Getting Really Sick of Chrono + Druid Dominating Other Supports

Seriously it has been years since HoT has been released and these 2 classes are still completely dominating all other support roles because they do absolutely everything with nearly no weaknesses. When compared to other supports it is a case of everything you can do I can do better, and I can do a lot of things that you can't even do. Combine druid + chrono and you easily have every single boon in the game permanently except like resistance and on top of that they bring more than enough healing, spirits, group stun-breaks, projectile defense, search and rescue, portal, boon rip, condi cleanse, long duration immobilizes, stealth, pushes and pulls, huge cc capabilities, and probably a bunch of other things I am forgetting. Sure other healers can heal for a bit more than druids, but druids are already over healing in most situations so that really means nothing.

As it stands firebrand + heal renegade is getting kinda close to competing, being able to do perma quickness + perma alacrity + healing + a few other things, however it doesn't have nearly as many other things going for it as chrono + druid so very few groups use it other than for fun or just to demonstrate that it works. I think it would be better to tone down druid + chrono than boost others up as it is boring when two builds can make almost all other forms of support and utility redundant and useless.

I would start by making spirits actually die to cleave again, honestly the game would be much better without them in the first place so making them die to cleave would help with this. They can still be op on fights where they can be kept alive but at least they aren't over powered in all situations and it would also require a bit more brains to know when and where to use them rather than spamming the button off cool down. Also why is grace of the land still 10 targets? Toning down phalanx strength while bringing in busted levels of might stacking to druid was an absurd decision, now druid makes all other sources of might stacking invalid as it sacrifices basically nothing to stack full might on all 10 people in squad.

We just had a mesmer overhaul and chrono remains as over powered as ever. To tune it down I would start with signet of inspiration, as the current boon spam it provides is extremely over the top. As it is now you can just give chrono a tiny bit of any boon and all of a sudden it is permanent on the entire group. Up the cooldown to like 60 seconds for both the utility and the trait so that it doesn't inflate the up times on all boons, then give chronos other ways to maintain perma quickness and alacrity as that is their niche, for instance making seize the day and flow of time affect allies as well as increasing the durations from well of recall and well of action. Additionally I would try to make sure that time-warp is almost necessary for perma quickness that way it tones down chrono's godly cc capabilities since they wouldn't be able to take moa or gravity well along with the more niche utilities like feedback and disenchanter. Perma quickness without timewarp could still be possible but only with traits and utilities all dedicated to maximum uptime, and a near perfect rotation.

@ArthurDent.9538 said:Seriously it has been years since HoT has been released and these 2 classes are still completely dominating all other support roles because they do absolutely everything with nearly no weaknesses. When compared to other supports it is a case of everything you can do I can do better, and I can do a lot of things that you can't even do. Combine druid + chrono and you easily have every single boon in the game permanently except like resistance and on top of that they bring more than enough healing, spirits, group stun-breaks, projectile defense, search and rescue, portal, boon rip, condi cleanse, long duration immobilizes, stealth, pushes and pulls, huge cc capabilities, and probably a bunch of other things I am forgetting. Sure other healers can heal for a bit more than druids, but druids are already over healing in most situations so that really means nothing.

Well true but you shouldnt forget that until PoF Chrono/Mesmer in generel had ONLY the support build viable and nothing else, besides maybe this core mesmer condi build which was only working for matthias. So of course he stay dominating, otherwise what else was there for him? i can see why people demand it now since now he can play as support/tank/dps, but before unless other supporter classes who could also work as dps, he had nothing. Just saying :). I agree to Druid though, Gotl and spirits where a little to op, since gotl overhaul only spirits.

As it stands firebrand + heal renegade is getting kinda close to competing, being able to do perma quickness + perma alacrity + healing + a few other things, however it doesn't have nearly as many other things going for it as chrono + druid so very few groups use it other than for fun or just to demonstrate that it works. I think it would be better to tone down druid + chrono than boost others up as it is boring when two builds can make almost all other forms of support and utility redundant and useless.Well just cause it is better nobody forces you to play them. If you want another setup just make a static and specialize on another setup. The bosses can be killed by any setup, the blame is not the classes, but rather the communtiy diciding to mostly run only with the best classes. Is this new? Not really ;). will it change? Nope. Why are they doing it? Cause it is the simplest solution since when everyone only build their classes around one setup you have a easier time to get 10 men together rather then having 10 setups. Dont say i always like it.I would start by making spirits actually die to cleave again, honestly the game would be much better without them in the first place so making them die to cleave would help with this. They can still be op on fights where they can be kept alive but at least they aren't over powered in all situations and it would also require a bit more brains to know when and where to use them rather than spamming the button off cool down. Also why is grace of the land still 10 targets? Toning down phalanx strength while bringing in busted levels of might stacking to druid was an absurd decision, now druid makes all other sources of might stacking invalid as it sacrifices basically nothing to stack full might on all 10 people in squad.Druid is by far no longer the only class who throws might around by now, he is simply the most effective. And by turning it down to 5 ppl you will only lock 2 druids instead of one into the setup. To the spirits: if you really want other supporters viable, you will have to remove them completly. Otherwise noone will ever accept another supporter as a main healer.We just had a mesmer overhaul and chrono remains as over powered as ever. To tune it down I would start with signet of inspiration, as the current boon spam it provides is extremely over the top. As it is now you can just give chrono a tiny bit of any boon and all of a sudden it is permanent on the entire group. Up the cooldown to like 60 seconds for both the utility and the trait so that it doesn't inflate the up times on all boons, then give chronos other ways to maintain perma quickness and alacrity as that is their niche, for instance making seize the day and flow of time affect allies as well as increasing the durations from well of recall and well of action. Additionally I would try to make sure that time-warp is almost necessary for perma quickness that way it tones down chrono's godly cc capabilities since they wouldn't be able to take moa or gravity well along with the more niche utilities like feedback and disenchanter. Perma quickness without timewarp could still be possible but only with traits and utilities all dedicated to maximum uptime, and a near perfect rotation.Dude no offense, but chrono had always a complex rotation, even more during the time when distort was a thing. I can accept and agree that this boonspamming is too much, but nerfing down the quickness rotation so time warp is needed makes chrono completly dead in comparison to firebrand. And taking cc away from Chrono wont make firebrand+renegade more viable, since then all dps classes will have to take cc skills which compensate the same amount of break bar dmg the chrono did before. Just take out the trait which will give you boons on shattering (+ maybe that soi only shares quickness and alac) and increase the amount of cc a firebrand and renegade has avaible. Cause otherwise you will have in 2 years the exact same thread, only with swapped positions.

And 2 years later another people will complain because renegade/firebrand dominating 4 slot as support in raid composition.

Edit: some of what you asking probably already happened after recent patch. If the calculation is correct

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/391000#Comment_391000

I thnik that nerf to alacrity on ventari killed the posibility of firebrand/renegade in second group. On some bosses you might take second healer and with last patch renegade you would get decend dps and firebrand could have provide the quickness in that subgroup. Dont know if would be meta o some bosses or not but the fact that renegade now needs boonduration for alacrity uptime kills it.

Ore removr spirits

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:Ore removr spirits

And quickness and alacrity from chronos. Spirits are the only thing druids have, same as chronomancers with alacrity and quickness. Or we could leave the unique things for classes so that they have any flavor left. We don't need another WoW.

Remove alaricity fro chrono and spirits from rangers and gotl only helps druid that is basicly what it takes to kill of these two and as long uniqui classes are metas will be too

Yea, i would like to see reason to play chrono without alacrity. Maybe instead of nerfing these support clases you can give others unique benefits too. If we get to a point where there is 6 diferent support classes then it might be better to only bring some (for better overall dps) but with each of them with unique skill all of them would have their use.

If you nerf support class so much that the dps they provide + dps increse for other party mamber isnt greater then one of you dps classes it is not worht to bring that support class at all. Like if chrono didnt provide alacrity it might be better to run mirages with timewarps instead of chrono. I would love to see your reaction to that meta :D

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:Yea, i would like to see reason to play chrono without alacrity. Maybe instead of nerfing these support clases you can give others unique benefits too. If we get to a point where there is 6 diferent support classes then it might be better to only bring some (for better overall dps) but with each of them with unique skill all of them would have their use.

If you nerf support class so much that the dps they provide + dps increse for other party mamber isnt greater then one of you dps classes it is not worht to bring that support class at all. Like if chrono didnt provide alacrity it might be better to run mirages with timewarps instead of chrono. I would love to see your reaction to that meta :D

Ore make druid and chrono a liabillity

To make raid comps more flexible they only need to make all boon sharing abilities 10 targets.

A renegade stacks might and alacrity pretty easily, even some protection with charr spirits, all this by having a way more reliable heal than druids in some situations where they struggle with astral power.Quickness could then be delt with by a Firebrand DPS, adding its fair share of aegis, reducing significantly the amount of damage taken by the raid.Finaly this woud give more options for other tanks that could also bring interesting spells to the table.

However it's all about the 10 target restriction. We know that they're limiting spells to 5 targets to prevent servers to take a huge hit, but since most spells have their tooltip reworked for WvW, why not do the same for Raiding, thus creating a real raiding environement and still keeping servers safe from overwork.

I've been trying to work on some support build on renegade, engineer(even holo) and firebrand and results are obvious, to me at least. If you go double healers, having two druids is just a waste of potential. In mono heal however nothing will ever surpass druids in boon distribution, but it wouldn't be that hard to change the meta by modifying weapons/kits/utilities that are underated or already designed for support and give them more healing/boon potential.

The most saddening part though, are those 10 new elite specs from PoF that brang absolutly nothing new in the support/tanking category, meaning that we are probably gonna have to wait 2, 3 more years before any relevant changes :T

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:I thnik that nerf to alacrity on ventari killed the posibility of firebrand/renegade in second group. On some bosses you might take second healer and with last patch renegade you would get decend dps and firebrand could have provide the quickness in that subgroup. Dont know if would be meta o some bosses or not but the fact that renegade now needs boonduration for alacrity uptime kills it.

That change combined with the lack of a proper hybrid stat set a renegade could use certainly wasn't helpful, especially when chronos now have heals on their wells in addition to their old, already overpowered kit. We tested the FB+ren combo in our W1-4 clear today and while it didn't feel that bad in the FB role, it really made me wonder whether a single minstrel chrono could replace both slots. I'll see what the logs say when our raid lead uploads them, but so far I don't think that the last balance patch was helpful for raid diversity. Pretty disappointing.

We should all go back to zerker meta from 2013.

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:We should all go back to zerker meta from 2013.

With how sick and tired I am of our Chrono and Druid overlords, I'd accept this.

@Azoqu.8917 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:We should all go back to zerker meta from 2013.

No such talk ore i wont heal you XD Laila the druid over lady XD

@Azoqu.8917 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:We should all go back to zerker meta from 2013.

Well that means that you would acept the meta i pointed above, bs,2*renegade healer and 7 timewarp mirages necause it looks like you dont care about diversity in groups, you just dont want druids and chronos.....

Sorry but i dont like ing. It doesnt have the right feal for me so i dont want to play it. But that doesnt mean that uli want to cut it out of group play. If you can play it and do resonable dps with it (like not 4k) then i dont care if it is ing

Right now there are 6/10 free slots in raids. I would love to see renegade healer or even firebrand quickness bot. But for me 6 free slots are much better then 0 free slots like it used to be with only warrior meta or the one i wrote above.

For me. Out of the 3 locked classes, warrior looks like slight problem now because either we get only warrior because their dps is insane or only one bs because condi war and bs have almost identical build

@ButcherofMalakir.4067True that if there's a rework to be done it should be more in depth. Even if Renegade heal / FB quickness would be a solution, it would be redundant at some point too. What raiding needs is more options, not just replacement...

@Gravenz.6258 said:@"ButcherofMalakir.4067"True that if there's a rework to be done it should be more in depth. Even if Renegade heal / FB quickness would be a solution, it would be redundant at some point too. What raiding needs is more options, not just replacement...

Mind explaining your phrase "more options, not just replacement" a little more in detail?

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Gravenz.6258 said:@"ButcherofMalakir.4067"True that if there's a rework to be done it should be more in depth. Even if Renegade heal / FB quickness would be a solution, it would be redundant at some point too. What raiding needs is more options, not just replacement...

He though that it would bee good to have options that similary strong. I think its imposible. The only way we cqn have 2 teamcomps is if both have something spacial but those special things would not be better together.

For example i woild like to see renegade ps build that is almost full dps (like maybe 80% of dps class)and provides 25 might to 5 players. This way you could take maybe renegades and soulbeast with spirits instead of druid for fights that require low amount of healing.Clear trade - more dps compared to lower healing and cc.

Druid will still be preferred because they can distribute 8sec based; 3 might stacks per spam! (Let's not forget to add up to 10 targets in the radius)

My main is ele always love her.. however, i hv been playing druid heaps since raid for two years.. and i also play some dps.. but I really enjoy druiding and been druiding for many months and years mainly for group content. if they decided to change how this is going.. I will quit. (-_-) I'm don't enjoy to change things all the time. It works and is good as is .. leave it as is... Few changes before pof .. many vet raiders left the game ... So dev will really need to be careful with changes they do to the build and meta

Firebrand Quickness is not NEARLY as forgiving as chrono which can fart SoI and copy every boon on its arsenal every seconds.

For firebrands you need to literally STACK ON THE FIREBRAND for the buffs to work. Not to mention that the mantras are frontal cones with 180 radius on the sides. Do you honestly think that is competitive on mobility fights?

Firebrand quickness may be competitive on bosses like sab or gorse but it falls off as soon as VG once mobility phase kicks in.

Please do not compare the two combos together. they are night and day apart.

Not to mention that a minstrel chrono can heal AND quickness fart two in one and probably carry most fractal groups and half the raid encounters.

I personally would like to see BUFFS to firebrand and heal rev to brought in line with chrono. Nerfs are never fun. No one likes nerfs. Powercreep be damned.

Well do whatever to include diversity.. but if "fixes" affect how the current players enjoy the game.. ppl will likely give up on it.. defeat the purpose of playing when the changes remove the fun out of someone. So ya.. fix to make or giving more choices or chances.. but not to destroy how things are working as is..

@Hunter.4783 said:Firebrand Quickness is not NEARLY as forgiving as chrono which can fart SoI and copy every boon on its arsenal every seconds.

Yeah he can fart evry boon at you....which is almost covered anyway. The only important buff is quickness, and this is much harder to keep up since the last balance patch.Most boon sources come from other classes, Chrono can simply share them to have a saver uptime.

For firebrands you need to literally STACK ON THE FIREBRAND for the buffs to work. Not to mention that the mantras are frontal cones with 180 radius on the sides. Do you honestly think that is competitive on mobility fights?Most bosses are not a mobile fight.Vg->you stack at the wall and heal/barrier each green, no problem hereGorse-> you always stand together behind himSab-> You always stack togetherSloth->Same, and those who have to go out for mechanics will miss the chrono buffs as wellmat-> one of the few fights where i agree that it will be harder with fbKC->you always stack and you have a much easier precast then a chrono for the burst phaseXera-> same as always, you stackcairn-> a other fight where chrono is betteroverseer->i dont even startsamarog->same as most other fightsDeimos->depends on the tactic usedDesmina->chrono is betterDhuum->dont know at this boss tbh since uptime is crap with bothBesides, yes Chrono has double the range with his buffs (360), but this isnt really much more. Either your group is stacking or not, if they dont then it realy doesnt matter which one you use.

Please do not compare the two combos together. they are night and day apart.

Not to mention that a minstrel chrono can heal AND quickness fart two in one and probably carry most fractal groups and half the raid encounters.He can heal very good groups. Otherwise his heal capility is crap. Just saying^^.I personally would like to see BUFFS to firebrand and heal rev to brought in line with chrono. Nerfs are never fun. No one likes nerfs. Powercreep be damned.To that i agree. The most important thing in my opinion would be to increase both their cc ability and make the uptime a little better.

There are three primary healers (druid, revenant, tempest) and several off healers (firebrand, scourge). There are three primary boon bots (chrono, revenant/herald, firebrand).

Of the three primary healers there should be some equality between the utility of the three. Druid is always taken because it brings fire and forget buffs through spirits and might stacking. Druid most definitely needs a little nerfing as it dominates the PvE and PvP scenes. As far as druid goes make the spirits baseline 5 man with the Nature's vengeance trait upping the cap to 10 man. Remove all boons from spirits, they are far too much fire and forget skills and the fact that a single spirit can pretty much maintain permanent vigor/protection/regen/stability across a 10 man raid party with the help of a chrono is far too unbalanced, especially as the druid doesn't work for these buffs.

Heal revenant and tempest are pretty much dead across all game modes and drastically need some help. Revenant is a pretty fun build and the tempest elite specialization should find some use somewhere. Perhaps increase the radius of the tablet. Tempest needs some support buffs and ideally warhorn should be tweaked to be more of a support weapon - its basically an elite spec that isn't used anywhere. Upgrade the auras and make them stack-able so that they are actually useful (perhaps give them small amounts of stats dependent on the healing power of the tempest).

Chrono needs its efficacy toned down. Time warp, boring as it is should be mandatory to maintain permanent quickness.

@Enigmoid.1264 said:There are three primary healers (druid, revenant, tempest) and several off healers (firebrand, scourge). There are three primary boon bots (chrono, revenant/herald, firebrand).

Of the three primary healers there should be some equality between the utility of the three. Druid is always taken because it brings fire and forget buffs through spirits and might stacking. Druid most definitely needs a little nerfing as it dominates the PvE and PvP scenes. As far as druid goes make the spirits baseline 5 man with the Nature's vengeance trait upping the cap to 10 man. Remove all boons from spirits, they are far too much fire and forget skills and the fact that a single spirit can pretty much maintain permanent vigor/protection/regen/stability across a 10 man raid party with the help of a chrono is far too unbalanced, especially as the druid doesn't work for these buffs.

Heal revenant and tempest are pretty much dead across all game modes and drastically need some help. Revenant is a pretty fun build and the tempest elite specialization should find some use somewhere. Perhaps increase the radius of the tablet. Tempest needs some support buffs and ideally warhorn should be tweaked to be more of a support weapon - its basically an elite spec that isn't used anywhere. Upgrade the auras and make them stack-able so that they are actually useful (perhaps give them small amounts of stats dependent on the healing power of the tempest).

Chrono needs its efficacy toned down. Time warp, boring as it is should be mandatory to maintain permanent quickness.

They intentionally increased the number of people the spirits cover from five because that meant that only 1 druid was brought to raids instead of having two brought so that all 10 people got the spirit buff. If you revert that change then druid will be confirmed for 2 spots instead of 1. Removing the boons makes the druid a pretty much useless class in raids, as there are other classes that heal better. All you would be doing is making it so that heal eles are being brought, reducing the diversity further.