Greetings fellow mesmers, I was playing around with the builder and made something that I am interested in trying for raids (at least Vale Guardian) when I get back home tonight.
I see there are a lot of condie mesmer builds poping up here and there so I wanted to try something a bit different. Not really sure if it’s viable or even useful in raids so I’d like your feedback.
Last night I played a bit with something similar and it worked rather fine.
So any feedback if you tried this, thoughts on what you think is not needed or needs to change and such is more than welcome.
This is the build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8ensIC1fi9pB+fCMrhlUj6cIaiqjcAKhAoeZr2rF-TBCBABVq+zZKBxS5HAHEg80NQxFAwp9HC4JAQIAzLAA-e
So let me explain what was the plan behind some of these things (some might require confirmation if something I thought can even happen and such). The idea of this build is to soak up as much damage as possible (for everyone), some self sustain abilities while still doing a lot of raw damage and still taking down those breakbars very easy.
I’ll start with traits.
Domination – Imagined Burden
Decided to go with this instead of Mental Anguish since I’m using a greatsword at Vale Guardian pretty much the whole time. One of the reasons is cause I’m in the group that goes inside the green circles. Might is always welcome, Cripple on the boss is somewhat helpful I believe and overall less cooldowns on the greatsword is awesome. Also the synergy with Illusionary Inspiration is rather nice to share that might a bit (and all other boons) with your allies, but we’ll get to that later.
Inspiration – Medic’s Feedback
From what I’ve noticed reflection is not really useful at all at Vale Guardian, but a quicker revive of a downed ally can be a game changer, especially in green circles.
Restorative Illusions, Healing Prism and Illusionary Inspiration
These three together work very nicely. When you shatter you get healed up, your allies also get healed up, summoning phatasms also gives your allies regeneration and casts a Signet of Inspiration (plus distortion). Also when you shatter you get Alacrity, and phatasms are also resummoned (Chronophantasma) which is all sorts of goodness all over the place.
Now for the main thing, all of those distortions.
Let’s start with Blurred Inscriptions, gain distortion on signet use and 20% cooldowns on all signets, pretty standard.
Now combine that with Inspiring Distortion and Illusionary Inspiration and each time you use the Signet of the Ether (also heals allies cause of the Healing Prism), F4, Signet of Humility or even summon a phatasm (casts another Signet cause of Illusionary Inspiration) everyone around you evades all attacks. Which is good not only for the green circle stacking but in so many other scenarios during this raid boss fight.
Also add to this whole combo the Well of Precognition with Mimic and Continuum Split.
Granted you are not an Alacrity bot with constant uptime of it but you still have a good amount of it so you can do this whole thing almost all the time.
When it comes to weapons I decided to take the shield as an offhand. Nothing really special about that choice though. The block is nice in times of need. Good to clear some of those annoying whisps that fly around, also summons a phantasm. Tides of Time is also a good against breakbars.
So, why Signet of Humility when you can use Time Warp or even Well of Gravity(which are all awesome skills)?
Well simply because of the whole signet thing. It’s one more signet that gives aoe evasion to your allies. The cooldown on it is reduced. And from what I’ve gathered it breaks the breakbar instantly.
The issue that I’ve found when Vale Guardian goes into his third phase where you have to move from pizza slice to pizza slice while he goes into his AoE spam state is that I always find myself in a green circle far away from him when he starts to AoE spam. Illusionary Wave and Tides of Time simply don’t have the needed rage for me to help with the breakbar when he starts doing that. The Signet of Humility has a huge range, also gives evasion to everyone near me when he starts to spam his AoE and apparently breaks the bar fully.
Is that a good reason to equip it over Time Warp? I’ll let you guys decide.
I need to check if distortion spam from me and Well of Precognition help with the blue circles that he uses that teleport you away. I normally use those on allies that are with me in the green circle if we are surrounded by the red orbs but once I used it at the boss and people who where melee didn’t get ported away when they were standing in the Well of Precognition, but not sure if it was from that. Need to check.
Weapons, Armors and Accessories are full berzerker obviously cause I go for the raw dps role in raids. I haven’t found it that hard to stay alive at this boss, since I have a decent amount of self sustain from all the heals, regens and evasions. With 1 proper dedicated healer/supporter in the party it gets a lot easier.
Sigils and Runes are just a placeholder at the moment. At first I thought that Daze duration from the runes means that the daze you inflict lowers the breakbar more, but apparently that’s not the case.
Sigil of Blood and Omnomberry Ghost help with self healing very nicely, but with a druid in a squad they are not needed at all I believe. Use the food and the sigil of your choice. Maybe another sigil of accuracy and +100 power and +70 ferocity food?
Inspiration – Mental Defense was also in play for a bit, shield block and all these evades will summon that defended very often but I don’t think he is that useful. Compared to things that Illusionary Inspiration offers at least.
So yeah… that’s pretty much it. What are your thoughts? This is my first build post (also not tested yet cause I’m not home sadly) so please offer any feedback that you can. What runes do you use, what sigils, are there better trait synergies than these, are some useless in the raid and stuff like that.