Guild Wars 2

Hey yall!

So as you could tell, im looking at playing mesmer in raids, as ive been playing mesmer for 3 years now. Ive made a build from what ive seen floating around here and there. I like it, its been working for me pretty well.

I just wanted to see what you guys thought about it, see how it is, possibly a bit of discussion. I know mesmer has never had high DPS but it does play a good bunker role from what ive seen.

The build I will be posting it what I currently want to achieve for this character.

Please go easy.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhUQJAsencfC9ph9fC2fCUrhFlj6MAWgJrORn0KFtyusMD-ThRYAB0oEkDdAfu/AAK/ARLAOq/EA4AwyLv8yLvcLv8yLv8ylCAwtWA-e

I beat VG a day or two ago with a similar build, as the tank: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhUQNAs+dncfCFoh9fC2fCUrhFlj6MAWgIrORn0KFtyShMD-ThRYAB0oEkDdAAo8DEtAju/AOq/EA4AglXe5lXe5SBA4WL-e

Just a couple small modifications. Chrono runes, inspiration signet instead of mimic, a couple trait changes. I personally use cavs trinkets and knights on other gear for substantially higher toughness than your build, but it’s not really usually necessary to go full toughness to tank.

In my opinion your tankyness is overkill. I use against VG a normal dps mes, just with Knight trinkets:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhUQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjiMAKgirOZn2qFtLSjsD-TxBBABRqEEgTCQe6F6S53oq/0/+DB8AACAcAwyLv8yLvcpAAcCA-e

Got no problems at all with that build.

Xyonon.3987:

In my opinion your tankyness is overkill. I use against VG a normal dps mes, just with Knight trinkets:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhUQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjiMAKgirOZn2qFtLSjsD-TxBBABRqEEgTCQe6F6S53oq/0/+DB8AACAcAwyLv8yLvcpAAcCA-e

Got no problems at all with that build.

Domination adds minimal damage. You’re using shield phantasms anyway, and they do garbage damage. You’re not producing a lot of shatter damage, and the boon stripping is of course unnecessary.

Inspiration lets me produce a third illusion faster (iLeap → block = 3 illusions with defender) so that I can start the combo quicker. The heals from it let me tank active floor panels without needing to rely on the Druid for heals. Since you need to move VG ahead of the rotation sometimes, being able to sustain that damage is pretty important.

Persistence of memory is really nice because it allows me to use BF or the block to mitigate close to 100% of attacks from VG. Again, the Druid could heal you up, but mitigating instead leaves your Druid free to keep the rest of the team healthy. That’s not an issue if everything goes perfectly…but nothing ever goes perfectly. If your team has to hit a circle on an active panel, you want the Druid to be fully topped up on cooldowns instead of having potentially burnt some healing you.

Xyonon.3987:

In my opinion your tankyness is overkill. I use against VG a normal dps mes, just with Knight trinkets:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhUQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjiMAKgirOZn2qFtLSjsD-TxBBABRqEEgTCQe6F6S53oq/0/+DB8AACAcAwyLv8yLvcpAAcCA-e

Got no problems at all with that build.

Well maybe he is a bit too tanky, maybe. But that’s FAR FAR less a problem than you not having chronomancer runes + Signet of Inspiration. Perma Quickness for your group is far more important than a bit more dps on your chronotank.

Fay.2357:

Domination adds minimal damage. You’re using shield phantasms anyway, and they do garbage damage. You’re not producing a lot of shatter damage, and the boon stripping is of course unnecessary.

I only use one shield phantasm. The others are sword phantasms for VG. You don’t need more than one shieldy for the alacrity uptime if you do not use mimic or soi, since then you can use calamity wich increases personal damage aswell where the 12.5% dmg modifier starting to make sense too.

Fay.2357:

Inspiration lets me produce a third illusion faster (iLeap -> block = 3 illusions with defender) so that I can start the combo quicker. The heals from it let me tank active floor panels without needing to rely on the Druid for heals. Since you need to move VG ahead of the rotation sometimes, being able to sustain that damage is pretty important.

iAvenger → iSwordsman → iLeap, done. Timer starts when you attack so you got time to channel that block (wich btw get’s reduced from 2.25s to 1.5s soon <3). We start the combo at the same time.
You don’t have to tank the active panels, you can move into them for just a moment, let the VG follow you, turn around and stay in the inactive one, while he stays in the active one. Then you get the druid heal together with your team. It’s a matter of positioning.
What damage are you talking about you want to sustain btw? o.ô

Fay.2357:

Persistence of memory is really nice because it allows me to use BF or the block to mitigate close to 100% of attacks from VG. Again, the Druid could heal you up, but mitigating instead leaves your Druid free to keep the rest of the team healthy. That’s not an issue if everything goes perfectly…but nothing ever goes perfectly. If your team has to hit a circle on an active panel, you want the Druid to be fully topped up on cooldowns instead of having potentially burnt some healing you.

You block the blue fields with your shield, you don’t need anything but alacrity for that. Then you evade serval attacks with common sword 2 skills or dodges. The rest of the team should barely get no damage, except for the green team wich is with the druid anyway, or the engis who are selfsustaining. The druid has almost nothing to do rather than to heal you up a bit and buff the team with “grace of the land” at these phases.

Thaddeus.4891:

Well maybe he is a bit too tanky, maybe. But that’s FAR FAR less a problem than you not having chronomancer runes + Signet of Inspiration. Perma Quickness for your group is far more important than a bit more dps on your chronotank.

Why would I use soi? I cast 1x TW (22s), 3x WoA (18s) and 4x ToT (24s). This means 64s quickness every 51s. With that considering reality is not a perfect world, I indeed might miss my allies with one or two skills (or they miss the wells) and keep a 100% quickness uptime. Without soi, and calamity instead A) your personal damage is higher, not just a little bit, and you have a higher alacrity uptime for your allies = higher passive damage / group damage.
On one thing tough I agree with you: group dps is far more important than personal damage. That’s why I do not use soi, nor chronomancer runes in raids.

“This means 64s quickness every 51s.”

Sry just glancing through the thread, I already talked about this with you xD

It’s every 56 seconds because you have to take into account from the start of CS to when it’s off CD not the end of CS till it’s off CD.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

“This means 64s quickness every 51s.”

Sry just glancing through the thread, I already talked about this with you xD

It’s every 56 seconds because you have to take into account from the start of CS to when it’s off CD not the end of CS till it’s off CD.

You got me there ö.ö You got me goooood … but smooth ;3

Xyonon.3987:

Why would I use soi? I cast 1x TW (22s), 3x WoA (18s) and 4x ToT (24s). This means 64s quickness every 51s. With that considering reality is not a perfect world, I indeed might miss my allies with one or two skills (or they miss the wells) and keep a 100% quickness uptime. Without soi, and calamity instead A) your personal damage is higher, not just a little bit, and you have a higher alacrity uptime for your allies = higher passive damage / group damage.
On one thing tough I agree with you: group dps is far more important than personal damage. That’s why I do not use soi, nor chronomancer runes in raids.

Imo runes of leadership not much better or even worse than runes of chorno and you underrate SoI.
With 70% boon duration:
1x TW + 3x WoA and 4x ToT = (11 + 9 + 12) * 1.7 ~ 54s
Runes of chronomancer with 3 wells gives you ~25-30s of additional personal quickness per rotation which you can share with SoI. Thus it is easier to keep and spread between more teammates – 54s from TW, WoA, ToT + 69s (54 + 30 – 15 ) from SoI ~ 113s (very rough math though). SoI gives quickness to 1 additional person (WoA and TW gives quickness to 5 ppl including mesmer, SoI – to 5 ppl, but not to mesmer) and shares other boons too. Runes of chronomancer gives you and you phantasms +275 offensive stats (power and precision) while runes of leadership – only 108 (power, prec, fer). Rough math: RoC gives 139 more power then RoL. Let’s say mesmer with all buffs have ~3400 power. Then 139 additional power is like ~4% damage boost to you and phantasms (swordsman mostly though). Imo additional precision for phantasm is not a luxury: phantasms don’t have phantasmal fury.

It’ is not a problem to farm raid with any of those runes
And now most impotant for me: while RoC + SoI gives you easier time with boons spreading and RoL + WoC gives you more (8-10s) group alacrity and mb more dps (not sure how much though), RoC is much easier to obtain.

Keep in mind for all tanks you don’t need to have as many toughnessesseseses as possible, you only need to have more than everyone else in your party (or 401 more than a PS Warrior).

As such, the minimum you need is 1001 for certain groups, although a healthy 1401 is safer. From there, tweak as necessary to make sure you have the most toughness. Slot in anything you can (including food) to make it possible. Do not have a stagnant build that is set at max or lowest toughness.

Another thing to note is that the point in running full Commander gear is to give you an additional 20% Boon Duration (requires 300 Concentration). As such, do not wear full Commander Armor/Weapon/Trinket as that will waste stats. Almost every armor and all your weapons will give you a little over 300 points, if you’re trying to min-max. After that, slot in Knights or other Toughness gear as necessary.

The reason you don’t need to get 50% is because food and nourishment should be giving you the bonus 30% (you get the most out of food/utility by running boon duration once you convert it into concentration stats). Sure, you don’t get the Potion of Ghost/Elemental/Bandit Slaying for the respective bosses, but those don’t affect Phantasms, anyways.

The food used for tank builds is Bowl of Nopalitas Saute or Loaf of Candy Cactus Cornbread (Saute is cheaper to craft, even counting the halved duration). For a DPS build, run Chocolate Omnomberry Cream or Fried Golden Dumpling (COC is cheaper and you should not need the might procs as a Mesmer). The reason the DPS food is so… bad, is because your main role as a Mesmer is to provide Quickness (and Alacrity). You get more DPS providing Quickness than you do dealing your own damage. COC is extremely cheap and offers everything you would get from any other Boon Duration food necessary to a DPS Mesmer build. If your group really needs extra damage (or you are running multiple Chrono), feel free to swap to Power Food.

Utility is any Bountiful item, typically Sharpening Stone or Maintenance Oil. The recipe for the Stone is more expensive, but it is the better of the two for a Mesmer’s DPS. In a tank build, you’re still going to be running these unless you absolutely need to get the Potion of Karka Toughness for some reason.

Xyonon.3987:

Why would I use soi? I cast 1x TW (22s), 3x WoA (18s) and 4x ToT (24s). This means 64s quickness every 51s. With that considering reality is not a perfect world, I indeed might miss my allies with one or two skills (or they miss the wells) and keep a 100% quickness uptime. Without soi, and calamity instead A) your personal damage is higher, not just a little bit, and you have a higher alacrity uptime for your allies = higher passive damage / group damage.

Wouldn’t that only be a 100% uptime for your subgroup though?

In my opinion getting more quickness time with RoC + SoI is more effective, that way you can spread more quickness between all raidmembers (either by being in your own subgroup with another Revenant or by switching your own subgroup between your rotations).

Xyonon.3987:

Why would I use soi? I cast 1x TW (22s), 3x WoA (18s) and 4x ToT (24s). This means 64s quickness every 51s. With that considering reality is not a perfect world, I indeed might miss my allies with one or two skills (or they miss the wells) and keep a 100% quickness uptime. Without soi, and calamity instead A) your personal damage is higher, not just a little bit, and you have a higher alacrity uptime for your allies = higher passive damage / group damage.
On one thing tough I agree with you: group dps is far more important than personal damage. That’s why I do not use soi, nor chronomancer runes in raids.

You can get perma alacrity without well of calamity. I guess there two different ways to get it done. Either you use Rune of Leadership to reach 100% boon duration or Rune of the Chronomancer + SoI.

Like I said, both seem good and both seem to be able to keep perma alacrity and perma quickness. Your build seem a bit safer on the alacrity up-time, while the other is a bit safer on the quickness up-time.

I still prefer the Chronomancer Runes + SoI variant. I never had any problem with perma Alacrity and it’s safer for the perma quickness which is highly depended on the Facet of Nature. This variant allow you to keep perma quickness even if you miss one Facet of Nature.

@Thaddeus:
Alacrity is not a boon, no affected by boonduration, nor by soi.

@watandara:
Indeed you could switch your subgroup all the time, yet that may interfere with the revenants, one using mallyx (mesmer group), the other using shiroh (other group). But yea, if you could keep up 100% for both subs, then both should use mallyx and this would be a good option.

But then again, I’d use leadership with over 100% quickness uptime, so you could forget about SoI, but rather ToT wich hits up to 10 members will be stronger, aswell your personal damage increases with WoC. If that’s not enough, why not use all the stuff together? SoI, leadership AND swap subgroups :O

Xyonon.3987:

@Thaddeus:
Alacrity is not a boon, no affected by boonduration, nor by soi.

I know. Why do you bring that up?

SoI and Boon Duration are for quickness.

Thanks for the awesome feedback.

As per the builds I saw I really like sticking with the toughness that I have, although I will take into consideration the suggestions. I know the group I run with has a bit of a tougher toughness then most, but we will work with it.

I am always looking to improve.

Thaddeus.4891:

Xyonon.3987:

@Thaddeus:
Alacrity is not a boon, no affected by boonduration, nor by soi.

I know. Why do you bring that up?

SoI and Boon Duration are for quickness.

Because you said this:

Thaddeus.4891:

You can get perma alacrity without well of calamity. I guess there two different ways to get it done. Either you use Rune of Leadership to reach 100% boon duration or Rune of the Chronomancer + SoI.

or did i misunderstand something? ö.ö

I don’t even get this debate. Perma-alacrity can be achieved with nothing but well of recall and spamming shatters on C/D. You don’t even need to use Continuum split. Hell, you can even do it with ZERO illusions just by adding Calamity if you wanted. Stand around in town, cast those 2 wells and spam shatter on C/D with no illusions = permanent.

It isn’t exactly difficult to do. Quickness uptime is literally the only thing that matters, because if you aren’t getting perma-alacrity you’re doing something wrong.

@Celeras The point of perma alacrity is here for alacrity on your mates not yourselve …

What? Allies will never have anything close to perma-alacrity. And your ability to dish out the maximum to them is based on maintaining it permanently on yourself for the Continuum rotation.

The priority of buffs is perma self-alacrity, quickness to as close to permanent as possible, then allies alacrity in a distant third. You should never sacrifice quickness uptime (<100%) for alacrity on your allies once you already have it permanently on yourself. Quickness is better.

In 5man content allies will always have perma alacrity and quickness if u support them properly …
In raids single chrono can (in ideal circumstances) keep all 10 ppl on perma quckness.

Xyonon.3987:

Because you said this:

Thaddeus.4891:

You can get perma alacrity without well of calamity. I guess there two different ways to get it done. Either you use Rune of Leadership to reach 100% boon duration or Rune of the Chronomancer + SoI.

or did i misunderstand something? ö.ö

Ok no I should have put those in two paragraph or be cleared. My first point is both build can give perma alacrity.

My second point is that it seem that both build can reach perma quickness, then I continue.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear.

Jacob.4280:

In 5man content allies will always have perma alacrity and quickness if u support them properly …
In raids single chrono can (in ideal circumstances) keep all 10 ppl on perma quckness.

Pretty sure Celeras is right and you are wrong.

The Leadership run + 4 Wells build will give yourself perma alacrity, but only 70% uptime Alacrity for your party in the best situation.

The Chronomancer rune + SoI build will give yourself perma alacrity, but only around 50-60% uptime Alacrity for your party in the best situation.

Remember that Flow of Time and Improved Alacrity only work on you, not your allies.

And shield phantasms work for everybody else so ye Im sure you can mantain perma alacrity on your team (in 5man content) when shattering and resummoning those.
You should be able to keep perma alacrity with phantasms on melees in raids as well.

And (if u dont care much for quickness coz thats rly not hard to mantain 100% in 5man) you can mimic WoR to get up to 42sec alacrity for your team just from wells in CS rotation, not counting any phantasm attacks. Thats a bit redundand tho.

Jacob.4280:

And shield phantasms work for everybody else so ye Im sure you can mantain perma alacrity on your team (in 5man content) when shattering and resummoning those.

And (if u dont care much for quickness coz thats rly not hard to mantain 100% in 5man) you can mimic WoR to get up to 42sec alacrity for your team just from wells in CS rotation, not counting any phantasm attacks.

Well I don’t know about 5 man content. Maybe. That said, here a video of probably the best buffing situation with the Snow Crow Gorseval run without any updraft.

Here the Warrior point of view which is inside the Chronomancer Party. And you can clearly see, even when you only talk about the time spend on the boss itself that the Alacrity uptime is not 100%.

Here a similar situation with DnT at sabetha. Again the point of view of the Warrior in the same party as the Chronomancer.

Again no perma alacrity.

I’m not saying that party wide Alacrity isn’t possible. But in real situation it seem that DnT and SC two of the best guild for PvE ain’t able to pull it off in raids even in their best run so far.

Maybe in fractal where there is less pression on everybody the Mesmer could achieve that. But I don’t think that Alacrity is something that people should try to reach on a regular basis. Maybe I’m wrong.

Im at work atm, but will check the videos once I get home.
Perma alacrity is theoretically posible the same way the perma quickness from 1 chronomancer on 10 ppl is posible as well.
In raids we are just not able to guarantee that everybody stays in the right range (from boss – phantasm alacrity, from center of TW/wells – quickness) to get either of them every time they should while not in chronomancers subgroup.

I think we are getting off topic here.

It’s not about IF you can keep up 100% alacrity for your team. It’s about how many shield phantasms you require to do so with your build.

Xyonon.3987:

It’s not about IF you can keep up 100% alacrity for your team. It’s about how many shield phantasms you require to do so with your build.

But using the shield phantasm can actually be pretty bad because you lose personal damage.

https://youtu.be/M0c55SlQ3kE?t=1920

Xyonon.3987:

It’s not about IF you can keep up 100% alacrity for your team. It’s about how many shield phantasms you require to do so with your build.

If you don’t have 100% uptime on alacrity for your 5-man subgroup, you’re doing it wrong though. It’s raid-wide buffing that’s exceedingly difficult to do reliably.

Ye thats what I was tring to say Fay
@TFFF you as a mesmer player are here talking about mesmer personal damage, really man …
Everybody who plays chrono these days knows that almost 1/2 of the time ur doing whatever else than personally damaging (casting wells, phantasms and so on).
Not even mentioning that mesmers personal dmg sux compared to whatever else u can find in raid.

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

It’s not about IF you can keep up 100% alacrity for your team. It’s about how many shield phantasms you require to do so with your build.

If you don’t have 100% uptime on alacrity for your 5-man subgroup, you’re doing it wrong though. It’s raid-wide buffing that’s exceedingly difficult to do reliably.

Well I guess that DnT and Snow Crow are doing it wrong then because on all of their video they never reach perma alacrity on your sub-group.

The reality is on a 56second rotation you can do your 3 wells 3 times each for a total of 24seconds of alacrity party wide. You can maintain 1 Shield Phantams for pretty much the whole fight so it’s 14 additional second for a total of 38seconds of party wide alacrity for each 56seconds rotation. Even if you could maintain 2 Shield Phantasm for the whole fight you would not be perma party wide alacrity.

That said. If you use the Leadership Rune + 4 Wells build. You probably be able to cast 3 WoC for an additional 6 seconds of party wide alacrity. This would put you at 44s in your 56second rotation with 1 EoM perma up. It would be in theory possible to reach perma with a second EoM up for almost all the fight, but I don’t think it’s possible.

IMO. It’s possible to get a very high party wide alacrity up time. Between 60 and 80% for a good Mesmer in the right condition. But to say that you are doing something wrong if you can’t keep perma alacrity on your 5 man subgroup is a bit far fetched.

I would be happy to be proven wrong. If someone can post a video with a mesmer next to them giving them perma alacrity that would be nice. But so far it doesn’t seem to be possible. Near perma in the perfect situation, but not completely perma. And in fight, this drop to like I said 60-80% depending on your build.

If raid no need additional pull from focus I prefer/try sw/sw+sh and keep 2 swordsman and 1 avenger. Ideally (never happens to me though ) with WoR + 2 other wells you can keep like 33s of alacrity for 5 ppl: (WoR (7s) + WoA (2s) + WoE(2s))*3 = 33s per 50s ((WoR 40s CD * 2 + ~2s cast time)/1.66 ~ 50s) rotation. This is 33/50 ~ 66% alacrity uptime. Plus 1 avenger gives 2s of alacrity every 7.5s (not affected by phantasmal haste iirr ) This is like 2/7.5 ~ 26% alacrity uptime; 26%+66% = 92%. A bit more cause shattering and chronophanasma. This is at ideal situation when all alacrity lands. On other side because of absence of signet of ether and rotation, part of the battle I have to spend with 2 avengers.

Jacob.4280:

Ye thats what I was tring to say Fay
@TFFF you as a mesmer player are here talking about mesmer personal damage, really man …
Everybody who plays chrono these days knows that almost 1/2 of the time ur doing whatever else than personally damaging (casting wells, phantasms and so on).
Not even mentioning that mesmers personal dmg sux compared to whatever else u can find in raid.

Did you even watch the video? xD

Thaddeus.4891:

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

It’s not about IF you can keep up 100% alacrity for your team. It’s about how many shield phantasms you require to do so with your build.

If you don’t have 100% uptime on alacrity for your 5-man subgroup, you’re doing it wrong though. It’s raid-wide buffing that’s exceedingly difficult to do reliably.

Well I guess that DnT and Snow Crow are doing it wrong then because on all of their video they never reach perma alacrity on your sub-group.

The reality is on a 56second rotation you can do your 3 wells 3 times each for a total of 24seconds of alacrity party wide. You can maintain 1 Shield Phantams for pretty much the whole fight so it’s 14 additional second for a total of 38seconds of party wide alacrity for each 56seconds rotation. Even if you could maintain 2 Shield Phantasm for the whole fight you would not be perma party wide alacrity.

That said. If you use the Leadership Rune + 4 Wells build. You probably be able to cast 3 WoC for an additional 6 seconds of party wide alacrity. This would put you at 44s in your 56second rotation with 1 EoM perma up. It would be in theory possible to reach perma with a second EoM up for almost all the fight, but I don’t think it’s possible.

IMO. It’s possible to get a very high party wide alacrity up time. Between 60 and 80% for a good Mesmer in the right condition. But to say that you are doing something wrong if you can’t keep perma alacrity on your 5 man subgroup is a bit far fetched.

I would be happy to be proven wrong. If someone can post a video with a mesmer next to them giving them perma alacrity that would be nice. But so far it doesn’t seem to be possible. Near perma in the perfect situation, but not completely perma. And in fight, this drop to like I said 60-80% depending on your build.

CS cooldown under permanent alacrity is 45.9 seconds. Add in 6s CS duration for a total of 52s combo reset.

3x heal, 3x action, 2x recall = 26s

52-26 = 26s remaining

Shield phant attacks every 7.5 seconds, providing 2s of alacrity. With chronophantasma though, you can increase that rate by ~1.5x, getting about 9 procs during the duration per phant.

2x phant at 9 procs = 36 seconds.

Permanent alacrity without too many issues. I’ll often have 3 phants up too, so that overcaps it a bit.

Fay.2357:

CS cooldown under permanent alacrity is 45.9 seconds. Add in 6s CS duration for a total of 52s combo reset.

3x heal, 3x action, 2x recall = 26s

52-26 = 26s remaining

Shield phant attacks every 7.5 seconds, providing 2s of alacrity. With chronophantasma though, you can increase that rate by ~1.5x, getting about 9 procs during the duration per phant.

2x phant at 9 procs = 36 seconds.

Permanent alacrity without too many issues. I’ll often have 3 phants up too, so that overcaps it a bit.

You are right it’s 52 seconds. Well 52.08 seconds to be exact. Because the actuall CD of CS with alacrity is 46.08 and not 45.9 but it’s not important. In reality, the rotation is closer to 53-54 seconds. We are not machine after all. But lets keep your 52sec.

The 56second was my mistake, it’s for another rotation with 4 WoA in it.

chronophantasma? This trait respawn your illusions. It doesn’t increase the attack of a phantams. I think you mean Phantasmal Haste no? But the problem is that it doesn’t work right now. The attack speed of the Avenger is 7.5second and it stay the same with or without phantasmal haste.

So with 1 Perma Avenger it’s 6 attack for 12sec of Alacrity for a total of 38second of alacrity per 52 seconds rotation.

You can probably increase that a little with a second Avenger, but he won’t be up for the whole 52seconds rotation.

But now we are going into pointless math territory. We all know that a Mesmer can keep 60-70% Alacrity uptime on his party. The question are

1) Can a Chronomancer can in-game put perma alacrity to his party. And forget about math your way out of this one. This isn’t obvious enough to be calculated in 2 seconds using wiki and such. A video will be the only evidence possible here.

2) If a Chronomancer is able to give perma alacrity to his party, is it worth it? Only to a certain point. You are a member of a 5 man party and as such you are still suppose to take care of 20% of the total dps. Sure you can drop your percentage if by doing so you boost the dps of the party by more than you lose dps. It’s not always worth it.

In the video that TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275 provided. Zui from DNT talk about exactly that. Oh he didn’t made a full test and all, but for him you lose too much personnal dps to get to near perma alacrity to be worth tempting. So there are my two questions. Can you or someone else provide a video of perma alacrity on party? And if so we can try to look if it’s worth it.

Chronophantasma drastically increases the rate of attack for the phantasms.

Put up 2 phantasms. They attack, now you shatter them. Normally it would be 7.5 seconds until the next attack, but the newly spawned phantasms only have to wait 1.5 seconds for the daze to wear off before attacking again. It allows you to roughly double their initial output, and then continue from there. Every time you produce a new set, you can shatter them to get an additional rapid attack.

Combined with persistence of memory and alacrity putting shield4 on a minuscule cooldown, you can produce and shatter shield phantasms quite rapidly to get a tremendous boost to their attack speed.

Thaddeus.4891:

Pretty sure Celeras is right and you are wrong.

This is typically the case.

It’s obvious who actually plays and clears the content on a regular basis, and who sits around with calculators pretending to know what they’re talking about. Show a video of any non-Chronomancer having 100% uptime for alacrity in any raid encounter.

It doesn’t exist, you can’t make it, and doing so would result in a net DPS loss regardless. 50-75% is where you want to be for ally alacrity uptime.

In theory 3 wells and 2 avengers + shattering and Chronophanasma is more then enough to keep party wide alacrity. You can check it at HoM golem with friends. But with all this mess in fight I’m not sure. Not saying it is not impossible though. Mb it is a matter of adaptation. This mess is another reason why I like to have bunch of extra quickness.

Btw seems like alacrity from Avenger closer to 3s then to 2s?
I did next test in HoM (spvp):
1. Pull out 1 avenger.
2. Wait till his initial alacrity fades off
3. Casted Moa on golem (180s CD)
4. Right after Moa cast end started stopwatch
5. ~143s and 19 avenger hits later got moa refreshed

So I got a CD reduction like 37s, which equals 56s of alcrity (37/0.66=56) . 56s in 19 avenger hits is like ~2.95s alacrity per 1 avenger hit. Thus avenger gives more then 2s per hit.
Or I did something wrong?

Since I don’t trust DNT anymore at all, I will soon “tm” do testings on allies with and without alacrity, while under the effect of quickness, to estimate the true dps increase for any profession. Even tough the napkin math of DNT seems somewhat correct, so I’d say we sometimes overestimate alacrity. Yet DNT says “shield phantasm is bad because it sometimes will buff pets or other phantasms” wich is just because the video is old and this has been fixed. Yet overall I’d say you should always have a damage phantasm over an iavenger. Low personal damage is not an argument. It’s only “more group dps” wich matters.

Since this is chronotank thread, we are getting off topic with dmg phantasms and personal dps.
I dont know how about others but I personally dont have much time to summon focus phantasm, only from time to time when some curtain pull is needed (VG seeker, Gorse spirits). Most of the time I have 2x iAvenger and 1x iDefender from trait while tanking.

Xyonon.3987:

I will soon “tm” do testings on allies with and without alacrity, while under the effect of quickness, to estimate the true dps increase for any profession.

Btw could you confirm/disproove ~3s alacrity duration from Illusionary Avanger’s _hit too?

I ponder where DNT took that 6 750 mesmer dps loss when achieving 100% party alacrity from 65% party alacrity.

It is funny how every chronomancer PVE thread turns into a discussion about who has the biggest p…. ehmm…. I mean highest quickness/alacrity uptime. Be careful to not be too theoretical about it. Things may get more difficult once you start to take Mr. Vale Guardian out on a waltz.

Mr Contact.6708:

It is funny how every chronomancer PVE thread turns into a discussion about who has the biggest p…. ehmm…. I mean highest quickness/alacrity uptime. Be careful to not be too theoretical about it. Things may get more difficult once you start to take Mr. Vale Guardian out on a waltz.

“Things may get more difficult once you start to take Mr. Vale Guardian out on a waltz.”

Exactly! Far too many times I see people underestimating how far things can go from optimal in a actual raid encounter. For example, in theory it would appear a damaging phantasm is better than avenger. In practice, how many people is the avenger going to be actually giving alacrity too? In practice, it won’t always be 4 other people. Which just further shows that a damaging phantasm is probably better. And with quickness up time, stuff happens. I’ve seen several people who simply see that ToT can hit 10 people on paper, but in reality, how many does it actually hit? Not only that, but then what about dodging, rezzing, gliding, splitting to kill the elites at gorseval, splitting to kill champions at VG, moving gorseval to the wall, gorseval teleporting to the middle etc.

TL;DR: Don’t look at quickness charts too much. Watch some videos of your build in action from either you or someone you deem competent. From there determine if your build has enough, too much, or not enough quickness for that specific fight.

Btw about ToT hitting 10 ppl if they stack – that’s not entierly true. We tested this with our guild and not everyone gained the buff IF they are all stacking on each other. If they are spread a bit, everyone gets the quickness.

I think the the combo field, the shield creates, wich grants quickness, can only affect 5 targets at the same time, like every other skill too. So I think the wall just does this kind of “am I touching someone? If yes → quickness to him”-thing, but very often in short time. So if too many ppl are on each other it sometimes will fail to share quickness to everyone …

The reason of failure and not being able to 100% share quickness, I recommend to have a slightly higher quickness uptime than 100%. I personally aim for about 110-120%, and move myself in the subgroup after each TW. So you will never waste quickness and since you have 2x 4 peps in a pt + you and the druid alone, there will be no problems with boonsharing either.

Mak.2657:

Xyonon.3987:

I will soon “tm” do testings on allies with and without alacrity, while under the effect of quickness, to estimate the true dps increase for any profession.

Btw could you confirm/disproove ~3s alacrity duration from Illusionary Avanger’s _hit too?

I’ll try what I can, but it seems this project of mine is a HUGE one :< It just took me 4 hours to calculate all the damaging skills of the engineer as condi and as power. I thought I would be faster, but getting all those “true cast times” from each skill is a pain in the -assassin gear ö.ö

Mak.2657:

Xyonon.3987:

I will soon “tm” do testings on allies with and without alacrity, while under the effect of quickness, to estimate the true dps increase for any profession.

Btw could you confirm/disproove ~3s alacrity duration from Illusionary Avanger’s _hit too?

I’ll try what I can, but it seems this project of mine is a HUGE one :< It just took me 4 hours to calculate all the damaging skills of the engineer as condi and as power. I thought I would be faster, but getting all those “true cast times” from each skill is a pain in the -assassin gear ö.ö

Thank you.
It is 5-10 min test though
You can do it with golem like I did.
I just ponder did I make gross mistake with math or why nobody noticed that ~1 sec alacrity difference from avenger hit.

Mak.2657:

Thank you.
It is 5-10 min test though
You can do it with golem like I did.
I just ponder did I make gross mistake with math or why nobody noticed that ~1 sec alacrity difference from avenger hit.

You’re sure it’s not just because you’re a mesmer with the trait “+50% alacrity applied to you” :’D

Ahaha, this ^

Ok, so I’ve been pouring over reddit, metabattle, and these forums lately trying to decipher the best build for chrono tank. The gear for this build is potentially ridiculous (runes of leadership, commander stats, sigil of conc), so I really want to get this stuff right and while I’m willing to pay for the best stuff, I don’t want to waste gold on something expensive that I later find is sub-optimal.

After reviewing all the builds posted everywhere for this role, this is what I believe is the most optimal chrono tank build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8dncfCFohlfC2fCUrhFVjiMAGhirOZn2q98JGioD-ThRBABcp8DP9DmpEEgTCAlq/8/+DkCwrlRA-e

• Sig of Concentration not shown due to not being in the calculator

Alternatively, for less distortion, but more alacrity from iAvenger, swap the Domination trait line for Illusions.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8dncfCFohlfC2fCUrhlljCdyOhLr+Qj0J9sBCgHD-ThRBAB/v/Ae6H4S5HAnEAzUCSp6PkCwrlRA-e

Gear: Zerker with knights trinkets to get enough toughness for aggro (my char has Assassin’s armor for dungeons/reflects, but w/e)
Runes: Chronomancer (used with Sig of Insp)
Boon Duration: 33% from Sig of Conc + 20% from food + 50% from Rev for max quickness

This build is pretty much the same build from what Ilyavi ran on KING’s 5-man VG, but with some toughness trinkets to allow tanking (they used a condi war to tank on that run). Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3xhs8k/king_5_man_vale_guardian_kill/cy4rnpj

The traits here pretty much allow for a ton of group distortion that of course has been used to skip the green circle mechanic of the VG fight, but even if you don’t have another chrono in the group and aren’t skipping the mechanic, it still seems like some great damage mitigation.

There seems to be a lot of back and forth on the forums over how to get enough boon duration, but ultimately sigil of concentration seems to be the best way to address this, even if it does require a bit more awareness in your rotation. Also, the rune choice seems to be somewhat controversial since Leadership allow you to take an extra well to provide additional alacrity, but considering that you can get boon capped without this and also can provide distortion when running sig of insp, I think chronomancer runes win out.

Anyways, that’s my 2 copper.

edit Added alternate version with more alacrity from iAvenger at the expense of distortion on Sig of Insp.

Also, as a side note, I find it interesting that MetaBattle’s Chrono Tank is so off since it’s recommending much more boon duration than the cap if you have a rev in the party (pretty much any organized group).

So I’m not sure if this ideal. This is what I’m runnig.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8dncfClfi1fC+fCUrhlejqeUb1Z9MFKhVzMAelMC-TRhaAB+o+DKKBHR/AAK/uc/BSB81YA-e

I have the weapon swap sigil, that gives boon duration as well.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Concentration

Probably the most expensive and grindiest build. Probably not the best either.