Patccmoi
22-07-2006, 01:29
Edit by Tsume: Below is the Crippling Mesmer guide by forum member Patccmoi. Any conversation, suggestions, or questions should be directed to its sister thread in the discussion forum, found here (http://forums.gwonline.net/showthread.php?t=411749).
I thought this would be a pretty good idea for a guide since it's one of the most efficient Mesmer builds i know and that isn't as popular as it should be imo. It has been extensively discussed and improved some months ago, so while i posted that build initially lots of feedback and suggestions made it what it is now. More than just a build though (tons of variations are possible), it's a Mesmer philosophy that is quite uncommon these days with the more 'generic' builds. So here it is, my guide to the Crippling Mesmer!
What is a Crippling Mesmer?
As opposed to what many might think at first, Crippling Mesmer name didn't come from Crippling Anguish (its elite of choice imo). It comes from the idea that your plan is to cripple the other team entirely instead of doing a harsh shutdown on one key target (a speciality of MoR-Diversion Mesmers, EDenial, etc).
Basically, instead of having one person functioning at 0-10% efficiency, you aim at having 3-4 functioning at 50% while applying degen pressure to hurt the monk, boon-prot monks being the class usually hurt the less directly by a Crippling Mesmers. But they can't keep their team alive forever if the rest of the team isn't functional.
What skill line is the most useful for that effect?
From my experience, Illusion is by far the most efficient at reducing everyone's efficiency because of its potentially very long duration hexes combined with Mantra of Persistence, and the fact that it offers a variety of severly hampering hexes against all classes. Domination has harsher shutdowns, but they are usually lower duration than their recharge which is not helpful for this idea of hampering multiple people severly. And most are punishing rather than reducing efficiency (for example Empathy and Backfire will hurt someone when they take an action, but they won't reduce directly the efficiency at which they can do this action).
As you want Illusion and Mantra of Persistence, most of your attribute points will go in Illusion and Inspiration
What skills are the most fit for this purpose?
As my initial aim with this idea was to reduce everyone's efficiency by around 50%, well i went for the obvious choices : those that slow target by 50%.
From Mesmer primary, the core skills usually are:
Crippling Anguish (reduce movement speed by 50%. Melee hampering)
Arcane Conundrum (reduce cast speed by 50%. Caster hampering)
Conjure Phantasm (good degen hex. Monk hampering by adding pressure, cover hex)
Mantra of Persistence, which basically doubles the duration of these hexes, is necessary so that you can apply them on multiple targets at the same time.
2 skills are usually required for energy management to be able to keep your hexing going. My favorite choice with this setup are
Drain Enchantment
Power Drain
because they are very efficient at energy gain but also because they further help your main goal of hampering. Drain Enchantment can be used to drasitically reduce the efficiency of some specific builds (think IW, Elemental Atunement eles, etc) and help add to the degen by removing regen enchantments like Healing Breeze, Shield of Regeneration, etc. Power Drain allows to interrupt key spells, easily with the help of AConundrum, allowing some control on their casting.
Migraine + Imagined Burden vs Crippling Anguish + AConundrum
As both setups offer similar effect, i tried both to see which i prefered before settling for Crippling Anguish for elite. Compare the stats of the skills:
Crippling Anguish vs Imagined Burden : -3 degen and 20 sec recharge vs 30 sec recharge.
Migraine vs AConundrum : -3 degen, 15 sec recharge vs 20 sec recharge, 5..17 duration vs 5..13 duration.
Migraine has a slightly longer duration than AConundrum, and recharges 5 sec faster. Crippling Anguish has same stats (out of degen) as Imagined Burden, but recharges 10 sec faster.
As the duration is already more than long enough using Mantra of Persistence, my main concern was recharge. Slowing movement speed is often vital for your self-survivability has NO self-defense except kiting. The recharge is crucial for this. You will often have 2+ targets worth slowing, and the lower recharge allows to snare both.
There is also the point very important to consider of the amount of classes affected by Migraine and Crippling Anguish. Migraine is a harsh thing to cast on all spell-casting classes. But most of the time, it offers very little against warrior and ranger, usually sins too appart from Shadow Refuge, and many Ritualist skills aren't spells. Crippling Anguish on the other hand is very helpful against anything. No one wants to see their movement speed reduced by 50%, be it to chase a target for a warrior, or to run from melee for a caster. 30 sec recharge Imagined Burden doesn't allow for the dual use (offensively snaring your team's target, and defensively snaring their melee), 20 sec on Crippling Anguish can. This, for me, was more valuable than the lower recharge and longer duration of Migraine.
Conjure Phantasm vs Images of Remorse
The lower cost of IoR seemed tempting at first. But honestly, the 1 extra second of casting hurts your survivability a LOT, it degens less and lasts shorter. For this build, i didn't like it at all because of your lack of defense, and found CP to be more efficient overall.
This leaves us with 2 slots, which can vary depending on your aim. One is usually used for a rez (can change in AB where you don't need one) while another is used for your last utility.
For the Rez, my choice is usually Rez Signet, or Resurrect/Resurrection Chant. Rez Signet is nearly always better in 4v4, in 8v8 you can consider Resurrect if you're not using another secondary.
As for the other...
The finishing touch : the last skill slot
This is where you decide what you aim for, and what classes you'll be more defended against.
Here are the choices i tried and preferred personally :
Faintheartedness - Reduces attack speed by 50%, going along with the rest. This is VERY efficient against assassins, and quite annoying for any ranger or melee. As a bonus it adds -2 degen, which can allow you to reach -10 degen on a certain target using Crippling-Faint-Phantasm. Also makes any melee quite useless! Duration is quite long even without MoP powering it.
Clumsiness - interrupts an attack and deals damage. This can allow you to dispatch attackers quite efficiently, but also to INTERRUPT attack skills. This is important, because when you get used to it, it can be very efficient as such. Take Dual Shot, Devastating Hammer, Irresistible Blow from thumper... you don't want them hitting you. They have an activation time as long as most 2 sec spells, and Clumsiness casts fairly fast. You can easily throw it in the middle of their attack, interrupting it and dealing a good damage at the same time. Ofc, it can be used before-hand too, and just force the guy to take a pretty big dose of damage or wait for 14-15 sec before Clumsiness goes away (gotta love Mantra of Persistence, most people waiting it out expect it to end much, much earlier). Also awesome to throw on Frenzy warriors for a nice little spike.
Spirit Shackles - everytime target attack, they lose 5E. This hex is possibly the worse thing an assassin can be hit with. They have nearly no hope of ever completing a combo with that on, and they can't attack in between if they ever plan on doing a combo someday. Also a real pain for Rangers and Thumpers who are restricted to auto-attacks if they don't wanna wait.
Spirit of Failure - Miss 25% of the time, which is quite annoying for attackers. A Ranger missing an interrupt or an assassin missing an off-hand attack is really frustrating. On top of that, very good energy management allowing for more spammability of Phantasm.
Malaise - Only if you have a team with good healing, because you can't sustain the healing yourself. It's cheap, and very annoying for casters to receive. But more than casters, personally i think that Rangers and Assassins are hurt the most by that. They usually don't hit 0E easily, and their regen is very precious. Can be annoying to throw around, but you don't get the same 'lasting effect' as true long duration hexes because it ends early most of the time.
Accumulated Pain There is no 'hampering effect' to that, appart maybe from reducing healing by 20%. The main goal of it is pretty obvious: kill your target. There is nothing less efficient than a dead target. If your team has warrior/thumper/sin dealing Deep Wound already, don't waste your skill slot on that. But if they don't, with your ability to easily apply 2 hexes on everyone, you can help a spike at anytime by just throwing an Accumulated on target. This is priceless to score kills if your team doesn't already have Deep Wound from someone else, DW being one of the most powerful spikes in the game.
Sympathetic Visage This is a different way to annoy their team, by protecting a key target once in a while emptying all war adrenal and draining all energy from people around it if a melee is hitting. With good team play, this can be used mostly against teams using Thumper. Have their target running near one of their caster and throw Sympathetic on them. Even if Thumper stops hitting after losing his energy
These are my favorite skills for the extra slot. Some are from Mesmer so you can go with a hard rez if you want, those from Necro obviously limit you to a Rez Signet.
Attribute distribution
There is no fix attribute distribution as it varies for nearly every build depending on your 8th skill.
So just a few tips :
If you don't use damaging illusion skill (Clumsiness for example), higher inspiration is better than illusion. You get same duration, but better emanagement.
Example of attribute distribution:
Using Spirit Shackles/Spirit of Failure as extra:
14 Inspiration (11 + 3)
12 Illusion (10 + 2)
11 Fast Cast (10 + 1)
Using Faintheartedness as extra:
13 Inspiration (10 + 3)
12 Illusion (10 + 2)
9 Curses
8 Fast Cast (7 + 1)
Using Clumsiness as extra:
15 Illusion (11 + 4)
12 Inspiration (11 + 1)
9 Fast Cast (8 + 1)
Basic in-game strategy and survival
Anyone playing Mesmer knows this : you are a primary target. Even when a monk is there, you might be focused first. So the last thing you want, having no self-defense AT ALL, is to be caught in the middle of the fight.
Your hexes all have very long duration. You DO NOT need to stay in the middle of the fight. Your wanding isn't worth staying in danger zone at all. So the main idea with this is to hang back, run in, throw your hexes, run back. Don't stay in the thick of it. If anyone run for you, Crippling Anguish on him. If 2 melee run for you, start running the instant you notice, Crippling Anguish on one, keep running, and when you can Crippling Anguish on the second. Depending on your build, it's often worth it to hamper the one that isn't in Crippling Anguish in one way or another (Spirit of Failure, Faintheartedness...) so that you take a little less damage while your Crippling recharges. Usually, once that lands, it's a joke to kite anyone.
Don't hesitate to lure someone far from the fight. Use the fact that you're a primary target to your advantage. One of the best strategy against warrior is to force them to overextend a lot running after you, and then throw Crippling Anguish-Phantasm-Faintheartedness (if you have it) on them. They will be far from the fight, at 50% move speed, for 30 sec. They are basically removed from play, coming back even more slowly because they need to constantly stop to heal sig if they want to stay alive (if they have no self heal, they might die there. This is especially true against Thumpers).
One of the hardest thing, for me at least early on, is to remember that your aim is to cripple as many people as possible. Don't waste any more time then you need on one target. Once your hexes are applied, don't try to kill them faster by wanding on top of the degen, don't look at them. Just pick your next target, and hex them. And fall back from fight if you're in danger at all.
----------------------
Alright, this is it for this little guide. Hope this helps some of you. This build possibly got me the most faction i got in RA/TA, and i used it a few times in GvG to decent extent to with a few tweaks, and quite often in AB too with very good results, possibly my favorite build there (though in AB i tend to favor fast kill with Crippling-Phantasm-IoR-Accumulated Pain, insp skills being the same, replacing rez sig with Ether Feast. You are more of a long lasting snare-degen machine that can DW than hampering people. But it's so fun to see these Touch Ranger degen to death because they can't get in melee range to self-heal ^^)
I thought this would be a pretty good idea for a guide since it's one of the most efficient Mesmer builds i know and that isn't as popular as it should be imo. It has been extensively discussed and improved some months ago, so while i posted that build initially lots of feedback and suggestions made it what it is now. More than just a build though (tons of variations are possible), it's a Mesmer philosophy that is quite uncommon these days with the more 'generic' builds. So here it is, my guide to the Crippling Mesmer!
What is a Crippling Mesmer?
As opposed to what many might think at first, Crippling Mesmer name didn't come from Crippling Anguish (its elite of choice imo). It comes from the idea that your plan is to cripple the other team entirely instead of doing a harsh shutdown on one key target (a speciality of MoR-Diversion Mesmers, EDenial, etc).
Basically, instead of having one person functioning at 0-10% efficiency, you aim at having 3-4 functioning at 50% while applying degen pressure to hurt the monk, boon-prot monks being the class usually hurt the less directly by a Crippling Mesmers. But they can't keep their team alive forever if the rest of the team isn't functional.
What skill line is the most useful for that effect?
From my experience, Illusion is by far the most efficient at reducing everyone's efficiency because of its potentially very long duration hexes combined with Mantra of Persistence, and the fact that it offers a variety of severly hampering hexes against all classes. Domination has harsher shutdowns, but they are usually lower duration than their recharge which is not helpful for this idea of hampering multiple people severly. And most are punishing rather than reducing efficiency (for example Empathy and Backfire will hurt someone when they take an action, but they won't reduce directly the efficiency at which they can do this action).
As you want Illusion and Mantra of Persistence, most of your attribute points will go in Illusion and Inspiration
What skills are the most fit for this purpose?
As my initial aim with this idea was to reduce everyone's efficiency by around 50%, well i went for the obvious choices : those that slow target by 50%.
From Mesmer primary, the core skills usually are:
Crippling Anguish (reduce movement speed by 50%. Melee hampering)
Arcane Conundrum (reduce cast speed by 50%. Caster hampering)
Conjure Phantasm (good degen hex. Monk hampering by adding pressure, cover hex)
Mantra of Persistence, which basically doubles the duration of these hexes, is necessary so that you can apply them on multiple targets at the same time.
2 skills are usually required for energy management to be able to keep your hexing going. My favorite choice with this setup are
Drain Enchantment
Power Drain
because they are very efficient at energy gain but also because they further help your main goal of hampering. Drain Enchantment can be used to drasitically reduce the efficiency of some specific builds (think IW, Elemental Atunement eles, etc) and help add to the degen by removing regen enchantments like Healing Breeze, Shield of Regeneration, etc. Power Drain allows to interrupt key spells, easily with the help of AConundrum, allowing some control on their casting.
Migraine + Imagined Burden vs Crippling Anguish + AConundrum
As both setups offer similar effect, i tried both to see which i prefered before settling for Crippling Anguish for elite. Compare the stats of the skills:
Crippling Anguish vs Imagined Burden : -3 degen and 20 sec recharge vs 30 sec recharge.
Migraine vs AConundrum : -3 degen, 15 sec recharge vs 20 sec recharge, 5..17 duration vs 5..13 duration.
Migraine has a slightly longer duration than AConundrum, and recharges 5 sec faster. Crippling Anguish has same stats (out of degen) as Imagined Burden, but recharges 10 sec faster.
As the duration is already more than long enough using Mantra of Persistence, my main concern was recharge. Slowing movement speed is often vital for your self-survivability has NO self-defense except kiting. The recharge is crucial for this. You will often have 2+ targets worth slowing, and the lower recharge allows to snare both.
There is also the point very important to consider of the amount of classes affected by Migraine and Crippling Anguish. Migraine is a harsh thing to cast on all spell-casting classes. But most of the time, it offers very little against warrior and ranger, usually sins too appart from Shadow Refuge, and many Ritualist skills aren't spells. Crippling Anguish on the other hand is very helpful against anything. No one wants to see their movement speed reduced by 50%, be it to chase a target for a warrior, or to run from melee for a caster. 30 sec recharge Imagined Burden doesn't allow for the dual use (offensively snaring your team's target, and defensively snaring their melee), 20 sec on Crippling Anguish can. This, for me, was more valuable than the lower recharge and longer duration of Migraine.
Conjure Phantasm vs Images of Remorse
The lower cost of IoR seemed tempting at first. But honestly, the 1 extra second of casting hurts your survivability a LOT, it degens less and lasts shorter. For this build, i didn't like it at all because of your lack of defense, and found CP to be more efficient overall.
This leaves us with 2 slots, which can vary depending on your aim. One is usually used for a rez (can change in AB where you don't need one) while another is used for your last utility.
For the Rez, my choice is usually Rez Signet, or Resurrect/Resurrection Chant. Rez Signet is nearly always better in 4v4, in 8v8 you can consider Resurrect if you're not using another secondary.
As for the other...
The finishing touch : the last skill slot
This is where you decide what you aim for, and what classes you'll be more defended against.
Here are the choices i tried and preferred personally :
Faintheartedness - Reduces attack speed by 50%, going along with the rest. This is VERY efficient against assassins, and quite annoying for any ranger or melee. As a bonus it adds -2 degen, which can allow you to reach -10 degen on a certain target using Crippling-Faint-Phantasm. Also makes any melee quite useless! Duration is quite long even without MoP powering it.
Clumsiness - interrupts an attack and deals damage. This can allow you to dispatch attackers quite efficiently, but also to INTERRUPT attack skills. This is important, because when you get used to it, it can be very efficient as such. Take Dual Shot, Devastating Hammer, Irresistible Blow from thumper... you don't want them hitting you. They have an activation time as long as most 2 sec spells, and Clumsiness casts fairly fast. You can easily throw it in the middle of their attack, interrupting it and dealing a good damage at the same time. Ofc, it can be used before-hand too, and just force the guy to take a pretty big dose of damage or wait for 14-15 sec before Clumsiness goes away (gotta love Mantra of Persistence, most people waiting it out expect it to end much, much earlier). Also awesome to throw on Frenzy warriors for a nice little spike.
Spirit Shackles - everytime target attack, they lose 5E. This hex is possibly the worse thing an assassin can be hit with. They have nearly no hope of ever completing a combo with that on, and they can't attack in between if they ever plan on doing a combo someday. Also a real pain for Rangers and Thumpers who are restricted to auto-attacks if they don't wanna wait.
Spirit of Failure - Miss 25% of the time, which is quite annoying for attackers. A Ranger missing an interrupt or an assassin missing an off-hand attack is really frustrating. On top of that, very good energy management allowing for more spammability of Phantasm.
Malaise - Only if you have a team with good healing, because you can't sustain the healing yourself. It's cheap, and very annoying for casters to receive. But more than casters, personally i think that Rangers and Assassins are hurt the most by that. They usually don't hit 0E easily, and their regen is very precious. Can be annoying to throw around, but you don't get the same 'lasting effect' as true long duration hexes because it ends early most of the time.
Accumulated Pain There is no 'hampering effect' to that, appart maybe from reducing healing by 20%. The main goal of it is pretty obvious: kill your target. There is nothing less efficient than a dead target. If your team has warrior/thumper/sin dealing Deep Wound already, don't waste your skill slot on that. But if they don't, with your ability to easily apply 2 hexes on everyone, you can help a spike at anytime by just throwing an Accumulated on target. This is priceless to score kills if your team doesn't already have Deep Wound from someone else, DW being one of the most powerful spikes in the game.
Sympathetic Visage This is a different way to annoy their team, by protecting a key target once in a while emptying all war adrenal and draining all energy from people around it if a melee is hitting. With good team play, this can be used mostly against teams using Thumper. Have their target running near one of their caster and throw Sympathetic on them. Even if Thumper stops hitting after losing his energy
These are my favorite skills for the extra slot. Some are from Mesmer so you can go with a hard rez if you want, those from Necro obviously limit you to a Rez Signet.
Attribute distribution
There is no fix attribute distribution as it varies for nearly every build depending on your 8th skill.
So just a few tips :
If you don't use damaging illusion skill (Clumsiness for example), higher inspiration is better than illusion. You get same duration, but better emanagement.
Example of attribute distribution:
Using Spirit Shackles/Spirit of Failure as extra:
14 Inspiration (11 + 3)
12 Illusion (10 + 2)
11 Fast Cast (10 + 1)
Using Faintheartedness as extra:
13 Inspiration (10 + 3)
12 Illusion (10 + 2)
9 Curses
8 Fast Cast (7 + 1)
Using Clumsiness as extra:
15 Illusion (11 + 4)
12 Inspiration (11 + 1)
9 Fast Cast (8 + 1)
Basic in-game strategy and survival
Anyone playing Mesmer knows this : you are a primary target. Even when a monk is there, you might be focused first. So the last thing you want, having no self-defense AT ALL, is to be caught in the middle of the fight.
Your hexes all have very long duration. You DO NOT need to stay in the middle of the fight. Your wanding isn't worth staying in danger zone at all. So the main idea with this is to hang back, run in, throw your hexes, run back. Don't stay in the thick of it. If anyone run for you, Crippling Anguish on him. If 2 melee run for you, start running the instant you notice, Crippling Anguish on one, keep running, and when you can Crippling Anguish on the second. Depending on your build, it's often worth it to hamper the one that isn't in Crippling Anguish in one way or another (Spirit of Failure, Faintheartedness...) so that you take a little less damage while your Crippling recharges. Usually, once that lands, it's a joke to kite anyone.
Don't hesitate to lure someone far from the fight. Use the fact that you're a primary target to your advantage. One of the best strategy against warrior is to force them to overextend a lot running after you, and then throw Crippling Anguish-Phantasm-Faintheartedness (if you have it) on them. They will be far from the fight, at 50% move speed, for 30 sec. They are basically removed from play, coming back even more slowly because they need to constantly stop to heal sig if they want to stay alive (if they have no self heal, they might die there. This is especially true against Thumpers).
One of the hardest thing, for me at least early on, is to remember that your aim is to cripple as many people as possible. Don't waste any more time then you need on one target. Once your hexes are applied, don't try to kill them faster by wanding on top of the degen, don't look at them. Just pick your next target, and hex them. And fall back from fight if you're in danger at all.
----------------------
Alright, this is it for this little guide. Hope this helps some of you. This build possibly got me the most faction i got in RA/TA, and i used it a few times in GvG to decent extent to with a few tweaks, and quite often in AB too with very good results, possibly my favorite build there (though in AB i tend to favor fast kill with Crippling-Phantasm-IoR-Accumulated Pain, insp skills being the same, replacing rez sig with Ether Feast. You are more of a long lasting snare-degen machine that can DW than hampering people. But it's so fun to see these Touch Ranger degen to death because they can't get in melee range to self-heal ^^)