Skill

[Havral]

Ranger Skills

Melandru's Assault - Pet Attack. Energy: 10, Recharge Time: 10 seconds, Affecting Stats: Beast Mastery. If this pet attack hits, it deals +5/+17/+21 damage. If it strikes an enemy with an Enchantment, that enemy and all adjacent enemies take an additional +5/+17/+21 damage.

An absolute killer against packs surrounding an enchanted creature/boss, and as more and more enemies have enchantments later in the game, Melandru's Assault becomes pretty much the prime pet attack. Just make sure your debuffer knows not to strip enchantments at the earliest possibility if you plan on using this.

I'm not entirely sure if this is true for all direct pet attacks, but from my experimentation this seems to be more... typical for Assault - It's possible for the skill to be wasted. If your pet isn't actively in melee when you cast it, then the skill will burn and your pet won't use the attack at the next possible chance.

Revive Animal - Resurrect all nearby allied animal companions. They each come back to life with 50/410/530 health.

Seems like the logical upgrade to Comfort Animal, sans the anytime healing - Raise all animal companions, return to life with a set amount of health, 5 energy loss over 10, no skill disabling on raise, and it has a neato icon.

Avoid.

One: It has a horribly long casting and recharge time.

Two: It sucks.

Why? Because if you're not within kicking distance (The minimum distance in which you can kick a corpse on the floor) of your dead pet, then you'll have wasted a long recharge time skill, compared to Comfort Animal, the area range is pitifully small. Also, unless your pets die practically on top of each other, then you're going to be picking them up one by one, because the range is so pitiful. The fixed health isn't so hot, since the HP of a pet is so high that the HP gained is roughly equivilent to the percentage gained if you use Comfort Animal.

Really, it seems that petters get shafted long time in Guild Wars. The attack skills are underpowered compared to most attack skills, pets are really paper tanks and die about four times as often as Alesia, and they have no really effective way to bring 'em back alive.

[Krakhan]

Elementalist Skills

Glyph of Energy
Description: Your next spell costs 20 less Energy to cast and does not cause exhaustion.

Energy: 5 mana
Casting Time: 1 second
Recharge Time: 15 seconds


A straight forward skill description, which does what it says. The part of it that makes it an elite skill is most likely not the energy reduction, but the fact that negates exhaustion.

This is the kind of elite spell you pack with your elementalist if you use a lot of the costly AoE spells like Earthquake, Meteor Shower, and Searing Heat that also cause exhaustion. This lets you more easily stack other spells on top of group for further punishment, without worrying about your mana dropping to almost 0 and not being able to follow up with any other combos.

You could also bring along an attunement spell to further help out with your mana reserves. Note you can reuse this quite a bit during a large battle due it's faster recharge time than Glyph of Lesser Energy.

[Krakhan]

Mesmer Skills

Arcane Echo

Description: If you cast a "spell" in the next 20 seconds, Arcane Echo is replaced with that spell for 20 seconds. Arcane Echo ends prematurely if you use a non-spell skill.

Energy: 15 mana
Casting Time: 2 seconds
Recharge Time: 30 seconds

Echo

Description: For 20 seconds, Echo is replaced with the next skill you use. Echo acts as this skill for 20 seconds.

Energy: 5 mana
Casting Time: 1 second
Recharge Time: 30 seconds

The reason I combined these two spells together were that they essentially have the same effect. They essentially allow you to bend the rules slightly in Guild Wars: allow one spell to occupy another skill slot, thereby allowing interesting combos that you can use.

Here are two examples of how these can be used in interesting ways. I've only had experiences with using these skills as an elementalist primary, so hopefully other people can add in other fun uses for these with other classes.

1) Meteor Shower, Arcane Echo, Echo.

With this combination, not only will you be raining down lots of rocks over any tough groups you come across, but the knockdown affect of meteor shower allows you to keep the enemy group from doing anything. Works the best when you have large clusters.

2) Earthquake, Aftershock, Arcane Echo, Echo.

Same idea with the first combo, you throwing in aftershock after each earthquake you use is great for causing an additional amount of damage due to the knockdown. This is a good setup to use for tanking.

Both of these setups consume lots of energy. So, any attunement spells and glyphs are good to use as well. If you want to not give up your elite slot for Echo, Arcane Echo does the job just as well, with the only downsides being more expensive to cast and working best with spell skills.

These are good skills overall, that could be combined most likely in other kinds of interesting ways.

[Lurker Wyrm]

...

Should also mention that Echo + Arcane Echo can give you a triplicate of any skill. Just cast Arcane Echo first, then Echo, which will turn the Arcane into Echo, and still have Echo active. Then use whatever skill you want tripled and it'll be echoed. Now cast the "other" Echo and use the echoed version of that skill to get yet another copy of it.

To try and simplify that a bit, say you want to echo Debilitating Shot, which is in slot 1; Echo is in slot 2; Arcane Echo is in slot 3. It would wind up looking something like this:
Use skill 3 (AE) -> skill 2 (E) -> skill 1 (DS) - skill 3 is now Echo, skill 2 is now Debilitating Shot, skill 1 has been used and is recharging.
Use skill 3 (E) -> skill 2 (DS) - all 3 skills are now Debilitating Shot, with 1 & 2 charging (although 1's probably recharged by now) and 3 readily avalable.

You can do this with any skill in the game (even elites to a limited extent since you would have to do it either while still in the same zone you captured the skill or make use of Arcane Mimicry/Thievery). I used Debilitating Shot as the example because that's a really potent anti-caster combo since Debilitating drains 10 energy with every hit. With 3 copies almost always ready, you'll be able to empty even the largest energy pools in no time.

Speaking of Arcane Mimicry, this is an easy way around the Hundred Blades + Illusionary Weaponry combo nerf (they made HB an elite to counter the combo). Just have a buddy of yours pack the skill you don't have and voila, you're good to go. Since the skill only stays around for so long, you can Arcane Echo the IW (assuming that's the one you take), or you can do something really devious. As a Ranger/Mesmer, if a friend of yours Brings Hundred Blades, you can "borrow" it from them and have some serious power if you also bring along stuff like Quickening Zephyr and Serpent's Quickness, which would give you HB access every 2-3 seconds for 20 seconds. Painful for baddies. Very painful.

Sticking with Mesmer abilities, Mantra of Resolve is a very useful skill to people who think they'll be interrupted a lot, since it completely prevents interruption. The only things you have to worry about being interrupted by are kd attacks (and if someone uses a stance breaker aka Wild Blow).

[Hawkmoon]

Warrior Skills

Cyclone Axe

Description: Perform a spinning attack striking for +4-12 more damage against all opponents standing around you.
Energy Cost: 5.
Casting Time: Next Attack.
Recharge Time: 4 seconds.
Linked Attribute: Axe Mastery. Increases damage.
Skill Type: Axe Attack.

A basic skill for axe warriors, useful for the entire game. The one thing to know about Cyclone Axe is that it does not require a target. As soon as you invoke it, you'll perform the skill, regardless of where you are. You can do Cyclone Axe as soon as you step out of town, no enemies in sight. This "feature" becomes important tactically because you do NOT want to trigger Cyclone Axe until you are right next to your enemy. With most of the other Warrior skills, you can key them while you're running to the enemy, and your character will wait to perform the skill until you're in range. Not so with Cyclone Axe - if you key it while running, you'll pirouette right there, and you've just wasted 5 energy. :mad: Position carefully before using.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Cyclone Axe

I think my favorite nifty thing about Cyclone Axe comes from the fact that you can time your use of the move button with the skill slot number and do a moving Cyclone, reminicent a bit of D2's Whirlwind. I have no idea if it actually damages everything as you go by though.