Mesmer: Getting Maximum Confusion from Illusions

This is a great build for the Mesmer in Guild Wars 2. It allows you to gain the the upper hand by confusing the hell out of the enemy. As you might have guessed from the title, we will do this by using illusions but we also added some things to make this build a lot more deceptive. The objective of this build is to get the maximum amount of illusions and use our traits to get some extra benefits from them. This will not only keep the enemy confused it will also allow you to do more damage by having more illusions to shatter.

Updated: 8/17/12

Weapon Set

The scepter and torch will make for a great weapon set since it provides the most illusions. The scepter will give you your first three abilities which all provide clones, confusion or blindness. This is going to be your main rotation you will be using most of the time and your first two skills are important since they can both summon a clone. The torch provides your other 2 abilities from the weapon set and they are very useful for avoiding damage and applying it as well. This adds a lot of trickery to this Mesmer build if you use it correctly. The first skill is The Prestige which makes you disappear into a cloud of smoke and blind nearby foes for 5 seconds.

Heal Skill

Since we are focusing on illusions in this build we can use a heal skill that benefits from that. In this case we are going to pick up Ether Feast which gives an extra boost to healing for each active illusion.

Utility Skills

Our utilities will specifically focus on illusions. The first utility is Mirror Images which is very useful since it has the shortest cooldown and actually summons 2 clones as well. Next utility pick up Phantasmal Defender which only summons one illusion but it takes half of your damage so use this when you need some shielding. For the last utility we will use Decoy which gives us stealth and summons an illusion.

Elite Skill

To finish off our action bar we will choose Mass Invisibility because nothing is more confusing then making you and your buddies disappear. Plus it only has a 90 second cooldown. Pretty awesome right? We are now left with the ability to summon 7 illusions, stealth 3 times and inflict 2 conditions of Confusion and Blindness each. Later on we will make it so Blindness also causes Confusion. So we actually will end up having 4 Confusion conditions and 2 Blindness, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Traits Breakdown

Now on to the fun stuff, picking the traits that really make this Mesmer build stand out from the crowd. We are going to focus on four trait lines and none of them will be maxed out which is really distinct in this build. Since we have so many illusions (and more to come) we focused on increasing the utilization we get from them. Many of the Mesmer’s traits give a bonus to illusions when they die so you may notice a trend in our choices. The four trait lines we are going to use are Domination, Dueling, Chaos and Illusions.

Let’s get started with the Domination trait line. We are only spending ten points here to pick up Crippling Dissipation which applies cripple to nearby enemy when your clones are killed. Chaos is another trait line that we are only spending ten points in which has a similar role in this build. Here you want to pick up Debilitating Dissipation which applies a random condition each time your clone is killed. The best part about this is it happens automatically on the death of an illusion, letting you focus on more important things. That will do it for the Domination and Chaos trait line.

Next lets focus on the Dueling trait line since it will provide more illusions for our disposal. The first trait you are going to pick up is Desperate Decoy which cloaks you and automatically produces a clone when your health reaches 25%.  Next you are going to pick up Sharper Images which causes your illusions to inflict bleeding on a critical hit making them much more productive for damage. By the time you pick up this trait you will have automatically picked up Deceptive Evasion which creates a clone at your current position when you dodge. We are going to spend five more points in this trait line which will automatically give us Confusing Combatants. This causes two seconds of confusion when a clone is killed which will be happening often.

Now when a clone is killed they will apply cripple, confusion and other random conditions to nearby enemies making them a vital part of this Mesmer build. But we aren’t finished yet. We still have 25 trait points that we will spend in the Illusions trait line of course!

The first trait you want to pick up in Illusions is Master of Misdirection When getting this you will automatically pick up the previous trait Illusionists Celerity which reduces the cool down on illusion summoning skills by 20%. Next we are going to pick up Blinding Befuddlement which causes confusion when you blind an enemy. This is very important since we already have abilities that cause Blindness and after picking up some traits earlier our clones have the ability to cause this as well. The last five points will be spent on Shattered Strength which causes shattered illusions to give us a Might boon increasing our damage output.

Wrap Up

That wraps up our build on how to maximize your illusions potential. When you are playing this build try to keep up as many illusions as possible since they provide an almost never ending amount of utility. Once you have 3 illusions out you can use your basic mechanic (f keys) to shatter them. Shattering is an exclusive ability to mesmers. Shattering destroys all illusions and applies a secondary effect and is a great way to boost your damage. Remember to use your stealth and other conditions wisely to keep enemies off balance and add more deception to this build. Remember that you can only have three illusions out at one time but this build will be your best shot at keeping illusions out at all times. If you have any questions or suggestions for this theory let us know in the comments. Enjoy trying this role and stay tuned for more.

NOTE: After receiving some feedback I just want to clarify something for people who may be unfamiliar or just confused with the Mesmer. All Clones and Phantasms are Illusions, but Clones are not Phantasms or vice versa. Clones are duplicates of the player, including name. Phantasms are their own illusions and do not look like the player.

 

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