Guild Wars 2

I was just screwing around… but I think that might work.

build

It could easily work as a power shatter, but looking at some of the traits, it might work even better as a damage hybrid between power and condition damage.

I would still use GS/Sw+Torch. Simply for the damage of GS and the survivability options torch offers. However with Sharper Images, Confusing Combatants and Sum of all Fears I could imagine a nice amount of conditions, which would go to waste, if you one goes power only. But maybe not, the might stacking of shatter builds would still allow for some condition damage increase.

Also shatter Mesmers might be a good option to deal with resistance boons, which at least Revenants will have access to.

This might be the chance for Shatter Mesmers to also go for a very powerful Celestial build. But I personally would probably prefer rampager or sinister gear for this (for a higher crit. chance).

The problem, as with all hybrid shatter builds for Mesmers, will be in seeing whether it’s worth the increase in Condie damage to go for hybrid stats, rather then just stick to the traditional Zerker gear and taking any incidental Condie damage as a bonus but maintaining higher Direct Damage.

In short, you will need to make sacrifices to Power and/or Ferocity in order to get more Condition damage, and this trade-off has been shown to be a poor one unfortunately.

All classic P-Shatter builds will benefit from these new Condie traits equally, and there isn’t much choice for the Illusions Major anyway, so I think you will find that classic Zerker P-Shatter will outperform a Hybrid Shatter.

As for Celestial, it’s no different then now either. The problem with Celestial is that you need a ramp-up time to get Might stacks, and that for a Mesmer the issue is that we can’t stack Might up fast enough nor survive long enough to wait for a ramp-up effect. (We need Fire Fields and Blast finishers, basically.) Also I think Anet already hinted that Celestial is getting a work-over, so I expect that means NURF INC! ;-)

I’m looking forward to hybrid shatter in HoT. The condi buffs to mesmer are looking pretty good atm.
For me it’s gonna be MtD with GS + whatever. Depending on celestial nerf, I’ll use mostly cele or sinister.

Yeah considering what the Dragonhunter video just showed in a hybrid build, huge burn & bleed damage, but still very strong direct damage…we’ll see, we might be able to do the same thing with an MtD shatter and that crazy +50% damage Torment trait. drool!

That could put up some big numbers along with improved Confusion, stacking burns…we can do some of that! (Staff Clones + AA should get some Burn stacks going now as well.)

GS + Scepter/Torch in an MtD hybrid build, probably with Dueling & Dom. Big MWs that also stack a buncha AoE Torment & Confusion…could be very nasty, and with AoE blind on shatter you still have a ton more survivability then Shatter has now.