Scepter hybrid-support amazing for raids
I was really wondering about trying this,
how much damage are you doing with this set up?
I raided last night (with a pug, so we were only got the Vale Guardian down to 50%) using a very similar setup, except that I used Dueling instead of Inspiration, and Pistol instead of focus. Full ascended Viper armor w/ rune of Berserker and Ascended sinister trinkets.
I found that I was not using the pistol much, since your cooldowns reset so fast that you can spam shield skills for quickness and alacrity for the whole group. I used all wells plus Time Warp. Despite being super glass, I was not going down very often at all. It’s crazy how fast Scepter #3 recharges with the scepter trait and alacrity. You almost always have 3 illusions, and you can shatter as fast as you can press the buttons pretty much.
It’s hard for me to get a sense of how good the DPS was since it’s very hectic, but Scepter #3 was hitting for 6-8k a pop, and I was seeing bleeding, torment, and confusion ticks reach around 2k each when everything was going well. The boss is constantly swinging, so the Scepter #2 goes off all the time (though the red orbs get in the way) and the cooldown on it is ridiculously lowPlus, you have the dmg from shatters and wells, so it all adds up.
I am sure it’s not nearly what you can achieve with some other classes, but you also have to take into account how much DPS you are adding to the other members of the Raid with quickness and alacrity.
All in all, it was a fun and different playstyle
I was really wondering about trying this,
how much damage are you doing with this set up?
This is a very hard question to answer, given the variability of confusion + torment. This is further complicated by our role of being alacrity bots, sacrificing personal dps.
What I can tell you is that I maybe autoattack 1-2s between scepter 3 skills; the rest of the time I’m either dropping wells, putting out a shield phantasm, or channeling the mantra for heals.
I am just curious on if a viper/sinister set up will be more optimal then a power phantasm build due to the lack of condi pve players at the moment, but still having the alacrity and quickness to support, with the raid being harder than i excepted and other players not being as good as i execpted, I am really not sure what to go with
There is definitely an opportunity right now for Condition builds, since most people don’t have an ascended set of Condition-oriented gear. As a Chronomancer, we also have the advantage of being able to provide something that no-one else can: Alacrity.
The advantage of playing a power Chrono in the raid is that you would be able to take Domination for boon strip on shatter, which offer better boon stripping that any other class by far. There are some important mechanics that require you to strip boons.
It was a safe bet to make a set of Viper, since I had 4 armor chests lying around, and I have a Necro and Ele as well, each of which can achieve insane DPS with the same setup. I have always mained a Mesmer, though, so I am partial to the playstyle.
I am just curious on if a viper/sinister set up will be more optimal then a power phantasm build due to the lack of condi pve players at the moment, but still having the alacrity and quickness to support, with the raid being harder than i excepted and other players not being as good as i execpted, I am really not sure what to go with
The thing with power-phantasm is that the shield illusion is pitiful direct physical dps, yet provides group-wide alacrity. It’s not a simple question to answer whether the alacrity it provides to your group outweighs direct physical dps.
On a condi build, less personal dps comes from phantasms, so running alacrity support with shield less penalizing to personal dps. Furthermore, as I mentioned in OP, chronomancers should take illusions to make Time Warp 76s cooldown, and Illusions provides some very nice condi traits.
The Mantra is sucking up enormous amounts of your time.
A side by side comparison with 25 might/vuln puts MoP dps at 458, and Well of Calamity dps at 444.
But MoP spam is taking up 43.8% of your time, while WoC would only take up 3.4% of your time.
MoP’s advantages are the heal, more flexible targeting (the enemy has to stay in WoC’s circle), and a little extra tankiness while channeling.
WoC’s advantages are noticeably more alacrity, more AA dps, more flexible casting, and some aoe cc.
Are the advantages of the Mantra healing really worth the heavy time investment? Doesn’t seem likely, to me.
Sigil of Earth would be a raw dps improvement over Sigil of Torment, even with 45% extra torment duration. 2s icd vs 5s icd is a huge difference.
Alternatively, Sigil of Malice will get you to 96% torment duration and 85% confusion duration, which is pretty strong. This, I think, would still get you more torment time than Sigil of Torment, with a nice side effect of extra confusion time.
Lastly, a combined approach for the wealthy would be to swap to Toxic Tuning Crystal and use Sigils of Earth, which would get you the same 96% torment duration, but also the extra bleeds from Earth. (Toxic Crystal actually gives you more condi damage than Master because you have so little extra toughness/vitality).
So as I see it, the ideal variant would be something like
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAr+dncfC9filfCufCUrhFlj6MAGgJrORn0KFtyGoIA-TxRFAB9r+jw7PAwJBgYlf9+AA6TJY76FIFAMLrA-e
With the understanding that Rune of Berserker might be a worthwhile swap when they fix the tier 6 bonus (the +5% condi damage is currently not doing anything).
Some small, situational swaps would be:
Medic’s Feedback → Persisting Images, if you find you never need to revive anybody.
Malicious Sorcery → Master of Fragmentation, which gives you and your allies reflect on top of the distortion from f4, and makes the daze from f3 aoe, at the expense of channel times and scepter 2/3 cooldowns.
Sigil of Earth+Toxic Crystal → Sigil of Malice+Master Crystal, if you find you can’t afford to make (and keep making) toxic crystals.
Lastly, Westibone’s plug for Dueling is a valid one. The extra bleeds from Sharper Images are not insignificant, iWarden will hit harder, and Deceptive Evasion makes keeping up a shatter cadence easy (especially considering you don’t have IR).
I’d stick with focus, though. Enough people have been talking about how much they like the extra control that it seems worthwhile to me over duelist.
Furthermore, the whirl finisher on iWarden is apparently pretty dang boss, especially given how many ethereal fields you put down regularly (confusing bolts all day long!), and how important fire fields are.
All of this is just based on numbers and what little I’ve heard coming out of the raid, I haven’t tried the raid myself.
On my next run I will try focus instead of pistol. I had actually forgotten about the whirl finisher, which is not to be overlooked. I am not sure how many “bolts” the iWarden’s whirl puts out (compared to, say, Necro Shroud 4, which is a LOT). Also, as others have said, the floating orbs can get in the way of the iDuelists volley as well. From my experience, traited focus is not necessary thanks to alacrity. The hardest part is trying to find the sweet spot when switching back and forth between weapon sets. Last night I camped in shield most of the time, which offers party quickness/alacrity (from the phantasm) as well as a lot more survivability with the block.
On my next run I will try focus instead of pistol. I had actually forgotten about the whirl finisher, which is not to be overlooked. I am not sure how many “bolts” the iWarden’s whirl puts out (compared to, say, Necro Shroud 4, which is a LOT).
I dismissed the whirl before myself, until Mikkel came into a thread talking about getting 5k burning ticks…on a build without torch or staff :P
Each attack counts as a whirl finisher, and it makes 12 attacks, so that’s 12 bolt procs, which usually fire out aoe (though apparently they do tend to aim for your target).
Yeah I just compared the tool tip with Necro Shroud 4, which shows the same number of hits (12x). I have been playing around with Viper/Sinister Reaper and was shocked at the effectiveness of using RShroud 4 in a poison field or fire field. I also hadn’t thought about being able to pull the orbs away from the Raid with Focus #4. I am looking forward to trying this out!
I’m feeling that unless there’s another chrono in the raid with focus, taking it is almost 100% necessary for the control on temporal curtain. Since Mesmer dps is awful, it means that your group is much better off letting you handle the seekers with curtain than having anyone else waste their time on them. Additionally, curtain allows you to actually control where the seekers end up, as opposed to just randomly tossing out knockbacks. This synergizes extremely well when you’re tanking (which you should be) because it allows you to toss them elsewhere from where you plan to drag the boss.
You should be tanking for several reasons. First, tanking allows you to control where the boss goes and how it moves. This means that you can stay put for the entirety of your alacrity combo without worrying about the boss wandering off (as long as you avoid the teleport attack). Additionally, with a minimum of 2 channeled blocks and a long evade/third block, you’re extremely well suited to sustaining defense to avoid damage. Lastly, Mesmer does awful dps, so your group loses only minimal dps contribution by having you use high toughness gear.
I’m very much not a big fan of anything condie for Mesmer in this fight though. Torment works decently…but since a lot of our torment is from shatters, we can’t stack it as high as we’d like to (need to leave avengers up for alacrity upkeep). The boss attacks really slowly, so confusion is awful. Burn/bleed works fine of course, but staff applies those, and staff is bad in a group due to bounce mechanics. Lastly, a lot of bleed/finishers is from duelists or wardens, but keeping avengers up is far more beneficial to party dps than a bit of bleeding/a few burns. Ultimately you’re just going to do much better damage with sword and power gear than trying to go hybrid.
The Mantra is sucking up enormous amounts of your time.
A side by side comparison with 25 might/vuln puts MoP dps at 458, and Well of Calamity dps at 444.
But MoP spam is taking up 43.8% of your time, while WoC would only take up 3.4% of your time.MoP’s advantages are the heal, more flexible targeting (the enemy has to stay in WoC’s circle), and a little extra tankiness while channeling.
WoC’s advantages are noticeably more alacrity, more AA dps, more flexible casting, and some aoe cc.
Are the advantages of the Mantra healing really worth the heavy time investment? Doesn’t seem likely, to me.
One of the reasons I included MoP + restorative in this inspiration variant is that it allows me to drop Well of Eternity quite liberally. With torment runes, the proc on heal does nontrivial condi damage. From this perspective, MoP becomes my actual heal, while Well of Eternity serves as a support/condi variant of Calamity. Without MoP, I wouldn’t be so inclined to drop Well Of Eternity on cd.
I’m very much not a big fan of anything condie for Mesmer in this fight though. Torment works decently…but since a lot of our torment is from shatters, we can’t stack it as high as we’d like to (need to leave avengers up for alacrity upkeep). The boss attacks really slowly, so confusion is awful. Burn/bleed works fine of course, but staff applies those, and staff is bad in a group due to bounce mechanics. Lastly, a lot of bleed/finishers is from duelists or wardens, but keeping avengers up is far more beneficial to party dps than a bit of bleeding/a few burns. Ultimately you’re just going to do much better damage with sword and power gear than trying to go hybrid.
Has there been any theorycrafting done regarding # of avenger hits with permaAlacrity, CP, and Persistence of Memory vs 3 static avengers? I’m arguing for a condi setup because I’m assuming that they are similar.
Nevertheless, I’m fairly confident that hybrid scepter outperforms power-sword with perma-alacrity, just looking at the 1-3 skills alone; confusing images, the highest dps for scepter already does more power damage than blurred frenzy, the highest dps (marginally) for sword. I would be excited to see some math prove otherwise that power sword 1-3 outperforms hybrid scepter 1-3 given optimal traits/stats/food for both.
(edited by adelaide.6213)
I’m very much not a big fan of anything condie for Mesmer in this fight though. Torment works decently…but since a lot of our torment is from shatters, we can’t stack it as high as we’d like to (need to leave avengers up for alacrity upkeep). The boss attacks really slowly, so confusion is awful. Burn/bleed works fine of course, but staff applies those, and staff is bad in a group due to bounce mechanics. Lastly, a lot of bleed/finishers is from duelists or wardens, but keeping avengers up is far more beneficial to party dps than a bit of bleeding/a few burns. Ultimately you’re just going to do much better damage with sword and power gear than trying to go hybrid.
So after tonight, I agree with you that focus is the right offhand to go along with the shield. I do think you are underestimating Viper gear, though. The alacrity uptime is still very respectable with Chronophantasma and liberal use of wells, without just leaving up shield phantasms. I was seeing 3k burning ticks in addition to warden still critting for 6k plus, with spatial surge going up to 8k plus. I saw some 4k confusion ticks even, and I wouldn’t be so quick to say that a strict power build is much better than what you get with 2100+ power and 1600+ condition damage unbuffed. This is coming from trying runs with full ascended sets of both. Whether or not tanking is the best role for us or not, I don’t know. I think we can all agree that the player is the biggest factor here, and if you play well and pay attention, you will likely succeed whether or not you use zerker/assassin or Viper/Sinister.
Either way, I felt like I was channeling Mozart with all the keys being pressed…haha;
Nevertheless, I’m fairly confident that hybrid scepter outperforms power-sword with perma-alacrity, just looking at the 1-3 skills alone; confusing images, the highest dps for scepter already does more power damage than blurred frenzy, the highest dps (marginally) for sword. I would be excited to see some math prove otherwise that power sword 1-3 outperforms hybrid scepter 1-3 given optimal traits/stats/food for both.
In the past I did some extremely in-depth analysis of the difference between a sustained rotation on scepter with 100% uptime on alacrity and malicious sorcery, and autoattacking with sword. This was for a zerker build though, not hybrid, so that would change things somewhat. However, sword has since received a substantial damage buff on the autoattack, and it already had a significant lead over scepter, so I doubt that hybrid would allow it to catch up.
with spatial surge going up to 8k plus.
Do you mean confusing images?
In the past I did some extremely in-depth analysis of the difference between a sustained rotation on scepter with 100% uptime on alacrity and malicious sorcery, and autoattacking with sword. This was for a zerker build though, not hybrid, so that would change things somewhat. However, sword has since received a substantial damage buff on the autoattack, and it already had a significant lead over scepter, so I doubt that hybrid would allow it to catch up.
Having to cast wells / put out iAvengers will heavily skew towards scepter though.
The scepter ranged advantage shouldn’t be discounted as well.
Nevertheless, I’m fairly confident that hybrid scepter outperforms power-sword with perma-alacrity, just looking at the 1-3 skills alone; confusing images, the highest dps for scepter already does more power damage than blurred frenzy, the highest dps (marginally) for sword. I would be excited to see some math prove otherwise that power sword 1-3 outperforms hybrid scepter 1-3 given optimal traits/stats/food for both.
In the past I did some extremely in-depth analysis of the difference between a sustained rotation on scepter with 100% uptime on alacrity and malicious sorcery, and autoattacking with sword. This was for a zerker build though, not hybrid, so that would change things somewhat. However, sword has since received a substantial damage buff on the autoattack, and it already had a significant lead over scepter, so I doubt that hybrid would allow it to catch up.
with spatial surge going up to 8k plus.
Do you mean confusing images?
Yeah sorry; Confusing Images. Definitely not using GS for this.
In the past I did some extremely in-depth analysis of the difference between a sustained rotation on scepter with 100% uptime on alacrity and malicious sorcery, and autoattacking with sword. This was for a zerker build though, not hybrid, so that would change things somewhat. However, sword has since received a substantial damage buff on the autoattack, and it already had a significant lead over scepter, so I doubt that hybrid would allow it to catch up.
Having to cast wells / put out iAvengers will heavily skew towards scepter though.
The scepter ranged advantage shouldn’t be discounted as well.
I noticed this as well. When using scepter, it was a lot easier to survey the battlefield and keep the damage up while more accurately providing tides of time and wells to the group. Part of the reason for this is that I was pugging, and people are still figuring out how to control the boss, so melee was more erratic.
Threads like this is one of the reason why I love my Chronomancer and HoT. The sheer amount of possibilities are amazing when you get to dive into the class and it provides a great opportunity to satisfy your inner theorycrafter.
I tried raiding for the first time last night and got to use my new Ascended Sceptor (first ascended weapon, yay) and I must say I loved the playstyle as I felt I had many important roles to do. I did go with dueling instead of inspiration as the extra condition damage seemed to be needed but I think I will try out inspiration next time as it probably wouldn’t be a significant drop in damage for the raid.
I started out with a pistol as well but ended up switching to the focus and I have started to learn how great it can be. The pull is great for the seekers and since the warden will be in melee range of the boss, there isn’t a delay on the shatter. The biggest issue with the warden compared to the duelist is when the boss got moved out of the warden’s aoe.
Since both inspiration and the focus is somewhat new for me I am still in doubt regarding some mechanics:
First of all, does the warden reflect/destroy projectiles all the time or only when using the attack? While it is irrelevant for the first boss it may come handy later.
And how does Illusionary Inspiration work? Does the phantasms pulse the regeneration once every 3rd second or once per attack? Also can the signet of inspiration proc be used to help with might stacking? Let’s say I and the people around me have 12 stacks of might and then I summon a phantasm, will the other guys get 24 stacks of might then? Can it also be used to extend the duration of other boons like quickness?
Anyone know how much of your damage you give up by using Inspiration over Dueling? While the bleed procs and fury on phantasms are great, I feel that the rest of the Dueling tree is rather lackluster, atleast for the first boss.
Part of the reason for this is that I was pugging, and people are still figuring out how to control the boss, so melee was more erratic.
I solve this problem by tanking. One of the pugs I had joined had some bozo tanking that was dragging it all over the place. Once I convinced him to let me do it, things got a lot better. Mesmer is a fantastic tank between blurred frenzy and shield 4, you can tank the first phase literally without moving your feet at all. When the floor starts lighting up, you obviously can’t stay totally still, but you can be very consistent with how it moves.
First of all, does the warden reflect/destroy projectiles all the time or only when using the attack? While it is irrelevant for the first boss it may come handy later.
Only while attacking.
And how does Illusionary Inspiration work? Does the phantasms pulse the regeneration once every 3rd second or once per attack?
PBAoE pulse centered on the phantasm, once every 3 seconds.
Also can the signet of inspiration proc be used to help with might stacking? Let’s say I and the people around me have 12 stacks of might and then I summon a phantasm, will the other guys get 24 stacks of might then? Can it also be used to extend the duration of other boons like quickness?
The proc is exactly the same functionality as signet of inspiration. The issue is that you can’t control when to use that unless you purposefully refrain from casting any phantasms until you want that boon share, and that gives it limited use.
Anyone know how much of your damage you give up by using Inspiration over Dueling? While the bleed procs and fury on phantasms are great, I feel that the rest of the Dueling tree is rather lackluster, atleast for the first boss.
If you’re going condition, you’re giving up quite a bit from the bleed stacking. Personally, I take inspiration because when I tank, I want to be able to provide iDefenders, and since I’m shattering often to proc persistence of memory to maximize my block uptime I take heal on shatter to reduce my reliance on the healer.
Anyone know how much of your damage you give up by using Inspiration over Dueling? While the bleed procs and fury on phantasms are great, I feel that the rest of the Dueling tree is rather lackluster, atleast for the first boss.
Using a focus/shield build with Fury/Chronophantasma/Persistence and about 50% bleed duration, I was able to maintain 6 stacks of bleed on average. I’ve found an alacrity-reduced mindwrack provides a somewhat good cadence for shattering in this setup.
As a comparison, having 3 iDuelists permanently out with Fury/Haste using the same gear setup yielded ~16s bleed stacks on average. (I don’t think avoiding shattering is optimal in a group though – because as a chronomancer you gain alacrity from shatters.)
I have to say I really like the idea of the Sinister scepter for that mixed damage. I’m not so sure about speccing so heavily in torment though. I think you thought process is that confusion isn’t as reliable enough of a source of damage, so you wanted something better. I agree with that thought process, but I think Alpha might be onto something with speccing into bleed instead.
I don’t like the MoP. I don’t think Mesmer should be putting so much time into trying to heal, when druids do it so much better.
My perspective is coming from only having fought the Vale guardian, so I do have a few concerns in that department. First, I like to have blink to manage both the green circle as well as the teleports. Additionally, I’ve been running the well that provides Blur to mitigate the seeker damage. I almost felt that I had to run GS/Focus for the knockback, but if the other players can manage moving the seekers, I do think I’d like a set like Sc/Sh + Sc/P. That being said, this thread has kinda convinced me to stick with focus for now.
Personally, being a WvW player, I run sigil of energy on everything. I do understand the necessity for damaging sigils in the raid though. Any tips for overcoming my reliance on energy?
Curo Lunesque – “Concerned Citizen and Community Builder”
NSP – northernshiverpeaks.org
NSP – northernshiverpeaks.org
(edited by Curo.2483)