Guild Wars 2

I am coming back to the game after a year or more and looking to play my Mesmer. I have always liked the Staff for the mesmer and before I left I (apparently) had a full suit of Rampager things, so I am starting to remember liking condition damage.

I have read through the guides posted here a few times, and the consensus seems to be “If you are doing pve, take a sword or be worthless”. I also see that the guides are roughly 1+year old at this point. I am wondering if anything has changed since then? Have their been changes to condition dmg that would make the staff viable in dungeon/fractals (I am mostly interested in pve). I am not a huge fan of melee mesmer.

Along with that, if I was to invest in staff/condition dmg pve’ing, is rampager the way to go? I read something somewhere about not really needing to stack of condition dmg gear.

When I was fooling around on the golems today it looked like I was getting some reasonable damage out of my current build with the iLocks up. I am hoping there has been a change recently (since I have been gone) that has made it better now a days.

Thank you for any input you can provide. I have been looking around the forums/sites all day trying to find a solid answer. All I have seen is “lol use a sword”. Hoping that is not necessarily the case.

If you want to do dungeons often, then yes, you’re going to need to use a sword. Can you use conditions? Sure. But you’re going to be holding your party back by providing subpar DPS and conditions that tickle at best. Condition mesmer’s best chance of being viable is in PvP or WvW, where pure DPS and rotations aren’t everything.

So here’s the deal…if you PvE as a mesmer, you should learn the sword and offhand of your choosing (usually it’s focus, but another sword works too). In the secondary slot, you can use staff all you like but you probably shouldn’t use it as your primary source of damage. It’s utility weapon, where most dungeon groups want damage. You do not want to be the mesmer who stands back from the group, spamming AA on a GS or a staff. There are a lot of dungeon mechanics that can get ugly real quick if someone isn’t with the group.

Have to learn how to be in melee range on a mesmer to be fully effective for your group. Sword and a traited focus will not only give you a nice low cooldown evade with sword 2 but you will have two different ways of reflecting projectiles with just weapon skills. You can use staff with setting up a warlock to be fairly safely away from the AoE attacks, but you swap to sword to close the gap with sword 3 and AA. Even then, it’s probably better to use sword/sword as the phantom with that one is a bit more useful than the warlock is (warlock’s higher DPS is dependent on how many conditions an enemy has on it and since most groups don’t stack condi, it’s potential is lowered).

GS tends to be used more in a dungeon mesmer build, it’s phantom is little more damage stable. All I can say is learn to use sword as your primary and if you must, use staff for a secondary.

Open world, just build what ever you like.
For dungeons, as people suggested, the damage and utility from sword/focus is unparalleled and almost essential to be an effective mesmer.

Staff conditions builds can be very good if you’re soloing. They will never be good in a party until possibly the trait rework.

Due to the condition cap, you’ll lose most of your damage because of your teammates applying conditions as well.

Was there any further news about them removing the condition caps in HoT, btw?

Carighan.6758:

Was there any further news about them removing the condition caps in HoT, btw?

Nothing recent. We probably won’t hear any more about it until the next beta.

I actually carry all off-hands with me in dungeons, and swap between fights. I use focus when melee is completely safe or projectiles are an issue (its often my default, and I keep it traited), sword when melee is too dangerous for phantasms and pistol when AoEs (especially mid range PBAoEs) are rampant or I need a reliable interrupt. I even break out torch from time to time when I could use a couple extra seconds of stealth.

The cap removal is set to land before HoT I believe, as are specs. Its nice, but the bigger problems with condition builds are scaling with stats, and build up time. It takes a staff build too much time to cap out its damage dealing in most contexts. If you really want to run conditions /pistol is actually pretty impressive at stacking bleed. I sometimes run Scepter/pistol and staff with a shatter and condition focus for soloing in PvE the defensive abilities and rapid clone production make it hard for anything to ever fight back, but its terribly inefficient at dealing damage. Its a fun thing to run occasionally, but I would not run it when I am with other people.

Currently … Dungeon is Sword + Focus / + Pistol … unless your party is bleed capped in which case I believe it is Sword + Focu s /+ Sword.

Sebrent.3625:

Currently … Dungeon is Sword + Focus / + Pistol … unless your party is bleed capped in which case I believe it is Sword + Focu s /+ Sword.

Hmm, really? I hardly ever bring out the pistol, mostly because I like having the block and the swordsman phantom. Going to have to give pistol a shot (heh…puns are neat) the next few times I take my mesmer into dungeons. I don’t think most of the parties I run with ever really cap bleeds, I tend to run with non-optimized guildies.

If I’m not in a group that can actually do a speed run, I’ll swap in a ranged weapon depending on the content … otherwise, the above is what I use.

I’m hoping the Phantasm from Shield does good damage so I can have 2 AOE-able off-hand weapons instead of one (focus) and then a single-target … not to mention giving Quickness and Alacrity to the party will likely be quite welcome.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Just trying to get back into the game and catch up on everything I have missed in the past year or so. It sounds like the block to conditions being viable is the condition cap at the moment (though the time to build up damage may be a problem as well). Hopefully something can be done about that to make conditions better, as I love playing that build with the staff. I will keep my condition damage gear + staff around just in case.

Thanks again!