Guild Wars 2

I’m looking for some help in picking the correct stat armor and trinket choices, as I’m slowly approaching level 80 (currently level 62).

My current build is as follows:
10/20/20/0/20

Main traits in my build involve illusions able to do bleed damage on criticals, dodge roll to spawn clones, extra bounce for staff, and probably faster sword action.

My main weapons of choice is sword/focus (or pistol for optional choice) and staff. I am planning to get the other weapons a mesmer can use as well as a second sword, but I plan to specialize in the above choices.

Ideally, I guess I’m looking for a condition build, though it appears I can do a berserker build too to swap to when I want variation. However, I don’t want to be too fragile, haha. So, any recommendations for combined gear? I was planning on the majority being Rabid armor but then I realised I would have to farm either HotW/CM/TA/Arah a lot, haha. I will if I have to, but I want to look at other options first.

So… any help?

You can get head/shoulder/hand/leg pieces in Orr for karma.

Only need to grind dungeons for chest/feet and weapons.

You can also buy Rabid gear on AH, but it is usually a bit more expensive than other exotics.

So mesmer players who opt for Rabid gear generally tend to go completely for that along with trinkets and backpack as well and ignore vitality?

Mesmer dont need much in terms of defensive stats as far as pve is concerned. We have enough options between blurred frenzy, distortion, clone meatshields, chaos armor, multiple condition removal options, and several others, that if you play well, you are almost perfect with just the base vit and toughness.

Not me. I run a slightly more defensive build that uses mostly rabid with some knights and carrion gear for extra survival. I would recommend full rapid with undead runes if you are going for a confusion spike build, but if you want to play a slower paced playstyle with sustained damage, some vitality will really help against other condition builds.

Some power will help too since most condition builds are not as spiky as power/crit builds, and you’ll likely be using some direct attacks with almost every weapon loadout. MW is mandatory on your bar, and I use for extra confusion anyway with the super low low CD, so even just a little power tends to scale better than a little extra condition damage.

Sounds like you don’t want to run a shatter build, though, so just consider whether you want to spike condition damage or sustain it. Personally I find condition spikes on mesmer subpar except for certain confusion spike niche builds (which are shatter builds).