Guild Wars 2

So.. hello!! I am at work, bored so I was playing with some builds.

I want to make a mesmer build based on my favorite weapon combination and I got quite.. stuck because I only found -ONE- possible way to trait all 3 weapons.

The weapon combination is:

Sword/Focus
Staff

Sounds pretty easy, but I need 10 points in duelist to trait sword, 20 points in chaos to trait staff, 20 points in inspiration to trait the awesome reflexion on focus. And then another 20 points to get Illusionary Elasticity, which I consider a must for staff.

That makes my talents: 0/10/20/20/20

Sword is straight foward damage and cleave, while staff seems to be a really hybrid weapon. Does staff clones apply more bleed/burn with their Winds of Chaos? This build lacks the “bleed on crit” for clones. (which I really can’t get without giving up either staff 20% recharge, reflective focus or extra bounces, I don’t know which I’d give up if I had to pick one.)

Would a rampager set of gear go well with this build? Or should I drop crit and invest on Carrion maybe? Maybe balance both to get vigor on crits often?

Can anyone give some feedback on this build? I am currently playing a 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build with full zerker gear (sword/sword (focus in teams) and greatsword. I find myself bored often with the playstyle, seems like a kitten thief with better team utility. (feedback bubble, portal and timewarp)

Would staff and focus reflection add more to the team to make up for the loss of damage?

I don’t think you should be a slave to -% cd weapon traits. They are pretty good, but really it is much more important to have a build which focuses on something good, rather than being crap at everything but with low cooldowns.

I mean, I just recreated your build in calculator and honestly it is just bad. I believe you want to be some sort of condition mesmer, but then you lack stacked bleeds and you don’t have any confusion either – you just rely on staff auto and clones for conditions really and they are simply not good at it, because some genius decided to put vulnerability on Winds of Chaos.

Your shatters are weak, your phantasms are weak and since you are going for condition gear then your whole S/F will deal no real damage whatsoever. Your defenses will be great, but that’s just about it. Team support? I dare say that whatever you bring to the field is not worth the spot, because there are much more powerful builds who can do the same stuff AND actually be a threat on their own.

Besides that – just do a small calculation there and see for yourself if certain cooldown traits are really worth it – for example – staff and sword (mh only), in my opinion, do not get enough from these traits to go for them just for the sake of getting them. Staff is good as it is even without that trait and same is with main hand sword.

The only necessity is focus trait really. IMO, you can easily toss all of your chaos points into something else, for example get 20 in Dueling for Deceptive Evasion and Sharper Images and 30 in Illusions for Illusory Persona, switch to more power based gear and you will become decently good at shatters.

Or even 10 Domination for +15% illusion damage then 5 more points in Dueling for Sharper Images and switch sword trait for Phantasmal Fury and toss the leftover 5 points into Inspiration for another 15% phantasm damage and you will have a decent phantasm build.

Either of those are clearly superior to your base build.

Rampager with /Pistol is pretty good utilizing the bleed on crit is good, and if you trait into it, the range of spawning it gets boosted (doesn’t get shown on tooltip, but it’s the same as the #5) and it gets a 100% finisher on all attacks. If you run with rampagers, they crit nearly every hit, but then running Sword Mainhand causes problems because you end up just running Phant build and not really going melee to do anything so your autos are useless. You could do Scepter, but it requires a lot of micro managing your skills to make sure you don’t spawn clones.

What I tend to do is spawn 3 Duelists, switch to staff for Chaos Storm ethereal field and for a ranged auto attack. Swap back to respawn a Duelist if anything happens. Also run Feedback for another Ethereal Field. Easily hit 25 bleed+confusion vs enemies. It’s useful in PvE, but in WvW it’s not super useful.

First question will be, exactly what content is this for? PvE, sPvP, WvWvW, Dungeons, etc? Further, will you favor the Staff over the Sword & Focus, the reverse, or be constantly swapping weapons the second the CD clears?
… There are just too many ways for you to lean. If you grab Deceptive Evasion, I wouldnt worry about the Staff Training and may find yourself using the Sword/Focus over the Staff in most cases and Blade Training is great to keep using Blurred Frenzy to try to stay alive while DPSing. If you don’t get Deceptive Evasion, you’ll be relying on the Staff’s Phase Retreat to produce you MOST of your Clones, and thus the Staff Training Trait is nearly a must and you’ll likely be favoring the Staff over the Sword and finding the Blade Training to be a bit less useful..

My own Hybrid, which I consistently call an “Odd Duck” build is kinda similar. It lacks the 20 in Chaos though, and thus lacks the Staff Training trait for 20% off CDs. This works out fine, as the Sword/Focus tends to be my primary weapon with the Staff acting as backup/ranged or swapping to for ally reviving (Drop a Chaos Storm on the ally’s head, and start reviving while using Mantra of Recovery, Chaos Armor, and Distortion to stay alive along with Aegis Procs).

0/20/0/20/30 traits with Blade Training, Deceptive Evasion, Mender’s Purity, Restorative Mantras, Compounding Power, Illusionary Elasticity (Or Phantasmal Haste if I find myself not using the Staff all that often), and Illusionary Persona. Restorative Mantras is swapped for Warden’s Feedback when I know I’ll be facing Projectiles though. Weapons usually tend to be Sword/Focus + Staff, though I carry 1/each weapon along and my utilities tend to be Mirror Images, I.Defender, and Signet of Illusions in PvE … Swapped out for Feedback, Null Field, and such depending on the fight/situation of course. Sadly, its missing both the +20% Mind Wrack damage and the 2x +15% Phantasm damage.

I tend to rather like Rampager’s Gear with Sharper Images. It makes the Clones actually do damage in most of their swings. Further I.Warden and I.Duelist can lessen the damage disparity between a Rampager Mesmer vs. a Zerker Mesmer on most mobs. In fact, I am quite comfortable entering a fight with a PvE enemy with just 3x Clones and the Phantasms/Shatters on CD, as the clones (whether Staff or Sword) will still do damage but also be beneficial depending on which I have out.

Thanks so much for the answers! That made lots of sense to me, I decide I will swap my 20/20/0/0/30 build to a 0/20/20/0/30 build and use staff instead of GS!

Gaidax, that post was just perfect ^^, cleared all my doubts and yes, the build did look quite weak on everything. Being a jack of all trades with a mesmer isn’t as effective as I thought! XD