Guild Wars 2

Hey all :)

I’d love some input from you mesmers out there that are running a shatter build utilizing Illusionary Persona (Illusions 30). I love using this with GS/Staff for event tagging in Orr, and I’m wondering if I can build something to work in dungeons as well.

I’d like something a little tanky for dungeons so I’m not sure if I should take some traits in the Chaos or Inspiration lines or put my points into domination and precision for the extra mind wrack/fury/clone on dodge and then use Carrion gear or a mix to make up for my lack of vitality and toughness.

Help a girl out please! :)
Any feedback is much appreciated!

Here’s what I use, with a mixture of Carrion gear, Valkyrie gear/jewelry, and Honor of the Waves Precision/Toughness/Condition Damage pieces:

Weapons

• Sword + pistol
• Greatsword

Utility Skills
Take three of these depending on your needs:

• Decoy
• Mirror Images (less vital since you have Deceptive Evasion, but you really should have either this or Decoy, sometimes both)
• Feedback (not always useful, but when it is, it’s a lifesaver)
• Null Field
• Arcane Thievery (ever stolen 25 stacks of might, retaliation, and fury from a boss?)

Domination 20

• Mental Torment (+20% Mind Wrack damage)
• Crippling Dissipation (clones cripple on death)

Dueling 20

• Blade Training (20% sword cooldown reduction)
• Deceptive Evasion (clone on dodge)

Illusions 30

• Master of Misdirection (+33% confusion duration)
• Illusionary Elasticity (extra bounce for Magic Bullet and Mirror Blade)
• Illusionary Persona (of course!)

That’s right. Melee. The thing is, Illusionary Persona only affects targets that are within 400 range units of you, so you have to be pretty close to them to hit them with your own persona’s Mind Wracks and Cries of Frustration. So, why not use a sword? While this build could definitely be tankier—I have a few pieces of ruby (Berserker’s) jewelry I should replace with beryl (Valkyrie) for more vitality—it currently relies pretty heavily on invulnerability and escape mechanisms.

For defense, you have:

• 5-point Dueling minor trait that gives you Vigor every time you critically hit.
• Blurred Frenzy (2 seconds of invulnerability every 8 seconds while in melee).
• Distortion on a 45-second cooldown.
• Illusionary Persona lets you do a 1-second Distortion even if you have no clones out.

Once you exhaust all of that, pull out a greatsword, dodge or Decoy out of melee range, and prepare for your next Blurred Frenzy + shatter bomb. Meanwhile, you can use Diversion to daze enemies and keep them from bothering your allies.

Works very well for me.

Also when you steal the fat stack of boons with arcane thievery, you could use signet of inspiration to share them with your party.

The important thing for dungeons for a melee build is to know wth the enemies are doing. If you understand that, then you can dodge / invuln / softkite anything they do and melee works fine.

In dungeons you should go either full zerker phantasm build or a projectile reflect build.

Poplik.8697:

Also when you steal the fat stack of boons with arcane thievery, you could use signet of inspiration to share them with your party.

Oh yes! How could I forget? It’s a pretty fun trick to do. It works well with the Superior Rune of Lyssa, too. When you have six of those runes, you get all boons (and I do mean all boons) when you use an elite skill (like, y’know, Time Warp). Then you can copy them all to your party and enjoy god mode for a few seconds. Fun for everyone!

I also forgot to mention Signet of Illusions, which can make it easier for your clones to reach their target when shattering (thanks to increased health) and will also provide you an emergency shatter recharge (if you need another invulnerability).

ManCaptain.3154:

In dungeons you should go either full zerker phantasm build or a projectile reflect build.

I disagree. For one thing, these really should be the same thing. There’s no reason you can’t have both in the same build, especially because you have time to lay down utilities and support skills while your phantasms do passive damage for you.

But shatter builds are criminally underrated in dungeons. Shatters with Illusionary Persona provide our best source of AoE damage, consistent interrupts and defense, pretty much constant confusion stacks for sustained damage, and (if you trait right) amazing kiting ability using Crippling Dissipation and Deceptive Evasion together.

A shatter/clone factory Mesmer can effectively “kite tank” better than almost any other profession, especially since bosses can be crippled endlessly and they’ll just keep trying to kill those clones.