Guild Wars 2

both hand commander +amulet gives 12.6%boon duration
with sigil of concentration 33%

total 45.6%
with rev 50%
already capped boon duration without food
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAsdWl0nhy0YdawWNwsGLEH1ZFcBdmZAkALUdm2phKA-TBRmABAo+zY6BGUZwa7PAA-e
rune is chrono rune
compare to full zerker this set loses about
45 power
280 ferocity
but 50 precision more

so now in food/ultility I just need to cover the 280 ferocity lose and any additional stats buff would be a plus already

what do you guys think ?

what for? raids? pvp?

Xyonon.3987:

what for? raids? pvp?

ofc not pvp hahaha u funny :P

for mainly for raid, other pve content doesn’t really matter so I can go alone with

Why bother? You can keep permanent quickness with just the 50% from rev (or at least you could before the chrono nerfs). The main reason to cap boon duration was for raid-wide uptime, but Anet crotch-shot that one so…

Fay.2357:

Why bother? You can keep permanent quickness with just the 50% from rev (or at least you could before the chrono nerfs). The main reason to cap boon duration was for raid-wide uptime, but Anet crotch-shot that one so…

what? I think I missed this nerf so now the 100% up time isn’t viable anymore?

100% uptime is completely viable… what changed is the following:

When each player in a raid enters combat, their boon prioritization will be locked in based on the composition of the subgroup they are currently in. That prioritization will not change until the player has left combat, even if their subgroup composition changes while they are in combat.

For Mesmer, this means that our wells and Time Warp strictly prioritize the people in your group. The reasoning for 100% boon duration was because it was possible for a single mesmer to get high up time on the entire raid of 10-people. More boon duration helped this immensely.

Now that we got pseudo shot in the foot, up time on our group of 5 people is all that matters.

Myrias.8732:

100% uptime is completely viable… what changed is the following:

When each player in a raid enters combat, their boon prioritization will be locked in based on the composition of the subgroup they are currently in. That prioritization will not change until the player has left combat, even if their subgroup composition changes while they are in combat.

For Mesmer, this means that our wells and Time Warp strictly prioritize the people in your group. The reasoning for 100% boon duration was because it was possible for a single mesmer to get high up time on the entire raid of 10-people. More boon duration helped this immensely.

Now that we got pseudo shot in the foot, up time on our group of 5 people is all that matters.

In raid environment, shouldn’t you be in your own subsquad, and if possible with a revenant ? 100% boon duration still matters in this case.

GLaDOS.5897:

Myrias.8732:

100% uptime is completely viable… what changed is the following:

When each player in a raid enters combat, their boon prioritization will be locked in based on the composition of the subgroup they are currently in. That prioritization will not change until the player has left combat, even if their subgroup composition changes while they are in combat.

For Mesmer, this means that our wells and Time Warp strictly prioritize the people in your group. The reasoning for 100% boon duration was because it was possible for a single mesmer to get high up time on the entire raid of 10-people. More boon duration helped this immensely.

Now that we got pseudo shot in the foot, up time on our group of 5 people is all that matters.

In raid environment, shouldn’t you be in your own subsquad, and if possible with a revenant ? 100% boon duration still matters in this case.

You can do that, but it’s massively unreliable. In that case, your buffing priority is determined by proximity. In VG, this means your non-circle squad will get the vast majority of buffs. On the others, it’s more of a total crapshoot, but you can almost guarantee that it won’t be an even spread. You’ll almost definitely be wasting a lot of quickness overcapping on people that happen to be nearby more often. It’s more efficient to just go into a squad and optimize for full buffing of the people that you know will be receiving the buffs.

Heyhey

You can do it reliably too: Squad 1: peps and you, squad 2: other peps. Now you have to form 2 groups and stay with squad 2 and buff only them with your aoes, then use inspiration to spread it with wide aoe to squad 1. The problem? No place let’s you do this coordination since the raid envoirment – again – supports stacking all together.

I still like 100% boon duration, for the simple reason to increase alacrity uptime and damage via calamity and then be able to not use 3 iAvengers for 100% alacrity uptime for my allies. But commander gear is NOT the way to go. Use surging + doubloon or leadership but for god’s sake STAY kitten ZERK !!

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Yeah go zerk ( or assassins ) because there is plenty of ways to get perma quickness already ( sigil of concentration, SoI, WoR, TW, ToT, rune of the chronomancer etc ).

Unless you are Chronotanking then Commanders is good.

actually it seems chrono tank is a good way to go with commander set:

boon duration 2x% full commander
save one spot for other class since the tank is also the chrono buffer

but tank requires a lot of exp before ppl can take you

Fay.2357:

(…)
You can do that, but it’s massively unreliable. In that case, your buffing priority is determined by proximity. In VG, this means your non-circle squad will get the vast majority of buffs. On the others, it’s more of a total crapshoot, but you can almost guarantee that it won’t be an even spread. You’ll almost definitely be wasting a lot of quickness overcapping on people that happen to be nearby more often. It’s more efficient to just go into a squad and optimize for full buffing of the people that you know will be receiving the buffs.

The result is pretty much the same if you stand in a 5-man subsquad, without the occasional buff on the other team.
I don’t feel that I overcap the team since there is always one reason or another someone didn’t get the tick (they exited the well too early, they dodged Tides of Times, etc.), although it may be a l2p issue.

Moreover, during Gorseval burst phases, the team is less spread out and benefit more from the random distribution (can’t talk about Sabetha since I lack experience there).

If you are chronotank and you go commander (lose offensive stats), you might aswell be the healer too. I’m really no fan of commander stats, they seem subobtimal in the end, when you really know what you’re doing. I mean you can tank with 1005 toughness (or 1036 with leadership) already.

Xyonon.3987:

If you are chronotank and you go commander (lose offensive stats), you might aswell be the healer too. I’m really no fan of commander stats, they seem subobtimal in the end, when you really know what you’re doing. I mean you can tank with 1005 toughness (or 1036 with leadership) already.

The…healer? No way you can heal, tank, and chronobuff at the same time.

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

If you are chronotank and you go commander (lose offensive stats), you might aswell be the healer too. I’m really no fan of commander stats, they seem subobtimal in the end, when you really know what you’re doing. I mean you can tank with 1005 toughness (or 1036 with leadership) already.

The…healer? No way you can heal, tank, and chronobuff at the same time.

>:3 Oh boy sure I can gonna upload a vid once I’m not terrible at it anymore xP But yea it works. You have alacrity with WoR and 3x iAvenger, you have quickness with TW, WoA, ToT and SoI via traits. The heal comes from MoP, regen and WoE.

pm me ingame if you want the build greez!

Xyonon.3987:

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

If you are chronotank and you go commander (lose offensive stats), you might aswell be the healer too. I’m really no fan of commander stats, they seem subobtimal in the end, when you really know what you’re doing. I mean you can tank with 1005 toughness (or 1036 with leadership) already.

The…healer? No way you can heal, tank, and chronobuff at the same time.

>:3 Oh boy sure I can gonna upload a vid once I’m not terrible at it anymore xP But yea it works. You have alacrity with WoR and 3x iAvenger, you have quickness with TW, WoA, ToT and SoI via traits. The heal comes from MoP, regen and WoE.

pm me ingame if you want the build greez!

I would like to see this build. I’ve been trying to build a tank, healer and buffer in one if possible. The Minstrels gear + this food actually got me thinking about this:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plate_of_Mussels_Gnashblade
Wasn’t sure if I wanted to pull this off on my chrono or my ranger. I’ve been contemplating using minstrel myself but I’m too poor to waste resources on a crap shoot.

With chaos (6 boons) and bountiful stones, that food, rune of the monk, sigil = 91% boon duration. A few pieces of Minstrel and the rest cleric/zealot for 100% boon duration. (Or drop the bountiful stone for the healing crystal and bring more minstrel) Protection, chaos trait, food for 33%, 9%, 10% damage reduction. Chaos, Inspiration, Chrono. 5/4/1 split without a herald to hog quickness. It does seem like a hefty loss in quickness uptime without double SoI and rune of chrono though. Losing the 10% healing bonus on food and runes would make healing much weaker so it seems like you’re stretching yourself too thin. (Side note: have you tried adding Sigil of agility with chrono builds? I was thinking 2 seconds of quickness on swap would help a bit with quickness uptime -> SoI)

My main concern with this general concept are two fold:
1) Is it really efficient at burst healing well? Like a lot of my guildies are not the best players and some need much stronger burst healing than others. The 0.8 scaling is a nice buff for Mantra heals but not sure it’s enough for practical use. This is the main thing holding me back.
2) Wouldn’t it be better to try this on a ranger? Like chrono buffs are still strong and worth it but I think the chrono is better off going full zerker still. Druid on the other hand does no damage in celestial avatar (besides pets but pets don’t care about gear). Have druid by itself so that it gets regen on 10 people + the pet. 16.5% astral force per second = camp CA for 15% buff on 10 people. Doing no personal damage anyways so why not be the healer/tank?

Trying to get my guild to swap to a 7/2/1 split with chrono/herald in group 2 and Druid tank and healer in group 3. Otherwise 5/4/1 split for the chrono tank/healer. Those dungeon nerfs =(. Too poor to buy it all.

all what I was thinking is:
to make Mesmer more demanding in raid
full zerk is ok but sometimes ppl will think about taking other replacements
if we can bring tank/dps/boon duration on the table, this offers us a more guaranteed place in raid

We already have a guaranteed place in raids. Just think about it that way: Every profession deals ~15-25k dips (average 20k), the Mes only ~10k dips. Alacrity buffs cd skills by 25%, quickness aa’s by 50%. This means a mesmer buffs your party by 25-50%. Professions like guard rather go to the 50%, professions like engi rather to the 25%. So let’s say 30% for a lower avergae. Now compare two subgroups:

Subgroup 1:
20k, 20k, 20k, 20k, 20k → 100k dps in this one, no mesmer.

Subgroup 2:
26k, 26k, 26k, 26k, 10k → 114k dps in this one.

The only problem is the 2nd subgroup with the druid who deals no damage at all. But in that sub you can go for a dps mesmer. The first mesmer takes 3 avengers, buffs alacrity, the 2nd one is dps and goes FULL ZERK with force and air and uses danger time, the trait with 30% crit chance against slowed targets. 2x TW, WoA and the iAvengers keep that slow up 100%. Then take 3 damaging phants and BAM, 15k dips we have.

I’m just not sure if duelling or illusions is better, and I’m also not 100% sure if dangertime is really that good, since you will lack a bit of alacrity from time to time and your phants have crappy 50% crit chance :/ Any ideas?

Also a few more things to mention – healing well scaling is insane. Mesmer personal damage as a healer is low, always. Therefore, unlike druid or tempest, you can completly forget about zealot gear to try push your damage. Just go full healing power with a magi / cleric mix and you’ll be fine. Maxing out HP let’s you reach the 2k mark with traits and 3 illusions up.

The main point of chronoheal is: you don’t lose dps on a tank / seperate mesmer. If the druid should play zerk and distribute his buffs to the party, or if you completly get rid of him and replace him with a true dps like thief or tempest, this I do not know (yet). But I expect a druid to be obsolete if a Heal-O-Mancer is doing his job.

Nah, someone else mentioned it…you can’t burst heal on a chrono. Well is 3s delay, mantra is a pulse every 4-5 seconds. A Druid can unload massive healing in seconds when necessary. Even the most aggressively heal-specced Mesmer can’t come anywhere close to that. Additionally, you’ll be losing out massively on quickness uptime without SoI. Yes, you have the trait. No, it doesn’t work. How do you plan on getting 3 illusions for the initial combo without using a phantasm skill? Answer: you don’t. How do you plan on doing your combo at all if you have to wait the 1.5s channel of shield block to cast a SoI. Answer: you can’t.

While I’m sure your healing is decent, there’s zero chance you’ll be as good as a Druid, and you’re sacrificing substantial quickness uptime to get there. No go.

Protection and regen with proper buffs and 2k healing power will be sufficient to keep a competent group up for a raid. Burst healing isn’t inherently a problem as in good raid group: a druid with glyphs is able to keep up a good group. Avatar#4 and 3/5 is just for burst of gotl or cc. If he’s making the build work, it’s sufficient healing for group. I doubt it’s efficiency for most groups though.

I guess what I was really asking is a question about how druids go about rotations. Just like how some chronos are now going in a separate group to buff 9 other people. Is that a valid strategy for druids? A cleric druid that both tanks and heals and camps astral for as long as possible can maintain 5 stacks of gotl on 10 people for quite some time. I’m going to test this tonight at Gorsaval.

I don’t think it’s a matter of making Druid obsolete but mutually exclusive: which is better?
A tank/healer druid + zerker chrono
A tank/healer chrono + viper/zerker druid
A tank/healer druid + no chrono
A tank/healer chrono + no druid

If you can keep up Gotl on 10 ppl, 15% to power and condi dmg is huge.
Frost spirit pulses 6 seconds every 3 seconds so that’s 7% on (theoretically 10 but let’s call it)7 people. Similar with fire spirit. Spotter is 9 seconds every 3 seconds. These buffs rival quickness/alacrity.

Fay.2357:

Nah, someone else mentioned it…you can’t burst heal on a chrono. Well is 3s delay, mantra is a pulse every 4-5 seconds. A Druid can unload massive healing in seconds when necessary. Even the most aggressively heal-specced Mesmer can’t come anywhere close to that. Additionally, you’ll be losing out massively on quickness uptime without SoI. Yes, you have the trait. No, it doesn’t work. How do you plan on getting 3 illusions for the initial combo without using a phantasm skill? Answer: you don’t. How do you plan on doing your combo at all if you have to wait the 1.5s channel of shield block to cast a SoI. Answer: you can’t.

While I’m sure your healing is decent, there’s zero chance you’ll be as good as a Druid, and you’re sacrificing substantial quickness uptime to get there. No go.

This is greatly a matter of skill. You never need instant heal, unless somone really kittens up and that’s the point where this single person uses their own heal skill. Anywhere else, over the whole run, you can simply keep them at max HP and if they take a hit somehow, they’re not oneshot, they’re like at 50% and won’t get immediately hit again in the next 4 sec.

In that situation, the druid is like the guard was in the old days in fractals – a babysitter. Expirienced players replaced the guard with a mesmer for good reasons. They didn’t need perma stability, some procs of the mesmer were enough. They didn’t need perma protection, their own skill was enough.

I’m pretty sure the Mesmer will have the same sustained heal as the druid. The instant burst is lower, well not there I agree. But you don’t need it anywhere and this opens new ways to create a team to clear the raid as fast and efficient as possible.

About the quickness uptime: I play the normal support Mesmer too without SoI, why would I need it as healer? 100% boon duration and it’s done. TW, ToT, WoA, the trait is just an addition to not being forced to actually use concentration, so you can stay at your 75% boon duration with monk, rev and bountifuls.

A friend of mine asked me for help at Gorsy, they need a healer. I went there with my Mes and told them that I’ll tank aswell. They were suspicious, can’t blame them, but hey, it was one of the smoothest runs I’ve ever had. I had no HP problems, neither did anyone else in the whole group. CS + double well allowed the eles even to go for meteor shower at breakbar phases (they were in my sub ofc). At the split phase I simply summoned a phantasm for the solo ones, perma regen with 500 tics, heal done, didn’t have to worry about them a tiny bit anymore. Quickness and Alacrity? 100% of both.

I was extremly happy everything went so well, I’ve never Heal-O-Mancer / Tanked Gorsy before. It was glorious. I just really HATE myself for not recording it tough.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

if only chrono is placed alone in a sub group, what happens with all the buffs :0? I’m curious and maybe newbie on this but never tried that

est.9210:

if only chrono is placed alone in a sub group, what happens with all the buffs :0? I’m curious and maybe newbie on this but never tried that

Priority is determined by proximity.

Ok I did today a full run as heal-o-mancer, tanked and healed on both vg and gorsy, it worked perfectly fine. Good sustain for myself, many blocks, super aoe heal and still 100% quickness and alacrity.

Just Sabby seems a bit stupid since mop proc has low range and therefore i must stay melee, so anotherone has to go ranged. But maybe it’s enough with 500 HpS with just regen until the last phase, so I could just go ranged and summon phants for regen and spam wells.

I’ll definitly set up a guide soon _

Xyonon.3987:

Ok I did today a full run as heal-o-mancer, tanked and healed on both vg and gorsy, it worked perfectly fine. Good sustain for myself, many blocks, super aoe heal and still 100% quickness and alacrity.

Just Sabby seems a bit stupid since mop proc has low range and therefore i must stay melee, so anotherone has to go ranged. But maybe it’s enough with 500 HpS with just regen until the last phase, so I could just go ranged and summon phants for regen and spam wells.

I’ll definitly set up a guide soon _

Ugh, so now I not only have to get good at tanking AND applying alacrity/quickness, I have to get good at healing now too?
I’m never gonna reach meta level x_x

Edit: Also, I just finished 5 pieces of Commander’s gear…now Wanderer’s might be meta, and I’m gonna go broke XD

You never need or even should go for commander’s , nor wanderer’s gear. As dps you use zerk or kitten (depending on the other mesmer), as tank you just use one piece of toughness gear and as heal-o-mancer you use magi / cleric mix or just full cleric.

At this point I want to entrust something to all of you: The whole “this is meta, I need it, that is meta, I need that” stuff is poison, don’t do that. Think for yourself, don’t blindly do stuff you hear others do. I’ve always been ignoring the meta, just took it as a reference of what other do. If it was optimal sure I did the same, but I came to that conclusion myself. I sure was a terrible player in the beginning, heck I even leveled my Mes with Scepter/Focus + Staff on release x.x – but for today, I’m happy that I experimented so much and that I calculate the best options for everything.

I carry 5 full asc armor sets with me – one is open world kitten with chrono runes, one is kitten with leadership, zerk with surging, both for raids, and only a few weeks after hot I made the Heal-O-Mancer magi / cleric mix. I even have a condi gear with me, it’s not even bad to play condi mes since last patch.

Still, if you join pugs and say you play heal tank mes or condi mes, they most of the time kick you for no other reason than being poisoned by “the meta”. The meta has to be invented.

Don’t follow the meta, design it!

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Xyonon.3987:

…or kitten…

I’m really curious what this actually is. Those censors…

Xyonon.3987:

as tank you just use one piece of toughness gear and as heal-o-mancer you use magi / cleric mix or just full cleric.

1. I was under the impression your heal-o-mancer IS a tank.
2. One piece of toughness gear barely squeeks by in the most absolutely polished and optimal groups. More often than not, I find I have to create enough toughness clearance to accommodate things like traits that randomly add toughness (warrior?), or a druid that can’t afford zealots, or a guildie who isn’t optimally geared yet, or a couple eles who just aren’t quite good enough at the mechanics yet to get by without some pieces for durability. Even in my raiding guild, with a pug that showed impressive dps and more experience than I, I found I needed at least 1200 toughness to ensure clearance. You’re talking pretty hard against “meta” thinking, but you just declared as gospel one of the fundamental tenets of the meta (that you must gear as though everyone in the group is meta) :P
That said, I dunno why I thought there was Healing Power on Wanderer’s gear.
Edit: I was thinking of Minstrels, which seems to have the perfect stat set for a chrono healtank, except for lacking damage stats…which given our terrible dps, seems like a small price to pay for strong healing mixed with easy boon duration and plenty of toughness clearance for squad variation.

Xyonon.3987:

At this point I want to entrust something to all of you: The whole “this is meta, I need it, that is meta, I need that” stuff is poison, don’t do that. Think for yourself, don’t blindly do stuff you hear others do. I’ve always been ignoring the meta, just took it as a reference of what other do. If it was optimal sure I did the same, but I came to that conclusion myself. I sure was a terrible player in the beginning, heck I even leveled my Mes with Scepter/Focus + Staff on release x.x – but for today, I’m happy that I experimented so much and that I calculate the best options for everything.

I carry 5 full asc armor sets with me – one is open world kitten with chrono runes, one is kitten with leadership, zerk with surging, both for raids, and only a few weeks after hot I made the Heal-O-Mancer magi / cleric mix. I even have a condi gear with me, it’s not even bad to play condi mes since last patch.

I’d like to go on record that I don’t have my Commander’s gear because some consider it “meta” and others don’t, I have it because enough consider it viable (to the point of arguing that it’s meta) that I feel like I can get away with it. I have now participated in a wide variety of raid group skill levels, and I can say that it’s worth it to me having a set that can cover all my needs without worrying that I’m a burden on the group gear-wise on the one hand, or that I’m depending too much on under- geared/skilled teammates on the other.
(That, and I’m not as good a player as I should be, and I like using the toughness as a crutch.)