Guild Wars 2

After deciding the old Blackwater was basically nerfed into unfunness, and that condi shatter just doesn’t work, as in MtD itself adds almost nothing to the build and you’re almost always better off not shattering, I decided to try and come up with a condi build for this new post PU era.

Here is is http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7cl0npMtFqxRNcrRCvxYqFOZKtgyh2pkBcLA-T5AWwAA2fQ/TAwRZAA

The idea is that scepter 2, IE, and DD are the primary sources of condi dmg for us. Blackwater kills too slow, and MtD is basically just a waste of 2 points, IE being the whole point of going into illusions for condi now.

I’m calling this Blockwater because it still relies on clone death, but the nerf to DD means we need to increase our clone generation to produce more to offset the weaker DD we now have. We have a scepter block every 6 seconds and a sword block every 9 seconds. With DE this actually can produce a lot of clones, as well as a lot of torment.

I’m experimenting with runes of guardian that apply a nice 1 sec burn on each block, for about 680 each time. You could swap these out for undead or something else for more dmg, I think it averages out about the same on the sc/sw side, and a little better of course on the staff side.

It’s early days and I only just started trying this out, but so far it seems to work really well. Staff is for if you are being ignored in a group fight, just get 3 clones out and AA away. If you are focused by someone swap over to block mode and start applying burning (if guardian runes) and torment and DD explosions in high frequency.

Sigils I put on bursting to compensate for the Guardian runes, the second one is up to you or both if you go undead/whatever.

I put serious condi cleanse with mantra heal and a utility devoted to it (take null field if you want) because to me nothing is lamer than a condi build that dies easily condis.

Either side sc/sw or staff will force cleanses, and it’s easy to overwhelm them. It’s not as tough as the old PU builds, but it puts out more pressure than old PU or MtD, and with nice condi cleanse. All the blocks and the 8 sec phase retreat actually give you quite a lot of survivability, just have to work little harder than old PU. You can last against 3 people for a little while, but not forever. You can win 2v1’s with this, but it’s not easy like it was with PU.

Gear for wvw is the usual, same thing you would use for PU except maybe more dire.

I hope you guys enjoy it. I’m not sure what the options are for condi now besides weak PU and MtD, but for now this is what I’m running when I go condi. Let me know how it goes if you try it.

Have you tried Balthazar runes?
+45% burn duration, +175 cond damage and burn on heal sounds like a better option.

Sorry for going off topic, but every time I see scepter/sword staff I think of Seven Mirror and this build really looks like what he would have run if he still played (maybe different runes but otherwise almost exact) x. x

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Sorry for going off topic, but every time I see scepter/sword staff I think of Seven Mirror and this build really looks like what he would have run if he still played (maybe different runes but otherwise almost exact) x. x

Well that kinda makes me feel cool, at least not dumb for posting it lol.

i think the different now for condi build is the IE triat
it doesnt matter if you go shatter with mtd or not
i like to go 0,4,2,2,6 with condition runes and when i shatter my condition is buff with 100-200 more dmg and also torment and confusion stacks

messiah.1908:

i think the different now for condi build is the IE triat
it doesnt matter if you go shatter with mtd or not
i like to go 0,4,2,2,6 with condition runes and when i shatter my condition is buff with 100-200 more dmg and also torment and confusion stacks

The only thing is that actually shattering 3 IE clones does not buff your dmg on a single target, it nerfs it. It does buff your dmg if you can hit like 3 people with the shatter, so for group condi maybe it’s good, but in a group fight IE clones are buffing your allies too so it’s still hard to say if a shatter is better than just maintaining staff clones.

Yes you get 100 more condition dmg, but aside from that it’s almost a waste of 2 points. With undead runes you’d probably be better of just taking Chaos X.