Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m in the process of creating a condition bunker build for my mesmer and I was hoping that a few things could get cleared up about rather specific aspects of the build. Now I know that there have been a couple other threads recently on condition mesmers but none of them really reached the level of specificity I’m looking for, though they were invaluable for learning the basics of the build. Hopefully this thread can serve not only as a means for my question to get answered, but also as a platform for more discussion about condition mesmers in general.

Anyway, I’ve recently switched from a more specialized tank build with healing power to a more traditional build with Sharper Images and Deceptive Evasion, focusing on stacking precision and toughness. I have almost everything figured out about the spec except for some very specific things such as runes, gear, and a few traits.

Here is my build; it is mainly for WvW but I tried to make it viable in PvE as well.

First, my current spec is 0/20/30/0/20:
I have:
Desperate Decoy, Deceptive Evasion

Illusionary Defense, Debilitating Dissipation, Chaotic Dampening

Master of Misdirection, Illusionary Elasticity

I really like this trait combo as it allows me to be quite resilient and is able to quickly produce clones and rack up condition damage from sharper images.

For my weapons, I use staff and scepter/focus with Sigil of Earth on the staff and the scepter and sigil of battle on the focus. My other skills are Ether Feast, Decoy, Null Field, Blink, and Time Warp.

For gear I will use (once I obtain it all) rabid gear in every slot, except for rings where I will use the ascended vit/tough/CD rings and weapons, where I use carrion for extra vitality (though I eventually plan to use the Bifrost so I will lose condition damage in my weapon slot).

Here are my stats at level 80 with the above configuration, not taking into account things like Chaotic Transference or runes:
Toughness: 1729
Vitality: 1190
Condition: 1217
Precision: 1537 (About 36% crit chance)
Power: 1089

Now, please help me critique this build to help me finalize it. I’d prefer it to be a bit more on the tank-ish side of things as I like having a pretty durable character, so with that in mind, here are my questions:

1). What is a good balance point between toughness and vitality for maximizing bulkiness? I mean, this spec can take physical hits just fine, but it suffers terribly from conditions. Null field helps somewhat, but its long cooldown limits it. I’ve been thinking that perhaps Runes of Lyssa of Saffron-Scented Poultry Soup would be a good investment. What do others who run a similar set do to avoid being destroyed by conditions?

2). What would the best runes be? I’m leaning towards runes of the undead, but runes of Lyssa would be good too, as would runes of the nightmare. How valuable is an extra 10% condition duration and should I be going out of my way to get it?

3). How valuable would more precision be for me? Would an extra 165 precision from runes outweigh the benefits of 165 condition damage from runes? If so, would Lyssa be a good choice or would something like Runes of the Thief be best?

4). Finally (though this ties in somewhat with number 1), how valuable is vitality? I expect that I should have some to not get destroyed by conditions, but I don’t want to waste too much of my itemization on useless Power points from Carrion gear. If only I could get precision, vitality, and condition damage on one piece of armor…

Anyway, those are all the questions I had. Please offer any other comments or feedback you might have on the spec! Thanks!

I use a very similar build but I put 10 less into Chaos and put them into Illusions instead (0/20/20/0/30). This gives you more condition damage and also let me pick up Illusionary Persona for anytime\bigger shatters. Since conditions themselves can’t crit, I personally see no benefit from raising your precision other than for trying to proc extra bleeds from Sharper Images. But for illusion crits, Phantasmal Fury has been working better for me that pumping up my own precision. The only reason for going 20 into dueling in the first place is to get Deceptive Evasion for shatters in my opinion.

1) I use either arcane thievery or null field, these usually do the job just fine for me. But maybe someone else with more PvP experience can chime in here for a more in depth answer.

2) Runes of the undead have been working great for me. Remember that increased condition duration from runes/sigils is NOT transferred to clones so getting those runes/sigils may be a waste considering how the number of conditions that come from staff clones/phantasm crits.

3) I don’t know if the trade off would be worth it, but I also haven’t done any testing on it. Maybe you can try going into the mists and testing out rabid vs rampagers to see the difference in bleed stacks and damage.

4) I’ve never used vit on gear so i wouldn’t know.

I’ve yet to read a valid argument for going 30 Chaos instead of IP, regardless of the situation (PvE, WvW, sPvP, farming, etc).