Guild Wars 2

So with the confusion nerf happening in WvW, I decided to play around with a confusion build in sPvP/Tourneys… and well I found my new favorite build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWlwzaqXUThGb9ICqHXX19dkU4avWJF42FC-TsAAzCpI+S9l7LzXyvsNNEZJycBA

This build is all about proccing blinds and keep confusion up 100% of the time… Direct damage isn’t that great but you can still one shot people with confusion on them. Spikes are about every 5-10 seconds and the most stacks I have proced were 20 on a target… You still have the ups of iPersona like you would get from a shatter build.

The traits I picked and skills are pretty self explanatory… The weapon skills now do several things. Torch clears a condition blinds burns and confuses… making it actually pretty nice… Signet of midnight blinds breaks stun and confuses… The staff is your back up weapon… When you swap to it you want to have chaos armor up full time (MORE blinds and confusion). Depending on who you fight you can switch out decoy for mimic and then phantasmal fury with retaliatory shield (rangers hate this). This build can down those pesky d/d eles in tourneys that your shatter build may have a hard time touching… Or maybe you like that extra toughness but don’t wanna be a bunker… Well this build may just be good for you… Its useful against almost everyone… Sorry if the explanation is a little weird my sleep sched is all screwy but lemme know what you all think!

Quick question – with the Blinding Befuddlement nerf (you get a 4sec stack of confusion on blind with a 5 sec CD), does the trait still work well to stack confusion? Seems that it wouldn’t, as the stack of confusion would fall off before the CD for the next stack was up, but I haven’t actually done any testing along those lines. Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’ve completely misunderstood the nerf as well…. xD

yes this is true but it mainly serves to just get the extra stack of confusion out there… Plus in scepter torch you have so many skills that blind already that taking it is still a nice boost. This also goes for the chaos armor on the staff which has a blind and a confusion.
Edit: And I really hope ANET does away with this stupid nerf… it was directed at glamour builds… But they hurt the effectiveness of other builds that relied on this trait.

Jackums.3496:

Constant confusion up-time doesn’t equate to much when its damage is simply bad. I mean, it’s still viable, but I don’t see how any good D/D Ele would lose to this spec, especially in tPvP. It looks like a mix between confusion, phantasm, and shatter, with none of the best of any of those specs. Perhaps you’re just a really good player, however.

What’s funny is d/d eles seem to go down most to this spec…. The fact that they need to be in close to melee range most of the time helps keep it up as two of the confusions require you to be w/in 240 units and d/d eles best condition cleanser is in water after that you can really spike it… One important thing to try and do is bait the cleanses… This is also effective against other mesmers (esp phantasms) because of the no summon on blind. The full uptime is just a little bonus the real gem is the spikes in it that usually are around 15~ which unfortunately you need to spec into confusion to really get kitten engies).

Edit: and while I would love for confusion damage to be higher you can still get people more often than not just killing themselves and then screaming at you… Also the burns and bleeds from staff/prestige are still very potent.

Jackums.3496:

jportell.2197:

Jackums.3496:

Constant confusion up-time doesn’t equate to much when its damage is simply bad. I mean, it’s still viable, but I don’t see how any good D/D Ele would lose to this spec, especially in tPvP. It looks like a mix between confusion, phantasm, and shatter, with none of the best of any of those specs. Perhaps you’re just a really good player, however.

What’s funny is d/d eles seem to go down most to this spec…. The fact that they need to be in close to melee range most of the time helps keep it up as two of the confusions require you to be w/in 240 units and d/d eles best condition cleanser is in water after that you can really spike it… One important thing to try and do is bait the cleanses… This is also effective against other mesmers (esp phantasms) because of the no summon on blind. The full uptime is just a little bonus the real gem is the spikes in it that usually are around 15~ which unfortunately you need to spec into confusion to really get kitten engies).

I just don’t see a good D/D Ele losing to this. Even pre-patch, D/D Eles rarely went down to my own confusion bursts. At this point, they don’t even really have to cleanse because the damage is negligible and the duration remains very short.

Do you use the blinds and confusion as secondary damage and distractions, and burst them down with shatters? Because that would make more sense. But the confusion itself actually taking the Ele down would be a bit hard to believe. I mean, a D/D Ele could easily out-heal any condition damage a Mesmer could throw at them now. It would take conditions + burst damage from shatters or phantams to actually take them down, at which point I wouldn’t attribute this build to confusion, considering it would only be a supplementary source of damage and harassment.

This builds entire source of damage is from confusion… And I have only mainly used it in sPvP (still working on the gear for it to be good in wvw) where confusion was already was considered “bad”. Now 2k damage per skill use at a modest 12 stacks doesn’t seem like much but with the attack speed of most classes in game it turns into 6k damage in a matter of a couple seconds… after which you go back to building it back up…. Hopefully with the next patch the update master of misdirection to affect iMage as well (fingers crossed). You pretty much whittle away at people and if its a warrior/mes/ranger (non-bm)/thief (d/x) you say GG before you start the fight… It does have its weaknesses against s/x thieves and BM rangers but after that people will kitten to you about how many conditions you throw at them.

I’ve still found it to be quite competitive in tourneys… I wish I had downloaded some FRAPs or something to show you guys a video… But alas its okay. And hey if the build isn’t for some people that’s fine. I like it… and I honestly change my build around a lot depending on the map/team comp… The other nice thing about this build is you can switch to a zerk shatter monster real quick without changing traits.

See? This wasn’t the end of the world.

MrForz.1953:

See? This wasn’t the end of the world.

Hey now I still think confusion in WvW should be more punishing than it currently is especially since it’s really all mesmers got… now if we could stack it with our AA like other classes can with their bleeds… Maybe I would be okay with it being what it is… But currently you have to spec very deep into confusion for it to be effective and even then you are lucky if it is fully effective…. know what I mean?

Edit: tested it out against my guild leader (one of the best d/d eles I know) he nuked himself in 4/5 fights we had. Loved it.