wa/me build help

Class: Warrior / Mesmer

Assumed items:
+1 to Swordsmanship

Attributes: (cost)
Strength: 3 (6)
Swordsmanship: 11+1 (77)
Tactics: 8 (37)
Domination Magic: 11 (77)

Total attribute points used: 197/200


Skills:
1) Sever Artery (availability) - (4a,0,0) If this attack hits, the opponent will begin bleeding for 21 seconds, losing health over time.
2) Savage Slash (availability) - (5,0,10) If this attack hits, it interrupts target foe's action. If that action was a spell, you deal 32 extra damage.
3) Galrath Slash (availability) - (8a,0,0) This attack strikes for +32 damage if it hits.
4) Gladiator's Defense (availability) (elite) - (10,0,30) For 8 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block incoming attacks. Whenever you block a melee attack this way, the attacker suffers 21 damage. This is an elite skill.
5) Empathy (availability) - (10,2,20) For 17 seconds, whenever target foe attacks, that foe takes 23 damage.
6) Shatter Delusions (availability) - (5,1,20) Remove all Mesmer hexes from target foe. For each hex removed, that enemy takes 32 damage.
7) Energy Burn (availability) - (10,2,20) Target foe loses 9 energy and takes 8 damage for each point of energy lost.
8) Mind Wrack (availability) - (5,1,5) For 20 seconds, if target foe's energy is zero, that foe takes 88 damage and Mind Wrack ends.

i designed this build to be a warrior killer. i start off by casting empathy on the warrior before approaching and when we begin fighting, i use gladiators defense. this way not only will he be dealing damage with each strike, but if he misses, he'll suffer more damage. when empathy is about to end, i'll cast shatter delusions for an extra 32 damage.

during the fight, i'll use sever artery to increase the damage output. if they try to cast something, i'll interrupt with savage slash. finally, when i get enough adrenaline, i'll use galrath slash.

im having trouble deciding what the last two skills should be. what i was planning to do was cast mind wrack and then use energy burn to do a lot of damage since warriors dont have too much mana. but the casting costs for the skills are too much for a warrior.

i was thinking of adding rush or sprint to chase someone down when they run. also, i could add endure pain or healing signet since it looks like i'll have problems with healing. if the damage output isnt enough, i could probably add gash instead. the thought of draining a warriors energy sounds nice since wa/mo wont have the energy to heal themselves.

originally i was thinking of adding as many low cost and fast hexes as possible and using the spell, shatter delusions to deal a lot of damage. then i realized that a warrior wouldnt have the mana to pull something like that off.

This is my first time working with mesmer skills so please tell me what needs improving.

Well, this is a very unusual build, so it is hard to give suggestions because I'm not sure what you absolutely "must" have on this character and what you are willing to change.

First of all, if you really want to focus on being a warrior killer, perhaps you should go W/N instead for their anti-warrior skills. Mesmer is really much better at being anti-caster than anti-warrior. If you had your heart set on being W/Me, perhaps you should drop the warrior-killing goal.

Secondly, Mind Wreck is hard enough to pull off as a caster; I don't think you will be able to get people's energy down to 0 as a warrior without a lot of trouble.

Also, you seem to want to partially focus on attacking the warrior's small energy pool. While this may hurt them a bit, I don't think low energy spells death for a warrior nearly so much as it would a monk or another caster class. A lot of warriors have ways around low energy such as adrenaline charging skills and healing signet. Perhaps if you want to focus on energy denial you should change your target to casters, or if you want to stay focused on killing warriors you should change your strategy?

Your build is kind of energy intensive for a warrior as well, so you might want to drop the energy requirements a few notches.

Finally, except in the cases of the most obscure warrior builds, most warriors require at least a snare or a run buff of some kind.



I'm trying to give general suggestions without writing your whole build for you. This would be easier to critique if you told us what you are willing to change in the build? Are there any skills, attributes, or classes you really want in your build that you aren't willing to throw out?

Thanks a lot for the suggestions.

i had a similar build for a w/n designed to be a warrior killer but its hard to tell if its effective or not. what i was planning to do with this and the w/n build was to set a penalty for attacking and thats what warriors do, just attack most of the time. thats why i have gladiators defense and empathy. plus some basic sword skills to add more damage.

what i need to do is find another skill that could increase the potential damage dealt against a warrior for attacking. im thinking reposte but im not sure.

energy burn and mind rack will be removed due to the energy costs. i'll add sprint and healing signet.

heres the w/n build with the same aim:

Class: Warrior / Necromancer

Assumed items:
+1 to Swordsmanship

Attributes: (cost)
Strength: 4 (10)
Swordsmanship: 11+1 (77)
Tactics: 8 (37)
Blood Magic: 9 (48)
Curses: 7 (28)

Total attribute points used: 200/200


Skills:
1) Sever Artery (availability) - (4a,0,0) If this attack hits, the opponent will begin bleeding for 21 seconds, losing health over time.
2) Savage Slash (availability) - (5,0,10) If this attack hits, it interrupts target foe's action. If that action was a spell, you deal 32 extra damage.
3) Galrath Slash (availability) - (8a,0,0) This attack strikes for +32 damage if it hits.
4) Bonetti's Defense (availability) - (10,0,60) For 8 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block incoming melee attacks. You gain 5 energy for each successful parry. Bonetti's Defense ends if you use a skill.
5) Gladiator's Defense (availability) (elite) - (10,0,30) For 8 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block incoming attacks. Whenever you block a melee attack this way, the attacker suffers 21 damage. This is an elite skill.
6) Life Siphon (availability) - (10,2,2) For 20 seconds, target suffers health degeneration of 3 and you gain health regeneration of 3.
7) Price of Failure (availability) - (10,3,10) For 30 seconds, target foe has a 25% chance to miss with attacks and takes 17 damage whenever that foe misses in combat.
8) Plague Touch (availability) - (5,1,0) Transfer a negative condition from yourself to target touched foe.

will probably change bonetti's defense with sprint.

I'd just like to point out that it's not because you're a warrior killer that you'll necessarily be dualing warriors in Tombs or GvG. Perhaps Gladiator's since the majority of which are warriors. If you really want to massacre the warriors, perhaps a good choice would be to go Me/N or N/Me. Empathy comboed with Enfeeble will make anything warrior useless. Stacking a sweetness like Price of Failure on top of that should further aid you. I'd be tempted to add Shadow of Fear and Faintheartedness but following your idea it wouldn't match well with using Empathy since you want them swinging as much as possible.

If you actually insist on going Warrior primary, a skill like Warrior's Endurance will greatly help you for managing energy. Combined with an energy stealing add-on you could truly harass anything warrior that comes your way. Don't forget that energy management is a huge issue and from the builds you posted you might have one. 10 energy is half a warrior's energy pool or a third if he's carrying a chakram or energy boosting item

As for actually downing Warriors, my theory on this is you shouldn't venture in such attempts unless you have someone else or even your entire team to help. This is just my opinion, but due to the fact that warriors have such high armor and are so easy to disable with skills like Shadow of Fear and Enfeeble, I think it's best if you just take away their damage and save them for later, like when monks and nukers are out. I've been Enfeebled and SoF'rd and let me tell you an orange pilon standing there could have done an equivalent job. Cool thing about SoF is that it has a HUGE duration and anti-hexers are more than often occupied with de-hexing monks so they usually stay on quite long. Also going N/Me or Me/N should help you harass casters and monks from the other team as well as offer much needed de-hexing capabilities.

[COLOR=DarkGreen]id defintly go with the adding healing signet, i think u should always have a self heal, and then maybe an enchantment removal from the domination side, with all this hype over IW mesmer/warriors and the mending warrior/monks im sure ull find it a nice skill in a lot of battles.

so id get rid of the mind wrack and energy burn for these 2 skills[/COLOR]

wow nice, this sounds like a great warrior killer, almost everyone of you skills helps the other one! this is a very nice build and it sounds like you spent alot of time on it. good job

cant tell if you're joking or not but thanks heh.

and yeah you're right odd sock about the whole dueling thing. problem is, i want to have a build that if for any reason i have to go it alone against a warrior, i would end up winning but at the same time, just go around and gank people.

in the arena at ascalon, i always ended up in a duel with someone so thats what im basing my skills on.

one thing i see wrong with w/n or n/w is that i always end up with having to cast too many spells at start just to weaken someone up. that ends up wasting a lot of energy and time which is why i want to avoid having so many different curses and hexes to cast. just one or two and then start fighting is what im aiming at.