Guild Wars 2

So they doubled the Condition bonus on Signet of Domination (from 90 to 180). Does anyone think it’s worth it now?

If they didn’t nerf confusion in the same patch, it would have been a no brainer for a glamour build. I’ll try it with my condition build and see if it makes a difference.

You can still play condition mes without confusion :P and if you do, confusion is NERFED, not taken out of the game.

I supplement my dps with condition damage instead of crit damage. I just tried the signet out in Orr but only gained at most 16 more dps with it. It could make a slight difference in long, drawn out fights but it’s still not worth giving up a utility slot for. I’ll also add that the blind didn’t stop the veteran risen giant from hitting me with conditions.

Well, to be clear: They nerfed Confusion in WvW. It has always had that damage in sPVP (because durability is harder to come by). I do not see the rush to get rid of Confusion in any context but WvW; Glamour Mesmers took a huge hit.

Anyhow, some context: I am currently running a hybrid phantasms build, focusing on critting and bleed-stacking with Duelists. 180 Condition is a good chunk of damage.

See here:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.8.2.7.20.18.20.20.4.4.180.196.197.184.203.5.2.29.528.0.0.542.549.550.0.0.0.575.0.0.588.595.0.10.30.0.10.20

Basically, it’s your usual hybrid PvE phantasm build with 15 Inspiration moved into Dueling. (In an environment where you have to do trade-offs, the Precision, Crit Damage, and Pistol buffs are more important than HP and a 15% Phantasm damage buff.)

I’ve still be waiting to see a viable (edit: pure, Suzut posted an interesting hybrid) condition build, since confusion is the only condition that Mesmers can consistently apply (everything else is random, except bleeds on illusion crit.)

The problem with pure Condition is that it’s not consistent. Pure Power may have to contend with toughness, but at least the numbers are big enough to push through in spite of it. Hybrid seems to be the most viable option for Condition, pretty much exclusively due to Sharper Images and its interaction with fury/haste Phantasms—stack lots of Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Condition, balancing with Power. =(

Anyhow, back on topic: Sigil of Domination for more CC and 180 Condition?

I like the signet, i use it more for the stun though (very nice) and just use the condi damage as a bonus.

It’s great now.

only worth for the 2sec stun but its 1y CD is meh. will wait for them to decrease CD to >30sec before being useful. If it wasn’t of the confusion nerf then of course it would’ve been great in wvw

I disagree. That signet has as much condition damage on it as a full set of Exotic condition runes. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The stun is also situationally very useful.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I disagree. That signet has as much condition damage on it as a full set of Exotic condition runes. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The stun is also situationally very useful.

O.o i did not know that it was on par to that… That makes it A LOT better in my eyes than it did originally.

Theden is correct. The stat boost is very significant, especially in sPvP. I am thinking that everyone with any reliance on Condition damage ought to be considering using it.

Suzut.4905:

Theden is correct. The stat boost is very significant, especially in sPvP. I am thinking that everyone with any reliance on Condition damage ought to be considering using it.

Now if only condi builds were worth running in spvp. Mirror Images still worth taking over sig of dom in my opinion.

Bleed-stacking works fairly well… if you’re not 1v1ing a Necro or something. xD

The problem isn’t the signet. It’s that mesmers don’t have any condition we can reliably stack besides confusion. Now that the two (insert insult of the day here) working on balance made sure that’s not very viable either, mesmers don’t really have a reason to spec primarily for condition damage.

I would love to be proven wrong though. I would also like world peace, more gothic lolita dresses and some devs actually willing to INCREASE THE NUMBER OF POSSIBLE BUILDS LIKE THEY SAID THEY WOULD! Naturally I’m not holding my breath on any of those things.

Am I the only one who realizes that with Fury and Haste, Duelists shoot 8 times every 4.8 seconds with an 84% chance to crit and proc Sharper Images? It seems very reliable to me. Throw in a Staff clone and a Warlock to even out the damage. ._."

Suzut.4905:

Am I the only one who realizes that with Fury and Haste, Duelists shoot 8 times every 4.8 seconds with an 84% chance to crit and proc Sharper Images? It seems very reliable to me. Throw in a Staff clone and a Warlock to even out the damage. ._."

If you only received a paycheck 84% of the time, would you still call that reliable? I have a 57% crit rate before Fury and main a staff but I only use condition damage as a supplement because there’s no guarantee Sharper Images will trigger every single time I need it to. That’s my issue with it and that’s why I still won’t pick up this signet.

once you use the stun you dont get the condition damage until the cooldown is back right? so if you stun someone you dont get condition damage until 1m. if you use it on cooldown you never get condtion damage.

@Crossplay
Yes. Because I would be getting 8 checks. Who gives a crap if it does not trigger 16% of the time? YOU GET EIGHT GOES AT IT. You’re looking at 99%+ probabilities that it will trigger at least once, and the expected number of crits is 6-7. I mean, really, if you think like this, WHY BUILD CRIT AT ALL?

I mean, there is no other SINGLE ability more efficient for bleed stacking than this. Even the Warrior’s Sever Artery chain is less efficient.

Phantasmal Duelist: 8*.84 = 6.72 per volley, one volley every 4.8 seconds, 1.4 bleeds per second
Warrior: 2 stacks every 1.5 seconds, 1.333 bleeds per second

I mean, yes, Warrior has more bleeding options, like Impale and Riposte, but these had ~15s cooldowns. I really must underscore just how individually efficient Phantasmal Duelist is, especially in the light that it is RANGED and INDEPENDENT OF LINE OF SIGHT.

EDIT: Here is an old blog post that examined the efficiency of Sharper Images: http://www.suburbanlion.com/?p=387

His attack speed estimates are actually too slow. We now know that Duelists shoot faster than we previously believed, and that Sharper Images is virtually mandatory on any Sword+Pistol Phantasm build.

Suzut, I feel you’re still missing my point. I like Sharper Images and I like condition damage. I even agree that the iDuelist is awesome, however, it is not good enough to base a condition build around. I don’t feel any of the random conditions that mesmers do is enough to create a build around by the very nature of their application being completely random. Now take into account that the Signet of Domination seems tailor-made for a condition build as that is the only situation I can see taking it over some of the other utilities available. Even the active isn’t good enough because I could simply trait glamours for blind and have them work on entire groups instead of single targets while having their projectiles reflected or being stripped of boons.

In essence, this signet is worthless to me without a condition I can reliably stack. That’s why I use condition damage as a supplement instead of a main focus. Now, if they replaced Winds of Chaos’ vulnerability with poison, then this signet would be a LOT more attractive!

Sure, you don’t want to do pure condition, but hyrbid condition seems acceptable. It’s not really random with the right stats. It’s a bleed whenever a Phantasm crits. And they crit with a very high percentage chance. Duelists and Warden seem to be the best for this. (I use Scepter+Pistol/Staff in sPvP, but sometimes tinker with Sword+Focus. and Scepter+Sword)

Sure. In WvW, you have a different role to play. I would not even bring a Phantasm build into a zerg fight. But how about sPvP, where single target damage matters?

hybrid seems like the correct choice.

phantasms dont even get % crit stats on thier hits do they? only percisision/condition/power etc.. but not %crit.

if that is so there is no reason to not take power/percision/condtidion damage gear for a hybrid spec. people ususally go rabid or w/e but toughness only matters if you go deep staff spec.

im sure someone has an opinion on that so lets hear it.

Well a hybrid style Phantasm bleed build can work. This is a little video of just 2 clips as I havent been able to get anything really good solo roaming. Since I have been messing with another build not using rabid gear.

The first clip is just me and a guildy we are running the exact same build as he asked me for something different from his zerk setup. The utilities are whatever you like I was just messing with signet of illusions and defender as I had never really ran them before or a phantasm build before I mostly just did confusion shatter build with GS sword/pistol.

The main point why I put this vid together was from this thread.

You can see that duelist can stack 6-7 bleeds on its own. This is 81% crit chance for duelist since he has fury. The confusion from scepter is just complimentary damage to go with bleeds for more pressure. The bleeds last for 9 secs for any illusion crit the staff is there for kiting and the usual goodies staff gives but the main damage is from duelist basically traited 1200 range let 1, 2, or 3 do the work for you.

This is all rabid gear the condition damage is actually lower than normal mine is at 1149 but you don’t need a truck ton of damage for bleeds and the returns are low for the amount of condi damage you have to put in.

1149 gets me 100 damage per tick on bleeds 1550 will get you 120 why duration > damage imo. You can as other said take Rampager gear to give you more crit so you can go deeper if you like into the illusion tree. I wouldn’t say deceptive evasion is a must but more clones = more bleeds so I would say 20 points is good to go for the extra crit 25 if you want the extra condition from shatter.

Basically your filling up the condition removal que for passive condi removal so there are so many conditions they can’t wipe all of them especially the important ones. Like engineers mask their confusion behind poisons etc. This works well with sword main hand too since your clones strip boons, apply bleeds, vulnerability and when they die lay conditions and act as fodder for more conditions.

Wipes are less effective if you can constantly stack bleeds over and over again. I also have traited clone death causes confusion, random condition, and recently I added the cripple on death also not in the video though.

I cant comment about pvp because I don’t do it at all. In fact, the only reason I enter the Heart of the Mist is because it’s a cheap way to get to Lion’s Arch.

Suzut.4905:

Bleed-stacking works fairly well… if you’re not 1v1ing a Necro or something. xD

that’s why i always ran it underwater. Not only bleed stacks are awesome underwater but a free stun to land iMariner/Feigned Surge is kinda important. Outside water i personally consider it a waste of utility (especially since mez has so many good ones)