Guild Wars 2!

[illyrus]

Do share.

I'll give the bare bones to it. Mesmers have 2 blocks and 1 distortion from weapons (sword 2 for distortion, scepter 2 and sword 4 for blocks). I normally pick 2 of those. I really like the sword 2 as your dishing out damage while you're evading and scepter 2 can be cut short to throw out a blind. Sword 3 saves the spot the clone charged to so you can use it as a shadowstep out of melee to avoid a big hit on a mobile fight if you like.

For traits Phantasmal Healing has phantasms grant regen to allies, Illusionary Membrane grants you protection for 2 seconds whenever you gain regen. iDuelist grants regen twice as fast as the other phantasms and gives you about 80% up-time for protection with 1 out. A single other phantasm of any type will give you 100% and you can start moving towards the protection time cap. Illusionary Defense gives you 3% DR per illusion out. Persisting Images gives your phantasms 20% more health (to be used with the Signet of Illusions). Finally Illusionists Celerity lets your illusions recharge 20% faster. So Chaos 15, Inspiration 15, and Illusions 5 are the minimum traits. Rest are up to you for how you want to dish out damage.

Prioritize toughness as from what I've read and seen it is given to illusions (vitality does not appear to be) with vitality and whatever damage stats you like coming in tied for 2nd place. What I originally used was sword/focus and scepter/pistol. Focus more so for Into the Void pulling things off team mates with knockdown than iWarden though for certain things iWarden is amazing.

On AE super heavy fights you're not going to have 100% phantasm up time of course but you should be able to keep up protection 50% of the time without too much issue. With all the ways to generate clones you should be fine keeping up the 9% DR. Utilities varied for me fight to fight, one thing I need to test is if Signet of Inspiration would let me copy a 20 second protection/regen to my party at that duration. Keep in mind that any source of regen will trigger the protection so you can get some good synergy with other classes.

Don't be afraid to shatter when it it seems like a good time. You have a quick enough refresh rate on your illusions that it shouldn't be much of an issue. If the situation calls for it of course step back and let your illusions eat some hits and die so you can go revive someone or simply take a breather.