Mesmer Needs Better Starting Skills

Maybe it's just me, but I feel that the Mesmer lacks in starting skills both quantity and quality. Any others agree?

We start out with a spell that makes your enemy take damage when they attack, and a spell that takes away energy from your enemy and gives you a good amount of HP. Those are pretty useful spells.

Going to disagree. I thought the starting spells at first seemed kinda crappy, but once I figured out how to use them they felt pretty good.

One of the first things I do with any character, regardless of what primary and secondary professions I plan on being, is go talk to Lady Althea and get the Mesmer starting skills, then just decline the offer to pick Mesmer as my secondary profession. Why? Two reasons. One, it gets both a quest and at a follow up (getting an egg for Old Mack), but the other is, Mesmer's have two of the very best starting skills, Conjure Phantasm and Ether Feast. Ether Feast is probably the best self-healing spell in the game outside of being a Monk, and Conjure Phantasm is just godly at lower levels (alas, it doesn't remain so at higher levels).

It is true that the quantity of starting skills for a Mesmer in KoA is smaller than some other classes. But I've always assumed it's to make up for the fact that it has the best quality starting skills in the game.

However, they label Mesmer as an "advanced" class. I wish that there was a trainer with a few Inspiration counters so you could show them what a Mesmer normally does, not just stacking effects.

Yeah, from what I've read, mesmers hands down get the best starting attack skill in the game (conjure phantasm) and the self-heal they get is pretty nice too.

course, that's just quality. I don't really know about quantity.

Not sure if you mean they need better skills available from the first trainer in Pre-Searing, or better skills in Pre-Searing period. Either way . . . they have plenty of good ones. Conjure Phantasm alone makes it worth picking up mesmer as a temporary secondary while doing Pre-Searing quests.

Quote: Originally Posted by Slade xTekno

Mesmers are awesome in PvE. The trick is that you need to know how to exploit the AI. Monsters are dumb enough to cast through Backfire and attack through Empathy. That alone makes Mesmer damage output incredibly high.

Hmm, I guess I need to try to use empathy again. Haven't used it much since it does not seem to do much damage before. Personally I prefer chaos storm rather than backfire in PvE because most of the time you can drop caster mobs pretty easily so it seems like a waste to use backfire on them.

Yeah, but when there is a mob around one of your warriors, and a caster at the back, the thing is cast the chaos storm on the mob and backfire the caster at the back. At certain areas of the game you can single handedly shutdown a caster and even kill him.

What, you don't like Shatter Delusions?

Conjure Phantasm is excellent at low levels, when monsters have few hitpoints and get ravaged by the DoT. Backfire is rather lacking early on when no one casts spells, but it does get better later on, particularly when it comes to smashing Monk bosses.

The rest are mediocre to poor, sure, but they're starter skills. Every class has some awful stuff.

Ok, not Shatter Delusions awful, but you get the point.

Peace,
-CxE

Empathy.

Disagree.

Quote: Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

Sorry to bump an almost month old topic but can some one tell me if you can learn empathy pre-searing with mesmer as secondary class please. I've seen it listed as one of two skills as a reward but I only got the other skill.

Thnx in advance

Not anymore. The AI is smarter than it was in beta and they will usually *only* cast through backfire if they can make up for it (taste of death, etc.) or only what's necessary. Rarely will you see high level mobs nuke themselves to death. You're usually better off using interrupts at that point (power spike/power block/cry of frustration/shame/guilt).

Ive been using backfire on casters since the start of the game and im now post ascension and going through southern shiverpeaks. I havent met any creeps who havent cast blindly through backfire.... maybe your talking about a slightly more advanced level.

The casting creatures in the desert such as hydras and them advanced windryders don't know their names.
They are still heavily affected by backfire, they just keep on casting

Interesting; not that far yet (the wilds) but I noticed that most casters stop casting with a backfire on them; you sometimes get to hit them with it once but it really is lacking now. Opening with an energy burn however and immediately power leaking their first spell seems to shut them up pretty well, some of them try for a second spell after that which you can then power spike and you've essentially stopped the caster. I actually don't even carry backfire anymore, opting for a 3rd interrupt instead (Leech Signet, though it isn't great, at least I can stop a skill with it).

Most of the monsters with monk abilities will cast under Backfire to heal there allies. I've also experienced monsters in the late game casting loads of spells while hexed with Backfire. Backfire continues to be useful for me in PvE.