Few questions about Mesmer/Virtuoso

[DarkSkysz.3521]

I am new to the class and was trying to find some raid builds to play with.

But then, I found some things I can't understand why.

All raids builds I saw are running sword/focus on subhand. Why no pistols?

Why there are traits like 'phantasmal fury' in the build? Don't you need one trait to make phantasm boons transfer over when they expire?

[Ombras.2853]

Sword/Focus offhand is the most used combination because Sword has the shortest cast time (hence, in a rotation you’ll often cast the Swordsman twice before switching to Focus) and Warden has the most hits, which means it will make trigger Bleeding the most. Phantasmal Fury, well, as I just mentioned, you wanted your Phantasms to crit because every crit triggers bleeding. I dunno why you would ever care about transferring boons in a raid squad, since you already have all boons covered. Raid composition =/= solo play.

[KeoLegend.5132]

Hello. Are you refering to power or Condi Virtuoso?

The reason Focus is BIS on Condi Virtuoso its because the Focus Phantasm hits like 20 times while the pistol hits like 5. So the "Bleed on Crit" effect applies more on the Focus Phantasm, thats why.

 

In power Virt you can play either Focus (high single target DMG) or Greatsword (higher AoE dmg)

[DarkSkysz.3521]

I did some testing and pistol phantom is applying 20 stacks of bleed always.

While sword/focus are random (crit chance based).

EDIT: Pistol is getting 100% crit because of the last update that chanced the duelist fury to aoe. The pistol phantom is getting fury from it and since focus 5 is not an atk, it do not proc fury, thats why I got less crits from focus.

This is the reason I started to think, why not pistol when its clearly easier to apply a lot more bleed stacks. Since sword is melee only and the phantasm can miss and focus is random target (adds can eat some dps).

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by DarkSkysz.3521

[Ombras.2853]

I already answered tho: in a rotation, you are able to cast Swordsman twice before swapping weapons, which results in a dps increase. Hence, you want Sword/Focus as your offhand weapons.

[Triptaminas.4789]

Sharper image trait in dueling trait tree, makes focus phantasm into bleed ramp, people forget the nature of its attack, so its counter intuitive for most, on why power based phantasm used in condi builds.

 

for second pair... fencer finness + short cd + skill 4- makes sword into only logical solution to further max out the bleed cannon, while maintaining survivability. 

 

People do not read the trait descriptions in attempt to find answers, and it shows. 

...

P.s Pistol guy need to do bit more testing. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DarkSkysz.3521]

On 7/4/2022 at 9:58 AM, Ugma.8104 said:

People do not read the trait descriptions in attempt to find answers, and it shows. 

 

Imagine if people also read the entire post instead of typing dumb things...

And if you can only survive using sword 4... you are bad.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

its benching ethics

builds from benches will always try to minimise rng if possible, which is why builds have to hit crit cap although sitting on 90-95% is totally fine as a personal choice if you can handle the non-crit occasions. condi ele for example can use lesser elementals, but benchers will avoid that like the plague because it makes performance vary wildly (and no one wants to wait 2mins before each attempt to spawn them in realistically either)

so in the same way, you are perfectly capable of trading 100% crit chance on phantasms for xtra bleed on pistol if you wish, since its still 75% chance that phantasms (without the trait) will still bleed anyway. but because bleeds arent guaranteed if you do this, youll probably be playing off by skill priority rather than a fixed rotation which raid builds like to follow