Spellbreaker - Defense Spearbreaker
The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great
Focused on: Strike damage and Sustain
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Difficulty:
Easy
This build was last updated on October 12, 2024 and is up to date for the August 20, 2024 patch.
Overview
A high sustain Power Spellbreaker duelist build for PvP using the recently introduced Spear.
Skill Bar
Spear
Staff
Utility
Skill Variants
Heal
- over - more consistent skill but harder to use under pressure due to the long cast time.
Utility
For the optional slot:
- Alacrity uptime from the relic. - the passive endurance regen not only gives you higher sustain, but also better
- - a more traditional setup with good defense and offense as well as some mobility.
- - great anti-CC tool but it has to be used proactively, as it doesn't break stun for the user.
- - could act as a second healing skill with barrier sharing and defensive boons.
Weapons
- Dagger/Shield over Staff - better damage, lower survivability. Use Sigil of Intelligence/Savagery on the Dagger set and Sigil of Energy/Cleansing on Spear.
Template Code
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Specializations
Variants
- lowers your damage but makes you much more durable in condition matchups. Take this trait if you're having trouble dealing with condi builds in your games. It's also a more forgiving option in general.
Equipment
Spear
Sigil
Sigil
Staff
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic
Equipment Variants
Sigils
- over - better cleansing.
Amulets
- - better healing, especially on Staff.
Usage
Elite specialization basics
- (FC) recharges your Burst skills and . 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, cast it in the middle of an enemy's attack animation, 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 with a weapon swap can get you there.
General
- Settings: disable auto targeting, otherwise it'd be impossible to use skills like settings guide. for disengaging. For more tips check out our
- Playstyle: this build is all about weaving hard hitting skills into chains of block and evade frames while tethering yourself to the target with as often as possible. The combos aren't set in stone, rather you'll need to adapt based on what CDs are available. Minimize melee contact whenever you can't outdamage your opponent, dodge/block/evade as many things as possible, and spike targets when an opening shows.
- Any burst skill can proc , including .
- Staff is your defensive set, the only truly dangerous ability with good damage here is .
- While Spear is the more offensive set, it's also fairly high on sustain thanks to multiple evade frames and CC skills.
- 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 is best used in melee to make it harder to react to.
- CCing a target removes a boon and deals damage/grants adrenaline via .
- All movement skills remove the Immobilized condition - list of movement skills in the build:
- Staff: and .
- Spear: .
- Rampage: , , and .
- Utility:
Survival
- Almost every single Staff skill has some healing attached to it.
- Spear is great at evading attacks. ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ gives you 4 evade frames in a row while doing damage and CC.
- Condi cleansing isn't great, mostly limited to burst skills cleansing 1 condition if they hit. Past that you have to rely on bigger CDs like or .
- Burst skills cleanse conditions whenever they strike thanks to
- Getting Blinded could make your Burst skill miss and thus the condition cleansing won't happen which is rather awkward. Dodge rolling however grants Resistance via which renders Blind ineffective, increasing the chance of a successful Cleansing Ire proc.
.
- isn't just an anti-CC skill, it also mitigates direct damage by giving you immunity to critical hits.
- Try not to overlap it with , as the damage reduction from DS can result in less healing, and overlapping 2 damage mitigation tools in general is just a waste of CDs. Granted you can't actually use Defiant Stance while stunned, so if Balanced Stance is your only available stunbreak then using both is better than dying.
can bail you out against any type of damage you're facing, but it's more of a last resort option.
- provides a steady stream of healing as long as you're landing those Burst skills (F1-F2).
- (SIO) is both a stunbreak and a source of condition removal for you and your team.
- Kite, a LOT. You want to run out of harm's way using mobility skills as much as possible before resorting to major defensive CDs.
- is great if you want to run away from pressure as it can build quite the gap while providing an evade frame.
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. Bonus points if you manage to attach just before using your elite.
- CC skills barely do any damage anymore, most of the damage in this form comes from autoattacks and .
- is a popular opener, allowing you to CC targets from range and then either follow up with for burst damage or to keep the CC chain rolling.
Related Builds
- Spellbreaker - Spearbreaker Roamer - WvW version of the build.
Ratings
As predicted, relic of rivers, spear, and spellbreaker were nerfed as a whole, pity since sb was the reason spear was so oppressive but it's a dead weapon now. But atleast this initiated the end of bunker meta
Nerfed to the ground. You can still play it and have it be viable but definitely not a top pick I'd say.
Broken from beta. Enjoy your time before nerf. We have a diversity crisis in PVP.
Comments
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