Getting ready for raids
Ok, that’s a lot of questions, let me try to answer them in a sensible order.
Tanking vs non-tank chrono
Aggro in raids is controlled by the toughness stat, where applicable. The person with the highest toughness will be the tank. Generally speaking, a chrono can swap between tank and non-tank gear by switching between different sets of trinkets. If you have a zerker set and a knights/Cavs/commanders or whatever other toughness set you can choose to boost your toughness enough to be the tank. The rest of the gear can be the same, so you don’t need 2 completely unique setups.
Is it hard to be the tank in raids?
Tanking in raids is generally the hardest role in the raid group. You are in charge of positioning the boss to properly execute mechanics in the fight and generally have to be more aware of everything that’s going on to do this. That being said, the difficulty of tanking varies greatly from fight to fight and even with different strategies in the same fight. I can guarantee you, however, that it’ll be more challenging than playing a dps thief no matter what way you do it.
Buffing your party
Both the tank and non-tank must buff their party in the same way. Mesmer is responsible for 2 buffs: alacrity and quickness. Alacrity is pretty simple to do. Group alacrity comes from the last pulse of wells (using the well trait), is baked into the last pulse of well of recall, and from the AOE hit of shield phantasms. To maintain 100% alacrity uptime you must drop your wells on your party as they are available while also keeping at least 2 shield phantasms on the boss.
Quickness is a bit more complicated. Quickness is a boon, meaning it scales from boon duration. This is where weapon swapping and the sigil of concentration come into play. The sigil of concentration provides you with 33% boon duration for 7 seconds after swapping weapons. This means that you want to time your rotations so that you only apply quickness after a weapon swap to make use of that bonus boon duration.
Quickness comes from a couple sources. Shield 5 applies quickness to everyone it hits both on the way out and back in. Well of action applies quickness on its last pulse. Time warp continually pulses quickness (but you don’t need this to have 100% uptime, I don’t personally use it). Lastly, signet of inspiration applies quickness to nearby allies when you activate it if you have quickness on yourself. Signet of inspiration also comes in the form of a trait proc that is activated when you summon a phantasm. This trait proc has hidden cooldown that is the same length as the normal signet. Here’s the rotation that I generally use:
Startup
- iLeap in non-shield weaponset (should put you in combat)
- Swap weapons (procs concentration)
- Shield 5 (applies quickness to yourself and allies)
- Begin channeling shield 4
- Enter CS an instant before the shield 4 channel completes (procs trait SoI)
- Use well of action, normal SoI, and the heal well
- CS ends
- Use shield 4 again (procs trait SoI outside of CS)
- Swap weapons (procs concentration)
- Use well of action, normal SoI, the heal well, and well of recall if you have it equipped
So that rotation is how you start a fight. It gets you a good CS opener without wasting any time or trait procs at the start of a fight. From this point onwards, you’ll do this next rotation every 20 seconds:
In-fight rotation
- Swap weapons (procs concentration)
- Cast a phantasm, use well of action, use signet of inspiration
That’s basically it. You should be using well of recall every time it’s ready to go, and if you are in your shield weaponset after swapping weapons you should use shield 5 there too. The exception to that are certain fights where heavy breaking is required regularly (Matthias and Samarog), which means you should hold shield 5 for the breaks instead of using it in the rotation. The last thing is that every 72 seconds CS will come off of cooldown:
CS Refresh Rotation
- Enter CS
- Shield 5, Shield 4, well of action, SoI, healing well, well of recall
- Exit CS
- Step 2 again
That’ll give a hefty boost to quickness duration that lets you comfortably maintain 100% uptime on your party. In between CS cooldowns, you should only shatter phantasms if required for breaking. Other than that, you want to maintain at least 2 shield phantasms at all times for alacrity uptime on your group.
(edited by Fay.2357)
Can you use full commander’s armor and then berserker trinkets and still be a support mesmer? whats the reason for 2 commanders and rest berserker? is it max boon duration?
Can you use full commander’s armor and then berserker trinkets and still be a support mesmer? whats the reason for 2 commanders and rest berserker? is it max boon duration?
So commander’s gear has toughness in it. If you’re always the tank, this isn’t an issue. However, if you sometimes take the non-tank role having a set of gear with toughness on it will make it difficult to let somebody else tank. Maximum boon duration is 100%, so anything past that is useless. Because of that, you can make a build that reaches 100% without needing a bunch of commander’s gear. 33% on swap, 20% food, 10% utility, 30% runes and we’re at 93% already without any boon duration on gear. You can then add a couple pieces of commander’s or slot platinum doubloons into a couple exotic trinkets to finish it off.