Guild Wars 2

Pyroatheist.9031:

Skyro.3108:

I feel the remove condition on heal trait is really underwhelming unless combined with mantra of recovery. The vigor on shatter trait IMO is much better as it gives you vigor even with 0 clone shatters with Illusionary Persona and increases your survivability much more with the extra dodges.

While condition removal isn’t abundant in this build, you do have a built in condition removal via combo’ing Focus 5 (whirl finisher) with Focus 4 (light field). Supplemented with Null Field gives you adequate condition removal IMO.

Null field really has no place in this build. All three of my utilities are extremely important, and that is one of the reasons that I take as much condition removal as possible. In another post I discussed what food I use, and my food has a condition removal effect on healing every 10 seconds. When you stack up that effect with the trait of removal, it becomes very difficult to get conditions to stick to me. The whirl finisher in temporal curtain is amazing, but not always reliable to do.

Condition removal is of absolute highest priority in this build, simply because it is a bunker build. There is no innate defense against damaging conditions other than removal, necessitating as much removal as possible. Additionally, cripple and chill both severely impeded my mobility and ability to disengage from a fight at will, becoming extremely dangerous. Lastly, poison interferes with my healing, which is a very important component of how this build works.

Without every last shred of condition removal I can throw together, conditions start to eat this build. Remember that this build is based on actually getting hit and not dodging every attack. Many condition applying attacks have a lot of small hits, making them the ideal situation for retaliation damage. In this build, I want to tank those attacks for my retaliation damage output, and then simply be able to remove the conditions applied after the attack is finished.

I’m speaking from a tPvP perspective where as a bunker mesmer your job would be to sit on points so you don’t have food buffs and you won’t be much disengaging and such as you would in WvW. Still, a trait which removes 1 condition every 21 secs at best is pretty underwhelming no matter how you slice it, especially when you consider the alternative which is basically a trait that virtually gives you perma-vigor. It is however pretty good when paired with Mantra of Recovery due it proc’ing with each charge use, the lower recharge of MoR, and the fact that MoR charges are instant and thus can be used to cleanse important conditions immediately. Of course this isn’t a mantra build though so that is point is moot.

Since I’m sitting on points and tanking damage rather than moving around and avoiding damage this makes combo’ing Focus 5 > Focus 4 very reliable, and why Null Field is also very effective as you will sit in it for its entire duration, plus it combos into another chaos armor. These 2 combined with runes of melandru which is quite effective for short duration conditions such as chill and I’ve found conditions to be quite managable.

I don’t WvW much but personally I think this build (well, with some tweaks like grabbing Restorative Illusions) has much more potential in tPvP than WvW since tPvP bunkers play a more pronounced role. You can also countercomp in tPvP such that you can switch to this build from a shatter build when the opposing team’s strat is to aggressively attack the backpoint with classes that can defeat shatter mesmers 1v1.

@Skyro: You are right, in tPvP the situation is vastly different. Turtling on a point does make the whirl finisher very reliable, and that one combo alone removes 4-5 conditions. Another point is that null field is a big team utility item, and a very very strong choice in a tpvp situation, depending on the map and your role.

Pyroatheist.9031:

cheeseonbike.5607:

Jofu.9637:

Hi you mentioned that when using illusionary leap and switch position + temporal curtain will give about 14 sec of retaliation but it didn’t happen to me? Could you point out what could possible went wrong?

Edit: tried it again, ahaha i needed to stand on the actual line for that to work

I got retaliation but not 14 seconds. Am i doing something wrong?

If you got something around 12 seconds, that is just a difference in buff duration increase stat.

However, if you got between 6 and 7, you are only activating one part of the leap combo. To get both parts, you must stand on the temporal curtain line, activate illusionary leap (combo 1), and then activate illusionary swap (combo 2). Swap must be activated while you are still on the temporal curtain line in order for the combo to work.

Don’t need to be on the line in my experience your leap and swap just have to cross it.

jportell.2197:

Pyroatheist.9031:

cheeseonbike.5607:

Jofu.9637:

Hi you mentioned that when using illusionary leap and switch position + temporal curtain will give about 14 sec of retaliation but it didn’t happen to me? Could you point out what could possible went wrong?

Edit: tried it again, ahaha i needed to stand on the actual line for that to work

I got retaliation but not 14 seconds. Am i doing something wrong?

If you got something around 12 seconds, that is just a difference in buff duration increase stat.

However, if you got between 6 and 7, you are only activating one part of the leap combo. To get both parts, you must stand on the temporal curtain line, activate illusionary leap (combo 1), and then activate illusionary swap (combo 2). Swap must be activated while you are still on the temporal curtain line in order for the combo to work.

Don’t need to be on the line in my experience your leap and swap just have to cross it.

That may be true, but if your target moves from one side of the line to the other, you now suddenly lose one or both of your leap combos. The only way to ensure the combo finisher is by standing on the line itself.

I have another 1 vs many video up, found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T--u3A25GI&feature=youtu.be

Pyroatheist.9031:

jportell.2197:

Pyroatheist.9031:

cheeseonbike.5607:

Jofu.9637:

Hi you mentioned that when using illusionary leap and switch position + temporal curtain will give about 14 sec of retaliation but it didn’t happen to me? Could you point out what could possible went wrong?

Edit: tried it again, ahaha i needed to stand on the actual line for that to work

I got retaliation but not 14 seconds. Am i doing something wrong?

If you got something around 12 seconds, that is just a difference in buff duration increase stat.

However, if you got between 6 and 7, you are only activating one part of the leap combo. To get both parts, you must stand on the temporal curtain line, activate illusionary leap (combo 1), and then activate illusionary swap (combo 2). Swap must be activated while you are still on the temporal curtain line in order for the combo to work.

Don’t need to be on the line in my experience your leap and swap just have to cross it.

That may be true, but if your target moves from one side of the line to the other, you now suddenly lose one or both of your leap combos. The only way to ensure the combo finisher is by standing on the line itself.

Correct. And for some reason recently if I am not on the line anymore it doesn’t work just for my clone. Hmmm… :/

Finally finished gathering the gear to try out this build and I love it. I tried it once before but with my Knight’s gear and it just wasn’t enough hp, it didn’t work well at all, but with the Soldier gear it works awesome. I ran around and did a lot of solo yak killing and camp flipping. A number of different times I had thieves try to kill me and run away as they found themselves suddenly near death, only managed to catch one tho haha. D/d eles drop like boxes of rocks. Had two d/d eles try to take me at a camp I was in the middle of flipping and they were downed before they knew what happened. The eight guys that came in behind them killed me tho xD

This is definitely more reliable than the shatter cat power omgered your insta dead from my burst build I have adjusted it recently from 20 in toughness to 20 in precision. Downside is I don’t get as much armor. Upside is I have more clone sources and still get a high Retal/regen uptime and also two sources of vigor with the 10 minor in dueling and 10 major in inspiration… It is quite great.

Great read. I’m still a baby, only lvl 15 right now and just bought the game couple of weeks ago, sadly the constant d/c making it hard for me to lvl on a constant basis. It’s been a blast playing the class, running staff, sword+focus or GS when the mobs are higher lvl and I can’t afford being hit.

I take it this is a more lvl 80 build rather than a lvln build?

Since i’m stubborn, could I lvl with this? If so where should I start putting points into for traits? Hopefully Anet can start w/some fixes w/these d/c’s b/c I really do enjoy this class.

And off-topic, does anyone know where to find the combo finisher list on what each field does when you apply a finisher? Thanks =)

Whoosah.8106:

Great read. I’m still a baby, only lvl 15 right now and just bought the game couple of weeks ago, sadly the constant d/c making it hard for me to lvl on a constant basis. It’s been a blast playing the class, running staff, sword+focus or GS when the mobs are higher lvl and I can’t afford being hit.

I take it this is a more lvl 80 build rather than a lvln build?

Since i’m stubborn, could I lvl with this? If so where should I start putting points into for traits? Hopefully Anet can start w/some fixes w/these d/c’s b/c I really do enjoy this class.

And off-topic, does anyone know where to find the combo finisher list on what each field does when you apply a finisher? Thanks =)

Hi Whoosah, good to see you working on the best class in the game. You had a couple of questions here, so I’ll answer them 1 by 1.

First off, combo fields/finishers: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
That page on the wiki should have all the information you need about them. As a general rule of thumb, for game mechanics questions the wiki is a great source of knowledge.

This build is definitely a level 80 build, and is very difficult to perform effectively without gear that has the proper stats, let alone the trait points. You could attempt to level with this build, but it does have rather low damage in PvE, and I highly recommend you not try to do that.

Instead, I have created another build, purely designed for PvE. It can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Supporting-Phantasm-Build/first#post1384283

That forum post explains it for the most part. To make it into a leveling build, you assign your trait points as follows: 5 into illusions, 10 into domination, 10 into dueling, 20 into inspiration, 15 more into illusions, and the rest into inspiration.

If you have any more questions about my builds or anything else, just go ahead and post them in the threads, or send me a PM and I’ll do my best to help you out with them.

Awesome thanks!!! Hopefully a fix for my d/c’s comes up soon. Really do enjoy the game and this class love the utility of it so far as lvl 15 ^^

I would go with 6x Melandru, Dolyak, Earth, or Orrian runes. Probably Melandru. Seems like the weakest point in this build is:

1. Condition spam, particularly sustained poison.
2. General vulnerability before you get warmed up.

CC/condition reduction would help avoid those problematic situations.

Think I would also drop the last 10 in Illu for Blade Training or Chaos for Debilitating Dissipation. Or Dom for the Cripple. Blade Training would allow for obnoxiously frequent BF along with faster leap finisher cycles. On second thought, you still would never get two sets of leaps on your own fields, but it would still help use the fields of others, nevermind the more flexible use of the leap/immobilize separate from the combo finisher.

One thing to consider with a build like this is that the fights are long, sustained, and you end up going through a large quantity of clones. The on-death Clone traits are pretty entertaining particularly when you have little / low demand for shatters. The Chaos one is kind of random and kind of meh, but adds some notable damage. Also adds 100 Tough and 10% boon duration. Crippling Dissipation is rather useful in general, but I’m not entirely sure if you’d want to kite most targets with the focus on Retaliation. Perhaps more an optimization for 1 v manymany.

The on-demand F4 is useful, but it seems like you would always have random illusions left over anyways. In this kind of build I would perceive IP as more of a crutch to overcome rather than a truly added-value tool.

The last consideration is that for winning long, sustained fights, poison is particularly notable to diminish the enemy’s healing. It occurs to me that the Orrian runes, despite not offering Vit/Tough, would have a useful place with this strategy to suppress other “outlast” builds.

Ok, interesting suggestions. I’ll take them 1 at a time.

Runes: I took a look at most of them. Dolyaks are a poor choice, this I know. I conciously chose soldier runes over dollars because they are very similar, except dolyaks focused on toughness, and soldiers focused on vitality.

Earth runes are poor as well. 2 of their special effects are random on-hits with long cooldowns. I don’t like that mechanic at all, and the 6 rune bonus is not useful for this build anyway.

That brings us to Melandru and orrian runes. Now these are interesting. The stun duration isnt too important, as I have more stunbreakers in this build than you can shake a stick at (also curious if it affects knockdowns/launches type skills). -25% condition duration, on the other hand, is very nice, and deserves some thourough testing in HotM.

Orrian runes are also interesting. The condition damage helps with confusion bursting, and that on-hit effect has a 10s cooldown, which is quite fine. Added to the fact that I build around getting hit, these runes also deserve some testing.

On to the other stuff. To start, blade training does not decrease the cooldown on leap/swap. Known bug, and quite annoying.

About IP. It is interesting that you view it as a crutch rather than a tool. Lets see if I can correct that view. Especially in a 1vmany situation, strong stomps are really important. IP is the tool that allows a Mesmer to successfully stomp most classes in the game, and there are definitely times when I don’t have clones around and need to stomp, as they were downed by a shatter. This build doesn’t have the clone generation of other builds, I can’t rely on them always being ready.
Additionally, it makes my mind wracks 30% more powerful, puts 30% more stacks of confusion on people, and allows for a more powerful and on-demand daze.

Aside from IP, 30 in illusions is important for the cooldown on cry, as that is the source of a lot of my retaliation.

Long story short, 30 illusions and 20 inspiration are the 2 parts of my build that are rock solid. Changing them would cause the entire build to start to fall apart. With that in mind, let’s look at your suggestions, remembering points would have to come out of chaos.

Debilitating dissipation can apply weakness, bleed, or vulnerability. Bleed and vuln are both not really great for this build, and I wouldn’t want to take a trait that is only 1/3 effective.

Crippling dissipation is more useful. The problem is that I don’t really have an issue with people running circles around me. You did see that problem though, and you are correct. I need them to get to me and hit me, and I have plenty of tools for restricting movement in this spec anyway. It also doesn’t help with chase downs, which is the one place it might be great.

Lastly, blade training. A low cd blurred frenzy would be awesome. Unfortunately, that is all I get out of that trait. The cd doesn’t work on leap, and the precision is useless for me. To get this, I would be losing 10% boon duration, 150 armor, and staff cooldowns, and I just don’t think that’s worth it.

Nice videos and guide.

this build does not work for me :| retaliation never comes up and I die in like 3.2 seconds

LordArrgh.8073:

this build does not work for me :| retaliation never comes up and I die in like 3.2 seconds

Are you level 80? Do you have the right gear? Did you actually read anything in any of the posts in this entire thread?

yes lvl 80 bought the pvt karma gear read the whole thread and watched the videos superior runes of the soldier are over 1g

Link does not work anymore, anyone have a copy of the build?

http://tinyurl.com/be5z3pv

shortend URL for the build

LordArrgh.8073:

this build does not work for me :| retaliation never comes up and I die in like 3.2 seconds

lol the only way I can figure is that you don’t have the right traits selected, or wrong gear, or aren’t standing on temporal curtain when you leap/swap, or a combination of. I don’t quite have all the right accessories, and therefore not quite as much hp as Pyro, and this build still rocks for me. My weapons, armor, runes are all correct as per the build. I am flat out a tank in WvW. The build also works fine for me gathering in Orr and such things, lower lvl dungeons it’s also fine, higher lvl dungeons the mobs just hit so hard it doesn’t work lol

ATourist.8359:

Link does not work anymore, anyone have a copy of the build?

You have to select the text and copy paste it.

LordArrgh.8073:

yes lvl 80 bought the pvt karma gear read the whole thread and watched the videos superior runes of the soldier are over 1g

I thought the karma gear was power precision tough? rather than power vit tough(which is what you should have for this build)

the yellows you buy in WvW for karma are pvt

Invaders gear ..is what they are called

LordArrgh.8073:

the yellows you buy in WvW for karma are pvt

Oh yeah, I looked at those once, saw they weren’t exotic stats and promptly forgot they existed x)

LordArrgh.8073:

the yellows you buy in WvW for karma are pvt

Invaders gear ..is what they are called

Ok, lets try to troubleshoot a bit. Firstly, are you taking Illusions II, and then using cry of frustration? Secondly, did you read and follow my instructions to the letter on how to use the double leap combo with temporal curtain? Both of these things should give you retaliation in a very straightforward and simple manner. Dying in 3.2 seconds is a bit more complicated, but we can get to that later.

OK so I think Ive found why I’m dieing so fast my stats are … power 1594 attack 2428 1513 toughness 2328 armor 1662 Vitality 22524 health

LordArrgh.8073:

OK so I think Ive found why I’m dieing so fast my stats are … power 1594 attack 2428 1513 toughness 2328 armor 1662 Vitality 22524 health

Those stats are quite reasonable. Are you able to apply retaliation yet?

sometimes …and evidently it doesn’t work against AoE or seige

LordArrgh.8073:

sometimes …and evidently it doesn’t work against AoE or seige

Retaliation most definitely works against aoes. Siege is an interesting one, and I don’t quite know the answer. I’ll need to run some tests for that actually. I advise practicing the temporal curtain leap combos on the target golems in HotM to get the timing and placement down properly.

Hey Pyroatheist, do you mind posting your character screen (H) so I can check your stats?
PM would be good as well if you don’t want it to be public.
TIA!

eleven.3170:

Hey Pyroatheist, do you mind posting your character screen (H) so I can check your stats?
PM would be good as well if you don’t want it to be public.
TIA!

Here you go.

Thank you very much for the fast reply.
I was wondering if you tried knight armor (soldier runes) and valkyrie accessories.
Would that work?

eleven.3170:

Thank you very much for the fast reply.
I was wondering if you tried knight armor (soldier runes) and valkyrie accessories.
Would that work?

There would be no point to it. Knight armor has precision as a minor stat. Even with a full set of knight gear, my crit chance would still be very low. Valkyrie has no precision, just crit damage. Because the crit chance would still be abysmal, there wouldn’t really be any point to the crit damage that valkyrie offers.

That makes sense.
Reason for asking, I was hoping to use my existing Knight armor to try this build.
Looks like I’m farming AC tonight.
Thanks Pyro.

Hey, just wanted to chime in on the support PvE twist I threw on this build. I -finally- got enough PTV (still not quite optimized as best I could hope) to have a solid shot at it.

Stats:
Power: 1,716
Precis: 1,173
Tough: 1,780
Vit: 1,672

Armor: 2,700 HP: 22,642 Cond Damage: 379 Healing Pow: 465

Traits: 0/0/20/30/20

Chaos V, X Inspiration I or IV, VIII, X Illusions II, VII

Runes: Superior Runes of Altruism

Overall it plays pretty well. 100% uptime on Retal and Protection, lots of Chaos Armor, my mantras AoE heal and Mantra of Recovery provides a 100% uptime on 3x might + ~50% uptime on Fury, mitigating the overall lack of precision in the build. I’ve done a few dungeons with it and felt useful.

I’m using a Rabid staff (Bifrost) cause it would feel a shame to not use the rainbows when I can. If I get higher in Fracts I’d probably use a PTV staff to fully optimize and working on PTV amulet + backpiece.

Thanks again for the awesome build Pyro, it’s made my supporting really entertaining.

Zileve.2089:

Hey, just wanted to chime in on the support PvE twist I threw on this build. I -finally- got enough PTV (still not quite optimized as best I could hope) to have a solid shot at it.

Stats:
Power: 1,716
Precis: 1,173
Tough: 1,780
Vit: 1,672

Armor: 2,700 HP: 22,642 Cond Damage: 379 Healing Pow: 465

Traits: 0/0/20/30/20

Chaos V, X Inspiration I or IV, VIII, X Illusions II, VII

Runes: Superior Runes of Altruism

Overall it plays pretty well. 100% uptime on Retal and Protection, lots of Chaos Armor, my mantras AoE heal and Mantra of Recovery provides a 100% uptime on 3x might + ~50% uptime on Fury, mitigating the overall lack of precision in the build. I’ve done a few dungeons with it and felt useful.

I’m using a Rabid staff (Bifrost) cause it would feel a shame to not use the rainbows when I can. If I get higher in Fracts I’d probably use a PTV staff to fully optimize and working on PTV amulet + backpiece.

Thanks again for the awesome build Pyro, it’s made my supporting really entertaining.

Good to see your adaptation is working well. A rabid staff isn’t the worst thing in the world. I’ve actually been using the ascended vassar’s ring, which has condition damage as a major stat, and a mix of toughness, vitality, power, and a bit of precision as minor stats just to put a bit more kick on my confusion.

The stun duration isnt too important, as I have more stunbreakers in this build than you can shake a stick at (also curious if it affects knockdowns/launches type skills). -25% condition duration, on the other hand, is very nice, and deserves some thourough testing in HotM.

Random aside: don’t neglect that many players fine-tune their condition duration to barely meet the last tick of their <insert condition, usually Bleed>, so any -% duration tends to break that and cause their conditions to lose yet another tick -- generally reducing their condition damage output by 30-35%, depending. More importantly reducing the uptime of poison’s debuff to your regen, anyways.

Orrian runes are also interesting. The condition damage helps with confusion bursting, and that on-hit effect has a 10s cooldown, which is quite fine.

I picked that up from another guy who posted his Rabid C/t/p tank-ish condition spec. Didn’t realize how low the ICD on the poison proc was until then. It’s rather nifty, although it’s been so long since I’ve played sPvP that I failed miserably when I tried the other day.

About IP. It is interesting that you view it as a crutch rather than a tool. Lets see if I can correct that view.

I’m well aware of the value of IP — I was one of the first to use it back when everyone and their brother used phantasm army builds.

I suppose if the extra uptime on Cry is that significant (sidenote: I haven’t actually used the build, so these things are probably more clear in actual play), then the cooldown for the 10 points is the main point (along with the utility of IP).

In retrospect, “the other options are rather lackluster” is probably what it comes down to more than anything.

I may have to try the spec out in sPvP sometime to be a tanktroll.

eleven.3170:

That makes sense.
Reason for asking, I was hoping to use my existing Knight armor to try this build.
Looks like I’m farming AC tonight.

You could try it. The toughness is significantly more important than the vit in the build. It’s not like the build would break with Knight’s gear. It’d just be more vulnerable to condition damage or heavy burst.

@EasymodeX: After a careful examination of my build and playstyle, I’m forced to say that your judgement of IP is accurate, under 2 conditions. First, the other traits need to be more worthwhile than it, which they are not. The really important distinction though, is whether the fight is a straight 1v1 duel, or a 1vs anything more than 1. In a duel, I can be careful and effective with my clone management, and always have a shatter ready. In any other sort of fight, the extra damage can easily wipe clones at a critical moment, and if I need distortion or an interrupt NOW, IP is the only option.

That effect you mention about fine-tuning condition duration also makes me wonder if the normal food I use would be better replaced with condition duration lowering food. I’ll need to run some calculations and see if that is the case.

As far as the gear thing goes, the vit is more important than you think. As tanky as this build is, Mesmer is still a light armor class. A lot of the damage mitigation comes simply from having a large health pool, and out healing the damage after the spike. This also helps with soaking up bleed spam and the like. The build wouldn’t break with knights/Valkyrie gear, but 1 stat on each piece would be completely useless, and it would be less effective because of that.

That effect you mention about fine-tuning condition duration also makes me wonder if the normal food I use would be better replaced with condition duration lowering food. I’ll need to run some calculations and see if that is the case.

I would suggest ‘no’ for a general WvW case, due to the prevalence of direct damage.

Unless the combination of that + Melandru suddenly make conditions completely non-threatening. … Which may be the case. Lulz. Haha that would actually be pretty funny. 1s immobilizes would be a stutter.

[Gear]

Right, but he said that he’d have to go farm AC, which is synonymous with flaying myself with a spork. So I figure if I were him, I’d definitely go mess with the build before I’d have the fortitude to step into a PvE dungeon.

Awww, ac isn’t that bad with a competent team. Also, when you remember that the only other dungeons with pvt gear are SE and HotW, ac starts to look a whole lot more appealing.

The food I use now is still condition mitigation. It removes a condition whenever I have a heal effect applied to me, with a cd of 10 seconds. Because it procs on regen application, regen ticks, or w/e, it is an automatic condition removal every 10 seconds. The difference between that and condition duration is a bit more subtle. The balance is going to be in the number of conditions applied. With small numbers of conditions, a full removal is more effective, but with large numbers removing one is less effective than lowering g the duration on all of them. I might just have to carry both foods and eat one or the other mid-combat.

I have to say that this is the most fun build that I have played for mesmer and I don’t even PvP primarily at all yet. I have been using this build to get my armor and 100% completion and I just really enjoy the survivability. In PvE it is enjoyable just because I know that I can handle as many mobs as the game can pretty much throw at me, and at the same time deal damage out based off of that.

I have tried glass cannon builds with GS and dual swords, etc .. but I really always miss the staff and actually having health and not always being close to dying if the situation is not 100% controlled. With this build I can find myself in crazy situations and either get control over them or at least get away.

Anyway, just wanted to show my appreciation for this build. I have full AC (yes I was grinding it) gear power+toughness+vitality .. plus the karma trinkets from Grenth that are soldier’s stats (missing a ring, still need to get another). On items that I have not gotten soldier’s yet .. I have been going carrion for condition damage and have been pretty happy with it.

Btw I use Illusionary Elasticity instead of Illusionary Invigoration right now, but all others are the same.

For gear I am actually using 2x rune of water, 2x rune of the monk, and 2x rune of the earth for the boon duration and protection duration. Not sure whether that is significantly worse than full soldiers ..

Pyroatheist.9031:

Awww, ac isn’t that bad with a competent team. Also, when you remember that the only other dungeons with pvt gear are SE and HotW, ac starts to look a whole lot more appealing.

I’ve done 1 dungeon run in GW2 one time since open beta, and that was AC story mode. I was PvE’d out for a month.

DX

Edit: I think I just found the entrance to SE in the world last night.

Edit2: Yeah, I’m saving my WvW tokens to outfit an alt with a set of PVT though.

Just to let everyone know, if you need P/V/T gear and don’t want to run AC forever to get it you can also get the same gear from either WvW OR from the Karma dealers in the Temples, each one has a different piece of P/V/T gear (only one I am missing is Leggings but I use both Leggings and Chest from WvW vendor). Also for the P/T/V accessories you can get them all from the Karma Merchant in the Temple of Grenth in Orr.

Was trying this build out last night in some WvW and it is great with more then one enemy, I was able to keep up vs 2-4 players at a time and still come away winning. This build also is good if you need to be the Mesmer Portal Bomb since you have a high survivability and can run into a zerg with stealth long enough to pop that exit portal and stay alive for the fight. Only problem I had was vs D/D Thieves that would get the drop on me, I guess I need to get the rotation down better but if I saw them coming it was game over for them.

@Contritition: Illusionary elasticity is a good choice for PvE. I would take that trait back when I still used this build in PvE. The cooldown refresh is primarily a pvp thing. If you have burnt distortion and you drop below 50% hp, chances are you’re gonna need it again real quick.

As far as the runes go, I’m not really a fan of that boon duration stacking mix. This build in particular really doesn’t need it, with the exception of protection uptime, which shouldn’t really be a problem in pve. I’m definitely considering some other runes than the soldiers mix I use, but the boon duration is really just overkill.

@EasymodeX: I tested out Melandru runes last night in HotM with the help of a friend. The results were such that I immediately went and bought a full set of them, and a bunch of the -40% duration food. I’ll be updating the guide and linked build to reflect these changes. Running in wvw with those stats is amazing. Conditions bounce off me like crazy. Immobilize, cripple, chill and the like become hardly noticeable. I can even camp in caltrops and get no more than 3 stacks of bleed on me.

Inc nerf.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

Perhaps, though I hope not. If it gets nerfed, I can just go back to my original build which works fine. I must say though, since most disabling conditions have a low base duration to balance them, having the -65% duration really turns my build into quite the juggernaut, shrugging off immobilize and things without even needing to burn condition removals for it. Just last night, I had a magguman zerg of over 20 people (not exaggerating, I swear) chase me clear across their entire borderlands for over 4 minutes before they caught me by waypointing a group ahead to cut me off. Nothing they threw at me would stick, so I was just able to keep trucking ahead of them.

I dunno if this was mentioned, but for an added bit of CC you can place the Temporal curtain, and leap-swap over it and then activate Into the Void, you still have a moment to swap to staff and Phase Retreat backwards over where the field was for the 3rd retaliation effect.

So the light field effect remains after you use Into the Void?

Sounds nifty.

EasymodeX.4062:

So the light field effect remains after you use Into the Void?

Sounds nifty.

That’s correct. I explained this effect a bit more in depth earlier in the thread. I’ll add something about that when I update the main post tonight.