Guild Wars 2

Hi there fellow Mesmers.
So the Patch brought big changes for all phantasm-mesmers. But did it for confusionbuilds too?
I would like to ask you to have some nice theorycrafting here on conditionbuilds for WvWvW.
Before GS was always a must in WvWvW, because of the Zerkers cleaning walls, etc.
Now here is the dilemma, im finishing Twilight, have my rabid gear from instances nearly set wit tough/prec/cond and suddenly GS got nerfed and Im honestly a bit lost on how to gear up anymore.

Biggest worry honestly is including that Greatsword, I love GS.
But this is Mesmer forums, so maybe anyone could possibly post some thoughts about this.
Im focussing on bleeds and confusions. Running Scepter/Focus and GS. Sure staff is nice, but i dont like it so much.
Thinking about taking runes of centaur for speed instead of focus and swap torch for it. But then i will lose lots of toughness and conditiondamage from runes of undead.
On the other hand torch now gives 3 stacks of confusions, what is insane.

Any ideas? Smallscale it is, mostly 1-3 ppl.

The only way I see a GS being viable for conditions is with a sigil for x% chance to inflict <condition> on crit. Then perhaps you could trait for all those “random/confusion/cripple on illusion death” effects and shatter more. With points in the Power tree, conditions also last longer so at least the izerker’s cripple will persist. At least mind wrack scales with power, and there’s a 10% crit chance trait for mind wrack as well.
Lastly, trait for bleed on illusion crit (sharper images) and if you’re feeling up to it (or have enough points), get the extra bounce for those attacks – it works with GS #2.

Edit: keep in mind that shattering doesn’t trigger those “on illusion death” effects. They need to be killed or overwritten. Also works when they die after their target dies.

With a lot of condition duration gear, the crit bleed trait, and proc bleed sigil up you keep up a lot of bleeds with precision+condition gear. However you miss out on burn from staff which can be a lot of our condition damage. With that said I’m currently Staff/Scepter right now however last night in PvE Fractals I was Staff/GS(for extra aoe) . On a boss with staff I was maintaining about 13-15 bleeds (by keeping staff clones alive) and burn was up pretty much consistently as well. I swapped over to GS accidently during the fight and popped zerker and 1 sword clone and left 1 staff clone alive I shot up to 22 bleeds maintained it for about 8-10seconds then it started to drop swapped back over to staff got my clones x3 back up and maintained 15+burn again.

I have very poor crit in my current setup but was still able to get a sustained increase for a while so I think the possibility/viability is there but you’ll lose other conditions from staff on the bright side you gain some burst.

I have recently gone back to my condition/shatter build(before the patch). For a long time I ran it in WvW and got tired of getting 0 badges so I switched to a GS Phantasm build for about a month or so. I never quite liked it though it didn’t fit my needs/play style except for siege.

I’m back on my con/shatter build. I run Centaur ruins to give me options in my off hand slot which changes regularly depending on what I kind of engagements I am seeing.
I tend to run in a group of 3 with two thief so the Staff gives me the tank I need to survive while everyone focuses me. My clones make it even harder for people to pick the thieves out when they pop out of stealth and Staff #1 provides lots of boons.
Utility is Feedback/Decoy and the 3rd one switches out a lot. Most of the time it’s portal though so I can engage and port back out when things get risky. Lots of Ethereal fields to supply chaos armor to the group and the conditions + shatters make for great dmg in small group engagements.

I love when we face thieves. They try to pick on me but can’t kill me while I stack tons of conditions on them. Then when I know they are getting ready to run I shatter Diversion on them. The confusion combined with the other conditions usually ends up with them coming out of stealth in a downed state pissed because they thought they were going to get away.

Don’t expect to ever get badges in a zerg though, which I could careless about at this point because I have full exotic armor and all the siege blueprints I need. Siege I love the utility we still bring to the group via, Feedback, Timewarp, Portal, etc…

Defending I don’t have as many options though so it can be somewhat frustrating but good commanders know how to use Mesmers defending as well. So I may not be putting out huge numbers but I am helping a LOT.

I’ve never used torch but have been thinking about giving it a try when i run with the thieves to give me a 2nd or 3rd stealth option.

if funny how many people i keep hear saying GS isn’t that good or completely bad for condition damage builds. So i’ll say this for the 100th time… 1) Mesmer has access to ONE condition weapon and that’s a staff. You can sound smart saying Scepter is the 2nd best n all but this weapon is a waste, COMPLETE waste of inventory space. Sword/Focus is nice but not for dungeons or wvw (i personally like it when grinding lodestones or something). Now, how exactly can GS be bad for condition builds when your clones have a laser that hits three times n fast? Clones alone will be stacking tones of bleed (one of your two main damage). Mirror blade/Illusion Elasticity enemies in chaos storm or any fields for aoe confusion (or multiple stacks on one target). Mind Stab should be on the Scepter cuz its pure lolz in any kind of build you’ll be running so don’t even bother spamming that unless you need to remove a boon on certain dungeon bosses. Spatial Surge+Sup sigil of earth=win sauce. No matter what kind of builds you’re running iBerserker has high damage AND has aoe cripple and multiple stacks of bleed (for your freaking condition build bla bla). Illusionary Wave is extremely useful everywhere. So how exactly is GS isn’t good or even decent? Its THE 2nd best after staff and for wvw iBerserker cripple is just too hawt to miss. Grab a condition damage/toughness/precision armor, accessories, weapons. 0/20/25/0/25 or 0/20/20/0/30. This build is mainly for FotM or any dungeon and u pretty much never lose 1vs1 BUT if you don’t 1v1 in wvw and want max amount of badges just spam glass cannon and when some1 attacks you just stealth and hide lol With broken Zerker its not really good lately as well.

Just thought I’d chime in here and reiterate condition builds with GS make sure you have a fair amount of precision/crit chance to maximize the bleed on crit.

GS condition is about bleeds from clones, forget everything else.

The bleed strength is decent. I wouldn’t recommend it over staff for gear with no power at all (like the OP’s Rabid). With Rabid staff will outdamage the GS, and of course staff has much more utility too, especially after the zerker’s nerfs.

Zid.4196:

GS condition is about bleeds from clones, forget everything else.

The bleed strength is decent. I wouldn’t recommend it over staff for gear with no power at all (like the OP’s Rabid). With Rabid staff will outdamage the GS, and of course staff has much more utility too, especially after the zerker’s nerfs.

You would mainly use the GS as the alternate weapon for AoE dmg from ethereal field with finishers. The whirling finisher(izerker counts as whirl finish) and bouncing projectile finisher from sword #2 it’s good for spreading mass aoe confusion then F2 for an addition 6 confusion. You’ll usually some bleeds in too. You can then switch back to staff get your clones up and just use staff 1 auto attack bounce to finish it all off.

Zid.4196:

GS condition is about bleeds from clones, forget everything else.

The bleed strength is decent. I wouldn’t recommend it over staff for gear with no power at all (like the OP’s Rabid). With Rabid staff will outdamage the GS, and of course staff has much more utility too, especially after the zerker’s nerfs.

Sigils can help there, but they’re all x% chance to inflict <condition> on crit.. something to consider nonetheless.