Difference between Me/R and R/Me

[stephencfl]

Well i made an Me/R... Dunno why. Mesmer are strong and rangers are tight. but the main thing is wut's the difference between a Me as primary and a R and primary. The only difference that i know of is mana... Me have more mana but there has to be something more. Is it that bow dmg is lower? Btw which is best? Me/R or R/Me?

thx for the help

[hahnsoo]

R/Me - You have better armor, but less Energy. You have Expertise, which improves the Energy efficiency of all of your Ranger skills and Mesmer stances and which is linked to the majority of the Ranger defensive skills (Expertise is life, for a primary ranger). You gain access to Ranger runes, but lose access to Mesmer runes. Also, you can use Ranger masks to improve one attribute.

Me/R - You have more Energy, but less armor. You have Fast Casting, which allows you to cast those Mesmer spells a lot quicker. You lose most of the Ranger defensive skills (by not having Expertise). You gain access to Mesmer runes, but lose access to Ranger runes. Also, you can use Mesmer masks to improve one attribute.

[Stephen Hawking]

There's quite a few differences I feel, but here goes...

The runes you can use and equip is a major thing. If you have ranger runes, you get better ranger attributes, and vice versa for mesmers.

Energy difference. This may not seem like much at first, but eventually a mesmer main usually holds around 42 from focus, and 8 more from enchanter set for a total of 50 energy. Where as a ranger holds 25 +8 from druid, but rarely holds the focus, and maybe a +5 energy bow. So they have 38 vs 50 energy quite easily. Not to mention the mesmer recovers energy slightly faster.

70 armor vs 60 armor. Which may not seem significant, but ranger armor goes up to 100 vs elemental spells, and 115 vs another elemental type. When you add in say an elite skill like greater conflagration (converts physical attacks to fire damage) rangers become pretty hardy vs warriors as well as elementalists which they always are. Mesmer on the otherhand has no such luxuries.

Ranger/mes will use some mesmer skills to augment their ranger skills most likely due to expertise. I.e. echo + debilitating shot = -20 energy, which cripples a lot of spellcasters. The same mes/rgr would pay a lot more energy to do the same combo (but could do other mesmer mess up skills instead). I.e. You're using more ranger stuff if you're a ranger primary due to expertise, where as the mesmer primary is probably using more mesmer stuff.

In general I play my mesmer primary with mesmer skills, I play my ranger with ranger skills, not due to the "pureness" factor, but simply due to expertise making ranger skills very spammable, and fast casting doing the same for a lot of mesmer skills. They're both so similar in terms of jobs though, its hard to say which is better.