Guild Wars 2

K so simple, straightforward question;

As a mesmer commander, is it viable to use a shatter build? Why or why not?

a Commander needs to be selfish. you need to ensure you stay alive. If your dead you and your zerg become useless. So if you know you can stay alive as a power shatter then all the power to ya. But there are more viable options to ensure you stay alive pulling away from full shatter.

“I’m going to ride a bicycle in a demolition derby. Is it okay to use a fixie?”

Classic 44006 shatter build? Nah.
And the only reason you would ever want that is to be able to use Distortion without any clone, which is a very long cooldown for 1s of invuln.
Not really worth it.

A build with triumphant distortion could work well. 3s invuln after killing someone on a 10s CD. Could work well if you’re good with tagging.

If you really want to go shatter then 2 6 0 0 6 I guess with triumphant distortion.

Going further with triumphant distortion, a support shatter build might work, something like 2/6/0/6/0:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW8dlknpVtlqxMNcrNCsBd6ZcjjQqAU6M8sYC-TlhRwAPVCeR5Bg9H2oEbnuBxq/AA-w

I threw that together quick, not fully optimized gear wise but you have a high health pool, decent armor and damage.

Idea is to build a bit more tanky so you can get shatters off successfully to cleanse conditions from allies around you, while also spreading AoE vigor and vulnerability to foes around you. If vigor isn’t as important, you could go with glamour mastery.

I know rending shatter isn’t very strong but I’ve always wanted to try it.

You could go GS instead of staff for more tagging but staff will keep you alive longer. With three ethereal fields, you/your team can keep up decent chaos armor uptime for hopeful protection procs with leaps/blasts.

I don’t WvW often, much less zerg so this might not be viable at all, but it looks fun.