Guild Wars 2

I’ll mainly be using it in PvE, but also for WvW roaming if it’s effective.

I was thinking of a hybrid build with ravager’s stats, Staff and Scepter/Torch (or Scepter/Pistol).

Basically I want my build to involve confusion and generally conditions. Staff and Scepter seem to be the best for that.
Since I don’t think a pure conditions mesmer would be very viable, I think I need some extra power, therefore making a hybrid.
Since I don’t want to be completely glasscannon, I was thinking of traiting 30 into Inspiration.

Have you tried a similar build before? Does it deal enough damage?

Pure conditions Mesmer isn’t very viable in pve, you are correct.

Hybrid Mesmer isn’t much better.

You’ll run into all the problems that a conditions Mesmer does, but for just half your damage or so, instead of all of it.

Unfortunately, anything other than full power/crit for pve is simply a horrible idea, and this really doesn’t seem like it will change any time soon.

If your condition build can do 100+ bleeding sticks for 7-8 seconds, 10+ stacks of bleeding when having 2 duelist out at lv 80. I really don’t see what the issue is. And there will be direct dmg on top of all of this.

When I go to solo fireshaman in full condi build the speed at which he dies feels fairly reasonable.

Assume 15 stacks of bleed, 130 bleed ticks (would be full condie setup). That produces 2000 damage per second.

2000 damage per second is more or less what you get from a single iSwordsman in a phantasm build.

Now assume 25 stacks of bleeding at 130 per tick AND burning at 800 per tick. That gets you 4050 damage per second.

You can crack 4000 damage per second by having two iSwordsmen and auto attacking.

yes never mind the torment dmg or any confusion spikes or any physical dmg that a condi build can still lay on top of the bleeding.

To have iswordsman hit at 8k per hit you’d be sacrificing plenty in defense. Full zerker is not the only way to play even in pve. Even if we suppose the figures that you ran above were true (they are not), what makes you think killing enemies at 1/2 the maximum speed possible will automatically make it non-viable? That is simply a very narrow minded view.

I would never call condi specs in PvE not viable, but they definitely are not optimal. The biggest problem with condition specs for mesmers is that in bigger champion fights you encroach on the condition caps and you have to share your condition damage with other classes which are more adept at it. There is no cap on power damage, so power specs for a mesmer will always be the best way to PvE and there’s really no debating that.

If you’re roaming PvE, it honestly doesn’t matter what you play IMO if it’s fun, even if you’re killing things really slowly. In dungeons it’s a different story, just generally don’t run condition specs there unless you’re with other friends and it’s a stroll.

I don’t know about you, but I personally find doing world events with a large zerg incredibly boring so I usually try to run them with as few people as possible. Maybe that’s why I feel condi build dmg is ok? I personally like to run the temples events with 2-8 people for example. The mobs and boss die “reasonably” ok to me when using a condi build. And i’d argue that if theres a zerg at the event that is big enough to reach the condi cap it probably won’t matter what I do, that is the boss dying within the time limit.

The bigger problem for condi build that is way worse than worrying about your dmg contribution in a zerg led world event imo is actually dmg to structures. This poses the biggest problem for condi builds because there are world events where you are required to destroy certain structures within a set amount of time. As structures do not take in condi dmg it can take a very long time to destroy on your own.

Dungeon wise I pretty much run every one of them. Again I don’t feel that the amount of dmg output is unreasonable. Again the mobs die “reasonably” fast. It is certainly not as bad as you are making it out to be. On my way to fractals lv 50, not surprisingly I was the only Mesmer out of those that I’ve come across that used the scepter. Out of all the times that I’ve ran fractals after the fractured update, there was only 1 person during the lv 30s that moaned about “the group not having enough dps”.

On another note, for a condi Mesmer in dungeons:
1) can apply condition on mobs for longer such as weakness
2) won’t roll over when the wind happens to blow in their direction.
3) soak up a fair bit of mob dmg for the group via the use of chaos storm and chaos armor without actually downing much.
4) chances are you will be the one running around rezzing everyone because you can actually stay up for longer.