Ellon.4316

That is still boon corruption but with extra steps. Simply put if the boss has “might” (deal extra damage) boon corruption will turn that into “weakness” (deal less damage). If you want something that negatively affects yourself but can be turned into doing extra damage then that also exists with harbinger “blight” mechanic.

Correct 🙂 Multiple mentions that this theory doesn’t make sense concerning the forces coming from the deep and i get that point. Cant explain that one. On the other hand Soo-Won only references the void when talking about her role in all of this. She could have at least said something about some horror in the unending ocean but didn’t. That is why i don’t think Soo-Won knew about this let alone it being one of her own dragon minions. For the story this theory still allows Anet to do whatever they want, Zaishen are not really involved in the story. Them not being involved is the reason the story could go this way 😜. Of course the DSM could be something else entirely.

In the olden days there was a wizard lord of great power called Lord Odran who opened up some portals to the mist and used these as a free waypoint service. One of these portals can be found in the tomb of primeval kings the other is in the battle isles. Now Odran is long gone but those portals remain and work both ways. The Zaishen order guarded these portals and protects Tyria from “horrors from the deep” “forces of darkness” (according to the wiki) since forever. Now enter Zhaitan with some massive tsunami causing Soo-Won to leave the unending ocean to protect Kaineng. But guess which place was destroyed/evacuated during that same event, it’s one with a portal that had to be guarded. With that portal unguarded demons popped out which led to the quaggan and largos fleeing the place. I could be wrong but I don’t think Soo-Won had anything to do with the horrors from the deep, her leaving just coincides with the Zaishen order leaving these isles. Side note: For living world/expansion the battle isles gives a link to the mists/“horrors from the deep”. The zaishen order which had their home base on these isles is originally a Canthan guild. It is a temple to Balthazar so there is even a tie in to the human gods. There are quite a few links to this single location that i would be surprised if we don’t go there. Plus as a bonus these isles are somewhat in the middle of the world map so it’s easily accessible from Cantha or Kryta. Side note 2: This theory also allows Anet to drop dragon magic completely for the next part of the story.

Just in case someone get’s here with googling how to run GW2 on Linux and want to know what their options are. Non-steam users could also try bottles for running GW2 (https://usebottles.com/ link because googling “wine bottles” wont find this software). Changing the runner to “wine-ge” and dropping the gw2.exe was enough for me to get things running stable.

I thought wine d3d can translate directx11 to OpenGL (don’t know how well it will run or if it is still updated). So a 2010 gpu should still be enough to run on Linux. For the fps dxvk (vulkan) is still preferred.

Nitpicking here, well of precognition only gives 1 sec of stability to yourself on cast. It doesn’t pulse it 😉. For solo chrono you could also take a look at the illusions trait line instead of domination. There are quite some traits here that trigger on phantasm summon and chrono has a chronophantasma to trigger all these traits twice. So going 2-2-1 in illusions means you self sustain quickness and might plus any other boon your phantasm might spawn with (aegis if you take inspiration, fury for dueling trait line). For the second weapon set i would take staff, not only does chaos storm pulse some nice boons (including aegis) you also get pWarlock which isn’t a strong skill but it summons two phantasms twice (thanks to chronophantasma) giving all those juicy boons. You will lose some group support but gain quite a bit of DPS.

I think people are underestimating the healing output you can get from the inspiration traitline. I like to run a heal-chrono build during meta’s and HPS wise i mostly hit between 4-6k on average (5 man so about 1k single target). But for meta’s or bosses with a lot of damage I’ve seen it average out at 8-9k HPS. Most of this healing comes from illusionary inspiration and mantra heal. For burst healing you can take well of eternity which heals for 9k, add the 50% healing output bonus from gear and food and it will heal your entire subgroup to 100%. Adding a specialization with healing in mind would result in inspiration being nerfed to the ground. I’d rather Anet focusses on the defensive boon output of chrono (things like protection/regen/stability) and making the healing from wells be more reliable because that would be enough to get a really strong heal build for mesmer.

The short answer is that with alac-mirage or quickness-chrono you can use utility skills for utility. With alac-chrono you have to take wells to get the 100% alac uptime losing all or most of your utility slots. The well heal trait besides being delayed also heals less compared to the mantra heal trait (wells heal more at once but mantra’s can be spammed more often resulting in more hps). This problem is actually pretty fixable by Anet, just have the well heal trait pulse instead of it being delayed. Have it give some barrier at the end as a bonus and suddenly heal chrono (either alac or quick) is in a much better state. The only reason I take it now on my heal-quick-chrono build is to get well of eternity over the 9000 total heal.

I’ve seen this said before but virtuoso is not that great for raw healing. Yes you summon blades faster then any other spec but when you are at 5 blades you stop triggering illusionary inspiration. So the healing of virtuoso is hard-capped at how fast you can shatter, plus you sacrifice healing power for precision gear to get close to the crit-cap that is needed. You cant provide alac/quickness so in short it only sounds good in theory. Another thing I noticed running heal-chrono during meta-trains for fun is that phantasms (especially staff/greatsword) are the best options for healing as a mesmer. Both these skills summon two phantasms and thus 2 clones triggering illusionary inspiration 4 times in total. These skills also have a fairly low cooldown (8 sec with chrono-alac). It is only outperformed by mantra’s if you equip 4 of them. But to stay on topic, quickness chrono is fine. It might not have the highest theoretical DPS but most player can’t reach that benchmark anyway so as long as you provide quickness nobody will care about the DPS (you might get called out if your DPS is sub 3k). For alac I would go with mirage, besides doing decent damage especially in some fights it is also easily overcaps alac while being super-durable with ritualist gear (I’m talking solo fractals durable so if someone says it is a bad option just ditch that person and solo it). Above is all from a PvE stand-point, I’m not knowledgeable enough with PvP, WvW to give good recommendations for that content.

As a defender of this meta staying as is i want to get some things cleared up. "You need highly optimized raid builds and gear". No you don't , https://dps.report/M4Je-20221219-192730_golem <-- 13.3K on harrier/cleric heal gear (monk runes and all). I believe the damage needed for Soo Won was set at 7K so almost double what is needed. Plus this is without the 25% damage buff you get from pre-events and the 150 power buff from protocols. If you want an explanation of the rotation: sword phantasm -> press buttons -> sword phantasm -> swap -> gs phantasm -> ether -> gs phantasm -> press buttons -> gs phantasm -> swap. More then enough time in the pre-events to explain this. "It's unfair that all those lore/collections/achievements are locked behind the meta". So are the lore/collections/achievements locked behind fractals/dungeons/strikes/raids/etc.. That content is a lot more difficult yet i see no-one complaining about missing the white mantle lore. Also people engaged enough to go for collections dependent on the DE meta are engaged enough to open the LFG. "Casuals should be teached in-game what is expected instead of suddenly hitting this roadblock". Everything is explained, jumping over shockwaves is done in Seiting and Kaineng meta's. Hiding behind crystals/junk or insta-kill mechanics is done in echovald, killing bosses at the same time or moving out of orange circles is done in so many meta events you should know it by now. The only new mechanic in the DE meta is the wisps phase, the rest of the meta is just boons and DPS check. Boons are handled by the commander and other players so you don't even have to worry about that. "Just remove the timer so everyone can succeed" Fair point, this also means removing the biggest most meaningful reward from the meta, that is beating Soo Won. It also means removing the only step-up in the game towards instanced content. Further widening the skill gap in the player base and making it impossible for Anet to do anything even remotely challenging in open world. Which eventually leads to the skilled player base leaving because there is nothing for them to do and you might not like it but the skilled and engaged playerbase is kind off important. It is the playerbase that leads meta-events, makes new builds, write articles and guides and in general push the game further then what was thought possible. Losing that playerbase means losing a lot of community knowledge. "Casuals don't want to git gud". You don't need to git gud, just willing to improve and there is enough downtime during the pre-events for me or any of the other more skilled players to help you pick the traits/skills you need to successfully complete this meta. I do not want to see this meta fail, I want to help people succeed! That is the reward i play for and that reward is far better then 12 unidentified greens. And as a note, I'm far from a good player. I barely hit 75% of the snowcrows benchmarks and yes i struggle in instanced content. So if i can be confident enough in leading a DE meta then with just a tiny spark of motivation and some knowledge anyone can do it.

This topic again... Once i logged in and was randomly in dragons end, commander on the map and escort event already started with around 40-ish people in the squad. Zero subgroups or organization, what I did was ask for lieutenant, organized subgroups just based on icons and what classes can do and shouted splits during the fight. Finished with about minute left and less then 40 people (some left because we were going to "fail"). The fight was scrappy at best but it was one of the best meta runs I've done. That is it, the meta is puggable you just need someone to take the lead, motivate everyone to get at least some DPS numbers and explain a mechanic or two. Remember that the ask for this meta of players is that they do about 25% DPS of what their class is capable of, reading chat, and press "F" to get protocols and food buffs. For the big finally of a 10 year story arc that seems pretty reasonable.

What The delayed reactions trait specifies it triggers on daze/stun/... and taunt. Mesmer has one skill that taunts, phantasmal defender. But this phantasm doesn't trigger the delayed reaction trait and thus doesn't apply slow. Because slow interacts with other traits this means losing out on 15% crit-chance which is quite a lot. Expected When i apply taunt (via a phantasm) delayed reactions triggers and also applies the slow effect. Actual No slow gets applied, only the taunt effect, this is for both Phantasmal defender and Lesser phantasmal defender from the mental defense trait in inspiration Additional notes Phantasmal mage dazes and correctly applies the slow effect. So this isn't a player only trait that doesn't apply to summons. It is also not a condition only problem because applying fear does trigger delayed reactions.

Agree with the overall sentiment here that mesmer is not fine. Sure virtuoso hits nice DPS, we have alac and quickness options etc.. The possibility is there but the focus from anet in the latest balance patches feels like some power co-efficients gets changed and that's it. Having a weapon "hit harder" isn't a fix for the gaps in the mesmer spec and i rather have them fix those then increase sword DPS by a tiny bit. Some examples: An entire traitline dependent on the regen boon WITHOUT a single utility or weapon skill that consistently gives this boon. This won't show up in DPS benchmarks. Only one blast finisher (second to last place spec has 4) on a 3 second cooldown. Those ethereal fields aren't going to combo with themselves. Having a entire heart in Seitung Provence dedicated to teaching combo's and not being able to actually use some combo's feels bad. Scepter that barely hits 50% of what staff hits. How am i going to explain a beginner that a condi weapon with condi gear and condi traits is the wrong choice? Crit chance trait on chrono being dependent on slow but zero runes/sigils that help, compare that to rune of the firebrand that gives exactly whats needed. Even with equipment changes this would still be the wrong choice because "improved alacrity" is just plain better. I want options in my build, not wrong choices. These are just some points i encountered during theory crafting, i bet others have their own list of things that need fixing. Part of the reason why i think this forum is more pessimistic then the others is that changes that affect the few good choices have immediate impact on a build and more often then not you cant work-around it by swapping some traits. This is coming from a filthy pve open-world casual (ok, also play fractals/raids/strikes so not that casual)

You are absolutely right that my numbers are nothing more then the clone ambush attack damage. I hope no-one takes my post as a rotation guideline because that's not what it is. The point I was trying to make (rotations aside) is that if you want the alac there is not a big DPS difference with this patch in running axe mainhand with two staff clones or staff with 2 axe clones. But to address your points Correct, camping a single weapon is not a good idea. Especially as you stated clones will die. For players learning the build or wanting to run something LI and still provide some support it might be a good thing to stay in staff longer then the normal rotation but at some point you have to switch weapons, even if just for the endurance bonus when swapping weapons. Again totally agree that for DPS you want to do more then ambush. What will be interesting too see is if the third pDuellist gets delayed. So pDuellist -> rest of axe -> pDuellist -> ether -> pDuellist -> swap. if you swap before the second pDuellist becomes a clone you end up with two staff clones. Ambush for 3s alac. Same also works the other way around with pWarlock and weapon swap to immediately get two axe clones for the bonus confusion on axe 3. "Clones die all the time", correct. But with this patch that only means an alacrity loss, not a DPS loss. It's not that with this patch your clones die faster then before. But for alac you now need to press pWarlock/phase retreat so you have more clones to lose 😉. Multiple adds is totally a valid point, this has been a weak point of mesmer since the first beta weekend and within that context this is a pretty big nerf. Help me understand the big DPS loss, because i really cant see it. For staxe nothing changes DPS wise but you will lose some alac. If you want to fill the alac gap you can as described summon two pDuelist at the end of axe to get staff clones (staff clones do a bit less damage, that's the DPS loss I'm talking about) or press pWarlock/phase retreat during staff phase. For staff/staff i think i can manage a 1.5 clone average to upkeep alacrity.

I still don't think this is the nerf people make it out to be (from a pve perspective, not pvp). But gut-feelings aside i just went to the golem to test things out. Build dueling 312 chaos 131 mirage 131 All boons, no food or utility. Mostly ritualist gear, some viper with nightmare runes. Only auto and ambush attacks. All averages are based on 3 runs with the exception of axe, multiple runs the ambush attack didn't trigger... Bugged runs are ignored in the averages Clone DPS (only clone attack and clone ambushes, no auto attack) 3 axe clones hit on average for 8499 3 staff clones average: 6005 3 scepter clones average: 3602 Weapon auto attack DPS (no clones, with ambush attacks) axe average: 8736 staff average: 6700 The alacrity part of "staxe" (clones, auto attack and ambush attacks) Staff with 3 axe clones average: 14.7k, alacrity is 1s instead of 2.5 so 60% decrease Staff with 1 staff clone and 2 axe clones: 13.8k, 2s alacrity (20% decrease) Axe with 3 staff clones average: 14.3k, 3s alacrity (20% increase) Axe with 2 staff and 1 axe clone average: 15.4k, 2s alacrity (20% decrease) Scepter with 3 scepter clones average: 9.2k. No alacrity, only sadness. Yes, dps wise it will be interesting what rotations people will come up with, in the end i think there will be a small dps loss if you still want to hit 50% alac uptime. Also pre-applying boons will not be possible anymore because you heavily rely on clones. On the other hand it is now beneficial to use both axe and staff clones and actually switch to axe instead of just camping staff for the alacrity. It also means alacrity can be applied by running staff with for example scepter and still provide 100% alac uptime as long as you keep your staff clones alive. If you want anet to do something i rather have them fix the axe bugs and buff scepter because those are way bigger dps losses then this change. And of course add the second dodge in pvp for all the pvp'ers out there.

On a more positive note, with the mirage changes you are not "tied" to staff anymore to provide alac. All you need is 3 staff clones, switch to another weapon and you will still provide alac/might. Which means staff/staff for full alac is not necessary but staxe can also provide 100% alac uptime, 3 clones is 3 seconds alac vs the current 2.5 seconds from staff ambush. Just make sure to keep your staff clones alive. So in a certain sense staxe can now chose between 100% alac, more dps or a bit of both. The last one being the easiest because you don't have to worry about overwriting specific weapon clones (assuming just switching weapons and summoning an equal amount of clones with each weapon).

Just make it simpler, there is no shame in swapping the meta viper gear for ritualist or taking a boon duration sigil. You don't even need to follow the "meta" rotation to provide alac. Shattering might provide a bit more DPS but that's just it, a bit more DPS. So my recommendation would be to not shatter (until you get a bit more comfortable with the build), just focus on dodging and dropping your heal `false oasis` and `crystal sands` utility skills for more dodges. This should overcap alacrity by only pressing a few buttons once in a while 🙂 Regarding the specter wells, remember chrono wells can also give alac so that's also an option to look at.

I find this interesting, i found greatsword to be the better weapon to use when it comes to clone generation or more importantly, triggering the illusionary inspiration trait. The thing with that trait is it triggers every illusion, so phantasms trigger it on the phantasm summon and when they become a clone. Meaning greatsword with alacrity trait in chrono will trigger this trait 4 times in 8 seconds (so on average 2s between triggers), or when meming with chronophantasma 6 times every 8 seconds. That is ignoring greatsword 2 which is a low cooldown clone summon and signet of ether which allows you to trigger pberserker twice. Not disregarding scepter for healing, it's just that greatsword probably heals way more then you realize, even outheals scepter with the correct traits. I'm also curious how staff will look after the next patch, it also summons 2 phantasms and the cooldown will be 10 seconds with traited alacrity. Plus you don't need to take domination traitline for it.

Maybe I'm stupid but i don't see that trait? There is metaphysical rejuvenation that's 10 seconds regen if you get hit while below 75% health (15 second internal cooldown), chaotic transference that gives 5 seconds with staff on 15 seconds internal cooldown and bountiful disillusionment with shatter 4 (30, 60, or 105 second cooldown). So most regen comes from staff or from getting hit, i usually try to dodge attacks 😉 . Agree with the statement that it is not an issue in instanced content but i think it wouldn't be to bad if in open world you have a way to self-sustain regen to use the chaos traits. In instanced content you can then take a more utility/damage focused trait and in open world the build would still be able to benefit from the condi buffs by running a "less" optimal trait. This is something that is easy to forget but not everything happens in instanced content. So having traits to help with providing boons, like bountiful disillusionment for might is not necessarily needed for raiding but it has it's place in the game, and it could be a valid option outside of raiding. Or it could be changed to share boons again which would be even better.

This thread is the most confusing ever, sarcasm incoming: "Chaos virtuoso is bad because dueling virtuoso does more damage or is the meta" "Chaos mirage is bad because it is difficult even though it does more damage then dueling virtuoso" Dueling virtuoso is good even though it has a more complex rotation than chaos virtuoso (still not a complex rotation) So theoretical DPS doesn't matter but difficulty of play matters but only when comparing between chaos mirage and dueling virtuoso, not when comparing chaos virtuoso and dueling virtuoso??? 😕 When it comes to the traitlines for a condi build you shouldn't take chaos because anet decided at some point it should do condi damage (mesmer buffs are somehow bad!?). Instead you should take dueling and take the power traits when running condi virtuoso for optimal damage on your condi build (assuming snowcrows)??? 😕 Let's be real, chaos virt, dueling virt and chaos mirage are al valid options for condi DPS. Nothing wrong with running a simpler or more difficult build depending on what you're comfortable with. If you are uncomfortable with mechanics/rotations you probably do more DPS with chaos virt then dueling virt anyway just cause it's simpler. To get back to OP's original question about grandmaster traits. I don't think it is wise to add another trait for condi damage, condi virt is already doing good damage as it is. However i think another solution would be to have a grandmaster that helps with getting regeneration, a lot of condi traits in chaos are dependent on this but staff is one of the only viable option to self sustain regen. Would make the condi damage in chaos more reliable without having to depend on supports or take mirage elite spec. It even fits the "boon" part about chaos 😉 .

I lack the knowledge of CM's or T4 fractals to tell if it is viable in those scenario's. For EOD strikes (non-cm) you can run it but ham or qfb are more consistent. So especially for pugging i would recommend running an alac or quickness dps build and not healing, saves explaining that in order to be healed people need to wait in the purple circle 😜 . Biggest issue in my opinion might be burst healing, your strongest heal is well of eternity that heals for over 10k with al the outgoing healing buffs but it happens after 3 seconds. Same with all well healing, it just isn't reliable in moving combat. You then get left with illusionary inspiration (which actually outperforms 100% regeneration uptime) and mantra's which heal nicely but except for mantra of pain the cooldowns are quite long. So in my opinion the possibility is there it just needs some tweaking to get viable. Like for example have wells heal each pulse instead of only at the end to be more forgiving and lowering the cooldowns on some mantra's to be in line with other supports. Biggest rant might be firebrands mantra of lore vs mesmers mantra of resolve, which do the same but firebrand also has regen and an extra charge with half the cooldown 😞 . The feeling i have with heal support chrono is that there is always a trade-off when picking traits and skills, which is good design in a sense but it feels unfair compared to some support builds that can do al those things without the trade-off.

Some feedback or things i would change, assuming open world or pve content. Based on personal experience and not facts so take everything with a grain of salt. Switch mantra of pain for mantra of concentration or mantra of resolve Simply put this build looks like it is heavily focused on boons/healing/support. While mantra of pain will heal more because of the lower cooldown it also doesn't help that much because most of your healing will come from the wells and summoning clones. A bit of stability or condi-cleanse is way more valuable. Depends on the content of course if more condi-cleanse or stability is needed. For general open world use i would take stability mantra, more shockwaves in meta's then condi's. Damage wise it wouldn't make that much of a difference anyway, without precision/ferocity everything hits like a wet noodle 😜 . Switch staff for greatsword More a personal opinion, greatsword with the domination traitline for an additional berserker syncs quite well with illusionary inspiration. This combo heals quite decently. I ran a similar build for a while and +40% of outgoing healing was from this combo alone. Big drawback is that you lose the chaos traitline meaning no method of madness trait and chaos storm gives quite some defensive boons. You also lose the fury from staff but to get good uptime with that you need to keep your staff clones alive and not accidentally replace them with sword/shield clones. Simply put greatsword is a bit more forgiving. If you stay with staff/chaos (which is totally fine) i would suggest taking chaotic interuption as the master traitline. Bountifull disillusionment is nice but sadly selfish and with a build like this i don't think the goal is only self sustain 😉. The extra cooldowns from this trait really helps with shield that gives some nice boons but the longer cooldowns hold it back, plus you have quite some CC in your toolkit so triggering it won't be to difficult. Giver amulet I just noticed a toughness amulet, if this is so you can tank it might be worth looking into blurred inscriptions instead of illusionary inspiration for the inspiration master traitline. This gives some distortion so better survivability and groupwide aegis, then you can take signet of inspiration for even more boon goodness. You lose some healing but if your team stays in the wells and using mantra's you can make it work plus extra aegis means less damage overall so less healing needed. If you decide to go this route ignore my greatsword fanboy part and stay with staff. Nitpicky stuff If you stay with the chaos traitline you slightly overcap boon duration. An additional 16.6% comes from chaotic persistance in chaos as long as you can keep regen up. With food giving another 4.5% you could aim for 79% boon duration from armor/runes. So there is some room to switch to an armor piece that doesn't give concentration. But this is min-maxing like crazy. You could also replace sigil of force with something else, a build like this won't really do damage anyway. Sigil of renewal for example kinda matches the healing output of healing prism trait in inspiration. Again min-maxing so do whatever feels like the right decision. And as Mell said, a build like this could easily switch between quickness or alacrity depending on what is needed making it quite flexible. You wont outperform HAM or QFB but you can fill either role, that's also worth something.

They might not buff wells directly (or fix them) but indirectly they are making them more worthwhile to take on an alacrity build. That's what i meant with a backwards approach to "fixing" wells. This might be more of a gut-feeling but it feels like this change to stretched time (and stretched time in general) is a forced way to make player use wells, you don't take them for the well anymore but just because of the trait effects. I'm also wondering why alac chrono specifically needed a DPS buff, why not quickness or DPS chrono?

What I don’t understand is the wells, it’s clear anet realizes wells are bad and that’s why they are indirectly “buffing” it with the improved alacrity trait. That’s a really backwards approach, people don’t like wells because the are bad to start with. Wells should be good by default and improved via traits, not made “good” by traits. For example you will pick “well of calamity” as alac chrono not because of the well but just because it has the lowest cooldown. Not all doom and gloom, well of precog is a cool skill. Just hope anet changes the other wells to be just as good.

When anet said they would make changes to chrono/greatsword i was really hoping for a blast finisher on greatsword 3. It would give support chrono a way to make wells useful by combo-ing with it (group wide chaos armor). It would also give mesmer an actual blast finisher, not counting torch because that's on a 3 second delay... It would even buff power chrono without buffing power virtuoso 🤯. Looks like support chrono just has to wait and hope the next balance patch will bring some much needed changes. Just afraid nothing will change.