Condi Virtuoso PVE Build Guide - Guild Wars 2

do you want to play a build that does exceptional damage with an easy rotation does all of its damage from range can be tweaked to provide all the amazing Mesmer utility and has an even easier version that still out damages some other classes full DPS builds oh my my then buckle up today we're covering your new main DPS class Condi virtuoso there's a lot of things that go into what makes a DPS class good in Guild Wars 2. first how much damage can it do how easily can it apply that damage how simple is its rotation how does it help your team and make their lives easier and how forgiving is it to play there are bills that do Omega damage but have complicated rotations and are super frail there are some that don't offer much to your team and punish you heavily if you make mistakes Conde virtuoso is not one of those builds here we have a high damage build that's super simple to play very forgiving with two blocks and insanely long Distortion baked into the build for free can swap out of skills to provide insane levels of brake bar damage or whatever extra utility a fight needs it's also fully ranged so you can safely walk out of dangerous mechanics while still attacking the boss all these things combined make this a build that you can take into basically all endgame content and give yourself the best chance to perform well on there's also a ton of room to tweak this build to make it more survival level or to give an even simpler damage rotation the biggest change for virtuoso compared to other Mesmer specializations is that your clone mechanic is now replaced by blades where your clones would be tied to a specific enemy and would disappear when that enemy died your blades will stick around when you're out of combat and will even regenerate over time your Shadow skills also change instead of causing your clones to explode on enemies Your Shadow skills will launch your stock Blade's enemies for different effects depending on which shutter skill you use an important thing about this build is that the vast majority of this damage comes from bleeding like a horrendous number of bleeding Stacks whilst of this bleeding is applied on critical hits as well so whereas most Condi builds will just load up on Viper's gear to give them the most condition damage and duration across a wide range of conditions this build is designed to do two things max out bleeding duration and max out critical chance you'll see how this plays out when we chat about the gear and Rune choices today we'll be looking at two main variants of the Conde virtuoso these will be centered around swapping out one of the trait lines everything else is very similar the first and high damage version of the build will be using the dueling trait line which places a higher focus on summoning phantasms and uses a bit more of a hybrid damage profile what I mean by that is your damage will have a bit more of a split between power and condition damage rather than focusing solely on condition damage this version also has a slightly more complicated rotation although it's not even really a rotation it's really just a few more extra buttons to press for this extra effort you do get slightly higher damage around an extra 10 or so for the chaos version we swap out the dueling trait line for chaos chaos is a more defensive traitline and also shifts the focus away from summoning phantasms as a main source of damage this means you can more freely swap your offhand weapon around or just not worry about summoning phantasms at all this does come with a drop in damage although it's still one of the higher damage low intensity builds you can find in the game at the moment this version does rely more on receiving regeneration from your subgroup to reach its full potential so make sure you keep that in mind we'll go through the traits in more detail later so stick around no matter the build variant you'll always be taking dagger as your main hand weapon the dagger is an entirely ranged weapon and will allow you to stock blades as fast as possible this means that you can shatter more often and do more damage flying cutter is a 1200 range attack that pierces enemies and for every three hits will cause an additional flurry of damage play cool launch three daggers in front of you in a cone shape if at least one of these blades hits an enemy you'll stock an additional blade for your blade songs unstable Blaze storm will launch a storm of daggers in front of you that moves forward and damages enemies it will also launch blades outwards for additional damage for the Dual inversion you'll want to take sword and focus as your offhand weapons these will give you the highest damaging phantasms possible as well as provide some amazing utility on sword illusionary repost give you access to a channel block and will also allow you to shoot out a bolt that dazes enemies phantasmal swordsman will obviously summon your sword Phantasm which deals outside standing damage and also grants you eight stacks of Mark if it hits note that this skill attacks using blurred frenzy the Mesmer sword 2 skill this is an important point for later for Focus we have temporal curtain which creates a wall that gives you and your allies swiftness when you cross it and it also cripples enemies you can activate it again to pull five enemies together this is an amazing skill for grouping up enemies for your team to burst down get familiar with this skill you're going to be using it a lot fantasma water will summon a Phantasm that attacks 12 times applies a whole load of vulnerability and even blocks enemy projectiles for the chaos version you can take any offhand weapon you prefer depending on what utility you need however the highest DPS option will typically be torch The Prestige will stealth you blind enemies and remove a condition when you come out of stealth you'll burn nearby enemies this is an instant car skill so you can just Spam it off cooldown for some extra damage phantasmal Mage will apply conditions and days foes it's not really used for its damage but it's great as some clutch brake bar damage now for our Blade song formally shutter skills up lights on skills are some of the most important skills on this build there's so much damage and utility baked in here we need to talk about it Blade song Harmony will simply fire all your stock blades at your opponent great damage weights on sorrow will fire your blades and inflict confusion on your target this is your most important Blade song skill for damage Blade song dissonance will combine your blades and Daze your target which is excellent brake bar damage blazon Distortion was only added to the game in October of last year and has caused this build to transcend the Mortal Realm by giving you one second of distortion for each blade you have stopped that's up to five whole seconds of distortion Play Turn Requiem will block attacks for 2 seconds and damage foes around you quite useful for a bit of extra damage and yet another spicy block for us to use in keeping with the Simplicity of this build our default skill Loadout is going to be full of signets Signet of The Ether heals you for a small amount and when used recharges all your Phantasm skills this becomes very important when we get to the rotation section of the video signal of Illusions will passively generate a clone a blade in this case every few seconds when you activate it it will recharge all of your shadows the active skill here is the main reason we include it in the build ideally you want to use it when you've used up all charges of your F1 and F2 blade songs this allows you to use your blade songs more often and recharge them between encounters the passive from Signet of midnight will increase your condition duration the main reason we include it in the build you can activate it to Blind nearby enemies and stealth yourself but it's really just here for the passive the passive from Cigna of domination will increase your overall condition damage again this is the main reason it's here in a pinch you can also activate it for some extra CC if you need try and use this as a last option for brake bar damage though given it will cut into your DPS if you use it Thousand Cuts is an amazing damage skill that shoots out blades in a line in front of you these hit 10 times PS3 enemies and is even unblockable for good measure if you want to swap out a skill for some extra utility swap out signal of Illusions first it's the weakest skill on your default Loadout and is by far the easiest one to replace some good Alternatives include reign of Swords which will give you some nice AOE damage and if you're new to the build and Performing the rotation a little bit slower will likely give you higher DPS than signal of Illusions blink and portal are great for some extra Mobility feedback will give you amazing projectile reflects if your group needs some extra stability feel free to use Mantra of concentration Mantra of resolve gives you great conduit cleanse and now field will give you great AOE Boon removal and condo cleanse for your team if you need extra CC you can swap out Thousand Cuts for Signal of humility for the chaos version of this build you focus far less on summoning phantasms so you can swap out your heal skill for whichever you prefer Mantra of recovery is a fantastic option here now to touch on our traits drooling is all about buffing your Illusions and critical damage phantasmal Fury gives each of you a phantasmus theory which obviously makes them crit more often and cranks your damage sharper images causes your Illusions to inflict bleeding on critical hits this pair is really well with your sword and focus phantasms given that each of your phantasms hit multiple times this is a juicy amount of bleeding fences finesse will reduce the cooldown of each of your sword skills and will give you a stacking ferocity buff whenever you use a sword skill superiority complex is a massive buff to your critical hit damage which really pushes this version of the build more towards a hybrid damage style rather than just straight Condi the master fencer trait also allows you to upkeep a decent amount of Fury on your team as well so that's nice the Illusions line is all about buffing your shadows now blade songs and your phantasms shadowstorm turns your F1 Shadow into an ammo skill with two charges so you can shatter more often compounding power is more or less a permanent damage buff as it triggers and stacks whenever you generate Illusions or blades mainly disillusioned will grant you extra torment on each Shadow and phantasmal force will crank the damage of each of your phantasms the more stacks of might you have and grouchy might when your phantasms turn into blades taking the virtuoso traitline will turn any clones you would normally summon into explains entertain some absolute Banger traits Dragon mind will cause blade attacks you use to inflict bleeding and critical hits another reason 100 crit chance is important it will also heal you for three percent of the condition damage you inflict so the more damage you do the more survivable you are this trait is one of the main reasons Conde virtuoso is so busted as a DPS build this level of baked in survivability is insane deadly blades will cause all blade attacks to inflict vulnerability it will also Grant you a damage buff for 5 seconds after you use a blade song skill because of this trade you'll want to be using a blatson skill at least every five seconds to keep up this buff phantasmal blades will cause your phantasms to launch a blade at your enemies when they are finished attacking this synergizes with all the traits that buff our blades and make our bladed hacks do bleeding more bleeding Stacks is the point here quiet intensity causes Fury to give us increased critical chance this allows us to take less Precision from our gear in order to hit 100 crit chance you'll also gain ferocity based on Your vitality so you'll want to run a tier 10 Jade call for their extra Vitality here more Vitality just means more damage blood sun will cause our bleeding to inflict 25 more damage which is a massive buff and for every 5 stacks of bleeding we inflict also generate another blade this means we can shatter even more often like I mentioned before running the chaos version of this build results in slightly lower damage but also greatly simplifies the rotation it also reduces the focus on summoning phantasms so we'll need to swap around some of our traits accordingly method of Madness will cause you to drop a lesser chaos storm when you use a heal skill we take this because there aren't really any better options for a DPS build in this line although the other traits in this line can increase your survivability quite a bit so feel free to take them if you're struggling illusionary membrane will grant you 10 extra condition damage if you have regeneration on you because of this trade and another one later on it's really important that someone in your subgroup provides this for you else is 10 lower damage for you so keep that in mind chaotic potency will just give you extra condition damage noise chaotic persistence will give you a nice chunk of condition damage and duration when you're affected by regeneration so again regeneration is super important for this build chaotic Interruption will recharge one of your weapon skills at random by 5 Seconds this is just a nice bit of quality of life you can be flexible for the Grand Master line and Chaos so feel free to take Bountiful disillusionment if you'll prefer some extra Boons when using your blade songs because we don't focus on summoning phantasms with the chaos build phantasmal force and the Illusions line is kind of wasted so swap it out for master of fragmentation for some Buffs to your blades on skills instead similarly Fantastical blaze in the virtuoso line is not as useful anymore so feel free to swap it out for sharpening sorrow this will grant you Fury when you use Blade song sorrow your F2 skill and give you extra condition duration when you have Fury the dueling and Chaos versions of these builds each have different gear requirements due to extra stats you get from your traits in the chaos version this also leads to some different sigil choices for each build I've also not used any infusions for this build a lot of Comedy virtuoso builds include some extra Precision infusions to nap some extra quick challenge personally this complicates gearing a bit too much for my liking so we're not touching infusions today if you want to see what gear you need if you consider infusions have a play with the discretized gear Optimizer it will show you the way and the light easiest one out of the way always take Runes of the crate and either build this Rune gives you bonus condition damage as well as an extra 50 bleeding duration this makes the entire build function for sigils each build will use a Sigil of Earth for the extra bleeding on critical hits the Dual inversion will take a Sigil of Agony for the extra bleeding duration given it gets less Condi duration from its trades the chaos version instead can take digital bursting again it's got the extra candy duration from various traits so it can afford to crank its condition damage instead for food take bowls of fancy leek and potato soup this will give you extra precision and condition damage for utility use toxic focusing crystals these are generally the best in slot utility for most condition damage builds for the gear stats there's going to be a rather odd mix of Rampages vipers and Sinister gear this is also we can hit 100 crit chance or as close as possible at least and max out up leading duration I've listed the specific pieces you need on the screen for each build variant I've also included links to each of the bills in the description below so you can always reference exactly what you need for each version finally we're at the rotation one thing I really like about this build is that it doesn't have a fixed rotation light condition damage skirt another build I love and we'll be covering later you instead have a priority list of skills which determines what order you press your buttons once you've carved the priority list into your mind hole you can easily adapt it to any situation and never get lost in a tricky rotation again we have an ideal opener for fights but after that we just fall back into our priority list first up let's go through our priority list and the rules for which skills to use and when for our skills excluding our phantasms our list of skills to work our way down is 1000 cuts Blade song sorrow Blade song Harmony always try to avoid building up two charges this is a waste of a perfectly good skill blade cool unstable blade stool and blade turn Requiem other than that fill your time with dagger Auto attacks also make sure you only use your bladesong skills when you have Fire Blade stocked for maximum damage now for our phantasms other than this priority list our rotation is controlled by our Phantasm cooldowns on the drooling build your Phantasm slap so you're going to want to use them as much as possible so we'll always start out on dagger sword use your phantasma swordsman swap to daggerfocus use phantasmal water use signal of The Ether to recharge our phantasmal Warden use phantasma Warden again as soon as you can swap back to sword use phantasmal swordsman Twitter your thumbs for a while until you can summon phantasmal swordsman again summon it swap back to dagger Focus repeat this until the boss is dead when you combine this Phantasm summoning order with the skill priority list guess what you've nailed the rotation now for some other useful tips always swap back to sword as soon as possible only delay weapon swapping so you can squeeze out the extra sword Phantasm try and group your skills together whenever possible this means instead of using dagger 2 Auto attack F2 Auto attack dagger 3 and so on try and line up your skills so that you don't need to use an auto attack between them this will mean that you cancel Less Auto attacks between skills and waste less perfectly good damage it also makes the rotation feel smoother so that's a plus always try and use a blade song skill every 5 Seconds to upkeep the deadly blades buff you want to use your signal of Illusions to recharge your blade songs when your F2 is off cooldown and a long cooldown at that and when you have no F1 charges left like I mentioned before if you're a bit slow on the rotation you may not get a chance to use this skill as often as you need in that case swap it for something else the passive on the Signet is not hugely useful for the opening burst use sword 5 weapon swap use F1 and Thousand Cuts during the cast dagger 2 dagger 3 Focus 5 and F2 use Signet of The Ether and focus 5 again use F1 again use signal of Illusions to recharge your Blade song skills from here you can just fall into the Phantasm summoning order and skill priority list if you're using the chaos build you don't even need to worry about swapping weapons just follow a skill priority list we went through spam torch 4 of cooldown and profit and with that you've now completely mastered what I'm going to go right ahead and argue is the best DPS build in the game at the moment this build is easy to play does insane damage is Uber survivable as all the juicy Mesmer goodness and has enough blocks in distorts to make tank builds blush remember back to when power mechanesque was the top of the DPS pile was super easy to play and everyone was mad well this is better than that so go log in grab your Mesmer make this build and watch as your DPS troubles just wash away thank you all so much for watching it's been an absolute pleasure to bring you these build guides and we're nowhere close to done leave a like And subscribe for some more sweet sweet Guild Wars 2 content and I'll catch you all next time

Channel: ConnorConCarne

Views: 27,592

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Id: qFCkDRZoqMg

Length: 17min 18sec (1038 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Training-Accident-36]

This is really great presentation, I'll comment on a few things I noticed or would want to add (and even though you might not want to include it in a Virtuoso guide, maybe it interests you personally since you seem to be a fan of the build :D):

1. While it's true that the build generally works at range, you still lose some amount of DPS if you play ranged. Krait Rune is a Melee effect, so is your F5 shatter. For your Dagger skills you run the risk that they might not always be hitting, especially your Dagger 2 is fanning out a bit too much when cast at range. Especially against targets that are not fully standing still, I recommend being as close to the boss as possible. When you showed AI dashing from the center to the wall, your Focus 5 that you cast on her while she was in the center actually ended up going afk because she walked out of range. So boss movement etc is definitely something you have to keep in mind.
2. Bladesong Harmony and Bladesong Sorrow actually deal almost the same amount of damage. It used to be different back when Bladesong Sorrow dealt extra bleeding damage, but these days they have basically the same damage outside of the confusion ticks. The reason we can prioritize Bladesong Sorrow is that the Ammunition from Bladesong Harmony lets you stockpile it for a bit, so not pressing it off CD won't be losing you Bladesong Harmony casts. Both are buttons that just do 40k damage :)
3. For Signet of Midnight I would remark that it's your only stunbreak. If you would be cc'ed for 4 seconds (getting yourself bubbled at Largos, for example), it is better to just instantly break free so you can keep attacking.
4. While Null Field can do the trick for pulsing boon removal, Phantasmal Disenchanter would probably be a better idea for most instances where you need Boon Strip. It costs you far less DPS as it actually does a fair bit of damage as well (2 Bleeding Stacks + some Power damage). It's also AoE boon strip.
5. Bladeturn Requiem, due to its very long cast time of 1.3 seconds, is is actually only barely better than autoattacking. (Its effective DPS per Casttime is around 24k, wheras autohits have around 18k, F3 also has 18k, and everything else, starting with Dagger 3, is above 35k.) I would say if you want to make the build easier to understand, this is the first thing you cut out. Perfect use of the skill is probably +500 DPS or so.
6. Deadly Blades buff, no matter how bad you are at maintaining Deadly blades, will probably be at least around 80% uptime. Shatters naturally separate from each other, because you have to wait for restocking blades, so good uptime is already guaranteed. What that means is you always have 4% of the buff available, and the advice to "space out shatters" can only improve the uptime from 4% to 5%. In other words, this piece of advice is worth 300 DPS or so. What's worse about it is that you are basically telling people to delay hard hitting skills. So ultimately, trying to play for good Deadly Blades uptime is probably a DPS loss for most people. In the Benchmark I achieve 100% uptime of the buff by filling with F3 and F4 which are no real DPS gains over autoattacking, so it doesn't matter that those are delayed. But starting to delay your F2 or F1 for DB uptime is not good.
7. Not sure I agree with the conclusion of this being better than Mechanist. At least damage wise, Mechanist at its most broken was ahead of this :) But Distortion is busted, so maybe you are right.

Don't be discouraged by this long list of nitpicking, I just watch Condi Virtuoso guides for fun and try to find things I disagree with :D And you know it's a good guide when my criticism is essentially "you are putting emphasis on things that offer only 300 extra DPS in a newbie guide, that might be distracting them"! I really like the visual, clear presentation, and nothing you are saying is wrong. Well done!

[u/ConnorConCarne]

Condi Virtuoso is one of the highest damaging builds in the game, is super easy to play, has all the great Mesmer utility, does all its damage from range and will simply make your life better. After bouncing around trying to find a go-to DPS spec for a while. This one just simply clicked and after a few minutes on the golem, we were up and running.

[u/neok182]

Love all these virtuoso builds I just really wish there was a way to disable the floating daggers when out of combat. My biggest turn off for the class.

[u/ZydrateVials]

I wanna try this but can't afford a viper set right now.

[u/karlson98]

Thumbnail says "Easy 38k dps". But that's not true, getting to those 38k dps is actually not simple at all. Doing the simple rotation will net you around 34-35k, you really have to squeeze the build for these last several thousand dps.

And if you decided to add that to your thumbnail, you could have included footage of you getting that dps, otherwise it looks like clickbait.

[u/Accomplished_Spirit3]

Checks out