Guild Wars 2

I could use some empirical assistance in speeding along my research toward a confusion build to settle on (SPvP). I have a smaller amount of time for games and I’d rather game than crunch, so thanks in advance to any who help.

One area of curiousity is the value of taking ‘confusion on blind’ in reference to chaos armor. With a staff/sword loadout you can achieve 15 seconds of chaos armor however is that better than the long-duration confusion the scepter brings? Unknown without recording a few matches.

I’m also curious in regards to carrion vs. Rabid. I recognize rabids superiority for a condition build however you need to shatter like a madman to stack confusion so I question the value of ‘leftover clone bleed damage’ vs. the extra damage from increasex power.

I’m also curious about shattered images. It sounds awesome with the extra might and confusion stack but I dont make a habit of being in melee range. In practice I dont want to be there and ‘shooters’ dont want to be near me (unless im being baited by a ranger for a trap).

Anything else I may have missed as well.

I’ve tried…

30, 20, 0, 0, 20
20, 20, 0, 0, 30
10, 20, 0, 10, 30
0, 20, 10, 10, 30
20, 20, 0, 10, 20

…And just dont have the time to really crunch them all. I know I really like ‘vigor on shatter’ but It can be hard to fit in when confusion duration is imperative to leaning on confusion damage as your main source.

Thanks for any input

Carrion > Rabid

If you’re going to use rabid don’t use full rabid at least. Crit without power neuters your shatter’s damage too much.

Your Confusion Shatter will essentially have no damage attached to it’s shatter with full rabid. You could try a combo of Rabid/Carrion if you wanted to maintain some crit but recognize that Retaliation scales on power and Cond’s don’t crit. Crit in a sense is useless for cond builds unless you have a specific reason for it like our vigor tactic from our crit tree. I find having staff CD reduction from the toughness tree gives me enough evasiveness that I can forego that particular tactic in WvW. PvE though that tactic is a must have.

Carrion will give you strong shatters and strong condi damage. I used to run 0/20/20/0/30 with full rabid and runes of the nightmare but this makes your damage so back loaded that any experienced player can just wait it out if they’re smart.

Now I run 20/0/20/0/30 with full Carrion.
use Mirror images, Decoy, blink
use -40% cond duration food
use Superior Runes of Hoelbrak
Take the retaliation trait in your Illusions line
Take 33% longer confusion
Take 20% stronger mind wrack and Vuln on shatter from Power tree.
Use Staff/ Sword, torch
Sigil of Battle in staff and sword (expensive)
Sigil of your choice in offhand, (sigil of energy, stacking sigils, etc)

Godmoney, original poster is asking about spvp where he won’t be able to use food buffs or mix armor. I’ve tried playing a confusion build in spvp but didn’t really like it, it doesn’t do the high damage that it does in wvw and you don’t have all the armor, weapon stat choices or food in spvp. I don’t play spvp much but I prefer to use Pyro’s bunker build or some variation of a phantasm build.

Godmoney, I completely disagree on your take of carrion over rabid. I run full rabid with undead runs giving me a ton of cond dmg. The precision does help since that is given to your illusions. Running 20/20/0/0/30, I find I stack huge number of conditions with plenty of bleeding to go along with my confusion doing 400-410 per stack. This is my glamour setup, but my other is 0/20/25/0/25. In this setup, my cond dmg is even higher (with the +5% toughness going to cond dmg). Yes, my shatters are much weaker in one sense, but I use them more for spreading confusion rather than spiking.

The other aspect to consider is survivability. Rabid gear is far and away better with this area. I will often lure melee foes in close, drop chaos storm so I block a good share of the attacks while the other don’t hurt much since my armor (tough + armor def) is around 3k.. This makes those cry of frustration shatters absolutely deadly.

I’ve played around with confusion a lot in sPvP actually, and I hope Embolism hops in to drop some knowledge on the subject.

Honestly, I’d say your best bet is the standard 20/20/0/0/30 setup. Sword/Torch + Staff worked out really well for me. My build was heavy on clone production, but allowed me to have a literal army of 6+ clones charging an enemy for a heavy shatter (and atleast 9 stacks of confusion, over 1k damage per enemy attack)

• Domination gives an extra 20% condition duration, as well as vulnerability on Daze which can easily climb to 20 stacks.

• I actually prefer Rabid gear, as my damage came from bleeds off clone crits in addition to Winds of Chaos & Confusion. The extra toughness also helped add about an extra 90 condition damage when I played around with the Chaos tree over Domination.

• I found myself doing more damage by producing clones rather than relying on confusion traits. Blink, Decoy, and Mirror Images was not only incredibly fun, but helped immensely in damage and survival.

• The scepter is a matter of personal preference, I found it too awkward and predictable for sPvP. I preferred using Sword 3 >> Swap for Immobilize>> Blurred Frenzy + Mirror Images + ConfuseShatter. The staff allowed me an easy retreat.

• 30 Illusions is near mandatory, both for the condition damage and the V, VI, VII, and IX, traits. Blind felt too infrequent, even with Chaos Armor (was more focused on not getting hit anyway, though the Toughness from rabid gear made me rather durable)

• The Dueling tree makes the “Vigor on Shatter” trait nearly redundant in most builds. You crit so often that you’ll nearly always have vigor up, and of course Deceptive Evasion plays very well off Vigor for staff clone production.

Overall, the build I used was a lot of fun, surprisingly durable, and worked well in both single fights and in groups. Confusion damage may be halved in sPvP but its far from useless especially when you and 3 staff clones are melting an opponent.

If you’d like, feel free to shoot me a w/ or mail and I’d be happy to theorycraft with you in game. (Name: Aeoldyn)

Nordic Natedog.4360:

Godmoney, I completely disagree on your take of carrion over rabid. I run full rabid with undead runs giving me a ton of cond dmg. The precision does help since that is given to your illusions. Running 20/20/0/0/30, I find I stack huge number of conditions with plenty of bleeding to go along with my confusion doing 400-410 per stack. This is my glamour setup, but my other is 0/20/25/0/25. In this setup, my cond dmg is even higher (with the +5% toughness going to cond dmg). Yes, my shatters are much weaker in one sense, but I use them more for spreading confusion rather than spiking.

The other aspect to consider is survivability. Rabid gear is far and away better with this area. I will often lure melee foes in close, drop chaos storm so I block a good share of the attacks while the other don’t hurt much since my armor (tough + armor def) is around 3k.. This makes those cry of frustration shatters absolutely deadly.

It’s fine to run rabid over Carrion if you like.

I mostly solo roam though and Rabid just doesn’t give me what I need fighting other solo roamers in WVW. Any decent player will just sit out the Rabid gears confusion and your actual shatter damage is so weak it creates no pressure for them to do anything.

Carrion forces people to heal from your initial shatters, forcing them into procing confusion.

I’ve experimented tons with both sets and both have their places. If I ran glamour I would use Rabid but I don’t run group specs so…….

To each his own. I’m just glad I finally tried out full carrion after month’s of using rabid. My shatter’s apply front end pressure with tons of Confusion on the back end.

Godmoney.2048:

Nordic Natedog.4360:

Godmoney, I completely disagree on your take of carrion over rabid. I run full rabid with undead runs giving me a ton of cond dmg. The precision does help since that is given to your illusions. Running 20/20/0/0/30, I find I stack huge number of conditions with plenty of bleeding to go along with my confusion doing 400-410 per stack. This is my glamour setup, but my other is 0/20/25/0/25. In this setup, my cond dmg is even higher (with the +5% toughness going to cond dmg). Yes, my shatters are much weaker in one sense, but I use them more for spreading confusion rather than spiking.

The other aspect to consider is survivability. Rabid gear is far and away better with this area. I will often lure melee foes in close, drop chaos storm so I block a good share of the attacks while the other don’t hurt much since my armor (tough + armor def) is around 3k.. This makes those cry of frustration shatters absolutely deadly.

It’s fine to run rabid over Carrion if you like.

I mostly solo roam though and Rabid just doesn’t give me what I need fighting other solo roamers in WVW. Any decent player will just sit out the Rabid gears confusion and your actual shatter damage is so weak it creates no pressure for them to do anything.

Carrion forces people to heal from your initial shatters, forcing them into procing confusion.

I’ve experimented tons with both sets and both have their places. If I ran glamour I would use Rabid but I don’t run group specs so…….

To each his own. I’m just glad I finally tried out full carrion after month’s of using rabid. My shatter’s apply front end pressure with tons of Confusion on the back end.

I primarily roam solo myself. In fact I’m pretty renowned for taking on 3-5 on a regular basis and being the last one standing. Vital is decent, but having the toughness really makes the damage I take from foes very minimal. Sure it would be nice to have more power for my shatters, but as someone who doesn’t shatter much it isn’t that critical. I let my conditions (which are many) do the work.

Trust me, my foes are under a ton of pressure from my illusions constantly criticalling (stacking up bleeds and other conditions) and I bait them into jumping at me a lot. This makes the toughness very important since I am in close range to my foes often.

In regards to surviving an encounter I think carriorn vs. Rabid is basically a wash. If you were to leave that as your deciding factor I think the right decision falls to which type of build the meta is likely to give you for an opponent: power/crit or condition.

I think my confusion spikes are reliably 12-ish. The daze shatter is a bit counter productive as the average shatter duration (with % 33 boost) is around 5 seconds. Well thats not hot when they can’t do anything during that time (typically). This is where my curiousity surrounding the application of confusion via chaos armor comes in.

I was thinking on it last night and I suppose the reality of it is that you probably cannot make confusion your main source of damage but that still leaves the choice of filler either being power damage or condition.

Condition is nice as you are already 20 deep into the dueling line….

….however power is also nice because you make your daze shatter (and sword clones if you use one) truly useful (ideally immediately following your immob on sword 3 and prior to sword 2).

I get to play this weekend. Anyone on EB?

Thx again

I’m gonna have to say, trying to run confusion in sPvP is a horrible idea. In wvw, a confusion bomb build is already somewhat of a noob stomping build, but in sPvP where confusion hits like a wet noodle, no one will even notice your damage.

Nordic Natedog.4360:

Godmoney.2048:

Nordic Natedog.4360:

Godmoney, I completely disagree on your take of carrion over rabid. I run full rabid with undead runs giving me a ton of cond dmg. The precision does help since that is given to your illusions. Running 20/20/0/0/30, I find I stack huge number of conditions with plenty of bleeding to go along with my confusion doing 400-410 per stack. This is my glamour setup, but my other is 0/20/25/0/25. In this setup, my cond dmg is even higher (with the +5% toughness going to cond dmg). Yes, my shatters are much weaker in one sense, but I use them more for spreading confusion rather than spiking.

The other aspect to consider is survivability. Rabid gear is far and away better with this area. I will often lure melee foes in close, drop chaos storm so I block a good share of the attacks while the other don’t hurt much since my armor (tough + armor def) is around 3k.. This makes those cry of frustration shatters absolutely deadly.

It’s fine to run rabid over Carrion if you like.

I mostly solo roam though and Rabid just doesn’t give me what I need fighting other solo roamers in WVW. Any decent player will just sit out the Rabid gears confusion and your actual shatter damage is so weak it creates no pressure for them to do anything.

Carrion forces people to heal from your initial shatters, forcing them into procing confusion.

I’ve experimented tons with both sets and both have their places. If I ran glamour I would use Rabid but I don’t run group specs so…….

To each his own. I’m just glad I finally tried out full carrion after month’s of using rabid. My shatter’s apply front end pressure with tons of Confusion on the back end.

I primarily roam solo myself. In fact I’m pretty renowned for taking on 3-5 on a regular basis and being the last one standing. Vital is decent, but having the toughness really makes the damage I take from foes very minimal. Sure it would be nice to have more power for my shatters, but as someone who doesn’t shatter much it isn’t that critical. I let my conditions (which are many) do the work.

Trust me, my foes are under a ton of pressure from my illusions constantly criticalling (stacking up bleeds and other conditions) and I bait them into jumping at me a lot. This makes the toughness very important since I am in close range to my foes often.

You seem to be under the misunderstanding that I’m arguing with you.

I shatter constantly and found that rabid makes the actual shatter damage completely negligible. Any decent player will need some pressure applied to force them into procing confusion.

Rabid and carrion both work well but with different emphasis on play style.

I just did a bit of math between carrion and rabid and it really boils down to a degree of “doesn’t matter” when it comes to survivability, except for two things: heals are more efficient with toughness as they don’t scale while vitality helps with incoming condition damage. Personally, I’m sticking with rabid with some jewels for vitality as I’m mainly roaming in groups and toughness adds to condition damage.

Iruwen.3164:

I just did a bit of math between carrion and rabid and it really boils down to a degree of “doesn’t matter” when it comes to survivability, except for two things: heals are more efficient with toughness as they don’t scale while vitality helps with incoming condition damage. Personally, I’m sticking with rabid with some jewels for vitality as I’m mainly roaming in groups and toughness adds to condition damage.

Exactly. My WvW build has -60% cond duration and 23.5k health so condition basically do nothing to me.

IMO one of mesmer’s weakness is condition removal, hence my build takes care of that weakness.

Conditons don’t even cross my mind anymore.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I’m gonna have to say, trying to run confusion in sPvP is a horrible idea….but in sPvP where confusion hits like a wet noodle, no one will even notice your damage.

I don’t agree with this statement universally but i do agree trying to use confusion as your main source of damage is taking some of your means to success out of your control.

For example confusion on classes that are using “slow” methods of attacking really, really sucks.

On “fast” classes (thieves, some rangers) it works extremely well.

So (to reiterate) you “hope” that you face someone whom you can exploit. Otherwise its a tough road ahead.

I still am hoping to find A very good spec for it as confusion (again) is one of the things that truly seperates this profession from the others.

djtool.8372:

In regards to surviving an encounter I think carriorn vs. Rabid is basically a wash. If you were to leave that as your deciding factor I think the right decision falls to which type of build the meta is likely to give you for an opponent: power/crit or condition.

I think my confusion spikes are reliably 12-ish. The daze shatter is a bit counter productive as the average shatter duration (with % 33 boost) is around 5 seconds. Well thats not hot when they can’t do anything during that time (typically). This is where my curiousity surrounding the application of confusion via chaos armor comes in.

I was thinking on it last night and I suppose the reality of it is that you probably cannot make confusion your main source of damage but that still leaves the choice of filler either being power damage or condition.

Condition is nice as you are already 20 deep into the dueling line….

….however power is also nice because you make your daze shatter (and sword clones if you use one) truly useful (ideally immediately following your immob on sword 3 and prior to sword 2).

I get to play this weekend. Anyone on EB?

Thx again

Certainly dazing seems counter productive, but keep in mind that you will often have guys trying to get those conditions off as soon as possible, so you can get some button crunching after it wears off. Sure it’s not the same against a more experienced player, but you still can easily catch someone off guard.

As to confusion being for noob busting, I catch even experienced guys off guard all the time. This is largely do to that I’m not a constant shatter happy mes. This makes those shatters even more out of place and catch guys all the time. Especially as my clones continue to stack more and more conditions on them.

My favorite sequence is casting Staff 3, dodge right/left (to place a clone), and phase retreat once I get jumped (whether that be a warrior, guard, thief, ele) followed by cry of frustration. Gives an instant 8 stacks and at the very least gets them while using 1-2 skills (minimum) while I put up more illusions, my glamour fields (for additional confusion if they purged their conditions), and going to town with my sword setup (sword/torch or focus). Sometimes laying down a chaos storm before my phase retreat to daze and give other conditions plus give me chaos armor and other buffs. I will often catch groups of guys (3-6) who jumped me and find that I down or nearly downed many of them. This happens even when they are prepared to face a mesmer. I’ll even let them wack at me some while I’m on the chaos storm using staff 4 chaos armor building up my buffs more and taking extremely low amount of damage when they do happen to land a blow thanks to my high armor rating.

Nordic Natedog.4360:

djtool.8372:

In regards to surviving an encounter I think carriorn vs. Rabid is basically a wash. If you were to leave that as your deciding factor I think the right decision falls to which type of build the meta is likely to give you for an opponent: power/crit or condition.

I think my confusion spikes are reliably 12-ish. The daze shatter is a bit counter productive as the average shatter duration (with % 33 boost) is around 5 seconds. Well thats not hot when they can’t do anything during that time (typically). This is where my curiousity surrounding the application of confusion via chaos armor comes in.

I was thinking on it last night and I suppose the reality of it is that you probably cannot make confusion your main source of damage but that still leaves the choice of filler either being power damage or condition.

Condition is nice as you are already 20 deep into the dueling line….

….however power is also nice because you make your daze shatter (and sword clones if you use one) truly useful (ideally immediately following your immob on sword 3 and prior to sword 2).

I get to play this weekend. Anyone on EB?

Thx again

Certainly dazing seems counter productive, but keep in mind that you will often have guys trying to get those conditions off as soon as possible, so you can get some button crunching after it wears off. Sure it’s not the same against a more experienced player, but you still can easily catch someone off guard.

As to confusion being for noob busting, I catch even experienced guys off guard all the time. This is largely do to that I’m not a constant shatter happy mes. This makes those shatters even more out of place and catch guys all the time. Especially as my clones continue to stack more and more conditions on them.

My favorite sequence is casting Staff 3, dodge right/left (to place a clone), and phase retreat once I get jumped (whether that be a warrior, guard, thief, ele) followed by cry of frustration. Gives an instant 8 stacks and at the very least gets them while using 1-2 skills (minimum) while I put up more illusions, my glamour fields (for additional confusion if they purged their conditions), and going to town with my sword setup (sword/torch or focus). Sometimes laying down a chaos storm before my phase retreat to daze and give other conditions plus give me chaos armor and other buffs. I will often catch groups of guys (3-6) who jumped me and find that I down or nearly downed many of them. This happens even when they are prepared to face a mesmer. I’ll even let them wack at me some while I’m on the chaos storm using staff 4 chaos armor building up my buffs more and taking extremely low amount of damage when they do happen to land a blow thanks to my high armor rating.

Just so you know, any group of 3-6 that get downed by 1 mesmer are also horrible, pathetic, bad, noob players.

I run 0/20/20/0/30 full rabid and ptc jewels mixed with pvc
I have 40% crit and with food buffs I run with 1848 condi dmg I also use sigil of battles and accuracy and for wvw, 1v1ing ( o I also run staff/scepter/focus) I have no problem surviving greater numbers or 1v1ing any class its just situational when you shatter, and stack your confuses. pay attention to what your fighting and their rotation. don’t spam attacks leaving your clones up for a bit is also helpful in stacking bleeds.

Hope that helped any other questions send me a tell in game

0/20/0/20/30 I run, scepter – torch / staff
roll asura for pain inverter, but ik you can change your race after you make your character i wish there was some option or purchase for that, i have commander tag and 3 armor sets on this character but i have stupid dumb human gods skills, i cant delete this character.

anyway, thats the build i run, i have rabid armor and weapons, and the new cavaliers trinkets from the karma merchant

So this weekend I attempted to make confusion my main source of damage by (basically) employing the following:

Sigils of energy
Inspiration trait 3 (vigor on shatter)
Signet of illusions.
Weapons were scep/torch and staff

Basically its about using your signet to double up on your confusion shatter, and it was successful in a solo-join environment. I can not tell you if it works in an organized environment as I do not have that capability.

I think I could have alternatively used sword/pistol in place of staff if I wished. I preferred the torch to pistol as it typically gives me the opening move(s).

I think next weekend I’ll try to do the chaos shield dealie and retain that signet of illusion so that I can double up on distortion and imbued diversion (or the other GM trait). Should be easy to cast the signet during a full distortion shatter.