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Need Help with Rune Choices for PVE Condi Mirage


chinnythehu.6832

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Hey all,

As title implies, I am currently running a Condi Mirage mostly for open world content. I am currently wearing exotic rabid gear (so no viper’s condi duration) To make up for my lack of Condi duration from armor, I turned to runes for help and saw Runes of Krait, Runes of Perplexity, Runes of Torment.

I don’t usually use the duelists in open world so the bleed duration from the Krait Runes wouldn’t be optimal with my play style which leaves the other 2.

I hate that the Runes of perplexity 3 piece is some random proc instead of more duration like Rune of Torment. They are both priced about the same on my server and I notice that my stacks of confusion and Torment are about the same after I finish my rotation. That being said, is it better to run Runes of Perplexity for the confusion duration or Runes of Torment for the Torment duration?

Thank you all for you time and responses!

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You're treading into a territory that most people don't go. There's a reason why we always recommend full viper gear with berserker runes: it works really well. A full viper mirage sits around 90% global condi duration without food, so we just buff our damage to the nines with berserker runes and call it a day. The damage output is good, and the direct damage buffs help as well. If you want to know what to do for a PVE Mirage, my advice first and foremost is to go full viper gear with berserker runes.

If you're worried about condi duration, you can go with x4 nightmare runes and x2 trapper runes, but I again must insist that this option is strictly worse than just going full viper gear with berserker runes.

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If you are using rabid set and a scepter on a condi shatter build in open world, you can take Rune of Tormenting. This way, you'll have +45% condi duration on torment and +33% on confusion due to Illusions minor grandmaster trait. Grab Signet of Midnight utility and Superior Sigil of Malice and you'll have another +30% duration on both. To sum up, it's basically +75% duration on torment and +63% duration on confusion without a single piece of viper/trailblazer set. However, it's worth mentioning that Superior Rune of Tormenting and Superior Sigil of Malice are rather expensive, so it might be kind of difficult to afford them for a new player.

If you want some overall condition duration, you can run 4x Superior Rune of Nightmare or 4x Superior Runes of Traveler (Traveler Runes provide less condition duration but give extra 15% boon duration) + 2x Superior Runes of Trapper, although you need to be lvl 400 in Armorsmithing to craft Trapper runes (not sure if there's any other way to get them).

If you don't want Condition Duration runes, your best choices are probably Superior Runes of Berserker or Superior Runes of Renegade, but you need Viper or Trailblazer set then, because pve Condi builds are underwhelming without condi duration.

The cheapest option for Rabid/Dire is Superior Runes of Undead as they give you bonus condi damage based on your toughness, and with these sets you'll have quite a bit of it. However, this rune isn't very good, so you'll have to replace it with something better as soon as possible.

Also, always remember to have Signet of Midnight and Signet of Domination on your utility bar as a condi mesmer. Their passives are free condi duration and condi damage.

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  • 1 month later...

@bart.3687 said:If you are using rabid set and a scepter on a condi shatter build in open world, you can take Rune of Tormenting. This way, you'll have +45% condi duration on torment and +33% on confusion due to Illusions minor grandmaster trait. Grab Signet of Midnight utility and Superior Sigil of Malice and you'll have another +30% duration on both. To sum up, it's basically +75% duration on torment and +63% duration on confusion without a single piece of viper/trailblazer set. However, it's worth mentioning that Superior Rune of Tormenting and Superior Sigil of Malice are rather expensive, so it might be kind of difficult to afford them for a new player.

Is rabid the best set if you don’t have access to viper/trailblazer, or would you recommend another exotic (dire, rampager, carrion, etc.)? Which weapons in addition to scepter should be used?

Also, can you give specific trait lines for a mirage condi build for solo open world? Thanks in advance for any info.

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@Ouija.1684 said:

@bart.3687 said:If you are using rabid set and a scepter on a condi shatter build in open world, you can take Rune of Tormenting. This way, you'll have +45% condi duration on torment and +33% on confusion due to Illusions minor grandmaster trait. Grab Signet of Midnight utility and Superior Sigil of Malice and you'll have another +30% duration on both. To sum up, it's basically +75% duration on torment and +63% duration on confusion without a single piece of viper/trailblazer set. However, it's worth mentioning that Superior Rune of Tormenting and Superior Sigil of Malice are rather expensive, so it might be kind of difficult to afford them for a new player.

Is rabid the best set if you don’t have access to viper/trailblazer, or would you recommend another exotic (dire, rampager, carrion, etc.)? Which weapons in addition to scepter should be used?

My advice would be mixing sets to find out what fits your playstyle best. Personally, I used to run Rampager + Rabid in the past and had fun with it.

As for the weapons, it's up to you as well. I mentioned scepter in this post simply because I feel like it benefits from Runes of Tormenting more than Axe or Staff (Scepter inflicts only torment and confusion, while Axe trades some torment for bleeding, and Staff doesn't apply torment at all).Imo, Axe is the most viable and fun choice for primary weapon as it provides good damage (both condi and power)+cleave+fast clone summoning+elusiveness, with Scepter or Staff in your 2nd set.

Also, can you give specific trait lines for a mirage condi build for solo open world? Thanks in advance for any info.

For condi shatter build with low toughness: Mirage+Dueling+IllusionsFor condi shatter build with high toughness: Mirage+Chaos+IllusionsFor clone build: Mirage + Chaos + Dueling

I'd write a little more, but I'm ill and very tired, so sorry :tongue:

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  • 1 year later...

Viper with Torment runes is better if you are running a Axe/Torch + Staff with Mirage skill "Infinite Horizon" and Dualing skill "Deceptive Evasion" - the combos and burst you can pull off are really easy as you can chain them in many different ways. The problem is you do need to evade skillfully going toe to toe with Axe/Torch and 15.9k HP.

If you are talking about full Kiting with Staff/Sceptor/Pistol - than you need to be using Viper Stats as Trailblazer will heavily handicap the sceptor and pistol. But if you are using Axe/Torch... well this is debatable. You dont need power with Staff/Axe/Torch, and the precision is only really useful for the Vigor and bleed procs on the dualing traits - these are not huge when you consider the Chaos trait buffs from your shatters. In this case you could opt to go with Trailblazer stats, but I wouldnt add torment runes, nightmare runes, or zerk runes with these... I would add Undead Runes along with the Chaos Trait skill to convert a total of 14% toughness to condition damage.

Trailblazer + Axe/Torch/Staff + Undead Runes + Chaos Skill (Chaotic Transferance +7% toughness to condi) + Mirage skill Infinite Horizon + Dualing skill (Deceptive Evasion) = Extremely Strong Tank with Highest Condition Damage and lots of evasive abilities. Yes you can solo Pretty much anything with this kind of build. Downside is you compromise slightly on total condi damage (condi+expertise), and dont bother using sceptor/pistol anymore as they require power to be useful.

Or

Viper + Axe/Torch/Staff + Torment Runes as these weapon skills primarily do torment and you'll have a greater damage output overall with less condition damage stats but substituted by the expertise. This also allows you to swap in the Sceptor/pistol combo for breakbars and high damage to single targets which is probably a better option than the axe/torch as its smarter to full Kite from distance with the low HP squishy build.

For Fractals.... the "Thats not a meta build" trolls will want you to run the Viper set, and for some bosses with breakbars that pistol does come in handy. But you do die more and certainly so if you try to solo some of them - whereas the trailblazer setup can solo them (just takes longer).

Overall I started with the trailblazer set and it was more fun... i mean you're like a God, nothing can kill you and you can melt anything overtime. With that build you can travel the map and not fear death....ever. I switched to the Viper build due to high level fracs and with a bit more proficiency in rotations and movement you can 'make-do' in most PvE situations. In saying that, alot of people are downed in boss fights and it's nice to heal them while your 40 stacks of torment are doing the killing for you.

Personally, I'm gonna switch back to Trailblazer and Undead Runes - wear the dps compromise but enjoy being that Hero that comes along and saves the day :)

As a sidenote - it would be interesting to see a Plagedoctor build with the same chaos trait skills as this will proc expertise from both the concentration conversion, and Boon stacking which adds 2% each boon and 2% expertise aswel. Although I think it would limited to group fights only to rely on others to provide the longterm boons to proc the damage, and im not going to grind the map currency to test it.

From Trailblazer to Viper.... going back to Trailblazer.

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@"Synco.8203" said:Viper with Torment runes is better if you are running a Axe/Torch + Staff with Mirage skill "Infinite Horizon" and Dualing skill "Deceptive Evasion" - the combos and burst you can pull off are really easy as you can chain them in many different ways. The problem is you do need to evade skillfully going toe to toe with Axe/Torch and 15.9k HP.

If you are talking about full Kiting with Staff/Sceptor/Pistol - than you need to be using Viper Stats as Trailblazer will heavily handicap the sceptor and pistol. But if you are using Axe/Torch... well this is debatable. You dont need power with Staff/Axe/Torch, and the precision is only really useful for the Vigor and bleed procs on the dualing traits - these are not huge when you consider the Chaos trait buffs from your shatters. In this case you could opt to go with Trailblazer stats, but I wouldnt add torment runes, nightmare runes, or zerk runes with these... I would add Undead Runes along with the Chaos Trait skill to convert a total of 14% toughness to condition damage.

Trailblazer + Axe/Torch/Staff + Undead Runes + Chaos Skill (Chaotic Transferance +7% toughness to condi) + Mirage skill Infinite Horizon + Dualing skill (Deceptive Evasion) = Extremely Strong Tank with Highest Condition Damage and lots of evasive abilities. Yes you can solo Pretty much anything with this kind of build. Downside is you compromise slightly on total condi damage (condi+expertise), and dont bother using sceptor/pistol anymore as they require power to be useful.

Or

Viper + Axe/Torch/Staff + Torment Runes as these weapon skills primarily do torment and you'll have a greater damage output overall with less condition damage stats but substituted by the expertise. This also allows you to swap in the Sceptor/pistol combo for breakbars and high damage to single targets which is probably a better option than the axe/torch as its smarter to full Kite from distance with the low HP squishy build.

For Fractals.... the "Thats not a meta build" trolls will want you to run the Viper set, and for some bosses with breakbars that pistol does come in handy. But you do die more and certainly so if you try to solo some of them - whereas the trailblazer setup can solo them (just takes longer).

Overall I started with the trailblazer set and it was more fun... i mean you're like a God, nothing can kill you and you can melt anything overtime. With that build you can travel the map and not fear death....ever. I switched to the Viper build due to high level fracs and with a bit more proficiency in rotations and movement you can 'make-do' in most PvE situations. In saying that, alot of people are downed in boss fights and it's nice to heal them while your 40 stacks of torment are doing the killing for you.

Personally, I'm gonna switch back to Trailblazer and Undead Runes - wear the dps compromise but enjoy being that Hero that comes along and saves the day :)

As a sidenote - it would be interesting to see a Plagedoctor build with the same chaos trait skills as this will proc expertise from both the concentration conversion, and Boon stacking which adds 2% each boon and 2% expertise aswel. Although I think it would limited to group fights only to rely on others to provide the longterm boons to proc the damage, and im not going to grind the map currency to test it.

From Trailblazer to Viper.... going back to Trailblazer.

I have nothing to add, just want to say, nice write up. Very helpful.

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Just a reminder that @Blood Red Arachnid.2493 gave advice in late 2017. @bart.3687 posted a few months later.Since then, runes & sigils have changed.


Personally, in this game, I'd never choose a defensive stat unless (a) it's a support role for which the stat is needed (toughness to draw aggro of certain foes or healing power for, well, healers) or (b) there's some specific niche that I'm trying to fill (e.g. more durability in WvW). Even when power isn't important, precision usually is, so for PvE I'd choose Viper's over Trailblazer's for that reason alone.

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