17 Mar 2005 at 22:23 - 14
Don't let anyone else mislead you; Mesmers are bad vs groups of melee enemies.
The simple fact is that Domination and Inspiration have almost 0 AOE spells and the damage on most is mediocre, with long recharge times. i.e. You can't kill anything reliably with those spells, let alone multiple enemies.
Illusion is a little different; it has some damage spells, but none are good vs multiple enemies. Conjure Phantasm is a starting skill and at the beginning of the game it's really good, but because the way the game works, it gets weaker as the game goes on. Phantom Pain works the same way. They are both DOT spells, Conjure does -5 pips of health (-10 health per second) and Phantom Pain does from -1 to -3 health per second and adds a deep wound at the end. (-2 to -6 health per second.) The way the game operates, a level 1 monster will have around 100 health. That means with conjure phantasm you only have to cast it on them for 10 seconds to kill them. Conjure casts quickly and recycles quickly, so if the first one doesn't kill them, the second should.
Conjure loses power over time because enemies gain health with every level. By the time you hit level 10 (which should happen fairly quickly) those monsters will all have around 300 health. That's 30 seconds for one Conjure Phantasm to kill one monster.
Furthermore, you're never fighting one monster. If you were, then you could easily outwit them. Ineptitude, Clumsiness, Power Leak, Backfire, and a whole bunch of other mesmer skills do a great job shutting down individual enemies. The problem is that you'll be fighting groups of 3-6 and sometimes more enemies at once. You can't afford to sit there for 30 seconds to wait for the first one to die.
That's why I recommend you focus on your monk skills- 1 monk should be able to keep 2 people alive easily vs 3 to 4 monsters, and it's very possible to hold out vs 5 or more with the right skills and a way to kill groups of monsters quickly. Elementalists can drop packs of monsters quickly. Monks and mesmers cannot. The elementalist just needs enough time to get their spells off without being slaughtered as they stand there defenseless.
Note: All of the above is advice intended for the PvE missions.
Also: I have no idea where Whiskas got the idea that monsters have infinite energy. This is the way rumors get started. To the best of my knowledge, monsters have energy pools just like ours and regenerate it the same way. It's possible to get a monster down to 0 energy, but the trick is keeping them at 0 energy. In general it's not as effective a tactic vs monsters because again, you're normally outnumbered and it takes effort to keep 1 monster at 0 energy, and most of the time the monsters are identical, so one does not pose more of a threat than another. In PvP energy denial is a valuable technique because It can quickly disable high-threat targets from the fight during a critical portion. Most of the time you want to drain their monks of energy or drain their mesmers so they can't do something horrible to your monks. Monks and mesmers are high threat targets at the beginning of the fight, so it's a good idea to disable them early and pick off the now-vulnerable targets.
If you're fighting 5 moss scarabs, why do you want to drain moss scarab #3s energy? He's going to keep chewing on your leg just like he did before, with or without energy.
