Guild Wars 2

kovah – Compounding Power only affects direct damage so it’s not terribly useful. The Adept slot in illusions is kind of lackluster, so Masterful Reflection is almost a filler more than anything. That being said, popping distortion when you’re stomping a foe means that you can do several thousand damage to everyone who’s focusing you down in an attempt to stop said stomping – more than you’d be doing with the extra direct damage from Compounding Power. As for the mix of carrion/rabid gear… I’m beginning to think that power is completely worthless on this build, the more and more I play. I find myself using sword almost solely for invulnerability or immobilize and don’t really use it as a main source of damage. I’m currently trying out a revised version of my build that uses exclusively rabid gear and Tuning Crystals instead of Sharpening Stones (here’s a link to this “test” build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8flwzqpXUTmGb9IipHEHyBcoU0dZXJF22FC-j0yA4MioZaBMVRQjAhkDLiGbVsIasK5hIrux0xoGcBZbuyKA-w). I’m thinking that power is almost useless, so I can’t say for certain yet, but I would probably recommend going full rabid, only throwing carrion in if you want it for more vitality. For trinkets, I’m going to try out the condition/vitality/toughness ascended trinkets (I want a bit of vitality so I’m not so weak to conditions) but regular rabid trinkets out to work just as well.

Midnightjade – I hope this build works well for you. You won’t be killing things as quickly as you were with confusion, but the DPS is pretty steady and will still get you kills. I’d check out the link I posted for kovah above, as it will help maximize your condition damage (in theory, I still have to test it), resulting in quicker kills.

-selan: I am indeed trying to make the best out of a bad situation. I certainly miss my confusion bomber. There’s just a part of me that feels going full zerker shatter Mesmer is equivalent to selling my soul to the devil since I’ve been a condition Mesmer since the kickstart (in fact, my Mesmer is my only character because I love it so much and have no desire to make other ones).

Sebrent – Glad to hear that you like the build! As far as the Maguuma map chat… Let’s just say it’s always an experience…

Ah, Maguuma, I’m sorry. The people I’ve started to run fractals with are all 4 from Maguuma though, so you’re not all rotten ;-)

As far as power in that build, I’d say you’d probably be better served with precision instead of power. It’ll result in more bleeds from your illusions.

If anyone wants to run this build glassier and have both power and and condition damage, rampager gear is nice. You have less condition damage, but you have about 70% crit chance before any food, oil, and sigil stacks. It was the first set of gear I got for my mesmer after release.

As far as the Runes of Lyssa go, have you thought about swapping some out to get more condition duration? Or perhaps trying Runes of the Centaur?

I <3 Runes of the Centaur with Mirror or Mantra of Recovery and 30 points in Chaos. It gives you near perma-swiftness. Runes of the Centaur also gives some +bleed duration.

Sebrent – After several quality hours in WvW today, I agree 100% that nixing the power in my build is a good idea. Also, good suggestion with the Rampager gear.

I have considered trying other runes, but I just can’t justify losing so much precision and the defensive utility of the Lyssa runes. Our condition removal is limited enough as-is, so having an emergency cleanse available is vital in my opinion; it has saved my life more times than I can remember. However, as is true with all builds, you could customize this by going with some +duration runes; those who like glassier builds might favor this option.

Wanted to chime in I did some tinkering and I was skeptical of investing in burn duration on a mesmer it just doesn’t seem like it would work.

My motto is you don’t know until you try.

So I messed around with 0/0/20/20/30 full apothecary gear. veggie pizza, 2 runes balthazaar, 2 Flame legion 2 lyssa. Trait for bounce and you get almost 4 secs of burning just from staff auto attack. If you can get the additional 20% condition duration by moving the points for torch like you have then 6 secs for prestige. 2 secs for staff 4 secs of burning from auto attack

I can’t part with the protection procs for chaos tree so I moved back down to 20 pts there so I have 90% burn duration on scepter torch and 80 on staff. Its beefy tankish because of the apothecary but it kills.

I just tested it on a friend running -60% condition duration and it worked well. Just wanted to throw this in there incase you wanted to check it out. Its really the only thing I have found I like for my apothecary set.

If I had SE tokens I would definitely pick up the full set of forge runes or full set balthazaar could be interesting also.

Nice to see you haven’t completely retired your Mesmer, Sinnacle :-p

Why use it with apothecary gear though? I’m a bigger fan of it with Rabid due to the precision + sharper images … though that isn’t a factor with your traits.

Sebrent.3625:

Nice to see you haven’t completely retired your Mesmer, Sinnacle :-p

Why use it with apothecary gear though? I’m a bigger fan of it with Rabid due to the precision + sharper images … though that isn’t a factor with your traits.

Yea I have gotten back into it well I have rabid set and apothecary and wanted to do something with apothecary but I love the 15 pt traits in chaos and inspiration to much so I wanted to take advantage of that with a tanky heal build but still able to kill people so I found that burning works well for this. I dropped back a bit on duration so I have 35% boon duration and 70% burn duration for this build.

oZii – I’m really intrigued by the fact that you’re using Apothecary gear. I experimented with Healing Power in the past and I found that for solo play, it was really underpowered. Of course, if you don’t have Sharper Images, there really isn’t a better alternative. Also, why 30 points in illusions? If you’re keeping clones up to inflict burning, I’d expect that Illusionary Persona isn’t terribly useful.

Also – I’ve uploaded a video with my revised condition build, which has completely gutted power from the build and adds in more condition damage (can get to 1850 before any might stacks!) and a little bit more crit. The thread also now reflects all these changes, as does the build link. You can find the new video here: http://youtu.be/ApgNT1cUT_s

Well I have apothecary set, rabid set, and a direct damage set. So the builds are different for all of them.

The apoth and rabid are condition damage builds but different style of play. I made some adjustments actually to the apothecary build so no more illusionary persona.

Its ok, ive been experimenting with the same but it still doesn’t compete with direct damage and not even close.

The damage reduction \ surviability is not good, when your running condition dmg stats your 3rd stat becomes pretty pointless such as precision in your case.

So to even begin to make condition viable for pvp you would need condition / vitality / toughness which I dont think has been added yet and that would require a whole new grind again.

Furthermore condition damage by its very nature should have a higher dps than direct damage for the obvious reason that it can be removed, it does not have this which is another major fault in condition dmg.

And lastly the staff mechanic will bounce to turrets, pets, minions, and even your own clones vastly neutralising its efficiency.

Thanks for the feedback dan,

I have a couple things to say in response to your post.

First, precision is a key component of this build. It is what makes Sharper Images proc, which is a substantial portion of this build’s dps. I love the condition/precision/toughness combo; condition damage is a direct boost to my dps, toughness adds up for quite a bit of defense as well, and precision helps proc Sharper Images and my Sigil of Earth (more dps) as well as providing nearly permanent Vigor. Also, I think you are somewhat off-base in saying that this build has low survivability; this build has high toughness, decent vitality, lots of stealth, vigor for lots of extra dodging, and invulnerability from Blurred Frenzy and Distortion, and teleports in the form of Blink and Phase retreat, the latter of which is on ~5sec cooldown. The amount of survivability is incredible and if you think otherwise you may have to evaluate your playstyle and see how you can get more out of the build.

As for condition/vitality/toughness gear, it does exist for ascended rings, earrings, and amulets, and I use those in my build to give myself a little extra health since I like having a little more buffer against conditions (perhaps the build’s biggest weakness).

Finally, damage: You’re right that the change to bouncing logic is a huge thorn in the side for this build. I find that it adds in a lot of volatility to the amount of bleeds I can stack on a target. I used to be able to get a minimum of ten and a maximum of ~17 or so bleeds on a target quickly, depending on how much they were able to dodge/stealth/otherwise avoid getting hit with WoC. Now, while I find that while I can still get up to 17 bleeds on occasion, the minimum number of bleeds I can get can now be as low as five or six if my clones are sucking up the extra bounces. As such, I have to pay much closer attention to the positioning of all my clones at all times, which makes the build much more difficult to play whilst attaining the same results. Also, regarding condition removal: it’s true that opponents who have large amounts of condition removal will be very difficult, if sometimes impossible to beat. However, in WvW, most players run little to no condition removal so that doesn’t happen very often. When it does, I usually call it a draw, /salute, and run away.

I added a new video, showing a little before-and-after in terms of the bouncing nerf. As you can see, the change does results in lowered DPS, but the change isn’t so drastic as to make the build completely unusable. Also wanted to bump this thread to the front because someone was asking about this thread and apparently couldn’t find it.

Hey thanks palu it was getting really annoying not finding this thread and I am all about searching for new builds and maybe tweaking them to fit my own playstyle. I like builds that are outside the norm and this is one of em.

Just wanted to bump this to say that this build is working great for me following the patch. With the buff to Prismatic Understanding and the fix on bounce logic, this build has been working wonders for me. Hopefully some of the people bemoaning the death of everything but shatter builds will give this a try.

Also, I’ll try to get a video up showing the new build’s performance within a couple of days once I have a chance to record some footage.

I always looked for a staff build and luckily I found one of your videos on Youtube!
I am playing with this build for 1 month, really a miracle on sPvP ! A lot of fun and could kill every classes in every map, very versatile.
In WvW its awesome even though I still using Rare accessories and undead runes… I hope to buy the Lyssa runes and some accessories this weekend and unleash more power of this build.
I aways read and test a lot on MMO and I spend 1 month trying to tweak this build, but I have to say it´s perfect. I do use scepter/focus during Zerg/tower just for skills, but the true power is on sword/torch when I am roaming.

I find it interesting that another Maguuman run this build. I’ve been running a similar build but with a different rune set and weapons. Scepter/Pistol and Staff. 0/20/30/0/20 the difference is that I use Bountiful interruption, Debilitating Dissipation and Chaotic Dampening in Chaos Trait line and Phantasmal Fury in Dueling Trait line. In essence, I balance my reliance on clones for dps with a Dualist to apply condition burst of 3-4k. My mode of attack is to start at range and circle and close in tighter and tighter at that point they start getting the effects of killing clones from dissipation between the might stacks from interrupts and high stacks of bleeds and 1k burns it’s a wrap.