Is there a way to make it so you can do alac and quickness without DPS as a support build?

[Axl.8924]

I was thinking the person who asked for alac and quickness that its prob a good idea to give something back to chronomancer for buffs and perhaps as long as you don't have super high dps as well it shouldn't be a problem when you are supporting? Why isn't this a thing? I'm totally on board for having alac and quickness back on chrono now that every other class does. I mean chrono is the ORIGINAL buffer of alac and quickness.

[Certero.2594]

That is already a thing, you can do both quickness an alacrity on chronomancer, and easier than you could do it back in the day thanks to StM.

 

It doesn't happen because of 2 things.

 

1.- Role compression

For an optimal 10 man squad you need two squads with 1 healer, and 2 people providing alacrity and quickness at the same time.

All classes that can provide these 3 things, can either do them while providing high dps, or it can heal doing one of the two.

So compositions are either

1 (heal+alacrity) + 1 (dps+quickess)

or

1 (dps+alacrity) + 1 (heal+quickess)

 

With this you have 4 dps per subsquad.

 

You can do alacrity and quickness on chrono, while providing low-medium dps, but then you also need a healer, which are usually low dps.

So with a chrono and a tempest (druid is getting alacrity in June) you would have 3 dps per subsquad.

Also, chrono doens't have access to might or fury or other offensive boons in the same way the other support classes do, so it would rely on the healer for most of it.

Basically quick+alacrity chrono is a piece of the composition puzzle that has no matching piece it can attach itself to.

 

2.- Wells are clunky as hell

All other classes can either insta apply the boons or move the application field while applying it.

Chrono requires you to stay into his fields for 3 seconds before getting anything at all.

 

 

TL;DR: Chrono does work, but you need to go out of your way more often than not to fit it into your composition, doesn't bring the sweet dps others in a similar spot do and is really clunky.

Maybe support chrono will get a (good) rework one of these days, but I wouldn't be counting on it anytime soon, or in the medium and even far future.

[attractiveman.7164]

It works, and despite what people say it's dps is still better than many other supports. But because it's harder to pull of than other supports people don't typically run it or run it correctly. The truth of the matter is there's not much point to it due to how many alacrity providers there are right now. In my squads I usually end up with more Alac than I know what to do with.

[Waffles.5632]

6 hours ago, attractiveman.7164 said:

It works, and despite what people say it's dps is still better than many other supports. But because it's harder to pull of than other supports people don't typically run it or run it correctly. The truth of the matter is there's not much point to it due to how many alacrity providers there are right now. In my squads I usually end up with more Alac than I know what to do with.

Couldn't agree more. Alacrity went from being one of the rarest buffs in the game to now I feel like it's completely saturated and on every spec. Freaking Oprah giving out cars all over again. I liked it more when it was unique to only a couple of classes, I know it made those classes rise unfairly in demand, but it also felt more impactful when you got the buff I suppose as well.

[Axl.8924]

So its fine? Are they then competitive enough with other classes?

If its hard but rewarding fine but if it cannot compete with other specs due to healing and alac or DPS/Quickness then thats a important part to mention.

[Mell.4873]

Alacrity Chrono only works on situations where your squad or party stack for long periods of time. 

So essentially world bosses, then it honestly is very op since you can pump out a lot of alacrity, quickness healing from Wells in a short duration and you don't even need to stand next to them.

This can be game changing for some world bosses where melee tend to stand in red circles. 2 or 3 Chronomancer can one shot claw of jormag, Me and wife often do this.

*I won't respond to negative comments

Edited May 27, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Mell.4873]

11 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

So its fine? Are they then competitive enough with other classes?

If its hard but rewarding fine but if it cannot compete with other specs due to healing and alac or DPS/Quickness then thats a important part to mention.

Quickness is fine and often Chronomancer can fill a slot in a raid or strike for this role. In terms of alacrity you only really have Mirage since alac uptime for Chrono is not high enough.

Healing is Mesmer weakest role since none of the elite specializations specialize in this and you only really have the core mantras. The best you can hope for is a high burst Chrono healer with mantras

[anbujackson.9564]

Basically it comes down to what was already mentioned by certero. Role compression. One of the worst balancing decissions imo because you just power creep the game.

The only good partner would be tempest or herald, if it gets 25 might on 5 people that is. Double chrono Q+A used to be the non plus ultra and nowadays its just forgotten. The final killing blow was the 5men nerfs. Before two support chronos could cover each other and deal with plenty of mechanics that way while providing excellent boons which would never run out after 5 seconds like today. 

Since you are not doing any other boons, you are just not good enough anymore.

And about providing both: First of all, you end up with no damage because you need boon duration. Dont really know how people can say that alac uptime isnt "high enough" though. Use mimic, SoI and a proper CS rotation with boon duration and you are good. Well.. as long as your group stays in your wells. Running minimum BD would be your own fault.

#buff chrono wells

Edited May 27, 2022 by anbujackson.9564

[Certero.2594]

On 5/26/2022 at 3:44 PM, Axl.8924 said:

So its fine? Are they then competitive enough with other classes?

If its hard but rewarding fine but if it cannot compete with other specs due to healing and alac or DPS/Quickness then thats a important part to mention.

DPS-wise, is not competitive.

Is hard, somewhat demanding, but very under rewarding if you compare it to other current meta picks such as heal alac mechanist and quickbrand. The mech alone does 7k while on full harrier and quickbrand has a 33k benchmark while providing great healing, all boons and tons of barrier as the cherry on top.

 

You can make it work nontheless, but you need to sacrifice a lot to get 100% alacrity uptime.

You need to go 100% boon duration, get the alacrity well, mimic and traited SoI (which means you take inspiration, which further lowers your damage) in your toolbar and that STILL DOESN'T CUT IT, you need to use shield 5 off of cooldown (so you take shield, which further lowers your damage) to give the remaining alac while the shield comes back (to 10 people, shield 5 is the only mesmer skill without a target cap alongside veil I believe) to achieve that 100% alacrity uptime on your subsquad

 

StM is strong enough to keep quickness by still, but you might have some trouble keeping clones up if you cannot get reliably hit to trigger shield 4, in which case you might wanna take scepter instead of sword and go full condi

 

Quick to note as anbujackson.9564 just said, you bring no might, no fury and no other fancy boons, just quick+alac, so your healer would have to do everything else boon wise, so either a tempest or a druid, but druid is also getting alacrity next month, so there would be even less pieces for chrono to perfectly compliment.

 

In short, is not very rewarding, is a bit annoying to play due to people moving outside your alacrity skills and is completely extinct from pugs but you can absolutely make it work if you learn how to play it. You might wanna make your own squad though as I doubt there are many pugs that would be willing to take you and just assume you're just trolling.

 

EDIT: On further testing, you can use improved alacrity trait and you just BARELY make it without the shield, so you can get some proper dps that way. Nothing compared to firebrand but still.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Certero.2594

[Axl.8924]

3 hours ago, Certero.2594 said:

DPS-wise, is not competitive.

Is hard, somewhat demanding, but very under rewarding if you compare it to other current meta picks such as heal alac mechanist and quickbrand. The mech alone does 7k while on full harrier and quickbrand has a 33k benchmark while providing great healing, all boons and tons of barrier as the cherry on top.

 

You can make it work nontheless, but you need to sacrifice a lot to get 100% alacrity uptime.

You need to go 100% boon duration, get the alacrity well, mimic and traited SoI (which means you take inspiration, which further lowers your damage) in your toolbar and that STILL DOESN'T CUT IT, you need to use shield 5 off of cooldown (so you take shield, which further lowers your damage) to give the remaining alac while the shield comes back (to 10 people, shield 5 is the only mesmer skill without a target cap alongside veil I believe) to achieve that 100% alacrity uptime on your subsquad

 

StM is strong enough to keep quickness by still, but you might have some trouble keeping clones up if you cannot get reliably hit to trigger shield 4, in which case you might wanna take scepter instead of sword and go full condi

 

Quick to note as anbujackson.9564 just said, you bring no might, no fury and no other fancy boons, just quick+alac, so your healer would have to do everything else boon wise, so either a tempest or a druid, but druid is also getting alacrity next month, so there would be even less pieces for chrono to perfectly compliment.

 

In short, is not very rewarding, is a bit annoying to play due to people moving outside your alacrity skills and is completely extinct from pugs but you can absolutely make it work if you learn how to play it. You might wanna make your own squad though as I doubt there are many pugs that would be willing to take you and just assume you're just trolling.

 

EDIT: On further testing, you can use improved alacrity trait and you just BARELY make it without the shield, so you can get some proper dps that way. Nothing compared to firebrand but still.

What if i sacrificed lets say the alac part and just did quickness and DPS? how high could i go then?

[Certero.2594]

49 minutes ago, Axl.8924 said:

What if i sacrificed lets say the alac part and just did quickness and DPS? how high could i go then?

That build does exist, and you only need to take StM to make it work, so you have some wiggleroom to mess with your build.

It has been part of the meta for a while, and as such more dedicated people have ran the numbers on the thing.

https://snowcrows.com/builds/mesmer/chronomancer/power-quickness-chronomancer

Checking it right now a I'm actually surprised they managed to make it work with 0 boon duration

 

It is the lowest DPS out of the dps+quickness builds, beaten by Qrapper by a hair's breadth, but Chrono still brings a very versatile set of utility that makes it more desirable in some situations.

 

And there's always the niche condi quickness chrono build, that works great for the bosses weak to confusion (largos, SH, Cairn)

 

 

[Axl.8924]

What if i wanted to try this in fractals? would the condi quickness work there?

[attractiveman.7164]

In short, it works. But with the explosion of heal mechs there's no reason to limit your build by trying to compress everything into a single build. I personally focus on quickness and dps. 

[Bolle.5840]

On 5/25/2022 at 9:05 PM, Certero.2594 said:

That is already a thing, you can do both quickness an alacrity on chronomancer, and easier than you could do it back in the day thanks to StM.

 

It doesn't happen because of 2 things.

 

1.- Role compression

For an optimal 10 man squad you need two squads with 1 healer, and 2 people providing alacrity and quickness at the same time.

All classes that can provide these 3 things, can either do them while providing high dps, or it can heal doing one of the two.

So compositions are either

1 (heal+alacrity) + 1 (dps+quickess)

or

1 (dps+alacrity) + 1 (heal+quickess)

 

With this you have 4 dps per subsquad.

 

You can do alacrity and quickness on chrono, while providing low-medium dps, but then you also need a healer, which are usually low dps.

So with a chrono and a tempest (druid is getting alacrity in June) you would have 3 dps per subsquad.

Also, chrono doens't have access to might or fury or other offensive boons in the same way the other support classes do, so it would rely on the healer for most of it.

Basically quick+alacrity chrono is a piece of the composition puzzle that has no matching piece it can attach itself to.

 

2.- Wells are clunky as hell

All other classes can either insta apply the boons or move the application field while applying it.

Chrono requires you to stay into his fields for 3 seconds before getting anything at all.

 

 

TL;DR: Chrono does work, but you need to go out of your way more often than not to fit it into your composition, doesn't bring the sweet dps others in a similar spot do and is really clunky.

Maybe support chrono will get a (good) rework one of these days, but I wouldn't be counting on it anytime soon, or in the medium and even far future.

Here we go ... 

Good explain , but go beyond it.

Go for clunky wells + heal.

with alac + quick problem solved.

[heal + alac + quick + tank]

long story short, if ppl not near u they suck cuz they not buffed or dead. (:D)|=<