Guild Wars 2

As the title states, I’m working on a new PvP build revolving around a melee style using two swords. My idea so far has been to manipulate Distortion for defense along with using iPersona and Dazzling to stack vulnerability easily.

The build so far: http://tinyurl.com/a2ap48w

I’m having trouble deciding on an Amulet to stick with, Runes/Sigils to run with, and if there’s a better way to do damage with two swords while still maintaining decent survivability.

My defense consists of:

5 Distortions / Blurred frenzy / Staff / Perma-vigor / Blink.

And for damage, each sword attack besides iLeap does decent damage. My autoattack usually hits for around 2k rather often.

Would Berzerkers or Rampagers be a better bet? Anyone have a melee-oriented Mesmer and can give some advice?

Tried this.

Didn’t work very well.. Duelist is better phantasm Stun is better to dps…
Why bother while torch is ridic op? :/

I use double swords in pve and in pvp and I really like them. Secondary is GS in pvp (staff pve).
For stats I have amulet berserker and jewel berserker. Runes are Centaur.
Build is the basic 20/20/0/0/30.
I like to do this:
Sword phantasm and clone and Blurred Frenzy and dodge→ F3, Mirror Images and dodge→ F1. That should kill any foe. With 25 stacks of vulnerability on foe and 3 stacks of Might on you your F1 deals 28% more dmg. On top of the F1 you deal 5k with BF and 4-5k with sword phantasm. Also this combo is very easy and fast to do. As defensive you are either invuln from BF or invuln by dodging all the time.

The dazes are to stack vulnerability. And my rune increases the duration of the 5 dazes at my disposal.
Sword/pistol is probably the easier route, but its far too common for my taste and I reaIly like iRiposte. Both phantasms are good.

And im not gonna go running to an exploit, though I imagine its rather fun right now.

This is a very unusual build and thus takes a lot of practice along withbquick reflexes and timing. How long did you run with your s/s build for? What were the gear/traits?

@Lily wow that sounds awesome. Would it work without Deceptive Evasion?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@Lily wow that sounds awesome. Would it work without Deceptive Evasion?

Probably not, I’m shatter heavy specced.

My opinion is that taking signets purely for the 1 second of distortion is such a massive waste if utilities and traits. The only bonus they give is a tiny tiny honor active defense that can’t even be activated while stunned. To get that, you waste 2 traits that happen to occupy the slots of other extremely powerful traits.

To have shatter traits, yet you have abysmal clone generation. You also have the 15% illusion damage trait which suits a phantasm damage build. Your build is crazy and all over the place.

First, ditch all the signets. You seem to be doing a hybrid shatter/phantasm build. As such, you need some different utilities. Taking mirror images and/or decoy allows you to have stunbreakers that double as an active defense through distortion. Additionally, they have their cd trait at 5 in illusions, which you always already take.

Having ditched the signets, you can actually take some useable traits. Take deceptive evasion in the dueling line, this will be the source of most of your clone generation. In domination, you have a few options. You could take cripple on clone death, which is never bad in a melee build. You could also go for the 20% enhanced mind wrack damage to give your shatter burst some more oomph. You could also take my personal favorite, the boon strip on shatter (strips 1 boon per illusions shattered that hits the target). The choice is yours.

Edit: noticed that dumb torch comment. While the glitch is fun, and I’ve had fun running a dungeon providing nothing but continuous blast finishers, it’s also still mostl useless in pvp. You can’t hit anyone with the flames or you take the revealed debuff. Sure, it’s decent for getting away from people in wvw, or letting your phantasms chunk the target. Shame the torch phantasm doesn’t chunk the target then…or do anything to the target really.

Pyroatheist.9031:

My opinion is that taking signets purely for the 1 second of distortion is such a massive waste if utilities and traits. The only bonus they give is a tiny tiny honor active defense that can’t even be activated while stunned. To get that, you waste 2 traits that happen to occupy the slots of other extremely powerful traits.

To have shatter traits, yet you have abysmal clone generation. You also have the 15% illusion damage trait which suits a phantasm damage build. Your build is crazy and all over the place.

First, ditch all the signets. You seem to be doing a hybrid shatter/phantasm build. As such, you need some different utilities. Taking mirror images and/or decoy allows you to have stunbreakers that double as an active defense through distortion. Additionally, they have their cd trait at 5 in illusions, which you always already take.

Having ditched the signets, you can actually take some useable traits. Take deceptive evasion in the dueling line, this will be the source of most of your clone generation. In domination, you have a few options. You could take cripple on clone death, which is never bad in a melee build. You could also go for the 20% enhanced mind wrack damage to give your shatter burst some more oomph. You could also take my personal favorite, the boon strip on shatter (strips 1 boon per illusions shattered that hits the target). The choice is yours.

Edit: noticed that dumb torch comment. While the glitch is fun, and I’ve had fun running a dungeon providing nothing but continuous blast finishers, it’s also still mostl useless in pvp. You can’t hit anyone with the flames or you take the revealed debuff. Sure, it’s decent for getting away from people in wvw, or letting your phantasms chunk the target. Shame the torch phantasm doesn’t chunk the target then…or do anything to the target really.

Dear Fellow mesmer; Please refrain from making silly commentary “dumb torch”
LOL

Bro .. if you haven’t figured out how to use torch yet that’s your problem.
The definition of torch is “hit anyone with flames properly”.

Hit me up for duels any time r42mes 155qp. I’ll even fight your duel specs with my 5v5 spec.

Thats where I hit a brick wall actually. I really enjoy the Sword Phantasm, and I’m guessing if anything I’d probably be making either a Phantasm build or a hybrid Shatter/Phantasm build (whichever has more survivability) as long as I can remain comfortable and deadly in melee range.

-The only reason I hadn’t gone with Decoy, Blink, and Mirror Images again is because its the exact same skill setup I had last time. (though I’ll stick with Blink always and forever) and had wanted to experiment with how far we could take the distortion/signet mechanics. Its sorta working, sometimes giving me fantastic results and other times leaving me scratching my head. It takes a lot of practice, and if its not giving me what I imagined after a week or so I’ll switch the utilities to something more conventional.

-Sig of Midnight is an instant stunbreak, aoe blind + distortion. I’ve used it to save many people from stomps. Signet of Inspiration not only counts as another distortion, but it restores my shatter distortion in addition to making my Phantasms more beefy.

-I went through the Illusions line for the %9 damage, extra shatter recharge, and of course iPersona but not necessarily with a shatter build in mind. Daze/Distortion end up being used far more frequently than MindWrack/CoF, and it allows my iLeap to deal both a daze and 15 stacks of vulnerability as well as making iReposte much safer and reliable.

That being said, I’m open to any suggestions. My goal is to have a strong sword, dangerous iSwordsman, and ability to survive in the thick of a fight.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

-Sig of Midnight is an instant stunbreak, aoe blind + distortion. I’ve used it to save many people from stomps

No you haven’t. A stomp can only be stopped by some sort of interrupt, or a full-blown stealth. A blind will not stop a stomp. It will stop a stomp stopper (downed skill 2 from some classes) but a stomp is not a normal attack, and will not be stopped by a blind.

That being said, midnight still isn’t all that great. The problem here is that you’re loading up multiple utilities onto single utility skills, which is good sometimes, but bad here. Signet of midnight is a stunbreaker, which makes it really important to have if you get clipped with some cc. The problem is, you also could want to pop it to preempt a stun or something, because that’s the whole reason you have the distortion trait. However, if the stun doesn’t come at the exact right time to get hit by the distortion, you’re now out of luck, having burnt your distortion and stunbreak.

Same problem with signet of illusions. You want to keep it for the shatter recharge, and additionally in a phantasm build, you gain massive bonuses from keeping it unused. The problem is if you burn it for the distortion, you’ve now lost your shatter recharges, AND you’ve lost the increased illusion health.

Ultimately, there’s a reason you use mirror images and decoy a lot: They’re simply the best (and no-one had better start talking about feedback and null field and w/e, those 2 aren’t the best in all situations, but they are some of the most powerful all-around utility skills in the game). The signets soak up 2 utility slots for questionable utility, and they soak up 2 trait slots that happen to be really important. Deceptive evasion is really important in any pvp build that doesn’t actually intend on tanking things because otherwise your clones die to fast to have reliable shatters. However, with that being said, if you are taking mirror images and decoy, you’ll have strong clone generation from those 2, and could double down on your phantasm power by taking phantasmal fury to add to the blade training.

As far as the domination trait goes, clones crippling nearby foes when killed can be really strong when trying to kite around with swords while letting your swordsmen do the work. However, this trait only synergizes really well with deceptive evasion. If you opt for phantasmal fury instead, I’d definitely go for the boon stripping on shatters. What that would do is give your shatters massive offensive utility without needing to actually need to them to provide the massive damage, allowing you to focus on the phantasms.

As far as survival you are apparently losing by ditching the signets…you’re not really losing anything. Not only do decoy and mirror images have massively lower cooldowns than the signets (signet of illusions anyway, signet of midnight has a reasonable cooldown), they also provide an effective 2 extra seconds of distortion and a target drop, respectively. Those are much more valuable than 1 second of distortion, and 1 stunbreaker. Your in combat survivability comes from blurred frenzy, blocks, and kiting. Since this is a phantasm build, you can only juke in with leap/swap to do a blurred frenzy, then simply back out and run around for another 8 seconds until it’s ready again. If you get pressured too hard, you can use the block as both a counter, and a strong deterrent to come closer, as that block can hit in excess of 4k on a crit. If you REALLY get pressured, you swap to staff, phase retreat, chaos armor (protection) and chaos storm for aegis and interrupts. You have plenty of active defense without needing those signets.

This whole time I’ve been living a lie!? Does it not stop stomps AT ALL, even before they begin the attack or not stop stomps in the middle of the animation?

And I see what you mean, which makes it a bit difficult in choosing between Deceptive Evasion and Phantasmal fury. The the thing is, I don’t want to simply kite while my phantasms do all the work, I want to be able to be in the thick of a battle fight while the phantasms support me. I know Mesmer can’t facetank like a Warrior, but if I’m nailing 2k autoattacks I kitten sure wanna be in my opponent’s azz.
Thats what makes forming a defense difficult. Most of the Mesmer defenses revolve around retreating and escaping, I figured I’d nailed onto something a bit more melee-oriented with the distortions.

I’ll play around with your suggestions, they were my first idea before I tried to invent something radically different lol.

only real thoughts i have is building into phantasms a bit and pulling phantasmal defender to join you and your swordsmen. Will provide a decent amount of retaliation and if you have it traited for regen as well will support and keep one another up as you wail.

if you want defense while keeping dogging your opponent, it really doesn’t get greater than defender. Loved the guy before I swapped for my sceptor/sword suicide clone build.