Guild Wars 2

“Cry of Frustration”’s Confusion lasts only 3s and not the 4s indicated in its tooltip.

also

+Condition Duration is not working correctly on CoF. Master of Misdirection +33%, Nightmare(4) +10%, Lyssa(2) +10%, and 30 Domination +30% on a character results in “Cry of Frustration” to only last ~5 seconds instead of 7.3 seconds.

These 2 bugs currently make Condition shatter builds totally unviable in sPVP. When you look at the point distribution in the trait trees and the traits it is quite obvious that shatter builds were designed for condition specs yet due to these bugs all shatter mesmers are currently forced into Power/crit burst builds (combined with the huge burst of mind wrack) .

Agree. Ironically enough, I get more mileage out of Confusion on my Engineer than on my Mesmer.

Static Shot – 2-stack of confusion, 3 sec duration, 15 sec CD. Bounces between multiple targets (enemies only!) and has a very long bounce range. Also blinds and does damage, but that’s beside the point.

Concussion Bomb – 5-stack of confusion, 5 sec duration, 18 sec CD. Also does AoE damage.

Just chaining these back to back already gives comparable confusion to Mesmer’s. Plus, since there’s no clones to worry about, all mobs come at me. But since Static Shot has a blind effect, I take no damage. And I also always drop Smoke Bomb, which is an AoE blind field. So I can just stand there while mobs kill themselves swinging at me and missing.

Seriously, works better than on the Mesmer. Faster too – two instant cast attacks with no prep work.

Yea, condition shatter Mesmer’s relying on a ability that counts on enemy’s using abilities is just unreliable, let alone when its main ability is bugged. In 3 seconds most enemys will cast just 1 or 2 moves if any, each ticking for 700ish with a full 4 shatter combo with stacked +cond.
Compare that with a power mesmer who can mind wrack for a guaranteed 4 × 1-2.5k (upto 10k)..and mind wrack is on 15 second cd compared to 30 sec CoF.

It works fine. It’s just the tooltip is bugged and the base duration is 3s, not 4s. Here’s the durations I saw:

No domination, no equip, no master misdirect – 3.02s
No domination, +10% (2/6 Lyssa) equip, no master misdirect – 3.37s
No domination, +10% (2/6 Lyssa) +4% (2/6 Nightmare), no master misdirect – 3.5s
No domination, +10% (2/6 lyssa) +4% (2/6 Nightmare) +6% (4/6 Nightmare), no master misdirect – 3.9s
+30 domination, +10% (2/6 lyssa) +4% (2/6 Nightmare) +6% (4/6 Nightmare), no master misdirect – 4.8s
+30 domination, +10% (2/6 lyssa) +4% (2/6 Nightmare) +6% (4/6 Nightmare), with master misdirect – 5.7s
No domination, no equip, with master misdirect – 3.98s

I dont know what game you are coming from or what notion you have, but condition mesmers in this game do damage with sharper image bleeds and sharper image bleeds only, nothing to do with confusion at all

3 shatter a cry of frustration and use your scepter #3 and watch a player or mobs health bar melt.

Right… because players love to cast with 10 stacks of confusion on….
Seriously, as Sabbatius pointed out, engineer is much better Confusion user.
The biggest reason is that things like scepter have nothing to offer to confusion build but one skill (and even Confusing Images scepter skill deals 450(900 crits)x5 direct damage on zerker build, making it actually just as strong in zerker builds than in condi builds). Engineer using Static Shot and Concussion bomb to inflict confusion has aoe blind in smoke bomb, burn bomb, poison dart volley and pistol autoattack to make use of his condition damage gear.
Condition mesmer is kittened.

Not at all. Clones cause Bleeds on crit, Torch can cause Burning and the Phantasm uses Condition Damage (granted, this one needs a serious buff), Staff uses Condition Damage so it is the immediately obvious side weapon, Scepter spams clones fast to use more Shatters causing extra Confusion with.
And you can trait for random AE conditions on clone death, which includes Bleeding which scales from Condition Damage.

Gotta love how people just start making laundry list of every condition ability mesmer has, as if recharges, weapon set limitations, on clone death not working with shatters, and other problems don’t even exist.
Oh yeah, 3 sec burning on 30 sec recharge if I take torch and one stack of 9 sec confusion. Guess I was wrong and condition mesmer is totally viable and totally on par with condition engies, eles and necros. Right…

The only weapon one could mistake for condition weapon is staff and staff autoattack with condition damage gear doesn’t even deal that much more damage than zerker gear staff autoattack, not to mention Staff phantasm on zerker gear hits more than twice as hard as on condition damage gear.

You also mention mechanisms that are antisynergetic. Yes you can shatter to inflict confusion. Then in next paragraph you say you can take on clone death trait. Well that doesn’t work. Because if you make a shatter confusion build then your on clone death trait is mostly unused.

Only idiots think scepter is better in condition build than in zerker build. The damage from autoattacks, block skill and direct damage from confusing images is at least twice higher in zerker build than in condition build.

All condition build gets is 170 damage confusion instead of 90 and 110 damage bleed instead of kittenage bleed on your clone crits. And for that you lose 60% of direct damage of zerker build. And since the majority of mesmer skills are either purely direct damage or they have condition damage with significant direct damage component (like scepter’s Confusing Images), you are losing way more damage than gaining.

So please, feel free to play your little confusion/bleeding/whatever minor stack builds while I’ll be running around dealing double your damage.

Condition damage mesmers are “viable,” I would argue that they aren’t optimal anymore though. And no, you won’t be dealing “double” the damage of a condition damage build, you’ll be dealing close to the same amount of damage, less against bad/spammy players, but the damage will be front loaded and can’t be cleared by condition management.

There’s a reason zerker gear is cookie cutter, you aren’t figuring something new and innovative out.

just fix cry of frustration and condition mesmers will be somewhat viable.

CoF base duration is 3s instead of the 4s indicated, the tooltip was changed in beta but the actual skill was not. So when you add this +83% duration to Confusion it only gets it up to between 5-6s Duration.

In addition, Master of Misdirection does not affect tooltips, though it does affect duration. If you cast CoF without any bonuses the duration starts at 2s (because it doesn’t show partial seconds, it’s actually at about 2.75s duration by time you see the tooltip), if you equip Master of Misdirection it instead starts at 3s.

Note that if you’re using all of this confusion duration you should really look into using a Scepter. Whatever else you can say about that weapon set it’s hard to frown on 9-10s of Confusion on a 15s CD.

There’s a reason zerker gear is cookie cutter, you aren’t figuring something new and innovative out

Right… because you know I haven’t tried about 30 different builds by now. If you think condition builds do about the same damage as power builds in spvp feel free to play them.

What Dastion says is important, btw.

If you spec +1 stealth duration, you’ll also never see a “6s” in the Stealth from Mass Invis.
However I took a stopwatch and timed my various stealth skills with and without the trait, and yes, it works perfectly. And in fact yes, you see “0s” for quite a while on the buff, 0,99…s to be precise. Likewise you won’t see “5s” on the buff without the trait.

I can stopwatch CoF if that makes it more believable?

The most viable condition build, imo, relies on a bug. What I assume is a bug, but hope it isn’t.

Get ready cuz I’m about to drop some knowledge. The increase range/reduce cool down of pistol trait has a neat side effect. It causes every single combo finisher projectile from the iDuelist to cause confusion. No longer 20% chance. Which means with just one duelist up plus a combo field (Null Field, Feedback, Chaos Storm, Time Warp), plus Confusing Images from Scepter = 13 stacks of confusion. It takes 2 seconds to set this up. 20 + stacks if you can get 2 Duelists up. Or, even more if you use Feedback and they combo field confusion on themselves. It really rips through people.

It is quite a fun build to play and I have been using it since release. Unknowingly at first.. although like I said, it is probably not intended.

I use 0/20/15/30/5 with Scepter/Pistol and Staff + Undead rune + Rabid amulet.