Fractal Rotation for Mesmer?

First off, I'm super new to mesmer. I've been playing fractals for years now on warrior, ele and necro but now I want to try for a more support based role. Both Chrono and Druid caught my eye and finally decided to start trying out Chrono first. I went to quantify's website and looked at their videos for chrono runs but I was just completely lost. No explanation on rotation or anything. When is the best time to use shatter skills or Continuum Split for example? Had a friend help run me through the basics and what I took away was "its your role to keep up as much quickness for the group as possible with alacrity using shield phantasms and SoI but I don't see how SoI is suppose to guarantee quickness. It just reads like you get a random boon. To make a long post short: have any rotations/tips for me would be very helpful along with optimal traits, weapons and armor. Thanks again!

Ok, I'll go through all of this and explain.

The chrono role: Support the group by maintaining quickness and alacrity uptime. You also provide support with excellent breakbar attacks, condition removal, boon stripping, and mob control.

Quickness is maintained through a combination of shield 5, well of action, time warp (if you choose to take it), and signet of inspiration. The way signet of inspiration works is that it passively ticks every 10 seconds, providing a random boon along with swiftness. When you activate it, however, it copies all boons on you and applies them to nearby allies at a set duration. You use this skill along with the trait proc for it (illusionary inspiration) to provide a high amount of quickness uptime. Shield 5 and well of action finish off the quickness buffing skills. You'll also need high boon duration to pull this off, so runes of leadership, boon duration food, sigil of concentration, and potentially commander's armor provide that.

Alacrity is pretty simple. You trait "alls well that ends well" to make your wells provide alacrity, then drop your wells on the party as usual. This means heal well, well of action, and well of recall. However, most of your alacrity uptime actually comes from the shield phantasms. If you make sure to always have 2 shield phantasms up on bosses, they will pretty much keep anyone in range topped off on alacrity. Well of recall is the skill that you'll often drop to make room for a situational utility, usually phantasmal disenchanter for fractal scales that spam boons a lot.

Shatters in general are rarely used. They sacrifice your phantasms and force you to rebuild those resources. The grandmaster trait "chronophantasma" helps with this, but it's not a permanent fix. F3 is an excellent skill to break bars, but try not to use it unless absolutely necessary. If there's an important bar to break, try and time your shield 5 to coincide with that bar, as shield 5 is one of the strongest breaking skills in the game. F2 is basically useless, so never use it unless you're out of combat and just spamming shatters to get a bit of alacrity. F1 deals a bit of burst damage, but that's not worth it mid-fight. If you're finishing off trash mobs or near the end of a fight, F1 can be appropriate. You can also use it to force a phantasm to do another attack rapidly (because chronophantasma makes the phantasms attack again after respawning). This is usually only used with a pWarden to boost reflect/destruction uptime. F4 is your panic button, use as needed.

Continuum split has a variety of uses. I'll usually use it at the beginning of a fight with 1 clone (iLeap) to drop shield 5, time warp, well of action, and signet of inspiration, before rolling into my full primary rotation. This lets me get a fast start on quickness and alacrity upkeep to begin a boss nicely. Once rolling, CS isn't required to keep quickness or alacrity up, so you can save it for things like double tapping shield 5 for a really nasty breakbar, or kickstarting your boon uptime after a big boss mechanic.

Summon three Illusions(In most cases Summon Swordsman/Warden>Sword Clone>Weaponswap>Shield 4)

Precast Tides of Time

f5 (before ToT cast ends)

Spam all wells

SoI

f5 Ends

Keep spamming wells, SoI, Phantasms, ToT (when traited Phantasm casts do SoI) while doing weapon swaps in between to activate Sigil of Concentration till f5 is ready again

repeat.

You may opt to run Time Warp when you're having hard time maintaining quickness. Only cast Time Warp in Continuum Split so that it goes on 90 second cooldown instead of 180 seconds as usual.

The other two posts do a great job already, but here's a list of random tips:

Shatters:1) Your shatters clears condis, so if you find yourself pressured by condis or feared (observatory for example), you can shatter to clear.2) Your shatters also heal. If you find yourself low, use your shatters for a bit of sustain as a last ditch. Maybe you'll buy enough time for your heal skill to come off CD. Obviously you lose clones and phantasms, but it's better than downing.

Invulns + Reflects:3) Distortion off signets and your distortion shatter is shared. This can be useful to help teammates if they forget to dodge a big attack (Nightmare fractal, Ensolyss's swipe/smash for ex)4) Downed teammates can be useful for another Feedback (e.g. someone downs to the Volcanic lava elementals, res them for extra reflects)5) You can take Warden's Feedback in Inspiration for extra reflects (useful for Snowblind's first boss to prevent teles at 75,25,50 for example).

Boon Rip:6) Aside from disenchanter, sword auto attack also rips boons on the third hit. This also means your sword clones rip boons in their auto chain. If you find yourself heavily pressured and can't get into melee range to rip boons, you can use illusionary leap (sword 3) to summon a sword clone. This will overwrite a phantasm, but ensuring no protection (No Pain, No Gain instability) is more important (especially if you're the only one with boon rip).

Traitlines + Weapons:7) Dueling traitline has a "blind on shatter" trait that can occasionally be useful if there are a lot of hard hitting trash mobs and overall quickness up-time isn't a huge concern (cliffside until boss). The extra alacrity and damage is usually not worth it in fractals to take Illusions over Domination, IMO.8) Focus 4, Temporal Curtain + Pull is amazing. I almost always have focus on for it. The swiftness can be nice for long jogs in the forest (Chaos fires, Snowblind before boss).

Rotation:9) I find my general rotation flow to be weapon swap, ToT (shield 5), Well, Signet and then waiting a bit for my sword phantasm/warden to proc SoI off the Inspiration trait line. You can cast your Well of Action before you weapon swap; I just like to keep SoI and the well's CDs lined up nicely. When you rotation gets off (as it will), just try to time your weapon swap with your well of action and signet of inspiration for extra 33% boon duration; you'll still be able to keep up quickness. Always make sure you have quickness before casting SoI.

SoI and Well of Action are almost always taken. I find swapping in the following for the third utility useful sometimes:

1) Phantasmal disenchanter (for easy boon rip; can help clear Mai Trin's bleed stacks)2) Well of Action (Pulsing Aegis, useful if there's a necro in your group helping you with boon rip already or if No Pain, No Gain isn't an instability)3) Feedback (Volcanic mob control, molten furnace experimentation, can pair with mimic for snowblind to avoid teles)4) Signet of Humility (1000 break bar damage, if your party's lacking CC on a boss with a big break-bar)5) Mass Invisibility (if you want to skip instead of killing everything)6) Blink for special spots in Aetherblade fractal that, with you condi clear and good timing, allows you to completely bypass the two traps. Deroir (KING) has a good YouTube video for this.

Feel free to throw questions my way; I think Chrono's one of the most useful and fun classes for fractals.

This is where the good old skill templates from gw1 would be useful

@Refia Montes.3205 said:

1. Summon three Illusions(In most cases Summon Swordsman/Warden>Sword Clone>Weaponswap>Shield 4)
2. Precast Tides of Time
3. f5 (before ToT cast ends)
4. Spam all wells
5. SoI
6. f5 Ends
7. Keep spamming wells, SoI, Phantasms, ToT (when traited Phantasm casts do SoI) while doing weapon swaps in between to activate Sigil of Concentration till f5 is ready again
8. repeat.You may opt to run Time Warp when you're having hard time maintaining quickness. Only cast Time Warp in Continuum Split so that it goes on 90 second cooldown instead of 180 seconds as usual.

Nice. I didn't realize you could precast Tides of Time. I'll use your rotation soon as I get a chance. Thanks.