Guild Wars 2

Jet Lag

Premise: Alacrity + Quickness = Win???

In principle, we can see the idea that 4 buffed elementalists might be better than 5 unbuffed elementalists. The question stands, how much buffing is necessary to make it worthwhile?

This build attempts to craft an optimal team Quickness and Alacrity sharing chronomancer build, with a minor in healing and boonsharing.
I don’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of boonsharing, so I’m sure the non-alacrity/quickness part of the build can do with a fair bit of improvement.

The Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW8encfClfi9fCufCUrhlejyMAugMqeUb1XF91itYA-TRCBABGp8Tw9DAfBFkKV/RClgAcRAyT3QCmfC4JAEA4A434bfDWf91Xf91jUABOzC-e
Chrono/Ill/Chaos
Key traits: All’s Well that Ends Well, Improved Alacrity, Chaotic Persistence, Bountiful Disillusionment
Key skills: Well of Eternity, Well of Action, Well of Recall, Well of Calamity, Time Warp, Continuum Split/Shift, Tides of Time
Key gear: 2x Platinum Doubloon; Traveler’s Runes (5-pc); Fried Golden Dumpling; Bountiful Maintenance Oil

The Primary Mechanic:
Alacrity!
F5 (at least 1 illusion required) -> Time Warp
In short, spam your Wells, except to make sure they’re off cooldown every time CS is ready, then do another Time Warp/All Wells burst, and begin again. What you do in the meantime is your own business.

Limitations:
1. Timing. Since you don’t have 100% team alacrity, you’re the only one who doesn’t have to pay attention to when you use your abilities to get maximum benefit. The rest of your team needs to be aware of when they will and won’t have alacrity.
2. Location. Everyone’s gotta be in the wells when they expire to the the All’s Well bonus, and they’ve gotta stay in Well of Recall to get its full bonus. In short, this is a stacking-strategy build. Spreading out neuters the build pretty solidly.
3. Quickness stacking might be interacting weirdly with Time Warp’s pulsing mechanics. I need to do more testing to be sure.

Math:
Here’s where it gets fun.
I’ve been doing most of my math here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p6Byh_rZrfQtG0dsI1Y2JL_yYw_mvzt8EqrBXN2hLps/edit?usp=sharing

The build under “With CShift, Extra Alacrity, No Gravity Well, Mimic Action” is giving:

• 61% Team Alacrity uptime
• 28.9% cooldown reduction to team skills (frontloaded)
• 100% personal alacrity uptime
• 40% cooldown reduction to personal skills
• 100% quickness uptime (52% boon duration from food/runes/doubloons, with Chaotic Persistence virtually guaranteed to be adding 12% from Quickness/Might/Fury/Swiftness or some other 4th boon, it’s pretty easy)
• 26 seconds of continuous alacrity from the moment we first cast Well of Recall

That gives us 26s bursts of alacrity with a 20 second lull between in which you only get 2-4 seconds of alacrity.

Now we must ask, does the math support including such a Chronomancer over another elementalist? For this we first pretend the Chronomancer deals no damage of their own, that they provide no support beyond alacrity and swiftness, and that they aren’t competing with other possible supports like banner warrior or guardian.

I really don’t know how to calculate elementalist damage in general, so I’m going to cheat and make a reductionist assumption:
Suppose we take a single damaging skill, any skill, and reduce it to its basic parts:
1. Damage – assumed to include any negative effect produced by the skill, magically translated into raw damage
2. Cooldown – duration of cooldown
3. Channel – duration of cast time

In general, DPS = Damage/(Cooldown + Channel).
By comparison, DPS = Damage / ((1-alacrity uptime) * Cooldown + (2/3) * Channel)
Or, damage divided by time modified to account for alacrity cooldown reduction and lower channel time from quickness. Quickness is 100% uptime, so we just use the straight number.
Mathematically, we find that 4 Elementalists with the quickness and alacrity from this build will always have higher average dps for spamming a single skill than 5 elementalists without the quickness and alacrity.
This result is not affected by the specific channel time or cooldown, so even combinations of skills should see the same results, so this serves as a reasonable proxy to the damage potential of an entire class’s skills.
The only loss not accounted for comes through loss of extra combos, as a 5th elementalist would have added better fields and more blasts, but the 4-Ele team gets some benefit there too, as they blast and lay down fields more often.

If you step down to 3 Eles and 2 chronomancers, however, even though it gets you to 100% alacrity uptime, it always does less damage. That’s not to say 2 chronos + 3 Eles can’t outperform, it just means the Chronos have to contribute damage of their own to make up the difference.

Once you start to add the Chronomancer’s own damage to the 4-ele team, you start to widen the lead over 5-eles even further, as it’s hardly reasonable to expect a Chrono to sit on his thumbs waiting for his wells to recharge.

tl;dr: 4 elementalists supported by a chronomancer deals more damage than 5 elementalists.

Edit: Replaced the build with a modified version of what Pyro tested in the beta. Note that Tides of Time increases the available quickness by a fair bit, making the whole build more workable. It’s a good thing.
In practice, uptime is less relevant than continuous, upfront time. Pyro was getting about 34s of continuous alacrity and quickness. That’s adjustable, and for longer fights you can get more uptime if you need it. The maximum potential in the spreadsheet is under
“With CShift, Extra Alacrity, No Gravity Well
Tides of Time (assume caught 1 per cast, 2 after f5), Calamity, 54s period”
The changes all constitute an increase in dps potential, so the above comparative dps math is still valid.

Very nice, thank you very much. I’ll look at the math later. However, looks like a very good support build. Glad to hear that a chronomancer may be a very good addition to pve runs. Additionally, as you have mentioned in your post, the chronomancer will do a little damage. Well of action and recall both do some damage on their own. You may also be able to get a mind wrack in continuum split with the rotation if you do a full shatter. You can then mind wrack after continuum shift. However, from my experience, I’m not sure you can do this rotation with one additional illusion. I tried pretty much the exact same rotation in the last beta. Perhaps you could do it with two. However, I highly doubt one, unless you have already tried and were successful.

I’m also wandering about the use of shield. Tides of time gives a little extra quickness to allies while echo of memory provides a little extra alacrity. People have been saying it will be useless on pve. However, I was never so sure of this fact. If you are running this build, its not like you are going to be summoning a lot of phantasms with s/s anyway.

You also have to be careful with your uptime and cooldowns. In some cases, you don’t want to blow through all your wells so you have something left for the next encounter. The 45 second cool down on well of recall is still pretty high. This may potentially be where the shield could be useful. To fill those cool down gaps.

I dont think the the argument you base your explanation is entirely correct. Yes, ele is the best class for pve, yet the meta party isnt 5-ele group… it include a thief cause they bring stealth on-demand (rather brutal time saving in many dungeons) and defiance stripping and still capable of tier-1 dmg (just loose in aoe, but they balance the loss in single target); warrior because easy might mantain (another brutal include since it allows eles to have their normal dps rotation instead of blasting fields) and banners + empower allies and not loosing much since their dmg capabilities are just below, tier-2;
and guard, reflects aegis and stability to complete the circle, again without loosing much in dmg, tier-2.

The build you posted does not cover might mantain/ and power/precision/ferocity/condi dmg buffs + on demand easy stealth and defiance stripping + reflect and stability to substitute all that classes for eles+chrono. Also, the build gave up big part of dmg mesmer is capable of doing (and tier-3 dmg) with that key gear/trait choices.

And last, a dungeon run isnt 100% battle time to make up for that CD and alacrity calculations. Especially on low cd skills like lava font. Or on same spot, to benefit of wells last pulse.

Concluding, by itself alacrity/quickness doesnt weight as much as the other classes supports/utilities to go all-in for it. If we squeeze alacrity+quickness, it means dmg or more frequent utility ( but the utility has to be present to have it cd reduced).
Yet i think it may be a meta addition if we can sub one of the meta party classes for a similar build of yours. Probabily an ele or guard are the best classes/roles to sub for. Maybe guard if we can adjust the build and give up a bit of alacrity, and put feedback/stability mantra.

lol.

it include a thief cause they bring stealth on-demand (rather brutal time saving in many dungeons)

Mesmers can provide nearly as much stealth, and portal to boot. In fact, I demonstrated during the last beta that chronomancer can maintain 100% stealth pretty easily. It’s not hard to make a couple skill/trait swaps, especially once you get the cadence of everything down.

FJSAMA.2867:

and defiance stripping

Fair point. That’ll be easier for the chrono with the new breakbar, as Lost Time + Greatsword = lots of slow = lots of breakbar damage.

FJSAMA.2867:

and still capable of tier-1 dmg (just loose in aoe, but they balance the loss in single target);

That was the whole point of this exercise, to determine if the dps gain from Alacrity/Quickness outweighs the loss of 5th-man dps. The math says it does, it provides more dps than an extra member of the highest-dps class in the game.

FJSAMA.2867:

warrior because easy might mantain (another brutal include since it allows eles to have their normal dps rotation instead of blasting fields)

That was the point of the minor in boonsharing. You get one less use of Signet of Inspiration, but you get it on a much lower cooldown due to alacrity. You probably didn’t notice all the might generation in this build, but it’s there. Can it compete with Warrior? I dunno, but I have my doubts. It can probably do well enough to cover some of the gap, not to mention that Glyph of Storms is on a much lower cooldown/cast time for your eles, too.

FJSAMA.2867:

and banners + empower allies and

Banners are a definite loss. But then, warriors do lose dps on their own. That’s not actually too big a problem either, since if including a warrior with 4 elementalists is worth doing over 5 eles, it’s probably worth including a warrior with 3 elementalists and a chronomancer. That would cover might and banners+empower allies right there.

FJSAMA.2867:

not loosing much since their dmg capabilities are just below, tier-2;

Covered that under thief, math says chrono adds more party dps than an ele, much less a thief or warrior.

FJSAMA.2867:

and guard, reflects

lolreflects. That’s why the build has traited focus, and why mesmers have feedback in general. The chrono can cover reflects just fine.

FJSAMA.2867:

aegis

That’s a bit of a loss, though the chrono shares distortion with allies, and can share protection with boonsharing (and aegis, if we get it).

FJSAMA.2867:

and stability to complete the circle,

Bountiful Disillusionment + Boonsharing = stability.
Also, one of the wells gives stability, which you can boonshare.

FJSAMA.2867:

again without loosing much in dmg, tier-2.

As above.

FJSAMA.2867:

The build you posted does not cover might mantain and power/precision/ferocity/condi dmg buffs + on demand easy stealth and defiance stripping + reflect and stability to substitute all that classes for eles+chrono. Also, the build gave up big part of dmg mesmer is capable of doing (and tier-3 dmg) with that key gear/trait choices.

The group you just described has 1 warrior, 1 thief, 1 guardian and 2 eles. Is that the meta? We don’t need to replace all of them, we just need to replace 1 of them, and we surely can.
Furthermore, the same math that proves 1 chrono + 4 ele outdamages 5 ele allows you to replace any single high-dps class in any group and do more damage, because 1 ele is the highest-damaging class, so long as the remaining group has sufficiently strong dps on their own, which you just assured me is the case for all classes in the meta.

FJSAMA.2867:

And last, a dungeon run isnt 100% battle time to make up for that CD and alacrity calculations. Especially on low cd skills like lava font.

That’s why I made a point of the 26s of upfront alacrity, because of shorter fights where longer off-time makes the difference you’re describing.

FJSAMA.2867:

Or on same spot, to benefit of wells last pulse.

As I noted in my build, this is one of the biggest drawbacks. It only works in fights where the group stays close together, and doesn’t move too much during burst time (it’s about a 5-6 second window that your group needs to stay together, with occasional pauses periodically after that).

I think the build is interesting, and it is interesting to see how alacrity and quickness translate into DPS. However, in the list of things you describe the build can do, there are a few flaws. You use boonshare to prove that you can provide party buff in terms of stability, protection, might etc… but you have only 1 boonshare ability and it is not on-demand and is thus difficult to time.

Alacrity and quickness are very useful, and they may justify a place in a party even if the party does not have only elementalists. I like them mostly because they give a niche we don’t have when reflects are not so important.

I am planning to make a full program to compute party wide DPS and boons and whatever based on skill rotation of all characters… but it will take some time

Silverkey.2078:

I think the build is interesting, and it is interesting to see how alacrity and quickness translate into DPS. However, in the list of things you describe the build can do, there are a few flaws.

Indeed! I’m hardly a support mesmer expert, so I fully expect the build can be improved by someone with more practice, but the concept and the math are very suggestive!

Silverkey.2078:

You use boonshare to prove that you can provide party buff in terms of stability, protection, might etc… but you have only 1 boonshare ability and it is not on-demand and is thus difficult to time.

Phantasmal warlock has the same cast time as Signet of Inspiration even without alacrity, and Phantasmal Warden with alacrity still has a shorter cast time than SoI without alacrity. In short, while it’s regrettably true that the build only has 1 boonshare, the cast on that boonshare is the same as on a boonshare build…so long as you haven’t been spamming your phantasms.

Silverkey.2078:

Alacrity and quickness are very useful, and they may justify a place in a party even if the party does not have only elementalists. I like them mostly because they give a niche we don’t have when reflects are not so important.

Yes, it’s actually quite beautiful. And frankly, since Mesmers already have some utility that can be worth bringing them along for, the alacrity/quickness gives them a secondary benefit alongside that utility. So we no longer have to whine about “only being brought along for portal/time warp”, since the group is getting other benefits from us as well.

Silverkey.2078:

I am planning to make a full program to compute party wide DPS and boons and whatever based on skill rotation of all characters… but it will take some time

I really look forward to it!

I’d like to add that the build I put together is meant to supplement the support role with more support…but there’s no reason you can’t replace the Celestial with Assassin’s gear, and still have most of the personal and reflect dps (just make sure to pick up a couple more platinum doubloons, and replace the Altruism runes with Scholar).

Look at it this way
1 support chronomancer and 4 eles may do more dps than 5 eles
5 eles can do more dps than 1 dps mes and 4 eles if no reflects are involved.
Therefore, 1 support chronomancer and 4 eles should beat out 1 dps mes with 4 eles.

Xstein.2187:

Look at it this way
1 support chronomancer and 4 eles may do more dps than 5 eles
5 eles can do more dps than 1 dps mes and 4 eles if no reflects are involved.
Therefore, 1 support chronomancer and 4 eles should beat out 1 dps mes with 4 eles.

So instead of being a dead weight, let’s be a semi-alive weight

ZoomZoom, Jet Lag, Warped Time…

Pick a name already or we’ll call this build Naming Time.

Ok, a few things.

First: The party you should be aiming for is 3 eles, 1 warrior, and 1 Mesmer. PS, banners, and the aura from warrior makes them a non-optional part of a party.

Next, about boon share. This build doesn’t do it, not really. You don’t generate the boons that parties really need in abundance, hence why a PS warrior is necessary for might, and why ele blasting or some other stuff is necessary for fury. You say 100% quickness uptime. How? You only get quickness from time warp, where’s the 100% from?

Next, I have a hard time believing that mimic is even remotely worth it compared to well of calamity, considering the offensive aspect of that well, and the 4x shorter cooldown.

The build certainly has plenty of reflects. I have my doubts that any of the new content will allow you to use reflects well on bosses, since Anet has only made more and more projectiles unreflectable as time has gone on, and this means that traited focus could even be too much for many fights.

Lack of stability obviously isn’t an issue, since there’s literally about 2 fights in the entire game that stability is useful on. Aegis isn’t an issue for the most part. While it can be nice to have, guards only have about 2 aoe aegis skills, both on hefty cooldowns. Losing that won’t make or break anything.

Overall, it’s interesting. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s really worth running in groups. The glaring issue with it is that in non-organized groups it’ll be worthless. The requirement of people to stand on the wells the entire time means that you need at least rudimentary coordination in your team, and most pugs are considered a success if everyone is able to walk and talk at the same time.

Fay.2357:

First: The party you should be aiming for is 3 eles, 1 warrior, and 1 Mesmer. PS, banners, and the aura from warrior makes them a non-optional part of a party.

Should be fine, the dps comparison should hold up under that assumption. The only problem would be trying to replace an ele in a party composed mostly of weaker-than-ele characters, then the math could get screwed up.

Fay.2357:

Next, about boon share. This build doesn’t do it, not really. You don’t generate the boons that parties really need in abundance, hence why a PS warrior is necessary for might, and why ele blasting or some other stuff is necessary for fury.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Converting the build over to a mostly-dps build is doable, though, so not a huge issue.

Fay.2357:

You say 100% quickness uptime. How? You only get quickness from time warp, where’s the 100% from?

Well of Action.
Well of Action states 3.5s of quickness on the wiki, and we are using Mimic on it, so we get 2 Wells of Action during f5 and 2 right after f5, for a cumulative 14s of quickness base, which is increased to 22.68s of quickness from our 62% boon duration.
Because we have 100% personal alacrity from Improved Alacrity, we can get another Well of Action in between cycles, so that’s another 3.5*1.62 = 5.67s of quickness, for a total of 28.35s of quickness.
Add that to the 11s from Time Warp, which goes up to 17.82s of quickness with boon duration, and we’re at 46.17s of quickness per 45.9s cycle (the cooldown of Continuum Split with 100% alacrity), which is 100% uptime.

Fay.2357:

Next, I have a hard time believing that mimic is even remotely worth it compared to well of calamity, considering the offensive aspect of that well, and the 4x shorter cooldown.

It’s all about the Quickness, in this case. You can see the math in the google doc I linked, I did a few different scenarios, including using Well of Calamity. Well of Calamity provides more alacrity than using Mimic on Well of Action and less alacrity than using Mimic on Well of Recall. What I don’t know is how much dps Calamity is actually producing in that time, as I’ve heard both that it’s great and that it’s terrible.
From what I can tell, it does less damage than a single lava font, and on a much longer cooldown than lava font, so I’m not sure that it’s worth giving up 100% quickness to get.

Fay.2357:

The build certainly has plenty of reflects. I have my doubts that any of the new content will allow you to use reflects well on bosses, since Anet has only made more and more projectiles unreflectable as time has gone on, and this means that traited focus could even be too much for many fights.

A noteworthy point.
Part of that was because it’s harder to fit Feedback into the build without sacrificing quickness and alacrity.
I’ve actually put together a build that’s a cross between this build and my breakbar killer build that uses Shield and Greatsword+Lost Time to try to provide superior anti-breakbar capabilities, that I’d like to try in the beta.
It should also be possible to put together a simple phantasm-damage build that doesn’t sacrifice quite as much personal dps as normal builds do.
I’ve also got my eye on a condi build version of this, though that gets a lot tougher to manage without IR. Maybe Improved Alacrity won’t be necessary, with lots of shatters?

Fay.2357:

Lack of stability obviously isn’t an issue, since there’s literally about 2 fights in the entire game that stability is useful on. Aegis isn’t an issue for the most part. While it can be nice to have, guards only have about 2 aoe aegis skills, both on hefty cooldowns. Losing that won’t make or break anything.

Though, the new content is apparently designed to be more dynamic. That’s not great for the build in general though, if you can’t keep your allies on the wells to get the benefits. (though if that’s the case, one wonders why Anet put so much into our wells in the first place. “Stand in this circle 3 seconds from now to get a small buff” when you’re creating new content to keep people from being able to stand in one place much just seems…counterproductive).

Fay.2357:

The glaring issue with it is that in non-organized groups it’ll be worthless. The requirement of people to stand on the wells the entire time means that you need at least rudimentary coordination in your team, and most pugs are considered a success if everyone is able to walk and talk at the same time.

Amen. But then, mesmers aren’t garbage in uncoordinated groups, as our damage output is just fine for the content.

Blergh, bad math is bad.

In order for the above to function, you must get 15% off shatter cooldowns, therefore you must run Illusions.

Therefore, any build that uses Mimic to achieve 100% quickness duration (or increased alacrity) must be Chrono/Ill/Chaos.

In short, you can get most of the quickness you need with Well of Action, Time Warp and some level of boon duration, but you inevitably need a little bit more.
Alternate methods to achieve 100% group quickness:

• Temporal Enchanter
• Mimic
• Tides of Time
• Boonsharing

Of these, Temporal Enchanter requires Inspiration, Mimic requires Chaos, Tides of Time requires shield, and boonsharing requires either Inspiration or less alacrity sharing (to slot Signet of Inspiration).

I’m exploring different builds, but it’s looking like Shield is probably gonna be the most flexible option, with Mimic in second place (given you get some boon duration from Chaos in addition to Master of Manipulation).

Some quick math on the BWE3 changes says it’ll actually be very possible to put up 100% team alacrity uptime even without iAvengers.

With Eternity, Recall, Action and Calamity, using a 54 second period (instead of triggering CS the moment it comes off cd), you can put up 98% alacrity uptime.

Swapping Calamity for Mimic, you can get 111% uptime (giving wiggle room for error).

Since 100% quickness was already achievable, and nothing has changed, you can now keep your group at 100% quickness and 100% alacrity, if you want. To Pyro’s point, that’s not as valuable as it appears, but it’s still cool anyway.

Adding in iAvengers just opens up more of that room, though iAvenger survivability concerns are valid there.

A third upshot of this development (both the boost to Recall and iAvengers), is that it may be feasible to forgo some wells in favor of other utilities without losing group support value. As Pyro says, the 35s continuous alacrity/quickness you got before was plenty. If you can get the same, but have Feedback or Null Field at the same time, all the better.

It seems clear that Jet Lag and other Well support builds are just getting stronger.