Guild Wars 2

I’ve been pretty interested in these two traits so I’ve attempted a Phantasm build based around them.

0/10/30/30/0

10 in Dueling with Blade Training
30 in in Chaos with Master of Manipulation, Bountiful Interruption and Prismatic Understanding.
30 in Inspiration with Mender’s Purity, Warden’s Feedback and Restorative Mantras

Utilities: Blink, Decoy and Mantra of Resolve.
Elite: Mass Invisibility

Weapon set would be Sword/Focus with a Greatsword. You could easily swap out the GS for a Staff when more defense is required. To offset the lack of points in Domination and Dueling I’ve gone with all Berzerker gear and Rune of the Pack.

I’ve been running this in PvE for a week or so and found it to be a pretty good support build with high survivability and decent damage output.

Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

You seem to not really getting enough bang for your buck having only 2 mantras (assuming your heal is the mantra), and should rethink that last trait and pick up a different heal and utility. I am certain you could find a different grandmaster perk in Inspiration that will increase your survivability. Though at the end of the day, if you are comfortable with it, keep to it, though tweak it and keep and eye on how it feels.

What kinda of sigils are you using on the weapons? And how are you taking care of conditions? These are two things to keep in mind when building. At least if you do a lot of soloing.

Elwood.8347:

You seem to not really getting enough bang for your buck having only 2 mantras (assuming your heal is the mantra), and should rethink that last trait and pick up a different heal and utility. I am certain you could find a different grandmaster perk in Inspiration that will increase your survivability. Though at the end of the day, if you are comfortable with it, keep to it, though tweak it and keep and eye on how it feels.

What kinda of sigils are you using on the weapons? And how are you taking care of conditions? These are two things to keep in mind when building. At least if you do a lot of soloing.

With the mantra and Mender’s Purity conditions are pretty manageable. To be honest I don’t find any of the grandmaster traits all that good so that’s why I’ve gone for Restorative Mantras. I often swap it out for Persisting Images though depending on the situation.

My sigils are pretty standard – accuracy/ battle and force for the GS.

Why not X/Battle + Battle instead? Also, you could put the last 10 points of Inspiration into Domination to get +20% Mind Wrack damage or +15% Phantasm Damage, allowing you to swap at will.

@leng jai, it looks like you’re putting together a build very similar to the Chaos Maestro. Chaos has painstakingly created and maintained this well thought out and tested build. Here is a link for your reference:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Vid-The-Chaos-Maestro-Support-Builds/first

Since you’re running full Zerker, consider picking up 2x Sigils of battle and 6x Runes of Altruism. That way you’ll always have 10 stacks of might and only need to interrupt three enemies to sit on 25x Might. (Munch on some Chocolate Omnomberries for an extra 20% boon duration)

In PvE, you don’t really need very much condition removal except for specific situations. If you take Mantra of Pain (which, with zerk gear, fury from altruism, and 10x might can nail you 1k per hit) and Mantra of Recovery w/ Restorative Mantras, you’ll see better healing returns and do better damage.

My gut feeling with this build is that you are going to be severely under utilizing prismatic understanding.

I can definitely see the OP build as highly survivable, no question there. But, as strong as PU support builds are (and they are indeed strong), one of the biggest irks I have is that you have to be in stealth to acquire the big boons that shift the tide of the battle. Not only do you have to be in stealth, you typically have to be there for long periods to work up a good amount of boon duration, which introduces an inherent handicap (especially for damage focused builds). If you’re wanting to deal damage, well you just revealed yourself and nullified PU. Certainly there are some instant cast skills usable while in stealth, but just overall it seems like using PU for support requires increased macro attention. Personally I prefer the in your face melee style support build.

That said, all the good PU support builds I’ve read about would be nice to see in a video to realize their full effectiveness (nudge-Chaos).

You can summon phantasms (and buff ’em with altruism) , charge mantras, lay down temp curtain(i… think) while stealthed without revealing.

With 65% boon duration(30 chaos, altruism runes, omnomcreme) Veil alone can give me 20 secs of protection. If theres a thief on my side best believe Im sticking soo uncomfortably cose to them.

Oh btw. May wanna consider Signet of Inspiration go share those boons.

@Pyro – I think you’ve got a good point there. The Mesmer stealth skills all have pretty long cooldowns and it’s hard to allocate two utility slots to them. I even have trouble using BI because it’s not always optimal to be using focus 4 and GS 5, especially in a group situation. BTW are you still doing the podcast on a weekly basis?

@skcamow – before I made this build I had the same concerns as you in regards to being in stealth. It turns out that we can practically do anything besides dealing direct damage. As Chaos said that means healing, summoning phantasms, charging mantras and dropping curtain. Casting Blink breaks stealth though.

@Chaos – Runes of Altruism is a very interesting idea. To be honest I’ve never even considered using anything with healing power bonuses. I’m guessing the increase in fury and might offset the power and precision I’m losing from Rune of the Pack? How viable are they in situations where you’re not getting hit though (when using a GS)? I noticed that Mantra of Pain is very spammable since the cooldown is basically zero.

We are still doing the podcast, albeit not weekly. I’ve been away recently, and Kylia has been having one beast of a time professionally, so we’ve been hard pressed to get them done. We did record a podcast with Supcutie, and you can expect to see that very soon.

Pyroatheist.9031:

We are still doing the podcast, albeit not weekly. I’ve been away recently, and Kylia has been having one beast of a time professionally, so we’ve been hard pressed to get them done. We did record a podcast with Supcutie, and you can expect to see that very soon.

That’s cool. Just noticed you guys haven’t been doing it lately. The link in your signature also doesn’t work anymore.

Do the bonuses from Rune of Altruism work if you use a heal at max HP?

leng jai.2961:

Pyroatheist.9031:

We are still doing the podcast, albeit not weekly. I’ve been away recently, and Kylia has been having one beast of a time professionally, so we’ve been hard pressed to get them done. We did record a podcast with Supcutie, and you can expect to see that very soon.

That’s cool. Just noticed you guys haven’t been doing it lately. The link in your signature also doesn’t work anymore.

Ooh, good catch. Yes, the runes work.

Huh, blink breaks stealth? I didn’t think it did – matter of fact, I tend to blink in stealth for just that reason. Really helps juke folks in WvW.

Dhampyr.2104:

Huh, blink breaks stealth? I didn’t think it did – matter of fact, I tend to blink in stealth for just that reason. Really helps juke folks in WvW.

It doesn’t. It shows you as not stealthed on your screen, but on enemy/ally screens, you’re still stealthed.

Dhampyr.2104:

Huh, blink breaks stealth? I didn’t think it did – matter of fact, I tend to blink in stealth for just that reason. Really helps juke folks in WvW.

If you look closely, you’ll still have the boon associated with stealth, just not the texture on your character.

You guys are right about blinking in stealth. Guess we can add that to the list of bugs.

leng jai.2961:

You guys are right about blinking in stealth. Guess we can add that to the list of bugs.

It’s a visual error that doesn’t affect enemies… have you been reading?

The visual error is the bug. What, you don’t think that’s worth fixing? I’m sure there are people other than me who thought using blink broke stealth since the most significant indicator suggested it did.

leng jai.2961:

What, you don’t think that’s worth fixing?

No, I don’t. The devs have much better things to spend time doing than fixing a bug that has 0 impact on gameplay.

Pyroatheist.9031:

leng jai.2961:

What, you don’t think that’s worth fixing?

No, I don’t. The devs have much better things to spend time doing than fixing a bug that has 0 impact on gameplay.

It can have a minor effect on gameplay if there are some players who think they can’t blink while cloaked. You’re right though, not a big deal.

Having a good time with this build after following Chaos’ advice about Runes of Altruism. I don’t find mantras very satisfying to use so I’m looking at swapping the trait with something else. Is sharper images worth using if you’re not geared at all for condition damage?

Extra damage is always good, but if you have 10 extra points, I’d shuffle them into Domination for 15% illusion damage.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Extra damage is always good, but if you have 10 extra points, I’d shuffle them into Domination for 15% illusion damage.

I only have 5 points since 25 points into Inspiration gives you the 15% damage boost anyway.