Guild Wars 2

Ryn.6459:

Guang, what numbers do you get for sinister engi, if I may ask?

18.5k on a balanced Traveler setup, 19.2k on a DPS-only Nightmare setup.

NikeEU.7690:

30 second fight length…

Sinister ranger with full group buffs is around 14k dps.

Berserker staff ele is around 17.5k

Berserker Engineer is around 17k

Berserker ranger is around 14k.

Condi ranger is a viable replacement for berserker ranger, and more fun to boot. But it doesn’t change the overall meta because ranger is still much worse overall than multiple other options, however it doesn’t really kitten your team if you do use one.

You’re forgetting the pet. With the pet the ranger is about 16k DPS putting it very close to the ele with far fewer overall requirements. Hell you’re not even gonna get 17k on that ele build without a ranger in the first place since you need Frost Spirit.

For any other situation where you don’t have a matching dungeon potion, don’t have an EA warrior and Spotter Ranger, aren’t downscaled, aren’t nighttime, mob isn’t 2600 armor, etc. ranger is going to be more overall DPS.

Which is actually what I just said, so it sorta sounds like we’re mostly in agreement on this.

Photinous.4628:

Do we have an idea where condi ranger now sits compared to other classes? Is ele still #1 in DPS?

My spreadsheets have Sinister Engineer as highest theoretical DPS provided you have a perfect rotation (which you don’t), then Zerker Staff Elementalist as #2 given optimal buffs. Sinister Ranger is #3 with the added bonus of their damage being a lot more consistent and less dependent on situational buffs.

Uh you should have 85% tops with the super expensive tryhard crystal, 75% without it.

NikeEU.7690:

Colin later clarified his comments on reddit and indicated not the dedicated anything would be required, only that it wouldn’t be useless to have full support character.

PSA: any healing you can achieve from a single dedicated healer you can surpass with 5 berserkers using coordination to blast water fields and trait/gear for perma-regeneration.

You can either waste all your blasts trying to coordinate on the one water field that occasionally gets dropped by the ele or ranger (which probably has fire or light fields stacked over it) and most likely end up dead, or you can just get a Ventari Rev to run the inevitable new cdmg/pre/hp/set and auto-heal everyone and not worry about it at all.

Elorna.5329:

Photinous.4628:

Elorna.5329:

Photinous.4628:

Is sinister really worth it as well? Can we achieve roughly the same amount of dps using rabid?

Your power damage is not completely nonexistent, so you get more out of that with the added power from sinister than you would from the extra cond dmg out of the utility buff (and the +100 cond, +10% duration buff is better anyway).

Yeah, I just don’t want to farm silver wastes if it’s not much more dps overall.

Ask Guang for math on that, but the difference probably isn’t game changing.

I was in Rabid for the video in my thread if that helps at all. The power from Sinister will boost the direct damage floaters you see in the video by approximately 50%, which is honestly not that much considering.

NikeEU.7690:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you’re going to say Aristocracy because of might stacking, let me cut you off right there. Ranger barely self-stacks any might (other than on pet) and anything you’re gonan get from sigils is not going to offset the loss of Malice/Earth.

Luckily I’m not!

For everything else damage-related, I’ve already considered as alternatives 5x Nightmare, Balthazar, and Krait runes and the are all extremely close in overall DPS. If it comes down to it though having general condition duration that also buffs your vuln and weakness applications will end up being slightly more useful overall.

I’m sure you have, but I’m talking min/maxing. Technically, the absolute best is Balthazar with Agony and Geomancy but that has a ramp up time which sucks for group play. Balthazar with Malice and Bursting is less than 1% less over time and doesn’t have a ramp up time so that’s probably best overall.

Why Geomancy? Earf is better.

Also you know Bursting is +6% to condi damage stat, not +6% to damage per tick, right? At 2900 condition damage you will get an extra 174 condition damage, which is worth about 10 extra damage per bleed tick and 27 per burn tick. With average 20 bleeds and 8 burns that is worth about 400 extra damage. On the other hand Earf is about 4 extra bleeds which is worth about 1k.

Sun Spirit is better for open world too. Ideally you’d probably want something like Sun Spirit, Flame Trap, Signet of the Hunt as your utility layout.

Sun Spirit: 6 ticks of burn x ~425 damage per tick = 2550 DPS

and Solar Flare = 15 ticks = 6375. Total: 8925.
Flame Trap: 10 × 425 = 4250

Viper’s Nest: 12 × 150 = 1800

Viper’s Nest is by far the weakest option of the three.

NikeEU.7690:

Sube Dai.8496:

Until we see the math of sinister mainhand axe/torch vs sword/torch I’m not sure its correct.

Surprisingly, they are equal. Like within 150 DPS of each other.

Second surprising fact: for any fight lasting over 10 seconds, Sun Spirit is better than QZ even for berserker ranger.

Third (un)suprising fact, Guang’s build is good, but suboptimal. There are higher DPS Runes and Sigils to use. Stay tuned.

If you’re going to say Aristocracy because of might stacking, let me cut you off right there. Ranger barely self-stacks any might (other than on pet) and anything you’re gonan get from sigils is not going to offset the loss of Malice/Earth.

For everything else damage-related, I’ve already considered as alternatives 5x Nightmare, Balthazar, and Krait runes and the are all extremely close in overall DPS. If it comes down to it though having general condition duration that also buffs your vuln and weakness applications will end up being slightly more useful overall.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Prophet.1584:

for pve wouldn’t rampager be good? especially if you go s/t+a/t. You could bring in some ferocity with trinkets so you still get the benefit of the higher dps on sword AA, splitblade on cooldown and use bonfire on quickdraw.

Well, you would do the same thing with Sinister, but have 400 more condition damage and 20% less crit chance over Rampager.

With banners, fury, and your own Spotter, you will already be sitting on about 95% crit chance. Rampager won’t help you here. Even without banners or an external source of fury, you’re still going to have around 50% uptime thanks to Furious Grip so the extra crit chance will be wasted whenever you swap for Bonfire. If you want to go Rampager trinkets instead of Sinister because you’re cheap/don’t have Ascended Sinister unlocked, that’s fine. Just don’t go full rampager. In fact, I think Sinister weapons/armor is cheaper than Rampager, at least for now.

Rag.3258:

Does food even work in the pvp lobby?

It does if you apply it before you enter the lobby.

Clearly a bad class.

Raven.9603:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Raven.9603:

Ltomato.8649:

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

This is false. Lava font + fireball can very simply reach 8k ticks and autoattacks. Ranger sword reaches at most 6.5kish with occasional bursts of 20-22k. And that’s with Signet of the Wild on. Once that falls, the damage drops too.

The ranger completes 3 sword auto’s every 1.5sec, as is your cat pet (lets assume this is a single target dps fight and cat is fine with it). The ranger would get 6.5 full rotations (~20 attacks) off in 10 seconds plus 20 cat autos (sure, cat will get a bite and maul in there instead of a few auto’s, but those are worth more).

In those same 10 seconds, the ele is going to get off 8-9 fireballs with 3 casts of lava font to keep it ticcing nearly every second.

Damage multipliers, cooldowns and might stacks aside, 9 FB and 10 tics of lava font do not outpace 20 sword + 20 cat autos. The individually bigger numbers of the ele tics do not equal higher dps.

That’s just super off everywhere.

Sword chain is about 1.85 seconds per.
Cat attacks about once every 1.2 seconds on average.

Fireball is once per 1.4 seconds, Lava Font with cooldown trait is 4s CD with .25s cast, so you get one every 4.45 seconds (3 Fireballs, 1 Font). In 10 seconds you will get about 6 Fireballs and 2 Fonts.

No wonder people think condis don’t tick for enough, they’re apparently in super Time Warp mode all the time.

I’m using the cast times listed on the tool tips of the skills. For example, sword 1 is : .5, .25, .75 = 1.5. FB is listed as 1sec cast. Lava font is instant. Is there a better source than the wiki or the skill tooltips for the attack times?

The wiki has the actual attack speeds for most auto-attacks and/or long channels, down in the notes. If you don’t trust the numbers on the wiki for any reason, go test it yourself in Mists.

Raven.9603:

Ltomato.8649:

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

This is false. Lava font + fireball can very simply reach 8k ticks and autoattacks. Ranger sword reaches at most 6.5kish with occasional bursts of 20-22k. And that’s with Signet of the Wild on. Once that falls, the damage drops too.

The ranger completes 3 sword auto’s every 1.5sec, as is your cat pet (lets assume this is a single target dps fight and cat is fine with it). The ranger would get 6.5 full rotations (~20 attacks) off in 10 seconds plus 20 cat autos (sure, cat will get a bite and maul in there instead of a few auto’s, but those are worth more).

In those same 10 seconds, the ele is going to get off 8-9 fireballs with 3 casts of lava font to keep it ticcing nearly every second.

Damage multipliers, cooldowns and might stacks aside, 9 FB and 10 tics of lava font do not outpace 20 sword + 20 cat autos. The individually bigger numbers of the ele tics do not equal higher dps.

That’s just super off everywhere.

Sword chain is about 1.85 seconds per.
Cat attacks about once every 1.2 seconds on average.

Fireball is once per 1.4 seconds, Lava Font with cooldown trait is 4s CD with .25s cast, so you get one every 4.45 seconds (3 Fireballs, 1 Font). In 10 seconds you will get about 6 Fireballs and 2 Fonts.

No wonder people think condis don’t tick for enough, they’re apparently in super Time Warp mode all the time.

Raven.9603:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Ranger is actually currently one of the highest DPS classes in the game. You might just be using the wrong build.

You are citing yourself as a source?

Why not cite yourself as a source from your same-topic post here, which was widely criticized for its fallacies? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-condition-damage-is-OP-and-zerk-sucks

Condition damage is in a good spot for rangers.
Power damage is in a good spot for rangers.
Group support is in a terrible spot for rangers.
Our marginally better damage than some classes is not nearly as valuable to the overall gameplay as having almost-as-good damage with excellent support.

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

OP’s claim that the ele is superior to ranger in general by doing very competitive damage while still providing nearly unmatched party support is totally accurate.

Sometimes when you’re the best source, you have no choice but to cite yourself.

Neko.9021:

Guang, your build looks pretty cool. In a long lasting fight how would you say it stacks up against the Berserker builds that players generally run? I kinda want to try this myself.

It’s probably the highest practical DPS you will get out of any class in this game currently. Engineers have more in theory but you need to manage your cooldowns really well. Zerk staff ele remains top tier for zerk DPS but requires a bunch of buffs you don’t normally get with common group comps (i.e. Spotter+Frost Spirit) or which aren’t always up.

The one downside to this particular build is that you don’t stack might very well on your own, so you need someone else to put it on you if you want max DPS.

Ltomato.8649:

I did try it with zerkers too in PvP, and I killed things 4 times faster.

A single barrage rapid fire killed the heavy golem.
A single path of scars and sword chain killed the heavy golem.

I easily got the signet of the wild bug where if you activate it and leave combat, you can’t swap utilities from the hotbar.

Also you do realize that Sun Spirit has an 8 second internal cooldown between burn procs?

A PvP golem with 2600 armor and 20k health isn’t exactly Giganticus Lupicus.

Ltomato.8649:

I’m pretty sure that
1. that build isn’t even optimal condi damage- it takes a lot of defensive traits and doesn’t take advantage of poison master. It also misses out on the cool synergy between krait runes and Strength of the Pack.

2. zerkers is still better, at least for rangers. You lose so many damage modifiers from going condi in terms of frost spirit, warrior banners, signet of the wild, etc.

3. Even if condi were stronger than zerker, I just did a quick build based off of your link in PvP (using rampagers), and the damage was a significant amount less than berskerker’s. Even if Sinister came out ahead by a small margin, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near the top.

4. Axe mainhand is so boring to play :c

1) Getting an extra 25% burn duration is worth more than 20% bleed duration and one stack of bleed every 60 seconds.

Poison Master is pointless because you don’t deal poison damage with this build.

2) It’s not.

3) A PvP simulation with the wrong gear and no consumables is not an accurate projection of anything PvE. In fact, go ahead and try the same thing with Berserker, I guarantee you it’s going to be significantly less DPS.

Ranger is actually currently one of the highest DPS classes in the game. You might just be using the wrong build.

I figured the DEKeyz figure would come up eventually so I crunched condi DPS based on the 30-second fight figure with ramp-up and it actually does roughly match Nike’s quoted 17% difference. The issue is that it’s basically a best-case scenario for zerkers (100% scholar and banner uptime, potions and night applicable, etc.) and a worst case scenario for the sinister engie (because you’re stopping the clock right before the big burns come back up).

Engie is also the most borderline case because their zerker DPS is so high. Mesmers and rangers are WAY better in Sinister specs by comparison, and warriors and necros can deal competitive damage as well (although their condi specs aren’t quite as OP).

Yeah, condition damage is actually good. You heard it here first. Here’s why:

Overall damage output is comparable or better

Here’s some quick, simplified Guangmath, using rangers as an example (just because their rotation is relatively simple).

A zerker ranger who is full buffed (full might/vuln/fury, banners, EA, Spotter, Frost Spirit, potion, Force/Night, full Ascended, 100% uptime on Scholar buff, etc.) will have a total power of about 2700 (worth about 4x damage). Crit chance will be close to 100% with +80% crit damage from ferocity, so total crit modifier is about 2.3 (i.e. you always crit for 2.3x damage). All the other buffs (vuln, traits, consumables, sigils, utilities, etc.) adds up to about 2.35×. I’m rounding a bit here but you can count it yourself. Sword chain hits 639 total damage at base stats every 1.85 seconds, so it’s worth 345 DPS. 345 × 3 × 2.3 x 2.35 = about 7.5k.

Now let’s make that a Sinister ranger with axe/torch. Same buffs except build modified for a condition spec (Malice/Earth sigils, Balthazar runes, Tuning Crystal, Rare Veggie Pizza). That gives you a condition damage stat of about 2650 which means that bleed ticks 280 (with vuln) and burn ticks 680. I’m going to skip the minutiae of calculating the exact stacks but in summary, Splitblade + Sharpened Edges + Entangle = 15 stacks of bleed, and Throw Torch + Quick Drawn Bonfire = about 7 stacks of burn. So bleed = 15 × 280 = 4200, burn = 7 × 680 = 4760. Total = 8960. Plus you do still deal some direct DPS (about 1k worth) so you’re looking at about 10k total DPS.

tl;dr full buffed zerk ranger = 7.5k, full buffed sinister ranger = 10k.( Yes, I know you can burst with Barrage, use traps, etc. I’m just keeping it simple.)

Direct DPS scales better (and that’s a bad thing)

Remember I said “full buffed”? That’s a pretty kittenumption in the general course:

- Having 100% banner and spirit uptime
- Warrior has EA and ranger has Spotter
- The potion you’re using works on the mob you’re fighting (so it’s not like Arah P2 where you keep switching between Inquest and Undead)
- The dungeon/whatever is considered night
- Your Scholar 90% buff is always up

When was the last time you were in a pug where you had everything? Let’s uncheck some boxes and see what the Zerker number goes down to.

- No EA, Spotter, or Frost Spirit
- Accuracy instead of Night sigil
- Strength instead of Scholar runes

Result: Zerk DPS drops to 5.5k (down from 7.5k, 27% loss)

Now we do the same thing for Sinister (take out EA, Spotter, Frost Spirit),. except Sigils and Runes don’t need to be changed since they’re already universal: You lose approximately one bleed stack (from loss of crit chance resulting in fewer Sharpened Edges procs) so your bleed damage goes down to 4000. You also lose about 20% straight DPS from not having the other buffs so in total your Sinister DPS drops to about 9600 (down from 9.6k, 4% loss). Hell, let’s get rid of all the other external buffs (like banners), and fury too, so it’s just might and vuln. Result: 8.5k DPS (down from 10k, 15% loss).

Tl;dr: Zerker loses damage very rapidly once you start taking away buffs. Conversely, even with the bare minimum, a Sinister ranger still gets 85% of max potential DPS easily.

Ramp-up time isn’t as big a deal as you think

You’ve probably heard some variation of “conditions suck because it takes forever to reach max stacks”. That’s technically true but it’s also not. While some classes do get really long bleeds that can stack up for a while before they start dropping off (necromancer scepter comes to mind), most also have big opening bursts of condition damage that are basically guaranteed to tick for full damage. See: Engineer opening burst with Fire Bomb, Napalm, and Blowtorch for 164 ticks of burn after condition duration is applied, and the longest duration burn on there is Incendiary Ammo for 10 seconds. That means that even before the engie starts any kind of bleed “ramp-up”, he’s already burned the target for 164 ticks of 600+ damage each. That’s at least 100k damage right off the bat.

So I guess the PHIWs won in the end.

Disclaimer: Conditions aren’t great for bosses that are immune to conditions or who cleanse a lot, for obvious reasons. If you’re gonna do Arah P2 a lot, don’t salvage your zerk set just yet.

Uh you can fix values on SPP and Sharpshooter after Grenades are fixed to actually make that possible. In fact that I think that’s lot easier than brainstorming ways to put per-mob ICDs etc. on everything.

You guys are just dancing around the obvious fix which is TO JUST NERF GRENADES. That’ll fix Steel-Packed Powder and Sharpshooter too.

Maxzero.4032:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Duelist’s Discipline is bugged and doesn’t work.

Mesmer sucks again. We had a good run guys.

The bleed does not stack with Sharper Images which is annoying.

The CD reduction works well though. If you interrupt multiple targets with Magic bullet or Mantra of Distrction its a 25% reduction for each interrupt.

It doesn’t work at all. Ditch your gear so you have no crit chance, you bleed exactly zero stacks with both Duelist and Magic Bullet.

Duelist’s Discipline is bugged and doesn’t work.

Mesmer sucks again. We had a good run guys.

frifox.5283:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- Timewarp now scales with boon duration and is potentially usable twice with Mimic.

Mimic will affect only utilities, no double casting Elites. You’re probably thinking of F5, which yeah, you will be able to.

Did they confirm that? Well it’d be super OP for sure. Although if Signet of Illusions works on F5 it’ll enable a Timewarp triple-cast.

Mesmers got pretty much all the buffs this patch. I’m actually gonna have a hard time justifying running anything other than mesmer or engineer after Tuesday’s patch. Just to name a few:

- Massive sustain via conditions (highest theoretical DPS in the game, and pretty good practical DPS even if you’re one of those “clones are USELESS because they always die before they even attack because EVERY SINGLE MOB totally pulses screen-filling AOEs every half second” whiner types.

- Timewarp now scales with boon duration and is potentially usable twice with Mimic.

- Respectable burst with Chaos Storm and/or Confusing Images.

Fay.2357:

You’re still forgetting my first and third points though. In a party situation, it’s unlikely for you to get 2 bounces out of your staff autos, and your non-single target dps in a build like that is absolutely trash.

If you’re worried about misbounces you can still use GS clones which are worth about 2.5k per clone. And for AOE you still have Chaos Storm and/or Berserkers now that those are viable weapons too.

You’re right about that one. I forgot to multiply by condition duration when transcribing the numbers from my spreadsheet. 3.33 is the base bleed duration so you’re looking at about 7.7 bleeds as a final number.

Given the sheer amount of bleed that a mesmer can output (while AFKing, even) on a worldboss, I wouldn’t be surprised if even 1500 turns out to be too low of a stack limit.

I am assuming a 1-second average delay between clone attacks. It seems to actually be random but 1 second seems about average. That puts clone fire at once per 2.4 seconds. A proc of Sharper Images will last about 12 seconds at 235% condition duration so you can fit 5 attacks into that timespan. At 80% crit chance 4 of those attacks will crit and they will hit twice, so you get 8 stacks.

Additionally, Winds of Chaos also has a bleed proc that activates 33% of the time for 7 × 2.35 seconds = about 16.5 seconds. Divide by 2.4 = 6.85 attacks, or 13.kittens (rounding). A third of those hits will bleed so you get about 4.5 total bleeds. 8 + 4.5 = 12.5 total.

So now that we know the exact numbers for the patch I can tell you exactly how OP mesmer will be.

Dueling Rampager mesmer, Agony/Malice, Krait runes (45% bleed duration), Rare Veggie Pizza (40% condition duration), Signet of Midnight (+20% condi duration). None of the toxic oil crap cause that’s super expensive, if you want to be a rich minmax tryhard you can add it in for a tiny bit more DPS.

Staff Mes:

12.5 bleeds, .5 burns, 1.2 confusion per clone

3.3 bleeds, .8 burns, 2.5 confusion from yourself

Total: About 46 bleeds, 2.2 burn, 5.5 confusion = 11.4k total condition DPS (plus about 1k in direct DPS from your crappy staff auto).

Sw/P Mes:

23 bleeds, 1.7 confusion per Pistolero

Total: About 70 bleeds, 5 confusion = 17k condition damage (+ about 3k direct).

Also keep in mind that these aren’t multually exclusive, so you can summon a Pistolero then 2 staff clones for instant 3-illusion DPS and still get about 3.3k per staff clone and 6.6k per Pistolero.

Fay.2357:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Multiply 3x Duelists, then multiply by 100% condition duration + 65% bleed duration = 65.51 bleed, 15.3 confusion

= 80.81 total

2000 cdmg / 20 = +100 damage per tick, add 42.5 base = 142.5 per tick

142.5 × 80.81 × 1.25 = WAY TOO MUCH

Might want to check your math at this point.

My bad, misread the condition duration as confusion duration. 8.24 bleed/duelist * 3 duelsts = 24.72 bleeds total, 24.72*1.65 = 40.788 bleeds full total.

You got the confusion right at 15.3, so totals out to 55.

I’m also failing to see where you get the random 1.25 multiplier from at the end, so let me give you a corrected final value.

142.5*55 = 7837 dps.

Fun fact, if I use your numbers, I get 142.5*80*1.25 = 14250 dps.

Want to take a guess at what the dps for a warrior or ele in a dps group is?

…It’s around 14k.

Want to take a guess how realistic it will be to maintain 3 duelists in any scenario?

Absolutely unrealistic.

Want to take a guess at how dead the boss will be by the time you get 3 duelists up and fully ticking?

Very dead.

In summary

You mathed wrong, and even if you mathed right, your conclusion is hilariously wrong.

First off, the 1.25 is vuln.

Second, that 14k number is ONLY the condition damage from the Duelists. In case you forgot, you still deal direct damage.

And confusion does the same damage per tick as bleed.

Duelist attacks every 6.6s traited with PH.

~70% crit chance with Rampager gear

~2000 cdmg with gear, might, banner

8 × .7 / 6.6 × 5 = 4.24 stacks of bleed from Sharper Images

8 × .33 / 6.6 × 2 × 5 = 4 stacks of bleed from Duelist’s Discipline

8 × .7 / 6.6 × 3 = 2.55 stacks of confusion from Confusing Combatants

Total = 8.24 bleed, 2.55 confusion per Duelist

Multiply 3x Duelists, then multiply by 100% condition duration + 65% bleed duration = 65.51 bleed, 15.3 confusion

= 80.81 total

2000 cdmg / 20 = +100 damage per tick, add 42.5 base = 142.5 per tick

142.5 × 80.81 × 1.25 = WAY TOO MUCH

Waiting to see how much confusion Confusing Combatants gives so we know whether Pistolero spam will be The Next Big Thing™ for Mesmers. If not, Chaos Stormway should be good for some laughs.

Fay.2357:

Interrupts might be extremely difficult to land on bosses when they roll out the new break bar mechanic instead of defiance. I might be wrong, but that’s the sense of the thing that I got.

Would be nice if Anet made it so CCs still count as interrupts for purposes of traits if you hit a move that would be an interrupt if not for Defiance. Tbh I’m not even sure how interrupts will work on bosses but I’m also not really expecting bosses to be a huge issue in the first place with the new Chronomancer stuff.

rabidsmiles.5926:

I’m pretty sure the OP is talking about PvE Mesmer, so interrupt builds aren’t really meta there. Most of the time they mess with defiance removal, though when they change that to a bar…it might go from being useless to useful. Dunno about making/speccing an interrupt build for PvE…doesn’t seem too helpful.

I’d just like to be able to use my staff in dungeons…I love that weapon with Mesmer and it pains me to have to use a GS for ranged damage. Sure, mirrorblade is a great skill but clones from a staff are actually useful as they can give fury and might as well as the condi. All a GS clone does is stand there and proc a crit hit a few times. Not to mention all the staff skills have a place in the rotation, where as the GS has that push that’s not so used in a dungeon setting (unless you want to get the ranger in trouble). Though the new GS trait is really interesting, but you’d have to keep clones and not phantoms up to get the time reduce…it’s a dps trade off.

With the elasticity trait becoming baseline…maybe I’ll be able to dust my staff off and get to use it one day.

GS clone has the fastest attack rate (averaging a bit over one hit per second) so they will proc crits more than any other illusion except Pistolero.

Mirror Blade is also the fastest recharging clone generator other than scepter primary which honestly sorta sucks, and if it bounces repeatedly the same target it’s actually worth more damage than Chaos Storm (2.1 coefficient with 3 hits versus Chaos Storm being about 1.9).

Staff clone on the other hand has a baseline bleed/burn but their attack rate is also slower. Compared to GS clone, which has 3 chances to inflict bleed and confusion at around a 70% chance (in rampager gear), a staff clone only gets 2 chances to crit for bleed/confusion, but gets two additional chances to bleed or burn. In terms of condition damage, it’s really going to boil down to whether 5 ticks of bleed and .7 stacks of burn (on average) is worth more than 3.5 ticks of bleed and however much confusion you get from the extra greatsword hit.

Then again the condition damage aspect may not even matter very much since Blazblue > Mirror Blade > Berserker > Chaos Storm > Warlock > clocks > shatter > de-Blazblue > repeat is looking to have the potential for an absolutely ridiculous anti-boss burst of direct damage.

So right now it’s pretty obvious that doubling up on sword mainhand is the best way to go (at least for PvE) but with all the new traits, especially buffs to GS and staff, some new specs with currently worthless weapons might be viable. For example:

Pistol:

- If confusion is changed to a DOT like was hinted, and now that mesmers get confusion on crit, Pistoleros will be able to stack substantial amounts of both (possibly 20-25 of each before condition duration, since pistol attacks have an additional chance to bleed now too), meaning a Rampager or Sinister Pistolero spec may actially be viable.

- Interrupts give big CD reduction, including to the interrupt skill itself, so interrupt/pistolero spam?

Greatsword:

- Regular clones have high rate of fire and will reduce CDs on each attack. Will get high condition stacks plus fast cooldowns if you stack clones.

- Fast cooldown on Mirror Blade means lots of might (to spread with auto-SoI trait). Fast CD on interrupt skill means lots of quickness procs, again to spread around.

Staff::

- Staff clones have a decently high rate of fire (now that Winds hits twice by default) and stack bleed/vuln/burn by default on top of on-crit stuff.

- Chaos Armor is easy to get and gives big CD reduction (25% per application). Can get two applications from staff skills alone (#4 and Chaos Storm + Phase Retreat) for 50% every 18 seconds or so.

- Warlocks still have super high overall damage and the shortest phantasm cooldown.

Potential new builds:

- Rampager or Sinister Pistoleros. Get massive stacks of condition damage while spamming interrupts for quickness.

- Berserker staff. Burst with clock utilities + Chaos Storm + Warlocks.
+ Blazblue.
- Rampager/Sinister GS. Stack 3x clones for massive CD reduction (about 12% per second with 3 clones up) and go ham with interrupt spam for quickness stacking on party, while getting decent condition stacks (each clone should be able to maintain 4-5 stacks of bleed+confuson base). May also work with staff depending on how damage values of bleed/confusion play out compared to burn.

Mesmer definitely looking like one of the stronger classes for HoT, at least until we hear more about the other specializations.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Such a detailed, thoughtful explanation as to why, Guang-senpai.

Consider me enlightened.
(No seriously, why?)

- Quickness is a boon now = Affected by boon duration + spreadable with Signet of Inspiration

- Mesmer has quickness on interrupt, gets increased GS CD with every auto-attack, and a GS skill that interrupts

- Quickness increases auto-attack speed

- Mesmer gets spammable Signet of Inspiration on phantasm summon

You can currently get +75% boon duration using Traveler runes, 30 in Inspiration, and boon duration consumables. Since boon duration applies to SOI’d boons twice (once on initial application, again on spread), you can get triple duration on any boon, meaning the 3s quickness on interrupt you get becomes 9s for everyone else, i.e. almost Time Warp levels.

Even assuming the 30% boon duration from traits is nerfed, that’s still +45% from equipment alone, or 2.1x total multipler.

The new mesmer is gonna be REALLY stupid otherwise.

spoj.9672:

The 3g price in the past was the stupid price. Especially as it was mostly caused by lupi skippers and underwater heroes. 8g is fair considering legit alphard and how painful brie is these days to solo. Not to mention the overall time to solo P2 and sell. personally I wouldnt sell for any less than 5g for it to be worth my time and effort.

It’s not really THAT much harder than before unless you count the Lupi skip. Belka and Abom are harder I guess and I’m actually not even sure how Brie works solo now, but Lupi is easier than ever now and Alphard was always easy enough to do legit with a mesmer even without any LOS gimmicks.

If anything cause a price hike it was probably the kickers/reporters (that’s why I don’t sell anymore).

You guys are gonna look really dumb when the condition cap is removed in HoT and burn guardian is the new DPS meta.

The only thing that needs to stop is the ridiculously inflated seller prices. I used to sell P2 for 3.26g, now I see people in LFG selling it for like 8g. That’ s kittening kittened and anyone who enables selling at that price deserves to be scammed out of his money.

This is one of those threads where I have to scroll back up to make sure it wasn’t actually started in 2012 or something.

Good job guys.

Mesmer gets like all their DPS from their precision trait line. Fortunately their precision traits are decent but if they weren’t you’d just be kittened.

Just make it so whenever you apply a condition to a world boss and that boss is already capped on that condition, you get teleported into Lupicus’ arena and you have to solo him. If you win the boss the boss takes damage equal to Lupicus’s max HP, if you lose the boss heals an amount equal to Lupi’s remaining HP and the game broadcasts your name to the rest of the zerg.

Easy fix.

Necro and mesmer are looking to be the OP classes in HoT thanks to the fact that they currently have weak class mechanics that could be very easily altered to be extremely strong in a specialization (i.e. both follow the mold of “consume resource to power up” which is always strong). Compare that to classes like the engie or ele who already have very good class mechanics that are highly unlikely to get buffs in HoT, and it’s pretty obvious that rolling necro or mesmer is the way to go if you want to be prepared for HoT and not be stuck with the kittenty lame outdated classes from three years ago.

Lishtenbird.2814:

This topic has been discussed to death.

yhvh.8703:

I was thinking, a new player using the LFG tool is really supposed to know this stuff just in order to not be kicked instantly from a group just because it failed to skip the whole dungeon?

A new player has to open LFG and type “I’m a new player, I want to do this dungeon!” – and that’s it. If he failed to read “80 only, experienced, zerker, speedrun”, that’s not the group’s fault.

yhvh.8703:

I think the possibility of these paths being skippable by running through mobs only leads to bad gameplay and puts a very bad impression on new players.

Confirmed to be working as intended by a Dev:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It’s one of those human things to do something with the path of least resistance and danger, especially when there is a reward at the end. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.
I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren’t incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.

I don’t imagine this next update will resolve all the skipping behavior. The path of least resistance is engrained in people, and even if I do everything I could to incentivize people, there will still be those who skip stuff. I have been fixing exploits that will require players to complete more of the events in dungeons, but I am sure people will still skip what they can to get to their end goal.

For now I would encourage those not looking to skip to find some folks who don’t like skipping and make a guild with them… or maybe look for guilds that are dedicated to not skipping, and tag along with them. I’m in a couple of them (anonymously), and it really is an effective solution to playing the game the way you want to play it: Find other people with similar interests and band together with them.

Then Hrouda was fired from Anet.

fishball.7204:

Technically if stealth wasn’t needed anywhere at all I’d probably take 4 eles 1 warrior in every dungeon

I’ve seen you guys wipe on daily dungeon tours. What’s optimal DPS in theory isn’t always ideal if it makes the margin of error too small. Having a thief or engie to blindspam trash or stack stealth is always nice.
, or a guardian to spam protection or something.

That said, I’m not always convinced thief is necessarily super helpful outside of certain stealth skips and certain fights where you really need blind on a long duration, or if you wanna Frostbow sploit like a nerd. Otherwise the AOEs on Smoke Screen and Black Powder aren’t great; Engie tends to have better blindspam range even if they can’t keep it up as long as thief does, and they can also stealth with reasonbale success on top of all the might and vuln crap they do.

Uh coated bullets doesn’t explode on every mob it hits, it pierces through them and explodes at max damage. That’s not quadratic scaling, at most it’s double if the mob is just inside max range and gets hit by both the bullet and the explosion.

Astralporing.1957:

Celtic Lady.3729:

It does seem odd. Why have fractals on there and not dungeons? The last time I did a fractal set, it took way longer than my favorite dungeon runs.

Perhaps fractals are way less popular than dungeons, which made people from that design team envious and lobbying for better advertising. And dailies are a simpler way to help fractals “popularity” than fixing their rewards (which would require some actual work).

There’s literally no one to envy or be envious of, Anet canned their entire dungeon team.

daimasei.4091:

So now we can’t skip that little part at the no so secret JP? Darm!

Otherwise, it looks like we are getting only buffs/fixes

I guess I’m never getting back up there once I take my alts off it. Better make sure I’m stocked up on Blade Shards.