Guild Wars 2

A Self Introduction

Hello everyone, I’m Gizuko, a fellow mesmer. First, I’ll say I’m not new to the class but I am to the forums, please be merciful Also, I don’t play that much, so please do expect nooby mistakes and worse.

I have been messing around some builds since a long time ago, since launch, to be precise, and this is what I have come to create: a build that I find challenging to play, and still effective (against the less-skilled half of the game, at least).

Why such a build

Although I like torch a lot, there are a lot of torch build out there and as heartbreaking as it is, it didn’t fit in my build. A PU build, at that. So I picked pistol, for the bleeds and confusion stacking, and staff, for the awesomeness.

On a side note, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I hate the staff. It’s useful, mobile, adds condition damage, makes you tanky and get’s people boons for free. On a RNG basis. Can’t count how many times I have stacked vuln on an enemy. Gives a stun breaker, defense and conditions, though.

I’ll cover the rest later, for now, please do take a look at the sPVP version of the build

Cons (Yeah, I’m listing cons first, close the tab while you can)

-Not a power based build (so far, I’m running with 0 power. Will correct it when I find a way around it)
-No blink
-Might lack damage mitigation (through BF and such)
-Not an efficient might stacking build.
-Conditions don’t last long enough.
-Boon stealing hurts.
-Therefore, necros hurt.
-Can be hard to finish someone off.
-Lacks testing, specially on wvw, where I would need to modify the build (can’t get all the gear and sigils I need right now, need a bit of time, but I have some ideas). Will work on it, though.

Pros

-Regen spam.
-Thus, lots of protection.
-Stacks confusion and bleeds.
-Decent condition removal.
-Invisibility.
-Combo management.
-Fanstafftick (nothing too good about it, just the pun. You can hate me now).

My playstyle (Still getting used to it)

As I said, I picked iDuelist for the condi stacking, but as you see in my utilities, no glamour was picked. I stack confusion through Staff #5 on the iDuelist so that confusion still applies even if the enemy gets away from it. I also try to add Scepter #3, but sometimes the pace of the fight makes it impossible. To avoid rushing things over, I usually begin to cast scepter#3 then switch to staff and field before the iDuelist attacks. Need some more skill before I do it right every time, though.

So that’s one combo. Then there is the other high risk combo, which involves certain 90sec CD light field (veil can be replaced by focus#4, but that might fight better in a power build), and provides up to 8x (was it 8?) conditions cleansed. And since this is a PU build, well, you benefit from the stealth too.

I use staff for the field, but it is my main source of damage (I only spike confusion, through the combo or scepter#3, but the staff helps keeping better track of all the CDs, but switching back to S/P 10 seconds before executing the field combo), mobility and defense. The scepter/pistol is for the last spike, to avoid healing through Pistol#5, to apply torment and block and for the condition cleansing. Runes of Lyssa are there for the condi duration increase, the condition cleansing and the higher chance of causing bleed. Runes and sigils are not final and are quite likely to change if I see something better.

As for the utilities, I use invis for obvious reasons, and mantra of resolve + healing for the condi removal and health management. MoR also procs runes’ random boon when charging the mantra (as opposed to Mender’s Purity+Restorative Mantras).

Things I’m testing/considering

I’m quite happy with how phantasmal healing works together with illusionary membrane, but I’m dissatisfied with condition duration (not that bad in WvW), and defense against burst.
I’m thinking of changing some things, like getting 33% conf duration or Chaos V, but that’s enough for now.

Last words (You have stayed so far, or haven’t, but do read this, please)

I think that pretty much covers everything, whether the build needs reworking or a complete trashing and restarting is something I’m not good enough to know. I enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean anything is set on stone yet. I plan on moving it to WvW in due time, but I can’t do so right now due to gold shortage (but I do have most rabid gear andsome weapons, need sigils, a good staff and the like), so I would appreciate some insight on whether it would do well in WvW as well (not just sPvP).

Thanks a lot for reading me, and for any criticism you might toss, since learning and improving only takes place after you realize what your own mistakes are.

[TL;DR] This is the build

Very nicely written and presented.

My first question. What do you wish this build to accomplish? The very first thing I noticed when I followed the link was Restorative Mantras. This would be great if you were investing in healing power/team support (such as bringing Null Field to further keep your team/party safe) however the armor is set such for a condition damage set up. I would personally drop Restorative Mantras and use Malicious Sorcery. At least that will boost your only real source of damage (conditions) and allow you to use the block and confusion more often.

In all honesty, the rest of the set up (in my opinion) is fine. I would personally use Torch just for the stealth to proc PU more often, however the reasoning for Pistol is understandable. (adding another Chaos field would actually benefit having the iDuelist a little more, since he’s going to be hitting a little lackluster on his own, perhaps Feedback, or Null Field).

Utilities, obviously keep decoy. I would trade veil for null field and trade mantra of resolve for Arcana Thievery (if you wanted that extra condition removal in these dark times of condition spammers) or Blink, for obvious reasons.

As for the heal, Mantra of Recovery is fine if you want to use the 2 uses as condition cleanse (since you traited for cleanse on heal) however since you have traited for reduced damage per illusion you clearly intend to keep illusions around, Ether Feast would benefit greatly from that.

This is very close to my build but I put more into the defensive side of things and capitilize on the protection. Having said that if you really want to take veil then the CD reduction would be great… Now add to it iDisenchanter and you have a great non-shatter far point assaulter build.

I admire your use of mantras. They are however still a little too clunky to be up there in PvP but when specced with healing power they are quite beautiful.

If you really like phantasmal healing and illusionary membrane then just focus on stealth as much as possible. I do suggest since you are more condition focused to change the build to 0/20/30/0/20 and take Master of Misdirection and illusionary elasticity. As it is right now you get the same amount of condition damage if you were to take malicious sorcery and more oomph for your staff.

Also consider retaliatory shield (not sure if I saw it). It’s great with a PU/staff build because you get aegis alot alot alot.

Other than that it looks great and strangely familiar.

Thank you very much for your imput! ^^

@WhiteRose: Yup, I have given some thought to Ether Feast, since I have some problems every now and then with heavy burst damage. I’ll probably switch both mantras for Ether Feast and Null Field (I love the boon stealing AT provides, but I think Null Field fits the iDuelist better, as you said) and try it out a bit, together with the scepter trait.

The build itself was thought to be somehow a tanky (and condition clean) “I slowly heal up will you slowly go down”, with the exception of confusion spikes and such. So I went for bleed/confusion stack spam, and then more continued damage through Staff. So yeah, basically a solid DPS, in terms of constant damage with little spikes.

The reasoning behind Restorative Mantras and both mantras was the low CD condi removal they provided, and by recharging it, I healed both myself and allies around me (I know I’m not gearing for Healing Power, but I read the ratio was 0.2 for RM, though I’m not sure if that info was outdated) on a constant basis, as if I was using a heal per second system instead of a burst heal.

@jportell: I’m very sorry if it is too similar, though I have ben reading tips all around the forum I have only checked Osicat’s and Natsu Dragneel’s build, so I’m very sorry about that (I checked it after I read you post, and you are right, the traits are very similar, but I didn’t know about you build, so I can only apologize at this point u.u)

I thought of going 10-20 into Illusions, but lost interest because I don’t really shatter, so the minors are a little less usefull. However, those two traits in particular seem very unrestrictive (they don’t require shattering), so I’ll probably look into them, specially for the wvw version, since I can afford losing some traited crit chance there.

Once again, let me apologize for the build, although this things are bound to happen (too many mesmers to come up with a 100% new build), I still feel like my supposedly original idea wasn’t so original, and on top of that someone else posted it before so it gets all the more embarrasing and may bring a bit of hate upon myself. And… ARGH Well, I guess you understand. Thanks for not jumping on me, though

So, all that said, it is a bit late here and I’m in need of some sleep, so I’m off to bed before I fall asleep on the keyboard.

Thanks everyone for going out of your way to help me and goodnight!

I used to be a mantra user like you… then I got roflstomped a hundred times in spvp

Yeah its cool but if you want to take PU but still be more offensive. Illusions is your way to go. You can deal with conditions in other ways (iDisenchanter for one) But all in all when I want more condi damage that is a good trait to take (iElasticity) Also the torch is good for ze burns….

I have made some build changes in order to try some of your suggestions, and while iElasticity+iDisenchanter have proven to be a very effective combo, I feel that the need of a target for iDisenchanter takes a bit of freedom away from the build (like LoS cleansing). They seem really fun though, gotta play around with iElasticity some more.

As for the null field changes, I’m currently trying to go Ether Feast+Null field (instead of the 2 mantras) with -20% CD on glamours and Malicious sorcery.

As for retaliatory shield, I’d lose either 20% crit on phantasms (less bleeds) or -%CD on pistol. It fits rather well on a PU build, and is extremely fun, but I need to check if the loss of some bleed is worth it (thought Retaliation scaled with power?).

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone, they are rather fun to mess with ^^

Edit, I forgot: I really like how Torch works (really think the phantasm could use some quality of life changes or buffs, though), but I can’t see it fitting into the build, since I’m using the pistol for comboing and bleed application. I feel I use confusion better when coupled with bleed (protecting the stacks and punishing cleanses).

Sadly the torch is half a weapon your condition damage is better with staff clones (or even GS clones for that matter) I think it’d be cool if illusionary rogue was replaced with Image. IMage would do more confusion when downed and iRogue would fit with the torch stealth theme

I like how torch is themed around not knowing what exactly is going on (blind, stealth, confusion), but it having iRogue would make it a more useful OH in many circumstances. We’d lose it’s retaliation, but I rarely get it on me at all, so I wouldn’t miss it.

I really wish I could run around with a Torch outside wvw/spvp and not feel dumb.