Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNAsaRlwzKqHTTkGZNJy5DRHaGYn3RqgqVSBudhA-jQDBYLYIMDRkgAgoAkqIZEBQ5PFRjtMsIas6HYaTRWBTI1hIyeBYA-e

I’m a pretty casual player who usually runs in open world PvE, but lately I’ve been trying to get more into WvW and I’m wondering if there are things I could do to improve my build without sacrificing my established play style too much.

Since I’m terrible at timing and aiming (at least at my framerate), I tend to run pretty phantasm-heavy and let them do most of the actual fighting while I desperately try to evade. That said, I also like having the ability to do some reasonable damage on my own; there’s a certain satisfaction to locking someone down with Illusionary Leap and then smacking them around with Blurred Frenzy.

This works great until I run into a 1v1 fight with an experienced melee player (usually a hammer warrior, it seems like) who can smash or endure all my illusions and relentlessly stun or close distance with me despite my escape skills. Am I missing something critical in my build, possibly due to my casual PvE mindset?

P.S. Watching thieves panic when they get turned into a moa is priceless!

You have to realize that alot of players out there are Mesmers and very mobile classes now. They are able to keep constant damage,mobility, and damage reduction based on their pure stats or class mechanism. Most builds these days have some kind of condition, like yours does. If you were to go head to head against maybe 2 people, you would crumble quickly. Staff is probably better if you want to preserve that type of phantasm damage and still be a bit defensive and have better mobility. You should really think about how to counter Other dps builds. There are lots of viable lockdown builds that would make you downed in 5 seconds or less. A lot of people these days go full dps because they believe they can finish an enemy quick enough to get the win. Those people are either very skilled, or very foolish and noobie. Better safe than sorry. Get more armor and vitality. Also, think about how this build would compete against other builds. (Condi, bunker, DPS, PU,etc). Never try to go full one armor set. unless you are condition or something. It just totally breaks everything else apart. Mix some armor stats, experiment with theorycrafting, then you will definitely land on a build that is successful.

I honestly have run a hybrid build somewhat like yours for a while. I will say you are insanely squishy and will need some toughness (around 1500 ) just to survive against the many thieves in wvw. You also don’t need that much precision, as you can gain that from precision stacking sigils. The other stats look nice though. For gear, I would the use the celestial helmet, and legs for everything, since hybrids use all stats. For the chest I use berzerker to compensate for celestials low power. For accessories you can swap some rampager for celestial or zerker depending on how much toughness you feel comfortable with.

Much thanks. I certainly wouldn’t mind being less squishy; how can you tell how much precision is too much? I stacked as much as possible to trigger Sharper Images, but if there are diminishing returns after a certain point maybe it doesn’t make as much sense as I initially thought.

First of all, you have GS. The clones hit 3 times. 3 chances for your clones to inflict bleed. That said, around 44-50% of crit is enough. Then you have plenty of other stats to make up for. Armor and Vitality would be a start. If you feel taht you need a guide to help you in your hybrid adventure, go look at my signature below. It is to a thread where I made a hybrid build. iF you can, comment on it while your at it. You don’t have to, as it is for you to find your own way into making a hybrid build through other threads and your own knowledge.

I noticed you dont have food or oils/stones/crystals. If in WvW, you should be running these at all times.

That’s a very good point… I almost never thought about consumables while leveling up or fighting on the landscape, but some of them look like they offer pretty significant bonuses. Any favorites?

Do not go for the precision based foods. you already have enough. Either go for Vitality/Toughness foods, or Condi duration/damage foods. If you want to find some possible stats outcome for a hybrid build, go check out my thread in my signature below. It only helps you grasp the final stat outcome of a hybrid build.

Well, rampager is really really squishy. You have pretty much 0 defense with it, base toughness, barely more than base hp, etc. If anything so much as touches you, you’ll squish like the squishiest squishy that has ever been squashed.

That being said, this is workable, you just need a massive amount of evasion and kiting and whatnot. Your traits are a little wonky though, you shouldn’t be taking deceptive evasion in a phantasm build, you should trait either pistol or sword instead.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Well, rampager is really really squishy. You have pretty much 0 defense with it, base toughness, barely more than base hp, etc. If anything so much as touches you, you’ll squish like the squishiest squishy that has ever been squashed.

That being said, this is workable, you just need a massive amount of evasion and kiting and whatnot. Your traits are a little wonky though, you shouldn’t be taking deceptive evasion in a phantasm build, you should trait either pistol or sword instead.

Squishy like any other berserk mesmer. as a mesmer you do not really need that much defense through your equip imho.