Power Virtuoso

September 2024

Introduction

Power Virtuoso is a DPS roamer that brings oppressive ranged spike damage and cleave, decent sustain, and AOE for the team.

Note: Virtuoso Sword replaces Illusionary Leap with Blade Leap, a mobility skill similar to Mirage Thrust.

Build Fundamentals

Virtuoso relies on spamming damage with Bladesong Harmony and the newly added Spear. Your game plan as a Virtuoso is to unload so much damage that your opponent runs out of defensive skills before you run out of damage. You can 100-0 almost any class in the game (including bunkers) with a well timed burst. Additionally, Virtuoso‘s mechanics make it so even when pressured or dying it is always dangerous. Remember Signet of Illusions resets the cooldown of every shatter.

Tip: Infinite Forge restored blades when you use a fully stacked Bladesong ability.

Build Specifics

This version of Power Virtuoso drops Psychic Riposte, the conventional choice for Virt in competitive modes, for Infinite Forge. Infinite Forge was buffed recently to improve its blade generation as well as giving it a flat 10% damage modifier on Blade attacks. Virtuoso relies on stacking damage modifiers to get massive critical hits on your Bladesongs. Mental Anguish (10% to 20%), Superiority Complex(up to 25%), Deadly Blades (5%), and Infinite Forge (10%) all stack to give you incredible dps if you can free cast in teamfights and weave in and out of to avoid getting locked down and focused.
With Janthir Wilds we have access to Spear. Mind the Gap swings in a circle around you. Hitting with the outer range of the skill is mandatory. It will increase the damage and give you [Effect Clarity] which will boost every other skill on spear. It causes Phantasmal Lancer to summon a 2nd phantasm, basically doubling the damage of this skill and gives a stun to Mental Collapse.

Tip: Mental Collapse also resets Mind the Gap cooldown.

Defensive

Like most power Mesmer builds, Virtuoso has relatively low self sustain and healing. Most of your defensive utility comes from Imaginary Inversion, Blurred Frenzy, Distortion, and Blade Renewal. In other words, Mesmer relies on not getting hit. Ether Feast was recently buffed and is arguably one of the best heal skills in the game when used on Virtuoso. Since it removes conditions and heals more for each active clone (or blade), you can heal with 5 blades to guarantee an 8.8k heal and 6 conditions removed. The fact that you don’t have to worry about  your clones dying is what gives this skill so much consistent value on Virtuoso. You also have good uptime to either engage or disengage as required.

Tip: Mass Invisibility can also serve as an excellent Revive utility since you can stealth your downed ally and resurrect them before the other team notices.

Alternatives

If you’re playing into teams with heavy reflect uptime from skills like Magnetic Aura or Feedback, consider taking Psychic Riposte for the Bladesongs.