Note: I intentionally left out the weapons and armour tab, seeing as this is more of a think through with nothing really set in stone.
I’ve heard several times over about how mesmers want a shutdown build similar to what there was in GW1. I had a think through and i’ve come up with an idea i’d like to share (criticisms welcome).
The build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsaRl0zqqXQTjGZ9IhpHBX4+GVBwT6hpd9pB
30/0/30/0/10
It just so happened that as a byproduct of the traits, there’s an innate increase in power and toughness alongside boon duration and condition duration, so shutdown mesmers won’t have to worry about being too squishy or about losing damage either.
The main idea with 30 in domination is to get illusion of vulnerability and halting strikes to directly aid interrupts themselves, dazzling and confounding suggestions to improve daze and wastrel’s punishment to deal more damage to disabled enemies (atleast i assume that disabled enemies are a subcategory of inactive enemies).
The 30 in chaos was primarily for chaotic interruption and bountiful interruption, granting more benefits for the act of interrupting enemies, though it doesnt necessarily aid shutdowns as a whole. I personally believe bountiful interruption prioritises over chaotic interruption, which could be replaced with mirror of anguish, acting as a counter measure to any incoming control abilities so that you control your enemy, preventing them from attacking you when you’re disabled. debilitating dissipation was a throw in and can generally be replaced with any other trait in the group, i didn’t really find anything that promoted shutdown.
the 10 in illusion is for the reduced cooldown of illusion abilities and to recharge shatters at 50% health. diversion being recharged when you most need a break sounds good to me.
Now here’s where i’m finding problems.
30 in illusion would grant imbued diversion and lower shatter cooldowns, but 20 points would need to be shifted somewhere. Chaos seems like it doesn’t promote shutdown, only kind of enhancing it but putting the 30 in chaos can increase toughness as a whole, making the mesmer less squishy (though you could argue lower cooldown rates for shatters would have distortion make up for the lost toughness, but i don’t find it a very good argument). power has way too many traits that are beneficial towards a shutdown build, so i’d recommend that those 30 points remain unaltered.
The remaining ten if you shift 20 points over to illusion, i havent really found a good place for them. Chaos offsets the glass factor a little, but putting the 10 in inspiration could bring a condition removal to heals as well as empowering heals. desperate decoy in dueling sounds like a good option as well, to promote evasion based survivability rather than hold your ground damage sponge.
when it comes to the right half of the skill bar, three abilities seem obvious to me. Moa morph, signet of domination and mantra of distraction. A stun, two dazes that have a 50% chance of making a stun and a 10 second hard shutdown. And that was all i was able to find in terms of control, but feedback could be used to provide a sort of shutdown for ranged enemies, mirror doing the same but self healing at the same time. However the low healing value of mirror offsets the reflection a bit, and setting distortion to also provide reflection (if you’re going 30 in illusion) could offset the necessity for the heal to have a reflection, opening room for the other two heals to be used instead. Signet of midnight could replace reflection if you’re looking for a closer range damage prevention tool, though blind making only one attack miss isn’t that valuable in my opinion.
continued
(edited by castlemanic.3198)