Minstrel Chrono Question

[PrinceValentine.9320]

I main Firebrand and Ranger in WvW. I really like playing support. I play Firebrand when I am with a huge squad and I play some sort of a support core ranger when I am running with a small group. I saw someone posted a topic about Minstrel Chrono in the WvW section. I want to know what kind of support does it offer to the squad. I play Mirage and Core Mesmer sometimes but I do want to try the support Chrono. Can you guys tell me things about it?

[Hannelore.8153]

Portals is the big one, but you need a super good squad to make proper use of them. Because of all the teleports and stealth Mesmer has its very easy for them to get behind enemy lines and port the entire group into the enemy zerg.

 

Chrono in particular is taken due to their tankiness as a support. Their overall capabilities are lower than other supports, but they have the capability to live forever and escape almost any situation,

 

Core Mesmer and Mirage lack the Alacrity to make proper use of some of Mesmer's tools.

[Veprovina.4876]

Portals, but you need to be in voice chat to properly coordinate them, putting one down and hoping someone will read your intentions never works. But in zergs you can portal golems long distances, off cliffs so they don't take damage, hide in keeps and portal people in...

 

Veil is another one, it doesn't have a limit as far as i can tell, and a few chronos with veil can stealth an entire zerg for extended periods, but also requires coordination.

 

Pulling is another one, but as FB you have that option too.

 

Gravity well is a big one. It's the hardest CC in the game, and with continuum split, you can use it twice in a row.

CS works with any utility skill of course, and if you have clones to shatter with CS, you can double all your utility casts.

 

You can give alacrity to rams and catas (and of course people) with well of recall.

 

Null field is another big one, as is boonstripping. You'll never be as good as a spellbreaker or a necro, but you can get pretty high up there if you're lucky.

You can use Mimic to double the cast of any skill except the elite. You can mimic null field for example.

 

Interrupts with domination traitline also strip boons so gravity well, shield 5, phantasmal berserker etc., all strip boons.

 

And after all that - everyone else can do this as good if not better than a Chronomancer with way less effort. If you like playing piano while also skating on thin ice, then Chronomancer is for you. And even then, helf our skills are not guaranteed to work so ymmw. The only good thing i guess is what @"Hannelore.8153" said, you're very tanky in Minstrels with like, defender's runes or something like that. You can tank a lot of the AOE spam.

[Cyninja.2954]

Chrono in WvW:

- Veil

- Illusion of Life

- Portal

- Null Field

- Focus Pull

- Mimic

- Gravity Well

 

Those are your skills and what you use depending on the situation. Veil, Illusion and Null Field see probably the most use in bigger blobs with a well placed Gravity Well into the bomb. There is some merit to running Decoy or Mirror Images for easier CS management, but in general you won't have the utility slots available.

 

Shield 5 and Focus as offhand weapons are given for a support. Wells see no use besides Gravity Well and as such alacrity is pretty much pointless in the current meta (from Chrono, there is a alac rene support build). Chrono is not used for boons any longer but only for its utility skills every since the SoI change.

 

This is mostly for bigger scale fights. Small scale is a very different thing.

[Infusion.7149]

Above posters are forgetting boon rip on sword autos , it's not just _Vicious Expression_ and _Shattered Concentration_ (which through testing is per clone). The big thing is tides of time (no target cap), gravity well, null field, focus pull, veil (no target cap). Illusion of Life isn't as efficient if there's a stall and you're not getting kills. If your party is terrible at stability but stacks well you can run mantra of concentration. Open-field portal hasn't been as effective as older times because of the obvious tell and the cap on people going through it.

 

People aren't running minstrel stat chrono for healing mostly, unlike with scrapper , tempest, and firebrand. They're running minstrel because to frontline with sword you need high defensive stats. Used to be a more useful stat with WvW boon chrono where you could Signet of Inspiration to copy boons and also output party boons on shatters. The heals on mantras and wells aren't amazing but you still get a minor amount of heal output from _Restorative Illusions_ as well as _Illusionary Inspiration_ if you choose to run Inspiration.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Infusion.7149" said:

> People aren't running minstrel stat chrono for healing mostly, unlike with scrapper , tempest, and firebrand. They're running minstrel because to frontline with sword you need high defensive stats. Used to be a more useful stat with WvW boon chrono where you could Signet of Inspiration to copy boons and also output party boons on shatters. The heals on mantras and wells aren't amazing but you still get a minor amount of heal output from _Restorative Illusions_ as well as _Illusionary Inspiration_ if you choose to run Inspiration.

 

But if you take the inspiration traitline it synergizes well with your other skills. It's just that, while everything you do heals, it heals for only a small amount, so it's mostly just there for "kind of sustain".

 

For frontlining i'd take Wanderer's instead.

[Yasai.3549]

Boons, Pulls, Heals and Stealth.

 

Also CC from Gravity Well and Boon Rip/cleanse with Null field.

 

 

[RisenHowl.2419]