Highest damage Mesmer build in PvE [Dungeons]?
I hate to think there’s one build to rule them all like that, and if there is, I’d expect nerfs.
Ultimately, I’d expect a shatter heavy build, a phantasm heavy build, and a condition heavy build to all be viable regardless of the current FotM.
In a power/crit build staff is a defensive weapon rather than an offensive one.
I personally find greatsword based builds to have the highest damage output in PvE. It might not have the single most powerful phantasm, but neither is it reliant on it for it’s damage so it is still viable in fights where you can’t keep your phantasms up indefinitely.
I would say it’s usually possible to do more damage in a fight with a very specialized build depending on the fight, but as a general purpose weapon the greatsword can’t be beat.
Do you think you could link that greatsword build from wowhead for me please?
Sure. Here’s a bog standard no thought involved high DPS greatsword build I use for farming DEs in Orr and can no doubt be adapted to dungeon play.
I’d probably retool a bit and get rid of the mantras for dungeons, but keeping them certainly isn’t that bad of an idea. It is a 16% damage increase, and with three uses a piece they can be incredibly handy once you get used to them. Mantra of Recovery in particular I absolutely love, with the third use of it the healing it grants is fantastic. Mantra of Resolve is amazing for getting yourself out of sticky situations, cleansing immobilize so you can roll away or poison so you can heal efficiently or really whatever you need. Mantra of Pain can be underwhelming, admittedly, but the damage it adds is not trivial — it amounts to 3 to 4k damage with full berserkers and three uses. Not worth recasting in a fight ever, so in long fights I just keep it up for the 4% damage boost, but in a short fight I try to use it as much as I can and recast between fights. Finally, Mantra of Distraction is an instant cast 1s daze, up to three times in a row. Use it as an interrupt, watch the mobs and keep them from casting big, important spells. All in all, while you could probably do better with more situation-tailored utility skills the Mantras make great general purpose spells, especially in a build like this. In my humble opinion, of course.
Here’s the build:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcmz0mMMzohoRmohoRmxx9MaVaqMaqc8kiG707khs7khS7kiT7khs7kNb70V7ofD8ofY
Other thoughts:
- I like Crippling Dissipation (Domination 5) for fighting veterans and champions; you can often get them to attack your clones when you’re far enough away and between this and your berserkers you can keep them indefinitely crippled. Also, when your clones are ‘replaced’ by summoning an additional clone when you already have 3 it actually triggers traits like Crippling Dissipation, so that’s an extra bonus if you don’t want to shatter but keep using Mirror Blade. If you don’t like it, though, then Mental Torment is an excellent alternative.
- Greatsword Training is required, not even a debate.
- Harmonious Mantras and Empowering Mantras are keystones of a mantra build, but if you don’t use mantras replace them with something else, obviously.
- Phantasmal Fury just makes sense, 20% higher crit chance on your berserkers is nothing to sneeze at.
- Deceptive Evasion is amazing, especially when combined with Crippling Dissipation. Shatter fodder or cripple fodder for days.
- Compounding Power is another 9% damage increase if you can keep 3x illusions up.
- I use Sword/Pistol for my second set because I like to swap to it to execute a mob that has gotten close. Swap, stun with Magic Bullet, then Blurred Frenzy for the finish. It’s pretty good in my opinion.
- Time Warp is too awesome to not use, especially in dungeons. I shake my head whenever I dungeon with a mesmer who doesn’t bring it. Do your team a favor and call it out in chat before you use it, though. I shift click it then hit enter, lets them know it’s about to happen so they can look for it.
So this build does more damage than the Staff build with iwarlock?
Absolutely, yeah. Condition damage builds are definitely lacking compared to crit damage builds and while warlock is amazing it doesn’t come close to closing the gap. What the staff has, however, that this GS crit damage build doesn’t, is absurd amount of tricks and defensive abilities.
It’s far too easy to hit the condition damage hard cap and only scales with one stat, whereas power/precision/crit damage scale exponentially with each other and every single stat on berserker’s armor increases your damage without a hard cap.
Not to diss the staff, mind you. It’s a fantastic and flexible weapon but in terms of raw damage, no staff build can compare to a crit damage greatsword build. The staff is much more of a wear-the-enemy-down slowly playstyle whereas the greatsword isn’t nearly so subtle.
I’m interested in what you mean by the “condition damage hard cap” as I’m using a condition build (this one : http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNAW8dlwzyoXVTqGa9IiZGBHyhSx1ldlZgbXIA;T8Ag1yuEUJ5SNlSKqmMNJay2krJZTLLGVs/A )
and I have quite a high condition damage yeah (the stuff on the link is good concerning the rabid armor but for jewels I use rampager for amulet, green rabids for earrings and Carrion for rings).
Furthermore, I don’t see the link with I Warlock : having played condition damage quite a few times, I found it more interesting to have 3 clones spamming conditions (except when target is full of conditions) than phantasms hitting so slowly and not so strong …
Am I wrong on this ?
I don’t play staff as a condition damage build. I go full Berserker’s with a staff. The iWarlock does increased damage based on how many unique conditions are on the target. It doesn’t do condition damage, it does raw damage, and it benefits from the power and crit on your gear.
I also tried the GS build and I “feel” like I’m doing more damage with the staff and 3 iWarlocks up. What’s the best staff build I could use?
Then again, maybe I’m doing something wrong? I would greatly appreciate the help.
Well, maybe you’re right. You could try a standard phantasm build with berserkers gear and a staff equipped. The issues I foresee with it in a dungeon is, for one, you’re almost completely reliant on your phantasms for damage so in fights where you can’t keep them up due to aggro or AoE issues you’ll do very little damage and, for two, you’re reliant on other people to put conditions up for you. Your staff by itself can keep two conditions on the target, not really enough to write home about here. If your party members don’t have a lot of conditions themselves, or if you’re on a trash pull where mobs don’t last long enough to either get a lot of conditions on them or get all three iWarlocks out on it then your damage significantly suffers.
But, if those are all acceptable risks, then try something like this:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcmc0z0MzMnrxmMnbxmaf0pGVMVoca08khA707khA7khS7kiT7khs7kNb70V7ofD8ofY
I put the greatsword as the swap here for AoE pulls, being able to use the iZerker instead of the iWarlock for actual AoE damage. Also, you can swap to the GS when you’ve summoned 3 iWarlocks in a boss fight and are sure they won’t be dying in the next 12 seconds. Might as well squeeze out more autoattack damage than the staff’s pitiful autoattack.
It’s a really focused build, I wouldn’t really use it for anything other than killing bosses in dungeons personally, but I can see how it would be effective for those bosses that iWarlocks can actually survive fighting.
Here is the actual build I’ve been running, I tried to boost phantasm damage as much as possible. Is there a superior build to this when it comes to boosting iwarlock’s damage?
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcmc0z0zMMxblmMxblmaf0pGcMmVca08kir7kiG70m7kGL70V
Here is the actual build I’ve been running, I tried to boost phantasm damage as much as possible. Is there a superior build to this when it comes to boosting iwarlock’s damage?
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcmc0z0zMMxblmMxblmaf0pGcMmVca08kir7kiG70m7kGL70V
Wow, our builds are VERY similar. lol
This is what I have been running around with as my general PVE/WvW/Dungeon build:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcmz0mczMmnLxcmnLxmGx9MGzaVaMVk
Gear is pretty much all power/precesion/crit damage with a few power/precesion/toughness pieces.
This is a general build.
The single best things you can do is swap skills out based on what your fighting.
Take the alpha fights in CoE. Some instances he is much easier to fight in melee. In those cases you WANT the 1h sword skill (blade turning) in the dueling tree.
sword 2 provides 2seconds on invulnerability every 8 seconds. Sword 4 is a block.
There is no “One build to rule them all”.
Be effective, swap out skills and weapons as needed.
Ok, I did not really have an answer to what I asked : what do you mean by "condition damage hard cap” ?
Do you mean that above a certain condition damage, it becomes less efficient/useless and it is more reliable to stack other stats to increase effectiveness or did I get it wrong ?
I’ve read somewhere that no more than 700 condition damage was required … I’m quite confused here.
(Btw, we’re still talking about dungeons builds here)
I like a staff/condition heavy build but here are lot’s of things to consider.
I’m trying to reach the maximum condition damage possible (just a personal objective for fun). Been playing with a max condition build/gear, carrion jewels, rabid armor/weapon, all damage comes from condition/thoughness(10%) and nothing else, the problem is that with this set of gear your stats will be spread out between power/precision, you’ll have no crit damage, so your phantasms will never hit or crit by that much. Then you’ll have those runs/events where bleeding is already at 25 stacks, so lot’s of your damage is wasted.
Staff is a great support/defense weapon, limited condition damage, to have a bit more fun I got IP, at least I can farm events “decently” while shattering.
My playstyle is very mobile, always in and out of melee range to get the most use of shatters. Running with 1608 condition damage, 1858 with 25 stacks in the sigil, and not all armor is rabid yet. When you have all your conditions rolling you’ll have lot’s and lot’s of numbers, but none of those will break the 4th digit (maybe a burning from time to time). To break the 4th digit you’ll have to summon a phantasm or shatter. At least you can rezz people while your illusions continue to apply damage to the mobs.
Resuming, if you want a max dps/pve mesmer build, it’s very easy to see a Greatsword/Power/Precision/Crit damage/Mantra build as the maximum dps possible. Not much support with mantras, but you can always use staff as a secondary weapon for those defensive moments.
(edited by Urkhan.7126)
Any updates on this since the last couple builds?
Any updates on this since the last couple builds?
Not that I’ve seen. For high-level fractals, most people I’ve chatted with seem to be running power/precision/crit dmg with X/20/0/0/30 as a base.
Some folks are 20/20/0/0/30, some are 10/30/0/0/30. GS still seems preferred, glass cannon builds with a few set pieces of toughness, and plenty of shattering.
We’re kind of in a holding pattern a bit though… Bersker isn’t behaving well (sporadic damage and unfairly high pause before his initial attack). Condition damage hasn’t been adjusted at all, so the 25-stack bleed cap remains a very real problem.
Unfortuantely shatter build really is the one build to rule them all at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, you can do ok with a phantasm build or a condition build too…but if you are looking at things objective shatter build is definitely the most powerful right now.
Unfortuantely shatter build really is the one build to rule them all at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, you can do ok with a phantasm build or a condition build too…but if you are looking at things objective shatter build is definitely the most powerful right now.
Fractals had a weird effect on this.
A lot of the high-fractal people seem to be saying that enemies hit SO hard that all the toughness/vitality in the world won’t help out as much as a solid set of glass cannon gear and some timely dodging. It’s disappointing, but it puts all those “support” and “control” builds on the backburner at that tier of play.
I will say that it’s a disappointment to see so many people toss away perfectly good builds because of an vocal high-level fractal segment of the population. A condition or support build is perfectly serviceable in a huge swath of content.