You’re doing it very wrong.
1. your healthpool is extremely low. in any group situation this is a rallybait build. Its prescence is overall harmful / detrimental rather then being a positive asset to your team.
2. you have very little cleansing + no stab + only 1 stun breaker making this good neitehr for roaming or larger scale.
3. you have too little stealth. for what you run it would be better to get rid of PU. stealth duration is only half the advantage of PU, its 2nd half is the boons it provides. Aegis , prot, regen especially are an absolutely awesome combo, but you cant generate that combo cause lack of stealth.
your traits are also kinda messed up. better off going with Ineptitude and the pledge in illusions line by far.
get rid of domination and pick either dueling or inspiration. inspiration is better for zerging while dueling better for roaming. see the build Kaziel above me posted ? the dueling line is good for small scale.
also, you have manipuilation skills traited but none on your utility bar ?
get rid of travellers runes, if you run a lot of stealth with pledge, torch + decoy + veil + mi, you will have a ton of swiftness from PU + blink. no need to waste runes on it. go either with perplexity cheese for best offense, or melandru for best defense.
get some dire gear, you dont need to go full, but with health that low do at least your armor.
note: all of the above are meant for pvp, either spvp or wvw, and perform horribly in pve, lowest dungeon DPS eva. you will be beat by PVT cleric full support guards.
PvE condi builds are bleed / pistol focused, there are a few of them posted in otehr threads and they perform ok, but …. in order to get that performance you have to give up everything that makes a mesmer, well, a mesmer. thus i do not recommend running a pve condi build at all. and needless to say if you take it into wvw you will spend vast majority of your time respawning. gear wise its a bit of a toss up between sinister and rampager, or mix of the 2.
This person is correct that your build is not good, and he pointed out some solid weaknesses in your build.
Some of his other advice is not good, however.
Runes of Perplexity are only valuable in specific builds, as it’s fairly easy to hit duration cap on confusion without them.
Traveler’s Runes are great. You lose dps, but the 25% movement speed is wonderful in WvW, and the condi duration helps make up the difference, and none of the stats are wasted anyway.
If you go Dueling, use Rabid gear. If you don’t go Dueling, use Dire gear for WvW and Sinister for PVP (I recommend dueling).
If you go rabid, note that there are no exotic rabid jewels, so you can fill the upgrade slots on your rabid trinkets with carrion (chrysocola) jewels rather than rabid crests. This gets a little extra vitality and power, and leaves you with more condition damage than if you go with rabid crests (even with Undead Runes and Chaotic Transference, chrysocola jewels give more condi damage than crests).
It’s actually pretty easy to build a Rabid condi mes that shifts to decent dps in dungeons, so he’s mostly wrong about that. In fact, I think condi in WvW has a lot to gain from some of the bleed orientation a pve condi mes has.
Lastly, the claim that “you have to give up everything that makes a mesmer, well, a mesmer” is bizarre. Give up what? Shatters? Shatter is terrible dps in PvE whether power or condi. Phantasms? iDuelist applies strong bleed stacks. Clones? Condi mesmer can actually deal decent dps with clones, where power mesmers deal no damage with clones. What class-defining characteristic do you have to give up?
You won’t be speedrunning any time soon with a condi mes, but your dps is good enough for guild runs, is very strong in the Silverwastes, and can solo champs like no other class.
In WvW roaming it’s totally boss.
Here’s my build for WvW:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQNArfWlsnhK0YDawRNwtGLvGkZHG+IKnQvjGaAyZTA-TlyCABOoEEgTAAOq/c8hAYv9HMw0HyPBgU0HglygjU6FA4AgrDECYxaA-w
Hotswaps:
- Signet of Domination for Blink, Radiation Field, Feedback, Null Field or Signet of Inspiration, depending on the situation.
Cheaper options:
- Sigils of Malice and Bursting are expensive, and it took a while before I decided to buy them. Before that, I had a Sigil of Earth on my staff and pistol, Sigil of Corruption on my scepter, and Sigil of Agony on my staff.
- Every so often I buy a stack of Super Veggie Pizzas and Quality Tuning Crystals, and I use those the vast majority of the time. Rare Veggie Pizzas and Toxic crystals are expensive and only to be used when you mean serious business.
Switching gears to PvE is fairly simple.
Torch -> Pistol
Prismatic Understanding -> Bountiful Disillusionment
The Pledge -> Compounding Power
Maim the Disillusioned -> Phantasmal Haste (optional, I keep MtD in Silverwastes and swap it in dungeons)
Ineptitude -> Malicious Sorcery (optional, I usually keep Ineptitude, but it’s a preference thing)
Mirror -> Signet of the Ether
Decoy -> Radiation Field/Feedback/Null Field/Portal/Whatever-else-you-need
Mass Invisibility -> Time Warp
A note about weapons:
- Scepter is primarily a pvp weapon. It has strong torment and confusion duration, which are good against some mobs, but mostly it’s weaker against mobs than bleed. You’ll spend most of your time in WvW on scepter/torch.
- Staff is primarily a pve weapon. It’s got decent defense, the only real non-shatter aoe the mesmer has, and is good for long-ranged combat when you need it, but otherwise the scepter outshines against players. Against NPCs though, the staff just blows the scepter away for dps. The only time you’ll need your scepter in pve is to swap over, use the pistol to get an iDuelist, and swap back to staff.
- Torch sucks for combat, and it rocks for stealth. It’s the go-to in wvw and pvp for the stealth alone, though the blind has its uses and the phantasm is occasionally better than a clone for damage.
- If you can afford it and you spend more time in pve than wvw, it makes more sense to put Sigil of Corruption on the scepter, so you won’t lose stacks if you hotswap from torch to pistol and back (in dungeon skips, for example). Easy enough if you’re using something cheap like Sigil of Earth, but Sigil of Malice is something like 10g, so you’d need to buy one for each offhand. If you’re rich, it’s the more effective option, but sigil of corruption is less than a gold apiece, by comparison.
- If you are in WvW more than PvE, you’ll get more mileage out of putting corruption on the Staff and Bursting on the Scepter/Torch, but that runs into the same issue, having to buy a separate Sigil of Bursting or Malice for each offhand.
The pve version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQNAraWnsICVohNoBeuBUrhFcDycBxeklBY1/CNINZHA-TlyCABOoEEgTAAOq/c8hAYv9HMw0HyPBgU0HglygjU6FA4AgrDkCYRlVA-w
Just remember: in PvE, bleeds are king, but pay attention to the NPC’s patterns and you can get good use out of Confusion and Torment.
In PvP, torment/confusion are king, but bleeds deepen your condi stack (more robust against cleanses), add some extra dps, and function better at longer ranges (got/need some space? Swap to staff and long-bomb the target with staff clones attacks and AAs!).
The ability to shift gears is also really nice clearing camps, I’ve never had a problem clearing a whole camp pretty quickly if I don’t have to worry about enemy players.
I started playing GuildWars 2 as a Guardian, which was awesome, but I wanted to run another character as well, and after trying a couple of classes I simply loved the mesmer class. So I went with that.