Spellbreaker - Duelist Staffbreaker

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage, Boon removal and Mobility

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on March 29, 2024 and is up to date for the March 11, 2025 patch.

Overview

A duelist Power Spellbreaker PvP build with a healthy mix of defense and offense, using the recently introduced Warrior Staff weapon to boost its survivability.

Skill Bar

Staff

Dagger/Sword

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.

Weapons

Off-hand Sword can be replaced by:

• Pistol

• Shield

Template Code

[&DQIWKzM+PTenAHAAagAAAK0AAACyAAAAfAEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADLwA2AFkAAA==]

Copy Template Code

Specializations

Variants

• Shield Master
  is great against projectile users.

Equipment

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Dagger

Sword

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Relics

• - helps a bit in condition matchups, has good synergy with
  Brawler's Recovery
  .

• - improves your consistency by making sure that your main attack skills crit and makes
  a bit redundant, potentially allowing you to drop it for something else like
  . On the other hand it offers lower burst potential than Isgarren.

Runes

• - more offensive option.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Full Counter
  (FC) recharges your Burst skills
  Path to Victory
  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, 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
  Versatile Rage
  with a weapon swap can get you there.

General

• Settings: disable auto targeting, otherwise it'd be impossible to use skills like
  Bull's Charge
  for disengaging. For more tips check out our settings guide.

• Playstyle: this build is all about weaving hard hitting skills into chains of block and evade frames while tethering yourself to the target with
  Magebane Tether
  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
  Magebane Tether
  , including
  Full Counter
  .

• Staff is your defensive set, the only truly dangerous ability with good damage here is
  Path to Victory
  .

• On Dagger/Sword
  Aura Slicer
  ,
  Breaching Strike
  and the
  Impale
  +
  Rip
  chain are your main damaging skills. Everything else in the build is basically a filler or something that's used to set up burst / survive enemy burst.

• 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
  .

• All movement skills remove the Immobilized condition - list of movement skills in the build:
  • Staff:
    Valiant Leap
    and
    Line Breaker
    .
  • Dagger/Sword:
    Aura Slicer
    and
    Breaching Strike
    .
  • Rampage:
    Kick
    ,
    Dash
    , and
    Seismic Leap
    .
  • Utility:
    Bull's Charge

• No Escape
  briefly roots enemies in place after you CC them. This turns skills like
  Full Counter
  and
  Disrupting Stab
  into great setup tools for your hard hitting abilities such as
  Breaching Strike
  or
  Impale
  .

Conditon cleansing & general survival

• Almost every single Staff skill has some healing attached to it.

• Skill #5 on both weapon sets can block attacks.

• Brawler's Recovery
  and
  Warrior's Sprint
  will be used to manage condition levels before resorting to mass cleanses.

• 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.

• Burst skills cleanse conditions whenever they strike thanks to
  Cleansing Ire
  .
  • 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
    Resilient Roll
    which renders Blind ineffective, increasing the chance of a successful Cleansing Ire proc.

• Adrenal Health
  provides a steady stream of healing as long as you're landing those Burst skills (F1-F2).

• "Shake It Off!"
  (SIO) is both a stun break 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.

• 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.

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. Bonus points if you manage to attach
  Magebane Tether
  just before using your elite.

• 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

• Twitch: Avatar