Guild Wars 2

It seems like everyone unanimously agrees that zerker gear is the strongest for PvE (how fast can I mow down that mob). But I’m tired of zerkers!

When solo’ing or in a small dungeon group, can condition damage gear on my staff mesmer be just as viable as zerker gear? I have the trait that applies confusion on all shatters.

If condition damage gear isn’t viable on a mesmer, then who? And if zerkers gear and pwning champs is the pinnacle of a legendary PvE player, I hope we get more variety soon.

Even in high end dungeons it’s all about bringing more dmg to get through faster. Never about bringing someone spec’d with great team support or a rupter or anything. Yes the holy trinity is gone, and what do we have for it? Everyone is now just DPS

I miss the gw1 elite missions where you needed a variety of builds, working together. Remember farming for Volactic Spears? IoJ monks, perma assassin, BiP necros. Remember DoA? DwG rits, imbas, HB and UA monks. I have never played WoW or any other mmo. So I’m not saying we need to move backwards, I’m just saying, variety is fun.

In gw1 I had an 80 alt of all professions so I could full fill many rolls. But now in GW2 the only reason to roll an alt is to do DPS a different kind of way.

Condition builds in pve are both weak and even currently bugged.
Do not bother with it unless you like placebos. Zerker gear just simply works, and that’s why it’s preferrred.

I wouldn’t call them weak or bugged, but there are some mechanics issues. The only real problems are the limits on stacking in group play (mainly large events) and the fact that you lack damage against non-creature enemies like destructable objects(turrets/wvw siege) and world bosses like the dragon champions.

Condition builds can actually be scary-powerful when you’re playing solo or in a small group with members that aren’t putting out similar types of condition damage. There’s a reason Rangers were annoyed over the nerfs to their shortbow. Events or anywhere that you get a lot of players attacking the same mob is when condition damage starts to really suffer.

The only problem with conditions is large events with 139834781239834 players.

For the rest it’s fine as it doesn’t sacrifice 2 atribute lines like Precission+Critical Damage so it allows for survivality, and it’s armor ignoring damage that while not bursty, can reach some apocalyptic sustained damage rates.

This game is never as simple as changing one variable at a time. That’s good!

I was able to double the damage my elementalist did, at range, by changing not just my gear and spec but also playing only in Earth attunement, and only with a scepter, issuing only the autoattack, with no one else in my group causing a noticeable amount of bleeds. (and yes I carried a staff for those times a ground targeted AoE bleed was needed). In WoW terms my rotation was 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1… and in steady state I could keep 19 bleeds up on a champion. With the cap at 25, my damage in a large group encounter would have been zero if the other people present already had 25 bleeds up…

In the end, my 4 person group couldn’t afford having 1 of the 4 people that specialized doing only ranged damage and not particularly offering field/finisher, healing, buff/debuff, much ability to take a share of damage or take AoE damage without dying (somehow that 1900 toughness was never enough), and I re rolled.

There are subtleties to gearing in this game which are beyond my full understanding and certainly beyond the understanding of anyone who says just put beserker everywhere.

i found that my condition built mesmer kill pretty fast. not sure whether it is faster than if i use berserker build or not ’coz i never had a berserker set…..

IMO condition damage is like true damage, it’s damage cannot be mitigated by armor. If left too long you will find yourself in trouble. (ie. no condition removals). They sure are not inferior.

Stack limit and speed run desires cap condition potential in dungeons. And too much removal limits it in PVP.

Condition damage is the weak link in the game’s balance right now and needs a significant buff.

As a necromancer conditions are a staple in our class. We control them by shifting conditions, applying them and even removing them. So it is natural (as a Necromancer) to try out a Condition-orientated build.

I found that I am extremely pleased with my Conditions. Perhaps the only complaint is the limited to the amount of stacks that you can place on players or hostiles.

Countless times in WvW I will get some loot or badges because out there (somewhere) was a player that had used all of his/her healing ability and the stacks of poison and bleeding that I had placed on them took their toll.

I am currently running full exotics (TA armor with runes of the Necromancer) and sure I may not be able to —--slap a player or a dungeon boss as hard as a ’zerg-gear warrior – but I am able to hit it hard with my conditions and then focus on killing off the adds, or rescuing my party members or even applying conditions to other players in wvw – all the while my conditions will be taking their fair share of damage. Almost like a fire-and-forget missile.

The simple fact is – conditions are damage over time. It is possible for condition damage to be a fair trade off and shouldn’t be considered to be “weaker” or “inferior”.

My main is a condition built staff mesmer in carrion gear with sigils of corruption and runes of the undead.
So she is pretty much as condition based as you can get and she is awesome.
She kills really fast and I use her for PvE
I also have a presc/power crit mesmer in beserker gear and I must say I see no real difference in killing speed- if any I still prefer my main.
It is up to which play-style you prefer.
Also the guy above me has a point about damage over time- while your conditions do their work you can focus on other things.

Everything in WvW has condition removal, and when an enemy is downed, all their conditions get removed. The worst part is that you usually want to kill the enemy fast with big burst, not wait around and give them opportunity to get their stuff in gear.

Think differently. In GW1 builds were so highly specialized, they weren’t actually fun to play. And while you may see a million zerk war lfg right now, in GW1 they were merely replaced with either lfm 55 or lfm perma

I love condition builds for small group and solo play, but yeah, they have problems.

The big one is that conditions don’t work on inanimate objects, so you have to rely on your power. In these circumstances, I think your condition damage should be added as a flat damage bonus.

I won’t comment on ease of removal, as re-application can be very quick, and in the case of multi-condition builds such as my sword/torch/cat ranger, powerful conditions can be “covered” by spammy ones.

Flamethrower Engineer should be awesome, but it’s spectacular how often the flame jet actually misses.

Confusion needs seriously looking at in PvE. It’s great in WuvWuv, although over time that may change as people learn how to counter it. The main problem in PvE is that mobs simply don’t attack fast enough for it to prove useful.
I think it needs changing so that its damage isn’t reliant on stacks, but rather on your condition damage stat, like burning and bleeding. The stacks should affect how many skills are subject to confusion. So every skill activation would remove one stack count.

Where it gets really smelly is in group situations where stacks are limited to 25 and it’s not clear whose condition damage stat is actually determining damage per tick.
This is a really hard problem to address and currently results in condition builds offering less and less the more players are partaking in an event. I’m trying to think of a balanced way of addressing this and bringing it in-line with the raw damage output achievable by Zerkers, but it’s going to take some thinking.

Oh, handy tips too:
Rampager’s gear gives the best precision of any gear and medium condition damage. This makes it great for shatter mesmers.

Superior Runes of the Undead are stupidly cheap yet utterly brilliant for condition builds.

Don’t focus on one condition; try to get as many going on target as possible.

Currently I try a condition build on my engineer. While I shouldnt have problems with condiremoval of most classes (except ele or condimencer) I have huge problems in pve.
No, not only with the bleed cap. But with other classes that burn and poison the enemy like Ele, Guardian, some thieves, necro and whatnot.

I now feel much more comfortable in longer fights. I´m not pressed to attack all the time to maintain damage and therefore play much more defensive and supportive and therefore I stay alive much longer.

Now… If dungeons weren´t such easymode-areas that playstyle would be worth something but as it is right now….. Zerkers and face- sry I mean … DODGEroll for the win <.<

Outside of the ridiculous CoF? Away from the big group events? Yes, Condition Damage is worth it. However, it’s rarely worth bringing more than one condition specialist in a group due to the caps on conditions. The exception to this is Necromancers, who have some very nice utility skills (Sig of Undeath, Epidemic) that can prove useful regardless of those caps.

I’m usually the condition guy in my guild dungeon runs and I’m always one of the guys people ask to run with them. I don’t do more damage as a mesmer than a warrior in full berserker gear, but I have other uses.

Anyway, I’m often the one rezzing the warriors in full berserker gear. lol