Guild Wars 2

Does anyone play a build similar to the one below, where you wear all Soldiers, have crazy reduced Cooldowns, and just spam Shatter to your hearts content? 11.5 seconds on Mind Wrack with such high power sounds pretty freaking awesome.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8clknpRtlpxINcrNSqxg6verNSmQAl8kuB-TlCBABCu/wRK9yR9HAuIAZpMwjHAQCm+mQJIDHBA90NIKoMC-w

My only question really is, is it tanky enough? Decoy helps, sure, but you have no Chaos Armor, No PU and minimal condition removal.

Anyone play a straight In-Your-Face Sword Shatter like this?

Well I play a tankier variant of a Shatter Mesmer. With Guard buffs I have around 2,200 power, around 49% crit chance with precision stacks and 63% crit damage.

With bloodlust, full ascended gear, infusions, guard buffs, etc I had about 2,550 armor, 20K HP.

I feel comfortable having this level of survivability, however having these stats doesn’t make you anywhere near tanky at all. If you aren’t careful you can still eat 7K-8K backstabs, eat a 12K+ Hammer combo from a warrior. Hell, I’ve even had eles hit me for an 9K Firegrab and 6K Burning speed but he/she probably had a lot of might stacks. The extra health and armor just allows you a little more leeway and a chance to react and counter-attack if you do get hit with something big.

Even if you had like 22K+ HP and 2,800 armor you’d still be relatively squishy. It is just the nature of the shatter build. It relies mostly on active defenses rather than passive boon generation. Going 30 into chaos gives you a ton more survivability than just the +300 toughness. It gives you +30% boon duration. You get regen when you drop below a threshold, you gain protection when you gain regeneration, you gain aegis, protection and regen when you go into stealth, stealth lasts a second longer, etc. You could also opt for illusionary defense which gives you 9% decreased damage with 3 clones out.

There is a huge difference between a 2,500 armor shatter build and a 2,500 armor PU build. Let me put it that way.

I did humor the idea of going 2/4/2/0/6, and dropping Greatsword Training to pick up the 3% damage reduction per clone. The build has a ton of clone spam potential to shatter, with short CD’s, so might be worth trying if I find I’m dying fast.

Dat 4.5 second Mirror Blade though…

I use the Staff/Sword+Torch personally, so with greatsword you are even more squishy due to a lack of phase retreat and boon generation. I personally never found Illusionary Defense to be worth getting in a Shatter build and it probably won’t help you all too much if you are using your shatters alot, despite really high clone generation. I doubt it would be the difference between dying really fast and tanking a whole lot of damage before going down. Plus I love the boon removal on shatter ;p.

I’ve been playing with the 4/4/0/0/6 setup in my original post for a bit, and I have to say it’s really amazing. I don’t feel squishy, and as such, I don’t act squishy. I can dive into zergs and generally be alright if I time some things properly.

Diving into an oncoming zerg in WvW, starting with a 4.75 second Mirror Blade, iZerker, weapon swapping to iLeap someone and Mind Wrack+ Blurred frenzy everyone running through me is INSANE Fun.

this is why ive now switched to guard, becuase of havoc you have to play to the absaloute best, so theres no room for sacrafice in any build or class, i do have to be honest though mesmer is the most fun