Guild Wars 2

I would like to highlight a build that will annoy people to no end in wvw and will most likely result in a flood of complaints about mesmer and inadvertently the overzealous nerf-hammer.

I am running under the assumption that in this new specialization system we have the ability to choose 9 major traits but are limited to only 3 specialization lines. Also that you can only choose 1 of the 3 available traits in each tier (1 adept, 1 master, and 1 grandmaster trait). If I am wrong then my apologies.

The three lines this build specializes in are Dueling, Chaos, and Illusions.

Dueling:

• [III] Duelist’s Discipline: Pistol attacks from you and your illusions have a chance to cause bleeding (2x bleeding). Interrupting a foe recharges pistol skills (50% recharge)
• [IV] Blinding Dissipation: Blind foes around you when you use a shatter skill
• [IX] Deceptive Evasion: Need them clones for shatter builds.
• * A special shout out goes to the minor adept trait Sharper Images and the newly reworked minor grandmaster trait Confusing Combatants for increasing your confusion and bleed stacks per critical hit.

Chaos:

• [III] Master of Manipulation: When you use a manipulation skill gain mirror (i.e. reflect projectiles) for a short duration. Reduces the cooldown on manipulation skills.
• [IV] Mirror Anguish: Same as before.
• [VIII] Prismatic Understanding: In it’s current planned state it effectively doubles the duration of your stealth skills

Illusions:

• [III] The Pledge Torch Skills remove a condition on use. Torch Skills recharge faster in stealth (1%…… <_<’ ).
• [VI] Malicious Sorcery: Torment deals increased damage to moving foes (50% more). Reduces the recharge on scepter skills when you inflict confusion(2%).
• [IX] Maim the Disillusioned: Same as before. Alternatively, if you wanted to focus more on confusion you could take [VII] Blinding Befuddlement as it stands since you have multiple sources of blind.

Gear

• Gear would be rabid for simplicity’s sake.

Weapons

• Sword + Pistol x Scepter + Torch

Opinion
Even though some people argue that Maim would be good in conquest pvp the current meta of team-makeups doesn’t support this strategy. This of course isn’t counting solo queue or hotjoin. I sometimes use maim in pvp for funsies when im tired of dying on glkittenter mesmer, hehe. Where Maim works best in my opinion is in wvw solo/havoc group roaming (and I guess pve if you’re not into speed runs) because you are able to eat food to increase your condition duration mainly, but stealth increases your survivability by a lot.

When I run solo on my mesmer in wvw, I use a dire maim variant for it’s beefiness and it’s nasty condition damage. It allows you to take on 1 or more serious opponents. It still requires skill and timing like a glkittenter mesmer but is more forgiving due to your higher vitality and toughness. As it stands, maim is balanced but leaning towards the op end of the spectrum.

If I solo roam on a rabid maim pu mesmer in the future and Anet wants to give me twice as much stealth uptime and access to more bleeds and ways to apply confusion then I don’t mind. I won’t complain at all. And during the stream, the developer talking about mesmer made the comment about maim that they might consider buffing it in the future.

What I fear however is that a lot of other people will complain about these specs and the nerf hammer will smash kitten through our trait lines like before.

What are your thoughts?

You’re right, could be annoying for some people.

I had a fight with a PU mes I intercepted at n-camp the other day. I was running full glass, 4, 6, 0, 4, – 3x mantras, menders. He was doing his stealth/condi thing, I was keeping the pursuit and applying a bit of pressure with phants, biding my time. After a little bit he came out of stealth and I used that instance between stealths to unload/lockdown, and that was the end of him

I’ve no doubt this will be annoying (as PU condi can be now), and that it could either dish out some heavy condi damage. But a little bit of knowledge and some sound build choices can take people a long way in countering even what looks to be the most troubling of builds.

I’d also expect more revealed skills to show up across the classes. Not to mention stealth trap in WvW if you really get upset.

And since you get Illusionary Persona as default…Maim is going to be much more powerfull (8 Torment Stack per Shatter is possible). Also…don’t forget Staff, it’s extremely powerfull in condition builds and it’s bouce is now default too. Can replace Sw/P for even more survivability and condition pressure.

I can already imagine the tears if this build makes it trough development. It will be a nightmare to fight agaisnt combining the survivability of PU with the pressure & condition burst potential of Maim.

Actually as is stands MTD builds will be a ton weaker, as they made all the shatter buffs a GM trait that competes with maim. So if we choose MTD we lose confusion on ALL shatters, Might on all shatters, AOE daze, reflect on distortion, and x2 confusion on CoF.(from what I understand)

This basically kills condition shatter, as their making us choose between being Shatter or MTD, which makes no sense at all.

Yeah, not to mention the Staff gets the old insta-Protection for CA if you get Chaotic Dampening. This will make Staff even more defensive, and with free IE and the Clone crits causing Bleed & Confusion things could get ugly pretty fast.

dimyzuka.7051:

Actually as is stands MTD builds will be a ton weaker, as they made all the shatter buffs a GM trait that competes with maim. So if we choose MTD we lose confusion on ALL shatters, Might on all shatters, AOE daze, reflect on distortion, and x2 confusion on CoF.(from what I understand)

This basically kills condition shatter, as their making us choose between being Shatter or MTD, which makes no sense at all.

You are incorrect. Please refer to this screenshot, and notice the minor traits that still exist: http://i.imgur.com/h7a0WHQ.jpg

Master of Fragmentation did not take the confusion and might buffs; it took Precise Wrack (F1), Confusing Cry (F2), Imbued Diversion (F3), and Masterful Reflection (F4).

edit: what we do, however, lose is the +duration on confusion.

edit2: additionally, it should be interesting to see how Blinding Befuddlement and the new Blind on Shatter traits synergize. If each shattered clone counts as an additional source of blind, and we get 6-8 extra confusion per shatter, then perhaps Maim isn’t as needed…

I think there are going to be a lot of people that try the DE/PU/Maim setup with Sc/Torch. For my money, give me the Pistol + Staff + Dampening + the new Bountiful Disillusionment. All that Stability…

note: this is for PvP

dimyzuka.7051:

Actually as is stands MTD builds will be a ton weaker, as they made all the shatter buffs a GM trait that competes with maim. So if we choose MTD we lose confusion on ALL shatters, Might on all shatters, AOE daze, reflect on distortion, and x2 confusion on CoF.(from what I understand)

This basically kills condition shatter, as their making us choose between being Shatter or MTD, which makes no sense at all.

Might and confusion buffs are from minor traits. Master of Fragmentation description wasn’t updated.
As it seems, it will only bring +10% crit chance to MW, 1 more confusion stack to CoF, AoE Diversion and reflection to Distortion.
Only useful is AoE diversion, as 10% crit MW means nothing in a condi build, 2 stack of torment>1 stack of confusion, and Evasive Mirror>Reflection in Distortion.

Conclusion: MtD will still be the best GM trait for Illusions and MtD shatter will be boosted a lot with IP, PU, reflections, all weapon traits, Confusion Combatants rework…

PD: How about a bunker MtD shatter Dueling/Inspiration/Illusions with massive condi cleansing, good self-healing while spreading tons of condis?

alanis.6094:

dimyzuka.7051:

Actually as is stands MTD builds will be a ton weaker, as they made all the shatter buffs a GM trait that competes with maim. So if we choose MTD we lose confusion on ALL shatters, Might on all shatters, AOE daze, reflect on distortion, and x2 confusion on CoF.(from what I understand)

This basically kills condition shatter, as their making us choose between being Shatter or MTD, which makes no sense at all.

You are incorrect. Please refer to this screenshot, and notice the minor traits that still exist: http://i.imgur.com/h7a0WHQ.jpg

Master of Fragmentation did not take the confusion and might buffs; it took Precise Wrack (F1), Confusing Cry (F2), Imbued Diversion (F3), and Masterful Reflection (F4).

Oh, ok. So now Main builds will lose %33 confusion duration, and cannot get any of the shatter improvements that are all baked into Master of fragmentation. That is even worse. %33 confusion duration should stay as a adept trait atleast.

dimyzuka.7051:

alanis.6094:

dimyzuka.7051:

Actually as is stands MTD builds will be a ton weaker, as they made all the shatter buffs a GM trait that competes with maim. So if we choose MTD we lose confusion on ALL shatters, Might on all shatters, AOE daze, reflect on distortion, and x2 confusion on CoF.(from what I understand)

This basically kills condition shatter, as their making us choose between being Shatter or MTD, which makes no sense at all.

You are incorrect. Please refer to this screenshot, and notice the minor traits that still exist: http://i.imgur.com/h7a0WHQ.jpg

Master of Fragmentation did not take the confusion and might buffs; it took Precise Wrack (F1), Confusing Cry (F2), Imbued Diversion (F3), and Masterful Reflection (F4).

Oh, ok. So now Main builds will lose %33 confusion duration, and cannot get any of the shatter improvements that are all baked into Master of fragmentation. That is even worse. %33 confusion duration should stay as a adept trait atleast.

Its not remotely worse. Confusion duration is nice, but an extra stack of confusion/might per shatter clone is much, much better. The stuff in master of Fragmentation is unlikely to have much interest for condition (or many other) specs.

Ansau.7326:

PD: How about a bunker MtD shatter Dueling/Inspiration/Illusions with massive condi cleansing, good self-healing while spreading tons of condis?

Should be interesting and will surely be tested. But IMHO the best bunker abilities we have are all in the Chaos tree. Dampening, Stability, and -damage per clone; in addition to the strong minor traits… I think they will outweigh the healing and condi cleanse -- which will likely still end up being pretty strong in groups.

Would be great if we could go Choas/Insp/Illu, but that silly DE…

I don’t play shatter but after the changes, I will be trying something like this. Shatter build. looks very interesting.

Domination * 3 * 1 * 2
Dueling * 3 * 1 * 3
Illusions * 1 * 3 * 3

Staff and Sp/pistol

Domination
Rending Shatter
Shattering illusions inflicts vulnerability on nearby foes.
Vulnerability(8.25s): 1% Incoming Damage

Shattered Concentration
Shatter skills also remove a boon on hit.
Boons Removed: 1

Mental Torment
Shatter skills deal more damage. This damage increase is doubled against foes that are not activating skills.
Damaging Increase: 25%Damage Increase vs Inactive: 50%

Dueling
Dualist’s Discipline
Pistol attacks from you and your illusions foes and have a chance to cause bleeding. Interrupting a foe recharges pistol skills.
Chance to Bleed: 33%Damage Increase: 20%Bleeding(2)(5.25s): 260 Damage

Blinding Dissipation
Blind foes around you whenever you use a shatter skill.
Blindness(3.25s): Next outgoing attack misses.Blind Targets: 5Blind Radius: 240

Deceptive Evasion
Create a clone at your current position when you dodge.

Illusions
Compounding Power
Gain increased damage for each of your active illusions.
Damage Increase: 3%

Malicious Sorcery
Torment deals increased damage to moving foes. Reduces recharge on scepter skills when you inflict confusion.
Damage Increase vs moving: 50%Recharge Reduced: 2%

Maim the Disillusioned
Enemies hit by shatter skills are inflicted with torment.
Torment(2)(6.25s): 234 Damage, 468 Damage if MovingNumber of Targets: 5Radius: 240

%33 confusion duration is a huge loss, and combined with %30 less condition duration overall (since we can’t go into dom if we want PU) means %63 less confusion duration. We also can’t get boon removal on shatters aswell with this build.

dimyzuka.7051:

%33 confusion duration is a huge loss, and combined with %30 less condition duration overall (since we can’t go into dom if we want PU) means %63 less confusion duration. We also can’t get boon removal on shatters aswell with this build.

In exchange confusion will be buffed to deal damage per stack every second plus damage on skill use.

The more I think about the changes, the more I like them. Now build variations will be more meaningful than just choosing this trait over this one. Now MtD will be able to have 3 secondary roles quite different from each other:
- A very offensive condi build when choosing Domination, and be able to control enemies while they drown with your condi bursts.
- A tanky condi build when going for Chaos. Completely trolling build with tons of stealth and really hard to kill.
- A condi support build when Inspiration chose. Able to give allies support through AoE condi cleansing and healing while still being a thread for enemies.