Spellbreaker - Defense Boonbreaker

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage, Control and Boon removal

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on September 16, 2024 and is up to date for the December 10, 2024 patch.

Overview

A duelist Dagger/Hammer Spellbreaker PvP build that focuses on CC and boon removal with plenty of high damage finishers to take advantage of stunned and boonless enemies.

Skill Bar

Hammer

Dagger/Shield

Utility

Slot Changes

Utility

• Endure Pain over Balanced Stance - both of these skills can be used to mitigate strike damage and break stuns. Balanced Stance is a bit weaker as a damage mitigation tool but helps way more against CC.

• Berserker Stance over Bull's Charge - with this you can get some Resistance without having to sacrifice Hammer damage to take Resilient Roll. This boon is especially useful against opponents that rely on Blind and Weakness to survive.

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Specializations

Variants

• Resilient Roll and Cleansing Ire could help you deal with conditions better, but it's going to cost you some damage and Stability access.

Variants

• Slow Counter is also a viable option especially with Merciless Hammer on Defense which makes the adrenaline gain from Loss Aversion less relevant.

Equipment

Hammer

Sigil

Sigil

Dagger

Shield

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Runes

• Rune of Holosmith - less tanky rune with higher crit chance.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Full Counter (FC) recharges your Burst skills Earthshaker and Breaching Strike. Always try to use it when you can refresh their duration, except if you're under heavy pressure in which case you can use FC purely for defensive means.

• Always try to make sure Full Counter goes off: briefly move into hostile AoE spells, tank Mesmer clones or Ranger pets, etc.

• FC is both one of the best defensive and offensive skill in the build as it blocks, evades, grants Stability, and performs an unblockable AoE CC attack when triggered.

• Both burst skills and Full Counter cost adrenaline. If you only need a little more until you can use them then Versatile Rage can get you there.

General

• Fast Hands reduces the CD of weapon swapping to 5 seconds, which keeps gameplay rather fast paced with minimal downtime. As a result you won't be auto attacking much unless you're cleaving a downed enemy.

• Despite its range Bull's Charge is best used in melee to make it harder to react to.

• CCing a target removes a boon and deals damage/grants adrenaline via Loss Aversion.

• Versatile Rage grants you half a bar of adrenaline on weapon swap. This might not seem like a lot, but it's quite useful especially in situations where you're under pressure and don't have the adrenaline to activate Full Counter. Instead of scrambling to build some a adrenaline a simple weapon swap could get you there.

• Movement skills remove Immobilize from you. List of movement skills in the build:
  • Dagger/Shield: Breaching Strike, Aura Slicer and Shield Bash.
  • Hammer: Earthshaker
  • Rampage: Kick (Rampage), Dash, and Seismic Leap.
  • Utility: Bull's Charge

Damage

• Both sets are capable of doing a lot of damage, especially with the proper setup.

• When it comes to bursts Hammer is all about landing Fierce Blow on CC'd foes for extra damage.

• Hammer Shock is the only true ranged skill on this set (not counting Earthshaker which is a melee leap). The Cripple makes it easier to catch up to fleeing targets so it has some value other than just doing great damage.

• Breaching Strike (BS) deals significantly more damage against boonless targets, Hammer and its Dispelling Force synergy plays an important part in setting up this skill.

• While Breaching Strike itself removes boons, the bonus damage is calculated before the boon removal, which means if the target has any boons when this skill lands you're not getting the damage increase, even if Breaching Strike removes all of their remaining boons.

• Going BS ⇒ Full Counter ⇒ second BS increases the chance of getting the bonus damage on the second Breaching Strike and also makes good use of Sigil of Intelligence.

• The two best skills for the Sigil of Intelligence proc are Breaching Strike and Aura Slicer.

• No Escape procs an Immobilize whenever you stun or daze a target. This is more relevant on the daze, as dazed targets could still move freely if it wasn't for this trait.
  • No Escape turns Full Counter into a great setup tool for burst chains, allowing you to immediately go on the offense even if you were being pressured. Breaching Strike and Earthshaker are both great followups for the short immob.

• Landing any Burst skill can chain enemies to you via Magebane Tether. While active the tether passively stacks Might for you, increasing your damage while also preventing enemies from entering Stealth. If either of you goes past a certain range the tether breaks but the target gets pulled to you, which makes it a rather powerful CC tool as well.

Conditon cleansing & general survival

• Brawler's Recovery provides a steady stream of cleansing in combat to help manage condition levels before having to blow CDs.

• Mending cleanses 5 conditions and should be used pretty much on CD, assuming you're missing a large chunk of health or need to deal with conditions.

• "Shake It Off!" (SIO) is both a stun break and a source of condition removal for you and your team.

• Bull's Charge is great if you want to run away from pressure as it can build quite the gap while providing an evade frame.

• Even Earthshaker could be used defensively as a ground targeted escape tool. A mobility skill is never a bad thing to have for kiting, and with this you could even jump over gaps in the terrain, forcing some specs to go around or blow CDs.

Rampage

• Rampage is what you use when you quickly want to burst/CC a target, or desperately need mobility to either chase down someone, or run away from a fight.

• CC skills barely do any damage anymore, most of the damage in this form comes from autoattacks and Dash.

• Throw Boulder is a popular opener, allowing you to CC targets from range and then either follow up with Dash for burst damage or Seismic Leap to keep the CC chain rolling.

Top Streamers

• Twitch: Boyce

• Twitch: Keyba

Related Builds

• Spellbreaker - GS/Dagger Duelist - Greatsword version.