Guild Wars 2

Currently using rune of the Chronomancer. Once my budget permits I’m switching back to scholar, though.

I thought the wells would give quickness to everybody. I was wrong. But still, it is a good solo set.

I… haven’t really used it in PVE. The big thing is that it is exclusive with harmonious conduits, and the stun break + temp damage buff is surprisingly useful in HoT. I just blast fire fields to give group might.

This is how it works with basically every weapon evade. It’s been a problem with sword for awhile.

This is, unfortunately, intended. The devs don’t want players canceling attacks to boost DPS, so they require the entire animation to finish first. My advice is to keep at least one regular dodge in reserve, as those can cancel an attack.

So I just noticed I’ve did the burn calculation wrong in the OP. That has been corrected.

Let me check. Viper’s weapons adds 7.5% duration, while giver’s gives 20%. So, full stats with Vipers is:

2066 Power
32.5% Crit Chance
1096 Condition Damage
1.1625 Crit Mod
2401 Effective Power
38.6% Condition Duration

Take away the weapon (7.5% condition duration, 205 power, 205 condition damage, 113 precision), and add the Giver weapon (171 prrecision, 171 vitality, 20% duration), you’ll get

Power: 1,861
Crit Chance: 35.3 (658 Precision)
Condition Damage: 891
Condition Duration: 51.1%
Crit Mod: 1.1765
Effective Power: 2,189
Bleed: 75
Burn: 270
Poison: 87
Confusion: 41, 105
Torment: 56

Viper’s has got the Giver set beat in effective power by 9.7%. For the conditions, I’m going to come up with an adjusted condi damage. Thiis the base condi damage time the duration. I.E. 75 × 1.51 for bleeds. It is messy, but it will do for now.

Bleed: 113 Giver, 122 Viper
Burn: 407 Giver, 417 Viper
Poison: 131 Giver, 137 Viper
Confusion: 62, 159 Giver, 67, 164 Viper
Torment: 85 Giver, 90 Viper.

Looks like pure Viper has got Giver’s beat, in both intensity and overall effect. However, this is at base. It is important to know that Viper and Giver’s have different scaling. The more condition damage you get, the more advantage giver’s gets. The more condition duration you get, the more advantage viper’s gives.

For example, at max might, bleed will do 182 scaled damage with Givers, but Vipers does 184. You may be saying “But Viper’s is still higher!” and you are right, but notice that Vipers is only 2 points higher, but was 9 points higher previously. Additional sources of condition damage may push Giver’s over Vipers. In fact, let me check the formula for that…

((C + 891) x 0.06 + 22) x 1.51 = ((C + 1096) x0.06 + 22) x 1.386
(0.06C + 75.4) x 1.51 = (0.06 C + 87.8) x 1.386
0.0906C + 113.8 = 0.0832C + 121.7
0.0074C = 7.9
C = 1,068

That is 318 points higher than max might. Include the rune set and a stacking sigil, and you just may achieve that number. When the Giver’s set is at 1,959 condition damage, it will match the Viper’s Set at 2,164. This is at base, so if you include other things (Sigil of Malice, Rare Veggie Pizza, other sources of condi duration), then the gap widens.

For example, the same calculation done again with Rare Veggie Pizza and a Sigil of Malice gets you a difference of

0.1086C + 136.47 = 0.1012 C +148
0.074C = 11.56
C = 1,562

Which.. isn’t a number I’m certain you can reach.

Tl:dr RUN VIPER YOU FOOL!

I’m surprised no one brings up Fist Flurry. The skill does massive damage. I’m getting a full animation in 1.75 seconds, which does a tootip damage of 995 + 465 + 872 (/ crit mod for proper scaling). This comes to, assuming a crit mod of 2.4 (which is about as high as I can get it), 1,042 tooltip DPS. This makes Fist Flurry our highest damaging skill.

I’ve been using it to beat the tar out of things in HoT maps, and it works wonders. The 2 second stun helps, too.

Imparing daggers isn’t that bad, either. 597 direct damage over about 0.75 seconds puts it at a respectable DPS. It is quite good at disabling, as anything without a breakbar is crippled and anything with is soon broken. Once it is bugfixed I’ll look forward to its ability to projectile finish, too.

I’ve found zerk reaper to be one of the easiest classes to do the jungle in. I currently run spite/soul reaping/reaper with reaper’s onslaught and dhuumfire.3 shouts plus 2 wells. The high health makes me hard to ambush, Death Shroud makes me hard to whittle down, my damage is high, and if I do need more durability I just swap out one utility for Rise or spectral armor.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And it isn’t fake math. It’s real math. It’s the responsibility of the players/community to analyze and understand it properly. Running a propaganda campaign against it is no better than running a propaganda campaign for it.

This is ridiculous. If something is given to be misleading or wrong, then it is actually a lot better to campaign against it than for it.

If you’ve spent any time with people, you’ll know that applied math is wizardry to the layman. The average person is in a mindset such that they don’t realize they can apply middle school math to real life problems. They’ve gotten into the habit of letting “smarter people” handle it for them. So of course they are going to take anything mathematical at face value as cannon.

The DPS calcs should come with a disclaimer that says “unless you are in this exact set of circumstances and achieve perfect play against an enemy that doesn’t fight back, you won’t be getting these numbers”. This is something you have to tell people.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

To be more clear, I should point out that you can’t really get more condition damage than you can with Rabid (maybe Dire, with a tuning crystal, but eh). So any tradeoff of durability for damage will be to add some power into your mix for direct damage.

That said, Viper might be the closest thing condi has to pure glass. It loses precision (less bleeds) and some condition damage, but gains condition duration and a strong amount of power. It’s possible that the condi duration will outweigh the lost condi damage in raw power, but no one’s done the math on that yet.

Somebody has.

I’ve been playing around with this skill, and I’ve learned something. If left alone, the impact strike chain will take 4.5 seconds to execute fully. But, after the last hit the animation can be canceled nearly a full second early. I’m getting around 3.6 seconds for a full chain. At tooltip values, this is around 369 DPS for the full skill. Staff auto is around 447 tooltip damage.

It isn’t as bad as it used to be. Now, auto attacking is only only 21% higher instead of 45% higher. Could it still use a damage buff? Personally I would like to see one. I’m not sure how to classify the skill yet, though.

Game mode? If in PVE, use Viper. Other modes, don’t know.

#1: What is expected of you depends on how elitist your teammates are. The “meta” changes a bit, but generally this is what eles are expected to have:

Full Berserker Gear of at least Exotic tier
Staff
Fire/Air/Third Line of your choice
Use Lava Fonts for damage, blast lava fonts for might and fury.

The fury is the big thing, since other classes can stack might pretty well. The more pro elementalist will carry all weapons, and then swap through them in the midst of might stacking to buff up the whole party.

To might stack, just use a blast finisher in a fire field. Arcane Brilliance, Arcane Wave, “Aftershock!”, etc. You can still stack might with scepter/x and dagger/x. The rules are only as rigid as your teammates want them to be, and the only people who really enforce these rules are the “pro” dungeon runners who specifically demand it. As far as open world is concerned, they’re just glad you are there.

#2: In general, any class is attempting to maximize their damage no matter what their role is. Nobody should be “just might”.

#3: Celestial Gear is good in PVP and WvW. PVE, not as much. The thing is, most damage can be avoided, and as such toughness/vitality/healing power aren’t as important as skilled play is. The ratio of damage to durability in this game is low, and it is designed like that to encourage preference in play. So, there is nothing built specifically to prevent you from just stacking high damage.

I did the numbers, like, a long time ago. The values have probably changed a bit, but basically you’ll want to maximize power before investing in precision. Exceptions to this are more rare than common.

So, full berserker.

Chrono-Herald. Facet of Nature buffs quickness boosts from the Chrono.

Reflects tear them to bits, though.

7. I don’t have any plans to get more, except maybe an extra spot for key farms/chest farming.

More than. The “effective power” stat is power scaled up from crits. Sinister is 2317 effective power, Viper is 2401 effective power. This puts Viper as having 3.6% more damage against crit-able targets. Against environmental objects, Viper does 10% more damage.

The thing is, if you don’t wear zerk, then you don’t perform well. Your performance, is looked upon as the whole of efforts your family has made to raise you. So, if you don’t wear zerker, then YOU SHAME YOUR FAMILY!!!

But on a serious note, I actually have spare soldier set. Should I find things getting to hot, I will switch out a few pieces of zerker for solider. The gear prefixes aren’t an all or nothing thing.

As far as alternate sets as a whole, Marauder is fairly close to Zerker. It is basically just zerker with valkyrie bits, but if you want one single prefix you can go for it.

Someone said that in one of my threads, expertise does nothing. Though the tooltip displays an increased condition duration, the actual applied condition isn’t longer.

I haven’t been able to verify this myself, but it bears looking in to.

I would pay real money for swimsuits. Maybe customizable underwear.

Dante.1763:

So what about a 50/50 set of sinisters and vipers. I already have a full set of sinisters ascended made for my ranger, and im not overly looking to replace the whole thing as i like the shear amount of damage my bleeds do(Already at 20% extra duration from traits)

From the math I’ve done (the “when does sinister = viper” part), you want to go with Viper’s, period. You need +212% condi duration outside of stats. So, Viper’s until you get to that 100% hard cap.

As for my advice… Ascended Armor/Weapons can have their stats swapped by using a Viper’s Sigil/Insignia in the mystic forge with the anthology of heroes and 5 globs of ectoplasm. Doing this is actually far cheaper than making an exotic set from scratch. The ascended rings can be transferred to another class that wouldn’t need stats as much (such as a rev). But otherwise… yeah.

I’m in the same boat. I salvaged about 4 full sets of sinister gear, then realized that to make the entire viper set four times over I’ll need to spend 1,000 gold.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

FYI if you’ve switched to Viper and wonder why you feel like you are doing less damage it is because expertise is currently broken. It adds time to the tooltips, but not the actual conditions…

Hopefully they fix it soon.

Have you done any analysis on the new runes?

That… is good to know. I haven’t done much analysis on the runes. I went into a big thing about the Chronomancer Runes, and came to the conclusion that they are only optimal if you are a solo Chrono.

NaotsuguLH.8915:

So, and I’m sorry for this, but I’ve pretty much been avoiding most topics on this. Are you recommending Viper strictly for condi heavy classes (i.e. Necro, maybe Warrior), or are you trying to say that Viper overall is the best stat for any class that has condi (i.e. Guardians have burns). What classes are you recommending Viper for?

I may run Viper on my condi mes, but I don’t know if condi mes would be any good in PvE.
Edit: Maybe even condi Warrior if condi Warrior is viable in PvE.

Viper is best if you are making a condi build, and you do not already have capped condition duration. If you are not making a condi build, Viper’s isn’t that good for direct damage only.

Well… I wouldn’t really call it a gear grind. If you have ascended gear, converting sinister to viper is pretty cheap.

The fact is that, as Anet introduces more gear prefixes, there will be some that are better than others for different circumstances. Players will want these, so they’ll go out and play the content to get them. Most of the gear prefixes released, aren’t exactly better than the others. Take Marauder, for example. All it is, is berserker with some valk pieces thrown in.

Viper and Trailblazer are the exceptions. Particularly because they introduce a new type of offensive stat. Expertise is pretty big. Concentration, the other new stat, isn’t as important, since most players already built around permanent fury and might.

Playing a zerker daredevil is fun, in the sense that I can do either really well or really poorly with a few key choices. It is actually quite uncommon for me to get one-shot. I’ll usually lose 75% of my health in one go, but the actual “Oh no I’m dead” attacks will kill my rev in one shot, too. I feel like an actual thief as I scurry about the world. In all the other maps, I can walk right up to an enemy and auto attack it to death with no fear of dying on my side. Here, things are actually dangerous.

I haven’t really encountered much “one shot with no telegraph” attacks. There are times when I am not exactly sure what killed me, but those are usually when I’m in a big event and all the special effects obscure my vision. But for HoT in general, I do have some bits of advice.

#1: Pick your targets carefully. Enemies come in groups, and Fist Flurry can only take out one. You’ll want to go for the one guy who is further away than the others, or the one that has their back to a wall.. If you can neutralize one target with a single skill, such as smoke screen against a ranged attacker, leave the projectile guy for last while you kill the first ones. Enemies with breakbars neutralize a lot of our debuffs, so save them for second. Scorpion Wire’s ability to both create and close distance is underrated.

#2: It is tempting to dodge like mad, but always leave some endurance/initiative. You’ll never know when you’ve got to avoid something, or GTFO of a high damage patch. Snipers hurt, but dying to a sniper because of a lack of plan B hurts worse.

#3: Stealth is your friend. Fight enemy stealth with your stealth. It is a quick aggro drops and a burst skill all in one. The more you use stealth, the less likely an enemy is to pick you out of a crowd..

#4: Be aware. In places like the Tangled Depths, snipers will hide around corners, enemies will pull aggro from a large range, and enemies will attack from atop ledges. Don’t shy away from ranged weapons. Also, holes in the ground are surprisingly common.

#5: Pick good utilities. I know we’re all used to haste + 2 signets, but in HoT it is a bad choice that will get you killed. You don’t always “win” by default here, and in a losing fight Assassin Signet is on the far side of useless. Consider using Shadowstep, Smokescreen, Signet of Agility for its active effects, Scorpion Wire, Shadow Refuge. Yes, it is not max deeps in the traditional sense, but in the new “dead deal no deeps” sense.

I’m still rocking the zerk. My motto isn’t change gear. It’s git gud.

But on a serious note, it is much easier to change a build to have more defensive utilities than it is to buy a whole other gear set.

The coin says guardian.

It has been my experience that the mesmer has enough health to not get 1-shot by most modrem, even in Berserker gear.

So go with either Berserker or Assassin gear. I’m not sure which one. if you feel yourself too squishy, start swapping out pieces for something more durable, like Valkyrie, Soldier, or Knight.

I’ve run a bunch of numbers on Vipers, and it is definitely the go-to condi set for any class not named Revenant.

The real question is, it is worth it to run a condi set on Mesmers right now.

Technically, there’s a certain “region” where sinister is better. I’m going to divide up the time of any fight into 3 phases:

#1: Starting Phase. This is the period where you are first bursting out your conditions. If the enemy dies here, then the enemy has died before you can do any real condition damage. Viper has an advantage here, due to greater effective power.
#2: Pre-Threshold. This is the point where you’ve dumped a load of conditions all over the enemy, but they haven’t really had time to tick away too much. In this period, when condition damage overtakes direct damage, sinister will be better.
#3: Post-Threshold. Here, your stacks are fully realized and you’ve entered into something resembling a full rotation. Once the stacks have been realized, Viper begins to pull ahead very quickly.

This phase will be class specific, but it will occur right around the time when you’ve earned a number of extra ticks equal to the the intensity advantage multiplied by the average sustained stacks of a condition. So, for example, bleed has a 12.5% intensity advantage, so if you sustain 20 bleeds, Viper will beat Sinister once you’ve gained an additional total of 2.5 ticks of bleeds. This isn’t “2.5 seconds at maximum stacks”, btw. That is 2.5 ticks of any bleed you inflict, including the first one.

So, for a more “real class” example, a necromancer will sustain 10.125 stacks of bleeding just auto attacking with scepter, Lingering Curses trait included. Grasping Dead adds 5.4 more stacks. Enfeebling Blood, 0.96 more stacks, totaling to 16.485 stacks (rounding to 16.5). This is 2.06 ticks of additional bleed in Viper, and since the first bleed from the scepter attack would have expired 8.1 seconds into the fight, Viper will beat Sinister at around 9.5 seconds (first bleed gets 1.5 ticks, second inflicted bleed gets 0.5 ticks).

It is a bit wobbly here, since depending on rotation the time at which those “extra ticks” comes can change. For example, if you open with Grasping Dead, you won’t get any extra ticks out of that skill until 18 seconds into the fight, so the threshold becomes around 11 seconds (including the cast time for grasping dead), assuming you auto attack. The rule of thumb is the shorter the duration of the condition, the quicker Viper gains the advantage.

Also this calculation is simple, as it only looked at bleeding. When you get multiple conditions, it gets technical again, since you’ll have one condition’s ticks covering for other ones.

There is another advantage. A sinister “burst” requires a sustained output of conditions. In legacy content this is pretty easy, but many HoT enemies have stealth, evades, and very dangerous counter-attacks. Being forced to chase and disengage buys extra time for viper to tick, thus granting more advantage.

I’m going to recommend a fairly simple philosophy in videogames: prepare for the harder fight. If you are fighting an enemy that will die in 6 seconds of Sinister gear, and you would need 9 seconds to gain an advantage in Vipers., then that enemy isn’t exactly a big deal. In Viper gear that enemy would die in 6.75 seconds – initial direct damage advantage anyway, so it isn’t like you’ve lost much. Combine this with the versatility and leniency of Viper, and I have to take Viper every time.

But to really put this into perspective, the numbers I have listed in the OP are without a rune set, with no might. Add a rune set and might, and you’ll get the following numbers. Sinister’s 2214 vs. Viper’s 2021.

Bleed: 155 vs. 143
Burning: 475 vs. 445
Poison: 166 vs. 155
Confusion: 87, 188 vs. 81, 176
Torment: 116 vs. 107

Intensity Advantages:
Bleed: 8.4%
Burning: 6.7%
Poison: 7.1%
Confusion: 7.4%, 6.8%
Torment: 8.4%

The real determining factors for Sinister is going to be the initial condition duration you have. There are examples where Expertise would be almost completely superfluous. For example, on my revenant’s condi build (full sinister) I have 95% duration for Torment. I don’t exactly need much more. Well… I could always use more, but I can’t get more.

I’ve been doing some math around proc based effects, and I’m not sure there is a class where the procs are so valuable that you would take Sinister over Viper just for them.
Sinister will proc 44% more crits than Viper, 27% under fury. On many builds, that isn’t that important. I.E. on my rev, I have a 33% on crit to proc 4 seconds of torment. On Sinister this is 0.62 torment ticks per hit, but in Viperthis is 0.43 torment ticks per hit. This seems like a lot in reference to each other but when you realize that it is attached to the mace’s initial 4 seconds of torment per hit, you can see that this extra precision really amounts to the difference between 4.62 per hit and 4.43 per hit. This is… about a 4.3% advantage in condition damage coming from procs. 4.1% if under fury. You can go back and do a lot of those calculations (many of which are tricky, because procs are “hit” based, and thus you need to find the average hit rate), but the conclusion you’ll come to is that they don’t matter too much, especially when you realize that condi duration plays a factor in these crit procs, too.

There are a few minor exceptions. Engineer grenades while not under fury will do a fraction more damage (1.38 scaled bleed ticks vs. 1.33 scaled bleed ticks per grenade volley) under sinister. Sharper Images on the memser will do 2.34 scaled bleeds per illusion hit vs. 2.26. These amounts are very tiny, though, and as such they aren’t greater than the advantage gained by the non-crit-proc conditions the class will inflict.

Well… that ended up more rambly than anticipated. I’m not sure how the math is going to work out when I start writing these posts, and sometimes one tangent leads to another and so on.

I don’t get what the problem is. So items you get from fractals and WvW are tradable. Why is this a problem? Is the fact that WvWers and fractal runners can sell these items for extra cash an evil thing?

Don’t think of it as spending gold. Think of it as giving gold to other players.

#1: I’m not entirely sure, but I am 90% certain that Dagger Training only applies to the weapon skills.

#2: There is no limit to the number of pulmonary impacts you can have on an enemy at any one time.

#3: Pulmonary Impact scales with power.

#4: Brawlers Tenacity doesn’t just give endurance at the start of the fight. It gives endurance at the start of every physical skill. It is worded weirdly because many physical skills are chains, but only the first link in the chain will give endurance.

#5: Staff master’s numbers are right on the trait: 10% damage, 2 endurance per initiative spent.

#6: The stat increases are of a set percentage, so yes they do scale.

#7: There actually isn’t that much of a “lack of numbers” anywhere. There’s only one trait that currently does not list critical info, and that is weakening strikes. Weakening strikes should list a 10% damage reduction from weakened enemies.

Bit of trivia, I actually used my condi ranger as a base when I started doing the comparison.

I did some math on the subject.

Interestingly enough, mesmer is one of the few classes where sinister might be better. It all comes down to how much damage comes from sharper images. If it is a lot, then go Sinister. If it isn’t a lot, Viper.

I did some math on the subject. My conclusion is if you are solo, yes they are worth it. If you are elsewhere… not sure.

Yes there are.

For movement speed I usually use a combination of Thrill of the Crime, then heartseeker while off swiftness.

A lot of condi builds use d/d for death blossom. This setup also has cloak and dagger, which you can pop for some condi removal. You may not have noticed this while building, but thieves don’t have a lot of condition removal, so Shadow’s Embrace is quite important for the build.

For the Deadly Arts tier, Potent Poison is good for more than just Dagger Training. Thieves use poison in a lot of ways, from dagger auto to needle trap to serpent’s touch. The poison from these skills is still a viable contribution. As for Dagger Training vs. Trapper’s Respite, that is a complicated one.

The main advantage with Trapper’s Respite is the ability to pre-cast two needle traps onto an area. The important thing to know here is the recharge: 30 seconds without Deadly Trapper, 24 seconds with. If you are using Skelk Venom (32 second recharge with venom traits), you’ll want to stick with dagger training. If you are using something like Withdraw or Signet of Malice, then you can pop a needle trap every 24 seconds with time to spare. Last time I checked, Trapper’s Respite has higher damage potential than Dagger Training if you can use it every 24 seconds.

Dagger training is less cumbersome, though. Just equip it and forget. On my condi build, I generally end up running Needle Trap anyway, and with Deadly Trapper it is still a solid utility. The extra might + vuln really helps, as does the ability to immobilize. While most people like caltrops for its higher damage, I find the more burst-like nature of needle trap to be more effective, as enemies will frequently die before caltrops does its thing. Also, trickster has more severe competition. But, should you find yourself not wanting to run needle trap, Panic Strike is a good alternative, because the immobilize will hold enemies into the caltrops AoE.

The final line is always a toss-up. Generally, I run trickery, because it has the most to offer.

#1: Increased initiative. This is important for Death Blossom Spam.
#2: Steal Recharge Reduction. In this build, steal causes stealth (+ condi cleanse), poison, and either an interrupt or confusion directly, so it works out well.
#3: A choice of Thrill of the Crime or Uncatchable. Thrill adds swiftness and fury, uncatchable is self-explanatory
#4: A wicked good master tier. Bountiful Theft is really useful in dozens of situations. Trickster is good if you want to use caltrops and withdraw for more defensive uses, and more condi clearing. Pressure Striking is good for additional condi damage on interrupt. Generally I don’t run a lot of interrupts in the condi build, but preferences vary.
#4: Bewildering Ambush or Slight of Hand. Personally I go for Bewildering. Thieves don’t really build for confusion, but when used at the right time those 5 stacks can hit quite hard.

All in all… a whole lot there to use. Some people suggest critical strikes, since it has vulnerability and a very large bonus to direct damage. While direct damage is still important, I find that Trickery has more synergy overall. Acrobatics is the worst traitline in the game, so I’d advise staying away from it.

Daredevil… I have not tried. Daredevil was built from the ground up to be a power build, so if you go into daredevil you will end up taking the more defensive traits:

At adept, Weakening Strikes is good for defense. Brawlers Tenacity has some hidden bonuses, however. When combined with Channeled Vigor, you’ll have a surprisingly large amount of healing and endurance regen, making you surprisingly hard to catch.

The master tier is between Escapists Absolution and Impacting Disruption. As I said before, I generally don’t run interrupts on the condi build. However… Impacting Disruption is underrated. Pulmonary Impact does massive damage by itself, so if you are running Viper, Sinister, or Carrion you will be hitting for 2k direct damage per impact. Escapists Absolution is self-explanatory.

Lotus Training is good. Really good. While Uncatchable does 4 × 4 bleeds (16 total), Lotus Training Does 10 bleeds + 6 torment + cripple in a larger area, and also increases condi damage for 10 seconds after use. This makes it higher damaging and more reliable than Uncatchable, and with all the dodges you’ll be pouring out you can do this a lot.

Escapists absolution and Driven fortitude sync well with the class. Death Blossom spam will trigger both traits frequently, giving you plenty of healing and condi cleanse. Is it better than trickery? I’m not sure. They sync in different ways.

I don’t think it is just sword, either. Something I noticed is that, when using D/D, after a backstab I’ll immediately go into a heartseeker, only to see my thief stand there for what feels like half a second before executing a skill.

Originally I would say “tank”, but with the recent change to blighter’’s boon, I’m not as sure.

Memser math always… perplexed me. I’m never sure how it works between reflects and phantasms. That said, I did some basic calcs on my current mes to figure out which rune I would go with. This is with mostly pure berserker gear (sans the backpiece).

No runes:
2,311 starting power
1,900 starting precision (46.88% crit chance)
890 Starting Ferocity (209.3% crit damage)
In the dueling line, I get near perma fury and fencer’s finesse, which comes to 66.88% crit chance and 219.3% crit damage. These can be exchanged later if you are unhappy with my build assumption.

With Chrono Runes:
2,486 Power
71.14% Crit Chance
219.3% Crit Damage
1.8473 Crit Mod
4,592 effective power

Scholar:
2,486 Power
66.88% Crit Chance
225.3% Crit Damage
1.8375 Crit Mod
4,568 effective power
x1.1 modifier at above 90% health. Note, in HoT it is quite hard to sustain this by myself, so I’m adjusting it to x1.05 for now.
4,796 Effective Power

Eagle:
2,311 Power
75.2% Crit Chance
225.3% Crit Damage
1.94 Crit Mod
4,483 Effective Power
x1.06 damage mod (up half the time, so changing this to x1.03)
4,617 scaled effective power.

Without fencer’s finesse or fury (non-dueling build), you get the following:

Chrono Runes:
1.559 Crit Mod
3,874 Effective Power

Scholar runes:
1.539 Crit Mod
3,827 Effective power (before 6th bonus)
4,018 scaled power

Eagle Runes
1.635 Crit Mod
3,778 Effective Power (before 6th bonus)
3,891 scaled power

I haven’t factored in additional group buffs because, so far in HoT, I find myself either by myself or with players who don’t have that many support skills. It is strange how often I’ll be in a group of 10 and not get any might… anyway, the difference between Chrono Runes and Eagle runes is nigh negligable before factoring in quickness (literally half of one percent).

The scholar rune is where things get tricky. I haven’t been using the shield lately due to my solo-roaming nature. I find the phantasm’s single player contribution to be nill, so I’ve been running offhand sword/pistol. Without walls of meat to distract enemies, my health is almost always lower than 90%, so the additional bonus is only good for the opening strike.

The hard part is quantifying the bonus power. Assuming a non-bugged version and 4 wells not named precognition, with permanent alacrity, we will get a total quickness uptime of 47.2%. (2/18 + 2/18 + 2/12 + 2/24). For now, I’m going to assume continuum shift as an 8 second bonus quickness every 45 seconds (from the rune alone), coming to 65%. Now, factor in time warp (10/45), Well of Action (3/18 + 3/45), and you’ll get an additional 40%, coming to a total uptime of 100% plus spare change.

The personal amount without the runes is 10/45 + 3/18 + 3/45, which is a 45.6% quickness uptime. Now, I’m going to use these values to get a “weighted DPS bonus” from quickness. This is, time on quickness x 1.5 + time not on quickness x 1. With the runes… you simply have 50% higher DPS (1.5). Without the runes, you have a 22.8% higher DPS (1.228). Comparing the two, the chrono runes can be said to have a relative modifier of 1.22 against scholar runes.

This is where mesmer’s ugly intricacies rear their head. On any other class I would just say “take the runes!” and be done with it. But… mesmer damage doesn’t come from the mesmer. It comes from phantasms, and reflect. This is where my analysis skills fail me: I don’t know how things like scholar bonuses, precision, or ferocity interact with these two faces, or what proportion of DPS they make up now.

So for solo roaming, I’d definitely say to take the runes. You go from having quickness less than half the time to having quickness all the time.

In a premade, however, there is one strategy that renders this all moot. If you have a herald on the team, and have decided beforehand that the herald will keep facet of nature active, and you yourself are running chaos for the boon duration boost… then the chrono runes are definitely a waste. You’ll regularly have 65% boon duration, 75% group uptime of quickness. At that point, you’d probably be better off going with Rune of the Herald or something similar to maximize group quickness uptime.

/random wandering math tangent.

Personally I didn’t start using chrono until at least I unlocked the grandmaster minor.

One of the reasons no one has suggested a build is because with how everything has changed, no one is sure exactly what to do yet. It is like being given half a dozen ways to melt face, and having to pick one. I can give you some fairly basic builds, though.

Illusions + Domination/Dueling + Chronomancer Avenger Build: Compounding Power, Phantasmal Haste, Chronophantasm are the real important traits. Basically, with how illusions only receive 1/20th the damage they used to, it is fairly easy to get 3 Illusionary Avengers up. These avengers pulse out AoE alacrity and slow on hit. Personally on this build I run 4 wells + time warp, and also use All’s Well that Ends Well and Improved Alacrity for traits. After summoning a few avengers, you continuum shift, time warp + wells, then use the wells again after the shift ends. Soon you’ll have 3 phantasmal avengers giving out near permanent alacrity and slowness. Sword/Shield is recommended.

That build is good for a long haul fight, but for more burst, there’s another one:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/PvE-The-New-Chronomancer-Dungeon-Rotation/first#post5517427

This isn’t my build. It is a bit complicated, but basically by spamming as many shatters as possible the mesmer is capable of giving out large amounts of group quickness, alacrity, might, and other assorted boons.

Now those are more support-oriented builds. For solo roaming in HoT content, I have a rather strange “lol wut?” build going…

Domination: Empowered Illusions, Furious Interruption, Mental Anguish
Dueling: Phantasmal Fury, Fencer’s Finesse, Deceptive Evasion
Chronomancer: All’s Well that ends Well, Improved Alacrity, Chronophantasm

Sword + Pistol/Sword. This is basically the same Dom/Dueling/Illusion build you’re familiar with, but replace inspiration with Chronomancer. It has that strange mix of clone summoning for shatters, phantasm sustain for long term DPS, and alacrity love (the other chrono traits more more PVP oriented, as interrupt traits and slows aren’t that good against break bar). The thing with this “build” is that nothing is set in stone with it, and I change weapons/traits as needed.

For non-chronomancer builds, we have the standard Dom/Duel/Inspiration for group support.
Empowered Illusions, Blurred Inscription (with Signet of the Ether), Mental Anguish.
Phantasmal Fury, Fencer’s Finesse, either Deceptive Evasion or Harmonious Mantras.
Compounding Power, Phantasmal Haste, Master of Fragmentation.

Ether Signet. Sword + Sword/Focus. Basically, summon a bunch of phantasms then auto attack, as usual. Stronger now that phantasms take reduced non-targeting damage. The support variant runs Inspiration, mostly for the minor traits but also for Warden’s Feedback. Reflects are still useful, after all.

The listed activation times for skills might as well be fictional.

I’m just glad that without the hero spec grind, I can finally enjoy the new maps. It isn’t so bad (well, not tangled depths, anyway) when the entirety of the game exists to restrict you from playing.

Personally, I don’t get why it is people wanted elite specs to be so far away. There’s no benefit to not getting it. It is like there is some vague existential desire for things to be far away.

I’ve only been so-so paying attention to WvW/PvP, but I would like an explanation on why the trapper rune bonus was cut down by 33%.

I do have an alternate DPS rotation other than weakening charge spam. Some of the enemies are quite… difficult to fight in HoT. Especially in zerker gear. What I have found is that dust strike does a surprisingly good amount of damage for a blind skill, so I auto attack and pop that to dodge most attacks.

But against break bars, I’ll stay in place, but quickly double-tap vault to jump up and down. This lets me avoid attacks while maintaining a relatively strong presence. Just alternate between bound and vault and, if you do it right, champions will barely be able to hit you.

I haven’t had problems to that degree. on rare occasion when I dodge, I will occasionally do a normal dodge instead of the dash, but that is rare.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Staff Auto attack: 215, 254, 516. Takes 2.1 seconds, so it has a DPS of 469.
Sword Auto Attack: 284, 284, 462. Takes 2.5 seconds, so it has a DPS of 412
Dagger Auto: 198, 302, 302. Takes 2.1 seconds, so it has a DPS of 382

In practice, this is not accurate. I tried both dagger and staff and the time on staff’s AA sequence is longer than 2.1s.

The staff attack animation goes like this:
(animation)-strike-(animation)-strike-(long animation)-strike-(after cast delay)

- each animation is 1/2s long and the long animation is 1s long with 1/2s after cast. Total of 2.5s attack sequence.

While the dagger animation is like this:
strike-strike-strike-(long animation)-strike-(after cast delay)

- the first 3 strikes happen in roughly .75s, but let’s just give is a round number of 1s and the long animation lasts for 1/2s and the 1/2s after cast. Total of 2.0s attack sequence.

So I did a couple of trials: time to do 20 attacks against an invulnerable golem. I came up with a total animation time of 2.2 seconds over and over again. Assuming this is accurate, it gives staff a tooltip DPS of 447, which is still higher than everything.

The aftercasts and precasts for animations aren’t always a half second long. I’ve done enough runs on different skills to know it.

Alright, time to do the math… again. Wearing no equipment at all in PVP, we get the tooltip damages for these attacks. With this data, you can get your DPS in any situation simply by calculating your effective power, then multiplying tooltip damage by effective power divided by 1000.

Staff Auto attack: 215, 254, 516. Takes 2.1 seconds, so it has a DPS of 469.
Sword Auto Attack: 284, 284, 462. Takes 2.5 seconds, so it has a DPS of 412
Dagger Auto: 198, 302, 302. Takes 2.1 seconds, so it has a DPS of 382

So the staff auto attack is the highest. Now to compare other abilities:

Heartseeker: 710 damage at below 25% health, 1 second activation time
Weakening Charge: 822 damage, 1 second activation time. Hard to use
Vault: 879 damage, 1 second activation time

These are the base damages. There are a couple of unique aspects to each auto attack: Staff reflects projectiles and stacks vulnerability. Dagger causes 8 seconds of poison and gains endurance. Sword causes vulnerability and cripple.

Going away from tooltips, in a max might situation, that poison on dagger will do 8 ticks every 2.1 seconds damage, which comes to about 3.8 ticks per second. The poison will tick for 78.5 damage, so this is an additional 298.3 DPS. Since the staff has 87 higher tooltip damage, this would mean that, for the staff to overcome the dagger poison, you would need an effective power of about 3,429. That is… very low for effective power, actually. Most zerker thieves will have that amount with just their base power plus might, let alone factoring in additional modifiers and crits. Also, most thieves are bad at stacking might.

Overall, staff auto wins. Weakening Charge wins. Staff is the highest DPS weapon we have.

It has been my general experience that math does match reality. Bad math and improperly applied math doesn’t. If the numbers are off, then there’s a factor that wasn’t taken into consideration. I found that dhuumfire onslaught does more DPS than the other auto attacks, and I didn’t go beyond finding this fact. Adding in more factors just ends up with special cases and nitpicking.

There is one variable in all this that can change things: might stacks. My current calculation assumes 25 might, which a reaper can, indeed, build themselves up to quite easily. But, this isn’t an immediate bonus. So there is a buff ramp_up time, depending how how well your team stacks up might.

Thankfully this can be factored, too. At no might, the burn does 131.5 damage per tick, and adds 592 DPS. Doing the same operation, we get 19,096 effective power to make Shroud Auto Attack equal to Greatsword Auto Attack. While it seems lower, this has the caveat that you must reach this effective power without might stacking or vulnerability, which again probably isn’t possible.