Guild Wars 2

Havent tried how its doing in active pvp, only on golems so far, but its dmg is… incredible…
And looks awesome with Bifrost (i dont have one, so please post SS about yours)

Golems. Only active in a perfect world.

Passive play on passive enemy… only used autoattack, and … didnt say esportz

I used a condition build earlier this week, but I’m too deeply rooted in Shatter Mesmer play to use condition mesmer skillfully.

If you have IE you can opt for Torment Shatter or Condi Clone. I’ve had more condition burst with Torment Shatter Staff / Scepter, getting very high Torment stacks (10 in most cases) if I get a good combo right.

I think IE synergizes with Debilitating Dissipation more because either they kill your clone and eat some conditions (even though it was nerfed a bit) or eat staff clone bolts. In theory, I thought it would be a good build, but it’s a really slow killer. Also, some mediocre survivability.
It’s good to see some viable condition builds though. I was on my Necro earlier and had faced a really good condi mesmer, we both ended up going down state, but I won because lol life steal on downed state.

Yes Bifrost does look nice with IE though.

Ignore the underline, I have no clue why it’s underlined…

As you well know the Golem simply is not a valid way to test something like this. It’s not just a passive target, but immobile. The speed at which you can stack bleeds with Staff & Clones is greatly dependent on your range to the target, and in PvP that obviously means it constantly changes. A target running away has basically nothing to fear from Staff AA and Clone attacks, same for Scepter of course, and thus you have a huge counter-play right there.

Obviously that doesn’t even include blocks, evades, dodges, teleports, cleanses, etc. that all would make this very ideal scenario very unlikely to happen in PvP.

I don’t think IE is overpowered, even for the Staff. Strong for sure, but OPd is a bit silly when compared to Condie Engie/Necro who can still do more and faster AoE condie applications with more cover Condies and utilities & elites that support the condition playstyle.

I’ve been playing Condie Shatter since the patch and I think it’s more viable then before, and is now significantly faster at killing then PU Condie, which is nice to see considering you have a lot less defense to boot. If you modify PUC to get IE, you really open up gaping vulnerabilities, mainly being extremely susceptible to Condies yourself.

I’m still laughing at everyone that thought torment on scepter auto was going to be the OP mesmer condi build. I realized very early that Illusionary Elasticity would wreck it. It’s good to see that others are finally starting to notice.

I have not tested it on another player but I have tested it on various NPCs. With Krait runes, Earth and Agony sigils and Sharper Images, you can stack insane amounts of bleeds on targets. The small amounts of burning and vulnerability help to shield the bleed stacks too. Also, since I have full Rabid gear, Chaotic Transference gives the staff nearly the same condition boost as Malicious sorcery does for the scepter.

What I found surprising is that the bounces make it somewhat viable for fighting more than one person. By the time I kill the target I was focusing on, the others are at half health.

I’m still tinkering with it but I can already sustain 17 stacks of bleed and easily get up to 21. I’ve noticed about 3k dps per tick on vets and champions. Even the veteran Risen Giant and all his worms just melt before me and they barely took me below half my health.

There are down sides though. It is a very passive playstyle. You basically dance around your target and auto-attack with the occasional usages of other skills to tip things in your favor. This appeals to my sadistic side but I doubt anyone that prefers twitch-reaction counterplay will like it. It’s one glaring weakness is AoEs. Because you have to use clones instead of phantasms to get high stacks, one well-placed aoe will wipe you clean and anyone with a sustainable damage field will wreck you. I was able to hold my own against the champion Karka but couldn’t handle the Toxic Alliance events in Queensdale.

I imagine it will be worthless against a zerg with all the aoe and cleanses but you may be able to flip depots solo. When I feel I’m ready, I’ll take it into pvp to see how they handle it.

I tried a 0/4/6/0/4 (no pu) staff build in pvp vs a friend. Let clones live – die to conditions, kill them as I spawn them – still die to clone death condis, focus me down asap – still dies before getting me to even half health. The rabid gear, 6pts into toughness line, and 3% less dmg from enemies per clone out worked wonders. Granted, he was a warrior so I didn’t have much trouble.

I didn’t try the build anywhere else though so can’t vouch for how it fares against other classes. I can see it being very weak to condi builds and non-cleave single target burst classes such as thieves.

I don’t see condi IE to be as competitive in pvp as a condi engi or necro due to lack of control. IE requires you to be in close range to really stack up the condi’s and staff does not really have any hard lockdown like fear or stun. Compare this to necro’s who can unload their condi payload while you are chain-feared.

I tried some x/4/x/x/6 condi torment shatter builds this week and they are really slow even with ramp stats .Power shatter is just better imho. Also comparing with necro and engi , condi mesmer couldn’t do much for middle point team fight and slow killing killed it as roamer.