(edited by skcamow.3527)
Soldier Chrono (PvP/Vid)
I’m not really sold on Crusader stats for Chrono. I tried it out in BWE1 in a build that had a lot of incidental healing via Inspiration and didn’t really notice a difference in survivability versus Cavalier or Knight’s armour.
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I somewhat agree with tobasco here. I think crusader can be good, but in the build you present especially, with only one source of healing, you only get 700-800 more healing on a 30s CD (less with alacrity). This is probably in part compensated by the added toughness (not against conditions though).
On the other hand, in PvP crusader also has more power than cavalier. I do not feel for doing the maths, but the loss in raw power may end up being very insignificant (if any). So, I think crusader and cavalier may end up performing very similar.
While the crit substitution is there I don’t think it’s a good idea because you don’t really have the sustained dps on Mesmer to make it viable in scenarios where you can’t put slow/fury up and can’t crit, unlike necromancer or revenant. It’s just not dependable compared to death perception or rolling mists.
Also you don’t have as much passive healing, so there’s that too, and in general I feel as though having high toughness on Mesmer is really pointless.
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High Toughness on Mesmer is far from pointless, especially when you go into Inspiration which has a lot of healing… and with Chrono, I do mean a LOT.
That said I agree that Mesmer DPS isn’t the way to go in PvP, and Inspiration healing doesn’t scale very well with Healing Power. As a burst profession I think to build around Danger Time you should be close to 100% crit while Slow is up, otherwise it’s too unreliable.
Another important thing to note about crusader is passive regen rates at 200/sec from the chaos line/BD. Obviously won’t be perma, but that kind of thing plays a lot into overall sustain.
The initial idea was crusader or soldier, and it may be that soldier is the better way to go – will be trying both.
Also I can’t see slow uptime being too bad honestly with this spread and utilities. Even without slow I’ll have perma fury so 30% isn’t terrible. Will have to see how it plays.
(edited by skcamow.3527)
Why Pack Runes? You could go for something like Lyssa, which would up your crit chance while adding some duration to slow. Altruism would add some might-stacking, or Runes of Rage will up your ferocity and the damage you can do while you have fury.
Pack Runes always struck me as great for roaming, but if you’re going for a “brawler” vibe, the need to quickness doesn’t seem too dire, especially when Chronos get the 25% speed boost.
Why Pack Runes? You could go for something like Lyssa, which would up your crit chance while adding some duration to slow. Altruism would add some might-stacking, or Runes of Rage will up your ferocity and the damage you can do while you have fury.
Pack Runes always struck me as great for roaming, but if you’re going for a “brawler” vibe, the need to quickness doesn’t seem too dire, especially when Chronos get the 25% speed boost.
It’s definitely not for the swiftness, rather specifically for two things: 1) to keep base crit chance at 10% which gets me at 30% with fury and 2) maximizing fury uptime. Those are two extremely important factors to making a build like this even remotely work. The power is good as well because although I don’t consider this anywhere close to a dps shatter build, it’s still got to do decent damage while having great staying power.
Lyssa, while decent, probably isn’t as good as pack. It helps with base precision but only provides 2% more over pack. The 10% additional condition duration isn’t really going to help that much as I’ll get a decent amount from the chaos line anyway. The condi clear is probably the most enticing thing about it, assuming I stick with gravity well. Then there’s the power loss, which is important for me to keep since this build doesn’t stack too much might.
After some testing, one huge change will be chronophantasma, much better than lost time especially in this build where I can’t stack the charges up quickly for the slow proc.
chronophantasma gives me that extra iAvenger for more slow. I’m gonna run time warp as well to see how that is.
I’ll also be trying soldier amulet today (last night was crusader). Damage felt good, stats indicated as well. Was doing a lot more honestly than I thought due to all the AoE. Never expected to see 500k.
For sure I was very difficult to take down but that seems to be the norm across the board for people playing chrono right now. A couple adjustments to this build would even make it bunker worthy. I’m hearing a lot of success being had for chrono in that area.
(edited by skcamow.3527)
I can say after many team q matches tonight, the simple changes to chronophantasma, time warp and soldier amulet make this one beast of a build. It can actually serve as a soft bunker but the damage this thing can output is really impressive. I was over 600k one match tonight in a non DPS, more supporting build. I know the stats aren’t everything but they can provide insight into what builds can do.
I should have went with soldier from the beginning, hence changing the post title and will surely be rocking this come HoT.
Thanks for the comments so far. I continue to welcome any and all feedback as to how to further improve it.
Glad to hear that it’s strong! It’s nice to break out of the Marauder/Zerk mainstream. My one concern regarding Soldier Amulet is that it lacks the ferocity to capitalize on all the extra crit chance you gain from traits. Then again, you are meaning for this to be more support than damage.
The ability for the shield to summon two phantasms if you land a block is amazing. It’s an interesting weapon set when paired with the sword. I was toying around with Sword-Shield/Scepter-Pistol for a condition build today and I found myself using S-Sh way more during the fights.
If you were to go more support in your build, would you sacrifice the Chaos line for Inspiration? Summoning an iDefender and iAvenger in one block is really nice for clone generation.
Your soldier Chrono build is a nice and different approach than the usual. Probably in HoT/raids, some vitality and toughness may be needed. I’m gonna have to look into seeing how it fares in PvE.
Hey Skcamow, here is one of the clips from the matches we played together:
It doesn’t show much, unfortunately, but how smooth your beta-Mesmer looks. =P Though at one point in the clip someone on the enemy team is chastising their Mesmer because of how their damage doesn’t compare to yours
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Glad to hear that it’s strong! It’s nice to break out of the Marauder/Zerk mainstream. My one concern regarding Soldier Amulet is that it lacks the ferocity to capitalize on all the extra crit chance you gain from traits. Then again, you are meaning for this to be more support than damage.
The ferocity is missed, but you’d be surprised what kind of damage this can do. It actually has decent burst but depends very much on the slow uptime of your opponents (which tends to be decent).
The ability for the shield to summon two phantasms if you land a block is amazing. It’s an interesting weapon set when paired with the sword. I was toying around with Sword-Shield/Scepter-Pistol for a condition build today and I found myself using S-Sh way more during the fights.
Yes the best part of this is the synergy with chronophantasma. This augments the already strong AoE slow the build has.
If you were to go more support in your build, would you sacrifice the Chaos line for Inspiration? Summoning an iDefender and iAvenger in one block is really nice for clone generation.
Indeed, if I were to change anything it would be to go inspiration but I wouldn’t sacrifice chaos, it’d be dueling. Bountiful disillusionment and chaotic dampening are far too important for an on-point build like this. I’m absolutely loving the AoE blinds from blinding dissipation and in a build like this, blind application via that trait is definitely optimized vs standard dps shatter builds (who shouldn’t be fighting on point the majority of the time).
Your soldier Chrono build is a nice and different approach than the usual. Probably in HoT/raids, some vitality and toughness may be needed. I’m gonna have to look into seeing how it fares in PvE.
This is an interesting prospect (and something I wasn’t originally intending). The optimal specs for raids are still getting ironed out. I saw many parties going with a small contingent of more tanky dps/utility/support. This could potentially fill that role. For sure, a mesmer must have a sword for the boon rip.
I saw a lot of knight amulet which makes sense because of the higher precision. Still, good slow uptime on the boss shouldn’t be difficult and the higher vitality and power from soldier may not be a bad play.
Also … I do have some footage which semi-decently showcases the build. Not sure I’m completely satisfied with it so I may wait until HoT when I can play with Chrono a bit more, not be such a newb at it and have more time to get good footage.
Yeah, using the GW2Skill.net builder, I’m trying to set up at least >50% crit chance for PvE. I’m debating with having either soldier’s armor or soldier’s weapons and the other is assassin’s and the trinkets being mostly berserker. Something like this:
Or this:
Like you said, optimal specs are still in the works. I’m gonna have to try out each version to see which seems better.
Hey Skcamow, here is one of the clips from the matches we played together:
It doesn’t show much, unfortunately, but how smooth your beta-Mesmer looks. =P Though at one point in the clip someone on the enemy team is chastising their Mesmer because of how their damage doesn’t compare to yours
Chaos, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but having watched your two most recent chrono vids, I cant help but think your chrono build is innefective, or sub optimally built (or something). It’s not that it can’t do anything, but there’s constantly all these situations where I feel like you should be able to do more but you can’t :/
Hey Skcamow, here is one of the clips from the matches we played together:
It doesn’t show much, unfortunately, but how smooth your beta-Mesmer looks. =P Though at one point in the clip someone on the enemy team is chastising their Mesmer because of how their damage doesn’t compare to yours
Chaos, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but having watched your two most recent chrono vids, I cant help but think your chrono build is innefective, or sub optimally built (or something). It’s not that it can’t do anything, but there’s constantly all these situations where I feel like you should be able to do more but you can’t :/
Just chiming in here, but I think a staff sw/shield well build would overall do better with a tankier amulet. In particular celestial comes to mind, though if you went that route it’d be wise to drop either dom or chaos for illusions to pick up maim, and if you kept Chaos and CI you could stack might fairly well with might duration runes. If you kept domination, you could make it work by using the traits to stack vulnerability to keep the sustained damage quite high for cele.
The other idea is to just conform to the meta hive-mind and use GS over staff for more focused burst damage overall, which would be a bit more optimized with marauder than staff would be, since sw/shiled gives you enough survivability.
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Hey Skcamow, here is one of the clips from the matches we played together:
It doesn’t show much, unfortunately, but how smooth your beta-Mesmer looks. =P Though at one point in the clip someone on the enemy team is chastising their Mesmer because of how their damage doesn’t compare to yours
Chaos, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but having watched your two most recent chrono vids, I cant help but think your chrono build is innefective, or sub optimally built (or something). It’s not that it can’t do anything, but there’s constantly all these situations where I feel like you should be able to do more but you can’t :/
Just chiming in here, but I think a staff sw/shield well build would overall do better with a tankier amulet. In particular celestial comes to mind, though if you went that route it’d be wise to drop either dom or chaos for illusions to pick up maim, and if you kept Chaos and CI you could stack might fairly well with might duration runes. If you kept domination, you could make it work by using the traits to stack vulnerability to keep the sustained damage quite high for cele.
The other idea is to just conform to the meta hive-mind and use GS over staff for more focused burst damage overall, which would be a bit more optimized with marauder than staff would be, since sw/shield gives you enough survivability.
That’s the thing. So often Chaos is off point, and when on point not a particularly strong point holder. And since he’s not there contending points, you’d expect more direct pressure vs targets where’as they barely seem to sweat most of the time.
I know the weapons are certainly your “set”, Chaos, but are you sure this build is properly functional?
Hey Skcamow, here is one of the clips from the matches we played together:
It doesn’t show much, unfortunately, but how smooth your beta-Mesmer looks. =P Though at one point in the clip someone on the enemy team is chastising their Mesmer because of how their damage doesn’t compare to yours
Chaos, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but having watched your two most recent chrono vids, I cant help but think your chrono build is innefective, or sub optimally built (or something). It’s not that it can’t do anything, but there’s constantly all these situations where I feel like you should be able to do more but you can’t :/
Just chiming in here, but I think a staff sw/shield well build would overall do better with a tankier amulet. In particular celestial comes to mind, though if you went that route it’d be wise to drop either dom or chaos for illusions to pick up maim, and if you kept Chaos and CI you could stack might fairly well with might duration runes. If you kept domination, you could make it work by using the traits to stack vulnerability to keep the sustained damage quite high for cele.
The other idea is to just conform to the meta hive-mind and use GS over staff for more focused burst damage overall, which would be a bit more optimized with marauder than staff would be, since sw/shield gives you enough survivability.
That’s the thing. So often Chaos is off point, and when on point not a particularly strong point holder. And since he’s not there contending points, you’d expect more direct pressure vs targets where’as they barely seem to sweat most of the time.
I know the weapons are certainly your “set”, Chaos, but are you sure this build is properly functional?
I don’t wanna derail the thread, but real quick..
I’d like to say that the build could use some tweaks, but I honestly don’t think it does. The setup of Dom/Chaos/Chrono is solid, the runes and sigils are solid, and the weaponset works… So I really think its just me.
I kind of go through this process when learning a build I really like where I absolutely suck at first, and gradually swim out of the swamp of my own badness as I learn from my mistakes.
The reason I’ve chosen to stick with this setup is because I see the potential here, I just haven’t unlocked it yet. And there are plenty of variants I could make:
- Swap staff with GS
- Swap to cele ammy
- Swap a well with Precognition
- Swap a well with Mantra of Distraction.
- Swap sword with scepter and go condi
I think any of those changes would make the build easier to run, and maybe a bit smoother, but I really like staff and the damage from marauder… That being said, skcamows concept of getting damage via crits from slow is really intriguing. And something I wanna look into.
But yeah.. Right now the bad videos are more my own foolish mistakes while learning the build then the fault of the setup. To be honest (and very self-criticizing) I feel I’ve been slacking on several fronts .. Like with the guide.. As irl stuff intervenes. But I plan to remedy that soon. I’ve replaced the other video in the Clockdown thread with one that better represents the build.
Skcamow.. From what you played do you think the tankier amulet is worth it with danger time?
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Fwiw, I like the chrono lockdown setup that chaos has. It definitely might work a little better with gs for focused burst, but staff is great for the defense and aoe pressure. I didn’t get enough time this past weekend to test it out unfortunately, but I will once hot hits.
Skcamow.. From what you played do you think the tankier amulet is worth it with danger time?
This seems to be an oft asked question and for good reason. The answer is, I’m as yet unsure. There’s still quite a bit of experimentation needed to determine viability. I will say that a base 30% crit chance isn’t too bad (pack rune+perma fury). Initial results seem decent but only two days of playing in the last BWE isn’t enough time to determine.
Here’s some footage: Soldier Chrono Video (BWE3)
I’m very clunky, much into the learning curve being I hadn’t played chrono yet until BWE3. The idea is there though and you can see some of it on display.
With a coordinated team around, this has definite potential. It’s going to take a couple weeks to confirm following the HoT release.