Guild Wars 2

First off: if anything, this build is at least a fun build. I haven’t had much time to mess around with it yet, but it seems relatively theoretically sound and I have had a good bit of success with it.

Secondly: the main problem with not having had enough experience yet with this build is that I can’t tell you precisely which traits and utilities are best for this. As a result, I would not at all be surprised if some of the traits that I took were second-best traits that, while good, are not entirely optimal. As I continue crafting this build, I’ll fine-tune it as reflected by my sPvP experiences.

So, that being said… I present… My build!

Chaos Void (UPDATED as of 16 January 2014)
Q: Why use focus over, say, /S or pistol?

Although the focus is a pretty good utility weapon, it’s probably about equal IMO or just slightly inferior to offhand Sword for Lockdown builds. This is because Illusionary Riposte has a much shorter CD than Temporal Curtain does (even when traited). However, there are a few things to consider. First off, Into the Void is a “pure” AoE. Counter Blade shoots a projectile in a line that can Daze its targets, but opponents do have to actually stand in a linear pattern in order for it to work on multiple targets. Into the Void is different; up to 5 targets in a range of 600 of Temporal Curtain will be pulled by the skill, which is extremely helpful for guaranteeing an interrupt and/or CC’ing multiple targets. Furthermore, however, Temporal Curtain has a longer range than Counter Blade has- TC has a 900 range and an additional 600 range with Into the Void.

Some other useful things about TC: it can reflect projectiles with this build, which can give you a nice shelter to hide behind for a period of time, it’s a Combo Field, and it grants swiftness to allies and cripple to enemies that pass through the field (unfortunately, the swiftness is more or less “bugged” if you’ve ever used TC for swiftness before, but it’s still more mobility than mesmers can get from just about anything else). The most important thing about the skill, IMO, though, is that once Temporal Curtain is up, Into the Void can be used any time with a fairly instantaneous cast. This matters because it means that you can interrupt somebody on a very important cast, which you can’t do quite so much with Counter Blade (due to its slow animation and projectile nature). This extra bit of flexibility is a major boon for a Lockdown build.

Finally, there are many other tricks you can do with Temporal Curtain, such as cliff pulls, pulls out of Shadow Refuge against thieves, and the like.

Q: So what are the other big ideas behind this build?

I don’t like playing with the meta. I’m a rebel. The result has been an extremely non-meta build (no offhand Sword, Confounding Suggestions, etc, etc) that I’ve tried to make as effective and fun as possible. I feel like this is potentially a high-skill build that, while non-meta, can still be very good.

UPDATE (January 15): I should also mention- Illusionary Membrane works very well with Phantasmal Healing.

Q: What changes are you considering to make for this build in the future?

There are a few, actually:

Illusionary Defense: in spite of the fact that this trait seems to be only very rarely seen nowadays, I do believe it is in fact a good trait in that it can significantly reduce the amount of damage you take even with only 1 clone (with 2000 toughness, a 3% damage reduction is a meager but still useful 60 toughness). I find the idea of actively amping up my defense a very charming one, particularly when compared to the passivity of the current sPvP meta. However, I may choose to switch to the more mainstream Debilitating Dissipation in the future.

Blade Training: not much to say about this one. I just have to evaluate its usefulness against Phantasmal Fury. However, the utility from Sword skills 2 and 3 make it unlikely that I’ll change this trait easily.

Vigorous Revelation: this trait, admittedly, doesn’t work extremely well with Illusionary Defense, but it grants extra vigor for you and your teammates when you absolutely need it. It may be replaced by Mender’s Purity in the future, however, which would have the additional benefit of allowing me to more easily free up the utility slot taken by Arcane Thievery for another utility. I would not at all be surprised if this trait was in fact swapped out for MP in the future.

Arcane Thievery- I might switch it to Portal in the future; I certainly will if I end up taking Mender’s Purity. However, right now I feel uncertain about getting rid of condition removal from my build.

Q: What game modes can this build be used with?

sPvP and WvW, not so much PvE.

Thanks all,
~Arganthium~

I was wondering about your rune choice. why ogre?

StickerHappy.8052:

I was wondering about your rune choice. why ogre?

That may also change in the future… However, Ogre is my go-to runeset for any damage build for a few reasons. First of all, all of the abilities are good. The power is always useful and the critical damage works well with my zerker amulet and precision from 20 into dueling. Rock Dog is just a decent AI to have around, and the 4% damage buff is amazing as well. Other runes (like Runes of the Mesmer) can be considered but aren’t that useful for this build anyways because (as in the case of RotMes) this build doesn’t use much dazing or stunning, just interrupts from Into the Void, and focuses more on the debilitation coming from Chaotic Interruption and the boons from Bountiful Interruption to truly “lock down” the opponent.

UPDATES

I tested the build out some more today, and I’ve made a few changes.

Vigorous Revelation (Inspiration III)- changed to Mender’s Purity. VR just wasn’t beneficial enough for me to give up the condi removal.

Illusionary Defense (Chaos IV)- though it was hard for me to give it up, I eventually decided that it was too much work trying to keep up 2-3 clones at all times just so that I could get the 9% damage reduction. As a result, this has changed to the more enemy-punishing Debilitating Dissipation.

Blink- this was a change I hadn’t expected beforehand- I’ve changed it to Mantra of Concentration. It’s simply more useful as a stun breaker, and the stomp assurance from it is great.

Updating build now.

*UPDATE*

Arcane Thievery- changed to Portal. Not much else to to say about that.

I’ll try to get some raw footage of gameplay soon.

EDIT: I will mention, though- just came back from two tPvP matches, won them both with the build, so I feel pretty good about it at the moment.

Arganthium, your PM box is full.

Qaelyn.7612:

Arganthium, your PM box is full.

Fixed. thanks for telling me.

I suggest replacing the runes with cc runes or centaur or others. The only thing that affects that 4% is the sword 2 and the shatter, and the aa’s of course.

CC runes will help give cohesiveness with the build.

StickerHappy.8052:

I suggest replacing the runes with cc runes or centaur or others. The only thing that affects that 4% is the sword 2 and the shatter, and the aa’s of course.

CC runes will help give cohesiveness with the build.

There’s no real point to putting in CC runes, and, to be completely honest, Centaur runes are pretty terrible to begin with. This build is not a swiftness-based build; it simply happens to be a side product of using focus. There’s no real point for me to be keeping up perma swiftness since my Swiftness from focus usually lasts ~15s to begin with, which IMO is more than sufficient for when I’m out of combat. In combat, Swiftness on heal and increased swiftness duration are completely pointless, and I’d even venture to say that the bleed duration isn’t very helpful either. As for the power buffs- well, those are, of course, the same buffs you get from Ogre Runes anyways.

As for CC runes, my first objection to them is that they don’t help much with keeping your opponent “locked down” anyways- a fifth of a second of additional CC, for instance, really isn’t enough to justify taking some kind of damage nerf or something. My second objection is that the longer my opponents are CC’d, Chaotic Interruption will do increasingly less. It’s better to simply interrupt, and then use the immobilize as a sort of de facto CC. Finally, if nothing else, I don’t even know that there are any runesets (at least for sPvP) that affect pulls anyways.

While I see what you’re trying to say with the power/4% damage buffs, most of my damage comes from the autos/BF anyways. For example, 2 of my 5 Sword skills are used to keep an opponent in my range while I auto attack and BF him. Also, the damage buff does apply to Chaos Storm, which is an AoE to boot.

Hey Arganthium, I’ve been reading your posts in the PvP forums for a while now and always find myself agreeing with you.

I like this build, and I think it’d definitely make a strong contestant for the next BotM if you’re interested. I actually feel that the focus one of the best, if not the best lockdown weapon in the Mesmer kitten nal. Between the Cripple/ Pull/ Reflect from Temporal Curtain and the fact that Warden shuts down projectiles even untraited, I feel the focus actually edges out the sword, despite the low cooldown on it’s daze (though if I’m not mistaken the sword daze counter is almost as wide as sword’s auto-attack cleave; it recently got buffed to be larger)

Everything about this build looks solid from a control-perspective, put I’d advise snatching up Superior Sigils of Hydromancy for your staff. Hydromancy’s chill allows you another form of AoE control in addition to helping secure iWarlock’s projectile hit. Consider this rotation, it’s one of my personal favorites..

Temporal Curtain → iWarden → Into the Void (before Warden appears) → iLeap+Swap → WeaponSwap (AoE Chill) → Phase Retreat + iWarden → Chaos Storm

There’s a form of control in each stage of that rotation (as well as a nice amount of boons), it’s a pretty hard-hitting combo, and the Chill almost guarantees more damage from iWarden AND iWarlock.

One thing I find interesting is your choice of MoConcentration over Blink or Decoy. It’s not often someone takes Concentration as their disengage over the others, what brought on the idea?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

-snip-

Thanks Chaos!

I’m certainly considering participating in next month’s BotM- I feel that this is a pretty solid build overall (though, admittedly, today I wasn’t playing very well; then again, this wasn’t a mesmer-specific issue for me, either). As for the focus vs sword debate- I’m certainly beginning to believe increasingly more that focus could very well be better than Sword. Of course, there’s still a long way to go before there’s any fairly conclusive evidence that shows that focus works better than sword, but I’m certain that they are at least approximately equal in strength.

As for SoHydromancy… When I was reviewing Lockdown builds (before I started playing one), I found skcamow’s “Chillruption” build extremely interesting, and almost decided to play it. However, the primary objections I had to the build were that the bonuses and duration of chills were simply not enough to justify centering a build around it. In retrospect, that’s essentially what Lockdown builds are, however- short CC durations that really pack their punch when you consider them in the context of Chaotic/Bountiful Interruption and other such traits. Still, it’s difficult for me to justify a dual specialization (both CC and Chill) when I’m already trying to do high damage at the same time.

There’s also another problem, in my eyes. Sigil of Hydromancy creates an incentive problem; if I don’t swap weapons often enough to utilize the Sigil, then I’m practically wasting a Sigil slot that I could be using for much, much more useful things. On the other hand, however, if I try to utilize the Sigil too much, then I might end up swapping to a weaponset that’s inferior for a given situation, or, going to the extreme- if I tried to weapon swap every 10 seconds, then I’d have to interrupt animations and thereby reduce the total amount of damage I do anyways as well. If you’re familiar with any of my work on thieves, you might know about how this is my primary objection to any non-dual S/D build that runs Quick Pockets (3 initiative on weapon swap). It’s essentially my job to try and find the middle ground between those two extremes, but then the question becomes one of whether or not that middle ground’s benefit justifies taking up a sigil slot. In my experience, it tends not to if the risk-reward ratio is already very high. However, for this sigil, that may not be the case.

Anyways, I tend to try to get rid of as many of these conflicting interests as possible in a build so that a player can focus more on combat than on other factors, and to maximize the utility of all of his/her traits/stats/etc. However, neither of these reasons alone are enough to “refute” SoHydromancy, so I’ll have to play around with the Sigil in some games to see how it goes since it does have a logical cohesion with the build. Thanks for the suggestions, though.

As for Concentration… It’s not really a disengage as much as it simply is a stomp ensurer and stunbreaker. In both of those regards, the utility is excellent- the 4s total stability tends to be more than enough to stomp a player without getting interrupted (and usually you only need to activate it once to get off a stomp anyways), and the fact that it’s an AoE stability only makes it better. As a stunbreaker, it can be practically insta-casted twice in a fight, and with its lower CD than Blink or Decoy, thus serves as a better stun breaker in spite of the 3s cast time (which I usually prepare before a fight- it’s not the end of the world if it has to be used during a fight, though). It obviously doesn’t give me the same disengaging ability that Decoy or Blink gives, but neither of those are stomp ensurers either, and as stunbreakers they are lackluster by themselves. However, I can disengage using focus, coincidentally. The reflect on both Curtain and Warden can create miniature “safe havens” for me against a wide variety of opponents, and with regeneration/protection, Warden can create a temporary bunker for me to hide in. The Swiftness/cripple is also extremely useful, and being able to pull an opponent back usually does the trick if I’m trying to escape. Overall the disengaging ability isn’t fantastic, but it does work very well with the build.

As far as the sigil goes I definitely understand your perspective, but I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

AoE Chill on it’s own is nice for a couple reasons, but especially good in a lockdown build like this; its all in how you decide to utilize it. Since Chill puts skills on a longer cooldown, IMO its one of the best control conditions along with Weakness, Blind, and Poison (speaking of which, Doom sigil would be an interesting alternative too, making it harder for enemies to heal.)

The curtain’s interrupt is perfect for this, pull them towards you, and then chill them. The interrupted skill (hopefully a heal) now takes even longer than 5s to come off cooldown because of the chill effect. This, in addition to how it helps out iWarlock/Warden land hits more is why I think the sigil would really shine. I don’t consider it a damage loss because 1) it does slight bit of damage 2) it helps get more damage out of your phantasms.

I’m going to give Concentration another look. It took me over a year to warm up to iDisenchanter, so I wouldn’t be surprised if MoConcentration turns out even better than I give it credit for.

UPDATE

Today I’ve been trying out this build, but I’ve been using greatsword instead of Staff. The new build thus looks like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsdRlwziqnVTlGZ9IipHBnvJcnUAdLXJF82FC-TsAg0CtIQShkDJDSSksINKYZx0CA

While I still have to try this out more, the following was my logic for choosing GS:

• GS deals damage more quickly and more reliably, and without projectiles. Also, it is a power-based weapon, which works better with my build overall.
• Illusionary Wave is more reliable as an interrupt, and I find the utility from being able to push away an opponent absolutely critical. It also has a slightly shorter CD.
• The boon removal helps me fight against boon-heavy builds.
• Phantasmal Berserker is extremely strong, and the cripple is extremely useful against fleeing opponents.

That’s not to say that GS is necessarily better, but I’ve done terrifically with it so far.

And Chaos: are SoHydromancy bugged? I tried them out on both Staff and GS, but for some reason it didn’t always activate during combat. Any ideas?

Arganthium.5638:

And Chaos: are SoHydromancy bugged? I tried them out on both Staff and GS, but for some reason it didn’t always activate during combat. Any ideas?

I’m not Chaos, but I can still tell you this was probably because you’re still using the fire sigil on your other weaponset. They share their cooldown. That means if your fire-sigil triggered in the last 5 seconds, nothing will happen if you swap to the weapon with the hydromancy-sigil, since it is on cooldown as well.

Saturn.6591:

Arganthium.5638:

And Chaos: are SoHydromancy bugged? I tried them out on both Staff and GS, but for some reason it didn’t always activate during combat. Any ideas?

I’m not Chaos, but I can still tell you this was probably because you’re still using the fire sigil on your other weaponset. They share their cooldown. That means if your fire-sigil triggered in the last 5 seconds, nothing will happen if you swap to the weapon with the hydromancy-sigil, since it is on cooldown as well.

Mmm. Thanks for the information, didn’t know that.