Guild Wars 2

Hello folks!

I thought I’d share a nice and tanky build for you all that I have been running lately to a great deal of success. I used to run the Confusing Shatter Damage build that I posted some time ago, however it began to bother me greatly that some of my traits were rendered useless if my opponent had stability. Another thing that also started to drag me down, is the heavy usage of conditions, and while I defend my previous build’s lack of condi remove, since I could often stun and daze a target long enough for me to kill them, when facing several opponents you just can’t keep up the dazes to avoid being killed by conditions. So, I started yet again to shop around for inspiration and surprisingly enough the build that I found to be defensive enough, and able to clear conditions fast enough was actually Kaamau’s Evasive Signets. There were, however, some aspects of his build that I didn’t agree with and thus have changed trait allocation, trait selection and weaponry, enough that I feel it warrants a new post

My build
So here’s the Dietzen’s Signets.

Like Kaamau said in his post, I want to be able to clear conditions regularly and I want to be able to withstand damage. Having distortion is a nice and quite nifty tool at your disposal and with added sources other than F4 and Sword2, you can often avoid big chunks of dmg.

Which tools do you have in this build?
I’m glad you asked, let me summarize:

Distortion

• F4 1-3 Seconds
• Sword2 2 Seconds
• Signet of Midnight 1 Second
• Signet of Domination 1 Second

Block/Daze

• Sword4
• F3 1-3 Dazes

Condition Clearing

• Mirror 1 Condition
• Signet of Midnight 1 Condition
• Signet of Domination 1 Condition

Stun Breaks

• Decoy
• Signet of Midnight
• Staff2 (Semi, it removes you from harm’s way)

Others

• Staff2 Blink
• Staff4 Chaos Armor
• Staff5 Chaos Storm (Swiftness, Retaliation, Aegis)
• Signet of Midnight Blind
• Signet of Domination 3 Second Stun
• Mirror 2 Second Reflect

Hey wait a second! You listed some of those tricks a lot of times! Is this some kind of Tom Foolery?
This is one aspect I like about the viability of this build, your skills do multiple things at any given time!

For example, Signet of Midnight is a stunbreak, it puts out blind in a 360 radius, it gives 1 second of distortion, and it clears a condition.
Signet of Distortion puts out a 3 second stun, 1 second of distortion and clears 1 condition.
So some of the abilities have various purposes and this is awesome, even if you use something for 1 purpose, you might help yourself in another. You might have stunned someone with Domination and at the same time avoided a warrior stun in the 1 second distortion duration.

How much is set in stone?
Based on your abilities, you can always switch out some of the cavaliers or knights pieces for more berserkers gear. I have found a somewhat middleway where I feel comfortable between the amount of toughness, crit chance and crit dmg.
Regarding gear, I can’t run this build without MH Sword and a Staff, OH you can decide which suits you best, I’ve picked OH sword due to the reduced CD trait and the viability of the weapon. You can block or daze which is awesome depending on the situation and the swordsman does insane dmg.

Trait Choices
Signet CD reduce, distortion on use, and condition clear on use.
Blade Training – Dual swords means more CD reduced.
Mender’s Purity clear a condi on heal, mirror has a 15 sec CD, so it’s quite often you can use it.
And Debilitating Dissipation, I love this trait, and this build can pump out lots n’ lots of clones, weakness, bleed or vulnerability on clone death is nice!
Also gives minor trait, retal on phantasms, regeneration on 75% HP and protection on regeneration.

Rune and Sigils
I’ve changed from Hoelbrak to Travelers, I need the speed boost so people can’t just kite me. Also, traveler’s rune give more crit dmg, vitality, toughness and precision, also healing and condi dmg (negligible), but it’s also very good to have the +15% boon duration and 10% condi duration actually also helps. So all in all, these runes are quite good for this build.

S/S – Battle for might, X (you can chose whichever you like, I took corruption just for fun and to try it.)
Staff – Hydromancy because, leap in with sword, do your burst, switch to staff to chill and blink out, awesome combo! (Thank you Osicat! I think it’s him that does this trick )

Food and Utility
Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup – -40% additional condi duration on self
Superior Sharpening Stone – More power, you can take oil instead if you want more crit chance.

(You can also run a + crit dmg (either precision or power) food, if you’re not too worried about conditions, I’ve tried both and they both work)

To be or not to be
Or, to shatter or not to shatter? I don’t shatter, unless I need some burst, daze or distortion. I only ever shatter on need, I don’t shatter on CD. It’s best to have clones out to pew pew and to have them die and proc Debilitating Dissipation.

Cons

• You have very little mobility
• No blink
• No swiftness
• Can be difficult to catch targets, Sword3 cripple and immobilize, Chaos Storm lucky chill proc, and Signet of Domination are the only tools to catch people. Oh and hydromancy on staff proc.

Pros

• High dmg
• Phantasms do very high dmg
• Many tools to avoid dmg
• High clone production, many Debilitating Dissipation procs

Conclusion
It’s a fun build, it differs slightly to Kaamau’s build but and it works. It does great dmg and you can really punish people for engaging you! Try it out

I don’t really have anything to say, because I like when people play with signets. You explained very well the advantages of a signet build. I have my own signet build, but the essential is explained by your build.

The distortion, blind, stun breaker and condition removal is very good. I also not shatter that much, only when I need it. Signets are counters to conditions, spamming thieves and stun lock warriors.

Aye, especially thieves I’ve found. You can negate a very large portion of their dmg by all the distortion you can put out. It’s awesome!

Updated which runes I use, also expanded the How much is set in stone? section, touching upon weapons.
Fighting in wvw with this build is just crazy good. I’ve been up against multiple opponents, and they simply couldn’t get me down with all the distortion and blinking around.
This build is exceptionally tanky but still does really good dmg… I’m quite amazed at the capabilities, and having switched to travelers runes, I can actually catch people!
You gotta try it out people!
Note: I’ve been solo roaming in WvW today from around 8 am to 12 pm, so about 4 hours of game time. During that time, the only time I’ve been downed/killed was to a very skilled d/p thief, the pressure he kept up was too much in the end, and he could port away every time I was close to having him downed, was a cool fight though he even backed off when another thief interrupted (who I killed with no effort lol)
So 1 defeat in 4 hours, not quite shabby I’d say

@Dietzen, just curious, do you spend the majority of your time in sw/sw? Reason I ask is the lack of chaotic dampening. I’ve always found staff cumbersome to run without it. I know it’s possible and people obviously do it but I always like to ask feedback when I see it.

According to the current build link, you don’t have much mobility (I don’t see blink in the build unless you were referring to phase retreat). Would you consider this a weakness?

skcamow.3527:

@Dietzen, just curious, do you spend the majority of your time in sw/sw? Reason I ask is the lack of chaotic dampening. I’ve always found staff cumbersome to run without it. I know it’s possible and people obviously do it but I always like to ask feedback when I see it.

According to the current build link, you don’t have much mobility (I don’t see blink in the build unless you were referring to phase retreat). Would you consider this a weakness?

Yes, I always start off in s/s burn everything, and after my blurred frenzy I’ll switch to staff which procs hydromancy, and then blink away… and yeah I did refer to phase retreat when saying blink and yeah I did think of taking chaotic dampening, however, I wanted to remove condi on signet use, and that has worked out like a charm.
To be honest, I’ve played with the trait and without, and I don’t miss it.. ofc #4 and #5 are on really long CD’s, but again I spend most of my time in s/s anyways, and with the reduced cd on sword, I find my abilities are constantly up…
I think it depends on the build if you need the trait, and I can honestly say that in this build you don’t need it…

skcamow.3527:

According to the current build link, you don’t have much mobility (I don’t see blink in the build unless you were referring to phase retreat). Would you consider this a weakness?

It’s true that mobility is lacking, but it’s the mesmer weakness. Osicat is pretty good with Phase Retreat/Camera Turning if you look at his videos. If you master the mechanism, it can be used like a normal front blink.

I used to play with focus for mobility in pvp, but iWarden is immobile, so it’s hard to land damage. If you follow Dietzen build, you can always change decoy for blink if you really need the mobility. Always put your own spice in your build.

Krispera.5087:

skcamow.3527:

According to the current build link, you don’t have much mobility (I don’t see blink in the build unless you were referring to phase retreat). Would you consider this a weakness?

It’s true that mobility is lacking, but it’s the mesmer weakness. Osicat is pretty good with Phase Retreat/Camera Turning if you look at his videos. If you master the mechanism, it can be used like a normal front blink.

I used to play with focus for mobility in pvp, but iWarden is immobile, so it’s hard to land damage. If you follow Dietzen build, you can always change decoy for blink if you really need the mobility. Always put your own spice in your build.

I would love to claim that I can zip around like a thief, but yeah I do have some mobility issues. I don’t necessarily feel it is an issue, now that I have travelers runes though.
If my target tries to run, I usually use signet of domination (which I save for just such an occasion) and follow up with sword 3 chain and sword 2. If the target is close I just sword 2 and try to blow em up. I always also try to switch to staff after this, while right on top of em, to ensure they get the hydromancy chill proc. But admittedly, warriors especially can just bounce away with little effort, same with thieves.

A note regarding phase retreat, if your target is behind you, and you use the ability, you will blink forwards away from your target. As the ability is always designed to move you away out of harms way. Needless to say, if you have no target you will still move back, not forward But you can use this on a critter or something for example to get some momentum, and if you are far enough away, you won’t spawn a clone on said npc.

Oh and one last thing, ofc you can switch around what you feel is best, I did this from Kaamaus build, he runs 3 signets I only run 2
The blink vs decoy thing, I’ve found I’d rather have a target drop, rather than a blink, since they will still have you targeted if you blink away, they won’t if you stealth. So that’s my personal reasoning for chosing decoy over blink.