Guild Wars 2

Been thinking about this for a week or so since the patch was coming out. I think we now have the opportunity to make a viable bunker Mesmer if we combine the signet, staff, and mantras with a little creative trait work. Here’s what’s been shuffling around in my brain:

Sword+Focus/Staff
0/20/0/30/20 or 0/10/0/30/30 –
Cleric’s Gear (Unsure of runes, considering – Superior Runes of Melandru)

Signet of the Ether – Mantra of Pain – Mantra of Concentration – iDefender.

DUELING: Mantra Mastery, Protected Mantras (IV, VII)
INSPIRATION: Persisting Images, Restorative Mantras, Restorative Illusions (V, X, XII)
ILLUSIONS: Masterful Reflection, Phantasmal Haste, (+iPersona) (V, X, XI)

The idea here would be to get Defender up and spam mantra heals on point. Stability from MoConcentration makes you difficult to knock off and the mantra heals will keep both you AND your phantasms alive, providing perma regeneration to those nearby in addition to the signet heals.

The major glaring weakness here is conditions. Ideally I’d like to trait Mender’s Purity but that’d be better suited for Mantra of Recovery. The only real condition removal in this build is the somewhat unreliable Focus Warden/Curtain combo. I’m stumped on trying to find a way around this.

Another idea, was simply using our natural defense combined with Signet and Restorative Illusions:

0/10/0/30/30

Cleric’s Gear (Unsure of runes, still considering – Superior Runes of Melandru)

Signet of the Ether – Mirror Images, Mimic, Mantra of Concentration.

DUELING: Retaliatory Shield or Blade Training (III or II)
INSPIRATION: Warden’s Feedback, Vigorous Revelation, Restorative Illusions (VIII, III, XII)
ILLUSIONS: Masterful Reflection, Illusionary Invigoration, iPersona (I, VI, XI)

Adding condition removal would be a bit easier in this build, though I’m still not sure what I’d trade off. I’ll be doing some studying on guardian bunkers this weekend and comparing notes.

Any ideas are more than welcome.

Well I did some testing with my utility wizard bunker spec in PvP. I’ll just say the healing signet is very strong, especially so if you have good healing power built in (say a conservative 900). You get the benefit of the 250/sec regen, plus 1,102 every 3 seconds from the signet (accounting for healing power), averaging out to 617 health/sec. It’s quite insane actually.

Keeping three illusions up is trivial. I just stood on the point, ingesting massive amounts of damage and I didn’t notice too much pressure until 3 or 4 focused me at once, slowly bringing me down.

Ok granted this was hot join, take it for what it is, but mesmer has some very, very impressive potential staying power with this signet.

skcamow, got a link to your bunker spec? Curious to see it. I assume something in that build is giving the 250/s regen?

My first try for a phantasm build is 10(III),20(IV,X),0,25(IV,V),15(III). Train of thought was:

- 20 Dueling, can’t live witthout DE. Just can’t
- 15 Illusions, that IC just to sweet

After those 2 it’s mostly see what I can go for. All out Phantasm damage is the first try I’m going for. Losing PU from 30 Chaos hurts stealth builds, but the idea is to have my phantasms more tanky and cover me with healing.

Qaelyn.7612:

skcamow, got a link to your bunker spec? Curious to see it. I assume something in that build is giving the 250/s regen?

It’s the phantasmal healing trait, spec is here: The Utility Wizard

I was playing more of a condition focus today, taking the glamour traits to add a minimal amount of confusion, but hey, since bunkers are really built for dealing damage, I figure why not get the most I can. I also slotted BI instead of CD in Chaos. I’ll have to do that more in hot join/soloq, didn’t notice the absence of staff cool downs. 25 might stacks seemed pretty easy, so running close to 1,900 condition damage at that point is no joke in a bunker.

I like your first idea, but I’d just stick to MoR with Mender’s Purity over the healsig. You could save the MoC casts for charging MoH. I worry about being pressured from off-point by a grenade engie (or just up-front by a hammer warrior) who could down all your illusions pretty fast and make the healing signet worthless.

Alternatively, between the two GM Inspiration traits I’d go with Shattered Conditions over Restorative Illusions, since you’re weak to conditions and already have plenty of healing.

Either way, I’m not sure whether going up to iPersona is that valuable – you’re not going for shatter damage, and you can’t hold points during Distortion. Comparatively, sticking them into Chaos provides a lot more defense — 100 toughness, iDefense for 9% more DR. It’s probably a tossup whether that’s better than the 600 from Protected Mantras (PM is more reduction probably, but only while charging). You could even steal 5 more from Illusions and trade pHaste for iMembrane to get some Protection uptime. So final build – 0/20/15/20/15.

Another thought would be to scrap Illusions entirely, and just go 0/20/30/20/0, grabbing the staff trait and Chaotic Interruption, which could be neat: pull someone off the point with Curtain, and they’re immobilized for free! Then drop a Chaos Storm on top of them for even more fun.

Quick note from my phone: iPersona + Restorative Illusions = 2000+ HP for each 1-clone shatter.

Combined with Mantra heals, Regeneration and Cleric’s gear thats around 5000HP every time I charge a mantra.

d’oh, I completely forgot about the IP + RI interaction – that does make it worthwhile. I’d still go with mantra healing and the newly buffed Mender’s Purity over healing signet and Persisting Images, but that makes the 0/10/0/30/30 variant very appealing.

The issue I see with the signet in a healing build is that the more healing power you have, the bigger the gap becomes between ether feast and the signet…especially since they fixed the ether feast bug.

Another issue is that the signet ties your healing to how many illusions you have over a long period of time. With ether feast, it’s very straightforward to push out 3 illusions then heal, but with the signet it’s a passive check every three seconds. Since the 1 and 2 illusion ticks both have a significantly lower base heal and a significantly lower healing power scaling, uncontrollable events where you happen to tick with 2 instead of 3 will ultimately very negatively impact your total healing.

I might try it in a healing bunker build, since pushing out defenders and disenchanters would be very nice, but overall I don’t think it’s good enough to sacrifice so muh healing.

I think ya’ll are right. The signet is nice in theory, esecially for trying to push out two defenders and sustain with mantra heals but it leaves me with a massive weakness to conditions. Mantra of Recovery, with Menders and Restorative is a much better choice. like mixing Restorative Illusions with iPersona, so I may try out that second variant first, then see what I can do with a Soldiers amulet mantra bunker with 0/20/30/20/0

For any serious bunker spec, I think it goes without saying that stability is necessary. To that end, I would think you’d want that mantra in there somewhere being it’s our only source of it.

What is the build meant for ? Not just talking about the inferiority of SoE – pyro did that.
But why would you summon a defender and keep healing it with charging mantras ? Do you think the mob will die of age ? Do you think defender + MoP will make you a tanker ? you can’t even dodge or swap weapons.

While I think the pDefender is great on paper but really situational. If your teammates get hit, it dies. So it basically halved a single hit of you party; like 50% aegis. Even the iDisenchanter is less situational, since you can abuse it for regen spring

And I think that the only reason to get Mantra mastery would be Healing Mantra. In your setup ProtectedMantras could be more usefull ……. and it’s … you know … ProtectedMantras.

Nretep.2564:

What is the build meant for ? Not just talking about the inferiority of SoE – pyro did that.
But why would you summon a defender and keep healing it with charging mantras ? Do you think the mob will die of age ? Do you think defender + MoP will make you a tanker ? you can’t even dodge or swap weapons.

While I think the pDefender is great on paper but really situational. If your teammates get hit, it dies. So it basically halved a single hit of you party; like 50% aegis. Even the iDisenchanter is less situational, since you can abuse it for regen spring

And I think that the only reason to get Mantra mastery would be Healing Mantra. In your setup ProtectedMantras could be more usefull ……. and it’s … you know … ProtectedMantras.

This is for tournament PvP. The defender and heals are all for my own survivability while holding points. Not worried so much about damage/kills.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Another issue is that the signet ties your healing to how many illusions you have over a long period of time. With ether feast, it’s very straightforward to push out 3 illusions then heal, but with the signet it’s a passive check every three seconds. Since the 1 and 2 illusion ticks both have a significantly lower base heal and a significantly lower healing power scaling, uncontrollable events where you happen to tick with 2 instead of 3 will ultimately very negatively impact your total healing.

Maybe i have the worst luck in the world, but with my clonespam build, the illusion count changes too fast for 3s interval with the heal, making the passive effect very unreliable. For example, aoe just destroyed all my clones and the heal ticked before i could MI and/or dodge, and scepter autoattack.. well, it gets worse.