Guild Wars 2

Dazed and Confused
20/0/20/0/30 http://tinyurl.com/bomvxeh

This build focuses on applying conditions of blind/confusion/daze along with staff conditions. The Blinding Beffudlement trait is key to this build, as blindness will play an important role in constantly keeping confusion on foes. Shatters, of course, are the other mechanism.
Blindness will come from these sources:

The Prestige
Illusionary Counter > Counterspell
Signet of Midnight
Chaos Armor

Clone generation is very important and you should have plenty with scepter’s ether clone/counterspell. In essence, through blinds and shatters, confusion should always be on the foe. They can remove it but you will just keep applying it.

Carrion gear was chosen due to the focus in the domination line and not much need for precision. Hence, power is respectable and that is important for the retaliation which will come from the Phantasmal Mage and Confusing Cry.

The main damage sources are confusion and retaliation. Understanding when foes are blind retaliation doesn’t proc, it essentially means that if they’re blind, they’re going to damage themselves from confusion and if they’re not blind, they will take retaliation damage.

Scepter/Torch is the primary weapon and swap to staff while S/T skills are on cooldown.

Playstyle
1) Get 2 scepter clones out (via ether clone or illusionary counter) and Phantasmal Mage
2) Allow mage to apply his 3 stacks, run in and cast The Prestige and Signet of Midnight simultaneously for 2 blinds (2 confusion stacks)
3) F2 shatter while casting confusing images
4) Scepter #2 (if not on CD) for 1 blind/confusion stack (or you can save for later)

If using IP, you should now have about 12-15 confusion stacks (+/- a couple due to cooldowns) on the foe. Note in #3, you can do during the Prestige channel. Though you’re no longer in stealth, the burning burst and confusing images provides a decent damage spike.

Juke from here using scepter/torch if you can to buy time for your attack chain (note you don’t always have to wait for the mage).
If you want to burst on top of this, use Mirror Images then a free shatter slot.
If in trouble … swap to staff. You can still get some nice confusion sustained.

Using Chaos Armor (either Staff #4 or Chaos Storm > Phase Retreat combo) will cause confusion 66% of the time when you’re hit due to the 33% chance confusion and 33% chance to blind.

When in situations faced with many opponents, use Imbued Diversion and when solo, use Illusionary Persona, generally speaking, though IP will likely be what you take most of the time. The domination line ensures nice vulnerability stacks on the foe when you daze or interrupt, which will happen often (use that 2 second stun from Signet of Domination!).

The blindness applied is mostly AoE (The Prestige/SoM/Counterspell), so that goes well with the AoE confusion coming from shatters.
You will generally be within 600-900 range most of the time to blind with Prestige/SoM. Illusionary Counter is priceless for that reason.

If you want to apply the most confusion possible quickly, just follow the above attack chain w/burst. If fast enough, you can end up with 16-20 stacks on them easily.

As an alternate playstyle, you can always hang out with staff, get your clones/warlock up and debilitate with staff conditions. With condition damage at these levels, it should keep some nice pressure on them. Then you can bring shatters in as you wish.

Condition removal comes with using Torch skills. It could also be managed via Lemongrass Poultry Soup (instead of Rare Veggie Pizza). I’ve also personally swapped MI for the Disenchanter phantasm, which is nice to use for an extra clone due to it’s quick recharge.

There is flexibility with the build. Possible skill alternates:
Illusionary Defense instead of Debilitating Dissipation.
Illusionary Invigoration instead of Confusing Cry (if you don’t care about the retaliation).
Rending Shatter (one of my favorites)/Crippling Dissipation instead of Signet Mastery.

I hope to get some video up soon.

Comments/Critiques welcome!

Looks good. I understand the focus on Blind/Confusion, but where do the Dazes come in beyond Shatters/Chaos Storm? or rather, what extra focus does the build have on dazes over any other 20/0/0/0/30 build?

The daze inspiration originally came from the Imbued Diversion trait of which I hear almost no chatter about on these forums. There’s probably a reason for that (and would like to hear), but an AoE diversion can be very powerful, more so in a group where in this build you are also AoE stacking lots of vulnerabilty, especially if you take Domination trait IV. I played with that for awhile as well and used a Sigil of Peril versus the Sigil of Smoldering.

The flexibility allows to swap back and forth to IP if so desired. You could also theoretically swap SoD for Mantra of Distraction as well which I didn’t mention in the OP.

Oh man, please put up a video putting Imbued Diversion to good use, I’ve been dying to see someone utilize it!

That does give me a bit of an idea.. Taking 10 from Chaos and placing into Domination; Imbued Diversion & 50% Stun chance on Daze could really screw with Zergs if placed properly…

Hi,
I like the idea behind this, a question though, since the majority of your damage is coming from confusion and retaliation do you not feel that having daze in the mix is counter intuitive since it effectively shuts down your main source of damage?

@Chaos – I’m working on getting a vid going. Will post here again when I do. Yeah going 30 into dom for the 50% stun on daze is enticing; I just can’t give up Chaotic Dampening.

@Kylia – great question. This build will shine the most I believe in group settings if using Imbued Diversion. When soloing/roaming, I would take IP to get the most out of your confusion stacks. Even w/out IP though, you can still stack up impressive confusion; it’s just the Imbued Diversion traits doesn’t do you much good against a single opponent.

So yeah it’s a little inconvenient to switch but honestly if you know you’ll be zerging then throw on Imbued Diversion and Rending Shatter. If solo/roaming, go IP.

Still a little confused

If you daze, then the enemy will not be damaging themselves from the confusion/retal that you have placed on them, since you have mentioned that this build is about maintaining confusion on your enemy.
as blindness will play an important role in constantly keeping confusion on foes.

And since Confusion is such a short duration, dazing for even 1 second of that duration potentially mitigates 33% of the damage output. (especially since you mentioned Lemongrass Poultry Soup instead of Veggie Pizza)

Food for thought?

@Kylia – yes, primary damage sources will be confusion and retaliation. You still have your other skills to pressure the opponent down and I stress pressure because obviously this is not a high damage output build. Both dazing/blinding serve a purpose of negating damage by virtue of the fact that they won’t be able to hit you (if timed properly) while pressuring them down. Yeah, daze means they are unable to use skills for a second but you’ve also put some vulnerability on them and bought yourself a little time to do whatever you need (MW/put a skill down/heal etc). Blinding does it’s job and applies confusion as well.

I do see what you’re saying though and the key really is to not waste too much of your blind/confusion applications when you apply daze. But even if you do with an F3, confusion will last much longer than the daze with the veggie pizza which is what I use in the build most of the time. Lemongrass poultry soup was an alt if concerned about condition duration/removal. Like I said too you could bring the disenchanter vs MI which I’ve done.

One other thought, if using Imbued Diversion, you could just use F3 when you have one clone up so as to not “waste” the others to save for confusion. You still get the AoE daze there. Or if you can space the clones out enough, what if you can get an AoE daze from each 3 clone shatter. I just thought of that and have not tested but would be sinister if it worked that way.

So daze on a group scenario …. if you take Imbued Diversion and F3 shatter on a bunched up group, to your point you do get less confusion duration from it. Following the daze though, Prestige, F2 shatter, SoM and Confusing Images as you back up. plus 25 stacks vulnerability on your target and at least 10 on the others. Losing some of that confusion for the 1 second they are dazed is unfortunate but the tactical advantage it provides the group far outweighs that IMO, plus you will still likely get some respectable confusion damage out of it.

skcamow.3527:

One other thought, if using Imbued Diversion, you could just use F3 when you have one clone up so as to not “waste” the others to save for confusion. You still get the AoE daze there. Or if you can space the clones out enough, what if you can get an AoE daze from each 3 clone shatter. I just thought of that and have not tested but would be sinister if it worked that way.

Correct, if you have the clones spaced out you can get up to 3 lots of 1 second daze. (if spaced out correctly as the Daze does not stack )

Just be carefull that you don’t 3 second daze your big confusion stack time (as the time you maintain a high confusion stack is a short period between the initial cast and final cast of the stack creation.
Can’t wait to see a video of it in action.