Guild Wars 2

Not sure when the change occurred, but I see now that there’s a cheap recipe for Commander’s stats. So I was thinking about upgrading my ascended armor to full Commander’s.

With the additional boon duration, is this the best choice for a chronomancer? (boonshare variant)? If not, what am I failing to consider?

Commander’s also increases toughness, so could that be an issue? (i.e. drawing aggro away from the intended tank?)

For commander stat, toughness is:

Weapons, 118
Armor, 207
Trinkets, 308

Total, 633

Will leave it to someone who raids to say how much armor a non-tank can run without pulling aggro.

Well, first things first: Chronomancer is typically the designated tank, if a Reaper isn’t present to tank instead. Occasionally I’ve seen a Guardian tank with the Hammer, but they’re rare.

Speed Runners will slap a +5 Toughness Infusion on their backpiece for 1005 Toughness for tanking.

Most regular Raiders will run with a couple of Knight or Commander Trinkets. Those who run training runs tend to top 1400 Toughness just in case the Warrior decides to rez someone (Since they get 400 Toughness while rezzing, thus stealing aggro) since training runs typically don’t worry much about breaking any records.

Generally speaking, try to keep Toughness as low as possible and keep Berserker or Marauder (Depending on how confident you feel in your Chrono play) around just in case you need to swap out.

The one thing you want to be careful of is you need BOTH the recipe for the individual armor piece AND the recipe for the insignia. If memory serves, the armor piece recipes are available on the TP, but the insignia (and inscription) are only available through the Dragon’s stand vendor (50 ore each). So just throwing that out there to make sure you’re aware of that.

As far as Commander’s being the “best” choice? Well, that’s depends your definition of the word best. Personally, I have a Commander’s set with Resistance Runes for Fractals to help keep me on my feet in the higher tiers. It’s by far not the optimal choice, but it serves it’s purpose for me. The one thing you want to look out for is making sure you do not go over the +100% boon duration cap. I mean, you won’t explode or anything (thankfully), but anything over +100% is wasted and does not result in longer duration on your boons. There are multiple avenues to hit a perfect +100%, but some options can be more expensive/time consuming than others.

Toughness isn’t a big issue unless you’re in a raid as some bosses have an aggro mechanic than hones in on the tankiest player (stat wise). Bosses in open world and fractal seem to favor tankier players as well, but there’s not a good deal of consistency around that. Only reason I bring that up is if you run Commander’s gear you’ll need to get used to standing in melee so you don’t end up dragging the boss(es) if you were to try to range.

Commander’s gear works well, you just need to be aware that a full set will guarantee you the tanking position in every raid group. If you’re OK with this, then that’s fine, but it means you need to really know what you’re doing and be very comfortable and familiar with the raids. Nobody wants to have a tank join the group and then completely screw everything up.