Rabid Staff Build vs Shatter for PVE
I run the build you are talking about on the main of my two mesmers. Actually, I’ve been running it on him for over a year, but as you are no doubt aware, things changed recently.
My build as it is currently:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-R;4k2l61Q7sU-71;9;4UWT;0147046038;4KZF4aJW8m9fgm9fgl-F81-NYisb-Vk9nep9seu9x99eWPk4RWAisXAi-0;9;9;9;9;9;2V6s5W
A fully-geared version optimized toward eking out the most possible damage:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VS;4k2l61Q7kW-71;9;4UWT;0147048248;4K7J4aJW8NX8aNX8ak-FD4-gDXIP0-3d384d485d5d0q-Fc1g;57V-1V051V05NV05N7;017V;9;9;8F;4V6s53;00M
My experience so far post-patch:
My kill times have improved significantly, in spite of losing clone-death conditions.
I kill mordrem husks hilariously fast compared to my thief and power mes.
I solo silverwastes champs as well or better than my power mes (better, because my clone uptime is higher than my phantasm uptime).
I get credit on world bosses (yay!).
I’m dealing competitive damage in dungeons.
PU makes mes dungeon encounter-skipping utility very high.
I’m tough as nails.
Mesmer reflects, time warp, null field, etc. give mesmer a lot of situational utility on top of the stealth.
I enjoy it immensely.
Some thoughts on the state of the build, and some of the differences between my build and the “optimal” build I posted:
1. Duelist’s Discipline and Malicious Sorcery being broken, I’ve instead taken Phantasmal Fury, Ineptitude and Blinding Dissipation. Assuming DD and MS get fixed sometime soon, DD will add 2-3 stacks of bleed per volley on average to the iDuelist, and MS will improve confusion and torment stacking with the scepter. In the meantime, fury on the iDuelist still improves his stack rate, and blind/confusion on evade/block and shatter are decent alternatives to scepter improvements and reflection on evade.
2. The 25% movespeed on Traveler’s runes are a good quality of life improvement for mesmers, and the 10% condition duration makes it not feel like I’m giving up as much for it. 50% uptime on swiftness via signet of inspiration makes this less important, so Runes of the Undead will certainly get you more bang for your buck, unless you really, REALLY hate being slow.
3. Clones die fast. A lot of clone condition play is about maintaining uptime on your clones without sacrificing your damage mitigation. Furthermore, knowing when you can shatter without losing clone time can add a fair bit of damage.
4. Staff clones let you get a double-proc of conditions on target, but there are a few tricks to maximizing that damage:
a. Isolating the target so the attack bounces go back to it instead of heading to one of its buddies.
b. Making sure either you or a clone are close enough to the target for a bounce out-and-back to actually happen.
c. The bounce to you or allies applies either might or fury, neither of which will affect your illusions. So ideally, you are closer to the target than your illusions are, so you can start getting that extra condition damage and crit chance. This often means putting yourself within or almost within striking distance of your target. It can be risky.
Not all of these are really doable all the time, so you won’t be at full damage potential a fair chunk of the time. Obviously this is true of any class, like how d/d thief won’t be at full damage if they can’t get behind their target, or if it’s just too hot that close in to be able to stay in melee range. It’s a different set of scenarios though that neuters the clone mesmer, so it can take some time to learn how to mitigate that (if you know you’re going into a fight with too much aoe to keep illusions up for any decent amount of time, you can always trait more heavily into condition-shatter, and you’ll be set).
I like it, I enjoy it, and I seem to be dealing comparable damage to most people in pvp, without more than an ascended amulet.
Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. I took a glance through both links you sent me and I was just curious about if you had any specific rotation of skills you go through for general combat scenarios. Do you just throw out your clones and watch the conditions ramp up or do you set up with Cry of Frustration or anything else?
It varies with the situation, so I’ll just take an approach to a solitary mordrem husk as an example.
Assuming I’ve already stacked up the sigil of corruption on my scepter, I’d start with an iDuelist and a magic bullet, then swap to my staff. Hit staff2, run to a decent spot and dodge quick for the third clone, then get up closer to the husk to get those might stacks and help the double-hits from the staff1 attacks. With most slow melee enemies, it’s pretty easy to stay in double-hit range without being in attack range of the enemy.
A normal husk will be dead before I need to worry about shatters or switching over to pop up a second iDuelist.
Against a veteran husk like a Mordrem Threat, it’ll take a little longer. This gives some options. When my staff2 is off cooldown and my endurance is back to full, I could easily hit a Cry of Frustration, then staff2 and double-dodge to get back up to full illusions.
Alternatively, I could swap over to scepter, back out to range and pull up another iDuelist, sidestep a bit and throw out scepter3 for some confusion stacks, magic bullet, and use scepter2 as filler while I wait for weapon swap to come off cooldown so I don’t overwrite my last staff clone with a scepter clone. If the staff clone is already dead it doesn’t really matter, and the 2 torment stacks from scepter1 in that time will probably outperform the 1 confusion stack from scepter2+ineptitude. If the husk throws his immobilize in that time, or is close enough to take a swing at me, scepter2’s 5 stacks of torment obviously outperforms. *see my note 2 posts down about why it’s actually even simpler than that.
Against a husk champion (which, by the way, is almost always up after Vinewrath/Labyrinth, and is easy to solo as a condition mes—it’s the one north of Indigo), positioning of illusions matters more because the husk can drop them really fast if it gets a mind to. Dropping an iDuelist means getting the heck away from it fast, and hoping you dropped it far enough outside the kiting circle for the husk to leave it alone. Often times on the husk champ I don’t bother with iDuelists beyond my initiate, and just make sure to replace my staff clones when they drop.
Staff is a great primary weapon for kiting, as the abundance of chaos armor is a great backstop in case you miss a dodge on the husk’s immobilize, or you get stuck on a rock and it gets a hit in, or you decided to drop an iduelist and needed to take a hit so the husk wouldn’t drop your phantasm.
In general, shattering in long fights should be reserved for edge cases:
- Supplemental damage in case you feel you can get away with spending staff2 and 2 dodges all at once
- Emergency defenses, as usual via distortion
- You know your illusions are gonna die anyway, so might as well get something out of them.
Obviously, different fights demand adaptation. Against the champ Vile Thrasher east of the husk champ, it’s very possible to keep up at least 2 iDuelists the whole time, but you have to position it right. The thrasher will always spin on a straight line toward you, so you need to make sure that line never includes your phantasms, while still giving yourself a place to sidestep to. Good geometry makes it a pretty trivial fight, bad geometry will make it a frustrating slog.
For groups, staff outperforms in general, as the bounces from your clones are decent at spreading conditions about. Catching clusters of enemies with Cry of Frustration can outperform leaving the clones up in some situations, especially if you can get your clones up quickly.
Given my nonexistent power stat, the only times I use the Phantasmal Warlock are when I need to deal damage to something immune to conditions like a structure, or when I just need some fuel for Cry of Frustration and I don’t want to blow a dodge on it.
To be sure, the core of the rotation generally is “drop illusions, watch conditions ramp up”, and anything after that is either adaptation to your particular enemy, or busywork to try to eke out a little more damage, like dropping a chaos storm or shattering and replacing the clones. An enemy that is content to just let you sit there (like a Husk Slinger, for example) and not drop any clones is letting you get away with an easy 80% of your damage, but you can definitely pick up that extra 20% with some extra work.
People have called the build mindless, and mostly I’d say that’s either because they’ve never played a longbow ranger, or because they just assume that all enemies sit there ignoring you and your clones like the Slingers do.
(edited by AlphatheWhite.9351)
Some strategic tips:
1. There are surprisingly few condition builds in open-world pve, even after the patch. That means when slingers pop up in your lane at Vinewrath or the fort you’re defending, you have the opportunity to do your team a real solid by heading out and dropping them really quickly. It helps that people often ignore the slingers far longer than they should, maybe because trying to kill a slinger makes zerker builds feel weak and they aren’t used to that. And you know that’s just gonna get worse in HoT, as they add more enemies with high toughness.
2. Even though you’re a condition build, reflects are still great. Indeed, Rabid gear still leaves me at abt 49-50% crit chance, so my reflects are very strong. I only trait for them when I know the fight needs it, but even without trait changes you can still just grab feedback and lol at the spinning thrasher bosses. I always have a focus in my inventory in case I need to swap my Illusions line with Inspiration for reflects on focus skills. Actually, the phantasmal warden is able to stack up more bleed than the iDuelist right now, but his positioning weaknesses make him less optimal for general play. Still, the right circumstances plus reflects make him a very strong pick for the right content.
3. Torch is weak. The change to the torch phantasm was an unequivocal nerf, one stack of burning every so often just can’t compete, even at 6s (it takes 2.5 stacks of bleed to equal one stack of burning at my current condi damage, and iDuelist averages 5-6 stacks per volley, with a higher duration). It’s like an insult when you consider how much burning Anet is letting eles and engis get away with.
HOWEVER, The Prestige is at 6s stealth with PU, and with decoy+MI+Veil, you’re up to 24s of stealth right there, which guarantees at least one extra Prestige if you’ve traited The Pledge, extending it to 30s, which gets you almost to decoy’s cooldown, giving you 36s of stealth over 38 seconds. I’m sure somebody’s found a way to do even better, but the point is that you can get some really sweet levels of stealth if you need them, and the torch is still somewhat passable (3s of aoe burn is better for groups than magic bullet, for sure). Killing people with clones from stealth is a bit of an art, and I haven’t practiced it much yet, so I don’t know how valuable that is, but it’s there. So I always have a torch in my inventory, too.
4. Get used to the idea of diverting your attention from the target when all your illusions are up. Whether it’s allies that need reviving or adds that need distracting, there are are a number of situations built into the game that are designed to pull dps away from the target. But since 50% or more of your dps comes from illusions, you can afford to be distracted more than most. It’s a good feeling, I think, to enable your group to stay focused, while not feeling like you’ve cut out too much of the available dps.
5. Get used to using stealth as your panic button, if you aren’t already. I’m always battling over whether to slot Decoy or Signet of Illusions, because while the extra hp can dramatically increase illusion uptime in many situations, 6s of stealth and a clone is really really good with this build, and is one of the best panic buttons the mesmer has imo. These days I usually slot Mass Invis as my elite, too, so I’ve generally got 16s of stealth on my bar at any given moment. It’s no Shadow Refuge, but it has its own perks.
Regarding the scepter 2 decision, I just noticed that I got that wrong. Blocking with the scepter will guaranteed always outperform throwing the blind because Ineptitude applies a blind/confusion when you block, so you still get the confusion on top of the torment when you block, versus just confusion when you throw the blind.
The only time throwing the blind is better is when you want to hit multiple targets with the confusion.
This will change a bit when they fix Malicious Sorcery and we no longer get Ineptitude, but only to the point of removing the confusion from the equation, making throwing the blind no longer apply damage at all.
Interesting write-up, AtW.
Tested this myself too and I have to say, sinister offers more damage but since the 30% condi dura removal and clone death is gone aswell miam got nerfed – no – it’s terribly weak compared to power or the true condi classes out there. We cannot sustain burn and bleed stops stacking at about 25 stacks wich is not enough to be viable.
The only way you can use condi mes in pve is with rabid gear to be tanky if you want to solo champs you are not capable of killing with power gear (yet).
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
Tested this myself too and I have to say, sinister offers more damage but since the 30% condi dura removal and clone death is gone aswell miam got nerfed – no – it’s terribly weak compared to power or the true condi classes out there. We cannot sustain burn and bleed stops stacking at about 25 stacks wich is not enough to be viable.
The only way you can use condi mes in pve is with rabid gear to be tanky if you want to solo champs you are not capable of killing with power gear (yet).
LOL what about you actually read the thread, OP is asking about a NON-shatter clone build, and on top of that conditions stack to 1500 stack now (way more than should be achievable in most circumstances even world bosses
~sigh~ You are missing the point in my comment… Sometimes I ask myself if ppl are just here to try point out “mistakes” or to actually learn someting about a specific topic…
BTT: The point is: Post patch condition damage has become weaker compared to post patch power damage of the mesmer. Even pre patch the condi dmg was only viable in solo content and this hasn’t changed at all. The problem wasn’t only the 25 stacks bleeding, it was mainly because the main condi damage came from the staff clones wich bounces also jump to allies wich cuts your dps in half.
So you can go for a pistol and scepter build for those situations eh? What’s happening here is you get some more power damage while shifting conditions but if you would have gone full zerk / kitten, your duellists and scepter attacks would have done simply more damage.
If you are honest to yourself and not a mindless fanboy of conditions, you realize that even the condi weapons scale off better with power than with condi dmg.
Open world bosses? I doubt anything can outdamage 3 iWarlocks with their 20k crits. Scepter 3# hitting for 16k full buffed? You’d need like 5000-6000 condition damage to deal that amount with confusion of the skill (+/- according on attacks the enemy does withing this time).
If you want to be useful for dungeons and fotm, you’ll have to deal sustained dmg, wich is now even more power oriented with mantra of pain (harmonious mantras) and fencer’s finesse. You also need precision and ferocity to deal damage with reflections.
TL;DR: If you want to max out your usefulness for dungeons and fotm aswell for critable open world content, you will always be better by going zerk / kitten instead of conditions. The only reasons to go conditions are for enemies like husks, uncritable enemies who are affected by condis or for pvp.
The OT asked if it works, I say NO, there is no viable good condition damage build for pve for Mesmer. (yet)
greez
- Madame Le Blanc
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
@Xyonon: While I respect your points on the potency of power builds, I’m surprised you completely ignored the main point of my post: my condition mesmer build, as outlined above and even with some suboptimal combat choices (Runes of the Traveler), has been effective in solo world content, world bosses, and dungeons.
This is to say your dismissal of the build appears to stem largely from lack of experience with the build in question, as I have personally played the condition mesmer in all available PVE content, and it has performed swimmingly.
Furthermore, your claim that there is no “viable good” condition damage build for Mesmer relies on a rather poor definition of viable, in which you define “viable” as “better than other builds of the same class.” (in particular, power mesmers)
We who speak English natively know, of course, that “viable” means “capable of working successfully; feasible,”
and in non-competitive content has little to nothing to do with how it stacks up against other builds of the same class.
For a proper definition of viable, I can safely confirm that the clone condition mesmer build is viable, as it does sufficient dps in dungeons, open-world roaming, open-world events, and world bosses to be “capable of working successfully; feasible.”
Indeed, none of your points have anything to do whether the build doesn’t work.
Since my earlier post in this thread, I’ve done many additional dungeon runs, including multiple paths of Arah. The build has worked well in those settings.
I run the Silverwastes regularly, and do world bosses periodically. In all cases, watching my damage output, it puts out a strong showing, easily enough to put the lie to your claims.
Far from being a “mindless fanboy of conditions,” I have put the build to extensive testing because I do enjoy it, in ways I don’t enjoy my power mes, condi engi, zerker thief, power ele, celestial ele, healing ele or longbow ranger (I do enjoy those for their own reasons).
You, on the other hand, have demonstrated a “mindless” devotion to “the leetzors!” in your apparent insistence that a build is only viable if it is optimal.
This is straight up just not true.
Before we get too far with arguing semantics:
- Yes, there are condition build(s) that can be pretty decent in dungeons
- No, there are NO condition builds are are good enough to compete for meta
1 = viable / phiw
2 = optimal / meta
What frifox said.
@Xyonon: While I respect your points on the potency of power builds, I’m surprised you completely ignored the main point of my post: my condition mesmer build, as outlined above and even with some suboptimal combat choices (Runes of the Traveler), has been effective in solo world content, world bosses, and dungeons.
I didn’t ignore your posts, I read everything and it’s really nice to see how much effort you put in this build. I played all the startegy tips in my mind while reading them and everything is fine, but I think the whole package is just not as good as you beleve it to be. Or maybe it is me who thinks that you think that it’s better than it actually is? That’d be a stupid misunderstanding – tell me.
This is to say your dismissal of the build appears to stem largely from lack of experience with the build in question, as I have personally played the condition mesmer in all available PVE content, and it has performed swimmingly.
Not this specific build, but condition builds in general have always had a special place in my heart, since I really love the staff and the scepter and I always hated the meta and normal things. I’ve tried serval different builds with conditions and I’m a tryhard who always retraits if I have to. According to this, having PU in my build (for example) for no other reason than skipping, makes it obsolete. I can retrait for PU only anytime with any build. That’s what I do. Lack of expirience with condi builds? No … well maybe a little. Expirience on both sides of the dmg output? Yes. But how about you? Maybe our definition of “performing swimmingly” is also different wich also a potential source of a stupid misunderstanding.
Furthermore, your claim that there is no “viable good” condition damage build for Mesmer relies on a rather poor definition of viable, in which you define “viable” as “better than other builds of the same class.” (in particular, power mesmers)
We who speak English natively know, of course, that “viable” means “capable of working successfully; feasible,”
and in non-competitive content has little to nothing to do with how it stacks up against other builds of the same class.
For a proper definition of viable, I can safely confirm that the clone condition mesmer build is viable, as it does sufficient dps in dungeons, open-world roaming, open-world events, and world bosses to be “capable of working successfully; feasible.”
Indeed, none of your points have anything to do whether the build doesn’t work.
You drifted away with your writings I guess. May I quote the OT here?
I just blew the majority of my money finished ascended armor so I don’t want to waste what’s left buying a set of gear if the build isn’t that useful in PVE events/dungeons/fractals. So basically it comes down to this…
There isn’t just viable or not viable in general. The word “viable” defines itself according to the request! In this case viable simply means, as you said “capable of working successfully, feasible” in the of the OT requested areas! Not just some of them! This means in this case: the whole pve package! (I think this is why we disagreed so much)
By your generalized definition of viable, everyting, simply everything is viable. But this is misleading the OT, since this build doesn’t worky VERY well with all the dungeon content (imo). By anything I’ve seen with any condition build so far, you cannot deal a good amount of damage with them, especially not on trash mobs. He’d get kicked by any speedrung party or higher fotm group. This build DOES work very well with fighting husks tough or the general open world stuff where I agree – everything is viable. So this build is only viable for some parts of the game, but NOT FOR ALL of them. According to this – you got a pm
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
(edited by Xyonon.3987)
Since my earlier post in this thread, I’ve done many additional dungeon runs, including multiple paths of Arah. The build has worked well in those settings.
I run the Silverwastes regularly, and do world bosses periodically. In all cases, watching my damage output, it puts out a strong showing, easily enough to put the lie to your claims.
I’d really like to see that damage output myself. Really, I’d appreciate it if you could upload a vid, even if you filmed it with your smartphone or anything. After all what you’ve said you seem to beleve or know that you really deal strong damage. I’m honestly curious.
Far from being a “mindless fanboy of conditions,” I have put the build to extensive testing because I do enjoy it, in ways I don’t enjoy my power mes, condi engi, zerker thief, power ele, celestial ele, healing ele or longbow ranger (I do enjoy those for their own reasons).
You, on the other hand, have demonstrated a “mindless” devotion to “the leetzors!” in your apparent insistence that a build is only viable if it is optimal.This is straight up just not true.
I won’t quote myself about the “build is only viable if it’s optimal” part, since I think you would’t say this again by now.
I’m not someone who just says “no, that’s wrong, no that’s wrong” all the time for no reason. I’d like to beleve you and tell others that this whole story is true. But word’s alone aren’t gonna change that at all. I want facts, numbers or any material I can work with. Can you keep up 2k, 5k, 10k, 20k dps? On how many targets? After what wind up time for the condis? Just stuff like that. I let myself being teached something new anytime, better than standing still, don’t ya think? But only if you can prove what you are talking about.
Overall I beleve we have talked from 2 different points of view. You with your main focus on your build, I with my main focus on the quote of the OT.
Some final words for this post: Since by writing it’s always difficult to show emotions, and reading makes us imgine the emotion of the writer having those we want him to have, I just want to say that I’m not aggressively disagreeing with you. I’m not a fan of misunderstandings so I wanted to say that. I’m a friend of good discussions. And I welcome new expirience. That’s why I want to meet ig (pm).
- Greez Madame Le Blanc
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
(edited by Xyonon.3987)
Somewhat on topic yet slightly off topic, I want to try this for fun. My 2nd mesmer I’d sinister and I love it, decided I’ll try a full condi though I doubt it can come close to sinister. Question though, does harmonious mantra effect phantasm damage? Last I checked no one was sure. If so I’d def use it with hybrid build
Well then you asked the wrong ppl
No it does not affect them. No damage modifiers affect phantasms, except for when they directly get them, like frost spirit (if the limit for targets isn’t reached by allies) or like trait 2 in domination (+15% dmg for phantasms).
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
@Xyonon I appreciate your perspective on trying to tailor the message to the OP, and I don’t disagree in principle.
I’d add two points to that, though:
1. I believe in giving an appropriate recommendation, and also in answering the question accurately. You’re right, in open-world pve, most reasonable builds are viable (I still wouldn’t take a healing ele into solo play though, so I wouldn’t call it “viable”. It’s still fun in Silverwastes if you stick with group events though).
And the honest truth is that you can enjoy yourself in most pve content on a lot of suboptimal builds, because classes in general got a power boost with the patch.
In this case, you do a good job making the case for power being optimal, but I think go too far in dismissing the viability of condition damage afterward. Why is it necessary to inappropriately diminish a build that is viable enough to be fun, when you’ve already proven that the OP would probably be happier with a more optimal power build? I personally don’t think that’s the right way to approach it. Encourage fun, and make it clear what the real relationship between different options is.
2. The largest audience for threads like these isn’t the OP, but people who lurk the forums looking for discussions on builds they are interested in. I only started posting on the forums after the patch because people were asking about this same condition build, which I have been playing since the beginning, and were getting told that it’s not playable in pve. Not playable, which is far and a way more harsh than anything you’ve said, and absolutely positively not even a little bit true. It was playable before the patch, viable now, and hopefully will be only barely submeta in the future (or…dare I hope…optimal???). My first reaction to an intriguing build idea is usually to go to the forums and see if anyone is talking about it, so I found your dramatic dismissal rather frustrating, as I felt that there would be many lurkers who’d come here and unnecessarily write off a build I find incredibly enjoyable, and whose performance in all the PVE content I’ve played it in has been more than adequate.
As far as dps, I think it’s unlikely I’ll get around to making any videos, sorry.
I’ll look at getting some numbers down on paper sometime for you, though. I might wait until I’ve swapped my Traveler’s runes for Undead.
Wind-up time is mostly the time to build up stacks, so around 3-5 for the bulk of the dps, and 4-7 for absolute max stacks. Since I rely most heavily on the staff clones, and get iDuelists up when I have the time, I don’t have the same windup I do on my phantasm mesmer, but then I have to wait for the condition stacks (I mean, I don’t have to be idle during that, but you get my meaning).
The other advantage this build has over phantasm approaches is that it’s much easier to keep clones up than phantasms, so you don’t have to feel stressed when your iDuelists get squished.
For speed runs, I can absolutely see how they would eschew a build like this, but then…they’re all about the pure dps meta anyway. They wouldn’t take a condi engi either, I’m sure.
For higher fractals, I suppose I’ll have to give it a try in there sometime.
Or you could. I don’t actually like higher fractals that much, which is probably telling.
@Azure: It wouldn’t surprise me to find Sinister dealing more dps. I haven’t given it a try yet, though I’m looking at making a set for my condi engi, to see how it performs. For my part, I like the rabid not just for the durability, but because the extra condi damage boosts my clone-applied conditions heavily, which makes the build less dependent on iDuelists, which improves my versatility.
I have no idea about Harmonious Mantras. That’s partly because I hate balancing mantras, and partly because I really like the clone uptime that Deceptive Evasion gives me.
If it does work, I’d definitely recommend it for hybrid builds, as clone-sourced dps goes down dramatically when you divert attention to power.
Lastly, to address an earlier point about dps going down in groups because of chaos winds bounce behavior, I actually found that the loss of dps was somewhat balanced by the increase in boon dispersion. And in fact, I noticed that even with multiple melee allies on the target, more than half the bounces went back to the target anyway. I’m not sure what would cause that behavior though, or if it was a bug or something.
The only way you can use condi mes in pve is with rabid gear to be tanky if you want to solo champs you are not capable of killing with power gear (yet).
Sorry but I don’t buy this. I use a sinister gear and easily solo champs. Even tried it in a solo dungeon run, hard but it do able provided I don’t pull too much.
See my signature for my build. I change one or two traits depending on the situation but the bases are there.
I even wrote a post on the build and how I play it.https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/CA-Build-Fun-but-boring/first#post5214429
(edited by Blades of Sabatine.5639)
@AlphatheWhite.9351
I like reading the whole wall’o’text and will probably take a deeper look on this again later, when I got more time. Really like the whole message though
I love healing ele too for example, it’s pretty funny especially against mai’thrin or silver wastes. So I know exactly what you are talking about subobtimal funny builds.
@Blades of Sabatine.5639
You misunderstood me. For efficiency alone, the only reason to go condi is that you can go with rabid gear IF you are unable to solo a certain champ with berserk/assassin/sinister gear. The “yet” in the end of the sentence meant that you ofc can learn how to play better against certain mobs, and then the the power versions of the class cannons will be stronger if you seek elitism. Unless you fight a husk (or ultra high armor mob in general) ofc.
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
I’m honestly hopeful that HoT has a much wider variation of armor levels than the generic content, a bit like SW.
Husks give condition builds a great chance to shine, especially when the slingers are wrecking your ammo while a champ teragriff rampages through the back line, and the power builds just can’t afford to focus the slingers over the champ. Condie build to the rescue! The slingers die in seconds, the zerkers take out the champ, and the siege golem keeps on trucking.
Even if they don’t buff condi mesmers/necros like they should, adding enough heavy-armored npcs to the mix in the jungle and dungeons would give us a real place.