Guild Wars 2

50%+Herald is going to be (thankfully) dead. The need for so many pugs to have a herald piggybacking on them is finally going to be gone.

Now, I’ve run without chronos and quite honestly done pretty much the same. It’s a bit of a hit, but the extra space compensates well enough in different areas.

a 5:5 mirror comp with 2 chronos and druids will be overkill on heals, a lot of damage sacrificed and generally very little yield. With these updates, I think it’d be more viable to just drop the chrono and herald all together and replace it with 2 thieves or necros.

afrocrusade.4253:

replace it with 2 thieves or necros.

That is to say, if they don’t delete epidemic too

The post from gaile mentioned damage buffs to compensate.

Take your finger off the red button for now..

I can hardly imagine a damage buff for mesmers that lifts them to proper levels, but we’ll see.

CptAurellian.9537:

I can hardly imagine a damage buff for mesmers that lifts them to proper levels, but we’ll see.

IT may have been referring to rev dps too. She didn’t specify explicitly.
We also don’t know what the base share duration will be on SoI yet..

Just wait til we see what the numbers turn out like. along with whatever else gets changed.

Plenty on reddit saying it is capped to 6s.

Pompeia.5483:

Plenty on reddit saying it is capped to 6s.

Which would make it close to useless in Raids and the Raid Comp would shift to something stale if that happens.

Walhalla.5473:

Pompeia.5483:

Plenty on reddit saying it is capped to 6s.

Which would make it close to useless in Raids and the Raid Comp would shift to something stale if that happens.

Not really. Lets assume you can only get 6s per SoI usage even at 100% duration. Some quick math.

A full buff rotation is shield 5 (2×3s), well of action (6s), SoI x3 (cast, mimic cast, trait cast) all repeated twice. This means you’ll get 4×3s, 2×6s, 6×6s of quickness in an aoe. This produces 60s of quickness. Halfway through the cooldown of CS, you can do shield 5, well of action, and 2x SoI again for another 24s of quickness. In total this produces 80 seconds of quickness on a ~70 second cooldown.

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

Fay.2357:

Walhalla.5473:

Pompeia.5483:

Plenty on reddit saying it is capped to 6s.

Which would make it close to useless in Raids and the Raid Comp would shift to something stale if that happens.

Not really. Lets assume you can only get 6s per SoI usage even at 100% duration. Some quick math.

A full buff rotation is shield 5 (2×3s), well of action (6s), SoI x3 (cast, mimic cast, trait cast) all repeated twice. This means you’ll get 4×3s, 2×6s, 6×6s of quickness in an aoe. This produces 60s of quickness. Halfway through the cooldown of CS, you can do shield 5, well of action, and 2x SoI again for another 24s of quickness. In total this produces 80 seconds of quickness on a ~70 second cooldown.

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

I think this is the pertinent bit, there’s a lot of mediocre and average chronos around for PvE and the excessive quickness covers this nicely for the most part.

It may end up where most people do not run chrono as they can’t find someone who can properly move bosses while keeping up the quickness and alacrity. Though I would think with permanent alacrity you’d have an excess of quickness but we’re also assuming quickness stacking also doesn’t change.

They could reduce it to max 5 stacks of quickness which would further increase the difficulty of the rotation as you need to generate and share quickness when people will get low on stacks and keep topping up when they get low.

Either way we’ll have to wait and see but I dare say there’s many fingering the red button now.

Fay.2357:

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

Having to Mimic-cast SoI makes me barf a little on the inside, but I could see how that would maintain permanent quickness on a 5-person subgroup in spite of a heavy-handed nerf. Worth noting that having to run Mimic over a second well cuts into Alacrity uptimes, though.

Maybe with the damage boost mesmer will have a dps slot as a condi dps. Mesmer have a higher DPS as condi with 100% crit then most people think.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Fay.2357:

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

Having to Mimic-cast SoI makes me barf a little on the inside, but I could see how that would maintain permanent quickness on a 5-person subgroup in spite of a heavy-handed nerf. Worth noting that having to run Mimic over a second well cuts into Alacrity uptimes, though.

As far as I know they fixed phantasmal haste with shield phantasms so you will get permanent alacrity from 3 shield phantasms.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Fay.2357:

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

Having to Mimic-cast SoI makes me barf a little on the inside, but I could see how that would maintain permanent quickness on a 5-person subgroup in spite of a heavy-handed nerf. Worth noting that having to run Mimic over a second well cuts into Alacrity uptimes, though.

Yeah, mimic-SoI is a bit gross, but it works. It actually won’t cut down on alacrity at all for most cases though. The vast majority of alacrity uptime is maintained from the shield phantasm attacks. Dropping well of recall won’t impact uptime at all except in cases where you can’t be near the boss.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Maybe with the damage boost mesmer will have a dps slot as a condi dps. Mesmer have a higher DPS as condi with 100% crit then most people think.

Sorta…but no. See, mesmer is competitive condie dps on paper, but it translates extremely poorly into reality due to how the fights actually work. Lets look at the most extreme example: keep construct.

Fight begins, mesmer puts a phantasm on KC. Oh wait, now you have to kill the first statue. Mesmer puts a phantasm on the statue. Oh wait, that statue is now dead, you have to kill the second statue. Mesmer stands around awkwardly twiddling their thumbs because they ran out of phantasms to use. Oh wait, now you have 15 seconds to burst dps KC. Mesmer slowly puts up a couple phantasms and just barely starts getting their dps going by the time the burn phase ends.

Now, not all bosses are quite as bad as KC. Condie mesmer is actually fairly viable on VG for green circles, and semi-viable on matthias. However, pretty much every other encounter is just absolutely awful for it.

Fay.2357:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Fay.2357:

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

Having to Mimic-cast SoI makes me barf a little on the inside, but I could see how that would maintain permanent quickness on a 5-person subgroup in spite of a heavy-handed nerf. Worth noting that having to run Mimic over a second well cuts into Alacrity uptimes, though.

Yeah, mimic-SoI is a bit gross, but it works. It actually won’t cut down on alacrity at all for most cases though. The vast majority of alacrity uptime is maintained from the shield phantasm attacks. Dropping well of recall won’t impact uptime at all except in cases where you can’t be near the boss.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Maybe with the damage boost mesmer will have a dps slot as a condi dps. Mesmer have a higher DPS as condi with 100% crit then most people think.

Sorta…but no. See, mesmer is competitive condie dps on paper, but it translates extremely poorly into reality due to how the fights actually work. Lets look at the most extreme example: keep construct.

Fight begins, mesmer puts a phantasm on KC. Oh wait, now you have to kill the first statue. Mesmer puts a phantasm on the statue. Oh wait, that statue is now dead, you have to kill the second statue. Mesmer stands around awkwardly twiddling their thumbs because they ran out of phantasms to use. Oh wait, now you have 15 seconds to burst dps KC. Mesmer slowly puts up a couple phantasms and just barely starts getting their dps going by the time the burn phase ends.

Now, not all bosses are quite as bad as KC. Condie mesmer is actually fairly viable on VG for green circles, and semi-viable on matthias. However, pretty much every other encounter is just absolutely awful for it.

How about Xera and Sloth ? Even if it is just these 3, at least we could see a bit of mesmer DPS, just like you at least see Engi on VG. Being viable in 3 of 7 boss fights is ok i think. (Not counting Trio and Scort )

OnizukaBR.8537:

Fay.2357:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Fay.2357:

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

Having to Mimic-cast SoI makes me barf a little on the inside, but I could see how that would maintain permanent quickness on a 5-person subgroup in spite of a heavy-handed nerf. Worth noting that having to run Mimic over a second well cuts into Alacrity uptimes, though.

Yeah, mimic-SoI is a bit gross, but it works. It actually won’t cut down on alacrity at all for most cases though. The vast majority of alacrity uptime is maintained from the shield phantasm attacks. Dropping well of recall won’t impact uptime at all except in cases where you can’t be near the boss.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Maybe with the damage boost mesmer will have a dps slot as a condi dps. Mesmer have a higher DPS as condi with 100% crit then most people think.

Sorta…but no. See, mesmer is competitive condie dps on paper, but it translates extremely poorly into reality due to how the fights actually work. Lets look at the most extreme example: keep construct.

Fight begins, mesmer puts a phantasm on KC. Oh wait, now you have to kill the first statue. Mesmer puts a phantasm on the statue. Oh wait, that statue is now dead, you have to kill the second statue. Mesmer stands around awkwardly twiddling their thumbs because they ran out of phantasms to use. Oh wait, now you have 15 seconds to burst dps KC. Mesmer slowly puts up a couple phantasms and just barely starts getting their dps going by the time the burn phase ends.

Now, not all bosses are quite as bad as KC. Condie mesmer is actually fairly viable on VG for green circles, and semi-viable on matthias. However, pretty much every other encounter is just absolutely awful for it.

How about Xera and Sloth ? Even if it is just these 3, at least we could see a bit of mesmer DPS, just like you at least see Engi on VG. Being viable in 3 of 7 boss fights is ok i think. (Not counting Trio and Scort )

On Xera it’s miserable. There’s a bunch of adds that you want to be cleaving, it’s totally worthless for clearing shards, and if it gets selected for a platform you can say goodbye to mesmer damage for the next minute and a half.

On Slothy it’s not garbage…well, it’s pretty garbage. Basically it’ll dps Slothy fine, but it has zero capacity for aoe. The whole reason we pull sloth towards the middle on the 2nd/4th shrooms is to yank in and aoe down the slublings, but condie mesmer is totally and completely incapable of doing that. If literally the only thing you need is a single target dpser on Sloth, then it’ll fill that role, but if you ever want pressure on Slubs…no can do.

We’ll end up with a mirror comp with 2 chronos most likely. 5/5 already works well and the increased alacrity and possible dps increases to the chrono itself will prob make up for some of the dmg you lose by the 4/4/2 nerf. Perma quickness is such a dps increase it’s worth taking the extra chrono for, instead of 2 dps and no quickness.

Who will be king in this meta? Well eles ofc, even if they buff rev they’re not gonna take advantage of the increased alacrity like eles do.

Hmm what would keep the chronotank from wearing commanders gear and using other methods of boosting its boon duration. We don’t take chrono tank for its dps ANYWAY. This would make it a more reliable tank for new mesmers. And boost its personal quickness generation. I believe up to near 80-90 percent if you commited to boon duration? Odds are if you used food you could hit 100%.

The chrono tank I believe would still be able to maintain perma quickness atleast on the DPSers correct? Which is where the main damage comes from ANYWAY.

Shadelang.3012:

Hmm what would keep the chronotank from wearing commanders gear and using other methods of boosting its boon duration. We don’t take chrono tank for its dps ANYWAY. This would make it a more reliable tank for new mesmers. And boost its personal quickness generation. I believe up to near 80-90 percent if you commited to boon duration? Odds are if you used food you could hit 100%.

The chrono tank I believe would still be able to maintain perma quickness atleast on the DPSers correct? Which is where the main damage comes from ANYWAY.

See my post ~8 posts above you.

Fay.2357:

Shadelang.3012:

Hmm what would keep the chronotank from wearing commanders gear and using other methods of boosting its boon duration. We don’t take chrono tank for its dps ANYWAY. This would make it a more reliable tank for new mesmers. And boost its personal quickness generation. I believe up to near 80-90 percent if you commited to boon duration? Odds are if you used food you could hit 100%.

The chrono tank I believe would still be able to maintain perma quickness atleast on the DPSers correct? Which is where the main damage comes from ANYWAY.

See my post ~8 posts above you.

My bad I completely read right over that one. Thanks for the reply. So from what im seeing the talk about chronotank being dead is…Pretty much just an exaggeration. The chrono will just have to commit a little bit more gear wise to compensate.

Shadelang.3012:

Fay.2357:

Shadelang.3012:

Hmm what would keep the chronotank from wearing commanders gear and using other methods of boosting its boon duration. We don’t take chrono tank for its dps ANYWAY. This would make it a more reliable tank for new mesmers. And boost its personal quickness generation. I believe up to near 80-90 percent if you commited to boon duration? Odds are if you used food you could hit 100%.

The chrono tank I believe would still be able to maintain perma quickness atleast on the DPSers correct? Which is where the main damage comes from ANYWAY.

See my post ~8 posts above you.

My bad I completely read right over that one. Thanks for the reply. So from what im seeing the talk about chronotank being dead is…Pretty much just an exaggeration. The chrono will just have to commit a little bit more gear wise to compensate.

Chrono is far from dead, you’ll even take 2 now.

Shadelang.3012:

Fay.2357:

Shadelang.3012:

Hmm what would keep the chronotank from wearing commanders gear and using other methods of boosting its boon duration. We don’t take chrono tank for its dps ANYWAY. This would make it a more reliable tank for new mesmers. And boost its personal quickness generation. I believe up to near 80-90 percent if you commited to boon duration? Odds are if you used food you could hit 100%.

The chrono tank I believe would still be able to maintain perma quickness atleast on the DPSers correct? Which is where the main damage comes from ANYWAY.

See my post ~8 posts above you.

My bad I completely read right over that one. Thanks for the reply. So from what im seeing the talk about chronotank being dead is…Pretty much just an exaggeration. The chrono will just have to commit a little bit more gear wise to compensate.

It entirely depends on what ANet do to a number of things not least of which is SoI.

They could cap SoI boons at no more than 6s per boon and no duration increase will affect it.

They could cap it’s stack sharing to 5.

They could reduce quickness cap globally to only 5 sources per player.

http://qtfy.enjin.com/mesmer#QuicknessCap has a good explaination about quickness sharing.

Power / condi druid still mvp

meeflak.9714:

Power / condi druid still mvp

It’ll be pretty tough for pubs, though. I have seen maybe 1 out of 20 groups that take sufficiently little damage such that power or condi Druid could be sufficient for keeping everyone alive (even with 2 of them). If that’s expected to get even worse with the healing value adjustments, then I foresee Magi being hands-down the way to go for all groups outside of very confident guilds.

Rising Dusk.2408:

meeflak.9714:

Power / condi druid still mvp

It’ll be pretty tough for pubs, though. I have seen maybe 1 out of 20 groups that take sufficiently little damage such that power or condi Druid could be sufficient for keeping everyone alive (even with 2 of them). If that’s expected to get even worse with the healing value adjustments, then I foresee Magi being hands-down the way to go for all groups outside of very confident guilds.

Zerk druid with riceballs and druid runes? Toss in a couple pieces of zealots or a staff if needed.

SlyDevil.3952:

Rising Dusk.2408:

meeflak.9714:

Power / condi druid still mvp

It’ll be pretty tough for pubs, though. I have seen maybe 1 out of 20 groups that take sufficiently little damage such that power or condi Druid could be sufficient for keeping everyone alive (even with 2 of them). If that’s expected to get even worse with the healing value adjustments, then I foresee Magi being hands-down the way to go for all groups outside of very confident guilds.

Zerk druid with riceballs and druid runes? Toss in a couple pieces of zealots or a staff if needed.

The nerf to CA healing coefficients is likely to be a lot worse than requiring a small band aid to cover up. The question will be, can your group keep up Scholar bonus with kitten berserker heals, or will you benefit more from Magi.

NikeEU.7690:

SlyDevil.3952:

Rising Dusk.2408:

meeflak.9714:

Power / condi druid still mvp

It’ll be pretty tough for pubs, though. I have seen maybe 1 out of 20 groups that take sufficiently little damage such that power or condi Druid could be sufficient for keeping everyone alive (even with 2 of them). If that’s expected to get even worse with the healing value adjustments, then I foresee Magi being hands-down the way to go for all groups outside of very confident guilds.

Zerk druid with riceballs and druid runes? Toss in a couple pieces of zealots or a staff if needed.

The nerf to CA healing coefficients is likely to be a lot worse than requiring a small band aid to cover up. The question will be, can your group keep up Scholar bonus with kitten berserker heals, or will you benefit more from Magi.

Yeah, really depends on how hard they slash the base numbers. CA has astonishingly powerful base healing right now, and they could conceivably drop that to something that has zero healing impact without heavy investment.

So, if you add in time warp to the equation, there should be roughly 14 seconds of down time for a 10 man squad. Thats for a about perfect case scenario. However, chances are that that down time will be a lot larger since its hard to perfectly time everything perfectly, especially when trying to use illusionary inspiration (plus can’t use Illusionary inspiration with the first rotation). I suppose there may also be the option to bring a dragon hunter with 100% boon duration instead of a second chrono, using feel my wrath to cut out the down time. If they have permanent alacrity, they would be able to use feel my wrath twice per continuum split time, giving out 20 seconds on quickness to cover up the holes. Soooo, yaaa its really relying on your chrono to be nearly perfect. Of course, then you also wouldn’t get the 100% alacrity on your squad. So, more than likely 2 chronos would still be more reliable and better.

Xstein.2187:

I suppose there may also be the option to bring a dragon hunter with 100% boon duration instead of a second chrono, using feel my wrath to cut out the down time.

Why would you want to do that, though? Sacrificing a ton of damage from the DH for nothing but a tiny bit of quickness uptime does not sound glorious.

Remember when it was all berserker stat? If you weren’t berserker you got kicked.
Then condition stacking got increased and bosses were given mad toughness scaling and health pools, so if you were berserker stat, you got kicked.
Then someone decided to just play around with buffs and be neither berserker or condition..they decided to fill that elusive role of, “support.”
Now if you are support, you will be kick. However, you’ll also get some nice damage buffs…welcome back power creep..hello again berserker stat.

Slow clap.

Chrono will never be dead. It’s the only class that gives alacrity. I predict a more diverse group comp. Maybe even a different class tanking, such as DH, with higher dps to make way for a more dps chrono. I don’t see dual chrono or druids for the fact the dps will suffer.

Magnus Godrik.5841:

I don’t see dual chrono or druids for the fact the dps will suffer.

Highest dps comp right now uses 2 druids. Difference between a zerk chrono and a rev in dps, while significant, is nothing compared to having no quickness.

NikeEU.7690:

SlyDevil.3952:

Rising Dusk.2408:

meeflak.9714:

Power / condi druid still mvp

It’ll be pretty tough for pubs, though. I have seen maybe 1 out of 20 groups that take sufficiently little damage such that power or condi Druid could be sufficient for keeping everyone alive (even with 2 of them). If that’s expected to get even worse with the healing value adjustments, then I foresee Magi being hands-down the way to go for all groups outside of very confident guilds.

Zerk druid with riceballs and druid runes? Toss in a couple pieces of zealots or a staff if needed.

The nerf to CA healing coefficients is likely to be a lot worse than requiring a small band aid to cover up. The question will be, can your group keep up Scholar bonus with kitten berserker heals, or will you benefit more from Magi.

Since SoI will provide a fixed amount of quickness, so there will be no need for the mesmer to stack tons of quickness on himself, so both chronomancer runes and a well heavy bar are not mandatory … wouldn’t a minstrel chrono be able to also provide some nice healing through the regeneration from illusionary inspiration, sigil of water, mantra based healing and maybe runes of water?
Looks like it should be enough to cover, probably in excess, any healing offensive druids could be losing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if bringing the chrono DPS close to zero would be a lesser hit on damage than swapping from a offensive druid to a full healer one.