This build is made for PuGs environments. More info about building effective team compositions can be found here. It provides a high amount of boons and a lot of safety to the group via its healing and therefore shines most in less experienced groups as well as when you have bad instabilities. Once the safety of a dedicated healer is no longer needed, you can move on to running e.g. Power Boon Chronomancer and other alternative boon providing build options.
The Heal Boon Chronomancer is able to provide permanently up to 25 stacks of Might, either Quickness or Alacrity, Fury, Protection, Regeneration, Vigor and a majority of the required Swiftness uptime. It also has on-demand access to Aegis, Stability and Resistance. The build is very flexible and can be adapted to the encounter, instabilities, and the group you are playing with. Make sure to read through the situational tab for an explanation of the different utility skills.
It offers a great amount of healing through Clone related traits like , , Wells via , Regeneration, . As well as providing boon removal in order to deal with Mistlock Instability: No Pain, No Gain. It also has great utility for T4 fractals, with pulls through , and access to Stealth, Superspeed, and leaps such as for skips.
Equipment
Note that this build variant is optimized for 150 agony resistance (utilising the additional 250 concentration of ), with enough Boon Duration to maintain boons. Celestial is chosen due to it providing more than enough Healing Power for T4 and CM fractals, while also increasing your personal damage to make mechanics like the Aspects on Silent Surf easier.
adds some Barrier to the toolkit and has great synergy with and the corresponding traits. Alternatively if you feel like your party needs more healing take .
If you want to use one gear setup for other types of instanced content we reccomend using the Raid/Strike setup, due to not having the extra attributes from outside of Fractals.
Check the Skill Explanations section below for alternative weapon setups. If you don't have the Weaponmaster Training mastery, take Staff in place of Rifle.
If you are struggling to maintain boons, check the gear optimizer for more gear variants!
While we don't recommend leaving your party during boss fights, when dealing with sections of trash mobs, Mesmer has fantastic utility to speed these sections up, often allowing your party to ignore sectrions of some fractals entirely, using Blinks, Stealth, and Superspeed. Some traits you will find useful for this are:
- This will let you provide Superspeed to yourself and your party.
- This will increase the duration of Stealth gained from skills such as and .
Utilize Mirage for skips when moving across large distances or you need leaps! , and along with the typical Mesmer toolset makes it really good for mobility and skips.
Mirage
Situational Traits
Inspiration
Can be played for extra Condition Cleanse at the cost of Aegis and Boon extension from .
Useful in projectile heavy fights, where there is a potential for a lot of downstates.
Its main usage lays in the combination with and a maxed out rez potential as well as projectile mitigation. Situationally it can also be useful to provide Resistance and Superspeed.
For additional condition cleanses in condition heavy encounters or instabilities.
Has some great value in T4 for extra add pulls e.g. Chaos or Aetherblade.
A very situational trait, primarily helpful dealing with Weakness on Arstariiv.
Can be used as a source of slow CC as a last resort if no-one else will help.
Situational Skills
Heal Chronomancer has an incredibly flexible toolkit, with all of its skill slots being flexible and able to be changed depending on the scenario. Check out the lists below for the common situatiuonal skills and their reason for use.
Heal Skills
Great choice to generate Clones and provide Regeneration.
Huge group healing after a 3s delay and cleansing on every pulse.
Utility Skills
Taken to help provide Might and Fury. Can be exchanged if you play Rifle and don't need a quick ramp up to 25 stacks, or another member of the group provides Might also.
With 800 break bar damage (in combination with ) your go to choice for single target encounter.
An AoE pull and CC, useful in T4s.
Additional Defiance Damage
Immediate single target break bar tool e.g. for the Assault Knights at MAMA.
Delayed version of an AoE , that also removes 3 boons.
Offers two charges of . When this skill recharrges and is channeled it wil lalso reduce the cooldown of .
Skips
For skipping sections of the fractal for your party.
1200 range blink, use it for skips!
Allows a second cast of another utility skill..
For stealthing your party for skips, can be combined with and for 18 seconds of stealth.
600 range leap, can be cancelled mid-air for slightly more range.
450 range blink, 3 charges.
Skill Explanations
Scepter / Shield
(Scepter 1): Is the start of your Scepter auto attack chain. While this does not directly heal, the final attack in the chain, will generate a Clone.
(Scepter 2): A channeled skill that will block an attack and generate two clones (if a block is triggered). Alternatively the channel can be canceled by double tapping the skill to cast create one Clone regardless.
(Scepter 3): Deals a small amount of damage.
(Shield 4): Creates a Phantasm on block that applies Slow and grants Protection.
(Shield 4 flip skill): Creates a Phantasm on block that applies Slow.
(Shield 5): Provides Might and Swiftness while also dealing defiance bar damage.
Rifle
(Rifle 1): Is your autoattack. It provides a small heal to allies where the projectile lands.
(Rifle 2): Generates a clone if it hits an ally, or enemy. Also heals and apples some Regeneration on impact.
(Rifle 3): Throws a beacon on the ground lasting 2 seconds, generating Might and Fury.
(Rifle 3 flip skill): Can be used to detonate the beacon from early proving a burst heal at the cost of boons.
(Rifle 4): A CC skill that creates a Phantasm and applies Vulnerability.
(Rifle 5): Shoots a bullet at a target location that when lands applies Barrier and Resistance to allies. Also opens a singularity that can be opened with the flip skill.
(Rifle 5 flip skill): Opens the singularity from , creating a one use, one way portal from the singularity to your location.
Staff
(Staff 1): Applies Fury and Might to any allies hit by the orb when it bounces.
(Staff 2): A 360 range teleport backwards, that will also create a Clone.
(Staff 3): Summons two Phantasms, that when their attack is finished become Clones. Ideal to be casted at the start of a phase.
(Staff 5): Shares either Aegis, Swiftness, or Resolution randomly on each pulse and deals some defiance bar damage. If you want to make use out of the Aegis, make sure to cast it early enough to deal with the random nature of this skill.
Pistol
(Pistol 4): Creates a Phantasm.
(Pistol 5): Deals a large amount of defiance bar damage that can be taken as an alternative to Staff on some CC heavy fights such as MAMA or Artsariiv if your party refuses to help.
Focus
(Focus 4): Used for Swiftness or projectile reflect if is traited.
When boonstrip is required on single targets the simplist option is to use . Mistlock Instability: No Pain, No Gain has a 20 second internal cooldown so the will always be availible to use. Be careful during split phases, since the timer for Mistlock Instability: No Pain, No Gain keeps ticking, meaning that if you cant strip every 20 seconds, you may find yourself desynced.
Another option is to play which can free up a utility slot, however it will only strip boons if the boss is casting an attack or has a defiance bar up.
T4s
On certain T4s, mainly dredge fractals such as molton boss where the majority of trash mobs have a large amount of boons, it is also recommended to play . This in combination with skills such as and can help to strip boons from multiple mobs at once. is another option to strip boons from multiple mobs at once.
Clone generation gets covered by a number of skill. On Scepter, the third hit of your Scepter attack chain and double casting of (Scepter 2) will both generate one clone each. Casting (Scepter 2) and blocking an attack will generate 2 clones. On Staff, (Staff 2) will also generate a clone, however it also will teleport you back, away from the party. Using a healing skill will generate a clone through .
Additionally, illusions summoned from (Staff 3) and (Shield 4) will turn into clones after finishing their attacks. Therefore you want to be using these skills to generate illusions and clones as often as possible to try and maintain three clones and generate them as quickly as possible after using Shatter skills.
Outside of Phantasms, or grants up to a third of your Might application and Fury if used off cooldown (be careful with well, since the boons are applied after a three second delay). can be aligned with defiance breaks, but remember to use it in your rotation, to help maintain Might and Swiftness. can also be taken to help maintain Might if you find yourself reponsible for all 25 stacks.
Shatters
Clones can then be used to improve the effects of Shatters, to trigger:
to provide Quickness, or (which makes affect allies) to provide Alacrity
Entering gives you a free cast of any of your availible skills. When it ends you will be reverted back to the position where you entered with your skill cooldowns also reverted. The duration of depends on the amount of Clones spent.
If the last stack of one of your Mantras gets used during the Continuum Split, the skill will not be reverted and need to be channeled again!
Use all Shatters while in for additional boons.
gets the most value at boon precasts, and during combat, if you either need additional CC, Stability/Aegis, or burst heal.
Situational Boons
Stability
Correct application of Stability requires knowledge of the encounters and which attacks and be negated with Stability without taking too much damage.
is your main tool and grants 4 stacks of Stability after the initial channel and 3 stacks of Stability for each of the two remaining casts. If a phase requires Stability right at the start, it makes sense to precast the channeled version e.g. Arkk.
share 3 stacks of Stability through and should be used as a backup source, while at least one instance of is recharging.
Any Shatter with will grant you 1 stack of personal Stability
Aegis
Correct application of Aegis requires knowledge of the encounters and which attacks are impactful to block.
provides one stack of Aegis at the initial cast and on every follow up pulse. Your best choice for multiple incomming hits at a short period of time e.g. some MAMA patterns and Siaxs Volatile Hallucinations.
immediately grants one stack of Aegis via . A great emergency skill.
(or any other Signet) grants one stack of Aegis via , when is traited. Play this instead of .
Resistance
Correct application of Resistance requires knowledge of the encounters and which conditions can be temporarely negated by Resistance. E.g. at some T4 fractals Immobile can be ignored to activate multiple trigger points, as well as at encounters that bombard your group with Slow and Chilled.
Any Glamour skill shares Resistance through . Most of the time is the preffered skill to do this.
shares Resistance when is used, at the cost of some healing and condition cleanse. In power compositions this can become crucial at Arstariiv, dealing with Weakness applied. Since an optimised precast can fully cover the entire first phase.
Precasting
()
, , and
, , and
2x
Take the Mistlock Singularity
Adjust utility skills for the encounter
Precast example by Drauskam
()
, , and
, , and
Optional: /
take the Mistlock Singularity
Adjust utility skills for the encounter
Precast example by Drauskam
Healing
Healing and Condition Cleanse
One of your primary sources of healing is , Which heals allies and yourself for each Illusion and Clone summoned. If multiple Illusions or Clones are summoned at the same time, the trait triggers for each Phantasm. The trait also increases your outgoing healing.
Granting boons as described above, also helps through Regeneration, which is also generated through , when you cast a heal skill.
Finally, and top it off, with most of your utility skill choices benefiting from these traits.
If you are playing with , every shatter will heal your party, scaling on the amount of clones spent.
can provide decent burst heal, if you manage your ressources wisely and the same applies to condition pressure, combined with or .
Consider playing for a large burst heal and condition cleanse. This is mostly useful in T4 fractals such as Sirens Reef, whith large amounts of damage and condition pressure.