Guild Wars 2

[THIS IS FOR SPVP TPVP]

Yo, asking you fellow mesmers from soloq and teamq, what rune/sigil/ammu sets do you run with your regular shatter build? I’m tempted to roll Traveler+Celestial+Double Air/Energy…

Why celestial? You’ll still be quite squishy, and your damage will be way lower than zerker.

Traveler and Air/Energy are good choices.

Because Staff is almost exclusively condition, and Shatter line is condition.

Staff only condition? Think you have never used iWarlock on a open world boss.

I roam with a power GS/Saff and I don’t spec for condi damage.

And even illusions line has condi damage doesn’t mean shatters are better with it. In fact, shatters builds have always been direct damage builds, and condi mesmer don’t spend points into that line.

Staff is primarily a defensive item. You shouldn’t be looking at it from a strictly damage point of view. Instead, you should look at is as an opportunity to think and get out illusions. The only really good damage from staff is iWarlock.

In fairness you wont be as effective as maxamising your burst, but it works, and is probably even superior for 1v1 situations.
A tradeoff for spvp would be to take torment on shatter, it is a big trade off but will help you immensly against the copious engineers in yoloq.
Also Id swap out travelers for strength and have battle on your staff. Your gs could either air/fire combo or further more might stacking.
In saying that, I maintain that for your team, traditional burst is better,

I run S/P+staff and full shatter zerker in PvP but traited for halting strike instead of mental wreck. Granted that my burst isn’t as high when compare to other shatter mesmers, but I can still deliver consistent damage using staff. I’m also feeling kind of stuck with it since the iLeap nerf and everyone can pretty much interpret incoming mind wreck.

Just to give you an idea when I’m holding staff. In many situations my diversion crit can hit 1.5k-2k (1-2 clone interrupt), and in ideal (full interrupt, crit and cumulating vulnerability) situations I can do up to 4k-5k damage. iWarlock crit can also deliver about 3k-4k. Plus further interruption from Chaos storm and mind wreck (though I tend to reserve this for sword) I can still do decent direct damage against light and medium armors. I know it is not the best damage there but staff is my defensive weapon anyway. Keep in mind daze also prevents my opponent from recovering after sword/mind wreck burst, and interruption damage + chaos storm can be really deadly against some S/D thieves who spam skills and think they can evade all.

Only problem I have in this set up is I’m pretty much a melee character, and may have problems against range opponents as oppose to GS/Staff.

Neptune.2570:

In fairness you wont be as effective as maxamising your burst, but it works, and is probably even superior for 1v1 situations.
A tradeoff for spvp would be to take torment on shatter, it is a big trade off but will help you immensly against the copious engineers in yoloq.
Also Id swap out travelers for strength and have battle on your staff. Your gs could either air/fire combo or further more might stacking.
In saying that, I maintain that for your team, traditional burst is better,

Thanks, it’s indeed better suited for soloq. I tried Strenght/Double Battle but it helps more the S/D thieves you get against every match >.<

Ansau.7326:

Staff only condition? Think you have never used iWarlock on a open world boss.

No, I melee it with Sword Sword when everyone else camps their GS auto. Staff has for base conditions, support and control.

Should have been more precise to avoid smart comments picking one word out of a pharagraph (@staff is power too, @shatters are power only).

Staff is not only utility as you guys imply. It has great pression on your target and that’s why I’ve been playing Celestial lately. But maybe I’m playing GS/S staff wrong and I shouldn’t use it offensively but rather camp GS AA at 200 range.

So far Strenght/Battle/Zerk seems the other GS/S variant. What would be your opinion on runes like Mesmer/Ogre/Pirate? I played those too and I don’t really see anything that changes in my gameplay compared to Strength (Perma 15-20 might) or Traveler (25% speed).

Staff is no condition weapon. At least 1/2 of the conditions you apply are not affected by condition damage and the conditions that get applied are applied in a really slow way. Especially with shatter where you don’t spam 1 with 3 clones for 30 seconds.

But ye if youre going with celestial, at least run Doom sigil on your staff then along with energy. I prefer to have air and fire on my gs for maximised burst but your choice.