Flameshaper adds the very important engulf and consume to our kit. Properly setting up your ramps before using engulf to maximize the effect of your lb and consumes and using them in the correct situations is the key to maximizing Flameshaper

Where does your healing come from

The base of the your gameplay revolves around ramping echoes and consuming them with ve to apply lb, followed by using db and engulfing yourself to transfer the single-target healing and also heal with consume.

The way consume works is that it will always prefer the strongest version of db applied on the engulf target, and will do its AoE heal for a percentage of what that specific db is healing for. This means that enhancing this db with effects like coy, fulm, renewingb and lungs will vastly increase the healing of consume as these effects all multiply each other greatly increasing the total healing.

Most of these affects are passive and always active with the exception of coy, and you should always aim to buff every single db with coy.

As for the specific targeting, db will always apply to yourself when you cast it and you will always be targeting yourself with engulf for three reasons:

1. consume only has a 25y range around the engulf target to do its healing, targeting yourself lets you position centrally in the room so the whole raid is in range.
2. Your mastery will also increase the healing of db and consume, and it is always active on yourself so engulfing yourself means mastery is guaranteed to be increasing the healing of db on yourself.
3. lb transfers healing you do to yourself to everyone else you echoed ve on, so by using engulf on yourself (with db active, which increases it by another 50%) you transfer part of this healing to everyone else.

All in all, this ends up in the scenario where Flameshaper has an enormous healing potential but requires careful planning to execute the ramp properly and do the healing at the right time.

Important things to know about

• fulm makes db heal in 20% less time (down to 12.8 seconds on a rank 1 db) while doing the same total healing over the whole duration. This doesn't increase the healing of db but it does so for consume. You need to keep in mind this duration as consume will remove 2 seconds from the remaining duration meaning if you plan to use two engulfs you need to do so in the following 8 seconds after casting db, anything later and it will fall off early.
• Consuming echoes with ve will apply insurance to people thanks to s24p. You don't have to actively do anything about this as it happens on its own but it's important to know that this is happening because it's big part of the reason we choose to consume our echoes with ve as opposed to other spells. insurance will do healing on its own and also the insurance on yourself will transfer a part via lb to everyone else.
• Having more healing over time effects on you increases the healing engulf does and so the amount it transfers via lb, however there isn't a comfortable way to add more hots on yourself before the lb. Using rev before starting the ramp runs the risk of it running out beforehand if it doesn't crit enough times. And picking enkindle means losing out on lungs, so we end up with only db and echoed db on us.
• fsiphon will reduce the cooldown of db by 6 seconds every time you engulf. If you are using stasis to send four engulfs in quick succession this will reduce the current cooldown on db by 24 seconds, letting you cast it again almost instantly after releasing the stasis. db is a really strong spell and you don't want to waste uses of it so be mindful of how the cooldown reduction affects its availability

Gameplay

Your gameplay will come down to ramping echoes for every relevant damage event of the fight and consuming them with ve. If you are committing stasis to a ramp you would use it right after the ve and fill it with db and two engulfs, if you are not using stasis the amount of engulfs you use into the lb will depend on your haste, current engulf charges available and how far away is your stasis

The goal is to get as many lbinds as possible and feeding engulf into it, while also causing consume. You always want to have two engulf charges ready for stasis and how many you can use between each stasis depends on your current haste, at 20% or more it should be two.

You want to maximize your sb and fb usage as well. sb is a good filler smart heal and fb is an burst generator via spark and leaping

Your ramp should look something like this

You need to start your ramp the right amount of time ahead. If you start too early the echoes will run out before damage hits the raid, and if you start too late ta won't come off cooldown in time for you to cast a second one meaning you will have five less targets covered by your lb.

Conclusions

Flameshaper is currently our best spec for raiding, it has a very powerful burst heal that can be executed very often and its perfect for covering frequent raid-wide damage events. It does require a certain amount of practice to execute properly consistently and might feel easy to mess up at first. Doing it right is important as losing echo coverage means more targets are in danger of dying due to not receiving your lb healing.

The Chronowarden tree doesn't add a new spell, instead it focused on enhancing and improving every part of the base kit of the spec.

Where does your healing come from

Your main form of healing is ramping echoes and consuming them with ve right as damage hits the raid, followed by echoing yourself and then casting a rank 2 sb on yourself to feed into the lb.

The way Chronowarden works, by echoing yourself and then casting sb at rank 2 you will heal yourself with it twice, followed by two chronofs, and all of this healing will partially transfer to all the targets you echoed before using ve.

On top of this, every target will get insurance on them from s24p, increasing the total healing you do even more. Once your ramp is over and your healing is done, you can start to ramp for the next damage event right away as soon as ta's cooldown allows it

You should also remember to use db and fb as much as possible. The ves you use to activate your lbs will also give you coy so you can follow up a ramp with db right after to do extra over time healing. fb on the other hand is a good burst generator thanks to spark and leaping, so it's a good way to kickstart the next ramp by giving you extra essence.

Important things to know

• Thanks to afterimg all empower spells generate chronofs when cast, these chronofs are full power and can generate bursts, this means all your empower spells can be used to generate essence and apply echoes for following ramps.
• fb will activate leaping, and consuming leaping by using chronof on a boss in a single target scenario will make the extra chronofs shoot to nearby allies, making it a good filler that does decent healing on top of generating essence.
• imatrix will give you on average three seconds less on all the cooldowns of the empowered spells, meaning you can use them more often and benefit from all the other carrier effects the tree adds to them. With spclarity and this your sb effectively has around ~17 seconds of cooldown which means approximately 50% uptime on primacy.
• tempburst transforms tts into a powerhouse of a cooldown. You can use tts as a secondary ramping tool as the haste and cooldown reduction it gives you lets you cast three tas before the echoes applied by the first one run out, meaning you can have 15 echoes out on the group without having to use any essence or stasis.

Gameplay

Chronowarden focuses heavily on lb and then echoing the empowered spells as much as possible:

• To respond to burst damage, our best tool is ramping echoes into consuming them with ve followed by using echo and rank 2 sb on yourself. This will do more total healing than echoing sb directly, as the ve will apply insurance via s24p to everyone echoed.
• The reason for using sb at rank two is because of afterimg: The free chronofs from the capstone go towards targets healed by sb up to a maximum of three, preferring natural sb bolts over echoed hits and then filling with echoed sbs until it reaches three. If you cast sb at rank three or four, you will get a single chronof on yourself and the other two will hit the other targets that sb picked. However if you echo yourself and cast it at rank two, the first two chronofs will hit you and the one extra target, and then the third chronof will also hit you as you are the first echoed sb target, meaning this guarantees you get hit by two chronofs and lb all that healing.
• This doesn't mean you won't ever echo sb directly, as sometimes the healing profile offered by reverb can be better than the high burst heal done by lb. This combined with the simplicity and quickness of echoing sb means it is still a tool that you can use on the appropriate scenarios.
• echoing rank 1 db repeatedly will let you cover the raid on a long-duration powerful heal over time, being a very good tool to handle rot damage scenarios
• stasis serves mainly as a ramp tool for ec. When preparing to lb the whole raid to heal with ec you should stasis a ta, followed by a single echo and then wait without healing until ta is ready again. After that casting the second ta it will fill the stasis, you would then instantly release the stasis as this will apply 10 more echoes before the original ones from the first ta run out, letting you cover the whole raid in echo right as you get ready to ve and ec.
• Activating tts will grant you a big burst of haste, helping you quickly ramp echoes via manual casts and ta before consuming them with the spell of choice. You should try to use this cooldown as another ramp tool separate from stasis to cover a different damage event.

Conclusions

Chronowarden currently falls a bit short of Flameshaper for raids, as the specs do a very similar thing but Flameshaper packs a stronger punch into the lb thanks to engulf and better healing outside of it with consume. However, Chronowarden is a very strong spec that can be used to great effect in raids and with proper play can feel more fluid and very rewarding to play.