Guild Wars 2

I see a few variations of condition build for mesmer – Rampager’s, Carrion’s and Rabid’s armor sets.
Which combination of stats is found to be more viable?
Is it more important to have higher toughness/vitality and if yes, what condition damage value is minimal to show good dps?
Is it necessary to get rid of power as an absolutely useless stat?

Please, share your thoughts.
P.S.: mainly talking about PvE.

Depends on your build and playstyle. Let us know how’d you’d like to play your toon and we can help better, but here is a short overview:

Rampager: Decent offensive spec with defense coming from high precision/dueling. Tends to get overshadowed by zerker or rabid spec, tho, since it doesn’t have the crit damage to make insane burst, like zerker and doesn’t have the durability of rabid.

Carrion: OK with some defense and a good mix of power and malice, but defense is subpar to rabid. Best used when running a condition/glamour spec without much condition removal, but overall best to use only a few pieces with other sets for some extra power/vit.

Rabid: Synergizes very well with the Dueling line for vigor/DE and Sharper Images. Usually the best set for shatter/condition builds, but mostly useless if you are not using Dueling.

Edit: More:
Tough is usually better than vit because it transfers to your illusions; vit does not. Also, it doesn’t scale against healing skills like vit does. But tough also doesn’t protect agsints condition damage, so it’s best to have a little vit on some of your trinkets or good condition removal or both. Using ramgagers, carrion, or rabid will get enough malice to be good.

Power is still useful for any mesmer build because you cannot avoid taking/using power skills to good effect no matter what weapon set you run. However, if you plan to mainly use staff w/o MW and rely on staff clones to do damage instead of shatters, power offers the least value to you. Any other build, including other condition builds can make good use of power; just use MW and your other weapon skills.

Carrion and Rampager are hybrid, not condition. Carrion has 1,000 Power which more than doubles your base direct damage. Rampager has more than 700 Power for 80ish % increase of base direct damage. The correct way to play hybrid is vastly different from the correct way to play condition.

Confusion build isn’t the best dps build for dungeons. But right now I’m playing a confusion build in pve only because I switch between pve and wvw so its become a pain to set everything up each time. Also I have very good gear, my setup is very good, I use consumables and I am good at keeping my mesmer rolling in this build.

My advice stack condition damage. Its easy to get over 2k with gear, traits, utilities and consumables. Cry of frustration, try to keep those confusion stacks high, bleeds, burns and feedback. In pve you can pump out clones like a machine so use them well. Imho the best gear is rabid, Arah, TA gear with precision, toughness and condition damage. The damage you do wont be bursty but it will be progressive. Sort of like a freight train it just takes a bit longer to get going. Once its going you have to keep it rolling.

Condition build is fun, pretty and decent in pvp/wvw. If you’re bored, you could try one. There’s a few ways to get into decent condition stacking. Rampager if you want both confusion and bleed which means you pretty much have to get into Duelist and Illusion trait to make it effective or Carrion for stacking confusion with shattering — I tried Carrion with Illusion and Domination traits.

But trust me, for the sake of saving your time and making your life easier, just go with the brainless glass canon build.

For condition build, you have to “hope” that your conditions last long enough and stack heavily enough to down your enemy. Let’s assume we mainly talk about Confusion since that’s the main condition for mesmer, if you generate confusion through shatter…. look at this…

In a span of 30 seconds you have to spend most of your time generating clones again and again and again and againnnnnnnnnn… then keep shattering — maybe with a little help from glamour traits. I tried that build once, and the highest number of stacks I can get on average is about 6-8. With full set Carrion/Rampager your dmg per confusion stack should be around 340-350. That’s totally about 2k-3k damage per tick. And oh dear if you’re talking about PVE, most of the time your stacks are gone before they can even deal damage. And that’s just 1:1 fight, you can totally forget about generating confusion in the form of AOE. At most, mobs would take just 3-4 stacks. And the dmg is plain kitten.

Now let’s see, the same span of 30 seconds, you use full glass canon GS build. I use 30/30/0/0/10, which means my iBerserker CD is about 16 seconds, my auto attack deals around 3k-4k with 3 ticks combined. You see, in 30 seconds, I can generate 2 iBerserkers, each deals 10k+ damage on every single mob in aoe range while, in the mean time, I can spam my auto attack for extra damage. You’ve got mob zerg coming? F1! 4k! 4k! 4k!

If you’re talking about bleed, I believe the most effective way into stacking bleed as a mesmer is through Sharper Image, which means you have to stack crit chance to make it work. Rampager is the only gear, in my opinion, that makes that option possible. But if you use rampager, you have to sacrifice some condition damage and vit that you could get from Carrion gear. And if you try to cover for what you’ve lost by mixing gear, you’re pretty much gimping your damage again. It’s contradicting.

So unless you’re a curious type, do yourself a fever, go with the glass canon build. If you want effective condition build, maybe play burng GD or something else. Condition mesmer is not bad, it’s just not the smartest option.

I have bad experiences with glass cannon builds, mainly because I like to play my mesmer in the front-lines instead of the back, so having a solid defence/health is really useful to me. Glass cannon is a good build, but you have a shorter time frame to take out your target, if you keep your illusions up and your distance far, it will help you out in the long run. Also remember that because you have low investment into the Illusion line, you have to use your shatter skills sparingly.

As far as condition-based builds go, the confusion should be considered supplementary – I personally wouldn’t rely on it as a primary source. It’s excessively useful against special monsters/bosses that strike multiple times in a short span. If you try and maintain confusion on a target, you’re just going to cripple your effectiveness by a mile. As Davy said, it’s 2-3k per skill use in its prime, and monsters in PvE don’t attack often enough for it to be useful.

Flaux.7154:

… in PvE don’t attack often enough for it to be useful.

^^ this particularly some of the bosses such as the Nightmare Tree in TA.

A common mistake is to think that Mesmer condition builds rely heavily on Confusion. That is not true except in WvW, and even in WvW you still rely heavily on Burning and Bleeding as Confusion can only be applied in bursts.

For sPvP and PvE, your primary damage comes from Burning and Bleeding, inflicted by Winds of Chaos. Confusion can provide some much-needed burst but is highly situational, if you just spam Confusion skills on CD you likely won’t get much benefit from them.

In terms of prefixes, Rabid (CondDmg-Precision-Toughness) is the absolute best, as the Precision it gives fuels some of your most important traits (Sharper Images and Critical Infusion) as well as any on-crit Sigils you use. Carrion (CondDmg-Power-Vitality) is a passable substitute, but provides no benefit over Rabid unless you face a lot of condition damage or prefer a hybrid approach. Rampager’s (Precision-CondDmg-Power) is, IMO, absolutely useless for Mesmers.

I dont think its a common misconception. A condition build does get the bulk of its damage generated from confusion. Its true the build also generates bleeds and burns also add to the damage. But its just been my experience from trying other builds that the bleeds and burns dont stack up quick enough and fall off very quickly. It just isn’t enough ooommph to make it a legitimate base of dps. Rather it seems to fall into nice supplemental dps. But when mobs attack so slowly that you can’t generate much confusion damage and we rely solely on our bleeds and burns it doesn’t contribute as much to a group. And thats kind of how I view it. Am I contributing enough to the group.

I ran TA again last nite in my condition build with a lackluster group but I carefully watched my numbers. To me it feels substantially less than my favorite pve builds. I guess the thing that sort of bothered me was when I joined the group someone remarked “alright a mesmer!” so the entire time I’m thinking “boy I should be doing more damage”. Maybe thats just me though.

In the end I dont think anybody would notice or feel that a condition built mesmer wasn’t pulling his weight. And maybe they do. But here is my last comment. I’m going to run Arah today with my guild. I’m seriously considering switching back to my favorite pve build rather than taking my confusion build because I feel its so inferior in pve due to so many mobs attacking slowly. Imagine how little damage I’ll do to that hammer guy who swings as slow as molasses (the one paired to the hunter)

Another common mistake people make is looking only at the Mesmer’s WoC damage without taking into account Clone WoC (plus Sharper Images) damage and Illusionary Elasticity. All in all the Mesmer’s Staff condition damage output is more than triple that WoC alone would indicate. If you rely primarily on Confusion in anywhere other than WvW it’s no wonder you’d feel weak, because Confusion is burst; not DPS.

Having said that, condition Mesmers definitely don’t do as much damage kittenter Mesmers: playing a condition Mesmer is essentially trading damage for survivability. All in all this is probably more important in PvP than in PvE, although I play condition Mesmer in both.

DavyMcB.1603:

Now let’s see, the same span of 30 seconds, you use full glass canon GS build. I use 30/30/0/0/10, which means my iBerserker CD is about 16 seconds, my auto attack deals around 3k-4k with 3 ticks combined. You see, in 30 seconds, I can generate 2 iBerserkers, each deals 10k+ damage on every single mob in aoe range while, in the mean time, I can spam my auto attack for extra damage. You’ve got mob zerg coming? F1! 4k! 4k! 4k!

…are you serious? Are you sure you didn’t mix up a warrior with the mesmer?
Those numbers that keep “increasing on the same spot” are CUMULATIVE damage. Different numbers flying in different directions/popping up somewhere else is damage from different skills/people. Your GS autoattack deals maybe 900-1400 damage at most. Possibly a bit more with full berserkers and might stacks, but 4k? Not even with a hundred might stacks.
I-Berserker also deals like 3-4k at most(!!) with full berserkers(and +30% damage traits), IF it managed to hit(or rather, live enough to strike once).

In my oppinion even for a condition dmg spec confusions strongest value for pvp (exept zerg wvwvw fights) is its controll value. As embolism say the WoC is the core dmg, confusion prevent your enemy from reattack you without get a great penalty for it. This give you room for keep do dmg and controll the enemy. Also with alot of clones you poison will lesser the healing done.

I dont run alot of condition, I got a full set of Kilbrons and strap it on in wvwvw from time to time thu and its wery strong for group fights idd. But even in my burst spec (Shatter cat or Shatter cat phantasm hybrid) confusion applied in big burst stacks have a room and is used for controll often.

Only thing I can see would change the value of confusion from a burst and controll dmg tool would be if they rerolled back wand,s 3rd attack to apply confusion. This woul give a reliable stable apply of confusion, still it would be op.

/Osicat

I don’t know… imo in a condition spec confusion is more than control. when timed you can and will burst someone down very quickly regardless of profession or build.
confusion is my core damage. burns and bleeds are good sustained damage.
if I manage to stack 10 bleed and perma burn (you need 2 clones and yourself) thats ~2200 dps + low direct damage lets round up to 3k dps. thats good but with some confusion they will hit themselfes with 3k damage 1-3 times a second. and if you are serious about confusionbursting they will hit themselves for about 3-6k.

it is a matter of playstyle but imo both damagesources can be considered “core” :P

Whether Confusion is burst or control pretty much depends on your opponent, i.e. whether they think taking the damage or waiting it out is better. Of course if you time your Confusion burst well you can usually get your opponent to proc it a few times, and usually people will stop spamming autoattacks when you have a few stacks of Confusion on them.

If you know or suspect your opponent has condition removal, try to bait it out with Bleeding stacks first. A well-timed Confusion burst can be the only thing that will bring down an opponent with lots of condition removal.

P.S. For those who don’t know, Confusion deals 2x as much damage in PvE and WvW than it does in PvP. This makes Confusion in WvW ridiculously powerful, downing people in a few seconds if they’re not careful. Especially hilarious against Thieves.

You all make good points but I think train derailed slightly. OP was mainly interestedin PvE if I’m not mistaken.

very good for pvp and not even half decent for pve.

doing fractals for the rings and I have to admit, imo confusion plain sucks in pve^^
sometimes a 20 stack confusion with ~6 sec duration is totally wasted, not triggered once.
I’m not very experienced with pve but perhaps it will get better when I know the pattern of all the enemies in fractals.
for example the boss in that snow fractal, when confused while he is summoning those ice shards he triggers confusion very fast. I managed to stack a 14 confusion just before he vanished on his floor to summon those ice shards and that was like 30-40k confusion damage. not THAT shabby.
don’t know if every enemy can be confused to that extend though

Confusion in pvp is very overrated. Without additional pressure to force the enemy to use skills, it fails exactly when you are most in danger: against experienced opponents.

See, GW1 Mesmer could create real lose-lose situations for the enemy. We, not so much. Sure, we get to occasionally melt newbies and baddies with confusion stacks, but these guys were dead anyway. To defeat a good player with confusion you have to make sure he must activate several abilities after you confuse him (which in itself has to happen after his condition removal is on cd)…and that’s actually very hard to do, because:
- dodge doesn’t trigger confusion
- there are plenty of defenses that are just a single activation
- our confusion, particularly CoF, doesn’t last that long
- our condition gear lessens the impact of the abilities we have that require an immediate defensive answer

While I’m looking into some creative ways to setup lose-lose situations; the crux of the matter is that confusion will forever be most useful against the most inexperienced players and least useful against the most experienced players, unlike all other condition that affect everyone equally (even if the experienced players know better when to remove and when not to). I’d trade confusion for a condition that acts the opposite way any day.

Confusion against skilled opponents essentially acts more like control than it does damage. If for example I suspect someone’s about to unleash a spam of attacks at me (or more likely, already being spammed on), a Confusion burst can ensure they stop.

One of the problems of course is that our Confusion-inflicting abilities are not reliable. Shatters require Illusions to run up and reach the target, Confusing Images is extremely clunky to use, iMage is laughable, Glamour Confusion traits are weak, etc.

I have to say that I generally prefer direct damage builds to condition builds. I personally don’t like how WoC works and I find the scepter frustrating to use.

Why are you mainly talking about confusion condition build for pve?
Rabid/rampager provides a good opportunity of using bleed and burn dots without shattering clones for confusion (confusion on clone’s death as a nice addition, not a core of the build). IMO, confusion in pve is absolutely useless.

If you want pure condition damage, every other profession can utilize condition damage gear better than mesmers. Just keep that in mind.

@Alex:
That’s why mesmer hybrid builds are underrated imo, esp in pvp/wvwvw. Although Embolism’s build can do quite well in both pve and wvwvw. As he says you won’t kill as fast, but you can provide great survival to both yourself and your team. I typically run a slightly more hybridish build that uses both conditions/COF and MW/sword combos offensively, but I use a very similar defensive approach, and I can’t tell you how many times I helped my team recover from near wipes.

I simply use CoF far less often in PVE than wvwvw, and more burn/bleed to MW/BF and then back to burn/bleed rotations when CDs come around. Damage is very good, consistent with mini spikes, and while not as devastating as a GS shatter build, I almost never die and keep others from dying, too.

I use a full carrion set. I made it before I started researching stats for mesmers lol. It made sense to me because I am glamor/greatsword/staff so I wanted power and conditions.. It seems to be working imo. I have not tried a beserker set and was thinking of making one to see the difference.

Not to derail, but is Scepter acceptable for power/support builds? I’m 0-20-0-20-30 using some phantasmal healing. My primary damage comes from GS, I love it, and my secondary set is Scepter/Pistol. This setup provides continuous regen for melee and ranged, when appropriately swapped and kept up on. This style of regen supply is not for shatter builds unless you’re wanting to quick-dip regen prior to shattering. It sounds funky in theory but pays off quite a large bit especially in wvw and fractals. Need some regen on yourself? Swap Pistol4, Scepter2-3, Pistol5, shatter if appropriate-swap continue dps and provide healing for melee (iZerker).

DavyMcB.1603:

Emanuel.9781:

DavyMcB.1603:

Now let’s see, the same span of 30 seconds, you use full glass canon GS build. I use 30/30/0/0/10, which means my iBerserker CD is about 16 seconds, my auto attack deals around 3k-4k with 3 ticks combined. You see, in 30 seconds, I can generate 2 iBerserkers, each deals 10k+ damage on every single mob in aoe range while, in the mean time, I can spam my auto attack for extra damage. You’ve got mob zerg coming? F1! 4k! 4k! 4k!

…are you serious? Are you sure you didn’t mix up a warrior with the mesmer?
Those numbers that keep “increasing on the same spot” are CUMULATIVE damage. Different numbers flying in different directions/popping up somewhere else is damage from different skills/people. Your GS autoattack deals maybe 900-1400 damage at most. Possibly a bit more with full berserkers and might stacks, but 4k? Not even with a hundred might stacks.
I-Berserker also deals like 3-4k at most(!!) with full berserkers(and +30% damage traits), IF it managed to hit(or rather, live enough to strike once).

I have 3.6k base dmg with about 60% crit chance(that’s like 100% in practice) and 106 crit dmg boost which is like 425% multiplier. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not mistaken. And since when can you see other people’s damage? o.o

Emanuel.9781:

DavyMcB.1603:

Now let’s see, the same span of 30 seconds, you use full glass canon GS build. I use 30/30/0/0/10, which means my iBerserker CD is about 16 seconds, my auto attack deals around 3k-4k with 3 ticks combined. You see, in 30 seconds, I can generate 2 iBerserkers, each deals 10k+ damage on every single mob in aoe range while, in the mean time, I can spam my auto attack for extra damage. You’ve got mob zerg coming? F1! 4k! 4k! 4k!

…are you serious? Are you sure you didn’t mix up a warrior with the mesmer?
Those numbers that keep “increasing on the same spot” are CUMULATIVE damage. Different numbers flying in different directions/popping up somewhere else is damage from different skills/people. Your GS autoattack deals maybe 900-1400 damage at most. Possibly a bit more with full berserkers and might stacks, but 4k? Not even with a hundred might stacks.
I-Berserker also deals like 3-4k at most(!!) with full berserkers(and +30% damage traits), IF it managed to hit(or rather, live enough to strike once).

I have 3.6k base dmg with about 60% crit chance(that’s like 100% in practice) and 106 crit dmg boost which is like 425% multiplier. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not mistaken. And since when can you see other people’s damage? o.o And when I mentioned Berserkers I was talking about two of them. In wvw it’s even easier cuz I half(and in most cases more than half) most of my enemies’ hp in just one Berserker strike. You won’t believe how many people out there would sacrifice their entire hp pool and armor for their dps. Btw, you would scream if you see how much dmg my iWarden does, cumulatively.