Wanted to squeeze this in earlier but today at work I was actually… Working. /gasp
KAAMAU’S EVASIVE SIGNETS
This was the build I was most eager to get my hands on and try out, its not often someone feels confident enough about a signet build to submit it into a contest versus more traditional setups. I’ll be honest, I groaned when I saw the traits at first, since so many signet choices battle against powerful traits like Deceptive Evasion, Mental Torment, and Empowered Illusions. I could already tell I was in for a unique, albiet difficult experience.
Unique, I think, is the perfect word to describe signet builds on a Mesmer; they’re very rarely made for good reason. In my experience, Evasive Signets is easily one of the most unique builds I’ve seen in a while and it’s very easy to look at it and go “That? Yeah, that’ll never work…” but it turns out, it actually kinda does. The build has much better defenses than your average Mesmer, even if you go full Zerker. The Melandru runes combined with sigils actually do some decent work at combating condition damage. Pistol, staff, and Signet of Midnight/Domination go together very well to offer an above-average amount of enemy control / Staff and Signet of Inspiration always do work together / and Staff(Phase Retreat) with Signet of Midnight make a fairly good defense, though not quite up to Blink&Decoy caliber. It goes without saying that Evasive Signets has a higher-than-average skill cap and someone could easily spend several weeks learning the ins and outs of the build. (You should see Kaamau in action with it. I underestimated him and got smacked up for it. =[ )
The problem I had with this build is that, for all its interesting points, it didn’t really stand out as ideal for any particular role. I was in PvP with a big grin on my face at how cool all the distortion and signet play was, happy for the boonshare and lockdown, and felt like a boss being so survivable but… I was essentially just running in circles feeling myself. Anything I could do with this build, I felt that another build could likely do better, and the unique/coolness of the build couldn’t do much to change that.
SENSOTIX’S BOUNTIFUL INTERRUPTION
Sensotix, real talk, I had my reservations about this build. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it was good, I knew it was good before even picking it up, but it was because of how you had seemed to contradict yourself with it’s conception. When I had first published Mind Crush (though it was still conceptual at the time) -even though I specifically mentioned that the build would take a few days to really grasp since the style was so different and lockdown builds weren’t really explored- you had tried it for about an hour before detailing it as unviable because of Arcane Thievery not being enough condition removal, lack of Illusionary Persona (you said Decoy mitigated the need for IP, but didn’t have Decoy in this build either), and the fact that it was missing either Portal or Illusion of Life.
Then, lo’ and behold, Sensotix’s Bountiful Interruption build appears! Complete with everything you said wouldn’t work.
So my first reaction was, of course “Wow, this guy … -_-” since the build seemed rather derivative from concepts skcamow and myself were working on. But I didn’t want to go into judging the build with such a jaded mindset because I wanted to be as fair and impartial as possible, so please keep that in mind for what I’m about to write…
This. Build. Rocks.
It rocks so hard dude. It was easy for me to pick up since it was similar to concepts I’ve explored before (boonshare, lockdown) and its trait distribution makes it a powerful phantasm build even without the boonshare/lockdown. But with it? Everything comes together so well that you could easily use this build in PvE or WvW (Great for small groups, terribad for Zergs though) even though it wasn’t made with those venues in mind. It was my favorite build to play of the bunch because I felt like I both did good damage AND was valuable to my team with my lockdown (definitely gained respect for Chaotic Interruption here) and boonshare (With this Warrior Meta, stealing their Elite Signet and giving it to my team is glorious). This build had actually got the highest score from the judges, but was beaten by popular vote. #Dat Democracy.
Only problem? Squishy as hell. Once you get focused, Greatsword doesn’t offer enough defense and untraited Blink isn’t enough of a disengage in many cases.
