Guild Wars 2

Hey all,
I’ve been running around in both WvW and sPvP with this build (or small variants on it) recently: [url= http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8dlwzipnVTlGZ9IiJF9mvd6RytcTXJF42FC-TsAg0CtIsRZjzGjNSbs2MsYVw2CA]0/20/20/30/0 S/F + St Build[/url]

Your first impression upon looking at the build and seeing the weapon sets and traits are that it’s extremely similar to Chaos Archangel’s “Chaos Maestro” build, and, in a manner of speaking, it is. However, there are a few very large differences between the two builds in terms of design and purpose:

1. Chaos’ build is almost purely support, whereas support is more of a collateral effect, but nonetheless an extremely powerful and important one.

2. The trait differences would also seem to be relatively small, but in the context of all of the other differences between the builds, these differences as well as the differences in ways that different traits are utilized massively changes how the build works.

3. You might look at some of the build variants listed in Chaos’ post and say that this build is something of a mix between the “Purifier” variant and the “Lockdown” variant, but in truth neither of those variants, even when their individual benefits are summed up, really cover the scope of this build’s ability, and, furthermore, the trait lines for each of those builds are very different from those of this build.

If nothing else, even if the build isn’t original to me, at least let this post be an advertisement for a build type that, IMO, isn’t seen very often.

Pros:

• Very flexible, both in-combat and out-of-combat. In combat, you can easily shift between roles simply by how you play- aggressively, defensively (Illusionary Defense gives you a broad range of control over how defensively you play), and so on. Outside of combat, many of the trait choices can be swapped out to change lots of the ideas behind your build. For instance, you could take Debilitating Dissipation as opposed to Illusionary Defense to switch over to passive defense and to get a bit more protection in very large battles. You can swap Shattered Conditions to Restorative Illusions, and then swap Vigorous Revelation and/or some utilities for condi cleansers, and then you’ll become a massive source of healing support for your teammates. Those are just a few different types of traits you can use; your actual flexibility is much larger.

• Good condi clearing without the usage of utilities

• Semi-hybridized between direct damage and condition damage

• Good reflecting ability, which is often an important tactic to have up your sleeve

• Swiftness!

• Lockdown- the combination of Chaos Storm and Temporal Curtain make this a very potent build for locking opponents down.

• Support- with SoInspiration, Vigorous Revelation, Shattered Conditions, and Mantra of Concentration, combined with the lockdown aspect of this build and Bountiful Interruption, this build is able to create massive support opportunities for your teammates.

• Damage- with the large number of boons that you apply, combined with Zerker Amulet and Phantasmal Strength, you can typically build up a large amount of pressure on your opponents solely from direct damage.

Cons:

• Although the build is flexible, it is, in some respects, a “jack of all trades, master of none” type of build. For example, it can’t Lockdown as well as a designated Lockdown build can, nor can it provide as much support as the Chaos Maestro can. The damage is pretty excellent with Ogre Runes, but then it lacks some much-needed toughness (more on this later). That being said, the primary reason for this being the case is that it’s hard to focus on doing all three of these things to your opponent at once, as opposed to do them individually. Thus, the potential of the build might be much larger in the hands of a skilled player.

• Lack of defense without changing your runes from the more traditional Ogre’s to something like Dolyak.

• Not a beginner-friendly build.

• May require you to play a wide range of different play styles depending on the situation, which can be a bad thing if you don’t like to play defensively one moment, aggressively the next, passively the next, and so on.

The Ideas
Many of the Mesmer’s traits and abilities have a very strange yet beautiful way to coordinate with one another. For instance, Phantasmal Healing and Illusionary Membrane work together like a well-oiled machine to reduce the amount of damage you take (which is further amplified by the defensive natures of the stats attached to both trait lines, and the increased boon duration you get from Chaos!). Vigorous Revelation and Deceptive Evasion is another match that, after the incoming nerf to Mesmer’s vigor, will become far more relevant than it is currently. Bountiful Interruption works well with Signet of Inspiration, and Phantasmal Strength works well with Phantasmal Fury. One of the main points of this build is to maximize the coordination between all of the mesmer’s abilities in order to consequently maximize his/her effectiveness.

Because of this coordination, I believe that Mesmers are able to have tune in to three different build types- Lockdown, Support, and DPS- very easily without stepping on their own toes in order to fit all three in. For instance, on thief (which is my main, though my Mesmer is easily my primary alt), it is difficult enough to get one of these three build types down, and impossible to get all three at the same time. Thieves can do tons of damage, but to do so they typically have to invest very heavily into their traits which have no real ability to “cooperate” with one another anyways. The closest that thieves can get to playing two different play styles involves mobility or stealth, though neither of those is a build type in and of itself, and tends to be very closely connected to the DPS aspect of thieves anyways.

Of course, the thief is only one example of another class that doesn’t have a lot of ability coordination, but if you look across all classes, you find that with the exception of those builds with extremely overpowered mechanics (/cough Healing Signet /cough), most builds can only pull off one and occasionally two different build types. Plus, in doing so, they aren’t really flexible either in combat or out of combat; they have to stick to one specific method of play in order to do well.

In light of these facts, I might say that the primary purpose of this build is to be extremely flexible. That’s what it really all boils down to, and how effectively you use this flexibility and coordination will make all the difference while in combat.

Notes/Possible Changes:

• Shattered Conditions- could eventually change to Restorative Illusions, though that would require me to take Mender’s Purity and Null Field. I’m not particularly optimistic about either of those changes (at least, as far as permanent changes go), but they’re certainly options to look at in the future, and most definitely options for possible stat changes you can make for certain situations. As it is right now, though, Shattered Conditions is absolutely incredible, in spite of the doubt that has been cast upon the usage of this trait in the past.

• Bountiful Interruption: Could theoretically change to Chaotic Dampening, but giving the effectiveness of this trait, I doubt that this change will actually happen.

• Mantra of Concentration- could change to another stun breaker in the future. However, given how amazing the Mantra is right now (both for support and for stun breaking), there’s little chance that this will be going away any time soon as well.

• Illusionary Defense- may change to Dissipating Debilitation, for reasons listed in the first item of the “Pros” list. This change is more likely to happen than the aforementioned ones, but still isn’t necessarily likely at all.

• Runes- this is the one thing that is almost certainly going to change. I feel that this build absolutely needs more toughness, but Dolyak Runes aren’t exactly optimal for a DPS play style. On the flip side, all Power+Toughness runes aren’t very good anyways. I’ll update the build in the future if I do indeed choose to adjust the rune set.

24 February 2014- Swapped out Signet of Inspiration for Blink. Though the idea of support is fully valid in both WvW and PvE, in sPvP I felt that you didn’t give or get that much for the utility slot. Blink gives me more mobility and an additional stun breaker, and is extremely flexible.

Another very interesting build. I gave this one a run for the past few days in hotjoin to get used to the playstyle. Very enjoyable and definitely has a profound effect on the battlefield. I made some slight changes…

• Chaos V – With DE, Debilitating Dissipation is just too good to pass up. I feel it actually offers better defense (both for yourself AND allies) than Illusionary Defense because of the constant AoE Weakness application and further pushes the lockdown aspect of this build. Speaking of which…

• Sigil of Hydromancy/Energy – I really like Hydromancy for lockdown builds because Chill is such a great control condition, having it reliably on an AoE every 20 seconds and comboed after iLeap > Swap > Frenzy is great.

• Superior Runes of Lyssa – I liked the concept of the Ogre Runes for more damage, especially with the rock dog, but the Superior Runes of Lyssa take really good advantage of Signet of Inspiration. I tend to use the Boon Storm rotation before popping Lyssa runes and then dropping them all on my allies, it really helps turn the tide of a fight.

For the past two days I’ve had a good experience with this build (granted there are a LOT of badkids in hotjoin, so I’ll be trying tourneys today). You’re right in that it takes more thought than your usual build as you don’t just run into a mob and blindly shatter, you have to be extremely flexible and observant to use the build to its fullest extent but what I really dig about it is that even in normal combat rotations you’re providing exceptional support to allies.

The build capitalizes on many of the unique strengths of Mesmer support; portals, perma-vigor, Reflects, ect. without having to sacrifice the ability to hit hard and also has a very good ability to control the battlefield via iLeap, Chaos Storm and Curtain. The most interesting and challenging aspect for me was learning to use Shatterede Conditions and Mantra of Concentration properly. There were so many times I missed a stomp or rezz and thought “#$!$!$ use the kitten mantra!” I’m surprised at how useful it really is, even for escapes; its a surprisingly good replacement for Decoy/Blink as a disengage. Shattered Conditions is also surprisingly good, I never gave it much consideration before I tried it in this build and there’s definitely a technique to learn to using it properly. Its not as unreliable as I originally thought though and combined with Vigorous Revelations it makes shattering an extremely supportive play, especially with Diversion and Distortion. The shatters are what define the “LSD” in my opinion, since Diversion now offers team support in addition to control, Distortion is an instant cleanse/vigor, and even Cry of Frustration becomes extremely useful.

So, my first two days with the build and I was already winning 2v1s no problem and even took down a 3v1 (two of them were reealllyyy unskilled though) while fighting entirely on point. Even in full Zerkers the build has more than enough defense through proper use of interrupts, staff skills, and reflects. All in all good stuff and one of my new favorite builds.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

…

• Chaos V – With DE, Debilitating Dissipation is just too good to pass up. I feel it actually offers better defense (both for yourself AND allies) than Illusionary Defense because of the constant AoE Weakness application and further pushes the lockdown aspect of this build. Speaking of which…

• Sigil of Hydromancy/Energy – I really like Hydromancy for lockdown builds because Chill is such a great control condition, having it reliably on an AoE every 20 seconds and comboed after iLeap > Swap > Frenzy is great.

• Superior Runes of Lyssa – I liked the concept of the Ogre Runes for more damage, especially with the rock dog, but the Superior Runes of Lyssa take really good advantage of Signet of Inspiration. I tend to use the Boon Storm rotation before popping Lyssa runes and then dropping them all on my allies, it really helps turn the tide of a fight.

Thanks for your comments Chaos, they’re much appreciated. As for these three suggestions…

• Debilitating Dissipation- I still find it extremely difficult to convince myself that this is the case, but ultimately I feel that I have to agree with you. It also requires my opponents to play with more skill, and hurts them for AoE spamming all over the place. Also, given that I’m using Shattered Conditions, there’s less of an incentive conflict between Shattering (to clean condis and burst) and keeping clones (to provide extra defense).

• Sigils- I’m definitely planning on trying out SoHydromancy when dual sigil slots come out for 2H weapons, trust me. Just feel more comfortable with Sigil of Fire at the moment, though. As for Sigils of Energy, I’m honestly not sure they’re necessary- at least, not while Critical Infusion has yet to be nerfed (though even then I have Vigorous Revelation). I’ve never been much of a fan about those sigils. Still, a good suggestion that I will take into consideration.

• Runes- Obviously, I can’t just write off any of your suggestions… But Lyssa Runes? The synergy from the 4 and 6 abilities with the support aspect of this build is obvious, but I feel uneasy about the fact that all of my utilities have extremely long CDs (except, more or less, for Mass Invisibility, though that obviously has its own problems, at least in sPvP). It’s not like my thief, where I get the buff from healing on a 15s CD and the buffs on a kitten CD. I just… I dunno. I’ll have to try it out. Just feel uneasy about it.

Thanks!

Ran a few SoloQs with the build. So many tools to handle lots of different situations, for me it worked awesome.

As for the Lyssa runes, I heavily suggest you give them a try (er.. with Mass Invis, I didn’t notice Moa in the link before) Signet of Inspiration is exactly half the cooldown time of Mass Invis, so you get this massive Lyssa-share every other time you use your signet. You’ll be convinced after your first temp curtain > Mass invis > signet in a teamfight =P