Guild Wars 2

Rolling a condi mesmer, and I’m wondering if Carrion gear is better than Rabid gear? current build is 0/20/20/0/30. Sitting at 2824 armor with staff, but only 15k HP which i feel is lower than I would like it to be, however I don’t want to give up toughness. Any thoughts?

with full rabid gear, i too sit around 15-16k HP (depend on wvw bonuses) with a staff condition build too and i must say it is more than enough, not unusual for me to be the last man in my group that stands in dungeons in fact

I use mine for wvw primarily. Trying out a 1:1 ration between toughness and vit and seeing which works better for me.

rabid is best. toughness helps you stay alive better than vitality in 90% of situations.

If you don’t use or care for Sharper Images (i.e. not taking Deceptive Evasion), then Carrion is better. Otherwise Carrion deals more overall damage.

Mesmers are generally better suited for toughness anyway, since we have light armor but a (relatively) high hp pool. The higher hp makes you more resistant to conditions, but toughness makes you more resistant to pure damage. So, imo, it would be better to stack up the toughness than to stack up the vitality.

So if you’re going for a condition-based build, rabid is definitely better. Burst is harder to react to, and toughness will help manage that.

Another thing to consider on toughness vs vitality, is that out clones and phantasm uses our toughness but does NOT gain anything from our vitality (source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion)

If you don’t use or care for Sharper Images (i.e. not taking Deceptive Evasion), then Carrion is better. Otherwise Carrion deals more overall damage.

I actually have sharper images, but not deceptive evasion (who says you cant stop a traitline at minor traits?) still i by far prefer rabid

Richard Nixon.6573:

Mesmers are generally better suited for toughness anyway, since we have light armor but a (relatively) high hp pool. The higher hp makes you more resistant to conditions, but toughness makes you more resistant to pure damage. So, imo, it would be better to stack up the toughness than to stack up the vitality.

So if you’re going for a condition-based build, rabid is definitely better. Burst is harder to react to, and toughness will help manage that.

I disagree. As a mesmer you have so many ways to negate direct damage through teleports, snares, stealth, a multitude of CC including a daze just for being a mesmer and if all else fails you can make yourself invulnerable (again just for being a mesmer). Managing conditions, however, is much harder for us to do without speccing into it. This is probably exactly why we have light armour but medium health, and I personally think it is best to keep pumping up that health because toughness is completely irrelevant when you’re negating the damage through skills.

@OP you’re taking staff, so you have the pseudo-stun break Phase Retreat with you anyway. You have Chaos Armour which further shuts down your attacker and you can take a skill like Signet of Domination or Mantra of Distraction for yet more defence to burst. You have 20 in your toughness trait line giving regeneration and, more importantly, protection in addition to some nice defensive traits. I’m assuming you’re running Chaotic Dampening from T2 which gives you both the aforementioned skills more often, and Phase Retreat even more often from Illusionist’s Celerity. Illusionary Defence or Master of Manipulation (with Blink) are both excellent defensive traits which increases resistance to direct damage even further. I assume you’re bringing Illusionary Persona, so you can insta daze and invulnerable on demand. This is all stacking up to be a LOT of resistance to direct damage, but where’s your condition management? It is all crammed into one utility skill.

IMO in most cases for mesmer vitality > toughness, and this is certainly one of them.

GummiBear.2756:

Another thing to consider on toughness vs vitality, is that out clones and phantasm uses our toughness but does NOT gain anything from our vitality (source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion)

This is probably not correct, since ANet actually changed the Vitality scaling for clones in late beta, documented in patch notes. Unless ANet removed the player’s Vit from the illusion HP formula after release, it still scales. I don’t recall seeing that in any patch notes post-release, so I assume it’s an error unless ANet ninja’d it (or I missed the patch notes).

The proper choice comes from your preferred method of doing damage IMO.

If you are looking to keep clones up then you should take rabid so they proc more bleeds.

If you are looking to shatter infrequently then take whichever you prefer

If you are looking to shatter like a wildman then take carrion.

djtool.8372:

The proper choice comes from your preferred method of doing damage IMO.

If you are looking to keep clones up then you should take rabid so they proc more bleeds.

If you are looking to shatter infrequently then take whichever you prefer

If you are looking to shatter like a wildman then take carrion.

In that case why not go for power/prec/condition (rampager) armor? Best of both worlds?

Many people already run in full berzerkers without any vit or toughness, so I don’t understand why nobody likes Rampagers.

Could someone provide a reason? Do condition mesmers need more toughness or vit because they kill slower and are prone to take a few more hits?

Because:

1. Sharper Images is not the whole build. It is an augmentation to the build. Investing your primary stat allocation into an augmentation to a build is ~_~.

2a. Both Rabid and Carrion offer a defensive stat.
2b. Berserker is not a good supporting argument for Rampager: Berserker gear enables very fast kills, which reduce the relevance of defense. Rampager gear does not enable very fast kills, because it is augmenting several “damage over time” components (Sharper Images and conditions in general).

Rampager is theoretically usable if you maintain high Might stacks intentionally because the Might will minimize the loss of raw power/cdmg. However, these builds tend to not maintain lots of clones for Sharper Images because they tend to rely on rapid Shatter cycles. Proficient maintenance of 3 Illusion uptime along with Shatters on cooldown could make the build efficient, but I don’t see many people trying to build that (with other Might stacking). A quick review of the concept would indicate that Boon duration food and Might on swap would be critical to heavy Might maintenance.

The general consensus that I have seen across the forums is that condition damage is subpar compared to direct damage. So, for a focused condition damage based build it’s paramount that you maximize your condition damage stat.

This is why you choose rabid armor. Through the Chaos line trait, Runes of the Undead and Master Tuning Crystals you can convert up to 16% of all the toughness you get over to condition damage.

The major reason for Rabid armor or Carrion armor is that vitality doesn’t transfer over to illusions, but toughness does. Even if your illusions are shatter fodder, they still need to survive until impact and toughness is more of a help here than vitality.

FlyingK.9720:

The major reason for Rabid armor or Carrion armor is that vitality doesn’t transfer over to illusions,

When did ANet change this?

As far as I know, it’s been that way since I’ve been playing which is from day 1 of public release.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion

Illusions derive their precision, power, condition damage, critical damage, armor, and healing directly from the mesmer’s attributes. Illusions do not gain any benefit from the mesmer’s vitality, condition duration or boon duration. They are neither affected by the damage of the mesmer’s equipped weapon nor by any of the various non-stat effects of weapon sigils or armor runes.

Clone HP scaling from Mesmer Vitality was changed during beta from 0.1x to 0.2x around open beta 3 or so (e.g. doubled), just prior to release. Unless ANet later removed Vitality from Clone HP scaling and I missed it (which I may have), or they did it ninja, then Illusions still scale off Vit and the wiki information is incorrect.

I don’t think rampager would be so bad if your intent is to maximize sharper images, but only if your loadout is staff and GS. Using a crit-procing sigil further justifies it.

If shattering is to be a part of your condition damage plan then that rules out rampagers.

I can’t speak on wvw but I have been doing spvp with mesmer for a very long time and it is my humble opinion that we are not set up to bleed stack people to death. In my opinion sharper images is best utilized when you do not have a useful shatter to apply. This trait helps to bridge the gap between shatters so that you may continue to apply pressure.

I have two ‘best’ bleed heavy specs that I will share with you if that is the direction you are set on. The second one however is not applicable in wvw.