Guild Wars 2

After playing and falling in love with this Chronomancer build last BWE, I decided to try and recreate the feel of that build as a vanilla Mesmer: now that Riposte has been fixed, it seems like a good time to give it a go. Here’s the build.
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As you can see, it’s a Condi Shatter build with a twist: instead of DE, it relies on Persistence of Memory and the excellent clone generation of Sceptre-Sword to churn out shatter fodder.
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The key points of the build are:

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Persistence of Memory. With iDisenchanter, Mental Defence and Illusionist’s Celerity, you can shatter a lot of phantasms, which in turn keeps your phantasm CDs low (Mental Defence is also affected by Persistence!). This doesn’t just give you decent shatter cadence, it also means frequent packets of direct damage from Swordsman, boon stripping from Disenchanter, and (fleeting) damage reduction from Defender.

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Counter and Riposte: Counter is on a 6s CD, and together with Riposte allows you to mitigate hits at a respectable rate while conjuring clones and dealing damage. They’re also very convenient for proccing Mental Defence. If there are AoE skills lying around you can basically guarantee a proc by running into it while blocking.

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Malicious Sorcery: The attack speed bonus of MS really shines here as you have multiple skills with significant cast times. Try conjuring Disenchanter with and without MS: the difference is really appreciable.

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Bountiful Disillusionment: The cast times on this build, especially on Mantra of Recovery, are vulnerable to interrupts. That’s where this trait comes in. Maintain a good shatter cadence and you’ll be very resistant to all forms of disabling effects, all while providing your teammates with (admittedly rather lackluster) boons. Don’t forget that with Restorative Illusions, you’re also healing and shedding conditions every time you shatter!

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So theorycrafting is good and all, but how does this build fare in practice? Well, I’ve been playing it in Ranked for a bit and it feels pretty good: I don’t have trouble maintaining a healthy cadence of three-illusion shatters, although if too many phantasms die before you shatter it can leave you dry.
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Is it competitive? Probably not, Condi Shatter in general isn’t all that competitive to begin with. But it is fun, and a taste of what the Chronomancer (with Chronophantasma and alacrity) will bring.

I love seeing more chaos/inspiration/illusions, FOTM still seems so strong with not many diverse mesmer builds out there.

I can attest to the strength of this trait spread, however run it a bit differently. I go celestial and sc/f staff. I’m in a PvP team so I don’t run it quite as selfish; I use chaotic dampending in chaos (due to staff ofc + on demand prot is sooo good), warden’s feedback, illusionary inspiration, compounding power (due to hybrid), and shattered strength (due to hybrid).

When I was first playing around with it, adapting my utility wizard build from pre-patch, I was doing a lot of solo/dueling and ran mental defense/persistence of memory for more illusions which was decent enough clone generation for some nice shatter bursts with might.

I know maim seems good and it’s probably best in a rabid/carrion build. In a hybrid though, shattered strength is much better IMO as you can stack the might pretty good with shatters and F1 (BD). I run rune of strength also to keep it up, can easily maintain 12-15 in active fights by myself. Having a sigil of strength on the scepter also impressively keeps the might on due to the sheer number of attacks that can be output by the weapon with MS. The power/condition output is quite impressive.

Malicious Sorcery indeed plays a big role without DE, since it not only speeds up scepter attacks, it also reduces recharges to 6s for illusionary counter which is huge. You can actually skirmish more than one full rotation, get that extra block/clone off + confusing images before you swap again. The extra speed is excellent for recharging the mantra as you stated, summoning phantasms and especially for stomps. It’s hard to not go ineptitude but MS is really good here.

The only thing your build seems to lack is a stun break but, nice overall!

skcamow.3527:

The only thing your build seems to lack is a stun break but, nice overall!

I definitely feel the lack of Blink. As a rule I trust in Bountiful to keep disables off me, and use Diversion/Distortion if one does go through.

It may be possible to use Blink instead of Defender, but I just love having two sources of Defender: and yeah, with MS it doesn’t feel like it takes quite as forever to conjure.

Embolism.8106:

skcamow.3527:

The only thing your build seems to lack is a stun break but, nice overall!

I definitely feel the lack of Blink. As a rule I trust in Bountiful to keep disables off me, and use Diversion/Distortion if one does go through.

It may be possible to use Blink instead of Defender, but I just love having two sources of Defender: and yeah, with MS it doesn’t feel like it takes quite as forever to conjure.

I would personally do that, swap iDefender for blink or decoy.

The reason I didn’t take Blink for this build is because it’s meant to be somewhat capable of holding points (hence also the lack of stealth). It doesn’t work quite as well compared to a Chrono build but it is capable of standing its ground, unlike most Mesmer builds (Bountiful’s Stability helps a lot!).

I think Signet of Midnight might be a better choice for a stunbreaker. It’s on the same CD and also Blinds enemies, and is a significant boost to offensive pressure when not used.

Embolism.8106:

The reason I didn’t take Blink for this build is because it’s meant to be somewhat capable of holding points (hence also the lack of stealth). It doesn’t work quite as well compared to a Chrono build but it is capable of standing its ground, unlike most Mesmer builds (Bountiful’s Stability helps a lot!).

I think Signet of Midnight might be a better choice for a stunbreaker. It’s on the same CD and also Blinds enemies, and is a significant boost to offensive pressure when not used.

SoM is a solid choice as well, I used it in my pre-patch UW build I mentioned earlier. The problem I always ran into though was trying to convince myself I didn’t need stealth to be successful vs other thieves (and mesmers to a degree). I functioned under this fallacy for awhile until I started fighting some much better thieves as my MMR increased, then my perspective changed.

Especially in soloq, it’s about surviving since you can’t rely on your random teammates so bail you out. Your build here is much like mine and to that end, a very decent far point assaulter. In those situations you tend to find yourself in many 1v1’s and often vs thieves. Once I added decoy my survival rate went way up. I was doing OK vs thieves in my build before I added it, but started doing much better after.

So either way is probably fine; you do have a lot of built in defenses but I think decoy is the best choice. If you absolutely must not have stealth in the build, SoM fits perfect for the role you’re going for in the build.

skcamow.3527:

I love seeing more chaos/inspiration/illusions, FOTM still seems so strong with not many diverse mesmer builds out there.

I can attest to the strength of this trait spread, however run it a bit differently. I go celestial and sc/f staff. I’m in a PvP team so I don’t run it quite as selfish; I use chaotic dampending in chaos (due to staff ofc + on demand prot is sooo good), warden’s feedback, illusionary inspiration, compounding power (due to hybrid), and shattered strength (due to hybrid).

When I was first playing around with it, adapting my utility wizard build from pre-patch, I was doing a lot of solo/dueling and ran mental defense/persistence of memory for more illusions which was decent enough clone generation for some nice shatter bursts with might.

I know maim seems good and it’s probably best in a rabid/carrion build. In a hybrid though, shattered strength is much better IMO as you can stack the might pretty good with shatters and F1 (BD). I run rune of strength also to keep it up, can easily maintain 12-15 in active fights by myself. Having a sigil of strength on the scepter also impressively keeps the might on due to the sheer number of attacks that can be output by the weapon with MS. The power/condition output is quite impressive.

Malicious Sorcery indeed plays a big role without DE, since it not only speeds up scepter attacks, it also reduces recharges to 6s for illusionary counter which is huge. You can actually skirmish more than one full rotation, get that extra block/clone off + confusing images before you swap again. The extra speed is excellent for recharging the mantra as you stated, summoning phantasms and especially for stomps. It’s hard to not go ineptitude but MS is really good here.

The only thing your build seems to lack is a stun break but, nice overall!

I love Chaos / Inspiration / Illusions builds, however I have ran into a huge problem with them.

Problem is Chaotic Dampening. While its OK in SPVP where a lot of your fights are 1v1 or 1v2, it is not OK in group situations.

The staff CD reduction is just a sick joke, its just completely not noticable while playing the game. Its only viable somewhere on paper or out in the blue skies within the theorycrafting la-la-la land. Thats how bad it is.

the protection component is OK, but still has very reduced use due to the fact that you get so much prot from other sources while using these trait lines. For example every time you get regen, you also get prot, every time you cast a phantasm, you get regen, etc. And this is far more reliable then having to proc fields for chaos armor.

In addition, my biggest peeve with chaotic dampening is that it fails to proc due to overlapping fields. This is quite extreme in WvW and PvE, less so in spvp, cause less players per battle = less fields, but its still there.

If they rework Chaotic Dampening so that the CD reduction component is noticable in a practical sense while playing, + adress the issue of overlapping prot boons + overlapping fields, then this trait will not be such a waste and I can play it again.

I would like it to be useful everywhere in the game not just in small scale engagements.