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The Mesmer: Uncommonly Effective
paranoidpvp
Member Posts: 539
Of all the professions one can study, the Mesmer is by far the least common. While it may not be the most popular profession to embrace, Mesmers are unmatched in their ability to counter the strategies of others because they specialize in turning your skills against you. The three lines of magic available to a Mesmer provide different strategy choices But, they all combine with the primary Mesmer attribute, Fast Casting, to make this an extremely effective profession.
The Illusion line focuses on Hexes. These include a lot of powerful counters to physical attacks—primarily those of the Warrior, Ranger, and Assassin. There are also degeneration Hexes that drain Health, snaring Hexes to slow enemies, and miscellaneous self-Enchantments that can protect the Mesmer from harm.
Powerful conditional damage skills like Clumsiness are the key to defeating physical attacks. This skill interrupts the next attack performed by the Mesmer's adversary and inflicts great harm in retaliation for the attack. Ineptitude, an elite skill similar to Clumsiness, is even more effective, as it blinds the Mesmer's foe for a significant duration and deals even more damage than Clumsiness.
Mesmers can also opt to damage their opponents over time with skills like Conjure Phantasm, as well as a few more interesting options. Phantom Pain is a degeneration Hex that applies a Deep Wound when it expires, discouraging the removal of the Hex. Images of Remorse, another skill used with this strategy, adds more Health degeneration and does extra damage to an attacking foe.
Where Illusion is most useful against physical attackers, Domination concentrates on eliminating and shutting down those who follow the path of magic. The Domination line provides some of the most effective anti-casting skills known on the field of war, including Blackout, Diversion, and Powerblock. All of these hinder enemy use of skills, either rendering opponents entirely helpless or reducing their skill efficiency to a fraction of its original state.
Many who choose this path also take advantage of the numerous interrupt skills provided through advanced training in Domination Magic. Interrupts are very powerful, but also require great reflexes. Many Interruption skills cause additional harm to targets when they are interrupted, but timing these skills correctly is a challenge in and of itself.
The Inspiration line is much more of a defensive line of training. What it lacks in destruction, though, it makes up for in its ability to keep a Mesmer alive and keep his Energy reserves high. The skill Ether Feast is quite effective because it steals Energy from an opponent and converts it into Health for the caster. For restoring Energy reserves, the Mesmer might use skills such as Channeling, Energy Tap, and Power Drain. Many Mantras are also found in the inspiration line, which can reduce damage, increase Hex length, restore Energy, or even evade interruption effects.
The Fast Casting line is arguably one of the most effective schools of training for any profession. While Fast Casting does not have many skills directly linked to it, it shortens the cast time for any spells a Mesmer chooses to use. This is especially effective when combined with the Necromancer's minion summoning or the Monk's resurrection abilities, as both require a relatively long casting time. Raising a fallen comrade or summoning an undead minion in short order can turn the tide of a battle, which is just one of the many reasons why Fast Casting is extremely useful.
I write this today in the hope that I might dispel a myth that has formed about the Mesmer. Some who do not know better have been heard to say that Mesmers are second-rate fighters, and a few veteran soldiers foolishly decline to ally with Mesmers in combat. I assure you that a skilled Mesmer in your party can make any task easier. This is proved by their ability to slay individual opponents effortlessly, including those—such as the Monk—who are often the most challenging to defeat. Do not underestimate the powers of Mesmers or you will soon feel the wrath of their twin goddesses.
This was in the last weekly scribe and I thought it was an interesting topic, I recently created a mesmer myself and have defenitely noted the lack of other people who share my primary profession. It seems that all I see these days are W/Mo and Mo/W, which is disturbing to me because it presents the obvious lack of ability to have a balanced team in PvE. I realise that in PvP it is much more balanced and you see a mesmer in almost every type of team, however I think this imbalance in PvE might be some of the reason people are turning away from Gw. I also don't understand why the mesmer is so unpopular, in PvP if a monk sees a mesmer that monk is instantly worried about what is going to happen to him/her because of that mesmer. Mesmers are feared and respected on the battlefield and yet they are so rarely seen, I don't understand it and I want to know what other people think. Please post!
Comments
Personally, if I see a Mesmer in my PvE groups I think to myself "This could be dead weight or an easy run". Mesmers, when played well, make such a HUGE difference that you can't help but notice it. Suddenly, you're not taking as much damage as normal, because of the excelent (and crippling) skill counters. Things become easier to kill, because of how much the Mesmer can soften them up for your damage dealers. And, your damage dealers can deal their damage, as the mob's counters have been countered. I've even seen tank Mesmers that could make a W/Mo cry.
Sadly, I think that most players only ever see the Phantasm spamers and never really understand the depth of the class, so they avoid it. Mesmers are so alien that you don't really know what you're going to get, and you have no idea if the player can play that class. And believe me, if your Mesmer stinks, your monks feel it big time.
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My first experience playing a Mesmer was not all that fun. He was an Me/Mo, and felt too "supporty". When I got him to level 20, I deleted him out of frustration.
A few months later, I decided to give the Mesmer another go-around to see if I couldn't make him more fun. I opted for a Necromancer secondary, started summoning Bone Horrors - rather quickly I might add - and began having a blast!
Once my Necro capped Spiteful Spirit, I thought, "I wonder how well a Mesmer would do with that spell?"
Heh...I've never looked back, and when I announce I'm an SS/Dom (Empathy/Backfire) or SS/Degen (Illusion) Mesmer "LFG", the invites come pouring in. Playing an SS/Dom or Illusion Mesmer is even more fun than playing an SS Necro because of Fast Casting. Combined with Mark of Pain, SS tears through enemy Warriors very fast. Drop Empathy on one of them, too, and sit back and watch them kill each other and themselves.
But an SS/Dom or Illusion Mesmer is even more effective with a tank on the team who calls targets for the other tanks/Assassins to hit. Because while Spiteful Spirit deals damage to a hexed foe's nearby allies (and himself) with every attack he makes, Mark of Pain deals damage to all nearby foes when he who is hexed gets whacked, doubling or quadrupling the damage output when several tanks/Assassins are hitting the same target.
And the beauty of SS/MOP is that they're AoEs from which the mobs can't run.
ME/N is a great combo when you get high enough to cap SS, and one good players actually seek to team with.
P.S. Me/E is a fun combo, too, especially with Water Magic. Too bad we can't put runes on secondaries.
In PvP I primarily played a mesmer. Using diversion, shame, and blackout I kept most casters from doing much of anything, but the metagame has changed to be very heavy on hex removal so backfire has become less useful. However shame and diversion are still good at catching opponents off guard, and can be combined with edenial which is not so easily countered. I still have to take some time to contemplate what is needed in PvP to satisfy the current metagame as edenial doesn't completely use Mesmer's potential.
In the whole scheme of things, I think monks are terribly overpowered, and behind them mesmers. I watched a couple of the final matches and in them, no one died. Because the monks were able to heal more than the other team could damage. There were actually a few deaths, but most of these were a backdoor assassin or other people that split off of the main group. Mesmers are overpowered because they can shut down and kill at least one person at a time, and are generally effective at doing this to monks. Warriors are also fairly overpowered, as seen by the sheer number of adrenal spikes in high ranked GvGs. However, their damage reduction has been nerfed in the latest patch, so we'll see how that shakes things up.
The sight of so many W/Mos and Mo/Ws is because of the overpowered state of these individual classes. There are so fewer W/Mes or W/Ns because they can't make effective use of their energy, whereas a W/Mo has enough energy to throw on Healing Breeze, then healing hands, and then throw on healing breeze again. Why bother spamming Grenth's Balance as a self heal, or Life Siphon? Or distortion or etherfeast? W/Mos generally don't exist in PvP because generally the monks are enough to keep them alive, so they can focus on other skills.
Monks and warriors are also so popular in PvE because so few teams refuse to leave without 2 monks and 2 tanks. That's one half of the team dedicated to one quarter of the classes available. Mesmers are not as easily understood in the cookie cutter mentality of PvE, so they're usually left behind, despite being able to single-handedly annihilate bosses, even the incredibly nasty Factions Elementalist bosses.
I found mesmers really affective with there hexes they all rock an mesmers are really easyto lvl up with once u get gooo hexes because u kill the eneimies so fast
. Id like to c more mesmers in the game my bro has it (note: hes 8 yrs old) an he gotten to lvl with it in 4 days i didnt even help him (never seen him play any MMO be4).
Mesmers are really good, i found out, with elemestist, u can cast a fire storm on them then use a hex an they loss health when they are runnin away then u use a freeze spell so they move slower its a good combo i really like it
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Thank for post a good topic
Whenever i step outside, somebody claims to see the light
It seems to me that all of us have lost our patience.
'cause everyone thinks they're right,
And nobody thinks that there just might
Be more than one road to our final destination--
You have to think to play a mesmer so it sucks? What the hell does that mean? And the majority of guildwars players can play everything correctly, I have no idea what you were thinking when you wrote this post but I have my doubts you have ever experienced high level PvP...
None of the profession suck really not one is the best either its how u use them an how u use ur skills correctly not 1 proffession is done rite terible. Like posted by Paranoidpvp Quote:
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You have to think to play a mesmer so it sucks? What the hell does that mean? And the majority of guildwars players can play everything correctly, I have no idea what you were thinking when you wrote this post but I have my doubts you have ever experienced high level PvP...
________________________________________________________
Whenever i step outside, somebody claims to see the light
It seems to me that all of us have lost our patience.
'cause everyone thinks they're right,
And nobody thinks that there just might
Be more than one road to our final destination--
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Mesmers were the only primary I hadn't run to 20 before Factions came out.
Took the opportunity to start one, and I must say, they're exceptionally good to play. They can do (almost) everything quicker than other classes, and even though the damage is less sometimes (no secondary class runes) that extra hit of casting speed makes a big difference.
Domination is a very versatile attribute in itself, and when coupled with Illusion or Inspiration you can do amazing things. Definitely not the safest class to play though, so grabbing some defense is an idea.
Mess'ers are a great secondary too. When I was doing S. Shiverpeaks and the Fire Islands with my Necro/Mes I don't think I got aggro once. But you should have seen those yellow negative numbers light up the screen!
It's strange but I used to think Mesmers were the interupt kings/queens, but honestly, I think if you use them with any more than one, you're wasting potential. And considering that Rangers do much better on the interupt front (particularly with their Dazing conditions) using a Mesmer for interupts is certainly not the optimal choice.
As for why Mess'ers get the rough end, well even when they're well played, what they do is often not noticeable. No flashy Meteors flying around, nor axes chinging, nor minions flooding...they're the quiet achievers.
I'm having a blast on my mesmer(pure mesmer), and i find myself to be really effective in all situations in pvp, with the exception of touchers and obsidian flesh eles(ouch @ them). I've tried a anti caster build, a anti melee build, but atm i've sort of merged both into one build.
I've been constantly editing my mesmer and switching skills in and out, but the one i'm on now is performing very well. My old build was designed to lock down, and it just wasn't as effective as this in ra. Sometimes i feel i need a bit of editing, but for now this has been working out great for me. I'm mainly in the random arena, but if i ever manage to find a good guild id be up for getting back into team arena/hoh(my first guild fell apart a long time ago after multiple hoh wins and then people started leaving, and some stopped coming to hoh when we tried to go... it just became a mess...)
But ya, mesmers are wonderful!
Currently going through GW withdrawl right now: my computer with the game on it blew up, and I'm waiting to see what it's going to cost to fix it.
Protect Tyria and Cantha for me in my absence.
thoguht the most of glory of mezmers come from pvp because its an annoying bastard to fight agasint. wither its e-denial; degen; or what in the mix, they have the ability to pressure players to iminitate them to fuck up (mostly spellcasters).
i personally love mez degens to faction farm in random areans because most teams dunt have monks to remove those dam hexes.
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*characters*
Guild Wars
-Danish Kokor-lvl 20 monk/mesmer
-Ettarde Aoi- lvl 7 warrior/ranher
Maple Story
-Danish-lvl30 Hunter
-kokore-lvl8 Mage
Runescape
-Lady Ettarde-lvl 58