Guild Wars 2

Over a year ago, when daze and Mantras weren’t as good as they are now, a couple of us were playing around with various Mantra build ideas.

One idea with the power of mantras was their ability to unload so that you sort of “joust”. Go in, unload your offensive Mantras, get out, reload.

In that train of thought, I put together this allocation of traits, but without weapons, runes, sigils, etc. as I’m curious how others think it could work (if at all).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQBVSfmS0WlGb0wtGJmGjJvJmTWVUkKgSOy4A

Skills
[Mantra of Healing] gives you a heal on a very low cooldown. It’s primary drawback is having to take the time to recast the mantra. This can be made “more worth it” via traits and/or runes with on-heal effects.

[Mantra of Pain] and [Mantra of Distraction] provide you with instant direct damage since you have [Halting Strike]. So you can go in, unleash phantasms, shatter, etc. and throw these two in for kicks and giggles for a little extra “tickle” so they know you’re there. [Mantra of Distraction] also helps reduce what your opponent can do to retaliate, stop a heal, etc..

[Mantra of Concentration] is there for a much needed stunbreak as well as stability (for your team as well!). I know we all love Decoy (I sure as heck do!), but with [Mantra of Concentration] I can get two stunbreaks and on a lower cooldown (though I have to recast the Mantra). The stability is always helpful when you want to make sure you can recharge a particular other mantra and/or helping your teammates not be interrupted for their own casts.

[Mass Invisibility] is an often “crowd favorite”, but it isn’t particularly necessary for this build, though some stealth when you’re heavily pressured and need to recast a Mantra would not be a bad thing … it’s also excellent group support and has the lowest CD of all of our current elites.

Traits
[Illusion of Vulnerability] for some vulnerability whenever you interrupt. Synergizes well with having [Mantra of Distraction] but can synergize with various weapons as well. Better-or-worse based on your selected weaponsets. It can make [Diversion] better as well. Even if you’re not a power-build, vulnerability helps conditions and can help “shield” other conditions from cleanses.

[Halting Strike] turns [Mantra of Distraction] and [Diversoin] from “just daze” to direct damage nukes as well. It’s even better if you have additional interrupts from your weaponsets.

[Critical Infusion] vigor helps us dodge more. Dodges help keep us alive and generating more clones. Always nice to have.

[Mantra Mastery] is currently selected since you have 3 Mantras in order to help with getting them “reloaded” quicker … though [Mantra of Pain] doesn’t really need it. If your weaponset(s) included mainhand and offhand sword, I’d entertain replacing this with [Blade Training].

[Sharper Images] makes illusion crits bleed. More deadly illusions is always welcome. More welcome if you run with condition damage.

[Deceptive Evasion] we live and breathe our illusions. I don’t see this build being an exception.

[Metaphysical Rejuvenation] regen at a threshold you’ll likely always get to unless you are stomping your opponent(s) so badly that you really don’t need regeneration. Synergizes well with [Illusionary Membrane] for some extra protection.

[Debilitating Dissipation] makes clones almost always useful. Punish people for cleaving your illusions.

[Illusionary Membrane] gives some extra protection when you gain regeneration (though 15s ICD these days, bah!). This works well with [Metaphysical Regeneration], [Bountiful Interruption] (chance at regen + protection), and [Phantasmal Healing]. Depending on your weaponsets and/or runes, it can provide even more protection … though with [Phantasmal Healing], you’ll likely not need other sources of regen to proc this. Darn that 15s ICD.

[Bountiful Interruption] is there for the always welcome Might + random boon when you interrupt. It obviously works well with [Mantra of Distraction] as well as various Mesmer weapons and [Diversion]. However, this is another trait I could see some people swapping out based on the weaponsets they select.

[Vengeful Images] simply for punishing people for targeting/cleaving your phantasms.

[Mender’s Purity] combines well with [Mantra of Healing] since it thankfully has no ICD, so you can get your cleanses from a skill with 2 charges and a very low cooldown.

[Phantasmal Healing] practically ensures that you’ll have at least 3.5s of Protection applied to you every 15s given the cooldowns on Phantasms, how this pulses every 3s. The regeneration isn’t bad either and synergizes well with your healing from [Restorative Mantras].

[Restorative Mantras] is there so you have some more sustaining power … in fact, over a year ago when I tried something like this, I found that when I was needing to be extremely defensive, I could constantly recycle Mantra of Pain to get some extra healing in. This also helps makes [Mantra of Healing] a little stronger as you now heal when recasting it as well as when using the charges.

Final Note:
Mantras can feel wonky, but they do have the added benefit of being able to be cast while you’re casting something else. The offensive mantras (Pain and Distraction) also provide no real tell for opponents to react to, so unless you are playing predictably (or unlucky) you are quite.

You can go in, hit hard, get out, recharge, and go back in. With the extra healing from [Restorative Mantras] and your sources of regeneration, you can have recovered more health each time than most opponents.

Sadly, no boon removal from utilities nor shatters, so you’d want to take Greatsword, Sword, and or Sigils for boon removal.

Having played a few similar builds I can say they are reasonably effective. If anything it seems like greatsword/staff would work best for this style, allowing plenty of ranged damage and interrupts. Mantras are easiest to charge by outranging and hiding behind walls so it fits there too.

Keep in mind this build is very close to many powerful traits – harmonious mantras, chaotic interruption, phantasm damage minor, shattered concentration… If anything I would say your dueling major traits are not clearly used.

As for skills, blink or decoy is much easier to manage and generally guarantees one mantra charge.

berserker generally works well, but as written you could find many 1v1 matchups tough – lack of mobility and boon removal will hurt against celestial, burst and other builds. Knight + restorative mantras is tough, but in PvP you tend to leave points to recharge against any enemies. Mantra of stability sadly does not help much there.

There’s a pretty good reason why this theoretical style of play never actually ends up working. The reason is that it’s very easy to say ‘get out, and reload’. In practice, this is incredibly difficult to do.

Thieves don’t let you get out and reload. When you engage a fight with a thief, unless your team peels for you, you’re going to have to finish that fight. If the thief is still alive by the time your mantra charges are gone, you’re forced to recharge them mid-fight, you can’t back out and take a breather.

Thieves are the most extreme example here, but many classes have a similar effect. Power rangers are not possible to disengage from using range. If you start running away, they just kill you. You can LoS them of course, but that requires terrain amenable to LoSing. Eles are difficult to run from as well, as they have more mobility. Terrain can be used to juke, but that again requires amenable terrain.

Disengaging and reloading is a fantastic idea of how to work the mantras. If you could actually do it, it seems to me like that’s how the mantras were intended to be used. Unfortunately, the mechanics of combat in this game simply don’t let you do that, and that makes running a heavy mantra build incredibly difficult.

First, thank you for the feedback :-)

If I was going to drop any of the traits currently there, I think I’d probably drop 2 from Chaos to put in Domination for Shattered Concentration. Of those you mention, I believe it is the most useful/powerful. In fact, I think that would be more beneficial … more vulnerability from daze and boon removal outweight 33% direct damage reduction that is up for only 3.25s every 15s (21.6% * 33% = ~7% dmg reduction).

Harmonious Mantras could be argued that it conflicts with Restorative Mantras.

I think between interrupts and blocks, you could handle a burst build, but that does mean you need to land those interrupts and/or use those blocks intelligently (and have blocks).

I could see Sword+Sword & Staff (or Greatsword) working. I’m reminded of how Osicat would often run in with the same setup sometimes with a Shattercat build and then get out while various abilities recharged. Same with Grimm/SevenMirror.

That sort of hit-and-run does more often have a place in smaller scale WvW than in sPvP though. Note, they weren’t running far, just enough to give them a little breathing room … and they’d judge the situation pretty well; sometimes not even moving back out because they had solid momentum in the fight.

While you may feel the need to move off the node to charge mantras, I don’t see it as required. I believe it’ll depend on how hard you’re being pressured at the time just as with any other build … though this could possibly have more potential for “recovering”.

Smart use of [Mantra of Distraction], [Distortion], [Chaos Storm], etc. could be leveraged to recharge a Mantra. That being said, Decoy causes you to not contest a node either :-/

I’m curious about playing this with Celestial instead of the usual Berserker or Rabid setups most often used. Obviously less burst, but more everything overall. Almost every Mesmer build is applying some sort of damaging conditions be it confusion from [Cry of Frustration] (or all shatters), bleeds from [Sharper Images], or the obvious condition weapon abilities. Likewise, you’re always doing some direct damage; especially with all of our weapon phantasms minus Torch’s.

I’m going to try to get some time tonight to play around with it (familial obligations … being a dad is lots of work sometimes, lol). I recall doing quite well with something like this over a year ago, but need to see about it now with the current change and meta.

I’m interested in the 1v1 capabilitiy, but also in the extra healing that it provides to teammates in group fights … compare it with the capabilities of the standard 4-4-0-0-6 shatter build that aims to quickly drop an opponent from the fight.

Fay.2357:

There’s a pretty good reason why this theoretical style of play never actually ends up working. The reason is that it’s very easy to say ‘get out, and reload’. In practice, this is incredibly difficult to do.

It’s easier to do with access to stealth and teleports. But then you have to drop some Mantras for utilities that enable that. Which I think isn’t a bad idea overall since it also means you have to spend less time recharging: with mantras, even if you trait heavily to boost their power, every additional mantra you take is liability as well as a benefit. >.>

(I really like traited Mantra of Recovery as a condition drop in non-solo WvW. I play it with MoD. In WvW, there’s a lot of breathing room to recharge, BUT I have Blink glued — GLUED — to my bar. And usually Torch and Decoy as well.)

If your successful with it more power to you. But I don’t understand the point of your selections. What are you trying to accomplish?

You go full mantra, but the only Mantra traits your utilizing are Mantra Mastery and Restorative Mantras. Reduced cooldown on MoR/Mender’s Purity works OK(but MoR only has a 10 second cd to begin so the reduced cooldown isn’t getting you much).

Then you have Mantra Of Pain which ONLY has a 1(3/4 traited) second cooldown. So that’s going to be triggering Restorative Mantras. Again, a 1 sec cd on MoP will be plenty for Restorative Mantras.

You could drop Mantra Mastery and use those trait points to enhance something else in your build. “Sword Mastery”, “Phantasmal Fury”, “Far-Reaching Manipulations”, etc. Again, this would probably have minimal affect on your gameplay and probably “up” your damage/kiting abilities. Again improving that In/Out gameplay that you mention.

Why bother with MoC and MoD?

What I’m saying is you could drop those two mantra’s, grab blink/decoy something more effective and your playstyle wouldn’t change much. You wouldn’t be burdened with 2 more mantra’s to charge. You’d be able to do more of that In/Out combat style your shooting for.

You have HS and BI, so that MoD makes some sense. But is this a “lockdown” build? Or is it a “Support Build” with Restorative Mantra’s?

If your going full mantra then go “full mantra” and grab the Empowered Mantra’s or Harmonious Mantras to add get some real benefit of a full mantra build. (Even those GM traits don’t really offer much benefit for a full mantra build.)

If someone posted an ALL GLAMOUR utility bar. There would be similar comments. It used to work, but not anymore. An ALL MANTRA utility bar, has never really worked.

Use mantra’s to improve\enhance your build. Like how some shatter builds will grab MoD with HS in place of portal. It’s another tool in build.