Guild Wars 2

We exchange one tyrant for another.

At least we aren’t damage bots or heal bots.

tobascodagama.2961:

At least we aren’t damage bots or heal bots.

I feel for the rangers. A heal bot or a utility bot is not fun, for me at least. We are going to be so important in wvw if the dont fix alacrity on siege. And as much as love pyros build I don’t want to play it.

Could ask the Mesmer haters to stay off the Mesmer forums. I’m becoming terrible angry at the Mesmer hate.

Ultimately, the difference comes in what you’re actually doing.

What will our role be? It’ll be to provide alacrity and quickness.

Is this a bad thing? Not really. Veilbot and portalbot roles sucked because we were literally taken for a single or two utility skills. Not for our skill, not for a build or capabilities of what we did, purely to be able to press one or two skills on our bar.

What is our role? Alacrity and quickness. What is the role of an ele? Damage. What’s the functional difference between these? There isn’t any. They’re just different words, different roles to play.

To effectively provide full dps requires a build and fully effective playstyle for an ele. To effectively provide alacrity and quickness requires a build and fully effective playstyle from a Chronomancer.

Ultimately, they’re equally valid, complex, and important parts of a party. A Veilbot is a 1 button wonder that would be just as good with no weapons or traits or utilities other than veil. A chrono support build is truly a full build designed and played to fit a particular role on the team.

One could argue a gimmick is still a gimmick no matter the key presses. Reminds me of that article, if you memorize a combo does that make you a great player? The ele imo is the worse example possible. Ele is a great damage dealer but a phenomenal field (useful) provider. I dig chrono but feel time will tell whether a gimmick or actually needed. Hopefully something is done to help our illusions being killed so we can contribute dps wise along with chrono.

Or interrupt mesmer if you dig that thing, we have a lot more roles in WvW with HoT, you just need to be more creative. Pop nullfield + gravity well and you’ll trap a plenty of enemy that depend on stability rather than blink. Do it again with Continuum and you’ll guarantee to down 3-5 or more people if your WvW group is competent.

Alternatively use continuum, mimic and warps (daddy and mini warps) to make opponent suffer from uncleanseable and pulsing slow while boost your group with high quickness uptime.

If you’re truly looking for pure damage, shatter still works for backline. Calamity + tides of time still works well with iLeap for locking people and shattering. Sure we still do mediocre damage against the main frontline, but but we have a lot more ways to build traits than the ever-the-same WvW staff ele build.

atlrising.5134:

Could ask the Mesmer haters to stay off the Mesmer forums. I’m becoming terrible angry at the Mesmer hate.

I haven’t noticed any mesmer hate. I feel the same way despite my main character being a mesmer. I just don’t want to be pidgeonholed into having to run well builds every single time.

Alacrity is balanced, for the chronomancer, but AWTEW makes giving it to classes that can abuse the buff far too easy and seems as though it’s going to practically force you to run wells every single time or have people complaining, just like playing a warrior without banners, but unlike a warrior who only has to commit 1 or 2 utility slots to banners, a chronomancer will end up running 4-5 wells.

Daniel Handler.4816:

We exchange one tyrant for another.

And this is bad how?
I still don’t quite see the problem with this. Others are brought to stack might, to spam their #1 skill or place banners. In a multi-class-multi-role environment, you will want to break down everyone to their strongest aspect, make them focus that exclusively, then mix on a macro (group / zerg / raid) level to achieve what you want to do.

That is to say, instead of everyone doing 50% damage, 30% healing and 20% buffing individually, you want 5 DDs, 3 Healers and 2 Buffers in your 10-man group.

Eponet.4829:

atlrising.5134:

Could ask the Mesmer haters to stay off the Mesmer forums. I’m becoming terrible angry at the Mesmer hate.

I haven’t noticed any mesmer hate. I feel the same way despite my main character being a mesmer. I just don’t want to be pidgeonholed into having to run well builds every single time.

Alacrity is balanced, for the chronomancer, but AWTEW makes giving it to classes that can abuse the buff far too easy and seems as though it’s going to practically force you to run wells every single time or have people complaining, just like playing a warrior without banners, but unlike a warrior who only has to commit 1 or 2 utility slots to banners, a chronomancer will end up running 4-5 wells.

I can see this actually being an issue. I think a solution would be to make AWTEW provide something different yet again….and move the group alacrity onto an innate buff provided by maybe well of action and gravity well. That way there will only be at most two required wells in groups instead of 4-5. That would limit the group alacrity to a couple of wells and the shield. I would definitely not look forward to being pressured to run 5 wells for my utilities.

Ok, this thread is turning into a gross version of a ‘I play how I want’ whinefest.

Here’s the deal: Raids are hard. If you want to play successfully in a raid, you don’t get to play how you want.

Every class is going to have a particular thing that they’re best at. In a raid team, that aspect will be focused on, built around, and added to the whole. For an Elementalist, this is 90% damage rotations with a side dish of fields now and then. For warrior this is banners, ea, and the Warbanner res with a side dish of damage rotations.

For the Chronomancer, this is alacrity and quickness. We provide alacrity and quickness through a full build, sets of skills, traits, and rotations.

Don’t like what the Chronomancer is capable of doing? Too bad. Don’t want to run 5 wells when optimization calls for 5 wells? Too bad. We’re not eles. We’re not warriors. We’re not Druids. Each class has a different role, a different reason to be present on a raid team. If all the classes could literally do the same stuff, this would be the most boring game in the world. Whining about not wanting to do this or that just because you don’t like it is equivalent to if your ele showed up in settlers gear and said ’I’m bored with my dps role, so I’ve decided to do healing with a bit of condition damage today’. You’d kick that ele without thinking twice, just as everyone else will kick you without thinking twice if you stubbornly refuse to run what is optimal.

The only thing that matters is that our role now truly takes a full build and playstyle to achieve instead of just 1 or 2 utility drops regardless of anything else you did.

This isn’t about dissatisfaction with what the chronomancer is capable of doing. It is about the way that one trait influences potential group pressure to slot all 5 utilities as wells. This is the same issue the former mantras trait had and it was also nerfed. Any trait that invalidates all other utility options is deserving of review.

I think the OP just didn’t expand properly on what he/she meant regarding being an alacrity bot. I think this is just the same thing others are saying about AWTEW and the pressure that directs to have every utility slot filled with one utility type. I don’t think anyone can reasonably have an issue with alacrity + quickness being our contribution to group play.

Some people do need to check their attitudes at the door though. Last time I checked this is forum to express concerns and now is the time to voice those concerns…while they are actively taking feed back and making changes. Whining about other people whining, is still whining.

I’m with Fay. Raiding requires optimisation and efficiency, which are the absolute enemy of flexibility. Chronomancer’s “alacritybot” build and rotation are not any more set in stone than a Staff Ele’s “dpsbot” build and rotation.

If you want flexibility, look to PvP/WvW where flexibility actually is a virtue (to a certain extent) or look to open world PvE where what you do doesn’t actually matter that much.

Don’t complain about Chronomancer actually giving us a truly unique, effective, synergistic build that requires the coordinated use of utility skills, weapon skills, and our class mechanic. Instead, admit that you just don’t kittening like raids. Nobody is going to crucify you for that opinion, but people WILL be rightly mad if you start agitating to take away the one thing that makes Mesmer playable and desireable in the raid meta.

Me, personally? I don’t kittening like raids. I got the raiding bug out of my system by doing it for two years in another game, and now I’m done. But I’m not gonna be mad that there’s only one viable Chrono raid build, because that’s more than the number of viable Mesmer raid builds, and it’s pretty kittening rare that any class has more than one viable raid build anyway, in any game. At least the “alacritybot” Chronomancer means my fellow Mesmers who like raids have something to do in them, and I’m happy for them to have that.

Um op here. This wasn’t in reference to raids at all. This was in reference to wvw. You wouldn’t use a veilbot in pve or raids. There is usually a degree of choice in wvw builds. But Pyros build is currently the max version of alacrity. And that is what the team wanted. The difference being that with the veilbots we had more control over the rest of our build.

Disregard this. Change is good.

tobascodagama.2961:

I’m with Fay. Raiding requires optimisation and efficiency, which are the absolute enemy of flexibility. Chronomancer’s “alacritybot” build and rotation are not any more set in stone than a Staff Ele’s “dpsbot” build and rotation.

If you want flexibility, look to PvP/WvW where flexibility actually is a virtue (to a certain extent) or look to open world PvE where what you do doesn’t actually matter that much.

Don’t complain about Chronomancer actually giving us a truly unique, effective, synergistic build that requires the coordinated use of utility skills, weapon skills, and our class mechanic. Instead, admit that you just don’t kittening like raids. Nobody is going to crucify you for that opinion, but people WILL be rightly mad if you start agitating to take away the one thing that makes Mesmer playable and desireable in the raid meta.

Me, personally? I don’t kittening like raids. I got the raiding bug out of my system by doing it for two years in another game, and now I’m done. But I’m not gonna be mad that there’s only one viable Chrono raid build, because that’s more than the number of viable Mesmer raid builds, and it’s pretty kittening rare that any class has more than one viable raid build anyway, in any game. At least the “alacritybot” Chronomancer means my fellow Mesmers who like raids have something to do in them, and I’m happy for them to have that.

Maybe I’m just assuming incorrectly that this response is to me, but I’ll bite. You seem to be missing the point of what I said. Which makes your response completely off base. What I said has absolutely nothing to do with removing what a chronomancer has to contribute to raids. You both have your brains stuck in a mutual exclusion loop that you need to wake up from. Just because there is a complaint/concern about having a trait that directly pressures a specific utility type for all 5 utility slots…does not mean that we don’t want the function of that trait to still be present. What it does mean, is that we feel it can be implemented in a way as to not require all 5 utility slots to be filled with that one utility type. So you can stop having a panic attack about losing any alacrity in the process…as that is not what is being asked for. It is entirely possible to increase the base amount of alacrity given on one or two wells baseline, while changing the trait to do something different. That is entirely possible to do without changing the amount of alacrity provided to the group. I don’t think anyone can logically argue that it is good design to have one trait that completely invalidates all other utility options. That is the point here.

You guys are so far in defensive mode that you can’t even see what the real discussion is about. There is no such rule that there can be no flexibility just because it involves a raid…at least not in GW2. Especially considering there have never been raids in GW2 until now…so you are just pulling that out of your butts. I played chronomancer in the beta this past weekend and I’m pretty sure the random group I was with probably had all sorts of assorted builds. Even with that randomness, even with the lack of coordinated communication, even with sub-optimal class composition, even with over half the group having no clue what they were doing, in about 30 minutes of play…we still ended up getting the vale guardian to what I assume was phase three. So no, raids are not that hard.

In short, there is no valid reason why this can’t be improved upon. No one is threatening your ability to apply group alacrity. If anything, making a change like this would make it even easier to apply group alacrity if the group application is condensed to fewer utilities with higher durations. This is not WoW or any of the previous games you raided in…stop treating it like them. I’ll complain anytime I feel like it if I feel I have a valid complaint. You are making an ignorant assumption that I don’t like raids…just because I think one trait is poorly thought out.

Although I agree with Pyro in principle, I also agree with the statements made about AWtEW. For now at least, Alacrity is a 100% Mesmer thing, and then you have to ask yourself, is it the intent of the design to have a 100% uptime of AE Alacrity? I’m pretty sure ANet was actively trying to avoid just that, and thus I fully expect changes to come before HoT is released.

I too think it’s pretty clear that AWtEW is a key issue behind this over abundance of Alacrity. I don’t have a problem at all with Pyro’s view on optimized builds, that’s plain common sense! However, I also think it’s common sense that 100% Alacrity uptime, even if difficult/skillful to achieve, should not be possible.

We have a well now that gives a considerable amount of AE Alacrity, and we have a ton of self Alacrity that will make the CD on that well very low. That on top of F5 means we can easily drop 15s of AE Alacrity without breaking a sweat. Personally, I think that’s a ton of group utility right there, without the need to get an additional 2s off every other well on top, leading to the perma-Alacrity issue.

That we can achieve perma-Alacrity on ourselves is less of an issue IMO, although probably still a bit over the top, but it is clearly OPd to have a permanent (or even near permanent) uptime of AoE Alacrity.

The role is great! I don’t think the OP has a point at all about being an “Alacrity bot”. The notion doesn’t really make sense as the “bot” part implies it’s based on a mundane & repetitive play-style that is skill-devoid. I am glad Anet found an entirely new and wanted role for both PvE and PvP, and I’m delighted that we Mesmers get this new role, but that doesn’t meant I want it to be OPd right off the bat.

We will be just as wanted/needed for our AoE Alacrity if the uptime is a more reasonable 60-75% max.

Windwalker.7421:

Although I agree with Pyro in principle, I also agree with the statements made about AWtEW. For now at least, Alacrity is a 100% Mesmer thing, and then you have to ask yourself, is it the intent of the design to have a 100% uptime of AE Alacrity? I’m pretty sure ANet was actively trying to avoid just that, and thus I fully expect changes to come before HoT is released.

I too think it’s pretty clear that AWtEW is a key issue behind this over abundance of Alacrity. I don’t have a problem at all with Pyro’s view on optimized builds, that’s plain common sense! However, I also think it’s common sense that 100% Alacrity uptime, even if difficult/skillful to achieve, should not be possible.

We do not have permanent uptime on AOE alacrity. You want it to not be possible: congratulations, you got your wish!

Regarding the general point: take away the alacrity, and the chronomancer will not be desirable in PvE. Rejecting alacrity because it’s valuable is the most worthless complaint.

“How dare you give us something that doesn’t suck???? Now everyone’s gonna want me to take it!” —everyone who didn’t think this through.

I dont have time to respond to this, so im just going to copy and paste my post from the feedback thread here-

“I have some changes I’d like to see that will probably be unpopular…
I’m not liking how ‘alls well that ends well’ influences my utility bar. Its powerful, but in the wrong way. Alacrity has a very potent effect, so i find myself filling my utility bar with wells for the alacrity and not for the actual effects of the individual wells…

I also feel like the amount of alacrity we can stack through well spamming is begging for future nerfs, and we all know those nerfs will be to our OTHER traits, before its determined that ‘alls well’ is the actual problem.

So, I’d like to propose a few adjustments to our traits-

Alls well- The final effect of your wells is 25% more potent.

Flow of time- 1s again

Improved alacrity- Your alacrity effects last 25% longer. (so now it affects your well of recall and shield phantasm)

Well of recall- bumped up to 6 secs, about 9s if double traited.

Well of Eternity- Might have to shift more of the heal to the Initial cast so the AoE heal isnt too strong.

Well of calamity and eternity- get the damage boost (I think) they need, especially with how highly telegraphed and delayed the final damge is.

well of action- now can be traited for a bit more quickness

So now, if we choose to use a well, its for the effects they provide individually and those effects are now enhanced. This also opens up utility slots in group content so we’re more than just alacrity bots (because thats all I feel like…). This change does reduce the amt of potential alacrity we can provide to a group though, which is why I’m sure there will be people that wont like this."

Daniel Handler.4816:

We exchange one tyrant for another.

I don’t get the complaint or point of this thread. We now have two options: Veil Bots or Alcarity bots. Actually, you can do both at the same time.

This is called build diversity. No problem here from my POV. Please correct me if I’m wrong though.

Well I don’t see the wells as a bot function because they actually do damage so if I use them I will at least be getting kills and doing DPS which means Bags in WvWvW.

As far as a druid in celestial form yes your doomed to heal the group who will in turn get all the credit and kills and Bags while you get Nothing but a warm fuzzy.

I am not a veil bot for anyone I need all my skills to survive I run solo in WvW and never in the many years have played have I ever seen a group say they have room for or need a Mesmer.
But if I had a dime for every time I have heard the Zerg leader shout that he needs a Veil i would be rich.
You Leaders do not want to get us groups and you scream at us when the Veils are not perfect and never give us credit for doing a good veil.
I stopped Veiling for Zerg’s because they just do not care about you and treat you like garbage.
You Lead Zergs and want a Veil play a Mesmer !

MailMail.6534:

Daniel Handler.4816:

We exchange one tyrant for another.

I don’t get the complaint or point of this thread. We now have two options: Veil Bots or Alcarity bots. Actually, you can do both at the same time.

This is called build diversity. No problem here from my POV. Please correct me if I’m wrong though.

As I wrote above. A veil bot has more build diversity as only one utility slot and perhaps one trait line is required.

An alacrity bot has one effective build atm. But again I’m probably not use to the expectations of such specialization. Probably I was an elementalist I would be used to running one build and one build only I’m wvw.

Merrex.5384:

Well I don’t see the wells as a bot function because they actually do damage so if I use them I will at least be getting kills and doing DPS which means Bags in WvWvW.

Yes, this is exactly Fay’s point. “X-bot” implies that we just drop one or two skills and then are useless. But all of our Wells have useful effects in addition to providing Alacrity when they pop. And that’s on top of all the other nice things that Chrono and Shield give us in every game mode.

It’s not as if our PvE utility prowess has ever been that varied. Feedback and Timewarp basically sums it up.

Odds are more likely that each party will have a Mesmer with 4 Wells and Timewarp. The brief Alacrity from the trait won’t be worth passing up all that quickness and slow, especially with Revenant 50% uptime and boonshare potential for those whose Core DPS won’t be helped as much by Alacrity (Thieves, Eles, and Revs in particular).

Even then there is potential for non-Alacrity builds. A Chronomancer with Illusionary Inspiration, Mimic, Signet of Inspiration, Well of Action, and Time Warp can share out some serious quickness (and other boons) with a Herald buddy in his party.

Dastion.3106:

Even then there is potential for non-Alacrity builds. A Chronomancer with Illusionary Inspiration, Mimic, Signet of Inspiration, Well of Action, and Time Warp can share out some serious quickness (and other boons) with a Herald buddy in his party.

While cool, alacrity builds can already hit 100% quickness share with a little tweaking.
Between Tides of Time, Well of Action, Time Warp, CS, Herald buff, and Boon food, you should be able to easily hit 100% quickness in a party without Mimic, II or SoI. In fact, I calculated that an alacrity/quickness support should be able to share 100% quickness on an entire raid, with some careful investment and timing.

That said, I think that just leaves more room for other support. When I first suggested boonshare for the support chrono’s secondary focus, Pyro shot me down, but it’s been suggested again since. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to go Well of Eternity, Signet of Inspiration, Well of Action, Well of Recall, with a Chaos/Inspiration/Chrono, Inspiration/Illusions/Chrono, or Chaos/Illusions/Chrono build for full boonshare.

We can now be veil and alacrity bot. Don’t sell Mesmers short^^

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Dastion.3106:

Even then there is potential for non-Alacrity builds. A Chronomancer with Illusionary Inspiration, Mimic, Signet of Inspiration, Well of Action, and Time Warp can share out some serious quickness (and other boons) with a Herald buddy in his party.

While cool, alacrity builds can already hit 100% quickness share with a little tweaking.
Between Tides of Time, Well of Action, Time Warp, CS, Herald buff, and Boon food, you should be able to easily hit 100% quickness in a party without Mimic, II or SoI. In fact, I calculated that an alacrity/quickness support should be able to share 100% quickness on an entire raid, with some careful investment and timing.

That said, I think that just leaves more room for other support. When I first suggested boonshare for the support chrono’s secondary focus, Pyro shot me down, but it’s been suggested again since. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to go Well of Eternity, Signet of Inspiration, Well of Action, Well of Recall, with a Chaos/Inspiration/Chrono, Inspiration/Illusions/Chrono, or Chaos/Illusions/Chrono build for full boonshare.

Chaos, inspiration, chrono,
You can give perma resistance. Perma protection. As well as every other boon in the game in some degree of perma or not.

This is the build I want to run. Its also the only thing I think that can give alacrity some level of competition.

But the game isnt designed that way. Damage is king.

Daniel Handler.4816:

You can give perma resistance.

….?

Embolism.8106:

Daniel Handler.4816:

You can give perma resistance.

….?

Bountiful Disillusionment + CS = Resistance
Temporal Enchanter + Glamour = Resistance

I assume that’s what he means, but then you’d have to take more glamours than just Time Warp, and I don’t see how you can get permanent resistance out of it even so (3s on CS cd, 5s on CS cd, shared makes 16s, if you have another glamour, that’s another 3s here and there…I just don’t see it).

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Embolism.8106:

Daniel Handler.4816:

You can give perma resistance.

….?

Bountiful Disillusionment + CS = Resistance
Temporal Enchanter + Glamour = Resistance

I assume that’s what he means, but then you’d have to take more glamours than just Time Warp, and I don’t see how you can get permanent resistance out of it even so (3s on CS cd, 5s on CS cd, shared makes 16s, if you have another glamour, that’s another 3s here and there…I just don’t see it).

before you attempt this make sure you have the traits bountiful disillusionment and temporal enchanter, as well as improved alacrity.

Then these are the steps

1. One hundred percent boon share (so keep your boons up for chaotic persistence )
2. Continuum split and aoe give 10 seconds of resistance.
3. Shift 2 glamour, that is 22 seconds of resistance aoe
4. Shift a signet of inspiration, allies now has 42 seconds.
5. shift back
6. use another signet of inspiration. Allies now has 64ish seconds, 9 stacks of the boon.
7. 30 ish seconds later use one glamour in range of said allies
8. use signet of inspiration to add 6 to the 6 they just got to make 12.
9. repeat steps 7-8 again 2 more times.
10. continiuum split is off cooldown repeat steps 1-9

As much as we’d all like proper boonshare to be a thing, the boons we can actually generate and share to a meaningful degree are Might (via BD), Quickness (ToT + Time Warp), and of course Alacrity. We can generate a lot of Protection, but the only ways we have to share it are SoI and II, each on a 24/30s cooldown.

tobascodagama.2961:

each on a 24/30s cooldown.

Not if you have alacrity

Daniel Handler.4816:

As I wrote above. A veil bot has more build diversity as only one utility slot and perhaps one trait line is required.

Pro-Tip: take out one of your wells in this aforementioned alacrity bot build for Veil. You still have 3+ Wells to use. By trait line, I assume you mean Chaos for PU’s Veil buff. It’s hardly worth using whatsoever, because Veil/Mass Invis will always suck as support until they start balancing Decoy/Prestige separately. If you mean Inspiration for the superspeed on glamour, this also is negligible.

I’m no WvWer by any stretch of the word, but I totally think you can be a Veil-bot AND an Alacrity bot. And furthermore, as pyro mentioned, the use of Alacrity takes into account an entire role and build. Using the word “bot” as a derogatory term takes away this huge buff to Mesmers in both WvW and potentially some aspects of PvE…

tobascodagama.2961:

As much as we’d all like proper boonshare to be a thing, the boons we can actually generate and share to a meaningful degree are Might (via BD), Quickness (ToT + Time Warp), and of course Alacrity. We can generate a lot of Protection, but the only ways we have to share it are SoI and II, each on a 24/30s cooldown.

This is wrong. If you are doing proper boon share you should have at least 50% boon duration or more. Something revenants can give people who don’t want to use doubloons and gear.

Protection:
Chaotic dampening has a 7.5 second duration on protection if you have at least 50%. From that any sw/sw +st mesmer can get 29.5 seconds every 27 seconds minimum. Not including the protection received from being hit while under chaos armor.

Sharing that once means allies who stick by you have perma. Sharing it twice means they have 1 minute of protection.

Regeneration:
As far as I have seen boons stack LIFO. As a result bountiful disillusionment is quite powerful. Adding in metaphysical rejuvenation and II means that if we stick to that 50% boon share we produce quite a bit of regeneration.

Simply f4 after a large blow your allies get 15 seconds of regen. You have 30 seconds at this point. Boonshare it once, then again. They now have 1 minute 30 and you have a kitten load of short duration regen from your phants to keep those big stacks on. Eventually this process repeats to the point that you and/or they have reached the 3 minute duration cap on regeneration.

Vigor:
Depending on build you can easily give perma vigor as a combination of critical infusion and BD.

Swiftness: easily achieve perma as the signet, chaos storm, and chaos armor all give sufficient sources.

Retaliation:
chaos storm gives large amounts, you can apply light aura to yourself, and in wvw you get substantial amounts when guards hit you.

Fury: perma with any dueling version of boon share.

aegis: if need be use chaos storm, hard to keep this boon perma

stability: bd says hello. not exactly perma but no one starves for it either. mantra of concentration says hello

resistance: see my post above

Now with chrono the mesmer boonstorm can apply every boon in the game for at least 10 seconds

MailMail.6534:

Daniel Handler.4816:

As I wrote above. A veil bot has more build diversity as only one utility slot and perhaps one trait line is required.

Pro-Tip: take out one of your wells in this aforementioned alacrity bot build for Veil. You still have 3+ Wells to use. By trait line, I assume you mean Chaos for PU’s Veil buff. It’s hardly worth using whatsoever, because Veil/Mass Invis will always suck as support until they start balancing Decoy/Prestige separately. If you mean Inspiration for the superspeed on glamour, this also is negligible.

I’m no WvWer by any stretch of the word, but I totally think you can be a Veil-bot AND an Alacrity bot. And furthermore, as pyro mentioned, the use of Alacrity takes into account an entire role and build. Using the word “bot” as a derogatory term takes away this huge buff to Mesmers in both WvW and potentially some aspects of PvE…

From what I saw of pyros build, the build cannot be changed without comprising alacrity generation. So you would have veil bots and alacrity bots.

The difference ultimately being that mesmers are prized for a singular rotation they can accomplish while the veil bots were prized for single skill. Veil bots were then maximized to focus on interruption and ganking to enhance their other aspects, things became more skill focused in combat at least, and some build diversity was allowed.

The singular rotation that gives max alacrity will be the only thing prized now. Not the wells that serve no function in wvw beyond giving alacrity.

Perhaps, PERHAPS, commanders will ask chronomancers to chain tides of time to create several waves. But we are not revenants so I don’t like being forced into a role where my 6-10 skills have been decided for me.

The main issue with the full boon share build is…why?

Permanent resistance…why? Between Mesmer and ele, you’ve got more condition removal than is ever needed in PvE just in normal builds (alacrity Mesmer and dps staff ele). Sure resistance can be handy, but it’s hardly important.

Permanent fury/might/swiftness can be obtained by an afk revenant or a slightly less than afk ele. They’re nice, but other classes can share it effortlessly without impacting their standard builds.

Regen is handy, but a ton of classes have access to it in one form or another; Mesmer is hardly needed for that.

Protection sharing is nice, but rarely do you need permanent protection. For temporary protection you can use a guardian shout, or herald can hit their elite facet for protection as long as is necessary.

Vigor sharing is fairly handy too, but many classes already have access to vigor in some form. Vigor also has far less of an effect than it used to, and so is less essential.

So basically we’re left with sorta vigor and sorta prot being the reasons to run full boon share. That’s not exactly a really compelling set of reasons. It might be nice to carry noobs with, but noob carrying is arguably better done with the alacrity build anyway. It’s cool…but ultimately not super necessary.

Fay.2357:

The main issue with the full boon share build is…why?

Permanent resistance…why? Between Mesmer and ele, you’ve got more condition removal than is ever needed in PvE just in normal builds (alacrity Mesmer and dps staff ele). Sure resistance can be handy, but it’s hardly important.

Permanent fury/might/swiftness can be obtained by an afk revenant or a slightly less than afk ele. They’re nice, but other classes can share it effortlessly without impacting their standard builds.

Regen is handy, but a ton of classes have access to it in one form or another; Mesmer is hardly needed for that.

Protection sharing is nice, but rarely do you need permanent protection. For temporary protection you can use a guardian shout, or herald can hit their elite facet for protection as long as is necessary.

Vigor sharing is fairly handy too, but many classes already have access to vigor in some form. Vigor also has far less of an effect than it used to, and so is less essential.

So basically we’re left with sorta vigor and sorta prot being the reasons to run full boon share. That’s not exactly a really compelling set of reasons. It might be nice to carry noobs with, but noob carrying is arguably better done with the alacrity build anyway. It’s cool…but ultimately not super necessary.

Please remember that the context of this is wvw.

So one would be contemplating the ability to speed up siege weapons with alacrity or the ability for the zerg to use foods that are not lemongrass poultry. In wvw the sharing is caring serves as a filler role for inadequate group compositions, for instance if a group is not receiving enough swiftness or stability. The inadequate part is usually lack of guardians, but can stem from just the general squishiness of the casters. The role is similar to herald on revenant, the difference being that the herald requires constant melee contact with allies, the chronosharer is boon storm bursts that last long.