Guild Wars 2

hi all, got 2 questions

first of all, if i got a clone with staff, how strong is the condition damage from WoC the clone deals?

and the other one- i see a lot of players taking sword on both MHs for dungeons, but i prefer sword/focus +staff, is sword/X +sword/ X that better? I run a shatter build, and with all the conditions my team can put up, the warlock is supposed to do more damage on one hit, and usually i shatter immediately after that so any other phantasm won’t do more damage. also, i got double bounce on staff so with all the conditions and boons i get from it and chaos storm and armor i feel like it is more useful, not only for myself but also for my team. maybe i am missing something, but why dual swords is better than other builds?

The condition damage from Winds of Chaos is as good for your clones as it is from you. (Edit: The only difference seems to be that their bleed is a second or two shorter.) That’s one of the advantages of a staff. However, Illusionary Elasticity will not give the clones an extra bounce.

Dual sword is appealing to many for the sheer damage the Phantasmal Swordsman can deal. If you’re shattering your phantasms, that is going to be less pronounced for you. The block can be handy and the line-daze suites some builds, but neither are game changers. I also like double sword purely for aesthetic reasons.

You are by no means in a bad way using a focus in dungeons. Some would argue it is the best weapon you could bring. Warden brings some area damage to the party and Temporal Curtain offers area control. As weak as mesmer aoe can be, and how important it is in dungeons, this can only be a good thing. If you trait the focus, then the projectile reflecting curtains absolutely trivializes some dungeon encounters.

The clones will have the same condition damage but won’t benefit from condition duration. The bounce thing seems to be a bug since it works underwater…

It depends on the situation if you should go for dual sword or staff, but you should play what you like and what fits to you. I don’t want to start the common “dual sword > everything” conversation with colesy and co. again >_>

thank you for the answers, but maybe i wasn’t clear about my second question, I wasn’t talking about sword/sword combo, i was talking about sword/X+sword/X

i edited the first post to make it clearer

Sword/X + Sword/X has the advantage of always having the best auto-attack of all mesmer weapons available, plus the maximum uptime for BF (best defensive tool + good spike). So it is indeed quite favored. Now, Sword/X + Staff is a nice option when you want more support.
In the ends, it depends mainly of what you want to do in a group.

Xyonon.3987:

The clones will have the same condition damage but won’t benefit from condition duration. The bounce thing seems to be a bug since it works underwater…

It depends on the situation if you should go for dual sword or staff, but you should play what you like and what fits to you. I don’t want to start the common “dual sword > everything” conversation with colesy and co. again >_>

Actually, the clones do benefit from condition duration. This was fixed quite a while ago.

Sword/X + Sword/Y is good because of the sword being our highest DPS weapon, full melee uptime, immediate access to blurred frenzy on cooldown and the strongest/most useful phantasms in the game (swordsman, duelist, warden) plus nice skills.

Don’t shatter phantasms in dungeons by the way, they’re one of your sources of sustained DPS, and if you keep up 2 or even 3 you’ll surpass the DPS of basically any other class.