What class combination do I want? What's good? Does it matter at all what I pick?
Yes and no. There is no combination which is truly gimped, but some are better than others to suit a certain playstyle. Your approach should not be, "What does each class do and do I want to live with those limitations?" but "What do I want to do? I see what is possible using these skill sets. I will mix and match these skills to suit how I wish to play, and use the unique primary attribute to further enhance, and help me decide what I'd like to do"
This post should help you with finding out what primary/secondary profession best suits how you desire to play.
In guild wars, you have six professions, and are allowed to choose one primary and one seconary professions, described here
http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=45
But what's the difference in choosing a warrior, as opposed to elementalist first?
Looks, equipment, and most importantly, a Primary profession attribute. I believe you should create a character to cater to your desired form of gameplay, and your primary attribute will drive what type of character you create.
Each Profession has a "Primary attribute" that you do not obtain if you choose that profession as your secondary. Each Primary attribute gives your profession a special ability not found in others, like fast casting, increased mana storage, increased healing, additional damage and accuracy with bow.
Let us look at each Primary profession:
Elementalist
-Skills here: http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=46
Primary attribute: Energy Storage
--gain 3 energy per level. First few points are pretty useful. Low cost of 3 cost total attribute points, gain +6 to your overall maximum energy.
--Aura of Restoration is based on Energy storage, so you'll get a synergistic effect of:
---Gain extra health per cast for spending more on your max mana reserves.
+Energy regeneration +Energy Max armor.
--Low armor rating for armor
What this means, if you wish to spend most of your time casting, consider creating an elementalist primary.
Ele/Mo especially would have a large pool of energy to drink from.
Elemental Skill sets:
Earth Magic: Lots of spells inflicting knockdown, which interrupts enemy actions like spellcasting, movement, and attack, and forces them into a sitting/ducking animation.
Additionally, earth magic has skills block, evade, and reduce damage from attacks, but sometimes slow the caster. These would be great if one considers being an "Earth Warrior" or "Warrior of Earth" (W/El) or living Golem A warrior like this would greatly reduce the Primary healer's overhead for healing while still performing warrior attack duties.
Consider how these skills are used, and arise from the restrictions of class and profession. It is end-use you need to think about.
Water:
Slow enemy. Freeze enemy. Blind enemy. Become a non-target for a period of time with Mists. Water is generally about instant ranged damaging the enemy while slowing them with cold at the same time. Cold damage enhancement spell too.
There's one spell in particular that is easily acquired and I see a lot of usage with when acquired, an elite spell called Water Trident. It does medium-high damage (just a hair under fireball) for only 5 energy to one enemy, and has a near instant recast/recharge time. If the target is struck while moving, he is knocked down. Only two downfalls to Water Trident: One, it is elite, so cannot be mixed with other elite skills. Two: it is a 'projectile' cast spell, which means it can miss if caught at a bad running angle--but its cheap fast damage which slows and potentially knocks down. Can't complain too much.
Fire:
Pure damage. Artillery, Up close, delayed damage, damage over time, instant damage. Plus, an Enchantment for additional fire attack damage (cold has equivalent too) for you warrior or ranger types wanting to use your weapons most of the time.
Consider what is best for you. Do you really want to wait 3 seconds to cast firestorm when the mob can or will move? Instant damage for moving targets. What about area of effect spells? Move to the enemy if you need to, and dash off after it is cast.
Air:
Blind, Speed yourself, knockdown, stun. Neato. Not as much damage, but application of status attacks in addition to damage just rocks. For example, lightning javelin will do damage AND interrupt an attacking foe. No preset condition of "must interrupt to do damage" like the mesmer. Do damage AND interrupt them if they're attacking.
There's a glut of other affects too. My favorite is whirlwind, an AoE attack spell around the caster that knocks down any attacking foe adjacent to the caster. Oh boy, who comes right up to you? Oh. Melee'ers.
Again, run up to the enemies tanking your teammates, but this time to save their butts and prolong their lives. Knockdown any enemy. This skill is useful even if you do not invest in air, as whirlwind is primarily useful for its attack-interruption (arse saving) abilities.
Gale. Instant Ranged knockdown. Someone chasing you or your healer? Cast gale and make them sit on their bums, with no conditions attached. Low 5 energy cost, low 1 sec activation time. All around very useful spell.
Other skill effects:
Reducing mana cost, Regain mana per cast of elemental type,
Mesmer
-Skills here: http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=47
Fast Casting attribute
--the formula is not clear, but visiual experience has shown 5-6 ranks of fast casting reducing cast time by half or 2/3's
--This means all spells taking 1 second of cast time are almost-instant, 2 seconds fast, and anything 3 seconds and above made tolerable.
--This can be crucial in casting interrupts, heals, and any counter-spell
Consider the Monk's long 8 second resurrect spell. Your vulnerability time would be greatly reduced as a Fast Casting Me/Mo.
On the other hand, why heal your teammates when you can dish out damage a lot faster?
Me/El as a fast cast fire mage specially would do the most damage per time. All those long 3 second plus spells are suddenly tolerable with low overhead. Cast those fireballs and meteors in no-time. Flare's 1 second cast time and instantaneous skill recharge time has suddenly become less than one second per cast. That becomes a huge increase of damage per second, as
Damage per time = Damage / (Cast time - Fast cast bonus * Time + Zero skill recharge time)
Most skills don't have that zero recharge time luxury, nor low cast time which is further reduced by the Fast Cast attribute.
Mesmer armor is not so great in terms of protection. It does however give +energy and energy regeneration like the Elementalist's. So keep in mind, Mesmers primarily make for powerful casters. Secondarily, they have a whole gamut of skills to counter every other skill in the game, including themselves! Useful for nearly any class as a secondary due to "advanced tactical" skill-sets.
Mesmers have the potential really shine in PvP, but can be the deciding factor of whether any PvE group faces a tough boss or "interesting" mob, as Me's can shut down use of all skills and abilities.
Domination Magic:
Oh woo hoo hoo! Punish, Interrupt, delay and drain any spellcasting and mana-dependent skills using instantaneous interrupts, and delayed hex spells.
Basically, you're a spellcaster's worst nightmare. The ultimate anti-mage.
The domination skill set is notorious for draining the enemy's energy supply, and punishing the enemy for any action it takes with interrupts and medium to incredibly high damage depending on the circumstances in which it is caught.
Some highlighted skills:
Backfire: Hex spell, For 10 seconds, this curse does HIGH damage whenever the enemy casts a spell. Expect 1-2.5x the listed damage. I say 2.5, because the caster rarely (in my experience) survives to make the third cast--or cannot cast at all for some reason (do dee do dee do)
Energy Burn: Medium damage, medium 10 energy cost, medium-long recharge time, high usage. Reason? Instant ranged damage that is not reduced in most, +85%, cases. Elemental damage, Physical damage are both reduced by armor and various spells and skills. Energy almost always regens. You get to use this bad boy at range, and blow a chunk of damage that is almost never reduced--that is, unless the eneny has zero to low mana, but now that their current energy is zero'ed by your energy burn is a GOOD thing.
Power Spike: Medium to High instant damage spell. Damage works only if enemy is casting a spell, but you also interrupt the spell they cast. Wonderful. Target and watch their spellcasters, and put an end to their casting days.
Cry of frustration: Similar to power spike, but the condition required is loosened to enemy using any skill. Less damage, but both interrupt and damage are now AoE around the enemy using the skill. Neat, huh?
Diversion: The next time target foe uses a skill, that skill takes an additional 10-47 seconds to recharge. Recharge time of 5 seconds. Oh boy oh boy. You can completely shut down any and all non-adrenaline based skills based on this skill alone. Totally worth it.
Many more skills have a tagged condition to do damage, delay or interrupt. Read for yourself, and consider what enemies you'll face. Knowledge of the enemy is most important when it comes to selecting mesmer skills.
For example, Shatter hex, like power spike, will do great damage to the enemy IF one of your allies is HEX'ed and near the enemy. It'll both remove the HEX from your ally and do great AoE damage.
Illusion Magic
Like the domination magic skill set, Illusion magic has many skills which require a set condition like "foe is attacking" "foe casts a spell" and creates another condition which is harmful to that enemy.
The player starts out with Conjure Phantasm, which is not very useful as a damage spell at all. It is a HEX spell that does damage over time, but a very long period of time for its investment. HEX's can be dispelled from many sources, but such a spell damaging over time is best against foes running away--thus preventing their health regeneration for X time longer. That is the true strength of this skill. . . however in general outside of PvP, we do not see much use for this.
Illusion magic has very many other interesting and very utilitarian spells. Consider Illusion magic as your secondary for warriors, rangers, and possibly monks. (I fear I do not know much about primary Necros)
Mantra of distortion (Stance, gone when putting on other stances):
Evade 75% of all physical attacks to you for a cost of 5-3 energy per attack. Definitely a survivalist skill, and can temporarily delay whole hordes of mob enemies this way. Combine this with other area interrupt and knockdown skills like cry of frustration or whirlwind, and you can 'hold the pass' temporarily keeping all enemies at bay while your mana lasts.
Otherwise, simply keep it on to survive yourself. I consider it a cool mana shield that reduces a LOT of potential damage.
Fragility: target foe takes 5-28 damage each time that foe suffers or recovers from a new condition. Excellent secondary skill for warriors in particular, whose attacks greatly revolve around inciting condition and status changes.
I must say, the Illusion skillset makes me want to create Melee specific Illusion warriors... Nightblades.
Imagined Burden: Ranged instant Hex. Slow target 50% for 8-18 seconds--or, in game terms, medium to LONG time.
I cannot stress how useful this is to survive. Cast this on any enemy chasing your spellcasters, or anyone in pursuit of you. Heck, open with this spell, luring the now slowed enemy into an ambush of ranged skill effects.
Sympathetic Vision and Soothing images: Adrenaline negating spells. All those nasty powerful adrenaline melee skills like power strike are now flushed down the toilet. Soothing images is a ranged HEX spell cast on one specific target for a medium length of time 8-18 seconds.
Sympathetic Vision's delivery is less direct, but can affect more enemies. Enchantment spell, drains all adrenaline of nearby enemies when melee attacked with this spell. So, cast it on your tanks or your runaway casters who are being attacked. All those warrior adrenaline skills are now gimped because they chose to mess with the wrong Mesmer. Ha!
In short, Illusion magic is best suited to enhance your survivability and the survival of your allies, whether spellcasters or tanks.
Inspired Magic:
This skill set is an interesting bunch. You get to steal energy, enchantments, hexes and gain those positive benefits for your own. You also have some interrupts against action and spells, but they're mainly transmuted your positive benefit, as opposed to Domination magic which punishes the enemy for their actions.
Inspired magic also has various enchantments that reduce the damage of various elemental types by a hefty percentage (1/4 to 1/2), and transforms that damage to energy for yourself.
Inspiration magic has more mish mash of skills, but generally do not do damage. They either protect you, or interrupt the enemy's action and gives you a minor positive bonus.
Other noteworthy Mesmer Skills:
Epidemic: All negative conditions target foe suffers from are spread from target foe to nearby foes.
I'm grinning ear to ear. Use this skill in combination with other condition rendering attack skills, AND fragility, which does damage whenever foe suffers or recovers from a condition.
Illusion of Weakness and Illusionary Weaponary.
Both are illusion spells, but since they're fairly rare, I thought I'd put them under here. Keep your eyes peeled for these powerful skills. Illusionary weaponary 8-34 damage replacing melee damage doesn't look like much, but this damage cannot be reduced, evaded or blocked by armor or skills. That's sick! Resistence is futile. The fact that it is an enchantment means it'll be disenchanted quickly in PvP, but not so much in PvE. In PvP I suggest using this spell as a 'finisher' rather than bread and butter use.
Illusion of Weakness.. lose 50-202 health, but when damage drops your drops your health below 25%, you gain that 50-202 health back. Muahahaha. That's a darn nice buffer. Weakness? Its an enchantment spell, so can be dispelled through various ways.
These skill combinations just get sicker and sicker. I love it. This is a fairly advanced use of 3 seperate skills in conjunction with each other, so I do not recommend it for bread and butter--but try new skills out! See how they work with each other.
Later, I will analyze other profession skills sets, but for now I will leave you with their almost-all important Primary attributes as a deciding factor for your character creation decisions:
Warrior:
Primary attribute
Strength.
Basis for many of warrior's skills, especially his running duration skills. With loads of strength, the warrior becomes a distance runner.
Every level of strength adds to armor penetration for his weapons. How effective this is varies. However, I find strength has many useful survival +hp skills, and is useful as a stand-alone skill enchancing attribute.
Warrior Armor: is quite simply the best in terms of armor rating and damage reduction. Looks? Arguable. Caster +energy +energy regen bonuses? None, but it does the job its suited for--protection via damage reduction.
Warriors have many status and condition inducing attacks centered around their weapons of choice, either axe, sword or hammer. In addition, there are advanced skills that require various enemy conditions to be effective, such as knockdown--which Hammer warriors can easily achieve.
Warriors weapon based skill attacks are sometimes based on adrenaline, which is charged by the warrior hitting the enemy, or being attacked from said enemy.
Warriors also have tactical shouts which enhance armor or speed of nearby allies, and many defensive stances that allow the warrior to spring into or out of battle, or hold their ground with +evade +block +parry a high percentage of ranged, melee or a combination of both attacks. These defensive stance skills sometimes requiring shields or swords to function.
Ranger:
Primary attribute:
Expertise
Armor: Rangers have the second best armor in the game, and can be easily customized against elemental damage. Some +energy regeneration, some +max energy, good armor rating, and +elemental armor. What's to complain about? Not as much as pure casters, but overall very good.
Rangers get very useful attributes in general. Beast mastery does a myriad of effects increasing critical and normal hit chance of your pets in addition to helping all those much needed beast mastery pet skills. Expertise reduces preperation time for many bow skills.
Many bow based skills that do +damage of various types, AoE, over time (poison + burning), and do status attacks like cripple.
Traps skills, which means mines. Very interesting. AoE Damage layed down on areas with a delayed contact charge. I like it.
Pets: Wolves, Lynx, Warthog and Moa bird. Many beast mastery skills. Basically your own personal frankenstein animal, as it can be ressurrected without penalty and tank better than most warriors! Not superb damage from pets, but very reasonable. Watch out for Beastmasters, they rock.
Rangers are also Escape artists. Rangers have a few skills that both increase speed and dodge/evade attacks for short periods of time. These become very useful in hairy situations. Outrunning rocks. Outrunning AND auto-dodging enemy arrow fire has saved my ranger's cute bum many many times. No arrow stuck in that soft fleshy bottom! Not as many, anyway.
Monk.
Primary Attribute: Divine Favor
This gives a bonus to healing, but there is rumour and reports of a bug that this bonus heal does not always properly work, in particular with healing targets other than yourself. <strike>As such, this attribute may be bugged, and I cannot recommend using Monk as Primary at this time.</strike>
Edit: If Divine Favor works, Monk Primary is strong choice for your healers.
There are many useful protection and healing skills as a monk. When desiring a primary healer, I highly recommend monk as a secondary to Me/Mo or El/Mo, to gain fast cast or energy storage added attributes. Divine favor may or may not be bugged. Monk as a secondary for Necromancer, as a true healer, given its fast mana recharge attributes, might be a third useful option--but I am unfamiliar with this build
Edit: Swissmercenary confirms Necromancer is a strong canidate for Primary of a Healing character.
Monk as secondary to warriors and rangers make them partial paladins and 'save the day' people, lowering the stress to party overall with healing and ressurrection. Tanks should be survivors, so should escape artists. Given that, W/Mo and R/Mo are bread and butter to most parties, and a popular mainstream choice. However, the power of rare and unusual profession combinations cannot be denied. At the time of this writing, Me's were becoming feared as the deadliest force in all PvP, and respected among the more experienced players. Before that, Me--anything only led to confusion among the masses, as no one knew what mesmers did (not even me). Now... Even Me/W is a serious threat, due to "Illusion Weaponary" skill alone.
Most noteworthy skill at this moment:
Vengeance resurrection: 8 second cast time, ranged. Ally is ressurrected for only 30 seconds, then dies and suffers no death penalty while alive this way. Not very useful? He is resurrected with FULL HEALTH and ENERGY. 100% health isn'tvery useful for fighting if he's only going to live 30 seconds, but it is of greater use to pull that corpse out of hairy situations.
Imagine the corpse deep into enemy territory surrounded by mobs. With Vengeance, this is not a problem if your monk with vengeance can safely angle a cast. Once alive, he'd better be instructed to run to safety as far as possible. Of course, the nastier the situation, the less he'll be able to run, but eventually his corpse will be able to run somewhere safe.
Necromancer
Primary Attribute: Soul Reaping
Gain mana for each enemy death. Can be very useful source of energy recharge.
I'm afraid I am less familiar with Necromancers than the other professions. Necromancers are another 'advanced profession' which I do not recommend to newbies to set as their primary, as they do not do much visible damage, nor have obvious supportive defensive capabiilties.
They have a variety of hexes, curses, land life siphoning skills which can be a boon to warriors. Their skills do not output a whole lot of damage by themselves, but can hold their own in tanking terms and additionally may summon minions and cause other interesting effects from corpses.
I need a necromancer expert to write this one. Any takers?
Edit #1: Made some corrections as per help from SwissMercenary
Forthcoming: Further skill analysis of warriors, rangers and monks
Yes and no. There is no combination which is truly gimped, but some are better than others to suit a certain playstyle. Your approach should not be, "What does each class do and do I want to live with those limitations?" but "What do I want to do? I see what is possible using these skill sets. I will mix and match these skills to suit how I wish to play, and use the unique primary attribute to further enhance, and help me decide what I'd like to do"
This post should help you with finding out what primary/secondary profession best suits how you desire to play.
In guild wars, you have six professions, and are allowed to choose one primary and one seconary professions, described here
http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=45
But what's the difference in choosing a warrior, as opposed to elementalist first?
Looks, equipment, and most importantly, a Primary profession attribute. I believe you should create a character to cater to your desired form of gameplay, and your primary attribute will drive what type of character you create.
Each Profession has a "Primary attribute" that you do not obtain if you choose that profession as your secondary. Each Primary attribute gives your profession a special ability not found in others, like fast casting, increased mana storage, increased healing, additional damage and accuracy with bow.
Let us look at each Primary profession:
Elementalist
-Skills here: http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=46
Primary attribute: Energy Storage
--gain 3 energy per level. First few points are pretty useful. Low cost of 3 cost total attribute points, gain +6 to your overall maximum energy.
--Aura of Restoration is based on Energy storage, so you'll get a synergistic effect of:
---Gain extra health per cast for spending more on your max mana reserves.
+Energy regeneration +Energy Max armor.
--Low armor rating for armor
What this means, if you wish to spend most of your time casting, consider creating an elementalist primary.
Ele/Mo especially would have a large pool of energy to drink from.
Elemental Skill sets:
Earth Magic: Lots of spells inflicting knockdown, which interrupts enemy actions like spellcasting, movement, and attack, and forces them into a sitting/ducking animation.
Additionally, earth magic has skills block, evade, and reduce damage from attacks, but sometimes slow the caster. These would be great if one considers being an "Earth Warrior" or "Warrior of Earth" (W/El) or living Golem A warrior like this would greatly reduce the Primary healer's overhead for healing while still performing warrior attack duties.
Consider how these skills are used, and arise from the restrictions of class and profession. It is end-use you need to think about.
Water:
Slow enemy. Freeze enemy. Blind enemy. Become a non-target for a period of time with Mists. Water is generally about instant ranged damaging the enemy while slowing them with cold at the same time. Cold damage enhancement spell too.
There's one spell in particular that is easily acquired and I see a lot of usage with when acquired, an elite spell called Water Trident. It does medium-high damage (just a hair under fireball) for only 5 energy to one enemy, and has a near instant recast/recharge time. If the target is struck while moving, he is knocked down. Only two downfalls to Water Trident: One, it is elite, so cannot be mixed with other elite skills. Two: it is a 'projectile' cast spell, which means it can miss if caught at a bad running angle--but its cheap fast damage which slows and potentially knocks down. Can't complain too much.
Fire:
Pure damage. Artillery, Up close, delayed damage, damage over time, instant damage. Plus, an Enchantment for additional fire attack damage (cold has equivalent too) for you warrior or ranger types wanting to use your weapons most of the time.
Consider what is best for you. Do you really want to wait 3 seconds to cast firestorm when the mob can or will move? Instant damage for moving targets. What about area of effect spells? Move to the enemy if you need to, and dash off after it is cast.
Air:
Blind, Speed yourself, knockdown, stun. Neato. Not as much damage, but application of status attacks in addition to damage just rocks. For example, lightning javelin will do damage AND interrupt an attacking foe. No preset condition of "must interrupt to do damage" like the mesmer. Do damage AND interrupt them if they're attacking.
There's a glut of other affects too. My favorite is whirlwind, an AoE attack spell around the caster that knocks down any attacking foe adjacent to the caster. Oh boy, who comes right up to you? Oh. Melee'ers.
Again, run up to the enemies tanking your teammates, but this time to save their butts and prolong their lives. Knockdown any enemy. This skill is useful even if you do not invest in air, as whirlwind is primarily useful for its attack-interruption (arse saving) abilities.
Gale. Instant Ranged knockdown. Someone chasing you or your healer? Cast gale and make them sit on their bums, with no conditions attached. Low 5 energy cost, low 1 sec activation time. All around very useful spell.
Other skill effects:
Reducing mana cost, Regain mana per cast of elemental type,
Mesmer
-Skills here: http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=47
Fast Casting attribute
--the formula is not clear, but visiual experience has shown 5-6 ranks of fast casting reducing cast time by half or 2/3's
--This means all spells taking 1 second of cast time are almost-instant, 2 seconds fast, and anything 3 seconds and above made tolerable.
--This can be crucial in casting interrupts, heals, and any counter-spell
Consider the Monk's long 8 second resurrect spell. Your vulnerability time would be greatly reduced as a Fast Casting Me/Mo.
On the other hand, why heal your teammates when you can dish out damage a lot faster?
Me/El as a fast cast fire mage specially would do the most damage per time. All those long 3 second plus spells are suddenly tolerable with low overhead. Cast those fireballs and meteors in no-time. Flare's 1 second cast time and instantaneous skill recharge time has suddenly become less than one second per cast. That becomes a huge increase of damage per second, as
Damage per time = Damage / (Cast time - Fast cast bonus * Time + Zero skill recharge time)
Most skills don't have that zero recharge time luxury, nor low cast time which is further reduced by the Fast Cast attribute.
Mesmer armor is not so great in terms of protection. It does however give +energy and energy regeneration like the Elementalist's. So keep in mind, Mesmers primarily make for powerful casters. Secondarily, they have a whole gamut of skills to counter every other skill in the game, including themselves! Useful for nearly any class as a secondary due to "advanced tactical" skill-sets.
Mesmers have the potential really shine in PvP, but can be the deciding factor of whether any PvE group faces a tough boss or "interesting" mob, as Me's can shut down use of all skills and abilities.
Domination Magic:
Oh woo hoo hoo! Punish, Interrupt, delay and drain any spellcasting and mana-dependent skills using instantaneous interrupts, and delayed hex spells.
Basically, you're a spellcaster's worst nightmare. The ultimate anti-mage.
The domination skill set is notorious for draining the enemy's energy supply, and punishing the enemy for any action it takes with interrupts and medium to incredibly high damage depending on the circumstances in which it is caught.
Some highlighted skills:
Backfire: Hex spell, For 10 seconds, this curse does HIGH damage whenever the enemy casts a spell. Expect 1-2.5x the listed damage. I say 2.5, because the caster rarely (in my experience) survives to make the third cast--or cannot cast at all for some reason (do dee do dee do)
Energy Burn: Medium damage, medium 10 energy cost, medium-long recharge time, high usage. Reason? Instant ranged damage that is not reduced in most, +85%, cases. Elemental damage, Physical damage are both reduced by armor and various spells and skills. Energy almost always regens. You get to use this bad boy at range, and blow a chunk of damage that is almost never reduced--that is, unless the eneny has zero to low mana, but now that their current energy is zero'ed by your energy burn is a GOOD thing.
Power Spike: Medium to High instant damage spell. Damage works only if enemy is casting a spell, but you also interrupt the spell they cast. Wonderful. Target and watch their spellcasters, and put an end to their casting days.
Cry of frustration: Similar to power spike, but the condition required is loosened to enemy using any skill. Less damage, but both interrupt and damage are now AoE around the enemy using the skill. Neat, huh?
Diversion: The next time target foe uses a skill, that skill takes an additional 10-47 seconds to recharge. Recharge time of 5 seconds. Oh boy oh boy. You can completely shut down any and all non-adrenaline based skills based on this skill alone. Totally worth it.
Many more skills have a tagged condition to do damage, delay or interrupt. Read for yourself, and consider what enemies you'll face. Knowledge of the enemy is most important when it comes to selecting mesmer skills.
For example, Shatter hex, like power spike, will do great damage to the enemy IF one of your allies is HEX'ed and near the enemy. It'll both remove the HEX from your ally and do great AoE damage.
Illusion Magic
Like the domination magic skill set, Illusion magic has many skills which require a set condition like "foe is attacking" "foe casts a spell" and creates another condition which is harmful to that enemy.
The player starts out with Conjure Phantasm, which is not very useful as a damage spell at all. It is a HEX spell that does damage over time, but a very long period of time for its investment. HEX's can be dispelled from many sources, but such a spell damaging over time is best against foes running away--thus preventing their health regeneration for X time longer. That is the true strength of this skill. . . however in general outside of PvP, we do not see much use for this.
Illusion magic has very many other interesting and very utilitarian spells. Consider Illusion magic as your secondary for warriors, rangers, and possibly monks. (I fear I do not know much about primary Necros)
Mantra of distortion (Stance, gone when putting on other stances):
Evade 75% of all physical attacks to you for a cost of 5-3 energy per attack. Definitely a survivalist skill, and can temporarily delay whole hordes of mob enemies this way. Combine this with other area interrupt and knockdown skills like cry of frustration or whirlwind, and you can 'hold the pass' temporarily keeping all enemies at bay while your mana lasts.
Otherwise, simply keep it on to survive yourself. I consider it a cool mana shield that reduces a LOT of potential damage.
Fragility: target foe takes 5-28 damage each time that foe suffers or recovers from a new condition. Excellent secondary skill for warriors in particular, whose attacks greatly revolve around inciting condition and status changes.
I must say, the Illusion skillset makes me want to create Melee specific Illusion warriors... Nightblades.
Imagined Burden: Ranged instant Hex. Slow target 50% for 8-18 seconds--or, in game terms, medium to LONG time.
I cannot stress how useful this is to survive. Cast this on any enemy chasing your spellcasters, or anyone in pursuit of you. Heck, open with this spell, luring the now slowed enemy into an ambush of ranged skill effects.
Sympathetic Vision and Soothing images: Adrenaline negating spells. All those nasty powerful adrenaline melee skills like power strike are now flushed down the toilet. Soothing images is a ranged HEX spell cast on one specific target for a medium length of time 8-18 seconds.
Sympathetic Vision's delivery is less direct, but can affect more enemies. Enchantment spell, drains all adrenaline of nearby enemies when melee attacked with this spell. So, cast it on your tanks or your runaway casters who are being attacked. All those warrior adrenaline skills are now gimped because they chose to mess with the wrong Mesmer. Ha!
In short, Illusion magic is best suited to enhance your survivability and the survival of your allies, whether spellcasters or tanks.
Inspired Magic:
This skill set is an interesting bunch. You get to steal energy, enchantments, hexes and gain those positive benefits for your own. You also have some interrupts against action and spells, but they're mainly transmuted your positive benefit, as opposed to Domination magic which punishes the enemy for their actions.
Inspired magic also has various enchantments that reduce the damage of various elemental types by a hefty percentage (1/4 to 1/2), and transforms that damage to energy for yourself.
Inspiration magic has more mish mash of skills, but generally do not do damage. They either protect you, or interrupt the enemy's action and gives you a minor positive bonus.
Other noteworthy Mesmer Skills:
Epidemic: All negative conditions target foe suffers from are spread from target foe to nearby foes.
I'm grinning ear to ear. Use this skill in combination with other condition rendering attack skills, AND fragility, which does damage whenever foe suffers or recovers from a condition.
Illusion of Weakness and Illusionary Weaponary.
Both are illusion spells, but since they're fairly rare, I thought I'd put them under here. Keep your eyes peeled for these powerful skills. Illusionary weaponary 8-34 damage replacing melee damage doesn't look like much, but this damage cannot be reduced, evaded or blocked by armor or skills. That's sick! Resistence is futile. The fact that it is an enchantment means it'll be disenchanted quickly in PvP, but not so much in PvE. In PvP I suggest using this spell as a 'finisher' rather than bread and butter use.
Illusion of Weakness.. lose 50-202 health, but when damage drops your drops your health below 25%, you gain that 50-202 health back. Muahahaha. That's a darn nice buffer. Weakness? Its an enchantment spell, so can be dispelled through various ways.
These skill combinations just get sicker and sicker. I love it. This is a fairly advanced use of 3 seperate skills in conjunction with each other, so I do not recommend it for bread and butter--but try new skills out! See how they work with each other.
Later, I will analyze other profession skills sets, but for now I will leave you with their almost-all important Primary attributes as a deciding factor for your character creation decisions:
Warrior:
Primary attribute
Strength.
Basis for many of warrior's skills, especially his running duration skills. With loads of strength, the warrior becomes a distance runner.
Every level of strength adds to armor penetration for his weapons. How effective this is varies. However, I find strength has many useful survival +hp skills, and is useful as a stand-alone skill enchancing attribute.
Warrior Armor: is quite simply the best in terms of armor rating and damage reduction. Looks? Arguable. Caster +energy +energy regen bonuses? None, but it does the job its suited for--protection via damage reduction.
Warriors have many status and condition inducing attacks centered around their weapons of choice, either axe, sword or hammer. In addition, there are advanced skills that require various enemy conditions to be effective, such as knockdown--which Hammer warriors can easily achieve.
Warriors weapon based skill attacks are sometimes based on adrenaline, which is charged by the warrior hitting the enemy, or being attacked from said enemy.
Warriors also have tactical shouts which enhance armor or speed of nearby allies, and many defensive stances that allow the warrior to spring into or out of battle, or hold their ground with +evade +block +parry a high percentage of ranged, melee or a combination of both attacks. These defensive stance skills sometimes requiring shields or swords to function.
Ranger:
Primary attribute:
Expertise
Armor: Rangers have the second best armor in the game, and can be easily customized against elemental damage. Some +energy regeneration, some +max energy, good armor rating, and +elemental armor. What's to complain about? Not as much as pure casters, but overall very good.
Rangers get very useful attributes in general. Beast mastery does a myriad of effects increasing critical and normal hit chance of your pets in addition to helping all those much needed beast mastery pet skills. Expertise reduces preperation time for many bow skills.
Many bow based skills that do +damage of various types, AoE, over time (poison + burning), and do status attacks like cripple.
Traps skills, which means mines. Very interesting. AoE Damage layed down on areas with a delayed contact charge. I like it.
Pets: Wolves, Lynx, Warthog and Moa bird. Many beast mastery skills. Basically your own personal frankenstein animal, as it can be ressurrected without penalty and tank better than most warriors! Not superb damage from pets, but very reasonable. Watch out for Beastmasters, they rock.
Rangers are also Escape artists. Rangers have a few skills that both increase speed and dodge/evade attacks for short periods of time. These become very useful in hairy situations. Outrunning rocks. Outrunning AND auto-dodging enemy arrow fire has saved my ranger's cute bum many many times. No arrow stuck in that soft fleshy bottom! Not as many, anyway.
Monk.
Primary Attribute: Divine Favor
This gives a bonus to healing, but there is rumour and reports of a bug that this bonus heal does not always properly work, in particular with healing targets other than yourself. <strike>As such, this attribute may be bugged, and I cannot recommend using Monk as Primary at this time.</strike>
Edit: If Divine Favor works, Monk Primary is strong choice for your healers.
There are many useful protection and healing skills as a monk. When desiring a primary healer, I highly recommend monk as a secondary to Me/Mo or El/Mo, to gain fast cast or energy storage added attributes. Divine favor may or may not be bugged. Monk as a secondary for Necromancer, as a true healer, given its fast mana recharge attributes, might be a third useful option--but I am unfamiliar with this build
Edit: Swissmercenary confirms Necromancer is a strong canidate for Primary of a Healing character.
Monk as secondary to warriors and rangers make them partial paladins and 'save the day' people, lowering the stress to party overall with healing and ressurrection. Tanks should be survivors, so should escape artists. Given that, W/Mo and R/Mo are bread and butter to most parties, and a popular mainstream choice. However, the power of rare and unusual profession combinations cannot be denied. At the time of this writing, Me's were becoming feared as the deadliest force in all PvP, and respected among the more experienced players. Before that, Me--anything only led to confusion among the masses, as no one knew what mesmers did (not even me). Now... Even Me/W is a serious threat, due to "Illusion Weaponary" skill alone.
Most noteworthy skill at this moment:
Vengeance resurrection: 8 second cast time, ranged. Ally is ressurrected for only 30 seconds, then dies and suffers no death penalty while alive this way. Not very useful? He is resurrected with FULL HEALTH and ENERGY. 100% health isn'tvery useful for fighting if he's only going to live 30 seconds, but it is of greater use to pull that corpse out of hairy situations.
Imagine the corpse deep into enemy territory surrounded by mobs. With Vengeance, this is not a problem if your monk with vengeance can safely angle a cast. Once alive, he'd better be instructed to run to safety as far as possible. Of course, the nastier the situation, the less he'll be able to run, but eventually his corpse will be able to run somewhere safe.
Necromancer
Primary Attribute: Soul Reaping
Gain mana for each enemy death. Can be very useful source of energy recharge.
I'm afraid I am less familiar with Necromancers than the other professions. Necromancers are another 'advanced profession' which I do not recommend to newbies to set as their primary, as they do not do much visible damage, nor have obvious supportive defensive capabiilties.
They have a variety of hexes, curses, land life siphoning skills which can be a boon to warriors. Their skills do not output a whole lot of damage by themselves, but can hold their own in tanking terms and additionally may summon minions and cause other interesting effects from corpses.
I need a necromancer expert to write this one. Any takers?
Edit #1: Made some corrections as per help from SwissMercenary
Forthcoming: Further skill analysis of warriors, rangers and monks