Guild Wars 2

So, common wisdom is Zerkers or nothing when you want DPS. But I’ve been going over the numbers and I’m not entirely convinced wondered if anyone could prove me wrong.

The difference is coming in from incidental bleeds.

In a typical zerker phanty build, you’re probably looking at ~50% base crit chance, with another 10-15% from other sources like sigils. Add in Fury and that’s around 85% crit chance on your phantasms.

This means a typical warden will inflict ~10 bleeds per attack cycle. The same goes for your clones and what-not, they’re all generating trivial amounts of bleed damage from non-trivial bleed stacking (GS clones will generate on average 2 bleeds per channel).

In a zerker build you probably wont deal more than ~55 damage per bleed (~275 total), so your warden in addition to doing his ~9-10k direct damage, is also dealing ~2750 condition damage.

If we switch it up to full rampagers and throw on condition/bleed duration runes/food, then it’s not unreasonable to double both the damage and duration of the bleeds to around ~110 per tick/10 seconds each. (~1100 per bleed), furthermore rampagers has a higher crit chance, so you’re landing more like 11 bleeds, so your warden in addition to the power based DPS is inflicting a massive 12,100 condition damage alongside still pretty significant physical damage (~4-6k in testing).

Furthermore, your clones become a non-trivial source of damage. Greatsword clones alone are capable of maintaining ~12-15 stacks of bleeding; that’s ~1,500 damage per second; this is clones we’re talking about here, providing DPS on a par with spamming basic attack (They’d only do ~500 without).

This breaks down when you look at the player’s own attack, sigil of earth cannot stack bleeds as fast as a clone, so the player’s direct damage attacks deal less than a zerker counterpart would, however this is offset by the fact your clones are helping deal non-trivial DPS too, in essence shifting the damage burden away from the player and onto your pets.

Another aspect is that the on-death condition traits (notably Duelling 25, which many phanty mezzies take) start dealing more respectable damage and have a better duration, and debilitating dissipation becomes downright potent.

There is of course, also the “problem” of the bleed cap, but in most pugs I have tested the concept with, this has not been a significant problem, with only a couple capable of capping bleeds without me, and none of those sustaining the cap indefinitely.

I can’t be the only one to have pondered this, so why is it that the general concensus is zerker or bust for phanty builds?

I think you have to look at the damage you give up to get that. I don’t use warden, but I use the duelist. I assume about 6 crits for 50 damage per tick (300 total) for 6 seconds (I have 20% condition duration). This is 1800 of “free” damage. But the duelists damage on it’s own is the big hitter – it can be in the 4000 – 6000 range (I’m at around 80% crit damage). So I would need to see how much of that I would lose to increase the condition damage, but so far, it hasn’t looked attractive.

Probably the biggest key for me is that I’m using this in WvW and I want pretty good toughness and health. So I’m not running berserker armor – I’m using all Sentinel and Soldier armor. So I think if you pick Rampager’s, the other key analysis is whether you hit both your toughness and vitality goals by going down that path.

I think also, at least for me personally I find building for condition dmg and only applying one condition to be sort of counter productive since it can so easily be cleansed in pvp settings. If you run staff or scepter I can see it being more valid, but both of those weapons will actually stack bleeding slower (staff may actually stack just as fast with it’s clones because they cause bleeding inherintly but try keeping the clones alive in a setting where there is tons of aoe flying around). From a pve stand point it is perfectly viable for open world pve solo play, but will always run into the same issues that plague condition users in pve. Large events become a problem, and sometimes dungeons as well. Even phantasm builds should be shattering their illusions right before a mob dies at the very least and the extra power and crit damage really helps make mindwrack hit much harder than it would with rampager’s. I won’t say that it doesn’t work to use rampager’s just to me it feels less effective for the types of weapons I choose to use.

As much as I’d love to run a condition build, with 110% crit damage, iZerker and iWarden hit like trucks. If there was a way to quickly stack the bleeds and keep them up, I feel like a condition build could work.

The main reason why i use zerk is becuase my effectiveness comes from burst damage, i do agree that the dps is higher but this isnt what makes the phantasm mesmer greakittens the burst

yeah but if you rely on your GS clones for damage it’s no longer a phantasm build so your question of ’zerker vs. rampager for a phantasm build is moot.

AAAHHH sorry!

djtool.8372:

yeah but if you rely on your GS clones for damage it’s no longer a phantasm build so your question of ’zerker vs. rampager for a phantasm build is moot.

AAAHHH sorry!

No real reason to be sorry. It’s true. If you’re going to have clones out most of the time, Rampager’s or Rabid will be your best bet because the most damage they can do is from conditions.

would be quite nice IF clones generated by dodge attack target.
of course only speaking about pvp. but can’t imagine it would be another story in pve.
if all clones would attack my current target it would be very impressive. but imo op as well :P

really just play the maximum glasscannon spec 30 30 0 0 10 and you’ll see the difference. conditions are quite potent on mesmer but nothing comes close to power/prec/prowess builds in regards to team viability. you can troll some nice 1vsx fights for the fun but any good opponent could just run away.
one extreme: high damage, less survivability, high burst, good/very good aoe
another extreme: condition damage, high survivability, low burst, almost no aoe

I’ll take first any day in wvw and tpvp. mixing it just gimps your potential. imo

yeah I was just teasing.

phtotrope.3761:

djtool.8372:

yeah but if you rely on your GS clones for damage it’s no longer a phantasm build so your question of ’zerker vs. rampager for a phantasm build is moot.

AAAHHH sorry!

No real reason to be sorry. It’s true. If you’re going to have clones out most of the time, Rampager’s or Rabid will be your best bet because the most damage they can do is from conditions.

Something to note here. If you are planning to use this in pve, NEVER use rampagers.

Phantasm builds will stack up massive amounts of bleeds. On paper, this is great. Your damage is increased significantly, and this is good, right?

Wrong. In rampagers, your bleeds will probably hit for around 90ish a tick. In rampagers, you’ll easily stack up 15-20 bleeds with duelists or wardens. However, if you have another condition built person in your party, you just nuked their damage.

A full condie spec can hit bleeds for 130-140 per tick. They will also usually be able to stack up 15-20 bleeds, generally due to duration. However, your phantasms stack up those bleeds because of rapid application, not duration. What this means is that your weaker bleeds will be overwriting the strong bleeds from your condie built person, significantly reducing their damage.

Tl;dr: Rampagers is a hybrid, and that means weaker bleeds than full condies. You will take away damage from full condie builds in your team by using rampagers, lowering your overall party dps.

To clear up I’m mostly thinking PvE here. PvP isn’t something I tend to do much and WvW is a totally different kettle of fish (For starters full zerkers or full rampagers in a zerg is fast track to being dropped at the first mass arrow cart spam)

Anyway that is a very important point there Pyro; even if you do put out lots of conditions and maage to claim a decent portion of the stacks you’re denying damage to your allied condition specialised players, hence better to focus on power, makes sense.

Once again we see how utterly messed up the GW2 metagame is right now >.<

Speaking of WvW, I would say zerk based phantasm builds are better in 1v1’s, however for roaming a rampagers based setup as phantasm is much better.

It’s a bit of a mind-game thing. You’ll mostly see people run when they hit 25%, there’s quite a difference when your bleeds tick 40% longer and deal 1.5-2x the damage as zerk based builds to get someone killed or keep him in combat mode. Cause, yeah, conditions keep enemies in combat mode making it harder for them to escape.

Also a really great thing I like is the extra duration on the immobilize of #3 sword. Due that increase to nearly 3 seconds I’ve been able to pull off combo’s much stronger and easier.

Just take a look at my new video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO-4WfMBMPU

Pyroatheist.9031:

Something to note here. If you are planning to use this in pve, NEVER use rampagers.

Phantasm builds will stack up massive amounts of bleeds. On paper, this is great. Your damage is increased significantly, and this is good, right?

Wrong. In rampagers, your bleeds will probably hit for around 90ish a tick. In rampagers, you’ll easily stack up 15-20 bleeds with duelists or wardens. However, if you have another condition built person in your party, you just nuked their damage.

A full condie spec can hit bleeds for 130-140 per tick. They will also usually be able to stack up 15-20 bleeds, generally due to duration. However, your phantasms stack up those bleeds because of rapid application, not duration. What this means is that your weaker bleeds will be overwriting the strong bleeds from your condie built person, significantly reducing their damage.

Tl;dr: Rampagers is a hybrid, and that means weaker bleeds than full condies. You will take away damage from full condie builds in your team by using rampagers, lowering your overall party dps.

So the real issue here is not the rampager’s gear per-se, it is taking the trait: sharper images in a phantasm build that doesn’t focus exclusively on condi-damage. And I suppose taking +condi-duration gear if that’s part of the build.

The same issues that you describe would occur with an otherwise identical build running berserker’s gear, except that the bleeds would be even weaker. Since the condition damage has nothing to do with whether bleeds get applied, but rather critical chance/precision do that. I suppose rampagers does have slightly better precision, so critical chance is slightly higher, but by the same logic, the best way to be a necro friendly mesmer would be to avoid precision (or the sharper images trait) entirely.

I think the point of limited conditions is important when playing any condition build in pve (whatever profession). Because whether your condi-damage is great or not, you and another player may be competing for limited bleed stacks. Two condi-necros shouldn’t run with eachother in the same dungeon, even if they both have optimal builds, because they will wind up getting the combined dps of 1.5 players. The rampager mesmer runs into the same problem…but so does a full condition-spec mesmer. Because of this, I think it’s important when running a condition build in PvE, to be mindful of other players, and announce this early on. If others are also running conditions, you should be flexible, either changing your build to accommodate, or graciously leaving the group, so that you don’t wind up with a 1hr CoF run. So the issue is not that rampagers is a hybrid build, it is that running rampagers requires you to take a condition focused build to optimize damage, which makes you a condition build…and then you have to have the same consideration as other condition-players.

Vs. World bosses, well 1-2 condi-builds would be useful, but beyond that it’s just making the fight tougher for everyone, so pure power dps is more useful…sad but true.

@bobross: I avoid going 15 points into dueling in all my pve builds except for a few specific instances for precisely that reason.

PvE speaking:
Well, I once went the rampagers way especially for Sharper images. Passive 70% crtchance including almost 100% uptime of vigor. But well, alot bleedings mesmerize your evaluation ability … you think you’re dealing alot damage. The trait lets clones deal quite the damage, but you’ll sacrifice your phantasms and your defense for it.

You’d have to gear and trait especially for running a SI build. High critchance, high malice, additional condition duration would be required. And the hardest part would be the phantasm restriction … All phants would lower your damage. You need to focus on cSword, cGS, iWarden and/or iDuelist. cStaff might work due to condition damage, but wouldn’t help your SI.

And once you have this build, fight buildings or crit-immune world bosses.