Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone. I’ve decided on a support and condition build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArdWlknpUtVpxANcrNCuxY6JCJiTOyJlMgfB

Could you please tell me if I would be very helpful in Dungeons or PvP?

Thank you.

For dungeons: Not really, no. Condition builds don’t really succeed in dungeons, especially not with Mesmer… even in casual pugs, and your traits wouldn’t be doing you any favors. The kind of support you’re offering wouldn’t be as helpful as other alternatives.

For PvP, maybe.

Prismatic Understanding would be a waste since you only have Mass Invis for stealth, you’d be better off swapping that with Bountiful Interruption for better boonsharing.

Phantasmal Fury is a curious choice since you are condition focused and your phants wont be doing very much damage either way (iWarden isn’t going to hit often and iWarlock won’t benefit very much).

Also, your rune/sigil/armor choice is verrrryy important, mind updating the build link to include those?

Mantra of Concentration. Hm, that gives me an idea to try out…

i want to say your build is viable for pvp and can be helpful…that stability is crucial in pvp for us and to get our signet off. for dungeons your build would not be as useful as is, i would switch out CD for bountfiul interruption and PU for BD in traits and MI for TW and MoC for maybe MoR, feedback or disenchanter/defender to stregthen my support role

edit: keep CD and change PU for BI. thanks chaos

For dungeons, the best form of support a mesmer can provide are reflects, pulls, condition cleanse, and in some situations, portal. Other classes are much, much more efficient at every other form of support— aegis, might stacking, protection, blinds, and even healing. As such, the only effective support I see in this build is the traited wardens, and the occasional cleanse/boon strip from Null Field.

As others have mentioned, conditions are also not particularly useful in dungeons even with Warriors and Necros— with Mesmers, whose main condition pressure comes from confusion and torment, the situation is even worse. Mobs rarely proc either confusion or torment, so both of those condition’s effectiveness is substantially reduced.

Is this build “viable” for dungeons? Sure, everything is “viable” and you’ll be able to complete content, and assist your team in some small way (the game is easy and old-ish, so pretty much anything goes). However, this is not certainly not the highest level of support you could be offering (that goes instead to maximum reflect damage/ reflect uptime builds).

Very nice. Guild Wars 2 is a very complicated game, just the way I like it.

Thanks Chaos, Shadowkiller and Maxinion. I have heeded your advice and decided to go a different route. I’m focusing on support and phantasms for dungeons. Here is the other build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW8dn0HSlaWlGGoB1aIR1QObznosbaSFocdA-e

I don’t know much about sigils yet. But I’ll try the sigils recommended in the following guide:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Dungeons-Phantasm-build-s/first

Weapons and armor will be full berserker types.

If you could answer my questions, I will greatly appreciate it: Do you think I should sacrifice Phantasmal Haste for Bountiful Interruption? I’m sure others have also used this build but what do you think of it? Also, will mender’s purity cure conditions on allies?

Thank you very much for your advice.

This looks much nicer, Martial. I would recommend a few small changes:

1. Take Inspiration V to Inspiration VIII— reflections are very important for a mesmer. If you know the fight doesn’t need reflections, you can swap back to V if you want.
2. Take Feedback instead of Phantasmal Defender. PD is ok defense, but it prevents you from having 3 offensive phantasms up. This can reduce your potential damage by about 20% in this build. And again, reflections are your responsibility as a mesmer in your party— you’ll be expected to use Feedback in the right times.
3. Definitely don’t use Anti-toxin Spray. Signet of Ether is probably best in this build.

With this build, I suggest you play with something like: start with staff. summon warlock. signet of ether. summon warlock. swap to sword. summon warden. attack with sword.

Or variations of the above. Staff does very little damage, so whenever you swap to it during combat, you’re losing damage. It’s an alright weapon to start fights with though.

I also do not think you should go for Bountiful Interuption. That’s deep in Chaos, which is a bad line in PvE, and you only have one interrupt (Temporal Curtain’s pull). Phantasmal Haste will be a lot more helpful for you.

Mender’s Purity does not cleanse allies.

For sigils, the standard night/accuracy + force will be fine.

One final comment: don’t leave your utilities set in stone. Swap them up depending on the situation. If you’re in a place that doesn’t have knock-downs, get rid of Mantra of Concentration, and take Mantra of Resolve for the group condition cleanse. If you’re in a situation where your party is stacking 25 might, you won’t need Signet of Inspiration, so you may as well get rid of that for Null Field or something else that will help your party more.

Good luck, and enjoy~

I think that you should make separate builds for PvP and Dungeons.

For Dungeons, you’re likely better off following Maxinion’s guide as it’s more recently updated (and sorry max, I didn’t realize I didn’t put it in the Grimoire when you posted it. x_x I thought I did but I must’ve not hit the “edit” button or something) Also iDefender won’t work out very well, as there’s too much damage for it to really be of much use (it works better and is pretty underrated in PvP though) and Signet of the Ether tends to be a better heal for dungeons. But dungeons aren’t my forte, so I’ll let someone else steer you there.

…On to PvP!

The reason why I say you should have a different PvP build is because PvP offers more opportunity for diversity in your theorycrafting. You can run a condition/support build and be effective if you know what to do and craft it together properly, my criticism on this build will be specifically from a PvP perspective that’s assuming you’re mostly going to be playing casually and aren’t gunning for a tournament team, if you are then.. well we’ll get to that. =P

TRAITS
Right now your traits are set up for a power build. If you wanna run condition in PvP you can, but I’ll judge for now from a power perspective and if ya wanna switch to condis we can adjust…

• Phantasm Traits: You’ve got quite a few Phantasm traits, but Staff/Focus have the most difficult phantasms to deal damage with. In dungeons this is fine since most enemies aren’t intelligent or particularly mobile but in PvP you’ll have a hard time dealing damage with them. They can work, for sure, but it’s tricky and takes some practice and positioning. Usually in PvP people run Sword/X – Scepter /X in their phantasm builds for more versatility. Most Phantasm builds also grab Signet of Illusions to give some durability to their pets.

• Mender’s Purity works best with Mantras, which work very well in dungeons. Mantras offer another form of support with MoConcentration (AoE stability) and MoResolve(AoE Condition Cleanse) as well as Restorative Mantras (Inspiration X). Mantra support builds require really good positioning and awareness since the AoE radius is very low.

UTILITIES
For starters, your utilities are all set for support but are all rather tricky to use and usually aren’t placed together. (Mesmers have quite a few options to build different support builds.) I’m not saying you can’t make it work, but lets take a closer look at what you’re offering…

• MoConcentration is actually really good team support but the radius is rather short and you only get two charges (3 traited; Dueling XI). MoConcentration works best in either mantra support or boonshare builds, with about 50% boon duration you can get it to 3 seconds per charge, but spammed continuously could end up being up to 9s of AoE Stability on a 23 second cooldown.

• iDefender: another AoE ability that absorbs half the damage to anyone who has it’s buff. Defender has the highest base HP of any Phantasm and Signet of Illusions/Persisting Images pushes it to the point where it can actually work out to protect a teammate or two.

• Signet of Inspiration: Signet of Inspiration can work well on it’s own, but is much better with the right weapons (Staff / Sword-Focus), combinations (Chaos Armor, LIGHT field combos), and conditions (atleast 4 boons lasting 8 seconds). It also requires a bit of positional awareness as you wanna absorb boons from other classes like Guardians, Elementalists, Rangers, and Engineers.

Like I said, I reaallyy think you should have separate builds. Phantasm builds struggle in group fights but excel in 1v1s and support builds can struggle in 1v1s but excel in group fights. Its not often that someone uses the same build they use in PvE as PvP

Nice comments on the pvp side of things, Chaos. And yes, completely agreed that different builds for different game modes are required.

Thank you for your comments Maxinion and Chaos Archangel. I will make adjustments to the build that I am using.

But I have a few more questions if that is alright. Can a shatter or Prismatic Understanding build work for PvE? Also is there a fantastic way of getting protection and sharing it with my teammates? Should I use Illusionary Membrane?

Martial.4916:

But I have a few more questions if that is alright. Can a shatter or Prismatic Understanding build work for PvE? Also is there a fantastic way of getting protection and sharing it with my teammates? Should I use Illusionary Membrane?

No, not really.

Shatter does far less dps than a phantasm build, and it can’t spec well for support.

PU is 30 points into a traitline that offers no support and no damage. It’s a trait that provides significant defensive bonuses while in stealth. Pretty much every single thing about it makes it bad for PvE.

Thanks Fay. Alright, I’ll use shatter and PU builds when PvPing.

I have made some changes to the build. And I sacrificed damage in order to be able to heal. Is this ok?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW8dnsISraWlGGoB1aIR1QM3pT3cYSSFocdA-e

I want to thank everyone that has helped me so far or read my posts. But I have a few more ideas for input if you don’t mind.

For dungeons, please disregard the build on my last post. I will, instead, use the second build I posted but going with suggestions from Maxinion. When building PvP support build I will take suggestions from Chaos.

Also for PvP, I may switch between a PU support build and PU condition build. (Muhaha PU muhaha) When I use PU support, I’m thinking of using traits in Chaos in order to give myself regeneration, protection and aegis (Metaphysical Rejuvenation, Illusionary Membrane and Prismatic Understanding)—-maybe also use Mantra of Concentration to give myself stability. Then use signet of inspiration to share all these boons every 45sec. What do you think about that idea?

I have a few more questions if you would please. Does prismatic understanding provide boons to allies that I put into stealth? May I cast a mantra even if I did not spend any of its casts (or maybe if I only spent one)? I think those are all my questions for now. All help is greatly appreciated.