Spellbreaker - Duelist Staffbreaker

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

Focused on: Strike damage, Boon removal and Mobility

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on August 24, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 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

Skill Variants

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. If you don't expect to be facing any condi specs then Endure Pain could even replace "Shake It Off!".

• Banner of Defense over Bull's Charge - although Bull's Charge is a versatile skill that could also be used defensively, the banner offers more sustain and group utility.

• Banner of Tactics - over Bull's Charge - if you want to build for more defense against CC.

Heal

• Defiant Stance - can be a great reactive skill due to its low cast time and could easily heal you to max HP in outnumbered situations when timed correctly, but Mending is more reliable with consistent benefits.

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Specializations

Variants

• Shield Master is great against projectile users.

Variants

• Guard Counter can be considered if you want to focus more on being tanky, but the loss of Immobilize on Daze will make it harder for you to set up burst or kite enemies.

Equipment

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Dagger

Sword

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Amulets

• - trades damage for higher sustain, Staff scales especially well with healing power. Often used with the Banner of Defense variant.

Relics

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

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

Runes

• Rune of Deadeye - 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 (warrior sword) + 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 (Rampage), 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 (warrior sword).

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.

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