Just how difficult is Mesmer (Chrono especially) in end-game content?

I have an 80 mesmer sitting around collecting dust and I'm looking for an in-demand support spec. Well, nothing beats Chrono, and apparent Mirage does some good damage for when I need to solo open-world stuff.

However, I hear they're incredibly hard to play. I guess it's because you have so much utility and unique buffs that if you make a mistake in your rotation you're pretty useless until things come off cooldown. Is the difficulty exaggerated? I'm not interested in setting speed records in raids or anything, but eventually doing some high-level fractals and maybe raids.

By and large the difficulty is not exaggerated. There are a number of things that contribute to this difficulty all at the same time. In raids, chrono is often expected to tank, meaning that you're in charge of the fights. You need to know the fights completely and execute everything perfectly otherwise you can singlehandedly cause a raid wipe. Additionally, the chrono often is expected to use invuln share to avoid mechanics like spore shake, green circles on VG, smashes on gorseval, etc. If you screw up the timing on this, you can instantly cause a raid wipe. On top of all that you have to be managing a semi-complex rotation to maintain the buffs on everyone, and failing to provide these buffs will massively impact group DPS.

The rotation isn't extremely hard and it is fairly flexible. There are no single points of failure in it like there were prior to the SoI rework, so you don't have to worry about that. The difficulty comes from the fact that you're expected to do the rotation while tanking while executing invulns.

There's also the issue that you don't really have chronos that are "just ok". If you do the rotation right, invuln correctly, and tank properly, you're a great chrono. If you do any of those 3 poorly, you're an awful chrono, and there's no middle ground. This makes it a lot less forgiving compared to a dps class where you could be say 20% under benchmark or 15% under benchmark and have varying levels of success. You either do it or you don't and there's very little room for error.

To expand a bit on what Pyro said:

The difficulty for chrono in raids is due to different aspects comming together:

Raid TankMesmers are currently being run as tank and support for raid groups. Being tank, as is the case with most MMOs, brings with it additional responsibilities and requires knowledge as far as positioning, boss abilities, overall mechanics etc. This can be more or less challenging depending on the boss but will always add an extra layer of responsibility.

Raid SupportPlaying a mesmer as support is easier than being the tank. You can focus more on rotation and keeping phantasms up etc. There is fights where both tank and support chrono are required to perform extra work (read distortion later on). Overall raid suppor chrono is probably intermediate difficulty wise, easier than a difficult rotation dps, harder than a very easy rotation dps.

Quickness/AlacrityMain job of chrono is to provide permanent quickness and alacrity to the raid. The rotation to do this is based off of smaller rotations within a big rotation. It's not that difficult once memorised or once you know the priorities. The rotation gets more difficult once you have to accomodate and adapt it for distortion or encounter mechanics.

DistortionMore advanced raid groups might require chronos to distort (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Distortion_(effect)) certain attacks to protect the raid from them and allow smoother/faster/easier kills. The distortion provided to the party (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blurred_Inscriptions) lasts 1 second and has a 5 second internal cooldown. Thus as a chrono you need to be able to cast distortion (F4, any signet used, phantasm summoned) so the 1 second immunity window happens during the mechanic which needs to be avoided. Failure usually means sever damage to the raid often resulting in instant wipe. Again this messes with your rotation and main role of quickness/alacrity provider.

There is basically the following types of performance:

• chrono who can do none of the above - obviously useless
• chrono who can provide a minimum amount of quickness/alacrity - lack of knowledge of how to execute a proper rotation due to maybe lack of knowledge of boss mechanics. debatable if this is of use, it will make fights harder when dps are not running quickness/alacrity
• chrono who provides quickness/alacrity - this is were you want to be as minimum
• chrono who provides quickness/alacrity and can tank - step up from basic support, quite a bit harder on some bosses
• chrono who provides quickness/alacrity and distort - a step up from basic support mesmer
• chrono who provides quickness/alacrity and distort and can tank - highest difficulty, tough to find for some bosses (espcially Xera and Deimos)

I tried to chronotank once. I'd tanked before in other MMOs, and was quite good at it. "I've got gear and I've got tank experience," I said. "I can do this!"

Nope. No I couldn't. I was not ready. Chronotanking is on a whole different level from what I was used to.

Although that leads me to my question...how do you get good at it? How do you practice? Just get with a very forgiving raid group and be willing to die a million times?

Mostly, yeah, forgiving group plus some time with the golem and in T4 fractals to get the quickness rotation put together. The good news is the tank part of chronotank is only needed for a few bosses. It honestly helps to have a guild group.

Chrono is difficult to newcomers because everybody expects you to know all the tricks inside out, unlike a DPS who underpeforms.

No one can carry a chrono except another chrono. A DPS can be carried by many other DPS. Druid has similar responsibility to chrono in that aspect.

Even outside raids you're expected to know portal skips, have executioner's axe, and an extra portal device. You're expected to do portal skips in uncategorized fractals, and aid in proper stealth skips where other dungeons are involved.

Mesmer is an extremely niche class with a lot of skill ceiling.

@Yuyuske.7182 said:I tried to chronotank once. I'd tanked before in other MMOs, and was quite good at it. "I've got gear and I've got tank experience," I said. "I can do this!"

Nope. No I couldn't. I was not ready. Chronotanking is on a whole different level from what I was used to.

Although that leads me to my question...how do you get good at it? How do you practice? Just get with a very forgiving raid group and be willing to die a million times?

The best way is run practice raids with an exprienced group. If you have a static, ask if they are willing to switch roles. That's the best way but pretty unrealistic for many people.

Second best is practice raids in general. Also for some bosses like VG or Gore, try to break it down to as little work as possible. Don't run distortion tries when practicing to tank.

For me personally the most difficult boss must have been Xera because of her difficult to follow pattern (which also skips steps depending on how good your dps is).

You really want to be able to run most bosses as support mesmer first, then work on being able to tank them. That way you at least have the general fight down before adding another layer of work on top.

The most important tank responsibility in most fights is: positioning. By that I mean of the entire raid which will follow your positioning and placement of the boss. It's essential on VG, Gore, Xera and Deimos and can be the difference between a successful kill and a wipe.

What gets most people is, while the general tanking is not as difficult as in other MMOs, much like the rest of raids here, a severe mistake, sometimes even tine like using a skill at the wrong time (say waste your Well of Precognition on Deimos) can be a wipe for the entire raid.