Guild Wars 2

Just thought I’d post here to get some feedback on a build I’ve been running for some time. I’ve seen a number of similar builds, but nothing quite like this.

Link: http://bit.ly/1d80Mlo

The idea is to play this like a phantasm/shatter hybrid (crazy, I know), depending on what the situation warrants. If you find your opponent is pretty bad about leaving your duelists up, play it like a phantasm build and keep spawning duelists for the bleeds. If you find your opponent is good at taking out your duelists (i.e. thieves CnD’ing off them), play it like a clone death/shatter build, abusing perplexity for confusion on both F2 and F3.

The utilities are interchangeable, and you should be changing them a lot depending on what you’re fighting. Before I engage, I’ll check food buffs and quickly swap utilities accordingly. For example, against a stunlock warrior, I swap to decoy, mirror images, and blink. Against a condi necro, I might use mantra condi clear/null field. Mesmers just have too many good utilities to settle on a default three.

The basic rotation is something like scepter 2 for torment, pistol 4 for duelists (get these up ASAP, and summon as many as you can). Pistol 5 for the interrupt + confusion. Scepter 3 for more confusion. Swap to staff. Chaos storm for more interrupts/condi’s and to keep pressure on. Duelist should recharge by the time you lay down your chaos storm, so expect another 2-4 stacks of confusion from the duelist + chaos storm combo. You can shatter if you want at this point, since staff illusion generation is OP. Staff clones + autoattack also do very nice damage with the condition damage you have. After the staff combo is done, you swap back to scepter/pistol and every skill (save maybe magic bullet) should be off cd for you to rinse and repeat.

Benefits over PU condi:

-Waaaaay more damage. 1700 condition damage without stacks/food. Duelists stack confusion with ethereal fields and a kittenton of bleeds.

-Phantasmal Haste makes duelists way more deadly, as they attack every 4 seconds. With 2 duelists up, expect 12-14 stacks of bleeds every 4 seconds. With 3 duelists up, you’re approaching the bleed cap. Every 4 seconds.

-25 passive trait in Dueling makes clone deaths more painful. In addition to Debilitating Disipation, clone death also causes confusion in this build.

-Deceptive Evasion + Illusionary Persona gives you lots of shatter damage as well. F2 will inflict 8 stacks of confusion. Against a stunlock warrior, mirror images + dodge + F2 will do a lot of damage, as they’re probably swinging away thinking they got you in their stun. With perplexity, F3 will will be similarly potent for inflicting confusion.

-Slightly more team utility. With Illusionary Persona, you can F3 on yourself while you res a downed teammate. Similarly, not as stealth focused as PU, so you can actually hold points in tPvP (decoy can be swapped out for blink or mirror images and mass invis can be swapped for moa).

-With perplexity, magic bullet, signet of domination, chaos storm, and F3 will all interrupt.

Weaknesses:

-Not nearly as much stealth as PU.

-No random protection/aegis/regen from PU.

-Not as good at resetting/disengaging. Staff on swap is pretty good for kiting and defensive play, but nothing compares to the cheese that PU offers.

-Conditions, conditions, conditions. Depending on what I’m facing, I might swap out signet for mantra condi clear or null field. Still, generally doesn’t fare well against condi necros/engis. Really depends on who gets that first burst off, and whether or not I can manage my stealth well. Arcane thievery is a life-safer when fighting against condi builds, but it’s all about timing it correctly.

-Will get absolutely eaten up by Diamond Skin ele’s. But then again, all pure condi builds should get eaten up by Diamond Skin ele’s, so this really isn’t surprising.

Summary:

Basically, if you’re like me and have too much pride to play PU, but aren’t good enough to play a real build, this is a good intermediate. You’re not quite as cheesy, but you still have a lot of options for easy damage and shutting your opponents down. You can adjust the playstyle to the situation fluidly, since this build has plenty of clone generation/clone death/shatter damage, in addition to very strong phantasm damage from duelist bleeds. I’ve run this for a few months now and have done pretty well at fight clubs/dueling events and small group roaming.

Feedback and comments warmly appreciated.

I liked the part where you went ahead and slammed a whole group of players who use a trait, by far my favorite.

I think you’ve got a nice idea going here but my whole outlook on your post soured as I read your summary. Kind of a sad way to end a well thought out and constructed post, maybe an edit on the end there to make it more friendly?

Any who, I wish you luck with the build, just not too much this week, as I’m NSP. :-P

Razamatazz.9628:

I liked the part where you went ahead and slammed a whole group of players who use a trait, by far my favorite.

I think you’ve got a nice idea going here but my whole outlook on your post soured as I read your summary. Kind of a sad way to end a well thought out and constructed post, maybe an edit on the end there to make it more friendly?

Any who, I wish you luck with the build, just not too much this week, as I’m NSP. :-P

Haha, take what I say with a grain of salt; most of what I say about PU is half in jest. To be completely frank, PU builds are fairly powerful, and you have lots of people QQ’ing about it. I’m not slamming the trait as much as I am acknowledging that there’s some controversy surrounding its use, and that this build provides an alternative. Overall, I don’t think PU deserves as much flack as it gets. It’s a very strong roaming/1v1 build, but not that good for anything besides that; it’s lacking in team utility and it’s suboptimal in sPvP/PvE.

Thank you for the feedback though, and maybe I’ll see you on the field this week!

Ahhh, in that case I’ll consider myself happily trolled (albeit not on purpose).

I may try and give the build a shot later on, though I don’t enjoy phantasm builds in WvW as much, it sounds like a nice build to be able to adapt to different situations. I’ll try to give it a shot.

Oh man, before they nerfed Perplexity runes this build could’ve put out some serious hurting with Imbued Diversion and the interrupt-proc from the runes.

As it is, looks like a strong build. Adding pizza and tuning crystal puts you at 1900+ base condi dmg, and your 12 second cd hasted duelists will be terrifying.

I’m wondering if it might be worthwhile to trade IP for Bountiful Interruption (or maybe staff trait) – Magic Bullet and Chaos Storm should get you a fair amount of interrupts, and more might stacks will push your damage through the roof. IP is more critical to power shatter builds since Mind Wrack gets such a huge boost from it – but in a condi build your wracks won’t hurt that much anyway so maybe you can live without. The instant F4 is always useful though.

The other thing I might consider is sigils of doom instead of Energy. More dodges always rock of course, specially with Debilitating Dissipation, but poison adds another useful cover condition, and helps a ton against high-regen builds. It’ll also hurt a fair bit itself with your condi damage.

Should be a fun build when you want to challenge yourself more, but every time I’d die vs a setup that counters it well, I’d want to go back to PU. In that regard, I don’t think this build really provides a lot more than you’d get by going 0/20/30/0/20 or even 0/30/30/10/0.

Thanks for all the feedback!

I’ll give Bountiful Interruption a shot. I like IP because phantasm builds usually don’t emphasize clone placement, so a lot of people (me) can’t shatter the F3’s well enough to hit the interrupt perfectly. However, with IP, I can just blink up to the opponent and hit F3 to guarantee an interrupt. That said, in small group settings, I’ve been running Imbued Diversion to spread the F3 interruption love. I’ve also been considering sigil of doom for a while now, since I do think mesmers need access to a reliable source of poison to counter healing signet warriors and spirit rangers. Will definitely give that a shot.

With regards to comparison to 0/20/30/0/20 and 0/30/30/10/0, I’ve tinkered around with them, but they lose the hybrid style I enjoy.

0/20/30/0/20 is definitely more defensive, but you lose confusion on clone death, and you can’t take all of Phantasmal Fury, Duelist Discipline, and Deceptive Evasion. I presume you’d take the former two, but then you lose a lot of your clone generation that makes shattering/clone death viable, so it’d play like a condition version of a phantasm build.

0/30/30/10/0 loses out on 300 base condition damage, and you lose Phantasmal Haste and Illusionist Celerity. Not only do duelists attack less frequently (6 seconds instead of 4), but they’re also slower to summon, so I feel like I’m losing too much effective damage. Moreover, shatters are on a long cd, and clone generation is a bit slower without Illusionist Celerity, so the shatter part of this hybrid build is still a bit crippled. Of course, both alternative builds offer a lot more survivability, so I think they’re nice for people who can’t survive as well relying on the staff’s defensive mechanisms.

Overall, I don’t think this build has many counters. It has a bit of a tough time against PU mesmers, but if you can time your torment, you should be able to beat them on pure damage alone. It has a tough time against condi necros and spirit rangers, but I think most mesmer builds (including the phantasm builds provided as alternatives) will also have a tough time against those, since mesmers are weak against condi builds in general. Of course, neither this build, nor PU, nor any pure condi build can deal with Diamond Skin ele’s. Besides that, I haven’t really run into many builds that’ll counter this, provided you abuse perplexity, duelist, and shatters well.

Having too much pride to run PU, but not enough to use perplexity doesn’t make sense!

But still, looks like a nasty build.

I had some fun with this build today, but as I mentioned before — would get frustrated when I’d run into a pretty tough counter that I know I’d win in a different build. But anyway…

mango.9267:

0/20/30/0/20 is definitely more defensive, but you lose confusion on clone death, and you can’t take all of Phantasmal Fury, Duelist Discipline, and Deceptive Evasion. I presume you’d take the former two, but then you lose a lot of your clone generation that makes shattering/clone death viable, so it’d play like a condition version of a phantasm build.

In the above build, I would drop Duelist Discipline, since the difference between a 16s vs 12s CD on the Duelist isn’t a huge deal for my playstyle (I’m more often using the staff).

0/30/30/10/0 loses out on 300 base condition damage, and you lose Phantasmal Haste and Illusionist Celerity. Not only do duelists attack less frequently (6 seconds instead of 4), but they’re also slower to summon, so I feel like I’m losing too much effective damage. Moreover, shatters are on a long cd, and clone generation is a bit slower without Illusionist Celerity, so the shatter part of this hybrid build is still a bit crippled. Of course, both alternative builds offer a lot more survivability, so I think they’re nice for people who can’t survive as well relying on the staff’s defensive mechanisms.

You actually only lose out on 125 or so condition damage, as you’d get Chaotic Transference. You’d also, in my opinion, have a lot more flexibility to stick with Signet of Domination, since you’d have that extra condition clear from Menders Purity.

Also of note, you said that Phantasmal Haste reduced recharge on Duelist from 6s to 4s. I’m not 100% sure that is correct, as it would obviously be a bug (33% vs 20%). The wiki lists it from 5.4s to 4.4s, which would be accurate based on the trait.

But either way, its a solid choice for those that really enjoy IP.

Noss.4105:

Having too much pride to run PU, but not enough to use perplexity doesn’t make sense!

But still, looks like a nasty build.

Runes of Antitoxin would be a solid choice here (and for most condi Mesmer builds that are low on condition cleansing).

alanis.6094:

I had some fun with this build today, but as I mentioned before — would get frustrated when I’d run into a pretty tough counter that I know I’d win in a different build. But anyway…

Curiously, which builds did you fight that countered this? I’ve run into very few hard counters, but maybe I’ve only been dueling a limited number of builds.

alanis.6094:

You’d also, in my opinion, have a lot more flexibility to stick with Signet of Domination, since you’d have that extra condition clear from Menders Purity.

I’ve actually agonized over somehow getting Mender’s Purity in, debating whether or not I should drop Illusionary Persona and go 0/30/10/10/20. I think it could work, but I just feel much weaker shatter-wise without IP, and I lose 100 base condition damage. I prefer to play fairly aggressive, so I want the extra damage and shatter potential. I think I’ll try 0/30/10/10/20 out tomorrow against some condi necro/engis and see if that works out better.

alanis.6094:

Also of note, you said that Phantasmal Haste reduced recharge on Duelist from 6s to 4s. I’m not 100% sure that is correct, as it would obviously be a bug (33% vs 20%). The wiki lists it from 5.4s to 4.4s, which would be accurate based on the trait.

The wiki is probably right. The only testing I’ve done is counting aloud, but I can only count so accurately. Regardless, the reduced cd on duelist summon, Phantasmal Haste, 125 extra base condition damage, and extra flexibility with Illusionary Persona add up, and I feel much weaker without them. I believe with food buffs and stacks, you’re up to around 2000 condition damage on this build, which could give condi necros a run for their money.

Overall, great feedback, and I’ll play around with the traits some more to see if I can adapt this build to respond to tougher condition builds.

Wait.. Wait… Do you have sooooooo much pride, that you chose not to pick a food buff?!

No speed = no dice.

I can’t play with 25% movement speed anymore.