Guild Wars 2

cafard.8953:

Tealots.6095:

While Druids do look fun and interesting, I bet they can still be locked down. :P

Yup, that’s the rock to the druid’s scissors at the moment. Not a single sun-breaker or source of stability in the new stuff. So in non PvE scenarios, a pure druid would spend his time interrupted, stunned and immobilised. You’ll probably only ever meet hybrid builds.

Um, you realize that Druids are still rangers, right?
I mean, it’s not like Blink, Midnight and Decoy are Chronomancer skills. Druid still has stunbreaks because ranger has stunbreaks.

Fay.2357:

Thing get complicated if you only have partial alacrity. Permanent alacrity is really simple:

Original cooldown * .66 = cooldown with permanent alacrity

*Note that .66 is based on some loose observations by Pyro. For safety’s sake I’ve adopted the same, but come the next BWE I plan to do some more solid calculations just to be sure.
By the math, it SHOULD be .6, so something’s hinky and is gonna need further experimentation.

Xyonon.3987:

Guys it’s never been about PS. It’s about EA (Empowered Allies). It’s +150 power aka +5% dmg for the whole pt.

What I mean is that I doubt that the damage increase of a warrior not going for EA compared to a warrior that traits EA isn’t higher than a party wide 5% dmg increase.

So even if anyone else can grant 25 stacks might, it would be useless since war goes into EA and therefore PS anyway.

As I understand it, the issue isn’t having PS per se, but about doing what it takes to get the 25 might stacks with it, which means taking an inferior dps rotation/weaponset in favor of stacking might with Greatsword.

Kitta.3657:

I agree with that, but I think it’s wrong to not consider synergy with runes/sigils when talking about traits current power. I mean, I’m all for a nerf to perplexity but in the current state, it makes Mistrust not a bad trait and since we’re talking about condi mesmer; why would you not choose the strongest aspect of it? 7 stacks of confusion with one insta cast 1200 range skill!! That is not to be overlooked. That will highly affect the result of a fight.

The issue is that Mistrust is not providing synergy, not really.

You will get that 5 stacks regardless of whether you have Mistrust or not, and focusing on interrupts in no way impedes your ability to also get confusion off shatter, except as you say, at extreme range.

Except, that even with Mistrust and Perplexity both, the ability to stack conditions is too low to be useful without shatters also contributing condis. So an interrupt condi mesmer (we did the math in another thread, someone wanted to see what the very best we could do with Mistrust actually is) is still a shatter condi mesmer who also gets interrupts for confusion. And by the numbers, unless you interrupt multiple targets frequently, Mistrust cannot compete with DE, even in the same build.

That’s the crux of the issue, the stacks on Mistrust are just too low to compete with extra clones.

Fay.2357:

Kitta.3657:

Fay.2357:

Greatsword is still sorta meh. It doesn’t have as high dps a phantasm as staff, doesn’t have the ability to summon illusions at 1200 range, and still is very weak up close.

Wait a second, GS has ability to summon illusions at 1200 range 0-0 I don’t know exactly what I’m missing, because I’d be surprised you wouldn’t be aware… But it completely does. Mirror blade is 1200 range and summons a clone on the target. Illusionary Berserker spawns a phantasm on 1200 range. 2/5 spawns illusions at 1200 range.

Are you trying to talk about staff being capable of summoning an illusion without a target? If so then #3 on staff still requires a target so you’re not really more advantageous than GS for that. I just mean this can’t be considered an arguing point against GS. Everything else you say is right though.

S/Sh S/P or S/S still sounds overall better for most encounters and compositions than Staff to me.

I should have been more clear. Staff will summon illusions that remain at 1200 range, out of reach of nasty boss stuff. Greatsword summons them on target, which is unhealthy for illusions, particularly at the beginning of a fight.

Re: Herald 15 might upkeep

I achieved this with Hoelbrak runes actually, as strength runes didn’t come with the package.

Herald also benefits from his own 50% boon duration, and gets another 15% besides from a minor trait, iirc.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Ok well, I looked back some and couldn’t find anything so I’ll just say this one more time. You will already have 30+ seconds of alacrity with only shattering when it’s a DPS increase. The only thing shattering off cd does is provide more alacrity for you. 30+ seconds of alacrity for you is already enough during the fight. Caps for emphasis. THE ONLY TIME MORE ALACRITY IS USEFUL IS IF CS WOULDN’T BE OFF CD FOR THE NEXT FIGHT BUT WITH SHATTERING OFF CD THAT WOULD CHANGE. But to even know this you would need to play with the same 4 people all the time. And I’d imagine these cases will not be the norm. If anyone has actually replied to this I’d love to here the reply, but I read all the posts people reply so I really don’t think its slipped past me over 4 times.

All those times that we pointed out that you need alacrity to reset your own skills for the next fight. Since this has been said many, many times now, and YOU’VE RESPONDED AT LEAST ONCE to those, it’s clear either
1. YOU JUST LIED about reading the rest of the thread, or
2. YOU JUST LIED about not having seen an answer about why you’d need more alacrity, because you’ve responded to such an answer already, earlier in the conversation.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

“Sanderinoa replied to you (perhaps unwisely)”

How was it unwise? We had a perfectly normal conversation. Nothing bad about it at all.

See the above lies.
You are toxic in conversation, not just because you get rude (who doesn’t, at times?), but because you don’t read what people write, you make broad assertions without evidence (and refuse to attempt to provide such), you go further to insist that your assertions are conclusive even after being called on lack of evidence, you dispute facts that have evidence while having no backing to your own position, your arguments often make no kitten sense, and you occasionally lie about your role in the conversation. All of the above is obstructive to constructive conversation in a forum setting.

These are the reasons I ceased to engage with you, and the reasons I would recommend that Sanderinoa do the same.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

@Alpha
But why do you actually need that alacrity?

Having answered you on this at least 4 times myself in this thread, in addition to the times Pyro ALSO answered this question, and
Having already said I’m not gonna engage with you anymore, only noticing this because Sanderinoa replied to you (perhaps unwisely),
I’ll suggest you actually read the rest of the kitten thread for this answer.

Kitta.3657:

PS Mistrust isn’t bad. 7 stacks of confusion instantly on my cheesy alt condi perplexity mesmer with one insta cast interrupt of 1200 range. That’s hella fine.

Since 5 of those 7 stacks are from the runes, that’s because Perplexity is “hella fine”, not Mistrust. 2 stacks for an interrupt is just bad compared to what you’ll get out of the clone from DE.

Sanderinoa.8065:

To be fair, warriors arent exactly a ‘high dps’ class. They are capable of doing more damage than the mesmer, but they havent been top tier dps since 2013. The warrior is taken because they have unique banners as well as other group damage support.
The reason PS warriors are taken a lot now is simply because it’s an easy and effective way of extremely high might generation.
Im not saying eles could fill that gap now, but I am saying that they’ll likely be able to once revenants join the party and icebow gets less of a priority.

I don’t know THAT much about revenants, but someone mentioned earlier that their might upkeep is around 16 stacks, which only leaves about 9 to be filled. This is extremely easy to fill in as you only need 3 blasts, and eles have one on their heal anyways.

Well, that makes sense.

As far as phantasm rotations go, I’d suggest (one if the points I made early in the thread) that focusing on getting a full 3-phant roster isn’t going to work out well, as you need to shatter a lot to be getting the alacrity you need, which interferes with the periodic waits that you need to sustain 3.

That said, given that same extreme shatter rotation, I think there’s a case to be made for using the PoM in conjunction with alacrity and Chronophantasma combo to use phantasms as a more disposable “fire and forget” offensive tool: let them live just long enough to get their first attack after creation, and their first attack post-daze, then shatter for the alacrity and MW damage.

At that point, the best phantasms for damage are gonna be a combination of strong dps and as low a cool down as possible.

That leaves warden, mage, duelist and avenger in the dust (dps wise),
and emphasizes swordsman, berserker and warlock relying on the weapon traits in dueling, Dom and chaos, respectively.

Warlock makes an interesting pick there, given the discussion on the potential value of chaos, but the low-dps focus of the build makes it a bit of a mismatch.

Berserker would suggest taking Imagined burden, which conflicts with Mental Anguish, so I suspect that one may not play out as well.

Swordsman had the best potential, as DE gives strong synergy with the high-shatter pace, sword is the first-choice for dps anyway, and it’s already the highest dps single-target phantasm already.

That said, shield won’t mesh incredibly well with the concept, unless we find a strong enough alacrity generation to displace some other less-damaging choices.
Or they fix slow being useless vs breakbar.

Sanderinoa.8065:

I did read up on BD, naturally, and it really does look cool to have a good might generation this way.
This would be extremely relevant if it would make for classes to be replaced in the party.
But due to the extreme ease with which eles keep up might, in combination with their blasting requirement for partywide fury, Im expecting the 25 stacks to simply be kept up through lava fonts anyways.

Mesmers are common to put a lot of effort into doing something which is much more easily attained through simple teamplay, this should not become too much of a habit.
Therefore I personally think we’re better off incorporating a blast or two in the rotation of other classes who can do so easily, rather than dedicating an entire traitline to it. As I stated above, I do think phantasms should keep a rather important role in the chrono playstyle, and these imaginary friends of mine want their might too

My only question on that is, why are PS warriors meta if it’s really that easy for the eles to fill that gap?

As I understand it, warriors are giving up a fair bit of dps for that extreme might generation.
Given that warriors are a naturally high dps class vs mesmers naturally low, it seems likely that the PS warrior is losing more total dps via PS than the mesmer is via Chaos. But if it’s worth it for the warrior to do that, why wouldn’t it be for the chrono to do so?

@Sanderinoa
Pyro may be underselling BD just a bit here.
The build can keep 12 stacks of might persistently on the party, even ooc.
With the Herald’s ability to do the same with 16 stacks (Facet of Strength + the might trait), the party has a persistent 23-24 stacks.
So the ability of Chaos+Herald to replace alternate might generation becomes a decent argument in its favor, letting your warrior use weapons other than PS, your eles not needing to worry about fire field blasting, etc.

If you’re right about Herald being common in the new meta, then, it may be that chaos will still make sense—depending on what your other sources of might are.

MailMail.6534:

It’s this simple:

BUFF VEIL
BUFF MASS INVISIBILITY
REVERT PU BACK TO +1s

End of story. Or no, we’ll keep avoiding the real issues and keys to balancing Mesmer stealth.

Except at that point, PU isn’t worthy of its GM slot. I’ll just be another Mistrust, incapable of competing with Bountiful Disillusionment or Chaotic Interference.

ozzy.8059:

if they promote pu condi play in any way you guys would be given the ele treatment by players. you are already a problem for wvw roaming and extremely strong in pvp 1v1 &+1 fights there really i no need to buff it at all

They’re nerfing PU, hard.
Were you just…not paying attention, or something?

Menaka.5092:

I would be fine with 2.5% if it worked even on chaos armor you get from other people’s blasts…

It doesn’t?

Ghotistyx.6942:

MI got lost in all the other letters of complaint floating around. Cool.

Oh, okay.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Maybe there’s an opportunity there. I actually have a Chaos,/Inspiration/Illusions build I’m looking into. It’s certainly not for PvE, which is the vibe I’m getting.

Some folks are looking at bunker builds for when HoT drops, and those could make use of both Chaos and Inspiration. The stealth from Veil is so terrible though, that it gets hard to justify taking a slot even for the glamour effects (given we can get better defenses from Wells now). Plus, if you’re a bunker running chaos anyway, it’s really hard to pass up on the stability from Bountiful Disillusionment.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Just wondering what was so great about 4s veil compared to 3s, but apparently that’s nothing either.

Yeah, I called out veil separately because this is a standing gripe that just gets worse with the change.

Vieux P.1238:

first i hear about it to.. .. Link plz :/

I don’t…what kind of link are you expecting? It’s been discussed exhaustively, but not in the last few days, so the threads are all gonna be old and on back pages.
Edit: you actually posted multiple times in one, “PU… PU’s everywhere…”, where the bug was brought up.

If you need verification, you can go test it easily.
1. Pop in a torch, trait PU and The Pledge, and slot decoy.
2. Activate The Prestige and immediately decoy.
3. When the 12s of stealth runs out, you should have about 1s left on The Prestige.

That puts The Prestige at about 13s cooldown. Since it starts at 30, that means it lost 17s in cooldown during your stealth, which works out to about 17/12 = 1.42s reduction per second of stealth, or about 4.7% (1.42/30).

Ghotistyx.6942:

Not sure what your issue is. It hurt Mass Invis much more than veil, but no mention of that.

What the hell are you talking about?
When I said “If they give back some of the duration on Veil/MI, I’ll be fine,” you do know that MI = Mass Invisibility, right?

But at 7.5s, MI is still providing a somewhat useful amount of group stealth. At 3s, Veil is not (4s really wasn’t great either).

Ghotistyx.6942:

Veil works out to be the same as +1s, for 3s total stealth instead of 4, plus you still get superspeed from the glamour trait.

Are you seriously confused why I’d be unhappy with +1s, when I’ve been defending PU almost since the June patch? You do realize that a lot of mesmers liked the extra stealth, and found it really nice to be able to provide a reasonable fraction of the amount of group stealth a thief can provide, don’t you?

Furthermore, I don’t take chaos and inspiration together on any builds. Do you?

You’re talking like I’m some bizarre anomaly who needs to be studied for being unhappy with the state of Veil specifically, which is itself rather bizarre, as I’m far from alone in that.

Seriously, you ask what my “issue is”, but your response demands that more than mine.

Vieux P.1238:

keenlam.4753:

PU nerf is justified but what about the Pledge then?

What about it?

The pledge is still bugged to be adding 3 times the cdr it’s supposed to.
Between the The Prestige and Decoy under new PU, that’s 9s of stealth. If you sit out the whole 9s, you get 40% cdr.

But, if they fix the bug so it’s only adding the 1.5% cdr it’s supposed to add, sitting out that whole 9s of stealth gives you 16% cdr, which is less than the baseline 20% that is usual for such traits.

In other words, The Pledge is bugged to be too strong, but it’s too weak otherwise, and the whole point of it is encouraging stealth camping anyway so you can get more stealth from a weapon whose cooldowns are much too long for the benefits they give unless you have The Pledge giving you 40%+ cooldown reduction.

The Pledge was a bigger problem than PU, and they’re nerfing PU without any sign that they’re gonna make The Pledge actually reasonable.

Khyber.1284:

:/ Give it to us, Take it back, really classy

If they give back some of the duration on Veil/MI, I’ll be fine. They weren’t really the problem anyway.

Also, I really really hope there’s gonna be a fix to The Pledge in that patch, nerfing PU before fixing the bigger problem would be…. quite inscrutable.

My biggest annoyance is that this is a big cut to our ability to escort groups for skips.
Back to thief meta, :sigh:

And Veil even worse than it was before…

There’s a faulty assumption in your premise.

In many cases, MoP is not a dps increase even when traited.

Xyonon.3987:

And why don’t you just use AA, AA, charge MoP, AA, AA, scepter 3#, AA, AA, charge MoP, …?

Because I’m on a condi build?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I think at this point we have both insulted each other, probably for the same reason. Anyway, this puts us at a crossroad. We could either A, continue to insult each other, B, walk away, or C stop.

B.

Until you start backing up your claims with math or evidence, you cannot convince me to read the things you say, as I have been wasting a great deal of my time reading them and responding to them, and it hasn’t been worth it, and won’t be worth it until you start backing up the kitten you say.

When you do start doing that, you can get my attention again by prefacing your post with “Look Guys, Math!” or “Look Guys, Video Evidence!” or “Look Guys, I Tried It!”.
You’d better mean it though, because I’ll only give you one chance to “cry wolf” before even that won’t work.

Alternatively, you could just walk away also.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I’m not against this change but given all the NPE stuff, as easy as it might seem to be for us on the mesmer forum to understand, I don’t think anet would do this because it would be too big of a change.

runeblade.7514:

I am going to say that this is a terrible idea because it will make fighting phantasm annoying and unfun.

A better solution is to buff Protected phantasm to 2-3 seconds. It’ll be enough for a phantasm to make one attack, then you use a clone production skill/dodge and then shatter. This will work in large group situation.

Phantasm doesn’t need to immortal.

I think going this route is a lot better than aoe resistance/immunity.

However, I think it would be better for phantasms to just gain distortion when the mesmer dodges. Similar to Companion’s defense for rangers that gives protection to pets when they dodge. Alternatively, looking at ranger traits, barkskin is kind of the aoe resistance people could ask for but I think it would have to be something that is traited.

The reason I like distortion on dodge is that it’s perfect for PvE problems. Mesmers dodge the aoe while phantasms evade as well. Distortion can be given to illusions as already shown by Protected phantasms. It’s easy to understand what’s happening on the PvP side of things and seems fair. I think it should be specifically for phantasms as DE and this might be a bit too much for shatter spikes…. speaking of DE

Mistrust: When you dodge, your illusions gain distortion. When illusions evade attacks, they cause 2 stacks of AOE confusion.

This would be a contender for DE while sort of bringing back a clone death/immortal mesmer style of build but more active. It would make people question dropping AOEs on a mesmer with a ton of illusions up. Defender might be able to “double evade” an attack but that’s iffy.

That’s a very interesting proposition, and I’m going to spend time thinking about it.

Unfortunately, it’s not generally the dodge alone that keeps players alive, but the dodge out of harm’s way. Even gaining evade, the illusions will still be standing in the aoe, free for the killing afterward. That’s one reason the ranger traits aren’t actually enough for rangers: because the pets are still standing in danger when the protection ends.

Lastly, I’ve always felt the idea that “you have to trait it” to make up for a fundamental flaw of a class is bullkitten. Like insisting that not having enough clone generation is okay because we can take Deceptive Evasion, putting a specific trait in a specific tree that is required to resolve a fundamental flaw with every build in the class is terrible design.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I would like to see the rotation your using sometime. I have the feeling you see a shatter button available and are like, OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Lets go press this button!!

And with that insult, you just went from being wrong and pedantic to being a total kittenbag. Good job, that’ll really sink your credibility.

And you know what? That’s enough for me.

I had a post written about my findings, about the many, many different rotations I tested, and even why trying to keep up 3 phantasms just ended up getting me less phantasm time (here’s a clue: swapping weapons to get a 3rd phantasm locks me out of the first weapon, and only one viable weapon in this build has a low enough final cooldown to keep up a constant rotation. So we’re increasing our wait time, which loses alacrity and quickness ground, and pretty soon you’re actually losing dps versus a build that just puts its phantasms in and lets them run), and did my usual line by line.
Heck, tbh I’m not even done trying to get 3 phantasms up in a viable shatter build, but even if I succeed it won’t help the chrono support, because they need to shatter frequently in order to get the alacrity they need to be ready for the next fight.

But you know what? Kitten it.

You just threw away civility, and with it went any reason I had to be civil. So I’m done.

It’s clear you have nothing left to contribute. You have spent this entire thread making ungrounded assertions, and steadfastly refusing to do the math or the testing to back up your assertions.
But it’s worse, because your arguments have been—for the most part—terrible.

But thank you for insulting me, because that made me realize: you’re not worth it.

Good bye bad fry, and good luck participating in future conversation with the terrible credibility you’ve established here.

Also worth noting that it will never hit an enemy twice either (unlike Wind of Chaos). It prefers allies, including itself, and the bounce can easily reach itself and me (or other phantasms), so I was unable to get a team of iMages to ever hit a golem twice on an attack with any positioning that I tried.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

“and conjures a clone”

Exactly my point. The skill might aswell not exist for pve then.

Enough. This is wrong, and has been every time you mentioned it.

At the rate a support chrono needs to shatter, you will NOT be getting 3 phantasms up at any given moment unless you totally screw up your rotations, or at the beginning of a fight (where you don’t need to worry about summoning a clone).

I tested the phantasm rotations extensively, and it was tricky enough to keep up 2 phantasms persistently with that as my only objective. This experience was repeated by many of the people discussing the uses of chronophantasma during the BWEs.
The only way to keep up 3 phantasms was the usual method: wait until they recharge. Shattering with any kind of speed just cuts down the phantasms, and puts you back at square one.

All you are accomplishing with your dogmatic insistence is proving to us that you didn’t actually try it.

There is nothing wrong with summoning clones, because the only time this build might have 3 phantasms is right at the start, when you shatter them immediately.

Edit: I should note that I WAS able to keep 3 phantasms up at a time by rotating between iDefender, Signet of Ether, and (sometimes) iDisenchanter. That was a huge waste of utility slots, however, as a clone serves just as well for shatters, meaning I was spending a slot for a single occasional attack from iDisenchanter or iDefender, and a little extra recharge on all phantasms. It’s also not an option available to the well support build, for obvious reasons.

Embolism.8106:

Eponet.4829:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

I should note that for both my math and Pyro’s, any departure from auto-attacking will give ground to the scepter.
Summoning phantasms, casting wells, casting mantras, blocking, etc. etc. will raise Scepter’s level, because CI has better dps than BF, while sword AA beats scepter AA. So if you don’t AA much, scepter wins.

On the other hand, any dodging that you need to do takes away from the scepter. Blurred frenzy being a minor increase in dps over the autoattack is when it’s used in place of the autoattack.

Blurred frenzy lets you maintain DPS uptime in situations where you would otherwise need to spend time dodging.

Unless it involves a flurry of attacks, don’t forget Illusionary Counter. It’s on a much lower CD than Blurred Frenzy and conjures a Clone to beef up your constant Shattering.

And I think you’ll find you spend much more time not autoattacking and casting other skills than dodging either way.

Well, tbh I’m not convinced that we can’t occupy a fair bit of time summoning and shattering phantasms. I was able to get a really fast rotation going on golems with iSwordsmen+Persistence of Memory+Chronophantasma, and it was pretty cool.
So between MoP, CI, and Phantasms, you’ll have a LOT of space filled up.
I’m working on a rotation that just combines CI and MoP, and it’s looking competitive with sword AA+BF so far (partly because of the HM bonus).
I’d be interested to see what kind of damage the phantasm rotation would add into that, but that math is gonna be…really hard.

I did some golem testing on a D/D thief right after the June 23 patch, and found that even with the new ferocity/crit traits in Critical Strikes, Berserker amulet Assassin amulet (and Scholar Runes still beat out Eagle runes).

And mesmers didn’t get nearly as many new crit toys.

So, I think it’ll take a lot to overturn the previous results. The only real advantage to Assassin is still probably reflects.

nearlight.3064:

let you lick targets down

?

curtegg.5216:

It’s sad how I misuse the scepter #2 block as a delay waiting for the CD expiration for weapon swap to try to keep that 3rd phantasm up.

Me, too -_-

Jerus.4350:

Not disputing Alacrity + Quickness benefits, more the need for this level of up time and the value of shedding the defensive support. We don’t live in a vacuum of paper theory perfection.

Except, you’ve been talking more about offensive than defensive support.
Pyro has already conceded (long before you or French Fry came into the picture, this came up right at the start) that swapping for Feedback may be necessary.
Doing so is a compromise between the need for reflects and value of that improved offensive support. You can compromise further, if need be, by swapping an entire trait line and weapon-set to get focus reflects, as Pyro has also conceded. That’ll weaken your offensive support even further, at the gain of reflect support.

But if you really need more…

If it was worth bringing along inferior dps (guardian, mesmer) for reflects in some dungeons before Chrono, why isn’t it worth bringing along a guardian in addition to the Chrono? I’ve already demonstrated mathematically that the chronomancer is adding more dps to the whole group than another ele would (which means he’s adding more than any other class would either), so why not just bring along a guardian for reflects in those dungeons where Feedback+Alacrity isn’t enough? Indeed, the guardian’s reflects will be even better than usual, given the effect of Alacrity, and guardian dps is already known to be decent, so they’d presumably contribute decently when boosted by Alacrity and quickness.

I made it through 10 minutes.

Would it have killed you to be brief, man? There’s no way I’m wading through all the rest of that, and I’m a forum warrior!

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

It’s better for you to shatter phantasms than to shatter clones because the phantasms do damage and then you shatter them and they do damage again.

How does summoning a clone keep you from shattering a phantasm?

I double tap, and I don’t care. I don’t like the dodge button, I need those buttons for other things.

Qugi.2653:

Hello,

I have mesmer that I use sword/focus and sword/pistol in open PvE. But I have problem some time. focus phantasm does good damage but if mob move during attack it stand there and miss and then slow to move and attack again. So I think about change from focus to sword/sword but I do not know because it seem sword phantasm do not do good damage from what wiki say. I ask because I would like to see thought on this before I spend gold to by another exotic sword and sigil for it. Also I even think about torch but I do not know if torch is any good at all for PvE.

Thank you.

Sword phantasm has the highest single-target dps of the phantasms, I believe.
I’m really confused why the wiki would say otherwise.
(edit: 17 minute ninja!)

Warden is just not good dps for exactly the reason you mentioned: it’s gotta be in their face, and it just stands there when they move.

Torch is terrible for open world.

Warden does destroy projectiles though, so it can be useful against bandits and other Mobs with Guns (mordrem don’t use projectiles, so don’t bother using warden against the artillery teragriffs or the leeching thrashers).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

You mentioned torch 4….

Specifically to say I didn’t need it. All you had to do was read what I said, but it sounds like you skimmed it instead?? Do you really think I’m so unimportant as to not actually read what I say? That makes me sad.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And I said where that it wasn’t?? I said you can use your elite pop CS at the end of teh cast so it goes off cd then swap back to TW. If you use TW then it would have double the cd than normal because CS has a 90 seconds cd while TW has 180 second cd.

You get MI back as soon as you get CS back since they have roughly the same cooldown, so you can swap to TW by the time you’re able to do another initiation.
I like the idea on using MI just once (for a shorter skip, say) inside CS, but then you’ll be waiting on CS anyway, since you probably don’t want to do a fight without CS (I guess that would be okay for some trash).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Except for the fact you don’t get TW then? Presuming your oping your alacrity during the skip?

Yes, that’s the idea. But since CS and MI have a similar cd after alacrity, even if you aren’t opping your alacrity during the skip, you’ll be able to swap to TW before you need to use CS again. So TW is only ever down if CS is down.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Exactly, this is my point. Chaos isn’t needed.

Except as Chaos noted, you haven’t provided any grounding at all that 18s is enough most of the time. You’d need a solid survey of bosses, and their average speed kill times, to be able to say something like that.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Yeah, I did forgot about CS and I didn’t relise the well was on such a low cd. But remember your giving up 12 seconds of relfects for 8 seconds of alacrity.

Do note that Pyro has already said he’d swap out Calamity for Feedback in fights where that matters more.
Also, as I noted earlier in the thread, shield is providing additional alacrity via the revamped shield phantasms. We haven’t calculated what kind of potential you get out of those, though, because it’s complicated and messy (Persistence of Memory + Chronophantasma + Quickness + Shield 4×2 = ????)

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

With my build you already have 18 seconds of alacrity which should be plenty. If there isn’t a need for reflects against a certain boss then you can go for the well.

What percentage of boss fights are only 18s long? Is there a source to find that kind of information?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I’m saying you can take well eternity sometimes, but you will also use well of eternity. And you can swap in shield if for some reason you already don’t. But the significant changes between our builds are STAFF and the trait line CHAOS.

I do agree with you on the staff, actually. If this were a boonshare build as well as an alacrity build, I’d probably stick with staff for the protection sharing, both otherwise I think you’ll get more mileage out of a second offhand.
The main key to the chaos is the might stacking, which is definitely more support than your build…given the right party. A PS warrior would make BD (mostly) moot, which would give a good reason to go Dom instead.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And the fact that my build has reflects while his has 0. I’m simply discussing changes to his build.

Already mentioned the feedback swap. Your build has 1 reflect, which his build has with a simple swap, the same swap you just suggested you’d be willing to make on any boss where reflects aren’t critical (most bosses).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

???? Glad you can see into the future about what my build will be like.

Just responding specifically to your trend of taking stuff from his build and incorporating it. You keep going that way, and that’s where you’ll end up. Taking my phrase out of context doesn’t help you.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I’m saying my build should already have enough quickness and if not you can just swap shield in. It really depends on the dungeon and the group you have. I have yet to play chrono so idk how often shield will be used or not.

If the fight only lasts 17s, yes. If it does not, no. See above, do you know how many fights that will be? And what are your sources on that?
As far as shield itself, it’s pretty boss, you should try it, I think you’ll like it.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

My build has reflects and projectile destruction. his doesn’t. See what I’m getting at? if your wanting to do a ele, ele, chrono, warrior, revenant comp, your atleast going to need reflects. Thus my build has significantly more support.

1. Shield5 destroys projectiles (though there’s been some bug reports around that). You’d know that if you’d read the ability.
2. He can easily swap to Feedback for the important fights, which means your build only has “more support” in places where reflects are less important than alacrity, in which case it is by definition not “more support”. Only on fights where Feedback and Shield 5 aren’t enough projectile destruction will your build have “more support”. Which fights are those, do you know?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

What? You saying all the stuff below that ( quotes from me ) is somehow ignoring it? Are you * with me? Like?!??!?!?!?!?!? Are you for real? You gotta start making some sence or I am gonna just strait up start ignoring you. I’m like 99.999% sure your just a troll at this point.

I edited this out 24 minutes before you posted.
I’ve found it’s useful to check the thread again before I post, to make sure everything I’ve said is still accurate.
(I also double-check my posts after I post them just so I can catch little mistakes like this one and edit them out).
I highly recommend both habits, especially in a conversation that’s going as fast as this one.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Never going to end up with 3 phantasms? Wah?!?!? May I ask why you think we will only ever be getting up to two phantasms out?

We’re shattering Mind Wrack on cooldown, at 100% alacrity, which means a shatter at least once every 7s. But we’re also shattering CoF on cooldown (13s), and the other two shatters on cooldown as well (20s and 26s). Between all of them, even Chronophantasma can’t keep your phantasms alive long enough to get three out except right at the start (remember we’re using Well of Eternity over Signet of Ether).
This isn’t just because of BD in Pyro’s build, but also because you need the 100% alacrity to keep your CS cooldown low for more frequent fights. Even if 18s is enough for your team, it’s unfortunately not enough for you, the chronomancer. So you’ve gotta be shattering.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

not to mention, the auto attack can give more than 1 close if you repeat the cycle twice……..

Clones always overwrite clones first, so you never need to worry about overwriting a phantasm unless you have three phantasms.
This is another mesmer thing I’m surprised you don’t know, given how hard you’re arguing today.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I’m talking party wide stealth not personal stealth lol.

What are you talking about? Veil and MI are party stealth, and they’re the skills I am talking about.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

So that’s either 10 seconds of stealth using your elite so that either your next TW will have double the cd or you don’t get to use TW next fight. Or 4 seconds of stealth or 8 if you use your f5 for stealth.

I swear you’ve given me reason to believe you actually play mesmer before, but statements like this make me wonder.
MI’s base cooldown is 90s, fully half of Time Warp. Furthermore, Master of Manipulation is in the chaos tree, so it’s an easy pick to reduce MI to 72s. With alacrity, that comes down to 48s or less, which is less than Shadow Refuge (pretty close if SR is traited)
With f5 running about the same, you get both of them as often as the thief gets Shadow Refuge, which is the lynchpin of their stealth skipping anyway.
So f5 → veil → MI → f5 → MI = 24s of party stealth, which around what you’re getting from Wall → SB3 → Shadow Refuge. Thief can increase that with Blinding Powder, Mesmer can increase that by casting veil after f5, or even more with mimic→ veil.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

The point is, while mesmer stealth is good, it comes at a heavy price. Thus thief will definitely still be taken for some dungeons.

I did note that this is possible, see my previous post. Another good example is Arah p3, where a thief can do the glowing ball toss solo.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Yeah, the DPS should be tested. But I would like to point out the extra boon duration for quickness isn’t necessarily that good. It depends, you might have perma quickness without it. Or the extra boon duration might not do anything. Think about it, with TW and the one well, you have 17 seconds of quickness. This is more than enough for a lot of bosses in dungeons.

Certainly possible. See my earlier note about some bosses calling for the chrono to shift closer to dps as the situation calls for it (good speedrunners will get good at it).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Has Pyro actually done some math on chaos not being much of a DPS difference or is he just guessing?

In PvE, I’d guess that the math that’s been done has largely been the efforts to make a mesmer that can compete for dps. Sadly, it’s always so kitten low that taking less efficient abilities just doesn’t make much difference.
For an example of just how big a difference it is, you can see the exercise in the WvW zerg thread, where Pyro demonstrated that a mesmer burst was doing less damage than a single meteor from meteor shower.
We’re talking 6000-7000 dps for an entire build, versus the 19k that buffed eles are supposedly getting.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And how much is not much lower? You could say the DPS difference between PS and full DPS warrior is low. And you also have to take into account FGS which is great for mobility. But I’m learning strongly on the ele, ele, chrono, PS warrior, thief/ele comp being better than ele, ele, chrono w/ chaos, full DPS warrior, revenant. We will see.

Yes, this is my point.

Egad man, you’re really mucking up the logic here:

You make it seam like your build somehow has significantly more alacrity or quickness. If you really need more quickness you can just swap in the shield, but chrono already has a lot of quickness without shield. And I take a feedback for extra reflects rather than TWO seconds of extra alacrity.

1. It is clear from this statement that you either didn’t read the rotation, or if you did, you didn’t understand it.
Well of Calamity = 2s per cast.
WoC during CS = 2s. WoC after CS = 2s. WoC 13s after CS = 2s. WoC 26s after CS = 2s
That’s 8s of alacrity coming from Well of Calamity, not 2. For the record, that’s 44% more alacrity than your build had.

2. Every compromise you make (well of eternity, swap in shield, etc.) makes your build less like your build and more like his. Eventually “your build” will be essentially the same as his, and then what will you be arguing about?

3. Yes, the build already has quickness. No, that quickness does not keep up with the alacrity, unless you build for it specifically. But you need it to, for the full dps gain, because you need cast time reduction and cooldown reduction to walk hand-in-hand both for the synergetic effect, and for your team’s pacing (so they have consistent results, not sometimes quickness+alacrity, sometimes alacrity alone).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

That’s the thing. You make it seam like your build does tons of extra support, and yet it’s the other way around. My build can do just as much support as yours, except for the might which other people will be providing and same goes for the fury. But my build provides reflects, which yours doesn’t at all. So its not your build provides greater support with less DPS, its your build does less DPS AND less support.

1. You are contradicting yourself. If your build does the same support and more dps, that’s not the same as his build doing less dps and less support, it’s his build doing less dps and the same support. The raw abuse of logic that this paragraph contains is driving me crazy. I mean, seriously? Even if your build provided close to the full amount of alacrity, that doesn’t in any way mean it’s “the other way around,” because even 2s of alacrity is still more support than not!

2. No, your build does not do the same support. By the time your build provided the same support, it wouldn’t be your build anymore, it would be his. See above.

3. See below regarding reflects.

4. See below, and other posts, regarding the discussion on PS warrior.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I wouldn’t underestimate the fact that people who don’t know what there doing can totally do close to 0 DPS.

Fortunately when we’re talking about the meta, we don’t have to worry about this possibility. If we aren’t talking meta, a dps chrono isn’t likely to top keeping people alive via Inspiration anyway, is it?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And I still don’t get where all this herald might stuff is coming from that people will think will replace PS warrior. The best I could come up with is the build I’ll link at the bottom of the description. But it hardly looks even close PS. The rampup time takes way to long not to mention idk how it would get 25 might.

I was working on that myself, and Pyro pointed me in the right direction:
1. Facet of Nature + Chaotic Persistence = +65% boon duration for Mes (more with more boons). Rev has their own +15%, so both are at 65% without food/gear.
2. That puts the might durations at: 24.75s from BD (mes), 20s from Facet of Strength (rev), 13.25s from Shared Empowerment (rev).
3. The mes can hit MW every 10s out of combat, proccing 3 stacks from BD. At 24.75s each, that’s 74.25 stack-seconds, or 7.4 stacks persistently.
4. The rev tics Facet of Strength every 3 seconds, granting 1 stack of might at 20s, or 6.67 stacks persistently.
5. Every time the rev tics Facet of Strength, he grants another stack at 13.25s via Shared Empowerment, which means 4.4 stacks persistently. That gets us up to 18 and a half stacks persistently right there.
6. Shared Empowerment has a 1s icd versus the 3s interval on Facet of Strength, so with the right timing you should be able to get more stacks out of it by using other facets. All three other facets grant a boon on a 3s interval, so that’s another 4.4 stacks there. that takes us up to 22.9 stacks persistently out of combat. (2 pips from Facet of Nature, 2 from Facet of Strength, 1 from Facet of Light or Facet of the Elements).
Once you’ve swapped to Facet of Darkness for combat (which puts your pips in the negative zone) to get permanent fury, FoD will be picking up the Shared Empowerment tab.
7. Now that we’re starting combat with about 23 stacks of might, we only need to burst an extra 2 stacks on average to get to max. Given that the chrono opening rotation procs Mind Wrack (BD) twice, we’re done. This could also be filled by just a little bit of pre-blasting, or even opening blasting.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I really don’t see rev being meta at all. I really think the meta is going to be ele, ele, chrono, PS warrior, thief. What would you even get rid of here for revenants mediocre ability to stack some might and 150 ferocity? The eles and thus lose a IB and vuln and a FGS for mobility? Chrono, losing all that quickness and alacrity and reflects/projectile destruction and condition removal? Or the PS warrior that applys might better than revenant and has 150 power and both banners? Or the thief with his stealth and blinds? There just isn’t a place for revenant in a meta comp.

Do note that currently, we aren’t proposing getting rid of the warrior entirely, just turn him into a dps warr instead of a might-bot. So we still keep the banners.
The weakest link really is the thief, as the chronomancer is better able to fill the stealth role than mes was before, the thief’s dps is (reportedly) below that of the revenant right now, and the blinds aren’t as critical (and yes, the mes can fill in those too, by shifting closer to your build and picking up Blinding Dissipation instead of Fencer’s Finesse).
The real question, as you and Miku both noted in subsequent posts, is whether we might not be better off skipping the Herald entirely, keeping the warrior as PS, and putting in a 3rd ele. I noted more detail in my response there about what needs to be calculated to know that.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Also, another reason I don’t think scepter will be good for a chrono is because it still does give off clones. Even so your going to be shattering with chrono you are wanting to shatter PHANTASMS not clones.

You’re never going to end up with 3 phantasms on this build, so this is a moot point.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

I don’t understand that comment then, where’s the use for Herald if elementalists do the boon job already? Except carrying a poor chaos mesmer’s boonshare. Not saying Herald is irrelevant for dungeons, the ferocity buff is solid.

I’m assuming the same place as PS warriors have. Why is PS warrior meta for 25 might stacks if eles can just provide it for you? If there’s an answer for that, then there’s the reason for the herald’s might.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I wouldn’t so easily say thief isn’t needed. If your chrono can swap trait lines fast and is OK with that, then he can either use his elite ( and thus lose a lot of quickness ) or use a utility which has a decent CD and only provides 4 seconds of stealth.
So it really all depends on the dungeon. I could see no thief for say SE p3, but not so much for say CM p1.

I do it all the time, when I swap to stealth for the Labyrinth in Silverwastes. It just takes 3 or 4 seconds, and that’s more involved that I would need for most skips (since I swap to torch/decoy/the prestige for labyrinth, which I wouldn’t need for a normal dungeon skip).
The keys though, are:
1. F5 allows double-proc on Veil and MI, or at least a much lower cooldown on both.
2. Alacrity lowers the cooldown on both Veil and MI.
3. 100% personal stealth means a chronomancer can execute longer/trickier skips with Portal than they otherwise used to (or for triggering waypoints, like in Arah P3).

That said, you are correct that it’s possible there will be some paths that still want a thief for the skip. That’s how it is with mesmers now though, isn’kitten Mesmers are taken for portal from time to time, but that doesn’t make us “meta”, it makes us “situationally useful”.
Heck, the way Anet talks, that’ll be the norm for raids too: “oh, this raid really needs fear and chill, I guess we gotta grab a necro!”

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And even if you don’t take a thief, why take revenant over say another ele? With taking revenant AND mesmer going chaos ( and thus losing DPS ), you can allow the warrior to gain some DPS. If you go the revenant style ( providing you don’t need much stealth ), you gain 150 ferocity and extra warrior damage while losing 150 power, less DPS on mesmer, two IBs, glyph of storms, and two FGSs. This is where some math is needed, but I am learning towards the 3rd ele being taken.

This really hinges on the relative dps gains and losses.
How much dps does the mesmer lose by taking Chaos?
How much dps does the warrior gain by going axes instead of PS/Greatsword?
How much dps does the Herald lose vs another Ele?
How much dps does the party gain from the Herald’s ferocity and the boon duration on chrono’s quickness?
How much dps do the eles lose when they have to provide the might/fury?

Pyro says the mesmer’s dps is so low already that swapping Chaos for Dom doesn’t really accomplish much.
Zenith and Pyro say the Revenant’s dps is probably at least 3rd place in the dps potential rankings, behind Ele and Warrior. Is that more or less dps than PS warr?

But really, the only way to have a good sense for it is to actually figure out the dps of each build, and what they lose or gain. That’s when there’ll be enough meat to convince speedrunners to put it to the test, and then we’ll get the real numbers a couple weeks or so after HoT drops.

frifox.5283:

3x MoP rate is not 2.75, 2.75 is the activation time which is only part of the attack cycle. The time to blow those 3 charges is a minimum of 3 seconds in addition to the activation time. This does lower the dps number by quite a bit but after quick math its actually not too bad (just a little lower than the sword aa). On paper this is starting to look quite appealing, especially since you can channel your healing mantra while blowing MoP charges, for more Harmonious Mantra stacks and sustain.

It’s worth thinking of MoP as a 2.75 channel damage spell with a 3s cooldown (though not reduced by alacrity, lol), as it functions just the same: you can be doing other things during the cooldown.

I would also point out that during that 3s, you can be casting Confusing Images as well. I expect the exact weapon choice at that point depends almost entirely on the secondary skills, with the AA being a very minimal consideration.

frifox.5283:

Quick answer would be “2.75 × 0.5” seconds faster. Long answer, would have to actually test it in game… However, swords AA would benefit from quickness much more since it doesn’t have the 1s cooldowns between hits like the mantra does.

Since quickness is a 50% increase in the casting rate, rather than a 50% reduction in the casting time, you have to divide the initial casting time by 1.5 to get the final casting time.
1/1.5 = 2/3, so you can multiply 2.75*.667 to get the final channel time.
In other words, it’s 33% shorter.

That does theoretically still correspond to a 50% increase in dps though :P

Miku Lawrence.6329:

In my experience elementalists cap might and give 1 min 40 of fury.

Which makes the fury from Dueling quite irrelevant, yeah.
It also frees up the Herald to not worry about fury, which will increase their other utility and personal damage.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Notes taken for Domination, was more focusing on the majors than minors, my bad.

Yeah, I’m surprised nobody mentioned that. Being able to help stack vuln is good, but the real power of dom is in that boost off all vuln generally.
Mental Anguish is strong for amplifying shatters, but sustained shatter dps is so terrible in general that it’s not really accomplishing a lot.
Stacking vuln is great, but meta groups already have ways to get that done.
Phantasm dps is useful, but subject to all the same issues as phantasms generally, and Phantasmal Haste is competitive with it anyway.
That leaves removing boons on shatters (so you’d be swapping to dom for any boss that has boons anyway, and just swapping back otherwise), and the vuln damage increase, versus the ferocity increase from dueling and the extra fury/vigor. Traditional builds have actually used mantras, so Dueling usually gets a strong mark in its favor right there. Though, traditional builds just pick both because they don’t need Chrono. (they can take Insp instead of Illusions too, because they don’t need the shatter cdr for f5 or alacrity on shatter).

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Thus my “I feel”, i’ll come back here when I get some info on that because I don’t remember correclty what the spreadsheets of Nike were saying.

I really think this is where Herald’s participation hinges. If it’s worth it to free the warrior to not go PS, then it’s worth it to bring in a Herald. Otherwise, the 50% boon duration can be replaced by other means at a cost to the chrono’s personal dps, but the gain of bringing another icebowele along (because we don’t technically need thief anymore).
I think Berserker is probably going to play into this as well, as it seems to me to be designed for this kind of role. I do wonder how Berserker dps will compare to the previous warrior records.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Pre-might is when you blast firefields because the boss is friendly, which happens in many dungeons.

Well, that could relieve a little of the pressure on the Herald (getting 16 might ooc is harder than 11). It’s largely unnecessary though as I mentioned, since you can start at 23 might on the group, and getting past that is rather trivial.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

For dungeons and not fractals or raids, I second the Dueling over Chaos because the later feels overthetop.
Chaos traitline only has one real benefit if you remove the staff – the boon duration as stated to get extra quickness. I feel however that Herald will be more than enough with his +50%. Dueling on the other hand… reffer to the post above.

• Do you feel that Herald will be worth bringing if you’re using a warrior to stack Might instead of the chrono+rev? If not, the boon duration from chaos gains value.
• It’s a bit silly to say “one real benefit” (boon dur) here, and then in your next paragraph talk about the other “real benefit” (boon stacking). Just as a note.
• The paragraph above talks about dueling in a vacuum, but we’ve already noted that permanent Fury is available to the party without dueling, which is one of the primary benefits of Dueling.
  Harmonious Mantras is wasted without mantras, Deceptive Evasion is unnecessary in a Chrono build, Sharper Images damage would be negligible even if your illusions were attacking much, 7.5s vigor on crit with a 10s icd is just another defensive trait to give a boon we can probably get elsewhere anyway, and is probably less defense than you get from chaos anyway (regen, protection, protection on chaos armor).
  Which leaves Phantasmal Fury and Fencer’s Finesse.
  PF requires phantasms to be attacking a fair bit, which is certainly no guarantee at all, given the problems we have in pve. The initial rotation, in fact, shatters your initial illusions before they get a second attack via Chronophantasma. I’ll be doing some math on that front, though, to double-check the damage potential of resummoning phantasms versus letting them attack.
  Fencer’s Finesse provides a bare 10% Crit damage at max stacks, which gets cut down through crit chance to around 7% total damage increase. You get 12.5% damage increase immediately from Domination via vulnerability, so I’m not sure why Dueling would be at all preferred over Dom anyway.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

I feel like the EA tradeoff on the warrior, the extra utility and slight damage increase on Dueling over Chaos (CD reduction, DE for faster Shatters) and the existence of fury prestacking for dungeons does not justify the warrior going solo and mesmer stacking boons with his herald buddy. Most dungeon encounters encourage pre-might (pre-fury).

Do you know what the dps increase on the warrior would be by swapping to a dps build over PS would be? I feel like we should know that before we can draw a firm conclusion on that one.

I don’t know what you mean by pre-might, the Herald+Mesmer combo is able to maintain a constant 23 stacks of might out of combat, which the Mesmer immediately bumps to max with their initial rotation. That sounds like pre-might stacking to me.

Silverkey.2078:

The condi on scepter are good even in zerker (you probably missed my post up there)

No, I just did the math.
No might, and they’re adding a sad 78 and 89 dps at best.
25 stacks of might and you’re getting 130-260 dps out of torment, 269-360 dps out of confusion.

I should note that for both my math and Pyro’s, any departure from auto-attacking will give ground to the scepter.
Summoning phantasms, casting wells, casting mantras, blocking, etc. etc. will raise Scepter’s level, because CI has better dps than BF, while sword AA beats scepter AA. So if you don’t AA much, scepter wins.

Math says at full alacrity and quickness with Malicious Scepter,
Sword AA + Blurred Frenzy should have around 22%-37% more dps (about 1000 dps) than Scepter AA + Confusing Images before conditions.

Even in the best case scenario for scepter (moving target that attacks once a second), and the worst case for sword (target has constantly refreshing boons), with 25 stacks of might (boosting the condi damage from scepter considerably), the sword still comes on top by around 200 dps.

Sorry guys, unless the ether clones are adding considerable dps from shatters (not likely, given shatters are already terrible dps), scepter won’t be replacing sword as king of mesmer melee dps.

That doesn’t resolve the question of having two mainhand weapons, though. Confusing Images singly blows away the dps of any of the other three elements, so mixing CI into a mainly-sword rotation could still be worthwhile, all things considered.

edit: ninjaed by Pyro!

Silverkey.2078:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Obviously we disagree on the might, as that’s the other part that brings in Chaos (12+ stacks of might from BD), and some other minor boons from BD (fury, regen, vigor).

I’m not really in the debate, but how does this provide 12+ might? As far as I understand, each F1 shatter is 3 might regardless of the number of shattered illusions, no?

With alacrity and Illusions, you shatter f1 a lot, including twice in the first 3-5 seconds.
Additionally, the might from BD has a relatively long base duration (15s) which is enhanced further by any Boon duration (e.g. 15% from Chaotic Persistence, 50% from herald). It adds up. I’ll note though that the ramp-up time on that is my biggest personal caveat with the Chrono+Rev might approach, as it takes a couple rounds of MW to hit 12 stacks (you’ll get 6 from the initial burst, but then you’ve got another 6-7s before you get more).
This is why I’ve been interested in finding a compromise between boonshare and chrono support.