Guild Wars 2

So after months to a year of hiatus from PvP (only came back to GW2 for LS, that’s it) I came back and felt like the meta drastically changed a heck lot. Now I heard that the meta revolves around shatter and lockdown builds and a few people saying that the PU’s getting a small resurgence. Correct me if I’m wrong.

So anyways, how viable is the phantasm build in 1v1 and team fights in PvP? What about PvE and WvW? Shoot away!

Also somewhat related, can Deceptive Evasion work for Phantasm builds. Some don’t carry it but I always like my max clones.

I brought this out a couple months ago.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-Phantrupt-Asskicker-CS-Interrupt/first#

Meta is still IP Shatter (Double ranged, but GS sw/torch is good to). Otherwise CS lockdown. The true power is in our interrupt/lockdown, but whats left of the top end are still running shatter.

PU is for dueling, trolling, that sort of thing. Its considered bad for teams and terrible for conquest.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Meta is still IP Shatter (Double ranged, but GS sw/torch is good to)…

Pretty much any of the offhand weapons are viable, it would seem. Some say the focus is best, (but I myself find that I do better with Pistol/Sword/Torch personally)…though destroying the Curtain (Focus 4) can be almost OP at times. :P

I don’t ever use Deceptive Evasion in a phantasm build, because bringing out clones will pop one of your phantasms, and we wouldn’t want that now would we?

Zumi.6384:

I don’t ever use Deceptive Evasion in a phantasm build, because bringing out clones will pop one of your phantasms, and we wouldn’t want that now would we?

On the other hand, we have so many clone summoning skills we often rely on for various reasons, it’s likely to happen anyway.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Zumi.6384:

I don’t ever use Deceptive Evasion in a phantasm build, because bringing out clones will pop one of your phantasms, and we wouldn’t want that now would we?

On the other hand, we have so many clone summoning skills we often rely on for various reasons, it’s likely to happen anyway.

I’m the kind of person that would bring Deceptive Evasion in a Phantasm build because it’s going to be hard to maintain 3 phantasms at once and most of the time, it will be two phantasms dealing damage against an opponent.

Plus with Deceptive Evasion, it brings me more options in the case that I don’t have my phantasms up. In the case that I only have 3 normal illusions, I can go to my shatter attacks so I get some form of offense/defense. Yes, my shatter attacks are weak, but I have the invulnerability, daze, and damage shatter attacks at any notice (in a scenario with only illusions and no phantasms). I can do damage, stun my opponent enough to bring out my phantasms again, or go in an invulnerable state so I can either give myself breathing room or retreat.

I’ve been using this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8alknpRt1oxMNcrNiqxY6XSJGSGQBlMjtB-TlCEwAwUVw++DEeAAbVCa4gAwU5HL1a6obAwFA4xRAIAACA38m38m38mlCIilRA-w

Which is a slight variation of Warlord of Chaos build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8dlknpRt1oxMNcrNipxY6biJHSGQDlslxB-TlCEwAEeAAMVe1VJIL1KaqEBnqKd0NA4gA84KAEb/hAAIAczbezbezbWKAxGGB-w

It’s really fun, I play it very aggressively, like a shatter build, just drop hell on them, gtfo, back in. When I started playing interrupt I felt it was so hard to interrupt other players but now after a couple of months with it I’m so much more aware of what the other player is doing and their rotations.

I use DE for interrupts, vuln stacking and boon removal. I usually drop a F3 after my GS rotation to bump up the second burst to the max. Thiefs are a pain in the kitten as usual but I feel interrupts and high dmg is the best way to beat them, I try to get phantasms up while dodging BS’s and then interrupt them to feed them to the phantasms.
Even though I don’t have condition removal I haven’t really had problems with conditions so far and I am a bit surprised by this but I think the stress this build induces from high dmg and interrupts throws people of, or I’ve just been lucky, which could very well be the case.