Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: I do not know if I’m the first to post about this build, but a casual search hasn’t found a build quite like it so I present…

The Mantra bunker build for PvP.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8cl4zioHSTlGb9IxJFQ35keo6Uv6SKi9tB-TwAA1EGpMyZkxIpRWjGRs+YTw5j3HA

The core:

Greatsword and Sword/Sword (though weapon choices can be tweaked to suite your playstyle).

Soldier’s Amulet + Runes of Melandru

4 mantras: Recovery, Pain, Resolve and Concentration (though you could probably drop Mantra of Resolve and pick up a utility if that suites your playstyle):

Traits: 30/20/0/20/0

III – Empowered Illusions – Illusions do 15% more damage
X – Greatsword Training – +50 power, 20% recharge reduction
XI – Harmonious Mantras – mantra produce 3 charges instead of 2
VI – Mantra Mastery – 20% reduction in mantra cooldowns
VII – Protected Mantras – while charging a mantra you gain 600 toughness
VI – Healer’s Purity – using healing skill removes 2 conditions
X – Restorative Mantras – charging a mantra heals you and your allies for 2700 health

This gives you 3 × 2700 instant heals each of which remove 2 conditions.
Charging a Mantra gives heals you and allies for 2700 and gives you 600 toughness
Mantra of Concentration can be used to ensure that you complete mantra charges under CC pressure. And you can remove up to 6 conditions (2 for each activation) on yourself and allies as needed with Power Cleanse.

Rotation: Start sword/sword, summon Phant. Swordsman, switch to GS, summon Phant. Berserker, Mirror Blade, Mind Stab (cast Power Spike repeatedly while doing this, as you can cast instants while using other abilities). Then charge Mantra of Pain. (while doing this use Power Return, Power Cleanse, or Power Break to remove conditions, heal or give stability as needed). Then use mirror blades again while spamming Power Spike). Rinse and repeat, inserting phantasms and other skills while spamming power spike. Recharge mantras as needed, and use stability if needed to protect the cast. You can stand a lot of condition pressure as both Power Heal and Power Cleanse remove conditions and are instant casts.

Pros: This build is good at holding nodes and staying alive. Glass cannons melt like butter left in the sun on a hot day. Alot of healing and condition removal. And you can apply power pressure at the same time. Great team support in terms of condi removal, stability and heals.

Cons: Much less damage than a glass cannon build. Not much cc, so you can’t push people off nodes like an engineer can.

I have not tried this in SoloQ or Teamplay, but it has done very well in hotjoin in node defense. Does very well 1 on 1, and survives 1v2 or 1v3 for quite some time.

I’m still new to Mesmer, most of my pvp experience is on my engineer.

Any advice is appreciated.

This build is not very dependant on weapon choices, you can choose the weapons that suit your playstyle and goals:

Greatsword – AE knockback, AE pressure with iBerseker, boon removal with Mind Stab, burst damage with Mirror Blade.
Sword MH – Evasion, Teleport, Immobilize. Melee power pressure.
Sword OH – singe target damage pressure with iSwordsman + Block
Focus OH – force targets off node with Temporal Curtain, iWarden (has been buggy post patch)
Pistol OH – Stun/Daze and good range dps with iDuelist
Torch OH – Stealth (for stomps against certain classes, otherwise not a great choice due to poor dps from phantasmal mage)
Staff – AE Daze/conditions, chaos armor (good defense against burst classes like thieves), teleport (but situationally might not be as good for holding nodes)
Scepter MH – Block, clone generation, and condi pressure (generally not a good choice for this power-oriented build)

Sounds interesting. The idea of spending most of the time charging mantras, raising your armor is neat. Phantasms will also keep up the pressure. Charging would be vulnerable to CCs for sure even with concentration. Should try this sometime.

Haha dig it, I had tried something like this a long time ago and it was good but not quite enough… maybe now things will be different

Tried this today. The survivability is pretty good. You spend most of your time managing mantras which can get sorta boring – but I guess that’s true of every bunker build. I miss the dynamism and constant high risk of playing a glass cannon phantasm mesmer. But this surely has it’s place in a team with the constant buffs, health regen, healing etc.

That looks pretty good. Too bad I’m terrible at juggling my channels like a proper mantra build requires. Apparently I fail at multitasking under pressure. XD

Just a thought, staff could work well with this as it would give you 2 things to do should you be CC’d during your mantra charging. You could phase retreat while still charging to probably confuse the opponent just enough to finish charging, or you could chaos armor to give yourself some boons and maybe protection which would go well with the extra 600 toughness.

Only problem is you really wouldn’t get much dmg out of staff and even clones on GS would be superior with sharper images.