Guild Wars 2

this combo is the best in my opinion, i havent felt anything else can beat this combo in PVE

amazing aoe (chaosfield + knockback + mirror blade + beserker + staff auto that bounces and an additional mind stab) which if used correctly you can instag every mob in DEs

amazing single target damage (4k damage with warlock on DE bosses)

amazing escapes and defence(chaosfield + chaos armor, a teleport back skill, knock back, beserker cripple)

great utility (staff apply all forms of debuff and buff to yourself while GS apply as much as 9 stacks of vulnerbility to foe and power to yourself)

great range with good damage on auto attack, coupled with shaper image you can apply 15 stacks of bleeding very quickly with GS clones and beserker.

this weapon combo is safe (1200 range with all forms of defence), high damage and great aoe capacity to tag mobs, i dont see how sceptor, sword and such can beat this.

discuss

1 name: Mr.Prometheus, check out his post, staff/sword-focus, staff/sword-torch

Chill – also keep in mind that Mr. Prometheus’ build and choice of almost everything is mostly leveling oriented, stated by him

I prefer sword + focus for the burst of blurred frenzy.

Staff or GS are a given for every mesmer though. They are strong weapons

All you did was list all the weapon abilities and call them amazing. That’s not really an argument. The Sword+Pistol or Focus wins in the DPS category for AoE and Single target respectively. The staff does not “staff apply all forms of debuff and buff to yourself,” I’m not even sure what you mean by that.

The pistol and focus gets you more bleed stacks from Sharper Images too.

You’re just not going to end up with the “best” build for anything while ignoring the off hands.

im sorry if i didnt explain it very well, but GS clones apply bleeds pretty fast too, 3 quick hits everytime it attacks (with beserker 3hits as well), sword and pistol is too single target forcused and in a big event the max amount of mob tag you can do is 4 (blurred frenzy).

sword/forcus offer great utility but the pulling effect from curtain isnt consistant and deals too little damage, a major draw back from swords is that you need to stand close the whole time, event such as champion giants is nearly impossible since you will be one shotted.

pistol duelist deal much less damage (although great at apply bleedstacks) than warlock, the maximum i did with duelist was 1.5k at level 55 yet i can do 3k+ with warlock, the bleedstacks apply only to single target while beserker can apply it to an entire group.

Further more sword/pistol requires a double cooldown reduction build (if you want the skills to be up all the time, otherwise you are stuck with horrible 10 second cooldown on blurred frenzy or 15 second duelist – the majority of your damage) which takes away 2 slot in precisionline, with GS and staff you can take phantasmal rage and deceptive evasion which both are very very helpful.

Blurred frenzy seems to do huge burst but that is it, only 1 skill for burst (duelist burst seems lacking the further you levels), Duelist + frenzy cannot even drop mob to 1/4 of their hp, with GS the damage isnt far off anyway when you use mirrorblade + beserker from range, add some autos and mob wont even get to you.

another thing that involves sword is it does next to 0 condition damage (except bleed) this makes condition traitline near useless to sword builds (but condition line offers a 20% cooldown reduction for all sorts of illusions which is a must take) GS/staff on the otherhand utilies this traitline much better since GS clones apply bleeds and staff gives all sorts of condtion to enermy.

The pulling effect is very consistent and the point isn’t damage. iDuelist does more damage than the Warlock once you count bleed, and iWarden does even more damage than that.

You just have a poor understanding of each weapon’s utility and damage. Do some dungeons at level 80 or some PvP and you’ll see why the offhands are too good to ignore.

You’re also basing basically all of your analysis on what seems good and what seems like it synergizes. You also keep saying general things like “all sorts of conditions.” No. It just applies bleed and burning for damage. 2 conditions. Everything is finite here. You don’t need to generalize when it’s just 2. Mesmer condition damage is from confusion and bleed. Burning is a side-note, and the off-hands apply bleed much better than either 2H weapon.