Guild Wars 2

Thought I would toss this build up and see what you guys thought of it. This is a WvW build, which can be used with little modification for fractals as you have high survivability.

Basics
0 in Domination
20 in Dueling (IV Blade Training, and X Deceptive Evasion)
30 in Chaos (IV Illusionary Defense, and V Debilitating Dissipation, and (pick)
20 in Inspiration (II Glamor Mastery, and VII Warden’s Feedback)
0 in Illusions

Ether Feast, Feedback, Null Field, pick, pick

Sword+Focus is the main weapon set. Pick offhand weapon set.
Knight’s weapons (Bloodlust + choose)
Soldier’s armor w/runes Melandru
Knight’s jewelry+back

Sample build modified for staff.

I developed this build for zergball, where you clump up into a tight cluster, open with disrupts, and tag as you go through. Usually you are just trying to stay on the commander’s tag and shattering is harder to pull off. I group up with the heavies in front.

The build is very strong and hard to kill. You do not shatter illusions as it gives you additional defense. When clones die from enemies or from new ones being generated they apply AoE conditions to nearby foes. The basic play for one on one goes like this:

Open with field (null, temporal curtain, or feedback)
Focus 5 to put warden on target, and his whirl finisher in that field is fun
Sword 3 2x to port through field to target. This generates either chaos armor (ethereal fields like null or feedback or sta kitten or spear 5) or retaliation (light field like temporal curtain).
Stand on Warden
Blurred Frenzy.
Repeat with a different field.

You will find you can maintain a nice rotation through all 3 fields with little wait doing this. You can use your curtain to yank stuff to a wall for a nice cluster, which gets AOE rooted for your blurred frenzy. Feedback, warden, and temporal curtain reflect projectiles, so use their positioning to stymie ranged attackers. This is additional defense, and helps you generate more tags for bags.

For zerg v. zerg open with curtain, yank to interrupt, dump either feedback or null, and use sword abilities. Note yanking with TC removes the bar animation, but not the light field and you can still sword 3 leap through it for retaliation.

Dodging generates more clones, which ups your healing and defense. Glamors are on short CDs, and pretty much everyone on your team likes those.

Things I have tried

for the 30pt talent in Chaos
-II Descent into Chaos is nice if you like to cliff dive or set up ports from high places
-X Chaotic Dampening is nice if you want to have optimized underwater weapons and use staff defensively
-XII Prismatic Understanding is nice if you want to carry for your other weapon torch, and veil/decoy + mass invis…all of these stealthers last longer, and you get a hard to use blast finisher for zerg buffing.

I am running with Staff now because I like enhanced trident, and it is nice having sta kitten for another ethereal field + phase retreat as another source of chaos armor in addition to the usual staff 4 chaos armor. Warlock is weak in this build, but most of your clones are there just to amplify defense.

- For general zerg running I take veil or port depending on whether I am running golems or doing open field, and TW for golems, and mass invis otherwise. Small group roaming with decoy or blink as a stun break is nice.

Food I either take Omnomberry cream for the boon duration and magic find when I am doing PVE and want my speed buff from temporal curtain to be max. Or you can go with -condition duration food to stack with the -25% condition/stun duration from Melandru (I use the cheaper, -37% condition duration food, for -62% condition duration total). I usually use sharpening stones.

Offhand weapon choice really depends on what you want to do. Staff is very defensive and ranged, and makes you that much more tanky. Greatsword is more offensive and ranged and good for destroying siege + crippling people you chase, but the traits really do not support it well. Torch is nice for blast finishes for buffing, and for another stealth getaway if you go to prismatic understanding.

In my present gear which is exotic PVT armor w/melandru, knights sword/focus w/bloodlust and leeching, knights ammy acended, knights accessory ascended, + PVT exotic rings, accesories, and backpiece, I get around 2200 toughness with over 3K armor and around 22K HP. My warrior buddy is a bit jealous that I can do this in light armor. Add to this chaos armor, melandru, blurred frenzy evasion and 3 clone heal and damage reduction, and it is really very hard to drop me. I started with more PVT gear in all slots, and have been replacing jewelry with Knight’s ascended as I get laurels, as my defenses are overkill in the PVT gear.

UPDATE- well there seems to be little to no interest in this build by others, but I have been honing it some and changing it around.

Some variants I have tried

0 30 15 20 5 w/ sword/focus and scepter/sword. Idea was to take retaliation on block as per zerg warrior, and use scepter 2 + offhand sword 4 to generate blocks and retaliation. While this is very nice to pop this as you move through massed fire, overall it has been somewhat disappointing. You lose your jump move in the scepter/sword set, which really ups survival, and scepter is just a garbage weapon imo. Low chaos points mean you have a tough decision on what not to take.

0 20 30 20 0 with prismatic understanding, sword+focus and sword+torch, mass invis, and veil/decoy. The stealth is indeed nice, but there really is no ranged option.

The one I am going to try tonight is
0 20 25 20 5. with greatsword and sword/focus. I am interested in trying out greatsword without 20 points in the first line, as it grants a nice ranged option to cripple on chases. Was agonizing over where to put the 5 points (shown in Chaos) because toughness is high and the condition damage matters. The 5 in Illusions is just too good to give up as it shortens sword 3 and focus 5 significantly. Was considering 0 20 20 25 5 for more phantasm damage, but am considering the 25 chaos for the condition boost from toughness. Condition damage affects bleeds from illusions on crits, damage from chaos armor conditions, and that from debilitating dissipation. My main frustration with this build is applying pressure on walls in WvW, and I think GS does that better than staff. Was not too impressed by confusing combatants.

Lepew.7890:

Note yanking with TC removes the bar animation, but not the light field and you can still sword 3 leap through it for retaliation.

Sorry not much to say on the build as I haven’t tried it, but thanks for this little tidbit of info. I had no idea.

Hey don’t credit me on that, I learned it from the Invincible Mesmer post.

Last night as I started to gear up, I tried 0 30 15 20 5 since I wanted to be near 50% crit hit chance. Was able to get in the 45%-49% crit range with around 39% crit damage, over 2K toughness, 3K armor, and 20K hp. Took phantasmal fury. Overall I am not very pleased with this, and I will try the 0 20 25 20 5 build tonight. Toughness is king, and I think the 20 pt in Chaos pick is better than phantasmal fury or the confusion on clone death ablility from dueling.

I can report though that greatsword is just peachy in this build as a ranged alternative. Yeah your iberserkers do not cast as fast or hit as hard as they do in a 20 20 0 25 5 build, but they are not your workhorse, they are there for ranged tagging or killing siege. GS3 is very nice for long range siege as it lets you do something on things you can not target.

I have been running with 5 weapons
set 1: sword + focus, knights, w/ superior sigils of bloodlust
set 2: sword + focus, knights, with superior sigil of flame and accuracy
set 3: knights great sword with superior sigil of flame

I start with set 1 + 3 while charging up bloodlust to 25 stacks, then swap to 2+3 until I die. Certainly it is easier doing this now that you can get epic weapons for 1g + ~130 badges of honor.

I am settled on PVT armor with melandru runes. I am not sure on how to accesorize. Seems like the PVT back piece from temple vendors with soldiers crest is the way to go in that piece short of your fractal piece. Going PVT on accessories rings and ammys is overkill defense at the expense of killing. Knights in those slots looks good, but I wonder if Berserker pieces may be a better pick.

Feast is still the heal skill to pick as your illusions stick around since you are not shattering. Null field and feedback are still indispensable for their jump combo field and chaos armor, as well as the boon strip and debuff strip and reflection. Looks like remaining slot goes between veil, port, or decoy, with veil for 5 man mobile stuff, port for moving golems, and decoy for solo roaming. Perhaps blink might be better than decoy for that. Elite of mass invis is the standard, with TW for when you move golems.