Viper armor for Mesmer?

From what I can tell, Viper's armor seems to be the go to nearly all the time. But between viper, vigilant, and trailblazer, I'm not sure which set of stats I should go with for my Chronomancer. What I'm looking for is to find the right balance between damage, and survivability. Right now, I die in one hit. Sometimes two. And the armor stats I have now don't seem to be helping to prevent that. (cavalier) I don't know if vigilant, and trailblazer would be better.

However, I assume most everyone I'm fighting against in wvw is using viper stats. And everyone can take several hits from me, if not being outright immune to everything I throw out. (Still don't know what's causing that) Unless I'm wrong in my assumption Viper's stats might be good enough to let me get away with taking a few hits, and not lose out on some damage output. I've spent half the day trying to look this up on my own but almost all the info is years old, and not giving me the answers I'm looking for.

Any insight or suggestions would help a lot. Thanks.

Viper go to? Hahaha thats PvE, not WvW. Trailblazer/dire is what everyone run, full condi tanks, heavy sustain is where its at. People that run glass condi usually get pounded to the ground by power builds unless the skill difference is so great they would have won regardless.

Go viper, get deleted in one hit and then cry for nerfs of the Coalescence of Ruin. Works all the time.

If you go viper is to maximize your damage; if you're running around in full glass cannon stats wishing to gank people as fast as possible you don't have the right to moan about being squishy, specially in a class so rich in tools to disengage and reset matches or to prevent damage. LTP or use a more sustainable approach to your stat slection.

If you became more tanky you'd probably just die in 2-3 hits instead of 1. Damage output in WvW is crazy high ever since specialisations were introduced so you can't rely on the toughness/armour stat to sequester much damage at all anymore.

What you really need is Protection. This is so much more important than toughness now. If I simply use the Chaos specialisation on my Mesmer, my survivability increases massively due to reliable access to Protection. Also...don't get hit. Never actually get hit when playing Mesmer in WvW or you dead.

The problem with viper is you don’t have enough power damage to chunk off a significant amount of health in a combo and you generally only apply 2-3 which most decent builds can handle easily. Added to that is that generally traits for condition builds and power builds are mutually exclusive, the nearest you can get to a true hybrid would be duelling, illusions and mirage however even then you will usually do garbage power damage.

Added onto this is you have the disadvantage of a power build in that you will die to a stray fart. As someone who runes full zerk a lot of my damage mitigation also comes from being able to punish mistakes with spikes of damage forcing someone to back off, but a viper build doesn’t spike damage.

If you want some hybrid pieces, grieving > viper (but don't go full - mix in some other stats such as cele trinkets as you'll need some sustain due to longer ttk compared with pure power).

Expertise is useless due to frequent cleanse - at least with ferocity you can land better crits in addition to condi.

Looks like it was a good thing I asked before making a decision on my own.

@SourCricket.7924 said:From what I can tell, Viper's armor seems to be the go to nearly all the time. But between viper, vigilant, and trailblazer, I'm not sure which set of stats I should go with for my Chronomancer. What I'm looking for is to find the right balance between damage, and survivability. Right now, I die in one hit. Sometimes two. And the armor stats I have now don't seem to be helping to prevent that. (cavalier) I don't know if vigilant, and trailblazer would be better.

However, I assume most everyone I'm fighting against in wvw is using viper stats. And everyone can take several hits from me, if not being outright immune to everything I throw out. (Still don't know what's causing that) Unless I'm wrong in my assumption Viper's stats might be good enough to let me get away with taking a few hits, and not lose out on some damage output. I've spent half the day trying to look this up on my own but almost all the info is years old, and not giving me the answers I'm looking for.

Any insight or suggestions would help a lot. Thanks.

Are you trying to roam or zerg or small man or what? If tying to roam your main problem is using chronomancer instead of mirage, mirage full power or full trailblazer will work, if you go tanky power on a mesrmer u are just using the class wrong cuz the main thing about power is to spike people down instantly your main defense is a strong offense, and your second line of defense is a ton of invulnerable skills you can chain and whatnot, going tanky on a mesmer makes no sense at all since you do have a nice baseline healthpool straight up, you either goo all out damage or full tank condi inbetween is not recommended. If you are trying to zerg tho u can try tank boon duration/share builds any commander will be happy to take you in.

Mesmer has built in sustain due to the many defensive options available to choose from. Grieving/Celestial is very effective for roaming if you don't want to run the power one-shot one trick pony and you don't want to bore yourself to death with condi tank.

@"Oozo.7856" said:

Come on, that's tons of hp. My record on the mirage is running away from a zerg I was flanking with 10 hp and surviving, only beaten so far by my weaver surviving with 4 hp.

(if you dont believe it lol. I never did get footage of the mesmer. Err well I did but I tossed it because the fight was boring to begin with)