Guild Wars 2

Hey there my purple comrades! After being heart-broken by the April 30th patch, yes I was a glam confusion mesmer for months, I started theory-crafting a new build that would make use of SOME of the condition trinkets that we all grinded so hard for. I’m switching my gear to berserker, but keeping some of the condition items as well. Still figuring out the balance. Anyway, I stumbled upon a build I think has potential. It’s extremely fun in WvW and gives great survivability with high burst potential, uses non-confusion condition dam (fire + random), and is flexibly useful as both a roamer and to bust up small zergs. I’m sure I’m stepping on other build’s toes, so apologies if this is already out there in another form. I give you… “Hidden Fire”!! (may need to copy URL into browser).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRlwzKqHWzmGb9IipH9WwBckUoavWJF42FC-TEAAzA

Overview: With this build you are an invisible assassin who truly lives up to the mesmer concept by distracting your foes with clones that deliver random conditions when killed, burning everything with pink fire, and evading your foes by staying invisible as long as you can. Your goal is to infiltrate small groups or even zergs while stealthed with “The Prestige” then burst into sight spreading fire everywhere and simultaneously slashing around you with blurred frenzy. Then go stealth and roll back, creating tons of clones while hitting with your iZerker for high burst, stealth again, cleanse conditions, then move in for more of the same. If done properly, you are invisible a ton and your foes are covered in conditions and terrified of where you will strike next. Mostly you want your foes to kill your clones, spreading conditions to them with the debilitating dissipation trait, but a well timed mind wreck or daze can’t hurt. I fought two thieves by myself today and managed to down both solo. It’s not so much a quick killer as a slow, deadly mixture of striking and retreating. You will often find yourself running into the heart of danger, stealthed. Pick the right nerve cluster of players and you can really scare the hell out of a small group when you burst into view, surrounded by pink fire and whirling blades. Then vanish as quickly as you appeared. Blurred Frenzy will make you invulnerable, but you can also use distortion for that extra burst of invul. Be prepared for a ton of running and dodging and constant movement.

Traits: 20(III, IX), 20(II, X), 30 (IV, V, XII), 0, 0 – Dam burst comes from Phantasms so we go for 15%. Torch is a huge part of this build so you really want Cleansing Conflagration for both the decreased cooldown and the condition removal. For Dueling, I really debated these ones. You could go with any number of choices. I settled on Phantasmal Fury and Deceptive Evasion. But once I get my crit% up I’ll swap to Blade Training or Desperate Decoy. 30 in Chaos, the meat of the build. The big prize here is Prismatic Understanding. With so many invisibility skills, that extra 1 second really helps. And the random boon is great. Debilitating Dissipation is great, because most mobs and players in WvW will shred your clones before they get a chance to even shatter. This turns that against them AND uses all that condition gear you were gonna toss. Okay, you gotta toss some of it (RIP Confusion) but not all. And Illusionary Defense is good because you need survivability to get out of tight corners.

Skills:
Decoy is key, clone generation and stealth. Nuff said. Veil, great stealth. Long. I debated Arcane Thievery a ton. There are a bunch of other slot skill you could try here. But at the end of the day I found myself really wanting a quick cleanse other than the traited torch to turn the tables. You get hit with a lot of conditions with this playstyle so you need it. Or null field. Mass invis (of course).

Weapons:
Sword/Torch – GS. Staff could work too if you want to throw on Chaos Armor before your main attack to spread more conditions, but then you lose the crazy power of iZerker (bugs aside). iMage, despite his pitiful state, can come in handy at times to fill the air.

I’ve been trying an interesting hybrid. By swapping out “Empowered Illusions” with “Crippling Dissipation” and using Focus and Scepter (Sw/T – Sc/F) You get an incredible amount of crowd control. It’s amazing for both zergs and solo. Try to produce as many clones as possible and almost never shatter so your foe kills as many of them as they can. Check it out.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRAsf7dlwzKqHTzpGb9IipH9WwBckUUavWJF42FC

As an ex-Rabid mesmer, thank you for sharing this
Some thoughts:
- Blink is another stun breaker, and it can come really in handy in situation like those you describe. Stealth + Blink is confusing for enemies. You can actually swap that with Veil, I always disliked Veil in a solo situation as for its huge cooldown.
- Berserker gear wouldn’t make you last that long. I am farming a SE/CoF (Knight/Zerk) right now, as I wanted to go Zerker too, but the lack of Toughness coming from Rabid gear made me think.

I will try this out, and let you know something. Cheers!

You can shoose wvw in the top right corner in the gw2skilleditor.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRlwzKqHWzmGb9IipH9WwBckUoavWJF42FC-TEAAzA
i hope that it helps

imo:
Soldier/Knight Armor with at least 4x Runes of Air could solve a lot of problems.
Leaving trinkets Rabid (o Rampager).

Downside, you’ll lose quite some Condition dmg, but the PTV set with incorporated Swiftness on heal (might even think to swap to mirror for the lower CD) is a huge benefit.

kovah.9764:

As an ex-Rabid mesmer, thank you for sharing this
Some thoughts:
- Blink is another stun breaker, and it can come really in handy in situation like those you describe. Stealth + Blink is confusing for enemies. You can actually swap that with Veil, I always disliked Veil in a solo situation as for its huge cooldown.
- Berserker gear wouldn’t make you last that long. I am farming a SE/CoF (Knight/Zerk) right now, as I wanted to go Zerker too, but the lack of Toughness coming from Rabid gear made me think.

I will try this out, and let you know something. Cheers!

Great thoughts guys! I’ll try blink out. And yes, full zerker might weaken you too much. Let me know how your test of the build goes!

It’s a nice base idea, but the mix between condition and zerk is a little odd, however it may work. I would drop veil, nice stealth, but is glitchy for me. Blink confuses people even more with the instant teleport, and if you roll into it you create a clone at your position and appear elsewhere. Go for 6x runes of the air, more swiftness for a start, crit damage is useful for you since you have 20 in dueling. The 20% lighting on hit procs a lot and can hit for 6k, great damage there.

Sigil of fire on the sword would work great, good aoe fire damage, complements the build and a sigil of geomancy on the of torch for bleeds on swap is great. I’d like to see some videos of this in action as well.

Benjamin.8237:

It’s a nice base idea, but the mix between condition and zerk is a little odd, however it may work. I would drop veil, nice stealth, but is glitchy for me. Blink confuses people even more with the instant teleport, and if you roll into it you create a clone at your position and appear elsewhere. Go for 6x runes of the air, more swiftness for a start, crit damage is useful for you since you have 20 in dueling. The 20% lighting on hit procs a lot and can hit for 6k, great damage there.

Sigil of fire on the sword would work great, good aoe fire damage, complements the build and a sigil of geomancy on the of torch for bleeds on swap is great. I’d like to see some videos of this in action as well.

Thanks for the suggestions! I’m gonna try the sigils and runes out. Any thoughts on food? Will attempt to get some video of the build soon. Thanks again for your interest.

Why not forgo the condition damage all together? Only condition damage you’re doing is with the torch, and potentially with the Debilitating Dissipation trait.

Would help focus on Power, Precision, Crit Damage, and/or Toughness. It feels a little spread out on stats for me and a bit glass cannon-ish. But then again, I’m used to my Carrion/Glamor build.

I do really like this concept though! It’ll be fun to see it tweaked up and in action.

Update:

Okay, I decided to not fully switch to zerker gear otherwise I’d lose too much vitality / toughness / condition dam. If this build gets too glass canon it gets difficult to pull off. I settled on chest piece Berzerker, and all weapons Berseker. The rest stays carrion / rabid / knights. Except for Berzerker back piece with ruby upgrade.

I took Benjamin’s suggestions and went with 6x Superior Runes of the Air, Superior Sigil of Fire on Torch, Superior Sigil of the Geomancer on GS, and since I wanted to keep condition up a little bit more, Superior Sigil of Corruption on Sword. The result is very, VERY effective. Wow. The main attack (Prestige + Blurred Frenzy) hits like an tank now, and if you swap quickly to GS after, you add more bleeds on top of it. The speed boost on heal really hits the sweet spot. To the above poster who wanted to forego condition dam, I say try it out. You may dig it. Personally I disagree. I got about 750 condition dam now (down from 1600 on my confusion mes) and that 750 still hits hard on burning. Ticking about 480 (much more with 25 stacks of Sigil of Corruption) on burn. Plus we got Phantasms applying bleeds, clone kills applying random, and Sigil of Geomancy applying bleed too. It all adds up fast and the conditions freak players out.

Lightening strike often strikes during the main attack, while yer invulnerable, and Fire AOE is awesome from Sigil of fire. Fits the build concept great too. Plus, with Phantasms getting fury, and the higher precision, your iZerkers always crits.

Blink works well, I also like portal dropped before you stealth in to pull off your main attack. After blurred frenzy, drop B portal and invis to get outta there. I’m still hanging on to veil for now. Comes in handy. Also, portal bombing work amazingly well with this build.

I’ll try to get a video up soon. Still trying out food combinations. Suggestions welcome!

Really fun looking build – spawn a bunch of high damage illusions, then disappear while they fight for you.

But agree with ammayhem, drop the cond dmg, focus on P/Pr/CrtDmg/T. Since you’re taking the trait that gives Phantasms fury, focus your build on that + stealth/deception/teleports:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRlwzipXUToGb9IipH9GxBckUoavWJF42FC-jkyAYrASWAJCAJPl1EogYNrIas6FMVpQq6MyejioVDA-w

Also, how to optimize Zerker stats – make sure you get the best bang for your Crit Damage buck:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/pwr-vit-tough-vs-pwr-pre-critdmg/first#post1322140

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/18q7oe/not_all_slots_are_created_equal_dos_and_donts_of/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/

PS – I went with 6x Runes of the Centaur instead of 6x Air because if you get hit by AoE while you’re stealthed, and that triggers the 6x Air Lightning Strike, you’ll get knocked out of stealth.

Centaur gives a lot of Power, plus longer-duration (AoE) Swiftness. Only wasted set bonus with Centaur is Bleed duration.

not sure if you saw this since patch…

from what people say. conditions applied by clones are now effected by condition durration bonus. so thats a big buff for conditions like sharper image and image type stuff. not sure if conditions on clone death were working before patch but they should be longer also.

kurtosis.9526:

Really fun looking build – spawn a bunch of high damage illusions, then disappear while they fight for you.

But agree with ammayhem, drop the cond dmg, focus on P/Pr/CrtDmg/T. Since you’re taking the trait that gives Phantasms fury, focus your build on that + stealth/deception/teleports:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRlwzipXUToGb9IipH9GxBckUoavWJF42FC-jkyAYrASWAJCAJPl1EogYNrIas6FMVpQq6MyejioVDA-w

Also, how to optimize Zerker stats – make sure you get the best bang for your Crit Damage buck:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/pwr-vit-tough-vs-pwr-pre-critdmg/first#post1322140

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/18q7oe/not_all_slots_are_created_equal_dos_and_donts_of/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/

PS – I went with 6x Runes of the Centaur instead of 6x Air because if you get hit by AoE while you’re stealthed, and that triggers the 6x Air Lightning Strike, you’ll get knocked out of stealth.

Centaur gives a lot of Power, plus longer-duration (AoE) Swiftness. Only wasted set bonus with Centaur is Bleed duration.

Great points. I have to check out that stealth breaking thing! Maybe I’ll scale back to 4x Runes of Air and fill in something else. Right now I’m liking the condition dam but I’ll try to reduce it and up p/pr/t/ crit a bit more through trinkets. See how that feels. Thanks for the links. If you try the build out, please post your findings.

zaxon.6819:

not sure if you saw this since patch…

from what people say. conditions applied by clones are now effected by condition durration bonus. so thats a big buff for conditions like sharper image and image type stuff. not sure if conditions on clone death were working before patch but they should be longer also.

Awesome. Some condition duration food might really help this.

Interesting build. My suggestions rigth now:

- Put in the torch or sword a sigil of smoldering (+15% burning duration), since burning does lot of damage but have short duration.
- Put in the armor 4 runes of air (you’ve got the swiftness on healing plus Lightning Strike will not break your stealth any more) + 2 runes of Lyssa (precision + 10% condition duration).

Stacking those conditions does have me curious for sure. Too much homework from school, I can’t log in and test things out right now. Grr…

This is what I was looking at in the build editor; no idea how it plays yet:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRlwzKqHTzmGb9IipH9GxBckUoavWJF42FC-jwyAYLBRKCERBkIAkALiGbhrIasqFMVJgycR1eDGta3BAA-e

I was trying this and variations of it yesterday, and i love it! I also tried it with staff instead of GS (since i also have rabid from before the patch and thought staff lends itself to condition damage more) and it works great for survivability and confusing you opponent but the damage is a bit… meh. I also didnt know if the condition damage was worth it but you get in confusions aswell (even though its now half damage, it helps a bit i suppose..).

But basically the only thing i cared about was having fun with people and annoying the hell out of them until they got angry and made mistakes to let me win

EDIT: I’ve just seen the posts about condition duration now about clones so I’m thinking of trying out the staff again and giving it more of a go maybe with + con duration runes or some different trinkets or something, burning from clones also work with the idea behind the build Thinking something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfWlwzipXUzmGb9IipH9GyBckUoavWJF42FC-j0yA4MBRaBIJAisAkDLiGbZDt+SENqhw0mCya0k6RKiWNA-w

Sedgy.5904:

I was trying this and variations of it yesterday, and i love it! I also tried it with staff instead of GS (since i also have rabid from before the patch and thought staff lends itself to condition damage more) and it works great for survivability and confusing you opponent but the damage is a bit… meh. I also didnt know if the condition damage was worth it but you get in confusions aswell (even though its now half damage, it helps a bit i suppose..).

But basically the only thing i cared about was having fun with people and annoying the hell out of them until they got angry and made mistakes to let me win

EDIT: I’ve just seen the posts about condition duration now about clones so I’m thinking of trying out the staff again and giving it more of a go maybe with + con duration runes or some different trinkets or something, burning from clones also work with the idea behind the build Thinking something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfWlwzipXUzmGb9IipH9GyBckUoavWJF42FC-j0yA4MBRaBIJAisAkDLiGbZDt+SENqhw0mCya0k6RKiWNA-w

Awesome! So glad you dig the build! I like the changes you made. I’m gonna play around with staff a bit too and condition duration. Let us know how it goes.

I was playing last night adding condition damage and i can assure you that it’s solve the damage of the staff, at least for me. I love it. The staff allow you to be in the middle of all, the combos with Phase Retreat and iLeap, the versatility and utility is too much to abandon it.

The challenge is find the right gear. The right mix between stats. Cd must be added enough, but you can’t forgive have enough power/precision for finish and toughness/vitality for survive heavy spike and cd, even with the ability for remove some. The key is find the best mix for you , including the food ; )

Superior rune of undead could be good too against spike damage if you test that you’ve added enough cd.

I’ll read you later. Good luck. testing ; )

Zoser.7245:

I was playing last night adding condition damage and i can assure you that it’s solve the damage of the staff, at least for me. I love it. The staff allow you to be in the middle of all, the combos with Phase Retreat and iLeap, the versatility and utility is too much to abandon it.

The challenge is find the right gear. The right mix between stats. Cd must be added enough, but you can’t forgive have enough power/precision for finish and toughness/vitality for survive heavy spike and cd, even with the ability for remove some. The key is find the best mix for you , including the food ; )

Superior rune of undead could be good too against spike damage if you test that you’ve added enough cd.

I’ll read you later. Good luck. testing ; )

Brilliant. I love the adjustments people are making. I’m still using GS, but staff is an awesome play style too.

UPDATE: Just got done playing and testing stats. If you go too far with zerker gear the condition part of the build is lost. But if you push away too hard from p/pr/crit you won’t get that great burst. It has to be just right. I’ve settled on a combo I like. Switched the GS from pure Berserker to Rampager. Got two zerker trinkets, left the rest carrion and rabid. Working great. Check it out (I updated the gear section):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRlwzKqHTzgGb9IipH9WwBckUoavWJF42FC-jU0AYrAiwgoFQkAAyCYyLaZP0UIQOMhVshoVFDr2BTVGItJiGN1eDBNPiSNA-w

I decided to go for condition duration boosts so the fire will last enough to be threatening. I went to 4x runes of the Air and 2x Runes of Lyssa. Then added Sigil of Smoldering to the sword, added Sigil of Corruption to the GS, kept Sigil of fire on the Torch. Used Rare Veggie Pizza so burn duration is up around 80%. Works VERY well. I love the effect. I don’t miss the lightening storm and no more stealth break. Been using maintenance oil for a little extra precision. Can get up to 1,000+ condition dam with full 25 stacks of Corruption and Signet (see below).

I also tried out blink extensively (instead of Veil) and I gotta say, it’s really worth it for this build. Incredible results. Blinking while stealthed is fantastic. It can get you out of stun lock, get you away from foes after your main attack, and teleport you into your target for the main attack. Really love blink in there.

Last thing I played with was swapping Arcane Thievery with Signet of Domination. The reason for this was I wanted a stun. Often times you’ll want to freeze a player so you can pull off your main attack (Prestige + Blurred Frenzy) with them stuck in the middle of it, unable to dodge. The combo of all three is devastating. Especially with fire duration extended. Plus the added CD with no cost to crit/pr is really nice. Plus I’m finding Arcane Thievery to be a tad wonky. Sometimes it doesn’t proc, cast time takes a second too long. Better to just blink out of there and cleanse with torch 2.

Still using GS although a lotta folks are having a great time with staff. I like the range on GS and the burst for iZerker. But Staff is really awesome too. Pulling off your main attack in Chaos Storm and Chaos armor is really awesome.

For food, you might try precision based food. That will allow you and the phantasms to proc more bleeding through sharper images.

I like Greatsword too, and if this kind of build works well with staff and greatsword, have the flexibility to change between both. If you need more direct damage greatsword, for example in the siege, or staff when you need more utility/survivability in the middle of a big chaos ; )

For farm we usually were using shatter build 20/20/0/0/30 with illusionary invigoration and berserker , but now events in Orr are much harder than before, and i usually see toons of players downed all time. Even adding half knight gear, the attack of some champions is lethal. Now, this type of build can work well for farm too without having to make a build only for farm. I have tested greatsword and works well like you say. Less survivability than staff (in some situations it was hard to survive), but better in long range.

Later i’ll try to farm some time and see how it works.

Good evening.

Played the staff version today and yeah its great, i like the utility and survivability.. Won a few 1v2s and survived against more but yeah.

Sedgy.5904:

Played the staff version today and yeah its great, i like the utility and survivability.. Won a few 1v2s and survived against more but yeah.

Staff is working more and more for me. Tried it a bunch tonight.

If you can live without swiftness on heal, going 6/6 Lyssa and turning your mass invis into a full condi cleanse (plus aegis, plus regen, plus prot, plus swiftness, etc.) is pretty great.

That said, if you don’t run with a swiftness-granting partner, the slow travel pace is probably going to be agonizing.

I can also vouch for condi duration food (+40%!) being amazing for condi-centric builds. Can’t wait to try it with this one.

I tinker with my mesmer build every so often and recently started playing a fairly similar build to this one. Made me smile when I saw this thread. It’s a lot of fun.

Entropy.4732:

Staff is working more and more for me. Tried it a bunch tonight.

What stats/sigil do you have in the staff?

Thanks

Oh, and for the #6 healing skill I would try out Mirror instead of Ether Feast (for the shorter CD). Just a suggestion.

venusiano.8246:

Entropy.4732:

Staff is working more and more for me. Tried it a bunch tonight.

What stats/sigil do you have in the staff?

Thanks

Sigil of Corruption.

Hi ppl, i also have a confusion mesmer build, full exotic gear, all, i run normaly with staff, scepter and focus, all rabid and trinkets, and runes undead, do you think it’s possible to use this build and change the minimal stuff, the cheapest way? i was think only change the scepter, i have a sword and GS rampager exotic. do you think is viable?
Thnkx

Personally, I do. I’ll let other people comment as to it’s viability. One way to cheaply swap stuff out to new stats is if you have badges from WvW you can trade them in to the new weapon vendors in EB and pay roughly 1 gold & 200 badges to get any exotic weapon or armor with any stats you want. Then use a transmutation stone to save the skin you want. I did this with my weapons, gloves, and chest piece. I did have to buy a few trinkets, runes and sigils tho but I kept a lot of my rabid & carrion gear.

right now i have few badges, i think only around 1500, but i have 2 more chars to buy stuff, right now i try the build, i change the trait of torch for mental torment, i do alot of bleeds, but for me is lack of burst to kill, i do have also a rare sword zerker and a exotic staff zerker and i swap now and going to try out. im now with 1310 power and 1794 precision, critical chance 46% and critical damg is 29%, toughness 1816, and 1343 cond dmg.

Moinomutante.1938:

Hi ppl, i also have a confusion mesmer build, full exotic gear, all, i run normaly with staff, scepter and focus, all rabid and trinkets, and runes undead, do you think it’s possible to use this build and change the minimal stuff, the cheapest way? i was think only change the scepter, i have a sword and GS rampager exotic. do you think is viable?
Thnkx

Sounds good to me, I was thinking of trying out rampager weapons for a bit more precision and condition damage (at the moment my sword and torch are just rare for testing before buying exotic). I would maybe stick a few beserker/rampager trinkets in just to get a bit more punch from blurred frenzy but thats just me.

Last night i tryed and it was a mess, i fell something missing, everyone i fight over damage me….

Moinomutante.1938:

Last night i tryed and it was a mess, i fell something missing, everyone i fight over damage me….

Did you have the right ratio of condition damage to zerker burst damage? It won’t work without some zerker gear. Regardless, I’m sorry you had a bad experience.

Dont be sorry. i try, no prob, i have much rabid gear, and i think it’s not going to work, i haded some rare berserker gear to try, but, not sure. going to try again tonight.
thnkx

Just tried this build with full runes of Lyssa and Signet of Inspiration. Really great effect and a nice bit of crowd support.

You might also consider runes of Balthazar. I played around with a build using Mirror heal offensively, decoy and heal as a psuedo prestige. With duration food and sigil
of smoldering i could get 10 ticks at 768 per tick out of the heal/burn aoe. For what ever reason , my testing showed the burn from prestige didnt scale with condi duration as well as the heal did. From memory 5k was the best i got out of the prestige burn. I tested using the mosquitoes in southsun. Apply burn and count ticks.

I had used Balthazar too in that way. I think that we are all testing all posilibities and finding similar solutions. I like them, about all in PVE, in WvW where people are cleaning conditions all time, i’m still not sure about the influence of the burn when you heal. But yes, if you catch someone with his removal abilities in cooldown… ; )

I have yet to decide what I want definitely if the set of Balthazar or a mix that i have been testing. And finally, if I get what I want from this type of build or not. Hopefully this weekend I’ll have time to finish testing everything and draw conclusions.

@Entropy: Thank you! I originally built a little Mesmer to go WvW’ing with, and 2 days later the nerf bat clobbered the “Glamorous” build. <sad face> Now you come along with a really nice build that makes me want to pick up the class again (lvl 30, WvW mainly w/ a smidge of PvE). I realize I won’t be “strong” until I hit 80, but now I have a new build to shoot for. :-)

Thorson.9218:

@Entropy: Thank you! I originally built a little Mesmer to go WvW’ing with, and 2 days later the nerf bat clobbered the “Glamorous” build. <sad face> Now you come along with a really nice build that makes me want to pick up the class again (lvl 30, WvW mainly w/ a smidge of PvE). I realize I won’t be “strong” until I hit 80, but now I have a new build to shoot for. :-)

So thrilled to hear that! Huzzah! I hope you enjoy the build when you level. May the gods be with you my purple comrade.

Nevermind

/delete this

So I’ve been experimenting with an interesting variation of the original build using scepter and pistol / sword and torch. Very effective for roaming. Using Signet of Domination for extra condition dam + the stun. The beauty of this weapon choice is that it gives you two seperate stuns, from the Signet and from magic bullet. Plus pistol phantom hits really hard if you time it right.

I’m surprised you didn’t go 15/25/30/0/0, as the 3 seconds of confusion from Confusing Combatants is great.

Kasama.8941:

I’m surprised you didn’t go 15/25/30/0/0, as the 3 seconds of confusion from Confusing Combatants is great.

But then you lose the torch cool down reduction and condition cleanse. And as the whole build is centered around “The Prestige” you gotta have that trait. But I HAVE been using pistol more. So maybe if I went 10/30/30, and got the pistol trait, it might be worth it. Have to play around.

Slight variation:
Basically it’s still 20(III,IX)/20(II,X)/30(IV,V,XII)/0/0. Weapons (S/T + Sc/P). For slot skills: Decoy, Blink, Signet of Domination, mass invis. Runes of Lyssa. Sigil of Fire, Sigil of Paralyzation, Sigil of Earth, Sigil of Corruption.
Food: Rare Veggie Pizza, Maintenance Oil.

Gives you 2 stuns to help pull off your main attack (Prestige + Blurred Frenzy).
And I love the Pistol.

Why GS over Staff? Drop Chaos Storm down and you’ve got even more random conditions. And with sword & staff leaps for chaos armor you’ve got even more random conditions. Plus staff#2 is a nice tele-out with another clone.

Seems like the strength of this build is the surprise frenzy when you pop in and cause a ruccus, and staff seems better at making that ruccus more maddening.

Seras.5702:

Why GS over Staff? Drop Chaos Storm down and you’ve got even more random conditions. And with sword & staff leaps for chaos armor you’ve got even more random conditions. Plus staff#2 is a nice tele-out with another clone.

Seems like the strength of this build is the surprise frenzy when you pop in and cause a ruccus, and staff seems better at making that ruccus more maddening.

A lot of folks trying this build have gone staff and loved it. As you say, the combo can be devastating, especially with chaos armor on for the main attack.

I favor Sword / Torch + Scepter / Pistol with this build of late too. I went with GS initially because I wanted a hard hitting burst damage phantasm to finish off fights. So iZerker or iDulest. The iWarlock doesn’t do as much burst for my taste. But staff does give some amazing utility with this build. Go for it!

Seras.5702:

Why GS over Staff? Drop Chaos Storm down and you’ve got even more random conditions. And with sword & staff leaps for chaos armor you’ve got even more random conditions. Plus staff#2 is a nice tele-out with another clone.

Seems like the strength of this build is the surprise frenzy when you pop in and cause a ruccus, and staff seems better at making that ruccus more maddening.

Plus pistol can give you a nice stun so folks are frozen in your main attack. With signet of domination that’s 2 stuns! Very nice effect.

I’ve been trying this build out in SPvP and TPvP! I’ve never had so much fun with this as much as ever! I’m actually addicted to PvP on my mesmer almost as much as my guardian. xD

I should try Scepter/Pistol as well, but I’ve been rockin’ with both Staff and GS. I love the utility on Staff skills!

Anyway, I’m using the same runes, but I am using Sigil of Leeching for the 2-handed weapons and the same sigils you used for Sword/Torch. Since PvP is quite different than WvW/PvE, I’m using a Berserker amulet with Rampager’s jewel in it.

It did take me a few matches to get used to the playstyle, but it is reminiscent of being an assassin hidden in plain sight to get a burst out. I’m still trying to get Sword 2 to work to my favor, because I always miss with it.

Anyway, thanks so much for the fun build!