Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently managed to level my mesmer to 80 and after few days as typical wvw power build I’ve decided to give conditions a go. Currently, this toon is still an alt, so I’m not very keen to spend 60+ gold on perplexity runes just to find that condi mesmer is not my cup of tea. So could you please suggest me cheaper alternative?

Undead are a great, effective, and extremely cheap alternative.

I think Perplexity honestly isn’t that big of a deal for a condi mesmer. You have so many other sources of bursty Confusion anyway. I’d consider Traveler better for many situations.

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Runes of the Undead and Runs of Scavenging are both very cheap and give you a nice fat Condition Damage bonus. (I’d say Undead is probably better if you’re doing Rabid gear, but either one is strong with Dire gear.)

Runes of Balthazar are another cheap rune set that lets you turn heals into big bursts of burn. You can see them in the old OsiCat PU mantra condi build. These days I’d consider using Balthazar runes with traited Mirror as well.

After trying the cheap alternatives I went perplexity and not going back. If you don’t main the mesmer after a while you can salvage the runes and sell. Exotic rabid gear is cheap.

That being said I used Nightmare runes for a while. Easy to get with some dungeon runs.