I don’t like balthazar runes on mesmer when there are other options available to boost burning duration/condi duration in general.
The vast majority on our burns come from torch so imo it is better to use other runes that improve the overall build/condis in general and simply put a 20% burn sigil on the torch. Thus, your other non-torch weaponset could benefit from the rune choice as well.
I experimented with a meme “ghost mesmer” build (burning/condi people without leaving stealth) and this is the gearing I ended up with.
You will want a hybrid power/condi gearset, because low level scaling for condi is terrible.
Any build that involves a staff will help you learn how a condi mesmer is played. It is also good to practice forward phase retreats while doing map completion.
My personal suggestion is to run Dueling (Deceptive Evasion)/Illusions/Chronomancer (chronophantasma + illusionary evasion) for a max clone spam build. For the other weapon, I suggest greatsword for burst because most core Tyria don’t have much hp if you’re lvl 80.
Additionally, what part of taking MoR makes you think you’re losing self-sustain instead of group sustain? If continually spammed with the mantra trait, MoR has an absolutely insane healing rate. Personal healing, not just aoe.
You are supposed to consume MoR charges, even if you are full hp, so the aoe heal becomes available sooner. Chaos provides an extra survibility in case you really should have waited to consume MoR charges.
Which variant of Minstrel chrono you perceive to be better depends on your experience of what people typically have difficulty with – big, predictable mechanics (choose Domination,) or messing up a series of smaller ones (choose Chaos.) I also would prefer a player new to mesmer tanking to run with Chaos (in this sense the build carries the player.)
Yeah, that’s really not how it works. The cooldown on the mantra heal is low enough that you’ll never be in a situation where you “needed those charges”. It’s incredibly strong continual healing output, and if you need chaos for personal survival while running full minstrels and the mantra heal, you’re nowhere near good enough to even think about trying to raid without an exceptional druid healer, let alone trying to carry on your own.
Edit: Also, if you’re taking neither illusions nor domination, maintaining 100% quickness uptime becomes substantially harder without perfect rotations. That’s hardly the build you want to give to a new tank…
Would you expect a competent mesmer to be able to carry with a build like this?
Additionally, what part of taking MoR makes you think you’re losing self-sustain instead of group sustain? If continually spammed with the mantra trait, MoR has an absolutely insane healing rate. Personal healing, not just aoe.
You are supposed to consume MoR charges, even if you are full hp, so the aoe heal becomes available sooner. Chaos provides an extra survibility in case you really should have waited to consume MoR charges.
Which variant of Minstrel chrono you perceive to be better depends on your experience of what people typically have difficulty with – big, predictable mechanics (choose Domination,) or messing up a series of smaller ones (choose Chaos.) I also would prefer a player new to mesmer tanking to run with Chaos (in this sense the build carries the player.)
If you’re carrying by distorting mechanics, and consistently running with a good healer, what’s the point in running Minstrel’s gear then?
Wouldn’t a full knight setup with leadership runes be more ideal in such a scenario?
The point of minstrel gear is to carry without a good healer. Invuln to avoid mechanics doesn’t mean your party can go without healing. Minstrel chrono in theory can also lower the healing load by being completely self sustaining and also healing nearby teammates.
If this is the goal, then Chaos offers an effective choice in context of Teapot’s build with MoR. With his build, you are supposed to immediately consume your MoR charges so it comes off cd sooner to maximize group healing effectiveness. Because you are trading self-sustain for group-sustain, Chaos helps make up for it in extra damage mitigation.
(Teapot doesn’t do a good job of emphasizing this aspect in his build video, but he executes this playstyle the few times I’ve seen him stream Minstrel chrono.)
Chaos offers enhanced damage reduction, high/perma protection uptime, and extra boon duration to invest more in healing options.
There is a better way. The [qT] Minstrel’s chronomancer build is here. The big difference here is that this is actually tankier than MightyTeapot’s build thanks to lots of Nomad’s gear and damage reduction food and that [qT]’s build relies on Concentration sigil for 33% of the boon duration.
I much prefer Teapot’s version in general, at least for its apparent purpose to carry groups, because it has much more healing. The extra toughness/damage reduction may be helpful for some mechanics/encounters, but if I had to choose one variant to invest in, it would definitely be something more like Teapot’s.
-Exotic Minstrel’s helm, shoulders, gloves: Bloodstone Fen (1x) and Bitterfrost Frontier (2x) PvP/WvW reward tracks. As new LS3 maps get added, more armor gear slots may become available.
-Exotic Cleric’s chest, legs, boots: Buy off TP if cheap, buy for WvW badges, or stat-select them from VB T4 or other reward track armor boxes.
-Ascended Minstrel trinkets: Do LS3 maps. Bitterfrost frontier winterberries seem to be the fastest.
-Ascended Minstrel’s sword/shield: You can choose/rechoose a sword/shield with Minstrel stats by completing/repeating the Caladbolg Current Events.
I’ve played your exact build with the likely exception of gear/stat differences.
I use a combination of sinister/celestial/viper because of scepter 3’s high power scaling. I don’t attempt to condi burst people as often, so instead I use torment runes with vulnerability sigil (as a cover condi) to maximize the pressure from my auto’s.
Also, given the aoe-fest that is large-scale wvw combat, I opted to take the slow-related traits, rather than IR/Chronophantasma for chronomancers.
Using this chronomancer-slow/hybrid power variant, I like to build up my stacks of LostTime before initiating a burst. Thus, I take advantage of scepter 3’s high power damage with the added slow crit chance to maximize burst.
They’re pretty comparable really. Perplexity gives you some extra pressure on interrupt with the confusion while tormenting extends the duration of your normal MtD torment.
It really ends up depending on the particular build you’re facing. If they don’t have enough condie clear, tormenting runes will make MtD and the scepter block last ludicrously long. However, all that extra duration is worthless if they’re cleansing regularly. In that case, perplexity is better because it gives you a bit more spike application on interrupt.
Perplexity was reworked relatively recently. Aoe confusion on heal instead of interrupt now.
I’d go with tormenting, especially if you are using scepter, as mesmer already has 33% increased confusion duration on their illusions line.
- Signet of Illusions instead of Midnight for alternative means of providing distortion
- Phantasmal Disenchanter since you’re running Signet heal. Remember it recently got buffed to strip/cleanse 2 boons/condis on cast.
- Not sure why you’re not choosing PowerBlock with focus/shield/gravity well providing interrupt sources.
- Greatsword over focus with the appropriate traits in Domination. With SignetHeal + iZerker, and high quickness uptime combined with (recently buffed) GS auto, you can output heavy pressure on enemy squishies, despite running commander gear.
One of my favorite new combos to pull off since the SoI rework/GS auto buff is iZerker → (Shatter2 mid-cast for quickness) → SoI trait proc → continue GS auto spam with quickness.
The prestige (torch) removing 1-2 condi’s baseline – power mesmer has traditionally struggled with conditions.
GS3 removing 2 boons instead of one – As others have mentioned already; in its current state it has been losing the boon application/removal arms race since HoT.
I actually think Mirror Blade is pretty fair right now in terms of its cast time / damage. I would go with boosting its might/vulnerability duration to help a power mesmer’s sustained damage.
Desperate Decoy – Even more clunky than theif’s Last Refuge blinding powder trait because it cancels your casting. Would like to see this reworked; my suggestion would be to give us the Mimic buff instead, thereby giving us 2x chance to use the utility of our choice.
NEVER go commander gear, it’s not good, not even as a tank.
I’ve heard of some groups dropping their herald altogether because a mesmer with commander gear can provide 100% uptime quickness without one. It seems that according to their calculations, it’s worth dropping the herald to bring a more selfish dpser.
PU builds haven’t been as popular since HoT was released because of scrapper/herald reveals.
The WvW power shatter builds that seem to be the most effective atm use Defender Runes + Mantras. Defender runes + heal mantra gives mesmers yet another safe-stomp mechanic, counterplay against certain class skills, and great sustain.
Wow, that build looks really solid! I like it. A Mesmer was using a build against me on my thief in WvW that was able to 100-30 me very quickly and I do believe they were using mantras of some sort as when they would burst me, there would be a graphic below me.
I’d love to try this build out. Could I use zerker trunks or a mix of valk/zerk with similar results? Also, what’s stronger in WvW overall, Mez or Rev?
I personally use Commander’s armor + Berserker trinkets/weapon. There’s probably going to be some people that will question my choice of Commander’s (power/precision/toughness/BoonDuration) armor (and its pretty expensive too.)
I would start off with Marauder’s armor, Cavalier amulet, and Berserker’s rings/accesories. You can buy the Marauder’s insignia recipe for karma from a normal crafting vendor.
Is Marauder armor hard to find? Now just to buy that amulet…
You can buy the Marauder’s insignia recipe for karma from a normal crafting vendor; it is craftable like other traditional exotic stats (or you can use the insignia to stat-swap ascended pieces you may have).
PU builds haven’t been as popular since HoT was released because of scrapper/herald reveals.
The WvW power shatter builds that seem to be the most effective atm use Defender Runes + Mantras. Defender runes + heal mantra gives mesmers yet another safe-stomp mechanic, counterplay against certain class skills, and great sustain.
Wow, that build looks really solid! I like it. A Mesmer was using a build against me on my thief in WvW that was able to 100-30 me very quickly and I do believe they were using mantras of some sort as when they would burst me, there would be a graphic below me.
I’d love to try this build out. Could I use zerker trunks or a mix of valk/zerk with similar results? Also, what’s stronger in WvW overall, Mez or Rev?
I personally use Commander’s armor + Berserker trinkets/weapon. There’s probably going to be some people that will question my choice of Commander’s (power/precision/toughness/BoonDuration) armor (and its pretty expensive too.)
I would start off with Marauder’s armor, Cavalier amulet, and Berserker’s rings/accesories/weapon. You can buy the Marauder’s insignia recipe for karma from a normal crafting vendor.
PU builds haven’t been as popular since HoT was released because of scrapper/herald reveals.
The WvW power shatter builds that seem to be the most effective atm use Defender Runes + Mantras. Defender runes + heal mantra gives mesmers yet another safe-stomp mechanic, counterplay against certain class skills, and great sustain.
I have a full ascended set of commander’s armor with durability runes (which I primarily invested in for my ele) and I have found it to be quite effective at tanking open-world content, but only in the new HoT areas. It has come in really handy for stomping musherooms in the Nuhoch lane, dealing with frogs during octovine, and tanking commanders in DS.
For pre-HoT tyria you’re probably better off running full glass as everything just melts and mobs don’t hit/cc that hard.
If you want to run boon duration gear and tank open-world, you should be running the chaos line.
(any 3 grandmaster traits in chaos are good choices, but I personally prefer chaotic interruption)
I’ve been running a mild boon-duration build around it with staff because of the heavy protection uptime and its ability to provide reliable clone generation for “clutch” continuum splits. With all the boon duration and extra reliability of CS, you also get extra mileage out of Seize the Moment.
I took seize the moment and had just enough boon duration to add 0.25 extra duration to it. Even though quickness stomps are now RIP, the extra duration is still useful for channeling mantras.
I would suggest posting, or perhaps playing around with, your combat/movement settings under General Options. There is a recent bug regarding skill retargeting and stomps and you may be experiencing something related to the new settings.
You probably had autocast on spatial surge before but recently toggled it off. Having autocast allows you to interrupt the autoattack with a skill like mirrorblade.
If you would like to keep autocast off then you may need to manually stow your weapon prior to casting mirrorblade if you were in the middle of autoattacking, a behavior which has existed as long as I can remember.
I personally have not noticed any recent change to the responsiveness in any regard.
It’s Viper so you’re really squish but there is a lot of baked in sustain with the condition cleanses, blocks on both sets, mental defense and torch stealth. I find this can burst similar to normal power shatter, just obviously differently. The power damage is definitely there though since these two MH weapons really shine in that area.
I have this decked out for team play and can be tweaked as necessary for solo, etc. I’ve also tried Sinister which works, but I find Viper to burst better and the extra condition duration is fantastic.
Using balth rune works really well to provide a decent third source of burning (without needing staff). With the condition duration in the ammy + burn duration from rune, it adds a solid third condition to your torment/confusion. Geo/Doom sigils round out the rest.
Note this is before the precog change. In a team build I wouldn’t run it but maybe you would in soloq. I think I played one or two matches with stab mantra vs precog and that actually worked pretty well. I’m sure there are other good options.
In general I’ve found balthazar runes lackluster for condi builds ever since the burning stacking change. Furthermore, burning for mesmers as a damaging condition has been really gutted since that change.
You’re probably incorporating the extra burning to use as a cover condi rather than filling the role of a dps condi. How would swapping balthazar with grenth runes (chill), and using hydromancy sigils work out for your build?
You could probably make some minor stat optimizations with your gear by using Marauder/Berserker instead of a hodgepodge of Berserker/Assassin/Valkyrie/Knights.
Marauder gear has a bit more stat points compared to the others.
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.)
The general consensus here is that mesmer provides the least dps, and should contribute to the raid by providing alacrity/quickness instead.
I strongly recommend taking illusions + timewarp with chrono. With continuum split, Time Warp effectively becomes a 76 second base cd skill (don’t cast Time Warp while not in Consortium Split, unless you’re in the final phase of the fight).
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.
- 12s iZerker
- Traited Ether Signet for refreshing iZerker
- Chronophantasma for more iZerkers
- Persistence of Memory for more iZerkers when you shatter your already too many iZerkers.
Banish Enchantment is unblockable so make sure to use it while he’s blocking.
The chronomancers you’ve been fighting have most likely been running the inspiration trait line – which provides a decent level of condi-clear, but most of the condi clearing is tied to our shatters. This means that you should prefer bursting conditions over passive application.
Since you’re running glassy viper, you may not be finding the time in between your burst condi applications. The “upcoming meta” chronomancer “bruisers” excel at out-pressuring glassy builds. Perhaps you should consider runninng dire/ (trailblazer?) to survive the chronomancer’s counter-pressure … counter-pressure which is tied to our “passive” condi clear. Once you’ve baited a chrono’s shatters after condi bursting initially, more tanky stats help you have more of a footing to apply another round of condi burst which should finish him.
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.
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.
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.
With the Chronomancer niche role of providing alacrity + time warp for raid groups, I’ve found the perma-alacrity uptime on yourself synergizes extremely well with Scepter3 combined with malicious sorcery.
I believe all Chronomancers should heavily consider taking illusions to make Time Warp an effective 76s base cooldown with continuum split, and the illusions line provides great condi boosting traits as well. Additionally, with persistence of memory + CPhantasma, you have extremely high aoe alacrity.
Furthermore, I’ve opted to go for mantra of pain – inspiration for raid sustain — I believe malicious sorcery increases all actions, including mantra channeling.
Scepter 3 is one of the HIGHEST hybrid dps skills in the game. This build is structured around providing support through other skills while you wait for it to come off cooldown … which isn’t very long due to Malicious Sorcery + Alacrity.
Fantastic 1v1 dueling build … near impossible to beat because of the sheer amount of stunlock and power-block interrupts. Not to mention the signet heal resets shield block.
However, in the end I decided I like the original trait lines better for general WvW roaming, but taking Seize the Moment instead of CP with the recent bug fix. I thoroughly enjoy stability-quickness stomps.
Staff is pretty bad when not running chrono, low aoe capability, painfully slow autoattack projectiles, pretty much only good for point-blank 2->F1 and the obvious Chaos Storm.
I much prefer Sw+F for guaranteed cleave, evade for champs/burst spawns and swiftness. iWarden completes a full attack cycle before despawning, which is pretty good for tagging near-instantaneous respawns at a fixed point (e.g. labyrinth doors)
Fortunately everyone seems to be running Chrono open world these days. Superspeed shatters give staff amazing tagging potential and kiting champs from range can work just as well evading them with sword.
Are you speccing Chrono before you have most of it unlocked? Why not just go domination instead for more traits?
I’ve found Illusionary Reversion increases your dps by a lot. I’ve been running chrono since i was able to get the movement speed trait for it unlocked.
Also a minor update:
I’ve been running Torment runes with a full sinister setup with Berzerker GS and Giver’s staff and am quite liking it.
First some motivation:
I’ll be listing advantages for these particular weapons from the perspective of tagging, mobility, and general QOL.
GS:
- GS3 is great for aoe tagging from ranged. No other MH/OH combo has a ranged, ground targeted; wells do make up for this deficiency somewhat.
- Autoattack cannot be “blocked” from teragriff vines or other swirling wind type effects
- Generally the best PbAoe burst.
Staff:
- Mobility and kiting
—-
So I’ve been running Dueling/Illusions/Chrono condi shatter the past few days with a Berserker/Sinister mix. I was wondering what a good stat distribution mix would be for using this hybrid condi shatter setup.
I’m not necessarily looking for an optimal dps setup. Just something that leverages the burst the GS provides (with respect to HoT monster health), while still providing decent sustained condi dps.
Vampirism (Post change) – new 6th bonus of aoe life steal may reveal you out of stealth
Strength – harder to utilize 6th bonus without illusions line. Not a popular choice currently anyways.
Pack – great stats, but I believe most mesmers take this for the aoe support and swiftness rather than the fury uptime. Swiftness will be mostly moot with chronomancers, and power chronomancers should be using dueling for DE getting very good fury uptime from the dueling line. I do not believe this is an optimal choice at all for solo roaming chronomancers.
After investigating this issue and testing on Tequatl’s bloated creepers i’ve concluded that this is caused by a bugged interaction with our GM trait Imagined Burden.
If you have IB and try to iWave a creeper without cripple, you will have the short knockdown effect.
If you have IB and try to iWave a creeper with cripple already applied, you will have the intended skill effect
If you don’t have IB at all you will have the intended skill effect regardless.
May be a symptom of another, bigger bug which prevents iWave from functioning correctly when it applies a condition (by some sigil/venom effect or something) – I know there have been complaints about iWave being inconsistent in the past. – have not tested this conjecture.
I tried Chrono/Mistrust – Blind/Inepitude with shield tonight. Didn’t really work out (WvW and sPvP).
Anyone having good results with Mistrust to share?
What did you try in WvW? Did you try jumping off a battlement with f5, shield5 the enemy zerg, and warp back up to the battlement? I’m just wondering how much aoe confusion you could cause…
Something like that.
I was hoping the shield block and precog-well change would give this kind of playstyle more breathing room. Then reality hit me with WvW skill lag.
I got more confusion using Gravity Well from range to be honest (and not much -i’d say 2.5-3.5k condi dmg on ~7 targets at most.)
After investigating this issue and testing on Tequatl’s bloated creepers i’ve concluded that this is caused by a bugged interaction with our GM trait Imagined Burden.
If you have IB and try to iWave a creeper without cripple, you will have the short knockdown effect.
If you have IB and try to iWave a creeper with cripple already applied, you will have the intended skill effect
If you don’t have IB at all you will have the intended skill effect regardless.
May be a symptom of another, bigger bug which prevents iWave from functioning correctly when it applies a condition (by some sigil/venom effect or something) – I know there have been complaints about iWave being inconsistent in the past. – have not tested this conjecture.
. Superspeed shatters give staff amazing tagging potential and kiting champs from range can work just as well evading them with sword.