11 replies to this topic

[Martiniam1]

I recently got a second character to 80 and am now interested in starting to level another. My two main characters are a ranger and a warrior. So I would like to level a light armor class next. However, I am torn between mesmer and necro. I have both at low levels and think both are fun. Can someone give me a run down on what each profession can offer me solo and in group play. Also variability is a concern as I want to be able to switch up skills often to keep leveling interesting.

Thanks

[Thaddeuz]

With Mesmer, you need to be active in your gameplay if you wanna achievement good dps. You need to pump illusions fast by switch weapons, using dodge (with trait) and shatter as much as you can. You can't rely on auto-attack plus some skill when their cooldown reach 0 like in other profession. You got some really nice skills and they are really different that other profession as well. Mantra are really original since you need to activate them before the fight so the skill could be ready when you need them. You get invisibility, teleport, phantasm, clone, portal and the best Elite Skill pool with Time Wrap and Mass Invisibility (Even Moa Form is cool). All this make the Mesmer really a one of a kind profession that really feel different not only visually but in your gameplay.

Necromancer are more easy to play. In fact, they are the more easy light armor profession (at least at low level), because you don't need to rely on your skill for your survivability (you got the highest hp pool with the warrior).  The Death Shroud is really nice and can save you several time if you know how to use it, but still it don't give you a unique gameplay like the shatter does for the Mesmer. There are a lot of way to play the Necromancer that feel different of each other. You can be a minions master if you feel like staying alive while letting your minions do the jobs, you can be a Wellmancer and be almost invincible against melee, you can be a tank in light armor if you want and it work, you can spreads condition in so many different ways, and for leveling the necro get several high movement speed skills (Signet of Locust give you 25% speed and cost 1 skill point, and later with Locust Swarm and Spectral Walk you can almost get constant switfness without making any change in your trait).

[Br0th3r6r1m]

I find Necro and Mesmer "overlap" quite a bit in what they ultimately achieve...conditions.  Both put sizeable amounts of conditions on enemies, just in different ways.  I find Mesmer more "fun" if you like having a challenge.  Think of yourself like a thief with magic.  Deceptions, clones, shatters...Mesmers are a blast but you have to have patience.  Gameplay is ALWAYS changing.  Truly deadly in the right hands/mindset.

Necros, are the tanks of light armor...pumping out conditions on everything.  I didnt use minions myself, but they offer a different route of gameplay.  Can litterally pull huge mobs and let dots take them down.  Death Shroud adds to their "tanky" ness giving you another life bar to utilize.  Great great class to play.

Again I think these two classes overlap more then any others, but a blast to play.  I generally feel that Necro's are more warmly looked upon in dungeons and group play, and that is strictly because the populous doesn't understand Mesmers.

[Cereal]

Br0th3r6r1m, on 09 January 2013 - 02:54 AM, said:

I find Necro and Mesmer "overlap" quite a bit in what they ultimately achieve...conditions.

I, and probably many others, cannot agree with this statement.

[Khrushchev]

I'm speaking from my experience with my main, a lv 80 Necro, and my alt, a lv 80 Mesmer.

Necro is amazing for melting faces with AoE, be it epidemic transferring 25 stacks of bleeding, poison, burning, and anything else that tickles your fancy, or multiple wells and Life Transfer. Necros always have options when it comes to damaging something. However, where Necros fall short are in burst situations, Necros have a lack of burst healing or damage, and next to no access to stun breakers or vigor, often leaving Death Shroud to act as a psuedo-stun break/burst damage sponge.

On the flip side, Mesmers have access to a lot of stun breakers (Blink/Decoy are amazing) and nearly constant vigor with a few points in dueling. This allows them to spec quite heavily into damage and still be relatively sturdy. Currently I am running a pow/crit build, have 3200 power, 45% Crit Chance, and 95% crit damage, and I'm quite enjoying it, especially since with Blink, I can get out of many a sticky situation and Distortion (With the roll-clones) + the perma-vigor from my traits make me quite survivable.

Both are good, and while both can "overlap" occasionally, they fulfill different roles to be sure.

[kendro1200]

Khrushchev, on 09 January 2013 - 03:24 AM, said:

I'm speaking from my experience with my main, a lv 80 Necro, and my alt, a lv 80 Mesmer.

Necro is amazing for melting faces with AoE, be it epidemic transferring 25 stacks of bleeding, poison, burning, and anything else that tickles your fancy, or multiple wells and Life Transfer. Necros always have options when it comes to damaging something. However, where Necros fall short are in burst situations, Necros have a lack of burst healing or damage, and next to no access to stun breakers or vigor, often leaving Death Shroud to act as a psuedo-stun break/burst damage sponge.

On the flip side, Mesmers have access to a lot of stun breakers (Blink/Decoy are amazing) and nearly constant vigor with a few points in dueling. This allows them to spec quite heavily into damage and still be relatively sturdy. Currently I am running a pow/crit build, have 3200 power, 45% Crit Chance, and 95% crit damage, and I'm quite enjoying it, especially since with Blink, I can get out of many a sticky situation and Distortion (With the roll-clones) + the perma-vigor from my traits make me quite survivable.

Both are good, and while both can "overlap" occasionally, they fulfill different roles to be sure.

This is a very accurate assessment.  Thaddeuz's description of necromancer play touched concepts, but skipped over lots of stuff.  One thing I'd like to clarify is that just because crit bleed necros have a useful auto attack doesn't mean that necros auto attack to win all day.  Devs designed necros to be masters of condition manipulation, and necros are strongest in that function.  Crit bleed necros can have very intricate rotations to maximize their dps potential, and their sustained aoe damage is second to none thanks to epidemic.  Burst necros are sorta weak, although some people have come up with hybrid builds of power and condition damage, that makes a very squishy necro with the ability to burst ~6k on demand while a 10-15 bleed stack ticks, which is nice.  There is a ramp up time to do so, so meh.  There are also necro might weaving builds that can hold 25 to 30 stacks of might with a good deal of power with close to 90% up-time.

Mesmers also have some really strong builds that can melt faces hard.  In dungeons a well played mesmer is amazing.  That being said, like eles, a poorly played mesmer is annoying and can drag the group down.

[Raagar Deathclaw]

take what i say with a grain of salt as i have nvr played a mes but necros dps potential is amazing imo, with consideration to traits and strategy you can have 10-15 stacks of bleed,poison,vulnerability,cripple and weakness almost constantly on a group which makes for alot of really efficient massacres

[Sword Hammer Axe]

Mesmer is incredibly popular in dungeons and such because of skills like Feedback, Portal, Null Field, and who could forget Time Warp. Besides, Mesmer has amazing damage when played right and can really dominate both PvE and PvP with some very rewarding builds. Besides, their flashy skills look awesome and so is wielding a Greatsword as a light armor class XD

Necromancer are on the other hand more easy to control and still play properly. They also have incredible survivability and can stack conditions like there's no tomorrow. Their skills also look pretty neat <3

Basically, they're both great. My two favorite professions (and I've done them all), though I think Mesmer might win just a teenee tiny bit because of my enthusiastic play style. Consider the pros and cons with each and you'll be able to find something neat

[Gerroh]

Khrushchev, on 09 January 2013 - 03:24 AM, said:

and next to no access to stun breakers or vigor, often leaving Death Shroud to act as a psuedo-stun break/burst damage sponge.

-Ahem-
Necromancers have 4 stun-breakers; plague signet, flesh wurm→necrotic traversal, spectral walk, spectral armor. Unless I'm forgetting something, all professions have 4 stun-breakers.
But yeah, we have no ability to dodge.

The idea behind necromancer, as Anet put it quite well, is to fight a war of attrition. Consequently, burst/spike damage doesn't exist with necromancer, because your purpose is to outlast everything else. You turn your opponents into weak little babies and then slowly drain their health away.

I don't have a lot of experience with mesmer, but I can tell you that as a condition nec I can output thousands of sustained DPS via scepter+dagger and epidemic. The great thing about this is that the bigger the fight gets, the more powerful you get. It's nearly impossible to kill a good necromancer in the middle of a huge fight, as they'll be gaining life force from everything dying around them.

I'm a bit biased on this topic as I hate mesmers with a righteous fury, but if you do choose mesmer, play staff or scepter, don't be another brainless greatsword mesmer.

Edited by Gerroh, 01 February 2013 - 11:19 PM.

[Shadow209]

I don't use spectral skills, as they have too much cooldown. Flesh wurm and plague signet aren't really usefull either, imho.
And we only have 2 dodges and no source of vigor (blood is power > well of power just isn't viable). Yes, we have deathshroud, but a strong attack can drain all your life force and it doesn't refill very fast in boss fights. We have no problems against groups, but in boss fights, where we need our dodges, life force fills very slow.

Mesmer on the other hand has 5sec of vigor on every crit, blink, Sword [2] for 2sec invulnerability, Sword [4] is a block, F4 schatters your clones for 1-4sec invulnerability. Plus you have stealth and clones can draw aggro pretty good, which helps a lot, since you can automaticaly create a clone on dodge.

In fact, necro and mesmer are my favorite classes, and I can't decide, which one I like better, though I would consider my necro to be my main.

On my necro I use a condition build (rabid gear), on my mesmer I use a power based phantasm/schatter build (berserker gear), but power based necros and condition mesmers are viable as well, so you can't just say "they both do conditions".

Edit: Necros have blinds from well of darkness and plague, which is awesome against trash mobs, but bosses are practically immune to it, so no blind tanking, when you need it the most.

Edited by Shadow209, 01 February 2013 - 11:52 PM.

[Elysen]

Gerroh, on 01 February 2013 - 11:17 PM, said:

I'm a bit biased on this topic as I hate mesmers with a righteous fury, but if you do choose mesmer, play ... scepter.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....













































































....OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

This is a PvE Forum.

[Khrushchev]

Gerroh, on 01 February 2013 - 11:17 PM, said:

-Ahem-
Necromancers have 4 stun-breakers; plague signet, flesh wurm→necrotic traversal, spectral walk, spectral armor. Unless I'm forgetting something, all professions have 4 stun-breakers.
But yeah, we have no ability to dodge.

The idea behind necromancer, as Anet put it quite well, is to fight a war of attrition. Consequently, burst/spike damage doesn't exist with necromancer, because your purpose is to outlast everything else. You turn your opponents into weak little babies and then slowly drain their health away.

I don't have a lot of experience with mesmer, but I can tell you that as a condition nec I can output thousands of sustained DPS via scepter+dagger and epidemic. The great thing about this is that the bigger the fight gets, the more powerful you get. It's nearly impossible to kill a good necromancer in the middle of a huge fight, as they'll be gaining life force from everything dying around them.

I'm a bit biased on this topic as I hate mesmers with a righteous fury, but if you do choose mesmer, play staff or scepter, don't be another brainless greatsword mesmer.

Necromancers "have" four stun breakers, but Spectral Armor has a minute and a half recharge, Spectral Walk has a minute recharge and offers little to most builds, and Flesh Wurm has a 1.5 second casting time, which can't be used while stunned, requiring a pre-cast and a hope that nobody kills it (which only takes about a second to do). Plague Signet is the only viable option, given that it transfers all conditions, a powerful bonus, but it also has a minute long cooldown, traited to signets 48 seconds. With only one, in my opinion, viable option to break stuns, on a 48 second cooldown, that's what I call "next to no access".

On the other hand, Mesmers have access to multiple great stun breakers. Decoy on a 40 second base cooldown, which additionally stealths you, making it much more difficult for some classes to target you. Blink when traited is probably on par with Shake it Off and Shadowstep with regards to the best stun break in the game. 1200 range teleport on a 24 second cooldown has gotten my Mesmer out of some incredibly sticky situations, and can be used to finish off Elementalists and Thieves who teleport or Vapor Form away, or avoid nasty Boss attacks like Lupicus's tunneling attack.

With regards to Mesmer weapon choice, I find Scepter is often times useless unless running a full shatter build, and Staff is a great defensive weapon (Phase Retreat is a Mesmer's best friend), but Greatsword is simply the best choice for a power based Mesmer build. Berserker is essentially an instant Churning Earth strength attack (Berserker) that cripples and repeats itself if not taken care of, able to be spawned every 16 seconds is quite useful. Played well, GS Mesmers can do incredible amounts of damage.

On the other hand, Sword/Focus is probably the most fun I have playing Mesmer, being able to pull people off of walls in WvW, having easy access to an Immobilize and a second of invulnerability are among the more fun parts of being a Mesmer.

Edited by Khrushchev, 02 February 2013 - 12:03 AM.