Guild Wars 2

Hey guys I recently leveled my guardian and I was wondering what the best/meta roaming builds are right now. Talking about solo and small man roaming that is.

Cheers

People say having so many skills where we need to do like 3 skills to achieve what another class can do in one is a bad thing.

Think of it this way, 3 skills that your opponent has to selectively dodge, or one skill they can easily dodge.

I really don’t see why everyone is complaining about ele being underpowered. After this feature patch I feel more equal and on par with the other classes then ever before. As for PvE, well we all know how good eles are for that so I won’t delve into it.

I’m not going to tell you to L2P but eles aren’t that underpowered in my honest opinion – atleast in the hands of a decent player that is. Put an ele in the hands of a bad player and they are so much worse off that anyone on the map can spot them out lel.

Alright you make a good point there mate. I think I’ll just go with air, thanks for the advice!

Hey everyone I hadn’t played ele for about 6 months and last night I was bored and decided to try out a d/d diamond skin celestial build in spvp. I can’t believe I forgot how much fun eles are! It was awesome even despite not playing it for a long time I still was beating people reasonably well.

Anyway the point of this post is that I am thinking of gearing it up for wvwvw d/d roaming and I need some advice on sigil choices from vet eles.

So I am guessing sigil of battle is still mandatory for d/d so I will be running that. For my second sigil tho Its a toss up between sigil of doom, sigil of air and sigil of generosity.

Why I want Doom:
It was buffed this patch to 6 seconds of poison which is effectively 60% poison uptime providing no cleanses (or badly timed ones anyway), which at my condi dmg (base 300 much much more with might) deals 114 * 6 seconds = 684 dmg. With 15 stacks of might this is 167 * 6 = 1000dmg. So an extra 1k dmg per 10 seconds with the added effect of reducing healing by 33% this can potentially add up to several 1000’s of health not being healed and thus we can pretty much count that as dmg dealt. All in all a very solid sigil, its only weakness being that it can simply be removed and is very subsceptible to -condiduration builds since then it will only last like 2 seconds lel.

Why I want Air:
Air recieved a massive buff and no nerfs (as opposed to sigil of fire). For most high power builds this hits about anywhere from 700 -1600 dmg (taking into account the most tanky and most glassy opponents). For the sake of calculations we are gonna take the average (1150) and just say that it proc’s every time for 1150dmg. So at optimal performance its doing 1150 dmg per 3 seconds which is about 3832 dmg per 10 sec. Tho this is pretty much impossible because you need to be attacking really fast and really frequently critting for this and that just doesn’t happen in a fight unless you are just dominating your opponent. So it will most likely round out to somewhere between 1-3 procs per 10 sec which is an average of 2 procs which = 2300 average dmg per 10 seconds. As we can see its far superior in terms of dps to doom but doesn’t add the added effect of reducing heals which helps vs some classes. Additionally it has only 50% chance to proc on crit so if you get unlucky and then fail to crit then get cc’ed or need to go on the defensive you are losing out on dps where as doom would just be ticking away.

Why I want Generosity
This sigil is awesome for keeping up pressure on your opponent, and if you get lucky can really turn a fight around in the blink of an eye. It’s hard to kind of say how much this sigil does in terms of dmg since you can never really know, but its utility and helpfulness is very useful. The only real downside is if you are versing power builds that don’t typically rely on condis its not going to be much help. In group situations where you will take more condi’s in general tho this rune helps. Oh and the cost. 53g.

So yeah, if you are wondering this is the build setup i am aiming for – http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhMMKc2zwzBf0AdAGpRw4AQDIAWOH0CmBA-TliIwAd1CcZ/hvnAg7qUsUJIQlY7UegXdFAPAgt6AIFwAjBA-w

Any advice or other pointers to potentially tip the favour to either sigil is appreciated, thanks guys.

It would seem like a very viable trait choice now. Im thinking this and the one that reduces cantrip cooldowns would be a great combo for 20 water. Especially with ether renewal to handle other condis

i could imagine :/

Yay~ I knew I wasn’t crazy. I’ve tested it thoroughly over the past few hours in wvw and they don’t seem to work together normally. Only remedy so far is what I mentioned above I hope this is fixed sometime.

I’ve tried taking my weapons on and off, this seems to switch which sigil works. Ive tried going underwater and then coming back out and this seems to make both work until i zone out of the map.

I shouldnt have to rely on the chance of water being on a map to use my own sigils.

Yes but only one of them ever works at any singular time.

Hey guys im running a new build that I constructed and it uses superior sigil of torment and superior sigil of doom on its weapon sets. They don’t seem to stack despite not being of the same class of sigil. Only one of them seems to ever work at a time. Anyone else have this same problem or know of a solution to it? It SHOULD work seeing as the newest patch update was to enable this kind of sigil mix and matching.

@Rahar – Lol you don’t do much pvp or any sort either then i assume? A D/D thief without 30 in shadow arts is pretty much a free kill. That is ofcourse unless they are running a quadruple signet 1 shot wonder build, in which case they are even easier to kill – you just need to avoid the initial burst. The 10% thing is apparently a 10% nerf to damage for crit damage builds. In other words, his back stabs are gonna deal less damage and therefore take more time for him to kill stuff resulting is potential losses where he may very well have won with an increased 10% damage.

@Big Tower – It’s a shame that your build is being nerfed (I don’t play D/D because its near impossible with australian 300ms ping) but you know what they say my friend:

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Good thing I play two builds! Guess Ima have to stow my bolt away and bust out quip more often!

You know what they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get motherkittening going.

Would like to see these since I’m super OCD about my builds/gear and I hate not being able to get the best gear possible and instead am stuck with inferior stupid exotic items

Anet doesnt want duelling or trading because they are too mainstream and are a part of WoW. They believe anything from wow should not be in there game and that is pretty much it.

l2travellerrunepls

So I was playing my thief yesterday and I gave sword a try. Played both pistolwhip and s/d and let me tell you, both were very fun! But there were a few minor things that if were changed, could provide a huge quality of life update for the thief sword.

1. The absurdly long pre cast and after cast animation on the sword 2 return. I don’t care about not being able to use it while stunned etc, but if the kitten animation is so long that I can’t evade the stun in the first place what is the point in this skill?? (Might just be my australian 250-350ms ping but still).

2. Why is the cripple on the 3rd strike of the auto attack?! Wtf is up with that. I’m no logic expert but wouldn’t it make more sense for this to be on the first strike? Then the following one do damage and the final strike do the weakness portion? Idk maybe its just me.

That’s about it I think, does anyone else agree with what I’m saying here or is it just me?

Thanks everyone for your tips! I have no idea to answer individually so I’m just going to do it like this:

@Dalanor.5387 – Yeah that’s true, I shouldn’t have said permanent fear. But that isn’t the point :P not many classes can even survive 3-4 seconds (unless you have all your cooldowns) because the necro will just SoS or stack many bleeds and burning while you are feared, then GL removing that fear with condition removal lol. Additionally, eles only have two cantrip stunbreakers, both on verrry long cooldowns (90s and 70s) so its much easier to spam fear more then I can stunbreak it XD. I have water attunement for cleanse yes, but any necro worth his/her weight is gonna actually wait untill I’m out of water attunement before they fear. After that its perma chill time and suddenly I can’t access water atunement for another 20 seconds.

@Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046 – That hit and run tactic sounds pretty good actually. Everyone else seemed to suggest it aswell.

@necromenous.5490 and Rennoko.5731 – I’ve never really used diamond skin because its too difficult to get :/ It’s also useless outside of fighting condi, but I think I’ll give it a try!

Thanks everyone! Much appreciated

Hi all necro’s, I play a D/D elementalist in WvWvW and well to put it lightly, almost every condi necro I come across destroys me. The amount of pure pressure and the fact that they can easily kite me with perma chill/cripple/weakness uptime combined with constant fearing (probably worse then WoW fear spam tbh) makes it hard to even get some damage off.

So basically I’m asking if there is any specific method of defeating you guys, not asking for nerfs or anything, just some honest to god help. Because I’ll be kittened if I need to run every time I see a necro.

P.S. before you say “L2P”, try versing a good condi necro as a D/D ele. Then you will know my pain

Hey Mblech and any other ele that is on a server which faces fort aspen wood, once i finish regearing my ele (havent played it in a while but just got back into it) would i be able to duel u guys? Would be nice to know how i stack up against the better eles in the game haha

Zyter, me and you kinda think alike. I recently was “dreaming” about a new offhand weapon that utilised our defining conditions burning and chill.

The offhand weap could be a new weapon entirely, or give us like offhand scepter or something. Something magical…

Anyway I had a couple of ideas like:

Fire attunement
4. Magma tomb – 1 second cast time and 900 range. Immobilise for 1 1/2 seconds and places a wide ring around the enemy that upon entering burns them for 3 seconds. Explodes after 3 seconds dealing AoE damage. Enemy is completely unharmed if they don’t move into the ring and stay still. 25 sec CD.
5. Frostfire blast – 3 second cast time and 900 range. Deals significant damage (equal to that of fire grab or something). Instant cast if target is chilled and burned. 40 sec CD.

Water attunement
4. One with frost – Instant cast. All of your attacks chill an enemy for 1 second, but for each chill you apply you are also chilled for the same amount of time. Lasts 5 seconds, at the end of the 5 seconds chill is removed from you and heals for more depending on how much chill you stacked on yourself. 30 sec CD.
5. Paralyzing frost – 1/2 sec cast. 600 range. Stuns your enemy depending on how much chill has been stacked on them up to a max of 3 second stun. 40 sec CD.

Earth attunement
4. Earthbound defence – 1/2 sec cast. Summons a destroyable, small, mobile ring of warding around the caster. Lasts 3 seconds and removes a condition each second. 30 sec CD.
5. Burrow – 1/2 sec cast, obvious and easily interuptable animation. Burrow underground on the spot for 2 seconds, upon resurfacing deal aoe damage and cripple. Evades all attacks while burrowing, but you move 50% slower in it. 40 sec CD.

Air attunement
4. Static Orb – 1 sec cast and 900 range. Places an orb of air on your opponent. Deals no damage initially but discharges after 2 seconds dealing more damage the farther your opponent has travelled (in terms of units). 30 sec CD.
5. Windborne leap – 1/2 sec cast/animation and 900 range. Leap to your target, dazing them for 1/2 a second as well as all enemies in a small radius around the leap destination. 30 sec CD.

I know stuff like this will never be in the game most likely but as The Game Slayer said, one can dream!!

Dee Jay.2460:

7. Elementalist – Don’t really have strong feelings about Elementalists any more. They used to be the gods of WvW a year ago but now they’re just average. Maybe they’re a good model to follow for other classes. Their moves are well-telegraphed, their builds make trade-offs. For every bit of offense they take they give up a tangible amount of defense. They can contribute to zergs and small scale fights, without carrying either. The only build I feel that breaks this otherwise balanced class is the combination of tanky builds with Conjured Weapons. The amount of pressure and sustain that can be combined in such a way is outside of the standard balance spectrum.

Um sorry what? The only problem you have with my class is some of our most useless player vs player utilities?! “tanky builds with Conjured Weapons.”????

Have you ever played an ele? Im sure you will realise that NONE of the the conjured weapons offer ANY sustain. Furthermore they are so limited in their applications that unless your opponent is kittened they won’t be doing much “pressure” either.

Their only use is ice bow for aoe, which is mainly for zerg fights, which you shouldnt be complaining about since we have meteor shower which is ten times better. And finally the fiery greatsword which is great for MOBILITY, not SUSTAIN or freaking PRESSURE (unless ofcourse your opponent is dumb enough to stand in a corner, in which case they will die… very very quickly).

There is a guide on the mesmer forums that has all the places where they can reflect projectiles.

the same goes for swirling winds, only it will destroy them.

sometimes you have to place it strategically to destroy the projectil before it actually comes to you, for example placing it ontop of a boss. i.e lupicus if everyone is stacking on him.

While I would very much enjoy having a 20s CD lighting flash (16s with trait) i feel that is a bit too much. Having lightning flash on 16s cd means i can lightning flash + Burning speed combo on practically every cooldown. If you can’t already see the amount of kitten that would cause then you haven’t played ele enough lol.

If they were ever to reduce the cooldown on this skill i wouldn’t see them lowering it below 30s, maybe 35.

What frownyclown said earlier about armour of earth and other utilities i agree with. Armour of earth has a way to long cooldown to justify the amount of boons it gives for the duration that they are given. perhaps keeping the duration the same and decreasing the cooldown to 60s, along with arcane shield to 60s would make them more desirable.

Then we could be really competitive.

Teehee.

stinkypants.8419:

The only thing that would make this good is that if you have this equipped it makes your blood venomous and when you take damage and bleed all over the enemy in your death throes they get some on them and die also.

The end.

YES. YES THIS WOULD BE AMAZING.

Warrior
-Defiant Stance: Stance. Absorb all incoming strikes for a period of time. All incoming attacks heal you.

Welp, warrior are officially god mode now…

As a long time condition mesmer and one who has recently started leveling a thief to play D/D in WvWvW, I can agree with your complaints about mesmers not being unstealthed by their clones. The problem is that, if you take that away there is almost no point in having a stealth mechanism on the mesmer in the first place. Why? Because every mesmer no matter what build will use illusions. Illusions will always be attacking meaning that if the mesmer goes in stealth he will pretty much immediately get revealed by his clones, meaning that going in stealth was pointless pretty much. Not every mesmer uses stealth but you get my point.

Normally a phantasm mesmer that uses phantasms to deal damage and then hides in stealth isn’t a huge problem because you can CnD of the phantasms and wear them down. Once they are all dead you can engage the mesmer without worrying about getting bursted immediately.

However, the build you mentioned actually punishes you for killing its phantasms, not to mention that a good 30-40% of the damage comes from just regular clones and their explosions when they die, not the actual phantasms themselves because no phantasm aside from the torch is condition based. When traited the pistol can be good for bleed stacking but that about it.

So how to deal with this kind of mesmer? The answer is simply reliant upon the mesmers skill level. After playing this spec on my own mesmer for so long I can safely say that I have almost never died due to being “outplayed” but rather through my own mistakes. The condi mesmer spec is literally impossible to lose with if you play it completely correctly – with the exception of another heavy condi class like engi or necro (tho usually null field can handle them).

In conclusion, if the mesmer is not so good to average skill level you will eventually win. If they are skilled you will probably die. If you are both skilled then it will likely be a draw.

Condi mes is very strong atm and definitely needs a nerf, but it needs to be gradual because the spec itself is very sensetive, take away any of its key traits and the build just won’t work.

Anyway if you want to stand a greater chance at defeating these mesmers just play a condi mes yourself and pay attention to when and what you die from

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PU IS FINE.

@pmnt

If this was about any other class other then elementalist, I wouldn’t believe you.

But I do.

just roll warrior GS/axe+mace.

Start off in gs, press 2
weaponswap, press 2 then 4
spam 1 till chain over
weapon swap to gs and press 2

rinse and repeat and you are doing more dps then any other class.

dps is all that matters in most dungeons unfortunately.

Don’t worry, we will still suck either way.

never hits anyway, so your wall of text is invalid

@MountainPanda

Although you seem to be joking, that would actually be pretty cool, just have it apply 1 stack of torment per clone shattered and put it on a relatively short cooldown like 15 seconds and your golden.

A lot of people said: “Oh it won’t work because you need to have a target”.

Yes that’s true but lets say hypothetically they did make it ground targeted. All they would need to do then is make it so that it can’t be cast unless you have an enemy selected.

….

Oh wait this type of mechanic isn’t in the game and is too hard to implement for the kittened interns that work at Anet…

On a slightly unrelated note, decoy can be used while the revealed debuff is active. So if you happen to be dying because your mass invis/torch4/veil ended up with a reveal, you can still stealth with decoy. Same goes for the desperate decoy trait.

C’mon, lets make this a thing.

I’m going to have to agree with Bacon, whenever I die I never blame it on my class or the classes I was versing, only myself (though I rarely die anyway).

To all the people who are worrying about how to kill the tanky professions:

If your using the 20/20/30/0/0 build there are two weapon sets I use which allow victory in any setting. The first is Staff and Sword/Torch (with geomancy sigils), yes this might sound stupid but it really works. I mainly use it for roaming and when I am fighting outnumbered situations. Obviously, you take the sword skill reduction and staff skill reduction traits.

The second setup is Scepter/Torch and Sword/Pistol. This combination unloads enough conditions to take any class out, provided you play accordingly by dodging and countering your opponent efficiently. I mainly use it when I engage someone, then find out I can’t kill them. I will disengage, change weapons/traits then proceed to re-engage. Again, the traits needed are phantasmal fury and desperate decoy instead of the weapon skill reduction traits.

For those interested the utilities I run are blink, decoy and either null field/veil.

Enjoy.

Anet, make it happen.

It really saddens me when people make such awesome suggestions the devs are never going to see it and the focus will remain just as horrible

This would be awesome, maybe make a few tweaks to the actual conjured weapon skills and tada elementalist is strong again.

With this we could probably become the class that Anet actually promised us…

What is the logic behind the creation of the Phantasmal Mage? Or in other words, what was going through the minds of the people who designed the skill.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the torch and its part of my favourite build so far (conditions) but there is just one thing I have never understood.

The Phantasmal mage has the worst DPS out of all the phantasms (probably loses even to defender LOL), the 3 stack of confusion it applies is almost non-existant as it is useless in PvE and easily ignored in WvW/PvP. The retaliation that it grants to yourself and allies lasts only for 4 seconds, barely enough time for an enemy to get one or two hits in (since as a mesmer you are trying to kite most of the time). Yet despite all of its shortcomings, it actually works. It really does work in my condition build and I love it.

My question is: WHY DOES IT HAVE THE LONGEST COOLDOWN OUT OF ALL THE PHANTASMS? 30 kittenING SECONDS. The absolute worst phantasm in the game, has the longest cooldown. LOGIC? NEVER HEARD OF IT.

Please reduce it to 20-25, and I will be a happy sylvari.

I play Gs/Staff shatter build with halting interuptions and remove boons on shatter.

Just take the best of both worlds and watch your opponents melt.

This would be cool, but what about all the people who like their medium armour skins? this is never going to happen lol

Watchwork Mechanisms
Watchwork tech is the latest and greatest innovation in Tyria. Watchwork parts can be used in new crafting recipes or as currency in the Crown Pavilion to buy items like new rune and sigil recipes, Watchknight Tonics, or the new Sovereign Weapon Set. You might even find the recipe to assemble a Watchwork Portal Device, allowing you to create a personal portal!

lol

Fishbait.6723:

Oddly, Necro can escape easily enough.
True, not quite like Guardian, Warrior or the obvious trolls/thieves.
I`ve a necro bank alt & with Spectral walk, staff wells & the extremely op scepter wall of fear (feck knows why anet let this & mesmer scepter line not put you into combat…(lol don`t recall its name ;p) ).
combined with several health bars hehe
Throw in locust signet which I don`t need/use & horn for even more speeds & job`s a good `un.
I`d say necro is above ele by a little, but we`re both kind of screwed over.

Finally, someone who actually lays down the facts and knows what the kitten they are talking about.

Glad to see that other mesmers are thinking the same way I do, and not complaining about sword 2 nerfs and kitten lol.

Thats a good idea with the boon sharing :o another cool one is stealing the 25 stacks of might from the underwater fractal boss and sharing that xD

8. Rangers – depending on what type of ranger it is, the main tactic is still summon phantasms and hide in stealth. Have good knowledge at what their pets can do we be mindful of their animations (which are relatively long and very obvious) and dodge them. The two most common are the wolf which has a fear (2 seconds) and the terrier dog which has a 2 seconds immobilise. Note that most ranger’s DPS is severely hampered if their pet dies, so if you see the pet on low hp for some reason, kill it.

9. Guardians – kite, kite, kite, kite, kite, kite, invis and then more kiting. With range, guardian is easy to fend off, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you will win (depends how defensive the guardian is). If you get ringed, blink out immediately (save blink for this). Additionally if you get pulled in by the greatsword5 on guardian blink away immediately (however you shouldn’t ever get pulled in since it is super easy to dodge as you can simply hide behind your illusions). Worst case scenario, spam dodge roll after the greatsword kittens you. This way his pull won’t pull you in as far (yes this works trust me). Again, don’t be discouraged if a guardian kills you (I believe they are the best class in the game), so ABSOLUTE worst case scenario just mass invis and run lol.

10. Engineer – if he is rifle, dodge the kitten out of his toolkit pull or your kittened. If its pistol/shield or pistol/pistol then its same tactic as ranger, only this time you must focus your attention on his CC and when he uses it. If he switches to flamethrower, expect a pushback. If he is using p/s and he comes close, expect a shield 4 into a shield 5 chain cc. Be mindful of these and try to dodge them, a GOOD engineer can kill you a lot of the time, but be mindful of the emphasis on the word “good”.

Idk if I have missed a class but the absolute best advice anyone can give you is to LEARN the other classes and actually play PvP/WvWvW a lot. I’ve spent about ~500 hours in sPvP trying out all the other classes and learning their abilities, and still today I am surprised by kitten that happens. One thing is for sure though, you can never stop learning.

Oh and carry every single weapon with you (all valkyrie) just in case you wanna switch it up. (i commonly do this).

Playstyle

Since this build and trait/gear set-up is so versatile feel free to mend it to your own playstyle, however I will explain the way I play.

I like to start in scepter/sword and I engage by producing 3 regular clones (whether through blocking or dodging or 1 spamming it doesn’t matter). Then I proceed to shatter them with Diversion. This applies a 15 stack of vulnerability on my opponent (which is the reason I don’t take the 15% increase in illusion damage) and then quickly summon my sword phantasm. I follow that up with a scepter 3 and then quickly swap weapons and dodge roll followed by a greatsword 4. By now you should have a sword phantasm, a greatsword phantasm and a regular greatsword clone out. Greatsword clones are superior to scepter ones as they proc damage 3 times meaning they have 3 chances to crit and apply bleeding. From here on out its do what ever you can to survive and deal as much damage as possible. I can’t really teach you how to play against every class as I don’t believe I am qualified anyway. Sword 4 is your other interrupt and use it wisely against heals and kitten.

However there are a few things you should consider:

1. When fighting a thief, save your GS 5 pushback for when he shadow refuges, most thieves save this as a last resort and if you can push him out of it he immediately gets the revealed debuff. This applies immense pressure and pretty much wins the fight.

2. Additionally when fighting thieves, save your blocks for when they stealth. After a theif stealths, they have 3-4 seconds to hit you with a back stab. The block durations on scepter and sword are both 2 seconds long, meaning if you wait 1-2 seconds then block while they are in stealth they have no option but to hit you and get nuked or simply unstealth

3. Conditions are pretty much meaningless to this build as we run -65% duration on them, but don’t ever underestimate them, if you are piled with conditions, retreat in the same way you would if you got bursted down to low HP.

4. When versing d/d elementalists, dodge their burning speeds every time (since I played elementalist for so long I can just tell when they are coming), but a good indicator that an ele will burning speed is if he attunes to fire. Try to time your burst (phantasms and confusion/torment) AFTER they come out of water attunement, as it is when they are most vulnerable and will sometimes force them to blow long cantrip cooldowns which is what you want. For s/d ele, i’d imagine the way to counter is the same but watch out for when he gets close or if you get updrafted. Break the stun immediately and keep your distance. For staff ele, well even warrior can beat staff ele so just focus on dealing damage and simply WALK out of the AoE and you will win.

5. Warrior – worst class in the game by far, you shouldn’t have any trouble here unless he’s like a kill shot warrior and you didn’t see him cast the ridiculously obvious killshot.

6. Necro – try to stay in stealth most of the time as this is the best way to avoid conditions, make sure you summon your phantasms up first though. If its a power necro then keep your kitten distance and blink out of his wells IMMEDIATELY, if you can’t then greatsword 5 him when he comes in to dagger spam you (while your immobilised with dagger 3) inside the well.

7. Other mesmers – same tactic with necros, only you need to play a lot more conservatively and try to pay attention to when they dodge so that you don’t blow your scepter 3 on a dodge roll and see “evade evade evade” instead of constant 500-1.2k hits. If its a shatter mesmer, well your kinda kittened if he gets an immobilise on you since we don’t run mainhand sword to counter it. The best way is simply to use f4 and try to dodge his illusionary leaps, if you can do that he won’t do much damage. As a last resort you can blink out (but only if your quick enough) or even decoy and hope for a protection proc.

Ok guys this is pretty much my first attempt at a full comprehensive guide so feedback is appreciated.

Why should you play this build?

I’ve always liked builds that were “jack of all trades”, or in other words, could do just about everything at a competent level, but must be played with a high amount of skill to achieve the same results as a specialist build. This particular build is centralised around dealing high direct damage whilst maintaining very good survivability in the form of stealth and great defensive boon up-time. It focuses on summoning phantasms and locking down your enemy with confusion, the new ‘torment’ condition as well as a relatively steady flow of interrupts. It also feature’s high control and great “countering” abilities that aid in the defeat of many of the so-called “PvP” professions. The versatility of this build is also one of the best as well, since we take such a generalised trait set-up it is very easy to just switch up a few trait selections and easily switch weapons according to your playstyle. While having access to all this may sound great it does have its downsides. The chasing down ability is great, but once your opponent is out of range of your Greatsword, you might aswell forget about them. Mobility is lacking also, seeing as both the ‘teleporting’ weapons (sword and staff) are not used in this build, though could be very easily with some minor tweaking.

Just for further notice, this build has 3 interrupts. The sword 4, greatsword 5 and f3 diversion shatter.

Skills and Trait set-up

Traits are as follows: 20/20/30/0/0

20 in domination to take: (II) and (X)
20 in dueling to take: (II) and (X)
30 in chaos to take: (III), (VIII) and (XII)

For utilities take: Blink, Decoy and Veil

The gear

This part is a little bit tricky and I’m not even sure if its the right way to optimise damage and survivability but it works so I’m not complaining.

Armour:
- Knights headpiece
- Berserker shoulders
- Knights body
- Knights leggings
- Valkyrie gloves
- Valkyrie boots

All of the aformentioned armour pieces have the Superior runes of Melandru (-25% condition/stun duration on self and toughness) slotted into them.

Food Buffs
- Bowl of lemon grass poultry (-40% condition duration on self)
- Your choice between the Superior sharpening stone, or Master maintenance oil.

Trinkets and kitten
- Celestial ascended amulet
- Berserker ascended rings
- Cavalier ascended accessories
- Berserkers ascended backpiece

*Note that all of these can be replaced with their exotic counterparts and if so with berserker/valkyrie jewels in all of them. For infusions I reccomend vital, but they are costly so do what ever you want lol this doesn’t matter.

Weapons
- Beserker/valkyrie greatsword with Superior sigil of energy
- Valkyrie scepter with Superior sigil of energy
- Valkyrie sword with Superior sigil of accuracy (5% extra critical chance)

General information that you need to know about the build
By going so far into chaos we can make up for not having the protection of a staff by taking Prismatic Understanding. This grants us major survivability and insane protection and to a lesser extent, regeneration up-time. The reduced cooldown on blink gives us additional survivability and helps make up for the lack of a staff and phase retreat.

The choices in dueling were obvious and don’t need explaining as they are pretty much cookie cutter for most builds, however in this build this focus is on illusions so we take Phantasmal Fury and Deceptive Evasion.

For domination this is where the build gets interesting, instead of straight up going for illusion damage, I chose to take Halting Interruptions (which deals ~2k damage on interrupt) as well as Greatsword Training. The reason I took the latter trait is because the minor trait Illusionists Celerity has been moves up to 25 points in illusions, deeming it unable to be used in this build. Instead I compensate by granting additional recharge reduction to the greatsword so I can maintain high DPS and pressure, it also synergises well with the Halting Interruptions trait because you can interrupt more often with the Greatsword 5 ability. Additionally, Halting interruptions synergises well with the master chaos trait Bountiful Interruptions, which grants a random boon for 5 seconds as well as 10 seconds of 5 stacks of might. Please note that it applies a new boon for each person you interrupt even if its with the same ability, seeing as nearly all of the mesmers interrupts are AoE or at least semi-AoE this is a very strong trait, granting up to 5 boons per interrupt (if you can manage to hit that many people). I should also note that it doesn’t apply a new 5 stack of might for interrupting many people at the same time. I believe this is intended, because otherwise it would be very easy to stack 25 stacks lol.

Lol “ninja buff” that’s a new one.