Guild Wars 2

With a trait tweak (Dom II to Dom V) and weapon swap (offhand sword to pistol) it can work either way, I prefer power builds though.

The build I posted isn’t meant to 1vX, unless maybe Moa was up. It’s meant to be offensive team support that happens to counter some meta builds in a 1v1. It’s kind of unique in its role.

In 1v1, if you nail the lockdown, the build can work over popular builds like spirit ranger, decap engi, most any necro, thieves (tricky, all or nothing), shatter mes, etc.

The team responsibility, notably its primary role, comes down to damage pressure and shutting down priority targets for your team’s heavy hitters to burst down quickly and easily. It’s shades of gw1 mesmer in a team fight.

Its weakness is disengaging and facing heavy stability, but no build has everything. I personally think the upside makes up for it. That, and it’s super fun to feel in total control of a fight by not letting your opponent do anything.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

EDITED 2/25/14

• Added a slight analysis of StickerHappy and Sensotix’s 20/20/30/0/0 builds.

I strongly believe that Mesmer lockdown will be getting some buffs in the future. What I’d love to see is a change to Wastrel’s Punishment(Dom 25) into something like “Interrupted skills take 75% longer to cooldown” or “reveal enemy cast bars.” (the latter seems highly unlikely though)

what would be nice is if they changed Protected Mantras to something like “Mantras have a wider AoE range; Mantra of Pain/Distraction become AoE” or a trait for imbued Diversion to make it “Refresh Diversion on interrupt, (20s cooldown)”

kylwilson.9137:

The concept of Stability and it’s prevalence amongst the current meta’s heavy hitters shot Lockdown in the foot for me, personally. I’m still practising occasionally because I so desperately miss the days of Guild Wars 1 where I was rewarded for skilfully locking down and interrupting an enemy.

What I wouldn’t give for cast bars, and increased casting times for skills in general (across every proffession) to slow down the ridiculous pace of the game, and actually put some reward into it.

I used to be a top notch Mesmer in Guild Wars 1; and it saddens me that I’m unable to read a battlefield at the glance the way I used to be able to.

As it stands we work with what we have but other classes can do it better, this definitely needs to be a more emphasized aspect of the Mesmer.

P.S: Remember the sound effect that played when you interrupted someone’s skill, and the icon above their head disintegrating? I still fantasize about that. That was the sound of satisfaction and a job well done.

Out of curiosity.. which other classes can lockdown better than we can? Thieves have a nice interrupt and Wars have, well, hammer but I wouldn’t consider either of those superior to what Mesmer can offer.

Also, have you been running shattered concentration? I know it’s a bit obvious but I rarely have a problem with stability because of it. In fact, I feel like Mesmer are the best counter for stab-heavy classes specifically because of Shattered.

S/d thief with 30 in tricks can dish out lots of daze its fun with runes of the mesmer. Thief blind spam can also lockdown pretty well.

That being said i still think chaotic interruption mesmer is the best.
Pulling into warden and sword leap into sword burst with daze mantra is the coolest thing ever.

Edit: engi cc is also pretty great.

Well that’s just it. Mes offers both hard CC (stuns/dazes/pulls) AND soft CC (cripple/weakness/vuln). Thieves are good at locking down a single target, but the “best” thief builds don’t really do that in favor of, well, killing the opponent quick enough that it doesn’t matter.

Engineer has great CC, both hard AND soft, but (from my experience as a Mes, which could be way different when fighting one as another class) doesn’t have the damage pressure to make the CC worth it. That’s not to say engineer don’t do much damage, but the engineer I’ve fought combine damage with soft CC or sacrifice damage for hard CC. I could definitely be wrong there though.

Hammer warrior deserves mention too, they can lockdown and murder an opponent before they ever break out, combined with their insane stability, I’d put wars up there right alongside Mesmer (though Mesmer edges out with more AoE CC and projectile shutdown)

Warrior stability is all about sustain I guess. The durations are long but so are the cooldowns, and warriors have so many good traits that most will only have stability as utility. So once it’s gone, it’s gone for a long time. And Shattered Concentration on a warrior that just popped Fury Signet and Stability almost makes me feel sorry for them…

I had some reservations about MoS because of the short duration, but I’ve actually come to rely on the fact that it can break you out of multiple bad spots instead of just helping you once, then going on a long CD (and the CD isn’t even bad compared to most stability skills). Toss in the fact that up to 5 people share the benefit, and I believe it may be one of the most powerful “reversal” skills in the game.

So I’ve been trying out Nettle’s 30/0/30/10 build that he was advocating (with my own tweaks) and I think it’s probably our best 100% lockdown build. Which I like conceptually. Lockdown is more of an all in kind of build to me and this personifies that perfectly. My only issue is that it probably wouldn’t perform that great in a team queue since you have very little survivability so once you start getting focused you won’t be able to stall/kite very much unlike with the extra survivability/confusion of the 20/20/30 setup, also not having signet of domination frees up space for more ways to survive. Overall though I love it. I think I’ll try it with Moa for a while to see if it’s useful lol.

Also I’ve come to see how Mirror Images could be really useful with this builds low illusion production.

I play a similar build but rather going with the 20/20/30, am running a 20/30/20 for more direct damage with heavy crit build.

One of the utility people don’t really mention here is the feedback utility skill. To me it a must, as I always use it as an offensive and defensive skills.

The other two utility slots mostly use Decoy, Blink, but been experimenting with P Defender for more defensive option (against thieves) and Arcane Thievery if going up against boon user or heavy condition user.

Next time, I am hoping to try Signet of Domination for more CC but that means I have to lose either Decoy or Blink. Both are very useful when you come up against multiple players.

Before anyone ask, why don’t I use Mantra of Distraction, the one sec stun is not really good, unless I can increase it to a minimum of 2 sec.

I play a similar build but rather going with the 20/20/30, am running a 20/30/20 for more direct damage with heavy crit build.

One of the utility people don’t really mention here is the feedback utility skill. To me it a must, as I always use it as an offensive and defensive skills.

The other two utility slots mostly use Decoy, Blink, but been experimenting with P Defender for more defensive option (against thieves) and Arcane Thievery if going up against boon user or heavy condition user.

Next time, I am hoping to try Signet of Domination for more CC but that means I have to lose either Decoy or Blink. Both are very useful when you come up against multiple players.

Before anyone ask, why don’t I use Mantra of Distraction, the one sec stun is not really good, unless I can increase it to a minimum of 2 sec.

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

I play a similar build but rather going with the 20/20/30, am running a 20/30/20 for more direct damage with heavy crit build.

One of the utility people don’t really mention here is the feedback utility skill. To me it a must, as I always use it as an offensive and defensive skills.

The other two utility slots mostly use Decoy, Blink, but been experimenting with P Defender for more defensive option (against thieves) and Arcane Thievery if going up against boon user or heavy condition user.

Next time, I am hoping to try Signet of Domination for more CC but that means I have to lose either Decoy or Blink. Both are very useful when you come up against multiple players.

Before anyone ask, why don’t I use Mantra of Distraction, the one sec stun is not really good, unless I can increase it to a minimum of 2 sec.

People don’t use Feedback outside of wvw zergs/pve because it really doesn’t have a place in spvp. There’s not as much confusion as there is in wvw and players don’t stay stationary like mobs do in pve. So at most against a good player you will have them get 2 shots reflected back to them before they move out of the area or they switch to their melee weapon. So you just wasted a 40sec cooldown that did maybe 2-3k damage.

Also the point of Mantra of Distraction is more to get interrupts and not for the pure dazing effect. Since we have quite a few traits that give added effects to interrupting, Mantra of Distraction is the best tool to utilize this. Although if you spec into Confounding Suggestions and use full Runes of the Mesmer I’m told the daze goes up to 1.75 seconds.

@All

Just a question:

For going 30 into DOM

Harmonious Mantras or CS?

People Tell me that CS and CI are redundant.

Yes it will be, but only if you have 90-100% interrupt rates.

I like the stun proc because it is a safe bet if youre not hitting all your interrupts.

I wanted to tweak Nettle’s Build.

I have a quick question as well. I understand the usefulness of Mass Invisibility. But going for a “lockdown” elite, why is it that Moa isn’t chosen as often? One would think it buys a chunk of time to keep the enemy out of commission while weapon skills/dazes are recharging?

Just theory crafting here (also, first post ever!)

@Tealots

Yes MoA is for lockdown but for a long CD it isn’t that much viable, also it can be dodged. MI is on a 90 sec cd. Adds Survivability, stealth can be used on a lot of things including charging mantras.

StickerHappy.8052:

@All

Just a question:

For going 30 into DOM

Harmonious Mantras or CS?

People Tell me that CS and CI are redundant.

Yes it will be, but only if you have 90-100% interrupt rates.

I like the stun proc because it is a safe bet if youre not hitting all your interrupts.

I wanted to tweak Nettle’s Build.

I tried out CS with CI and I’ve found that it’s pretty useful for the reasons you stated but Mender’s Purity won’t really work for you if you run CS. Which means you have to switch out Signet of Domination. At least in my head that’s what it comes to. Overall though I like both of them together but imo it pigeonholes you a bit into needing at least one weapon with daze to fully utilize CS. Also if you do happen to interrupt+stun it’s a bit of a waste, especially if CI applies cripple.

^why not?

Thats why i was saying if you have a large success rate in interrupts it is therefore redundant. And why wont menders purity work if i run CS? I mean without mantra GM yes it is only 2 charges but 2 charges is still 4 conditions on a 10 sec cd.

StickerHappy.8052:

^why not?

Thats why i was saying if you have a large success rate in interrupts it is therefore redundant. And why wont menders purity work if i run CS? I mean without mantra GM yes it is only 2 charges but 2 charges is still 4 conditions on a 10 sec cd.

4 conditions every 10 seconds sounds good, but put into practice if you run across any condition heavy class they can reapply those conditions faster than you took them off and then you’re left with a sub-par heal. Harmonious Mantras only barely makes Mender’s Purity worth it in a pvp setting.

Just wanted to add.. I’ve recently been running almost entirely without condition removal save for Lyssa runes and nearby allies and have been able to survive fine. It’s an adjustment, but it’s doable.

The idea had been suggested to me by supcutie, who does the same. Having decoy and good positioning can go a long way to avoid being hit by conditions in the first place, though of course there’s always the chance of being caught offguard, thus Mass Invis. Even when I ran with condi-removal, iDisenchanter, Null Field, and -to a lesser extent- Arcane Thievery tended to be enough for me to be able to survive.

The only conditions you really have to worry about are Burning, Poison, and Bleed. Cripple is surprisingly rare, chill has a low duration, and torment hits infrequently. The only times I’ve really wished I had better condition removal is when I’m suddenly hit with a Necro’s Signet of Spite and even then, that’s more CC than damage (2x bleed, 10s poison) but the cover conditions makes it hard to cleanse any existing bleed/burn. Necros, Condi Warrior, and certain engineer/ranger are the only specs that make Condition Removal all that necessary, and I think an untraited Menders+Mantra of Recovery (4 conditions every 13 seconds) is more than enough, especially if you’re packing Lyssa runes.

As for Confounding versus Harmonious Mantras, I’d go for Harmonious because it offers a bit more. The extra heal, extra daze, extra stab or whatever really comes in handy when you’re packing two or more mantras, and sorta helps add a defensive boost to make up for the loss of Deceptive Evasion. But if you’re rolling Sword/Sword with daze mantra then it is reeallyy hard to choose.

As for the Moa Elite.. It’s a perfectly fine alternative, but since I’m running Lyssa Runes I prefer Mass Invis for the shorter cooldown. Also, Mass Invis helps with stomps/rezzes/disengages better than Moa, though Moa can turn the tide of a fight quickly (and Moa-ing the lord in Legacy of the Foefire is great)

Oh yeah, and I love feedback, I just don’t have any room for it. I think it’s an excellent control ability though. It’s good for teamfights, but also good in 1v1s as it essentially shuts down projectiles for it’s duration: you sit inside the dome and shoot out of it, which forces the opponent to come to you. I’ve found it particularly good for rangers and engineers. Also, even when they DO engage you Feedback is an ethereal field; thus more procs of Chaos Armor, thus more blind! Hell, with feedback and staff slotted you could have Chaos Armor up as often as not. If I had one more slot, or could slot normal skills in elites, it’d either go to Feedback or Signet of Dom.

Raunchy.6891:

So I’ve been trying out Nettle’s 30/0/30/10 build that he was advocating (with my own tweaks) and I think it’s probably our best 100% lockdown build. Which I like conceptually. Lockdown is more of an all in kind of build to me and this personifies that perfectly. My only issue is that it probably wouldn’t perform that great in a team queue since you have very little survivability so once you start getting focused you won’t be able to stall/kite very much unlike with the extra survivability/confusion of the 20/20/30 setup, also not having signet of domination frees up space for more ways to survive. Overall though I love it. I think I’ll try it with Moa for a while to see if it’s useful lol.

Also I’ve come to see how Mirror Images could be really useful with this builds low illusion production.

So I’ve gotten better at this build, and I’ve taken it up to ~300 on the team leaderboards now. I think I can go even further with it with a bit more practice. Smart positioning is the key.

^vids please if you have the time.

Hey I am back after a long break and started playing with this spread in sPvP, it has been awhile mind you but kitten is it effective, there is something satisfying about hitting the enemy team with a shatter that removes all their boons then mind wracking them right after. I got to say you guys have really explored the lockdown playstyle a lot in such a short time, after I craft a set of berserker gear I will begin testing builds for WvW, which is of course my favorite area. the 30/10/30 build seems like an epic Mantra group support build in WvW if your just running a small 5 man. With that said I have to say thieves are my most hated enemy, I can barely lock them down with all the stealth they have, conditions aren’t even that problematic as of yet.

So there is a Condition cleansing Sigil.

^sigil is bugged. Procs even if you dont have a condition.

Deathcon.5903:

Hey I am back after a long break and started playing with this spread in sPvP, it has been awhile mind you but kitten is it effective, there is something satisfying about hitting the enemy team with a shatter that removes all their boons then mind wracking them right after. I got to say you guys have really explored the lockdown playstyle a lot in such a short time, after I craft a set of berserker gear I will begin testing builds for WvW, which is of course my favorite area. the 30/10/30 build seems like an epic Mantra group support build in WvW if your just running a small 5 man. With that said I have to say thieves are my most hated enemy, I can barely lock them down with all the stealth they have, conditions aren’t even that problematic as of yet.

Immobilise.

Every single time I PvP, if I don’t have any sort of teleport and get immobilised I literally get obliterated off the face of the earth.

^This.

/15char

Raunchy.6891:

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

I play a similar build but rather going with the 20/20/30, am running a 20/30/20 for more direct damage with heavy crit build.

One of the utility people don’t really mention here is the feedback utility skill. To me it a must, as I always use it as an offensive and defensive skills.

The other two utility slots mostly use Decoy, Blink, but been experimenting with P Defender for more defensive option (against thieves) and Arcane Thievery if going up against boon user or heavy condition user.

Next time, I am hoping to try Signet of Domination for more CC but that means I have to lose either Decoy or Blink. Both are very useful when you come up against multiple players.

Before anyone ask, why don’t I use Mantra of Distraction, the one sec stun is not really good, unless I can increase it to a minimum of 2 sec.

People don’t use Feedback outside of wvw zergs/pve because it really doesn’t have a place in spvp. There’s not as much confusion as there is in wvw and players don’t stay stationary like mobs do in pve. So at most against a good player you will have them get 2 shots reflected back to them before they move out of the area or they switch to their melee weapon. So you just wasted a 40sec cooldown that did maybe 2-3k damage.

Also the point of Mantra of Distraction is more to get interrupts and not for the pure dazing effect. Since we have quite a few traits that give added effects to interrupting, Mantra of Distraction is the best tool to utilize this. Although if you spec into Confounding Suggestions and use full Runes of the Mesmer I’m told the daze goes up to 1.75 seconds.

I know what you mean about good players moving out of the field or changing to melee weapon to stop the reflation damage back to themselves. That is the main purpose for using it. The less time your opponent can deal damage to either your or your team, the better your chance to taking them out or put pressure them or force then to run.

Lets look at it another way, your words, a 2-3k damage can be attain from the reflection plus an head start say another 2-3k damage you generate. So already you are dealing between 4-6k damage if not more. Sometimes you might not get the head start but you can still prevent them or stop them from doing their rotation. Combine this with the number 3 sword skill, (illusion leap), you get in close fast, you now have chaos armour to protect you. If you manage to leap inside and your opponent jumps out and still trying to attack from outside, you are shielded from their damage while you do damage to them.

All this is a win win. Even good players will find this challenging. Against a bad player, you know what can happened.

Example. Took on a ranger and a guardian trying to cap a node, I dropped it just as they were both about to spam there AOE damage skills. Without doing anything else, both their HP was down to half because they did not move away.

This is very good against Bunker or AOE spamming players, either it kills then or they have to move and in turn stops their action.

The only down side to it is you might lose one utility slot, but this I don’t find a problem since I am making use of it.

I say to people, give it a try, yes it might not be to your liking or your play style, but it something some others my take a shine to like I have.

As for Mantra of Distraction, I tried it but means I lose 1 of my important utility which I cannot do without. I will give it a go some other time.

@Chaos Archangel.5071

You got it right. Feedback is underrated.

@Tealots.6095

Both have their advantages and disadvantages but I run with Mass Invisibility.
I cannot say which is better cause when you think about it, both do similar job, Offensive and defensive rolls.

Moe is more for single target control while MS can be use for single (yourself), and multiple (team) rolls.

Really you have play with both of then and see which you think suit you best.

Yeah, feedback is one of my favorite skills. An anti-projectile Ethereal field that could give me 9 seconds of Chaos Armor? (10+ seconds when traited) More AoE in teamfights is always welcome but its especially nice for duels and when you’re running CI. Wait till that ranger/engie switches to ranged, interrupt&immobilize, pop Feedback.

Profit.

Outta curiosity, has anyone made any adjustments to their build with the new patch? Right now my 20/20/30 Sword-Focus/Staff build just got an additional Hydromancy rune, but I noticed some interesting changes

- Vigor nerf sucks
- Sigil of Paralyzation now offers 20% stun duration.
- Runes of Grenth work surprisingly well.. but having absolutely 0 condi removal sucks. =[
- 30/10/30 with power block is definitely a thing. It’s possibly one of the most difficult Mesmer builds to play effectively though.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Outta curiosity, has anyone made any adjustments to their build with the new patch?

I tried that and i can say that’s definitely interesting thing.
I’m running 30/10/30 with might stacking. It’s almost same as 20/20/30 which i used previously. And DE….
DE is good for additional shatters which is perfectly to strip of boons some annoying fellas. And crit….
But well, if you get used to live without DE it becomes much more interesting with power block as it’s really nice to block skill for 10s and even auto attack
I’m running it only for short time but i think that 30/10/30 is good variant to 20/20/30 and it’s actually not really much harder.
Though i suspect my current build for 30/10/30 isn’t optimal…

Was interesting to see Misha’s build for 55hp monks yesterday. Total team fight build, bringing back timewarp, runes of strength + battle for the sick might stacks, 30-20-20-0-0 traits.

Guess 20/20/30 is the better now since power block is ‘fixed’
though it’s still nice trait but it’s not so cool now

Sorry for not reading the entire thread, but I agree with the OP. I’ve always used 20/20/30 for my lockdown, with Boonstripping, Interrupt traits and MoD being the only things that always stay the same. I run sword/focus+Staff zerker.

Sometimes I use Arcane thievery and blink. Sometimes Portal. It’s always kinda different depending on my team, the other team and the map.

Hey Chaos what do you think about the buff to sigil of paralyzation (+30% now)? Also, what do you think about harmonious mantras moved to duelling?

What do people thing about Chaotic Dampening vs Bountiful Interruption? BI is without doubt a fantastic trait, but the better chaos armor up time and more frequent chaos storms from CD are very nice too.

(I’m frequently seeing 20+ vulnerability stacks on people if I drop a Chaos Storm on a team fight, it’s great!)

@sendmark: I reallyyy wanna get the chance to talk to Misha, I’ve seen some of their vids and I love interesting out-of-the-norm builds.

@Quadox: Sigils of Paralyzation are bugged and don’t work with Runes of the Mesmer or Confounding Suggestions. =[ Otherwise they’d rock and I’d revisit 6/4/4.

@Neurophen: They’re both good options, but I tend to lean towards Bountiful for a couple reasons: Protection, Fury, Swiftness, 5x Might and no ICD, I feel like Bountiful works better if you have a Focus in your build along with the staff, but Chaotic Dampening is still excellent and you can immediately notice a playstyle difference with and without Chaotic. I miss my low cooldown C-storms but I’m addicted to Bountiful. =[