Alacrity: Time for a Change

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Personally I was sick of the chrono meta. As a player with a newly kitted out Harrier healing Renegade, this pleases me.

[Akeno.4962]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Personally I was sick of the chrono meta. As a player with a newly kitted out Harrier healing Renegade, this pleases me.

Sadly, the only thing support renegade could brag about was personal damage compared to a condi druid. Now we're losing that. So what's the point of a support renegade anymore? Not that it had any point before, apart from flavour and being tired of the mirror chrono setup: it lacks cc, meaning buffs and ways to deal with mechanics compared to druid.

[gilles.1642]

I know that we will have to wait and see, but:Distortion changes / Phantasms changes / Alacrity changes / Quickness changes... I am talking about the profession of Chronomancer. I do not understand why change the mechanics of a profession that works well? It seems that instead of improving the professions that are not working so well you are breaking apart a profession that works well to bring it down to the ones that do not work that well. It is frustrating for the players (especially the Chronomancers)

[Valexia.8041]

@gilles.1642 said:I know that we will have to wait and see, but:Distortion changes / Phantasms changes / Alacrity changes / Quickness changes... I am talking about the profession of Chronomancer. I do not understand why change the mechanics of a profession that works well? It seems that instead of improving the professions that are not working so well you are breaking apart a profession that works well to bring it down to the ones that do not work that well. It is frustrating for the players (especially the Chronomancers)

This ^

[Attuned To Love.6579]

I kinda want to understand, what arenanet expects from this change to happen?Chronos will still be able to maintain perma alacrity... and chrono still brings enough quickness, after the phantasm change it's not even hard to get initial quickness because you will probably take seize the moment instead of chronophantasma.

also chrono brings still more cc capability than firebrand renegade does... so what on earth did you expect to happen? it will enforce the 2 chrono meta even more, will make every other class less enjoable (slower rotations with more auto attacking ) ...

rather make alacrity a 10 man buff instead of a boon so you would open the field for 1 chrono (quickness for one sub and alacrity for 2 and quickness firebrand for quickness in the other sub) but even then i dont see a reason to nerf it at all... even after 100% alacrity uptime was easily achieveable already on some bosses...it would have been even fine if they make it a 10 man buff but lower the outpot of one chrono... so you have to bring either 2 chronos or 1 chrono + quicknessbrand+renegade to cover both... but no...

[Asur.9178]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

You'll find alacrity in some unexpected places, such as the Thief's stolen bundle "Consume Plasma," and on the condition conversion list for skills like "Contemplation of Purity."

Basically, Deadeye will continue being trash and more improvements on DD and Core Thief.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Akeno.4962 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Personally I was sick of the chrono meta. As a player with a newly kitted out Harrier healing Renegade, this pleases me.

Sadly, the only thing support renegade could brag about was personal damage compared to a condi druid. Now we're losing that. So what's the point of a support renegade anymore? Not that it had any point before, apart from flavour and being tired of the mirror chrono setup: it lacks cc, meaning buffs and ways to deal with mechanics compared to druid.

Renegade has excellent CC. It is one of the best in the game. Alongside of that, it does the following:

Caps mightCaps alacrityPermanent meaningful regenSpots of protectionAssassin's PresenceStacks VulnerabilityReflects projectiles on command.

Combine this with a resting crit chance of 42% in Harriers, and Soulcleave's massive DPS boost + heal combo, and it leaves me wondering why anyone would bother bringing a druid.

[narcx.3570]

With tides of tide no longer providing quickness, how are Chrono's supposed to jumpstart their sub's quickness, other than with their one well? That's gonna lead to a ton of quickness downtime in a lot of the mechanic-heavy raid encounters... Maybe all of this is enough to officially say no to chronos, and hello to weird quickness firebrands?

[MidnightStar.2960]

I see that you guys are still insisting on bring 2 chronos to raids so let's nerf it to the ground some more. So glad I dropped this class a couple of months ago. At this rate, it'll be the new dumpster class, right next to necro and all its specializations.

[Attuned To Love.6579]

@narcx.3570 said:With tides of tide no longer providing quickness, how are Chrono's supposed to jumpstart their sub's quickness, other than with their one well? That's gonna lead to a ton of quickness downtime in a lot of the mechanic-heavy raid encounters... Maybe all of this is enough to officially say no to chronos, and hello to weird quickness firebrands?

as i meantioned before... after the phantasm change it make actually be not worth to bring chronophantasma anymore and bring seize the moment instead... which means you gain quickness in the moment you do continuum split or every other shatter

[Eowin Of Rohan.2619]

I'm overall happy with the announced changes for mesmer, especially in the other thread about phantasms, but there is one thing I find bad : nerfing alacrity to 25% :-1:

• It was already nerfed from 66% to 33%, another nerf is ridiculous imho. Makes alacrity a lot less fun.
• It will impact all other builds and rotations in group content. Everything. Did you multiply all damage in all skills of all professions by 1.2 to compensate (not even talking about the fluidity of certain rotations that really relied on alacrity) ?
• More importantly : adding a trait to go back to "normal" Alacrity seems like a bad choice. The trait will be a forced choice for all Chronomancers (afaik you were trying to eliminate forced choices and make it so each trait choice is meaningful ?) ... and even worse : it will kill all your efforts that started around PoF to diversify group content party compositions by letting different professions provide key roles (like having a renegade to provide some alacrity, and changes to druid and warrior so the comps now have more options than "2x(chrono+druid+war+dps+dps)"). Basically only chronos will be able to provide acceptable alacrity due to the trait while no one will want anyone else to provide alacrity.

[Attuned To Love.6579]

@"Eowin Of Rohan.2619" said:

• More importantly : adding a trait to go back to "normal" Alacrity seems like a bad choice. The trait will be a forced choice for all Chronomancers (afaik you were trying to eliminate forced choices and make it so each trait choice is meaningful ?) ...

the trait just changes the alacrity on chrono himself

[BikeIsGone.8675]

How much of a dps increase is alacrity (on its own) anyway?I doubt that cooldown reduction (CDR) translates into a 1:1 dps increase....33% CDR shdouln't mean 33% more dmg.So i dont get why all people lose their shit over some measly 8% effectiveness nerf.Especially if the trade-off is better uptime.

[GWMO.4785]

@GWMO.4785 said:Answer me this please @anet: Will chrono still be able to single handedly be able to UPKEEP quickness, alacrity as well as share boons after the patch? If not, what will the overal uptime be on average?

[Attuned To Love.6579]

@BikeIsGone.8675 said:How much of a dps increase is alacrity (on its own) anyway?I doubt that cooldown reduction (CDR) translates into a 1:1 dps increase....33% CDR shdouln't mean 33% more dmg.So i dont get why all people lose their kitten over some measly 8% effectiveness nerf.Especially if the trade-off is better uptime.

it is not about the nerf of dps with that... this one is minor... might be around 2-4 % or something like that... but it will make rotations even less fluent.. thats the thing... it slows down the gameplay what is actually bad..

i mean a quick example how alacrity works

Now: Skill with 10 seconds cd -> with alacrity (33%) the new cd is 10seconds/1.33 -> around 7.5 secondsThen: Skill with 10 seconds cd -> with alacrity (25%) the new cd is 10seconds/1.25 -> 8 seconds

it might seem to be a very small change but it might actually have a huge impact to some rotations

[BikeIsGone.8675]

@Attuned To Love.6579 said:

it is not about the nerf of dps with that... this one is minor... might be around 2-4 % or something like that... but it will make rotations even less fluent.. thats the thing... it slows down the gameplay what is actually bad..

i mean a quick example how alacrity works

Now: Skill with 10 seconds cd -> with alacrity (33%) the new cd is 10seconds/1.33 -> around 7.5 secondsThen: Skill with 10 seconds cd -> with alacrity (25%) the new cd is 10seconds/1.25 -> 8 seconds

it might seem to be a very small change but it might actually have a huge impact to some rotations

fair point. But the fluidity of any rotation was already hindered by the fact that maintaining a 100% alacrity uptime wasn't achievable in the first place. (at least that was the case last i chekced). So if you now have less effectiveness but at the same time are guaranteed to have the boon, id say it's actually better for rotation fluidity.

Edit: so yes, its slower, but more stable gameplay

[Walhalla.5473]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Akeno.4962 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Personally I was sick of the chrono meta. As a player with a newly kitted out Harrier healing Renegade, this pleases me.

Sadly, the only thing support renegade could brag about was personal damage compared to a condi druid. Now we're losing that. So what's the point of a support renegade anymore? Not that it had any point before, apart from flavour and being tired of the mirror chrono setup: it lacks cc, meaning buffs and ways to deal with mechanics compared to druid.

Renegade has excellent CC. It is one of the best in the game. Alongside of that, it does the following:

Caps mightCaps alacrityPermanent meaningful regenSpots of protectionAssassin's PresenceStacks VulnerabilityReflects projectiles on command.

Combine this with a resting crit chance of 42% in Harriers, and Soulcleave's massive DPS boost + heal combo, and it leaves me wondering why anyone would bother bringing a druid.

I'm using Rev right now in fractals as a healer and Soulcleave is really a good healskill. Of course it requires players to stack where that AOE is ( spoiler alert, most pugs spread ), but when players stack and that skill is fired, players only die when they stop attacking or get a one-shot. And there is also that healing skill thats basically a 2k regen. Still bummed to see in fractals people looking for a druid ( and tbh most druids in fractals are quite bad, have seen a lot who didn't know that they have a CA ). Its not the only heal supporter out there :)

[Lexan.5930]

yay more build diversity and more gameplay options for raids.

Also PvP with the changes to phantasms will be very interesting. I'm excited to see the other class changes for the patch

[Attuned To Love.6579]

@BikeIsGone.8675 said:

fair point. But the fluidity of any rotation was already hindered by the fact that maintaining a 100% alacrity uptime wasn't achievable in the first place. (at least that was the case last i chekced). So if you now have less effectiveness but at the same time are guaranteed to have the boon, id say it's actually better for rotation fluidity.

Edit: so yes, its slower, but more stable gameplay

well on some encounters it was... in good groups at least... will be easier to maintain perma alac now on some bosses after you are not reliant to phantasms anymore...we will just see... just calculated around with some numbers... it seems to be not too much of a change at all... migth have more impact on golem than in actual raids... but we will just see...

@Lexan.5930 said:yay more build diversity and more gameplay options for raids.

Also PvP with the changes to phantasms will be very interesting. I'm excited to see the other class changes for the patch

it will not bring more diversity in raids tbh... its still the same as before just with worse alacrity and more uptime

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Xenorosth.2048 said:So, here's the problem that I see. Wouldn't that mean that enemies that rip boons can now get alacrity? Would slubblings on Sloth see Alacrity? It's hard to really understand this change without more traiting context. As a chrono tank main, I worry. Additionally, for bosses that give random boons, does that mean that they can cast spells quicker? What are the interactions with enemies on this?

Also, what are the implications on the rotation? Will it be more complex? Will we have to shatter for alacrity now? Right now it's painful to shatter anything unless you have nothing up.

I can see the Scourge trait that gives you removed boons seeing use in PvP. This sounds like a buff to them, but it also means that they can't take Sand Savant, so they have lower shade uptime and lower area covered.

[Akeno.4962]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Akeno.4962 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Personally I was sick of the chrono meta. As a player with a newly kitted out Harrier healing Renegade, this pleases me.

Sadly, the only thing support renegade could brag about was personal damage compared to a condi druid. Now we're losing that. So what's the point of a support renegade anymore? Not that it had any point before, apart from flavour and being tired of the mirror chrono setup: it lacks cc, meaning buffs and ways to deal with mechanics compared to druid.

Renegade has excellent CC. It is one of the best in the game. Alongside of that, it does the following:

Caps mightCaps alacrityPermanent meaningful regenSpots of protectionAssassin's PresenceStacks VulnerabilityReflects projectiles on command.

Combine this with a resting crit chance of 42% in Harriers, and Soulcleave's massive DPS boost + heal combo, and it leaves me wondering why anyone would bother bringing a druid.

1) Druids (and I still don't understand why it has to be this way) have better CC than us by using rock gazelle and electric wyvern, among other skills like Glyph of the Tides . This means they aren't pushed away of the group by Surge of the Mists, don't have to waste all their energy on exploding the tablet or aren't stuck on a long cast to use Darkrazor's daring, that effectively works as a medium speed cc because its divided in pulses of low breakbar damage.2) As long as you have a harrier druid, 25 stacks of might is expected, and you're always taking one. You can still produce a great amount of might while in viper, its current "meta" stats.3) Yeah, but it also capped alacrity when using a full viper support renegade.4) Regen is actually at crossroads now. Before, support renegade didn't take any regen traits because of chronomancers overwriting it. Next balance patch it won't happen, so regen traits will actually be better for healing your group. But, by taking them, you make harder for your druid to recharge their avatar, meaning less might for 10 people while you can only provide for 5.5) 6) When viper support renegade build was designed, it focused in having the best personal damage and mediocre healing because it would pick up condi druid disappeared role. That meant not taking devastation (any regular dps renegade would bring it), so it lost assassin's presence and vulnerability stacking, and taking Heartpiercer instead of All for one.7) Currently there's no encounter where an amazingly long on demand projectile destruction bubble its a way to deal with mechanics. If it reflected them, it could work in slothasor or Mathias. If it cleansed condis for each projectile, it would alleviate some preassure from sloth and probably desmina while wurms are up (i haven't investigated if those are projectiles or not). If it were an on demand guardian's sanctuary it would mean greater cc capabilities but it would be op in pvp.8) The problem with Soulcleave's Summit is the way lifestealing works. Its damage is tied to power, so dps renegades would abuse this skill if it were any meaningful group dps addition. But they don't because the damage it increases, even if its nice, isn't nothing to write home about it, probably to avoid dps renegades abusing this skill. So as a healer you use it a "momentary invulnerability", which is nice, again. But the skill would work miles better if it meant a powerful group dps increase to a level that rivals frost spirit and was tied to your healing power.

Sure, when you play harrier renegade you're free to take devastation and all renegade's support traits, and I'd rather play that way. But it lacks purpose and definition. It isn't fulfilling the condi druid role anymore, its just a healer. And it, quite sadly, it can't be compared with a druid in that role. So why take a renegade that does some stuff a druid can worse if its alacrity output isn't better than chrono's? They certainly could have made alacrity 10 man (so that a quickness firebrand or a dps chrono are tied for the quickness provider role in the other subgroup) and given renegade any other buff instead, and it would be in a better place.

[Cronos.6532]

Can you make it so Alacrity increases Thief initiative regeneration, but also maybe have Chilled reduce initiative regeneration?

[aceofbass.2163]

@Thalies.7609 said:And what about concentration affect on alacrity? Because if alacrity would be a boon, concentration may just increase the duration of alacrity even more than we already have. It's cool but it breaks the whole 'balance' theme of this buff.

that's why alacrity will only have 25% reduction on skill recharge as opposed to 33% if untraited.

[narcx.3570]

@Attuned To Love.6579 said:

@narcx.3570 said:With tides of tide no longer providing quickness, how are Chrono's supposed to jumpstart their sub's quickness, other than with their one well? That's gonna lead to a ton of quickness downtime in a lot of the mechanic-heavy raid encounters... Maybe all of this is enough to officially say no to chronos, and hello to weird quickness firebrands?

as i meantioned before... after the phantasm change it make actually be not worth to bring chronophantasma anymore and bring seize the moment instead... which means you gain quickness in the moment you do continuum split or every other shatter

Oh fair enough... I honestly never really paid much attention to the other chrono GM's, cuz like, why would you, haha. But that's actually going to work really well, one quick f1/SoI and you'll have both Q&A rolling.

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Are you planning on changing the visual effect for Alacrity?