Guild Wars 2

I’m a fan of keenlam’s clone spammer and of Natsu Dragneel’s Blackwater Mesmer. I’m also my guild’s build mechanic; I spend a good deal of time tinkering with builds for various purposes.

While I was working on a build for a guild member, I stumbled across this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW7flwzKqnQTsGb9IhpHBH5AH1jrXduTqQpB-jECBoOCyEHwUJBKTqIasl1FRjVDBTliIq2HoIa1SBAx0I-w

It worked well in initial testing, and it’s been serving me extremely well for some days now.

The basic tactics are similar to the other clone-spamming builds. It doesn’t have Deceptive Evasion, and a veteran of the various clone-spamming builds will likely miss it at first, as I did.

On the other hand, it does spawn clones pretty rapidly anyway—for one thing, Phase Retreat’s cooldown is just 6 seconds, and the numerous vanishes tend to confuse targeting pretty effectively (besides providing ready access to Prismatic Understsanding, of course).

One difference in tactics is that I use Blind and Imbued Diversion pretty aggressively in order to stack a lot of Confusion very rapidly. That’s been the source of a lot of my good results in WvW. It’s not unusual to see an opponent hovering up around 20 stacks of Confusion.

If you enjoy clone-spamming builds and want to try something a little different that still has that general flavor, give it a go. If you see ways to make it stronger, please feel free to speak up.

How does Imbued Diversion help you stack Confusion?
I get that you stack confusion on shatters through the minor trait #5, but specifically imbued diversion, how does that do it better?

Dietzen.6127:

How does Imbued Diversion help you stack Confusion?
I get that you stack confusion on shatters through the minor trait #5, but specifically imbued diversion, how does that do it better?

It’s the Runes. Superior Runes of Perplexity stack 10 seconds of Confusion on interrupt. The AOE daze from Imbued Diversion is not guaranteed to interrupt, of course, but in practice I’ve found that it very often does.

ahh ofc, I forgot about those, righteous then

Few things I see:

Lack of self condition removal. Most condition builds get away with traited torch, but will often carry other condition removal as well. I’m not sure that the Intelligence sigil + Purity would cleanse enough conditions. That also takes away from using things like sigil of Battle for stacking might to further increase your damage.

All Dire. I’m torn with Dire personally. Since there’s no Sharper Images in this build, I can see it working, but I have nearly the same health with just using all ascended Dire/Rabid trinkets and Giver’s weapons. (Side note: Ascended Giver’s weapons Anet, now, not at Christmas)

Zen.4678:

Few things I see:

Lack of self condition removal. Most condition builds get away with traited torch, but will often carry other condition removal as well. I’m not sure that the Intelligence sigil + Purity would cleanse enough conditions. That also takes away from using things like sigil of Battle for stacking might to further increase your damage.

All Dire. I’m torn with Dire personally. Since there’s no Sharper Images in this build, I can see it working, but I have nearly the same health with just using all ascended Dire/Rabid trinkets and Giver’s weapons. (Side note: Ascended Giver’s weapons Anet, now, not at Christmas)

Condition removal is a concern. In practice, it hasn’t been much of a problem.

I would like to find a good way to incorporate better condition defense, though. I’ve had a couple of fights against condition builds that ran very long, and in the end came down to who made the first mistake. Stronger condition defense would certainly have given me an edge in those.

Honestly, I’m not sure how much the sigils contribute, either. I’m open to other alternatives. Several of the builds on the way to this one were might-stacking builds, but based on that experience, I don’t know that sigils of Battle by themselves are all that compelling. I ran some builds where I combined them with other sources of might stacking, but if I do that, then it becomes a pretty different build, and so far this one has been outperforming those earlier experiments.

The same goes for the Dire gear versus alternatives like Rabid and Giver’s gear. This build is the endpoint of a series of experiments, and the builds on the way were more similar to Blackwater and friends, and leaned more on Rabid gear, higher Precision, and Sharper Images. I like those features.

But that’s what makes this build worth reporting, I think. It’s precisely because the earlier ones were more similar to Blackwater that I didn’t report them, though we found them effective. So far this one seems to be at least as effective as those earlier builds, and it has a more distinctive character, which, as it seems to me, makes it worth investigating.

I guess the highest priority in my mind would be to improve its condition defense without losing its general sturdiness or the crazy Confusion-stacking.

Oh, and you can also easily swap Dazzling Glamours in to replace Imbued Diversion, and swap more glamours in on the utility bar. That gets pretty fun in sieges and larger conflicts.

I might think about moving the 10 points from Domination to Inspiration to get Mender’s Purity. I might also consider changing Chaotic Dampening to Cleansing Inscriptions.

Also, Sigils of Generosity are better than Purity, but they’re awfully pricey. But moving the points to Inspiration would make it more attractive to swap in some Rabid items for higher Precision, improving the performance of the Sigils.

I tried moving the ten points from Domination to Inspiration, and the result does seem a little more robust. Now I’m wondering whether, in relying on both interrupts and blinds, I’m spreading the build a little too thin. Perhaps if I focused on one or the other as a source of confusion, it would leave more room to strengthen the condition defense and perhaps better incorporate other tactics.

I am currently buying everything I need to try this build. Looks interesting. I will let you know how I go

If you’re trying it out, I’d suggest trying this version:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW7flwzKqHVTmGb9IhpHBH5A/UBoj6x1te1B-jUCBINCyUEwUJBKHCKTiIjtsuIasaIYqUER1+AFRrWIgHrBA-w

It provides better condition defense than the original version.

After more testing, I’ve had generally good results, but occasionally you meet a strong player who is savvy enough about Confusion, and mobile enough, to give you some trouble. Furthermore, I’ve now run into a few extremely heavy condition builds that are trouble—Zen was right, at least if you encounter a build that really stacks conditions extremely heavily in a player who is good at picking you out from among your clones.

It is possible to counter those players by fooling them and evading their targeting, but it takes a lot of nerve and a little luck. You have to be willing to act like a clone in order to fool them, even though it sometimes means you might get hit by something you could dodge.

Extremely heavy condition-stacking does seem to be its weak point, and I continue to be interested in modifications to counteract it without losing the essential character of the build.

Wondering if i should scrap precision all together and just got for vit/tough/cond for everything. Have about 20% chance to crit which doesn’t seem like much. Would make me tankier and free up sigil spots for other things.

Dunno.

You would probably be better off with Imbued Diversion or Illusionary Persona in illusions grandmaster trait. Blinding Befuddlement was just obliterated by Anet, so combining it with Dazzling Glamours just isn’t strong anymore. Probably would want to replace Dazzling Glamours with Illusionary Invigoration as well.

I was working on this build early this morning before I started reading your post:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWlwzipXUzgGb9IhpHBH5AHlir7dSKU9rB-TsAgyCpI0SplTLjWStsaNEZJyUAA

They seem to be similar in some ways… I started fidling with it form a spvp pow and if I like it (never played with so low crit chance) I will try it in wvw too. In my previous experiences I found that traited torch is so far the best condi removal we’ve got and PU just makes it even stronger. Now I just wonder whether I can kill someone or not with this build Survival should be fine, I am pretty sure about that…

The only thing I am debated now is which runes to use in spvp.
In wvw I would like trying either noble or tormenting… Whem I tried Perplexity I didn’t like it much tbh…

@Zen: I agree. I ran it with Imbued Diversion and in combination with Runes of Perplexity it resulted in scary-fast Confusion-stacking.

@trooper: I found the key to making the Runes effective is to have a couple of easy-to use interrupts. As Zen suggested, Imbued Diversion is a good choice: pop a single clone and shatter it, and you get stacks of Confusion on a few enemies. SInce it’s a wide-area AOE, you don’t need to have a lot of clones up to get a good effect from shattering, so that setup favors a more parsimonious tactic where you spawn and shatter one at a time.

At this stage I have to say that in my judgment Blackwater is stronger overall, but this build shines in certain situations. It’s great in small-group fights except when you face an extremely heavy condition build, or a very skilled opponent who is unusually adept at neutralizing Confusion. It’s great in open-field zerg fights, because it’s so easy to spread stacks of Confusion all over the place, and in the hectic circumstances of large-scale WvW, you usually end up with several targets who go down quickly.

In the original form it’s very easy to make a slight change to the trait and utility skills to turn it into a decent AOE build, repeatedly stacking Confusion on whole groups.

So, in summary: fun build, strong in certain circumstances; not as strong overall as something like Blackwater—at least in its current form.

It’s enough fun that I remain interested in tinkering with it, so all additional suggestions are welcome.

2 things:
Illusionary Riposte (sword off hand) causes daze in a line and has a short cooldown, so it goes well with Runes of Perplexity (dunno if you want to include it in this build though).

Second thing, since you’re doing PU and Mender’s Purity, Mantra of Healing is much much better. You can cast while invisible (not necessary to be honest, but why not since you have PU) and take 2 conditions off instead of 1, every 10~15 seconds.

@greenlentil:

I don’t know how to incorporate offhand sword, to be honest. The staff is a major element of the build, and so is the torch. For what it’s worth, Scepter 2, when triggered instead of waiting for the block, blinds enemies in a line, and in this build that means it stacks Confusion on them.

The suggestion to substitute Mantra of Healing is definitely solid. The only thing wrong with it is that I don’t actually like mantras much, because of the awkwardness of the charge/activate cycle; but that’s purely a matter of personal preference. There’s no denying that the mantra is strictly better in this build, and I should set my preferences aside in this case in service of an objective improvement.

I’ve adjusted the build accordingly, and I’m interested in any other improvements that folks can suggest.

Well, I’ve tweaked the build several times in response to suggestions here. I just ran it for a bit in WvW and it seemed pretty strong.

The incident that prompted me to post this update was a 1v3 (plus a sentry) that I won fairly quickly. Obviously, not too much can be concluded from a single fight—the other players may have been very weak. For what it’s worth, though, they weren’t uplevels, and they were a condition Necromancer and two Mesmers running some version of a condition-based clone-spamming build.

Here’s the version of the build that beat them:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW7fl4zKqHVTmGb9IhpHEH5A/UBoj6x1te1B-j0BBIOCysCCy5RFRjtsuIasadER1KIYeFFRrWKgJlGB-w

It incorporates suggestions from several people here, and the results of a little more of my own tinkering.

The Apothecary gear combined with Prismatic Understanding makes it really bad news for the opponent whenever you spend any time at all in stealth, and despite my rocky relationship with mantras, the Mantra of Recovery works a treat for clearing conditions (thanks, greenlentil!). Combining that with Null Field (which is also AOE DPS in this build) seems to emasculate enemy conditions pretty effectively.

…oh, and I just remembered someone’s point that Imbued Diversion is probably preferable to Dazzling Glamours.

So, yeah; this one:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW7fl4zKqHVTmGb9IhpHEH5A/UBoj6x1rO3B-j0BBIOCysCCy5RFRjtsuIasadER1KIYeFFRrWKgJlGB-w

I managed to defeat another Mesmer who was pretty definitely running Blackwater, and he was not bad, so I think that means this version of the build is strong enough to be worth a look.

No, I’m not silly enough to claim it’s actually stronger than Blackwater; Blackwater is a very strong build and one of my favorites. I just happened to be able to defeat this one particular player who was using it.

But I think it’s strong enough now to be considered a realistic option for fans of the clone-spamming style. It does depend fairly heavily on Runes of Perplexity, though, which is a weakness.

As mike said it could be difficult to get used to play with no deceptive evasion. I am still practicing but I seem to do well enough without it. However I am still fiddling with the build and atm I have tweaked it a little: 20/0/25/0/25. Again, it is hard not to take PU. It requires much more attention but the survival you loose from it is regained by having a shorter CD on decoy and phase retreat. I come from a 20/0/30/0/20 as you see from my previous post, and this new one is a step closer to mike’s build without giving up on traited torch which I like so much.

A further change I have done is swapping the armour only (for now) from rabid to carrion. When I will have the founds I will take the weapons too. I find it better because it greately boosts my power without giving up any condition damage. Being a fan of battle sigil and noble runes I can stack might easily. Weapons like staff and scepter greately benefit both from power and cond damage and they now really hit hard. In fact I was not too confortable with the overall damage output of your build. Although rabid has decent crit chance it wasn’t really cutting it for me so I decided to drop it almost completely in favour of more HP and power (edit: conditions do not crit!). My cond power with 5 stacks of might (easily obtainable) is around 2400 and 2700 power! I do not see how to improve this further without loosing survivability and manteining the original build flavour tbh..

However, accessories will be rabid giving me the thoughness needed.

So far so good

Link

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgQQNAW7flwzipXUzgGb9IhZGBH5oZc9qTSRpfNA-jUCB4MCy0CwkIBKFqIasVhFRjVzATHjIq2YmIq2HATKgFlGB-w

@trooper: all good points, and it’s interesting to see the direction you’ve taken the build.

If you look at my latest version, I’ve gone a different way. Like you, I dropped all the Precision (it wasn’t really doing much for us, anyway) and switched in Apothecary Gear. That makes it easy to have high Healing Power with strong Condition Damage.

The upshot is that any time your opponent yields to the temptation to use his skills, he gets slammed hard by the stacks of Confusion. Meanwhile, with all the Healing Power from the Apothecary gear, each time you vanish you’re highly likely to heal right back up—and you’ve got three vanishes.

I don’t blame you for wanting the traited torch—it’s great. But greenlentil’s suggestion to swap in the mantra heal was a solid one. It gives you two condition clears every ten seconds, and combined with the full condition wipe every 40 seconds from Null Field enabled me to come out on top pretty easily against several strong condition players.

I was dubious about the value of this build for a while, but these latest developments have me optimistic about it again. Thanks for breathing new life into it, you guys. It’s been a fun experiment so far.

I like the ideal of it but as I wrote earlier… don’t you feel a little underpowered? Yes, good conditions, good healing and good stealths…. but when facing good opponents I was like “gosh.. I will never be able to kill this one with this setup” Really, I had the feeling I couldn’t kill people without the power I have now. But hey, maybe it was me…

Just wondering, could you update the op build to what you’ve come up with as I am not quite sure which build you’re ending up with

@trooper: Killing power is a valid concern, but what I’ve been finding is that with Condition Damage over 1500 and a high rate of confusion-stacking, people kill themselves. It seems like in practice the main use of conditions other than Confusion is to motivate people to use their skills because their life is leaking out. I had a very long fight with a Blackwater Mesmer who eventually lost because, although he was savvy enough to try to avoid using his skills while he had Confusion stacked, he couldn’t seem to resist it forever, and when he finally did use a few skills with a bunch of stacks of Confusion, he died really quickly.

That fight was instructive because, although it went on for a long long time, he was never able to seriously threaten my health, presumably because of the combination of relatively high Healing Power from the Apothecary gear and the effects of Prismatic Understanding.

I’m guessing the next useful thing to do with it is to play around with trading off some of the Healing Power for additional Condition Damage.

@Dietzen: this is the version I’m using now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW7fl4zKqHVTmGb9IhpHEH5A/UBoj6x1rO3B-j0BBIOCysCCy5RFRjtsuIasadER1KIYeFFRrWKgJlGB-w

Another fight I’m interested in, and haven’t had yet, is a stealth-heavy Thief with a lot of condition-clearing. I’ve had pretty long fights with guys like that using Blackwater and Condition Cat, and I’m curious to see whether this build makes any noticeable difference in such fights.

Saraneth.6021:

Wondering if i should scrap precision all together and just got for vit/tough/cond for everything. Have about 20% chance to crit which doesn’t seem like much. Would make me tankier and free up sigil spots for other things.

Dunno.

My current opinion is that you’re right about this. It works better to totally ditch Precision; it’s not really doing much for you anyway, and it’s resources you could instead spend on Vitality, Toughness, Condition Damage—or, as you can see in mt latest version f the build, Healing Power.

It turns out that Apothecary gear is a really good fit for this build. The combination of Healing Power, Toughness, and Prismatic Understanding makes it extremely tough, and every vanish has a high likelihood of healing you up.

So yeah, your idea was definitely the right one.

trooper.2650:

I was working on this build early this morning before I started reading your post:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWlwzipXUzgGb9IhpHBH5AHlir7dSKU9rB-TsAgyCpI0SplTLjWStsaNEZJyUAA

They seem to be similar in some ways… I started fidling with it form a spvp pow

By the way, trooper, please keep us updated on how it’s working for you in sPVP. I haven’t played sPVP since beta, and I’m definitely curious about your experiences. I can see where time-to-kill would be an increased concern in that setting.

mikelevins.4639:

Another fight I’m interested in, and haven’t had yet, is a stealth-heavy Thief with a lot of condition-clearing. I’ve had pretty long fights with guys like that using Blackwater and Condition Cat, and I’m curious to see whether this build makes any noticeable difference in such fights.

Well, I got my wish, and it turned out pretty okay. I happened across a dead ally and started to revive, only to take a backstab from the Thief that had killed him. After about 15 seconds of fighting, the Thief fled and then died a few seconds later from something—Confusion stacks, I’m guessing. I was at about 70% health with no heals used yet.

I guess that’s a partial answer, but I’ll know more after I’ve encountered more players.

trooper.2650:

I like the ideal of it but as I wrote earlier… don’t you feel a little underpowered? Yes, good conditions, good healing and good stealths…. but when facing good opponents I was like “gosh.. I will never be able to kill this one with this setup” Really, I had the feeling I couldn’t kill people without the power I have now. But hey, maybe it was me…

I assume you’re reporting on a phenomenon that I’ve run into as well: against other very tough builds, the fights can get extremely long. I can see where that would be a very bad thing in sPVP. It’s bad in the new WvW borderlands, too, when you’re trying to control ruins, because the longer the fight goes on, the greater the likelihood that enemy roamers will show up (of course, the enemy bunker runs the same risk).

I did look at your Power version and it looks really good to me. Is it working well for you? I’d be very reluctant to give up Prismatic Understanding and Imbued Diversion at this point, but I have to agree that Cleansing Conflagration is so good for a build like this that it almost looks like a must-have. For myself, I’m finding that greenlentil’s idea of using Mantra of Recovery together with Mender’s Purity really is doing the trick. It may even change my mind about mantras.

On that note, I’ve just been trying another small change: dropping Null Field and running Signet of Domination instead. It adds a ton of Condition Damage to a build that already has high Condition Damage, and it gives you another nearly-instant interrupt—awfully handy for stacking up that Confusion with the Runes of Perplexity. It boosts killing power quite a bit at the cost of reduced condition defense.

It may be a bad idea. I may really need the Null Field. The nice thing is that it’s so easy to switch between them. If it looks like I’m going to need more Condition Defense, out comes the Null Field. My Condition Damage has been strong enough to win a bunch of different kinds of fights tonight (it’s been a good night for this build). If I feel like living a little more dangerously, I swap in the Signet, and now my conditions are even more withering and I have the stun—both to cancel dangerous enemy skills, and to add a bunch more stacks of Confusion.

I’m starting to really like this build.

mikelevins.4639:

trooper.2650:

I like the ideal of it but as I wrote earlier… don’t you feel a little underpowered? Yes, good conditions, good healing and good stealths…. but when facing good opponents I was like “gosh.. I will never be able to kill this one with this setup” Really, I had the feeling I couldn’t kill people without the power I have now. But hey, maybe it was me…

I assume you’re reporting on a phenomenon that I’ve run into as well: against other very tough builds, the fights can get extremely long. I can see where that would be a very bad thing in sPVP. It’s bad in the new WvW borderlands, too, when you’re trying to control ruins, because the longer the fight goes on, the greater the likelihood that enemy roamers will show up (of course, the enemy bunker runs the same risk).

I did look at your Power version and it looks really good to me. Is it working well for you? I’d be very reluctant to give up Prismatic Understanding and Imbued Diversion at this point, but I have to agree that Cleansing Conflagration is so good for a build like this that it almost looks like a must-have. For myself, I’m finding that greenlentil’s idea of using Mantra of Recovery together with Mender’s Purity really is doing the trick. It may even change my mind about mantras.

On that note, I’ve just been trying another small change: dropping Null Field and running Signet of Domination instead. It adds a ton of Condition Damage to a build that already has high Condition Damage, and it gives you another nearly-instant interrupt—awfully handy for stacking up that Confusion with the Runes of Perplexity. It boosts killing power quite a bit at the cost of reduced condition defense.

It may be a bad idea. I may really need the Null Field. The nice thing is that it’s so easy to switch between them. If it looks like I’m going to need more Condition Defense, out comes the Null Field. My Condition Damage has been strong enough to win a bunch of different kinds of fights tonight (it’s been a good night for this build). If I feel like living a little more dangerously, I swap in the Signet, and now my conditions are even more withering and I have the stun—both to cancel dangerous enemy skills, and to add a bunch more stacks of Confusion.

I’m starting to really like this build, and I have this forum to thank for that.

By the way, this is a great build for flipping supply camps. I can usually sort of just run into the camp and engage everything, and come out on top. Admittedly, that’s a risky tactic—enemy players could show up at any time. It’s pretty fun, though. I’ve been doing it successfully even before the Righteous Indignation buff has worn off; I just have to be careful to kite and dodge so the supervisor’s buffed cone AOEs don’t hit me. Based on experience, if I attack when RI is below 90 seconds, I can wipe out the guards and yaks and around the time I’m done with that I can kill the supervisor.

It’s good to share ideas
Have you thought of using veggy pizza? Your conditions will not last very long, aside from confusion of course. Also, why not trying a sigil of energy? Not having critical infusion means not dodging very often.

As for me I think I will give perplexity runes one more go. Furthermore I will consider accessories with healing power too. Let’s see how it turns out…

trooper.2650:

It’s good to share ideas
Have you thought of using veggy pizza? Your conditions will not last very long, aside from confusion of course. Also, why not trying a sigil of energy? Not having critical infusion means not dodging very often.

As for me I think I will give perplexity runes one more go. Furthermore I will consider accessories with healing power too. Let’s see how it turns out…

I’ve used both veggie pizza and sigil of energy in other builds; definitely worth a try; thanks for the suggestion.

About dodging—since I don’t have Deceptive Evasion, I almost never find myself unable to dodge when I need to. At first I missed the ability to always create a clone whenever I wanted, but I’ve adjusted. It was really a small adjustment. I’m never short of clones, unless I forget and shatter before my next spawns are ready. That hasn’t been happening much lately.

As for the runes, if they were only for the condition damage, they’d still be okay. The chance to stack confusion on hit makes them better for this kind of build; the guaranteed stacks on interrupt make them really good, especially when used with Imbued Diversion (or any reliable source of interrupts).

Today went well. Few 1v2 won vs guardians, hunters and wars mainly. Only when vs 3+ I had troubles (but it was hard to kill me. Eventually I downed someone but couldn’t stomp them). The only thing is that often ppl when loosing were making a run and confusion wasn’t helping: if someone is turning his back to you is like killing a doliak if you know what I mean. The only skill triggering confusion would be his healing which is often not enough to get him killed by even a big confusion stack.

Apart from that I am pretty much satisfied and like the build a lot. My accessories are all ascendent quality: a mix of rampager, knight, cavalier and rabid. This means I still have a lot of crit and crit chance to get rid of but stepping down to exotic quality accessories just because I not not have the funds to get all ascendent apothecary for example, it seems a waste. So for now my set up is far from being “ideal”.

What is your rotation when starting a fight? Do you start with staff? What are your tricks?
As far as dodging you are right. In fact I will not equip the energy sigil. But don’t you miss sigils on your weapons?

trooper.2650:

Today went well. Few 1v2 won vs guardians, hunters and wars mainly. Only when vs 3+ I had troubles (but it was hard to kill me. Eventually I downed someone but couldn’t stomp them). The only thing is that often ppl when loosing were making a run and confusion wasn’t helping: if someone is turning his back to you is like killing a doliak if you know what I mean. The only skill triggering confusion would be his healing which is often not enough to get him killed by even a big confusion stack.

Apart from that I am pretty much satisfied and like the build a lot. My accessories are all ascendent quality: a mix of rampager, knight, cavalier and rabid. This means I still have a lot of crit and crit chance to get rid of but stepping down to exotic quality accessories just because I not not have the funds to get all ascendent apothecary for example, it seems a waste. So for now my set up is far from being “ideal”.

What is your rotation when starting a fight? Do you start with staff? What are your tricks?
As far as dodging you are right. In fact I will not equip the energy sigil. But don’t you miss sigils on your weapons?

Yeah, if the build has a weakness now it’s that there is no way to reliably trigger high DPS when you want it. It depends so much on Confusion that you just have to play a waiting game. I think your strategy has to be about what you can do to provoke the opponent to use his skills.

I’d like to find a way to stack some additional reliable DPS without breaking the character of the build. I’ve been tinkering with getting Sharper Images back in, and I can do it, but so far all the ways I’ve tried cost me too much in the areas of condition defense. If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears.

I usually start fights with Phase Retreat to distract them and get the Winds of Chaos started. If I have the chance, I’ll often pop the Prestige right at the start to get the PU buffs going; the Prestige is on a short enough cooldown that I’m comfortable burning it at the start, and it helps get the confusion started right away—and I mean the actual real-world confusion as well as the in-game effect :-).

Once the fight is started, the next stage sort of depends on how savvy the opponents are. Inexperienced players go down really really fast, and there’s hardly any need for strategy at all.

More sophisticated players require playing a very patient shell game. With the various vanishes and with Phase Retreat on a 6-second cooldown, it’s a matter of keeping a cool head and knowing what all your cooldowns are all the time so you can cycle through doing spawn-shoot-vanish-CC-shoot-spawn-shoot-vanish… and so on.

I’m always very interested in what obstacles are around me. I want to disappear a lot, and if I can do it without using a cooldown, so much the better., so I like to fight where I can run behind things while opponents are distracted.

Oh, and absolutely the best pace in the world to be with this build is standing right behind your opponents, with a Chaos Storm right on top of them and you, and three clones in front of them to keep them occupied. I try to make that happen any way I can.

A small minority of skilled players figure all this out, and realize that the way to beat you is to keep high AOE or cleaving DPS on you and your clones all the time. Even so, that’s a somewhat risky strategy, because of your high toughness and quick recoveries, and because of all the conditions the clones will stack if you’re using Chaos V.

I still haven’t seen the latest version of the build take a clear loss. I’m not claiming its unbeatable, or that I am; I haven’t been playing it that long. Of course someone else with a strong build and better skill is going to beat me at some point. I’m just saying it’s holding up extremely well so far.

Honestly I don’t miss the sigils. I tinker together and test a lot of builds for our guild. use sigils when they seem like the best thing, and I don’t use them when they don’t. I sometimes run builds with orbs instead of runes, as well. It all depends what I’m trying to do.

mikelevins.4639:

This. You couldn’t write it any better. However if they are not running they will eventually die.
One thing I was thinking about imbued diversion is that it is a kind of wasted trait when doing 1 vs 1, ain’kitten And even on bigger scale fights you can apply max of three aoe stacks of confusion on a long cd anyway, which isn’t much considering the nerf confusion got. Am I right or do I miss something? I mean you can still stack a lot of confusion on your target but those around u will get a max of 3 and tbh I do not see it as game breaker talent.

Sharper images. It’s a great minor talent but it pairs well with the duelist or zerker phantasm and both don’t gel with the flavour of the build (unless you trait the pistol for confusion combos, but in which case you’ve got to give up on something. If you drop inspiration tree you loose your condi removal and still wouldn’t be enough. Would you sacrifice PU or ID or both?). I would leave crit tree alone…

I do not think this is a viable build for hotjoin pvp, at least not mine (20/0/25/0/25). Lack of perplexity runes is a big concern. I have been using nightmare and adventurer but they do not replace perplexity. In the end this type of build is too slow to kill people who know what they are doing, especially when fighting on a given spot that needs to be conquered. I did well in 1v1 but not always, especially eles weren’t easy. With 2v2 up to 5v5 was ok but bigger scale fights were a trouble. Its major problem is the lack of burst and confusion not lasting enough, even with trait V in illusions.

However in WvW I never had the feeling I couldn’t kill someone if the fight was fair but even 1v2 I did often well. In the end I am very much satisfied and will keep using it in WvW. As far as spvp I guess I will have to try something different: conditions and Mesmer aren’t made for each other I think. Other professions can apply them much better and with reliability.

is the +healing from Apothecary a greater gain instead of running Dire armor you think?

I’m thinking about running with full Dire might feel abit “safer” in terms of the greater health pool?

I feel good using carrion weapons + armor. Although my WvW set isn’t finished yet my goal is to have all ascendent accessories rabid. So far no apotechary but from what I read mike seems very happy with his apotechary build. I may give it a chance too at some point… But I guess you need PU to make it shine

+1
Only a few small changes while I played your build and enjoyed it.

1. Dire armor&weapons > apothecary more hp+condi and don’t lose much healing as mantra&regen doesn’t scale very well with it anyway.(that sounds nice and thought out.. but to be honest I just happened to have the dire gear in bank lol)
2. Ascended settlers backpiece(again was just sitting in bank)
3. Arcane thievery > null field. Seemed 36s cd is better than a kitten cd and with lack of dazzling glamours null field wasn’t blinding anymore in build. (When I wasn’t expecting to be vs condi in duel I put domination on as per other posters suggestion).
4. Sigils Staff geomancy, corruption & doom.
5. Food to 40% duration condi.
1921 condition dmg with stacks and no might(heh replace doom with battle/bursting and break 2k if you like). 19.8k health.

http://tinyurl.com/nw5nsmj

@Rhonin: I would expect a full Dire set to work very well. I don’t think I;ve tried it with this build, but I’ve used it with several other condition builds and it works great in any build where you don’t need a lot of Precision.

@skeppi: I like the sound of your setup and I might try it.

About the Apothecary gear: I arrived at Ghost Light after experimenting with varations on Blackwater (actually variations on some of our guild’s builds that happen to be nearly exactly like Blackwater and Osicat’s Condition Cat, though they evolved independently), and I was coming from a Rabid setup. Without Sharper Images, Rabid gear is not all that attractive, but Dire or Apothecary is.

I chose to go with Apothecary to exploit the Regeneration stacked by Prismatic Understanding to its full potential—to make my Mesmer just keep regenerating health all the time really annoyingly, and that seems to work.

(I used to play a character in Champions Online called Pooka who had regeneration, high toughness, stealth, and teleport. That’s a really annoying combination to fight! THe way I played him was to crowd control a group of people from stealth, teleport into the middle and do a bunch of point-blank AOE damage, then vanish once I started to take damage to let the regen heal me back up. You think clone-spamming builds are trollish? Try playing a character like that!)

I would expect a full Carrion or Dire setup to work well, too; they would just feel different.

@trooper: Have you tried Blackwater? It has Sharper Images, and the bleeds that it stacks speed up killing quite a bit. If you haven’t tried it, I suggest that you should; it plays almost exactly like this build, and you might like the time-to-kill better.

Tbh I come from a 20/20/30 without knowing it was called Blackwater. I am not saying it was my build but I arrived there through experimenting. I had a small variation in gear, didn’t take retaliation from trait and used sword/pistol instead of staff for more control and more kills. However I got bored after a while. PU was getting mandatory for any build and wanted to move from there.

Anyway, I have not discarded the idea of stacking confusion but I have lately switched to 0/30/20/0/20. Stacking confusion via combo field is much more fun and rewarding. It’s great and together with perplexity a bit OP sometimes (20~25 stacks ftw). I can put a lot of pressure and deal very good damage. It’s not an aoe build though. Let me know if you want all the details about it.

@mikelevins I run a full apothecary setup on my 2nd mesmer which I really enjoy playing because its just such a troll build 1vX. Only issue I have with it is like most condi mesmer builds is can’t catchup to runners so if the condi doesn’t finish them they stalemate by running away. So many invis that I rarely shatter my clones unless i’ve getting burst down and I tend to position myself on/near clones so they get killed and apply more conditions. I tried to find op to give credit but it’s buried on forum. All the traits are setup just right for reducing CD on all weapon skills not just summoning. When clones die they apply 2 condi’s(cripple+random) & sigil geo+doom are meant to add more condi to the stack so it helps to overwhelm builds with good condi removal. Torch skills remove condi’s(not enough condi removal and you can find yourself having problems vs a condi engi). The runes can be swapped out for scavenger if you want more healing, i kept undead for the 5% touchgness → condi which stacks well with chaotic transference which is same and having 2k toughness.
Anyway here is the build http://ow.ly/pxIyO

I’ve tried out oscicat’s condi build with full rabids and didn’t much care for it compared to this build. For my playstyle preference I found his build squishy(i hear bw build is same) in comparison. I know perplex is OP but I play that on my engi and it feels more controlled and you have more interrupt options(even felt more comfortable with them on ranger than mesmer). 1v1 build was alright 1vX I found myself wanting my other build a lot lol.

@ Trooper Curious to see what your build looks like. From traits I imagine its a staff w/ sword/scepter + pistol is it something like http://tinyurl.com/l3o8sbp

:)

trooper.2650:

Tbh I come from a 20/20/30 without knowing it was called Blackwater. I am not saying it was my build but I arrived there through experimenting. I had a small variation in gear, didn’t take retaliation from trait and used sword/pistol instead of staff for more control and more kills. However I got bored after a while. PU was getting mandatory for any build and wanted to move from there.

Anyway, I have not discarded the idea of stacking confusion but I have lately switched to 0/30/20/0/20. Stacking confusion via combo field is much more fun and rewarding. It’s great and together with perplexity a bit OP sometimes (20~25 stacks ftw). I can put a lot of pressure and deal very good damage. It’s not an aoe build though. Let me know if you want all the details about it.

Please do post the details; I’d be interested in taking it for a spin.

Here’s the version of Ghost Light I was running most recently:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW7fl4zKqXQTmGb9IhpHBH5A/UBoj6x1rO3B-j0BBIOCysCCyZSFRjtsuIasadER1KIYeFFRrWKgJlGB-w

As you can see, I backed off on the Healing Power a little; the way that Healing Power scales makes heavy investments in it questionable, and this version seems to be stronger, if anything.

I’ve come to appreciate Ghost Light as a tool in a toolbox. By itself it’s not as strong as Blackwater or Condition Cat, but it’s very hard to kill and can chase off or bog down several opponents on an objective. Combine it with one or two Blackwaters or similar builds and it amplifies their strengths by shutting down enemy players with lots and lots of Confusion. If the opponents don’t use their skills, the Blackwaters kill them. If they do, the Ghost Light kills them.

I run it solo sometimes because, even though the savvy players will get away, it’s still fun to round up a supply camp and start whittling it down, AND kill the enemy players that come to defend it. :-)

If they’re really savvy, that won’t work and I may get killed. But at this point I’ve won enough 1v2 and 1v3 WHILE killing a supply camp that I realize it’s a feature of the build. I think I win those only because the opponents are overconfident going in and so they don’t pay attention to what’s happening. The hectic nature of a supply-camp clear helps mask what I’m doing. But it works often enough to be fun to try, even if I know that a certain percentage of the time I’ll run into players that are too smart to fall for it.

skeppi.4856:

@mikelevins I run a full apothecary setup on my 2nd mesmer which I really enjoy playing because its just such a troll build 1vX. Only issue I have with it is like most condi mesmer builds is can’t catchup to runners so if the condi doesn’t finish them they stalemate by running away. So many invis that I rarely shatter my clones unless i’ve getting burst down and I tend to position myself on/near clones so they get killed and apply more conditions. I tried to find op to give credit but it’s buried on forum. All the traits are setup just right for reducing CD on all weapon skills not just summoning. When clones die they apply 2 condi’s(cripple+random) & sigil geo+doom are meant to add more condi to the stack so it helps to overwhelm builds with good condi removal. Torch skills remove condi’s(not enough condi removal and you can find yourself having problems vs a condi engi). The runes can be swapped out for scavenger if you want more healing, i kept undead for the 5% touchgness -> condi which stacks well with chaotic transference which is same and having 2k toughness.
Anyway here is the build http://ow.ly/pxIyO

I’ve tried out oscicat’s condi build with full rabids and didn’t much care for it compared to this build. For my playstyle preference I found his build squishy(i hear bw build is same) in comparison. I know perplex is OP but I play that on my engi and it feels more controlled and you have more interrupt options(even felt more comfortable with them on ranger than mesmer). 1v1 build was alright 1vX I found myself wanting my other build a lot lol.

@ Trooper Curious to see what your build looks like. From traits I imagine its a staff w/ sword/scepter + pistol is it something like http://tinyurl.com/l3o8sbp

:)

Interesting, skeppi; I was just testing a build almost identical to the one you linked, but Dire gear in the Armor slots, and slightly different sigils. It’s too soon for me to have an informed opinion, but it seems pretty fun so far.

I dunno guys… I have tried so many variations…

I have come to realize that there is no a build viable for every encounter. Maybe it’s me but depending on who you are facing I found that a build is better than others and again it could be not good enough versus other professions. A build which seems very good vs ranged can be proved wrong if played vs same profession with different build. There are some many variables involved and perhaps this is the beauty of the game which keeps me hooked. I never thought the Mesmer was so versatile.

Playing Confusion is great. It is highly destructive when in group fights. The pressure will force the enemy to do something other than running. Depending on the encounter it isn’t bad in pve either (no fights Dolyak style though). Is it good in a 1v1? Yes and no. I had so many people just running as soon as they realized I was specced for confusions and I couldn’t do much to stop them. However if they are reckless they will just kill themselves.

With the setup I am running now I can easily stack an average of 15 confusions, and often going over 20 if played right. I use 30 points in duellist tree and 30 in chaos for PU. 10 points in the power tree for Crippling dissipation but these can be spent in illusions for +33 % duration on confusion. Here it is http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRAsa7flwzqpXUzqGb9IipHEXwBckKUalewb52FC-j0CB4MhGpJQk0wkIBiQAMFqIasl1FRjVzATHjIq2YmIq2jATKgFlGB-w

The problem with this spec is that it relies heavily on combo fields. Having feedback or null field in the utility slot is ok. Having two glamour skills is also ok if playing in a party but can be too much if roaming. Decoy being the third utility.
Now, not having picked traited torch means you’ve got to get either null field or arcane thievery. Null field is a combo so it is perfect for the iduelist but you do not want to waste your only condi removal to proc confusions. That’s why I like running with feedback: if no ranged profession is faced I can still use it for confusion stacking. So, traited pistol in a confusion build it kind forces you to have at least two glamour. Having only one would be picking that talent kind of waste. An option would be using staff #5 and that would help a lot but that means dropping scepter and torch. Or just the torch since you cannot fast proc stacks of confusions without pistol, which in the end becomes mandatory.
In reality a very good variation of the build would be scepter+pistol / staff. But having PU and not Torch makes is a bit meh…
So it’s really like a cat running after its own tail. Building around ipistol+combo is hard. I think I could solve all the problem if I dropped deceptive evasion+confusing combatants (which was nice for the confusion flavour of the build). But that leads to a 20/20/30 blackwater kind of build which I tried so hard to move away from… So, after all this confusion stacking I am kind of confused myself