Guild Wars 2

Preamble (for brevity’s sake, feel free to not read)

Greetings all. Nero here. <3

I’m only new to the forums (as of today) but I’ve been compelled to share what I’ve learned so far about being a shatter/condition Mesmer. Before the latest feature pack update (in September) I was curious about the trait “Maim the Disillusioned” (MtD) and intrigued at the amount of torment application Mesmers had, but after the patch it only got better with buffs to scepter and MtD.

After the patch, no one seemed to care about MtD, but since the most recent news that MtD would receive a further buff I’ve noticed a lot more interest in the viability and application of a shatter/condition Mesmer. So I thought I might share my build to open up further discussion and provide advice about what I’ve found so far now that I’ve been playing it for 3 months.

I came up with this build after months of messing around and testing. In saying that however, there’s probably other people that play similar builds out there and this build is not rocket science. So if you run a similar build please feel free to add any advice or improvements if care to.

The Build

Click here for the build.
Note: I don’t currently have ascended everything, but it’s what i’m working towards.

Basically, this build was built for roaming in WvW. This means, the ability to fight 1-2 people who try to gank you and provide survivability through stealth, toughness and increased movement speed. This build also excels at 1v1 fights and so does well in solo queue pvp (with decreases to condition damage and duration mind you)

Pros
-Provides intense condition damage through torment and confusion.
-1.8K torment damage per shattered clone (if the target is moving) do the math
-10+ stacks of confusion
-Good level of survivability.
-Good level of mobility.
-Great kiting potential.
-Great 1v1ing potential.

Cons
-Weak to CC and control conditions such as blind/immob.
-Conditions applied to target in bursts (meaning you should panic if they dodge/block all your bursts and try to reset fight or kite a little until cooldowns are finished).
-Mediocre condition removal: arcane thievery/cleansing conflagration aside, I kinda wish I had moooooooooore.
-Not as survivable as PU condi specs (but is anything?)

Main Damage Rotation

- [Pistol 5: Magic Bullet] stun, 5x vulnerability (if dazed, and it also says confusion on tooltips but it never procs)
- [Pistol 4: Phantasmal Duelist] 4-5x bleeding
- [Sword 3: Illusionary Leap] cripple, 2x vulnerability
- [Sword 3: Swap] immobolize
- [Dodge Forward]
- [Diversion] daze, 6x vulnerability, 3x torment, 3x confusion, 3x might
- [Dodge back]
- [Mirror Images]
- [Cry of Frustration] 6x confusion, 3x torment, 3x might

*Take a break. If you managed to hit all of that you need it. Usually you won’t end up hitting ALL of the shatters but in an ideal scenario, this is what you could potentially apply, leaving them floundering, looking for condition removal or trying to run away, but its time for part II!

-[Weapon Swap]
-[Torch 4: The Prestige] stealth, blindness, burning (after 3 seconds), condition removal
-[Torch 5: Phantasmal Mage] retaliation, 3x confusion, condition removal
-[Scepter 3: Confusing Images] 5x confusion
-[Scepter 2: Illusionary Counter] 5x torment
-[Mind Wrack] 3x confusion, 3x torment, 3x might, 3x vulnerability

If you’ve managed to land everything by now and they still aren’t dead then GG. Nah jokes, kite and start again, but most people are dead by now what with the 12+ stacks of torment and confusion towards the end. Even if you don’t manage to hit all of the shatters, if they have 50% of what you tried to apply on them and they don’t cleanse some how they’re in real trouble.

At this point you still have two disengage/stealth options left in your utilities and your opponent is left thinking, what the hell.

Counters to this Build

I find that blind spamming and blocking guardians and thieves give this build a lot of grief, especially with guardian’s multiple condi cleanse. They are the classes or builds that have presented some challenges to this build. But I’m not THAT great at 1v1s, maybe someone with more skill would have better luck.

Nuggets of Wisdom

-While testing out this build, I found that condition damage is not the most important trait if you want hardcore confusion, torment damage. I’ve noticed some condi/shatter builds traiting into the inspiration skill line purely for the “Malicious Sorcery” trait, but I think that’s a waste since the scepter block is already on a low cooldown. I tend towards the Domination traitline, for more condition duration, super 25 stacks of vulnerability, and reduced cooldowns for torch and its condition removal.
-The 25 stacks of vulnerability don’t increase your condition damage, yes, but you’ll still be doing direct damage with blurred frenzy, shatters and auto attacks, the more damage the better right.
-I have not yet tested this build with torment or perplexity runes, but I really think based on the current damage that would just be too much. I’m much more in favor of Runes of the Traveler for the increase in movement speed, and boon duration.
-I am not sure if the Sigil of Agony increases the “Sharper Images” trait’s duration. I don’t think it does, so maybe that Sigil could be swapped for another.
-Also, the Sigil of Accuracy, I’m not sure if precision really benefits this build all that much. Perhaps this could be swapped for something else, since confusion and torment are doing the main damage.

Conclusion

This has been a great build for solo and small group roaming in WvW as well as good for solo queue PvP. I will be working on improving it and maxing it out with full ascended gear in the future.

If you have any suggestions for improvement, if you’ve also played a condition/shatter mesmer before, or if you have advice for any other mesmer wondering about shatter/condi, please post your comments here.

-Yoroshiku

take staff instead of sword
better conditions better defense with IE

Suggestion noted but there’s a part of me that feels like staff is more suited for condition/support and tickling your opponent to death with short duration condis while you kite around.

Have you found much success with the condition duration/damage of the condition applied by the staff?

I feel like sword is one of the few Mesmer weapons that truly locks them down ready for a proper shatter. Of course they can always stun break out of it which is okay, because scepter torch rotation does more damage anyway which you show in the video that you posted in the other thread.

I get what the guy’s saying. Staff does condi, but a different breed of condi. What I’m thinking is maybe switch it to sword-torch and scepter-pistol. You can use the iDuelist>Magic Bullet>Confusion Images for a better hit chance.

Or you can switch pistol for sword or an extra illusion skill, though that’s less important.

I’ve used both. Staff+sc/torch, staff+sc/pis, swo/torch+sc/pistol. As I’ve said before, they’re all very fun builds to play…and all just objectively worse than other options.

It’s really irritating because I enjoy the play style, but I very much don’t enjoy gimping myself by taking an awful trait. With the upcoming buff, I’m hoping that the trait will actually be gaining enough burst power to make shatter in for conditions not just a waste of resources, as it is now.

Ultimately, the current situation is that it plays like a shatter build with none of the oomph that shatter builds have, while remaining close to as squishy as a glassy shatter build. Where in standard shatter landing a shatter combo can literally instakill someone, landing a full combo in torment shatter makes them stop moving for a few seconds…and pop a condition removal. You say each clone deals 1.8k damage…over 10 seconds…if the target is moving. Standard shatter will deal twice that instantly with no if’s attached.

Looking at that discrepancy makes it obvious why torment shatter is so bad right now. You don’t gain significant defense from the condition build and your shatter suddenly become incredibly wimpy by comparison. It means you’re spending the same resources for an attack that does only a fraction of the damage possible from the other build. It’s really quite a shame, and I hope the incoming buff makes it more worthwhile. Sorry bout the wet blanket post though.

+1
condi shatter as for now and i think for the coming buff wont get close to power shatter
dont think you can burst someone to 10% hp with condi shatter

first you have to lure them to use cleanse – but they wont till 50% hp
then use heal but they wont till 25% hp
so you basically play as condi spec while shatter enemies below 25% hp which can go down even without shatter
so even if using f2+f3 which will be 12 stacks of torment and 9 stacks on confusion
so if the enemy moves and use skills the dps will be
100*12*2=2400 dps +190*9=1710 dmg per skill/dodge
so to do 15k dmg (lets say as power shatter) he needs to move for 5 sec and use 3 skills
so u must use it after all his cleanse are on cd or else you burn your clones and leave you alone without any defense but torch stealth

Fay.2357:

Ultimately, the current situation is that it plays like a shatter build with none of the oomph that shatter builds have, while remaining close to as squishy as a glassy shatter build. Where in standard shatter landing a shatter combo can literally instakill someone, landing a full combo in torment shatter makes them stop moving for a few seconds…and pop a condition removal. You say each clone deals 1.8k damage…over 10 seconds…if the target is moving. Standard shatter will deal twice that instantly with no if’s attached.

Looking at that discrepancy makes it obvious why torment shatter is so bad right now. You don’t gain significant defense from the condition build and your shatter suddenly become incredibly wimpy by comparison. It means you’re spending the same resources for an attack that does only a fraction of the damage possible from the other build. It’s really quite a shame, and I hope the incoming buff makes it more worthwhile. Sorry bout the wet blanket post though.

I agree with the sentiment of the post but I think that comparing a glass cannon build to a condition build is like comparing a Char to an Asura. Although a condition shatter mesmer and a power shatter mesmer both share the shatter utility skills their stats and objectives in battle couldn’t be more different.

Glass cannon builds rely on power, precision, and critical damage. Therefore, a power shatter mesmer is very fragile but capable of doing some crazy burst damage. They rely entirely on stealth and movement to keep themselves alive. Their objective in a fight is to try to blow up their target as fast as they can. If something goes wrong, they need to run away because they’ve blown all their cooldowns and they need to reset the fight back in their favor.

Condition builds rely on conditition damage, condition duration and an extra couple stats of their choosing. In my builds case, this is toughness and precision. A condition build relies on sustain and control more than burst damage. Their main goal is to control the fight and outlast your opponent.

You said that ‘You don’t gain significant defense from the condition build’ but if you take into consideration, the average toughness of a glass cannon spec shatter build is about 1800 and the toughness listed in the build-link says 2698 that’s an increase of 800-900 toughness. There’s probably scope for messing around with trinkets to increase this figure but I think this build has waaaay more toughness than a glass build and waaaay more survivability.

In order to understand how this build plays and the objectives of this build in a fight, first we need to talk about your opponents options when they notice they initially have 5+ stacks of torment, confusion, bleeding, and vulnerability. Not to mention being interrupted multiple times with magic bullet and diversion. These are their options:

1. Run away!!!
2. Try to heal and condi cleanse.
3. Stand in one spot and do nothing while the mesmer wails on them with an increase to direct damage (through vulnerability and might stacks) and continues applying further stacks of torment and confusion.
4. Run away, then heal and condi cleanse.
5. Try to burst the mesmer down before the condition damage kills them.
6. Kite a little and try to last until some friends come to their aid.

Most builds in guild wars 2 are both bursty in nature and require movement. But when your target is presented with the dilemma of ever increasing torment/confusion stacks and a decreasing health bar, it throws them off. Which is what you want. Confusion and torment are your control mechanisms as a condition Mesmer. The more they try to burst you or run around, the more damage they receive. If they do nothing, or try to ignore you, then the torment will kill them anyway.

As far as the torment and confusion damage is concerned you forget 1 thing about power shatter mesmers. They only have 1 source of burst damage shatter…mind wrack. Cry of frustration applies confusion, which a power shatter spec is not traited for. Diversion and Distortion act as utility skills.

In a condi spec, each shatter applies 1 (10.7sec) stack of torment [928-1856 dmg] per shattered clone, 1 (7.2sec) stack of confusion [187 dmg] per shattered clone, 1 (14sec) stack of vulnerability per shattered clone, 1 (11sec) stack of might per shattered clone. In addition, each shatter applies their normal characteristics, for example, diversion applies a further five stacks of vulnerbility and cry of frustration applies a further 1-3 stacks of confusion.

If we are still in theory-craft land, if you shatter f3 then f2 in quick succession and land every clone, the target has, 6 stacks of torment and 9 stacks of confusion. Therefore, over 10-15 seconds, your torment stacks will do from 5568 to 11136 damage and confusion will hit the target for 1-1.6k every time they use a skill. Plus the negligible damage from bleeds.

This is only with 2 shatters, and you haven’t even swapped to scepter/torch yet which has even more condition damage application. Furthermore, the more you shatter, the more might you get, which further increases your condition damage.

In a real fight however, even if you deal 50-70% of your maximum damage potential, your target is really hurting and needs to somehow get rid of these condi stacks which you will inevitably keep applying.

To conclude, yes Power shatter does more upfront burst damage, but you gain next to no survivability and it’s not a very forgiving spec if you make a mistake or your opponent dodges your mind wrack shatter. Is power shatter viable? Yes, in a spike damage scenario.

I argue, that saying that because a condition shatter mesmer can’t layout spike damage like power shatter mesmer is counter intuitive. They aren’t supposed to. If you want spike then you take power. If you want control and sustain and damage over time, then you take condi. The condition damage that this build provides is more than enough to kill any class or any build you need only to check the tooltips provided in the build link.

I play this build because I believe it IS viable. I don:t think it is fundamentally flawed, or torment is bad, like some people suggest. It just needs a bit more love from the mesmer community, that’s all.

I wish I could show you a video of some fights but I only came up with the idea to share the build yesterday. :p

messiah.1908:

+1
condi shatter as for now and i think for the coming buff wont get close to power shatter
dont think you can burst someone to 10% hp with condi shatter

first you have to lure them to use cleanse – but they wont till 50% hp
then use heal but they wont till 25% hp
so you basically play as condi spec while shatter enemies below 25% hp which can go down even without shatter
so even if using f2+f3 which will be 12 stacks of torment and 9 stacks on confusion
so if the enemy moves and use skills the dps will be
100*12*2=2400 dps +190*9=1710 dmg per skill/dodge
so to do 15k dmg (lets say as power shatter) he needs to move for 5 sec and use 3 skills
so u must use it after all his cleanse are on cd or else you burn your clones and leave you alone without any defense but torch stealth

It doesn’t matter if they cleanse their conditions, you can just reapply them. The style of play of a condition mesmer is completely different to a power shatter mesmer, as I explained in length in my previous posts.

As far as defense options are concerned, you have scepter block, which has a short cool down and applies more nasty stacks of torment, decoy, mass invisibility, distortion, blurred frenzy, the prestige, and perma vigor and sigil of energy to increase the amount of time you can dodge. Plus 2698 toughness.

About DAMAGE PER SECOND.

Based on the figures in the build link, per stack of torment the damage per second (dps) should be a minimum of 86_dps_ (928/10.7sec) and a maximum of 173_dps_ (1856/10.7). With every step they take, with 6 torment stacks, they recieve 1038 damage per second. If they are standing they receive 516 damage per second.

This plus the scepter rotation, I can get over 12 stacks of torment on the target in a real fight with potential for more, but scepter torment stacks have all different stats and I hate math, but you can imagine 12 stacks of torment has a large DPS potential.

@fluxit: I’m going to do a slightly simpler thought experiment/analysis, see what you think of it.

Instead of discussing the minutiae of a shatter condie combo, I’m going to look at the specific differences in impact and build between standard glassy shatter and condie shatter.

First, the Defense.
You’re right in that condie has more toughness. Unfortunately, actual defense is far more a function of avoidance and sustain than raw damage mitigation from armor. PU condie builds have stealth, prot, regen, etc to mitigate and avoid damage, and that gives them a ton of defense. Condie shatter has precisely what glassy shatter has…just with a tad bit more toughness. That 10k backstab drops to 8k…a significant difference, but you’ll still die ultimately. For that reason, I assume that the defense diffference between condie shatter and normal shatter is almost non-existent, albeit a small lean towards condie shatter.

Now for the Offense.
There are several aspects of offense in a shatter build. One is what happens when your offense successfully connects, but the other is actually getting that offense to connect at all.

Even the best shatter players don’t land all of their shatters, and getting off a multiple shatter combo is going to happen incredibly rarely in a normal fight, generally necessitating a surprise start from stealth to actually succeed in that. The ease of landing this shatter greatly varies from build to build as well. Leap/swap is very important for landing a strong combo, and some shatter condie builds won’t take sword (I know yours does). Additionally, power builds tend to have more high-impact skills that can bait a dodge (mirror blade, iZerker, etc), and so I’ll give the edge of actually landing a shatter to the power build.

The other aspect of offense is what actually happens once that shatter connects, and this is the most interesting part.

Power Shatter
From a dry start with really no setup, a power shatter can pump out 3k*4 if you get everything to land. Note the *4 modifier is possible because of IP. This results in 12k instant damage, potentially higher if you pull off a combo like point blank mirror blade or diversion vuln stacking. That’s pretty much it, and once that damage lands mitigation is not possible. Additionally note that this is with mind wrack, which has half the cooldown of cry.

Condition Shatter
From a dry start with no setup, a condition shatter can currently unload 3 stacks of torment, 6 stacks of confusion, and 3 stacks of vuln. This torment will do 2868 damage over 10 seconds in total, 5737 if they’re moving and if they use no condition removal. The confusion is really too variable to analyze, and the vuln is simply a cover condition (which is important though, don’t get me wrong).

You can see the difference here. So much of your discussion begins at a point like:

fluxit.8247:

we need to talk about your opponents options when they notice they initially have 5+ stacks of torment, confusion, bleeding, and vulnerability

To get to that point requires a lot of things to happen though! They need to have eaten perhaps the torment block, a shatter or two, taken a lot of phantasm hits. You can’t compare a simple power shatter to that situation, you compare that situation to…eating a power shatter and a blurred frenzy and having an iZerker and iSwordsman chewing on you. Both builds have the capability to provide outstanding pressure and limit options, but one simply does it with a far far higher potency.

i guess some of you never fight a d/p thief – you put condi they go stealth and cleanse – hard match if the thief play patiently and take you bite after bite
warrior – if they smart the use shout so you cant put condition for 10 seconds of them while they can harm you so you must back away
ranger condi/power – if using survival of the fittest can cleanse conditions almost constantly
ele d/d/staff – almost immune and have cc and best cleansing abilities – hardly you put 12 stacks on them
mesmet power shatter – if he catch you . you are in trouble my friend

the most easy to hit and put high stacking are – necro/some ranger build/ thief (not d/p spamming ) , dps warrior and all dps build out there

so even with the new update i dont think you will be able to put higher stacking against good player with cleanse

you can watch my channel and see me doing 12-15 stacks but only after i lure them to use cleanse with blocks and AA with staff . so it is not fast shatter build

Fay.2357:

I’ve used both. Staff+sc/torch, staff+sc/pis, swo/torch+sc/pistol. As I’ve said before, they’re all very fun builds to play…and all just objectively worse than other options.

It’s really irritating because I enjoy the play style, but I very much don’t enjoy gimping myself by taking an awful trait. With the upcoming buff, I’m hoping that the trait will actually be gaining enough burst power to make shatter in for conditions not just a waste of resources, as it is now.

Ultimately, the current situation is that it plays like a shatter build with none of the oomph that shatter builds have, while remaining close to as squishy as a glassy shatter build. Where in standard shatter landing a shatter combo can literally instakill someone, landing a full combo in torment shatter makes them stop moving for a few seconds…and pop a condition removal. You say each clone deals 1.8k damage…over 10 seconds…if the target is moving. Standard shatter will deal twice that instantly with no if’s attached.

Looking at that discrepancy makes it obvious why torment shatter is so bad right now. You don’t gain significant defense from the condition build and your shatter suddenly become incredibly wimpy by comparison. It means you’re spending the same resources for an attack that does only a fraction of the damage possible from the other build. It’s really quite a shame, and I hope the incoming buff makes it more worthwhile. Sorry bout the wet blanket post though.

You’re right though. Power Shatter build lets you insta down a target, even AoE burst multiple opponents.

Old condition/confusion shatter could almost achieve the same thing thanks to confusion dealing damage at the higher (still PvE) rate. Retrospect is enlightening in this regard. Back pre confusion nerf, pre condition meta, nobody ran cleanses and everybody ate mesmer confusion bursts. Post condition meta you’d be lucky to manage the same thing now. Compare the old confusion shatter burst then to a power shatter build then/now and you have to laugh at the “balance” of the confusion nerf. A person could always stop attacking and disengage with a high stack of confusion on them. They can also cleanse. In fact there’s options to negate condi application all together. Mesmer’s don’t need 2 stacks of torment on shatter to make a viable condi shatter build, all they need is IP with +50% confusion damage.

I don’t have any vids of my old confusion shatter gameplay anymore. I didnt start recording until just before confusion was nerfed. However I did take this back in the day, and you can still do it yourself. Of course this was without food/crystals/ascended/exotics/guard stacks/might stacks etc. Oh the things that could be possible with confusion today :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMdwgiYZSvo

(In case you miss it its 16 stacks of confusion, 5k+ on skill use. GG for all but the most conscious of players.)

messiah.1908:

i guess some of you never fight a d/p thief – you put condi they go stealth and cleanse – hard match if the thief play patiently and take you bite after bite
warrior – if they smart the use shout so you cant put condition for 10 seconds of them while they can harm you so you must back away
ranger condi/power – if using survival of the fittest can cleanse conditions almost constantly
ele d/d/staff – almost immune and have cc and best cleansing abilities – hardly you put 12 stacks on them
mesmet power shatter – if he catch you . you are in trouble my friend

the most easy to hit and put high stacking are – necro/some ranger build/ thief (not d/p spamming ) , dps warrior and all dps build out there

so even with the new update i dont think you will be able to put higher stacking against good player with cleanse

you can watch my channel and see me doing 12-15 stacks but only after i lure them to use cleanse with blocks and AA with staff . so it is not fast shatter build

D/P thiefy, no probs. Shout warrior, just kite until shout is up this is like asking a dagger daggrr thief what theyre gonna do when the shout warrior is immune to damage, haha. Condi ranger, is definately a tough matchup but so what? Good players are good players. It doesnt matter what build they run.

Lets get this power shatter stuff over with now because i feel like so far we will just go on and on and on. So far for power shatter ive heard spike, burst, dps.

Power Shatter Mesmers have a high burst, but so do scepter, dagger eles, and eviscerate warriors, and glass gs guardians. You can compare them to other respective builds within their classes but ultimately, if you criticize a condition build for not having as good a dps as a glass cannon build youre missing the point. If you want to burst your target down with condition damage in a short period of time…isnt that op and missing the point of what a condition damage class is supposed to be.

Remember the purpose of this build is for wvw solo roaming and small group roaming.

Now, PU condition isnt good enough in my opinion because any build that is nerfed by your target just walking away is not that great.

This condition build minimizes your targets chance of escape and maximises your chances of griefing thiefies who try to surprise you and eat a face full of condis messaging you calling you a troll and pu noob.

Also Fay, what do you think would be a respectable amount of toughness? I guess youre a tough man to please if 2700 damage isnt enough haha. Might test some different trinkets out. But i understand what youre saying, but pu is too much of a bunker.

Maybe more points in the toughness line? But at the cost of what? Precision and deceptive evasion?

And as far as them just standing there and not dying if they do nothing. I guarantee you they will die very fast if they stand there and eat not only the condition but direct damage. Cross my heart hope to die. Heavy heart of the mists training golem usually dies within 10 seconds to use one example, eventhough i know its not a great one.

But anyway if you want damage spikes obviously this build is not for you. So lets stop talking about that now. It is called the Emperor of Torment and not the Emperor of crazy spike damage for a reason. :p

fluxit.8247:

Power Shatter Mesmers have a high burst, but so do scepter, dagger eles, and eviscerate warriors, and glass gs guardians. You can compare them to other respective builds within their classes but ultimately, if you criticize a condition build for not having as good a dps as a glass cannon build youre missing the point. If you want to burst your target down with condition damage in a short period of time…isnt that op and missing the point of what a condition damage class is supposed to be.

The reason we keep bringing up burst damage is because shatters are an inherently bursty mechanic. You’re consuming massive amounts of resources when you shatter, for what should be a significant reward. The reward is there in power shatter…and it simply isn’t there in condition shatter.

fluxit.8247:

Also Fay, what do you think would be a respectable amount of toughness? Might test some different trinkets out.

2800-2900 is respectable armor for sure. The thing that I tried to explain in my previous post though, was that armor in and of itself is not sufficient defense. You need armor and…something else. Mobility, sustain, active defenses, etc. Condition shatter has all of those in the exact (or less) amounts as power shatter, and so I generalize their defenses to being roughly the same.

Im afraid weve reached a crossroads then because that is a matter of opinion. I respect it though.

Fay.2357:

fluxit.8247:

Power Shatter Mesmers have a high burst, but so do scepter, dagger eles, and eviscerate warriors, and glass gs guardians. You can compare them to other respective builds within their classes but ultimately, if you criticize a condition build for not having as good a dps as a glass cannon build youre missing the point. If you want to burst your target down with condition damage in a short period of time…isnt that op and missing the point of what a condition damage class is supposed to be.

The reason we keep bringing up burst damage is because shatters are an inherently bursty mechanic. You’re consuming massive amounts of resources when you shatter, for what should be a significant reward. The reward is there in power shatter…and it simply isn’t there in condition shatter.

fluxit.8247:

Also Fay, what do you think would be a respectable amount of toughness? Might test some different trinkets out.

2800-2900 is respectable armor for sure. The thing that I tried to explain in my previous post though, was that armor in and of itself is not sufficient defense. You need armor and…something else. Mobility, sustain, active defenses, etc. Condition shatter has all of those in the exact (or less) amounts as power shatter, and so I generalize their defenses to being roughly the same.

One thing you can take in a condi shatter over a power shatter is 0, 4, 4, 0, 6 with chaotic dampening and your choice of adapt traits (manip cd or clone death). That way you get the 6s staff phase retreat and increased blink mobility etc.

That said, the deficit in damage vs the poor condi removal in this meta is just…. horrible. In another line of thinking you can’t afford the 4 in chaos because 4 in domination for torch condi cleanse is so very important :/

i love conditions build dont get me wrong
but the main problem is with the word “shatter”
while shatter you pretty much defenseless as condi build
the torment itself wont do much as it will get cleanse in 2-3 sec so 12 stacks or 5 stacks doesnt matter
thus the gameplay of every mesmer condi build will be dot thus bait the cleanse skills and then shatter meanwhile kite and stay alive

i think if anet would add to mtd also 50% more confusion dmg only from shatter than you could probably burst with shatter your enemy as with 1-2 skills the confusion would be 10k and torment 5k