Virtuoso, explain to me, pls <3

[OlsenSan.2987]

So, I am a returning player, I haven't played actively since 2020. I believe I've been online a few times since them to activate LWS4 episodes and Also IBS. With that being said, I had just recently (today) bought End of Dragons and got Virtuoso Spec maxed out, but I don't know... Is it better than mirage? Mirage has been my safe haven in this game. I didnt like Chronomancer that much back in the day, because I hardly play support and to be honest, I suck at it. Now, all I see people asking in groups is Qdps, Adps. While I used to be only DPS. I

nstead of looking for builds in snowcrows and rotations, I'd like if possible, from another experienced mesmer, to give me some idea about virtuoso. Builds, strength, weakness, best weapons to use. And then I can start from there. I'd be thankful 🙂

[zeyeti.8347]

hello, 

If you play a lot solo and like to wander around safely i would say mirage is a best pick with his survivability , self boon etc , but as you seem to know mirage i don't need to elaborate on it.

For virtuoso it's a much simplier version of all mesmer builds , not relying on clones but on ammo for your "shatters" to deal more damage , good thing about it is that when your target is down you don't loose those ammo (not like clones) and even out of combat they restack fast enough for you to have some for your next target , the way you win ammo is teh same way you win clones , so if a traitline says : "gain one clone if..." , you will win an ammo up to 5 max , but virtuoso has many more ways to win ammo than other mesmer specs trough his own traitline.

You can either play it as power or condi , power is pretty simple and tend to use dagger/sword and greatsword ,(but you can use any other power weapon that suits you , the difference in dps is not hige) and it is pretty simple to build (full zerk with some assassins pieces) virtuoso has also a bigger crit chance easily than any other mesmer spec , fury gives you +40% crit. chance instead of 25% and it's a base traitline 

Condi is a weird one where you need to look deep into traitlines cause the weapon used for it are dagger/sword and dagger/focus , two weapons who are normally power as none of them inflict condition directly , but virtuoso crit always proc bleed when use "sword tag skill" sword skill are all your dagger skill , and focus + sword are there to maximize the use on the trait : your phantasm apply bleed on crit . Normally your phantasm have same crit chance as you but they all benefit from fury enhanced trait so they have all 100% crit chance if stuffed correctly. If you want to eb sure a skill ahs the sword tag , you can hover on the skill tooltip and it is normally written.

that's why the condi build on virtuoso is weird to make because instead of running full viper (like most condi build) you play with a mix of sinister and rampager to max out the crit chance.

For the gameplay it's way more spammy than a mirage as your shatters recharge really fast and your ammo reload really fast , the shatters are most oriented trough damage , but you still got some utility , the more ammo you have the more your shatters will be efficient , just like clones.

f1 do power damage (and bleed if correct traitline selected , al shatters do that))   f2 is more condi oriented  f3 is a big cc who deal up to 250 breakbar dmg if used at full ammo , f4 is your basic distorsion (like all mesmer spec have) f5 is an aoe spin around you dealing decent damage but need to be close range to deal damage.

If you want open world solo build condi virtuoso is strong as you have life steal 3% with bleed (who is main source of damage for virtuoso thus you play with krait runes +50% bleed duration) and power pretty much blast everything who is not elite away. I would say it lack selfboon and the trait who are defensive kind of are lackluster as you need to dodge perefctly to have them active.

but for endgame content virtuoso is one of the safest pick , it has long range can use some utilities skill , like blink portal or more cc with a minor dps loss.

I may have missed some steps , if you have further questions feel free to ask. I am no master of virtuoso but i think i know well enough how this spec works.

Edited July 24 by zeyeti.8347

[Nash.2681]

No avid mesmer player here, but generaly I'd say, stick with what you feel comfortable. If you get along with mirage just fine- go for it. 

Virtuoso's popularity is based on two factors. First, it's easy and straight forward to play. Even I who plays Mesmer very, very rarely pulled 35k on cVirt yesterday trying it out just for curiosity. Second, it's a long range build making it even more easier to get along just fine. And while condi Mirage's benchmark is pretty much on par, it's way harder to pull off. But then again, if you're used to it, you might find it easier personally and then there's nothing wrong with sticking to Mirage.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

The strength of Virtuoso is that it's currently 1 of the very few specs that can condi DPS fully at range. This gives it several advantages: consistent DPS through ticking condi damage, and being virtually unaffected by forced split mechanics.

And what makes it even more special than other ranged condi DPS specs is that it doesn't even need the Utility Bar at all to do its damage, so it can bring the Mesmer's massive utility toolkit (Feedback/Portal/etc) to help with encounters with no problem. And being a Mesmer, it has plenty of built-in ranged CC when compared to many other DPS builds. It also has a very simple, straight-forward pattern of buttons. Even if you press buttons randomly, you'll hit 30k as long as you press something. And most of that damage is also naturally converted into your own self-sustain; some DPS builds don't have that healing luxury.

You can see how all of these things combined make it an extremely popular build. It doesn't top the benchmark, but in most encounters it'll probably be among the highest DPS. 

The downside is only that it's a condi DPS build. It means it's ill-suited for things with many fast phases, since you won't have enough time for all the conditions to tick.

[OlsenSan.2987]

On 7/24/2024 at 12:53 PM, zeyeti.8347 said:

hello, 

If you play a lot solo and like to wander around safely i would say mirage is a best pick with his survivability , self boon etc , but as you seem to know mirage i don't need to elaborate on it.

For virtuoso it's a much simplier version of all mesmer builds , not relying on clones but on ammo for your "shatters" to deal more damage , good thing about it is that when your target is down you don't loose those ammo (not like clones) and even out of combat they restack fast enough for you to have some for your next target , the way you win ammo is teh same way you win clones , so if a traitline says : "gain one clone if..." , you will win an ammo up to 5 max , but virtuoso has many more ways to win ammo than other mesmer specs trough his own traitline.

You can either play it as power or condi , power is pretty simple and tend to use dagger/sword and greatsword ,(but you can use any other power weapon that suits you , the difference in dps is not hige) and it is pretty simple to build (full zerk with some assassins pieces) virtuoso has also a bigger crit chance easily than any other mesmer spec , fury gives you +40% crit. chance instead of 25% and it's a base traitline 

Condi is a weird one where you need to look deep into traitlines cause the weapon used for it are dagger/sword and dagger/focus , two weapons who are normally power as none of them inflict condition directly , but virtuoso crit always proc bleed when use "sword tag skill" sword skill are all your dagger skill , and focus + sword are there to maximize the use on the trait : your phantasm apply bleed on crit . Normally your phantasm have same crit chance as you but they all benefit from fury enhanced trait so they have all 100% crit chance if stuffed correctly. If you want to eb sure a skill ahs the sword tag , you can hover on the skill tooltip and it is normally written.

that's why the condi build on virtuoso is weird to make because instead of running full viper (like most condi build) you play with a mix of sinister and rampager to max out the crit chance.

For the gameplay it's way more spammy than a mirage as your shatters recharge really fast and your ammo reload really fast , the shatters are most oriented trough damage , but you still got some utility , the more ammo you have the more your shatters will be efficient , just like clones.

f1 do power damage (and bleed if correct traitline selected , al shatters do that))   f2 is more condi oriented  f3 is a big cc who deal up to 250 breakbar dmg if used at full ammo , f4 is your basic distorsion (like all mesmer spec have) f5 is an aoe spin around you dealing decent damage but need to be close range to deal damage.

If you want open world solo build condi virtuoso is strong as you have life steal 3% with bleed (who is main source of damage for virtuoso thus you play with krait runes +50% bleed duration) and power pretty much blast everything who is not elite away. I would say it lack selfboon and the trait who are defensive kind of are lackluster as you need to dodge perefctly to have them active.

but for endgame content virtuoso is one of the safest pick , it has long range can use some utilities skill , like blink portal or more cc with a minor dps loss.

I may have missed some steps , if you have further questions feel free to ask. I am no master of virtuoso but i think i know well enough how this spec works.

I think your answer was perfect. Thanks so much, really!

I was about to start changing the stats on some spare ascended gear I have to create a condi oriented build for virtuoso to try it out, but after your reply, I have decided to go for the power build.

I think I will remain using my mirage for open world, since I feel very safe with it and since I am solo, I don't need to bother so much. But I was really looking for a new build for instanced dungeons/raids. And your reply was just perfect. And since I have many light gear with those prefixes, I won't need to have to craft anything. 

You explanation gave me a full scope of what to expect from virtuoso and its playstyle and it sounded very interesting to try it out. 👍

[OlsenSan.2987]

On 7/25/2024 at 9:31 AM, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

The strength of Virtuoso is that it's currently 1 of the very few specs that can condi DPS fully at range. This gives it several advantages: consistent DPS through ticking condi damage, and being virtually unaffected by forced split mechanics.

And what makes it even more special than other ranged condi DPS specs is that it doesn't even need the Utility Bar at all to do its damage, so it can bring the Mesmer's massive utility toolkit (Feedback/Portal/etc) to help with encounters with no problem. And being a Mesmer, it has plenty of built-in ranged CC when compared to many other DPS builds. It also has a very simple, straight-forward pattern of buttons. Even if you press buttons randomly, you'll hit 30k as long as you press something. And most of that damage is also naturally converted into your own self-sustain; some DPS builds don't have that healing luxury.

You can see how all of these things combined make it an extremely popular build. It doesn't top the benchmark, but in most encounters it'll probably be among the highest DPS. 

The downside is only that it's a condi DPS build. It means it's ill-suited for things with many fast phases, since you won't have enough time for all the conditions to tick.

Yeah I don't look down on benchmarks, but I also know that it is done in a stationary target, and it usually breaks rotation when you are fighting a real boss. And from what I could feel from your answer Virtuoso can pretty much maintain its dps in any situation. Thanks a lot for the insight, Now I have an idea of what to expect from this new spec.

[zeyeti.8347]

On 7/26/2024 at 6:58 PM, OlsenSan.2987 said:

Yeah I don't look down on benchmarks, but I also know that it is done in a stationary target, and it usually breaks rotation when you are fighting a real boss. And from what I could feel from your answer Virtuoso can pretty much maintain its dps in any situation. Thanks a lot for the insight, Now I have an idea of what to expect from this new spec.

well thats' the good point about virtuoso , you loose literally no damage on a moving target , the only skills that are affected by range are dagger 2 , you sword skill 5 who need to be cast on a non moving 2 sec target and f5 shatter who is melee , all the rest do 100% of his damage at range (just focus 5 has weird range on the pantasm i think) as condi virt.

As power you loose the same stated as above you have in common with condi virt. and the trait who increase your damage when in 300 range treshold +10% dmg, that's all. 

Virt is maybe one of the few specs where the most ppl are the closest to the actual benchmark. It becomes really intuitive when u start playing it more often and you will realise that a lot of cd really stick well in the rotation.

And icing on the cake , it's super shiny , with pink sword all over the place instead of those lame pink butterflys , that only for me is a good reason to play it , except chrono pits who are pure asmr to my ears 🤤.

[Jeyzer.1605]

Others have already given really good answers but I'll add one thing: WvW zergs. 

Clones are pretty useless in zergs since they'd just explore immediately under the AoE pressure, so you don't have the time to build clones up for a shatter or for Mirage DPS. Bladesongs don't have that restriction since they're not physical so you can launch them anytime, and they can be traited to be unblockable, which is a blessing in this reflect-infested boonball meta.

That point also applies for PvE content to some extent, where a lot of mobs will die before you could do anything with your clones. So you'd be spawning a clone and the target will die before you could use a few ambushes. Then you'll need to respawn another one for another mob. With blades, you can open the fight with a 5 blades bladesong for quick burst and any subsequent generated blade can be used on the next group of mobs.

Also, some corrections: 

On 7/24/2024 at 11:53 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

but virtuoso crit always proc bleed when use "sword tag skill" sword skill are all your dagger skill , and focus + sword are there to maximize the use on the trait : your phantasm apply bleed on crit .

Focus isn't considered a blade so does not benefit from Jagged Mind trait in Virtuoso afaik, but is still taken because is does 12 hits (more than Pistol which does 8 from the phantasm) and those apply bleed through Sharper Images.

On 7/24/2024 at 11:53 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

f3 is a big cc who deal up to 250 breakbar dmg if used at full ammo

Yeah that one is actually better on Mirage / Chrono because each daze is only 1/2s on those as well, but since they are applied separately, and the min breakbar damage per daze is 100, f3 deals 400 breakbar on Mirage and even more on Chrono due to the extra slow. The benefit though of Virt f3 is you can use it at range, and since it's blade based, you can open fights with it when you need quick breakbar damage rather than wait to have 3 clones up. 

On 7/25/2024 at 8:31 AM, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

The downside is only that it's a condi DPS build. It means it's ill-suited for things with many fast phases, since you won't have enough time for all the conditions to tick.

Thankfully for fast phases, you can use power Virtuoso which has higher burst than power Chrono / Mirage. Power Chrono has a narrow time range where it will outperform power Virt, but on 5-10s burst windows, and on 30-60s dps windows, I believe power Virt outperforms it, or at least is in a very similar range (Snowcrows shows less than 1% DPS difference between both).

On 7/28/2024 at 3:28 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

the trait who increase your damage when in 300 range treshold +10% dmg, that's all.

It's actually 600 range for +15%, so while not fully ranged, you don't have to be literally in front of the target to proc it, you can comfortably move around to dodge AoEs etc. 

Edited July 29 by Jeyzer.1605

[zeyeti.8347]

On 7/29/2024 at 11:16 PM, Jeyzer.1605 said:

It's actually 600 range for +15%

correction indeed it's 600 range , but +10% , +15 was from beta

[Teknomancer.4895]

Good answers here, so I'll just add that since Mirage seems to be your "comfort zone," there is a minor adjustment to your approach that takes a bit of getting used to. Mirage is more focused on keeping illusions up & active, so you're not really incentivized to hit the shatters quite as often as other specs. With Virtuoso, you really want to fire those shatters/bladesongs off pretty frequently since Virt tends to fill up the ammo faster. It's just a minor adjustment but it does take a little getting used to if you're coming from a "mostly Mirage" kind of perspective. Good luck!

[Tren.5120]

On 7/24/2024 at 11:54 AM, Nash.2681 said:

No avid mesmer player here, but generaly I'd say, stick with what you feel comfortable. If you get along with mirage just fine- go for it. 

Virtuoso's popularity is based on two factors. First, it's easy and straight forward to play. Even I who plays Mesmer very, very rarely pulled 35k on cVirt yesterday trying it out just for curiosity. Second, it's a long range build making it even more easier to get along just fine. And while condi Mirage's benchmark is pretty much on par, it's way harder to pull off. But then again, if you're used to it, you might find it easier personally and then there's nothing wrong with sticking to Mirage.

The degree of difficulty between the two isn't even in the same universe.

IMO, cVirt is the easiest DPS build in the game to play.  It has the lowest skill floor and the highest performance at the skill floor.

It's also pretty cheap to gear (Wizard's Vault doesn't give free Viper Ascended, IIRC).

If it were melee range, I think it would be more balanced - wholistically speaking.  I think it's IMBA given the range it can play at coupled with the numbers it puts up at the skill floor.

I honestly think it should be a 600 Range build.

It feels nice for a newbie to play, though I do think it can feel a bit unsatisfying once you get a bit better at the game and can handle a bit more complexity in the rotation.  But it performs so well that unless you need to bring more utility, it's hard to justify going from that to a Mirage or Chrono build.

Nothing wrong with "easy" builds.  There just need to be some balance applied to it.

Edited August 3 by Tren.5120