Guild Wars 2

Introduction
This build is mainly meant for spvp and is based on locking down people and boon stripping, while dealing consistent damage. The idea came from the forgotten Rune of the Mesmer; I thought “there must be a reason if Anet created this rune, beside trolling his players” and decided to make it shine.

The build
30/10/0/0/30
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8flwzipXUTjGb9IBqHYP7cn0DTn6VXqQsB-T0AA2CoIkSJlTKjUSpsSNIZRymgDJPSA

Domination

• II Halting Strike: you’ll be interrupting a lot and this trait is a good source of damage.
• X Greatsword Training: you’ll be using mainly the GS and, with IC, your skills really have short CDs.
• XI Harmonious Mantras: 1 more daze

Duelling (Mainly picked for the permanent vigor)

• VI Protected Mantras: 400 toughness when preparing your Mantra of Distraction

Illusions

• III Compounding Power: 3% damage for each active illusion. Despite having invested deeply in the illusion tree, the only shatters that this build uses are Diversion and Distortion, which are on relatively long CDs.
• VII Illusionary Elasticity: 1 more bounce on Mirror Blade
• XII Imbued Diversion: AoE daze (useful when dealing with more than 2 people)

Utilities

• Ether feast: fat heal
• Blink: great stunbreaker and great to distance yourself from nasty melees
• Decoy: another stunbreaker and grants stealth
• Mantra of Distraction: the core of this build and your main interrupt skill
• Mass inivisibility: when things get hairy

Gear
A thing I noticed while playing mesmer is that I can avoid physical damage more easily than condition damage; I know how to kite and avoid direct hits but conditions are something that often screw me up and therefore I usually pick up vitality over toughness. Moreover, with this build and in pvp in general, reaching 100% critical damage is impossible and a 20% more crit dmg won’t be that noticeable. The gear used is Knight’s (Note: in pvp Knight’s amulet grants Power, Precision and Vitality). This grants good output damage and a large healthpool, in order to give you the time to digest those nasty conditions and recover while stealthed/LoSing.

The runes used, as mentioned before, are Rune of the Mesmer (+33% daze duration).

Weapons
- Greatsword with sigil of nullification (60% chance to strip a boon on critical hit): your main weapon and source of damage
- Sword/torch: I swap to this only when I’m chasing someone with iLeap or when things are getting hairy (The prestige)

How does this build work?
The basic idea is to strip people of their boons and demolish them when locked down. The first thing I usually do is forcing the dodges: Mirror blade and iBerserker do a good job at forcing the first 2 dodges. You might think “Hey, you just wasted 2 good damage skills, wtf?” but those skills are only a decoy to me: my true purpose is to misdirect their attention elsewhere while I strip their boons with 1 and 3.

After they got stripped of their boons, keep dpsing until they are at ca 50% of their hp (your skills have very short CDs: Mirror blade is on a 4s CD and iZerker is on a 12s CD) and then it comes the domination:
MoD, illusionary wave, Diversion, MoD
This combo provides good locking and, remember that 5% damage against inactive foes? This is when it becomes useful. I usually kill anyone that is below 50% hp with this because they have to deal with:
iZerker
Mirror blade (aka big purple stick)
Interrupts (aka Halting Strike)
All of this while I keep stripping their boons and dpsing with 1 and 3(hard to dodge).

Why no clone on dodge?
I generate enough clones already through mirror blade (4s CD) and iZerker and remember that this isn’t a shatter build. Moreover timing diversion for a 4s daze is nearly impossible because, even if you are godlike at positioning your clones, your target MOVES. If this wasn’t enough, mirror blade spawns a clone at your target location and whether you have 3 clones or 1 clone sticking to your target, the result of your diversion will always be a 1.3s daze (since it doesn’t stack duration).

Also, this spec is quite straight forward: you go out there and openly dominate your target; you don’t have to hide or anything, since your target will have hard times doing anything to you, since you are harassing him with iZerker and interrupts, while stripping his boons. Really, he’ll have his mind somewhere else

By the way, I often find myself shattering 3 clones so really, it isn’t necessary.

Last notes
I tried it yesterday and it was extremely fun; the most noticeable thing is that players have little time window to do any damage to you and most of them don’t expect such treatment. Interrupt builds aren’t so popular and everyone runs the fotm shatter; also, they expect you to wear gc gear and try to wear you down with condition, but with 24k hp it’s enough to easily outlast those conditions and recover. Some guardian heavily specced in boons will still be hard to totally strip and retaliation is always a pain in the kitten .

I would like to say that I didn’t have any particular problems against other classes but a good 60% of them ran away from me during the demolition so don’t know. I was also able to solo 2 thieves but they were most likely horrible (one dodged twice my 1, so go figure). The AoE daze saved my butt there

I’m not a magus of pvp and there surely are some ways of making it better, but so far I really enjoyed this spec and, above it all, it was different. I’m open to critics and suggestions

Oh, remember to wear a cool looking mask when using this spec or it won’t give the same results.

EDIT:
Signet of domination would have been appealing if it was instant… but it isn’t.