Guild Wars 2

Soooo I’m not sure if I’m a bigger masochist than I expected or just bored, but when the patch hits I decide to get off ele (I know I know, they’re also in terrible state) and reaper and try the new buffed mistrust in an interrupt-phantasm-ish-ish build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse7ansnB1ohlpBmqBEgilcjy8CetJouVn1btMAStWD-T5QHgAAnEghnAQ6+DAA
Keep in mind Build Editor has not updated yet. This build comes with mercenary runes. Had plenty of unranked success in the last few days, though I’m not sure if its because my opponent are terribly bad or spammy.

Most of the time I can stack around 8 confusion on most opponent, occasionally goes up to 12 on necro. Combine that with scepter and I can get around 10+ confusion easily. With 5 stacks of bleed from each well placed iDuelists (if they survive to deliver more than 1 barrages), you should be fine in some 1v1 situations. Interrupt plays more roles than phantasm in teamfight, especially when focus fire on somebody or casting nullfield + gravity well on ressers (seriously those stacks can be ridiculous).

This build does not play like bunker. You must keep a safe middle distance from enemy, even if it means pull off from capture point from time to time! Also don’t linger if you’re outnumbered 2v1, I know mistrust means the more the better, but with the current meta chances are you’ll be downed in focus fire first.

Surprisingly good against standard zerker thief due to mercenary amulet, the bleed and direct damage from iDuelist means thief can’t ignore them. Against reaper you can kill them relatively easy if play smart, ooooor maybe just too many new players jumped on reaper bandwagon. And you feast on any ele foolish enough to overcharge when you have interrupt.

Unfortunately several hard counters are meta atm:

• every hammer weapon skill from scrapper counters you. No, seriously. Reflect on 2, evade on 3, block on 4 and AoE on your illusions on 5.
• Good luck interrupting revenant. If every revenant’s sword + shield did not mitigate most of your attacks, their Shiro (which undoubtedly every rev has one) will screw up your hard earned immobilize + daze.

Some ok match ups with the rest, you can be really good or bad against warrior or druid. Pretty simple to give mesmer confusions with their silly clones, and beat them if you know how to dodge their old school bursts. DH have many ways to block your attacks and you’ll find them healing back up very easily. But some well landed confusion and torment will sent them down the road.

That’s my experience and build on mistrust. Any suggestion is welcomed.

But before anyone ask, I also tried malicious sourcery. Stay off that trait, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. Seriously can we change that trait to increase torment damage by 50% like we were promised in pre-June 23rd patch note?

EDIT on iDuelist due to typo, 5 stacks not 8 stacks :O

+1

Initial comment:

• This is like the third Mistrust build I’ve seen without the Illusions trait line… which perplexes me. You really are missing out on maximizing how strong Mistrust is to forgo it. I do understand why people prefer Chaos though as it’s an amazing trait line. I’d still probably take Bountiful Disillusionment over CI though. The stability is just so good. Combine that with Blinding Dissipation and you have unstoppable stomps.

i took illusion instead of chaos
with good pressure my conditions are higher
though we still have the same problem , scraper (for me its thieves as they tend to run away faster)
but with group fights its amazing atm until necro transfer back the conditions

Agreeing with Illusions>Chaos. I’m running a similar build and have gotten 31 stacks of confusion on a Necro. He absolutely melted.

Did the same.

Swap sword+shield to staff. More pressure.

I did swap chaos to illusions, more pressure.

15 Confusions stack are easily done.

I wanna swap chrono to chaos, but I will need to play more phantasm like than shatter like… not sure.

Rune of mesmer are great with all the daze we get!

I play with generosity and rabid to protect myself versus condis.

Harder than this summer (chaos, illusions, duelist) but more CC, giving more utility into fights.

Dal

I’m really not seeing this build being effective against any necro that actually knows how to play their class. While normally necros are pretty susceptible to interrupt builds, this build relies on condies, and any decent necro these days is going to be running with ~4 reliable and difficult/impossible to interrupt condition transfers. If they panic and spam skills, they’ll die. Alternatively, they can use a condie transfer and watch you ruin yourself with your own condies…4 times in a row if necessary. Add onto that the stability from reaper shroud and necros should rip you a new one. Extra points if they’ve got the scepter trait, and the returned condies get hilariously long duration (I think, haven’t actually tested that one).

Thieves are going to be very hit or miss. On the one hand, you should pretty much never land an interrupt on them since their rotation is more or less dodge → autoattack → repeat. On the other hand, if you manage to get some stacks on them they should die pretty quickly.

Honestly, I see this as mostly a noob-stomping build. It has all the drawbacks of an interrupt build without the advantages of hard lockdown and damage from power block, and without the ability to capitalize on getting interrupts that power builds have. Against a noob, you’ll get a couple of interrupts, stack some pressure, and watch them melt. Against an experienced player with a good build you’ll get an interrupt here or there, and then they’ll calmly cleanse it and keep going. The situation in which you achieve a kill relies 100% on them blowing up on confusion with the help of pressuring from the duelists, and that simply isn’t going to happen against most experienced players.

Fay.2357:

I’m really not seeing this build being effective against any necro that actually knows how to play their class. While normally necros are pretty susceptible to interrupt builds, this build relies on condies, and any decent necro these days is going to be running with ~4 reliable and difficult/impossible to interrupt condition transfers. If they panic and spam skills, they’ll die. Alternatively, they can use a condie transfer and watch you ruin yourself with your own condies…4 times in a row if necessary. Add onto that the stability from reaper shroud and necros should rip you a new one. Extra points if they’ve got the scepter trait, and the returned condies get hilariously long duration (I think, haven’t actually tested that one).

Thieves are going to be very hit or miss. On the one hand, you should pretty much never land an interrupt on them since their rotation is more or less dodge -> autoattack -> repeat. On the other hand, if you manage to get some stacks on them they should die pretty quickly.

Honestly, I see this as mostly a noob-stomping build. It has all the drawbacks of an interrupt build without the advantages of hard lockdown and damage from power block, and without the ability to capitalize on getting interrupts that power builds have. Against a noob, you’ll get a couple of interrupts, stack some pressure, and watch them melt. Against an experienced player with a good build you’ll get an interrupt here or there, and then they’ll calmly cleanse it and keep going. The situation in which you achieve a kill relies 100% on them blowing up on confusion with the help of pressuring from the duelists, and that simply isn’t going to happen against most experienced players.

i agree this build is lacking 1v1 atm. but in group fight where 1 player cannot control 3 or 4 enemies you have the chance to do good
i often cc chain necro while my team just burst him down. sure i did only 10 confusion on him meanwhile. same on thief. i w8 for the right moment and lock him which usually lead to disengage by him unless he stupid to stay around.
but if we only cc i ask myself why not to go power over condition. smart necro transfer my 10 torment 15 confusion to my allies

I honestly use this build with Sage’s Amulet and PU… With Torch. Because Mistrust isn’t a ‘DPS’ interrupt trait. So you could stack stealth while interrupting foes without getting kicked out of it…. Since Aegis blocks most stealth removals too.

Here’s the build I have been playing mostly in the off-season… and with great success:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWncfClphNqBGpBEgilZjqMAqtcDd4ipioeX/1hF-TJRHABk9EA8uMAAnCgU2fAA

It kind of plays like zerk Staff ele in that you ideally want to free cast from a distance (Time Catches Up makes this possible). That’s about where the comparison ends, because you can actually do immense dmg in melee range. The issue is that you can’t be in the thick of team fights, because you’re pretty squishy. Typical of a high risk high reward build which I think is the direction you want when using Mistrust. You’re able to +1 fights out of no where; multiple stacks of confusion is particularly good against enemies caught off guard.

I’ve settled on pretty much everything in this build except the third utility slot and Rune of the Berserker when I’m feeling particularly YOLO. Also, I take Phantasmal Fury sometimes (iWarlock hits like a semi). It depends heavily on the enemy/team composition. Obviously, MoR for when I know I need condi clear. SoM for when I know I don’t need as much condi clear. Portal for when I’m in an organized team of 5.

Yes, there are a few professions and specific builds out there that this will be clobbered by. Necro’s buffed transfers are one of them. That being said, I haven’t met a thief that could beat me 1v1 thus far without completely disengaging from the point. Remember, this is a squishy build, so don’t expect to never go down unless you are with an organized team.

That all being said, the damage this build can do from landing an AOE interrupt[s] on a stack of enemies is insane. I’m getting 15+ stacks… I highly suggest people try it out before ripping the concept to shreds. We’ll see where it stands after more testing and when we’re able to face stronger opponents in ranked.

The bane of the build is going to be aoe cleanses. When you hit an aoe interrupt and stack high confusion instantly, that puts the confusion stack at the top of the priority list for cleanses. An aoe cleanse popped in reaction to the stack will ruin all of your damage.

The question, of course, is whether those aoe cleanses will be common. Shout tempest/bunker guard have massive amounts of aoe cleansing. Bunker chrono has rather high aoe cleanse production as well. However, scrappers to my knowledge don’t have a lot of aoe cleansing outside of that one gyro, reapers usually won’t have anything that does that actively, and thieves/revenants lack aoe cleanse almost completely (nobody uses Ventari).

So yeah, not sure how it would work out. It’ll depend enormously on the enemy team comp. Aoe high stacks of confusion would either be devastating or completely ignored.

Had a long reply and it got lost. -_-

tl:dr- This is a hybrid build. AOE cleanses would be the “bane” of a build using Rabid Amulet. Yes, exactly the term to use in that case. For someone using Sinister/Vipers, not so much. There are damage sources outside of Confusion and Torment. Additionally, using Chrono/Illusions gives me the ability to keep up constant pressure via shatters. Even if the confusion burst is cleared, they still have to worry about more conditions coming their way.

We shall see how things shake out in the new season but I’m optimistic about the bursty role I’ve provided for my teams while using Mistrust.

MailMail try this

torment is longer which is great when enemy burn his cleanse (like chill for reaper)
torment from heal skill
blocking blocking blocking with weapon set and with alacrity shorter cd
cover condi from weapon swap

only problem – power rev and thief with fast burst so MI works great and you use it + F2 OR f3 and block block
also sword daze every 6-7 sec (with alacrity)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cnknBdqhlpBmqBEgilcjq+Vn1btMAStWD92KpZA-TJRHABB8EAA4kAo7+DeXGAA

messiah.1908:

MailMail try this

torment is longer which is great when enemy burn his cleanse (like chill for reaper)
torment from heal skill
blocking blocking blocking with weapon set and with alacrity shorter cd
cover condi from weapon swap

only problem – power rev and thief with fast burst so MI works great and you use it + F2 OR f3 and block block
also sword daze every 6-7 sec (with alacrity)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cnknBdqhlpBmqBEgilcjq+Vn1btMAStWD92KpZA-TJRHABB8EAA4kAo7+DeXGAA

Why using Duelist Discipline if no pistol?

My 2 cents, Mistrust work great with Staff 5 and Gravity Well.

Jourdelune.7456:

My 2 cents, Mistrust work great with Staff 5 and Gravity Well.

+1 Mistrust works best with AOE interrupts like Chaos Storm, Tides of Time, Traited Diversion Gravity Well and Mantra of Distraction. Pistol has always been a condi weapon suited best for single-target dmg.

@Messiah
Hey buddy! Long time no speak!
About the build you suggested, it’s really interesting! The frequent blocking is quite interesting. I might actually try it out once I get sick of the build I’m using. I imagine I will prefer the one I’m currently using, but I’ll see. A few changes I’d make right off the jump:

• Ineptitude over Malicious Sorcery. The latter really is only worth it for Scepter 3. Ineptitude provides not only offense but a ton of defense when you’re in sticky situations. With the amount of blocks you have, you should be able to keep up a good amount of blinds. It also adds a stack of confusion onto every shatter (if you’re melee). Sorry, I just have not ever been impressed with the current iteration of our scepter trait…
• Vulnerability sigils over Geomancy. You will get some bleeds from Staff clones that are pretty lengthy in and of themselves. If I want to add a condi via a sigil it’s either gonna be poison or Vulnerability to act as a cover condi.
• The torment runes are good in theory, but I just feel like it’s too singularly focused, and doesn’t take into account the build’s ability to focus both torment/confusion as big damage dealers. Still, if the torment doesn’t get cleared, I can see these durations being very deadly.
• I assume Duelist’s Discipline is a typo. Definitely Phantasmal Fury here for iSwordman’s crits! He hits like a truck I imagine.

The only issue I see is that the build seems more reactionary since your clone generation is almost entirely based on blocks rather than summoning them yourself. You also don’t have a lot of range at all, and when you’re playing Vipers, being in melee for too long will surely spell your doom. It’s the reason why I love Staff so much. I can create some distance while still doing big damage from range via Chaos Storm, iWarlock or shatters.

Good theorizing as usual though!

Jourdelune.7456:

messiah.1908:

MailMail try this

torment is longer which is great when enemy burn his cleanse (like chill for reaper)
torment from heal skill
blocking blocking blocking with weapon set and with alacrity shorter cd
cover condi from weapon swap

only problem – power rev and thief with fast burst so MI works great and you use it + F2 OR f3 and block block
also sword daze every 6-7 sec (with alacrity)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cnknBdqhlpBmqBEgilcjq+Vn1btMAStWD92KpZA-TJRHABB8EAA4kAo7+DeXGAA

Why using Duelist Discipline if no pistol?

sry take PF or decoy

MailMail.6534:

Jourdelune.7456:

My 2 cents, Mistrust work great with Staff 5 and Gravity Well.

+1 Mistrust works best with AOE interrupts like Chaos Storm, Tides of Time, Traited Diversion Gravity Well and Mantra of Distraction. Pistol has always been a condi weapon suited best for single-target dmg.

@Messiah
Hey buddy! Long time no speak!
About the build you suggested, it’s really interesting! The frequent blocking is quite interesting. I might actually try it out once I get sick of the build I’m using. I imagine I will prefer the one I’m currently using, but I’ll see. A few changes I’d make right off the jump:

• Ineptitude over Malicious Sorcery. The latter really is only worth it for Scepter 3. Ineptitude provides not only offense but a ton of defense when you’re in sticky situations. With the amount of blocks you have, you should be able to keep up a good amount of blinds. It also adds a stack of confusion onto every shatter (if you’re melee). Sorry, I just have not ever been impressed with the current iteration of our scepter trait…
• Vulnerability sigils over Geomancy. You will get some bleeds from Staff clones that are pretty lengthy in and of themselves. If I want to add a condi via a sigil it’s either gonna be poison or Vulnerability to act as a cover condi.
• The torment runes are good in theory, but I just feel like it’s too singularly focused, and doesn’t take into account the build’s ability to focus both torment/confusion as big damage dealers. Still, if the torment doesn’t get cleared, I can see these durations being very deadly.
• I assume Duelist’s Discipline is a typo. Definitely Phantasmal Fury here for iSwordman’s crits! He hits like a truck I imagine.

The only issue I see is that the build seems more reactionary since your clone generation is almost entirely based on blocks rather than summoning them yourself. You also don’t have a lot of range at all, and when you’re playing Vipers, being in melee for too long will surely spell your doom. It’s the reason why I love Staff so much. I can create some distance while still doing big damage from range via Chaos Storm, iWarlock or shatters.

Good theorizing as usual though!

the problem with staff is the losing the blind on chaos armor so ineptitude only proc every 10 sec so only shatter blind and scepter #2 and proc confusion . while MS reduce cd on scepter to 6 and 9 sec for skill 2 and 3 and with alacrity its 4 and 7 sec. so i get more bursty concept with scepter.
regarding range – staff is slow range weapon and thief can easily melee me even if i PR to higher places. while with block with sword, shield and scepter i have more chance
also isword is 1200 range and hit like 3-4k with low cd.

i had some duel against PU condi mesmer and his bleed on me even though he were on stealth were 1-2 stacks only while geomancy especially when you should swap when rdy proc 3 stacks and 1 poison to cover.

i am still playing with ideas

In WvW, I’ve been coupling Mistrust with perplexity runes to try and tune a Chrono condi build into something that is actually dangerous in larger fights. It’s ineffective 90% of the time due to rampant AoE cleansing, various passive condi removals/immunity and the various auto-CC immunity traits in existence. However, every now and again, you get a lot of AoE interrupts coupled with some nice condi shatters in a short space of time and it can get messy. Starting to get many angry whispers from players who simply have no idea what’s going on when they suddenly have 35-41 stacks of Confusion. Mantra of Distraction is of course essential to ensure AoE interrupts. The easiest and best use of this combination is hitting a downed target with 4-5 players attempting a res.

Bear in mind that this sort of build is massively gimmicky and I generally find there’s no room for inspiration or chaos so, even in full rabid, you are pretty glassy especially in WvW where direct damage is incredibly high and condi Necros too can just blow on you and you explode. The lack of personal boon uptime does protect you from corruption to some extent though.

It’s a bit of a laugh though if you feel like playing around with Mistrust.

Simonoly.4352:

Ieven in full rabid, you are pretty glassy especially in WvW where direct damage is incredibly high and condi Necros too can just blow on you and you explode.

At that point, I’d maybe just go full Dire. It’s not like I’ll get any more angry whispers in Dire than Rabid with a build like this. :P