Guild Wars 2

I’ve been having a lot of fun and learning a lot listening to Kylia and Pyro on the mesmerized podcast. I’m pretty new to WvW, and I was getting killed a lot with my berserker build. I know glamour is great, but I like trying to make new builds. I’d love feedback on this idea.

Basically, it hits the marks of 1500 toughness, 20K health, and balanced crit percent and crit damage. Here’s the build link http://bit.ly/13ek31E

The traits are 10/30/20/0/10

III in Domination for 15% illusion damage
II, IV, and X in Dueling for phantasm fury, deceptive evasion and blade training (for sword cooldown)
III and X in Chaos for manipulation cooldown and staff cooldown
VI in Illusions for shatter resets at 50% health

Sword/Sword and Staff for weapons
Basically all soldiers armor, mostly soldiers accessories (a little berserker/valkryie – I have Circle of Logic ascended amulet for example), and runes of divinity
Sigil of accuracy on staff and one sword. Sigil of generosity on other sword. Sigil of perception on something to stack Precision stacks.

Traits are Arcane Thievery, Blink and Null Field (Ether Feast for heal and Time Warp critical).

Pluses:
- If my numbers are right, it’s about 1600 toughness and 2100 health
- With omnomberry ghosts, master maintenance oil and 25 stacks of perception – it should be around 56% crit chance (so phantasms will be at 76%) – with no stacks phantasms will still be around 64% crit chance
- Crit damage is 57%
- Lots of invulnerability 2 out of every 8 seconds with sword, 2 distortion casts if I drop below 50% health
- Quick cooldowns on basically all skills

Things I’m worried about:
- Slow… No swiftness. Out of battle, can swap to focus for some. Otherwise, I need to use blink and learn Osicat’s trick of Phase Retreating off of things (maybe even Illusionary Leap to ambient things)
- Condition strategy is swapping with Generosity or Arcane Thievery (36 sec cooldown). Null field for one more removal and ethereal field for all the leaps in this
- Damage – on paper, iWarlock and iSwordman hit for a lot and they can be cast every 10 – 12 seconds from 1200 range) – in battle, maybe this doesn’t work
- AoE damage is pretty much only shatters and chaos storm
- Maybe this plays too fast for my reflexes – I envision a great deal of leaping…

I’m starting to get the gear for this build, so I’d love any feedback. For me, one of the best things about mesmers is that so many builds seem potentially viable. Thx for all the tips I get here!

Imo toughness as a phantasm build are sort of like training wheels (rather like using Knight’s amulet). In the future you’ll find that you really wouldn’t need much traits on Chaos to survive as a phantasmer/shatterrer, and would allocate it to other trait lines for more damage or functionality

Toughness in a phantasm build really depends on what you want to use it for. This build looks designed to do a bit more skirmishing, and so does well with some toughness. It’s obviously not a full shatter build, but it’s got deceptive evasion and staff, both of which work better for a skirmishing build than for a phantasm build

I rather like the concept. Consider swapping that first chaos trait for the 3% less damage per illusion depending on the situation. You’ll have to tell me how it plays though, it’s definitely an interesting design.

The build looks nice, but why do you need Feedback? c;

Thx for the notes. I don’t have the soldiers armor, so I’m playing this with my zerker gear right now.

I think it has promise, but I need a lot of practice to get up to speed with it. Right now, I feel like I’m thinking a lot about what skill I should be using.

The gear for this is big investment (divinity runes and sigil of generosity alone are over 50g), so I’d like to make sure this seems like a reasonable build.

Thx

You’d want to consider rune of the air for extra swiftness. The crit damage you will get from it is also good, and the 6set bonus is no joke.

I wouldn’t waste gold on a divinity set lol

No toughness in WvW is equal to having a rally-bot.

I don’t quite have all the gear for this build, but so far I like it. I survive a lot more.

I found that I needed the focus a lot, so I went sword/focus versus sword/sword as I planned.

Otherwise, it’s a fun build to play so far. Lots to learn about timing and skill use.

I tweaked this build a little bit since I found out sigils of accuracy don’t transfer crit percent to phantasms and since I decided I really can’t play without the focus.

Here’s the updated build. http://bit.ly/17eYD36 It comes in at 1579 toughness and 19,652 health (using curry pumpkin soup). The illusions should be around 75-77% crit chance (but up to 90% crit chance if I build perception stacks) and 75% crit damage.

It’s fun to play so far. I’ve survived a lot more bad situations in WvW, and there’s some flexibility in swapping around skills.

Hexxen.7216:

Sigil of Generosity doesn’t work in WvW.

Since when?

They changed it to a PvE only sigil didn’t they?

Edit: Doing a fast google search has poped up with it apparently does work but I found a few that still says it doesn’t. ^^ Sorry ^^