Guild Wars 2

But I want the videos right meow! :-p

People should give proper respect to condition engineers … the only class that can load you up with bleeding, burning, confusion, and poison … as well as weakness, immobilize, cripple. I’m surprised more don’t go condition … then I remember Melandru’s and Lemongrass in WvW :-p

It may be worth adding that the two blocks themselves can do a massive amount of damage. That thief in stealth trying to backstab you will not get a chance to hit you a second time when he’s downed by the counter attack.

A great side benefit of the build while fighting other mesmers is that you don’t need to really worry your head about finding the right one amongst their clones except for the actual casting of the phantasms themselves. It doesn’t matter how much they stealth, or how many clones they produce. You can’t fool those deadly machines

In fact in a way this build punishes stealth because there’s a good chance the attack recharge of the phantasms will be up during the stealth duration causing all of them to immediately burst as soon as the foe comes out of it.

That’s a dangerous thought…

@bhagwad: That’s precisely what happens.

There are few quicker ways to kill an overaggressive thief than scepter block + sword block. Especially if you follow it up with a shatter (already have 2 clones from the 2 blocks).

I’ve been running similar to this with the GS due to the nature of the servers we’ve been playing against. The wvw zergs are massive. Yet the GS can be devastating. At first I didn’t consider this at all until someone on another server was using it on us. Really opened my eyes.

Decided to try this out, my swordsman doesnt seem to crit at all on the practice dummies…. I’ve had 3 swordsmen hitting the dummies for a few minutes, zero crits…. this is with 48% innate crit and the trait for fury on phants. They’re hitting for 2200ish per go… that’s not crit damage, right?

Limey.2769:

Decided to try this out, my swordsman doesnt seem to crit at all on the practice dummies…. I’ve had 3 swordsmen hitting the dummies for a few minutes, zero crits…. this is with 48% innate crit and the trait for fury on phants. They’re hitting for 2200ish per go… that’s not crit damage, right?

It’s not possible to crit on objects.

Thank you Pyro

I’da sat here all day trying to work it out.

So my critical damage is 90%, so in theory I should be seeing swordsman crits of 4kish?

Also, is the number that shows up on the Duelist volley a separate damage figure per pop-up, or is it summing the damage total and displaying the total amount done over the course of the volley?

With 0% critical damage, your crits will hit for 150% normal damage. Therefor, with 90% critical damage, the crits will hit for 240% normal damage.

For multihit attacks, such as the duelist, or blurred frenzy, the number you see is a running total of the damage output by that attack. You can see the damage per hit in the damage log (or not, because the gw2 damage log is so unbelievably deficient it blows the mind).

Ok, so the final value displayed on the volley (3k or whatever) is what was done overall. I didn’t do 500 + 1000 + 1500+ 2000 etc.

Thanks for that. Easier just to look at the final number.

And yeah, so far the combat log isn’t showing me anything, so I haven’t a clue where I’m at actually.

One last question, how do you typically open up combat? leading with pistol stun + duelist then swapping for swordsman, or leading with swordsman?

@Pyro

The timing of the dodge/block/blind/invuln is right when the animation ends… you’ll notice a SMALL pause before the phant appears… that’s when it’s sort of checking to see if it “hit”

I’m about 50/50 on doing this but I don’t have much need to do it as very few run phant builds anymore. With more pratice I’m sure I could do it all the time without any problems.

I got very good at dodges from the last game I plaid before Gw2 (Dragon nest) where if you missed a dodge on a particular skill your opponent would juggle/wall bounce you from 100-0. Gw2 is far more forgiving in general xD

@Limey: My normal opener is swordsman, duelist, stun.

@Aberrant: I’m fairly sure that blocks don’t work at all. I’ll test this out with shield stance later tonight. Since blinds last a decent time, they’re obviously a good phantasm blocker, it’s just the dodge I could never get to work.

But yeah, that’s what gblast ex spam + time dodge is for. Lotsa get out of jail free cards if you do it right. Just a shame the time dodge cd couldn’t be lowered at all.

I just checked vs a guard using their block/heal and nothing appeared. It’s because the summons are considered attacks…. and so multi hitting/aoe attacks don’t even occur due to a single dodge/block/blind/invuln… because frick logic : /

I quit DN before the EX stuff was in the game… got sick of the same few PvP maps/nests… some classes did get power dodges though which helped. We still get a lot more escapes in Gw2 and fewer instances where if you don’t you’re just dead.

<- Desdemon (can’t gif spam in these forums xD)

so i was trying this out in tPvP last night, and its true that its great 1 v 1, no good in group T_T

rolling back to my favorite immortal mesmer

I have no doubt this build is incredibly tough to beat, though I have fought builds that i would assume are similar, judging by weapon comfiguration vs my condition engineer. Have yet to lose 1v1 in months of play (using my build) in WvW roaming and win majority of 1v2. Mesmer, regardless of build or skill have not bested me yet. Be it in duel or random encounters. It probably helps that I run a very similar build on my mesmer.

these are my 2 cents here: personally i prefer using gs over scepter/sw simply because it is more reliable: pets, illusions, minions or even rock dogs will block the ranged shots of the phantasmal duelist. the phantasmal berserker insta-spawns directly next to the target when casted and is an aoe making it effective against strafing opponents. Additionally, blind can be easily removed using gs autoattack.

A limitation of the sw/scepter blocks are multi-hit attacks. I’ve had problems fighting hammer, mace/shield wars before using this build. Decoy, bf, and blink can only do so much against good kd/daze builds.

@Reven: yeah this build needs more condition removal. like wookie said, disenchanter, null field and AThievery are good alternatives to replace the signet with. In group fights disenchanters are the better choice because it gets the benefit from traits (recharge and hp). I use both disenchanter and AT as I find I can survive most tpvp situations with one blink and blurred frenzy.

As for stealth….a smart thief should know how to deal with 3 spawned phantasms: run away.

Thorment.7945:

this are my 2 cents here: personally i prefer using gs over scepter/sw simply because it is more reliable: pets, illusions, minions or even rock dogs will block the melee shots of the phantasmal duelist. the phantasmal berserker insta-spawns directly next to the target when casted and is an aoe making it effective against strafing opponents. Additionally, blind can be easily removed using gs autoattack.

A limitation of the sw/scepter blocks are multi-hit attacks. I’ve had problems fighting hammer, mace/shield wars before using this build. Decoy, bf, and blink can only do so much against good kd/daze builds.

@Reven: yeah this build needs more condition removal. like wookie said, disenchanter, null field and AThievery are good alternatives to replace the signet with. In group fights disenchanters are the better choice because it gets the benefit from traits (recharge and hp). I use both disenchanter and AT as I find I can survive most tpvp situations with one blink and blurred frenzy.

GS may be many things, but saying that the berserker is reliable is unfortunately rather hilarious. It is our least reliable skill, mainly because Anet insists on breaking it every kitten patch.

Multihit attacks are a problem for the blocks of course. That’s why you use blurred frenzy for multihit attacks, and use blocks for things like dazes and knockbacks, which are almost all single hit attacks.

Melee attacks are always more reliable than projectiles. Melee attacks that mesmers can do at 1200 range is just plain stupid, especially in the past where we did not need line of sight for it. There is no blocking it; it can’t be reflected, its a whirl finisher and its an aoe attack… So there are your reasons for why it gets nerfed, but despite all that its still the strongest weapon set. Obstacles makes duelist rather kitten if used properly, but berserkers simply run around it.

Maybe its just me but I like the playstyle where I can have a different rythym to use when I switch weapons. Greatsword gives me exactly that. Also, I prefer to fight pistol mesmers than greatsword simply because you can predict their movement will be localised around the duelist (especially if there are also active swordsmen). Blurred frenzy at that area and a gs rotation will most certainly destroy their phantasms. I guess what I’m saying is, it takes a mesmer to defeat a mesmer.

edit: note that a lot of ranged attacks are ranged multi hits.

First night I tried this I hated it. Within 30 minutes I was back on my new turret Engineer who is a team play beast.

Then I gave it another shot the next day and loved it. Personally I had to swap to Soldier jewelry because I was just too squishy using zerker and coming off a bunker Engineer and also a variation of your Immortal Mesmer build. I guess you get used to not being such a squishy and it was irking me getting destroyed so quickly.

Swapping to that I started having a blast. I still have 21% base crit chance, plus Fury on Phants, plus the up to 250 extra Prec off the weapons sigil. Phants are still doing massive damage, but I can take a beating for almost twice as long as before. (I’m old and probably a little slow on reaction times, so maybe that’s why I just have to have some toughness and HPs to make a build work for me.)

I did run into one Guardian that I couldn’t touch. He didn’t do much to me either, but somehow my Phants weren’t scratching him and he did a good job of quickly clearing them out, but that left his attacks against me also very ineffective. As soon as he’d focus on me, I’d get Phants back out and he was taking damage, so he’d go back to killing the Phants and healing up and I couldn’t do much to stop it.

I also took the condi-clear Mantra and it’s amazing at clearing condi’s on top of the heal removal in this build. This also made a huge difference in the viability of this build in sPvP and was much more useful then the Illusions Signet IMO. I’m running into far more condi Thieves lately, and this Mantra frustrates the crap out of them and any other condi applying build.

The core of this build is really nothing new and I played something very similar long ago already, but it’s always the finer points that Pyro comes up with that make his builds a little better. They always inspire new ideas to create a variant of his build that better suit my own play-style, and that IMO is what it’s all about.

Don’t be cookie cutter and expect to be just as good as Pyro, you have to make any build work for you and your own style of play, and only use his builds as a template to start from.

Using this build verbatim I had a horrible experience and was losing to any burst class because I imagine my reaction time and button-pressing skills are probably not as good as Pyros, but as soon as I swapped to be a bit more tanky I was having a blast.

It is a very different play-style then Immortal, and Shatter, but I wouldn’t call it passive or boring. It still requires a lot of skill to use both your offenses and defenses wisely, because as has been pointed out there are a good amount of counters. When you waste Phan timers while being blinded, you quickly see your DPS output vanishing…but when it’s on, they really can lay some smack down.

Lastly, while not a team-oriented build, in sPvP at least it performed quite well for my teams. Again if used wisely, the DPS output of this can be very effective for your team, but I agree that the larger the fight gets, the less effective your contribution as the phants just die too fast to matter. However, I was scary effective in 2v2 and even 3v3s, because the enemy just didn’t know how important it was to clear the Phants rather then trying to kill me. (And the blocks too are VERY punishing in those fights, they hit rather hard and as stated by someone above can be nicely combod with a shatter if your phants just got killed off.) So for taking/holding points this build worked out better then I expected, especially if I had a team mate or two with me facing close to even odds.

Thanks, nice build and a refreshing change from Immortal. It’s nice not to have the long wind-up that sometimes makes Immortal a little frustrating.

@Windwalker: Good to see you’re having fun with your adaptation of it.

As far as team fights in s/tPvP go, I usually try to hang around corners and just keep summoning phantasms on that one annoying thief or something. I also usually take null field in tPvP, that way I get some team utility out of the build too.

@Thorment: The berserker doesn’t keep getting nerfed, it keeps getting broken. Every patch that comes out, it gets broken, and anet goes “oh crap, we didn’t mean to do that” yet they keep breaking it. Don’t really feel like explaining how broken it is right now.

I suppose I haven’t been paying attention to the changelogs enough for it, but yeah I get how you feel. I know someone who quit gw2 when they introduced los for p.zerker. I’ll try giving this another shot tonight and just annoy people off points

I’ve been running a similar build, five points difference in trait allotment, mostly knights and cavalier gear, some valkyrie pieces thrown in here and there. Did a bunch of duels earlier with an engi, he was running some kind of rifle build first and then he switched to a condition build. The condi build was way harder for me and if we hadn’t got interrupted by a DB zerg I’d have switched to null field and probably done better. But anyway, I’m not a great mesmer by any means, who won boiled down to who made the most mistakes, it was pretty half and half. His rifle build as long as I didn’t do any big screw ups I could usually beat, the other, not so much xD

Amadeus.5687:

All I need to do is not apply al my condition in a burst, and watch when you send back and just walk away when you hang out in a Null Field, Osicat tried that, and while it will complicate the fight, and help a lot out on the condition removal, it won’t be an automatic win!

Well that seems logical, but if you find yourself fighting a mesmer that throws null field only to remove conditions, must not be a great mesmer for sure.

Any good mesmer throws null field when having the cd for illusionary leap. Cast null field on top of you, quick ilusion leap, swap, it pins you down, chaos armor for mesmer, removes conditions, removes your buffs and leaves you wondering what happened. (if theres not a little rock or a bit of grass on the way ofc..in that case nothing happens…fix it anet).

Every class in this game is more than capable of dishing out large amount of dps. Every class has some form of counter. I really think classes are well balanced. No class is better than the next one…only player skill. For that, i still am in awe how we dont have 1v1 arenas yet….

Pyroatheist.9031:

@wookie: I think you misunderstand how I designed this build to be played, and additionally why I take the scepter and sword over the greatsword, for example. This build relies purely on the phantasms for damage, and on everything else for defense. Using skills like blurred frenzy for offense reduces your defense. The point of the trait setup and gear is that you don’t need to augment the damage from your phantasms. They are enough to tear apart any build in the game in short order.

Due to the fact that your phantasms are enough dps to handle any build, you have the luxury of utilizing all of your other skills for defense.

I am trying the build now and getting torn to shreds in spvp…

atheria.2837:

Pyroatheist.9031:

@wookie: I think you misunderstand how I designed this build to be played, and additionally why I take the scepter and sword over the greatsword, for example. This build relies purely on the phantasms for damage, and on everything else for defense. Using skills like blurred frenzy for offense reduces your defense. The point of the trait setup and gear is that you don’t need to augment the damage from your phantasms. They are enough to tear apart any build in the game in short order.

Due to the fact that your phantasms are enough dps to handle any build, you have the luxury of utilizing all of your other skills for defense.

I am trying the build now and getting torn to shreds in spvp…

As noted at the start of the guide, there is a very short list of things this build does well. While you can run it in sPvP, you will get destroyed if multiple competent people attack you.

I just want to make it clear. I made this guide because I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about this build recently. I do not run this build often, because it isn’t great at doing most things. I never intended this build to be effective at sPvP, or wvw, and maybe someone can find a good place for it in tPvP. Ultimately, this is an amusing dueling build that I put together, and that’s really it.

I ran up against a GS & Sword/Pistol Phantasm build that played much like this today. . . and had a decent fight. I ended up winning but it was more difficult than most builds. Mesmer vs Mesmer is really just a matter of knowing what the other is playing though. I realized after a minute of dueling that he was a phantasm focused build because he spent the entire time just trying to keep distance.

For reference, I am currently playing 0/10/0/30/30. . . Blade Training, Mender’s Purity, Warden’s Feedback, Restorative Illusions, Master of Misdirection, Illusionary Elasticity, and Illusionary Persona. I run 4 piece Knights, 2 piece Soldiers, with Divinity based Amulet and Rings, Valkyrie Backpiece and Earrings. I run Sword/Focus and Staff for weapons. The build plays in total adaption of how my opponent plays, putting them on the defensive after figuring out when to avoid their damage.

My build is not the best, nor will it be, but it has proven itself to be both versatile and powerful while allowing me to play defensively and stay alive. I played the build to beat the Phantasm based opponent by draining out their defensive options with a constant string of shatters (which gains me health to negate their phantasms damage) then eventually drop a Chaos storm on them and leap into them to hold them in it with a Mind Wrack. (and diversion to keep them from using any abilities I might have forgotten)

I run a 20/20/0/25/5 with GS and Sword/Pistol which I find superior to pressure.ranged targets. If you are loosing 1v1 with this build on your mesmer you are getting outplayed. Ele and engi will be the easiest classes to kill you though but like I said they have to play better than you.

atheria.2837:

I am trying the build now and getting torn to shreds in spvp…

As I said, the same thing happened to me and I adapted the build by simply swapping out Berzerker Jewel for Soldiers and it turned into a really decent sPvP build for me. You’re not much of a team supporter, but that doesn’t mean you’re not an effective team member. As Pyro said, if you find yourself in a larger skirmish, find the squishies to send your Phantasms against. Even if they only live for one attack, that’s often enough to do massive damage to a Thief or other burst build class.

The most fun part though is definitely 1v1 and 2v2, or even 2v1 I can often handle quite well depending on class. Oh yeah, I also swapped the Signet of Illusions for the condi-removal Mantra, and this swap makes me so much tougher against condi-builds it’s not even funny. I thinkittenpt everything else the same, though I run Centaur on my armor because otherwise with this build you have zero speed…I can’t get used to that! ;-)

I still have a 21% base crit chance, but of course the Phants have Fury up at all times, so it’s really not too shabby on burst DPS. I’ve really been very strong in 1v1s with this build, although there are some builds that either gave me a run or were a stale-mate. I’ve had Engineers, Elems, certainly Guardians, and occasionally even Rangers and Mesmers who fought me to stalemate or even bested me outright. (Which certainly could be a l2 kitten ue, because I don’t claim to be a god of mesmers/gw2/gaming in general. ;-) )

I’m really enjoying it in sPvP now, because it’s such a nice balance of decent-to-good DPS output and medium survivability.

P.S. And it can’t be stated often enough how brutal the damage off the 2 blocks is, people just don’t expect Mesmers to do this kinda damage in melee. Coupled with a quick swap to MH Sword and BF, Heartseeker spamming burst thieves must be pulling their hair out wondering what just happened to them.

Toying around with this build for a bit more, learning how it works in WvW and sPvP and it turned out really well. The build was efficient, a few gear swaps and it became quite survivable allowing me to drop 2 people in a 1 v 5 which surprised me due to the lack of toughness/vitality. Oh, and Rangers. Pyro was right, they’re easy, beat them every time since my last post, just have to work out the synergies of the build.

Pyroatheist.9031:

This build is not good in group fights…
What this build does do, is win any 1v1 duel. It is the most overpowered dueling build in the game.

How does this build do in “1 vs Many” fights? When you say it’s not good in group fights, I’m assuming you mean effectiveness in group play (small or large), rather than 1 vs a group of people. Thanks for any opinion on this.

Nah, I think he means 1 vs many. I use a very similar setup and it works really well for running with an organized team. Depending what we’re doing I can swap some traits around for various things to better help the group. Guardians giving stability is so nice, gives me plenty of time to get my phantasms set up then we’re good to go, as long as I can avoid being targeted and keep my phantasms out I can dish out a lot of damage. But I’m not talking about fighting big zergs, in those your phantasms will die to aoe so fast they can’t do anything.

Kazhiel is correct. This build works fine in a small skirmish situation, although if you get too large, the phantasms just die. It is abysmal in a 1 vs many.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Kazhiel is correct. This build works fine in a small skirmish situation, although if you get too large, the phantasms just die. It is abysmal in a 1 vs many.

Thanks. Appreciate both your responses.

Been using this build a while and love it. Except I use sword/sword + sword/pistol. I don’t see the point taking anything else in my main hand when I have 8 sec cooldown on frenzy. If I wanted to swap to scepter for a block I’d have to wait 10 secs to be able to block/blur again anyway. Also I use centuar runes and mirror heal for plenty of swiftness.

I run with decoy, arcane thievery and blink.
There are a lot of boon engineers, boon eles and bunker guardians around atm… arcane thievery feels SO amazing when you steal 20 stacks of might or a bunch of prot/regen/swiftness. Also helps with our condi weakness.

Each shot of pistol #4 is a 100% chance projectile combo… so if you hit feedback (no global cooldown) right as you spawn the pistol phantasm… boom 8 stacks of confusion. I sometimes swap thievery for this.

In 1v1s I usually open with decoy or our elite invis (phantasm summons do not break stealth OR trigger weapon swap cooldown) and bring out the swordsman. Decoy is preferred because the player often assumes that if there is only 1 mesmer at the start of the fight, then that is the real mesmer. Then swap to pistol (no wpn swap cd incurred) and bring duelist out, followed by a barrage of magic bullet, swap again for sword #4.. 3…2.. not many people recover from those 2 phantasms and 3-4 secs of stuns/immobilizes within the first few seconds of a fight.

Added 1v1 opness… swap in phantasmal defender.
50% less damage taken for you and all your illusions until they kill him.. and he has retal/regen and a cooldown of 24 secs.

I’ve found this build amazing in group fights, but then I am used to playing a thief.
If you play it like a thief… as in skirmishing around the edges, finding weakened players… you can drop them before they even realise they have 2 phantasms pointing at them and a leap/immob/frenzy ready to be hit. The phantasms will live long enough to do what their job was (down the target). Once the target is downed, shatter them with F4 and stomp while invul.

@fadeaway: Are you on Maguuma?

Desolation EU [:

its looks like my old build, just i used sceptr/pistol for range and sw/sw for meele. sometimes hard against sword/pistol thiefss with #3 button (daze) when breakstun on CD, and sword/dager sometimes to. but build not bad rly. just to squishy in this zerkers times

The class I have the most trouble with is d/d ele… but I guess everyone has trouble with them.

fadeaway.2807:

Desolation EU [:

Ah, k. I ask because the inspiration for making this build was a sword/pistol sword/sword phantasm build that dismantled my immortal build, so I worked with it and added a few tweaks to make this one, and the guy that ran that I bumped into on maguuma.

Just tried this for a few. Omg. Ridiculous. I was ownong a dd ele. Got him to 10 pct and he ran away.

Then fought a bunker engineer. He was trying to kite my phantasms across whole map. He dies too. Ao funny.

Im sure i wasnt even playing that well. I forgot to do any shattwring or use the illusion signet

Im gonna duel my thief buddy whos arrogant. He is going to cry once i slap him with this

so after running number of tPvP matches, I found this build strong (not amazing) in 1v1 situation, and moderate in group support, I am speaking in the current Temple of the Silent storm map rotation, due to the way the ma kitten et up, (anyone would know) that GATE (the middle point) has this roof bit you can stand on, and if you have 2 iDuliest out, it can really turn the game round, as for Alter, use blink and decoy a lot to get around, it is easy for enemies to walk up to the upper section, so play carful. But for the Temple node, it is much safer since enemy will have to walk a massive stair case and down the walkway to get you, dont waste that blink!

TL;DR: Be a sneaky little mouse, and you will be fine in sPVP. Don’t DIE!

Love seeing my build on here after I fought you with it at fight club, except i don’t use sep, overwriting phants with auto attack clones blows, plus NEED to have BF on both weapon sets.

So what tweaks did you add except for swapping out Sw/Sw with Sep/Sw? Also, this build is so/so for sPvP because it relies on overwhelming offense, i run around 130% crit dmg and you can’t get anywhere near that in sPvP

Also, the counter to this is a well played P/D thief, or a very good PVT engineer with grenades, I have lost to both consistently, although all the engineer fights were really close. However, i could probably duel trigerless 20 times and maybe win 1 or 2 just from luck.

Cube.4905:

Love seeing my build on here after I fought you with it at fight club, except i don’t use sep, overwriting phants with auto attack clones blows, plus NEED to have BF on both weapon sets.

So what tweaks did you add except for swapping out Sw/Sw with Sep/Sw? Also, this build is so/so for sPvP because it relies on overwhelming offense, i run around 130% crit dmg and you can’t get anywhere near that in sPvP

Also, the counter to this is a well played P/D thief, or a very good PVT engineer with grenades, I have lost to both consistently, although all the engineer fights were really close. However, i could probably duel trigerless 20 times and maybe win 1 or 2 just from luck.

Well, the major change was the scepter. It provides a good chunk of additional damage and defense that is really nice. I turn off the autoattack, so that’s not a problem. Also, in wvw (and to a lesser extent sPvP) confusing images can be really strong if you have time to channel it.

I also made it a bit more durable than your build, by adding a few soldiers pieces to boost my hp a bit. One more thing is that I really leave the sigil open to swapping. Since this is really a duel build, change that util around to counter your current opponent.

P/d thieves are pretty easy. Swap out ether feast for the heal mantra, and now you have plenty of condition removal to deal with them. Make sure you don’t summon the phantasms on a caltrops. Also, be fast with blurred frenzy or a dodge after their stealth attack. If you do it right, you’ll only get 1 stack of bleeding from the whole thing. Another change is you can take mirror to really screw with them on a rather low cooldown.

I’ve run into a few grenade engies, but none that really posed a problem. Feedback will screw with them, especially with the traited pistol. Just try to spread out the phantasms enough so they don’t kill all of them in one go. A glassy HGH grenadier will die really fast, and a tanky pvt one just won’t do anywhere near the damage necessary to kill you.

Play vs triggerless and get back to me. Phants give C&D targets and there is nothing you can do about it really. Anyone that can survive and out-invis this build will win. Trust me I’ve been running it forever. Also, PvT engies still hit like trucks with grenades/rifles, ive never lost to any engie except one, and he was extremely well played, another counter to this build is to just walk away from it.

Edit : also, as a rule in fight clubs i don’t switch out skills, i test my roaming build vs what i could possibly encounter. When a P/D thief jumps on you, it not like you get to call timeout and switch to mantra, even though i don’t think that would change anything, as i run mantra that drops conds sometimes and they will still prevail. That being said, there are 100 bad thieves out there for every good one, just like any other class.

please help me understand the benefits of Sigil of Air “30% chance to cause a lightning strike on a critical hit”

Does this also apply on Phantasm as well? If this only apply on the character, the only real application would be blurred frenzy isn’t it?

just a random thought: if you really are swapping weapons like crazy, how about throwing in sigils of Hydromancy?
As your weapon swap is purely defensive anyway and you swap weapons as soon as you can, you will have 33% chill uptime on your opponents.
Just keep swapping weapons and you might even be able to punch through a 1v3 situation with the insane damage of your phantasms, as the chill allows you for some nice positioning advantage… Especially cause you don’t have endless clones with crippling dissipation.

@Pyroatheist,

This may be a stupid question, but how effective have you found this build against a bunker D/D Ele? I have an 80 Mesmer which was my first character in GW2 and I eventually quit playing because of how slow she was in WvW and boring my spec was. Soon later, I leveled up my D/D Ele and typically find most Mesmer’s I’ve seen to be fairly easy. Of course, they are about 90% all shatter builds which are easy to predict/avoid.

Though I love my Ele, I’d like an excuse to pick up my Mesmer again. D/D Ele’s are quick and fun to play but they are very restricted in some cases.

going to have to give this a shot, i have been running a close variation but with slightly different trait distribution and GS + S/P. I generally play more offensively so i will also try the sword/sword version.

Also this build is not meant to really be a group build. It is a good roamer/point assist. I usually go to far point and look for a 1v1 then go back around to assist on other nodes where needed. It also holds up well in 1v2 when using blink/decoy/BF properly even with zerker.

@Cube: I think I may have triggerless just the other day, though I can’t remember for sure. It was a long fight, but careful play meant I never really came close to dying, so it was only a matter of time.

Also, I view this build as a dueling build, and that’s pretty much it. I would never roam with it over my immortal build, so I swap out skills for dueling.

@FinalPatriot: This build tears apart bunker d/d eles. They are very predictable, and they don’t do enough damage to really hurt you. Also, they have a lot of multihits that will hurt from the retaliation on the phantasms.

@naphack: You may have something with sigil of hydromancy, I’ll have to give it a shot.