Guild Wars 2

(Part 1 of 3)
Note: the build link is in the middle of Part 2 below.

The following idea are only 10% my own invention. They’re just a summary of what I’ve learned. Much credit to Shattercat, Seven Mesmer (Grimms), and PyroAthiest for their shatter build threads and ideas and feedback. Also to Nyite from my own guild for her observations and experimentation.

A lot of the hot builds you see on the forums are for specialists who like to do sPvP or small patrol roaming in WvW. And who like tough one-vs-many fights. This is especially true of “shatter” builds. But I’ve found a shatter build that I’ve adapted for WvW zerg vs zerg frontline fighting, and which is also great for PvE and dungeons.

A “shatter” build typically features 30 points In Illusions specifically to get the Illusionary Persona trait (XI). This build type also features main hand sword. These two aspects mean that you plan to spend some time up close and personal so that both you and your clones will be in shatter range when you want to shatter.

If you are fighting from range only, with ranged weapons, then half of your illusions pop too far from the target and have to run in towards the target to shatter. Especially in big fights and WvW, some of those illusions might not survive long enough to get into shatter range.

Many shatter builds feature staff on the weapon swap to serve as a getaway stick to gain range when things are getting too hot in melee range. Jink in, use all your shattering tricks up close and personal, then swap to staff and get distance and pew pew and force enemies to work to retarget you, then when you’re ready for another round of up close shattering, go back in to melee range again.

That’s the basic pattern and rhythm of shatter play.

To make this work well, you want LOTS of on-demand illusion generation so that you can shatter and immediately get out more illusions. This means the trait that generates a clone when you dodge is mandatory. And it means that you typically want Miror Images in one of your utility slots because that’s an instant 2x clones you can generate that way too.

Shatter builds also benefit from some amount of stealth too. In some cases, just the Decoy skill is enough. In other cases, you might use Mass Invisibilty for your elite skill and also Torch offhand for a third stealth from The Prestige (torch4). This stealth helps you stay juking aroun in melee range longer before the heat gets too hot and you have to gain distance and recover.

Speaking of gaining distance when you need it, Blink is another nearly must-have skill for shatter play, because with Staff 2 plus Blink you can get waaaaayyyyy away from the opponents.

Now, for the shatters themselves, you have three utility shatters (F2-F4) and one damage shatter (F1). IMO the two most valuable shatters are F1 and F2. If you take the II trait in Illusions (Cry of Frustration grants Retaliation), that makes a 3-illusion F2 shatter give you 15-19 seconds of Retaliation (depending how many points you have in the Chaos trait line), which is huge. If you take this trait, then F2 is usually your first shatter unless you are rocking an offhand focus. After that, you typically leave your illusions in play and save your F1 shatter for a burst finisher when the target is at 1/3 health. Of course, in longer fights or against human players who heal up, you’ll have to play it by ear and go through more shatter cycles in each fight, but the general goal is to save a big F1 shatter for a surprise killing burst. And if you’re relying on Retaliation from the F2 shatter, to reapply retaliation as desired if the fight is going to drag out.

Speaking of Retaliation, if you use an offhand focus, you can get ANOTHER 10-13 seconds of retaliation by standing on your temporal curtain (Focus4), then using Sword3 to toss the sword clone at the target, then using Sword3 again to swap places with the clone. You can have effectively 90-100% uptime on Retaliation this way if you trait for the F2 shatter retaliation too. This is huge both in PvE and in WvW, but it takes a little practice and steady nerves to do the focus-based combo while juking around in melee shatter range.

One other aspect of shatter builds. They are often somewhat tanky by using Knights armor (Pow/Tough/Prec). The goal is to get near 40% crit chance or better so your F1 shatter will hit hard, but still have enough toughness to stay in melee range and survive some hits. Shoot for 40% crit chance, at least 20% crit damage, around 27K Toughness, 1600 Power, and around 17K health or more if you can squeeze it in. Some people tend to run 4x pieces of Knights armor and 2x pieces of Soldiers armor to hit these numbers. (For WvW, that means 2x pieces from the karma vendors in the Orr cathedrals, or the one at the gates of Arah has a head and boots that fit the bill.)

(Part 2 of 3)

Another thing to understand: This playstyle isn’t usually targeted at Zerg vs Zerg frontline fighting (although it can save your bacon if an enemy is determined to bust through the front line specifically to try to burst you down). This playstyle is generally used more for small group patrols and for sPVP. However, with one tweak, I think it is awesome for general Zerg vs Zerg because there are always people who try to push through (or flank) and try to burst down what they think are the squishy cloth targets. In these cases, the Sword main hand can save your bacon because of the Sword2 being a 2-second complete immunity during the opponent’s opening burst! When you see someone coming right at you, just swap to sword and hit #2 right as they try to burst you. Foiled! Now you have lots of tricks to make them pay for their insolence, and you still can run away if you need to.

So I tend to run with a Retaliation shatter build full time now even in zerg battles, but I switch out my staff for a greatsword instead and take my chances when crafty else’s or thieves try to get me. Usually the sword tricks are enough to discourage or kill them, and If I need a getaway I use GS5 to push them back, then blink away to gain the distance I need. And that works fine. And GS is much better for zerging than staff, because you score way more kills at typical front-line range. It just hits a lot harder and is tuned to hit hardest at maximum 1200 range.

The specific build is:

Greatsword + Sword/Focus (all Knights)
Sigil of Force on the Greatsword, Sigil of Generosity on the Sword, Sigil of Force on the Focus.

4x Knight’s Armor + 2x Soldier’s Armor (but 6x Knight’s is fine too)
6x Superior Centaur runes on the armor, for 14-ish seconds of swiftness when I use my heal.

Mostly Emerald jewelry (essentially Knight’s stats), but 2x pieces of Beryl too for a little extra crit damage.

With all exotic gear, I hit those target stats I summarized above.

Here’s a link to the specific traits and skills:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAsdRlwzipHVzpGa9IyJFQ3yh6x2ldfXJF82FC

Some notes about the traits and skills that vary from the general “shatter” archetype:

Most shatter builds are -very- weak in condition removal. As in “none at all”. I don’t like that, because the #1 thing that gets you killed in WvW is being crippled when you are on the run from a bad situation. So this build features 2 different methods of condition removal:

A trait that lets you remove one condition on heal (every 20 seconds)

Null Field. Its best if you stand in Null field and let it tick for a while to strip everything, but on the run you can cast it slightly in front of you and run through it and it will strip 1 or 2 conditions while you run through it. Hopefully, the condition “on top” is cripple, so between this and the above-mentioned trait, you have two chances to strip cripples and get away. Null field is also great in a zerg choke point or on top of a wall in that it can strip everyone around you clean of too many conditions.

I swapped in Null field for the typical Decoy, because in lots of play testing, Decoy will NOT save your bacon. The stealth is too short. You get more survivability from dodge rolling to generate clones and all your other techniques to spam lots of illusions.

Time Warp in the elite slot instead of Mass Invisibility. Because in Zerg vs Zerg fights, especially at choke points, Time Warp doubles the damage output of everyone (on your side) bunched up at the choke point, which can really turn the tide and cause a lot of attrition on the other side, helping your side punch through and rout the opposing zerg. (Nyite is the one who made me a believer of this.)

Since this build features Greatsword on the swap instead of Staff, there’s no need for the typical 20 points in Chaos to get the 20% faster cooldowns on staff skills. These 20 points are better spent getting 2k more HP, the ability to strip a condition every 20 seconds by using your heal, faster CDs on your focus attacks, and making Temp Curtain reflect projectiles. Another strong bonus is giving full-time retaliation to all your clones!

And finally, yes staff is a little safer because of the in-built ‘blink’ from Staff #2, but GS is just much stronger damage. You will score noticeably more badges of honor with GS than with Staff. When you get in trouble up in melee mode with sword/focus, switch to staff and use GS 5 to push them back, then start running and Blink to gain even more distance. If your GS4 is ready by this point, turn around and fire your berserker at them to cripple one or more of them too for good measure, before booking it for safety. Works a treat. I don’t miss staff at all for survivability.

You’ll notice that the “bouncing attacks have one extra bounce” is still a trait in the Illusions line. Remember that GS2 is a bouncing attack, so that’s a 33% increase in damage output for that one attack.

(Part 3 of 3)

Play style tips:

Run around from fight to fight with Sword/Focus out, and alternate between your speed line (Temporal Curtain, Focus4) and your Heal (Runes of Centaur activation) to have 100% swiftness at all times.

If you get jumped while running around, your first instinct should be to wait until the first attacker is about to hit you, and counter with Sword2 to foil their opening burst. If you have time to plan your response, toss out the Focus 5 phantasm as they’re running in, and maybe even dodge once to spawn a clone and wait to unload your Sword2 if they take the bait and don’t retarget you immediately. After this, try to get retaliation going through either method, with the Focus/Sword combo (curtain, stand on it, then Sword 3 and Sword 3 again after you see the clone pop) having a higher preference, because that way you’ll probably have 2-3 clones up when that first retaliation is about to drop and you can refresh it with an F2 shatter on 2/3 clones instead.

When you find a zerg fight, switch to Greatsword and mostly use Greatsword at the front lines. Save your Sword/Focus for when somebody decides to single you out and kill you. When you see someone coming in at you from the front or from the flank, use the same general tricks as described above for getting jumped while roaming.

A key point here is to switch to Sword/Focus early if you see someone gunning for you. Don’t wait to the last minute, because GS gets weaker they closer they are. If you are ready with Sword/Focus as soon as they get too close for comfort and obviously headed toward you, you can foil them and slow them down with Focus 5 and a dodge roll right as they make their opening move on you. If you get panicked, you can even F2 shatter with only those two illusions out and you’ll still get about 9 seconds of retaliation to help you out.

Try not to use Mirror Images during a front line fight. It will be tempting to do so, but it’s best for when a thief back stabs you because Mirror Images is a stun breaker. So Mirror, then dodge to break target lock and pop3rd clone. Now F2 shatter if it’s ready, and then lay into the theif with Sword 2 for 2 seconds of invulnerability. You have foiled the stun they rely on to keep you locked down while they burst you, you’ve made it so if they keep trying to burst you they’re taking 321 Retaliation damage “reflected” back at them per hit (based on your ~1644 Power), and you still have Focus5, Sword3, and probably another dodge to generate three more clones to mess up their targeting. Now you’re just into straight shatter jousting. I’m here. No! I’m there! And if they stacked more bleeds than you like before you broke their opening burst, just drop a Null Field on top of where you’re fighting to strip those off (and any others they try to add if they think they can still get you.

Note: you can also us Blink as a stun breaker (just blink straight through your attacker), but I prefer to save Blink for gaining additional distance when running from a situation I can’t survive. YMMV.

When things get dicey and you can’t prevail while jousting in shatter range, switch to GS, push them back with GS5, then blink away to gain distance, and don’t blow your Healing right away. Instead, turn around and cripple them with GS4 if it’s ready, then run for a short while until you can flip to sword/focus again, then use your speedline first if possible to gain swiftness. Try to save your Heal for stripping cripple off yourself if they manage to do so while you’re running.

Okay, I hope this helps new mesmers and experience mesmers alike! I love how many ways there are to play a mesmer well in WvW.

1. Your build link has a Rampager amulet / jewel.

2. The 10 points in Chaos is kind of meh, although it’s ‘ok’. It’s only buffing your Blink. I recommend considering moving the 10 points into Inspiration for Warden’s Feedback, Vigorous Revelation, or Medic’s Feedback.

shaktiboi.5194:

while they burst you, you’ve made it so if they keep trying to burst you they’re taking 33% reflected damage

Ret does not work this way at all. It’s dmg is dependant on your power not on dmg they hit you for. So if it hits for 300 on bunker it hits for 300 on GC thief.

“Damage dealt depends on the level and power of the retaliation’s source. Retaliation deals 267 damage per hit at level 80 with the base power of 916, and +1 damage for every 13.4 power above that. It is not reduced by the target’s armor.
"

@ EasymodeX: Excellent point on the 10 points in Chaos. Fixed. I’ve been loving the fast Blink and had blinders on for that one, but I don’t even need to playtest to tell that Warden’s Feedback is a better tradeoff for a 24-second blink in this particular build. I also fixed the old sigils and jewels that were hanging around from 7Mesmer’s original (lol) that I used as the base for this particular build link.

Edit: although now, lol the build looks really similar to PyroAthiest’s ‘Immortal’ build, but with GS and more emphasis on front-loaded damage rather than Vitality tanking through retaliation buildup. ^.^

@ Moddo: Also an excellent point and clarification. I’ll adjust that in my OPs above. Either way, its pretty significant extra damage. (321 “reflected” damage per hit on you at ~1644 power, which is what you’ll have if you gear as described above. You really notice this extra damage output in PvE and Dungeons too.

Thank you for this. I was reading all your comments in PyroAthiest’s Immortal build and was trying to find a good balance but you are way ahead of me! This is exactly what I wanted to play since I really love the retaliation trick with the focus 4/sword 3 but wanted to more damage output than Pyro’s build.

Plumsucker.9507:

Thank you for this. I was reading all your comments in PyroAthiest’s Immortal build and was trying to find a good balance but you are way ahead of me! This is exactly what I wanted to play since I really love the retaliation trick with the focus 4/sword 3 but wanted to more damage output than Pyro’s build.

It works a treat. Was using it in front line fights last night for an hour and did not get defeated even once. Only got downed 4 times, and thats from standing in range of enemy walls reviving fallen allies for that stupid new daily achievement, lol, and getting away with too much bleedmor burning damage still on me after blowing both of my condi strippers from staying in thenAOE to get them up. Scored about 40+ kills.

I’d blink out of range back towards my zerg to ensure I got downed where I could be safely revived.

This is great!
I’ve tried glamour support, bunker, offensive shatter, but this is the best of all of them!

Tried it at lunch today and wrecked face.

Thanks for the great build!

I really like this build still. Am rocking 0/20/0/20/30 right now on my Mes, and I’ve played everything and anything as a Mesmer before. This suits my playstyle the best.

I wear all Knight’s gear, with Centaur runes, and all Knights (stats at least) trinkets, with Ruby Orbs (Zerker) bonuses. Gives me about 46% crit chance, 17k hp, 2500 armor and almost 50% crit dmg. Zerker weapons.

A very well balanced, decent DPS tank/shatter build that works good in both WvW and PvE dungeons. A few skills are swappable per situation in the trait lines too.