Guild Wars 2

I typically use the staff as my main weapon in almost every encounter (PvE, PvP, WvW, etc.) while focusing on condition damage and support. I decided to try making a more aggressive style build that can go toe to toe with against warriors and thieves while not compromising on ranged damage. I’m not much of a youtuber but here ya go.

Excellent video and commentary. I’m more of a pve dungeon runner so I biased my build toward condition damage (I still have a 43% crit). Any thoughts of condition heavy builds in pvp? So far, for me its been semi-disappointing (plus I’m not that good of pvp’er).

Solid looking weapon skins.

@curtegg, I used to PvP against Almost Famous (ALFA) during the beta, stress tests, and early release of the game. But then I really began to enjoy PvE and now I prefer the WvW aspect of PvP as opposed to structured PvP. In sPvP I typically focus on shatter builds and weapon or phantasm damage, letting the phantasm use its attack and then shattering it with along with 2 clones. Not to say that condition builds are bad.

I typically run a staff support / condition build for dungeons. Also, if you WvW at all, staff condition builds are incredible. A lot of players run glass cannons, meaning they spec purely for damage and neglect to bring utilities for condition removal. Condition builds melt through opponents like this. In sPvP, however, people are generally smart enough to have some form of condition mitigation.

You mentioned PvE and dungeons, and I would highly recommend Mr. Pormetheus’ build. It’s excellent for dealing condition damage. In dungeons, however, I’ve recently taken to running a glamour support build (if my team has substantial DPS already) and spec’ing my glamours to have longer duration, shorter cooldowns, and to blind enemies withing in the radius. Its very useful combined with the boons / debuffs provided from Chaos Storm.

Doesn’t that include you, as well?
Like you said it’s very glass cannon so aren’t you susceptible to those kinds of condition builds? What’s it like running around WvW without condition removal? Is the general plan to nuke them before they nuke you? (or rather, you nuke yourself =P)

This is pretty much the same thing I’m running, and I’m actually thinking of taking just a couple of Valkyrie/Knight gear, just to make myself a little less squishy. The build’s damage output seems to be high enough that you can spare a few critical % damage, no?

not many people run condition builds in wvw, you can often get away with no condition removal if you have good positioning.

TeaTime.2418:

Doesn’t that include you, as well?
Like you said it’s very glass cannon so aren’t you susceptible to those kinds of condition builds? What’s it like running around WvW without condition removal? Is the general plan to nuke them before they nuke you? (or rather, you nuke yourself =P)

This is pretty much the same thing I’m running, and I’m actually thinking of taking just a couple of Valkyrie/Knight gear, just to make myself a little less squishy. The build’s damage output seems to be high enough that you can spare a few critical % damage, no?

What Wad said is exactly correct. Few people bring condition removal or bring condition builds, which means two things. 1. Condition builds are very strong if played right. 2. Condition removal is only viable in the rare situation you encounter someone using a condition build.

Also you’re right about being susceptible to other glass cannons, but the mesmer and the thief are among the professions with the highest survivability. In the video I talk about the two stealth skills, blurred frenzy, and the ability to chain distortion for up to 6 seconds of invincibility. Also, warriors and most other glass cannon are predictable. For a thief, open with blurred frenzy or distortion for him to waste his initiative then blow him up. On a warrior, stun break then blurred frenzy a d shatter combo for 2 seconds of invincibility and over 10k damage. You have the tools to escape unwanted encounters, or render yourself immune to damage for a short duration, making you durable though squishy. Plus people panic when a bunch of mere images pop up.

In the video is a great example of a glass cannon vs. a glass cannon. The ranger and I go toe to toe, but he out bursts me in the end. I was too eager to get the kill that I failed to go invisible when I had decoy on hand. But the build instead is relatively tough. How many other people can blink into a group of fifty guys, stomp the downed player while invincible and get safely away while invisible?