Guild Wars 2

Condition damage or Boon Duration Runes for PU builds?

I love the idea of spamming clones and literally confusing human opponents with stealth, but I’m not sure if I should focus on boon duration( 2 major and 2 superior runes of water+ 2 superior Runes of the Monk) or condition damage runes(Undead). Thoughts?
I would like the build to be bunker-ish, so I’m leaning towards boon duration. However, all I see are people using condition damage runes.

There’s also 2x traveller.

Unless you’re going to be using that extra boon duration for something (such as swiftness, or retal, might stacking, etc), you might aswell go condition damage. Just join the blackwater train. But don’t go for perplexity runes as who knows what they’ll look like tomorrow.

What’s your weapons/build?

No, I won’t go near the perplexities. I’m running a typical Blackwater build, which a few tweaks of my own. Staff and Scepter/torch. The boon duration would be really nice for Retaliation, aegis, protection, and regeneration though.

I’m not sure how much my damage would suffer from going with boon duration though. The 2 major water runes are just temporary, until I can afford 2 runes of the traveler. :P

Why not see

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Part of the excessive stealth on blackwater is it hold up the survive aspect of the build. Meaning you don’t need to rely on boons so much. If the stealth you’re using currently can proc enough of those boons during the fight to cover you, do you need the extra duration?

Now, if you wanted longer swiftness for more mobility then yes, there’s MUCH more reason to take boon duration. Since you dont have a focus or reliable source of swiftness, it makes more sense to bunker down, up your damage output, and leave every battle with someone dying one way or the other. In that case, dps is the smarter choice.

So, do you NEED the extra boon duration? Or can you survive without it, and thus speed up your encounters conclusion with swift kills?

Thanks for the reply! I guess I’ll go with Condition Damage Runes instead. You make a strong point about having tons of boons from the build anyway.

Perplexity are decent but not amazing on Mesmer. They are mainly for Confusion duration and the Confusion-on-hit, instead of the super-strong Confusion-on-interrupt that other classes make excellent use of.

I’d definitely go with some sort of Condition damage runes for sure. I use Undead runes (condi dmg / toughness) in spvp and they are great! Remember, 1/3 of the boons you gain from PU go away instantly when you get hit (Aegis), regardless of duration, so I don’t think Boon Duration runes are a great idea, because it will only have a big effect on the duration of 2/3 boons.