Guild Wars 2

Edit: 7/20/2013

Alright, so after running the build mentioned here for a week i decided to change things up a bit and what i ended up with was quite a bit more offense with seemingly the same amount of defense.

I switched to :

Traits
20 Dom: Empowered Illusions(Potentially halting strike)/Gsword Mastery
20 Dueling: Far Reaching Manip(or Phantasmal Fury)/Duelists Disc
30 Chaos: Master of Manip/BI/PU

Weapons
Gsword/Sword+Pistol (gives me two on command interrupts with f3, both phantasms hit for 4k+, had the zerker randomly hit for 8k, o.O

Utilities
Mirror/Arcane Thievery/Blink(Or veil)/Decoy/MI
This is where i am getting most of my defense from, I had never used arcane thievery before, but with the cooldown reduction and range increase i have fallen in love with this utility. It was fun as hell to steal a rangers Rampage as One and proceed to stomp them into the ground/works well for almost all classes because you can time it well to steal their boons when they build up a couple, or save it to dump conditions while stealing boons, and with 32 second recast you can use it often.
Blink: The decrease on CD and range on this utility is amazing as many of you know.
(Veil): I have actually been using veil quite a bit more lately, it works perfectly with this build, and if you can manage getting both stealths its that much more powerful, it has been the difference in many battles between death and life for me, but sometimes not having blink as another stunbreak has lead to my death, as well as not being able to catch runners, they are both good, and depnding on what you are doing either one can work well.
Decoy+MI: With PU these both have become even more amazing than they were before

Food
Chocolate Omn Cream: 20% boon duration= 50% total boon duration with traits
Maint Oil (extra crit for both me and my phantasms)

Gear
100% Exotic Berserker for every piece

Runes/Sigils
6/6 Centaur runes, with the boon duration i have 100% swiftness uptime

Gsword: Sup Sigil of Air (could switch for fire but its a little too expensive atm)

Sword: Sup Sigil of Perception (extra crit=<3)

Pistol: Sup Sigil of Battle (Cant ever go wrong with might, with BI, Gsword 2 and this sigil its not hard to keep up 10+ stacks of might, can go quite a bit higher if lucky with interrupts)

Build in Use
Video of me solo roaming:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_UyJG57OoM

I ran this build in WvW for around 5 hours, the first 1.5 completely solo, then in a roaming group; it was by far the most fun i have ever had in a 200~ hours of mesmer(almost all that time in WvW). Even though i dropped the torch with its lowered cooldowns, condition removal and extra stealth i felt like i survived quite a bit longer through the extra range on blink, deceptive evasion, and the increased damage: a better offense is often the best defense, +30 more crit damage and two hard hitting phantasms help me drop people so much faster so i dont need to bounce in and out of stealth as much, also the bleeds from sharpened images actually add some pretty decent DPS with the pistol and gsword phant, and then there are the extra interrupts available from pistol which have given me a noticeable increase in might stacks from BI.

I managed to stack up 25 stacks of perception and kept them for a few hours while playing solo+ as a trio, something which i had never really done before. I think of myself as semi suicidal as in i love to charge big groups, down someone, stomp them, and get out alive, and the increase in blink range and decrease in CD helped me do just that. It was the first time i had ever thought to myself that i need to get a new sword to switch out when i cap stacks (ill probably get the +5% crit sigil on the new sword)

So what do you all think?

PS: One of the greatest things about 20/20/30 is there are so many different build variants you could switch too depending on your need.
^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^

Old Build
I have spent the past two days roaming in WvW with 20/0/30/20/0,

Weapons: GSword, Sword/Torch
Centaur Runes (I’ve mainly been soloing or duoing so the speed is essential, if i went with a bigger group i would probably use Lyssa runes)

MoR/MoP/Blink/Decoy/MI
Dom: Empowered Illusions/Cleansing Conflag
Chaos: Illusionary Defense/BI/PU
Insp: Mender’s Purity/Restorative Mantras

I am running 100% exotic berserker gear with boon duration food, and precision oil.

With the 3 condition removals, 3 stealths throwing in an occasional blurred frenzy the defense and longevity of this build is actually pretty stellar, and with the 15% bonus damage for phantasms and the high crit/crit damage i can actually take people down fairly fast.

Rotation: I always start off with iZerker while running towards them, i then use gsword 2 for might, and then depending if they are close enough ill use gsword 5 and cross my fingers for an inturrupt. After throwing the sword i normally switch weapons, throw out iMage and depending on whether they are starting to damage me either use prestige for the blind/blast and then heal, or pull out a blurred frenzy for extra damage. After the initial rotation i try to get up 3 iZerkers to help take them down while i slip in and out of stealth/i also use stealth to recharge my mantras, both of which heal after channeling. So far i normally save MoP for when i need a little extra burst dps to try and finish someone off, or i just use the charges if i need a quick heal.

I was able to win quite a few 1v1s, a couple 1v2s, and most fun of all was to jump into a battle between the two opposite forces, down and stomp someone, then get out; rinse and repeat.

One problem i had with my phantasm build was if i was fighting multiple people it was always hard to pull off a stomp without getting melted. Now with 3 different stealths, with a very high chance of getting aegis+protection, it is easy to stealth stomp then blink away without too much trouble.

What do you guys think of the build? I honestly haven’t seen anything like it before and it is working fairly well, its fun down classes i.e. guardians, thieves, condition anything, that are generally expecting to take you out fast, and then see you outlast all of their bursts, heal to full hp, while knocking their hp down at an alarming rate.

Any suggestions on how to make it better?

Thanks!
Xelnok

Updated first post with the new build i have been using

Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated (i know there are new builds popping up all the time but i haven’t really seen any like this)

Would be interested to see a video of it in use if you have one.

Good post Xelnok. Since the patch I’ve been also running a hybrid stealth build. Only I run 20/20/30 instead of 10/30/30. I like to have GS mastery. Plus, the 20 in Dom gives me tons of stacks of vulnerabilty on a 3 shatter diversion, and if I happen to interupt, I get 5 stacks of might to boot. I tend to always open with that shatter, run through my other shatters, then pop out my phantasms. I run GS/sword and swap between focus, pistol, sword or even torch offhand depending on my mood. Also I run veil instead of arcane thievery. It’s a really fun build to play. I’ve even run it w/GS/Staff in some zerg situations. I typically run a mix of zerker/knight w/air runes and a sigils of generosity/perception/battle. With my knights staff (I have a zerker one too) I push 1700 toughness, and coupled w/the boons I get from veil makes me very tanky for a guy w/such high crit and power. It nice when I read about other mesmer’s that have tried this out. It’s a really fun playstyle too because I sort of play shatter, then while my shatters cooldown I play phantasm until my shatters are back up. All the while stealthing and building defense/might. Best of all, it’s really easy to try out without re-gearing from shattercat or phantasm builds.

@Dasboba: I actually just switched over to 20/20/30 for the gsword mastery to test it out, i’ll lose 10% crit damage, and DE, but the cooldown reduction for the greatsword will be worth it for more might from #2, more izerkers, and more knockbacks. I have also been switching in veil depending on what i am doing or who i am coming across, i have been switching it for blink instead of thievery though, a well timed arcane thievery can be the difference between a win and a loss, especially against necroes/engineers. I have also been messing around with phantasmal fury instead of long range manipulations, the DPS increase is really good, but sometimes a long range blink will be the difference between getting rolled by a zerg, or escaping.

I could use more defensive armor, but i honestly think a better offense is almost 100% of the time better than a good defense (when fighting 1v1-2/3). With the 100% zerker armor, throwing in the vulnerability stacks, and the increased damage from phantasmal fury and more izerkers i think i should do far better at bursting people down, and between the stealths and the defensive boons with the long boon duration i think our defense is definitely good enough.

@Cares Less: I tried to get bandicam to work but it was having issues, and both of my harddrives have been acting up like crazy, so recording alot of data while playing might mess them up even more. I’ll try to get some videos of me playing, but i have honestly been playing way too much lately running around with this new build, and last night my wife got pretty kitten ed at me for playing so much, so i promised her i would play less.

(I could probably get some footage of SPvP duels/matches alot quicker and easier than getting a large compilation of WvW fights, the problem is the build works far better in WvW with the higher crit damage and longer boons)

Xelnok

Hey Xelnok, glad to find some other people are playing this build too, we will be able to share our thoughts on this kind of build. I’ve always been a shatter mesmer and for now i have been enjoying the fights with 20/20/30/0/0 build.

Here is my build :
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.3|c.1g.h1h.f.1g.h8|1.1g.h17|1g.7r.1g.7r.1n.7r.1g.7r.1n.7r.1g.7r|1i.0.3s.0.2s.0.1i.0.21j.0.1c.61|k39.k1a.u38c.0.0|0.0|31.3d.3c.34.3o|e

For my setup, I’ve kept using my melandru runes + with the torch reduction – 40% condition duration, i’am doing pretty good vs conditons. While having a good offensive ~3k power,50% crit chance, 72% crit dmg.

Love the blink reduction cd, but for the arcane thievery, i have sometimes trouble landing it. But when it does, i love stealing 20 stacks of might.

I don’t use veil, as i think it has a long cooldown, i think torch invis + decoy + Mass Inv seems enuf + more offensive abilities (Stun signet/Arcane thiev).

there is one trait which i think i could maybe switch out : Bountyful interruption for maybe Debilitating Dissipation (conditions when they kill my clones, or if clones get replaced), since there i only have 2 interupts with Gs #5 and shatter #3, which may not actually land an interupt. I’ll have to test this out.

P.S : I miss Illusion personna, I am the guy who run’s into 5 ppl to stomp one.

I finally managed to get fraps to work yesterday and in a few hours time i got some pretty good 1v1/2s using this build. I’m working on editing them together to make it more enjoyable to watch. Its not as interesting to watch as some of those crazy condition mesmers that dance in and out of 1vxs all day, but it should show you the potential damage and how fast you can burst people down, and then get away with stealth.

Xelnok -

First I want to say thank you for sharing this build, I tried it out in WvW last night and had a lot of success and fun. Typically I would run a Sw/Torch & Staff shatter build and would have to rely on on the staff and armor stats for defense/survivability. With your build, all of the survivability comes from the combination of stealth and Prismatic Understanding.

I also love the flexibility of your build – it’s great for roaming, zerging, and with just a few utility changes works great for PvE.

I just have two tweaks that I wanted to get your input on:

1st) What do you think about taking 10 out of Dueling (drop Deceptive Evasion) and moving it into Domination to pick up the Greatsword Training trait. My argument is that this is primarily a phantasm build and the extra clones from DE aren’t really useful, whereas decreased cooldown on ALL of the Greatsword skills would be very helpful in both interrupts & phantasm generation.

2nd) Drop Empowered Illusions and pick up Halting Strike. With the pistol & greatsword you have 2 on demand interrupts (#5 skills) and 1 interrupt that requires very little setup (GS #2 plus F3 shatter). Halting Strike wakittenting consistently for 3.5k for me last night in WvW, which given the relatively short time frame of most WvW roam engagements seems to represent more DPS than a flat +15% to phantasm damage. Also, it’s very satisfying to see somebody go into their heal animation, interrupt it and watch them die immediately. People don’t seem to understand or be aware of the Halting Strike ability just yet, because I got a lot of messages asking me how I was able to do so much burst confusion damage. Lastly – it synergizes very well with your choice to pick-up Bountiful Interruptions and makes great use of those inherent interrupt skills that this weapon-set employs.

Please let me know your thoughts – and thank you again for sharing this build!

- Renn

I have actually been running 20/20/30 for a little bit now and i much prefer it to the original 10/30/30, just check what i said a couple posts above yours, the gsword training helps out alot.

As for halting strike i am still somewhat on the fence, it is a great trait and synergizes perfectly with this build, and in most cases i can see it doing well, but sometimes in a fight no matter how hard you try you won’t get an interrupt, and in other fights you will get multiple. Really the only reason i have been keeping the phantasm increase dps is because i almost always have 2, if not 3 phantasms up which is guaranteed damage, IZerker is also AoE, and when throwing him into a zerg that is 5k X lots of people, whereas with halting strike i would be hitting every single one of those people for less damage. (But then again i have Iwaved a big zerg and gotten multiple interrupts just from that skill alone)

I’ll probably mess around with it more after a good week of roaming without it and compare to how fast i could kill people on average. The damage is nice when it does crit, but without the crit it is only subpar.

having a blast whit this build in BL. i was testing some variation but the core build is, kill ASAP

Hey everyone!

First of all, this build looks awesome. I just have some questions about the stats, the defensive stats mainly.

In your video, if I’m not mistaken we can see that you have 18k health, but how is this possible if you’re full berserker? My main problem with this build is that I am scared the condi builds would knock me off real quick. There’s only arcane thievery as a condi removal and it’s on a 36 sec. cooldown which is quite long. This only condi removal with the 0 vitality added doesn’t make you very vulnerable to conditions? Even with the PU regen?

Second of all, toughness either might not be quite high? I know myself and my playstyle is much less agressive and slow since I am new. So I might get killed too quick because of the lack of toughness. Or is it still easy to stay alive?

What I really want to know is your current stats and if the build still has a high survability against several types of enemies. What are its weakness? Can you take camps on your own or survive 1v3 fights ?

Anyways, thanks for this build that I really like.

PS: Have you done any changes to it? Quite a long time…