Boon Chrono vs any other high end buffer

[Requiem.9648]

I see dps chrono seem need love like Virt have but to be honest buffer chrono continuously drowned since 2018. I wish chrono buffer still a thing and what i am looking at right now is quickness spellbreaker give better boon than a chrono quickness STM that is realy sad dps wise/buffer. The boon chrono give almost close to nothing compare to a herald or a firebrand or scrapper  if you compare dps as quickness buffer. Also seem worst when you going alacrity we will not talk about it. Since SOI and chaos line was mastered and mendatory like before in some fight now chrono is close to inexistant the only purpose is portal and you can replace it for a vir at this point. Anet should give back the old chaos trait line 5 mans buff stab, might, prot,fury and more love to SOI since quickness and alacrity are separated.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Requiem.9648

[Mell.4873]

7 hours ago, Requiem.9648 said:

I see dps chrono seem need love like Virt have but to be honest buffer chrono continuously drowned since 2018. I wish chrono buffer still a thing and what i am looking at right now is quickness spellbreaker give better boon than a chrono quickness STM that is realy sad dps wise/buffer. The boon chrono give almost close to nothing compare to a herald or a firebrand or scrapper  if you compare dps as quickness buffer. Also seem worst when you going alacrity we will not talk about it. Since SOI and chaos line was mastered and mendatory like before in some fight now chrono is close to inexistant the only purpose is portal and you can replace it for a vir at this point. Anet should give back the old chaos trait line 5 mans buff stab, might, prot,fury and more love to SOI since quickness and alacrity are separated.

Arg Support Chronomancer is such a touchy subject for this forum since it was one of the best Supports, a very long time ago and now it is not.

The reality is Chronomancer is really a Support Healer and can even apply more boons that other classes but it needs to be used in conjunction with other supports. Inspiration is a very good tree but lends itself more to healing rather than Boon application so people don't take to trait Signet of Inspiration to boost the boons of 5 people. They can also output a silly amount of Aegis, more than any other class in fact so in the right hands you can avoid almost any mechanic.

This will all go on deaf ears and I will most likely get many confused faces for even saying all this. Mostly due the prior skills that where better like the old Signet of Inspiration.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Delta.1526]

2 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

The reality is Chronomancer is really a Support Healer and can even apply more boons that other classes but it needs to be used in conjunction with other supports. Inspiration is a very good tree but lends itself more to healing rather than Boon application so people don't take and to trait Signet of Inspiration to boost the boons of 5 people. They can also output a silly amount of Aegis, more than any other class in fact so in the right hands you can avoid almost any mechanic.

I feel like Alac Chrono is so close to being a viable healer, but doesn't quite get there for a few reasons. IMO the main factor is All's Well That Ends Well heals 3 seconds after the skill is cast which limits reactive healing (and involves your party co-operating by standing in the circle). Stretched Time/ToT applying Alac on cast is a good change, but All's Well remaining the same means Chrono actually requires the party to be MORE stationary than before -- they need to hang around for the full Well to get the support they can bring, whereas before if you knew where you were going to be in 3 seconds time you could pre-place them. The biggest issue I see with frontloading the healing of this trait or making it pulse smaller heals each second is All's Well That Ends Well is a fantastic pun -- perhaps it could apply Barrier at the start of the cast and heal at the end? Or even Regeneration?

I agree with everything you've noted about the class. Inspiration has some great tools for a healer, but Blurred Inscriptions is just kinda mid now. Chrono does have the space in its kit to take a Mantra for utility, with Mantra of Concentration being a short but sweet burst of Stability -- adding heals onto that is nice. The amount of Aegis it can toss out is kind of awesome -- I've been mucking around with CS'ed Chaos Storm and Method of Madness, and while they aren't reliable enough to ignore mechanics with timed Aegis like Blurred Inscriptions is, they provide consistent damage mitigation over time and a significant-to-permanent uptime of Resolution + Swiftness with good Continuum Splits. It's jank as hell having to roll the dice for boon upkeep, but it is what it is, and it's a cool niche.

To be honest, Heal Alac Chrono just has a reliability issue. It has access to everything a heal class would want, but it's subject to variability that's outside your control. It could theoretically maintain decent Might and Fury with Winds of Chaos -- if the projectiles bounce optimally. Outside of that, you have a modest splash of Might on Shield and Fury in Dueling, which you wouldn't take as a healer. You've got significant healing potential in your Wells, but you can't slam them down reactively and need the party to stand still as their kitten is getting beat to get healed up. Theoretically you have access to permanent Protection as well, via Echo of Memory + Chronophantasma/Signet of the Ether and some Continuum Split shenanigans but that would involve magical Christmasland optimal blocks on cooldown, 100% boon duration and, if running Chronophantasma, no Alac or Quickness. In more realistic scenarios, you block a big hit and then apply protection to your party after they facetank it -- same issue as All's Well, it just doesn't fit with reactive healing. It's a cruel irony that most of the time, the Time Wizard's damage mitigation is just a little bit too late.

Quote

Anet should give back the old chaos trait line 5 mans buff stab, might, prot,fury and more love to SOI since quickness and alacrity are separated.

I think some power could go back into Chaos and SoI now Alac and Quickness are mutually exclusive. SoI applying to 5 targets by default seems fine -- as it is, it's essentially useless without traiting into it, and we already have Wells for that. Maybe it could extend boons by another second with the trait or something. I don't think Bountiful Disillusionment from the Chaos line would be okay to revert back to 2018 -- being able to just slam all your shatters in CS for significant uptime on boons risks power creeping other support classes niches, and we already have Mechanist and Firebrand for that. It could be pretty fair if the stacks/boon duration scaled with the amount of clones shattered; 1-2 stacks/seconds without clones, and 1-2 more for each additional clone shattered means you're still managing resources rather than just jamming keys. As it is, because Support Chrono used to be so good, all the relevant traits are weirdly selfish now; I'm sure there's a fair middle-ground to make it viable but not overwhelming.

Mesmer's access to Stability is fine. The lovetaps to Mechanist and Firebrand hit their stability duration, and I think Mantra of Concentration is pretty well positioned in comparison now; you need to time it rather than just incidentally negate mechanics. I reckon where it suffers boon-wise is in reliable Might/Fury contribution, and notably access to Regeneration -- the Chaos line is built around having permanent Regen, yet you can't actually apply it to your team. Protection is another sticking point. TBH I think a super elegant solution for both of those would be making Shield 4 a blast finisher when you click the button, and having Chaotic Transference apply Protection/Regeneration when you apply the Chaos Armor aura to allies, not just yourself. Chrono's got all these ethereal fields and no way to blast them, seems like free real estate.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Delta.1526

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, Delta.1526 said:

To be honest, Heal Alac Chrono just has a reliability issue. It has access to everything a heal class would want, but it's subject to variability that's outside your control. It could theoretically maintain decent Might and Fury with Winds of Chaos -- if the projectiles bounce optimally. Outside of that, you have a modest splash of Might on Shield and Fury in Dueling, which you wouldn't take as a healer. You've got significant healing potential in your Wells, but you can't slam them down reactively and need the party to stand still as their kitten is getting beat to get healed up. Theoretically you have access to permanent Protection as well, via Echo of Memory + Chronophantasma/Signet of the Ether and some Continuum Split shenanigans but that would involve magical Christmasland optimal blocks on cooldown, 100% boon duration and, if running Chronophantasma, no Alac or Quickness. In more realistic scenarios, you block a big hit and then apply protection to your party after they facetank it -- same issue as All's Well, it just doesn't fit with reactive healing. It's a cruel irony that most of the time, the Time Wizard's damage mitigation is just a little bit too late.

I feel like the only place you can reliably heal is Strikes (Icebrood mostly) or Open World but if you are good enough you can heal in fractals. The real trick to healing (which I picked up in fractals) is to focus more on resurrecting people with Illusion of Life rather than truly controlling the chaos by not moving. If you didn't already know but Healbrand does have problems healing when people don't stack and with Chronomancer Wells can be places at a distance so it has some advantages when people don't move (think OW Boss stacking) .
When people do move and go down they can be resurrected just as quick with well timed Illusion of Life which is in fact an AoE.

[Delta.1526]

44 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

I feel like the only place you can reliably heal is Strikes (Icebrood mostly) or Open World but if you are good enough you can heal in fractals. The real trick to healing (which I picked up in fractals) is to focus more on resurrecting people with Illusion of Life rather than truly controlling the chaos by not moving. If you didn't already know but Healbrand does have problems healing when people don't stack and with Chronomancer Wells can be places at a distance so it has some advantages when people don't move (think OW Boss stacking) .

I have noticed the proximity issues for Firebrand, yeah. Honestly, the AoE itself is generous enough, it's the 3 second delay that hurts reliability. Sometimes I can't even see my wells underneath everything else that's going on, and people are bad enough at greens, let alone purples. Plus it's linked to the way you're maintaining Alacrity, so you can't always hold it back. Well heals are just all or nothing, and out of your hands to some extent -- and they're increasingly less relevant with more mobile encounter design. I do like that it can be placed at a distance, super helpful for encounters like Whisper where you split regularly and don't want to stack too tightly because of chains.

 

44 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

When people do move and go down they can be resurrected just as quick with well timed Illusion of Life which is in fact an AoE.

This is spicy lmao.  I've never tried running Illusion of Life when I'm memeing on heal chrono, but I'll give it a go. The fact it's only 15 seconds of life kept me from messing with it, but there's for sure some scenarios where 15 seconds of life is better than full dead. I haven't done the math to see how many wells Chrono needs to run to maintain Alac now, but I suspect you might be able to with just Eternity/Precognition/Tides of Time and solid CS discipline -- two Mantras or one + Illusion of Life sounds sweet.

EDIT: Yep, you can maintain it very comfortably with just those two. Actually, you can maintain it with just one well and ToT on cooldown (if you blow all of them when CS is up), which does let you keep either Well of Eternity or Well of Precognition in the wings as clutch Aegis/heal in 3 seconds time if you stand right there.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Delta.1526

[Requiem.9648]

Even there guys the question you need to ask yourself what is better on alac/heal vs mech what is better vs quck/hb. I love play HB but im very personnaly tired to see around 5-6 orange class in every single fight in the game.

[Myxam.2790]

There's been rumbling and rumors of Stretched Time/Ends Well Support Chrono burbling among my peers but when I sit down and really look into there's a lot of things I'm seeing keeping it from really being viable, especially when we're talking about competing with the likes of Tempest, HAM, HealBrand, and Specter.

 

First, being the legacy of nerfs to Signet of Inspiration: The first major pain coming in Feb 2018 changing its effect from sharing the boons at their present duration to the subgroup, to applying one stack at a set duration, and then later that year in December changing it from applying boons at all to increasing their current durations, which is where it stands now, nerfed down further even from there.

Part of the big niche Chrono occupied up to this point was, yes, a monopoly on Alacrity sourcing, but also allowing low Boon Duration sources of critical boons to be covered in subgroup via the Chrono doubling their duration ever 12-15 seconds. When we lost both of these, our healing was never competitive with the likes of Druid, Tempest, and the newly arrived Firebrand. Leaving us as just a more complicated and less efficient Alac/Quickness than Renegade and Firebrand. 

 

Second, being the investments we need to make into getting the numbers to where they are. We have a lot of very poor choices to make in pursuing 100% uptime on Alacrity, and it costs us options in other directions that our competition just doesn't need to make. We have to give up a lot of very powerful utility options to take our Wells, if we had Alacrity on Shatters we'd be in a better position.

 

Druids are the only of our competitors who take as deep of an investment as we do, but their perma is far safer, and their healing packaged into their weapon and profession skill. We can't compete with the outgoing Barrier, Stab, Healing, Damage, and general ease of play of the Mechanist, making us a very unworthwhile pick at worst, and a challenging pick at best. We're not anywhere close to being able to compete here. We don't even have a leg up on healing output when it comes down to it. We don't have a single aspect in this role that we do better, making us overall the worst choice in it. Even Shoutsworn Heal Warriors have us beat with the recent changes to Banners.

 

Lastly, ArenaNet's present execution and vision for balance is stacked against Elite Specializations like Chronomancer. Drawing every class into a position to 'play' every role regardless of their approach or strengths will mean someone will always be at the bottom. Removing what makes a specialization unique at the group level, removes considerations to that end which is what Chronomancer has historically always thrived on. Veterans of the Genre know what happens when you take these approaches: When everyone can do anything, the person who does it with the least effort wins. And, not balancing to allow complex and mechanically demanding specs to be rewarded for that time and effort hampers our ability to succeed in spite of Chrono's baseline requirements of positioning, and timing in excess of the base expectation.

 

You can see this principle going on right now with Rifle Engineers in all aspects of the game. When you have several options to do something similarly, the easiest to play well will gain a lionshare of the play. You do not see nearly as many Bladesworn Warriors despite their ability to outperform Rifle Engineer because doing so requires a great deal more effort and engagement.
 

In Conclusion; Chrono's Support Aspects have never recovered from the nerfs in 2018 heading into Path of Fire, and following changes in other parts of the game and the introduction of new, better support choices as continued to undermine its niche. Improving its numbers will not change its placement, as it does not fit the present design schemes of ArenaNet's vision where Supports are concerned, and where the community is concerned thanks to its complexity.

 

Changing Stretched Time to grant Alacrity to the party from Shatters like Seize the Moment will be a step in the right direction.

Improving its Alacrity duration would not aid in Chrono's play as no other Alacrity Support needs to aim their sourcing outside of player placement, which is what hampers accessibility/playability to this, not our capacity to trade Concentration gear away for DPS.

 

Changing Flow of Time to grant personal Alacrity or Quickness based on the Grandmaster Trait choice would help as well.

Flow Of Time is an unexpected barrier to playing Alacrity Chrono well, as it reduces immediate readability of uptime on Alacrity, and provides far more worth to our Quickness Variant as its rewarding that playstyle over the Alacrity side. Allowing all 3 Grandmaster traits benefit from this minor aids the class overall, not just AlacSupport.

 

All's Well That Ends Well, Restorative Mantras, and Blurred Inscriptions need Cooldown Reduction features added to them to bring to parity with their competitors in Role.

These changes are legacy balance changes from the days when Alacrity gave 66% Skill Cooldown Reduction and not the 25-50% we have today. Repeal these changes and Inspiration stops being a neglected Trait Line by the playerbase, and HealMesmer becomes a topic of conversation.

 

Making Persistence of Memory transfer to 5 targets instead of only the Mesmer, or making it a Minor Trait, would also help close the gap as a lot Mesmer's important Boon Generation is tied in Phantasm-affecting Traits.

Giving our groups ready access to the copious amounts of fury, and quickness we can generate from this, or the odd round of aegis will help close the gap for us, plus the might output helps close that gap as well.

 

Reviving BoonShare via Blurred Inscriptions and Signet of Inspiration would be perhaps the bravest and most direct approach to reviving our placement in group-play. 

Rolling back this one change would be enough to bring Chronomancer Support out of the dark ages and back into the conversation, I cannot stress how much we lost when this was taken alongside Alacrity from us in 2018. 

[Delta.1526]

I like those core Mes changes; particularly Persistence of Memory, though the Quickness is problematic considering Chrono's been prohibited from providing significant Quick/Alac at once. I hated to see it go but now it's gone, there's space for Chrono to get...whatever the opposite of a Chrono nerf is. I'd love to see a Chrono anti-nerf at some point in my life.

I'm a little worried about boonshare -- I miss it, but I'd be worried that getting it back would stop Chrono getting the changes to the elite spec kit that it desperately needs. Or that it'd end up being too good and get nerfed, meaning I'd have to mourn Signet of Inspiration for the fifth time. Would love to see SoI get boon extension for 5 targets baseline again now we've lost Quick/Alac, but I don't want to see it fly too close to the sun again -- the poor thing's already been through so much.

On 8/29/2022 at 8:11 AM, Myxam.2790 said:

Druids are the only of our competitors who take as deep of an investment as we do, but their perma is far safer, and their healing packaged into their weapon and profession skill. We can't compete with the outgoing Barrier, Stab, Healing, Damage, and general ease of play of the Mechanist, making us a very unworthwhile pick at worst, and a challenging pick at best. We're not anywhere close to being able to compete here. We don't even have a leg up on healing output when it comes down to it. 

Yeah, Chrono can't compete with the Mechanist, Chrono's been trash for years. But like...who CAN? Mechanist gives perma alac, barrier and a sizable chunk of Might to the group while they're alt-tabbed. When they start pressing their weapon and mech skills off cooldown, they add on Protection, Regeneration, Vigor, Fury and the rest of the 25 might stacks. Then, y'know, they've got all their utility slots available for signets and kits. Mechanist can maintain permanent Alac/Fury/Vigor/Regen/Protection and reach 25 might stacks, while stark naked other than white Berserker's weapons. Chrono cannot and should not be able to do everything Mechanist does, because Mechanist shouldn't be able to do it either -- it can do so much for so little investment and effort, both as a Support and a DPS that it's suffocating class diversity. 32% of raiders are Mechanists now -- at the peak of Chrono centralizing the meta, before our fall from grace, we clocked in at a touch over 20%. 

Quote

We don't have a single aspect in this role that we do better, making us overall the worst choice in it. Even Shoutsworn Heal Warriors have us beat with the recent changes to Banners.

I'm a Shoutsworn enthusiast and even though it has less raw healing output, it's far more functional than Heal Chrono due to the Barrier and Regeneration it can provide with Banners/Warhorn. The shouts themselves are excellent reactive heals, coming out instantly, stacking Might/Fury, and healing in a generous AoE. It's not Mech, but it doesn't have to be to get the job done. Mesmer does have aspects of its kit which are legitimately better than Mechanist when judged in a vacuum (more Aegis/Stability, better burst CC)...however, the two things Heal Chronos have to make them better than say, Heal Virtuosos, are CS and the support options attached to their wells -- but the fact you can whiff your allied support is awful.

On 8/29/2022 at 8:11 AM, Myxam.2790 said:

Changing Stretched Time to grant Alacrity to the party from Shatters like Seize the Moment will be a step in the right direction.

Improving its Alacrity duration would not aid in Chrono's play as no other Alacrity Support needs to aim their sourcing outside of player placement, which is what hampers accessibility/playability to this, not our capacity to trade Concentration gear away for DPS.

I'm on the same page re. why they're bad, but I think making Stretched Time a StM clone is the wrong approach; Quick DPS Chrono is bottom of the barrel in its own niche, and Mesmer already has Alac DPS Mirage. I'd rather see Wells entirely reworked to be actually good for a Heal Alac playstyle -- and that seems like it could be the plan looking at recent changes. Stretched Time was the band-aid slapped on wells after the Alac/Quick split gutted them, but I don't hate what it's doing; Alac on Well of Eternity frees up a utility slot, and you can jam Well of Precognition, the only utility well with any utility. Between these and Shield, you're providing full Alac, regular Aegis, and a modest amount of Might. It would be a solid foundation for a Heal Chronomancer spec, if not for how ancient and clunky wells feel in modern GW2 -- they need a full on mechanical revamp to have the consistency of other supports. 

This could be done in a bunch of ways, but I have a modest proposal:

All's Well That Ends Well: Wells are no longer ground targeted, and remain centred on you for their duration. If you are targeting an ally, your wells will remain centred on that character. Wells apply barrier when cast, and heal allies when they end.

I've given it (possibly too much) thought, and this seems like the best way to give Chrono more consistency with applying their well effects. If you're stacked up and hitting enemies, you can move yourself to keep allies in the circle, if you're split up or doing mechanics you can remotely keep up support, and if you're a DPS Chrono or playing WvW you still have your tasty ground targeted Gravity Wells -- which I assume is better than blinking into a zerg carrying a black hole (though that sounds awesome). I like the concept of the well heal but it's not great in practice; you're casting your wells for Alacrity so your targets will be on full health most of the time, and when they do need to be healed you want to be doing it quicker than 3 seconds later. Barrier mitigates both of these factors nicely.

Wells actually applying their effects to allies without having to literally see 3 seconds into the future would be a massive bonus to your supportive wells -- Well of Action in particular would go from being a total joke to being situationally kinda useful, in competitive gamemodes. But Well of Calamity and Senility would remain pretty bad; with their powers combined they hit with the force of about 2 Sword autoattack chains, and do nothing for allies. I'd like to see Calamity stack Might -- it fits with the 'DPS well' identity and would patch a hole in Mesmer's kit -- other classes stack might whenever they breathe, but Tides of Time peaks at 20 stacks max, if you try really hard. Well of Senility...god, I don't care what it does, I just want it to do anything else. There's plenty of gaps in Chronomancer's toolkit that it could fill -- Protection, Regeneration, a group stunbreak -- but here we are with 2 stripped boons after 3 seconds, on the class with access to Null Field, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Phantasmal Berserker, Arcane Thievery, the Domination spec and A Sword.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Delta.1526