Guild Wars 2

I am curious about condition Mesmers, are they viable for pve/dungeons and WvW? Which weapons? Staff I am sure and what else? It seems that most are phantasm/ shatter speced. Any advice would be appreciated.

I would guess something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW7flwzqpHUzgGZ9IhJF9G5nUQdpj6x1z+3B;TsAg2Cro+y8l4L7Xuvkft8Y4xeBA

Add in a food buff like the spicy pumpkin cookies for extra condition duration and damage.

Staff is the only important weapon. Your second set can be almost anything, the only weapon to avoid is the OH Sword.

This is what I use for dungeons: http://tinyurl.com/bsajwt6

This is what I use for WvW: http://tinyurl.com/c3cay7q

This is what I use for sPvP: http://tinyurl.com/cd5u86t

You can use MH Sword in place of Sceptre, I switch between the two depending on the alignment of the stars. Focus can be substituted with Pistol if you’re more interested in single target mayhem.

Imperatora’s build has a critical weakness: condition builds tend to be reliant on Staff Clones for damage, and that build has no way of creating Staff Clones quickly. Almost all condition builds will go for 20 points in Dueling for Deceptive Evasion, which also provides Critical Infusion to fuel dodge Clones and Sharper Images to augment Clone damage. It also gives you a bit of Precision to kick these on-crit effects off.

In terms of stats you almost certainly want to go with Rabid gear, as it maximises your condition damage as well as giving you a healthy amount of Precision to fuel your on-crit effects. It also has no wasted stats, unlike Rampager’s and Carrion.

Well, condition mesmers are in a complicated place.

First, we super should separate PvE/dungeons from WvW and PvP. The main reasons are behavior and synergy.

By behavior, I mean swing/action speed. Most human players will spam skills at a high rate, making Confusion a power-house condition. Most computer-controlled opponents, however, will swing only once every 3-5 seconds and make a stack of confusion worth less than a stack of bleeding.

Synergy-wise, group composition can further hinder condition builds. In WvW, you’ll rarely reach a condition cap on an enemy player. In PvE, it’s much more common to find vulnerability and bleeding hit the limit, lowering the team’s overall damage.

For general PvE, I’d say that condition mesmers aren’t in a good spot. We rely a lot on confusion, which is weak in pve. We hit caps frequently. And we have few reliable means to deliver meaningful condition damage compared with other classes. Don’t forget that all those staff skills have a great chance of applying a non-damaging condition instead of a damaging one.

If you’re looking for builds, a few are floating around the forums.

Check out Osicat’s condition-shatter build in the stickied post at:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-WvWvW-Pve-Shatter-Cat/first

FLIMP has some great condition-build guidance and videos to offer as well:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Video-FLIMP-WvW-Series-Updated-19th-Feb/first#post1557336

Also be sure to check the guildwars2guru forums for advice as well.

Finally, don’t be afraid to try builds out. They’re cheap to respec (free in pvp). Builds from as far back as release are generally still worthwhile to try; very little has changed in regards to conditions and mesmers since then.

Embolism.8106, good point. And this, ladies and gents, is why Imp should never try and make builds before her morning coffee.

I almost exclusively play condition Mesmer and I love it, I play burn/bleed/confusion tank when solo and glamour build in mass WvW.

I will link my build tomorrow as I don’t have time right now, started working on a guide for it too.

Thanks for the input, I will try some of the builds that were posted. I was fearing that condition spec didnt have enough dps for dungeons.

I have been trying condition mesmer builds lately for the simple reason that I don’t enjoy Greatsword, sword or focus on mesmers. Sadly I have have to agree with everyone here that it is certainly less effective (And after 20g of equipment too.)

In PvE we really suffer from confusion’s mediocrity. With condition duration as maxed as possible it is pretty easy to keep a few stacks on an opponent, but it is usually irritatingly bad. Most enemies seem to do a skill every 5 or so seconds and a small few -never- trigger it. (e.g. Gunpowder Morgan) It is hard to overstate how irritating it is to see an opponent rampaging across your team and see a single mediocre confusion tick. Confusion is supposed to be the enemy defeating themselves, in PvE it just feels like a randomly occuring condition. Making it even worse is Phantasmal mage, who has a longer cooldown and attacks more slowly than almost every other phantasm. Doesn’t do very good damage either.

So yeah, I learned to more or less ignore confusion (Sadly, because I was pretty excited by the idea of it) and use the staff. Staff may not provide great offense, but it does have an excellent defensive toolset. So, I am building more towards that. I keep Scepter/torch in my offhand for it’s use in WvW where confusion is actually pretty nice. For skills I use Arcane Thievery, Feedback and Arcane Disenchanter. Good condition removal, and it is surprising how useful feedback can be. When conditions aren’t common I swap out Arcane thievery for Signet of Domination.

I hope that Anet will make confusion tick on every attack NPCs make in the future, I would be okay with a lowering of confusion damage a bit to accompany this, but not quite the 50% that sPvP has. Confusion isn’t great there either. Also, give Phantasmal Mage a huge buff. He is one sad fellow.

its not worth running until anet does something with confusion for pve (which will probably take 3+ years). If you want a condi build run nec or ranger those two do it nicely.