Guild Wars 2

With increased boon duration you can get a high uptime on your defensive buffs as you noticed.
I don’t think it’s viable without Deceptive Evasion, Illusionary Persona and Might on Weaponswitch (this will work with boon duration, with only 50% increased boon duration you’ll get 30 seconds of might on each weaponswap)
Also, Signet of Inspiration is almost a must to be a benefit to your team.
All in all it severely narrows down your choice in traits/runes etc. but it is viable especially in dungeons, I ran around with a similar build (only 60% boon duration without bufffood though) before the buff to Illusionary Persona and even then it was already strong.
I actually even posted my build with the gear/traits I was running this setup with on this site but I won’t bother looking that one up again.

I’ve come up with a stealth build after the buff to PU.
It’s based on the idea of a build that’s been posted in this forum before, using the fact that if you have 3 clones active and spawn another one the first one dies and activates the “on death” traits.
I haven’t tried it yet but it looks kinda fun so I thought I’d post it in here in case someone has experience with the same or similar builds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRAsa8flwzKqnUToGbNJipH9WwBcoFQqQpVmBvdhA;TgAg1CqoIyQkQILROikEB

sinican, that statement is as stupid as saying guardians center around virtues.
Certainly, it’s part of the class and you can focus your traits more towards it, but you don’t HAVE to focus your build around it.
Even a mesmer focusing towards phantasms would occasionaly use shatters (invuln, some final burst etc.) or at least that’s how it was supposed to be until Anet started nerfing phantasms more and more.

I only get the bad link message if I try posting it otherwise:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNAW8clwzSpHQTqGa9IiJFBHyh6x2ldfXJF82FC;TsAA2Cno8y0loLbOOvk5sEZIy+DA

The amount of viable mesmer builds are getting fewer and fewer so I decided to post my build that I’ve been running around in dungeons/WvW for a while.
It’s pretty much the same as other shatterbuilds, except that it focuses more on the boons you gain from your staff/shatters.

Staff is mandatory, the OH sword is debatable, but since you’ll use F1/2 on cooldown I prefer a phantasm with one quick attack rather than the unload from the iDuelist.
Blocking can also do a nice amount of damage and both of the skills summon illusions.

As for equip, I run knights accessories and a mix of berserkers and power/vit/toughness armor/weapons.

Traits are pretty standart, no need to go into detail there.

Runes are 2 rune of the water and 2 rune of the monk, netting you 30% increased boon duration and 2 rune of strength (or cheaper versions that give 20% might duration with two of them equipped)
Sigil of battle on both sets for those stacks of might and one random rune for your second sword.

Utilities in order:
Ether Feast: That or mirror are pretty much equally good, the mantra is not an option.
Mantra of concentration: It’s a stunbreaker and with all the increased boon duration you get 3 seconds of stability, better than other stunbreakers imo..
Signet of inspiration: If you’re running around alone you might consider swapping it for either feedback or signet of midnight (feedback for another combo field and signet for another stunbreak and the 10% boon duration which benefits this build greatly)
Nullfield: Condition cleaner and combo field…

Playstyle:
It’s pretty much the same as other shatterbuilds except for the fact that you actually want to get hit a bit.
Try to start a fight like this:
Get out those staff clones and pop chaos armor, once it wears off drop a chaos field, use phase retreat and swap weapons, before the chaos strom wears off use either sword #3 or #5 for another combo finisher: leap, once that wears off use nullfield to get another chaos armor up.
As soon as your weaponswap cd expires change to staff again.
Basically, it’s blow all your cooldowns when you can, shatter and dodge whenever you can, weaponswap as soon as it’s ready and get that chaos armor up whenever you can (you’ve got 3 combofinishers, 3 – 4 with feedback – combofields and your staff #4 at your disposal for that.)

Although there are no points in domination (meaning no +power from your traits) you’ll be constantly running around with like 6-10 stacks of might at the least (10 stacks being 350 power) so your damage will be ok, depending on how much berserker gear you are wearing.
As for survivability, protection, regeneration and swiftness should be up almost all the time, depending on how much power/vit/toughness you are wearing you will be quite tanky.

I hope some people have fun with this build as much I have, even more I hope for some kind of patch that makes other builds as viable again as. shatter builds, but that’s for another time. ~

Although it’s a different suggestion, I’ll post it in this thread since I agree that phantasms and F1-4 are both core mechanics of the Mesmer:

Right now mesmers can either focus on phantasms or shattering – so either you shatter your phantasms right away (maybe wait for one attack) or you avoid shattering your clones most of the time.

Why not change the idea of phantasm altogether.
(I know this would require a lot of tweaking numbers, even changing skills/traits)
Let’s take the greatsword as an example:
Using your phantasmal berserker skill will turn you and all your currently summoned clones into a phantasmal berserker, perform his attack (the berserker whirl) and return you and all clones to their original form afterwards.
This would open up so much more possibilities to build your class, you can still focus your traits on either shattering or dealing damage with your “phantasmal form” but getting a bit of both would become viable as well.

PS: I’m sorry about not posting this in a new thread, but when I read “… here’s an idea of making phantasms useful but not overpowered”
I felt like I had to post this in here >.>