So I noticed a new comment on my old Guild Wars Me/D video, and it enticed me to play again.  Unfortunately, the build in the video had been completely changed in a recent patch.  Sand Shards no longer deals damage on misses, but instead causes a AoE DoT effect when it ends.  Whereas the old version pumped out a lot of damage if there were multiple foes to miss, the new version has lower damage output and causes the AI to scatter even easier.  Thus, I set out to see if I could make a new solo build with the same profession combination.

The survivability of the old build was still pretty much intact, but I no longer needed the self-blind of Signet of Midnight due to the change in Sand Shards functionality.  I went over to the Zaishen arena and started to play around.  What I found was that I could keep myself alive without blind by using a combination of Mystic Regeneration, Mirage Cloak and Armor of Sanctity.  I changed the elite skill to Signet of Illusions and reallocated my stat points.  This opened up a variety of other options for damage.  After some experimentation, I was able to down IWAY with the following combination:

Signet of Illusions – makes all skills use Illusion attribute (16)

Mystic Regeneration, Mirage Cloak. Armor of Sanctity – keep me alive

Channeling – energy management

Mystic Twister, Dust Cloak – additional damage

Faithful Intervention – just another enchantment

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With the proof of concept working, I decided to give it a whirl in PvE.  I went to my old Sunspear rep farming spot, East out of Camp Hojanu in Barbarous Shore.  Right outside the town are several packs of Heket which are mostly physical damage.  Since the packs were only 4 instead of 8 like IWAY, Channeling wasn’t return quite enough energy to cover the enchantment maintenance.  I switched out Faithful Intervention for Auspicious Incantation for more energy.  With the energy problem solved, I didn’t really need the blind effect on Dust Cloak anymore and switched it our Heart of Holy Flame to add burning instead.  The only problem with this farming spot are the Blue Tongue Heket monks that spawn randomly in the melee packs.  I had some success using Backfire on them, but they still could take a while to kill.  I decided it would be better to just avoid them altogether.

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Having Signet of Illusions leaves plenty of room for variation in the build, as it can use any skills with an effective attribute of 16.  I found that having Armor of Sanctity up was more important than Mirage Cloak in most cases.  The damage from letting Mirage Cloak drop and the synergy with Auspicious Incantation made it worth keeping, but it might be possible to do without it in some locations.  A Dervish primary could probably use a similar setup and might be able to get away without the energy management skills needed on my Mesmer.  Although Fast Casting is kind of nice against the Heket because they like to interrupt.  Not bad for a proof of concept, but more damage and a speed boost would be nice.

Anyways, good luck and happy hunting!