Guild Wars 2

Mesmer Community,

I’ve decided to share with the Mesmer community a build I’ve flushed out, tested for the last two months, and finally comfortable with sharing the finished “product.” I’d like to give respects and acknowledgements to Mesmer players such as Osicat, Chaos Archangel, and others like them whom have shared their knowledge and guides in the past, for it has been their willingness to share what they’ve learned to inspire me to do the same. Fair is fair.

If you get a moment to rate it and provide feedback, I would appreciate it! A lot of time, patience, and love for the Mesmer class went into making this one – enjoy!

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Phantom_Menace

Note #1: I choose Meta Battle because I believe the build’s design is durable enough to restore faith in a lot of Mesmers (myself included at one point) that lost it after the most recent nerf bat on damage output (pvp related), and because I wanted to present it in such a way that I could explain the synergy behind what makes it so viable in PvP play right now.

Note #2: I couldn’t resist the name for this build because it’s too relevant and perfect! Enjoy living a lot longer in your PvP matches! (Inspired by my extreme disdain for dying, and in an effort to counter the amount of spike builds in the current state of the game; besides, I’ve long felt that a dead mesmer is a mesmer that did something wrong.)

Cheers!
Sylvena Variel (aka Syric)

Cool, thanks for sharing.

Did you at any point test the staff in your build? I’ve been doing some testing myself, and I think it’s secretly the best bunker weapon available to mesmer.

With Chaotic Dampening and alacrity, you can have a pretty high uptime of chaos armor, and chaos storm, while generating warlocks and winds of chaos clones at a high rate.

At the very least, it’s a lot of fun.

Syric.1936:

because I wanted to present it in such a way that I could explain the synergy behind what makes it so viable in PvP play right now.

Dude, you literally made a thread in the PvP forums 4 days ago (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Goodbye-My-Lover-Goodbye-My-Friend/first) about how you’re quitting GW2 because you’ve been unable to win a single game using this build after hitting ruby. Are you seriously trying to claim this is viable?

It’s like you’re trying to support… but can’t figure out how you intend on doing that… and don’t realize that healing power may as well not exist when mesmer is involved…

Atlashugged – Ty. I haven’t thrown staff into the mix. I’ll try it out – it does sound like a viable alternative.

Fay – I’m permitted to change my decision, and that’s exactly what I did. Guilty as charged – I love the Mesmer class too much to ever stop playing it. I’m disappointed that you choose to highlight that aspect of that post vs. all the other fine points I brought up in that rant. I stand by it – the game has some very disappointing imbalances right now, and in that passionate rant I outlined a few of them. Additionally, I was stuck on the last 5 pipes in Sapphire (not Ruby). The build outlined here was not the exact one I was utilizing – I had an epiphany on the build, applied it, and vol-la! I made the corrections and it came together, finally, which is why I feel comfortable sharing it in its final form now. Have you tried it yet?

Durzlla – The build is craftier than it appears on the surface. You need to dig deeper into its’ mechanics. If you look at the entire structure of the build, you’ll see it works well as assaulter, bunker, and/or support. It depends on the context of the match and enemies your up against. I typically heal for 7k-10k to allies within every 15-20 seconds – not to mention the boons they receive (i.e. regen). How about a few more screen shots of my more recent matches? Below, you’ll see that the build has proven to be damage effective, healing effective, self/team boon effective; numbers don’t lie (specifically, look at gw596.jpg, which displays 227k dmg total, took over 300k worth of total dmg, and healed for 301k w/ 778 boons applied – with my highest total to date being approx 1,326):

http://syric.net/phantom-menace/

Needs more of everything.
“http://i.imgur.com/p67YZM3.png” more like this.
mesmor stronk.

Cannot understand your weapon choice at all.

I really can’t think of any good reason of going other weapon sets rather than staff, sword/shield in a bunker support build.

The problem with bunker build now is the support you provide is pretty much limited to bountiful disillusionment. It is still a very strong trait but not good enough to carry the rest of mesmer now. I would suggest try playing with illusionary inspirtaion rather than mental defense and see if you still can survive.

If you can, it would still be a decent build with support. Your probably need to take portal as well. But I suspect lacking mental defense can make your build too squishy to play effectively.

Exciton.8942:

Cannot understand your weapon choice at all.

I really can’t think of any good reason of going other weapon sets rather than staff, sword/shield in a bunker support build.

The problem with bunker build now is the support you provide is pretty much limited to bountiful disillusionment. It is still a very strong trait but not good enough to carry the rest of mesmer now. I would suggest try playing with illusionary inspirtaion rather than mental defense and see if you still can survive.

If you can, it would still be a decent build with support. Your probably need to take portal as well. But I suspect lacking mental defense can make your build too squishy to play effectively.

I haven’t had much success w/ the staff because, for me, it messes up the rotation of this builds beauty. The idea is not to teleport out. It’s to absorb a #$#$ of damage and let the enemy(ies) burn out their skills, elite, etc. – all the while you’re blocking and evading these things. I’m not saying Staff isn’t useful, but it’s not my recommendation for the build’s design. You’re suppose to stay on cap point. Not harass it. And, if you mix this build with a DH, Ele, etc. Your golden. You only need 1 other team mate that is effective to see the true potential this build yields and carries out.

Counterweight.7192:

Needs more of everything.
“http://i.imgur.com/p67YZM3.png” more like this.
mesmor stronk.

Impressive and amazing condition damage #s! What build? What match setup yielded these kind of numbers? What was the enemy teams composition?

Judging from your healing Allies #s, it looks like your build is different by design than mine. My build is, at its core, support w/ an emphasis to still do enough damage to be a threat not to be ignored.

Syric.1936:

Counterweight.7192:

Needs more of everything.
“http://i.imgur.com/p67YZM3.png” more like this.
mesmor stronk.

Impressive and amazing condition damage #s! What build? What match setup yielded these kind of numbers? What was the enemy teams composition?

Judging from your healing Allies #s, it looks like your build is different by design than mine. My build is, at its core, support w/ an emphasis to still do enough damage to be a threat not to be ignored.

Probably condishatter vs a 5 man MM necro team

Sorry to be a downer Syric but our summons are actually called Phantasms, not Phantoms, which are two very different things