Guild Wars 2

Nretep.2564:

^
Yeah, but that makes a 2s AoE stability even more pointless. The main use of the skill was the stun breaker (+2s “protection” from other stuns). I don’t like clean mantra because I have mender’s purity, so I use stability mantra for stunbreak and fear.

I agree with you there, particularly because the range is so terrible. Sure, you could spam it twice (or three times if traited) and push out 4-6 seconds of stability, but it’s pretty inferior to Stand Your Ground for example. And constantly having to waste three seconds recharging it just makes it worse.

I can see it potentially being useful in PvP/WvW teamfights to eat the first stun bursts from the enemy, but in PvE the only situation that comes to mind is the Harpy Fractal (since everyone’s clumped on tiny platforms anyway, and you can see the orb coming).

GK: even against most small-sized mobs in PvE the GS phantasm hits 3x+ consistently. Yes, it was bugged for a time (and everyone on the forums complained about it) but if your memories of the iZerker are from back then, you need to re-evaluate. The list Xyonon quoted was from actual observed tests against free-standing golems, so applying your own down-scaling based on the erroneous assumption that they miss far more than they actually did in practice is pretty silly. Your original argument was 1 sword + 1 duel > 3 zerker, which is plainly false, without even considering the difference in AA dps.

Note that I’m not arguing with your actual position which is that Sw/X+Y is generally better in dungeon fights than Sw/X and GS — that’s true, I agree, most cases full-melee is the clear choice. I’d just like you (and colesy) to stop claiming the GS is absolutely entirely useless in every conceivable situation, and that staff or scepter are better when they clearly aren’t.

Side-note – I’ve actually really found Illusionary Wave surprisingly useful recently in one specific fight: the Clockheart at the end of TA Aetherpath. Running GS+S/F for positioning the Holo Pirate to break his shielding has been invaluable — several times, an Into the Void + Blink + Wave + Mirror Blade + iZerker + Stab + Mind Wrack combo has gotten me a clutch shield-break from a way-out-of-range hologram.
It’s useful enough that even in a fight that is SUPPOSED to be pure-melee I end up keeping a GS swap just for the ‘useless’ Wave; kinda ironic.

Anyway, GS camping mesmers are more a l2p issue than a bad-weapon issue, much the same as bearbow rangers. If all they’ve played with is other PUGs where nobody stacks and LoS is an unheard-of concept, it’s not surprising they play how they do. I could bring up the recent COF p2 run I did with a staff-camping guard who didn’t ever switch weapons or even bother to hit Empower once in a while – just sat there auto-attacking his little heart out — but using that guy to claim that Guard staff is worthless would be pretty dumb.

It’s also important to recognize that it’s a LOT easier to be full-melee when you’re in a good group where everyone else is bringing banners and boons, guards are pumping out Aegis to block big hits, and overall DPS is high enough that you don’t die. I’ve often been in groups where there’s zero might and fury on average – where I don’t even slot Sig of Inspiration since there aren’t even enough boons on me to bother duplicating.
In situations like that, keeping a GS swap so I can pull out and range when I’m close to dead ends up working far better than staying full-melee, lying dead on the floor, and then kittening out the rest of the group for being bad.

Hi Prophet! welcome to the forums check out the [OMFG] post and join the guild!

That’s a fairly decent layout, although I would argue it’s more of a Phantasm+Mantra build. Shatter builds really need Illusionary Persona and Mental Torment to make F1 start really dealing damage; as it is you have three traited weapons and 25 in Inspiration which benefits Phantasm builds much more.

As such, I’d take the five points from Illusions and dump them into Inspiration instead – you don’t want to shatter much so the Might-on-Shatter does you no good, and instead you could grab Restorative Mantras for some free group-healing when you charge, or Temporal Enchanter, or 20% phant hp, or Mender’s Purity, or Medic’s Feedback – Inspiration has so many useful majors you’ll be better served by one of those than Shattered Strength in most situations.

The only other change I’d suggest is having one sword with Battle and one with Bloodlust – use the single Bloodlust mainhand until you’re fully-stacked, then replace it with Battle for six extra might stacks in combat (+210 more power).

Nretep.2564:

Valarauka.2719:

I do love the Medic’s Feedback change though – it was already an amazing trait, this just makes it even better!

They just updated the visual appearance, not the actual duration. Feedback has always lasted ~1s longer than its visual dome. They just fixed that on Feedback and Medic’s Feedback.

No, the bubble produced by Medic’s Feedback never lasted as long as the bubble from the actual Feedback skill (~2 seconds less) – I’ve run both for ages, I know this. They’ve increased the duration on the rez-bubble to match regular Feedback length.

Also, regarding breaking ally Fears: you actually want to use the condition cleanse mantra for that, not the stability one. Fear is a condition; it’s blocked if you already have stability, but gaining stability when you’re already feared won’t clear it. Either a condition cleanse OR a stun-break will, though, so now you can break fear on allies using Mantra of Resolve (pitiful range though, grrr). On yourself either mantra works, as always (since Concentration is a stun-break for yourself).

The only thing in the game that breaks stuns on allies (that I know of) is Guardian’s Virtue of Courage traited with Shielded Mind (Virtues GM).

They keep killing mesmer confusion sources, and yet Perplexity runes remain unchanged..

I do love the Medic’s Feedback change though – it was already an amazing trait, this just makes it even better!

Mimic is awesome in melee range! You can even catch your own staff attack to turn it on and then you have four seconds of free blocking. And yeah, PU is great, but if I use Moa and Mimic instead of the stealth skills it won’t be much use to me.

I’d run it your way in WvW where escapes and disengages are much more valuable; in sPvP, fighting over a point, stealth can actually be counterproductive.

Ooh, this is interesting. I’ve been playing a 20/20/30 GS/sword+sword interrupt build in sPvP for a few days and it’s a lot of fun, but I’ll definitely give this a shot. I’ll probably go with Mimic+Blink+Thievery for even more blocking, with Manip cd instead of DiM and keeping CI over PU since there’s not much stealth left, but playing block+retal heavy sounds like a lot of fun!

Keeping the 10 in Illusions makes sense to me though as the 5 for Retal on phantasms is useful, and 5 more points anywhere else don’t make too much sense except 15 Dom for vuln spiking – I feel a condi cleanse is worth more than that these days.

And more good news for this: scepter skills 2 and 3 get their cd reduced tomorrow!

Eh, I feel like Inspiration has enough useful traits that moving the five points over from Chaos is worth more than the occasional regen proc which you can get from standing near a phantasm anyway. Apart from weapon choice and Crippling Dissipation instead of Empowered Illusions, this ends up being the standard 10/30/0/30/0 phantasm build, which is well tested and effective. All you’re doing is giving up 15% illusion damage for cripples instead, which can be useful in WvW, but wasted in PvE.

In general, philosophically I’d think capitalizing on newbies in WvW is easy enough that you don’t need to build for it – your build should be optimal against tough opponents, the weak ones are never a threat to begin with…

It’s actually surprisingly good, I’ve been playing a 20/20/30 halting strike/BI/CI build in sPvP the past few days, and it’s pretty nice to be able to push someone off a point with iWave and have them get immobilized outside. The cripple/chill/blind is a bonus, and a good cover for the immob. Follow up with iLeap, magic bullet, offhand sword daze, MoD / signet of dom, whatever else to keep them off the point.

The good thing about that is, Thief S/D should be getting a little nerf in the next patch where Larcenous Strike only steals 1 boon instead of 2, which should give PU some advantage back.

I run 10/30/0/30/0 almost all the time in dungeons and fractals.

1 – never mix on-crit and on-swap sigils, they all share cooldowns so the swap won’t proc if the crit one just triggered. Energy is overkill for most PvE (you already have perma-vigor), although in WvW having more dodges always helps. Battle is great for damage if you’re swapping on cooldown, at least one Perception or Bloodlust is always great to build up stacks, and Force/Accuracy work if you have nothing more specific in mind.

Note, in most cases you can get away with having a single mainhand sword with a Battle in it, that way you don’t need to buy 2. Sword/X+Y is all you need for most dungeon encounters (where X and Y are two of sword/focus/pistol); I keep a GS on hand for range, AoE, and some fractal bosses, though scepter/pistol should work too.

2 – Definitely Empowered Illusions and Phantasmal Fury over what you have right now for PvE; I usually put Deceptive Evasion back in for WvW because clone generation can be more important there. The build is flexible, don’t be afraid to change traits around situationally.

3 – I’ve actually found Medic’s Feedback amazingly useful in dungeon runs, being able to Blink to a downed friend and rez them instantly inside the relative safety of a Feedback bubble has helped me save teammates countless times. For example, the Fractal 48 Grawl Imbued Shaman, whose second agony arrow would be a certain Defeated state for a downed player – just gets reflected, no problem. Of course, it’s less useful if you’re in a pro group where nobody ever downs, but that’s hardly the usual case for me..

I usually run Medic’s Feedback + Focus trait + Glamor Mastery, swapping for Shattered Conditions or Mender’s Purity situationally (or very rarely Restorative Mantras + Mantra of Pain when the group is seriously lacking survival power).

Shattered Conditions takes a little getting used to, but I find it pretty valuable when you know how it works – the trick is that the condition is only removed when the illusion shatters, not when you hit your F-key – so for everything but F4, you need to make sure you have an illusion already in melee range of your target, or be prepared to wait for the condi clear. Illusionary Leap and Mirror Blade are great for this, since they get a clone right on top of the target almost immediately. Of course, it wrecks your phant dps, so only bring it if you need frequent AoE condi removal and nobody else can do that for the party. Hopefully Mantra of Resolve will be a better option for this come Oct 15th.

EDIT: reading your original post again, I should clarify – this is a pure phantasm build here, it’s very hard to call something a Shatter build without going 30 into Illusions.
If you want to play Shatter, starting with the classic 20/20/0/0/30 is never a bad way to go – take Mental Torment and Shattered Concentration in Domination (or Rending Shatter in a PvE / non-boon-heavy env), and Illusionary Invigoration instead of the bounce trait in Illusions.

This is sad on the same level as Ele conjures and Engi kit damage not being pushed up to compensate. I’m still getting ascended just for the extra AR, but I sincerely hope they bump it at some point when most people are rocking ascended stuff .. or just actually make it scale off your equipped weapon, which is what it should do!

Prismatic Uberhaxing?

EMBRACE THE BUTTERFLIES.

It gets easier after level 40 – once you unlock Deceptive Evasion (Dueling master trait – clone-on-dodge) your clone production goes through the roof; if you pair that with Crippling Dissipation (AoE cripple on clone death) you can perma-kite as many mobs as you want. Pair that with some reflection (Focus, Feedback, or both) and you’re almost unhittable in open-world stuff.

What are you smoking, Vex? Mesmers are amazing in 1v1 and small groups, much more so than in zergs.

Hiya!
IGN: Fiona Oberyn / Gate of Madness (US)
I’ve got several 80s but Mesmer is my first and true love.
I play everything to varying degrees; fractals, dungeons, WvW (almost always solo/small group roaming, mostly in BLs not EB), and been getting more into solo queue tPvP recently.

I love build theorycrafting as much as I do actually playing the game; haven’t posted anything “major” but I’m constantly experimenting, and I’m the “builds guy” in my guild for almost every class. Always open to more theory discussions.

Sort of echoing what people have already said, sword offhand isn’t great for condi builds, nor is retal. And torment is a little weak imo, specially just two stacks. I would swap to Perplexity runes and offhand pistol, and Duelist’s Discipline instead of Retal. Shield – that gives you TONS of confusion for more punishment of offensive play (chaos storm, magic bullet, and traited duelist shooting through the chaos storm). Also a lot more bleeds from the duelist.

Also, Sigil of Generosity is a straight upgrade from Purity. Or you could consider the poison-on-swap ones for more condition pressure as skcamow said.

Your trait allocation means nothing to us until you specify which actual traits you’ve picked, which skills / stats / weapons you’re using, and what your intended playstyle is. It’s impossible to dispense any meaningful advice without that information.

Also, line breaks and paragraphs really help.

I really doubt they’re touching DE – didn’t see anything about it in any of the preview notes, so unless Nilgoow has some secret source, it’s just speculative whining. :p

I do hope they fix Perplexity runes though…

colesy.8490:

For the love of god, drop those 30 points in chaos and stick them … anywhere but chaos.

Eh, I didn’t see his PvE build since he removed the link, but 30 Chaos can be pretty nice for PvP/WvW…

I can think of two ways to go within the original constraints:

1. Phantasm Tank spec with an interrupt flavor:
Halting Strike, Phantasmal Fury, Illusionary Defense, BI, CI, Mender’s Purity, Warden’s Feedback (or Persisting Images).
Run with Sword/Focus and Scepter/Pistol, iDefender, Blink, and third skill of your choice. You get great projectile defense, perma-regen, hugely reduced damage when your defender is up, and AoE interrupts on both weapon sets for bonus Might, Halting Strike damage, and immobilize + extra control conditions on your enemies. Use Berserker/Knight/Cavalier gear mix to your preference.

2. Clone-death condi variant:
Crippling Dissipation, Desperate Decoy, Debilitating Dissipation, Staff trait, Prismatic Understanding, Mender’s Purity, Scepter trait.
Scepter/Torch and Staff, full Dire gear (no sharper images, so rabid is useless), decoy/veil/{blink/arcane thievery/signet of dom}. This build is really weakened by not having Sharper Images or Deceptive Evasion, though.

Both of these builds are meant for solo or small-team roaming, they won’t be very useful in a zerg v zerg situation.

Soyboy.3548:

If I use mantra of concentration during a lunch, the 2 seconds of stability are wasted lying on the ground.

Using mantra of concentration during a dinner is similarly ineffective. ;p

Not quite right – I believe reflects don’t use personal power or weapon damage (as seen by boss attacks doing boss-level reflected damage) – seems like it takes the base damage from the original projectile, and then uses the player’s damage multipliers, precision and crit-damage to determine the final damage.

A celestial build will still crit pretty hard when it does since celestial has almost-zerk level crit on most pieces. Given the crit food, oil, and accuracy/perception sigils this build should actually do pretty good for reflect damage — it’s pretty much a best-case scenario, since the significant loss of power from going zerk→celestial shouldn’t affect it at all.

If you just want to run around with a zerg and nuke stuff, go with 30/30/0/0/10: very squishy but super-fun. Zerker can hit for 8k+ aoe unbuffed; autoattack for 3k+ per chain from 1200 range (numbers are fuzzy, it’s been a long time since I did this last). Get some might from the zerg and watch the number soar.

I’d suggest something like this as a template – 12% damage boost from mantras, 9% possible from images (though they probably won’t stay alive long), maxed power/prec/crit, all weapons traited, extra spike damage from both your mantras (daze should interrupt and proc Halting Strike pretty often). One utility slot left open for whatever you like.

Of course, if you get caught alone you’re going to be very squishy, but you may still be able to surprise 1v1 with how much damage you can put out. 1v2+ you’re dead meat. Then again, that’s what makes it fun!

Nice companion post to the compendium! +1

I’d throw in some discussion of Illusionary Persona somewhere (maybe its own section?) since it’s such a game-changer for shatter-oriented builds – it plays a role in damage (large boost to Mind Wrack), control (insta-diversion) and survivability (insta-distortion).

Imbued Diversion is also worthy of a mention in the Control category.

We’re kinda far from April 1st, don’t you think?

Also, you should switch to that Celestial dragon bash food!

And you better swap that GS out for something else before certain forum members see it… :p

Without explaining what you didn’t like about the “common builds”, why this is more to your taste, or what you intend this build for, it’s kind of impossible to suggest much.

Looks like an extremely tanky phantasm build, with a little bit of stealth stuff in there. I will say the Knight+Soldier mix is way too defensive for anything but WvW play; also, PU seems a bit wasted if you’re only taking Decoy and MI.

That being said, one minor tweak I’d make given what I see is to swap Debilitating Dissipation for Bountiful Interruption. Having one random clone-death condition trait thrown in there makes no sense given you don’t have any condition damage anyway; BI can give you some good additional might stacking (which you seem to be going for with the Battle sigils already) when you interrupt people with GS wave or Magic Bullet.

Also, not sure what you need Mirror Images for – you shouldn’t be shattering much with this build to begin with. I might replace that with Blink and then take Manipulation cooldowns for more Blinks and Arcane Thievery – should help your survivability more than Illusionary Defense.

I just took a quick glance at the trait page and skill bar; didn’t watch the whole video.

Seems reasonable; I would just move the 5 points from Illusions into Inspiration and pick up the glamor skills cooldown trait since he has Null Field and Feedback slotted.

Phantasmal Haste hasn’t moved, you were thinking about Illusionist’s Celerity which moved from 5 to 25.

Also, I couldn’t click your link, had to copy and paste it to get it to load for some reason.

10/30/0/30/0, berserker/ruby. Generally Sword(force)/Focus(perception) + GS(fire), switch to sword(battle)/sword(force)+pistol(accuracy) for bosses. I carry a staff(energy), torch, and scepter too but only pull them out in WvW sometimes.
Sigil choices should be fairly self-explanatory.

Trait-wise, I run pistol+focus+sword traits, swapping pistol trait to Deceptive Evasion or Blink range if needed and I don’t have the pistol on. I switch focus trait to phant HP or glamor CD when I swap out the focus.

I also usually run Medic’s Feedback on the first Inspiration slot when I’m running with a group, or Mender’s Purity when solo.

Boon-on-hit is bad for mesmers since you shouldn’t be getting hit much in the first place. 5% chance to proc means you need to get hit 20 times on average per proc; 5 second boon with 10s icd means 50% uptime is the best possible outcome. Realistically, I’d say you won’t get more than 10-20% uptime in practice. Of the boons, Fury is the only one that’s really useful, and a single Ranger or Ele can keep that up for the whole group permanently all by themselves. Or a couple warriors with FGJ…

I’m going to second the ruby orb recommendation.

Sweet video!
What really impressed me was the detailed breakdown of opponent builds, weaknesses and likely rotations, which is truly key to being able to counter them effectively. Some of those predictive blurred frenzies were absolutely beautiful to watch.

“Know your enemy and know yourself, and be victorious in a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Totally agree with this. If anything, the Greatsword needs it’s versatility improved, not it’s damage.

If they changed Mind Stab to rip two boons and be a blast finisher I’d be the happiest mesmer this side of the Black Citadel.

I run traveler for my WvW set; I find it invaluable there for solo roaming, and it lets me run without a focus when I want to without being slow as molasses.

For dungeons I use ruby orbs – you generally have a focus equipped for the utility anyway, and the party has enough other sources of group swiftness that it’s up constantly regardless.

Sigil of Battle is always better than Strength if you swap constantly.
Battle is 3 stacks of 20 second might, so 6 permanent if you swap on cd.
Strength is 1 stack of 10 second might, with 2s icd, so you can only ever max out at 5 stacks if it procs immediately when ready every time. In practice that never happens so you’re more likely to get ~3.5 stacks with reasonable crit chance.
(edit: above calculation disregards boon duration, but the relative amounts hold steady regardless).

The other nice thing about Battle is you can run a single one on Sword/x + Sword/y builds (just put it on the mainhand sword), and it’ll proc every time you switch. Saves some cash…

You only wouldn’t want to use Battle if you tend to stick with one weapon set for long periods, since then you’re losing efficiency.

Perception isn’t bad at all, particularly for mesmers since it boosts your reflect damage and your phantasms’ crit chance (more crits and more bleeds with Sharper Images).

You can’t stack more than one type, so you need to pick one of Bloodlust/Perception. I like to put my stacking sigil on my focus since I tend to get a lot of quick AoE kills with that.

You don’t really need the triple-cast mantras trait – in fact, if you’re using MoP for healing it actually reduces your healing output (since you have to cast it one more time before you can channel it again for the heal).

I’d suggest dropping 20 points from Domination and instead going 10/30/0/30/0 – picking up Blade Training, Empowering Mantras (since you have mantras anyway, why not use them for bonus DPS as well? 8% more damage is nothing to sneeze at) and Warden’s Feedback (traited focus is essential in dungeons and fractals).

Skills-wise, I’ll also suggest swapping the signet of illusions for Inspiration (more boon-sharing), or Feedback/NullField/third mantra for more DPS depending on your situation. Assuming the rumored patch notes are accurate, the stability and condi removal mantras will affect allies too in the next patch, making them very strong options.

Incidentally, this ends up being the same trait allocation as my own current build, I just use Duelist’s Discipline and Glamor cooldowns instead of the mantra-related traits. (or Medic’s Feedback, love that trait.)

Lockdown is clearly useless in PvE, the point of lockdown builds would be to use them in WvW and sPvP against other players, who use skills constantly and have no Defiant..

The explanation for this is that all conditions tick on the same instant, regardless of when they were applied. So if you have a burn with 1.5 second duration, and you just apply it by itself, it’ll only tick once. However, say you have a bleed already on which is about to tick in 0.2 seconds and you apply the same burn, it’ll tick once (after 0.2 seconds), and then again (after 1.2 seconds).

This works out so that if you assume condition application time is independent of your previous stacks, “on average” a 1.5 duration condition will tick once half the time, and twice half the time. Not really sure how viable that assumption is, and also the second tick will never happen if it’s the only condition you’re applying, but still additional condition duration isn’t a complete waste even if you don’t cross the next second threshold.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

GS is probably the worst weapon you can use for open-world PvE. Mobs will aggro onto you and go to you immediately, meaning 99% of the time you will be attacking from melee range and dealing virtually no damage. If you want a ranged weapon with an AOE phantasm, use scepter/focus. Alternately, run a shatter build with staff and sw/sw for clearing trash mobs fast.

GS is far from the worst mesmer weapon, I really don’t see how you can seriously propose the scepter as an alternative.

1. If you already have Sword/Focus as your main set, Zerker is your only other AoE phantasm — and your own numbers from the other thread show its unbuffed DPS to be on par with the Duelist (even if it usually misses one of its ticks).
2. Duelist and Swordsman are both overkill for trash, one single mob is hardly ever worth stopping sword auto for the summon delay.
3. Greatsword “pseudo-cleaves” in a line, and hits far more frequently than scepter for crit effects like Sigil of Fire (more AoE tagging for events).
4. You only need to initiate with it — summon zerker, cast mirror blade for a nice 6 might while gap closing, and then switch to S/F for warden and melee cleave.
5. The point of having a ranged swap is to be able to safely stay far away if necessary while still doing reasonable damage. Scepter dps is utter kitten from max range.

If you’re fighting a champ or something, for sure switch to SP/SS and go to town. Most other cases, GS/SF wins.

Let’s clarify things here:
Daze = prevents someone from using skills.
Stun = prevents someone from using skills or moving.
Interrupt = interrupt someone WHILE they are casting a skill (locks out that particular skill for 5 seconds).

Note that you can interrupt people without either dazing or stunning them using various other control skills (push/pull/blowout etc.). And dazing or stunning can both either cause or not cause an interrupt depending on whether your target was using a skill at the time.

Now the traits:
Domination 5-trait “Illusion of Vulnerability” adds 3 stacks of vuln when you interrupt
Domination Adept trait “Halting Strike” adds damage when you interrupt.
Domination 15-trait “Dazzling” adds 5 stacks of vuln when you daze (interrupt not required — also, this works on bosses even if the daze itself has no effect due to Defiant)
Domination Grandmaster trait “Confounding Suggestions” adds 1 sec stun to half your dazes, as Alissah said. Interrupt or not doesn’t matter.
Chaos Grandmaster trait “Chaotic Interruption” adds immobilize to interrupts -- from daze or any other effect.

Most people go 25 Illusions for Compounding Power, phantasm recharge, and Illusionist’s Celerity – all told, faster summoned+faster attacking phantasms (although the Swordsman doesn’t really benefit), and 9% more personal damage as well. DPS-wise it’s supposed to be about equal to other options (haven’t tested myself, though) .

I personally run 10/30/0/30/0 usually, so I can have all the phantasm damage traits while also traiting both sword and pistol, and so I can swap to Deceptive Evasion when I hop into WvW without having to re-trait. Thinking of switching to 0/20/0/25/25 though because having more wardens on a shorter cycle is really useful for fractals, and I’m doing a lot more of that than WvW these days.

My 30-point trait in Inspiration goes to Shattered Conditions – I know it’s gotten bad press but I personally find it pretty useful, and consistent enough if you know how it works.

I’ll second the greatsword, sword+focus suggestion. You can use the focus pull to group things up inside your Warden’s AoE — cast curtain against a rock/tree/other obstruction, start casting warden on your target, and hit 4 again to pull everything together just as the warden spawns on top of them. Follow up with an Illusionary Leap and Swap into the middle of the group to keep them crippled/immobilized inside the warden, and hit Blurred Frenzy then Mind Wrack (as soon as the warden’s done spinning) to finish them all off.

Adding a Sigil of Fire to the GS helps a ton too, because the fire blasts proc very often on its triple-attack, and tags everything in the vicinity of your target.

The low damage issue may be down to gear and trait build — how are you set up?

They should rename the trait to “Wastrel’s Reward”.

Nice guide! +1
Minor note you could add to the weapons section – iSwordsman’s leaps are finishers, so jumping through ethereal fields gets him pretty high uptime on Chaos Armor which can help his survivability a fair amount too.
Also, might be nice to have a section detailing the common useful utility skills to have on your bar, and situations where they’re useful.

Basically just repeating what colesy and Bumbler have already said here…
For sure move the 5 from Chaos into Illusions – you can already have perma-regen just by standing near a phantasm; and Celerity reduces cooldowns on so many skills it’s not even funny (Decoy, Leap, Duelist, Warden).
Don’t use Sentinel or PTV jewels – jewels are THE best place to get crit-dmg from (you only trade 5 stat points for each % of crit) so if you really DO want defensive stats get it from your armor instead (using Knight’s head, chest, legs is the common optimized swap).
Don’t mix on-crit with on-swap sigils – SPECIALLY Battle since you want to be swapping on every cd with those to keep 6 might up. All sigils share icd, so your crit sigil will never proc. Even worse, if the strength sigil does proc in the last second before you switch, the OTHER battle sigil won’t work when you swap weapons since the Strength cooldown (2 seconds) will still be active. Two battle is fine, I would put a Perception sigil on the focus (or a third offhand) to build stacks – since focus does more AoE, I tend to get more trash kills faster on it – and put Accuracy on the pistol.
Runes wise, the 6th bonus from Strength (5% dmg while under Might) is reportedly bugged, so Scholar or Ruby Orbs would be better for overall damage. For WvW I like Hoelbrak too – they’re like a more damage-oriented version of Melandru (still get condi reduction, but with Power and Might duration instead of toughness). They’ll work well with your Battle sigils too.
Traits and skills – I’d switch the 20% phantasm HP for glamor cd reduction, more frequent Feedback and Null Fields rock, and with Celerity you’ll be able to summon replacement phants VERY often anyway. I personally often use Medic’s Feedback in that slot, it’s great for helping people up safely.
In dungeons you’ll want to have Signet of Inspiration on unless your teammates are good at capping might & fury themselves – you can basically double the boon output on the team.

I would love the extra duration on Medic’s Feedback. It’s already on my bar nearly all the time when I’m doing dungeons/fractals with friends, can’t count how many times I’ve prevented a wipe by blinking to a downed ally and popping a feedback bubble while I rez.
Or just tapping F on the downed NPC in dungeons to get a couple of seconds of bubble at no cost. I think I get more overall feedback duration from that trait than from having the actual skill on my bar — usually only ever swap it out for Glamor cd reduction when I need portal or Null Field more often.

This sounds like fun!
IGN: Fiona Oberyn
Server: Gate of Madness (NA)
Role: Scholar
Play: Fractals(40+)/Dungeons/some WvW/very little sPvP
Time: 8pm onwards EST

Scepter 2 kills the orb, so does staff symbol. 900 and 1200 range.

5-signet is easymode, but also super boring since you don’t actually use any of your skills. It’s also not nearly as OP as it used to be since they made the bonus precision scale. I think you might have more fun if you added some banners, shouts, physical skills in and actually used them..

For guard, grabbing 15 in Radiance so you can spam F1 is super fun; 5 in Virtues is useful for the boons, and shout cooldowns from the Honor line are always useful. Weapons-wise, the greatsword rocks, sword/focus is amazing damage, and staff is good for running around fast and tagging stuff with event chain zergs (harathi etc.). I have a lot of fun casting the GS leap and hitting Judge’s Intervention halfway through it to teleport to a target up to 1800 units away, while doing AoE damage/blind/burn. Follow up with dropping the symbol and then whirling everything to death. You can pre-load the focus 5 before doing this for an even bigger burst.

+1, I was just coming here to post this suggestion myself.
Now that everyone has an incentive to salvage greens instead of selling them all, we REALLY need that confirm dialog to go away.