Guild Wars 2

Which do you think would do a better job at conditions out of these two?

On the spur of the moment I crafted ascended sinister set and chewed through all my gold and was wondering which could make better use of it, or perhaps I should level an elementalist if they’d get more mileage out of it?

I’m not a specialist, but whenever I think of conditions, the first class thats comes to my mind is the Necromancer. They can apply them with most if not all weapons, and the AoE with staff is really nice.
Mesmer can only really apply confusion and torment, with bleed on crit from illusions.
Necros have access to bleeding, poison, torment (DS 5) and chill, plus you can trait fear to apply damage too (but that’s normal damage). And Signet of Spite active applies a lot of conditions to your target. Plus, you can choose a trait that outgoing condition damage heals you.

But I’ve read that Necromancers aren’t that wanted in PvE (in dungeon runs etc.), because they have no real team supporting abilities, while Mesmers have a lot of utility skills.

I can’t speak for mesmers but necros aren’t great condition damage wise. They’re more about manipulating conditions atm. Epidemic can be fun in world events with a lot of players, but for the solo content, you’ll mainly just be using scepter 1 and stacking bleeds and poison.

here’s the breakdown in my experience with a full sinister set.

Necromancer: applies a lot of conditions, but slowly and initially poorly. they stack more over time. In longer fights you will have more damage overall. This is the slow, effective burn. With the number of conditions applied a single condi clense will not cancel out your build.

Mesmer: you don’t have as many conditions, but your confusion and torment make up for it. This is more useful for a short set up and a well timed spike. Built in interrupts prevent clensers.

Elementalist: high, initial damage, quickly. burning and bleeds will stack fast and do a lot of damage. the ability to reapply them quickly make condition removals merely a speed bump. you don’t have nearly as many conditions, but because of this the ones you focus in are more effective in short fights.

With the bump in burning, wouldn’t it be Ele by a landslide?
Not sure how chill is acting after the patch, but you could perma-chill on a Necro, it just wasn’t worth it before. Like L step said you can splash a lot of people with condis, but in my experience it was only an irritant to them.

yeah ele is the good due to the burning base damage and the fire fields. it is very easy to spike up a ton of damage quickly. if you want to focus on high, fast, spike damage ele is the way to go.

but notice I didn’t say which one was best. all three are effective styles, it’s just a matter of how long you like fights to last, or what kind of fights you are in. an epidemic necro defending the gates of arah vs 20+ mobs will always cause more mayhem to more targets than an ele will. it’s just a matter of preference of playstyle.

Isn’t Sinister really a HYBRID set more than just a full out Condition Damage one?

Your Trait choices need to keep in mind that you are going to get a very decent amount of direct Power damage and Crits (but no additional Crit damage) while being fairly squishy in that armor.

I’ll be quite surprised if Burning doesn’t get some nerfing tomorrow (hopefully not hard enough to make it a useless condition).