Guild Wars 2

Anyway, as I said before, I completely agree with you that mesmer seems to be built around conditions, yet puts out relatively weak condi damage compared to other professions. At least half of mesmer weapons are condition-based: scepter, torch, staff and pistol. However, scepter is the only weapon out of those four that deals significant condi damage on its own.

And, half of the specializations have traits that augment condition damage: Dueling, Illusions and Chaos. But again, the majority of our condition damage comes from only one of these: illusions.

I’d be happy if they just slapped a +50% torment damage to moving targets on MtD and called it a day.

Mistrust should equally have a +50% confusion damage to targets using a skill – at least it would be attractive over DE and be a good tradeoff.

Then buff/fix staff AA burning, prestige burn (number of stacks), and do something good to iMage.

I must say, I disagree with the OP about Staff needing a boost at all. I think it’s one of our best weapons and keeps in line with the chaos theme. It’s a versatile weapon that can be used both offensively/defensively AND using condi/power damage. The bleed stacks can add up quite quickly.

On a related note, there are definitely ways Anet can improve condition Mesmer, but the Staff skills aren’t the problem here… That’s deserving of a different thread I suppose.

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I must say, I disagree with the OP about Staff needing a boost at all. I think it’s one of our best weapons and keeps in line with the chaos theme. It’s a versatile weapon that can be used both offensively/defensively AND using condi/power damage. The bleed stacks can add up quite quickly.

On a related note, there are definitely ways Anet can improve condition Mesmer, but the Staff skills aren’t the problem here… That’s deserving of a different thread I suppose.

It’s versatile, but the damage is awful. It was only ok-ish damage pre-burn change, and now it’s substantially worse. On top of that, the double-bounce only works if no other allies are nearby, which halves your damage in most situations.

I think the main problem with Staff is not the mediocre autoattack (though that certainly doesn’t help) but the fact that it has no other skill that deals condition damage. Sceptre has an even weaker autoattack but is considered a much stronger condition weapon thanks to two very powerful condition damage skills.

Warlock needs to do more for condition damage, and I might even suggest giving Chaos Storm a condition bite.