Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

This is a quick guide that might interest any players interested ninja gameplay, i.e sneaking into keeps or towers behind enemy zergs undetected, and if found surviving outnumbered for as long as possible in order to portal in a supporting group. Its kinda a “behind enemy lines” build as you will be severely outnumbered and outgunned most of the time. I’ve had extensive experience solo roaming with this build and with the support of havoc groups have managed to ninja every keep and tower in WvW more times than i can count. Now dont get me wrong, I love shatter mes, and have played just about every single mesmer build out there, but now Im writing this for any bored mesmers who are tired of traditional wvw roaming and looking for a very different way to play mesmer. In a nutshell you are trading traditional dps for extreme survivability while putting yourself into some seriously outnumbered situations (10v1) with the opportunity for some very high rewards.

Successful infiltrating relies on several key points:

1. Map awareness You are going to be looking at your map a lot. Swords and flipped camps are your clues on where the enemy is and most groups follow predictable behavior. SE camp flips, expect SE tower or Hills. Speldan flips, expect Mendons or Anz. You will be roaming alone and moving fast to get to keeps and towers in time to get into position.

2. Situational awareness. Your actions vary greatly depending on what the enemy is doing and the status of your target/tower/keep and how you attempt to hide or sneak in. Sometimes it is better to wait for a zerg to bust the door down first and follow them in, letting their zerg focus allow you to slip in undetected. Other times if you already own the tower and are the sole defender, you need to sneak inside without being seen so as to not arouse suspicion. So much to say on this subject, but a lot of it comes down to practice and trial and error. Also, know your hiding spots. There are tons people dont know about or rarely check.

3. Utilizing your build strengths to hide/survive. Chaining stealths and blinks to get into position undetected is key. The survivability options of mesmers should be pretty straightforward to any mesmer.

4. Communicating with your havoc group/map roamers to cap the objective. Know who your active groups are and be in touch with them. After a few successful caps they will know to look out for you and will respond very quickly.

Infiltrator Build

Gear
This build runs full exotic nomad gear (lol i know)and ascended PTV trinkets. Full soldiers gear/trinkets also works really well. The nomads are easily craftable surprisingly. Took me all of an hour, so not as hard as you might think, and i hate Dry Top/pve. The PTV trinkets, i figure most everybody has a set of those. The runes are Superior Runes of Speed which are cheap and keep you very very mobile. ***Please note get an aqua breather lvl60+ and put a superior rune of speed in it or you will be dead when hiding in bay, very important. With full stacks you can see 3.1k Armor and 28k HP, which is insane.

Weapons
Weapon sets are Scepter/Torch and Sword/Focus and are all used defensively, as it is pointless to attack with nomads, you have to use your environment and skills to stay alive. Thats half the fun of this build. Use scepter block a lot as its on a 10 sec cd, and sword #2 as an evade when getting group focused. Try to stay in scepter/torch as long as possible and only switch to sword/focus if you need the extra evade from energy sigil or speed/cc from temporal curtain, or as a last resort while getting focused.

Utilities
Utilities are Blink with extended range and cool down, Decoy, Portal, and Mass invis. It goes without saying you have to abuse the hell out of PU in this build. PU offers protection aegis regen and now might (useless) but also swiftness which synergizes really well with the superior runes of speed.

Ether Feast which on a 20 sec CD excels over the signet heal. You will be able to heal a ton of HP every 20 seconds esp when you keep your clones up. Remember it heals more per clone.

Blink is on a super low cooldown and has extended range so when getting chased try to use it to its farthest as it can really save you. Remember also that you can blink up certain ledges and cliffs during a chased that forces enemies to take the long way around to reach you. Also blinking behind enemies mid chase can be just as effective/confusing.

Portal, is by far the greatest utility in keeping you alive when you are getting chased by 15-20 people. The trick is, you have to get good at thinking about hiding portals in out of the way places when getting chased. For example, in bay you jump in the water with 15 people behind you, go low a sec and drop a portal right by the rock wall, spear #2/#4/#5 away. Look behind you and make sure they are coming after you. In most mob zergs they just chase you without thinking twice, let them get closer to you until they just start to attack, then portal back at the last second. At most only one person will have seen the portal, usually nobody sees it and you now have a huge distance from your enemy, and your spear cooldowns are back up, allowing you to spear #2/#4 away creating an INSANE distance and often resetting your HP. In SM, you can drop portals on the 3rd floor, drop down, run around, get them to chase you and then portal back up to the 3rd floor. These are just a few examples of how to divide an enemy group with portals. Remember also, if most of the zerg stops chasing you, they are waiting at the portal for you to return. No sweat. Here is another juke move for you: the fakeout portal. You can drop your return portal and then use decoy (remember dont target anyone so you dont leave a clone). To the enemy it will look as if you portaled back, making them stop in their tracks, giving you more distance. Another example, in hills, use the cliffs to your advantage by dropping portals on the hight ground, dropping down, getting then to chase you down then portaling back up buys you lots of time. Anyway, lots of fun to be had here with portals. More examples than i can count.

Use Mass invis as a last resort when everything else is on CD and you are getting hunted bad and really need 6 more seconds to get your other skills off CD. I cannot stress the last resort part enough.

F1-F4 abilities F1-F2 arent really that usefull. The interrupt shatter is good situationally if you are desperate and F4 is on CD. F4 is awesome, its an on demand invulnerability when you have clones up. Just remember to dodge for deceptive evasion clones. Use this shatter when either your scepter block is on cd and you really need the damage mitigation or your are getting zerg focused hard, 10+ people beating on you in a clump.

Underwater weapons I use double soldier’s spears with cleansing sigils. Spear #2 and #4 creates insane distance and will make you immortal in bay. #5 use before leaving the water to by you some time if someone is chasing you. Aso dont forget #5/#2 chaos armor combo. Swapping spears is your underwater condi removal. Also note you will lose a condi every time you jump in the water (9sec cd). Spear #3 should be used when getting chased and you have your enemy in range, combine it to pull off a F3 daze shatter And dont forget to have a rune of speed on your aqua breather for the #6 +25% movement increase underwater

Underwater utilities Signet of midnight, Decoy, Portal, Mass Invis. Decoy for jukes and stun breaks, Signet of midnight for stuns/blinds and when getting group focused, and portal for crowd separation and jukes. Mass invis as a last resort.

Traits:

Just a couple points, fall damage is CRUCIAL. To properly execute various jukes and distractions, you will be jumping off a lot of things repeatedly. Very important to have fall damage on, or you will die. Your condi cleanse is from torch, which sucks in the condi meta, but joined with anti condi food (lemongrass or poultry variants) you are ok. Really save torch condi clear for immobalizes/cripples if you can or huge bleed stacks, let your heals mitigate the lesser condi damage.

Anyway, thats the build. However, most of your survival will depend on your environment and how you use it. This build will ensure your survival in order to allow you to get really creative with your outnumbered juke play.

Have fun!
(and try not to troll toooo hard lol)
Golden Mirage

sounds neat

just a question tho, why not sword /torch , staff

staff for added mobility + survivability

and sword for surv, small iLeap trolls (probably wont work so well, ty anet for iLeap nerf (clone dieing – no leap)), and torch for the stealth

just wondering

Wyrden.4713:

sounds neat

just a question tho, why not sword /torch , staff

staff for added mobility + survivability

and sword for surv, small iLeap trolls (probably wont work so well, ty anet for iLeap nerf (clone dieing – no leap)), and torch for the stealth

just wondering

That’s easy, scepter block. Can intercept an incoming attack and continue moving. When you’re being chased the last thing you want to do is stop. Even for a second.

Was scared this was going to be a thread about the infiltrator runes.

I would use Wyrden’s weapon setup though, staff is amazing for juking. 1 teleport, a field of awesomeness, an aura of cripple/blind/other thing.

@Ross i would chose sword over scepter any day due to the fact you can use it to immobilize people and leap to npcs. A fun one is skill 2, when it ends pop torch and blink out the opposite direction.

Also with your current toughness without stacks would condition clear on swap on your land set as well be a little more handy.

sw/t and staff can definitely work great, especially if it is your preferred weapon set and you feel comfortable evading with it already. You can pull off some great evasion combos with that set for sure. I chose scepter/torch for the mobile block. Often in drawn out chases when you have several people behind you if you stop for even a second or two from the sword #2 root it allows them to catchup to you and begin their chain stuns/cc’s. From my experience, in an outnumbered chase you have to constantly keep moving to prevent group lockdowns. I prefer sword#2/#3 as a last resort for group focus, following with temporal curtain for speed/cripple and literally pulling them off. I can see for sure how the staff could essentially do the same thing. I just love the focus so much for moving around the map. With speed runes you have only 5 seconds without swiftness from TC. (and if you proc swiftness from stealth you have near perma swiftness when running across a map)

And as for energy sigils vs. cleansing sigils on land weapons, both work well. Energy sigils are more multipurpose as they can help evade both condi/power as well as incoming stuns, while cleansing sigil can really come in handy when condi clears are on CD and you get hit with a cripple or immobalize for sure. Both have their pros/cons.

Mark Ryan.1078:

sw/t and staff can definitely work great, especially if it is your preferred weapon set and you feel comfortable evading with it already. You can pull off some great evasion combos with that set for sure. I chose scepter/torch for the mobile block. Often in drawn out chases when you have several people behind you if you stop for even a second or two from the sword #2 root it allows them to catchup to you and begin their chain stuns/cc’s. From my experience, in an outnumbered chase you have to constantly keep moving to prevent group lockdowns. I prefer sword#2/#3 as a last resort for group focus, following with temporal curtain for speed/cripple and literally pulling them off. I can see for sure how the staff could essentially do the same thing. I just love the focus so much for moving around the map. With speed runes you have only 5 seconds without swiftness from TC. (and if you proc swiftness from stealth you have near perma swiftness when running across a map)

And as for energy sigils vs. cleansing sigils on land weapons, both work well. Energy sigils are more multipurpose as they can help evade both condi/power as well as incoming stuns, while cleansing sigil can really come in handy when condi clears are on CD and you get hit with a cripple or immobalize for sure. Both have their pros/cons.

you are being silly Energy sigils are great, sigils of momentum are not worth the extra armor when you already have 3k compared to condition clear.

This sounds like fun. I need to be on a better WvW server for it though.

you are being silly Energy sigils are great, sigils of momentum are not worth the extra armor when you already have 3k compared to condition clear.

From my understanding energy sigils conflict with cleansing sigils because they are both weapon swap sigils. So running both energy and cleansing on both weapon sets would render one of those sigils useless. Anybody know for sure?

Mark Ryan.1078:

you are being silly Energy sigils are great, sigils of momentum are not worth the extra armor when you already have 3k compared to condition clear.

From my understanding energy sigils conflict with cleansing sigils because they are both weapon swap sigils. So running both energy and cleansing on both weapon sets would render one of those sigils useless. Anybody know for sure?

that was long ago, now every sigil got its own cd, u still cant use energy + energy on same weap tho, but u can use 2 different on swap sigils on 1 weapset, guess u r just coming back from beeing away for a long time:p