last note there, Im a mesmer primary so no soul reaping, just fast casting.
, but your last note there, Im a mesmer primary so no soul reaping, just fast casting.
Silmor
Err... my mistake, that's what I get typing before morning coffee. Forget about the Death Magic minionator setup then, sticking with a mix of domination/inspiration/curses will most likely help you through PvE. Just be prepared that most groups you travel with won't acknowledge your contribution to the team simply because they're unaware that you're the reason why things went so smoothly.
And I wouldn't recommend aiming for one specific build to go for - just get familiar with your skills so you can select your tools depending on which challenge you face.
And I wouldn't recommend aiming for one specific build to go for - just get familiar with your skills so you can select your tools depending on which challenge you face.