Guild Wars 2

Hello mesmer community: I don’t usually post a lot on forums, but this is a thing I’d like to know better

First of all, I apologize for my basic english skills because it’s not my primary language so…

Since the fix to “Giver’s” weapons now it’s possible to stack condition duration effectively: given that we have the strongest condition (wvwvw wise at least) at our disposal, we benefit more from stacking that stat.

On the simulator with
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.3|b.1m.h5.f.1m.h19|6.1m.h19|1b.7i.1b.7i.1b.bi.1b.bi.1b.7g.1b.7g|1b.9b.1b.9b.1b.9b.1b.9b.1b.9b.1b.9b|0.k5a.k4a.0.u65b|31.d|31.39.3d.34.3o|e
this build, food, runeset and weapons one can achieve 83% condition duration and 116% on confusion. With the recent changes to scepter#3 skill to pierce up to 5 targets this has the potential (along with cry of frustration and phantasmal mage if torch is equipped) to perma-confuse clustered people.

My question is: will it work in reality or it’s only good on paper? Will be worth for me to abandon undead runes and my rabid weapons in favor of +cond. duration and giver’s ones?

Too much of a sacrifice for me. Also, runes of lyssa are expensive, I’d rather stick with 5 Runes of the Nightmare and another one that adds whatever stat I want to add, I don’t rely on crits though.

Well, didn’t consider Runes of Nightmare: with those i lose 10% duration but confusion stays above 100% which is still good. Crits are not so important to me too, i have low power and poor crit. damage, but giver’s weapons only come with precision, so i have this crit. chance… Thanks for the input!

Crit chance is excellent for condition oriented mesmers because our illusions have a 100% chance to inflict bleeding per crit.

Sebrent.3625:

Crit chance is excellent for condition oriented mesmers because our illusions have a 100% chance to inflict bleeding per crit.

Yeah forgot that! Every little helps and with this cond. damage bleeds tick for 107/sec. Don’t sure if our illusions inherit our duration tho… Might have to test. As soon as i get home i’ll try this out… If this sucks, i’ll have a bunch of ectos from salvaging :\

Illusions do not inherit +duration.

That’s a shame, but i see staff clones would have been OP otherwise… Thanks for the info Gaia.

Condition duration is good, but if confusion is your main source there are two important considerations while building around that condition.
1) Unless otherwise changed, confusion duration caps at 10 seconds.
2) If you’re going to max out your confusion duration, it’s worth considering cost vs benefit considering players (and groups of players) have various forms of condition removal. Is it worth sacrificing other areas of your build for the 9th and 10th seconds of confusion which may be well cleansed by then? Maybe, maybe not.

I have nothing to add but a quote from a friend: “I love it when foreigners apologize for their great English skills!”

Ok so here’s the thing. You want duration but you also want damage. You want a good balance that doesn’t take away from your survivability. For example:

My WvW build has a little above 23k health and a little above 2k toughness but being a glamour build I have found numerous ways to keep up Chaos Armor (which offers protection) for long periods of time (around 10+ seconds on Chaos Armor if need be) so my survivability is as good as it needs to be for those zergs. That being said, with food and sigils, my Condi damage peaks at just over 1.8k (over 2k with might stacks) and my Confusion duration is at 93% with everything else being around 60% or so.

That being said, I consider this a really balanced build that has really great confusion damage output (I’ve seen hit for over 3k per tick and practically instantly melted the person) BUT the other conditions also pack a really good punch.

The point is, you don’t want to solely rely on confusion damage in your confusion build, as odd as that sounds. Bottom line, you’re still a condition build and you can’t apply your other conditions if you’re dead. Bulk up your confusion damage/duration, but don’t sacrifice other areas to do so as confusion is easily countered; especially in WvW.

Sorry for late answers but i was having some issues and couldn’t login to forums… Apparently my password was wrong, but suddendly became right and let me in.

Anyway @Chesire: I thought chaos armors gained from leaping through combofields wouldn’tapply protection when gained, this is a great improvement in survivability; I’m revolving around others conditions too, not only confusion because if i wouldn’t cover it with something else it would be cleansed instantly. The loss in survivability would come from the loss of toughness on runes, and maybe on weapons too… Still need to test if i can keep myself alive.

@Crossplay: I take it as a compliment, am i right?

@Ross Biddle: Thanks for the input on duration cap, i’m not willing to sacrifice all of my cond. damage for the sake of duration, but every moment they waste to cleanse my conditions is a moment i get to reposition myself, get some skill off cooldown and probably some other clones up; plus, skilled players usually await the end of confusion stacks if they got no cond. removal that can cleanse all of their conditions at once, so if my confusion lasts longer i get an enormous advantage where my other conditions (mainly bleeds and burnings from clones + staff) keep on chewing the opponents life.

Shimdroid.2765:

Anyway @Chesire: I thought chaos armors gained from leaping through combofields wouldn’tapply protection when gained, this is a great improvement in survivability; I’m revolving around others conditions too, not only confusion because if i wouldn’t cover it with something else it would be cleansed instantly. The loss in survivability would come from the loss of toughness on runes, and maybe on weapons too… Still need to test if i can keep myself alive.

The combo field Chaos Armor doesn’t provide protection when triggered, but it still has the chance to when you’re hit. So if you use the Staff 4 for the initial protection and are being hit, then use combo finishers to keep chaos armor up that’s more time for it to keep stacking with itself and it really does mitigate quite a bit of damage. This is especially true for attackers that are spamming that auto or any other attack for that matter. Not to mention the confusion they are placing on themselves. It has proven in both sPvP and WvW to be highly effective in keeping me alive as well as dealing damage to enemies.

Chesire.9043:

Ok so here’s the thing. You want duration but you also want damage. You want a good balance that doesn’t take away from your survivability. For example:

My WvW build has a little above 23k health and a little above 2k toughness but being a glamour build I have found numerous ways to keep up Chaos Armor (which offers protection) for long periods of time (around 10+ seconds on Chaos Armor if need be) so my survivability is as good as it needs to be for those zergs. That being said, with food and sigils, my Condi damage peaks at just over 1.8k (over 2k with might stacks) and my Confusion duration is at 93% with everything else being around 60% or so.

That being said, I consider this a really balanced build that has really great confusion damage output (I’ve seen hit for over 3k per tick and practically instantly melted the person) BUT the other conditions also pack a really good punch.

The point is, you don’t want to solely rely on confusion damage in your confusion build, as odd as that sounds. Bottom line, you’re still a condition build and you can’t apply your other conditions if you’re dead. Bulk up your confusion damage/duration, but don’t sacrifice other areas to do so as confusion is easily countered; especially in WvW.

What on earth is your build?

I’m struggling to get past 1.5k Toughness and running a glamour build with Tough/Prec/Cond damage armour/accessories/rings etc.

Be really interested to see what you’re running and what I’m missing out on, literally have about 8 sets of gear at the moment messing around with stats since day 1!!