Guild Wars 2

Title basically says it all, looking for feed back on a different type of build. no clever name yet.

Focus is attempting to make use of BD (the new chaos trait) to swap between sustain and bursts while maintaining some form of attrition via condition wrist slapping.

Currently
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArcWlknpQtNoxVNMrNCuBZ6JEiRiyg0kSGgfB-TZBBwAAeCAJ3fwyJAYzhA4cZAA

Able to sustain and handle fights easily as a 1v1 against most professions (BS thief excluded, stealth will always be the bane of the mesmer)

Handles 2v1 fairly well, typically long enough for backup for arrive.

Sometimes survives a 3v1 for a while but normally i get squished pretty fast.

Strengths: Clones as far as the eye can see, Loads of blocks, easy to keep conditions up, high mobility to avoid/poof out of large damage chains, phants are just as useful kittenter fodder as they are semi-working one-hit-wonders. High pressure on single/multiple targets.

Issues: Reliable Condition removal, having conditions reliably removed, Currently not finding enough burst to bring down more bunker oriented builds. Occasionally still gets mowed down by Glass cannons (mostly thieves or stun-locking warriors).

Why not go PU?

Because as great as PU is, its an OP build that abuses stealth (imo the most broken mechanic in game) and some day i’m sure it’ll find its way into the cross hairs of Anets warrior rifle nerf gun. Also I’d love to pull away from our classes dependance on PU for sustain in pvp.

PS, this build works reasonably well in PvE and can be used as a “boon share” monkey to help keep fury, retaliation, and Regen on your team in dungeons. Haven’t bothered to test it in WvW in a zerg but if someone else would like to, feel free.

Just don’t bother with BD. If you don’t want to use PU, that’s fine. Don’t cripple your build by taking a garbage trait though.

In my extensive testing since the patch broke, BD is intensely underwhelming. I’ve tried numerous builds to see if anything could be made at least something to think about.

In fact, I tried 0/4/6/0/4 (in a power spec though) and considered it briefly only by at the very least taking illusionary invigoration and optionally bountiful interruption. At least 20 in illusions is required to get anything out of BD due to shatter recharges, and you have that. Anything less than 20 makes BD so much worse than it already is. Overall the power spec with this trait spread just doesn’t work that well in my personal experience. As boon share – adequate but high recharge on SoI is meh. As a damage spec, it pales in comparison to a CI build.

Along the lines of your condition spec here, other than the advice I already gave – I personally would switch to a competent bleed proc’ing phantasm. This means you ditch OH sword for pistol or go with GS. Then you need to take sigils that buff might, either strength/battle, and ideally a rune set that adds additional damage to your build, not just stat buffing. Just my 2 cents.

As far as BD goes in general, you have to find a way to make the trait even worth taking, meaning the boons on ALL shatters have to mean something and you’re not forcing anything just to get the boons (very important). I have a build that I believe might be workable (pyro hates it ofc, ha!) but will need a lot more testing in order for me to be confident in it, and I intend to do just that.

If you want to keep testing, by all means. I’m personally not going to defend BD, because the trait is not grandmaster quality and it irks me that Anet thinks it is (along with disruptor’s sustainment, UGH). This however doesn’t mean we can’t, or shouldn’t keep experimenting as you (and I) have. Heck, most of the GW2 mesmer world shunned chaotic interruption for months before someone experimented with it and voila, you briefly saw it reach tPvP meta level. BD is not as strong as CI but I’m just trying to make a point that experimenting is a good thing, even on crappy traits. It’ll at best end up with something that’s surprisingly workable or at worst cement the trait’s garbage reputation. If you’re having fun at the end of it all though, you’re golden.

I havent had a lot of time to really get into the meat of things but a few alterations here and there have yeilded interesting results.

I dropped Sword recharge/+prec for Retaliation on Blocks This means a lot more retal uptime and it does help against classes that dont focus on a high speed 1-2 punch burst.

I also added in Retal from F2 but i’m still meh as to what should really belong here.

Various runes ranging from more power to attempting to add conditions on hit havent yielded much yet. I did have some better luck using Prot based rune bonuses as the build lacks that boon outside of Chaos Armor.

Sigils, using Battle did help out with overall damage and sustained output from conditions, staff + 1 or 2 basic clones can eat through Hambows running full signets/Healing Power/ etc… Not as quickly as i’d like but i’ll take it over watching their health never move. Able to upkeep atleast 3 to 9 stacks of might 70% of the time unless hit with mass boon removals.

Arcane Thievery lends itself in place of Null Field in smaller fights to ditch some bleeds and grab more might or Protection/regen. Still playing with this slot tho.

Still having issues with Exceptionally devastating CC (mostly the lovely necros) but most thieves are no longer and issue as many cannot keep pressure without burning a lot of their movement skills and initiative. Lack of stability on the entire class lends itself to this almost always being and issue tho.

I’ll update later with basics i’ve been using as far kittenter rotations and such.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Just don’t bother with BD. If you don’t want to use PU, that’s fine. Don’t cripple your build by taking a garbage trait though.

this.

PU isnt even viable in real PvP, it doesn’t have the damage to really threaten a good bunker with 1 person rotating from mid like decap engineer has. It cant bunker a point, and the dps is terrible to be considered for that type of role.

All the QQ about PU is coming from turboscrubs in the bottom MMR braket who decide fighting a mesmer off a point is ever a good idea.

It seems like you really like the play style, but not the stigma that comes with it. Not like that stigma is even justified. The closest thing to PU that’s viable is shatter.

Since when PU deals damage?