Spellbreaker - Defense GS/Dagger Duelist
The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good
Focused on: Strike damage, Boon removal and Mobility
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Expansions required: 
Difficulty:
Easy
This build was last updated on March 29, 2025 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.
Skill Bar
Greatsword
Dagger/Shield
Utility
Slot Changes
Utility
- over - both of these skills can be used to mitigate strike damage and break stuns. The signet offers weaker mitigation but higher uptime, while Endure Pain can save you from burst damage but provides less protection against CC.
- over - no passive and longer CD, but stronger active.
Weapons
- Off-hand Sword over Shield - shorter duration but more frequently available block, more damage, less CC.
Template Code
[&DQIWKzM+PTenAKcAagAAAK0AAACzAAAAfAEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADBQBnACMAAA==]
Specializations
Equipment
Greatsword
Sigil
Sigil
Dagger
Shield
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic
Equipment Variants
Relics
- - Slightly weaker damage alternative.
- - helps a bit in condition matchups, has good synergy with .
- - improves your consistency by making sure that your main attack skills crit and makes a bit redundant, potentially allowing you to drop it for . On the other hand it offers lower burst potential than Isgarren.
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, 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 can get you there.
General
- Settings: disable auto targeting, otherwise it'd be impossible to use skills like 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 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.
- Example: from outside melee range ⇒ dodge to your target ⇒ ⇒
- Any burst skill can proc , including .
- , , and are your main damaging skills, everything else is basically a filler or something that's used to set up burst / survive enemy burst.
- 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:
- Greatsword: and . These two skills also provide excellent mobility both in and out of combat.
- Dagger/Shield: , , and the burst skill . The Dagger skills are also excellent gap closers.
- Rampage: , , and .
- Utility:
- briefly roots enemies in place after you CC them. This turns skills like and into great setup tools for your hard hitting abilities such as or .
Conditon cleansing & general survival
- and will be used to manage condition levels before resorting to mass cleanses.
- 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 .
- 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.
- Getting
- provides a steady stream of healing as long as you're landing those Burst skills (F1-F2).
- (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.
- 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.
Top Streamers
- Twitch: Boyce
- Twitch: Keyba
- Twitch: Avatar
Related Builds
- Spellbreaker - Defense Boonbreaker - Hammer version.
Ratings
Not bad, but it's a bit hard to justify not playing Staff these days. If you're looking for an oldschool Spellbreaker build that can do well, this'll do, but there are better builds out there now.
Still decent but outshined now by Staff. Less survivable and less group support which makes it very weak in teamfights, but still can duel well on side nodes.
A decent Sidenode build. This get outshined by Condi-Berserk right now. But is the better option to hold the Point in 1vX Situations. With its high CC uptime IT IS also a mediocre midfights build
Fantastic duelist with good damage,sustain and cc. You can choose between condi cleanse or stability in defense allowing you to adapt to mutliple different matchups. The most recent nerfs have brought it down to a degree that is less overpowered but it is still the best dedicated duelist in the current meta.
Comments
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