Guild Wars 2

Due to a change of Topic I had to delete my initial post. The first 4 replies are answers aimed at the previous post. Sorry for messing up! This is the real thing:

I know, the general assumption about carrion is that it is not good for mesmers.
But I wanted to elaborate the damage output compared to rabid gear.

Wiki:
“Average damage = base * ( 1 + Critical Chance * ( Critical Damage – 1 )
= base * ( 1 + 0.25 * 0.8 )
= base * 1.2

Example: given a critical chance of 25% and critical damage of 180%, average damage output is 20% greater than normal.”

Now, if you use rabid and 4 points in dueling tree (almost everyone is running with DE), no points in domination, you will get a 44% crit chance and 163% critical damage. Let us take AA from staff for example:

111 * (1 + 0,44 * ( 1,63 – 1)
111 * (1 + 0,44 * 0,63)
111 * 1, 28 (rounded up) = 142,08

Like wiki says this is an average damage output. It is now +28% greater than normal. Let me break it for you: the 643 crit chance value rabid amulate gives you counts like an average of +28% damage increase to your AA (and thus to any other attack).

Same build but with carrion trinket will give you 643 power more. Staff AA is now 189 (already 33% more than previous average damage output with crit factored in), crit chance 14% and crit damage still 163%.

189 * (1 + 0.14 * (1,63 – 1)
189 * (1 + 0.14 * 0.63)
189 * 1,09 (rounded up) = 206,01

Carrion trinket will give you a 45% average damage output more than using rabid. This is plain math and no one cannot deny that you will be able to hit harder. Always. Every single hit will be more powerful.

So, why is it that everyone discourage using carrion? The lack of crit chance. But what does a crit chance do in a condi build with staff, torch and scepter? If you ask me, not much. Mainly because you do not use the best bleeding phantasms: pistol, zerker and warden and thus bleeds will not stack that much. You will still be able to use bleeds by debilitating dissipations, but procs from illusions will be less. Now, we should open a discussion whether the loss of some bleeds from illusions can be mitigated by the gain of power and raw damage. My experience teaches me that it can.

In short this is a build that melts people, where fire+torment is the main source of damage, but it still deals a good chunk of raw damage that helps putting pressure. Combo like torch #4 and scepter #3 (with sigil of intelligence) becomes scary.
The build retains the PU+condi characteristics (high survivability, long lasting fights, outnumbered fights) but it fixes chasing capabilities and does not rely only on conditions.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArfWlsnpIttpxRNcrRitxY6LKpiT1DqKqkBMMA-TpBHwAEOEAW2fwwRAAwDAIZZgBnAAA

Small tweaks:
- 2 condi removals in the utilities: you may prefer blink instead of something else. Up to you. AT is mainly for stealing boons, not removing conditions. I just love it
- Compounding celerity can be swapped for mender’s purity. Be aware you will lose chasing capabilities which conditions builds are suffering from. I personally started loving this talent. Very underrated!
- Compounding power can be swapped for Master of Misdirection but due to the nature of this build I wanted more raw damage pressure over longer confusions. Up to you, really.

Thoughts?

I’ve been having problems solving speed issues in WvW as well.
In basically anything but WvW, the Mesmer really does shine and is a real joy to play. But whenever I’m in WvW, I feel like I have anchors attached to my feet. Celerity doesn’t seem that great though to me, it requires illusions to be out? – and the whole class mechanic is that we shatter our illusions?

There’s a lot of things about mesmer that seems counter-intuitive or illogical.

Well, the build doesn’t require you to shatter at all except for invulnerability and daze. Anyhow you can quickly create 3 more clones as long as you are in combat. It often happened to me to be with no clones and with a foe fleeing: dodge twice and cast a phantasm and here you go, you can easily keep up with him and keep harming him if in range. If you use blink instead of AT than it’s even easier. Although AT can boon strip speed, in case…

Of course, traveling out of combat feels like a drag and hard swapping focus it’s the only way but I am trying to find a solution to the only problem this particularly build has: don’t you want to fight? Do you prefer to run? The burning you can apply is crazy and unlike confusion cannot be ignored. It will hurt you and by the time you realise that it’ll be too late. Already tested it

Problem is I still do not know whether to drop crippling dissipation or illusion V :|

Halfcentaur.9706:

I’ve been having problems solving speed issues in WvW as well.
In basically anything but WvW, the Mesmer really does shine and is a real joy to play. But whenever I’m in WvW, I feel like I have anchors attached to my feet. Celerity doesn’t seem that great though to me, it requires illusions to be out? – and the whole class mechanic is that we shatter our illusions?

There’s a lot of things about mesmer that seems counter-intuitive or illogical.

Traited manips, range + duration, focus curtain for swiftness, and either pack runes or boon duration runes. You won’t be slow.

Definitely keep Illusionists Celerity to get your Phase Retreat down to 6 seconds.

As you are using Balthazar runes, I would also recommend picking up Illusionary Elasticity to increase your burn potential. Could be quite noticeable.

just bumping for topic change.

There are other problems with carrion.

It offers vitality instead of toughness. This means you’ll be squishier. Mesmers already have good base hp, and adding more without toughness won’t help all that much. In a full carrion build, you’ll end up around 23k hp…and glass cannon armor. Conditions will still melt you without adequate removal, but now thieves, warriors, shatter mesmers, phantasm mesmers, and other strong power builds will also melt you. On top of all that, you have lower condition damage from chaotic transference and tuning crystals.

Carrion doesn’t give crit chance. You covered the sharper images a little bit, but lets look at it again. I don’t think you really appreciate how much bleed pressure it provides. Your clones and phantasms are all attacking at a quite good rate, regardless of how fast they’re replaced and/or killed. These alone can build up 5-8 stacks of bleeding with a good crit chance…one that is obtained with rabid gear. In carrion, your crit chance will be too low for the sharper images to even be noticed, and this removes a significant amount of pressure.

Additionally, a lower crit chance means less chances to proc critical infusion. This is ever more important since the nerf to it. With carrion gear, you’ll often have large periods of time with no vigor, where with rabid you can usually get a proc almost immediately after the icd ends.

Just a bit of math. You have a 14% crit rate. On average, you need to get 11 hits to have an 80% chance of critting. With rabid, you’ll have around a 45% crit rate, giving you 3 hits to have an 84% chance of critting. This is a massive difference.

Lastly, you’re talking about how much damage the power from carrion adds. It’s…not that much. You’ve got 1500 power. This is nothing. You have next to no crit chance, so almost none of those will be crits. This means that your power damage will be hitting minuscule amounts. The issue is that you’re taking this power just for a tiny boost, not for an actual hybrid build.

In an actual hybrid, you focus on effective critting power damage alongside condition pressure. With carrion, you’re focusing on condition pressure with a tiny bit of power that adds next to no damage…but sacrifices condition damage, survivability, and indirect survivability (vigor access). It’s simply objectively worse in every way.

TBH the build seems a bit all over the place, no offense.

Compounding Celerity can be OK for in combat mobility, but I’m not sure it’s really underrated. It’s just that in many instances when you need mobility the most, your illusions get killed off by AE, tether range, etc. It’s just not reliable enough.

As for Carrion vs. Rabid, don’t forget about all the Toughness on Rabid and the fact that Sharper Images works on all Illusions, not just Phantasms. It’s pretty much the only thing that makes non-staff Clones do any damage at all w/o being killed. Not a big deal, but should not be forgotten in the comparison.

Sure, you can play Carrion in a PU build and still have pretty decent survivability after coming out of stealth, but if you get locked down when Protection is down, you’re a glass cannon through-and-through.

I agree with the low vigor generation but that is easily fixed by double energy sigil. But I have a question. Do you agree with the above calculation? It says that although the low crit rate, your weapons with carrion end up doing more damage. You do more damage. Not a little bit but an average 45% more than standard to be precise. After all you rely on fire to do the job. A full condi build can reach 1700 condi damage. Here you start on 1400ish and depending on sigils you can get close to it. But power is higher, much higher than rabid.

Armor or HP. Well, if I could I’d go for armor but it’s a trade for being able to do more damage. More HP isn’t bad and helps with conditions anyway.

Bleeds and condi power. With carrion you are not losing much condi damage. Only 10% of 645. Neglectable considering the power you gain. As already said bleeds are not lost completely, there will be only less. However if I wanted bleeds I would go with pistol.

Talking about hybrids. Whatever build with 60% power/40% condi of 50/50 or 40/60 is hybrid. And I don’t see why only power centric builds with a tiny splash of condi can be considered viable while if you go condi you have to go full condi or else you cannot add some power because otherwise it’s useless…

The build is not a mess either because it’s exactly what I used to run except for trinket rabid and Master of Misdirection instead of compounding power. Over all is a variation of Osi napalm build and I wouldn’t call it a mess. It does wonders. I’ve only recently been thinking that crit does little to it (condi don’t crit anyway) and more power would probably more useful hence carrion. It retains everything a PU condi build has (except few bleeds) but it adds more power. Does that hurt it? Don’t think so.

Compounding celerity doesn’t solve all our problems, I know it but I still think it is underrated. Clones dying quickly? How hard is it to produce 2-3 more clones? A dodge and a phantasm? Really, I have been able to keep up with fleeing foes only thanks to this trait. Anyway, clones don’t die when chasing…. And if escaping ppl will go after you and not the clones.

Honestly, I think this build really needs a vid to show its viability/capabilities to convince those sceptical out there. I hope to be able to make one, one day.

trooper.2650:

I agree with the low vigor generation but that is easily fixed by double energy sigil.

That’s not enough. I run with double energy sigils in every build I use (for PvP anyway), and I still value vigor massively.

trooper.2650:

But I have a question. Do you agree with the above calculation? It says that although the low crit rate, your weapons with carrion end up doing more damage. You do more damage. Not a little bit but an average 45% more than standard to be precise.

Your calculations and numbers are correct, but you’ve drawn an invalid conclusion. Yes, you’ll do % more damage. However, you’re misleading yourself by looking at it as a %.

Example: One hit does 10 damage. You change your gear and the next hit does 15 damage. You’ve got a 50% increase. Unfortunately, the actual value of the increase was only +5, which is completely meaningless compared to the hp in this game.

Example: One hit does 10,000 damage. You change your gear and the next hit does 11,500 damage. You’ve got a 15% increase. However, the actual value of this increase is 1,500 damage, which is significant when compared with the hp in this game.

By taking carrion gear, you’re increasing your power by about 400ish compared to a rabid build. At the very most, you’re gaining 400 damage on your skills (that’s for the prestige). On something like winds of chaos, you’re only gaining 120. On the scepter auto, 200.

While you’re technically gaining damage, the amount you gain is absolutely negligible, completely useless.

trooper.2650:

After all you rely on fire to do the job. A full condi build can reach 1700 condi damage. Here you start on 1400ish and depending on sigils you can get close to it. But power is higher, much higher than rabid.

In my normal condie build, I sit at around 2k condition damage. Your build sacrifices a lot of condition damage with that carrion gear, among other things.

trooper.2650:

Armor or HP. Well, if I could I’d go for armor but it’s a trade for being able to do more damage. More HP isn’t bad and helps with conditions anyway.

As I mentioned, you’re not actually doing more damage, so it’s a bad trade.

trooper.2650:

Bleeds and condi power. With carrion you are not losing much condi damage. Only 10% of 645. Neglectable considering the power you gain. As already said bleeds are not lost completely, there will be only less. However if I wanted bleeds I would go with pistol.

You’re losing a significant amount of bleeding. As I said, a normal rabid build maintains around 5-8 stacks of bleeding from sharper images. You’ll have 1-2 at most. Factoring in your loss of condition damage and running the numbers, you’re losing about 900 damage per second. That’s quite significant.

trooper.2650:

Talking about hybrids. Whatever build with 60% power/40% condi of 50/50 or 40/60 is hybrid. And I don’t see why only power centric builds with a tiny splash of condi can be considered viable while if you go condi you have to go full condi or else you cannot add some power because otherwise it’s useless…

Not really sure what you’re getting at here.

trooper.2650:

The build is not a mess either because it’s exactly what I used to run except for trinket rabid and Master of Misdirection instead of compounding power.

Just because it’s similar to what you’ve run in the past doesn’t mean it’s not a mess.

trooper.2650:

Over all is a variation of Osi napalm build and I wouldn’t call it a mess. It does wonders.

It’s hard to call it a variation of the napalm build when you don’t have the burn duration that makes that build truly work, allowing your staff bleeds to last 2 seconds. What exactly does it do wonders against?

trooper.2650:

I’ve only recently been thinking that crit does little to it (condi don’t crit anyway) and more power would probably more useful hence carrion. It retains everything a PU condi build has (except few bleeds) but it adds more power. Does that hurt it? Don’t think so.

Again, you seem to be missing the point. It retains everything a PU condie build has…except bleed pressure, defense through armor, dodges through vigor, condition duration from the domination line, and aoe cripple. As I’ve said a few times already, the power does nothing.

trooper.2650:

Honestly, I think this build really needs a vid to show its viability/capabilities to convince those sceptical out there. I hope to be able to make one, one day.

By all means, make a video, but a video doesn’t change the fact that carrion gear isn’t good, and showing you beating people also doesn’t mean that the build is effective.

trooper.2650:

Compounding celerity doesn’t solve all our problems, I know it but I still think it is underrated. Clones dying quickly? How hard is it to produce 2-3 more clones? A dodge and a phantasm? Really, I have been able to keep up with fleeing foes only thanks to this trait. Anyway, clones don’t die when chasing…. And if escaping ppl will go after you and not the clones.

I actually didn’t touch on this choice before, but I may as well. CC is actually a pretty decent trait. The 30% boost is almost as good as swiftness, and so for mobility in a fight it’s really nice. The part where it starts failing is when things go wrong. If you get jumped on by several people, your illusions start dying faster than you can put them out, and you need to gtfo real fast. Suddenly CC is useless to you, and that’s its main fault.

There are few things which I do not agree with

“Your calculations and numbers are correct, but you’ve drawn an invalid conclusion (…)
While you’re technically gaining damage, the amount you gain is absolutely negligible, completely useless.”

I took AA from staff for an example. I could be taking #3 from scepter, which is one of the strongest hitting skill. There you can see it is notable. Based on what you say you do not consider anything besides berserker (or anything that max power) or rabid. A sort of narrow PoW? Because lets face it… in pvp you get these values: 922, 643, 434 (celestial) and 328 (rampager). So, it is quite a good chunk of power there.

“In my normal condie build, I sit at around 2k condition damage. Your build sacrifices a lot of condition damage with that carrion gear, among other things.”

Talking about pvp here, not wvw. Show me your build and prove it. I could be just swapping a sigil (corruption) and I get much higher. A 0/4/6/0/4 with undead, rabid and sigil of corruption gets you at 1880. Unless you put signet of dom I fail to see how you can get so high in pvp.

“As I mentioned, you’re not actually doing more damage, so it’s a bad trade.”

Wrong. You are doing more damage. I have figures showing it. Your assumptions are based on bleedings which will not proc because of the low crit. I did play long time with full rabid condi PU and non PU, and the constant stacks of bleeds you are talking aren’t always there so… Those numbers I put up there show every-single-hit hits harder. Whatever weapon or skill you use. The crit increase form rabbid is factored in so you cannot say “but with rabid I will crit more so more damage” No! Carrion outdamages rabid. Full stop. We can discuss if the other stats the trinkets provide can be suitable to a build or not. But as far as damage there is no doubt.

“You’re losing a significant amount of bleeding. As I said, a normal rabid build maintains around 5-8 stacks of bleeding from sharper images. You’ll have 1-2 at most. Factoring in your loss of condition damage and running the numbers, you’re losing about 900 damage per second. That’s quite significant.”

To me these are “made up” numbers

“Not really sure what you’re getting at here”

Please, define hybrid for me.
The way I understand it, hybrids are builds with a mixture of power and conditions. Whether it is a balance like 50/50 between the two sources of damage or 60/40 or 40/60 doesn’t matter. It’s a hybrid build. But the general assumption seems like if I favor power over conditions it’s ok (a 4/4/6/0/0 for instance). It’s not ok the other way round. I am proving this wrong.

“It’s hard to call it a variation of the napalm build when you don’t have the burn duration that makes that build truly work, allowing your staff bleeds to last 2 seconds. What exactly does it do wonders against?"

I am sure you meant “staff burns” to last 2 seconds
Traits on Osi’s build do not affect condi duration. He uses food for the 40% duration. Plus a sigil of smoldering which I am not completely sure about since he likes swapping it with 2xdoom and 2xtorment. As far as I know he hasn’t created a version for pvp. In pvp, Balthazar runes are more than enough to get the burning from Staff AA to 1.5 sec. The concept from his build is still there: apply burning from healing while being a PU based build. All other differences are down to personal taste. It does wonders vs all ranged professions, but generally doing very well in many situations vs many builds.

“Again, you seem to be missing the point. It retains everything a PU condie build has…except bleed pressure, defense through armor, dodges through vigor, condition duration from the domination line, and aoe cripple. As I’ve said a few times already, the power does nothing.”

Bleed pressure is mitigated by the increase of power, armor by larger health pool, dodges by sigils, condition duration the one I care the most) by runes

“By all means, make a video, but a video doesn’t change the fact that carrion gear isn’t good, and showing you beating people also doesn’t mean that the build is effective”

So, what does? A duel?

“I actually didn’t touch on this choice before, but I may as well. CC is actually a pretty decent trait. The 30% boost is almost as good as swiftness, and so for mobility in a fight it’s really nice. The part where it starts failing is when things go wrong. If you get jumped on by several people, your illusions start dying faster than you can put them out, and you need to gtfo real fast. Suddenly CC is useless to you, and that’s its main fault.”

As already said many times CC is not the solution to all. But I have heard so many complainings about “fighting a conditions Mesmer? Just walk away…” You cannot do this anymore. CC helps you keeping the pace of the enemy (unless talking about nike warriors) and the burning and increased damage will do the rest.

I’ll reference calculations that I’ll put in a second post.

trooper.2650:

I took AA from staff for an example. I could be taking #3 from scepter, which is one of the strongest hitting skill. There you can see it is notable. Based on what you say you do not consider anything besides berserker (or anything that max power) or rabid. A sort of narrow PoW? Because lets face it… in pvp you get these values: 922, 643, 434 (celestial) and 328 (rampager). So, it is quite a good chunk of power there.

Your 2 hardest hitting skills are the prestige and confusing images. The prestige will do about 200 more damage from 400 power against a standard armor target. Confusing images will do 500 more damage. Ref EQ 1. Pretty much every other skill will be negligible ( discounting the iWarlock because it’s so unreliable in PvP). So from those 2 skills, you get total damage increase of 700 over about 20 seconds, which is pretty bad.

trooper.2650:

Wrong. You are doing more damage. I have figures showing it.

Yes, you’re technically doing more power damage on your skills. Again though, the increase in power damage is negligible, and doesn’t have a real effect on someone.

Look at one of the two damage skills; the prestige. Your carrion gear means you’ll hit for 200 more. The burn, however, lasts ~5 seconds at 650 per tick, doing 3250 damage. The damage increase from carrion is only a 5.3% increase, absolutely negligible (Ref EQ 2).

trooper.2650:

To me these are “made up” numbers

Well, lets un-make them up. Reference equation set 3. As you can see, a carrion build will average to 1 bleed from sharper images, where a rabid build will average 5. Applying damage per bleed gets you a total dps loss of 440 dps for carrion.

Note that this is 440 damage per second. Recall that your increased power is getting you ~1000 (counting all skills) damage every 20 seconds or so, which is only a gain of 20 dps.

trooper.2650:

If I favor power over conditions it’s ok (a 4/4/6/0/0 for instance). It’s not ok the other way round. I am proving this wrong.

It’s not a matter of what you’re favoring, it’s a matter of how you do it. Firstly, I think most hybrid builds are bad, because they simply don’t add up the separate parts to be better than a pure build. That being said, the most successful hybrid builds utilize high crit. This is because both power and condition damage for Mesmer scales with crit. Power without crit is nothing. This is most evident when one looks at my immortal build. I had 2400 power…but no crit, and my power damage barely tickled anyone. You simply can’t do good power damage without crit.

Because of no crit, your build does no power damage and is useless as a hybrid. It’s the same the other way around though, mainly power and no condition makes it do no condition damage and is useless as a hybrid…but at least control conditions like weakness and cripple still work.

trooper.2650:

Bleed pressure is mitigated by the increase of power

That’s nice to say, but it’s simply wrong. Refer to my earlier calculations.

trooper.2650:

armor by larger health pool

Unfortunately, that’s just not how it works. Armor and health are different aspects of defense. Stacking pure health isn’t effective. Thieves and such will kill you nearly as fast as a total glass cannon. You need actual damage mitigation, particularly in a condition-based build that works on an attrition fight.

trooper.2650:

dodges by sigils

As I said before, the sigils are not a replacement for vigor. You need vigor and sigils, particularly in a build that has no armor. If you get hit at all, it will hurt.

trooper.2650:

condition duration the one I care the most) by runes

The burn duration from the runes is close to useless. It only affects the rune proc and the prestige, but the vast majority of your burning (staff) ends up being nearly unaffected because 1.5s burn only ticks once. In return, you’re losing 20% duration on all bleeds, control conditions, and torment.

trooper.2650:

So, what does? A duel?

A video can show it being effective, but won’t necessarily. Seeing as this is a build for PvP, I’d like to see it being used in tPvP, preferably top 1000 ranked level, and see how it functions.

trooper.2650:

As already said many times CC is not the solution to all. But I have heard so many complainings about “fighting a conditions Mesmer? Just walk away…” You cannot do this anymore. CC helps you keeping the pace of the enemy (unless talking about nike warriors) and the burning and increased damage will do the rest.

Well, I was talking from a WvW roaming standpoint. If you’re not WvW roaming, why does it matter if people run away? Nike warriors and other running builds don’t exist in PvP because they can’t do anything in a capture game type.

Equation Set 1
The prestige
Skill coefficient: 1
Average weapon damage: 1000
Power 1: 1100
Power 2: 1500
Target armor: 2000
Damage 1: 1000*1.0*1100/2000= 550
Damage 2: 1000*1.0*1500/2000= 750
Difference: +200

Confusing Images
Skill coefficient: 2.5
Average weapon damage: 1000
Power 1: 1100
Power 2: 1500
Target armor: 2000
Damage 1: 1000*2.5*1100/2000= 1375
Damage 2: 1000*2.5*1500/2000= 1875
Difference: +500

Equation Set 2
Burn Damage: .25*(1200-1400)328= ~650
Burn time: 5 seconds
Total Burn Damage: 3250
Skill Damage: 3250550= 3800
% Increase: 200/3800*100= 5.26%

Equation Set 3
Illusion attack rate: ~1 attack every 1.5 seconds, or 2/3 aps
Assume 3 illusions.
Total illusion attack rate: 2 aps

Sharper Images bleed duration
Base: 5s
Carrion build: 5s
Normal build: 6s

Critical Hit Rate
Carrion Build Crit Chance: 14%
Crits Per Second: .14* 2aps= .28
Crits per duration of bleed: .28*5s= 1.4
Average Bleeds Maintained: 1

Rabid build crit rate: 45%
Crits per second: .45*2aps= .9
Crits per duration of bleed: .9*6=5.4
Average bleeds maintained: 5

Damage per bleed in both builds: ~1350*.05+42.5= 110

Bleed dps in rabid: 110*5=550
Bleed dps in carrion: 110*1= 110
Difference for carrion=-440 dps

Well, even if I still have few things to say and don’t agree with all you say I must admit it’s a pleasure discussing with Pyro.. ehm… Fay. Always very accurate and precise in his replies.

In the end I have to agree that carrion isn’t optimal. But what if you manage to raise crit rate to a 40ish level (kill on sigil + traits)? Is carrion always bad or there is a threshold for crit chance where if reached it makes the amulet a valid option?

I’d Argue that Carrion does have a bit of weight in some situations. Mostly on Staff where Fury is a thing and a 14% crit rate turns into a 34% crit rate. I haven’t checked to see if this effects clones after the fact but it’s still a thought.

I’d also note that with Melendru Runes, Carrion offers my build better survivability in sPvP matches against many classes and builds over Rabid. Sure toughness is nice but it doesn’t shave that much more off the 1-8k Hits I take. Rabid also offers less Health to buffer conditions which means you end up in kitten a lot faster with what can be considered less time and or less conditions.

However I do end up with less vigor if I am not careful and don’t end up on my staff for a fight. This’ll be more of an issue now with the sword nerf…

Personally I’ll just say use what works the best for you and if you have fun then great. Numbers are only numbers until you get fun out of them.

if you’re still having fun as a mesmer, let us know your secret tho.

trooper.2650:

In the end I have to agree that carrion isn’t optimal. But what if you manage to raise crit rate to a 40ish level (kill on sigil + traits)? Is carrion always bad or there is a threshold for crit chance where if reached it makes the amulet a valid option?

Let’s go with a definite maybe.

The problem is that I’m not sure it’s possible to do that. I took your build, tossed a perception sigil on it, and reached 24% crit. That’s a little better, but it’s still not great.

I guess the main issue for me is that the power damage is so negligible that it’s not worth gearing for. The HP definitely is more of a bonus though…and that’s why I typically run with the dire/rabid ascended type trinkets, because those get me to a little over 20k hp in WvW. In PvP though, that’s not an option.

Now, the fury from winds of chaos on staff doesn’t actually help all of it. It’ll help you crit more, which produces vigor, but fury doesn’t transfer to illusions, so it won’t affect sharper images procs.

One issue that no one is even touching on, that plays a significant role no matter how much crit chance you add to a Carrion build, is the lack of Crit Damage. It is hard to overstate the importance of Crit Damage in a Power builds ability to deliver high DPS.

This is the long standing gripe with Power based builds vs. Condie ones, and IMO is what kills off Carrion gears usefulness in a hybrid role for which it presumably was intended. If it were just the lack of crit chance, but it’s the “death by a thousand cuts” scenario; a little less power, a lot less crit chance, a LOT less crit damage…on top of lower condie damage caused by lower crit rate, less defense since Vit scales terribly in comparison to Toughness….it all adds up to lot of downsides.

Great discussion though!

Windwalker.7421:

One issue that no one is even touching on, that plays a significant role no matter how much crit chance you add to a Carrion build, is the lack of Crit Damage. It is hard to overstate the importance of Crit Damage in a Power builds ability to deliver high DPS.

This is the long standing gripe with Power based builds vs. Condie ones, and IMO is what kills off Carrion gears usefulness in a hybrid role for which it presumably was intended. If it were just the lack of crit chance, but it’s the “death by a thousand cuts” scenario; a little less power, a lot less crit chance, a LOT less crit damage…on top of lower condie damage caused by lower crit rate, less defense since Vit scales terribly in comparison to Toughness….it all adds up to lot of downsides.

Great discussion though!

Well, I sorta ignored crit damage just because lack of crit chance preempts that discussion. It is an issue though.