Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’ve been testing out a burst condition build in PvP and i would like to hear what others think of it. I’ve tried a variety of other condition builds but none seems to provide the survivability and/or offensive capability that suits my playstyle. I chose to focus on condition damage rather than duration because i felt that i can’t stack conditions fast enough compared to other classes like rangers/engineers/warriors etc. Therefore, i thought that the conditions that actually end up on the target(s) should hit as hard as possible for the short duration they are up.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-NZ-3S;0VPV51R7cVF71;9;5JO-O;118-39;229-V-V8V;1jwmAjwmA1Fj

Basically for the playstyle, use Pistol 5 to daze your target and spawn iDuelist and iDisenchanter first. They will provide you the time to run around to generate any 3rd illusion as they harrass your target. After that you just wait for your phantasms to shave your target down with power and condition damage stats from the carrion ammy and win! I’m still testing this build but so far it’s quite fun! A good way to fight in this build is to stay in short to mid-range in both weapon sets and blink/swap weapons to proc geomancy on your target when you can. I imagine this build will be a good bunker buster or a backpoint defender. Have a go and let me know how it goes =)

You get more crit and thus bleed if you use Rabid and Toughness is better if you intend to stay in melee and mid-range.

Can you explain why you choose Carrion over Rabid?

Yes i agree with that point. However, with 20 points in dueling, my base crit rate is sitting at 14%, and my phantasms have fury. That would mean that they crit quite a bit even without rabid stats.

I personally find that i (the mesmer itself) don’t apply a lot of bleed/burns/poison when i’m in staff unless i weave through the opponent whilst inside the chaos storm. The way i see it, the main condition “applier” is my iduelist. I just have to focus on surviving burst attacks, staying in range for my disenchanter to cleanse my conditions/rip boons, keep my chaos armor up, and lastly proc additional bleeds via geomancy by myself (which doesn’t rely on crit rate).

The vitality allows me to last longer when fighting a condition specced class, and it doesn’t function too bad against burst classes as well. In addition, chaos armor is kept up quite a bit via staff and phase retreat in chaos storm, and that gives quite a good chance to keep regen and protection up.

Lastly, power stats makes all my phantasms and myself hit quite hard. IMO, it forces the opponent to think twice about eating the full volley of my iduelist.

Read the 15 point minor trait in Dueling where illusions inflict bleeds on crit.

14% crit is low and the bleeds are a substantial amount of damage, especially if you are using a staff.

Yes, but they have fury. 34% is a decent crit chance.

No it’s not.

Your phantasms should have at least 70% crit chance (w/phantasmal fury of course) if you want them to inflict bleeds reliably.

At the very least with max gear, you can get 44% with full rabid weapons and armor and half rabid trinkets and half rabid/unamed trinkets (for more VIT). Full rabid gives 49.9% crit chance I believe. These numbers are using the meta 20/20/30/0/0 condition build. Of course that crit chance number will probably be higher Tuesday with ascended rabid weapons.

Kelvytuong.8301:

Yes, but they have fury. 34% is a decent crit chance.

Just so you know, Fury only applies for Phantasm. Whereas Dueling 15 turns all illusions (clones and phantams) to bleed on crit. That’s a lot of bleeding.

If it isn’t blatantly clear to you people he’s a HYBRID build, IE he doesn’t focus solely on condi or power he has a good amount of both and if you try to only counter one, which most people do, will be their death.

It was clear to me that he wanted to be a hybrid but I still agree with others that precision is much more important to this build since it affects both power and condition dmg. With the power of Excel, let’s take a look at some numbers. Let’s assume that his choice of carrion is 100% dmg and all other pvp jewel choices are an increase or decrease in power/condition dmg. Since most bleeds come from 2 sources (sigil and SI & pfury) I’m going to calculate 3 different condition comparisons.

Rampagers: 9% power dmg; +99% (258% clones) SI dmg; -12% Sigil dmg;
Celestial: -4% power dmg; 10% (57% clones) SI dmg; -25% sigil dmg;
Rabid: -26% power dmg; 93% (223% clones) SI dmg; +3% sigil dmg;

Basically, the loss/gain in power dmg is minimal compared to the 2-3.5 x more dmg SI can do when you use rampagers or rabid instead of carrion. Carrion of course also comes with 644 vit. Rampagers is a loss of 315 vit while rabid turns the 644 vit into toughness (better for mesmers IMO since it also affects illusions.) Celestial is not as clear cut since weapon swapping style determines where most of your dmg comes from. I suspect the 285 to 3 defensive stats and more consistent bleeds still make it better than carrion.

So I would pick any other jewel set besides carrion for a hybrid mesmer damage. Sigil of minor accuracy will probably be better for your build. The only thing holding carrion even close to viable is the sigil of geomancy. If you swap to sigil of battle (will give you about ~300 power/condition dmg and doesn’t require you to be in melee range), this will give you about 25% more power/condi dmg and then you should definitely drop carrion.