I have to hand it to Anet, they’ve really managed to surprise me with some of the changes in the last patch. Out of playing around with my recent Condie Shatter build, I’ve kinda stumbled over this power shatter build. This is unlike any shatter build I’ve ever seen or played, but it’s quite possibly the most powerful build I’ve played in sPvP. (Certainly in terms of DPS output on a single target.)
I derived the name of this build from one simple little change in the last patch; The Sigil of Intelligence. (And this build doesn’t just wrack minds, it wrecks them!) Thanks to this Sigil, you now get 3 attacks with 100% chance to crit, every time you swap weapons in combat. This is actually quite amazing! It opens up many new build possibilities by allowing a reduced focus on Precision in your build without sacrificing spike damage potential, and perhaps no build or even profession stands to gain more then Mesmers!
You might also say the title has a double meaning to it, because this is an “Intelligent Shatter” build. That is, you can’t just mindlessly MW whenever the CD is up and illusions are out, but you have to time your spikes with your weapon swaps and use those crits wisely. This allows you a guaranteed 3x max damage shatter, without running full zerker GC and praying for a tripple crit!
It’s downright harkitten
he rest of this build is centered around getting max power & damage boni, so that when you MW it hits like a Mac truck. (And so do your Phantasms btw!) People will think you’re a GC shatter Mesmer, but you have 1550 Toughness, 3×2790 heal with 6 Condie removals, and still retain both Blink and Decoy if you want. (Or make it hit even harder with another 1-2 Mantras up to get 4/8% more damage bonus, but at the cost of survival skills.)
Sure you’re no tank, but you’re also not nearly as squishy as a typical GC shatter Mesmer and you can often even out-spike them!
Oh and you think Power Spike sucks, do you? With those 3x guaranteed crits, in this build, it averages ~2k a pop and often hits Thieves for 2.5k. That’s 6-7.5k damage in ~2 seconds after a weapon swap. (Or for real fun, set up a 3x Diversion shatter, swap weapons, and Pew-Pew-Pew! )
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8cl0npEtNqxMNcrNiqxcqmI9BBERp7Y7BA-TJBHwAMLDA4iAY4JA0Z/BA
There are lots of possibilities for tailoring this to your likes, and you can even get significantly more damage at the cost of survivability, such as the aforementioned added Mantras, or swapping the Inspiration points for Compounding Power for another 9%. I chose to make a viable all-rounder instead, with condie removal and escape options.
There are definitely some hard counter profession/build combos to this build (Bunker Condie Engy is tough to beat), and it’s much more single-target oriented then a classic Shatter build, so I wouldn’t really call it OPd…but I do feel kinda like a Thief. ;-)
Finally! A power shatter build that has both enough spike and enough sustain to be fun to play in sPvP. I bet someone can make a real nice WvW version out of this concept too.
I’ve been playing this for a couple of days and it’s a lot of fun, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too. Play around with it a little to get a feel for the best combos, and turn off auto-attack to prevent wasting SoI crits!