Guild Wars 2

Hi!
So I attempted the first raid wing like three or four times when it first came out (mostly as an ele) but then I went on a bit of a break from the game. How are mesmers in the raids now? Do we have a possible place among the damage dealers or is our role still limited to giving the team quickness / alacrity? If that’s the case, what kind of rotation does it best?
Thanks for any help I can get!

Mesmer is still a quickness alacrity bot. And most people expect you to tank also.
Chronotank at this point is arguably the hardest class to raid with. I would suggest to start raiding again with your ele and maybe swap to mesmer after you learn the fights.

Mesmer is not a viable damage class in raids. The role we play is quickness+alacrity buffing. Mesmers are still great in raids though, pretty much every raid group takes at least one.

Rotation is pretty straightforward. Get up 3 illusions, F5. Time warp, sh5, well of action, well of eternity, well of recall, signet of inspiration. Exit F5. Sh5, well of action, well of eternity, well of recall, signet of inspiration.

Wait until your well of action is off cooldown, recall should still be around 3-5s cd at this point. Use sh5, action, eternity, recall, signet.

At this point, wait until F5 is off cd then start from the top.

Now this being said, you won’t be able to do this exact rotation on anything other than possibly sabetha and VG (tough on VG, but doable). On gorseval, you’ll need to adjust it to sync with updraft timing if your group takes those. Wing 2 will see you taking feedback instead of action, and you’ll often want to hold your combo on slothy until he does breakbar, that way you can contribute to breaking with shield 5. Similarly on Matthias, it’s often a good idea to hold the combo until sacrifices, allowing you to break people out with shield 5. On keep construct, you’ll need to time the combo so that you get the full boons going a second or so prior to the burn phase, and another time when the statue things start spawning after phasing him, so you’ll spend some downtime without using the combo.

Long story short, you’ll need to learn and adapt in each fight. Up there is the basic combo that would ideally be used off cooldown every time, but the actual demands of fights force you to adjust your execution.

Heya!

The Chrono is a top tier profession for raids and always required. It’s one if not the hardest profession to play in raids, but very fun! Unfortunately also rather expensive (Superior Sigil of Concentration / some additional armors and weapons for minmaxing), but that depends on your desire of efficiency.

The normal Chrono scratches at the 50% dps of the top dpsers (excluding staff ele against large hitboxes) so we’re not made for that as Fay already mentioned. If you are fancy and have a guild to discuss tactics with, there are some niches where you can play condi Chono without feeling bad. The dps is nothing special in melee, but rather high as a ranged profession for like Sabby or VG. However never do that if you are the only Chrono in your party, your main focus is it to spread Quickness and Alacrity.

As for the rotation the only thing you should be aware of is that A) you always use your wells after a weapon swap for the Concentration Sigil proc and don’t spam your whole rota right after the CS again or you will overstack Quickness from the TW wich cannot be spread to your allies that well.

The first CS is a bit different; since you want to set up 3 iAvengers as quickly as possible, start with a iWarden / iSwordsman and a clone from sword #3. If you are fancy you can summon a staff or pistol phantasm and swap the weapon out while casting, but it’s not required. Anyway, after that swap your weapons and start channeling shield #4. Right before it ends, start the CS and use Time Warp → Well of Action → Tides of Times → Well of Recall → Signet of Inspiration and then end the CS. After that your shield #4 is not on CD, so you can use it again, block, use it again and you have 3 iAvengers. By that time your weapon swap should be ready again, swap, Action, Tides, other wells, SoI (shortform of Signet of Inspiration) and continue this way. The next time you start your CS rota you can start with Well of Recall and cast CS at the end of that, since it has the longest cast time.

The rota may change a bit depending on the boss and wether you are solo or with another Chrono. If you need some specific help on that, just ask or pm me here or ingame.

About the shield #4 into CS → this is important: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Something-every-Chrono-should-know/first#post6191041

Greez!