Troubadour - Quickness Support Power DPS

This is a test build. You may comment and rate it.

Focused on: Direct damage, Support and Utility

Designed for: Raids

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on January 09, 2026.

Overview

Power Quickness Troubadour plays pretty similarly to Chronomancer, with the notable advantage that it easily provides 25 Might and permanent Fury in addition to Quickness.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Sword

Spear

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Sword is the best mainhand weapon for players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure.
• Greatsword is the best replacement for Spear for players that don't own Janthir Wilds. This also makes the build fully ranged (assuming Dagger mainhand), which could have niche use.
• Taking both Greatsword and Spear is also an option. It deals around the same damage as Dagger/Greatsword, but has higher boon generation as both phantasms trigger your boon trait twice.
• Offhand Sword can be replaced by a Shield for tanking and extra boons, or Focus if you need Temporal Curtain to pull adds.

Skill Variants

Heal

The choice of heal skill is free, as Signet of the Ether is a DPS loss to cast, and you don't rely on phantasm casts for boons.

Utility

You don't want to swap out either of your Tale skills, as Tale of the Soulkeeper is essential for boons, and Tale of the Tortured Mastermind helps with Relic of the Claw uptime. Both skills additionally generate extra notes.

You can easily replace Mantra of Pain, depending on whether utility or DPS is more important.

• Signet of Illusions deals similar damage to Mantra of Pain and boosts your boon uptime by allowing an extra use of Lively Lute. This requires a different rotation.
• Feedback provides a long-duration reflect.
• Mantra of Concentration provides Stability to your group.
• Mantra of Distraction for encounters that require heavy CC.
• Signet of Domination offers more CC than Mantra of Distraction but on a longer cooldown, which may be more suitable for some encounters.
• Portal Entre if you need a portal.
• Mimic allows you to get a second use out of a key skill if you'll need it more often than the cooldown. Often used together with Portal Entre.

Elite

• Time Warp if you have doubts about your Quickness uptime.
• Signet of Humility for CC.

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Specializations

Trait Variants

• Use Bountiful Blades when running Greatsword.

Equipment

This uses the same gear as virtuoso/chronomancer for convenience.

With four instruments playing, this is sufficient to reach 100% crit chance. This should be the case for most of the rotation, but there are sections where there are only three, and if you make mistakes this is likely to occur more frequently. If you want to optimise around only three instruments, you can run full Berserker stats gear, and Rune of Superior Rune of the Pack.

While you can technically maintain Quickness without any boon duration, in practise you want some. Easy options are:

• Replace Sigil of Superior Sigil of Force with Sigil of Superior Sigil of Concentration
• Rune of Superior Rune of Fireworks
• Rune of Superior Rune of the Pack with the setup mentioned above.

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Assassin

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Dagger
Berserker

Sword
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Spear
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x14

Infusion
x4

Relic

Consumables

Food

• , or ascended alternatives

Utility

• or alternatives

Usage

Boon generation

Thanks to Life of the Party, Lively Lute and Crescendo each generate AoE Quickness and Might when used, irrespective of the number of notes consumed.

Additional boon uptime comes from Tale of the Soulkeeper, which generates more Quickness and Might, along with some Fury. Fury uptime is made permanent via Master Fencer.

And that's it! Tale of the Soulkeeper generates such a large portion of your boons that you never want to remove it, and the combination is sufficient to maintain 25 Might, which is rare for a DPS support.

Otherwise, you don't provide any utility by default, though you can bring some on-demand defence if necessary:

• Aegis can come from Tale of the Honorable Rogue. This is an ammo skill, so it can be used in quick succession if needed.
• Stability can come from either Tale of the Valiant Marshal or Mantra of Concentration. Tale of the Valiant Marshal provides more stacks and generates a note, but Mantra of Concentration is an ammo skill and has a much shorter cooldown if you use the last charge and rechannel it, making it the more effective skill in general.
• Though not a boon, Tale of the August Queen provides AoE distortion, which is very powerful as there are some mechanics that can only be skipped with invulnerability.
  • This skill also causes all instruments to play in the background for a duration, but note that this does not count as summoning them and does not trigger their skills.

Instrument usage

Troubadour is somewhat similar to Virtuoso, in that it does not generate clones. Instead, any time a clone would be created you instead generate a Note. Unlike other Mesmer elite specialisations, the number of notes consumed when summoning an instrument does not affect the strength of the skill, but rather the duration that the instrument continues playing for - this is relevant for Symphonic Resonance and Fortissimo

Note Sources
The following skills create notes:

• Bladecall (mainhand Dagger)
• Illusionary Leap (mainhand Sword)
• Illusionary Riposte (offhand Sword)
• Mind the Gap (Spear)
• Mirror Blade (Greatsword)
• Every Tale skill generates a note, except for Tale of the Soulkeeper and Tale of the August Queen, which generate two and zero, respectively
• Fortissimo generates six notes at a rate of one per second after using Crescendo

The following skills summon phantasms that later become notes:

• Phantasmal Swordsman (offhand Sword)
• Phantasmal Lancer (Spear) - two phantasms are summoned if empowered with Clarity)
• Phantasmal Warden (Focus)
• Phantasmal Berserker (Greatsword) - two phantasms are summoned with Bountiful Blades
• Harmonize additionally creates a note when the phantasm is summoned

Shatter Usage
As mentioned before, your Instrument skills don't have their effectiveness increased by consuming notes, the more important thing is the duration. Fortissimo and Crescendo only care about the number of instruments playing, and by far the most significant effect from Harmonize is that provided by Lively Lute. Fortunately, Lively Lute only has a cooldown of 12 seconds (9.6s with Alacrity). This means that to maintain the buff, you only need to consume a single note with each use if you use it off cooldown.

This leaves you free to use notes on the other instruments. You can maintain Flustering Flute by consuming three notes each time, but this will not quite be enough to maintain Deafening Drum or Harmonious Harp. Using an instrument again while it is still playing resets the duration if the new duration is longer than the remaining duration. Note that you still want to use Lively Lute nearly off cooldown to generate boons.

The priority of other instruments is:

1. Deafening Drum
2. Flustering Flute
3. Harmonious Harp

Rotation

Deafening Drum and Harmonious Harp fit neatly into the loop and so are included here. Other skills do not fit neatly, and so are used off cooldown instead outside of the opener):

• Lively Lute - Make sure to always have at least one note
• Tale of the Tortured Mastermind ⇒ Tale of the Soulkeeper ⇒ Flustering Flute - these three skills have the same cooldown, and assuming you're maintaining Lute and Flute, the first two skills will generate three notes to ensure that Flustering Flute is always cast with the maximum duration
• Crescendo - can delay slightly if you'd get an extra instrument playing

Opener

1. Unstable Bladestorm
2. Phantasmal Swordsman
3. Lively Lute
4. Tale of the Tortured Mastermind, and Tale of the Soulkeeper during the cast - the latter has no cast time so you can use it any time
5. Bladecall
6. Weapon Swap
7. Mind the Gap
8. Phantasmal Lancer
9. Flustering Flute
10. Crescendo
11. Imaginary Inversion
12. Deafening Drum
13. Mind the Gap
14. Mental Collapse
15. Mind the Gap
16. Autoattack, and use Lively Lute when you reach three notes
17. Phantasmal Lancer
18. Mind the Gap
19. Weapon Swap

Dagger
If using Relic of the Claw, you should use Illusionary Riposte ⇒ Counter Blade if the buff would expire.

1. Phantasmal Swordsman
2. Bladecall
3. Unstable Bladestorm
4. Harmonious Harp - you can stow weapon to cancel the animation as soon as the instrument appears, as it does no damage
5. Autoattack, and use Bladecall when available
6. Bladecall
7. Phantasmal Swordsman
8. Unstable Bladestorm
9. Weapon Swap

Spear

1. Phantasmal Lancer
2. Mind the Gap
3. Deafening Drum
4. Imaginary Inversion
5. Autoattack until Mind the Gap is available
6. Mind the Gap
7. Mental Collapse
8. Mind the Gap
9. Autoattack until Phantasmal Lancer is available
10. Phantasmal Lancer
11. Imaginary Inversion
12. Mind the Gap
13. Weapon Swap
14. Return to start of Dagger section

Crowd Control

• Deafening Drum - daze.
• Mental Collapse - stuns if used with Clarity, but generally you won't want to do so.
• Illusionary Riposte ⇒ Counterblade - daze.
• Temporal Curtain ⇒ Into the Void - pull (focus only).
• Tides of Time - stun (shield only).
• Illusionary Wave - Knockback.
• Tale of the Tortured Mastermind.
• Signet of Humility - daze.

If you need more CC remember you can take Signet of Humility, Mantra of Distraction, or Signet of Domination.

General tips

• Blurred Frenzy (mainhand Sword), Illusionary Riposte (offhand Sword), and Imaginary Inversion (Spear) can be used to avoid incoming damage with less of a DPS loss than dodging.
• Tale of the August Queen