Guild Wars 2

This has been bugging me since I got my hands on my second ascended set and made it Minstrel a bit ago. My zerk/commander’s set was easy, force sigil is a no brainer for the offhand weapons but the Minstrel, a force sigil doesn’t seem to justify it’s cost. 5% of meh damage isn’t exactly useful, especially since the Minstrel gear is designed to help you carry with utility and I would like to find a sigil to help with that utility. I finally got my hands on a weapon box drop from Fractals and swapped it over to Minstrel’s shield so I have my full set. The Main hand is my Bolt with the Concentration sigil in it. Right now, I have a Sigil of Water in the offhand because it’s cheap and it fills the slot…bit of extra healing never hurt anyone.

What I am pondering is if I should get a Sigil of Transference to help with the Mantra heal/traited healing we do from the Inspiration traitline? I mean, the Minstrel’s healing is okay and an extra 10% on top could be nice…

Is there another sigil I ought to be looking at that I’ve missed? Or, in the end, should I just stick with the water sigil and be done with it?

Optimally it’s a platinum doubloon as seen here, but if you’re running chaos or have a general excess of boon duration then transference is best.

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Oh I’m not using Teapot’s build…I have a Sigil of Concentration on my Bolt. I’ve already gotten myself so used to weapon swapping that the concentration sigil is no longer that much of an annoyance to use. Have Domi/Insp/Chrono for the trait lines, with traited Mantra heal so I heal my teammates when I cast it and have the added toughness. This is why I am pondering the Transference sigil rather than the water sigil as the mantra is only on a 10 sec cooldown so maybe the extra healing from the mantra cast would be more than the occasional healing from the water sigil?

I have 100% boon duration from everything else + the Sigil, so no need for the plat doubloon. Hence the want to find a nice useful sigil for that off hand

rabidsmiles.5926:

I have 100% boon duration from everything else + the Sigil, so no need for the plat doubloon. Hence the want to find a nice useful sigil for that off hand

Transference is your best bet then for sure. Your main sources of healing are the regeneration boon and the Mantra heal trait with the inspiration minor grandmaster trait.

Xyonon.3987:

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Not sure if serious, you did realise he was asking for his minstrel set right? Aka he will be tanking.

Please explain to me now how chaos is not a good trait line when tanking. I’m sure those 1k more damage which Domination might provide will be of so much use over the protection uptime from chaos for example…

Cyninja.2954:

Xyonon.3987:

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Not sure if serious, you did realise he was asking for his minstrel set right? Aka he will be tanking.

Please explain to me now how chaos is not a good trait line when tanking. I’m sure those 1k more damage which Domination might provide will be of so much use over the protection uptime from chaos for example…

Hard to give up Distort on Signet use…that’s a lot of potential damage/mechanics mitigated if you know when to block them. Domi is useless otherwise, you aren’t taking it for the damage it provides; I would love to fit Chaos into my build but that signet Distort is so kittened useful.

Cyninja.2954:

Xyonon.3987:

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Not sure if serious, you did realise he was asking for his minstrel set right? Aka he will be tanking.

Please explain to me now how chaos is not a good trait line when tanking. I’m sure those 1k more damage which Domination might provide will be of so much use over the protection uptime from chaos for example…

even if you are going tank minstrel chrono your job is still to grant quickness and alacrity to the group and even if it is possible to grant perma quickness with 2 mesmers and shield 5 effecting 10 players the Domination traitline with reduced signet cooldowns or illusions with the reduced continuum split cooldown and more alacrity output make your life easier. Also the Distortion on signets in the Domination traitline is extremely usefull. While the Chaos traitline offers more protection aswell as a 9% Damage Decrease its just overkill and you should survive everything even without it in minstrel gear

abullenfla.9632:

Cyninja.2954:

Xyonon.3987:

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Not sure if serious, you did realise he was asking for his minstrel set right? Aka he will be tanking.

Please explain to me now how chaos is not a good trait line when tanking. I’m sure those 1k more damage which Domination might provide will be of so much use over the protection uptime from chaos for example…

even if you are going tank minstrel chrono your job is still to grant quickness and alacrity to the group and even if it is possible to grant perma quickness with 2 mesmers and shield 5 effecting 10 players the Domination traitline with reduced signet cooldowns or illusions with the reduced continuum split cooldown and more alacrity output make your life easier. Also the Distortion on signets in the Domination traitline is extremely usefull. While the Chaos traitline offers more protection aswell as a 9% Damage Decrease its just overkill and you should survive everything even without it in minstrel gear

So essentially what you are saying is:

- both trait lines allow for maximum quickness/alacrity
- both have their unique benefits (domination provides more distortion and shorter signet cds) while (chaos provides group protection and more damage reduction)

How exactly does this make one trait line superb and the other trash?

My issue was with calling chaos useless, which it is most certainly not for a minstrel mesmer. It’s merely a matter of playstyle and preference.

As i see it its Water or Transference. While the math leads you to transference, water has the advantage of being effective while not using your heal skills. The real issues with running minstrel chrono comes from the fact even with pulsing damage auras, you dont need that much healing if your not failing mechanic checks. Now, in order for druids to be effective they must Heal players. So by taking the healing role you hurt your raid in medium and low pressure situations. In a high pressure encounter or in a situation where healing is needed to make up for failed mechanics, i like water over transference. Mantra and trait heal usually cap players off and the bump from water can be nice in between the recast.

Ballads.2509:

As i see it its Water or Transference. While the math leads you to transference, water has the advantage of being effective while not using your heal skills. The real issues with running minstrel chrono comes from the fact even with pulsing damage auras, you dont need that much healing if your not failing mechanic checks. Now, in order for druids to be effective they must Heal players. So by taking the healing role you hurt your raid in medium and low pressure situations. In a high pressure encounter or in a situation where healing is needed to make up for failed mechanics, i like water over transference. Mantra and trait heal usually cap players off and the bump from water can be nice in between the recast.

This.

When running with an organised group you bring your utility Mesmer and run the encounter as per standard meta build metrics.

The part where minstrel comes in is when running stuff with randoms on some of the harder encounters like Matthias where even after x amount of months people will still f—- up some of the mechanics. You effectively swap some damage for more group support to make up for other peoples mistakes. Sure in an ideal world one could just put this up as: get good. In a more realistic world though, you have to carry some people occasionally to speed things up.

Cyninja.2954:

So essentially what you are saying is:

- both trait lines allow for maximum quickness/alacrity
- both have their unique benefits (domination provides more distortion and shorter signet cds) while (chaos provides group protection and more damage reduction)

How exactly does this make one trait line superb and the other trash?

My issue was with calling chaos useless, which it is most certainly not for a minstrel mesmer. It’s merely a matter of playstyle and preference.

Chaos only offers self protection and damage reduction that isn’t needed for any encounter not even deimos and domination offers more group protection with reduced signet cd if you get some protection from somewhere else like Herald runes while also offering more quickness.

abullenfla.9632:

Chaos only offers self protection and damage reduction that isn’t needed for any encounter not even deimos and domination offers more group protection with reduced signet cd if you get some protection from somewhere else like Herald runes while also offering more quickness.

While I am 100% in the camp of Domination over Chaos, the AOE stability spam that you get from Chaos is super useful in encounters like Samarog CM.

abullenfla.9632:

Cyninja.2954:

So essentially what you are saying is:

- both trait lines allow for maximum quickness/alacrity
- both have their unique benefits (domination provides more distortion and shorter signet cds) while (chaos provides group protection and more damage reduction)

How exactly does this make one trait line superb and the other trash?

My issue was with calling chaos useless, which it is most certainly not for a minstrel mesmer. It’s merely a matter of playstyle and preference.

Chaos only offers self protection and damage reduction that isn’t needed for any encounter not even deimos and domination offers more group protection with reduced signet cd if you get some protection from somewhere else like Herald runes while also offering more quickness.

Except that Chaotic Persistance allows for easier synergy with other runes like your formentioned Herald runes, Illusionary membrane gives even more self protection which makes it easier to share (basically guaranteeing having it when boon sharing). Domination has a harder time to make this work since it almost relies on leadership runes or has a harder rotation due to sigil of concentration. So no, even with reduced signet cooldown, Domination does not better share protection except on nice golem warrior builds.

That’s not counting Bountiful Disillusionment boons provided for all those shatters.

The literally ONLY thing Domination has running for it is 1 extra group distortion which is very powerful, but only useful against sporadic situational planed skipping or negating of boss attacks. It does not help against continued pressure situations.

We can keep debating all day long. I run both builds and have 2 different mesmers running different builds. If you have a raid setup with good enough people to run pure near perfect meta raid builds, great for you. Me, I’ve noticed both Minstrel mesmer with Chaos (or Domination) or Utility mesmer with Domination have their fair uses in different raid groups.

Saying Chaos is useless is shortsighted and shows lack of imagination and/or adaptability to actual ingame situations.