Fragility+Virulence madness

Awesome report EinValentine. Glad that it's working well for you. Perhaps you'll get more group invites as more PvE players learn of the class' destruction skills.

Yezah... as I said in the first post, I went to the International District Team Arena in Droknar's with seven other players who also wanted to test it out. It was clear that when a Condition was down and Virulence was applied, three Fragility numbers would pop up instead of the expected two (for Disease and Weakness). I had other theories, like Deep Wound's Fragility damage coming late since Fragility never shows it with numbers, but I couldn't fully understand it without seeing what my target sees.

So I brought my build to the Team Arena with some friends and ran the tests... the person I applied it to took jpg shots and we all clearly saw the results later on - Poison is applied as the last Condition with Virulence. We also verified that Deep Wound triggers Fragility damage, but only the victim sees the numbers pop up (again, a jpg showed this).

So now its not even debatable anymore. As long as you don't start with Weakness, Disease of Poison, you'll get the full evil benefits from the Fragility+Virulence combo as I've described. BTW, I've seen variations of this build a lot more since last I posted here... as a result I now carry Hex Breaker with me instead of Illusion of Weakness. It helps vs. all kinds of hexes of course, but this build is the one I fear the most.

Poor build.
Before I purchased GW, I came up with this build and worked to it. Within a week of having it, this is all I did in the PVP arena's and I don't think anyone caught on. However, I must say that this build is easily countered by any careful opponent. I would suggest the following.

Illusion - 12+1+3=16
Domination - 11+1 = 12
Curses - Dump the rest in here - Should give you like 5 or 6 I beleive

Cast in this order
Parasitic bond - quick cast and cheap - good to counter hex breakers
Fragility
Conjure Phantasm- put on to protect against single hex removal
Phantom Pain
Shatter Delusions
Virulence
Leech Signet or Power Drain (I used to use Power Drain)

Last slot I usually carried a Res Sig.

This build is superior to the one listed because it counters any kind of hex removal while giving HP Degen at the same time the damage is being done. Try it out :P

this is the build i am currently running:

fragility
phantom pain
shatter delusions
virulence {e}
energy burn
cry of frustration
distortion
illusion of weakness

6+1(7) - Fast Casting
12+2+1(15) - Illusion Magic
11+2(13) - Domination Magic
2 - Death Magic

however, i find that this is just simply not enough damage after the fragility-virulence combo followed up by energy burn has been completed. does anyone have any tips on anything i can change around in order to make this an almost guaranteed kill, save the obvious counters?

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Bring 1 rez signet. U can easily kill the mesmer by now.

Well, to stop casters and such from casting, why not use power drain? Replenishes most if not all of your energy when you use it to stop their cast. And that 1 extra second is all you really need to finish executing the combo. I say it is a poor build because I tried for about a month to find the most effective and unstoppable way to do this. The other choice of mine for the build was using clumsiness or backfire and that usually added that extra punch to the combo to garuntee a kill.

I rarely use this combo anymore because I have realized that any decent monk would simply heal the person once their health drops below 75% (A reversal + divine favor would do the trick) and it is an inefficient way to use energy to kill someone. I'm sure that this build will become unpopular in the near future when people realize what it is and that all you need is a simple smite hex or a draw conditions once the deep wound has kicked in.

I've been screwing around in the random teams matchups with Frag/Virulence and have found a place in my heart for Ethereal Burden.

Why? It's dual purpose, it has both a worthwhile effect when cast (the snare) and over time is actually a net energy gain to use.

It also helps to get warriors off my back. I don't know how it goes in more organized fights, but in the random machups I practically always have some obnoxious warrior on my butt all the time 'til he's dead. Distortion is often simply not enough, particularly not if they are packing spells in their secondary. Ethereal Burden gives me some breathing room and helps my energy management. It is also good for dealing with those idiot players that run around long after the match has been decided just to irritate the winning team.

I find that often at the opening of the battle one of the enemy will charge forward hoping to get off some ability or another with the intent to retreat immediately afterward. You can dump Ethereal on them then to mess that up. Then you can unload the frag sequence on someone, by which time Ethereal has worn off or been broken and you get back a very nice chunk of energy just in time to use your combo again.

Its not perfect by any means, but I've found it quite helpful.

A few questions:

1. Hex removals: is there a fixed rule as to which hex a removal spell gets rid of if its target is under multiple hexes? For example, is it always the last one applied, or the one that's been there the longest?

2. Phantom Pain: why don't you cast this BEFORE Fragility? It lasts for 10 secs, so you can easily get off Fragility while its degenerating your enemy, so he will already have Fragility on him by the time PP expires (or is removed) and the ensuing Deep Wound will trigger Fragility.

3. Fragility and conditions: if you are already suffering from a condition, will Fragility trigger again if THE SAME CONDITION is reapplied before the previous one's expiration? (I know you're going to say "why would you want to reapply it?", but I don't, I'm just asking to find out how it works, as your target may be a Monk with Martyr or something).

4. Am I right in guessing that this build isn't very effective against Monks with strong condition-removal spells, as the health healed by the condition removals will mostly offset the Fragility damage?

5. Does anyone know if the Poison caused by Virulence is an intentional, undocumented feature, or whether it's just a bug and only a matter of time until it's fixed?

6. Is there a way to tell Fragility has been removed apart from the numbers not appearing when you recast Virulence?

And finally:
7. Wouldn't this build be 400% more effective if you tag-teamed with a Necro to inflict all those conditions instead of doing it yourself? This would:
a. free up at least 2 skill slots on your skill bars, for those vital defense, interrupt, or energy-stealing spells (pick your flavour).
b. prolong the effect of fragility, as a Necro can put a 25" Bleeding on the target and recast Virulence until they're dead (in the unfortunate event the target should recover from the Deep Wound before you've finished them off, thereby gaining health, or has been healed by enemies)
c. spam Parasitic Bond to lower the chances of Fragility being removed
d. Spread the conditions over the whole enemy party with Plague Sending, spamming the enemy monks with "I've got Poison on me!" messages (potentially confusing them as to who the Fragility target is) and putting them in a lose-lose situation: if they use Martyr, they'll trigger Fragility, if they keep healing your Fragility target they're wasting their energy and letting the rest of the group lose health from Conditions, and if they remove Fragility (the smartest option, if they can remove it), they still have all the conditions to take care of, and then all the health already lost to heal (by the whole party, not just the Fragility target), leaving them with probably zero energy.

1. Hex removal will always take away the most recent one that's ben cast on the target. That's why the starter in this setup (Fragility+Phantom Pain) is so successful in getting around most hex removal attempts.

Fragility comes out in .7 seconds with decent Fast Cast stats.... if you throw it at a target who's already in the middle of, say, a 2-second spell, you will recover (with .75 seconds aftercast) before he does since he has aftercast too. Now you immediately begin throwing out Phantom Pain. Assuming it's not interrupted, you can get it on him in about 1.4 seconds. From the end of HIS aftercast he has about a second or so to cast a hex removal on Fragility before PP snags him.

The result if he's late? He'll remove PP instead and a Deep Wound will form and take away 100 health points and reduce his healing by 20% for up to 20 seconds. Not only that, Virulence WILL immediately be cast (.7 spell) and here comes all the Condition damage that follows, as he now has four of them afflicting him, all triggering Fragility damage.

It is not an easy thing at all to use a hex removal as your main anti Fragility defense. If you can't mass heal through it, you need Hex Breaker or an interrupt for the most consistent results. You have a second or less to get it off befor PP connects, which eliminates most of the Monk's 2-3 second options like Remove Hex. Another Mesmer with FC points can use Shatter or Inspired Hex because of a .7 or less cast time. Mesmer secondaaries using these are cutting it to the wire. No, hex removal isn't impossible, but fairly difficult in most cases.

2. I do change around my cast times actually for various reasons. Try putting Back Fire after PP and if they remove BF they not only take 120 damage from it, tPPs -60 degen and its -100 point Deep Wound means they have taken -280 damage BEFORE Fragility or Virulence are even part of the picture!You are also spamming the wand during that time (average -15 every 1.25 seconds) which adds up more damage. The opponent may be on his last 35% health when the DW is formed, and a Fragility scast at 8-seconds allow you to Virul them just as you are able too for the win.

Play around with all kinds of variations, or even team up with a Necro or Warrior to hunt enemies that already have Conditions on them.

3. No,, Fragility never re-triggers when a repeated Condition is cast before the old one expires.

4. There are better ways for a Mesmer to deal with Monks. Mesmers can be just as tough to kill with this setup if they are half-way decent. That leaves four other classes that absolutely need their Monk if they don't have the right secondary. You can't kill 'em all so it is still pretty effective in many ways.

For instance, Say if three Fragility+Virulence MesNecs were in the Team Arenas with a competant Monk teammate. By laying down Fragility combos on three enemies (including a Monk if they have two), you are creating enough spike havok that can beat many different teams even if they have healing. With other Mesmer skills built in (interrupts, Diversion, Back Fire, etc.) It isn't an eeasy thing to cure three team members (and/or yourself) simultaneously at the brink of death. Not unstoppable, I don't mean to imply that, but a pretty strong group indeed.

5. I think it's just not listed. It's understandable to see something accidently kept out, but not accidently put in IMHO. Besides, we sent our findings with photos to Arena.net - they could've easily fixed it if it were a glitch. Because it can be stopped with planning on a build, no need to adjust it. I hope they simply update the descrip.

6. Only if its the single hex on the enemy. If the pink marker is gone, then Fragility is gone. Don't worry, if PP was successfully cast, it is extremely likely to still be there because of the Last In First Out rule described above.

7. Oh, this is definitely a strong enough setup to get some decent team mate action going. The sky's the limit on how you plan it out. The Mesmer can concentrate on Fast Cast points even to minimize the extended hex cast times under NR in play modes like HoH. Using mantra of Concentration to ward off Choking Gas interrupts and the like, you can contribute easily with 30E of 4 second casting (under NR): Fragility - Phantom Pain - Shatter Delusions. The Necro can then apply Virulence and you both are free to speed up the damage. He may even have Arcane Echo set up on Virulence to apply it again in three seconds, while applying Bleeding as you mention. Many options exist.

where is virlulence? ive searched the forzen forest and searched for elite skill locations but i still cant find it

The bosses don't always appear in the same place, and sometimes not at all. Next time you go there you'll probably find him.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply! Didn't know that stuff about how hex removal worked - I assume the last on-first off rule applies to conditions as well?
Spam-casting Arcane Echo/Virulence sounds like a decisively EVIL combo!

The reasons this skill build is so popular and powerful is because of the damn armor ignoring damage this thing produces. I've done my own run of this build using energy denial as my backup. It's a very energy hungry build and I found myself just emptying out enemy monks and especially enemy eles with it. Warriors are funny as I'll just clobber the one hitting me with Virulence so his dmg becomes crap [yay weakness] and simply run around with disease and then Plague Touch.

At the heart, this is a conditions build so running plague sending or touch just hurts that much more... ^_^

Actually, -35E to potentially do 80%-100% damage makes it a pretty energy efficient setup. Plus, with natural energy regen during a sequence, by the time you hit Virulence you should have only spent a net 22E to 25E. Not too bad at all.

I've began to see more and more of these silly builds in GvG. It's really stupid, since hex removal, condition removal, or signet of humility own your face. Personally, I just pack signet of humility and laugh at these silly mes's in arena. In real games we just remove the stupid hex.

The DPS is insane but the ease of countering it, the problem with kiting/target switching, the cycle time and energy issues make this build a noob killing machine and not much else.

I've fought tons of these in random arenas. All I do is use the mend ailment button and it really speaks for itself.

listen guys the only time when Me/N fragility spike is only good is in GvG for taking out the flag runner and all the NPCs. Usually teams don't equip hexbreaker on their Runner (though many guilds are now starting to do so), so you have an easy target to kill, that will hurt the other team a lot.

Eternal Pariah uses this strategy, though I believe their Me/N has changed around a lot.

Anyway, a good skill set up to consider:

Phantasm, Fragility, Phantom Pain, Shatter, Virulence, Ethereal Burden, Tap, Arcane Echo.

A combo of Arcane echo with virulence will ensure your target is dead within 6 seconds.

Hmmm, a team of four with what looks to be one Fragility+Virulence build wins 50 games in Team Arenas before they quit (take a look at the Illusion gear).

So much for the claim by some that it's a cinch to stop in TA; another forum theory myth shot down. There can be well prepared teams on both sides of the fight, not just those defending it as we often see described in threads criticizing it. Average Fragility players can be easily handled (even they can be dangerous though), but in the hands of a smart player with good teammates it is downright evil.

As for the team build, there's likely some Cripple and Burning from the Rangers added to the Fragility cast I'd guess. Then again, maybe there's some other Illusion based MeNe build that can help get 50 wins that I don't know about.

most of the builds posted here are too front loaded and have no energy managment. itl run itself out of steam after the first go at the combo. and even then, it may not kill your target if they're experienced.

Lol, tell that to the teams I just faced since my last post. I dusted off my build, not having played it in two weeks as I tried other things and sure enough, the wins came quickly. By my third group, (with a Mo/Ne, Wa/Ra, and WaMo), we were getting flawless wins with ease. We were closing in on twenty wins when two of them had to leave. One of them left too late and we couldn't get a free replacement for the next match so we just all quit.

If a smart player is playing well, energy management is not an issue. There is no "steam" that's run out in actual play unless the player is just spamming attacks with no purpose. Half the time the Phantom Pain+Shatter Delusions combo isn't needed since Conditions form all over the place from other sources I find. Waiting for skills to recharge is usually the bigger issue, not energy.

When my combo is like this fragility- phantom- shatter- virulence there should be another -32 dmg when phantom pain ends canceled with shatter or im wrong?

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yea but mend ailment heals for x amount for the rest of the conditions. So say you have deep wound, +3 more conditionns that virulence gives you then simply use mend ailment which heals u for 3x. As a W/mo with my prot prayers at 10 i heal for i believe 44. Fragility does 35dmg around i believe. So at least i survive and then the recharge is laughable. I just go over and beat them down with my might axe

Real Thanks x 1000 to thread-starter !


i think this build is fragile against mass degen
thinking of replace IOW with Hex Breaker


i will leave more comment/improvement after more test

Thanks again for ur kind share

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Therm - I ran tests at the same time we determined Poison was part of Virulence. Deep Wound DOES trigger Fragility. You just don't see the number pop up, but my friend saw it on him (the target) and took a jpeg to prove it.

Entropy - all that you've brought up can be dealt with too. Diversion or a well timed Shame cast can stop Mend Ailments. Distortion avoids a lot of Axe swings.

pearhk - You're welcome. My current build always has Hex Breaker in it. Works wonders vs. other Fraggers.

Yukito - Plague Touch will never be a consistent answer. After Fragility + PP cast (kite for degen and space), Shatter Delusions+Virulence is a 1.7 second total cast (with aftercast and Fast Cast figured in). And if PP is allowed to degen to the Deep Wound naturally, Plague Touch takes .75 seconds and needs melee range, while Virulence takes .7 (with decent Fast Cast points) and can be cast from aggro range.

I played this build with a necro/mesmer for a while, just for fun. I know it's really a mesmer/necro build. After abit of playing around I got quite good with it. In my final build I found that using echo with viulence worked great. I was able to get 3-4 virulence spikes in 20 secs, giving over 800 damage.

When virulence ends after x secs there should be another 3 x 3x dmg for each condition that ends right? I noticed some dmg at the end but there re no numbers so cant be sure if its 3x or just one single spike for all three conditions. What sux in this game is that i cant fight with who i want. Everything is random and there is no way to test anything

virulence only triggers when there's a previous condition, the only thing i see on ur list is phantom pain which has a 10 second lag

It's really not that uber - I have a different flavor that runs w/o hexes and provides defense I like a lot more than this, AND I can take out those running this.

I'm not going to post it in detail but my fave is a E/N right now.

Yes I don't even have hex breaker (which shuts this build down) but I have other ways to mitigate/deal with these bombers/recover health AND mana.

It's a nice build but it's pretty obvious/regular now and it's always enjoyable to drop them as they try to get off their 4 spells.

Good build.

I got killed last night by this build in the random arena, and I didn't even know what happened. All I saw was all these conditions and the next thing I know was I only have 50 heath left with bunch of -34 (fragility) over my head.

That triggered me to do a little search with fragility and here I am

Now I kinda know how to counter this . (Btw I am a R/Mo)

Overall, this build does crazy spike damage if everything executes as planned and to someone who's not prepared (like me ).

Its not workig so good at random arenas since almost everyone knows how to stop the combo. Ive started to use power leak and leach signet to interrupt the interrupting skills but its working only against person that im attacking at the moment (i can see what hes doing), when someone else (third person) is trying to disturb me i cant do much about that. I find IW me/w bulid veeery powerful. The only way to stop it is shatter enchantment which as a spell can be interrupted With disortion im kicking warriors/rangers asses as well. However frag mesmer is freaking lethal when used properly

fragility scriptkiddies are the cheapest cookie cutter build ever. Cant play 2 matches in random arenas without coming across a wannabe fragility poser trying to prey on noobs for a quick kill. Too bad all of my pvp chars are designed to run right through them and they usually quit the game early before they die.

If interruption is the problem, bring in Mantra of Concentration/Resolve.

Mantra would leave you in deep energy debt. Have fun wanding while the interrupt rangers chain their disrupts on you . I guess better you than the monk though?

I lost energy, the opponent lost a life. Why do people here become paralyzed everytime a new FotM comes along? Yes, Rangers interrupt with damage; keep working on solutions instead of waving the white flag.