Guild Wars 2

I hate the scepter ambush with Mirage so I don’t see me swapping to play it. I doubt the fractals/raids/PvE environment is going to swap from Chrono to Mirage at all so guess my mesmer is sticking with shield. Will be on the back burner as Ive gotten a little bit burnt out being everyone’s tank/boonbot/distorter, basically tired of being ALL THE THINGS.

Switching back to my Ele and maybe Holosmith if it survives the incoming butchery that is sure to happen to it after release.

I am hoping shield is a viable option, I like the reflects and easy CC…and I am being completely selfish as I own Flameseeker Prophecies and I would love to be able to use it on the Holo. Off hand pistol might remain the damage choice.

For PvE? Nope, I run Fire/Arcane/Tempest, I find the Arcane traitline and more specifically the Final Shielding trait helps keep me alive better than the pity regen from Water. I’ve learned how much damage I can take before needing to use a heal or for emergencies swap over to water and wait for the overload.

As for WvW or PvP, I dunno as I don’t play those.

I doubt power Ele/Tempest is going anywhere, zerk Ele is probably the safest thing you can invest gold into.

At first, I was like ok…thematically it’s kinda cool but then I logged in for the beta and found out my kitten scepter now roots me for the ambush. WTF? I play scepter because it doesn’t root me like the sword does but now Mirage is messing with my favorite weapon. Nope, forget that.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Photonic_Blasting_Module

This GM trait traits it into a blast

Haven’t quite pinned it down yet…I have a soft spot for Alchemy but it’s hard fitting in Elixirs when the Holosmith is giving new toys to play with. Explosives with Forge traited for ranged is awesome though! Gave the full time today during the stress test to the Holosmith and it was so much fun just wrecking everything in sight.

Probably going end up Explosives/Tools/Holo as well…in the end the two give most to the Forge and working around it. Dunno about utilities; I rather like the Spectrum Shield and I like the toolbelt skill for the arena, I play a Chronomancer as well so having a group pull again on Holosmith is pretty neat. Wish it was a group buff though. So much to go through and consider now that we aren’t so reliant on the base kits anymore \o/

What did you expect to happen equipping Clerics? Only having power with no precision for crits and no ferocity for crit damage is going to have a hard time taking things down. I slapped zerk with scholar runes onto mine and I was wrecking things with just random button pushes. I imagine adding in some nice condi damage for a hybrid power/condi would be even better. Actually getting to try this new spec out in PvE made me fall in love with it…it’s elegant game play.

I have a soft spot for my Dreamer. Pink unicorns are a running joke between my husband and I, started as a joke of me buying him any pink unicorns I could find and now he has a unicorn collection that our daughter regularly raids. When I saw it first in game, I knew it had to be the first one I made. Now that they have the option of turning off the projectile sounds for others, I am more comfortable using it. I didn’t like being the ‘troll’ to others around me.

I have Bolt and Bifrost that the ranger can use as well but Dreamer will always be my favorite.

If someone wants to run around looking like a nauseous disco ball at Mardi Gras more power to them. Why ruin someone else’s fun just because it isn’t your fun?

Forgive me but I do not PvP in this game…just something I never have interest in. So for me in fractals, it’s all about the rotation which must be why I see it as button spamming.

Nope, I am thrilled to be given the chance to play something other than kits. Yes I know the forge is basically a ‘kit’ but it’s more than that. It’s a different, less spam all the buttons play style that makes you think about what you are doing in the moment. I like that we can’t just swap from forge to kits and back again. Maybe, just maybe I’ll get to see something besides grenades and bombs on my utility bar…maybe…probably not but maybe.

Healing engi looks like so much fun, wish it could be viable…druid brings all those buffs and their condi damage is stupid easy to put out on top of the healing, hard to justifying bringing the medic engi :/

I like to call a lot of the light armor diaper mullets…short in the front and long in the back. The worst offender is that masquerade bottom, why in the world would one cut away the front to reveal panties like that? Stop cutting peeping cutouts from the front of the female leggings please! And give us some kitten pants and I don’t mean harem style, the only decent pair we have are the ones from the Ascalon dungeon :/

Holosmith for sure. It’s such a pretty spec and care was taken into creating it. It feels different enough from the kit spamming engie to be interesting.

Also, I can just swap my Bolt and Flameseeker from the Mesmer over to the Holosmith and only have to pull out the concentration sigil.

Sticking with sword/shield, since I have bolt and flameseeker mostly but I like the sword skills and a kit can easily be ranged if I needed it. I do think they should have added the heat mechanic to the other weapons at least, I mean the Mirage’s base weapons got the ambush skills, I don’t see why they didn’t give pistol or rifle something.

Not thrilled the scepter ambush roots me, I do like the step back but I play scepter because it doesn’t root me like the sword does :/

Wasn’t a fan of Bolt but I made it anyway so I could stop carrying around a bunch of swords for the stat reset option. The footfalls are sort of ugly but it’s growing on me. Not a fan of the new legendary, the noise it makes is awful. I’ve been debating reskinning over Bolt to Whisperblade, the purple misty sword always was my favorite.

Pants would amazing…also, stop cutting away the front of the skirts. Just leave them whole please, no more weird buttcape/mullet skirts.

Don’t like the unidentified items, not a good system at all. Just give us the drops and let us sort them out, no need to reinvent the wheel here.

The mount was great, strafing would be nice but understandable as to why not. I honestly bought the expansion after seeing the Raptor in action.

Was not thrilled that it was a PvE test and no elites to test. Not liking the next weekend WvW/PvP test for elites, not all of us want to play a PvP game and would like access to a PvE environment to test the new skills. Even letting us have the golem area with the new professions would be nice.

The privateer set is really good, I have the scepter and the warhorn myself.

I find I crash way more with the new native client than I ever did with the other one. My character will start to turn, everything freezes and I get the white error message to send the bug report to Anet. This happens at least once every 20min or so…really frustrating because it’s lovely to use other than the crashes.

Why is the native scrolling gesture turning still so slow? When I select the box and move around, the turning is soooooo slow that it’s not even useful to use. It feels so natural to use the two finger drag on a Mac trackpad but if you cannot turn the character with the pin point precision that this game demands, you cannot use that option.

I like my sparkly chicken I some how got off one key I had been saving from a map completion back during the Lunar New Year thing. After that, it’s the kitties with hats…Chauncey and the Feline Familiar, so adorable!

dace.8019:

Celestial Rooster glider, because BUKAWK

I won’t lie, I was so tempted to buy that stupid glider because it made me laugh.

I use the raven glider the most because huge, bright bird that I can color is awesome.

That’s mine…it’s even called Daze

I prefer my focus over sword for my secondary offhand, most of my fractal groups do too. It’s pull is way too valuable to give up for some extra damage on a profession that isn’t known for DPS. Pulling everything to one point for the group to cleave into is way more fun! Can’t pry my shield out of my hands either so no sword here.

Out of the new armors they released…I wonder how many are actually being used? I find most of them to be ugly and not even worth my time pursuing the skin. Weird buttflaps and trench coats and pointy random bits do not make for nice fashion :/

If they got rid of that irritating female asura ‘graaaauuuuuugh’ noise that she makes while casting a big ability, I would go back to my asura chrono in a heartbeat. However, having 3 phantoms plus me all making that kitten awful noise will grate on the nerves pretty badly. Since it’s a battle noise and not ‘player chatter’, not even the checkbox will stop it. Til then, it would be my Human Chrono.

Phit.3560:

Ok i got it. I was in the right direction. I really love tanking but ill start with a basic setup of commanders zerkers. Thank you guys for the help!

You can tank in the basic gear set up, all you do is swap out the rings for Knight’s rings, this will place your Toughness to over to 1400 needed to tank.

Minstrel’s is fun and all, but the basic Chrono zerk build will take you through all content smoothly and without complaints.

So the very basic Chrono gear should be:

Armor
Commander’s – Leggings
Berserker’s – Helm, Shoulders, Gloves, Chest, and Boots,

Trinkets –
Berserker’s – Amulet, Rings, Earrings,
Exotic Berserker’s Back with a Platinum Doubloon

Weapons
Berserker’s – Sword, Sword, Shield, Focus, Scepter (if you want to have a ranged weapon)

This is your no frills basic Boon Share Chrono build – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dn0nBlfiFoB+fCMrhFVjiMAGhi7MJGiprOZn2qF-TRSBQBA4kAMxHAA/2f4bTQok6LRQJ4VU+hH9CHUFCSBE4UL-e

If your budget doesn’t allow for the Bountiful Sharpening Stones (usually the meta builds use them so they can add more zerk and less commander’s), you swap the Amulet for a Commander’s Amulet and you use Commander’s for the weapons. I hate those over priced and soul sucking Sharpening stones so I use the Commander’s Amulet and weapons for my build. I lose a little bit of power but at least I get to keep my gold.

This is the one I run to keep myself away from those kitten stones – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dn0nBlfiFoB+fCMrhFVj6MJGipjMAGhirOZn2qF-ThSBQBUS9lLqMICKBPoKEfbCy90LMxHAA/2kitten9AwJBgUABOGA-e

Our Wiki will tell you when a new DS map will open: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon's_Stand

You can usually find a group in the start right before the new map opens or look on the LFG is someone is posting for a meta map.

As for the Minstrel’s questions, honestly I made my zerk/commander’s ascended set first so I could run t4 fractals and slowly got box drops for my Minstrel’s set. Sorry I am not much help but I think all Chrono’s should have a zerk/commander’s set ontop of any other ones they carry.

Cyninja.2954:

Xyonon.3987:

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Not sure if serious, you did realise he was asking for his minstrel set right? Aka he will be tanking.

Please explain to me now how chaos is not a good trait line when tanking. I’m sure those 1k more damage which Domination might provide will be of so much use over the protection uptime from chaos for example…

Hard to give up Distort on Signet use…that’s a lot of potential damage/mechanics mitigated if you know when to block them. Domi is useless otherwise, you aren’t taking it for the damage it provides; I would love to fit Chaos into my build but that signet Distort is so kittened useful.

Every time I see that neat gizmo/Juggernaut shiny effect, I think ‘whoa cool, I totally want it!’…then I remember it’s from the 3rd phase of precursor crafting and I give up again. Kitten you, you mithril and del. ingot eating npcs -.-

Oh I’m not using Teapot’s build…I have a Sigil of Concentration on my Bolt. I’ve already gotten myself so used to weapon swapping that the concentration sigil is no longer that much of an annoyance to use. Have Domi/Insp/Chrono for the trait lines, with traited Mantra heal so I heal my teammates when I cast it and have the added toughness. This is why I am pondering the Transference sigil rather than the water sigil as the mantra is only on a 10 sec cooldown so maybe the extra healing from the mantra cast would be more than the occasional healing from the water sigil?

I have 100% boon duration from everything else + the Sigil, so no need for the plat doubloon. Hence the want to find a nice useful sigil for that off hand

This has been bugging me since I got my hands on my second ascended set and made it Minstrel a bit ago. My zerk/commander’s set was easy, force sigil is a no brainer for the offhand weapons but the Minstrel, a force sigil doesn’t seem to justify it’s cost. 5% of meh damage isn’t exactly useful, especially since the Minstrel gear is designed to help you carry with utility and I would like to find a sigil to help with that utility. I finally got my hands on a weapon box drop from Fractals and swapped it over to Minstrel’s shield so I have my full set. The Main hand is my Bolt with the Concentration sigil in it. Right now, I have a Sigil of Water in the offhand because it’s cheap and it fills the slot…bit of extra healing never hurt anyone.

What I am pondering is if I should get a Sigil of Transference to help with the Mantra heal/traited healing we do from the Inspiration traitline? I mean, the Minstrel’s healing is okay and an extra 10% on top could be nice…

Is there another sigil I ought to be looking at that I’ve missed? Or, in the end, should I just stick with the water sigil and be done with it?

As someone who does fractals daily, druids are a welcome sight. Condi and healer are both used, no one seems to care if you bring power either…so long as those Grace stacks are kept up, frost spirit/spotter are up and you have good control of the pet, groups won’t complain. Healer is a little less useful in a high level fractal as most runners know what they are doing and the healing is a bit excessive. Condi is perfect though, fights are usually long enough for your conditions to do their thing.

Vipers all the things with 4 nightmare runes/2 trapper’s runes is the ‘meta’ at the moment for condi. Magi is the standard meta healer.

I prefer to run traited warhorn myself. Groups tend to not stay together and I get frustrated trying to place healing spring, warhorn is way easier. Not as effective, the regen from the spring is amazing, but if your group won’t sit still what’s the point?

When I am on the healer druid it’s always sw/wh and staff for me…double staff is redundant and can’t really melee heal, where as if you have a water sigil on and you are in melee at least you are still healing to get CA back.

GoTL isn’t considered a boon so boon duration doesn’t help there. The exotics with plat doubloons is mostly for the regen to make an attempt for the druid’s regen to outlast, and thus be the one ticking versus the Chronomancer’s. Basically it’s a way to overwrite the one being constantly tossed by the Chrono so that the druid gets the CA heal for their f5.

Honestly, I don’t use a mouse, I play on a laptop and I’ve been using my trackpad to play since day 1. I have the trackpad option from settings set up so when I swipe with 3 fingers, I turn like the action camera. I tried a mouse recently and I cannot for the life of me play this game with one…though that’s mostly because of an old wrist injury that makes holding a mouse painful. All that said, a gaming mouse with a bunch of buttons can’t hurt.

You can go into your setting to replace the FN F1-0 keys to just pressing the F keys. It’s under Keyboard in the System Settings. The little check mark box for ‘Use F1, F2, ect. keys as standard function keys’…might help out with those shatters. Honestly, I play on a MacBook pro and have for the last 3.5 years and haven’t had any problems with it.

Wish they could take the place of a mystic coin in the clover recipe…

Malice.8439:

I’m currently aiming for something like this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dnsIClfiFoB+fCEgiFVjiMAGhi7MIGiprOZn2qF-TRSBQBA4kAcP9CXRp3EfAA8b/BKp+yBVh4iKDIpSQSBE4YA-e

I notice you use a Greatsword in your build. I find that intriguing, would you mind telling me more about it?

That is almost exactly what I run on mine. You can swap out the ascended amulet for an exotic Commander’s one, as you cannot put an agony infusion there, so you can get a little more boon duration. You can do the same with the back piece if you need the extra there but you lose one slot for AR, meaning everything else has to be +9 at the minimum. I use a Knights sometimes, so I can add the extra toughness to my tank zerk build if needed. This is mine: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8NSAAgaA-ThSBQBfbGC/2f4hKDm4DA4e6HAwJBQWKBpk6LHUFiro0jIAlxA-e

With the amulet swap out, I can use the level 70 food from my WvW provisions box and never have to spend a copper on food. Heck, in Fractals with my omni pot, I don’t even have to use boon duration food with that build.

Malice.8439:

I’m already doing Sw/Focus + -/Shield, for that very reason.

I hadn’t considered that too much Commanders gear would lock me into a tanking role. That’s a very good point.

It would appear that I can’t escape having to farm Silverwastes for a few days to afford that Superior Sigil, then.

The sigil is pretty much the linchpin to the basic boon duration build. If I could ditch it, it would be a happy day but giving up 33% boon duration for a weapon swap hurts.

I know the Leadership runes woes, I never willingly go into DS anymore because I cannot stand that map; my guildmates even pointed out that it seemed like I lived there. It’s not easy just tossing away 30% boon duration because I didn’t want to farm DS or WvW. I figured that if I was going to commit fully to making a boon duration Chrono, I better just do it right. Why spend so much gold if I wasn’t going to go 100% into it?

The 4 Traveler’s runes and 2 water will work, if you aren’t planning on raiding much (or plan to always tank), the Durability Runes or the Herald Runes are a good substitute as well. I’d still suggest when you see a new map open for DS, just do one daily and eventually you can replace out the runes for the Leadership ones.

I too am a Dreamer owner who cannot use the legendary I love the most because of complaints. I get called a troll and then get told off rudely. I did not make it for the noise and I did not make it to troll other people, I made it because it makes me laugh killing things with Robot Unicorn Attack unicorns. I loved that game as a teenager and when I saw that they had implemented it here, I was thrilled.

I fully support a sound change into something more pleasing to the ear. Tone down the high pitched neighing sound…or turn it into something else, just don’t remove the fact that it makes a sound.

So not getting the runes means you have to pad up your Boon Duration in another manner, either constantly using the stupid expensive utility buff (the boon duration stones that take 3 platinum doubloons for 5) or by adding in commander’s gear. However, commander’s gear will only take you so far. Full commander’s for armor is only 13% and full trinkets is 20%. By doing this means you cannot play anything but tank, you cannot swap over to the secondary chrono position, you lock yourself into tank. The whole reason we use the runes is so we don’t do this.

The sigil is by far the easiest way to help up that boon duration without trading raw damage. If it helps, equip the shield in the secondary slot (meaning the sword only in the first slot and the shield only in the second) so you don’t have to rely on muscle memory for cooldown tells. This one thing gives you more boon duration than a full set of Leadership runes for 7 seconds…it’s worth it, if not completely annoying to use. Trust me, I’ve been trying to replace it but I can’t justify the cost of using the utility buff for the exchange. This weapon swap will become almost reflexive as you continue to play the profession.

It’s harder to make sure you can be both chrono roles if your party already has a tank with those Durability runes though. With the basic zerk/commander’s, you can easily lower or raise your toughness by swapping out a few trinkets…the runes means you have a higher base toughness to work around. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Durability runes on my tanking armor but if a Chrono only has one set of armor, the Leadership runes are the best bet so they can fit both roles.

Barring the great debate over minstrels vs zerk…since you asked for a minstrel build and not an argument, this one is mine.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dn0nBlfiFoB+fCMrhFVjqOZn2q9MJWipjMAGhiD-TByGQB97BAAMlgA4kAEO9CJbCC9U/pc7PQQlfkCwvxAA-e

I can’t stand eating my gold away with bountiful sharpening stones and I am too lazy to make a full minstrel’s weapon set so I share the Commander’s between the Minstrel armor and the zerk/commander’s set I carry around. It’s a toss up for the water sigil on my off hand weapons, been pondering a Transference sigil but the water was a cheap filler sigil til I figure out what to stick there.

Is it the best? Probably not, but it works for me and my tanking needs. It doesn’t use expensive foods or utility buffs, in fact those are whatever you want to use as the Rice Balls are there just to add to the healing output…anything else you want will work. Note, I do carry a zerk/commander’s meta set, I did not replace it with the minstrels and no chrono main should.

Fay.2357:

On VG we don’t get the green circles. Instead, we let the mesmers invuln the green circle hits so that we can maintain 100% melee damage uptime on the boss.

Holy kittens…I dunno why this never struck me. /facepalm My guild is new at raiding and we are relying on the know-how of two members who have gotten kills before but as a necro and an ele, so I have no experienced tanks to tell me how things go. This makes total sense and as to why we take the Domi line in the first place if you don’t bother with greens and can just distort through the damage. Takes a bit of knowledge though, knowing when to distort, gives me something to learn the timing on for sure to make me a better tank.

Was using the color Dewdrop to match the blue-y parts of the back pieces myself.