Guild Wars 2

BACKGROUND:
“Lyssa is the twin Goddess of Beauty and Illusion, individually known as Lyss and Ilya. She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers[…].” (source)

I choose this name for my build because just as Lyssa herself my build is split into two sides. The first side is a build that pressures the enemy with direct damage through phantasms and ‘normal’ hits. The other side of my build uses shatterskills to have better control over the whole fight and support my mates.

The build uses both, phantasms and shatter, because phantasms are the safest duel style a mesmer can play and I often get in situations where I have to duel other classes. The phantasms I picked are also quite viable in teamfights. With the duelist you can pick one enemy to go down and the berserker deals enough aoe damage for teamfights.
The shatters are the strongest way to deal damage on aoe in teamfights. Shatters also have a lot of great traits like Shattered Concentration or Shattered Conditions.

the Build

TRAITS: (choose your style)
20-20-0-30-0

Domination:

• 10 Points:
  I – Mental Torment
  II – Halting Strike
  III – Empowered Illusions
• 20 Points:
  VII – Shattered Concentration
  X – Greatsword Training

Dueling:

• 10 Points:
  I – Far-reaching Manipulations
  IV – Blade Training
• 20 Points:
  X – Deceptive Evasion

Inspiration:

• 10 Points:
  I – Medic’s Feedback
  II – Glamour Mastery
  V – Persisting Images
• 20 Points:
  VI – Compounding Celerity
  IX – Temporal Enchanter
• 30 Points:
  XI – Shattered Conditions

You can change these traits as you like to let them perfectly fit your style. My choice was to have harder pressure through phantasms and support (boon/condition removal) with my shatterskills.

WEAPONS:
Greatsword:
My choice was the greatsword because it’s the best weapon to put hard pressure on an enemy that’s on long range. It’s also a good weapon for point fights where you can push your enemy out of the circle. The phantasm also fits in the build dealing heavy aoe damage.
Sword/Pistol
The sword is a really strong damage weapon as well. Also it supports my goal to pressure my enemy with the 3rd skill that immobilizes him. Also Bllurred Frenzy is one of the best weaponskills I know (high damage and evasion). The autochain is another reason to choose this weapon. The clones you create will clean the enemys boons and chase him meele what will take away a lot of damage from ranges that do not pierce.
The pistol has one of the most powerful phantasms. 8 times the chance to cause bleed and hard damage on critical hits is just great for the build. The stun of our magic bullet can be used to interrupt the enemys healspell/rezz/stomp/… and is also a projectile that hits up to 3 targets (very nice for teamfigts)

UTILITY:

I’d let you choose between those:

• Blink
• Decoy
• Nullfield
• Feedback
• Portal
• Illusion of Life
• Phantasmal Disenchanter
• Signet of Domination

I use Decoy, Blink and Portal because with the skills Blink and Decoy I can break stuns what helps in duels against stunlock classes. I can also kite while my phantasms deal the damage I need to take my enemy down.
BUT you have to be careful with Decoy and F4 because you can’t hold points using them.
The portal is just for mobility and roaming. Place the first one at near and go to support your team. When you see an enemy going near just be there before him

ELITE:
Moa:
With this skill you could actually take one enemy out of the fight for sure. Also it will win you almost ANY duel when you’re about to fail.

Mass Invisibility:
With invisibility you can safe rezz, kite better and use the effect of Lyssa Runes more often.

Time Warp:
I wouldn’t take this because of it’s high cooldown. Also it won’t help that much with this build.

PLAYSTYLE AND ROTATION

I start every fight as a phantasm mesmer using my illusions to make my enemy waste his cooldowns. When I figured out the style of my enemy (condi/burst/stun/bunker/…) I choose between shatter and phantasm.
Most of the time I use my shatterskills as a conditionremove against condition specs and as boonremove against bunkers.
The hard thing is to keep an eye at your phantasms. The more phantasms (and less clones) the harder will it be to decide when to shatter. It’s important to know what you have. You can have these:

• Greatsword clone
• Sword clone
• iBerserker
• iDuelist

Always know what you have. E.g.:
“I have 2 GS-Clones and 1 iBerserker.”
“I have 1 GS-Clone, 1 iDuelist and 1 iBerserker.”
or
“I have 2 iDuelists and 1 iBerserker”

The more phantasms you have the harder it will hurt you to shatter them so keep in mind what you have summoned.

Your rotation will be like this:
At the begining you use a greatsword (would be the best) and you summon a clone with Mirror Blade and your iBerserker. Until that time you are free to do as you please. You may autohit him and knock him back when he reaches you but you can also switch to Sword/Pistol to summon another phantasm and have the “defensive” skillset (Blurred Frenzy and Magic Bullet)

Feel free to make suggestions and criticise my build.

~ Me Games Ma

reserved =) (first time i’m writing this :>)

My complaint is that with this is that you are shattering your main source of damage, aka phantasms. It is more a critique of the traitline shattered conditions is in. I wish it was in illusions. Also, what do you think about the signet of illusions?

I run pretty much the same setup. The shattering of illusions is pretty much a “OH kitten” move for me, when you get loaded with condys. As a mesmer its pretty much yer only option outside of nullfield.

PhDusk.2590:

My complaint is that with this is that you are shattering your main source of damage, aka phantasms. It is more a critique of the traitline shattered conditions is in. I wish it was in illusions. Also, what do you think about the signet of illusions?

This build is extremly powerful in defense and attack without relaying on toughness (that’s because you don’t have to do the dmg yourself).
This is the only disadvantage:
As already said it’s hard to choose when to shatter and when to leave your phantasms alive. I’d say it’s not the best choice for new mesmers because they should learn to use the two styles before combining them.
It’s a matter of overview, control and predicing what your enemy is doing next.
I disagree with you when you say that they should place Shattered Conditions in Illusions:

1. It perfectly fits in my build
2. It’s a defensive trait and inspiration is our most defensive traitline.
3. It’s still a second focus on phantasms so the Minor Traits do also a great job there.

My Opinion for Signet of Illusions:

• Passive
  50% HP for my phantasms makes them have from ~3333 hp to ~5000 hp that is not really bad but also not as good as some people think. The art of phantasms is to place them right (in PvE I still suck at this). This is enough for them to surive. If your enemy wants them to go down they will go down.
• Active:
  This is not good for this build. I do NOT shatter the whole time so I don’t need this. Also it’s got a too long cooldown.

Rinzler.8072

I run pretty much the same setup. The shattering of illusions is pretty much a “OH kitten” move for me, when you get loaded with condys. As a mesmer its pretty much yer only option outside of nullfield.

I actually shatter them alot since I’m also using Deceptive Evasion I can use more clones to do that. Also my sigils improve my idea with one additional dodge all 10s.
But I agree with you when you say it’s our only option besides Nullfield and that’s why I choose this trait. Also I think it’s even stronger as nullfield because it does instantly remove up to 3 conditions and has far less cooldowns (15, 30, 45, 60) and you can use it more precise.

This is pretty close to the PvE build I use most of the time, and I have tried it a bit in sPvP too. It’s quite strong in teamfights; I find it most useful in 3v3ish mid-fight situations, and I love portal to be able to run over to support home or far if necessary while being able to instantly get back to mid when needed. The buff to Shattered Conditions will also be awesome for this; 600 range is plenty to keep your whole team condition free when fighting on points.

However, I find it really hard to be effective roaming / dueling with it. With only decoy for stealth, and no staff, I find myself too vulnerable 1v1 to be able to fend off other roamers effectively; I go down pretty fast to a good backstab thief (or a few others). After decoy, blink, and F4 are blown I’m basically a sitting duck; I tend to find dual-sword + staff works a lot better for staying alive.

Hey Valarauka,
thanks for your feedback! I figured out that build to be strong when I used my PvE build on Sensotix’ duel day. It worked very well then. I was really surprised and just made that guide but I’m still trying things out. I use Sword/Fokus & Sword/Pistol in PvE and I didn’t think that’d work so I switched Sword/Fokus with GS and really had the damage. I’ll also try the same build using a Staff instead of the GS or instead of Sword/Pistol. I’ll see.
I’ll post my results here.

ADD: Sometimes I use Signet of Dommination instead of Portal because you can stun 5 seconds with that skill. It’s really good against almost every enemy that uses his/her stunbreak for F3/Illusionary Wave

Hi,

this build might be a good duel build, but it is NOT a good tpvp build.

It is always nice, to have people try out new stuff, which can work (were exactly have you tested this build in a tpvp environment? I haven found you on the top 1000 lists.), but please don’t give the impression, that there is a real choice beside the common 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build. The right trait choice is an important part of the pvp game, so please don’t confuse new people, who will only end up with a bad pvp experience, when they have chosen the wrong trait setup.