No Offchrono in Strike PUGs - other ideas?

[Lurana.7506]

Hi, I run a squad through most of the strikes a few times a week. And it's horrible to find offchronos via lfg. So what is your idea to bring boons to the squad if not through offchronos? I also tried the healbrand/alacren combo. But finding an alacren is somewhat difficult, too. And I prefere Druid and Barrier Scourge as healers.

[Lexi.1398]

If you're pugging strikes you'll always be missing something generally because not that many people who do strikes care about compositions.

Anyway, double chrono is bad both statistically and it can get really rough boon uptimes if the chrono is doing alacrity since they need to either have very high boon duration (a lot more than SC uses) or be highly skilled- good luck finding someone who has an appopriate boon duration for their skill level & trait/utility set up.

You can have two healers while also having fb/ren/chrono all be dps variants, it doesn't really matter if it's not optimal and I doubt you'll be worse off comapred to double chrono because a properly built quickbrand is basically a dps slot (fun but sad fact, quickbrand with allies benches higher than reaper on sustained damage) with a very easy rotation who has an easier time upkeeping quickness than chrono too.

If it was me, i'd have staff tempest/scourge + druid/x warhorn tempest + 2 condition quickbrands as the core and alacrity is nice but very missable in strikes, but then i guess it depends on whether you're a small group of people looking for more, a large-ish group looking for fills (cover all the important roles yourselves if this is the case IMO), or one person looking to lead 9 pugs. The more pugs you are relying on, the less likely it is for you to find a good set up, and there isn't really such a thing as a compact way to deal with boons, if you want two healers the most compact it gets is 4 people who aren't doing pure dps.

Lets think - high boon duration 10 man quickness StM chrono (RIP if any of your pugs aren't good at stacking), i think the same is possible for might from heal scourge with the right set up but even more likely to not work than 10 man stm is (i suppose druid would be safer 10 man might but then you wouldn't have transfusion), heal renegade, i think that's about as compact as it gets and everything except alacrity is gonna have VERY sketchy uptimes set up like that.

The most missable boon, IMO, is alacrity, and while yeah it hurts to have no alacrity if you can't find a ren it'd be much worse to have alacrity and be missing quickness or might, and the low damage of the average chrono makes me tend towards, it'd probably be better to run a firebrigade+chrono hybrid with scourge/druid but missing the brigade (renegade) part of it, than using double chronos struggle to give boons out to people.

[Eramonster.2718]

@Lurana.7506 said:Hi, I run a squad through most of the strikes a few times a week. And it's horrible to find offchronos via lfg. So what is your idea to bring boons to the squad if not through offchronos? I also tried the healbrand/alacren combo. But finding an alacren is somewhat difficult, too. And I prefere Druid and Barrier Scourge as healers.Support chrono is even harder to come by compared to alacren imo. Healbrand can cover most of the boons, there will be seams as no class will comes close to chrono pre nerf days. Matter of preference for Druid & Scourge, but will need planning for boons (Eg. Quickbrand for quickness and aegis etc). To avoid over stacking support leaving no room for DPS. The idea is to get all/close to all Boons within limit of a squad (10 players). META class are more easy to come by or at least felt so.

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

If you get renegade, then you can give quickness to 10 players as full diviner chrono with scepter

[Infusion.7149]

Why punish yourself with more complex timing , asking people to stack in wells for 3 ticks if you don't run Seize the Moment, and lower damage when you can run a standard firebrand + renegade combination? It's literally 2x the damage on average vs a full boon chrono (~11K-12K) and even a zerk inspiration dueling chrono with double sword /sword focus (time warp elite 10 chrono comp) was benched at ~21K (with slow for danger time) which is lower than both power quickness firebrand and diviner renegade which are around 22-24K. In strikes you can run the condi quickness firebrand which is even higher benched damage around 28-30K ; it also generates fury.

Also because firebrand has 2s block on aegis and the cooldown is much lower on mantra of solace, the chrono signets (Signet of the Ether , Signet of Inspiration) with 1s traited distortion are much less forgiving with respect to timing of shared aegis.

Unless "Feel my Wrath" is self quickness only, it's beneficial to stack guardians even if they aren't firebrands.

Even in their heyday, chronos were less played than other classes which is why you had so may LFG posts with "need chrono". Guardians are the most played class per gw2efficiency so I would try to plan your squad around that.

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

@"Infusion.7149" said:Why punish yourself with more complex timing , asking people to stack in wells for 3 ticks if you don't run Seize the Moment, and lower damage when you can run a standard firebrand + renegade combination? It's literally 2x the damage on average vs a full boon chrono (~11K-12K) and even a zerk inspiration dueling chrono with double sword /sword focus (time warp elite 10 chrono comp) was benched at ~21K (with slow for danger time) which is lower than both power quickness firebrand and diviner renegade which are around 22-24K. In strikes you can run the condi quickness firebrand which is even higher benched damage around 28-30K ; it also generates fury.

Also because firebrand has 2s block on aegis and the cooldown is much lower on mantra of solace, the chrono signets (Signet of the Ether , Signet of Inspiration) with 1s traited distortion are much less forgiving with respect to timing of shared aegis.

Unless "Feel my Wrath" is self quickness only, it's beneficial to stack guardians even if they aren't firebrands.

Even in their heyday, chronos were less played than other classes which is why you had so may LFG posts with "need chrono". Guardians are the most played class per gw2efficiency so I would try to plan your squad around that.

You forgot that firebrand needs chrono to get that damage. Without him he has to take more BD.

That beeing said, I thonk that best comp for strikes are 6 dps firebrands, druid, warrior and 2 condi renegades. You can swap renegades for 1 alacrity/heal renegade and something else (3rd healer? ) if you need it

[RaidsAreEasyAF.8652]

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:You forgot that firebrand needs chrono to get that damage. Without him he has to take more BD.

Taking a different utility and a Conc Sigil instead of earth isnt really breaking it. You can get very close to that damage. You really arent missing out on much damage by taking more BD.

[lare.5129]

chrno or alac ? ofc qfb and alac. On chrno it depend on weil 3th tick, squad change place - boons missed .. profit - 0

[Painbow.6059]

I don't find it difficult to find chronos or rens via lfg. Offchrono works fine, although firebrigade is superior because it has higher damage and more utility via legends and tome of courage. Jalis for Kodans, Ventari for Boneskinner, Valiant Bulwark for the projectiles on Fraenir and Kodans, Unbroken Lines for WoJ after killing your doppelganger at 25%, or the knockback on Shiverpeaks Pass if your squad DPS isn't good. That's not to say Chrono can't mimic similar utility options, but not as well, and generally at a greater cost. There is also the option of one of them playing heal. Usually on Boneskinner I take a Druid, Heal Fbr/Ren and Healscourge, although Druid and (usually) Healscourge are sufficient if the players are decent.

[mindcircus.1506]

@Lurana.7506 said:Hi, I run a squad through most of the strikes a few times a week. And it's horrible to find offchronos via lfg. So what is your idea to bring boons to the squad if not through offchronos? I also tried the healbrand/alacren combo. But finding an alacren is somewhat difficult, too. And I prefere Druid and Barrier Scourge as healers.

Offchrono?How are you finding the first?The number of competent people playing support in PuG strikes is shockingly small. I have done a lot of strikes and I think I've seen maybe two AlacRens that can manage to spam f4 effectively,Chrono? Forget it.

If you want boons forget the LFG or bring them yourself.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

Let's be honest, this only matters for Whisper and Boneskinner, and good luck keeping players stacked on Whisper.

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:You forgot that firebrand needs chrono to get that damage. Without him he has to take more BD.

Taking a different utility and a Conc Sigil instead of earth isnt really breaking it. You can get very close to that damage. You really arent missing out on much damage by taking more BD.

You are missibg some damage for sure. Also droping chrono hurts other boons too. Not like it hurts firebrand but still.I am not saying that quickbrands are not a goid idea. I think firebrand is amazing for strikes, so amazing that it is better to just stack them as dps in my opinion

[Lurana.7506]

Thanks for your answers everyone. I think I have a strategy to get the boons done for my next strike run :)

[Firebeard.1746]

@Lexi.1398 said:If you're pugging strikes you'll always be missing something generally because not that many people who do strikes care about compositions.

Anyway, double chrono is bad both statistically and it can get really rough boon uptimes if the chrono is doing alacrity since they need to either have very high boon duration (a lot more than SC uses) or be highly skilled- good luck finding someone who has an appopriate boon duration for their skill level & trait/utility set up.

I feel like I need to correct something: SOI and shield buffs are raid-wide, so double chrono comp needs less BD than single chrono. I run high BD on my chrono because I don't always trust the other chrono (and I'm not sure I'm quite as tight on my rotation as I should be) but just letting you know the SC optimizations are around double chrono. I've also seen chrono + alac ren and qb as a boon setup. Because SOI doesn't scale off of BD and benefits everyone, it reduces the amount of BD required on those setups (though condi QB doesn't require any I believe).

[Lexi.1398]

@"Firebeard.1746" said:I feel like I need to correct something: SOI and shield buffs are raid-wide, so double chrono comp needs less BD than single chrono. I run high BD on my chrono because I don't always trust the other chrono (and I'm not sure I'm quite as tight on my rotation as I should be) but just letting you know the SC optimizations are around double chrono. I've also seen chrono + alac ren and qb as a boon setup. Because SOI doesn't scale off of BD and benefits everyone, it reduces the amount of BD required on those setups (though condi QB doesn't require any I believe).

Yes, and it still has around 50% boon duration for double well chrono with danger time too, for a beginner chrono I would expect them to be able to hold up both boons (double well) at 70% BD with imrpoved alacrity and start dropping if that setup takes danger time, though I suppose i have that metric from raids and most strikes are less player focus and rotation interruptive. For quickness only StM chrono the proper amount is 0%, but beginner chronos should also take more even on that build. Not every chrono is a beginner chrono ofc, but i constantly see chrono pugs running a bad set up for their level of familiarity. There's also StM builds, which are safer for lower BD (even when also covering alacrity, even for beginner chronos)- but that's another thing a chrono pug would need knowledge on first. Chrono complicated xD

Even if you are running an appropratse setup for your skill, , traits, and utils the other chrono may not be, and if they are "low" boon duration alacrity can start dropping even with the extra SoI and tides.

[LadyKitty.6120]

@Lexi.1398 said:If you're pugging strikes you'll always be missing something generally because not that many people who do strikes care about compositions.

Anyway, double chrono is bad both statistically and it can get really rough boon uptimes if the chrono is doing alacrity since they need to either have very high boon duration (a lot more than SC uses) or be highly skilled- good luck finding someone who has an appopriate boon duration for their skill level & trait/utility set up.

You can have two healers while also having fb/ren/chrono all be dps variants, it doesn't really matter if it's not optimal and I doubt you'll be worse off comapred to double chrono because a properly built quickbrand is basically a dps slot (fun but sad fact, quickbrand with allies benches higher than reaper on sustained damage) with a very easy rotation who has an easier time upkeeping quickness than chrono too.

If it was me, i'd have staff tempest/scourge + druid/x warhorn tempest + 2 condition quickbrands as the core and alacrity is nice but very missable in strikes, but then i guess it depends on whether you're a small group of people looking for more, a large-ish group looking for fills (cover all the important roles yourselves if this is the case IMO), or one person looking to lead 9 pugs. The more pugs you are relying on, the less likely it is for you to find a good set up, and there isn't really such a thing as a compact way to deal with boons, if you want two healers the most compact it gets is 4 people who aren't doing pure dps.

Lets think - high boon duration 10 man quickness StM chrono (RIP if any of your pugs aren't good at stacking), i think the same is possible for might from heal scourge with the right set up but even more likely to not work than 10 man stm is (i suppose druid would be safer 10 man might but then you wouldn't have transfusion), heal renegade, i think that's about as compact as it gets and everything except alacrity is gonna have VERY sketchy uptimes set up like that.

The most missable boon, IMO, is alacrity, and while yeah it hurts to have no alacrity if you can't find a ren it'd be much worse to have alacrity and be missing quickness or might, and the low damage of the average chrono makes me tend towards, it'd probably be better to run a firebrigade+chrono hybrid with scourge/druid but missing the brigade (renegade) part of it, than using double chronos struggle to give boons out to people.

StM chrono+heal/boonbot scourge+alacrigade does work, the boon distribution is just random but slight overcap covers for it. Kitty's even made a video to show and explain it. Finding anyone to accept a random variable, however, is easier said than done as people are afraid of uncertainty about boons (which is only an issue if people run out of stack). Only issue would be fury but using Pack runes as heal scourge and StM chrono covers a good bit about that.

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

@LadyKitty.6120 said:

@Lexi.1398 said:If you're pugging strikes you'll always be missing something generally because not that many people who do strikes care about compositions.

Anyway, double chrono is bad both statistically and it can get really rough boon uptimes if the chrono is doing alacrity since they need to either have very high boon duration (a lot more than SC uses) or be highly skilled- good luck finding someone who has an appopriate boon duration for their skill level & trait/utility set up.

You can have two healers while also having fb/ren/chrono all be dps variants, it doesn't really matter if it's not optimal and I doubt you'll be worse off comapred to double chrono because a properly built quickbrand is basically a dps slot (fun but sad fact, quickbrand with allies benches higher than reaper on sustained damage) with a very easy rotation who has an easier time upkeeping quickness than chrono too.

If it was me, i'd have staff tempest/scourge + druid/x warhorn tempest + 2 condition quickbrands as the core and alacrity is nice but very missable in strikes, but then i guess it depends on whether you're a small group of people looking for more, a large-ish group looking for fills (cover all the important roles yourselves if this is the case IMO), or one person looking to lead 9 pugs. The more pugs you are relying on, the less likely it is for you to find a good set up, and there isn't really such a thing as a compact way to deal with boons, if you want two healers the most compact it gets is 4 people who aren't doing pure dps.

Lets think - high boon duration 10 man quickness StM chrono (RIP if any of your pugs aren't good at stacking), i think the same is possible for might from heal scourge with the right set up but even more likely to not work than 10 man stm is (i suppose druid would be safer 10 man might but then you wouldn't have transfusion), heal renegade, i think that's about as compact as it gets and everything except alacrity is gonna have VERY sketchy uptimes set up like that.

The most missable boon, IMO, is alacrity, and while yeah it hurts to have no alacrity if you can't find a ren it'd be much worse to have alacrity and be missing quickness or might, and the low damage of the average chrono makes me tend towards, it'd probably be better to run a firebrigade+chrono hybrid with scourge/druid but missing the brigade (renegade) part of it, than using double chronos struggle to give boons out to people.

StM chrono+heal/boonbot scourge+alacrigade does work, the boon distribution is just random but slight overcap covers for it. Kitty's even made a video to show and explain it. Finding anyone to accept a random variable, however, is easier said than done as people are afraid of uncertainty about boons (which is only an issue if people run out of stack). Only issue would be fury but using Pack runes as heal scourge and StM chrono covers a good bit about that.

Boon distribution is not random. You can wiggle so everyone gets it. Boons go to 4 closest targets and you.

[LadyKitty.6120]

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@LadyKitty.6120 said:

@Lexi.1398 said:If you're pugging strikes you'll always be missing something generally because not that many people who do strikes care about compositions.

Anyway, double chrono is bad both statistically and it can get really rough boon uptimes if the chrono is doing alacrity since they need to either have very high boon duration (a lot more than SC uses) or be highly skilled- good luck finding someone who has an appopriate boon duration for their skill level & trait/utility set up.

You can have two healers while also having fb/ren/chrono all be dps variants, it doesn't really matter if it's not optimal and I doubt you'll be worse off comapred to double chrono because a properly built quickbrand is basically a dps slot (fun but sad fact, quickbrand with allies benches higher than reaper on sustained damage) with a very easy rotation who has an easier time upkeeping quickness than chrono too.

If it was me, i'd have staff tempest/scourge + druid/x warhorn tempest + 2 condition quickbrands as the core and alacrity is nice but very missable in strikes, but then i guess it depends on whether you're a small group of people looking for more, a large-ish group looking for fills (cover all the important roles yourselves if this is the case IMO), or one person looking to lead 9 pugs. The more pugs you are relying on, the less likely it is for you to find a good set up, and there isn't really such a thing as a compact way to deal with boons, if you want two healers the most compact it gets is 4 people who aren't doing pure dps.

Lets think - high boon duration 10 man quickness StM chrono (RIP if any of your pugs aren't good at stacking), i think the same is possible for might from heal scourge with the right set up but even more likely to not work than 10 man stm is (i suppose druid would be safer 10 man might but then you wouldn't have transfusion), heal renegade, i think that's about as compact as it gets and everything except alacrity is gonna have VERY sketchy uptimes set up like that.

The most missable boon, IMO, is alacrity, and while yeah it hurts to have no alacrity if you can't find a ren it'd be much worse to have alacrity and be missing quickness or might, and the low damage of the average chrono makes me tend towards, it'd probably be better to run a firebrigade+chrono hybrid with scourge/druid but missing the brigade (renegade) part of it, than using double chronos struggle to give boons out to people.

StM chrono+heal/boonbot scourge+alacrigade does work, the boon distribution is just random but slight overcap covers for it. Kitty's even made a video to show and explain it. Finding anyone to accept a random variable, however, is easier said than done as people are afraid of uncertainty about boons (which is only an issue if people run out of stack). Only issue would be fury but using Pack runes as heal scourge and StM chrono covers a good bit about that.

Boon distribution is not random. You can wiggle so everyone gets it. Boons go to 4 closest targets and you.

Yush, in theory, it'd be possible to spread the quickness evenly IF you can always position yourself optimally to reach peoples who didn't get quickness on previous shatter. But since stacking is the name of the game and other peoples also wiggle and move more or less, you can't practically hit them all optimally and thus you need to output excessively enough to cover for that fact. True, it's not truly random if nitpicking but in practise it makes little difference.