Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

So recently we have seen the change to stability boon, and to me, this is a change on a very huge scale of the game, something we haven’t seen for a while. This hopefully will shake up the meta a little bit as we see more play of CC skills to remove stacks of stability (before, people have to wait out the stability or use any boon removal skills) and more frequent use of buffed up transform elite skills.

So in the light of this huge change, I’d like to redefine a role of mesmer in terms of group support by utilizing what we do best: BOONRIP.

So introducing THE EQUALIZER build.

Build concept: This is a group support build that is based entirely on the fun concept of “deny enemies of their boon advantage and ensure our allies free from condition disadvantage”, in other words, keep us allies and them enemies somewhat on even ground, hence the name “Equalizer”.

Build link

To be continued…

Traits:
The core traits that make the build are: Shattered Concentration (Domination VII) & Shattered Conditions (Inspiration XI) (and of course no mesmer build that uses shatters would be complete without DE).

So it’s a 4/4/0/6/0 build.
So every time you shatter your illusions, you will remove 1 boon (from the enemy) and 1 condition (from yourself and ally) per illusion shattered successfully.

Shatters are still part of your main damage but you won’t use as aggressively and frequently as you would like in the typical 44006 Burst Shatter builds. In fact, you might find yourself rely on phantasms to deal sustained dmg over the course of battle and only use shatters when necessary in the presence of enemy boons and conditions.

Other traits that I choose either to add to the dps to keep it at a decent level, or survivability, mostly in the form of sustained healing.

Weapon and utility skills:
Sword mainhand is perfect for this build because of its boonrip ability on AA.

I prefer Pistol as offhand since I find iDuelist is most reliable when it comes to deal sustained dmg and maintain pressure to enemies. It also provides a powerful stun.
However, I can still see other offhands like Sword and Focus work in this build as well. It could be personal preference.

This build is tanky by nature and that’s because you really need to stay in the heat of the fight (most often in melee range) long enough to matter and perform your role. That’s why I pick Staff as 2nd weaponset because it’s the best defensive weapon we have.

Mantra of Recovery is used as our heal because its great synergy with Runes of Defender. The aegis boon granted from using MoR can also be used to protect your charging of Mantra of Concentration whenever it runs out of charges.

Mantra of Concentration is used to protect our long-cast time skills like the heal mantra and phantasm-summoning skills. The build doesn’t use Blink or Decoy, so MoC will act as your double-stunbreak skill to take on the role normally performed by both Blink and Decoy in other mes builds.

Null Field and iDisenchanter are used to fortify the core concept of the build: ripping boons and removing conditions at same time. Null Field for me is a must because it’s more reliable and AoE, whereas iDisenchater can be switched out for other utilities (like Portal or Veil in WvW).

Moa Morph is used as Elite because this is our answer to enemy Transform Elites, and it’s very powerful when used right. As Transform Elites got buffed recently, we can expect our Moa Morph is indirectly buffed and gets more value in play as well. Moa Morph goes well with the theme of this build, equalizing the enemy that just goes supercharged with their transformation, bringing them right back down to our level.

To be continued…

Gear:
Statswise, I go for a mix of Knight/Cavalier/Zerker to have a good balance between defense, which is more important in this build, and offense.

In terms of defense, there are 3 key things to note:
1) Relatively high toughness stat.
2) Very high sustained healing through traits and high healing power stat.
3) Frequent access to Aegis boon thanks to the great synergy of Rune of the Defender and Mantra of Recovery.

In terms of offense, our dmg can be considered decent and more about sustained dps rather than bursty. High uptime of Retaliation also compliments our dmg nicely and discourages enemies to attack you.

Sigils: the choice of sigils is almost by personal preference. But I explain why I choose mine: Fire/Air to optimize damage on the offensive weaponset while Energy/Poison helps with your sustain and hampers enemy sustain.

Runes: Up to this point, needless to say, the Rune of Defender is key to make this build work. It provides huge sustain to the class that would otherwise lacking in sustain to really stay in the midst of a group fight (without relying on stealth and PU trait).

Build Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Very good access to boonrip and condition removal to support your team
- High sustained healing and good access to block for defense
- Very tanky and thus more forgiving to play
- Lots of offer in terms of group support
Cons:
- Low mobility, especially outside of combat
- No access to stealth, might need some time to get used to the playstyle
- DPS not as high and bursty like power shatter builds.

Ok guys,
Let me know what you guys think about this build idea. I’ve just come up with it and will be testing it myself but like usual I’d love to see others to try this one out and help me testing it in real combat. If you enjoy playing a support build or simply want to experiment something new, then please give it a go and give me some constructive feedback.

Thank you all. Have a good day.

I believe Chaos has a similar trait spread from long ago when he was experimenting with a lot of support builds. I think it is in the build sticky at the top of the forum. It may be worth looking into that too.

My “go to” build is extremely similar, but I mostly sPvP and do not WvW:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWlknpWtNqxMNMrNipxc6jWaLSGQDlslxB-TpBFwACeAAIOEA12fYxRAoaZAAnAAA

The primary, or “core”, trait selection is the same (Shattered Concentration, Deceptive Evasion, Shattered Conditions) with the same overarching concept as yours: remove enemy offensive and defensive assets while contributing to your team.

I dropped the build for a while to experiment with others and try to better grasp shatter (power and condi)/interrupt/pure support, but I have begun messing around with it again to see how I might be able to make it work better for me.

Looks intresting, I’ll definatly give it a try for a few days in are current tpvp setup it could be very helpful

Does chaos storm give enough Aegis to justify Retaliatory Shield?

Would mantra mastery be an option to speed ruse time on cleanse/heal support? or possibly Phantasmal fury to up dps slightly.

Edit: sorry didnt see the runes , nvm my post

Shifty.7104:

Does chaos storm give enough Aegis to justify Retaliatory Shield?

Would mantra mastery be an option to speed ruse time on cleanse/heal support? or possibly Phantasmal fury to up dps slightly.

Chaos storm does give Aegis, Infact i find it to be the most abundant of the boons it gives, And mantra mastery would give you better overall support, but less damage, so I’d say that’s more a matter of personal prefrence

I never said anything about losing DE it was RS I was questioning, neither did I say that chaos storm did not give Aegis.

Shifty.7104:

I never said anything about losing DE it was RS I was questioning, neither did I say that chaos storm did not give Aegis.

The DE thing was a mistake on my end, got my traits all mixed up in my head XD!

Love the concept here!! I’ll be giving it a closer look.

I’ve been playing around with the Defender Runes quite a lot and they are really great with a mantra build. I’ll give your build a spin.

Give me a month of testing, but I only do PvP, so is there any way to switch the runes without Gimping the build?

I’m just not sure where this build fits. The obvious placement would be as a point bunker/support in PvP…but no runes, and that sorta kills it.

In WvW, it’s going to be entirely ineffective in a large group, because shatters aren’t a thing, so shattered conditions/concentration won’t work. You also don’t really have any aoe other than chaos storm, so it’s just not a good choice. For a small group, it’s decent for sure. I’m just not sure why you’d run this over something like standard shatter or maim shatter in a small group. Solo roaming it’ll be ok. You’ve got good defense, good sustain, but fairly poor damage.

You could potentially replace most of your gear with zerker to let you really do damage and rely on the runes for defense. This would make you more of a reasonable choice in small groups. Also, you’ll want to drop empowered illusions for either mental torment or halting strike. When you don’t have anything keeping your phantasms alive, it’s really not worth it.

I’m glad that the build idea is so well-received.

@StickerHappy: I’m fully aware that the runes are not available in PvP and that makes me a sad kitten. I honestly dont see how u can replace the runes with something else without gimping it. Defender runes just add too much to the build defense. Having said that, while we’re waiting for Anet to add the runes to sPvP, you can try it with Rune of the Flock i guess, its the closest thing I can think of that has some synergy with the build, but again, you can’t really control the blind, unlike the aegis in Defender runes.

@Pyro: Noted your advice regarding to 1st trait slot in Domination, I guess I play around with the other 2 as well (Mental Torment and Halting Strike) and see which one suits me best.

I do have a question regarding the survivability of illusions with high toughness stats. To what extent would it help to secure the shatters? I mean, in zerker shatter builds, clones can be 1shot killed; with high toughness, they would get 2-shot killed instead?

Also, in large group (zerg), with this build, you can join frontline and fight in melee range. This should help secure shatters better than, say, stay at backline like other builds right? But again, this is just me theorycrafting. I need to test it out in WvW first

keenlam.4753:

Also, in large group (zerg), with this build, you can join frontline and fight in melee range. This should help secure shatters better than, say, stay at backline like other builds right? But again, this is just me theorycrafting. I need to test it out in WvW first

I don’t think even CERN can measure the time it takes a clone to die in any decent WvW fight, and they work with stuff that decays in nanoseconds.

Hi! I’ve happened to play this exact trait point spread for a while so I definitely have some advice for you.

First of all, if you feel you are lacking for speed, there are three things you can do: switch pistol to focus, switch to traveler runes, or swap staff with GS. The last option might not make much sense initially but the point is that staff has slow projectiles and is really bad for chasing enemies. Of course, if you want this to be a support build, you won’t be able to do that.

Secondly, I would suggest you take the focus off of this build being a mantra build. Mantras imo simply aren’t very good to focus on, and while its okay to have one or two, transforming your build into a mantra build probably isn’t the way you want to go. As a result, I would change MoRecovery to Ether Feast and X in Inspiration to XIII (with focus), III, or IV.

The final major change I would suggest is that you make your build more offensive. Changing to zerker stats doesn’t sacrifice much in terms of survivability (you have tons of health and condi removal) and does wonders for making the build more fun imo.

Otherwise, there are a few accuracy changes you could make throughout the build (trait changes, sigil changes, rune changes, etc) but I’d suggest you first try out what I suggested in PvP.

EDIT: I should also note that all I’ve said is from the perspective of a more offensive player so doing things like making yourself more aggressive don’t necessarily correspond with what you want, which is okay. And also Inspiration III is a great support trait (and trait in general imo), I’d suggest changing your first two traits in Inspi to III and IV if you don’t run focus, and incorporating Signet of Inspiration which is a pretty good support utility

I really like the synergy between MoR, Restorative Mantras, Runes and Retaliatory Shield. I have had my eyes on those Runes for a while (Celestial Bunker Mes with Sc+Sw/St). Pretty disappointing they’re not in PvP yet.

But as Pyro said, I don’t see too much use for this build in other game modes.

keenlam.4753:

Hi guys,

So recently we have seen the change to stability boon, and to me, this is a change on a very huge scale of the game, something we haven’t seen for a while. This hopefully will shake up the meta a little bit as we see more play of CC skills to remove stacks of stability (before, people have to wait out the stability or use any boon removal skills) and more frequent use of buffed up transform elite skills.

So in the light of this huge change, I’d like to redefine a role of mesmer in terms of group support by utilizing what we do best: BOONRIP.

So introducing THE EQUALIZER build.

Build concept: This is a group support build that is based entirely on the fun concept of “deny enemies of their boon advantage and ensure our allies free from condition disadvantage”, in other words, keep us allies and them enemies somewhat on even ground, hence the name “Equalizer”.

Build link

To be continued…

Seems like the “core” theme expressed here is “redundancy”.