Showing Posts For sang.1705:
I think as Fay has stated, you could buff Shattered Strength, but ultimately it doesn’t actually get you anywhere. You have to play chrono and inspiration for obvious reasons and if you play power you take dom. Are there variations? Sure, you could go full glass cannon and do something like chrono/dom/dueling but then you are basically sitting around praying you don’t get condi-bombed…which quite frankly isn’t a good strategy.
I think a better solution/buff would be to give Mesmers a more reliable way to clear condi other than taking inspiration.
All of this being said, even if we had more reliable condi cleanse outside inspiration, power shatter (not burst shatter via domination) will still run into problems with illusion creation. Running the traditional GS + Sw/Sh in a power shatter only nets you 3 illusion creating abilities. If you are going to run a power shatter utilizing a trait like Shattered Strength, you are going to want to be shattering and generating illusions more consistently, even with taking Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma in Chronomancer.
Generally speaking, from what I’ve seen, most people play a variation of one of two builds:
(1) Interrupt based power shatter utilizing Dom/Chrono+1 or (2) Staff Condi (most often using Perplexity runes)
From what I understand, PU/Torch is less popular after the nerfs. Additionally, most builds usually take inspiration over chaos for survivability/condi cleanse and stacking both inspiration and chaos while possible, does reduce your damage output compared to other builds. While you definitely could run torch, shield is ridiculously good.
The build you described could probably work using inspir/chrono + illusions or dueling. Perhaps something like this?
From what I experience, there are roughly two popular builds when it comes to roaming and light havoc. The first is an interrupt power shatter utilizing dom/chrono+1 while the second is staff perplexity condi. Obviously there is more than these two builds and there is certainly variation within them, but for the most part these are the two general build types I see most often when roaming or in a light havoc group.
As such, what is everyone’s current preferred roaming or light havoc group builds in WvW?
I’m torn between which I prefer. I build my perplexity condi tough with a mix of dire and rabid gear and I have a lot of fun being so survivable while also being able to catch opponents off-guard with the amount of condi I can stack via shatters. On the other hand, power-shatter is just joyous when you get that interrupt and burst an opponent down before they know what hit them.
Down in Tier 3 of WvW where I am play, most roamers are primarily Thieves or Warriors; while havoc is usually a combination of something similar. I’m not sure if this is the case in T2 and T1, but as such, I generally tend to think that any roaming or light havoc build should be relatively decent against the aforementioned professions.
(edited by sang.1705)
Coming back to GW2 after almost 3 years away and spending a lot of my time roaming, the OP’s reaction was the same as mine while playing a zerk burst shatter Mesmer. For me, it was such a volatile machup that pretty much any misplay on my end lead to death. I got so sick of it I swapped to a staff condi shatter build and now I lol all over thieves.
I think the thing to remember is that its ok if things are not meant to be balanced across all professions in all situations. The challenge is figuring out what is an acceptable tradeoff such that you are able to play the way you like. For example, if you run a build that sacrifices condi-cleanse for damage you have to accept that if you run into an enemy with a condi heavy build, you are probably going to die.