Guild Wars 2

I was procrastinating theorycrafting in the Mists today and decided to have another look at Mantra builds. This is what I came up with:

.

PvP Mantra Build

.

And you know what? It’s surprisingly effective.

Basically, the idea is to be constantly charging and discharging Mantra of Pain, receiving constant healing from Restorative Mantras and dealing decent damage with Power Spike. The moment Mantra of Pain is off CD (which is basically immediately), start charging it again.

In general, you should stick to the Staff, conjuring iWarlock or spamming WoC while Power Spiking for more damage; and using Chaos Storm, Phase Retreat and Chaos Armour to protect you while you’re charging Mantra of Pain (the latter two can be used while charging without interrupting it).

If you’re starting to feel the pressure, use Decoy before charging (do not use it while charging, it will interrupt it) and conjure iDefender while Power Spiking. Use Power Return for cleansing conditions and supplementary healing. Mass Invisibility is useful when both Mantra of Recovery and Pain are uncharged, and you need some time to charge them both.

When on the Sceptre-Pistol, use Magic Bullet (before, not during) to cover charging, and use iDuelist, Confusing Images or Ether Bolt when Power Spiking. While possibly stronger offensively than the Staff, this set lacks the Staff’s powerful defensive skills, so be prepared to switch back to the Staff if things get dicey.

.

QUESTIONS

.

What are the pros and cons to using this build?

While this looks like a Berserker build on the surface, it doesn’t play like one: it feels more like a Bunker. With healing from Restorative Mantras and Mantra of Recovery, plus the Staff’s powerful defensive skills, you’re very hard to kill. On the other hand, you don’t hit as hard as a Berserker should; although the damage from Phantasms, Power Spike and Clone conditions is pretty substantial sustained damage. Mind Wrack can of course be used to finish your opponent off.

I guess that doesn’t directly answer the question, so pros: very tough, cons: not bursty. Hey, I’m new to it too.

.

Isn’t this build really, really vulnerable to interrupts?

It is, but what I’ve found is that even playing against builds with very frequent interrupts, this build can still prevail. Stealth, Distortion, Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat are invaluable at protecting you from interrupts while charging.

.

Why Staff and Sceptre? Aren’t they condition damage weapons? Why not use GS and/or Sword for a Power build?

While you’d likely get more damage out of the GS, the Staff is used for its powerful defensive abilities, 2 of which can be used while charging Mantras. These are invaluable for protecting you while you’re vulnerable. The iWarlock is also a powerful Phantasm with a very short CD, and Staff Clones deal a nice bit of damage through conditions too.

The reason the Sceptre is used over the Sword is because with this build you’d generally want to stay at a range, and while the Sceptre is relatively weak it can at least deal damage while you’re Power Spiking.

.

What about Shattering? Do you use Shatter skills with this build?

I do, but situationally. The most important Shatter is of course Distortion, making you invulnerable and guaranteeing you will finish charging a Mantra. Mind Wrack is used mainly to finish off opponents.

.

What if I’m up against a condition build?

Personally, I’d switch out iDefender for Mantra of Resolve. While Mantra of Recovery cures 3 conditions with Mender’s Purity, that won’t be enough if your opponent is a condition build. iDisenchanter may also be a good choice, particularly if your opponent is boon-happy.

When Decoy interrupts mantra charging, better use blink.

And personally, I don’t get 20 points into chaos for staff reduction. Deceptive evasion is enough for me.
And the “toughness on mantra charge” is weak. Far reaching manipulations of phantasmal fury might be the better choice.

this i very good for one on one but has no capabilty or prospect of killing 2 or more people at the same time :S

Nretep.2564:

When Decoy interrupts mantra charging, better use blink.

And personally, I don’t get 20 points into chaos for staff reduction. Deceptive evasion is enough for me.
And the “toughness on mantra charge” is weak. Far reaching manipulations of phantasmal fury might be the better choice.

You can just use Decoy before charging Mantras. Blink might get you out of a bad situation but it won’t protect you from say an interrupt.

Staff CD Reduction allows you to use your very important defensive skills much more frequently, plus lower CD for iWarlock. Deceptive Evasion doesn’t help at all with charging Mantras and you don’t need increased Clone generation anyhow as you won’t Shatter much.

Protected Mantras is +200 Toughness, and since you’d be charging Mantras constantly you’d enjoy the bonus most of the time.

RedCobra.7693:

this i very good for one on one but has no capabilty or prospect of killing 2 or more people at the same time :S

If you are in a group vs group situation spamming Mantra of Pain (also Mantra of Recovery) will also heal your allies, plus the Staff in general is pretty good at buffing allies.

Embolism.8106:

You can just use Decoy before charging Mantras. Blink might get you out of a bad situation but it won’t protect you from say an interrupt.

Decoy doesn’t protect you from an interrupt either. Alot interrupts are aoes, which decoy doesn’t prevent. On contrary, you have to use it before charging.
PhaseRetreat and Blink can be used while charging (and I tought decoy, too) and therefore are better for preventing interrupts.

And for Menders Purity (condition removal on heal), I don’t think it triggers on (healing) mantra charging.

[ Edit ]
you forgot to mention that Restorative Mantras can heal illusions and NPCs, too. But in a “group” fight it’s too crippled by the 5 entities limitation

Nretep.2564:

Embolism.8106:

You can just use Decoy before charging Mantras. Blink might get you out of a bad situation but it won’t protect you from say an interrupt.

Decoy doesn’t protect you from an interrupt either. Alot interrupts are aoes, which decoy doesn’t prevent. On contrary, you have to use it before charging.
PhaseRetreat and Blink can be used while charging (and I tought decoy, too) and therefore are better for preventing interrupts.

And for Menders Purity (condition removal on heal), I don’t think it triggers on (healing) mantra charging.

[ Edit ]
you forgot to mention that Restorative Mantras can heal illusions and NPCs, too. But in a “group” fight it’s too crippled by the 5 entities limitation

Come now. You know very well that a lot of interrupts require a target, and even those that do not have to guess where you are if you are stealthed. Decoy is just plain better than Blink at preventing Interrupts, the only benefit to Blink is it can get you out of Immobilises and Knockdowns; but you got Phase Retreat for that. Pressing Decoy before charging a Mantra is hardly rocket science.

I’m pretty sure Mender’s Purity does cleanse conditions on charge, as that counts as a heal too (for all other purposes like on-heal Runes).

Being able to AoE heal is nothing to sniff at, limitation or no. Be aware that I think in terms of PvP, not WvW (at least, not zergfests or sieges or other WvW specific stuff), when it comes to builds.

Somewhat similar to a Mantra/Phantasm build I’ve run in the past. Some points…

1) If you drop Torch for Pistol and go 5 more points into Inspiration – probably dropping 5 out of Illusions – you might get more mileage out of your second set. No ability to stealth charge, but the stun/daze from Magic Bullet in combination with the pressure of damage from iDuelist may make up for it, particularly since you can heal him throughout the fight if they don’t bring him down immediately.

2) You might consider switching your runes to something like Lyssa. While you may not be speccing for condition damage, you definitely want your conditions to add more pressure and stick around for more damage from iWarlock. Even the slight 10% bonus from Lyssa will help with that, and you’ll get both the same precision as well as the six rune benefit which is quite nice for practically resetting fights with Mass Invisibility.

Almost certainly much better with Pistol and iDuelist for keeping the bleeds on, but still very useful if you’re going for two Staff clones with iWarlock.

3) Defender is good, but you might want to consider taking Portal or Blink in many situations. Both of them allow you more mobility without breaking your charging, and are just generally very good as well.

1. Is a very good point, I feel that this build needs more offensive power: it’s already very strong defensively. I am not so convinced with 2. and 3., +10% CondDuration is a fraction of a second for most conditions and seems unlikely to benefit iWarlock, and iDefender is really, really good. I’d bring Portal for team play but that’s about it.

I can definitely see where you’re coming from with 2 and 3, particularly in sPvP.

My experience comes almost entirely from WvW, where I can use pizza to get condition duration to 50%, covering ground is more important, and iDefender is good but, I would think, not quite as good because of the prevalence of encounters where numbers are heavily weighted one way or the other.

Charging your dmg mantra lowers your overall damage output. Thus it is better used as a spike, as the name suggests, to help drop a target.. with that in mind the heal of mantra cast is less useful.

I can’t imagine wanting to trade one of our amazing utility slots for a relatively weak on demand extra bit of burst.

fadeaway.2807:

Charging your dmg mantra lowers your overall damage output. Thus it is better used as a spike, as the name suggests, to help drop a target.. with that in mind the heal of mantra cast is less useful.

I can’t imagine wanting to trade one of our amazing utility slots for a relatively weak on demand extra bit of burst.

You’re missing the point. The key here is Restorative Mantras.

By basically using Mantra of Pain on cooldown, the amount of healing you get is huge. Despite using Berserker stats, this build can facetank a lot of damage: of course it’s best if you use your skills to evade damage, but what damage does go through is easily healed away.

Mantra of Pain is not burst. It is sustained healing and DPS. It’s 1500 – 3000 damage and 2600 healing every 4 or 5 seconds. Plus you have Phantasms and Clones out that deal damage regardless of what you are doing, and you can use skills while using Power Spike for conjuring Phantasms or dishing out extra damage.

Embolism beat me to the punch.

Regardless, as he states, near-constant 250 toughness and AOE healing makes MoP far from a ‘weak’ utility choice when traited properly, and it only gets better with additional Mantras because the damage can be activated while you’re charging them.

In fact, if they added a second damaging Mantra on a low CD I could see Mantras becoming too powerful, as you could simply cycle through them while providing good DPS, constant AOE healing, and a free 250 toughness. Topic for somewhere else, if at all, but still an interesting thought.

I think any build that takes the mantra heal but doesn’t use a rune set with an on-heal effect is missing its full potential. Lyssa would be pretty good, but so would Dwayna, Flock, Grenth, etc.

I think portal would be better than decoy – more team utility and can provide the same purpose as Decoy (port out, charge mantras, port back) just with longer cooldown (but used smartly can virtually guarantee survival).

Question that comes to my mind with this build is what role is it supposed to play?

Bunker? Not sure it would hold out long in 2v1 scenario enough to justify bringing over a BM ranger, guardian, or engy.

DPS roamer? Would not be very moble, doesn’t do enough damage to efficiently finish fights.

Backpoint defender? Its based around being at range and has too much stealth such that you’d have hard time keeping a point from getting neutral.

Change the 20 in chaos to domination/dueling and you have a build similar to the one outlined in Pyro’s overpowered 1v1 build (and swap some weapons). Towards the end of that thread I tried adding healing mantras but felt it lacking. I felt my escape mechanisms, defensive abilities and the extra utility slot were better options than standing around casting MoP for a 2.6k heal.

Considering my job as a 10/30/0/25/5 was to drop people fast and be able to escape if required, I didn’t know what sacrificing damage for immobile sustainability was going to achieve. It goes even further that way by taking points out of dom/duel and into chaos. Kavia’s question is a great one – what role is this supposed to play? There are far better bunker options, better nuke options, and better mobility options. Or are we talking wvw?

The way I see it there is offensive play (kill stuff) and defensive play (either facetank like a bunker guard or escape/get range), the heal on mantra isn’t powerful enough to allow you to facetank, and I always found the best defensive option was simply to use our amazing retreat options to back off rather than try to heal through it using hps equivalent to a bunker warrior’s dps.

I’ve been playing a Mantra Build since the patch, somewhat similar in that it uses MoP & MoR along with RM & MP, but mine is quite different. I’m using GS + S/S, Blink, and Decoy along with Centaurs for speed on heal.

I’m 30 in Dom for the 3x charges on Mantras, and I trade the 20 in Chaos along with 10 from Dueling to get it. (And I get 15% added damage on Phants and 20% dmg on MW traits and the added power.) I also skipped armored Mantras for Fury on the Phants, and I’m using Soldiers so I’m a bit more of a tanky Phantasm build that uses Mantras for healing, spike, and cleansing.

I’m enjoying it very much. I do cycle through MoP a lot to get extra heals mid fight, and since the last patch I really can’t say I feel I get interrupted a lot even w/o factoring in Blink/Decoy. Fact is my Phants are doing the damage and I can run around and add to it with MoP, whilst also healing. Sure there is a short moment where my DPS drops while charging MoP, but the return is a removed condi, a fat heal, and a nice 3x insta-hit damage spike.

I’m definitely hard to kill and hard to pin down, and I can put a good amount of damage on a single target with those two Phants. I might try out Staff, but as much as people hate on the iZerker, I still love it’s cripple on running enemies and it still tends t put out solid DPS most of the time.

Although I lack big spike damage from my low crit chance and crit damage due to going with Soldier runes, I make up for that with Fury on Phants and the added spikes from MoP. (not to mention my higher toughness and 24k HPs.)

I definitely think Mantras have come a long way in the past few patches, although I would definitely still like to see improvements to some of the lesser used ones and maybe more (or improved) trait options. Right now I can’t make much of a case for most Mantras besides MoP w/ RM and the 3x insta-heal from MoR. (Which IMO people are underestimating. The instant part is the key and along with a trait like MP it’s just very very nice now that the charging time for Mantras has come down to somewhat sane levels.)

Kavia.8249:

I think any build that takes the mantra heal but doesn’t use a rune set with an on-heal effect is missing its full potential. Lyssa would be pretty good, but so would Dwayna, Flock, Grenth, etc.

Lyssa is on Elite-skill, not heal.

Kavia.8249:

I think any build that takes the mantra heal but doesn’t use a rune set with an on-heal effect is missing its full potential. Lyssa would be pretty good, but so would Dwayna, Flock, Grenth, etc.

I think portal would be better than decoy – more team utility and can provide the same purpose as Decoy (port out, charge mantras, port back) just with longer cooldown (but used smartly can virtually guarantee survival).

Question that comes to my mind with this build is what role is it supposed to play?

Bunker? Not sure it would hold out long in 2v1 scenario enough to justify bringing over a BM ranger, guardian, or engy.

DPS roamer? Would not be very moble, doesn’t do enough damage to efficiently finish fights.

Backpoint defender? Its based around being at range and has too much stealth such that you’d have hard time keeping a point from getting neutral.

The reason this build does not use Runes like Dwayna is because the extra Precision from Eagle (or any alternative Precision Rune) is important for augmenting your DPS. Your survivability is already very high, extra survivability won’t contribute too much.

Besides, most on-Heal effects are on a 10s CD. Mantra of Recovery isn’t going to proc it three times if that’s what you’re thinking.

If you run this build in a tournament you would be using IoL, Portal and Time Warp, so no stealth. I have played this build as a tournament build and stealth is really supplementary, you do fine without it.

I think people generally underestimate the survivability of the build, as well as its DPS (which, given the base stats are Berserker, is not bad at all; it mainly lacks Mind Wrack burst).

fadeaway.2807:

Change the 20 in chaos to domination/dueling and you have a build similar to the one outlined in Pyro’s overpowered 1v1 build (and swap some weapons). Towards the end of that thread I tried adding healing mantras but felt it lacking. I felt my escape mechanisms, defensive abilities and the extra utility slot were better options than standing around casting MoP for a 2.6k heal.

Considering my job as a 10/30/0/25/5 was to drop people fast and be able to escape if required, I didn’t know what sacrificing damage for immobile sustainability was going to achieve. It goes even further that way by taking points out of dom/duel and into chaos. Kavia’s question is a great one – what role is this supposed to play? There are far better bunker options, better nuke options, and better mobility options. Or are we talking wvw?

The way I see it there is offensive play (kill stuff) and defensive play (either facetank like a bunker guard or escape/get range), the heal on mantra isn’t powerful enough to allow you to facetank, and I always found the best defensive option was simply to use our amazing retreat options to back off rather than try to heal through it using hps equivalent to a bunker warrior’s dps.

The misconception here is that you think you’re supposed to facetank with this. You’re not. You’re supposed to use your array of defensive skills to avoid damage. The point is, with your evasion and superior healing, you’re unkillable. 2600 HP every 4 – 5 seconds is no joke, and your MoR also provides a huge amount of healing. And remember, this is with no Healing Power investment apart from Inspiration: you’re using Berserker stats for this.

And yes, offensively this build is more Phantasm than anything else; so in that regard the “loss” of DPS from charging Mantras ~60% of the time is quite minor.

(I’d like to point out however that the generic Phantasm build has been around since Beta, so I don’t see why people call it Pyro’s build).

Embolism.8106:

RedCobra.7693:

this i very good for one on one but has no capabilty or prospect of killing 2 or more people at the same time :S

If you are in a group vs group situation spamming Mantra of Pain (also Mantra of Recovery) will also heal your allies, plus the Staff in general is pretty good at buffing allies.

yes i suppose youre right, quite a good uniques build tbh, i enjoy seeing creativity such as this, not my cup of tea as i enjoy overcoming more than one player on my own i love the adrenaline but yeah one on one this would be great and to focus in a group aswell, i can see that you can have to defensive weapon sets then instead of devoting one set to greatsword or sword

See, I’m torn about this kind of build.

On the one hand, I tried a low-level variant of it a week or two in WvW (basically just Mantra of Pain + Restorative Mantras) and it seemed to work really well. Spamming Mantra of Pain gives pretty good consistent DPS and spectacular consistent healing.

The big problem I have with the build is that it’s kinda boring to play. You’re basically just pressing 7 over and over again most of the time. Not to say there’s no nuance to the build because there clearly is, but most of the time it’s just 7 over and over.

Blaine Tog.8304:

See, I’m torn about this kind of build.

On the one hand, I tried a low-level variant of it a week or two in WvW (basically just Mantra of Pain + Restorative Mantras) and it seemed to work really well. Spamming Mantra of Pain gives pretty good consistent DPS and spectacular consistent healing.

The big problem I have with the build is that it’s kinda boring to play. You’re basically just pressing 7 over and over again most of the time. Not to say there’s no nuance to the build because there clearly is, but most of the time it’s just 7 over and over.

^this
hence the reason i said its not my cup of tea i agree but im not denying its a good build

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kavia.8249:

I think any build that takes the mantra heal but doesn’t use a rune set with an on-heal effect is missing its full potential. Lyssa would be pretty good, but so would Dwayna, Flock, Grenth, etc.

Lyssa is on Elite-skill, not heal.

Lyssa is both; full cleanse and all boons on elite, plus a random boon on heal.

i like all the posts that go “i use a build alot like this …… except its got differnt traits gear and utility…” “if you take all your traits and move em around its just like someone elses build”

Kordos.3629:

Lyssa is both; full cleanse and all boons on elite, plus a random boon on heal.

You’re right, I’d forgotten about the (4).

A random boon is hardly something to write home about, and that effect is on a 10s CD too anyway.