Guild Wars 2

Hey fellow mesmers,

I am running a condition heavy build with Staff being the obvious choice for primary weapon. (0/20/30/0/20 with loads of clones, Carrion or crit/tough/cond gear if anyone is interested)

I am currently using GS as a secondary weapon but that is not very useful on it’s own, nor it does contribute to the condition damage playstyle a lot.

So my question is: what realistically would be my best option to have as a secondary set?

GS – too power oriented which I don’t have much and no traits in the power line
Sword – same thing
Scepter – would be good if it would be of any use (a bleed on main attack please? or anything like that?)

Offhands are pretty straight forward – torch is semi obvious choice for cond heavy build.

Anyone has any ideas?

Cheers,
Max.

scepter is good if 5stacks of confusion is of any use to your play.

for offhand you can go with an aoe bleed in the form of eWarden or you can go single target bleed in the form of eDuelist with the boon of having access to a 2sec stun with magic bullet.

GS is nice, but ya, no synergy and you can’t have an offhand. Sword is really nice for PvE but in WvW I’d rather have the scepter for range. If you’re fully +cond, you should probably stick with the scepter regardless.

Thanks for answers,

I will have to play around (and upgrade my rubbish scepter ) and see which offhand suits me better…

And for the love of all kittens – Anet, please make the scepter a cond damage weapon, not power!

I’ll echo the “depends on what you’re doing” thing.

GS doesn’t have great synergy, but it’s a power-house of a weapon. Berserker gives you bleed stacks just like the duelist does. Mirror Blade is a fantastic source of Might and Vulnerability. The cone knockback is always handy. Clones seem to stack bleed pretty admirably as well. I run a similar spec and find solo PvE play much easier with a GS to swap to than some of the others.

That said, Scepter/Focus is your buddy for WvW and Scepter/Torch can be ok in sPvP. The stealth on The Prestige is a life-saver, but if you’re going for a more aggressive playstyle then I’d probably go with Pistol offhand. I personally find the too-long channel of The Prestige and the lackluster Phantasm override the utility gained from stealth.

I use the scepter as second weapon for condition dmg builds. I totaly ignore the fact that you can have and auto attack and use it as a tool to blind the enemy or get confussion on him ( which ticks pretty hard). As Off-hand either use sword if I face vertrans and stuff like that and pistole for the rest. Both have there benfits and draw backs and non really does more dmg over time then the other. I tried using tourch and it did work out really well but the CD are just way to long and it is not worth it to reduce the CD by 20% and not get the dodge clone thingy.

The 5 stacks of confuse could actually be decent with that build. Since ALL of your shatters will be applying confusion from your traits. Would be a piece of cake to build that into the 15 stack range.

The short duration combined with the rapid fall off of higher stacks really needs to be adjusted. That said, the Torch Phantasm confuse is a very long duration and does a lot to help maintain the stacks.

I run a similar build, and the Torch really does excel for Confusion assuming you take the confuse on blind traits….which can turn the torch into a confusion machine. And since your stacking cond the burn from The Prestige is just gravy. The torch does need fixing though. We need to be able to have it cancel early (from say…a dodge) and still have it do it’s fire aoe and it would serve as a far more useful Blast finisher. For PVE the stealth is just way to long to effectively use both conditions that The Prestige applies.

The pistol isn’t a bad choice and The Duelist can stack bleeds very quickly with Sharper Images. If you’re going for shatters though it becomes a much poorer choice due to it’s (now longer) CD.

That leaves you with the Focus (amazing for WvW) or the Offhand Sword which I find horrible particularly when paired with the scepter.

quote GS doesn’t have great synergy, but it’s a power-house of a weapon. Berserker gives you bleed stacks just like the duelist does. Mirror Blade is a fantastic source of Might and Vulnerability. The cone knockback is always handy. Clones seem to stack bleed pretty admirably as well. I run a similar spec and find solo PvE play much easier with a GS to swap to than some of the others. /quote (forum didn’t let me use the quote function for some reason…)

This is what i was thinking of when using it. It comes in handy in those PvE situations when you’re 1 vs 5+ (Chaos Storm + Phantasmal Retreat + Mirror Image -> Shatter, swap weapons, iZerker, Mirror Blade, dodge for a third clone -> shatter for confusion = mop up if anything is still standing.) With this setup i have survived in places where others are dying left right and sideways, but it just doesn’t feel “condition damagey” if you get what i mean.

This is how my build looks like. The only difference now is that i am getting more Rabid gear (precision/toughness/condition damage) which cannot be crafted.

Does anyone have any suggestions about the composition? I feel it is very well rounded with high survivability and good damage output. I cannot blow stuff up in seconds, but i can weather all but the heaviest of storms.

Cheers,
Max.

I use for my condition mesmer scepter + torch. You can give condition with phantasm and scepter + torch invis and burn is always nice. If you pick decoy and mass invis you are pretty hard to catch.