Feedback - Chrono Heal/Alac

[Silverlock.9736]

Curious what the thoughts are on the following build:

 

Gw2Skills.Net - Heal Alac Chronomancer

[Mell.4873]

Looks good but you probably don't need the Mantra heal if you use that many Wells. If you ran a Heal Quickness Chronomancer then run Mantras instead of Wells.

Both work great by the way, and use same gear.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Mell.4873

[mungozen.2379]

On 8/6/2022 at 7:52 AM, Silverlock.9736 said:

Curious what the thoughts are on the following build:

 

Gw2Skills.Net - Heal Alac Chronomancer

Is this for open world or instanced content?  Did you choose those weapons for any specific reason?  I’d consider approaching this differently but I’d like to know your motivation and goal with this build. 

[Ellon.4316]

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.

[mungozen.2379]

32 minutes ago, Ellon.4316 said:

You wont outperform HAM or QFB but you can fill either role, that's also worth something.

I’m intrigued by this statement. Do you feel Heal Chrono with Alac or Quick is viable in instanced content?  Do Chrono Heals actually stand up in T4 or CMs?

[Ellon.4316]

20 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

I’m intrigued by this statement. Do you feel Heal Chrono with Alac or Quick is viable in instanced content?  Do Chrono Heals actually stand up in T4 or CMs?

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.

[Mell.4873]

9 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

I’m intrigued by this statement. Do you feel Heal Chrono with Alac or Quick is viable in instanced content?  Do Chrono Heals actually stand up in T4 or CMs?

I have personally healed T4s with Chronomancer but not CMs only Alac Mirage. This was also before the buff too. 

[Bakeneko.5826]

2 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I have personally healed T4s with Chronomancer but not CMs only Alac Mirage. This was also before the buff too. 

Chrono in CMs is as useful as warrior banner

[Mell.4873]

16 hours ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

Chrono in CMs is as useful as warrior banner

Well Quickness Berserker is a thing and get numbers close 30k dps. Good alterative to HB setup if someone else is providing Healing + Alacrity. 

[Salt Mode.3780]

I've done CMs so far I have not seen a single chrono in any of my parties. The only Mesmer I see are Virtuoso for DPS otherwise never for utility. 

[Silverlock.9736]

On 8/7/2022 at 5:21 PM, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Is this for open world or instanced content?  Did you choose those weapons for any specific reason?  I’d consider approaching this differently but I’d like to know your motivation and goal with this build. 

 I am trying to find a support role using a Mesmer that is a little easier than Staff Mirage. I would consider any suggestions. I would like it to be for instanced content.

[Salt Mode.3780]

3 hours ago, Silverlock.9736 said:

 I am trying to find a support role using a Mesmer that is a little easier than Staff Mirage. I would consider any suggestions. I would like it to be for instanced content.

staff mirage is easy as it gets...if you are thinking chrono might be the answer then no there are more APM on chrono then any other mesmer specs

Edited August 12, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[Silverlock.9736]

4 hours ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

staff mirage is easy as it gets...if you are thinking chrono might be the answer then no there are more APM on chrono then any other mesmer specs

 

I have found keeping alac up to be quite difficult. 

[Mell.4873]

27 minutes ago, Silverlock.9736 said:

I have found keeping alac up to be quite difficult. 

Just run Inspiration Mirage with Signet of Inspiration. That is how I maintain Alacrity.

[Endaris.1452]

41 minutes ago, Silverlock.9736 said:

 

I have found keeping alac up to be quite difficult. 

Are you sure you have the correct gear?

The SC build used to be vipers but it changed to ritualists gear to a good part. Additionally, if you struggle with boon duration you can always compensate with e.g. Boon-Condi Food or even more ritualist gear, it's not going to lose you terrifying amounts of DPS.

In general for your initial build suggestion, if you want to make the most out of Heal Mesmer, you definitely have to run scepter. With Scepter AA and Quickness you can produce a clone every 1.8s, making the heal from Illusionary Inspiration outheal a regular healer's regeneration and that is very necessary because you have no way of applying regeneration to your group. All other weapons (even GS with domination) provide extremely lackluster base healing. For that reason I also don't really like Chaos because your regeneration uptime will likely be quite bad if you don't purposely take damage all the time to trigger Metaphysical Rejuvenation. Meaning all you get for your group is being able to cast Chaos Storm a bit more often and get the on-heal trigger which is super lackluster. Personally I would probably prefer Dueling here for Master Fencer, providing Fury and Deceptive Evasion, creating even more clones for healing on dodge.

You also aren't capable of keeping up protection just from shield which is why I would recommend the unorthodox option of running Superior Rune of the Herald and Heal Mantra or Mirror - with that combination and the addition of Shield 4, you'll be able to provide 100% protection to your group while also activating Healing Prism nearly off cooldown. This is easily affordable as with the (announced) base duration increase on wells, you can upkeep alac with just 2 wells and shield 5.

So overall something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiyAs63lZwmYMsGWJW0TqtPA-zRJYqRL/ZkqUoaFgOnl23sAA-e

Would look almost identical for quickness except that depending on your group, running illusions is an option if fury is not required from your side.

Edited August 13, 2022 by Endaris.1452

[Ellon.4316]

14 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

In general for your initial build suggestion, if you want to make the most out of Heal Mesmer, you definitely have to run scepter. With Scepter AA and Quickness you can produce a clone every 1.8s, making the heal from Illusionary Inspiration outheal a regular healer's regeneration and that is very necessary because you have no way of applying regeneration to your group. All other weapons (even GS with domination) provide extremely lackluster base healing.

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.

[Endaris.1452]

Even if you run GS, you still should run Scepter in the other set. Simply because it is much better while GS4 is on cooldown.

My personal suggestion would be Dueling+Focus because if you run Heal Chrono you want to cover your support role the best (fury coverage) and do things that makes Chrono unique compared to other healing supports (Focus pull).

But yeah, especially on bosses where boonstrip would be any concern, Domination+GS would definitely the obvious lock-in because in my opinion you really can't afford to run main hand sword if you don't want huge downtimes in your healing output. And that is also my gripe with GS a bit, it is "bursty" healing while Scepter is very consistent one and especially in raids you want the latter to keep up scholars at all times.