Guild Wars 2

When reading the forums, I tend to see “using the glamour build” or “using the shatter build” and I wonder to myself where are these commonly accepted builds?

What I notice with character optimizers, is that they have a certain set of “commonly accepted” builds that they all know and understand as being good and just refer to them in passing when talking about another build they developed that can do something crazy.

What I want to know is, where are these commonly accepted shatter, glamour, legion, etc. builds that everyone seems to know? If someone could link these builds to a ill-informed person (me) it would be greatly appreciated.

Don’t have links but this is a summary:

Preface: all builds take 5 Illusion. If the build does not include 5 Illusion it’s a bad build.

1. Phantasm army / legion builds are phantasm-centric. Defensive / “Bunker” ones take 15/15 Chaos/Inspiration for the minor traits. DPS ones will invest those 15-30 of those points into Dom/Dueling/Illusion. Everything else is optional.

- Dom 10 Empowering Illusions is common.
- Insp 25 +phantasm damage is common.
- Dueling 15 Sharper Images is common.
- Pistol and Staff are common, GS is optional.
- Focus is optional with Insp 20 for the Focus trait.

2. Shatter builds have 30 Illusion and use Shatters. Typically includes 10 Dom for Mental Torment.

- Dueling 20 for Deceptive Evasion is common.

Any other traits come down to weapon selection and personal preference.

- GS, Pistol, Focus, Staff are all common. Currently S/P + Staff seems to be a trend in sPvP.

Shatter builds have a general divide between raw power based damage (Berserker/Soldier/ other power gear selection and associated Mind Wrack-damage traits) and hybrid or condition damage (Carrion or Rabid or Shaman gear selection generally focusing more on Confusion).

3a. Mantra DPS build = 30 Dueling. Usually 30 Dom as well.

- Usually includes 3 or 4 Mantras selected. Always Mantra of Recovery, Mantra of Pain, Mantra of Resolve.
- Third util slot Mantra of Distraction or Concentration or Blink.
- Usually a GS + Sword/x based build because GS and Sword have more burst than other weapons.

Mantra builds have a few significant variations because of how the traits work …

3b. Mantra support build = 20 Inspiration for the “heal on Mantra chargeup trait”. Everything else is optional.

- The heavy investment into inspiration, and the likely gearing for Heal stat (I mean you went out of your way for the Mantra heal trait right?) means that this is more than likely a support build.
- 15 Chaos is common.
- >20 Inspiration is common.

Personally if I were to make this build I would go 30 Illusion for AOE Might on Shatters and get the 10 Insp trait for Vigor on Shatters. Super buff + heal huehuehue.

4. Glamour builds focus on Glamours. The trait line investment is similar to many other builds, but the Trait selection itself is radically different … and focus on Glamours. Typical build will be:

- 20 Dom for Confusion on Glamour
- 20 Insp for Glamour minus cooldown / plus duration
- 20+ Illusion for Blind on Glamour at a minimum
- Illusion trait for 33% Confusion duration optional
- Illusion trait for Confusion on Blind optional

Glamour builds haven’t “gelled” with as much maturity as the other builds from what I can tell. The traits I list above are 100% Glamour spamming. However, in real use not all of those traits may be necessary or optimal. Off the top of my head, these are the following consideration / “problems” with that Glamour build to which I don’t have a settled answer yet although others may have:

- I almost never use both Glamour traits in Inspiration because Warden’s Feedback is too good. Is 30 Inspiration more optimal?
- That’s a metric asston of “all your eggs in one basket”. What do you do besides Glamours? Currently I leverage maximum condition damage (Carrion or Rabid … Shaman?) for the Conditions, and therefore use the Staff.
- Glamour traits are not effective for sPvP since there are too few players. The Glamour utility abilities themselves are still strong, but not worth making an entire build around.
- Portals. Portals are Glamours, but you have to run into the enemy. This usually means you want Blink and/or Decoy — why do you have a Glamour build again? Is 1.5 Glamours really worth it? This is a struggle because Portals are critical for organized WvW, but a Glamour build is kind of meh, because you want Decoy and Blink and MI to get the best portal results.
- In WvW, Null Field and Feedback are the only 2 Glamours highly usable for Confusion/Blind abuse in large scale if you are not portal-ing. Throwing Veil down at the enemy doesn’t land on many of them, and you lose the entire purpose of Veil (unless you are diving at exactly that moment, which is valid). If you use it near your team, then none of the traits take effect on it.

Off the top of my head, any other build (and there are some) would require more explanation and you won’t see them casually referenced by a label.

EasymodeX.4062:

Off the top of my head, any other build (and there are some) would require more explanation and you won’t see them casually referenced by a label.

Wow thanks! That’s exactly what I was looking for=)

The one thing I’d disagree with is the requirement of 5 Illusions.
In most sPvP and PvE cases this is universally true, OTOH in a WvW Sword-build you are locking into 20 Dom and 10 Dueling already (weapon skills are stronger than 5 Illusions + flexibility), 10 Chaos and 10 Insp is a requirement since you want Chaos Storm and Feedback on rezzing, and, thinking about is, actually 20 Insp is a requirement, for reduced CD on Feedback (since you’re already using one slot for the other trait).

This leaves 10 points. And between -20% Illusion CD + Sharper Images and Clones on Dodge, it’s not an easy call to make. The former gives you slightly better keep attack potential (due to the iZerker), the second gives you slightly better versatility due to PvE usage (all traits used can easily be swapped for PvE traits, but Clone-on-Dodge is extra lives in PvE, whereas -20% Illusion CD is not).

I don’t in general disagree with that it should be in 99% of builds, though. It’s more an issue of how strong Chaos II and Inspiration I are, locking up too many points for WvW purposes.

Heh, “99% of the time you want 5 in Illusion unless you’re making a very, very, very specific build and you really need 70 points allocated in the other trees”. I mean your build logic is valid with the assumptions you make, but /shrug. In any case, by the time you spec into 20/0/10/20/0, you need to really ask yourself whether Dueling at all is worth it. Even if you advance it to 20/10/10/20/0 for Blade Training, you need to make a good case of Sharper Images for WvW, when WvW tends to include a hell of a lot of “Illusions do not stay alive to drop bleeds”.

Also, -20% Illusion CD in PvE is extra lives, especially when you stack it with another weapon trait where the incremental effect is exponentially more clone generation. And, don’t neglect that the Illusion CD trait applies to both weapons for the cost of 1 minor trait. And lastly, the -20% Illusion CD is extra damage too, not just extra lives.

General mathematical observation on clone generation:

- Assume 1 illusion per 10 seconds. This is 0.1 i per second.
- A 20% cd trait (weapon trait) will drop that to 1 per 8, or 0.125 i per second. This is 25% more illusions per second than baseline.
- A second 20% cd trait will that to 1 per 6, or 0.167 i per second. This is 67% more i per sec than the baseline, and 34% more i per second than the first trait alone.

Hence, due to the additive stacking of the %reduction effect, you get exponentially more illusions per second by taking both.

This is part of the reason why Mesmers feel more powerful at later levels.

Hrm, fair point really. I’ll give 20/10/15/20/5 a spin for a couple of days, see how it compared.

@EasymodeX
I miss the “Condition Build” (Staff) and the “Bleeding Build” (SI + GS + prec). I got the feeling that at least the Condition Build is quite common.
There’s also the unreliable interrupt build … but dunno if anyone actually goes for that.

staff builds typically emulate the rabid amulet (I spvp only sorry I can’t talk about pve). Some people go with the carrion. So whatever direction you want to go with those trait lines. It tends to write itself.

You can achieve maximum condition damage with 0-0-25-0-30 + 15 using undead runes and corruption sigils. your duration lacks but you can achieve 1900+ condition damage. This type of build requires playing a decoy game which lacks somewhat as you can be tracked by being marked.

GS/Staff condtion is pretty much getting at least %50 crit, 15 in precision line, and attempting to maintain 3 clones opposed to shattering them.

Easy laying the knowledge smackdown as usual I see. The only thing I can add regarding the Glamour/Confusion spec is dont take increased field duration in inspiration it’s broken and doesnt add any extra time.

Take Medic feedback for an extra glamour/confusion field from clicking for half a sec on a corpse every 8 secs (10secs without the glamour cd trait), or warden’s feedback like easy suggested as an alternate to it.

dont take increased field duration in inspiration it’s broken and doesnt add any extra time.

I heard that:
- The tooltips on all Glamours are broken to show the traited durations, even though they last for untraited amounts (this one is pretty obvious)
- The trait actually works, restoring the Glamours to the tooltip durations

Haven’t actually looked myself though, since I always end up getting the -20% cooldown. Medic’s Feedback is a pretty solid option though. I wonder if the Feedback from that trait applies Glamour traits like blind and confusion, or not.

Bonus AOE blind + confuse + ethereal field + the actual reflect every 10s huehuehuehue.

It does cause blind/confusion

edit: fields last the same amount of time regardless of the trait being used.

All of a sudden I feel like being a nice and friendly team player and rezzing all those fools that managed to get themselves downed running early at the turtle.

5 illusions? Fact or opinion? I’d say opinion.

EasymodeX.4062:

All of a sudden I feel like being a nice and friendly team player and rezzing all those fools that managed to get themselves downed running early at the turtle.

Technically you dont have to be a friendly, simply starting the action of ressing them spawns it so you click then move on, think of corpses as extra bubble nodes :P

i think it’s safe to say glamours and interrupts are not suitable things to base builds on, but possible elements for other builds. for example, a shatter or mantra burst mesmer might find some of the interrupt traits useful (but not likely considering their distribution and overall mediocrity) and the glamour skills can help a legion/condition mesmer provide additional team support (traited medic feedback sounds nasty, i’ll have to try that sometime).

Phira.3970:

5 illusions? Fact or opinion? I’d say opinion.

opinion if you dont plan on using illusions as a mesmer.

wads.5730:

Phira.3970:

5 illusions? Fact or opinion? I’d say opinion.

opinion if you dont plan on using illusions as a mesmer.

No such build exists.

that was the joke

It is optional with Deceptive Evasion, if your intent is clone creation. Taking both is overkill on that front. I dropped it for one build I was trying and didn’t miss it at all.

On the other hand, it lets you pump out those clone skills more often, so the additional effect can be worth it. Mirror Blade in particular makes it very worth the 5 points.

Its so good, I think it should have been a grandmaster trait. Shhhhhhhh.

I actually use a tank/condition damage/phantasm build that doesn’t seem to be on here. It’s 0/0/25/25/20 Going for Staff/Trident 20% cd bonus with +50 toughness, phantasm health, phantasm cds and whatever seems to be useful from there.
It doesn’t seem to work too well in pvp because the defender and disenchanter which I use for support aren’t quite fast enough or beefy enough to be helpful but in dungeon’s it’s been a HUGE success. The disenchanter continuously strips conditions off of EVERYONE and the defender’s tooltip is wrong. It takes half the damage of anyone within 600 range of this. You can tell by the little buff icon it passes around to those close enough.
I go Staff/ Sword-Torch mostly for all the support it can provide. Staff’s got the most conditions and boons as any mesmer weapon. Sword’s got an immobilize and an invuln for whenever you’re stuck getting so close to use the immobilize, and then Torch has the only blast finisher a mesmer has, which with any of “your” fields gives one of the most powerful auras in the game, chaos armor. With any other fields it can do a myriad of useful things from heals to might buffs. Not to mention the invis is really nice if you attracted a bit too much attention and the phantasm is so-so with your condition build. It gives retaliation to everyone which is a nice buff, a better one for classes that love stacking buffs, and confusion, which while with your “add confusion to all shatters” minor trait in illusions isn’t as good kittentering it would actually be, it’s still not bad, and lasts a lot longer than the shatter confusion does, especially if your defender and disenchanter are on cd and you don’t want to shatter them until you can resummon them.

EasymodeX.4062:

Don’t have links but this is a summary:

Preface: all builds take 5 Illusion. If the build does not include 5 Illusion it’s a bad build.

Strictly opinion and not at all true.

Jokes on you bro.

I guess it’s true if you don’t know how to swap weapons nor if you can play situations correctly.

Easy’s claim is under conditions where we cast illusions exactly when they recharge and if you do not weapon swap.

And I surely don’t spam my illusions. There is a max number of clones. It’s 3.

And ahem. Btw are you sure the math works that way?

20% of 10 -> 8 seconds

20% of 8 seconds -> 6.4 seconds or 6

You claimed 6. I think it’s 6.4

Phira.3970:

And ahem. Btw are you sure the math works that way?

20% of 10 -> 8 seconds

20% of 8 seconds -> 6.4 seconds or 6

You claimed 6. I think it’s 6.4

40% of 10 is 4, 10-4 = 6
Just use Phase Retreat with both trait, cooldown starts at 5. If it was 6.4, then it would start at 6.

0/20/30/0/20
Staff, Sword/Pistol is my build. Bleed/condition build. Works great.

Apparently it doesn’t stack. 20% is cap.

What do you mean, it doesn’t stack? CD-reduction on clone/phantasm skills from 5-Illusions and the weapon traits?

Try throwing 5 point in illusion and my GS 4 skill goes from 20 sec→ 16 sec.

Then I try getting the GS 20% cd reduction and still 16 sec.

I also tried other way

GS 20% reduction brings it from 20-16 sec.

But then adding 5 points in illusion, it’ s still 16 sec.

C’mon guys this is the class basics >< It DOES stack … try casting the ability, cd will say 11(12) secs after cast and will be usable when that time is up.

Also increased duration or reduction of boons, conditions and abilities is additive not multiplicative. IE 20+20% = 40% off the initial value, NOT 20% off the initial value and 20% off the recalculated value.

It does stack, it just doesn’t show in the tool tip. Get both and test it out and look at the cooldown timer.

For shatter build you should consider 20 dom: shattered concentration (removes boons when you shatter). One of my favorite traits for that build.

Posted a guide for the wvwvw shatter build I use. Hope it to any good.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat/first#post675677

/love osicat

Yay for EasymodeX!

Quick unrelated question: What’s your in game? Maybe you did sPvP videos?