Guild Wars 2

Decent, I like it. Similar to what I’m running, but I focus more on confusion then I do on retaliation. What gear are you using for this?

Just so you know, Sigil ofHydromancy and Energy share a cooldown, it is essentially useless to have both.

Also, Runes of the soldier + svanir, instead of runes of earth? :/

Additional Information

The temporal curtain light combo field will persist even after detonation with into the void, but invisibly. This means that you can pull people using the detonation, and then subsequently still trigger the double leap combo with the invisible combo field.

Class Specific Fighting Guide

1. Necromancer
2. Engineer
3. Guardian
4. Ranger
5. Warrior
6. Elementalist
7. Thief
8. Mesmer

1. Necromancer
Would you like your necro well done or extra crispy, sir?

2. Engineer
2.a Flamethrower Engineer
Flamethrowers do 5 hits per second in an aoe cone. Simply put up retaliation with a defender or another phantasm and the engineer will be dead in 10 seconds.
2.b Pistol/Other Weapons
Engineers are almost exclusively projectile based. This means they are extremely susceptible to projectile reflects. They can also put out a surprising amount of both direct and condition damage. To counter them, simply stay in sword/focus and hide behind temporal curtain and wardens. Once you have some illusions up and are feeling safe, you can switch to staff for the chaos armor and storm, but make sure you go back to sword/focus as quickly as possible.

3. Guardian
Guardians will fall into 2 main categories: those that use greatsword, and those that don’t. The fights will be a bit different, but the same. Make sure you have retaliation and the defender up at all times. Guardians have a lot of aoe damage, and will take a lot of retaliation damage from the defender.
Keeping chaos armor up is nice, but ultimately not necessary. More important is to have at least 1 sword clone always out in order to help strip boons.
The duration of the fight is where greatsword matters. With defender and 1 other phantasm, most guardians will take over 70% of their hp in retaliation from a single whirling wrath.

4. Ranger

There are a few different ranger builds you will encounter, but you deal with them all in the same way. Try to keep retaliation up without using cry as much as possible. When the ranger starts using a bow, switch to staff, use cry, and put up chaos armor. This quick combo will not only refresh the retaliation on you, but put confusion on the ranger. The small and fast hits of the bows are perfect for applying tons of boons and conditions from chaos armor, proccing tons of retaliation damage, and proccing tons of confusion damage.

If you happen to be low on hp, simply kite the ranger. If they swap to bow, drop temporal curtain and let them hit themselves, switching to the warden for reflects after letting temporal curtain stand for a few seconds. Once you have regained enough health, you can go back into attacking them.

5. Warrior

Warriors are one of the easier matchups, as they are so straight-forward. Warriors have absolutely nothing other than straight damage, or perhaps bleeds if they are condition specced. With the runes of melandru and -40% condition duration food, you can simply ignore any bleeds the warriors apply.

Keeping retaliation and 3 illusions up at all times is crucial in this fight. While warriors only have damage, they do have a lot of it, and so the damage reduction per illusion is very important, as is having the defender as much as possible. With a non-rifle warrior, it is best to stay in sword focus to keep retaliation up, and then switch to staff as soon as they try to combo you in order to activate chaos armor for the defensive protection proc. For a rifle warrior, just put up reflects and let them kill themselves. If they kneel down and stop moving, hide behind a reflect and watch them eat a 10k reflected kill shot.

6. Elementalist
6.a Staff Ele
The staff ele is a pretty relaxed fight. If they sit in water for a long time, you might not be able to kill them. However, staff also has almost 0 damage potential against this build. So many of their attacks are projectiles that they often end up hurting themselves, and the loads of aoe they output just results in tons of retaliation.
6.b D/D Ele
This is a harder fight. They have a ton of condition removal, and decent damage. If you are careful, you shouldn’t need to worry about being killed, but don’t underestimate the burst they can do. To actually kill a d/d ele, you need to let them get to around 50% from retaliation and normal attacks. Once they switch into and then out of water is the time you have to attack. Burst confusion and go as offensive as possible. With luck, they’ll die from confusion.
Ultimately, this fight is a waiting game, waiting for them to make a mistake. If they play perfectly, it will stalemate, but no one is perfect, and you can survive mistakes while they can’t.

I really like the look of this build so far. The retaliation uptime is interesting.

Do you ever find you don’t have enough dps to get someone down? Like another class that is similarly tanky?

7. Thief
Some thieves will simply kill themselves on your chaos armor and retaliation. P/D, S/P, death blossom thieves will all destroy themselves very quickly. However, a really well played backstab, D/P, or S/D thief can be a tough fight.

Thieves operate in a rhythm. Attack, stealth, pause, attack. Get used to this rhythm, and then act to counter it. Run around quickly to make it difficult to get an attack from behind. Activate chaos armor for the 5 seconds of protection. Use blurred frenzy to invuln through the first attack. Most importantly, stay with your Illusions. Be really careful about shattering, as it removes a lot of your passive defense. Keeping several phantasms up for the regen is a must, and if you can keep a defender up, all the better.

A useful trick to know is that if a thief stealth during the channel of a phantasm, the phantasm will be placed directly on top of the stealthed thief. This allows you to get a fast idea of where the thief is, and the direction they will have to take to get to your back.

The time to shatter is immediately after a thief attacks from stealth, when your phantasm cooldowns are ready. You can absorb some damage, but the thief really can’t, so bursting cry + mirror images + leap/swap + wrack during their attack will hurt them badly. If they are careless, that’s the fight over right there. Once you do the shatters, immediately summon a phantasm for defense once they stealth again.

Keep an eye out for shadow refuge. If temporal curtain is off cooldown, you can pull them out of it, making the thief extremely vulnerable for a few seconds, even more so if they were already low on hp.

8. Mesmer
Your hardest fights by far will come from other mesmers. Confusion mesmers really aren’t a problem in this build as long as you are careful. Confusion generally won’t last more than 2-4 seconds with all the condition duration it has, so a bit of caution nullifies any confusion bomb builds.

Shatter builds hurt. They output more damage than a thief, and can be more difficult to see coming. Against a shatter build, play offensively. Stick on top of the other Mesmer with leap/swap, curtain pulls, whatever you need to do. Shatter builds hate to be pressured, because it forces them to waste clones on defense. The more pressure you can apply, the less they will be able to set up the full burst combo.

Never be afraid to use blurred frenzy to dodge a shatter, even if you don’t actually do damage with it. The 2 second invuln is the most potent active defense you have, so use it when you need it.

If you can dodge or otherwise nullify the first few shatter bursts, the shatter build will be rather out of offensive options for a while, and putting on pressure is even more important.

The one build that is really difficult to handle is a well played phantasm build, especially with offhand sword. My experience with this build has been the Mesmer simply running in circles while the swordsmen chunk me, and I really have no counter to it. If you find yourself fighting someone like that, I suggest you put on your running shoes.

s/tPvP Modifications

In HotM, retaliation is bugged so that it does not scale with power on phantasms. While this lowers the damage output of the build, it allows you to make some interesting modifications.

Drop the soldier’s amulet in favor of the cleric’s amulet. While lowering your health, it will turbocharge your heal and regen, making you very difficult to kill.

Additionally, drop decoy and take phantasmal disenchanter. This provides amazing boon stripping against boon heavy classes like guardians, eles, and engineers, and also shores up the weaker condition defense that you have in HotM without being able to use the -40% food.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Darx.9842:

I really like the look of this build so far. The retaliation uptime is interesting.

Do you ever find you don’t have enough dps to get someone down? Like another class that is similarly tanky?

The only class that I have completely failed at taking down is a staff ele using ether renewal, sitting in water pretty much the entire time. Everything else will die eventually, or run away. I can’t really stop a thief from running away (who can?), and I also can’t catch up to a d/d ele if they want to peace out. Everything else I can chew down though. The build has deceptively high power, since that is the major stat on all of the gear, just no crits.

I see. Do you think this build would be effective using Knight’s (pwr/prec/tgh) gear? That way there would be a bit more burst from crit, but still able to take little beating. Or is the large amount of Vitality required?

Updates as of 6/25 Patch

The only change that really hit this build was the change to vengeful images. This nerf massively reduces your dps potential. It also forces a somewhat different play style to utilize the paltry 5 seconds left. Instead of cycling phantasms, you’ll want to burst them out at the same time. Once all the cooldowns are up, you can burst them out again. This maximizes your damage potential if you lay them down at the proper time.

WvW
No recommended changes to the build.

s/tPvP
I was using a variant of 20/30/20 prior to the patch. This is no longer viable due to the IC nerf. 20/20/30 is definitely the only option. I was also using signet of illusions. Since the nerf to the signet, this is no longer such a game changer, so I do not use it. I recommend defender, mirror images, and disenchanter. In today’s condition heavy meta, the disenchanter is massively important to stay alive.

Summary
The survivability of this build is not impacted. The damage potential, however, is. This will take some getting used to, but it remains an extremely resilient and versatile tank.

You might try the Phantasmal Disenchanter instead of Mirror Images.

Ok ok I know it sounds stupid in the first moment but think about …

Pro:
- it provides even more Phantasmal Healing
- it removes conditions on you and boons on them
- very short cooldown

Contra:
- no stun breaking included (yeah Mirror Images breaks stun, but you can use staff Phase Retreat every 5 sec. anyway, so you don’t really need another stun breaker)
- only one instead of two illusions (but cooldown is only half!)
- longer cast time (doesn’t really matter for a slow-killing tank build like this)

Snoxx.7943:

You might try the Phantasmal Disenchanter instead of Mirror Images.

Ok ok I know it sounds stupid in the first moment but think about …

Pro:
- it provides even more Phantasmal Healing
- it removes conditions on you and boons on them
- very short cooldown

Contra:
- no stun breaking included (yeah Mirror Images breaks stun, but you can use staff Phase Retreat every 5 sec. anyway, so you don’t really need another stun breaker)
- only one instead of two illusions (but cooldown is only half!)
- longer cast time (doesn’t really matter for a slow-killing tank build like this)

I’ve used the disenchanter before. There are a few reasons that I take mirror images instead. Firstly, it is a stunbreaker, while disenchanter isnt. Disenchanter is also somewhat bugged right now, and sometimes will not spaw properly. I generally don’t need more condition removal than I have, but if I do, I will opt for arcane thievery due to the additional utility of it.

There is no need for more phantasmal healing procs, the phantasms put it up every 3 seconds, and I easily have more than 100% uptime. Back when the phantasms only did it 5 seconds every 10 seconds, I did run with the disenchanter, precisely for that reason.

Lastly, mirror images provides an instant 2 clones, and more often than using it as a stunbreaker, I use to burst confusion as the second half of a shatter combo, thereby allowing me to quickly and suddenly put a ton of stacks onto my target.

It isn’t a bad choice, by any means. It simply isn’t as strong as mirror images in most pvp situations. For pve it actually is definitely stronger than mirror images, because of the massive condie removal utility.

Could you explain the retaliation leap combo?

I can’t get it to work. You said illusionary leap thru temporal curtain? It gives about 4 seconds of retaliation on the clone, but nothing to me. Is that right?

EDIT: I figured it out, you have to STAND on the temporal curtain line. Very weird.

Darx.9842:

Could you explain the retaliation leap combo?

I can’t get it to work. You said illusionary leap thru temporal curtain? It gives about 4 seconds of retaliation on the clone, but nothing to me. Is that right?

EDIT: I figured it out, you have to STAND on the temporal curtain line. Very weird.

Yep, that’s how you do it. You stand on top of the curtain, then do the leap + swap, for the double activation.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Darx.9842:

Could you explain the retaliation leap combo?

I can’t get it to work. You said illusionary leap thru temporal curtain? It gives about 4 seconds of retaliation on the clone, but nothing to me. Is that right?

EDIT: I figured it out, you have to STAND on the temporal curtain line. Very weird.

Yep, that’s how you do it. You stand on top of the curtain, then do the leap + swap, for the double activation.

Yeah.. 14 seconds from the leap, and 15 seconds from the shatter. I don’t even think Guardian is capable of generating that amount of retaliation, and it’s supposed to be their signature boon. Odd.

Darx.9842:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Darx.9842:

Could you explain the retaliation leap combo?

I can’t get it to work. You said illusionary leap thru temporal curtain? It gives about 4 seconds of retaliation on the clone, but nothing to me. Is that right?

EDIT: I figured it out, you have to STAND on the temporal curtain line. Very weird.

Yep, that’s how you do it. You stand on top of the curtain, then do the leap + swap, for the double activation.

Yeah.. 14 seconds from the leap, and 15 seconds from the shatter. I don’t even think Guardian is capable of generating that amount of retaliation, and it’s supposed to be their signature boon. Odd.

It is somewhat odd. Even in a build completely designed to stack retaliation, guardians can’t even come close to what mesmers can do, especially considering you can drop curtain, and then swap to staff for phase retreat for ANOTHER leap combo into retaliation.

Hey! Thanks for sharing this build. Was really a breath of fresh air I was actually thinking of using this build for spvp. How do you think it would fair and any tips on playing well in that field?

The build is decent in sPvP, provided you have a decent team for helping you out. It is abysmal at roaming, for obvious reasons, but is fantastic for turtleing on a point, although you can get overwhelmed in sPvP.

In tPvP, however, the build performs fantastically, and the only major issue I have encountered is that a knockback engie will slowly take a point from me over the course of a few minutes, but that is easily solved with a bit of team support.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The build is decent in sPvP, provided you have a decent team for helping you out. It is abysmal at roaming, for obvious reasons, but is fantastic for turtleing on a point, although you can get overwhelmed in sPvP.

In tPvP, however, the build performs fantastically, and the only major issue I have encountered is that a knockback engie will slowly take a point from me over the course of a few minutes, but that is easily solved with a bit of team support.

I tried a confusion/retaliation build as well as a bunker build on my mesmer and got laughed (they had time to type at me too….)at as the guardian/engineer just promenades in, knocks you off the point, out damages you, out heals you, and eventually takes the point. If you get the interrupts/knockback/pulls in your build, you’re not as tanky either…and you won’t be doing damage. I find it a futile build in any sort of spvp or tpvp unless you just like to stubbornly survive without having any contribution to your team…

The only way you could possibly make it work is if you are so A+ at GW2 that you know how to time stability charges from mantra of concentration to counter the knockbacks. Good luck with that.

Soyboy.3548:

Pyroatheist.9031:

The build is decent in sPvP, provided you have a decent team for helping you out. It is abysmal at roaming, for obvious reasons, but is fantastic for turtleing on a point, although you can get overwhelmed in sPvP.

In tPvP, however, the build performs fantastically, and the only major issue I have encountered is that a knockback engie will slowly take a point from me over the course of a few minutes, but that is easily solved with a bit of team support.

I tried a confusion/retaliation build as well as a bunker build on my mesmer and got laughed (they had time to type at me too….)at as the guardian/engineer just promenades in, knocks you off the point, out damages you, out heals you, and eventually takes the point. If you get the interrupts/knockback/pulls in your build, you’re not as tanky either…and you won’t be doing damage. I find it a futile build in any sort of spvp or tpvp unless you just like to stubbornly survive without having any contribution to your team…

The only way you could possibly make it work is if you are so A+ at GW2 that you know how to time stability charges from mantra of concentration to counter the knockbacks. Good luck with that.

Since my build uses the focus, and has a lot of leaps/stunbreakers, it takes an engineer a VERY long time to take the point, and is not really possible for a guardian to, as they don’t have the stupid amount of knockbacks that an engineer does. I will kill any guardian that isn’t fully specced into heals, and if they are fully specced into heals, then they won’t be taking the point from me. Engineers are really the only weakness for the point bunkering, and it takes them a very long time even so.

I am a big fan of this build. I used something just like this in sPvP, but it was condition based (shaman’s amulet), and I took the double bounce trait. I also took Signet of Inspiration so I could share my super long retaliation and might/regen buffs with the entire team. If you use it when you are clustered up with everyone, it makes a huge difference. I like this power based version, though, as you can really maximize retaliation dmg.

One NOTE: If you are using condition dmg, and you take the confusion on blind trait, chaos armor has a 66% chance to give confusion when struck (33% confusion chance, 33% blind), which really puts the stacks on thieves and anyone else who is hitting you very rapidly. Grab null field, and you can have chaos armor up quite a bit of the time.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The build is decent in sPvP, provided you have a decent team for helping you out. It is abysmal at roaming, for obvious reasons, but is fantastic for turtleing on a point, although you can get overwhelmed in sPvP.

In tPvP, however, the build performs fantastically, and the only major issue I have encountered is that a knockback engie will slowly take a point from me over the course of a few minutes, but that is easily solved with a bit of team support.

Hey Pyroatheist, great thread.

I think you were that Mesmer I dueled a couple of times last matchup (EB/Yaks/DB) with that [Taco] ele on the road near Centaurs. Super fun duels.

Will try out this build sometime but I guess I can’t give up the GS just yet haha.

Luzano.6983:

Pyroatheist.9031:

The build is decent in sPvP, provided you have a decent team for helping you out. It is abysmal at roaming, for obvious reasons, but is fantastic for turtleing on a point, although you can get overwhelmed in sPvP.

In tPvP, however, the build performs fantastically, and the only major issue I have encountered is that a knockback engie will slowly take a point from me over the course of a few minutes, but that is easily solved with a bit of team support.

Hey Pyroatheist, great thread.

I think you were that Mesmer I dueled a couple of times last matchup (EB/Yaks/DB) with that [Taco] ele on the road near Centaurs. Super fun duels.

Will try out this build sometime but I guess I can’t give up the GS just yet haha.

Yep, I remember you. The last fight in my video was my first duel with that ele, before he figured out that dodging confusion meant staying alive.

As far as greatsword goes, its a fantastic weapon, but its also extremely offensive. It fits well into an offensive build for that reason, but in a fully defensive build like this on, staff is perfect. Staff also has a surprising amount of utility, even in a glassier build. The main wvw use I’ve been finding for my greatsword is just a keep defense/zerg running build that takes 20/30/0/0/20 with 4 mantras for pure maximum damage with those 3 lovely 1200 range non-reflectable attacks.

Westibone.3985:

I am a big fan of this build. I used something just like this in sPvP, but it was condition based (shaman’s amulet), and I took the double bounce trait. I also took Signet of Inspiration so I could share my super long retaliation and might/regen buffs with the entire team. If you use it when you are clustered up with everyone, it makes a huge difference. I like this power based version, though, as you can really maximize retaliation dmg.

One NOTE: If you are using condition dmg, and you take the confusion on blind trait, chaos armor has a 66% chance to give confusion when struck (33% confusion chance, 33% blind), which really puts the stacks on thieves and anyone else who is hitting you very rapidly. Grab null field, and you can have chaos armor up quite a bit of the time.

I’ve used the double bounce trait in my build, but mainly when I am in a team. The problem is that the staff clones are not affected by that trait, which makes it far less effective than it should be. Signet of inspiration I will also often take when I am in a team, but when roaming solo it is not a good choice by any stretch of the imagination.

In my opinion, confusion is a horrible condition to base a build around. I have tried it in wvw, using full rabid gear, but it just doesn’t work as well as other builds. My success with confusion comes when using it as an auxiliary condition to another attack. In most cases, I will stack up confusion either during a large burst combo (glass cannon shatter build) or when they are lower on hp (primarily tank build). This forces them to either eat a ton of damage from a shatter combo, or eat a ton of damage from 12 stacks of confusion. Similarly, it forces them to avoid simple things like dodge rolling, or facing the damage from 10-12 stacks, and this allows me to force the confusion damage onto them, as opposed to getting a ton of stacks and watching them drip off with no consequence.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Westibone.3985:

I am a big fan of this build. I used something just like this in sPvP, but it was condition based (shaman’s amulet), and I took the double bounce trait. I also took Signet of Inspiration so I could share my super long retaliation and might/regen buffs with the entire team. If you use it when you are clustered up with everyone, it makes a huge difference. I like this power based version, though, as you can really maximize retaliation dmg.

One NOTE: If you are using condition dmg, and you take the confusion on blind trait, chaos armor has a 66% chance to give confusion when struck (33% confusion chance, 33% blind), which really puts the stacks on thieves and anyone else who is hitting you very rapidly. Grab null field, and you can have chaos armor up quite a bit of the time.

I’ve used the double bounce trait in my build, but mainly when I am in a team. The problem is that the staff clones are not affected by that trait, which makes it far less effective than it should be. Signet of inspiration I will also often take when I am in a team, but when roaming solo it is not a good choice by any stretch of the imagination.

In my opinion, confusion is a horrible condition to base a build around. I have tried it in wvw, using full rabid gear, but it just doesn’t work as well as other builds. My success with confusion comes when using it as an auxiliary condition to another attack. In most cases, I will stack up confusion either during a large burst combo (glass cannon shatter build) or when they are lower on hp (primarily tank build). This forces them to either eat a ton of damage from a shatter combo, or eat a ton of damage from 12 stacks of confusion. Similarly, it forces them to avoid simple things like dodge rolling, or facing the damage from 10-12 stacks, and this allows me to force the confusion damage onto them, as opposed to getting a ton of stacks and watching them drip off with no consequence.

I agree. I see some people owning with confusion bomb builds, but I also trialed full rabid and I felt it lacked punch. I was not using torch or mass invis at the time, which I think really changes up how the max condition build plays.

I have been toying around with that spreadsheet that’s been floating around, trying to see if there is a hybrid gear setup that would allow balanced stats with around 1k condition dmg, 1800-1900 power, and decent crit, crit dmg, hp, and toughness. I think it’s possible. I got the idea after watching a video on the hybrid necro. Mix of rampager, knight, zerker, valkyrie…something like that. Would be great to have decent burst while still being able to switch on the fly and hang back, wearing them down with conditions.

Westibone, I think it’s possible to do that it would just take the right switching around of gear. I’m running runes of undead and have the chaos minor trait that combines for 10% of toughness as condition damage. I have all Knights armor now but a mix of weapons and rare rabid jewelry/accessories and I still have as much condition damage as when I ran all rabid but way higher power and toughness.

Kazhiel.8194:

Westibone, I think it’s possible to do that it would just take the right switching around of gear. I’m running runes of undead and have the chaos minor trait that combines for 10% of toughness as condition damage. I have all Knights armor now but a mix of weapons and rare rabid jewelry/accessories and I still have as much condition damage as when I ran all rabid but way higher power and toughness.

Make sure you also use the tuning crystals, which will add an additional % of toughness and vitality as condition damage.

The main reason I really don’t like condition damage mesmer is because we are horrific at applying any condition that isn’t confusion. Sharper images is currently our best way of stacking bleeds, and burn/poison is very difficult aside from lucky staff autos. If Anet gave us an on-land phantasm that was capable of doing condition focused damage, then I would consider running a condition damage setup again.

As I mentioned earlier, confusion is simply very weak by itself. It can be immensely powerful, but it needs support. In order to make confusion effective, you have to force your opponent to make tough choices, and that requires other sources of pressure, be it conditions or straight damage. Because condition is highly stackable in a burst situation, and does quite high base damage with enough stacks, I’ve migrated more to using it without any condition damage at all, because 10 stacks is still enough to hit for 1.5k every skill use, making it a very powerful damage source when you force your opponent to use skills or dodge roll.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Make sure you also use the tuning crystals, which will add an additional % of toughness and vitality as condition damage.

Yup, I have them. I’m running a 0/20/30/0/20 atm, like it real well, it’s pretty entertaining with all the stealths.

Kazhiel.8194:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Make sure you also use the tuning crystals, which will add an additional % of toughness and vitality as condition damage.

Yup, I have them. I’m running a 0/20/30/0/20 atm, like it real well, it’s pretty entertaining with all the stealths.

The full stealth mesmer build is certainly an interesting one. I fought a guy using it, it’ll be in my next video. Somewhat effective, but mainly just prolonged the fight as opposed to really winning it.

I am attempting something similar, what are your thoughts of torch offhand with its phantasm applying confusion and retaliation?

My immortal Mesmer build comprised of Runes of the Adventurer (before it was nerfed) and Mirror.

It was hilarously silly.

DaisyRogers.6837:

I am attempting something similar, what are your thoughts of torch offhand with its phantasm applying confusion and retaliation?

While I accept that the torch may possibly be a somewhat viable weapon in a few super niche builds (/skeptical face), this would be a horrific replacement in this particular build. By taking the torch, you are presumably dropping the focus. Lets compare the two:

Torch
Invisibility with a burn and blind, also a blast finisher.
Phantasm applies 3 stacks of confusion for 3 seconds unaffected by cond duration to 1 target, and 3 seconds of retaliation to you, assuming it summons properly, as I have heard the attack range is bugged.

Focus
Temporal curtain: Ground targeted line skill that buffs swiftness, cripples enemies, reflects projectiles, and detonates to do an aoe pull. Also is a light combo field, allowing 14 seconds of retaliation with illusionary leap/swap, and condition removals with the warden whirl finisher.

Phantasm: Large aoe projectile reflecting bubble capable of bein a whirl finisher.

As you can see, there is really no comparison. Unless you wanted to go 20 points into Dom, you would have no torch cd trait, making the recharges on it massive. You lose 14 seconds of highly reliable retaliation for a possible 3 seconds based on a bouncing attack. You lose all the projectile reflections, you lose the swiftness, the cripple, the pull. Compared to the focus, the torch is nothing.

Pyro: any idea what gear he was using? IMO there’s several gear sets/rune sets a person can use with the build that changes the way damage is dealt in this build.

Daisy: I don’t think that would work as focus 4 seems to be integral to retaliation generation

And Pyro wrote a long reply in the time it took me to type two sentences on my phone haha

Kazhiel.8194:

Pyro: any idea what gear he was using? IMO there’s several gear sets/rune sets a person can use with the build that changes the way damage is dealt in this build.

Daisy: I don’t think that would work as focus 4 seems to be integral to retaliation generation

I’m on a phone too, I just got the jump on ya =p.

If I recall correctly, he was using scepter+torch/staff. He seemed to be focused on condition damage. His utilities were decoy, veil, and I think blink, along with mass invisibility. Apart from that, I don’t know for sure. He was a bit undergeared, in mostly masterwork and rares as I found out later.

He didn’t pack a lot of punch to me, but he certainly took out one of the 2 really annoying pistol engineers I was fighting quickly enough, demonstrating of course the need for support with confusion damage, as opposed to relying on it alone.

Haha I’m one thumbing it while driving a tractor, so slow ugh

I have two gear sets I use with this build, one is rabid with runes of lyssa using rabid staff usually sword/torch because sword is better for negating damage in group fights but i also sometimes use scepet/torch. The other is knights with runes of undead but p/t/v weapons (staff, sword/torch) and all accessories, it’s way more direct damage and also very good condition damage (get 10% of tough as condition damage thru chaos minor trait and undead runes, then food buff on top of that).

Edit to add: I don’t use veil, I use mirror images, more offensive and defensive uses with being able to instantly pop two more clones for shatter since don’t have iPersona.

treborIRL.4521:

retaliation dmg is reflected with how much power you have – seeing as you have no points in the power trait line…i don’t think its that worth it.

You can get quite a bit of power thru gear choices.

Kazhiel.8194:

treborIRL.4521:

retaliation dmg is reflected with how much power you have – seeing as you have no points in the power trait line…i don’t think its that worth it.

You can get quite a bit of power thru gear choices.

I’m not entirely sure who you quoted in your post, but you are quite right. With power as a major stat on all the gear, I get very high power. In addition, since this build is focused on toughness and vitality, master sharpening stones are incredibly effective. I’m not ingame right now, but if I recall correctly, I usually have around 2200 power, and more when might stacking from shattered strength starts to kick in.

In general, retaliation does between 320 and 380 per hit.

Oh they must have deleted their post or a mod helped them to it. I’ve had mods delete some of my posts and send me pm warnings because they weren’t “relevant to the conversation” or something, I don’t remember the exact wording lmao

Have you ever considered using that signet that give 50% extra health to all your illusions? Plus when activated it recharges all shatters. It would make sense i think because 50% more hp to Phantasmal defender means 50% more dmg you dont take.

Though i can only see anyone being able to swap decoy out for it… since the other two utilities are mandatory.

Reckless.6325:

Have you ever considered using that signet that give 50% extra health to all your illusions? Plus when activated it recharges all shatters. It would make sense i think because 50% more hp to Phantasmal defender means 50% more dmg you dont take.

Though i can only see anyone being able to swap decoy out for it… since the other two utilities are mandatory.

Well, the first and most major reason why I would never take this signet is because the passive effect is severely bugged. The hp bonus it is supposed to give to the illusions doesn’t actually kick in for 8-10 seconds after they have been summoned. This obviously makes it useless for the passive effect, and therefor not a viable part of the build.

However, let us just assume for a moment that it works properly. In this situation I still would not take the signet, and here is why:

Firstly, the way I play the Mesmer involves a massive amount of rapid location shifts and target drops. Between phase retreat, illusionary swap, mirror images, and decoy, I am warping around in puffs of butterflies or completely invisible a large amount of the time. This makes it difficult to immediately identify which Mesmer is the real one. To compound this effect, I attempt to keep any identifying features to a minimum. This means I stay away from mantras and signets, as those do not show up on clones. Food doesn’t either, but food buffs are too good to pass up. For that reason, I would not take the signet.

Assuming I got past my shyness for signets and took it, the utility it would replace would be mirror images. This is because decoy is too valuable as a target drop to pass up. The passive bonus would be lovely, but the active would be almost useless. This build does not have extremely high clone generation, and even with mirror images, I rarely find myself in a situation where I have more clones to shatter than shatters to use. Recharging the shatters while dropping mirror images would only make this problem worse.

I hope this helped explain my reasoning well enough, and I apologize for the wall of text.

IIRC signet of illusions “pulses” its effect every 10s, so it’s not always 8-10 secs before it works. It still combos nicely with iDefender since it is so beefy it usually survives until the passive effect kicks in. Also the whole signet showing up in your buff bar is kind of moot. You’re going to have something there regardless (like your perma-retal), and there are many other ways to discern the real player anyway. It may fool some players but these are bad players. I don’t use Signet of Illusions simply because there’s just no room on my bar though.

Now I understand you’re mostly a WvWer, but I’ve adapted it your build for tPvP and I must say it shows potential.

For gear adjustments I’m using power/tough/heal power instead of power/tough/vit for more sustainability, and using runes of melandru for the tough + stun/condi duration reduction as conditions can be a big issue and remove 1 condition on heal trait is simply not enough. I generally slot null field in addition to this, though that slot that I change up depending on the comp I face. My utility bar is pretty tight as 2 of the slots are automatically taken by iDefender and Portal.

For trait adjustments I dropped 10 points from chaos and picked up restorative illusions. The synergy this has with illusionary persona is amazing as it simply tacks on an additional ~1.1K heal (w/ cleric’s ammy) onto each shatter (making for example a 1 clone shatter heal for ~2.5K). Then further combined with the shatter reset @ 50% health trait and you become quite the healing machine. While you do lose a bit of protection uptime you can still get good protection uptime because remember you basically tanking hits on the point so you are getting a lot of chaos armor procs, and I usually combo phase retreat with both chaos storm and null field for 10 addition seconds of chaos armor uptime.

All in all though very nice build! I was looking to make a bunker build due to all the various builds ppl are sending to harass the mesmer in tpvp nowadays (symbol guards, D/D eles, trap rangers, caltrop thieves, etc.) and it is kind of funny how people get confused when they realize they can’t kill me.

Skyro.3108:

IIRC signet of illusions “pulses” its effect every 10s, so it’s not always 8-10 secs before it works. It still combos nicely with iDefender since it is so beefy it usually survives until the passive effect kicks in. Also the whole signet showing up in your buff bar is kind of moot. You’re going to have something there regardless (like your perma-retal), and there are many other ways to discern the real player anyway. It may fool some players but these are bad players. I don’t use Signet of Illusions simply because there’s just no room on my bar though.

Now I understand you’re mostly a WvWer, but I’ve adapted it your build for tPvP and I must say it shows potential.

For gear adjustments I’m using power/tough/heal power instead of power/tough/vit for more sustainability, and using runes of melandru for the tough + stun/condi duration reduction as conditions can be a big issue and remove 1 condition on heal trait is simply not enough. I generally slot null field in addition to this, though that slot that I change up depending on the comp I face. My utility bar is pretty tight as 2 of the slots are automatically taken by iDefender and Portal.

For trait adjustments I dropped 10 points from chaos and picked up restorative illusions. The synergy this has with illusionary persona is amazing as it simply tacks on an additional ~1.1K heal (w/ cleric’s ammy) onto each shatter (making for example a 1 clone shatter heal for ~2.5K). Then further combined with the shatter reset @ 50% health trait and you become quite the healing machine. While you do lose a bit of protection uptime you can still get good protection uptime because remember you basically tanking hits on the point so you are getting a lot of chaos armor procs, and I usually combo phase retreat with both chaos storm and null field for 10 addition seconds of chaos armor uptime.

All in all though very nice build! I was looking to make a bunker build due to all the various builds ppl are sending to harass the mesmer in tpvp nowadays (symbol guards, D/D eles, trap rangers, caltrop thieves, etc.) and it is kind of funny how people get confused when they realize they can’t kill me.

I understand the synergy with the the signet of illusions with the defender, but regardless of that, I had several more reasons as to why I wouldn’t take it.

At any rate, when I’m in tPvP, ill usually have a few amulets with me, one of which is shamans, depending on what I’m facing. Null field is a utility I common run with, but another favorite of mine is arcane thievery, especially against thieves. There are few things more fun than purposefully tanking a ton of caltrops hits, then politely handing over the 18 stack of bleed to the thief and watching them flip out.

When taking the shamans amulet, restorative illusions is definitely a really powerful trait. Another interesting one to fiddle with is the restorative mantras. This soaks up a utility unfortunately, but has the interesting effect of aoe healing all of your illusions as well, which can significantly help with sustain.

Yeah mantras aren’t very viable in tPvP.

Also I think you overestimate the effect of transferring bleeds to caltrops thieves since they have that cleanse in stealth trait.

Skyro.3108:

Yeah mantras aren’t very viable in tPvP.

Also I think you overestimate the effect of transferring bleeds to caltrops thieves since they have that cleanse in stealth trait.

Generally I don’t transfer a stack of bleeds to a thief with the intention of allowing them to easily leave and cleanse it. The bleed transfer would be the immediate prelude to a illusionary leap/swap + shatter burst.

You are right about mantras, it is just an interesting trait with a bit of synergy regarding the clone healing. Generally I take mantra of pain for the heal spam when I am using my fully phantasm focused fractals/pve build, because I can set up my phantasms, and then turn into the group healer.

Hey Pyro, great build thanks for sharing. Quick question, I know you use tuning crystals but whats the food? Thanks again!

influx.5372:

Hey Pyro, great build thanks for sharing. Quick question, I know you use tuning crystals but whats the food? Thanks again!

Actually, I use sharpening stones. Retaliation scales off of raw power, and so I aim to maximize that.

As for my other food, I have no idea of the names, so ill get back to you with them as soon as I can hop ingame.

Alrighty, here are the foods that I use. Normally, I run with Loaves of omnomberry bread. This gives 100 vitality and 70 toughness, which is a great complement to my build.

If I start to get into a sticky situation however, I will switch to a Bowl of saffron-scented poultry soup. This is +70 healing, but the other effect is much more important. The effect is removing a condition every time you use a healing skill, with a 10 second cooldown. It just so turns out that this is not limited to your main heal skill. As a matter of fact, this will proc on EVERY bit of healing you get, whether it be from regeneration, restorative mantras, restorative illusions, anything. At its most basic level, this allows your main heal skill to remove 2 conditions at once, due to the trait inspiration IV. Other than that, it allows a static 1 condition removal per 10 seconds based on just the regeneration that you will have active at all times.

There are other useful foods out there, but these are the two that I switch between.

hey Pyro,

I’d like to try this build out, but the link doesn’t seem to go anywhere atm.

I just turned lvl60 and was wondering if this would work well while leveling, seems like it was be pretty easy. Which traits would you recommend having first, at lvl60?

Here is a good link to the OP’s build. You MUST copy and paste the TEXT of the link into a new browser tab. Don’t copy the link itself, because you’ll get the Anet obfuscated version if you do that. You can also get to his build with a non-obfuscated link by going to his video and looking at the extended description for the video. There’s a clean link there.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW8dlwzSq3UzoGb9IhJF9G5nUA9lj6x2B/3B;T8AA1ytEaJ1StlSLqsMZJgymlLLZWrPGfsBB

jeeshadow.7624:

hey Pyro,

I’d like to try this build out, but the link doesn’t seem to go anywhere atm.

I just turned lvl60 and was wondering if this would work well while leveling, seems like it was be pretty easy. Which traits would you recommend having first, at lvl60?

Hi jee. Links not working is a common problem on these forums, and easily fixed by simply copying and pasting the link URL into your address bar.

As far as using the build for leveling goes, you are certainly welcome to try. It is certainly a very resilient build. The problem is that it lacks some damage in pve. What I would recommend instead is a phantasm focused build. That way, you don’t have to worry about getting close to things to kill them. The full traits would be 10/10/0/30/20, using greatsword and staff mainly, but carrying a sword and focus just in case. You would get 5 points in illusions first, then the 10 in Dom and dueling, taking 15% increased illusion damage and granting fury to phantasms. Then put your traits all into inspiration, and finally last into illusions.

For the insp traits, I usually take condie removal on heal, 20% increased illusion hp, and mantra heals, which I swap out for the focus trait or glamours depending on the situation. It is a highl versatile build, and really fantastic in pve.

@Pyroatheist, Hi. Im wery impressed how you combined the traits and overall build to synergice with eachother. Its obious you can follow a ability and how it get affected or affect al other parts of te build in a posetive way. I alos like the fact you combine passive survival (gear, boons) with acctive survival (staff, sword, 2 stealths and shatters).

Two questions, have you tested to add Vigorous Revalation in inspiration for more energy?

How do the spec work vs boon stackers, do it become 2 healing paladins in a end of days wow duel?

Also about the Link, if you want to get the build link to work for clickers get rid of the need to explain for somone every day how to compy / pastle the build you can use:

http://tinyurl.com/

This recreate a working and shorter link that work on A-nets forum. Its Mark Katzbach A-net dev who mentioned this about build links.

/Cheers Osicat