Guild Wars 2

Which is better?

The consensus seems to be that power builds put out more dps than condition builds for pretty much all professions (I think even for necros the dagger is their highest dps weapon). However, for the pve mesmer imo it’s better to pick your weapons first based on what utility you want out of them and then gear around your playstyle ( if you rely on your staff clones then bring condition damage, if you use your staff as a backup weapon to your greatsword you should probably stack power, etc).

note: for dynamic events conditions are simply not very viable as mobs die too quickly and champions easily hit the condition stack limit.

That very much depends on playstyle…

Shatter builds and greatsword users will benefit most from focusing on power/crit (ie berserkers set) since these attacks do almost exclusively direct damage,

Any build that uses a staff, or phantasm builds that also have sharper images will benefit a lot from having good condition/crit – (ie rampagers set). I would recommend against focusing totally on condition to the detriment of power entirely though.

Both are entirely valid paths through PvE. I levelled on a pwoer build but recently switched to condition and actually put out MORE damage with it than i did on power, though without so many trait points I don’t know if the build would be so viable.

They will both work. My experience is that power will take down single targets or groups of 2-3 fastest, cond works best on groups of 3 or more. The advantage I saw to condition builds is that they continue to apply damage if you are temporarily unable to hit – knocked down, kiting, dazed or whatever. It could well be that the power build would have killed that target before it CC’d me though, it’s hard to say.