tanky mesmer
A real tanky ? Cleric set, runes of the water, sigil of water, signet of illusion, traited hp phantasm trait, iDefender. Sword/Focus (projectile and speed boost), Scepter/Sword (2x block, ranged and mobile iSword). 10/20/10/25/5
When I’m glass canon, I just bring iDefender when I know it’s more dangerous.
Look up Seven Mirrors. He has a great Survival Build for PvP (Staff + Sword/Torch).
I just hit 80, but I’m trying a survival variation: 0/20 (IV,X)/20 (IV, X) 0/30 (I, VII, XI)
Still have mostly rare gear (want to experiment with stats before committing to pricy Exotics).
The idea is to do a kiting tank/shatter build. Pop off 3 clones, mind wrack to grab agro along with a Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat out for Chaos Armor, tank by dodging and using staff/blink and Focus 1 to buff swiftness while dropping iWarlocks and clones to keep up shatter AOE and iWardens for DPS as I kite through them. Null Field and Focus 1+2 to remove conditions (as snares are are sure doom if you don’t cleanse them). Try to keep Chaos Armor up as much as possible (between Chaos Storm, Staff 4 and Null Field it’s pretty consistent).
Illusion XI is just as much for the defensive shatters as Mind Wrack, Distortion, even with no clones is still essentially a well timed dodge every 60 seconds and Shatter is an Interrupt every 45. Chances are you’ll always have an extra clone or two thanks to Dueling X and between the two shatters that’s some good mitigation between Mind Wracks.
I leveled to 80 in full zerkers gear and rarely died, if mobs didn’t spam snares or weren’t mostly ranged I could frequently take out 8+ normal mobs as well as a vet or two, if they were all melee, I’d pretty much never get hit.
I use Mirror/Arcane Thievery/Blink/Null Field as a standard load out and Mirror + Feedback/Blink/NullField if there’s a lot of ranged.
For gear, as I said, I leveled in full Berserker, and I rarely died, because I rarely got hit, but a few solid blows and it was game over, so I’m trying out a combination of Knights and Ravagers (I mostly use staff and do often have conditions up from it and iWarlock/ bleed crits) -although, as I understand, Berserkers is considered superior. Staff is Ravagers, Sword/Focus Knights, Armor is Knights, Accessories are/will be Ravagers. My DPS isn’t great, outside of shatter bursts (which are good esp if I’m in range to count), but it’s consistent over multiple enemies with good maneuvering and my survival/durability is pretty amazing.
I’m not sure if this is an endgame viable build by any means, but it’s def fun running around and soloing huge groups of mobs. It seems like it has potential, and I’m amazed how Tanky my mesmer ended up.
As for Pistol, I’m not sure if it’s a great Tank style weapon, Magic Bullet is great for defense, but I think I’d prefer the AOE of ibreserker on a group of distracted mobs, + the Temporal Curtain’s run buff (and pull for when mobs start running off onto people DPSing). The single target DPS with traited crit bleed and having a projectile combo finisher might help hold agro against champs better though.
I’m also running centaur runes , for the swiftness on heal, swift buff, +power is always nice and the bleed duration bonus isn’t bad, since I tend to stack a good number of bleeds from Staff Clones.
(edited by MiloSales.8560)
It depends on how tanky you want to go. If you want to go for a nice tank/damage hybrid, seven mirror’s build is really strong. For absolute tankyness, you’ll probably want to look at my immortal mesmer build, which is completely focused on taking, absorbing, and returning damage.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Immortal-Mesmer-Build/first