Guild Wars 2

The concept of Suicide Clones is fairly simple. You’ll want to maximize the traits that create effects when your clones are destroyed (through damage, on target death, and when summoning a clone or phantasm while already having your max clone count). The clones and phantasms will still be useful while alive, but it is inevitable that they will be destroyed. So why not make lemonade out of those lemons? With the core build detailed below, every time a clone dies (but not shattered) they will apply the following conditions to nearby enemies:

- cripple (3s)
- 1x confusion (3s)
- 3x vulnerability (5s), 3x bleed (5s), or weakness (3s)

That is certainly not bad. But it really begins to get interesting when you apply those effects multiple times by forcing your clones to commit suicide. To accomplish that, you will be taking advantage of every illusion summoning weapon skill as often as possible as well as dodging in close proximity to your target(s). Additionally, if the setting allows for it, you can use utility skills such as Decoy, Mirror Images, and Phantasmal Defender to further amplify the condition application.

Suicide Clones comes in a few varieties depending on your playstyle preference and the area of the game you prefer. Unfortunately the build does not have many hot-swappable traits because the various weapons perform better in certain roles, and their associated traits are spread out through the trees quite a bit.

The core traits are as follows…
Domination (10 points): Crippling Domination [V]
Dueling (25 points): Deceptive Evasion [X], Confusing Combatants [grandmaster]
Chaos (10 points): Debilitating Dissipation [V]
Illusions (5 points): Illusionists Celerity [adept]

http://tinyurl.com/suicide-core

As you can see, the core build only accounts for 50 of the 70 points available. The remaining points will be used to grab weapon cooldown traits associated with your set. Here are my recommendations…

WvW (ranged)
Staff + Greatsword
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-wvw-ranged

WvW (melee ball)
Staff + Sword/Focus
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-wvw-melee

PvE (dungeons and farming)
Staff + Greatsword
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-pve

sPvP & tPvP
Staff + Sword/Sword
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-pvp

Gear:
As you may have noticed from the build links “Rabid” is always selected. This is fine for PvP, but for WvW and PvE I actually use a combination of Rabid, Carrion, and Rampager gear. The Rabid gear fills my armor and back slots (which was great because I love the HotW set). Rampager gear fills my Accesory, Ring, and Amulet slots (aka Coral). And Carrion is taken care of using my weapon slots.

Consumables:
The following should be pretty self explanatory…

Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stew

Master Tuning Crystal
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_Tuning_Crystal

General Tips:
Pay attention to where you summon your clones. Depending on your active weapon set some clones will stay at range and will therefore negate the benefits of their suicide. However, some weapons will create clones in melee range though they may still used ranged attacks.

Greatsword is an excellent example. Mirror Blade (#2) will create a stationary clone in melee range of your target which are great for suicides. However, if you dodge while at max range you will summon stationary clones that won’t do you a whole lot of good besides stacking bleeds. But since they do that just as effectively in melee range, there’s not much use for a ranged greatsword clone.

Staff skills on the other hand will always summon stationary clones near you. So to maximize suicide effects while using the staff you’ll want to fight your target as close to melee range as possible. An advantage of this is that your staff other staff skills such as chaos armor, chaos storm, and winds of chaos will be that much more effective by applying both conditions and boons.

When using dual swords, your clones will all run into melee range wherever you summon them. That said, you should already be in melee range while using dual swords anyway.

Some might argue that the scepter could work well with this build because it summons clones in melee at the end of your auto-attack chain. I’ve tried it and personally feel like the chain is just too slow, and it is generally outperformed by the other weapons. However, if you just really loved the scepter, feel free to try it out and let me know what you think.

Coming Soon:
- More detail regarding utility/sigil/rune selection for the different builds.
- Video highlighting the build in WvW (both group and solo)

Feel free to ask any questions you may have, or even offer suggestions if I missed something that would benefit this playstyle further.

hmm. nice idea, mb try it later

For some reason it is not allowing me to update the post… I wanted to add the following…

“It’s important to note that these traits do not create conditions when phantasms are destroyed, only your clones. Of course, summoning phantasms will cause your other clones to suicide. So Phantasms are still utilized in the build.”

I ran pretty much this same build a while ago!
Generally… it was fun. The lack of clone control was my biggest annoyance. My clones would die very frequently far, far away from their targets and have no effect. It worked best with Staff clones which did damage normally and, since I play a melee/mid-range staff, were often in range to explode when dying.

One thing I’d point out, and I’m not sure if this is fixed yet, is that some of the pop-up damage numbers were broken when I played. Many times I checked and a 1-stack of confusion caused by clone death would NOT spawn the pop-up number when the enemy died, though the enemy would still take damage. Again: not sure if this is fixed yet.

I also didn’t go into Domination. The crippling was nice, but I just found that it didn’t have a large enough impact on gameplay. I was usually within melee range most of the time anyways, dodging to kite rather than running. I put the points in Illusions and Chaos, I think, for some added condition damage and the extra (self only) staff bounce.

Thanks for the feedback Kelthien.

I think I would agree that the cripple is not as necessary in PvE. But I wouldn’t go without it in sPvP and WvW.

Perhaps this is worth considering as the PvE build…

http://tinyurl.com/suicide-pve-2

I’ve found that stacking 3 wardens on a ranged only boss is pretty broken.

There exists a far better way to use this build, together with pahntasms and scepter. For example 10,25,10,20,05. Now you use for example Scepter and Pistol. Using the scepter will create the clones next to your target, OK, the amount of killed clones is pretty low like this, but still you have them (remember your elite, time warp works nice for it).
Now you can easely stay away, you inflict with you autoattack three aoe-conditions instead of creating only a clone that you dont need. Like i said, of course the amount of killed clones is low, but the amount of killeable clones with other weapons is not soo much higher and places them most often to far away from your foe. At the same time you have two duelists, spamming regeneration, inflicting bleed on crit and dealing a good amount of dmg.

Chris.6105:

There exists a far better way to use this build, together with pahntasms and scepter. For example 10,25,10,20,05. Now you use for example Scepter and Pistol. Using the scepter will create the clones next to your target, OK, the amount of killed clones is pretty low like this, but still you have them (remember your elite, time warp works nice for it).
Now you can easely stay away, you inflict with you autoattack three aoe-conditions instead of creating only a clone that you dont need. Like i said, of course the amount of killed clones is low, but the amount of killeable clones with other weapons is not soo much higher and places them most often to far away from your foe. At the same time you have two duelists, spamming regeneration, inflicting bleed on crit and dealing a good amount of dmg.

That’s an excellent point Chris. That said, when you play this build you will find that the vast majority of your clone generation comes from dodging. Unfortunately, dodging while wielding a scepter isn’t very effective. If you are using a sword, any dodges will create melee clones that not only apply vuln on auto-attack, they also apply all of the suicide conditions when they die.

Honestly though, I’m still holding out hope they will do something to the scepter to make it more desirable overall.

The playstyle Chris outlined is pve only. Only in pve will you have 2 duelists up and be happily spamming scepter autos.

In pvp, that tactic won’t even remotely work. You have to play a close staff or swords with DE to get this build working well.

I run something similar 10/20/10/0/30.

sceptor/sword and Staff, Shatter/suicide hybrid.

Suicide builds are excellent in dungeon runs and can apply a lot of crowd control on bosses with their massive AoEs wiping out clone armies at a go. You can quickly rack up effects, I think I had 30s cripple stacked in a very short order.

Advantage of sceptor/sword is it also allows you to play more in melee range with short cooldown blocks plus all the blocks summon clones ontop of your foe. Its fun watching explosions pop all over the place.

haven’t taken it to WvW yet as I am still working on maxing gear, but when I am not in dungeons Sword/Focus replaces staff for running around.

I know there are a lot of haters on the sceptor (wouldn’t be opposed to some buffs) but it is still quite handy when the pink ray of doom works (I’ve watched some videos of it and blink decoy and other means of masking the wind up helps a lot as well as firing closer versus max range seem to help a lot). Having two clone producing heavy hitting blocks is also sweet (paired with OH sword), combined with some of the shortest cool downs for blocks. Semi/Permanent vigor to dodge roll often in between and it becomes quite actively tanky, combined with MH Sword on swap and it becomes win.

My two scents from my experience running a shatter/suicide build, feel free to flame my love of my sceptor, I’ve made it work thus far. Will probably have to adopt it in WvW a bit and learn my timing with pink death ray, but for suicide production it is king.

EDIT: also, for weapons like GS, a little harder because of diminishing returns the closer you are, but with other ranged options with stationary clones, kite your enemy into your clones if they are melee. Keep them amongst all the explosions, it gets really disorienting, especially if you stealth in midst, or blink in the midst of it all. Traited on death explosions are much bigger and brighter than your standard pop on death or shatter.

DaisyRogers.6837:

I run something similar 10/20/10/0/30.

sceptor/sword and Staff, Shatter/suicide hybrid.

I really appreciate the feedback and personal experience. I will need to try the scepter in conjunction with an OH sword. Having two short CD blocks at my disposal sounds quite good…

DaisyRogers.6837:

My two scents from my experience running a shatter/suicide build, feel free to flame my love of my sceptor, I’ve made it work thus far. Will probably have to adopt it in WvW a bit and learn my timing with pink death ray, but for suicide production it is king.

TBH I’d really love to make the scepter work. I think the Abyssal Scepter skin is amazing and would love to sport it as long as I’d actually want to use it regularly.

Just bumping this thread because I have been looking for a sort of “Hybrid” power/something GS build, and I think I am going to try something similar to this suicide/shatter build.

I like sitting back in big fights and spawning clones, and occasionally when the time seems right toss a shatter out, and get clones back up. As they die they are relatively easy to replace with a 6s Mirror Blade, plus I’d roll Mirror Images, Dodge clones, etc. I think I’d have good enough clone generation for shattering AND suiciding.

Maybe something like:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.3|1.1g.h4|6.1g.0|1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73|1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61|k5a.k5a.a5.0.k37|0.0|31.35.3d.39.0|e

I’ve got huge attack/power, so my GS abilities would still hit hard. A great crit % for some bleeds from clones. Cripple when they die (and they will…), and random condition on death. Great mobility for a mesmer at least, and… yeah.

I know what you’re thinking “But there’s no condition damage!”, but the only thing that would benefit from Condition damage is Bleeds. Otherwise it’s just cripple, vulnerability and weakness, which do not use condition damage. I’d rather hit hard myself, than up my bleed damage by 50/tic. The bleeds are more just additional damage on top of my own, and the clone suicide mechanic is for kiting/debuffing, imo.

What you guys think??

There is a build link I posted in this thread using Staff/GS, traited similar to yours which is a condition/shatter based build if you’re looking for other ideas. I find having ~700 condition damage is helpful. Don’t forget about the staff clone conditions which are not trivial. You would essentially be trading some of the toughness you have in the build you linked with more condition damage. Note the Orrian Stew food; might is very important with the build and you will pretty much perma-sustain it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Berserker-vs-Rampager-staff-shattering