Guild Wars 2

After sorting out my play style preferences I would like now some feedback on gear and especially sigils.

This is exactly what I am wearing now:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRAsa7flwzipXUzgGb9IipHDnvBckUoavWJF82FC-jUEBYLCZYMS00yA0HwkIgJPFRjtmpIasKGY6TIKXAaXwaYQqYomxByOO1ecIuDYBAxA-w

A lot of stealth helps with survival so I switched from knight armor to berserker and so far so good.
I still have to upgrade an earring and the back and sort out the sigils. Which accessories should I go for?

Sigils. Having 2 stun at my disposal I would like to take advantage of Superior Sigil of Impact on sword. Is it a good choice or should I go for something else? Being sword/pistol my offensive set I think the Battle on pistol suits it just fine.

On the “defensive” set I use Energy on either scepter or torch but unsure of the other one. Suggestions?

For the runes I find Centaur the only option for obvious reasons…

Talents. I am pretty much sorted with Adept tier in Chaos being the only one which I switch from -3% damage, conditions on images kill and -50% on fall damage (very fun to abuse in wvw )

Food. What are the best most popular ones in regards to a build/setup like mine?

Thank you for spearing few minutes of your time

/rgds

First of all, I think you need to decide if you want to play with a condition build or a power one. I say this cause your “defensive” set is has little part of defensive and is quite useless without condition damage.

- If you want to maintain the defensive set, I’d change scepter/torch for staff. You will see a lot of boons on you, plus chaos armor does a pretty job, even after remake.

- If you want to go more with direct damage, then I suggest to change scepter/torch for greatsword.

- And if you want to go with condition damage, then you need to change all your gear. Preferences are Rabid, Carrion, Apothecary, Settler… Weapons are fine, as iDuelist does quite a lot of condition damage combined with Sharper Images.

Talking about sigils:

Sigil of impact really does nothing to your build. Its benefits are worthless, since you have only 2 ways of stun and mesmers don’t have knockdown skills. Also remember that phantasms aren’t affected by this sigil.

Then, sigil of energy is also worthless in a mesmer with perma vigor, it’s more suitable in builds without points in Duels.

I would think of taking one of the stacks sigils (Bloodlust, Perception or Corruption). In PvE and also in WvW you can have the 25 stacks easily, and they provide good amount of stats.

And finally the food. This depends all in the build you’re running. But normally, people take food or to boost one of the mainstay of the build, or to balance the weaknesses.
For example, a condition build will go with Veggie Pizza and Tunning Crystal, to boost their condition damage. But a zerker mesmer would go with Lemongrass (-40% condition duration), as their have enough damage.

I use Torch for stealth and retaliation. Scepter does a preatty good beam+block. The conditions part of this set is marginal and don’t care about it.

Traited torch saved my life countless times. Its sinergy with PU is amazing and scepter is overall a good weapon. I literally love the play style with 4 × 1h weapons while I feel GS and staff boring to hell. I used staff instead of sword pistol few times and I was literally unkillable with retreat from staff and invisibility from torch/decoy/MI but I could not kill kitten. I tried GS sword/pistol but lacks of an active “oh kitten button” which torch has (decoy and MI aren’t enough for me, especially when finding yourself in 1vsX). Hence sword/pistol is the offensive set and scepter/torch the defensive.

Buffs. Chaos tree + PU gives me already enough of that. Plus might when interrupting foes and switching weapon and swiftness almost on demand. Don’t feel I need more.

I would focus more on power rather than conditions for sure.
Given the accessories I have now what I am debated with is whether to buy accessories with mitigation stats or not. Should I reach a 50% chance crit or increase the power further or keep an eye on health and thoughness. What are the acceptable values for these stats in wvw?

Sigils. Would it be possible to run two stacking sigils and benefit of both at the same time? For example +damage and +crit on the same set or a sigil on each or the two sets for example?

It’s not a problem if you want to go 4×1h weapons. The thing is that both scepter and torch are condition weapons, so they are better if you upgrade your condition damage instead of power, as most of their skills provides you conditions. So I’d would definitely focus scepter/torch in a defensive set.

Here’s the link of the build with all changes, so you can see and compare better:
http://tinyurl.com/ppn5nzh

For roaming, you need to balance the toughness and health, cause you don’t have all that condition cleanings from zergs. I would focus more on precision rather than power, cause a lot of your skills are multi-hit and they benefit more of critical hits. Also I would choose Maintenance Oil.
I’d change some gear, like weapons. Use more defensive stats for scepter/torch (Magi or Shaman are the best) and use both zerker sword/pistol.
And take Plate of Lemongrass Poultry. With all that stealth skills and cc, you can manage to be with less than 50% of health with no problems. You also will cover that lost of power to have more precision.

And finally, no you cannot have 2 stacking sigils at the same time. If you run with 2 of them, the first to stack will be the only one activated and it will be permanent until you die or you change map.
The only stacking thing that happens is if you run the same stacking sigil in both weapons. In this case, you will gain 2 stack with every kill. But this is rather useless, since reaching 25 kills is not that difficult.
I’ve also changed weapons sigils.

PD: If you have enough laurels take the Celestial Amulet, it gives you a lot more stats than any other amulet.

PD2: I forgot to say that Signet of Domination is not worth in your build, since you don’t focus on conditions and that 3s stun is in a very long CD for what you get. The best alternatives are Signet of Inspiration, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Null Field, Signet of Midnight or Arcane Thievery.

Are we talking WvW only or something that also works in pve? If so, what wvw playstyle (zerg or roam)?

Here’s one build I’ve been messing with lately in spvp. It works great verse large numbers and still fairs well 1v1.
http://intothemists.com/guides/426-prismatic_clone_factory
I’ll prolly give it a whirl in WvW eventually. It does lack some serious cleansing though…

As for gear, I like being able to cheaply swap gear. Therefore, I went celestial amulet and accessories. My rings are zerk and backpiece is knight. I swap my armor and weapons back and forth between Knight and Rabid depending on whether it’s a power or condition build.

@Ansau
Lets do some math on the torch first (I used gw2skills.net build calculator for this so it may not be 100% accurate):

skill#4 has 302 damage + 984 fire x 3sec.
skill#5 has 446 damage + 195 confusion x 3sec

For the sake of the calculation I just picked 30 points in domination to increase Power by 300:

skill#4 is now 401 damage (33%) + 984 fire x 3sec. (0%)
skill#5 is now 446 damage (0%) + 195 confusion x 3sec (0%) (although I do not understand why 446 does not get affected by power like skill#4 does since the icon damage is the same and thus considered direct damage)

Now with 30 points in Illusions:

skill#4 has 302 damage (0%) + 1209 fire x 3sec. (23%)
skill#5 has 446 damage (0%) + 263 confusion x 3sec (35%)

It is obvious that torch benefits more from conditions. However it has invisibility (synergy with PU) and retaliation (synergy with Power). Also we all know how confusion works: if you do not spam during those 3 secs no damage will be dealt… Conclusions: to me torch benefits from both.

Now lets take a look at scepter:

Skill#1 has 168/168/252 damage
Skill#2 has 336 damage + 1275 torment x 8sec + 34 damage (counter spell)
Skill#3 has 840 × 5 damage + 5 stack of 325 × 5sec confusion

+300power:

Skill#1 has 223/223/334 damage (33%)
Skill#2 has 446 damage (33%) + 1594 torment x 8sec (25%) + 45 damage (counter spell) (35%)
Skill#3 has 1115 × 5 damage (33%) + 5 stack of 325 × 5sec confusion (0%)

+300condi damage:

Skill#1 has 168/168/252 damage (0%)
Skill#2 has 3366 damage (0%) + 1725 torment x 8sec (35%) + 34 damage (counter spell) (0%)
Skill#3 has 840 × 5 damage (0%) + 5 stack of 438 × 5sec confusion (35%)

Scepter, despite being a condition weapon it benefits more from power since the only ability which is not affected by it is confusion. All others, torment included benefits from it, not as much as with augmented condi damage but still not bad.

I do not think I will gear towards conditions.
I will consider improving crit chances since as you say we deal fast hits rather than slow single blows.

Signet of dominations helps A LOT. It’s not the condi damage that I am after. I often use the Signet Mastery to have it quicker but as much as invisibility from torch is something I will never trade for. It helps catching someone running or running from. It helps reviving an ally by interrupting a stomp or healing, putting pressure… it is more useful than you may think.

Anyway, thanks for the input.

@Helios
For some reasons the link is not showing anything.

So you are using knight for power. I have it too and used it before switching to PU. I now feel much safer with this build and this allowed me to swap back to berserker and downing people much faster. Of course, when facing multiple enemies in wvw I have to say that more armor wouldn’t hurt.. but it’s a trade off. For now I am more than happy.
Please, check the link. I would like to see what you came up with. Ty

I agree with the scepter being a better power weapon despite the nerf. However, I don’t think your number comparisons are fair. It’s really hard to compare base power to condition damage as one can crit but the other isn’t affected armor.

Don’t get celestial accessories. Get celestial chest/legs or weapons if you want those. The ascended celestials are just bad in comparison.

If you want to go for a % damage sigil, ideally you have a berserker sword of night (10% dmg at night). You can transmute this onto a ghastly weapon to make it easier to tell when it’s boosted. When it isn’t night, it comes down to if you want a sigil of force 5% always or impact 10% for not very often. None of these affect phantasms or condition damage though. So basically, if you CC someone then do a blurred frenzy/mindwrack combo, the impact might be worth the spike damage increase. If not, sigil of force is a better choice.

trooper.2650:

@Helios
For some reasons the link is not showing anything.

So you are using knight for power. I have it too and used it before switching to PU. I now feel much safer with this build and this allowed me to swap back to berserker and downing people much faster. Of course, when facing multiple enemies in wvw I have to say that more armor wouldn’t hurt.. but it’s a trade off. For now I am more than happy.
Please, check the link. I would like to see what you came up with. Ty

Sorry about that. It wasn’t published. It should show now. I put that build through its paces last night in tpvp and it faired very well.

Yes, I use Knight for Power. Personally, I find Toughness > Crit Dmg in most cases. Toughness scales your HP much better than Crit Dmg scales your total damage. Higher survivability (aside from CoF p1 or low level Fotm) allows you more damage.

You made 2 little mistake:

You didn’t thought that putting 30 points in Domination you’re also upgrading 30% condition duration.
And you didn’t realized that condition damage in the skill description is done during all the condition duration, not every second (confusion apart), so there are no multipliers.

Correct numbers are:

Base:
1- 117/117/259
2- 345 + 1275(torment) + 34
3- 860 + 325(confusion)
4- 331 + 984(fire)
5- 446 + 195(confusion)
TOTAL = 5288

Power stats:
1- 223/223/334
2- 446 + 1275(torment) +45
3- 1115 +325(confusion)
4- 401 + 984(fire)
5- 446 + 195(confusion)
TOTAL= 6012

Condition damage stats:
1- 117/117/259
2- 345 + 1725(torment) + 34
3- 860 + 438(confusion)
4- 331 + 1209(fire)
5- 446 + 263(confusion)
TOTAL= 6144

THIS IS THE BEST SCENARIO FOR POWER STATS, for 2 reasons:
First, I count the enemy will only activate 1 skill in every confusion duration, and I count as if the enemy don’t move during all torment.
And second, there’s no condition duration fact in this maths. This will make the differences much bigger.

Whatever way you look at it (yes, I did not consider the duration to make it easier) Torch to a lesser extent, but Scepter defenitely more they benefits from power more than cond damage. True, power suffers from thoughness but conditions can be cleansed so in the end it is hard to compare them and it’s down to your play style.

In the mist I tried Helios build while keeping the torch 20/20/30/0/0, switched rune set with Undead ones first and then Adventurer and also using staff + sword/torch. Amulet was first rabid and then rampager. I did very well and was impressed. Very good feeling so I thought let me try it in wvw.

I can easily swap gear set to full rabid+Undead runes+rabid staff but everything else stays the same as my current set up, since I cannot afford to buy all other rabid/rampager gear for now. Cond dmage went to 1300 roughly and it’s probably not good enough. However, the major drawback is the rune set. I cannot do without Centaur. I cannot run away, I cannot run after, you can only get carried by the raid but when roaming it’s simply not viable. And I do not see a conditions setup working with Centaur or Air. Am I right?

Switching back to knight and my usual setup the old feeling came back immediately and it was a joy moving around and downing the elementalist which was running away few moments earlier.

In the end I will keep trying cond damge setup in the mist for it was fun but since focus isn’t a condition weapon and rabid gear doesn’t gel well with centaur I will stick
to my gear and wait to see if I will ever be able to play without Centaur.

I will probably buy the remainig gear with a focus to thoughness or rather vitality since I am kind of low on that. What would be the minimum HP I shouldn’t go below?

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts