Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing with Osicat’s Napalm Cat build recently. It’s a very interesting build, but I’ve been running into some issues with it. Specifically, it takes forever to kill people and it’s too easy for them to just run away. Dropping staff for sword/pistol gives me two forms of cc, and a great source of bleed. Of course, this shakes up the build a bit, and I’m not sure where to go from here. I’d love to use travelers again, and I want a little more power while keeping strong condition damage and insane amounts of stealth and mobility (probably rabid gear). Has anyone ever used a scepter/torch sword/pistol hybrid build? Any ideas?

So I think this is from my rabid armor/weapons + Cav trinket days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9BceGSMbEQ

Hybrid can be done but it has drawbacks in the current roaming meta. There’s just a lot of hard builds out there, either with a lot of sustain and/or condi which will make your life hard. No swiftness is a liability in WvW, which you’re asking to forgo. But general issues aside, pistol really helps for damage in a hybrid build. Torch for survivability. 4, 4, 6 with PU is a great setup. I’d go assassins armor, rabid trinkets, then zerk weapons or zerk/rabid split.

I’d swap your weapons around. Use torch/sword so you can prestige burst. Scepter/pistol so you can chain your range attacks (cast iduelist, stun pistol 5, then use scepter 3 windup, the 3s stun will allow everything to land).

The thing with Osicats napalm build and staff is that the burn duration creates 2s procs of burning from staff AA’s, giving 100% burning uptime. Add in the burns from heals you can draw out their condi cleanse, then stack on heaps of burning so even if they’re running they’re gonna go down. Dropping staff in the Balth Condi build is a bad idea.

This build was shown in one of osicat’s videos. I, knowing that the build is outdated, and also keeping in mind, your most likely little experiance with a glassy mesmer play style made a build which will probaby best fit your needs.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQRAsa7fl0npRtlpxINcrNCuxY6JaICUGUTlMgfB-T1SBABFpEbH1fCc/hrUeExDAUCii+hFOIAIYiBjjAgGnAAAMBBA-w

Power isn’t too high, but you can fix that with sharpening stones. You having a perfect amount of toughness. Phantasms will hit hard. You have trav runes for mobility and you have scepter 2 for blocks. You also have invisibility from decoy, torch 4 and mass invis. You also punish your opponents for killing your clones/phantasm with Debilitating Dissipation which causes bleeds, vulnerability and weakness.

Ross Biddle.2367:

The thing with Osicats napalm build and staff is that the burn duration creates 2s procs of burning from staff AA’s, giving 100% burning uptime. Add in the burns from heals you can draw out their condi cleanse, then stack on heaps of burning so even if they’re running they’re gonna go down. Dropping staff in the Balth Condi build is a bad idea.

Napalm cat is amazing at what it does, it’s what it doesn’t do that’s the problem. Balthazar runes are critical to the build, and sacrificing traveler’s for it is just too much for me, especially without a reliable source of swiftness. Swapping the weapon combos sounds interesting. Can the hybrid build work well in the current meta?

Stormbolt.7293:

Ross Biddle.2367:

The thing with Osicats napalm build and staff is that the burn duration creates 2s procs of burning from staff AA’s, giving 100% burning uptime. Add in the burns from heals you can draw out their condi cleanse, then stack on heaps of burning so even if they’re running they’re gonna go down. Dropping staff in the Balth Condi build is a bad idea.

Napalm cat is amazing at what it does, it’s what it doesn’t do that’s the problem. Balthazar runes are critical to the build, and sacrificing traveler’s for it is just too much for me, especially without a reliable source of swiftness. Swapping the weapon combos sounds interesting. Can the hybrid build work well in the current meta?

1V1 yes, vs roaming gank squads spamming condi’s you’ll likely feel the pressure, and underwhelming yourself. Vs high sustain/bunker warriors etc you might not be able to overcome them. Otherwise yeah, Hybrid is great, and the weapon options are fun. I used to run hybrid in wvw, got plenty of vids and stuff up on my channel, but after the big rune patch I felt it got gutted to much. Here’s the old build thread updated with post patch changes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/The-Holy-Hell-Build-2-0/first#post3977712

Ross Biddle.2367:

Stormbolt.7293:

Ross Biddle.2367:

The thing with Osicats napalm build and staff is that the burn duration creates 2s procs of burning from staff AA’s, giving 100% burning uptime. Add in the burns from heals you can draw out their condi cleanse, then stack on heaps of burning so even if they’re running they’re gonna go down. Dropping staff in the Balth Condi build is a bad idea.

Napalm cat is amazing at what it does, it’s what it doesn’t do that’s the problem. Balthazar runes are critical to the build, and sacrificing traveler’s for it is just too much for me, especially without a reliable source of swiftness. Swapping the weapon combos sounds interesting. Can the hybrid build work well in the current meta?

1V1 yes, vs roaming gank squads spamming condi’s you’ll likely feel the pressure, and underwhelming yourself. Vs high sustain/bunker warriors etc you might not be able to overcome them. Otherwise yeah, Hybrid is great, and the weapon options are fun. I used to run hybrid in wvw, got plenty of vids and stuff up on my channel, but after the big rune patch I felt it got gutted to much. Here’s the old build thread updated with post patch changes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/The-Holy-Hell-Build-2-0/first#post3977712

Any other PU roaming builds to consider? I’m trying to find the most irritating, ragequit-indusing build possible. Something that will make them go “what the hell just happened?”

I think full rabid is better but here’s a hybrid build by BlackDevil I remembered that looked interesting at the time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Maximised-Hybrid-Phantasm-Build-Roaming

Ummmm,

I really wanted to make hybrid work post patch but it just didnt feel the same. I had to move away from PU for the sake of damage and learn to live without it (even under the kittentiest circumstances – though there’s a limit). There was one build someone posted that I did like the look of, but I don’t remember what it/the thread was called. It used pistol which really helped with the damage output.

I just put up this build/thread now, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-Phantrupt-Asskicker-CS-Interrupt/first#post4651142
It’s spvp but could be made for WvW and would have the desired effect. But you’ll run into various WvW related problems depending on your desired mode of play.

Just wondering, what happened to hybrid builds with the patch? I just came back after several months, so I’m not completely caught up with the meta

Stormbolt.7293:

Just wondering, what happened to hybrid builds with the patch? I just came back after several months, so I’m not completely caught up with the meta

There weren’t a lot of hybrid builds ever but I can say what happened to mine.

Two things.

1) The changes to runes meant you could pick n choose runes to create high boon duration. Using high duration + things like PU etc meant I could stack a lot of boons, which made things amazing.

2) Alterations in the patch with both runes and changes to other classes meant everybody else had various advantages that made life for Mesmers very hard.

Too tankie to go celestial and PU.Its good one,but quite unfunn,very similar in “yawn” dmg like condie pu :-).But if you like celestial stats,and that weapon set,you could try shatter condie,had loads of funn with it in PvP.More fragile than PU,but still not bad,while dmg was sometimes surprising.Stuff suddenly melting,like if some unseen hand was slaping em :-).

Thou i personally would stick to sword/torch+scepter/pistol.You might find higher need for torch while in melee,than on scepter.

KaporHabakuk.6219:

Too tankie to go celestial and PU.Its good one,but quite unfunn,very similar in “yawn” dmg like condie pu :-).But if you like celestial stats,and that weapon set,you could try shatter condie,had loads of funn with it in PvP.More fragile than PU,but still not bad,while dmg was sometimes surprising.Stuff suddenly melting,like if some unseen hand was slaping em :-).

Thou i personally would stick to sword/torch+scepter/pistol.You might find higher need for torch while in melee,than on scepter.

Shatter condition sounds interesting. Any links to builds? A lot of the pinned threads seem really outdated.

Stormbolt.7293:

KaporHabakuk.6219:

Too tankie to go celestial and PU.Its good one,but quite unfunn,very similar in “yawn” dmg like condie pu :-).But if you like celestial stats,and that weapon set,you could try shatter condie,had loads of funn with it in PvP.More fragile than PU,but still not bad,while dmg was sometimes surprising.Stuff suddenly melting,like if some unseen hand was slaping em :-).

Thou i personally would stick to sword/torch+scepter/pistol.You might find higher need for torch while in melee,than on scepter.

Shatter condition sounds interesting. Any links to builds? A lot of the pinned threads seem really outdated.

I was running something like this (cant remember weapons exactly) for a while recently. There’s something about cele am + Maim that does just seem to work.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQRAsd7alknpRtlpxGNcrNCuBZyJ0AUHkocySGgfB-TJRHwAFeCAs2fAwJB4YZAA