(PvE) How to indicate that you play dps and not a support chrono?

Without directly telling them.

I pug a lot in T4 FotM, and make an effort to avoid ‘LF chrono/dps’ groups, usually joining blank ‘t4’ or ‘daily’ groups. However, for some reason, people expect me to be playing support chrono even though my Signet of Inspiration doesn’t ever pop up in the last three minutes D:If there’s already a sup chrono, someone goes, ‘Hey, we have two chronos’, until after a fight where someone has to flat-out say ‘One’s a dps.’ Oh.And occasionally there’s someone who accuses me of having/giving poor boon uptimes. Okay WHAT.

I’ve tried casting Mantra of Pain, even in the lobby, in people’s faces but to no avail. I use sharpening stones but no one seems to check the buffs anyway. I don’t ever use a shield (excluding situations where more hard cc is requested) and use shiny off-hand skins to indicate that I use S/S and S/F.

My question is, what is the best way to indicate that you play a dps chrono?If it’s one of the ones I’ve already mentioned, I guess I’ll have to deal with it then :/

Edit: fixed title... twice.

Is this a substantial problem? I pug T4 every single day and it's extremely rare that anyone cares what people are playing. The only time it became an issue was when we had a support Chrono, support Tempest, and support Scrapper, resulting in horrendous group DPS. Barring extreme situations like that, just start or join a group, enter the fractals, finish the fractals. If someone brings up weak boon uptimes, type "im dps" in party chat. If the person starts questioning you further or presses the issue in any way, right click > block and move on with the fractal. It's not as if you're playing a bad spec. This is all just IMO of course.

@"Noodle Ant.1605" said:Without directly telling them.

I pug a lot in T4 FotM, and make an effort to avoid ‘LF chrono/dps’ groups, usually joining blank ‘t4’ or ‘daily’ groups. However, for some reason, people expect me to be playing support chrono even though my Signet of Inspiration doesn’t ever pop up in the last three minutes D:If there’s already a sup chrono, someone goes, ‘Hey, we have two chronos’, until after a fight where someone has to flat-out say ‘One’s a dps.’ Oh.And occasionally there’s someone who accuses me of having/giving poor boon uptimes. Okay WHAT.

I’ve tried casting Mantra of Pain, even in the lobby, in people’s faces but to no avail. I use sharpening stones but no one seems to check the buffs anyway. I don’t ever use a shield (excluding situations where more hard cc is requested) and use shiny off-hand skins to indicate that I use S/S and S/F.

My question is, what is the best way to indicate that you play a dps chrono?If it’s one of the ones I’ve already mentioned, I guess I’ll have to deal with it then :/

Edit: fixed title... twice.

I say it about 10 times before the boss pull. sometimes even 9 times is not enough, really gotta get that 10th time in. "I'm dps" otherwise they won't know.

Can't help ignorant people. If you tell them upon joining that you are on a DPS build it should be enough.If I want to find out what the other chrono is playing I check if I see an SoI on his buff bar.

But I know your pain, it happens regularly that people act stupid and even join lfgs that are looking for 1 chrono as dps instead of chrono...

Thanks for all the current answers posted so far :smile:

I’m aware that a low effort ‘im dps’ will solve the majority of the issue, but is having to tell every group necessary? This doesn’t seem to affect other similar scenarios like heal tempest (who joins in and doesn’t move from water very often) and support renegade (Ventari tablet says hi). I can pick out other DPS chronos too using aforementioned tactics. If I could somehow display my role without making any effort at all, I would take it... not for myself, but for other players so they know they shouldn’t be playing as if they had perma quickness and alacrity (and they shouldn’t be expecting it).

I often try to be the fourth/last person to join (so everyone gets to know my role at the same time instead of repeating it over and over again), but I remember joining a lone soulbeast once and then tricking three other DPSers into thinking we were some raid comp in LFG :tongue: Maybe this is an issue in that DPS chrono isn’t known so well? From my experience, I found that there are three groups of people: 1) never heard of it, all chronos are support, 2) only just heard of it, don’t know how effective it is, 3) yeah, know it, and 4) :hushed: don’t care, let’s get this frac done.

On a more separate topic, it doesn’t help that I play this class regularly so even though it’s already a thing, I am asked questions from time to time, usually ‘What build are you running?’ and ‘Does chrono do good dps?’ I kind of hate giving vague answers like ‘it’s mostly on meta’ and ‘good but definitely not the best’ (especially when you’re blowing the more average pug dps out the water... and they happen to have a meter). Could anyone provide good answers to these general questions so I can copy paste knowing that it is a confirmed response from the Mesmer community?

@Noodle Ant.1605 said:This doesn’t seem to affect other similar scenarios like heal tempest (who joins in and doesn’t move from water very often)

Trust me, i still get people asking me: are you dps?

Me: support

Teammate: oh I was thinking that's a lot of water and earth overload for a tempest.

Like, really my dude? You're the one I'm healing the most often.

@Noodle Ant.1605 said:My question is, what is the best way to indicate that you play a dps chrono?Play mirage instead.

What, it is the best way to indicate you're not a support chrono.

@aceofbass.2163 said:Trust me, i still get people asking me: are you dps?

Me: support

Teammate: oh I was thinking that's a lot of water and earth overload for a tempest.

Like, really my dude? You're the one I'm healing the most often.Then we both know how each other feels. I blow up trash mobs at DPS DH speeds (maybe slower :smirk:) and still get confused with support.@Dawdler.8521 said:Play mirage instead.

What, it is the best way to indicate you're not a support chrono.There was a period where I joined as a Mirage, then switched to DPS Chrono mid-instance but that became to fiddly and people still somehow thought I was switching to support. What brought me to play DPS Chrono was having an army of 8 iZerkers and 4 Disenchanters out at once, but sadly that build isn't quite meta in the first place. It did turn some heads though... WAIT... I'M ON TO SOMETHING! :tongue:

just get in say "hi I'm dps. fuck you."

Unless lfg asks for chrono, in which case they expect a support, most groups don't really care what the others are doing as long as you are not dying.

Joining as Mirage like you said is one thing. If you do a full T4 run, you only need to do that in the beginning, while you are in the lobby, so that the leader can search for a chrono support if they want. After the run starts, I don't think anybody cares anymore.

Arc build templates make things much smoother.

I hate to pull up this thread once more, but I've finally been kicked for playing (more correctly, stating that I played) a DPS Chrono amidst a regularly advertised 'T4s' group. Maybe it was mostly on my part. For a brief recount: upon entering - '2 chronos?' issue (hey... I have no inspiration siggy!), followed with me saying, 'I'm not a chrono' (:-1: point for me, my horrible sarcasm) before someone asking whether I was dps (which I answered to, too indirectly maybe? 'What else could I be?' another :-1: for me) shortly followed with a kick (possible accumulation of :-1:). They didn't even get to see the build's potential in combat or at least, at the level that I played it assuming that they already had - for a player who didn't perform as well. Heck, they didn't even ask me whether I had a different spec.

I'm tired of this. I can't answer these questions without losing my mind. If I have to tell every. single. party. that I join, there's gonna be no end to it...

This shouldn't be an issue that happens for any player. We shouldn't have the '2 chronos?' issue. Similarly, we shouldn't have a 'fake chrono' (dps chrono), 'fake temp' (heal temp), 'fake dps renegade' (support renegade), etc. There NEEDS to be a more obvious indicator for these specialised roles/roles which people choose to play that are still more than viable. I can't say for certain what the end resolution should be - whether the community gets better at accepting that these players and builds exist, that some tool is developed for these players or maybe something else. If you think I'm referring to players who play bizarre-out-of the-blue builds, read again or do some research, I'm referring to builds which are slightly off meta and are 100% as viable in capable hands (and minds and teamwork, if that all still exists).

Otherwise I'm stuck playing my condi weaver that I know no-one will check (it's a weaver, who cares) - it evidently works a lot better for me in pug environments than the meta power weaver but unfortunately, I don't play it as well as my chrono, it has way less utility than my chrono, so it's more to everyone's detriment than my own.

Edit: what are you meant to refer to the support chrono as? Support chrono? supChrono? sChrono? Chrono? o_O