This is an sPvP build meant to take full advantage of the Celestial Amulet (with berserker jewel) to have all around high defense while still maintaining respectable direct damage as well as condition damage. The build’s role versatility focuses on solo queue play, where you are not sure you can depend on your teammates in a fight or if they’ll just run off in a random direction. It’s good for both defending and assaulting points, for 1vs1s and group battles.
Celestial Amulet is terrible on most classes, yet Staff Mesmers can make good use of it due to high uptime on Fury, good condition applications from clones and shatters, and decent direct damage with using the Illusionary Ellasticity trait in close range.
How to play this build in sPvP
When engaging an enemy, cast either Chaos Storm or Feedback, stand inside the AoE and cast Phase Retreat to proc Chaos Armor. If you use this three skills in different time intervals, you should have Chaos Armor up for 15 seconds out of every 28 seconds. If you are targetted and taking damage, cast Cry of Frustruation with at least two clones to proc the long-duration Retaliation from the Confusing Cry trait. If you are in a group fight cast Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustruation as much as you can. If you are fighting one person, leave the clones alive longer so they would cast more conditions on your foe and use your shatters when you see your illusion skills are off cooldowns for quick replacements.
When you are using the staff, try to stay within 400 range of your opponent so Illusionary Elasticity would bounce a second attack on them, yet stay out of melee range. This is a range a ranged class finds themselves within often in sPvP at any rate. This way you pressure your opponent with both direct damage and clone conditions with the occasional shatter, while also stacking might and fury from Winds of Chaos.
If you notice your opponent has exhausted their defensive cooldowns/dodges, switch to Sword/Pistol. This set is useful mostly as a fire and forget, switching to it to blow off all cooldowns fast, using the illusionary leap->switch->blurred frenzy->shatter combo, and quickly switching back to staff.
Distortion shatters are mostly good for finishing a downed player, while Diversion shatters are ok for stopping an enemy from downing a friendly. If you are heading to a capture point and there aren’t nearby enemies, use Ether Feast to proc swiftness from Runes of the Centaur to get there faster – Ether Feast will almost always be off cooldown by the time you need it again.
Equipment Selection
Celestial Amulet: A staff mesmer benefits from each of the stats it increases. Fury from bouncing Winds of Chaos will help you maintain a 50% crit chance and the amulet’s +crit damage stat is as high as berserker’s.
Berserker’s Jewel: When using a Celestial Amulet, the stat that suffers the most for it is Power. This jewel is there to compensate for it.
Runes of the Centaur: This give more +power to compensate for the amulet’s low power stat, grants you swiftness for 14 seconds from Ether Feast every 21 seconds, and gives you +bleed duration to push your Winds of Chaos to 8 seconds per bleed (Winds of Chaose base bleed duration is 7 seconds for your attacks, and 5 seconds for your clones’ attacks. Ignore the tooltip, it’s bugged).
Staff – Sigil of Agony: The +bleed duration now works on clones, pushing the duration of their bleeds to 6 seconds.
Sword – Sigil of Fire: This AoE will almost always proc when you use Blurred Frenzy due to it’s multiple hits, enhancing Blurred Frenzy’s own AoE damage.
Pistol – Sigil of Accuracy: Helps you maintain your crit chance at a workable level, as you won’t have Fury procs as often while not using your Staff.
Trident – Sigil of Earth: Since Trident bleeds last two seconds, an extra bleed proc chance is better than +duration that won’t do anything.
Spear – Sigil of Fire: Same as Sword, this AoE will almost always proc when using Vortex, enhancing it’s AoE damage.
