Rant about Support Chronos

[Deepcuts.9740]

From the get go, I must say I do not have a support chrono character, only a poor mesmer named Teleport Service...for, you guessed it, portals.Saying this, I admit I do not know too much about the class but some basics I do get.Basics like a support chrono must:

1. Give alacrity to party/squad members.
2. Give quickness to party/squad members.
3. Supply aegis on demand to block attacks.My rant is about plenty of support chronos I met specially in high tier fractals and dungeons that will not give anything listed above.And when I say anything, I really mean it. ArcDPS shows buffs and most of the cases I rant here about will show 0 (zero) or very close to 0 (zero) alacrity.Also, alacrity changes the color of your skill counters, so you know when you get it. it is not rocket science. It happens a lot that the color of my skill counters will never change for an entire T4 run with a support chrono in party.I took under consideration that even if the LFG stated support chrono, maybe a dps chrono joined. No such luck 99% of the time, the chronos I am referring to have lower dps then me, a healing druid.

When this happens, I usually ask in private the person if they can provide some alacrity. Almost all the time, the silence will be deafening.If the chrono will not respond, I will ask in party chat if anyone else gets any alacrity. Who knows, maybe my positioning is wrong. Again, most of the time, no one will answer. Who knows, maybe they do not know what alacrity is or how to spot it or they just don't care.And I am not talking about fresh accounts either. I am talking about 10-20K+AP ones.If this is the case, I will just leave the party.

Anyone else observed this trend with some chronos?I know any class has its share of bad apples, but I am only asking about this class now.To be clear, I am not bashing the class or generalizing the behavior to all support chronos.

[Shikaru.7618]

Join t4 + cm (pseudo t5) groups with kp requirements. A decent number of players who are setting up t4 only groups that are not leftovers from an existing cm group are generally those that don't meet the skill floor to do so.

[Vinceman.4572]

Play chrono and experience yourself why such observation is the case. Look at the lfgs and you'll see there's something heavily wrong with the adjustment of the class.Also, I would delete "dungeons" from the equation (or rant) since most of the players running them nowadays have no real clue of the paths as well even though they have 20k AP+.I can't blame chronos, almost nobody wants to play it and especially for dungeons and t4 fractals I'm welcoming almost every player knowing how to execute the fractal mechanics. In case of high KP CMs I would expect a different level but I rarely run them at the moment so I couldn't care less.

[Zenith.7301]

Chronos and druids are the same thing; you notice the bad ones straight away and you really don't notice the good ones until you've experienced the bad ones.

A druid who enters CA at the wrong times, who doesn't bring stone spirit or forgets to put it out alongside the others, who doesn't pop glyph of empowerment for every breakbar, who won't bring healing spring for afflicted instability or 99 CM/Artsariv.

Same goes for chrono. When they don't pop aegis for artsariv's stomp, when they don't preempt Arrk's balls since there will always be someone screwing up novas. Who doesn't know mass invis ports to the circle captures in 99CM or who's not helping do substantial damage to CC bars. When they don't use the mantra of concentration and share the stability for Skorval'd final phase, etc.

I would even venture to say that the bad chronos you get are simply people who grab their mesmer alt, slap zerker gear on it knowing you can't inspect their armor and runes, and probably don't even use boon duration utilities, on top of their bad rotations.

[AlRaiko.6140]

Play chrono so you ll never lack of quickness/alacrity

[maxwelgm.4315]

Since you mentioned right on that you don't play chrono yourself, well, you should to realize what might be/might not be wrong. I'm not gonna deviate from the main topic by claiming that class design is broken if you rely so much on another player for an encounter to perform well, where "so much" includes the skips/pulls/blocks/alac/quickness/other boons that allows you to basically DPS golem and finish T4's in 30 min. So for now just keep leaving the groups where the chrono can't carry the other 4 and you should be golden. The amount of "bad" players should not be surprising; maybe the Chronos you're getting to join you are not even aware/care about running the boonsharing build, or even worse, maybe they think their boonsharing is not related to SoI but rather to wells, among many other possibilities. The same thing happens in raids but when there are 9 other people to cover it seems better than when there are only 4 to do so.

Personally I hate performing as a Chrono in Fractals and teammates not corresponding by being good DPS golem players, to the point I make my T4's nowadays as "chill T4 lf any" and lazily go about for an hour just giving the bare minimum boon bursts. In time it became more compensating than stretching myself for that extra half hour of efficiency. CM's I don't even dream of doing them anymore, and when I do I join as DPS instead. Chrono is in a really bad place to do Fractals right now and balance has clearly not thought of that game mode at all during their last iterations.

Also anecdotal evidence is always a tricky thing; whenever I'm not the Chrono in my party, I usually do have at least enough quickness/alac uptime to wreck some decent damage, but on the other hand only a few chronos actually care to pull off certain skips and to change their utilities at any given time during runs. A good number of them ignore skill CDs and don't use the instabilities with said CDs in mind, so fights might start slow for a good 20s before they have more boons to give. That's far from the dreadful scenario you're describing albeit not ideal.

[Jeknar.6184]

I haven't played Fractals in a while but didn't the Illusionary Inspiration change hurt 5-man Chrono? I'm assuming I'll be forced play with mimic now because of the lack of a second SoI.

[RaidsAreEasyAF.8652]

@Jeknar.6184 said:I haven't played Fractals in a while but didn't the Illusionary Inspiration change hurt 5-man Chrono? I'm assuming I'll be forced play with mimic now because of the lack of a second SoI.

It feels weird but its doable with enough group DPS. In pugs its just aids to play.

[BRNBRITO.9624]

It's a bit less braindead with no lesser SoI/higher cd SoI but alacrity/quickness uptime is still fine.Personally i still do old 2 wells/SoI rotation and run Time Warp everywhere but 99cm, maintaining 90-100% uptime on CM pugs even with Moa, some people just don't pay attention to Wells so Mimic rotation can be better in some cases.Only time uptime drops is during Bomb/Marble on Artsariiv, Orb split at Arkk etc for obvious reasons.