Guild Wars 2

Goal – To establish a comfortable Hybrid that maintains Large burst Spikes coupled with pressure/sustained damage from Conditions.

End result – Unreliable in sPvP at this time but manageable for WvW and PvE.

The Traits -

this is a 4/4/0/0/6 set up.

Domination : Mental Torment / Shattered Concentraton
Dueling: Far-Reaching Manipulations / Deceptive Evasion
Illusions: Compounding Power / Illusionary Elasticity / Maim the Disillusioned

This traits were chosen to either compensate for gear choices or purely by utility. There is some wiggle room but these are what I’ve found that work for me.

Weapons –
Gs / Staff

Just using the basic double ranged shatter set is pretty robust. Staff really shines here and can catch opponents off guard when the burns kick in.

Gs/Scepter + is also lovely for those more inclined to these types of set ups.

I don’t recommend ditching GS as its a great source for might and bursts tho..

The Gear -

Mixture of Zerkers and Sinister ofc! yes this will be a very glassy build but fear not..

I wont be super particular on the exact things to use but I will suggest numbers to aim for stat wise.

Power – 2k is a great spot to be in. this allows for 1.5-2.5k hits or crits even on the chunkiest warriors with Gs2. (increases with might stacks)

Crit Chance – 40-50% typically leaves you golden you can aim higher or lower but i dont recommend dropping below 35%..

Ferocity – 500 to 600 really makes your crits hurt… you can go lower or higher not that important you just want your spikes to really hurt.

Condition Damage – 1k or above. You can compensate with foods or sigils of bursting or runes if you’d like but getting above 1k is really what lets the sustain from Torment Bleed and Burn cover any dead periods. Personally i use Sigils of Bursting and Signet of Domination to push over that 1k.

The rest is up to you and your preferences. More Vit and Toughness are always a good thing but avoid Healing Power.

The Basics!

Play aggressively. This isnt a build that has a lot of room for back peddling or defensive reaction play. Even when/if using the staff you should be kiting in a way to set up your foes to be within Clone AA at all times.

Know your Foes. If you’re up against a condition immune target such as a D/D ele or Guardian don’t count on passive build ups to bring them down. Shatter bomb them and force them to heal or cleanse (they often cannot do both). against Glass cannon killers (thieves) kiting with a staff and allowing Condition spam to hurt them can put them on the defensive and open you up to shatter/pressure further.

Block happy foes are easily eaten by GS2. Its unblock able and it bounces into them 3 times, that’s up to 8k damage on a foe that just has to take it or waste a CD and dodge.

Weaknesses -

Its glassy so if you get caught with your pants down then you’re probably going to get spanked. practice your scrappy back fighting to compensate.

AoE spam if you are not careful can negate your clones and phantasms just like any mesmer build.

No On-demand F4, be careful about that..

Strengths -

Plays like standard Shatter but can swap gears to more passive play if needed. a bit more versatile on that front. Eats through most builds that compensate for only Condition or Raw Damage.

Lots of Panic to foes that are hit by a large burst and then 1k+ ticks from conditions and confusions..

Actually ticks on foes in PvE

Lets staff run double/triple duty as a Condition weapon (burns and vuln maybe some bleeds) Boon Spam and Phantasm Truck.

Prevents a lot of “Dead time” that both Shatter and Condition solo based builds tend to run up against where no damage is being done and another set up needs to take place.

Enjoy and Experiment, would love to see it improved and filled out by those who have more time to do it than i do these days!

Im curious. I tried hybridizing mtd briefly. It worked well in pve but was soooo squishy like a bug in wvw. I had to be careful of those rabbit npcs let alone other players. :p

without Sinister gear actually being present in the Build editer tools this is a rough approximation of what I run and the numbers behind it. Just replace the carrion/rabid with Sinister in your mind…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQJARWlknpMtdqxBNUrNCrBh6sslfSyBEgSWhrB-TFjFABLqGDvPBA42fIXlQDq6QVKBB4CAYkSijUicmuAkPEA8ocAA-w

I’m not going to comment on its PvP/WvW effectiveness, since you’re probably aware of the potential issues that it runs into there due to build mechanics/stat choices. I’m just curious as to where any amount of PvE viability even begins to creep into this build?

It’s a hybrid build (not good in PvE), a shatter build (awful in PvE), using greatsword (usually pretty bad in PvE), using torment as a primary damage condition (fairly bad in PvE) and confusion as a secondary damage condition (absolutely awful in PvE). Condition burst doesn’t work on mobs. They don’t chase after you and they don’t spam skills in a panic. They just get hit by it, stare at you dumbly…and that’s about it.

if you run a Sword Focus all the time I’m sure the foe sitting still and staring at you is entirely true Pyro.

I’ve brought it into basic PvE and Dungeon runs with minor changes and it works just fine. is it super meta? no but it works :P Give it a try, you might like it.

Swish.2463:

if you run a Sword Focus all the time I’m sure the foe sitting still and staring at you is entirely true Pyro.

I’ve brought it into basic PvE and Dungeon runs with minor changes and it works just fine. is it super meta? no but it works :P Give it a try, you might like it.

Anything works in PvE, but that isn’t the point here. I can even bring a double scepter Mesmer with sword offhands in a dungeon and still make it work.

But there is a huge difference between something working and whether something is efficient and effective.

Dungeons for alot of people aren’t about just clearing it, no matter how long it takes. Any random pug party can complete a dungeon. But for a lot of people it is about how fast they can complete it. And I guarantee with your build you are hindering that greatly, unless you have a really good party, but seriously why be the weakest link? Guaranteed you aren’t doing even a third of the DPS you could be doing with a meta build.

If everybody had the mentality “oh it works just fine we just completed a dungeon”, before you know it we’d have 3 hour Arah parties instead of 15-30 minute or however long it takes for the usual meta party.

It’s fine if you want to use it for fun and I’m sure some parties wouldn’t mind, but I would still acknowledge that the build would be terrible in comparison to current meta builds.

Sure anything but the meta builds will be sub optimal that’s why they are meta. I post this because it’s fun to use and it’s a bit different. If someone else can have fun with it other than me or it inspires a new meta then I’ll call it a win.

If your not focused on speed clears and farming it still gets a job done and does it pretty well. Wvw is where I’ve had the most fun with it being able to run a shatter build where I don’t have to be in someone’s face for ip and it still hurts.

Swish.2463:

if you run a Sword Focus all the time I’m sure the foe sitting still and staring at you is entirely true Pyro.

I’ve brought it into basic PvE and Dungeon runs with minor changes and it works just fine. is it super meta? no but it works :P Give it a try, you might like it.

Yes, yes, I’m sure it works in pve. This is because literally anything can work in pve because pve is so easy. That doesn’t mean that it works well or that you’re not a wasted spot on a team for running it.

Foes standing still and attacking slowly is not dependent on weaponset. That’s simply how enemies behave. They use slow attacks slowly. They’re animation locked, so no moving while attacking. In 5s they’ll use maybe 2 attacks if you’re lucky. If you try and kite them around to get torment ticking…they’ll just switch aggro to someone not running in circles. Additionally, I’d love to see you do any damage whatsoever to some bosses like the molten duo that would laugh at your attempts to shatter anything.

This build falls squarely into the list of ‘kick on sight, no questions asked’ builds if I’m not in the mood to carry someone that isn’t contributing anything to the team whatsoever.

Fay.2357:

Swish.2463:

if you run a Sword Focus all the time I’m sure the foe sitting still and staring at you is entirely true Pyro.

I’ve brought it into basic PvE and Dungeon runs with minor changes and it works just fine. is it super meta? no but it works :P Give it a try, you might like it.

Yes, yes, I’m sure it works in pve. This is because literally anything can work in pve because pve is so easy. That doesn’t mean that it works well or that you’re not a wasted spot on a team for running it.

Foes standing still and attacking slowly is not dependent on weaponset. That’s simply how enemies behave. They use slow attacks slowly. They’re animation locked, so no moving while attacking. In 5s they’ll use maybe 2 attacks if you’re lucky. If you try and kite them around to get torment ticking…they’ll just switch aggro to someone not running in circles. Additionally, I’d love to see you do any damage whatsoever to some bosses like the molten duo that would laugh at your attempts to shatter anything.

This build falls squarely into the list of ‘kick on sight, no questions asked’ builds if I’m not in the mood to carry someone that isn’t contributing anything to the team whatsoever.

i wanted to glean some kind of helpful insight that wasnt purely negative for your post so i gave it a day but all i come away with is the following..

rehash and circle back on something negative you stated earlier (cant work in pve to well yeah anything works in PvE) and that you refuse to try it, you refuse to give it a chance. QQ You’re an elitist.

Maybe I’m wrong there, but anyway maybe read the post above yours before just replying next time. <3

Enjoy the Hybrid build community

Swish.2463:

i wanted to glean some kind of helpful insight that wasnt purely negative for your post so i gave it a day but all i come away with is the following..

rehash and circle back on something negative you stated earlier (cant work in pve to well yeah anything works in PvE) and that you refuse to try it, you refuse to give it a chance. QQ You’re an elitist.

Maybe I’m wrong there, but anyway maybe read the post above yours before just replying next time. <3

Enjoy the Hybrid build community

I suppose there isn’t really much insight to gain, I just want to make the point clear that this is not an appropriate build for PvE.

Your build doesn’t remove conditions, it doesn’t provide defensive boons like aegis, stability, or protection. It doesn’t have any good form of mob control, and it will do extremely low damage.

This is an accurate assessment. It’s not just that it isn’t a meta build — you can run non-meta builds that still at least do something. This build does nothing.

Am I elitist to not want people in my party running builds that do nothing? Maybe so I guess, but I’ll take that chance and say it anyway: This build is not suitable for group PvE in any way, shape or form, and running it is an insult to your party.

Edit: To be clear, this is fine in PvP/WvW, or at least it’s not out of hand awful. It does obviously suffer from issues of being glassy shatter that all glassy shatter builds suffer from, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary.