Guild Wars 2

Best name ever, right? (I know, it needs work.)

Anyway, I’ve been playing a lot of old-school shatter recently, and wanted to come up with something a little tankier than the traditional 20/20/0/0/30. And with the recent patch—in particular the changes to mender’s purity and mantra mastery—I’ve been using mantras a little more, and enjoying their flexibility. As such, I sought to combine the the two, and thus I give you the shmantra-er—a shatter focused build with good sustain, and which comes close to bringing the damage of traditional shatter builds while being a bit more trolly and annoying.

Traits are 10/30/10/0/20.

Why it’s fun: You are moving so much and spamming clones like crazy. Sword, Staff (with IC), blink, travelers. You have all clone-on-death traits, and with 3 mantras & compounding power, your dps is super high. Staff provides the boons and defense, torch gives you survivability, sword whittles down the enemy, and wrack hits hard.

Domination: I or V (Mental Torment or Crippling Dissipation); I’m finding that the perma cripple is a good trade for mental torment. But both work.
Dueling: VI, X, XI (Mantra Mastery, Deceptive Evasion, Empowering Mantras); the meat of the build—keep mantras up as much as possible
Chaos: V (Debilitating Dissipation); DD helps stack vulnerability and is troll-y, in it’s own way
Inspiration: na
Illusions: I, VII (Precise Wrack, Compounding Power or Illusionary Elasticity); higher crit on mind wrack, and i’m still toying with the last to see which brings greater dps.

Armor: Full Zerker, with a little knights if I’m feeling squishy. I have travelers on right now, too.
Weapons: Staff, Sw/T. You can run offhand pistol or sword too for a little more bang. Also, you can switch out GS for staff in smaller fights.

The basic idea is that empowering mantras allows you to get some real bang out of mind wrack without taking illusionary persona, as all damage is increased by 12% so long as you have mantras ready. Use the invisibility on torch to recharge your mantras, and swap out mantras depending on situation. Necro or engi—take mantra of resolve. Warriors—take mantra of concentration. I kind of like mantra of pain as well for that added mini burst. But the key is to time your mantra recharges. And my “oh-kitten” skill is, believe it or not, avatar of melandru, at least in WvW. Otherwise, mass invis. Full cleanse, heal you up, tanky while your shatters recharge, and good cc

Anyway, feedback is always appreciated. I’m sure there are ways to improve this as well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNAW8fl4zSpHSTmGhNJipCBHKFaH2RqQrV6xtdhyGA-j0CBYLAYMRmEJwUBQJPCZJQSslhFRjVVDQvATVaR1eDMa1SBUlwK-w

Edit: after playing around a lot, staff provides just that much more utility than greatsword in any fight against more than 3 oponents. And given the insane amount of clones that can be pumped out, crippling dissipation is as valuable as mental torment (though you can use either) when you go staff.

Edit 2: I think that sigil of perception is are actually a little better than bloodlust, given all the damage boosts.

One thing I might do is replace precise wrack with compounding power. Your crit chance is almost 60, so you don’t need the extra crit. Besides, 3 illusions with c. power plus empowering mantras (3 mantras) is 21 percent more damage, which would help your build since you are a little squishy and very bursty. Also, a ascended celestial backpack O. O. I want one :P

Shoot, you’re right. I meant to have celestial on the amulet, not backpack. Wish I had one of those too.

Quick question re: compounding power. I’m sure this has been asked before, but how does it work with mind wrack. I’ve seen different answers here on the forum.

Edit: played around with scepter/sword last night, and liked the additional defence with the dual blocks and additional clone generation. I’m going to try out switching deceptive evasion For protective mantras today and see if I still have enough clones for shatter and defense. If so, I may switch to 20/30/0/0/20 and add a little more tough/vit to my gear. Ignore this, too clunky.

So this is how compounding power works. Lets say you shatter 3 illusions. the first shattered illusion will deal 9 percent more damage. Now, you have 2 clones so it will do 6 percent more damage. Finally, your last clone will deal 3 percent more damage. That’s pretty much It :P

@WoC: Thanks for the info. In light of that, I’ve changed the build a little and put 20 in Illusions to take both. I’m going to spend a little time with static weapons to try to measure damage.

Bunda.2691:

@WoC: Thanks for the info. In light of that, I’ve changed the build a little and put 20 in Illusions to take both. I’m going to spend a little time with static weapons to try to measure damage.

So as it turns out, % boosts are actually multiplicative. So…

1 mantra: *1.04
2: *1.04^2
4: *1.04^4
4 + 3 clones: 1.04^4 *1.03^3

Ok, so doing the math, with three mantras and three clones, you’re hitting for ~150%. Throw on a sigil of force (5% damage increase) and the 15 point trait in domination becomes really appealing: if you can apply all 15 stacks, your mind wrack is basically hitting for 180% before crit.

So, with only 80% crit damage, your mind wrack crits hit for ~400% if you can pull off the F3 —> F1 combo.

I’ll test it a little, but 20/30/0/0/20 (likely taking shattered concentration) might be more powerful (if less original).

Even more math: Which gives a bigger burst, 10/30/0/0/30 with IP, or 20/30/0/0/20 with the vulnerability stacking but no IP?

Woah woah woah. Lets not get hasty with our mathing now…

3 mantras: 1.04^3=1.124864
3 clones: 1.03^3=1.092727
3 mantras and 3 clones: 1.04^3*1.03^3=1.22916926413

You have a multiplier of 1.23, or roughly a 23% increase in damage.

Now, if you tack on a sigil of force (1.05) and 15 stacks of vulnerability (1.15) you get up to..

1.229*1.05*1.15=1.48422188643

In total, a multiplier of 1.48, or a 48% damage increase.

@Pyro: I was including the 1.2 increase of Mental Torment (for around 1.775 total)

This all said, while I am getting good numbers, I must say that mantras just aren’t … well, fun, which puts a major crimp in this build. Putting it succinctly, managing mantras just kind of blows. It feels like I’m doubling the button mashing (ele style) for not that much greater a payoff.