Guild Wars 2

Aight guys, I’m a long time player and reader of the forums (both since BWE 1), but rarely a poster. Thought I would do some more videos cos it’s fun.

Just as a preface to this I’m going to go ahead and say: Conditions are overpowered.

At least in WvW small scale anyway. Condi builds are king. The strongest few builds in the entire game for roaming are condi (what I always have most trouble with on any class in a 1v1 anyway). Mesmer, Warrior, Thief, Ranger, hell even Ele these days. Necro and Engie do condi a bit more balanced in my opinion, probably because they were originally created with it in mind.
Tankiness and massive dps at the same time while barely sacrificing any utility is powerful. Not only that, but condi application is WAY more than the removal 1 or 2 people have.
Now I think that the food has a lot to do with it. +40% and -40% foods are crazy powerful for their cost and in my opinion WvW would be better if ArenaNet scrapped foods altogether (don’t kill me).

Anyway….. before this turns into a condi rant post (it already has) – I usually run zerk shatter or some kind of burst, just because it’s more fun to play. But frankly I was sick of having good 1vX fights and then being practically 1 shot by a ranger or thief I didn’t even see (you all know what I’m talking about). This happens all the time. So I decided to go tanky for a bit to get some longer (and more outnumbered) fights. But how do you go tanky AND do damage? …..Condi.

Ok, so the bit about Deceptive Evasion. GREAT trait obviously, but we are all being held back creating builds if we require 4 points in Dueling. Take those 2 points out and you can have 2 GM’s in other lines. So as I’m condi I went PU & MtD. Actually works pretty well, even though the best trait hands down to synergise with shatter builds is DE.

With some better clone awareness and OP-ness of condi’s it’s a fun and strong build to play. As zerk shatter and IP I would deffo still take DE just because 1 dodge and f4 is 2 secs of invulnerability with is amazing and life saving.
I know Mesmers are probably overall in one of the worst positions in the entire game, but for roaming I think this (or variations of this) may be the most OP build still even with the PU ‘nerf’.

With the standard 4/4/6 staff/scepter/torch build I personally think is slightly more powerful, but I get bored very quickly playing that though. It’s a much more passive play style and I prefer action packed fights to be honest. So, adding shatter means much more active play style – trying to avoid damage, manage illusions with skills only, and shatter while keeping pressure on the opponents all at the same time is pretty fun. Having both the staff traited and Illusionists Celerity is great for clone production by putting Phase Retreat on a 6 second cooldown, also gives awesome in-fight mobility and in combination with stealth means you can pretty much escape angry zergs (this happens a lot). Anyway, see what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-rG-aDb7Gg

Heres the build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW8flknpItlpxRNcrNitBZ6LUiKg6hckVWqAA-TlyAABWoEEhjAAQq/88DAAATQxobAMlfJt/gGHEAOuAACCYRA-w

Pretty standard stuff, definitely not optimized for anything really. Could do more damage, but it’s unnecessary. Went for Speed runes cos at the time I had just bought some Traveler for my zerk set and didn’t want spend that much again. Traveler would almost certainly synergise better with the boon and condi duration, but the extra vitality from Speed is nice enough.

Also, as an aside – youtube really butchered my video quality. Was really nice before hand. I guess it’s their re-sampler. It did take about 36 hours to ‘process’ and sat at 360p for that time before upgrading to 1080p60fps. Still, the quality sucks now especially in the high motion areas where it goes blurry. Anyone know any tricks? I’ve definitely seen much higher quality videos.

I think the thing you have to be willing to give up if you don’t run DE is assured 3 clone shatters. Not that you can’t do them but it’s just so much more consuming of time, effort, and the planets aligning that you just have to let it be. It’s just not practical.

The other thing is it requires a different trait setup, so 3 in Illusions, and appropriate weapon CD’s on top of that.

What about the loss of sharpened images?

I can’t watch the video at the moment, but I’ve been considering running either a 0/0/6/4/4 CI or 0/0/4/4/6 MtD setup (both with traited focus so I have free rune choice), but don’t like the idea of giving up sharpened images, DE, 1200 blink and vigour on crit, to pick up ielasticity and more condition damage.

Anyway, I’ll watch it when I can later.

Yeah sharpened images and DE are great. But the clones and phantasms in this build are so slow hitting that you don’t miss the extra bleed procs that much. It’s a lot more effective with pistol for instance.

Personally I can’t live without the vigour or the 1200 blink in WvW either. They are both life savers. Same reason I need a permanent speed boost from runes rather than a 60% up-time on swiftness with focus. The extra 2 points usually for DE gives the MtD which if you get a 2/3 clone shatter on someone is HUGE damage.

I’ve got other clips where I’ve landed an early Prestige, 3 clones Cry of Frustration and the opponent has just melted in a couple of seconds. Burning, 6 torment and 6-10 stacks of confusion with their condi removal on cooldown is a quick death. Much more damage than 4 extra bleed stacks would give for sure.

I do love the idea of one day being able to run no DE, different runes and different utilities, but right now I think you can only give up one at a time.

Unfortunately ATM DE is must in any shatter build
Sure you can run without it but you will have harder time killing or staying alive
And for me it’s bit slower killing

I also tried up with mtd but felt wired with it

Seems like the standard PU condi build from ages ago. Whats new?

Happy you are having fun with it.

messiah.1908:

Unfortunately ATM DE is must in any shatter build
Sure you can run without it but you will have harder time killing or staying alive
And for me it’s bit slower killing

I also tried up with mtd but felt wired with it

I completely agree for power set ups. With condi, it’s a bit more forgiving because you can set up more clones while the damage is still being done.

Ross is totally right too. 3 clones shatters are rare without DE, but still possible. Plus it’s fun trying to get those illusions out in time!

Cyninja.2954:

Seems like the standard PU condi build from ages ago. Whats new?

Happy you are having fun with it.

I believe the 4/4/6/0/0 ‘blackwater’ was the standard PU condi from when they originally buffed PU that you are talking about. Forgive me if I’m wrong and someone has posted this version before.

Like I said, it’s pretty standard in almost all way except I got rid of those pesky 2 points in dueling.

Interesting experiment but without DE the shatters come so slowly :<

Honestly, I think you play quite well. That being said, there’s pretty much nothing good I can say about this build. It has less survivability than PU condie (no crippling dissipation, no torch cooldowns for more torch 4, less condition removal from torch trait) and it has less pressure than either PU or a normal MtD build. Normal PU will have torch (scepter block is enormous pressure) and confusion beam (good application for doom sigil + decent confusion). Additionally, it’s able to produce a lot of clones to make those DD procs work for you. You just don’t have that at all. MtD obviously produces a lot more pressure from shatters. You shatter now and then, but you don’t really have the clones to pressure people with it.

This can be seen pretty easily in that fight against the ranger. The mesmer and guardian were hilariously bad and seemed to have close to zero condition removal, so even the small bit of condies you applied did manage to stick. The ranger, on the other hand, had good sustain and good removal. You were completely unable to kill them until help showed up after 3 minutes of fighting, and that would have gone on for far longer. This build simply has no pressure against even okish condition removal/sustain.

Here is how to improve this build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7flknpRtlpxNNcrNCwBZ6EEhAcqJg6XMjLC-TFyCABAcQAq4CAAouhl3fwT1fSUJYWK/k4JAQKAYWDA-w

Runes and utils are always debatable. Either way, sustain goes WAY up and we’re dumping all that unnecessary crit without loosing out the only thing its good for, which is prime vigor regen. Now you have the breathing room to set up nastier condi bursts thanks to that huge hp pool, and your condi damage is fully tricked out. Also scepter for torment + confusion is just going to beat out the sword. I know the BF is great to eat up those ranger pew pew’s, but you’ve got other ways to mitigate those.

You play pretty well — your dodges, field placement, and use of stealth were more than good enough to outplay your opponents — but I think the build’s holding you back some.

One of the best things about MtD is that it makes every shatter skill hit hard (2x Torment plus 1x Confusion on top of whatever the baseline effect of the shatter skill is) — this makes it practical to double-shatter in rapid succession, which you can use to make up for dodged shatters or overload people with decent condition removal. In contrast, I saw a lot of times when you had shatter skills available but nothing to shatter — you still have a reasonably nasty burst, but you spend a lot of time just kiting and hiding between condi-bursts to set up another one.

Sword damage is very low. IIRC, at one point I saw you Blurred Frenzy into a glassy dude and only put out like 900 damage. It seems like the main value of Sword was tanking stuff with Blurred Frenzy and forcing ranged peeps to run away from you because they do it reflexively and don’t notice how low the damage it.

Oh yeah I know exactly what you’re both saying. I’ve played all the popular builds a lot, including a lot of my own, but actually this one is loads more fun, for me at least.

This isn’t really a build showcase, just a video of some fun fights I had really, showing the build because people always ask.

I actually fought a MtD mesmer yesterday with scepter instead of sword and honestly he just coudn’t land any shatters on me because he didn’t have any way of keeping me still and my mobility was too much. The sword is necessary to pin them in place for just long enough. Great defensive weapon too obviously for those outnumbered fights. For instance I NEVER would’ve lived long enough to kill 2 of the 3 warriors in that clip without sword. Mitigates so much damage when used at the right time.

I played the standard blackwater a lot when it was first ‘discovered’ and to me the playstyle is just a bit too passive for my liking, especially with shatter being my favourite style anyway.

For the fights against people with good removal, I WILL out-sustain them PU is so powerful I will win in the end. I like the longer fights at the moment, it’s refreshing change from running zerk shatter the whole time where its over in a matter of seconds one way or another.

This is just a bit of fun to be honest. It’s the condition build I’ve had the best time with in terms of enjoyment for a long time (on any class). I’m just showing the fun I have/had and while I know and completely agree that it isn’t meta or optimised, the PU aspect makes it viable for roaming.

Ross:

that build does look powerful for damage, but I need that speed in WvW (i used to run perplexity blackwater before the confusion nerf but even then got rid of them immediately when speed and traveler came out.) To me, it looks like it would have less sustain because the sword loss, so you would end up taking more damage overall. Plus that 1200 range blink just saves your kitten so much when running from angry zergs or guild groups when you poked north camp a bit too much.

ASP.8093:

Sword damage is very low. IIRC, at one point I saw you Blurred Frenzy into a glassy dude and only put out like 900 damage. It seems like the main value of Sword was tanking stuff with Blurred Frenzy and forcing ranged peeps to run away from you because they do it reflexively and don’t notice how low the damage it.

Yeah, sword is utility/defense only. Need the immobilize and the evasion. Usually I just use ileap then blurred frenzy out of force of habit to be honest, and I might as well hit them with it when they are stuck in place while the shatters get them

Yeah, I can definitely see how the immob compensates for having your shatters dodged.

luxontime.1046:

This is just a bit of fun to be honest. It’s the condition build I’ve had the best time with in terms of enjoyment for a long time (on any class). I’m just showing the fun I have/had and while I know and completely agree that it isn’t meta or optimised, the PU aspect makes it viable for roaming.

This I understand, that being said…

luxontime.1046:

I actually fought a MtD mesmer yesterday with scepter instead of sword and honestly he just coudn’t land any shatters on me because he didn’t have any way of keeping me still and my mobility was too much. The sword is necessary to pin them in place for just long enough.

This isn’t accurate. It’s more difficult to land shatters, certainly, but it’s not impossible. You simply need to be more skilled with clone placement and baiting. Additionally, scepter itself adds an immense amount of damage pressure from skilled use of the block.

luxontime.1046:

For the fights against people with good removal, I WILL out-sustain them PU is so powerful I will win in the end.

This really isn’t accurate. In order to ‘out-sustain’, you’re making the assumption that you’re actually killing them at all. This is a faulty assumption. I’m fairly certain that I could literally facetank 100% of your damage using nothing but my heal and a utility or two in several builds. Your condition application is simply too slow to kill someone with good removals.

Well what you are saying doesn’t fit my experience at all. Saying I’m wrong, when I have first-hand experience (and shown it in a video) is strange to say the least.

Let’s talk about the ranger fight at mill. I think that is THE highest condi removal spec in the game apart from maybe hoelbrak+lemongrass warrior with cleansing ire, signet and berzerkers stance. That Ranger had 3 survival skills (I think), each one removing 2 conditions with relatively low cooldowns when traited. Not only that, but he also had empathic bond, removing 3 every 10 seconds (well transferring to the pet). Now, even with all that removal, I managed to keep him under pressure and eventually get him to the point where it was all on cooldown and the pet was dead so could no longer use empathic bond.

Bear in mind I managed to do this with a camp of guards respawning and attacking me at the same time. Also note that the friendly ranger that came by only attacked the guards, the only thing that happened was the spider immobilized him further, all other damage was from me. He has already run out of removal.

So far in my experience running this build, there is only one build which counters this, and its not through abundant condition removal, but actually boon removal, and that of course is Thief S/D (what a surprise).

Having said that, your points about high condition removal are true. In fights against 3+ people with shared removal (guards and eles especially), I have very little way of doing enough damage in the time frame to win. They will still have a tough time killing me though with the high protection, regen up-time, invis and blinks.

Also, the scepter block is super powerful (if it lands), but as I do (and many decent people do against me) you simple dodge after you see the animation and ‘block’ appear. They do need to ‘fix’ that actually, needs a much faster counter blow, maybe make it near instant so you have to be really quick to react to dodge it. May need a damage reduction though in that case. Anyway I digress.

All I’m saying is: I’m yet to find a build 1v1 which can out-sustain this one from condi removal alone.

luxontime.1046:

Also, the scepter block is super powerful (if it lands), but as I do (and many decent people do against me) you simple dodge after you see the animation and ‘block’ appear. They do need to ‘fix’ that actually, needs a much faster counter blow, maybe make it near instant so you have to be really quick to react to dodge it. May need a damage reduction though in that case. Anyway I digress.

There are a lot of tricky ways to get the scepter block to land with high consistency. I’ve made several posts about them, they’re floating around in my post history somewhere.

luxontime.1046:

All I’m saying is: I’m yet to find a build 1v1 which can out-sustain this one from condi removal alone.

Well, this depends. Do you mean a build at all, or a build that I’d actually run.

Any build with heal mantra, removal mantra, restorative mantras, and mender’s purity would out-sustain your damage by just spamming all their mantras off of cooldown.

Any build with pDisenchanter would both remove your conditions faster than you applied them while removing your boons more or less instantly as well.

A shoutbow warrior would have far more than enough condition removal to never die to this.

A standard celery ele would also be incredibly difficult to kill with this.

Any competent SA specced thief would never die to this build.

There’s a lot of builds out there that would be able to completely disregard your damage pressure. It’s possible you haven’t run into them yet, but these builds I’ve mentioned would absolutely shut it down.

You are right yeah. Any build made specifically with as much condi removal as possible just to beat this one will do well, as it will be a specific counter. But in terms of roaming builds that people actually run, then no not many.

I’ve actually got videos beating celestial ele’s and SA thieves and cleansing ire warriors (there aren’t too many hambows in WvW though due to mobility issues), they are longer fights yeah, but beatable. I’ll include them in the next video if I don’t get shot down

The sustained pressure from staff clones (even though little) with the burst every so often of poison, burning, 4-6 bleeds, 2-6 torment and 4-10 confusion is too much for almost all builds that I’ve encountered. If that burst happens to be just after they switch out of water attunement, or empathic bond has killed their pet, or they miss an earthshaker, then often its just too much for them.

Like I said S/D thief is actually a direct counter to this, especially the SA 2/0/6/0/6 version. They can evade all your clone damage easily because the projectiles are slow, just like they can evade the shatters. You can’t lock them in place with ileap as they just use withdraw to break out, and they take away all your tankiness by stealing your boons. Not only that but the condition removal in stealth with the ability to just SR if it’s getting too much is the icing on the cake.

Against S/D thieves scepter is much better because of the block and confusing images can track them once cast obviously. In fact, encountering S/D thieves you’d be better swapping out PU for CI then you may be able to lock them down long enough to get shatters off.

Uhh, seems like you’re fighting morons, this build has such little pressure I’m not even sure how you kill anyone at all :/

I actually went and my setup togeather and ran it over breakfast before running off to work. So here’s a quick vid of a couple fights.

The 1200 range manips is a huge tradeoff, but considering the stealth options under PU, with 900 blink and 6s phase retreat, the tradeoff isnt as impacting as it might otherwise be. CD traited manips means Arcane Thievery isnt a terrible choice for your condi remove, which is also very powerful if you do come to face another condi build. That said, from stealth during a withdrawl you will be able to very easily strip swiftness off targets, leaving them slower, and giving you a burst of speed. It’s not as strong condi clear as the mantra, but with the DIRE + Inspiration vitality you’ve got A LOT more hp’s in play to simply soak up condi damage anyway.

Anyway here’s a vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIfVyOBAK2E&feature=youtu.be

Ross nab, video still processing!

It looks pretty powerful single target dps for sure, especially when you get the block ‘riposte’ to land then a 3 clone CoF. Very good for 1v1’s. It definitely shows in that video. They did both stand still and let you shatter though, in my experience that rarely happens.

I’m not sure however about the survivability in 1v3 situations. I don’t think it would be outrunning any groups of 5-20 (like frequently has to happen for me) without runes for movement speed increase.

The speed thing is an issue, and also the mantra can easily be swapped back in. For me sometimes you just need to get rid of that cripple, immobilize, chill when you don’t have a target in range that will save your life. I used to run Arcane Thievery in a melandru/lemongrass build (before speed/traveler) but it used to fail so much that I switched it out and use the mantra now pretty much exclusively.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I actually went and my setup togeather and ran it over breakfast before running off to work. So here’s a quick vid of a couple fights.

The 1200 range manips is a huge tradeoff, but considering the stealth options under PU, with 900 blink and 6s phase retreat, the tradeoff isnt as impacting as it might otherwise be. CD traited manips means Arcane Thievery isnt a terrible choice for your condi remove, which is also very powerful if you do come to face another condi build. That said, from stealth during a withdrawl you will be able to very easily strip swiftness off targets, leaving them slower, and giving you a burst of speed. It’s not as strong condi clear as the mantra, but with the DIRE + Inspiration vitality you’ve got A LOT more hp’s in play to simply soak up condi damage anyway.

Anyway here’s a vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIfVyOBAK2E&feature=youtu.be

Scepter ftw