Guild Wars 2

I wanted to share a tpvp build I have been testing over the last few days and that I found to be fun and succesful. Ill give you some of my thoughts about advantages and disadvanteges.

I play soloQ mostly and the build tries to cater to that: its meant as an all purpose-roamer, strong in 1v1 (you cant prevent that in soloQ), fast, and still viable in teamplay. I tested it on EU soloQ, matchmaking between 95% and ~800.
All credit goes to addiktGaming, the build is a variation of what I found on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V78huRBpwik

Link to the build:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-NZ-FR;0VPF01y6BV-71;9;49T-9J2;0189;13;059-U-k6b;1_JH8_JH85Bc

First things first: the 6-piece bonus listed for the runes of speed on intothemist.com is wrong. Its +25% speed in reality (just like travellers runes in PvE), more on that later.

In general, you want to get your phants out and survive, just like with any phantasm build. Duellist hits for aprox. 3200 dmg (w/o bleed stacks), warlock for aprox. 3000 dmg (2 condis on target) on a heavy golem.

On to the goodies:

Deceptive evasion: to use DE in a phantasm build really made me ponder until I tried it out-it works marvelously. Clones irritate your enemy even in higher tier gameplay. Sword and staff clones both not only contibute to your damage (albeit minimal), but they also are a plague; noboy wants a clone (or the real mesmer?) to swing a sword at him in meele range, blocking your attacks, stripping your boons. Because your foes get burns, bleeds (staff clones) and confusion (clone death), you are sometimes mistaken for a condi mesmer and your hard hitting phantasms are ignored. As you most of the time dont have more than 2 phantasms out (no +health for them), theres really no need to worry about overwriting phants with DE.

Weapon choice: One thing that always bothered me with pantasm builds in tpvp was the fact, that phants died to quickly in teamfights or even 1v1 because of AoE spam. I found the combination of staff/s+p to solve that problem. By initiating fights at max. distance with one phant, circling around the point to drop off the other and then moving on, its very hard for your opponents to cleave your range-attacking dmg dealers. Condi necros are still hard fights because of aoe cleave, but you can beat them if youre clever enough (or theyre not). So for me, pistol and staff are not debateble for this build to work.

Runes of speed: another choice I was sceptical about (+vitality is inferior to toughness, +swiftness duration is obsolet), but turned out to be really good because of the +25% speed increase. Your roaming feels much, much quicker, your kiting improves alot (although strafing is not affected, you have to run forward), you can chase fleeing foes and bail out yourself more reliably. All-in-all you have to test it for yourself: this speed buff was a much bigger benefit, than you would assume when you read it.

Duellist on 12 sec CD, phantasmal haste: obvious, but still underrated by myself in the beginning: with your phantasms out of harms way and not dying early, in combination with phantasmal haste rises the pressure on your enemy. If your phants and you are grouped in a large triangle around your (stupid hambow, cough, cough) enemy on the point, he has a hard time deciding who to attack first, since he wont be able to cleave you and your illusions.
On the other hand, if you are in trouble and need to buy you time, just hit distortion-dodge-diversion without hesitation: you’ll have another duellist up soon and turn the tables!

Null field: I like to use null field offensivly (guards, eles, warriors) on points if I see those classes with massive buffs, and defensivly against terrormancers (still a hard matchup) and most engis. The chaos armor from staff #1 inside is a nice addon. In teamfight, null field can really help clear the point for your tough classes. I wouldnt leave home without in tpvp. With this build, you have a blind from dazzling glamours additionally (also for portal!)

Portal: I know not everyone is sold on portal in soloQ-I definitly am. There’s numerous matches this skill alone has won the game for my team; when everything is set nicely after the beginning, you control 2 points and can roam close/mid with portal, its very hard for your enemy to regain a point (it doesnt work out this way in soloQ all the time, but oh well…)

toughness: so here comes the main “con” of this build. With 1836 armor you are easy prey for trickery thieves if caught off-guard and for any zerker builds. If you see them coming though, you stand a good chance: you can stealth, kite around objects (runes of speed!), blurred frenzy, magic bullet, distort and dodge, while your phantasms feast on their health. High skill floor here and still much to learn for me.

A standard point assault 1v1 would be: duellist at max range – magic bullet – swap – chaos storm on the stunned enemy – warlock – phase retreat (all while circeling around the point). If the enemy is dangerous at range, I start with decoy, same rotation afterwards.

I think I will stick to that build for quite some time and I’d really love to see some of you guys trying this out and giving some feedback!

Cheers,
Clam Camouflage