Guild Wars 2

Okay so I came up with 2 condition builds for use in WvW.
Both use scepter/torch and staff as primary weapons.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|6.5b.0|b.5b.a2.f.5b.0|1q.71q.1q.71q.1b.71q.1q.71q.1q.71q.1q.71q|2w.0.2w.0.3x.0.2w.0.2x.0.1b.9b|k59.k2a.u5ac.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

The first uses a mix of dire and rabid gear, and tormenting runes. It is slightly tankier than the meta condition builds (same traits though) but has a slightly lower ability to stack bleeds.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|6.5q.0|b.5q.a2.f.5q.0|1q.71q.1q.71q.1q.71q.1q.71q.1q.71q.1q.71q|2x.0.2x.0.3x.0.3x.0.2x.0.1q.62|k59.0.u5ac.k47.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

The second is essentially full dire and appears to have extreme survivability for a mesmer with 23.5KHP and just as much toughness as the other build I believe. Stealth and clone death traits are retained, and while the ability to stack bleeds is consistently lower, the build has more torment/confusion uptime with scepter, an extra condition removal, and looks to be very tough to kill. My biggest concern with such a build would be whether or not it could kill another easily. I don’t take traits in illusions since the confusion gain from shattering wouldn’t be significant, nor would be ellasticity since I’m pretty sure it still doesn’t work on staff clones.

Please recommend which build to use and let me know what you think!

The second one is almost identical in traits to this build:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/BUILD-Condition-build-for-roaming-WvW/first

Which I run, all be it with some varied gear to give me more VIT, and I can highly recommend it for its effectiveness solo and for small roaming.

If this isn’t your cup of tea though I would go with the lower one cause I like being tanky and hate taking the Dueling line for conditions. ^^

Well the trait point allocation is the same, but I go into Inspiration not for healing but for general tankiness really.

That raises the question of whether it is better to be tanky or better to be able to apply conditions through illusions better. Is the difference of 8K HP from a full rabid build worth the extra offensive power that is fueled by precision? I do not know, so I need more opinions before I commit to gear.

1v1 I have probably a 98% win rate(guessed but I lose very very infrequently) and I would assume your second build would be the same. Though the builds do take a bit of time to kill. The original poster of the build I posted admits that it is a troll build to really annoy people. It is also great 1v3 above 3 and my win percentage goes down significantly. That being said both builds have no “real” burst but with the one I posted hitting them with a Scepter 2, then hitting prestige and running at them in stealth with the block up so they foolishly activate the torment and then switching to staff for the bleed on switch and throwing down a Chaos Storm is a rather lot of conditions that are easy to get all off. Average player will usually panic with that many conditions so fast and you can take advantage of their panic.

Haha I agree. The main difference between our builds is that yours is very healing power focused, while mine has a bit more condition damage but less healing.

And yeah 1v1 mesmer condition in general is very strong, and the stakitten AoE nature lets you handle multiple foes surprisingly well.

And the panic part is definetly fun to play against, especially with confusion stacks either punishing or inhibiting their next offensive move. Because of staff clone conditions, I’m not too concerned about losing sharper images really.. I’m more concerned about losing the staff clone uptime from deceptive evasion. I’ll test a bit more in spvp with say a carrion amulet sorta see what it would be like without that extra bit of bleeding.