So im always testing new builds for my mesmer to not only doing damage but support the team. Im mostly relating to 5-7 men smallscale since thats what my guild does. We are mostly playing against much bigger groups so the more support you have while still doing damage the better it is.
In my opinion its the explicit duty of a mesmer to rip off boons cause thats what mesmers are perfect for, so i have to go for 4 in the first traitline (shattered concentration)
Since only shatter does any damage in a teamfight u have to use it so my next 4 points have to go into the second traitline (deceptive evasion) to actually have some clones to shatter.
Now with only 6 points left i got the “choice”. There are some different Grandmastertraits which are suitable for shatter.
The most popular one for the shatter mesmer is Illusionary Persona (XI Illusions)
Thats unfortunately the only Trait which is worth using it.
I´ll explain why:
The Grandmaster trait Maim the Disillusioned (XIII Illusions) is just to less condition pressure. the duration is far too short for being useful. Yes you stack confusion too on shatter but theres the same problem. When you compare the duration of the Mesmers´s confusion from shatter to the confusion of that warrior trait on interrupt, engeneers confusion or even the stupid rune…..its pathetic. Maybe you can kill some people without any condiremove with it but dont expect to have condition pressure like a necro for example.(I tried some hybrid builds too with moderate success)
Imbued Diversion ( Illusions XII) might be useful in some situation in a small area for example in spvp on a point, but most of the time you wont approach anything with it since the Diversion cooldown is far too high for that Grandmastertrait.
The other “Shatter” Grandmaster traits are on the Inspiration Traitline. Here comes the big Problem. Remember we only got 6 points left. When we r using all of them for Inspration, we aint got any in the Traitline Illusions, which makes our Shatter CDs go up till they are useless.
The Inspiration “Shatter” Grandmaster Traits are Anets attempt to make shatter more supportive, so thats what i was actually looking for!
Shattered Conditions (Inspiration XI) makes every of your shattered clones remove one condition from everyone on your team in a range of 600. Awesome!
Restorative Illusions ( Inspiration XII) is more a selfish trait. You heal urself on shatter. Id love to test it if there were not that big problem.
We still aint got any points in Illusions so we shatter once in a lifetime.
So there are some different ways to fix this:
Replace shattered concentration or deceptive evasion to the Illusions Traitline or place the GrandmasterTraits which are suitable for shatter into the illusion Traitline.
Since we aint got enough Grandmaster Traits for the second proposal Id suggest to replace shattered concentration or deceptive evasion.
The effect would be much more different shatter builds. At the moment theres only one or its inefficient.
So you cold say if u wanna support your team then use Mantras.
For an efficient Mantra support build on the other hand you need 6 in Dueling for Harmonious Mantra (Dueling XI) and 4 in Inspiration for Restorative Mantras (Inspiration X). 4 Points left. What you wanna do else while supporting your team? Rip off boons! So 4 in Domination. And yet again the same Problem. No points in Illusions and we can forget shattering so the enemies can be happy with their boons!
And when u say. Hey a supportive build dont have to rip off boons too dont have to do damage and so on. But the support is much too low to compete with other supportive builds from other classes. So there would be no point to use the support mesmer anyway.
In my opinion Replacing Shattered Concentration into Illusions Traitline would solve many problems Mesmers have right now. It would cause much more Team Build diversity with still efficient Builds and isnt that what we all wanna have?
although i was only talking about a smallscale group, the support builds would obviously work in a wvw zerg too. In tpvp i dont think of any possible support mesmer meta any time soon but!! there would be some different Shatter mesmer builds cause you would have the free selection of more Traits while still doing what a mesmer has to do: Damage and Shattering boons!
Please tell me your thoughts and forgive me for any possible mistakes since its not my native language
Greetings
Mimsy