Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow mesmers, I just got to 80 and I loved everything about the class so far but now I have some doubts about gear.

First of all my setup: Using Staff/Sword-Focus with a 20/0/30/0/20 with ConditionDamage/Power/Vitality gear. Not going about rotations or specific talents because my question is more about general gear. Oh on a side note I tend to use shatters a lot as soon as I see I can shatter and replace illusions instantly.

What I am having trouble at is deciding stats for gear, I have read guides here and seen MrPrometheus guide as well and there seems to be some conflicting stuff. For example his guide uses the gear and setup I am using but I have seen other builds that use 0/20/30/0/20 with ConditionDamage/Toughness/Precision.

I am trying to decide which one works better for a condition build, the guides seem like they have received no updates in quite some time. I want to start looking for specific armor sets but I don’t know which set of stats to go for.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Raziel,

Here is a fairly recent condition damage build that I wrote up about a month ago or so:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/WvW-Confusionless-Condition-Build-VIDEOS/first

Do keep in mind that a condition build, especially following the change in bouncing logic that occurred recently, is considered by most to be sub-par to a power-based build. However, I feel that it is still viable if you are VERY aware of the positioning of your clones so that they don’t suck up all the boons from Winds of Chaos. With a condition build you trade burst damage for more survivability, but can still do decent sustained damage with a bit of effort.

Also, to answer your question more directly, Rabid stats (condition/toughness/precision) are more viable than carrion stats (condition/power/vitality) because precision is hugely important for your DPS due to sharper image procs and allows you to use many of the on-crit sigils effectively (I like the sigil of earth for extra bleeds). Also, note that +condition duration food is very important for this type of build as it basically make each bleed worth 1.5 bleeds, a substantial increase in dps. Without it, you will probably feel like your DPS is too low.

Next, regarding shatters: ever since confusion was nerfed, I’ve found that shattering isn’t terribly useful. Condition damage comes from three primary sources in general: your own Winds of Chaos, your clones’ Winds of Chaos/sharper image crits, and clone death traits (Debilitating Dissipation). If you are shattering, you’re negating the on-death traits entirely, since shattering doesn’t count as them dying, and you’re also creating a period in which your clones are running towards the target to shatter and thus are not applying more conditions. If you are insistent on shattering and want it as a part of your playstyle, I would advise steering away from a pure condition build and looking for more of a power/condition hybrid using the iDuelist from the pistol to apply bleeds or even going for a full power build with some assortment of knight’s/zerker gear (I’m really no expert on power builds though, so I can’t provide much advice here).

Finally, I realized that I wrote this whole post under the assumption that you’re talking from a WvW perspective. If that’s the case then I hope it was helpful, but if not, do know that a condition build can be modified to make a pretty effective bunker for point defense in sPvP and can work ok in PvE, though in the latter scenario the lack of burst damage is often a problem.

Palu thanks a lot this type of response was exactly what I was looking for.

Now I understand the gear I should be looking for as well as the build should look like 0/20/30/0/20 as opposed to what I am using right now. Also thanks a lot for the shatter tip as I took the shatters as on-death.

The build you stated as well as the Rabid set gear should work ok for PvE? Or for PVE should I be looking at Berserkers gear and use GS/Staff? I am sorry i didn’t say it on my previous post, I am looking for PvE build since my brothers and I want to farm the dungeons armor

I would get a set of Knight’s gear first and Berserker’s eventually as well. Condition gear isn’t that great for PvE especially since it is so easy to max out stacks of bleeds on a target.

Condition gear can work alright in PvE, but as Xavi said, Knight’s/Berserker’s would probably be more reliable in the long run. Condition builds work in dungeons assuming your conditions aren’t overlapping with other people’s conditions. As such, if you are in a party where other members are putting considerable amounts of bleeds/burns on the target, you will notice a significant decrease in your personal dps, whereas power builds don’t have this problem.

All that being said, I use a somewhat modified version of the above build for PvE (I do high level fractals and CoF/SE mainly). In CoF I’m perfectly capable of running six or seven minute runs with my guild and in fractals I don’t have any issues either. As a said before, the main time you’ll run into problems is if you have other people overwriting your conditions, so if you can consistently get in groups where that doesn’t happen, then conditions can work in PvE to some extent.

Excellent gonna switch traits and find gear with those stats and see how I like it.

Also could you elaborate a bit more on the modified version for PvE please.

Thanks.

Yeah, I suppose that would be helpful :P

Basically, stealth isn’t very good for PvE, so I swap out Feedback for Decoy, and use pistol or focus instead of torch. Also, time warp instead of mass invis of course. Then I usually swap out Chaos XII for Chaos IV, but that’s because I’m lazy and don’t want to respec every time I switch between WvW and PvE. Ideally, you’d probably move those 10 points out of Chaos and into Illusions, Domination, or Inspiration depending on what your PvE needs dictate. Also, you would probably use rabid trinkets instead of the condition/toughness/vitality ones that I have and that would give you enough crit to use more DPS oriented runes, such as those that increase bleeding duration or condition damage.