Guild Wars 2

Hi all

I finally found a build where I don’t get mashed and still do some good damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRncfClphtfCmfCEgiFcjyMDylRqMAWtfpuVn1dF-TJBHABAcKAaZ/hsLDMwTAAA

I designed it to be a team-fighter, being able to remain in the heat of the fight for some time. So it has fairly high sustain from the crusader amulet (high toughness + decent healing power) and also very good CC mitigation from the chaos line (because I have been suffering massively of CC since the update).

But the key of the build is to try to loose the least damage possible. The crusader gives a power and ferocity almost as high as a marauder, so the goal is to recover the crit chance. Thanks to dueling and BD on F3, we get high fury uptime. And thanks to danger time, we can get to approximately 60% crit chance if the enemy is slowed. This means that the build can potentially have nearly the same burst damage as marauder.

The most difficult part is to maintain the slow. We have high crit chance vs slowed enemies, allowing to proc “Lost time”, but our crit chance is quite low if the enemy is not slowed. To make up for that, I used the sigils of intelligence. This makes sure that the 3 skills after weapon swap all crit, procing Lost time.

The ideal is to have your F1 or wells burst right after the weapon swap, to guarantee that most of it will crit.

I could in principle use time warp to have higher slow uptime. However, I found gravity well to be one of my best sources of damage, survivability and support at the same time. Place it on a downed body (ally or enemy) and smile. Trying to defend your lord, put it on him. Or maybe you just want to burst people down, that works too. I usually try to put well of action on top, to proc the slow and increase the crit chance.

What do you think?

Take daredevil runes. That way every dodge will grant a crit. Every crit will grant vigor. Constant vigor = more dodges = more crits. Sure, you’ll get 3 crits on weapon swap which you can use to generate that slow, and slow higher crit chance, but daredevil runes will cover the gap and not only ensure that slow output, but your VIGOR uptime. A mesmer without vigor is almost dead in the water.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Take daredevil runes. That way every dodge will grant a crit. Every crit will grant vigor. Constant vigor = more dodges = more crits. Sure, you’ll get 3 crits on weapon swap which you can use to generate that slow, and slow higher crit chance, but daredevil runes will cover the gap and not only ensure that slow output, but your VIGOR uptime. A mesmer without vigor is almost dead in the water.

Good idea!
I don’t know the new runes enough, I didn’t think about this.
It is probably better, because the problem only the sigil is that the 3 hits often happened very fast and thus did not proc 3 Lost time (short iCD). Your suggestion ensures a more “steady” crit chance.

I also tried scrapper runes, but I didn’t like them as much.

I’m a fan of this concept, I’m pretty sure you saw my other thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Soldier-Chrono-PvP-Vid

The only real difference in the build is GS vs Staff. Crusader is what I started with but found sustainability (with high vitality) yet still delivering decent damage was found at the sweet spot of soldier amulet. Crusader was a lot of fun; I just survive a lot longer with soldier. You can definitely down people who decide to stay in melee range to fight you with soldier.

I’ve experimented endlessly with this idea – daredevil runes are a bit random for this. For classes like guardian/warrior where they have huge payload skills it’s going to be really nice. With the exception of mirror blade, you have many multi-target skills; a random AA, shatter, BF hit, etc. Where it does make sense is to proc lost time; however with 5 charges required and random crits, proc’ing that trait is going to also be random. The trait is balanced around a build with high crit chance so a decent slow uptime can be maintained. The 2s of slow you get from all that work trying to get crits/charges isn’t going to be worth it even with GS. I recommend chronophantasma which provides 2x iAvengers and a better chance for more overall slow output.

Also – your crits are really going to suffer without delayed reactions. Or, if you find they’re OK I would think you’d do noticeably more damage with it. There’s nothing better than iLeap > Tides of Time (interrupting), swap and BF with that slow on them. It’s probably one of the most important sources of slow and one of the linchpins of the build. You have plenty of AoE interrupt sources to make that work for you. At the very least, if you want to keep Lost Time I’d consider Delayed Reactions mandatory to help get those charges.

Sure you’d miss AWTEW, but with your high shatter cadence, the alacrity gained there should make for decent recharge rates.

My 2 cents …

Oh~ I might play around with this idea of using Fury+Danger Time increase crit chance instead of precision. Nice ideas~