Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

recently I have been thinking wether ‘Imbued Diversion’ (XII Grandmastertrait in Illusions) would be worth it building around, along the lines of the Chillruption by skcamow Chillruption by skcamow.

The way I believe Imbued Diversion works:

Whenever you use your F3 Shatter (Diversion), instead of dazing (and hence interrupting if the target is casting) the target of the respective Illusion/Phantasm for 1 second:
Each Illusion now dazes 5 targets in a 360° radius (range?) around its respective target.
Is that right so far?
So if, in an ideal world I were to have 3 Illusions up, I would be able to daze 15 targets for 1 second, or, if they overlap less but then for up to 3 seconds?

While looking at the new ‘on Interrupt’ traits and the new Perplexity runes, that sounds amazing!

After recieving some very contructive feedback from the community I changed my original build to the following:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQJARWlwzaqHWTmGa9IhZGB33oec9sz9yHwNA-jECBINBiWIQ5QFRjtsuIasqaER16FYGzER1eEYSBso0I-w )

Again credit goes towards skcamow, since he is the ‘father’ of this setup.

What I believe it does:

• 2 AoE Interrupts with GS #5 and Staff #5 on relatively long cool downs
• AoE Interrupts with Diversion every 34 seconds
• might for each interrupted target (dont know how many stacks, though?)
• Chill, Blind, Cripple -> Soft CC on each interrupted target
• Confusion on each interrupted target
• if not shattering: cripple and damaging conditions for clones that get eaten up in AoE
• with 1632 Condition Damage and 31% Crit chance a decent punch (gear is not fixed)
• Veil
• Blink + MI Shatter bomb for fleeing groups.

facing the problems of:

• high cooldowns on weapons (esp. Staff with 2 30 sec CDs)
• difficult Illusion creation due to the lack of Deceptive Evasion
• a GS which does almost no Conditions while playing with high Condition Damage and low Power.
• and most importantly: The Shatter-Problem: I have only ranged illusions.
  Realistically they will close to never reach their target in a larger fight.
  What I believe I did against it:
  GS: #2 and #4 create an Illusion directly at the target which i can shatter immediately, at least dazing AoE 5 targets.
  Staff: #2 granting an Illusion directly before me while channeling a second(iWarlock), granting me a 10 target AoE daze while in backward movement.

Variant 1: Imbued Diversion + Boon Stripping
Since with Imbued diversion you have 3 AoE Shatters, the Domination trait ‘Shattered Concentration’ appealed to me, giving the Mesmer an even more defined role in group WvW. Unfortunately I had to drop all points in Chaos for that …
Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQJARWlwzSoXVTqGa9ICqHXX2xdkUUasWJF42FC-jECBYhQINA0CBKHqIasl1FRjVVjIqWdDzYuIa1SBMp0I-w

I am still very eager to hear your thoughts!

[PS: Dont mind the lack of condition remove, thats taken care of through my Team].

@Gorath, it’s more than viable – I can confirm running that build is great in WvW and I know others have done the same with success in smaller groups. When in a zerg and running those traits, it’s better to run the power build – gearing for condition damage isn’t going to do much good but could work w/Perplexity. I do have a condition variant posted in the original thread as well which should work ok for zergs (shines more in 1vMany), but not as good as the power version. Perplexity would make the build that much more sinister in zergs. You don’t necessarily need condi-dmg gear for that either since your base damage in the power setup is over 400 and is going to be significantly higher due to BI with all the interrupts going on.

As you stated, your best chance at getting an AoE diversion proc is to either shatter your zerker immediately or accurately time your Mirror Blade illusion. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. The instant you see that purple dot from #2, F3 immediately and watch the interrupts proc like crazy. GS #5 is awesome if you can get in close enough. Chaos Storm, as you can imagine, works great too and all of these are AoE.

Having enough clones to shatter is never a problem since you only need one clone to get the madness going with AoE diversion, plus you have mirror images on reduced CD due to IC. Yes you can really create some chaos if you can somehow get a 3 clone diversion chain going. It’s unlikely but it can happen and just needs practice to find those windows of opportunity.

As mentioned in the OP, when zerg’ing, run BI and when solo roaming, swap to Chaotic Dampening. It’s a surprisingly powerful roaming build due to all the disruption/cc.

I tested it months ago (before the changes to interrupts) and I couldn’t make it work for me.

One thing: I would change the jewels from Celestial to that unnamed mix with cond damage, toughness, vit, prec.

Oh, you get 5 stacks of might on interrupt from the trait, so you’ll have quite a lot up (I’d say about 15 stacks) most of the time.

@Menaka, you should give it a whirl now with the buffed BI and especially CI in this case. I suspect you would expect a noticeable difference.

@Skcamow:
So it’s good to hear that at least I got the mechanics right
You are propably right about the gear as well.
With the current traits the damage is pretty low and perplexity runes are the only reliable condition source on a reasonably short CD.
Yet, I would really like to stick with conditions!
Is it possible to build a condition build around imbued diversion?

@Gorath, it certainly is possible. There is a condition build posted in the Chillruption thread – see my signature – one w/undead or melandru, and one w/perplexity (if you want to reference it). Here is a variant of the perplexity build but adding Imbued Diversion: http://tinyurl.com/n7bcelx

Using Imbued Diversion in a condition build poses some hard choices.

• Go 0/15/25/0/30 As you can see, we (unfortunately) dropped chaotic interruption in favor of putting those points into dueling for sharper images. This due to the fact the focus of the build shifts from chaotic interruption more to the runes.
• Go 20/0/20/0/30 giving you access to cleansing conflagration and torch (this wouldn’t be my 1st choice).
• Instead of the GS mirror blade shatter trick, you would be doing the same with scepter AA/shatter. It’s not as good obviously but not bad either.

Now, you don’t have to deviate from 10/0/30/0/30, but it honestly isn’t the best setup for a condition build. Also, IMO it’s best to go with 2 weapons for each hand. You could possibly take staff on one set but I don’t recommend it because you want BI to take advantage of the interrupting you’ll be doing which takes the place of Chaotic Dampening. You could run staff w/out CD and take BI anyway but you want BI no matter what to have that great synergy with the perplexity runes.

As you can see, your base condition damage number is high. Keep in mind this number is before any corruption stack charges and before any might stacks. With full corruption charges, you’re at 1,950. With 25 might you’re at about 2,800. Obviously confusion is going to clock someone hard at those numbers. And amazingly, it isn’t that difficult to reach in zergs.

I love running with the 3 stun breakers, but if you need better condition management, just swap one of them with the iDisenchanter or mantra of resolve.

My personal thought on this is, you have to decide which trait is going to be more useful in this case using perplexity runes: Imbued Diversion or Chaotic Interruption. Personally, I’m still with Chaotic Interruption. Reason being you have to remember Into the Void and Magic Bullet are AoE interrupts. Right there in a zerg you’re going to stack 25 might rather quickly, proc’ing perplexity all over, adding F3 for spice to get an extra interrupt here and there. Those interrupts come with a price when taking CI – immobilize and chill/blind/cripple. That’s much more debilitating than an AoE interrupt chance on a single skill, F3. Just something to keep in mind. Good thing is you can easily try both builds with the same gear to see what works best for you.

Hey,
sorry for the late reply.
I went to have a look at your chillruption post and gave the 0/15/25/0/30 build a shot. I am pretty amazed! Its kind of a compromise build to be sure but I feel like I get the most benefit out of it for large group play.
You certainly have a point about focus and Pistol but I prefer GS & Staff. Its just a matter of taste I guess.
I even had quite some success in small scale, 1vs1 or 1vs2! Ofc you are lacking the PU buffs but still have quite some punch. Man I was even able to stack 21 stacks of Confusion on an Ele right after he came out of water atunement once …
Sure, I was really lucky hitting 3 illus + the runes proccing, but still:
ever watched an D/D ele flee with 21 stacks confusion on him? he didn’t get far

so: thanks for the feedback! I will propably will stick to that setup for our large group play and ocasionally switch back to 20/20/30/0/0 for roaming.
(the build derived from the Chillruption Condition Variant:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQJARWlwzaqHWTmGa9IhZGB33oec9sz9yHwNA-jECBINBiWIQ5QFRjtsuIasqaER16FYGzER1eEYSBso0I-w )

Eventhough I was thinking about a build with heavy illusion creation, hoping them to be killed and hence spreading conditions?
With those 3 traits:
Crippling Dissipation
Confusing Combatants
Debiliating Dissipation

But thats a different topic now

@Gorath, cool you’re getting it to work with GS/Staff. Honestly IE really saves you with a condition build in this case, though I have heard of some using GS in a condition build. Those clones can really stack the bleeds because of the fast AA, just have to make sure you have enough crit chance to facilitate that since clones are not affected by phantasmal fury.

One other comment on the build is there is no condition removal. I assume that is deliberate due to your inclusion of veil, being a group build and relying on others to remove your conditions. In case I’m not correct, I suggest trying to get the iDisenchanter or arcane thievery in there.

Changed the original Post to include the changes I developed with skcamow and added an alternative, completly dropping might in favor of boon stripping. Let me know what you think!