Hello and welcome to my latest character build creation. Many of my previous character builds have been inspired by characters and class concepts seen in other games, and this build is no different. This time I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from the ever fascinating Mesmer concept.
Of the Mesmer class’s many traits two stand out the most: Their ability to confound and confuse enemies and dominate the battlefield with a barrage of spells, each bearing unique debilitating effects. Incidentally these traits are quite easy to translate into Skyrim, and we’ll be doing it without delving into any crafting skills.
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Masters of charm and deception, mesmers compel those of lesser minds to heed their words and bend to their will. Through powerful illusions and hexes they weave their way into the minds of their enemies, distorting their senses and dictating the course of battle with but a few dark whispers.
Unsurprisingly, mesmers often form cults of personality around themselves, often investing much of their focus into cementing their influence upon those in positions of great power to suit their own dark agendas, and many regimes have fallen to their twisted machinations.
Race: Imperial Vampire. I highly recommend imperials given their ability to calm enemies with voice of the emperor. If imperials aren't your thing Bretons make a good alternative due to their magic resistance that partially counteracts the weakness to magick from the Apprentice Stone.
Stats: I recommend a 2 magicka 1 health 0 stamina ratio. A primary feature of this build is its high rate of magicka regeneration, which only gets higher the more magicka you possess.
Stone: Apprentice Stone. Fast spell casting requires a fast magicka recharge rate. The Apprentice grants 100% magicka recovery which pairs well with other sources of magicka recovery included in this build.
Skills: Destruction, Illusion, Sneak, Restoration, Speech
Attire: Master Destruction Robes, Morokei, Amulet of Talos, Ring of Erudite.
Spells: Fire/Frost/Shock/Poison and Frenzy Rune, Calm and Fear Spells, Arniel’s Shade
Shouts: Become Ethereal
Blessing: Blessing of Talos
Moral Alignment: Neutral Evil
The Build
A Mesmer weapons of choice are chaos and confusion. To challenge a Mesmer is to never be sure of what is real and what is not, chasing illusions all the while being bombarded by spells from seemingly every angle. That is exactly what we're striving to achieve in the gameplay.
Arniel’s Shade is an expert level conjuration spell that summons an illusory mage. But what makes this spell so awesome is that it costs nothing to cast, the Shade comes with its own extensive list of spells, and best of all it's Completely immune to damage and thus cannot be killed or dispatched by any enemy.
Become Ethereal combined with necromage enhanced about cooldown effects essentially let's you turn yourself into an invulnerable phantom at will.
These two powerful abilities working together leave enemies scrambling after mirages, never knowing which one is real. And when the dust has settled your enemies will lay broken and defeated having never seen through the ruse let alone laid a hand on you.
Gameplay
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To get the most out of your magick you will want to become a vampire and perk necromage as soon as possible. As a vampire, necromage enhances any perk taken after itself. If you happen to perk necromage well afterward you can always transform into a vampire lord and back again. This resets your racial data allowing necromage to affect everything as it should.
Join the College of Winterhold as soon as you can, and train up restoration with Collette as you rise up in level through heavy use of Destruction and Illusion spells. With Runes comprising the bulk of your offensive might expect Destruction to level up exceptionally fast. The more enemies you hit at once per time the faster you'll level Destruction.
As an illusionist your Illusion skill will rise very quickly as well. If you're feeling impatient, spamming the muffle spell will max out Illusion from start to max level inside of 30 minutes. Don't worry about Conjuration at all. Since Arniels Shade costs nothing to cast and doesn't benefit from the Summoner perk, there's no need to perk this tree.
Sneak gets much use in this build so expect it to keep pace with Illusion and Destruction fairly well. But again, if you're the impatient type, you can always take advantage of the Hadvar/Ralof exploit in Helgen. Simply sneak attack them repeatedly when they stop to warn you of the sleeping bear ahead. Sneak can be maxed out in under 10 minutes this way.
Lastly we have Speech which is taken solely for roleplay purposes. A Mesmer can sway minds, invoking any emotion from adoration to fear from their unwary dialogue partner. After all, minds are as malleable in conversation as they are in battle, and it's always satisfying to get your way through subtle manipulation rather than through violence.
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Mind Games
The Mesmer’s dark powers are augmented considerably through the use of the Necromage Vampirism glitch, specifically that of their immense magicka recovery rate.
Necromage is a Restoration perk that makes all spells more effective against undead. Specifically, it increases the magnitude by 25% and the duration by 50%. Since vampirism makes the player undead, any spells, enchantments and effects used on yourself are also augmented by Necromage.
The magnitude of all your magicka recovery items is increased by 25%. Rather than bore you with the math I’ll cut straight to the end result. Your total Magicka regen rate will hover around 500%. And that's before taking the Ring of Erudite into account. Runes, a prohibitively expensive class of spells, can be cast with alarming frequency, wreaking havoc upon your hapless foes.
Chaos Weaver
Req - All Magicka Recovery Effects, rune master, all runes
Whispers of Madness
Req - throw voice, frenzy rune, dual casting
Mirror Image
Req - arniels shade, shadow warrior
Mirage
Req - become ethereal, amulet and blessing of talos
Replies
Posting this here to motivate me to actually finish this thing.
Don't really have much productive to add at this stage but this definitely looks interesting. Haven't seen Arniel's Shade used before, sounds like it will work well with all the AoE chaos you'll be dishing out with rune spells.
Would you consider using wall spells or the bend will shout with this one? I've found it has some interesting interactions with the NPC allegiance system. When the effect expires two allies that you got to fight each other will continue fighting if one of them dealt damage to the other for instance.
I once considered wall spells but ended up saving that for my maleficar build (back when it was going to be a vanilla build). I've decided I want to stick with runes because they've proven incredibly effective with this build. Arniels Shade gets enemies fighting in clumps and I just dump rune after run at their feet. Being at ground zero of a rune explosion seems to cause them to deal more damage.
Im still on the fence about using Bend Will as I'm wary of its lengthy cool down time. The main strategy of this build is to have this sort of back and forth between arniels shade and myself using become ethereal. I'd like to have the shout available at all times. But it'll definitely be considered as mind control would really suit this build.
Nice man. This motivates me to post my current character lol.
Oh yes absolutely please do!