Guild Wars 2

I used to run Sc/T and Staff on my PU build. I’m now trying Sw/T and Sc/P. So what stats should I use on the Sword, stick with condition or go zerker?

You gave up Staff for Sword? Before you ask what stats to use, ask yourself if that was a good idea. I mean, really.

I’m running SW/Fc Sc/P . With realy good results, most anoying weakness, mobility, reduced. And you can take perplex without worring about travelers.

garland.5193:

You gave up Staff for Sword? Before you ask what stats to use, ask yourself if that was a good idea. I mean, really.

This guys right. If you’re some newbie mesmer who relies on staff for survival, or if you’re running a build that lacks survival in all other areas therefor the staff is necessary to plug that hole, then you won’t want to drop staff. Otherwise, go hard.

I prefer sword/torch, scepter/focus myself.

I don’t see any point in owning a Rabid or Dire sword, so go for zerker I guess. Sword(s) bring nothing to a condi build.

Tbh sword condi PU is extrelmy solid. It’s one of the most effective wy to land a torch blast + pistol barrage without enemy dodge half the barrage! Also with dubble on hit/crit sigil u can go stealth with torch, swap, summon pistol phantasm, charge sword and get torment and poison, cripple and immobilize on target just as burn hits and 4-6 bleeds. End with a daze shatter to make things stick.

/Osicat

Ps, if u using torment or grent runes who do condis on heal the burst is a perfect opportunity to use a mantra heal and get some extra condis on target.

Here,

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-The-Holy-Hell-Build-s-solo-zerg/first#post3589756

Loads of vids in the thread, or just watch this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8td7XyA1JU&feature=player_detailpage#t=0

Lately ive been running zerk armor with cav trinkets instead of my usual rabid gear with cav trinkets, just for a change. With all the runes of str and might stacking taking place out there atm, you get your condi boost plus power boost with a quick arcane thievery steal of might. People dont realise what happened.

Advanced Scout for solo roaming.

FYI, build is slightly out of date. Boon duration runes are out, and I haven’t decided on a new set yet.

@OP, if you play condi, take a rabid sword. If you play power, take a zerker sword.

garland.5193:

You gave up Staff for Sword? Before you ask what stats to use, ask yourself if that was a good idea. I mean, really.

Swapping staff for sword is a good idea on PU builds. Sword clones apply vuln, strip boons, and always run to melee the target, making it much easier for them to apply conditions on clone death.

Moreover, giving up staff means you can take both pistol and torch offhand. In my experience, sword/torch offers just as much defensive play as staff. You have a stunbreak on iLeap, stealth on torch 4, and (if traited), condi removal on both torch 4 and 5. And as much as people would like to believe staff does good condi damage, it simply doesn’t compare to duelist bleeds + sword clone deaths.

This is a condition build you’re running, so don’t go Berzerker. Go Rabid or Dire. To the people that say that it’s dumb going with s/p instead of staff, I kind of do agree. Sword pistol give you a lot more CC and some straight out damage which can help you finish people off quicker or catch them, but what you are sacrificing is A LOT of stuff.
Here are my reasons why it’s a really bad idea.

1. Staff clones actually do condition damage! 3 staff clones will apply a lot of conditions
2. With the pistol, you will get a bleed here and there from the phantasm IF you have phantasmal fury (for which you will have to sacrifice the 1,2k range blink which is a huge help) vs. constant burn, bleed and vulnerability to your foe while granting yourself might and fury from staff bounces
3. You will be a lot less mobile. Phase retreat forward helps you with mobility a lot.
4. Phase retreat is a stun breaker every 7 seconds. (Extremely helpful against mesmer sword immobilize, any kind of warrior CC, thief basilisk venom and sometimes can even tp you to higher ground giving you a massive advantage ect.)
5. You can get chaos armor which has a high blind output and will often grant you swiftness
6. Chaos Storm is such a great skill, you get aegis, retaliation, swiftness, while you daze your enemy, put chill, poison and weakness on him. It’s best used defensively. It’s also an ethereal field. You can phase retreat through it to get chaos armor => back to #5

Is all that worth sacrificing for a bit of CC? In my opinion, no.

mango.9267:

@OP, if you play condi, take a rabid sword. If you play power, take a zerker sword.

Swapping staff for sword is a good idea on PU builds. Sword clones apply vuln, strip boons, and always run to melee the target, making it much easier for them to apply conditions on clone death.

Moreover, giving up staff means you can take both pistol and torch offhand. In my experience, sword/torch offers just as much defensive play as staff. You have a stunbreak on iLeap, stealth on torch 4, and (if traited), condi removal on both torch 4 and 5. And as much as people would like to believe staff does good condi damage, it simply doesn’t compare to duelist bleeds + sword clone deaths.

For boon stripping, you normally take phantasmal disenchanter on fights up to 1v3, after that it’s better to get portal. Also, you really think going in melee range auto attacking is a good idea on a mesmer? The stun break isn’t reliable here as you need to have the clone actually go out and spawn which as we all know doesn’t happen every time.
I can see the point with clone death but then again, staff clone auto attack puts conditions on the target the entire time they’re alive which is a lot better than just when they die and it is A LOT more conditions that way. Plus, lets not forget the boons that you get.
Vulnerability is useless since we do not do straight out damage so that argument is invalid.

Regarding the phantasmal duelist go back up to my reason #2 why staff is better.

Jurica.1742:

1. Chaos Storm is such a great skill, you get aegis, retaliation, swiftness, while you daze your enemy, put chill, poison and weakness on him. It’s best used defensively. It’s also an ethereal field. You can phase retreat through it to get chaos armor => back to #5

Chaos armor is nice, but chaos storm isn’t reliable. What makes chaos storm good isn’t really the boons or the conditions, since you can’t reliably get the same ones each time. Rather, it’s good because it restricts your opponents mobility and prevents the opponent from melee’ing you while it’s up. The boons/conditions (whichever ones you happen to get) are just a bit of an added bonus.

With regards to staff dps. It simply doesn’t match the duelist bleed stacks. On a rabid PU build, 2 duelists will stack 10+ bleeds every 6 seconds or so, and the base damage of their shots is also non-negligible. Staff clones simply don’t compare.

Jurica.1742:

For boon stripping, you normally take phantasmal disenchanter on fights up to 1v3, after that it’s better to get portal. Also, you really think going in melee range auto attacking is a good idea on a mesmer? The stun break isn’t reliable here as you need to have the clone actually go out and spawn which as we all know doesn’t happen every time.

Just because you can take a utility to boon strip doesn’t mean the sword boon strip is somehow useless. If anything, having sword potentially frees up a utility slot if you previously relied solely on disenchanter for boon strip.

The stun break is reliable. The only thing not reliable is summoning the clone, but that’s (presumably) a bug that Anet is fixing (yes, we’re still waiting…). Lastly, don’t forget that sword 2 offers an evade, and sword 3 gives you an immobilize.

Jurica.1742:

Vulnerability is useless since we do not do straight out damage so that argument is invalid.

Just because you don’t use direct damage doesn’t mean your team mates won’t.

However, debating sword vs. staff is a bit misleading. The debate is really having both pistol and torch vs. having staff. I think it’s better to have both pistol and torch. Sword is viable both offensively and defensively on a PU build. Duelists outdamage staff clones, and magic bullet offers a nice stun. Torch offers stealth, blind, burn, retal, confusion, and (traited) condi clear.

If you take staff, you either give up the stealth/blind/burn/retal/confusion from torch or you give up the duelist bleeds + magic bullet stun. On a PU build, I don’t want to give up either.

Your last pharagraph (spelling..) doesn’t make sense. People run staff + scepter torch so the torch is there no matter how you look at it, only thing you change is you loose staff and get sword and pistol. The duelist bleeds okay do a lot of damage but it’s just one condition. How hard is it to strip 1 condition off yourself? No problem. With staff you put on loads of conditions and they won’t all get removed as easily. Both staff and sword have a stun break okay, but staff stun break will teleport you out of the targets melee range and spawns a clone which dies from the damage => conditions. The sword blur can be helpful but you have a lot of stealth, you can kite (target has cripple on them) and you can line of sight which is basically a must tactic for a lot of builds. Osicat does it all the time, saves you HP and cooldowns. I used to run sword pistol + scepter torch and I only recall one incident where I actually needed to use the sword blur, in over 20 hours of play with it. And that could of been easily avoided if I had staff for chaos storm + phase retreat.The stun can be helpful I agree with that. You really don’t need the immobilize, it will stop your target from running for like 3 seconds, while yes, that can and is sometimes useful, all that you mentioned comes nowhere close the utility that Staff gives you.
Chaos storm really isn’t as you say in my experience, yes, they may avoid meleeing you but what if you’re against a ranged class? And to be honest most people I’ve fought didn’t care much about it, it prevented a ton of backstabs because of the aegis, it allowed me to block tons of attacks, basically is a little fort of mine where I’m invulnerable. the boons and the conditions are extremely helpful for ‘just a bonus’ and they all add to condition variety which is extremely important.

Oh, also, I want to add that staff phase retreat is instant, while with the sword it takes you a second or two to pull it off and you will stay in the attackers melee range unless you targeted a mob that farther which isn’t an option always.

Jurica.1742:

Your last pharagraph (spelling..) doesn’t make sense. People run staff + scepter torch so the torch is there no matter how you look at it, only thing you change is you loose staff and get sword and pistol.

Plenty of people run staff and scepter/pistol or staff and sword/pistol. The point is that you can’t have both pistol and torch.

Jurica.1742:

The duelist bleeds okay do a lot of damage but it’s just one condition. How hard is it to strip 1 condition off yourself? No problem. With staff you put on loads of conditions and they won’t all get removed as easily.

Actually, staff clones only apply one condition (burning) that s/p doesn’t apply. And staff clones don’t even reliably apply all of the conditions. You could very well end up stacking bleeds only with staff clones (but still not as many as you would with a couple of duelists).

Jurica.1742:

I used to run sword pistol + scepter torch and I only recall one incident where I actually needed to use the sword blur, in over 20 hours of play with it.

To be fair, 20 hours isn’t a lot of time to get used to a new weapon set. Whether or not you used it, blurred frenzy is an EXTREMELY useful defensive maneuver which mesmers use all the time.

Jurica.1742:

You really don’t need the immobilize, it will stop your target from running for like 3 seconds,

The immobilize isn’t just to stop a target from running away. It sets up nice burst combos and can be used to buy you some time defensively.

Jurica.1742:

Chaos storm really isn’t as you say in my experience, yes, they may avoid meleeing you but what if you’re against a ranged class?

That’s my point. It’s less effective against ranged builds than melee builds, since you don’t really stop the ranged dps as much as you do the melee dps. That said, it’s still good because you can use it to restrict (say) a ranger’s positioning.

Wow! It looks like I kicked up a mini hornet’s nest here.

I had a chance to try this yesterday for a little bit, using a zerker sword. I took in a couple duels, contested a couple capture points and spearheaded a couple pushes (keep in mind this was Friday afternoon). Survivability was not really an issue. I really liked what pistol brought to the table. The sword, however, felt kind okittenward. Don’t get me wrong, it has its usefulness. Blurred Frenzy is a great offensive block, and iLeap helps to confuse the enemy. It might be that I just need more practice with the new combination.

If you are going for condition damage stick with a condition damage sword. If, for example, you use a zerker sword and swap to it during combat you will lose damage on all the conditions you previously applied with your alternate weapons and are still ticking.

Malakin.2809:

If you are going for condition damage stick with a condition damage sword. If, for example, you use a zerker sword and swap to it during combat you will lose damage on all the conditions you previously applied with your alternate weapons and are still ticking.

I switched to Power/Prec/Cond.

I would only go sc/t amd sw/p for roaming or hot joint, but if I was running in a gvg, I’d go GS and s/p in the tank squad.