A world of pain, a rethink on AoE

Ok let's face it AoE spells are considered a pathetic waste of space on your skill bar. No one takes them seriously since all what you have to do is "run out of the Firestorm". Fact is, this mentality on AoE spells has taken out their entire tactical use in team builds. They are costly skills and apparently they can be avoided pretty easily. If you do a slight paradigm shift and make them the focus of a build, I think they can easily be fixed.

Let's first adress the problem of people running away since it's the most apparent one. What can be done to this ? The first solution would be to make AoEs larger. Unfortunatly this is one constant of the problem that can't be changed. Dev's set it to x feet and that's final. The second solution is to keep the ennemies from being able to run away. A few solutions are possible. The best I've thought, yet is actually quite simple. Rangers have a nasty spell called Pindown. As long as this bow attack hits it will cripple the target for any x amount of time. Combine this with Epidemic and you're looking at AoE crippling.

Now crippling only takes out 50% of the target's movement rate. That means that if they were to be struck by the AoE in normal times for 1 second, they'd now be struck for 2 seconds. Personally I still don't think this is enough. We can now turn to the Elementalist line for a little more help on this subject. The earth line has a pretty good skill called Earthquake. For those unfamiliar it causes AoE damage as well as a knockdown. Getting back up from a knockdown takes over a second, that's why those mob can Aftershock you after using their Whirlwind skill. If you look at it now, the ennemies are knocked down and crippled. That basically means they won't be going anywhere for a while.

Now you want to cause damage to those poor saps on the floor. What are the decent ones to use ? If you've done Tombs PvP and fought the Rift Wardens, you'll know Maelstrom is a pretty nasty skill, especially after being snared by Ice Spikes (which in our case is equivalent to Pindown + Epidemic). An added bonus to Maelstrom is that it will interupt any healing going on. So if a monk is also struck in this he'll be as usefull as glasses on a blind man. Another spell I found extremely destructive was the infamous Meteor Shower. If you combine this with what we already have, it's bound to keep them even longer in the AoE since it causes knockdowns as well as dealing mass damage. Again, in the Rift Warden part before the HoH, I got hit a few times by this and let me tell you, even as a Wa/Mo I wasn't too happy on how deadly this skill was since I'd most likely die from it. It tears through health like a hot a knife through butter.

So basically after a little practice and timing, you and your guildies can combo Pindown + Epidemic, while an Earthquake and Maelstrom are being cast. Follow this by a Meteor Shower and a Firestorm or Lava Font and the ennemy monks will have their hands full for sure. If you get a few nature rituals in this, your ever-so costly AoE spells can be cut down to a mere 10 energy per cast, well 20 if you count the exhaustion factor

It's now more of a question on how the ennemies will form up. In Tombs, it's a little more difficult since there is often open space and most self-respecting teams won't gang up together. I noticed that most paths leading to a higher/lower elevation part of the map are often narrower making a great place for a little AoE loving. As for when you make it to the HoH, most paths are narrow to begin with anyways, and when you actually make it to the altar that you have to capture, you can just sit it out untill the last minute and unleash all your AoE at once.

Let's hope this thread brought a slight amount of hope to those still thinking about AoE spells.

If people are within range to be hit by Epidemic (as far as I can tell, it isn't large) then they're within range to be hit by Deep Freeze, which is cheaper than casting Epidemic + Pin Down, and does considerably more damage to everyone in the area of effect as well as slowing them down.

Hmm. Well, there are two kinds of AoE spells -- the ones that deliver a large burst of damage to everyone in range, like Fireball or Phoenix, and the ones that slowly dish out damage over time, like Fire Storm. You don't make any distinction in your post when you talk about "AoE spells", but your concerns and solutions make it apparent you're talking about the latter.

I tend to think of the Fireball-type AoE spells as offensive, and the Fire Storm kind of AoE spells as defensive. Indeed, I often wish I could center the latter on an ally. If the enemy wants to continue to beat on that target, they need to stand in the rain of fire to do it. If they simply choose to run out of the area of effect, great, that's exactly what I want from a good defensive spell. That's 100% damage prevention for the duration -- hardly a "pathetic waste of space on your skill bar", particularly for an attribute line with few real defensive options.

Still, these are some good ideas on how to get more offensive use out of them...

AoE spells are already wonderful in tombs. You don't need all this fancy other stuff to use them, you just need to hit targets that aren't mobile. The best uses I have found so far include kicking heroes off the hill, protecting our hero from enemies who require close range to deal damage, and using them in narrow pathways when collision detection has tied people up. You could also use them to kill priests and any other immobile targets just fine.

Movement is the bane of AoE. I don't see why you would want to do all of this extra work and take up a lot of spaces on people's skill bars just to make moving players stand in your AoE for two more seconds. In most situations, you would get more damage on the moving targets by just packing in more damage spells.

Using Glyph of Sacrifice may be an option to get Meteor Shower off in 1 second instead of 5. This makes the chances of catching a group together much more likely. The extended cooldown is only a problem if you usually are able to get the spell off more frequently. Considering that people don't tend to cluster frequently and will attempt to run out of AoE range, you might only have been able to use it once anyway.

Glyph of Sacrifice (Spell) Your next spell may be cast instantly, but takes an additional 120 seconds to recharge.

Meteor Shower (Spell) Exploding meteors strike the area near your target. Each strikes for 7..91 damage and knocks down anyone it hits. This spell causes Exhaustion.

The 'storms' aren't a bad class of skills, mechanically. Sure they're usually going to be hitting just 2-3 times before someone gets out of the area of effect, but chasing people off, busting up packs, is the main use of the storms.

The problem with storms is that, well, Chaos Storm is just plain better than every Elementalist storm. It's cheaper, casts a whole lot faster, and is more dangerous than anything this side of Maelstrom. It also isn't played all that much - granted, I feel it's underplayed, but if Chaos Storm isn't good enough to make the cut, then why would something like Searing Heat, which is a whole lot worse on every account, ever make it?

Peace,
-CxE

I don't think chaos storm should be put higher or below the other storm spells, for the small area of effect.

All it really do is trade raw power with size and casting speed for recharge time. So, I put it on the same level of effectiveness as other storms.

since there are so many AoE, you cant exactly generalize them all in one line.

Male storm thou, is probably indeed the most useful AoE... even now with exhausion, it still pretty good... it is something you can bet that EVERYONE would want to get out of.

fire storm- probably the most balanced AoE out there, or rather... the one that can be used the most often.

meteor shower- if it werent for the recharge time, this thing would have gone broken =/ and of course... there are ways to go over that recharge time... it is basically like thunderclap where you have to make your built just purely around it for it to reach its maximum potential...

hmm... why am I posting all these things? I guess I am bored =/ (currently in my school) oh well, time to find something more interesting to do...

I wish march 18th come faster >_< I can't wait to complete my 2nd character... are there any guild that is full of E? I need to get connect with one...

It's important to draw a distinction here between the single hit nukes like Fireball and the "Storms", the low-damage per hit, lots-of-hits, ticking damge AoEs. The tactics and uses for both are quite different. Used well each subset of an AoE can slice an enemy up.

And it is true that in certain circumstances the Storms aren't what you'd really want to be using. On open ground, where there's room to run and manuever they're easy to get around and difficult to put to effective use. However, open ground is not the only situation in GW. Different situations make different skills more or less useful, after all. You don't bring a Tombs build into the Arena. You don't bring an Arena build into the Tombs. Not if you want to be at your best. You can bring the same strategy, the same concept, but you'll need to tweak and adjust for the specific circumstances and the reason for that is that there are differences in just what's optimal or competitive in each area.

Where Storms shine is when you can count on the enemy grouping together or otherwise passing through specific points. They can be put to very good use in the Tombs, in your King of the Hill maps where you can count on that Hero and its team clustering around a single point, even in the Hall of Heros, where passage ways are narrow. In PvE, too, where you can drop a Storm on top of your tank and chip away at a whole pack of enemies at once, Storms prove their worth.

The key is to find those spots and circumstances those skills are suited for rather than try to fit a square peg into a round hole by trying to make up for their shortcomings in situations where they're not called for.

I've always been a fan of Chaos Storm. Always a staple go-to skill for my Mesmers. It's low cost, low cast, comparitively and an AoE energy drain. However, it's in Domination and the reason most people are in Domination is, of course, the interrupts and there's more attractive ways of dealing damage there like Wastrel's+Mind Wrack. And the other players who're combining with Mesmer for damage probably overlook it, too. Elementalist are probably looking past Domination in favor of Inspiration to fuel their more familiar nukes. And Rangers and Warriors take one look at the 15 energy and 2 second casting time and run heading for the hills.

Yes I was talking about AoE that have a duration. Sorry, I should have pointed it out. But what I was trying to point out was that they ARE underplayed skills and looking at the "fancy" strategy I posted it's obvious that they are to an extent very powerfull. The Pindown + Epidemic, I admit never has been tested, and I actually had a few thoughts about it too.

What I wanted to point out is that you never get really Deep Freeze + Maelstromed, or at least I haven't. And this is all because people have the "Firestorm=run away=sucks" mentality. As you all can see a simple strategy like this comboed with an Eruption can prove to be quite hurtfull. Of course my focus wasn't to get a quick kill out of this. If you get everyone to get all panicky and down to 60% health then you most definetly have the upper hand on the battle. AoE over time spells aren't intended to finish off entire teams in a 2 second time span, altough a well placed Meteor Storm could, but rather create chaos in their line.

On a different topic, creating havoc is in my opinion something everyone should consider lookign into. In PvP I sometimes got lost and ended up behind the ennemy monks and casters. Oftentimes I'd go after a caster. Why not a monk ? Cause no one's expecting it, when you think you're a low priority, a she-warrior starts tearing you to peaces and you notice your health bar is down to 50% (not to mention the following Final Thrust will leave you guessing), you get caught off guard. Why was this effective ? I can't give an exact answer, but I'm guessing it's because monks are so busy healing themselves and the targets of focus fire they can sometimes get the tunnel syndrome. This is when you get so focused on one or two elements that you lose sight of the general picture of the battle. For those of you who read stuff for no reason, pick up a copy of the Sun Tzu, it's quite educative on this subject. I can also state that most of the matches where I accidentaly did this, we ended up winning. Chaos rules. AoE over time, even though I haven't tested it personnaly can probably achieve the same thing. If you're a character that has no means of healing and get caught a few seconds in a Firestorm, and get split from your group, you've become an easy prey.

It costs less, casts faster, is more dangerous, and has comparable recharge to the other storms. How is it on the same level under any stretch of the imagination?

Compare it to Fire Storm. Same energy, same recharge, casts in half the time. Ok, so how are the effects? Against Warriors, the damage you'll deal with Chaos Storm is comparable to what you'd get from Fire Storm (as Fire Storm is affected by armor, while Chaos Storm is not). Rangers still have +20 AL vs. Elemental...oh, wait, it's +30 vs. Elemental now. Check. So Chaos Storm is just as threatening to Warriors and Rangers as Fire Storm. What about casters? Destroying their energy utterly if you catch them casting is a whole lot more scary than a few more points of damage - would you trade 12 health for 6 energy? I would.

None of the storms, except perhaps Meteor Shower, are usable from a damage perspective - you'll usually get around 50 damage in an AoE around the target. The real benefit is forcing people to move, or using it when someone has to stand in it. Damage is just a side benefit.


True, but you can do them all in a paragraph:

Chaos Storm is the best - long lasting, cheap, quickly cast, scary. Only knock is that it's in an awkward line. Maelstrom is next because of how savagely it owns casters who stand in it - you're going to knock out several spells, deal damage (better than Fire Storm!), and confuse players with a non-obvious in game animation. Best Elementalist storm by far. Firestorm is next because it's cheap - the damage is pretty sad, but at least it makes people move. Meteor Shower is cute, and it's a fun blitz trick with Glyph of Sacrifice, but otherwise the cooldown kills it - skills need to work harder than this. The rest of the storms are trash.


Don't make me stab you in the face.


The fools. They should have realized by now that Barrage is the nuke of choice, not anything an Elementalist has. Though I hear Conjure is good...


Seriously though, use Chaos Storm. It's better than Elementalists.

Peace,
-CxE

I said attractive. Not effective. It's an awful combination but people seem to go nuts over it. I attribute it to the unbriddled passion created by those skill's icons because there's really no rational reason why people like them...

Well, yeah, for AoE damage, spammed Barrage with a few damage buffs is king. But that's bringing up the whole issue of how Elementalists are, in general, at the moment.

Yeah, and I should have known better when you said attractive - we all know how that combination works.

*hands Saus a paper bag*


Well, hey, Energy Storage is better than Fast Casting. You could make a mean Mesmer by going Elementalist/Mesmer with Energy Storage and your favorite combination of Domination and Inspiration skills.

Plus you could Conjure your wand if you wanted to deal damage. =)

Peace,
-CxE

Thank you for assembling the fast-casting table. Given the .75 "dead time" between each cast, it really does affect the usefulness of fast casting. In effect, making a 10 in fast casting worth only about 20% faster for a 5 sec spell (.75+.65)/1.75 = 80% , or a 30% speedup for 3 second spells (.75+1.95)/3.75 -- regardless, it is far less than it should be, given the high cost.

Although, perhaps running a Elementalist primary to get a "good Mesmer" still isn't the best deal, since you can't use runes.

Obviously. And you can also increase your wand dps by minimizing the projectile travel time by standing right in face of your enemy

Yeah, but going Elementalist/Mesmer missing out on runes isn't such a big deal. Mesmer's don't necessarily want or need their attributes sky high, so the rune boost isn't a necessity.

Still, Fast Casting isn't all that awful, especially when you have the energy tapping ability of a Mesmer to counter-act the advantage of Energy Storage. It's best when, obviously, you have it working on spells with long casting times. Where do you find a lot of large casting times? In the Elementalist list. Probably not enough to make it worth it with aftercast and all but you can go Mes/Ele and function perfectly well.

Yeah, Fast Casting is pretty marginal on a whole lot of spells - particularly the kinds of skills that really draw people to the Mesmer. When you're looking at, say, Power Leak, with a .25 second cast time, knocking a third off of that (~10 attribute) with Fast Casting saves you a whole .08 seconds - virtually nothing. When you consider the spellcaster refractory period, you're comparing 1 second to .92 seconds - virtually indistinguishable.

The aftercast really keeps you from abusing fast cast by chain casting quick skills, which is, intuitively, what you want to do with it. What it ends up being is more tactical, letting you react to situations more quickly, instead of having to spend that extra second caught in a cast animation.

If you're going to use Fast Casting, you really need to use the slower skills, the 2 and 3 second casting time ones - they get dropped to around 1.3 and 2 seconds to cast, respectively, at 10 Fast Casting. It isn't a huge speed boost, but it makes those skills feel a whole lot more managable. Something like Energy Tap feels really slow and almost unusable on a Mesmer secondary, but it's something that you can squeeze in between casts with Fast Casting.

Maybe that just means that Fast Casting feels better than it actually is, or that it actually is better than it looks on paper. Play around with it a bit, figure out if you value the flexability it gives you, and draw your own conclusions.

Peace,
-CxE

I think you confused me. Power Leak is listed as 1 second. So... what you're saying is that I should take the listed cast time, subtract .75 from it, and then look that value up in the table? So, at lvl 10 of fast casting,

PowerLeak = .75 + lookup(1-.75) = .75 + .16 = .91
Backfire = .75 + lookup(3.0-.75) = .75 + lookup(2.25) = .75 + 1.4???

I'm confused, sorry. Why are you listing fractional seconds for only times under 1 second?

Fast Casting is starting to bother me. Like Soul Reaping, it's just not up to par with other primaries. Especially when there's insanely broken, degenerative, and deformative things like Expertise walking around. But, obviously, it was too good when there was no aftercast or it affected the whole casting time not just the activation portion (Or was it? I don't think I was a tester just then.) so it was retouched and having it affect both cast and aftercast to get those quick chain casts that it would seem suited for is probably a bit much.

Here's an insane idea. What if Fast Casting didn't work on the activation time but instead on the aftercast? What if it took off, say, 5~5% of that after cast time per rank but left the actual activation/casting time alone? So, at FC 12 you'd have say 30~40 seconds aftercast on all your spells. Maybe the numbers could be tweaked so that it was a bit more but how would the general idea of affecting aftercast instead of cast play out?

Spells that list their casting times as 1 second are widely innaccurate. They cast, that is to say their effects are put in place once your activate the skill, anywhere from .25 seconds to the full 1 second, in the increments shown in Ensign's table. The game doesn't list fractional casting times, anything under a full second gets bumped up to the nearest full second. Casting times over 1 second tend to be more accurate, of course, and you can just add the .75 to them. At 1 second you really have to know the skill.

All interrupts - with the exception of Cry of Frustration which I'm not sure about - are extremely fast. At a full 1 second cast with .75 after cast they'd be nearly unusable. They're almost, but not quite instant, and that's what lets them interrupt just about anything if you've got the timing right.

two ideas i have about this
1.make AOE's ground targetable or...
2. have it so you charge the spell up then stand there imobile till you trigger the spell to go off all the while being interuptable this would atleast allow you to time it better.

right now barrage > elementalist AOE and it only takes one skill slot im wondering if their going to nurf it or make ele AOE better in some fashion.

The problem is that the actual cast time is generally the important bit. That's what lets you get a skill off faster, just beat your opponent to the punch, fire off that Pheonix before a warrior lands a killing blow. Having it affect aftercast won't help you in those situations where timing is paramount, which I think is what the skill was designed for. It would allow you to squeeze out more spells in a given time period, but that's not really what the attribute is about.

I don't ever think it was "over powered", even if you can "chain cast", you are going to be limited by mana, and subject to interruptions. Perhaps what they should do is make interruptions a bit more painful, by causing the caster to "reset" for an additional N seconds. I mean, if elementalists get vastly more energy, why not let a mesmer do a bit of chain casting? At lvl 12 strength, 12% penetration is roughly 40% more damage per hit, so why not let a mesmer cast spells 40% faster? Energy storage is about 40% more energy right? From Ensign's tables, a 12 fastcast about 20% faster , not 40%. I think in the october it was closer to 40%, and I thought it was a nice trade-off, I was willing to invest that 11th point (but no more, the 12th was too expensive for the minor speedup). Now it seems the value point is about 6... if at all.

Ok. Then perhaps it should be 55% speedup at lvl 12 before the aftercast, that'd give it roughly a 40% overall reduction in cast time. Being able to pump out 3 spells when an elementalists can only do 2 is the real value, IMHO. Beating someone to the punch is more about reflexes, and not about strategy. I like Guild Wars beacuse it doesn't require me to have fast reflexes.

When it was first introduced it was a lot better than what it is now. I forget exactly what it was but it was either a higher percentile reduction, perhaps 5% if not more, or there was no aftercast or some combination of the two. Like when they switched Smiting to ignoring armor (ie it had been balanced to deal with armor, like Fire Storm, but suddenly it ignored armor like Chaos Storm) the alphas flocked to it and it got hammered into the ground.

And, for that matter, the hit to energy from casting spells faster isn't that big of a problem. There's Prodigy, there's BiP, there's all other sorts of energy management techniques and a lot of it resides in the Mesmer skill list. Proper energy management means you're not so much limited by energy as you are by casting and recharge times. Well, Fast Casting takes care of one of those, so when it's sufficiently good it can be quite powerful.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Now, Fast Casting is letting a Mesmer win those timing battles. But timing is twitch gaming. It depends on your reflexes and your connection speed and all the rest. It's an important facet of things but it shouldn't be *that* important. Fast Casting should let you, I don't know, cast spells faster. It's like Flurry with attack skills. You should be able to pack more spells in a shorter amount of time. It would hit the smaller casting time spells more than it would hit the larger casting spells but it would, at sufficient levels, give you that 3 spells for everyone else's 2. That's not really happening today.

It doesn't stack up to Expertise, but what does? Expertise is disgusting. It needs to be toned down and turned into something reasonable, not an attribute that everyone dumps 14 levels into without thinking. Stop thinking like an alpha tester - attack the problem, not everything but the problem.


Poor. Then the attribute is only useful for chaining lots short casting time spells together. It doesn't help you react quickly or help out tactically, it just turns it into a spam attribute. That's not quite what we're looking for. The strength of Fast Cast is how it makes otherwise mediocre, 2-3 second cast spells go off quickly, making them a tactical option instead of something you have to invest and dedicate yourself to casting. The effect is actually quite good, it just doesn't quite stack up.


I think that you'll find, when playing a pure Mesmer, that energy isn't nearly the concern that cooldowns are. You have a ton of great energy management skills available, between Energy Drains, Power Drains, Spirit of Failure, Shame, and a bunch of other things. Plus you're a class that's more looking to tactically cast spells, not spam them. No, energy isn't a particularly big problem.

Fast Casting also helps in those interrupt battles - the faster your spell finishes, the shorter their window of opportunity.

What is really going to limit you is your cooldowns. Most of your real money skills have cooldowns between 20 and 30 seconds, and you're going to find yourself with a lot of time with little to do. You fire off your Power Drain and Power Leak, throw up a couple hexes, Drain / Tap your way back up to full - and wait a good 10 seconds for everything to recharge. Elementalists and Monks might be bound by energy, but Mesmers most certainly are not.


Where exactly did you pull that number from? You need to be hitting a target with roughly 170 AL to get that kind of increase in damage - and even then only when using skills. Against a more reasonable, 100 AL target, you're looking at getting a 23% damage bonus when using skills, and even with the (generous) assumption that half of your attacks are skills, you're just looking at a 12% bonus to damage with a level 12 Strength - closer to a 6% bonus versus casters.


There's also a huge problem here - a problem of units. While the numbers listed in the Fast Casting table are seconds per spell, the actual unit of measurement that you care about is *spells per time*. We don't want durations, we want speed.

So let's run a couple of numbers - for one, two, and three second cast times. What is the effect of a level 12 fast casting on these spells, not in terms of cast time, but in terms of speed?

1 second: 30% faster
2 seconds: 42% faster
3 seconds: 48% faster
5 seconds: 55% faster

Those are the actual, real world effects of Fast Casting. If you are casting 2-3 second casting time spells with a level 12 Fast Casting, you will be able to cast 45% more spells in a given period of time than a character without Fast Casting.

As Fast Casting stands, you *are* getting a 40% increase in your casting power. It's sitting right there in the numbers, if you look for 'em.


Funny, because that is *exactly* what it does, right now, in game. I'll add another table to the Fast Casting article, because just showing the reductions in cast times really isn't getting across the power of the attribute. You can cast 3 spells for every 2 of your opponent's right now. It's a much better attribute than you think it is.

Peace,
-CxE

Except if you're mesmer. Look down that Mesmer skill list, and you'll see a whole bunch o' ones, fair share of 2s, and the odd 3 here and there. Fast Casting is fantastic for an Ele, they've got the skills to benefit from it. A backup rezzer will benefit from it immensly. But if you're playing close to a "pure" Mesmer, you're Primary attribute just isn't doing a great deal for you, which is a bit of a worry design-wise.

That's true - the primary Mesmer pretty much runs on interrupts (which don't care about Fast Casting at all) and two second casting time spells. Now, Fast Casting absolutely *loves* two and three casting time spells, giving them a significant increase in raw power plus greatly improving their tactical flexability - but you actually have to use them.

If you just want to play an interrupting Mesmer, I agree that Fast Casting benefits you very little. But that's the same case as the Elementalist has when all you want to do is cast a low energy spam skill, or a Monk who wants to cast protections as needed instead of healing like mad. It's in your class, but it isn't really what the primary excels at. Elementalists have Energy Storage to power out a bunch of large skills quickly. Monks have Divine Favor to make a bunch of cheap, efficient spells truly shine. Mesmers, with Fast Casting, aren't masters of interrupts but of tactical shutdown. Once you get past the interrupts, what do you run on a Mesmer? Backfire? Three second cast. Shame? Two seconds. Arcane Conundrum? Also two seconds. Energy Burn and Energy Drain? Same. Energy Tap? Three. Spirit Shackles? Right in the sweet spot. The body of the Mesmer's skill base, the real workhorses that on your bar are right in the two and three second casting time range that Fast Casting wants to work with.

The only class that works with Fast Casting better is the Necromancer, as they have even more of the two and three second casting time spells that work so well with Fast Casting. Monks? Everything they use regularly casts quickly anyway. Elementalists? Energy is your concern, not how fast you can cast things - hell, they even slow themselves down with Glyphs to try and solve that problem.

Fast Casting isn't a perfect fit for the Mesmer's skill line, but it is a very good fit - and it is entirely in flavor for the class. I wouldn't touch the actual effect of the attribute at all. What I would do is add a few skills to it, ala Energy Storage, to really flesh out the Mesmer's role a bit better. For all the flack the attribute gets, I think it's decent as is - it's a solid, general effect that meshes well with the class as a whole. Exactly what you want in a primary only.

Peace,
-CxE

If we're talking about primary attributes, then strength is getting by on the strength of its skills at this point. Before when it had healing signet and did 2% AP/level it was overpowered, no question. Now the effect is mediocre, but it gives you access to a large pool of skills useful to a variety of warrior builds, AND it gives you access to a good shield.
The point: the effect meshes extremely well with what a warrior is trying to do, but the effect is weak. The attribute gets by on the strength of linked skills and a shield.

Divine Favor parallels strength in many ways- it gives a small boost to a small portion of your skills, boosting your long term healing. It also has a large pool of skills, like strength. That's where the similarities end, however. There are very few skills in the divine favor line that I'd want to use, and I don't care if my wand or focus is tied to DF, Healing, Protection, or whatever I have in my other attribute.
The effect is just about right, but the linked skills are poor.

Expertise has the strongest effect and some decent skills. The effect could be toned down, the skills are about right.

Energy Storage has a solid effect with a few once-powerful skills tied to it. If they lighten up the nerf on the skills they'll be okay. The real problem is that the elementalist is crippled without energy storage.

Fast Casting, as Engisn pointed out, fits in pretty well with the mesmer spells, but it needs more than one skill tied to it. Granted the one skill it has is nice, but there are 0 other benefits to having a high fast casting- not to mention that I don't think I've seen single wand tied to fast cast. The effect on fast cast is about right, but it needs some skills.

Soul Reaping- ah yes, the old nightmare. An effect that makes the most abysmal attribute (Death magic) less abysmal. Like your flakiest friend, he's a good guy when he's around, but not there when you need him. On top of that, it has exactly 0 skills linked to it.
The line desperately needs some linked skills AND a serious reworking. Who knows, maybe they've gone out and changed things since last BWE?

Effect: 3 of the lines have an effect that is about right, 1 is overpowered, 1 is a bit underpowered, and Soul Reaping is a mess.
Linked Skills: Expertise is about right, and the rest all need work. Strength could still lose a few skills ane be a strong line. Some of them just need more skills period. The skills linked to Divine Favor might not be great, but at least they have something. Throw SR and FC a bone.

Like I'm not trying to get Expertise fixed? I mean, it's not like I'm going out of my way to mention and prove at every excuse how horribly broken it is, isn't it? How it's pretty much no longer a nice boost but a necessity for any Ranger player, not just in the decent range but as high as you can make it, eliminating flexibility and diversity from Ranger builds as far as AP go. How it's extremely overpowered, letting a primary Ranger spam away skills with decent effects, like Barrage, like Debilitating Shot, yet at the same time requires that a Ranger's skill line be so top heavy with expensive, energy intensive skills that a primary Ranger, and a high-level primary Ranger at that, is the only character that can possibly use them, turning Expertise from a nice tactical bonus to something that alters fundamental strategy. How it warps both the Ranger profession and how Ranger interacts with other professions. No, no, I guess I never mention that at all...

Expertis can be bad, the skill acquisition system can be bad, the character creation system can be bad, item availability can be bad, and I can be trying to get them all fixed and still have time to worry about Fast Casting. It's not a big priority, not as much as those other things, but it's a notch or two below where it should be.

For spells with no recharge time, maybe. You can cast 3 Chaos Storms for every 2 an Elementalist casts? You can get off more interrupts in the same amount of time than anybody else with Fast Casting? How does shaving a few seconds - going from .9 seconds on an interrupt from 1 seconds - help you cast them that much faster? At the end of three Power Leaks you'd be just .3 seconds ahead of anyone else. As you say, the real problem when chaining spells is the recycle time. When Power Leak takes 20 seconds to recharge how does shaving that .1~.2 seconds help you cast it faster? Or Chaos Storm when it takes 15 seconds?

The idea I'm getting at is that rather than being a skill that helps a Mesmer tactically - letting them have quicker reactions - that maybe it should be a bit more basic than that and let them cast their skills more rapidly than anyone else. It's simple, it's easy to explain, and it doesn't require an advanced degree in mechanics to understand - when you cast 1 spell, I cast 2 with Fast Casting. Eh, I said it was an insane idea...

But, answer me this, if Fast Casting is so good, why is it usually a dump stat?

Why do people play with Ether Lord?

Peace,
-CxE

In Feb we ran a AOE elem build and did fairly well. As long as you stick together enough to make your AOE's overlap, but move around enough to make AOE cast against you not as effective, you should do good. Just make sure you have finishing skills, for when targets run away the odd time. Stuff like fireball ect, so you eat those last hp's up without giving the monks enough time to fully heal.

I disagree with everybody's view of Mind Wrack and Wastrel's.
Wastrel does really good damage and using skills all the time is extremely hard to do as you run into recharges and energy problems. I have been killed by domination mesmers a lot, by the simple virtue of energy denial. Energy Drain and Energy burn and Ether feast, coupled with malaise means that pretty much every Wastrel will work and mind wrack will work as well.

Interrupts are inferior in many respects because a lot of people like me pack Mantra of Resolve.

I will also take this opportunity to let you know that cpukilla's build Suicidal Assasin doesn't work at all in the way he thinks it does. It is wildly ineffective build, and it would be good if you made sure the person actually played the build they are posting and we would be spared the theorycrafting.

Can you use fast cast to sneak in spells like diversion and backfire while the enemy is casting his/her spell? Like if you see the enemy is casting deep freeze can you sneak in backfire before he finishes and still have him take damage?

I am not quite sure whether diversion or backfire are triggered by the skill/spell activation or completion.

No, of course you aren't. We talk about how absurdly broken Expertise is because we hate the game and are trying to scare people away, not because we're trying to draw attention to a problem so it can be fixed. We're just a bunch of whiners, not a fanbase making critical observations about the game.

Shame on you for thinking otherwise.


Solve one problem, and you run smack into another one. Solve your energy problems and you start standing around waiting for skills to cool down. Solve your cooldown problems, and you start choking on your cast times. Figure out how to cast fast enough, and suddenly you're draining your energy too quickly again.

Energy costs, cast times, and cooldowns are the rules that govern skill usage. A primary attribute can solve one of these problems for you, but you have to work around the other two on your own.


In the midgame, yes, recycles end up becoming the most relevant. But not in the early game - when time is most sensitive and all of your skills are fresh, casting times dominate.

Casting times rule the first ten to fifteen seconds of an encounter, when you can fire off all your skills and your only limit is how quickly you can do so. After that until around the 30-40 second mark, cooldowns rule - you still have juice left over, but you're using normal attacks while waiting a few seconds for a key spell to refresh itself. After that you're in the long game where energy starts to dominate - your skills are fresh and you have the time to use them, but you're just waiting to regenerate enough energy to use them.

Obviously different character builds will move through these different limiting stages in different ways - you can skip cooldown limiting entirely with good design, and you'll hit the energy wall at different times - but one of them is always going to be an issue. I wouldn't say that any of them are fundamentally more important than the others.


By shortening their cooldowns? That's an idea, but if you do so you're just going to start slamming into the casting time and energy walls. That's just how these things work.

But, on that note, I do think that fast casting needs a little kick, and since the actual mechanics of it are fine that means a few more linked skills. Mantra of Recovery is a good model even if the skill itself is weak (for an elite) - toss Serpent's Quickness, or something similar, into fast casting and the attribute becomes that much more attractive.


Ok, an actually serious answer this time.

The first reason is because so many primary Mesmer builds are Illusionary Weaponry builds. IW doesn't use a lot of spells, but stacks buffs and attack skills instead. They don't do a whole lot of casting - they're really just Mesmer so that they can pump Illusion through the roof. So Fast Casting isn't all that important, hence the dump stat.

Another reason is because of the unhealthy reliance on interrupts in the game right now. With the lack of viable enchantment and hex removal, interrupting those spells while they're being cast ends up being the best solution to the rampant use of enchantments and hexes. If you're using a bunch of interrupts, you aren't using the proactive spells that Fast Casting really loves. So when your character starts with Power Block, Power Drain, Power Leak, and Power Spike, Fast Casting takes a hit.

But I think the big reason Fast Casting isn't used much is because people just underrate it. It is a powerful effect despite how low the numbers look, and you can feel how much better it's making you in game - your skills just kinda go off when you use them instead of it being some involved process. Time management is a bit more advanced than energy management, making Fast Casting a less obvious attribute, but that doesn't change how it affects your win/loss record at all. It's a solid attribute. Don't underrate it.

Peace,
-CxE

Right. My mistake. ANet is good. ANet is great. All is right and well with the game and we're perfectly on schedule for release with no flaws and no misteps. Everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Move along.


I suppose that's my whole problem with it. It's not an attribute that's any good on the surface. Not to the vast majority of people. That primary is something every Mesmer gets. It needs to be obvious. Perhaps better documentation of attribute effects in game would help. But to that player who's just picked up GW and doesn't understnad the first thing about energy management the idea of time management is going to be just as hard to get accross. When they put points into Fast Casting and nothing obvious happens, they forget about it. The effect should be something noticable, hell, flip it around with Mantra of Recovery. Fast Casting lowers recharge. Mantra of Recovery/Whatever you'd call it lowers casting times. Since there are Mesmer builds that can safely and justifiably ignore it, just like there are Monk builds that can ignore Divine Favor, there's a problem.

Although, more skills would be a way to go, too...

If you think casting times aren't obvious, try to explain why cooldown management is important. If Fast Casting is subtle, Fast Recharge is downright invisible.

You're right, though, people just look at big numbers and think that's all there is to a class - just look at how high demand a skill like Rodgort's Invocation is. Random J. Scrub understands that more energy is better. But I don't think they need to cater every single class to Mr. Scrub. It even says in the description that the Mesmer is a trickier class to play - if someone picks that and expects to be hit over the head with a duh stick, they deserve what they get.

Peace,
-CxE