W/Me: Too advanced a profession to play?

[Rabidgeese]

Hey, I'm a lvl 16 W/Me using Gladiator armor and swords. I'm having a hard time with the W/Me. On the warrior side of things, everything is great. Endure Pain and For Great Justice are always on my skill bar. It's the Mesmer side that I'm having a hard time with. As a Mesmer, I don't have many healing spells for myself, so my basic strategy seems to be to keep the other guy from healing and/or getting healed. Basically, to do a lot of damage in a small amount of time. I've tried the classic Conjure Phantasm, Shatter Delusions combo, and even try to throw in a Phantom Pain. But the problem is is that after that, I have barely any energy left. My Gladiator armor and a nice Chakram I found bump my energy up to 34, but that's still not enough to cast regularily. It seems that I have to cast a lot of spells do do any real damage. Here are my attribs:

Illusion: 6
Domination: 6
Inspiration: 4
Strength: 6
Sword: 6
Tactics: 5

Am I just not using the right skills? Are there other ways to increase energy? Or is the mesmer class just not very complimentary to the warrior class?


RG

[bodangly]

I think the problem is you need to really focus more on what you want to do. Are you trying to shut down casters? Then focus on Domination magic and take stuff like Backfire and Power Spike/Leak. Are you more of a warrior killer? Why not bring along Spirit Shackles and throw some points into Inspiration magic, maybe even bring along Signet of Midnight as well to blind your enemy. Mesmer is a tough class to play, you really are going to have to choose a specialization to be very good at anything.

[Torm Shadowbane]

My suggestion to you would be to re-think how you are spending your attributes. You seem to be spreading yourself a little thin -- it could work -- but it seems to me that more "focused" builds seem to be easier and do better.

It would help more if I knew what skills you were using.

I would suggest switching to Axe because Axe skills seem to have a more Adrenaline based use than swords. However, swords can still work as well. It would also help to know if this character is more for PvP or PvE or both. Here is a build that I think could work:

10 Strength
11 Axe
10 Inspiration

Here in this build you will be focusing more on the warrior side of things, while also having the ability to steal energy from opposing enemies. Some of these skills you can swap out for something different as you need them. You have a pretty wide range of things to chose from. Stick with the Gladiator armor and get a Shield instead to help boost with protection in combat.

Skills-
Eviscerate (Elite)/ Dismember
Penetrating Blow / Cyclone Axe
Executioner's Strike
Disrupting Chop
Axe Rake
Spirit of Failure
Energy Tap
Ether Feast

Here in this build your warrior skills don't require you to use -any- energy leaving your energy storage for your Mesmer skills. Axe also, typically speaking, does more damage than a sword. (Although it also has a wider range.) You may want to get a Rune of Axe Mastery to help boost it up a bit, though.

Your Axe skills can be swapped out as needed and depending on the situations you face. However, I would recommend keeping Eviscerate (Elite) or Dismember. If you can get Eviscerate then I would highly suggest you use that instead. I would also recommend keeping Executioner's Strike and Disrupting Chop. Disrupting Chop can be helpful when fighting certain monsters -- especially elementalist types with longer casting spells -- as well as in PvP. I would also highly suggest keeping Axe Rake for PvP or you could drop that for another skill in PvE. You could also speak to someone using swords and ask if they are using Hamstring, that way you can take out Rake and replace it with something else.

Spirit of Failure allows you to cause an enemy to miss their target 25% of the time. This can be useful in several ways. Do you see that monster hitting on that Monk? Cast Spirit of Failure on them to help reduce the damage they do. Or cast it on monsters attacking you. (Or players if in PvP.) Not only will they miss, but they will be losing energy with each miss. Warrior types will quickly find themselves out of energy.

Energy Tap allows you to steal energy from an enemy which of course is endlessly helpful as you don't have much energy. If an enemy Mesmer is tapping you -- you can tap them right back! More useful on Warrior types, Rangers and Monk, however. Ether Feast allows you to steal energy from your foe as well, but turning it into health instead. This is your 'self' heal. You can heal yourself a little over 100 points each time it's cast.

The three Mesmer spells I picked out were not energy intensive, which means that you could easily use them on a warrior with little to no problems.

The key, at least in my opinion, of choosing and using a secondary class for a warrior is to discover how it benefits his or her ability to use their abilities. In my view a warrior's job is to be a close range fighter, a tank, to take and dish out damage. The key to using a secondary is to find out what would help you in that job. The Mesmer has a wide range of skills to choose from. Get a picture of your character in your mind and see what you can come up with. This build might not be to your liking but hopefully I was able to provide some type of help -- at the very least an idea for something you would enjoy.

[Rabidgeese]

I've been changing skills a lot recently, but my basic skill list is something like this:

Sever Artirey
Gash
Endure Pain
Resurrection Signet/For Great Justice
Power Leak
Power Spike
Energy Burn
Empathy/Ether Feast

I'm pretty sure that one of the problems is that I'm spreading myself too thin. But I would like to be something of a versatile character; I'd like to be have a fair chance of killing both warriors and casters.

The other problem I've found is that quite a few Mesmer spells take a while to cast (3 seconds) and take quite a bit of energy (15). So stuff like backfire is out of the question.

With your skill list, you had more warrior skills than mesmer. Is this something I should do? I really like Illusion and Domination; would I be more versatile if I took all my points out of inspiration and put them in those two? Should I remove my points from tactics?

I really like the idea of being able to mess up people; I like the warrior defenses, like Bonettis, to mess with warriors, and the power spikes/leaks to mess with casters. But I'd also like something a bit more powerful that causes damage or such.

Thanks for all the help so far guys :)

RG

[Hunt3r_kill4]

A few suggestions of skills you should consider the most:

Empathy
Spirit of Failure
Ether Feast

Energy problems are easily solved, just think. Mesmer is the ultimate energy replenishing class, and you can use either Energy Tap, or a Warrior skill called "Bonetti's Defense"

[Diceclock]

Soothing Images.

Become an anti-melee by preventing their adreninline build up. You won't need as much energy or heals when you gimp their damage.

[Loquetus]

i also agree that your skills are to spread out
try to focus on 3 skills
getting 2 of those up to 10 and the third upto 11 + runes is more usefull then alot of lvl 5 skills
mesmer is a though class to play but works wonders when played right
as a wa/me you can rely on:
-doing massive dmge 10 str, 11 weaponskill, 10 mesmer skill to drain your oponents hp (forgot name >>)

- good dmge + countering: instead of draining hp you can decide to take along backfire or empathy

-caster killer using spell disrupting attacks: daze attacks from weapons and spell disrupters

-wa/mo killer: drain energy and hence denying them the use of monk skills needed to survive

[minetryk]

How about

sword or ax (I've never played a warrior)
Inspiration 12
Illusion 12


Illusion
10,1,20 Ineptitude -if target attacks, they take 68 dam and are blinded. Elite
or
10,2,5 Soothing Images- recharges faster, not quite as good, affects nearby enemies as well. Can choose another spell for elite.
or
15,1/4,30 Power block- domination spell though. interrupts, shuts down all related skills. Elite.

Inspiration
5,3,20 energy tap - spend 5 energy to get 13
5,1/4,25 power drain - interrupt spell (for casters), spend 5 to get 25
I would use both
10,3,5 spirite shackle's - now most of your energy will definately be used for mesmer.

warrior skills-
5,0,10,0 savage slash - interrupt casters. use sparingly.
0,0,0,4 severe artery
0,0,0,8 galrath slash

resurrection signet. No major combos that need all 8 slots.

kind of guesing with the warrior skills, except savage, thats a good one.

My W/Me will look similar to this, unless I get beat down. Haven't PvPed yet

[Taxed]

If energy you need, then you need to find a sword pommel...
There is one that gives -1 energy regen and +1 energy per hit. While the -1 regen sucks, the +1 per hit with a sword works wonders. My Warrior/Necro had no problems with energy using that sword pommel. Your energy bar fills up suprisingly quick with it!

[Warskullx]

Focus your attribute points into three categories. Then come up with some combos.

For example: Fragility+dismember or phantom pain+axe rake+axe twist. They lose 3 conditions at once causing a lot of pain with fragility (not to mention the pain the comes from receiving those conditions.

[this_barb]

You should bring Illusionary Weaponry and turn it on in the heat of battle (when nobody will notice you casted it). The DPS is much higher than using your normal weapons.

[Herthbul]

Not really. Besides, why would you waste your elite slot on a skill that does jack for you? You already deal decent DPS, and if you're aiming for more then just be a W/Mo that runs Strength of Honor/Judge's Insight. Problem solved.

And personally, for a War/Mes, it doesn't get better than a Echo + "Fear Me!" combination. Sure you can fool around with other methods of energy draining, but the combo mentioned relies on adrenaline purely, so the energy concerns of a Warrior really don't come into play, plus you're only taking two slots.

[Aboleth]

Personally, i think warrior/mesmer is pretty friggin awesome in pvp. I would focus my attribs into three areas:

Swordsmanship
Strength
Domination Magic

I would keep the rest of his skills at 0, although tactics might come in handy for longer stance times.

I would use.... (this is just an example of a decent build)

Hamstring
Sever Artery
Final Thrust
(another warrior skill)
(another warrior skill)
Blackout
Backfire
Energy Burn or Shatter Enchantment

Hamstring is great for slowing them down while you deal damage, final thrust is absoloutly awesome for finishing. Sever is a pretty standard sword skill, and use 2 others you think might be useful. Blackout is pretty nice to make sure that last monk cant cast crap while your beating him sensless, remember to hit your stance BEFORE u use this. Backfire is priceless... I mean... wow. I usually use shatter enchantment as someone is running, after a monk attempts to use healing seed or breeze on them. If you dont want to bother with that, energy burn is a great way to finish people who are no longer in range of your melee. this is just one example, but illusion or inspiration magics can also be awesome for a warrior. Imagined Burden slows, Illusionary weaponry is absoloutly sick whily your in a flurry or frenzy. I would be careful to not use too many mesmer skills, as they usually cost around 15 mana, and a warrior has to pick and choose his spells, so make them count. Hope it helps.