October 2024

Sidenode Virtuoso

Virtuoso is a sidenoder heavily based on projectiles. As mesmer it has access to a potentially game-breaking elite: Signet of Humility. Virtuoso doesn’t have clones, instead, it stores up to 5 blades. Every core Mesmer skill that would usually give you a clone now gives you a blade, you also have access to Psychic Riposte, which is your main way to build up blades. Blocking not only stocks up 3 blades but gives you via Duelist's Reversal, which creates very interesting counterplays. Your main sources of damage are your Shatters (Bladesongs) Bladesong Sorrow and Bladesong Harmony, which you’ll want to use with a high amount of Blades to deal as much damage as possible. When you can’t use Bladesongs, cycle through your weapon skills. On Scepter, you should spam Illusionary Counter, if you won’t proc the block effect of it,…

Power Bladesworn

Power Bladesworn is a high burst DPS build with large amounts of cleave for dealing with adds and excels in short phases. The build requires good knowledge of positioning in encounters because you cannot move during Dragon Trigger. Power Bladesworn builds Flow by being in combat and using Flow Stabilizer, which is used to enter Dragon Trigger. DT then converts Flow into charges. Once you gain 10 charges, use Dragon Slash—Force. Using any ammo skills increases damage for the next Dragon Trigger due to the trait Fierce as Fire. The build gains a massive damage increase from Overcharged Cartridges. This utility buffs the damage of Dragon Slash—Force, Dragon's Roar, and Gunsaber skills. Overcharged Cartridges should always be activated before using Dragon's Roar and entering Dragon Trigger. Use Flicker Step during Dragon Trigger to activate the buff from Relic of Peitha…

Healbreaker

Healbreaker is a variation of support warrior that combines instantcast healing from Vigorous Shouts with the utility of the Spellbreaker profession. Healbreaker is overshadowed by Support Chrono and Support Guardian in the current meta, but it provides unique advantages and buffs that can make it situationally useful. Your main source of healing comes from Vigorous Shouts , which is an instant heal on each shout use. Healbreaker has access to four shouts – "For Great Justice!" , "On My Mark!" , and "Shake It Off!" are all instant cast, while "To the Limit!" has a cast time. Staff gives you access to great healing and cleanse: Valiant Leap, Line Breaker, Defiant Roar, and Path to Victory all grant healing and boons to allies. In teamfights, you can engage with Valiant Leap and Path to Victory, reset it with Full Counter, and…

Condition Specter

Condition Specter is a powerful DPS build that offers high survivability and solid damage from mid-range via large amounts of and . Specter can provide a lot of barrier and Crowd Control (CC) without sacrificing anything from its base kit. Deal damage to enemies with skills in Enter Shadow Shroud. Use Twilight Combo on Scepter/Dagger as much as possible to deplete initiative and apply more conditions. Fill with Auto-attack chains. Use Spider Venom and Skale Venom off-cooldown as long as there are allies nearby to scale your damage. When you are ready to Enter Shadow Shroud, make sure your initiative is as low as possible. Swap weapons, Enter Shadow Shroud, and Exit Shadow Shroud regularly to proc Superior Sigil of Doom and Quick Pockets. Use Siphon to gain more Shadow Force while on Scepter/Dagger. If possible, place Prepare Thousand Needles…

Curses Harbinger

Curses Harbinger is a powerful teamfight build centered around boon corruption and massive conditions damage and coverage. Harbinger fills a damage role in a team and pairs well with a support guard or tempest as it can be vulnerable to getting focused. The majority of your damage comes from Dark Barrage and your auto attack Tainted Bolts  in Harbinger shroud. Always make sure you are auto attacking in shroud to get maximum value from your quickness uptime and the damage output. Having high can improve your skills. Devouring Cut will cost you 5 blight for 5 and extra damage. Same for Voracious Arc but for a cost of 10 . Elixir of Ambition is a press to win button, it gives you every boon of the game and applies every condi to each enemy you hit. You want to, hit…

Condition Specter

Condition Specter is a safe roaming build that has the luxury of also being able to duel a lot of classes, so you could call it a very mobile sidenoder. Specter is slow and less stealthy compared to other thief variants. Infiltrator's Strike will help you move from fight to fight, but it won’t help if you try to go for a decap. Most of your mobility comes from wells and Shadowstep, which is also your only stunbreak, therefore try to use it with care. This build is really straightforward when it comes to dealing damage. Most of it comes from and . Measured Shot->Endless Night is your hardest-hitting ability. It has high base power damage and really good condition application, you want to spam it to get the most damage done possible. Siphon also brings good pressure, applying and…

Support Tempest

Tempests can provide good support with good condition removal, passive healing, and solid burst healing. It also brings some unique utility via auras that buff allies, both defensively and offensively. For the Arcane variant, check the alternatives at the bottom. This build allows you to be the main source of healing and cleansing in your party by transmuting auras and using shouts, it has strong passive and burst healing from multiple sources, for example Transmute Frost, Water Attunement, Overload Water, as well as from granting allies auras via Elemental Bastion and finally Soothing Mist granted by the trait Soothing Mist. Additional cleanse is provided by using weapon skills, transmuting auras via Smothering Auras, and using shouts. This build has huge trait synergy with auras. Applying an aura to an ally will heal them through Elemental Bastion, and grant them and via Invigorating…

Power Willbender

Power Willbender is a roamer that excels at skirmishing, outnumbering, sticking to and bursting targets given its high mobility and damage and has excellent tools to stay alive. Our main role is to generate as many kills as possible in teamfights and outnumbers. With willbender our virtues are now all movement skills, making us very mobile. Use your virtues procs and high damage to run down enemies that cannot afford to trade blows with you. Use Flowing Resolve to evade attacks. Use Judge's Intervention right next to a moment you’re going to unleash a burst like Symbol of Luminance into Gleaming Disc. Use Whirling Wrath inside the hitbox of an enemy to deal extra damage. Use multi hit skills like Solar Storm, Whirling Light or Executioner's Calling and symbols to proc Flowing Resolve and Crashing Courage as often as possible.…

Longbow Untamed

Untamed is a bruiser-style build that takes advantage of ranged damage combined with a melee oneshot and good area pressure. Untamed excels in ranked games due to its versatility and flexibility as a profession. An important note about Untamed: It’s is one of the two classes in the game that has an F6 and F7. Binding these to something that you can easily reach so you won’t have to skill-click in a fight. Untamed is Arenanet’s attempt to take the AI component out of Ranger builds by giving you manual control over all of your pet’s actions. This is great if you’re familiar with Ranger since your pet won’t try to cast random auto attacks when you need a CC, but it also means Untamed can’t get carried by random pet abilities. It is extremely important to know how each…

Mercy Deadeye

Power Deadeye is a strong roamer that takes advantage of Shadow Gust and Be Quick or Be Killed to lock down and eliminate targets quickly. Deadeye benefits from the baked in mobility of any thief spec, however is is vulnerable to focus and gets countered by projectile block from builds like Tempest or Catalyst. As a roamer, Deadeye focuses on moving around the map and quickly getting kills. In order to do this, you need to lock down and eliminate your target as quickly as possible. Deadeye relies on a mechanic called malice to do damage. Whenever you mark a target, hitting them with an ability will generate stacks of malice. At maximum malice, your stolen skills will give you and Malicious Death's Judgment will do 75% more damage. Try to build malice as quickly as possible after marking a…

Heal Firebrand

Firebrands play a vital role, they serve as the backbone of the squad, bolstering allies to keep them healthy via sources of damage mitigation, stun breaks, boons and healing. The most fundamental boon you will be providing is . The build excels as a boon support with both defensive and offensive capabilities, it has good healing output, great burst cleansing, stun breaks for allies and a substantial number of boons. The Guardian’s Virtues are transformed into Tomes. When activated, the Tome replaces your weapon abilities with potent offensive or defensive skills. Not every skill within each book is worth using due to page costs, so knowing each tome skill is critical in managing pages and being effective. Tome of Justice is your offensive Tome. As a support Firebrand, this tome is primarily used for the pull from Chapter 3: Heated…

Power Alacrity Mechanist

Power Alacrity Mechanist is a versatile build, providing permanent and 25 stacks of when paired with any Quickness Build. This build can choose from several different weapon variants (see top of page) – Sword and Pistol provides consistent melee damage along with a small amount of CC. is purely generated by your Mech. This means that you have to make sure that your Mech is always at least within 600 range of your party and at least within 360 range when you use Barrier Burst. While this will happen naturally in most encounters you should still keep an eye on your Mech’s position, especially on bosses with very large hitboxes. generated by your Mech attacking enemies thanks to Mech Arms: High-Impact Drivers and Barrier Burst. This sounds more complicated than it actually is – all you need to do is…

Condition Alacrity Renegade

Condition Alacrity Renegade is a long-standing popular build that can provide permanent to the party while also having high condi DPS and good crowd control abilities. The build is also capable of providing some to the party for a slight damage loss by utilizing Heroic Command and the blast finishers from Echoing Eruption on top of the fire field from Searing Fissure. The build also has access to important utility skills such as Breakrazor's Bastion for some group heals and Banish Enchantment for boon removal. You will provide through Orders from Above combined with Righteous Rebel. Upkeeping is as easy as pressing Orders from Above off-cooldown. The rotation is based on Charged Mists granting you 25 extra Energy when you swap stances. Always try to utilize this effect to maintain the overall rotation. More than other builds, Condi Alacrity Renegade…

Heal Alacrity Tempest

Heal Alacrity Tempest provides high amounts of sustained healing and permanent , , , , , and 25 stacks of . This build also has access to many useful utilities, including boon extension (thanks to Sand Squall), ample condition cleanses, projectile reflection, and a counter to one-shot attacks ("Rebound!"). The core gameplay of this build involves rotating between Fire Attunement and Earth Attunement to cast Overload Fire and Overload Earth respectively, while quickly passing through Water Attunement and Air Attunement to use healing and utility as needed. While casting the Core Loop, use "Flash-Freeze!" and "Aftershock!" off-cooldown. Save "Aftershock!" if you need to provide projectile reflection with Magnetic Aura or "Flash-Freeze!" to mitigate incoming spike damage with Frost Aura. Tempest also has on-demand  from "Eye of the Storm!" and from "Aftershock!". (Note that you will typically use "Aftershock!" off-cooldown to…

Condition Mechanist

Condition Spear Mechanist is a damage build that provides consistent melee damage. This build can also optionally use Pistol/Pistol, with both a 1-kit and 2-kit variation – these variants can be found at the top of the page. For the kit-less low intensity version of this build, check the alternatives section at the bottom. Spear has a mechanic called Focused. It is a debuff applied to enemies when using Conduit Surge and makes your Spear skills inflict additional conditions or have alternate effects. It is very important to always keep the debuff on the target you are fighting, and you can refresh the duration by finishing an autoattack chain or using Conduit Surge again. You can track your Focused buff with Focusing on your buff bar, but you will have to pay attention to which target you are hitting. If…

Power Quickness Scrapper

Power Quickness Scrapper is not only a great source of and DPS, but it provides high utility and CC with skills such as Elite Mortar Kit, Thunderclap, Medic Gyro, and more. In addition, due to the trait Impact Savant, as long as you are doing damage to something you will almost NEVER die! Scrapper also has great access to and applies a large amount of . Power Quickness Scrapper generates quickness for your subgroup by blasting or leaping through combo fields! Your key combo finishers are Rocket Charge, Throw Mine and Function Gyro! Function Gyro creates and blasts its own combo field but for your other key abilities make sure to use them in a combo field or you won’t generate any quickness! Fortunately, there will usually be a large spam of combo fields during a squad encounter so this…

Power Sword Holosmith

Power Sword Holosmith offers high damage output, self sustain and high encounter adaptability through Heat management. Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit is the defining trait of this build. It increases the maximum Heat capacity to 150 which increases the damage modifier from Laser's Edge by 7.5% to 22.5%. It also drains Heat while not being engaged in Photon Forge. Your goal is to keep your Heat high (99-150%) while not Overheating. A huge advantage of Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit is the adaptability you gain through managing your Heat: being able to let your Heat drop to use Holographic Shockwave before a CC happens or resetting your burst during downtime. Cast your Toolbelt skills inside Photon Forge or use them off-cooldown if they are instant cast like Surprise Shot. Optimally you want to use Blade Burst above 100% Heat and if there…

Power Quickness Catalyst

Power Quickness Catalyst is a fast-paced support providing , as well as a lot of other boons such as , , and a lot of . This build can be seen as an aggressive boon build with limited supportive utilities compared to Power Quickness Chronomancer or Power Quickness Scrapper. NOTE: Elemental Empowerment will grant you bonus stats, including Toughness, which can make you the tank with up to 100 extra Toughness. Each Sphere will grant a different set of boons, but all of them apply thanks to Spectacular Sphere. Deploy Jade Sphere grants . Deploy Jade Sphere grants . Deploy Jade Sphere grants . Deploy Jade Sphere grants . The first thing to do when entering any Attunement is to use Hammer 3 and Deploy Jade Sphere. You should use Grand Finale with all the orbs at the end of the…

Power Catalyst

Heal Alacrity Mechanist

Heal Alacrity Mechanist is a defensive support that provides permanent , , , , , and 25 stacks of  to a subgroup. This build provides sustained generation and good healing output. Use Energizing Slam off-cooldown to generate , , and for your group. Use Elixir Gun's Acid Bomb and Super Elixir, and Elite Mortar Kit's Elixir Shell off-cooldown to provide and healing. The Mech applies boons around itself: Control its positioning to be near the group at all times. Mech Boon Application: Use Barrier Burst off-cooldown for , , and . Use Barrier Signet off-cooldown to provide and . Make sure not to overlap Barrier Signet and Barrier Burst, or you will waste some alacrity application. Crisis Zone provides , , , . Unless you need it for extra , save this ability for certain situations when you need on-demand , ,…