Guild Wars 2

Foreword:
This build has been created based on the idea of not running PU-Shatter or Mantra-Shatter because I got flamed everytime I ran such builds.

The Idea of the build

Recently I literally dreamed about GW2 and that Sigil of Paralyzation, Counfounding Suggestions and Signet of Domination would result in a stun lasting for a really long period of time.

The next morning I woke up and decided to create a build running these things.
The hype was strong with me.
Even stronger was the dissappointment when I found out (or better when Chaos told me) that the sigil and the trait do not stack the stun duration to the expected 55%. The bonus of the sigil just further increased the duration from 25% to 30%. With a sad face I gave up on the idea of permastunning enemies and focused on playing with signets instead.

The Build:

The Specializations:

• Domination:
  Confounding Suggestions: Increases Stun Duration from SoDomination(3.75s) and Magic Bullet(2.5s).
  Blurred Inscriptions: Conditionremoval, Distortion, Cooldownreduction for Signets
  Mental Anguish: More burst damage on stunned/not casting foes.
• Dueling:
  Phantasmal Fury: More phantasm damage and more lowdps bleeds
  Blinding Dissipation: Blind on shatter as defensive option of using shatters
  Master Fencer: High fury uptime for more damage.
  Deceptive Evasion: More Clones to shatter
• Inspiration:
  Menders Purity: 3 instead of 1 condition is cleansed on using your heal
  Persisting Images: Nothing better in this slot. Retaliation + more health on phantasms
  Inspiring Distortion: Share Distortion a LOT (signets do that too)
  Restorative Illusions: Extremly stron helper for the sustain additional conditionremoval and heal on shatter.
  Healing Prism: Passively heal even more by having illusions (regeneration + Signet of the Ether
  Illusionary Inspiration: Permaregeneration while phantasms are up. Signet of Inspiration for boonshare additional distortion and conditionremoval.

Skills:

• Signet of the Ether: passive healing, removes 3 conditions, 1s distortion, reloades phantasms
• Signet of Midnight: instant, AoE blind, stunbreaker, 1s distortion, removes 1 condition
• Blink: instant, stunbreaker, movement
• Signet of Domination: 3.75s stun, 1s distortion, removes 1 condition
• Signet of Humility: MOA! :) (no stunbreaking while moaed), 1s distortion, removes 1 condition

Weapons:

• Greatsword: strongest burst potential, stong phantasm burst with SotEther, knockback to bait stunbreakers.
• Sword & Pistol: high defense from sword, phantasm which usually doesn’t get cleaved, strong stun to either burst / bait stunbreaks

For WvW: I’d suggest to change at least one of these:
Blink-> Decoy
Signet of Humilty-> Mass Invisibility
Phantasmal Fury-> Desperate Decoy
Pistol→ Torch

Pros:

• high bursts (as every build atm)
• extremly good sustain from passive healing + shatter healing
• insanely long stuns (which is why ppl will flame you if you run this)
• frequent (shareable) distortions
• passive boonshare
• frequent blinds through shattering and signet of midnight
• tons of conditioncleanse
• MOA! =)

Cons:

• no stealth!
• quite a high skill floor
• high risk (but also high reward)
• less boonstrip since shattered concentration is traided away for our signet trait
• weak to high stability uptime (e.g, rampage as one rangers)
• getting flamed as hard as playing pu mesmer o.O (which is why I failed here // look at the foreword)

If anyone has critique/ideas, pls post them I’m always open for them ;)

I think we dueled a couple nights ago. Pretty strong build, beat me consistently on a vanilla shatter spec. The only weak point IMO is the heal skill. If it weren’t for the Distortion & cleanse on cast I’d recommend ditching it for Ether Feast. That said, if any build can make signet heal viable for PvP, this is it.

Thanks for the feedback!
The heal yes.. I never actually ran this heal outside of pve. It just doesn’t heal enough
However the combination of good poison removal, permaregeneration (~160hp/s) and the signet IF 3 illusions are up is actually quite strong. And since you get a few hp back when shattering you’re not left without healing =)

Is there any [OMFG] tester willing to test this build?

I would love to see someone experienced with this build use it in practice, it sounds interesting

Everyone knows I love a good signet build. Good work here friend.

PvP
The main problem is that with current PvP you cannot cap with distortion. Now when Stronghold rolls out this might be a great way how to support hero push.

Personally I would change Illusionary Inspiration for Mental Defense, because you don’t have that many booms to share, but that will depend on your team.

If there is a good boom source on your team Illusionary Inspiration will pay off as well.

WvW
It is a very selfish build so I am assuming that you are aiming for single small team roaming. I used similar build myself so yes it will be a fun and strong build to roam with.

MailMail.6534:

Everyone knows I love a good signet build. Good work here friend.

I didn’t know! Did you try it out? Anyways thanks for the feedback!

Korusef.3714:

PvP
The main problem is that with current PvP you cannot cap with distortion. Now when Stronghold rolls out this might be a great way how to support hero push.

Personally I would change Illusionary Inspiration for Mental Defense, because you don’t have that many booms to share, but that will depend on your team.

If there is a good boom source on your team Illusionary Inspiration will pay off as well.

WvW
It is a very selfish build so I am assuming that you are aiming for single small team roaming. I used similar build myself so yes it will be a fun and strong build to roam with.

PvP: Yes the invulnerability certainly is a problem but it’s only one in teamfights. With most mesmer builds you’d go stealth instead which also prevents you from capping points. Until now I’ve seen my role as a fighter who tries to get the enemy down by sustaining and still having a lot of burst/dps potential since the build uses phantasms as well kittenters. In teamfights tho it sucks to share distortion to your bunker and let the other team cap/decap the point. I totally agree with your concerns there.

Looking forward to try it out on Stronghold and thanks for the advise to try to protect the hero

WvW: I’ve been using the build with either: torch offhand/Desperate Decoy/Mass Invisibility/Decoy
Stealth is definetly needed for roaming, There are always dudes who’re gonna chase you 4< vs 1 so you’d be happy to have at least one souce of stealth. torch tho cuts your damage and decoy cuts your movement…

Positive thing about torch is that you can easily Moa->SoDomination->Free downstate o_O

Me Games Ma.8426:

Stealth is definetly needed for roaming, There are always dudes who’re gonna chase you 4< vs 1 so you’d be happy to have at least one souce of stealth. torch tho cuts your damage and decoy cuts your movement…

Unless you are pulling the whole 20-ish zerg behind you, you are not doing your job, BUTTERFLY UP.

Korusef.3714:

Me Games Ma.8426:

Stealth is definetly needed for roaming, There are always dudes who’re gonna chase you 4< vs 1 so you’d be happy to have at least one souce of stealth. torch tho cuts your damage and decoy cuts your movement…

Unless you are pulling the whole 20-ish zerg behind you, you are not doing your job, BUTTERFLY UP.

Haha reminds me of something: With the old trait Illusionary Invigoration (restore all shatters when hitting 50% hp) and also with Signet invulnerability I’ve had a build with which one could be invulnerable for a whole ~15 seconds. I’ve pulled enemy zergs and let them hit me for a while^^ While my mates where opening up their keeps I even made a difference because they didn’t have enough men to fight our zerg in the lord room… they dropped in one after another because more than half of their zerg wanted to kill a little mesmer who just dropped temporal curtain into their zerg (took them too long tho)