hehateme23

Kanto, on 18 October 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:

This makes some good points, but remember of course that with Deceptive Evasion + Mirror Images or a Scepter, you can create so many clones/phantasms that you can throw up 3 distracts, wait until the mob almost reaches them, shatter, and immediately make 3 more.

Of course, it all depends on your play style, what you're doing and who you're doing it with. I run with high DPS warriors who tend to keep all the aggro (and won't benefit from cripple - I wish we had Chill!), and we wait until they're low then use Temporal Curtain/Into The Void to drag a mob off them, or use the same skill to save a downed player who's still being targeted. Magic Bullet is a great player-saver as well.
Also remember the value of Blink + 3 illusion Distortion as a fantastic res combo. Warrior Endure Pain is great for it too, but on a much longer cooldown than our Distortion and they're more likely to need theirs for melee survival.

I really do wish that Diversion was more useful.

An unsaid point about not shattering vs shattering would be of course if you have up 3 staff clones with Illusionary Elasticity, you can give your team mates like 7-8 stacks of might occasionally, a lot of Fury, plus a lot of conditions on the enemy.

You already have good advice here so no need to re-hash it. But I'll play devil's advocate about not shattering when in a dungeon.

PvE mobs are very easily distracted by clones. Each time one of your clones is being targeted is a time someone in your team is not being chased after. Now add the 'cripple on illusions death' trait and the AoE slow has made the mobs chasing your team even less of a threat. Couple it with the 'clone on dodge' trait and the 'vigor on crit' minor and there is a blanket of safety you are casting over your team over the dubious DPS increase of a shatter.

In a game without tanks and healers we need to shoulder part of the burden and can't go deep into the role of 'I'm DPS only, you deal with it'. I would advise on not being lured by the 'max DPS0rxs!' crowd as we have no DPS meters and not even enrage timers, outliving a boss is generally better than trying to squeeze a few hundred more damage.

I'd recommend you take Illusionary Persona and Illusionary Elasticity.

Illusionary Persona is absolutely incredible. Not only will it boost the power of all your shatter skills when you have illusions, since it will count as having 4 not 3 to shatter, you can use it when you have no illusions at all, giving you a 1s Distortion any time, which is a literal life saver. Since the #3 skill Diversion does not stack daze duration unless the illusions reach the mob at different times, you may as well also use this with no illusions up.

Illusionary Elasticity will greatly boost your staff auto-attack DPS, as well of course as buffing more allies and giving enemies more conditions. It's particularly good with staff/gs because it will also increase the bounces of Mirror Blade (GS #2) which means more buffs, more conditions.

If you find yourself not using your #2 shatter (I don't use it but I'm not a condition spec) because you can't create enough illusions to keep it and mind wrack on cooldown, then seriously consider 20 pts in Dueling for Deceptive Evasion, which will have you making clones like nobody's business when it's combined with Dueling's Critical Infusion (Vigor on crits), and you'll also get Sharper Images which will make your illusions inflict bleed on critical hits. This is huge for a condition damage build. Even if you don't want Deceptive Evasion, consider Sharper Images, but they do all have good synergy.

You can also consider phantasms which will do projectile or whirl finishers, like the duelist or warden on the pistol or focus. The advantage to these is, in addition to high crit rates, their attacks will combo with your ethereal fields (chaos storm etc) and send out large stacks of confusion. This can be great with the Scepter #3 skill Confusing Images, which builds up stacks as well as hitting pretty hard. Scepter #2 can also blind.

I'm not saying you have to change weapons, but play around with things and see what you like.

Also consider that staff clones and main hand sword clones will have the effects of your auto-attack for those skills. Staff clones will have bouncing projectiles which inflict conditions and buff allies, and sword clones will inflict vulnerability and remove a boon. These can be good paired with the create clone on dodge trait or the mirror images skill to quickly make a lot for more conditions when your phantasms are on cooldown.

It depends mostly on what you want to do.

For dungeons/group play, you'll want to carry Time Warp as your elite skill.

You have a slightly strange mix of traits because you have the 20% phantasm HP buff, and shatter effect on yourself, and the effects clones give when they're killed. Obviously if you want to be a shatter spec, Illusionary Persona is absolutely amazing, but in which case taking the 20% extra health on phantasms seems pretty redundant - you're going to shatter anyway, so just shatter phantasms after they attack and resummon.
Similarly, the traits which say clones give a condition to targets when KILLED means when the clone is overwritten or destroyed by a mob, NOT shattered. So you have one trait for longer living phantasms, one trait for shattering, and two traits for your clones being killed but not shattered!

It's a good idea to decide whether you want to leave phantasms up all the time to do DPS, and not shatter, or run a shatter spec and rapidly create clones, shatter, create phantasms, wait for their attack, then shatter them, before you decide where you want your traits to go and go from there. It will help us to advise you, as well.

With a support/condition build you could still do either of these things, Phantasmal Warlocks from staff will have nice synergy with a spec that inflicts a lot of conditions if you want to keep them alive, or you can go rapidly creating clones and phantasms, using phantasms which inflict conditions and clones and shatters and shatter traits which inflict conditions as well.

If you lean hard on the staff and want to be more rugged try 20/0/20/0/30, if not so much give 20/0/0/20/30 a go for great support

EDIT: Maybe try signet of domination in place of one of the other utilities if you feel lacking in condition damage.