Guild Wars 2

Gday Everyone!

Ive bin using this build in fractals and so far im rely enjoying it so i thought i wud share it with everyone to help some people as well as let people help me.

This is my first ever guide so please consider that before you /ignore, /throw rock, /noob me :P
Pls let me know if u have any suggestions with regards to this

OUTLINE

This is a phantasm/mantra dps build with some small amounts of support. Now that might seem a little complicated but rest assured i will explain it later. While you may not be able to outdmg a warrior, thief or hammer ele, u will still be able to do a decent amount of dps while not being so squishy and providing small group heals.

THE BUILD

The traits for this build are as follows 10/30/0/30/0

Major Traits:

Domination: Empowered Illusions (III)

Empowered Illusions adds 15% dmg to all illusions (which is alot!) and yes this applies to phantasms as well

Dueling: Blade Training (IV), Duelist’s Discipline (IX), Empowering Mantras (XI)

Blade Training is taken as some free precision whereas Duelist’s Discipline is taken to improve the survivabillity of your pistol phantasm

Now to explain why i wud chose Empowering Mantras. While shattering and phantasm’s are capable of dealing nice amounts of damage, mesmer weapon skills do abyssmal dmg However Empowering Mantras gives you an extra 4% dmg for each readied mantra which adds up to a possible extra 16% increased dmg with 4 mantras. Suddenly a normal 4-6k blurred frenzy becomes 6-8k and gs auto attacks do 3-4k dmg.

Whilst this may not seem like a huge increase keep in mind that phantasms die, no matter how good you are at managing your phantasms, the fact of the matter is there will be times when you are unable to keep 3 phantasms up. This is when we must rely on our weapon skills to pick up the slack while we are waiting for our phantasm skills to recharge.

As an added note Empowering Mantras does NOT affect the damage your phantams do

Inspiration: Glamour Mastery (II), Restorative Mantras (X)/ Warden’s Feedback (VIII)/ Temporal Enchanter (IX)

Now the reason why many phantasm builds go into the inspiration trait line is due to the 25 minor trait which gives phantasms 15% dmg. But this trait line also opens up many supportive major traits most notably Restorative Mantras and Warden’s Feedback.

Restorative Mantras is a small aoe heal (2kish) that is cast whenever u CHARGE a mantra, not when u release it. This synergizes very well with Mantra of Pain which has pretty much no cooldown. Meaning that if u find urself with low hp and with your heal on cooldown, you can quickly spam mantra of pain, healing urself and those around you everytime you charge the mantra back up.

However there are times when you will find that other major traits would in fact be much more useful in a certain situation. For example Wardens Feedback which causes all focus skills to reflect. This is especially useful in the harpy fractal where reflects are very desired. Also as a sidenote, in the harpy fractal where you have to climb the stairs whilst dodging lightning bar things, those bars count as projectiles so throwing down a temporal curtain with the Wardens Feedback trait will reflect the bars providing your party with some breathing space to get up the stairs. These traits are situational and i personally find myself changing them constantly to suit different scenarios.

GEAR

Armour

Now this is a dmg build so the armor and trinkets primarily consists of Power Precision and Crit Dmg gear with Ruby Orbs (otherwise known as berserker gear).

Weapons

The base weapons that I use are Greatsword and Sword/X. For the offhand i personally find myself switching between pistol, sword and focus very often as different situations warrant a different kind of weapon combo. For sigils i use Superior Sigil of Accuracy for Greatsword, Superior Sigil of Perception on mainhand sword and a mix of force, air and fire for my offhands. Like the armour the weapons are berserker.

Stats
Power: 2145
Attack: 3245
Crit Chance: 63%
Crit Dmg: 101%
Health: 17582
Toughness: 984

Gameplay/Rotation

As this is a phantasm build your attacks are going to revolve around trying the maintain 3 phantasms up at a time while dealing dmg with ur weapon abilities. In most single target situations, the pistol phantasm is preferable as it is a ranged phantasm which wud be more likely to survive longer. However in aoe situations the greatsword or focus phantasm wud be better as they do aoe dmg.

Ideally, in order to do the most dmg, one should stay in melee with a sword as it provides the most dmg (skill wise). However there are times where being in melee is too dangerous and so that is why we have the greatsword. But this also raises another issue as our ranged pistol phantasm is coupled with the sword which is a melee weapon and while blurred frenzy does make us invulnerable it cannot maintain us being in dangerous melee situations for extanded periods of time. Hence we use mantra of pain, which provides us with ranged dmg +healing while we wait for the weapon switch cooldown, thus avoiding us having to run around like headless chickens doing nothing while we wait.

Also a note on blurred frenzy. It does not always have to be used offensively. It can be a real lifesaver if u are out of dodges and you know that your not going to be able dodge a bosses attack eg. Jade Maws spit of death, Lupi’s Aoe, Ice Shamans Aoe….etc.

Phantasms

To put it simply phantasms are those purple glowing guys that you summon while illusions look more like mirror images of yourself. Whilst there are alot of different phantasms i will focus on the ones that i use with this build.

Phantasmal Berserker (Greatsword): This phantasm does an attack which is basically a copy of the warriors no.3 greatsword skill Whirlwind Attack with an extra cripple and it follows the same mechanic. Meaning like wars, this phantasm can stack next to a wall while attacking to do immense amounts of dmg.

Phantasmal Duelist (Pistol): This phantasm is a copy of the thief dual pistol skill unload, where it hits a single target 8 times. With high precision and crit dmg this phantasm can hit some big numbers while being a projectile combo finisher.

Phantasmal Warden (Focus): This is your single highest damaging phantasm hitting a target 12 times while absorbing projectiles. Now this might seem awesome but do consider that the dmg is dished out over a period of time and that this phantasm is STATIONARY, meaning it will not move even if the target moves.

Phantasmal Swordsman (Sword Offhand): This is a rather simple phantasm that attacks your foe once while providing a combo leap finisher.

Shattering

As this is a phantasm build shattering regularly is almost nvr recommended with the exception of the fourth shattering skill distortion which can be used to avoid heavy incoming dmg. There are times however where shattering can be used for example when either the phantsam or mob is about to die.

Also if one has their 3 phantasms out and phantasm summoning skills off cooldown, they could quickly mind wrack and resummon.

Take note that the third shattering skill can be quite effective during the first boss in grawl fractal as dazing the grawl shaman will stop it momentarily allowing more time before it reaches the captives.

Utilities
I mainly run with 4 mantras for utilies although i often sub in a feedback or null field when it is required. Remember in dungeons and fractals you should never have a fixed set of utilities. Yes sometimes you may have to sacrifice your own personal dps for a reflect or some stability but in the end your party does more dps than just you alone so keep that in mind.

I’ve been running pretty much the exact same thing for awhile (although I changed to 10/30/0/30/0 Sword/Focus+Scepter/Sword a bit ago for a more small WvW group focus) and its an amazing damaging support spec.
Running zerkers with this build is counter intuitive outside of pve, if you take this into WvW, switch out zerkers for knights.

Also, even with phantasm builds, you should be shattering semi regularly as it situation warrants it, the skills are there so make use of them.

EDIT: I should also mention, Mind Wrack does nice damage with Empowering Mantras, I’ve run a shatter variant of this build (10/30/0/0/30) with hilarious results.

@clipnotdone
thanks for your input about shattering i have updated the post

this is mainly for pve which is why im using zerker gear as mesmers have an insane amount of survivability in dungeons