PvE condi non PU build
- First off, Condi survival is kind of a moot point in PvE. I’ve found my rabid mesmer to be extremely durable in whatever situation I’ve been in. I think you’ll get a lot more mileage out of rabid, and it won’t be long before you find you don’t notice much difference in survivability (it’s there obviously, but the vitality just isn’t very important in pve).
- None of your traits in Domination are contributing to your condi focus, except for what vulnerability you can apply with dazes/interrupts. Obviously switching to rabid would open up dueling, and frankly I can’t recommend that more strongly. Sharper Images alone should be able to keep you at around 8 stacks of bleeds consistently, which is a significant dps boost.
* If you’re fixed on Domination though, you’ll probably get more out of Blurred Inscriptions (read: distortion+ineptitude=pretty, and abundant condi cleanse), or Furious Interruption (synergy!) over Shattered Concentration, and Rending Shatter over Empowered Illusions. The only advantage EI has over RS for your dps, imo, is that you’ll be able to kill structures faster.
- If you switch to rabid, move off torch to pistol (obviously). I did some torch testing last night, and the average burning stacks I was able to get on golems with Balthazar Runes, Sigil of Smoldering and Phantasmal Haste in Rabid gear was 7 stacks, which is equivalent to about 21 stacks of bleeds. Between the bleeds and burns I had at that moment, it was slightly less damage per tick than I get with staff clones stacking bleeds, and a fair bit less than I get with 3 iDuelists up stacking bleeds. In short, iMage is currently underpowered compared to iDuelists with Sharper Images, and that will get worse when they finally fix the Duelist’s Discipline.
- The Pledge is broken right now, adding way too much cooldown recharge than it’s supposed to, but even so it requires you to stay in stealth to benefit, which won’t really benefit you much in the dps race…you need to be active, not sitting around waiting for your torch skills, unless you’re after lots and lots of stealth (in which case you’re looking at a PU build). I did testing on dps changes from that last night, and the burn stack from The Prestige itself is negligible even with the too-fast recharge from The Pledge. Signet of Ether and weapon swap cooldown makes the extra time you’d get on bringing your iMages up kinda moot, and you can get condition removal from Blurred Inscriptions. That lets you swap over to Compounding Power for the nice extra condi damage.
- Some of the condition duration not shown in the Build Editor is from Chaotic Persistance, 3% for each boon on you. I can’t imagine how you’re getting to 100% on anything but confusion though, as you’re 40% short before CP.
- You won’t need feedback in most pve content, and when you do need feedback, you won’t often need a clone utility at the same time. If you swap in Signet of Midnight, that’ll put you at 80% base condition duration on this build, ranging up to around 90% with a few boons on you, maxxing at 100% where a lot of boons are available. This cuts the value of Runes of Perplexity dramatically, and at that point Runes of the Undead will probably outperform solidly, with Nightmare runes coming in second (putting you at 95% base, maybe letting you swap out the toxic crystal for a master crystal). If you have to choose between Signet of Midnight and Signet of Domination though, you should probably choose Signet of Midnight. In pve, Signet of Midnight gives you aoe blind/confusion application, a stun break, a lower cooldown, and 20% condi duration is better than 180 condi damage (when you’re below the cap). In wvw zerg, the 9s aoe blind and stun break are still better than the stun from Signet of Domination, imo. In WvW roaming, you should retune to PU anyway, because stealth.
- Interrupts are weaker in PvE, as not everything can be interrupted, and you don’t get interrupt bonuses on Defiant targets anymore. For comparison, I tried out a build that was extremely interrupt focused, taking Mistrust from the Dueling tree and a bunch of other stuff, and the confusion stacks/damage on interrupt was incredibly high in groups, competitive on easily-interruptable solo targets, and incredibly inferior on other targets. Its damage was so uneven as to not even be worth it, even though one-shotting groups of Menders with a single Magic Bullet is hilarious. The point is that relying on interrupts for stacks like with Rune of Perplexity in PvE is just not gonna work out very well. It’s a nice side benefit, but if it’s your only benefit, go for something that focuses on conditions from shatters or illusions.
- You don’t have many reliable interrupts in this build, relatively speaking(Chaos Storm which is random, Signet of Domination which makes you choose between Condi damage and the interrupt, as well as being a 1/4s timer, and f4, which is a rather long cooldown shatter and will probably cut your sustained dps when you use it). I think you might get more out of Bountiful Disillusionment than Chaotic Interruption, but you’d have to test that to see.
- Without rabid, your Sigil of Torment isn’t doing much. I’d recommend swapping to Bursting.
Regarding total stacks and potential damage, I did a comparison between a shatter build and my preferred clone-applied build (confusion/torment primary vs bleeds primary), and the damage comparison really comes down to how fast the target attacks, and how much it moves. Against faster and more mobile enemies, the shatter build picks up steam. But in PvE content, it suffers against bosses and slower targets like husks, or the female teragriffs.
In build form, my suggestions if you stick with Dire/Domination:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAW7fnsICdqhVoBOoBcrhFYDyMFBfmoR5mLhMAXI3A-TxyCABQoEEgDCwxXAAA1NYgpPkfCAYpMoJleCt/gPq74pKBBAOAk4hdDkCAmlVA-e
If you swap to rabid:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAW7ansICNqhVoBOoBcrhFcDyMDxuCoB5k7oMAr+XA-TxyCABOoEEgDCAOq7YgpPkfCAYpMQo9HuUlA90NM9FA4IleBAOAk4hdDkCAmlVA-e
Changes from your build:
Dire -> Rabid
* except for the Chrysocola jewels, because there is no rabid jewel, so you’d have to step down to crests
Torch -> Pistol
Domination -> Dueling (Phantasmal Fury, Blinding Dissipation, Deceptive Evasion).
* Duelist’s Discipline is bugged, so PF outperforms
* Blinding Dissipation synergizes wonderfully with Ineptitude, but if you really want more reflects, Mirrored Evasion is a nice hot swap (and makes evading ranged attacks hilarious with reflect on top of the blind/confusion from Ineptitude).
* Deceptive Evasion is hands down the best clone generation out there. If you feel like you keep your illusions up just fine though, Mistrust is how you one-shot menders.
The Pledge -> Compounding Power
Mirror Images -> Decoy
* With Deceptive Evasion slotted, you won’t need much more clone generation, which makes decoy outperform Mirror Images, especially with Signet of Midnight as a stun break.
Gains:
- Crits to get torment stacks
- Crits on illusions to stack bleeds
- 20% general condi duration
- 151 Condi damage
- Better condi phantasm (iDuelist averages 5 stacks of bleed with Sharper Images)
- An added, reliable interrupt (Magic Bullet)
- More blind, more vigor, more clones
- Restored interrupt effects, as Magic Bullet gives enough interruption to switch back to Chaotic Interruption.
- Phantasms hit harder on average. 44% crit chance + Fury = 64% crit chance, so (.64*.5)1 =1.32, or 32% damage over baseline. Even with Empowered Illusions, a 9% crit chance means (.09*.5)1 = 1.045, 1.045*1.15 = 1.20175, or 20.2% over baseline.
- Better reflects. Since reflect crit chance is your crit chance, Rabid dramatically outperforms Dire.
Losses:
- Vitality (important in pvp, not important in pve)
- Feedback and another non-signet utility at the same time.
- Condi cleanse! While this is not important most of the time in pve, it comes up from time to time. If you find you really need it, swapping decoy to arcane thievery, null field or mantra of resolve should cover all your pve needs. If arcane thievery is working fine now (it was kind of unpredictable in the past), it even doubles as an offensive option. Null field is hands down better for WvW, though.
- Stability from Bountiful Disillusionment. That’s an easy fix if you find yourself missing it, and I’d probably be swapping between CI and BD often depending on what I’m fighting.
- No more vulnerability stacking. This is definitely a dps loss, but how much depends on how good you were at stacking it. You’d have to do some testing to see how much loss it is, but given the timing issues, issues with interrupts, and long cooldown of f3, I don’t think you’d be able to keep up full stacks permanently. My intuition says even if you did, the bleed stacks from sharper images will outpace the vuln.
- Confusion duration. Though condi duration when up generally, confusion goes down slightly when we swap out the Runes of Perplexity. Runes of the Nightmare would guarantee max duration, so there’d be no loss, but you wouldn’t pick up that yummy 7% toughness damage boost from Runes of the Undead. I’d say in general, Undead is probably a net gain, especially with Chaotic Persistence making up some of that gap, but it could do with some testing.
In the final analysis, switching from Dire/Domination/Perplexity to Rabid/Dueling/Undead moves dps from vulnerability stacks via daze/interrupt/shatter over to bleed stacks via illusions, sacrifices some confusion duration to gain more condition damage (or sacrifices confusion duration for overall duration), moves a little bit of utility into condition duration, loses some confusion stacks on interrupt, gains an interrupt skill, picks up extra phantasm damage, gains an aoe stack of torment on staff attacks, sacrifices reliable condi cleanse (which can be gained back at the expense of a clone utility/stun break), and loses some (unneeded?) durability.
Some variations off the top of my head that could be useful:
Sigil of Torment -> Sigil of Bursting
* Even at 44% crit chance, you’ve only got a 22% chance to apply the torment, at 9s duration you won’t ever get above 2 stacks at a time off it, usually less (though I bet you could keep up at least 1 stack). Bursting, meanwhile, adds 131 condi damage to the build before corruption stacks (146 with full corruption). I think in the long run, you’ll get more mileage out of the bursting. Again, testing is needed. AOE condition application certainly has its own value.
Master of Manipulation -> Illusionary Defense
* With MI as your only manipulation skill, you won’t get that reflect up very much, and the 18 seconds off MI, while nice, is still a benefit you only get every 72 seconds, if that. Illusionary Defense will get you up to 9% damage reduction at any given moment, and in pve it really adds up. Ymmv, and it’s definitely the sort of thing to consider swapping to in projectile-heavy content.
Decoy -> Null Field, Arcane Thievery, Mantra of Resolve
* Already mentioned this above. My experience has been that I don’t really die much even without condi cleanse, so I generally prefer decoy. Still, it’s an easy swap.
Anyway, those are my thoughts :P
Well, i decided to follow your advice and change some things of my build, but not that much though, since i’m kind of used to it.
- changed to runes of the Undead (more condi dmg ? hell yeh! )
- changed to sigil of bursting
- changed 2 traits but kept domination
- changed some skills : went with signet of midnight
For now, i deal a lot more condi dmg, my shatters seem to matter more and i still have the feel of melting mobs away.
Although the crit from rabid is nice, i prefer having a bit more hp, esp when facing bosses in SW or multiple mobs (think several terragriffs) at once. And it’s definately valid for WvW.
Thx for the advice, it really boosted my character.
One of the easy things to forget, too, is that you already get a 33% confusion duration from the Illusion tree, so being at 60% base condition duration gets you to 93% confusion duration immediately, and you only need 2 boons at any moment to get to 99% from chaos, meaning the confusion duration from the runes of perplexity is totally wasted.
That leaves the confusion on interrupt the only reason to take perplexity over, say, Tormenting or Undead.
Even as it is, Midnight + Food + Malice = (20+40+10) = 70, add Master of Misdirection’s 33% and you hit cap on confusion.
So you could drop the toxic crystals and still be maxed on confusion duration. You’d still be down 10% on torment though. Build editor says you’d pick up 83 condition damage in exchange, I dunno how that stacks up in the long run.
Without sharper images you aren’t getting many bleeds, so that 10% is all about torment and the little bit of burn you get off iMages.
I really just don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about. And since they’re just consumables, I guess it’s something you could test easily.
The above also assumes you keep condition food up.
If you’re using magic find food, you’ll definitely benefit from the Runes of Perplexity.