Build:Mo/Me SoA Illusion

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1 Attributes and Skills
2 Equipment
3 Usage
4 Counters
5 Variants
6 Screenshots
7 See also

This build is used to farm bosses and monsters, and it's almost the same as the Mo/E SoA Sliver build, this one just uses the Illusionary Weaponry elite to deal armor ignoring damage longer than Sliver Armor causes damage, and doesn't need several monsters to be around the target. The most important part of this build is to only have 55hp. This is why some call monks with builds like this 55hp Monks.

[edit] Attributes and Skills

Monk / Mesmer	Attribute Rank
Divine Favor	10 + 3 (+1)
Protection Prayers	10 + 3 (+1)
Healing Prayers	0 + 3
Smiting Prayers	0 + 3
Illusion Magic	11

The optional slots can be replaced with Mend Ailment and Remove Hex.

[edit] Equipment

All armor parts should have a Superior Rune attached. You should have two scalp designs, one with Divine Favor +1 and the cheapest superior rune and the other one Protection Prayers +1 and the cheapest monk superior rune. what superior runes you attach won't matter, as long as you have at least one superior protection prayer and one superior divine favor rune attached to your armor (smiting prayer and healing prayer runes are preferable if you are going to use smiting prayer/ healing prayer skills in the optional slots).
A sword with "Enchantments last 15-20% longer" would be preferable. As off-hand the -50hp Grim Cesta you get for completing the Cities of Ascalon quest

[edit] Usage

First before approaching the enemy, you should equip the Scalp Design with +1 Divine Favor, then you cast Blessed Aura and Watchful Healing. Then you can change the protection prayer scalp design back if you want (no need yet) and cast Balthazar's Spirit. Now change the Scalp Design into the one with protection prayers +1 (if you already haven't), then go near the enemies (but so that they can't spot you) and cast Protective Spirit followed by Shield of Absorption. Now you approach the enemies. If you know a boss which is near, you can ignore the enemies you approached and run to the place where the boss is, but otherwise you attack an enemy, use Illusionary Weaponry and kill the enemy (Illusionary Weaponry ignores armor).
Remember to recast Shield of Absorption immeaditly when it ends, and Protective Spirit is preferable to recast at the same time as SoA.
Try to not fight interrupting enemies, because they can interrupt Illusionary Weaponry, and then you'd have to wait another 35sec to wait for it to recharge. If you need to fight interrupting enemies, like when killing Lian, Dragon's Petal as she has a mesmer near her.
When killing monsters, I prefer killing them in this order:

Healing Monsters (Monks, Ritualists)
Interrupting Monsters (Rangers, Mesmers)
Health Degrenation causing monsters (Necromancers)
Bosses
Other (Warriors, Dervishes, Elementalists, Paragons, Assassins)

- The professions mentioned are only examples. It does NOT mean that Rangers couldn't cause health degrenation and that Paragons can't interrupt.
If you first start killing the interrupting monster and there is a monk healing it, it might take quite a while to kill it. You don't need to kill them in this order if they don't have the skills why we kill them. For example, you don't need to kill Necromancers before killing the Boss if the Necromancer doesn't cause health degrenation.

[edit] Counters

Remember that if you don't have skills such as Mending or Healing Breeze equipped, you should avoid enemies causing health degrenation.
Enchantment removing Mesmers/ Necromancers should be avoided, because if Protective Spirit is removed, you'll die to their high damage and if SoA is removed you'll probably die as you don't have any skills that heal you.
Even though the Illusionary Weaponry is armor ignoring, remember that if the enemy uses enchantments which grant more armor to the enemy (for example Armor of Earth, Illusionary Weaponry will deal lesser damage.

[edit] Variants

As already mentioned, the optional slots can be replaced with Mend Ailment and Remove Hex.
I wouldn't prefer taking Mending, because your energy wouldn't regenerate by itself almost at all. I'd take Watchful Healing or Healing Breeze.
When fighting against bosses I'd prefer taking Conjure Phantasm or Conjure Nightmare, because they will take away the bosses natural +3 health regeneration and cause -2 or -5 (depends if you use conjure phantasm or conjure nightmare) health degeneration.
To make enemies easier to kill, you can take Phantom Pain and take advantage of the Deep Wound condition it gives the enemy.
If you are scared of casting SoA too late, you can always bring Arcane Echo (you first cast Arcane Echo, then SoA).
Equip Mantra of Resolve to prevent interrupts (you can take down your attribute on Illusion Magic from 11 to 10 and put to Inspiration Magic to make you lose only 8 energy