Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer
The following is a concept profession, and it is posted with the aim towards discussion vis-a-vis it’s aesthetic and mechanic. I make no claim that this profession is balanced for in-game purposes, and it will continue to remain a work-in-progress

Lore and Introduction
The Chronomancer, or time magus, lives outside our dimension. With one foot squarely in all three states, the past, present and future, the Chronomancer balances the events of now with those yet to come and those that have occurred. They straddle the veil of existence, and call upon their past and future selves as aid in battle, and maintain the unique ability to interact with these selves and even switch with them.

Mechanic
The Chronomancer wades into the tide of battle with their eyes focused across time, utilising their visions of future and past known as Aspects to influence their behavior in Battle.

The three aspects:
Aspect of the Past: Aid your future self in a benevolent act of sacrifice

The Chronomancer sacrifices half of their damage now for twice their health later, aiding their future self. This is the past aspect, during which you deal half damage. Activate to transform to Visionary of the Past, with twice health and new, damage dealing abilities. Cooldown is 30 sec

Aspect of the Present: Aid your present and influence the tide of battle

The Chronomancer understands that the past and future was now, or will be now, or… this is confusing, but they seem to understand it. This is the present aspect, during which you absorb half the damage that your allies would take. Activate to transform to Clairvoyant of Presence, with new, support abilities. Cooldown is 30 sec

Aspect of the Future: Aid your past self and send your experience backwards.

The Chronomancer takes twice damage now to take half damage later. This is the future aspect, during which you will take twice the damage from attacks. Activate to transform into Seer of the Future, with new, control abilities. Cooldown is 30 sec.

Mechanics details
f1-f3 buttons will be the aspects. They are charged skills, each charge representing 2 seconds of ‘up’ time, after which there is an equal time penalty, with a total of 5 charges (10 seconds). There is a trait line which reduces the Chronomancer’s penalty time.

The player will hold down their aspect, during which time the negative penalty will be applied. (halved damage dealt, receiving half damage from friendlies, twice damage recieved). After this is done, you recieve a buff which allows you to transform into your Aspect by tapping the f1-3 buttons again.

Armor
Undecided.
Many want this to be a heavy armor profession but that doesn’t truly suit the profession

Weapons
Staff
Scepter
Focus
Torch
Warhorn

Reserved for Weapon skills

Staff: Melee/mid-range
1) Swing your staff three times, dealing damage, receiving a random boon and applying a random condition. (chain skill)
2) Thwack your opponent, crippling them.
3) Throw your staff, impaling your enemy, immobilising them. (3 sec). If they break out of the immobilise, they are pulled to your feet.
4) Swing your staff above your head, dealing damage in an AoE and turning boons into conditions
5) Charged skill-become immobilised, and strip conditions off of you and your allies. If you are struck whilst charging, transfer those conditions to the one who attacked you.

Scepter mid/long-range
1)
2)
3)

Reserved for Utility Skills

Conditions of the past
Send all your conditions forward in time, to be suffered by your future self

Rewind
Rewind your health and location to where you were 10 seconds ago

Boons of the Future
Proc many boons randomly for 10 seconds. for the following 10 seconds, any boons are transformed into conditions.

Past and Future lives
Summon a child and wizened old person (if you are sylvari, a shorter version and taller version) versions of yourself. Your past self does damage, and your future self supports.

Reserved for Extras and FAQ’s

Instead of “Past and Future lives” – it could be ancestors of the past and future which could show up as random npcs of your race instead of being a child and senior. I wouldn’t want a child going in to battle, or a senior.

I love the idea of the Chronomancer though. I believe they incorporated some of their concepts in to the current mesmer. Perhaps in the future patches or expansions we will see this class. I imagine it will be difficult to balance though.

I wonder if Tyria has an equivalent of the Three Fates? If so, then Aspects could be:
Aspect of <Insert name here>. Another idea, and one that ties in with the concept
art, is that one could set their Toughness Trait-line to represent being shifted out of
(or sideways to) “standard time.” As much as I hate to step on Mesmer’s toes (Hell,
I bought the game because of their style.), I could see a Distortion-ish effect
for Chronomancer defenses. For that matter, a good set of ‘base’ Conditions could
be:
.Weakness/Cripple (temporarily speed-aging the target.)
.Fear (causing the target to perceive time as you do. However, you’d have to limit
it, so as to not step on Necromancer toes.)
.Immobilize (locking the opponent in time, for “X” duration.)

Logical Boons could include:
.Swiftness (Speeding up your movement/side-stepping “standard” time)
.Regeneration (Speeding up your body’s time, in order to accelerate healing.)
.Stability (Locking yourself into a specific time/space.)

I’m sure others could be (successfully) argued, but those seem to be the more “logical”
examples. As for teacup’s comment; Yes, I’d agree that some of the original ideas must
have been folded into Mesmer’s arsenal (i.e.: T. Warp/Blink/Portal/Temporal Curtain
/Distortion effects can all be argued to possess a “Chronomancy” aspect.) And, unfortunately, that’s the “rub,” on this (otherwise darn stylish) idea.

Time for a bump methinks!

I agree, mesmers do kind of have a great deal of this feel to them.

Have I stepped on their toes? Probably not. Their mechanics are about confusing people in the present, hopefully a Chronomancer is more about trade-offs between their time-stances

So if I get this mechanic right you exist normally in the present which fluxuates your damage. But you activate the past to build up cahrges on the future so you can do bonus damage?

Sounds wonky and very little reason to cripple yourself so often just to spike damage.

Each aspect should benifit you now. Try present nuetral bit every x seconds generates a charge on past and future. Personally I wouls say entering past aspect shoild up damage and lower defense and crits in it add charges to future. In future you dmg is down but defense is up and again crits charge past.

Reasoning future lets them see and counter enemy movements before it happens. A more defensive stance as the future is mutable and they must ward against many possible attacks. Looking to the past lets them pinpoint openings and strike but doing so leaves them more open to damage.

As for armor go with heavy. Just change the name. Chronomancer invokes final fantasy images of a light Armor mage. Try Seer, Prophet, or Oracle. Denote a warrior who uses their ability to glimpse future events and manipulate the resent past in thier favor in combat. Prehaps even a luck based skill set that enhances allied crit chance, blinds opponents (forcing them to miss thru time manipuatives) or other changes to condition duration.

This should set it apart from warrior and Guardian as well as all the rest and give its own archtype. A mutable class able to shift highly offensive to defense mid battle while seeking to control chances of crit and hits. As well as other control of flow.

I love this but I am sure Arena Net some where said that chronomancers will never bee seen in Guild wars 2, which makes me cry I love the concept and I hope your post here changes their mind.

I know a while back I started thinking about ideas for a chronomancer including themes for utility skills (Basically the 5 different types, I hadn’t quite got to writing up the 4 of each that’d be used)

I used the weapons that were mentioned on the GWW for them (Other concept art, some very recent, and some dating back even to before Nightfall depicts men and women with a range of weapons, including maces, dual-wielded spears, javelins, halberds, dual-handed swords and dual-wielded axes.)

While I may have kind of set aside my thoughts on this (At least for the moment) perhaps it’d help give you some ideas.

I love this concept, though I think the f1-f3 skills might be better off if they were focused on defense.
Burst damage would not be as useful as burst defense, in my opinion.
Sacrifice half your defense later (when it’s just a single boss that you and your party are working on) so you can have double defense now while there are multiple mobs alive.
Alternatively, your armor is cut in half now, while you are out of AoE range and perhaps kiting to heal while your party fights, and then you can run in and tank for a short bit while you rez a fallen party member.
I know those are weak examples, but that’s just off the top of my head.
Skills could definitely be focused around things similar to chill and quickening zephyr (manipulation of time buffing yourself/party and de-buffing targets).
Skill 1/auto-attack should be a generic hit with a chance to slow down the target (technically this would be speeding time up for the target, resulting in those in normal time-space perceiving the target as slower).
Skill 2 could be a time stopper (just like a stunn basically). Stops time for the target for 3seconds.
Just thoughts. Would be a fun class to play if done right.

Chronomancer is awesome idea, agreed.

This concept sounds like it should be an expansion of engineer, with them being technologically affiliated. So then it could be like they have a Temporal Manipulation drive available to them. I just don’t see very many skills being available initially for chronomancer since time manipulation is simple.

However, If anet is able to create a complete skill tree for A new class such as this then By all means I’m for it.

+1 for good thread

Small edit on the aspects, have a look, critique

I got reinspired, and edited the apects. now, it’s a channel-transform! What do we all think?

I see no reason for GW2 to have Chronomancers as a seperate class, when the game already has partwise Chronomancers with the Mesmer.

All that GW2 needs is more horizontal progression in form of Sub Classes, Trait System Redesign or a mixture of both to allow players to improve the Mesmers more into Chronomancer Gameplay, because Mesmers already have KSills, that manipulate and shift the time as an Illusion. And basically is time magic nothing else, than just the greatest form of illusion magic.