Where do Chrono Quick and Alac builds actually work?

[Mell.4873]

I think people get to preoccupied with doing damage with their Support Mesmers. 

Alacrity and Quickness Chronomancer shines when you are not trying to preform 20k dps. The traited Signet of Inspiration is absolutely amazing in Fractals, with the ability to boost boon duration by alot when pared with certain professions like Guardian. You can maintain most boons in the game with it. 

[Nezekan.2671]

8 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

So the takeaway is that Mirage and Chrono offer no viable heal build with Alacrity, or without. Meanwhile, Virtuoso running Illumination has potentially the highest HPS of any Mesmer healer and is less positionally restricted.

My complaint is that being just quickness, just alacrity or just a healer doesn’t appear to be good enough to always get a spot.  I do think that either Alac or Quick support should be tied to viable healers (3 support roles/2 support slots per group).  Even both Alac and Quick could have viable healing builds to allow for players to opt in or out of healing as the group needs. 
 

Perhaps I am wrong about this but why would a group take a support that can only ever offer 1 type of support?  

Correct. But generally, either quickness provider heals or alacrity provider heals in fractals, not both. The other one focuses on boon/damage.

[Ellon.4316]

On 12/19/2022 at 9:19 PM, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Meanwhile, Virtuoso running Illumination has potentially the highest HPS of any Mesmer healer and is less positionally restricted.

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.

[mungozen.2379]

1 hour ago, Ellon.4316 said:

’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.

The comment about Virtuoso being the better healer was facetious.  That Virtuoso is a selfish non-support oriented eSpec, but can make better use of Inspiration healing seems somewhat appropriate for mesmers as a profession.  You know, the profession where nothing makes sense.....

1 hour ago, Ellon.4316 said:

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). 

Quickness Chrono might be fine, but why would I play Mirage for an Alac build when Chrono should have the ability to be Heal+Alac?  My continued issue with Anet and how they have presented Chrono builds is that they give us the tools to be Heal/Alac/Quick/Power DPS in some combination but the Heal and Alac parts do not work effectively in many environments.

Put it another way, if Chrono is now not meant to be a Healer or Alac provider, could they get rid of those traits and skills and give us something else?  Oh hang on, we all know that they aren't going to do that, so perhaps they should figure out how to make those parts of the Chrono playable rather than leaving them rotting for most of the past year.

 

[Ellon.4316]

1 hour ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

but why would I play Mirage for an Alac build when Chrono should have the ability to be Heal+Alac?

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.

[Mell.4873]

8 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

The comment about Virtuoso being the better healer was facetious.  That Virtuoso is a selfish non-support oriented eSpec, but can make better use of Inspiration healing seems somewhat appropriate for mesmers as a profession.  You know, the profession where nothing makes sense.....

Quickness Chrono might be fine, but why would I play Mirage for an Alac build when Chrono should have the ability to be Heal+Alac?  My continued issue with Anet and how they have presented Chrono builds is that they give us the tools to be Heal/Alac/Quick/Power DPS in some combination but the Heal and Alac parts do not work effectively in many environments.

Put it another way, if Chrono is now not meant to be a Healer or Alac provider, could they get rid of those traits and skills and give us something else?  Oh hang on, we all know that they aren't going to do that, so perhaps they should figure out how to make those parts of the Chrono playable rather than leaving them rotting for most of the past year.

 

I will agree Mesmer makes zero sense, especially the traits which everyone complains about untill you understand you don't focus on them rather the specialisation traits.

Inspiration Virtuoso is very funny since it's only about a 5k DPS drop to be able to heal (although no burst healing). For Fractals it is pretty worthless but for Raids/Strikes its amazing, especially since you can sneak it in when people are struggling.

 

Chronomancer Alacrity or Quickness can work but the problem is you really need to play it as a healer and not preform any DPS. Quickness can benchmark higher (15k roughly) but it's still nothing compared to the 28k on Mirage Alacrity.

[Mell.4873]

6 hours ago, Ellon.4316 said:

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.

Barrier aswell as healing is an amazing idea. You end up spamming Wells anyway since 10 seconds of Alacrity can amount to more than 5 people if done right. 

Most of the time you can makeup for the lack of healing with Gear and the Inspiration grandmaster. Scepter can be amazing at helping the HPS since when traited it can generate a clone every second. 

[mungozen.2379]

10 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Most of the time you can makeup for the lack of healing with Gear and the Inspiration grandmaster. Scepter can be amazing at helping the HPS since when traited it can generate a clone every second. 

The Attack Speed increase from Malicious Sorcery does not stack with Quickness.  If you are in a group with Quickness or are self providing it, then this trait is mostly wasted.  You do still benefit from the 20% CD reduction to Scepter 2 and 3, but for a GM trait this is pretty weak given that a boon (which is readily available in PvE) overrides the most powerful part of it.  Perhaps this is a more valuable trait in WvW or PvP?

Either way, it doesn't quite support Heal builds as you suggest.  As I mentioned in another post, Inspiration healing is pretty bad for Chrono as it is currently.  Yes clone generation can be easy on a static boss, but on trash or mobile bosses, those with phases etc, you can't reliably use wells or clones as a method of generating heals.  As someone suggested recently, perhaps traited Mantras would be more reliable, too bad they nerfed them a while back.  Perhaps a Quick Mantras Chrono would work, but its hard to take enough Mantras when you need Wells for Alacrity Chrono.

[Moradorin.6217]

1 hour ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

The Attack Speed increase from Malicious Sorcery does not stack with Quickness.  If you are in a group with Quickness or are self providing it, then this trait is mostly wasted.  You do still benefit from the 20% CD reduction to Scepter 2 and 3, but for a GM trait this is pretty weak given that a boon (which is readily available in PvE) overrides the most powerful part of it.  Perhaps this is a more valuable trait in WvW or PvP?

Either way, it doesn't quite support Heal builds as you suggest.  As I mentioned in another post, Inspiration healing is pretty bad for Chrono as it is currently.  Yes clone generation can be easy on a static boss, but on trash or mobile bosses, those with phases etc, you can't reliably use wells or clones as a method of generating heals.  As someone suggested recently, perhaps traited Mantras would be more reliable, too bad they nerfed them a while back.  Perhaps a Quick Mantras Chrono would work, but its hard to take enough Mantras when you need Wells for Alacrity Chrono.

It used to be a good trait for running scepter when it was a valid weapon option in wvw/pvp. I would argue its pretty trash now due to the changes to condi application and the nerfs to scepter 2 and 3 which reduced clones to 1 if you are able to trigger the block and gutted the burst on 3 which was always hard to line up with more than 1 target anyway due to how its a line between Mes and target so others need to be in between (targeting nightmare) and in wvw people dont stand still like Mobs/npcs.

 

When last I played a Condi Mir in wvw I used scepter and axe even w the nerfs. Needless to say I stopped playing Mirage in wvw some time in early 2021.

 

It might be nice if this trait added back the 2nd clone and improved condi application from the auto, or maybe 2nd clone + improved burst+ confusion stacks on 3 in wvw/pvp or somthing like that? Scepter is pretty trash in all modes tho if Im honest. Its one saving grace is the block but it only blocks 1 hit which compared to most in the game its very weak. Its really just a counter attack that channels a block (you stop attacking) till they hit u (if they r blind).

Edited December 22, 2022 by Moradorin.6217

[draxynnic.3719]

21 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

The comment about Virtuoso being the better healer was facetious.  That Virtuoso is a selfish non-support oriented eSpec, but can make better use of Inspiration healing seems somewhat appropriate for mesmers as a profession.  You know, the profession where nothing makes sense.....

Quickness Chrono might be fine, but why would I play Mirage for an Alac build when Chrono should have the ability to be Heal+Alac?  My continued issue with Anet and how they have presented Chrono builds is that they give us the tools to be Heal/Alac/Quick/Power DPS in some combination but the Heal and Alac parts do not work effectively in many environments.

Put it another way, if Chrono is now not meant to be a Healer or Alac provider, could they get rid of those traits and skills and give us something else?  Oh hang on, we all know that they aren't going to do that, so perhaps they should figure out how to make those parts of the Chrono playable rather than leaving them rotting for most of the past year.

 

The heal traits in Inspiration at least have to potential to be useful for a heal mesmer specialisation in the future.

Healing wells, though, honestly feels like they were a stopgap to replace the original 'all wells give 2s alacrity' trait, which never received a proper replacement. Although I guess it is somewhat useful for minstrel chronotanks?

[Mell.4873]

3 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

The Attack Speed increase from Malicious Sorcery does not stack with Quickness.  If you are in a group with Quickness or are self providing it, then this trait is mostly wasted.  You do still benefit from the 20% CD reduction to Scepter 2 and 3, but for a GM trait this is pretty weak given that a boon (which is readily available in PvE) overrides the most powerful part of it.  Perhaps this is a more valuable trait in WvW or PvP?

Either way, it doesn't quite support Heal builds as you suggest.  As I mentioned in another post, Inspiration healing is pretty bad for Chrono as it is currently.  Yes clone generation can be easy on a static boss, but on trash or mobile bosses, those with phases etc, you can't reliably use wells or clones as a method of generating heals.  As someone suggested recently, perhaps traited Mantras would be more reliable, too bad they nerfed them a while back.  Perhaps a Quick Mantras Chrono would work, but its hard to take enough Mantras when you need Wells for Alacrity Chrono.

Oh, I didn't know that, well turns out I was not traiting it anyway in PvE(I use Choas traitline). I was thinking of my WvW version.

You are right Wells are very hard to use but not impossible. You are able to spam them pretty quickly and if you hold onto Continuum Split which means you can get of some burst healing if needed.  Its more for Raids or Strikes, it would be very hard to play this in a Fractal.

Saying that, ironically I have played this in Fractal CM's so maybe I'm just that good at its rotation and predicting damage.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Mell.4873

[mungozen.2379]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The heal traits in Inspiration at least have to potential to be useful for a heal mesmer specialisation in the future.

Healing wells, though, honestly feels like they were a stopgap to replace the original 'all wells give 2s alacrity' trait, which never received a proper replacement. Although I guess it is somewhat useful for minstrel chronotanks?

That lost clone was only WvW and PvP. PvE still gets 2 clones off Scepter 2. I actually didn’t recognize this nerf took place since I haven’t taken a Scepter Mesmer in PvP or WvW ever.  It’s a pretty silly nerf, what logically would be the reason for it?  Clones too powerful in WvW??? Hahaha

[Ellon.4316]

4 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The heal traits in Inspiration at least have to potential to be useful for a heal mesmer specialisation in the future.

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.

[Moradorin.6217]

6 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

That lost clone was only WvW and PvP. PvE still gets 2 clones off Scepter 2. I actually didn’t recognize this nerf took place since I haven’t taken a Scepter Mesmer in PvP or WvW ever.  It’s a pretty silly nerf, what logically would be the reason for it?  Clones too powerful in WvW??? Hahaha

It was done in the same span that they removed a clone off staff, reduced ambush condi application and removal of a dodge in pvp/wvw.

PvE Mirage is not at all the same as PvP/WvW Mirage. Many people dont realize how nerfed it really is. Even people that know Mirage pretty well in pve have no clue how bad it got nerfed and how much is mode dependent that impacts how its played at a core level, like clone generation, dodge frequency/timing, etc. Its very awkward to swap between modes on compared to any other spec. Its way more than just needing another gear and build tab for that mode. Its almost a subset of the spec its so different with all its odd trade-offs.

[draxynnic.3719]

8 hours ago, Ellon.4316 said:

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.

I don't think Arenanet going all-in on a mesmer healing specialisation would necessarily result in Inspiration nerfs. Historically, such elites have usually had the core healing traitline be left alone since the elite specialisation was then calibrated accordingly, or even buffed.

I'm sure you can get some pretty good open world healing out of it, but in organised groups it just doesn't compete. And being heavily reliant on specific utility groups is probably part of the problem, especially since mantras are still a bit scuffed at the moment. I could see it happening, but it would take some real commitment to it.