Guild Wars 2

So, hype, basically. The mesmer buffs of which you all know about are incredibly powerful.

We have: 6/6/0/0/6 Shatter mesmer GS/sword
Confounding suggestions-Shattered Concentration-Mental Torment
Phantasmal Fury-Blinding Dissipation-Deceptive Evasion
X- Phantasmal Haste- Master of Fragmentation

Basically CS is now insane, and exactly how i’ve always wanted it with 100% chance. <3.
Shattered Concentration is good, but depending on how boon dependant the new meta will be, “Furious interruption” or even “Blurred inscriptions” might be better (if we get a signet buff).

“Phantasmal Fury” can be swapped with “Duelist’s Discipline” (Depending on how pistol turns out) or “Desperate Decoy”. The way to know if “Phantasmal Fury” is worth it basically depends on DPS calcs after patch since phantasm damage is now baseline.
Now, “Blinding dissipation”. I almost died when i saw this trait. This is so incredibly good, like just WOW. DE is obvious.

For illusions, I see people running either “The pledge” or “Compounding power” depending on if you use torch or another weapon and personal preference. (I’d go CP).
For master tier, none of the traits are very good for shatter build, but i guess phantasmal haste for the Zerker attacks and for quicker condition remove with Phantasmal Mage. Not amazing. Master of fragmentation is fairly obvious.

Now, in my opinion many of these major traits are subpar, BUT, the real reason why you want the illusions traitline is because of the amazingly good minor traits, IC and Shattered stength (buffed). Also, i think Illusion traitline will reduce cooldown on shatter skills.

This, at the moment, feels like a really fun build.

6/6/6 Lockdown/interrupt GS/Staff
CS – FI – Power Block
X- Blinding Dissipation- DE
Master of manipulation- Chaotic Dampening – CI

So, here we have an interrupt build that might be used beside shatter. The problem with this build instead of shatter is basically like in game at the moment. Because of the lack of shatter cooldown reduction and the like, it does too little damage to kill bruisers like shout war/ cele ele.
Even though IP is baseline, the problem persists. The defense is amazing, it has weakness and protection, but still does much less damage.
BUT, we need to remember that the meta will change. And like others have called as well (Helseth’s reddit, par example), celes won’t be able to stay alive in this meta. This is because of various reasons like no stat lock and thief getting massive buffs. This has the effect that people need to go for more damage/burst builds. And luckily, this might be were interrupt mesmer can really shine. Weakness, multiple immobs, protection- while at the same time easily doing enough damage to kill. Very nice.

Now, in terms of the traits:
CS i’ve already talked about. FI is much much stronger now, and will work well with ressing, stomping, and channeling Daze mantra quicker. Still not 100% sure this is worth yet, but probably (depends on freq. of stability in new meta). Power Block is now incredible as well. That 15 seconds skill lockdown works well vs all heals (Consume condi, healing turret, ranger heals, mesmer heal, new specialization heals, revenant heals), banners, crates, pindowns, rapid fires, burning speeds, mirror blades, and more. Weakness works well vs thief even though we can’t lock down their skills.

First trait in duelling i am unsure of, probably phantasmal fury it is also possible pistol will be good in new meta, but i think staff will be better. This depends on classes and maps though.

In Chaos line:
Master of manipulation is interesting, and can be very useful when for example blink bursting a ranger or an engi. Also good vs warrior. I like that we have gotten more reflects by the way! Chaotic dampening is just amazing in general. Protection will be very strong if the new meta goes more Zerker- oriented which it looks like so far. CI is obvious, one of the best traits on mesmer now since we have Bountiful interruption in it. In my opinion just better than stability trait pretty much always.

Other Builds

Other builds might work as well. For example:
Boonshare
0/0/6/6/0
Master of Manipulation – Chaotic dampening – Bountiful dissilusionment
Vigorous revelation – Restorative illusions? – Illusionary inspiration

Last 6 points im not sure about. Maybe domination for signet recharge (signet of inspiration) or duelling for more vigor or illusions for might on shatter.

The problem is that our best boon traits; CI, Bountiful and PU are in the same spot. -.-
The point is to get vigor and protection mainly and give it to your teammates, but sadly mesmer has very limited fury uptime. Something you could do however is try mimic with this build ^^. What? It works well with MoM trait! Don’t give me that look.

Condition
0/6/6/0/6 scepter/pistol, staff
Duelist’s Discipline – Evasive mirror – DE
Master of Manipulation – Chaotic dampening – CI
X – Malicious sorcery – Maim

Interesting, but not sure it would work. Perhaps sword is better than scepter still, not sure. Very good reflect uptime which is needed for this wep set.

Phantasm
Just no please.

Mantra
Some niche mantra build perhaps:
6/6/0/6/0 with Daze mantra, Portal , Dmg mantra(not sure), Heal mantra probably
CS – FI – Power Block
X – Evasive Mirror – Harmonious Mantras –
Mender’s Purity – Warden’s Feedback – X

Now, this is some weird stuff. Protective mantras is now baseline, so that’s fun.
CS is just good, especially with Daze Mantra. FI helps ALOT with channeling mantras, amazing synergy. Power Block might be interchangable with with Greatsword training, but i very much doubt it.

In duelling, i am still not sure about the first trait, but probably Phantasmal Fury or Pistol trait. Evasive mirror is probably better than Blinding Dissipation. This is not 100% of course. Harmonious mantras is fairly bad on its own, since DE is better for 90% of situations, but there is a nice synergy that i will get into now.

In inspiration, you take Mender’s purity. This trait has potentially become one of the best mesmer traits, and syngergizes with HM really well. It seems like every time you use a charge of your heal (which has 3 charges), you cast power cleanse as well. So, If you use a charge of your heal, you have used 2 mantras, technically. This means Harmonious mantras will activate 2 times, giving you 8% every time you use ONE charge of your heal. This in combination with the other mantras will grant you an almost permanent 5 HM stacks in combat, which means +20% damage. Very, very strong and can work well with for example new power block trait. The survivability in this build comes from the heal when you cast a mantra, which actually works in AOE (and heals for 2,5k +) I can see people using this to support allies like engis use healing turret for example.

With these traits, your heal mantra will heal you three times, heal your allies when channeled for 2,5k +, remove 6 conditions in total for you and your allies, and give you 600 toughness while channeling. On top of that, it will be easy to channel because of furious interruption buff. All this on an incredibly short cooldown. The problem with this build is that all of the inspiration GM traits are kinda meh. Super speed on glamour is useless for this build, shatter condi remove is unneccessary. Therefore, you will need to use boonshare trait, which isn’t that good on paper, but if you get boons from your teammates you can send them back, effectively doubling the boons. Hard to say, but this could be nice.

General stuff:
There is the possiblility that evasive mirror is very overpowered, so it might be better to use over blinding dissipation in every build. It makes you almost invulnerable vs current engi meta build and good vs warrior, ranger, thief as well. This depends on if the trait gets changed and also depends on how the meta turns out. If we see melee burst warriors the blind trait will abviously be better vs that, for example.

The inspiration trait for boonsharing might also be better than it looks on paper.

There might be some other “broken” things like almost removing your weapon cooldowns by using combo finishers in glamours in conjunction with Chaotic Dampening to reduce Staff cooldowns massively. 5% reduction per second is nice, depending on how it works. 5% of the total cooldown or 5% of the current remaining cooldown? Finishers we have for this include: Sword #3, Staff #2, Sword #5, Torch #4.

Additionally, the pistol trait is interesting to say the least, with no internal cooldown you could reduce cooldown of pistol skills by 100% from 2 interrupts. So if you hit your pistol 5 bullet and interrupt with it, the cooldown is reduced by 50%?

These 2 things together could be interesting for some sort of Staff , Sword/pistol build.

So far, i feel Greatsword is still 90% necessary for power builds, but this doesn’t need to be the case. Read the cooldown speculation above for example. The question is if we can do enough damage with only the new traits (Mainly mental torment) without having zerker and mirror blade.

Now this is long asf and i have probably forgotten some interesting things, but that is what the comments are for i guess. That is, if anyone is extremely bored and reads all of this (won’t happen).

For reference: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33qrg0/specialization_ama_livestream_notes/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1weRTxaaGunZFEEKZg-zy4x2A50GFVqSNJ7YwMtWr-jw/edit?usp=sharing

Quadox.7834:

The problem is that our best boon traits; CI, Bountiful and PU are in the same spot. -.-

Intentional, obviously.