I’m sure a lot people have been as eager as I have been in wanting to see Anet implement this class after we were teased with its existence with the cancelation of Utopia years back. Based on the current mechanics of GW2, how would you envision a new profession like this take advantage of the current game elements while making for a unique gamestyle?
Quickness – A Power/Crit and Effect on Crit Playstyle
Personally, I play a lot of mesmer. One of the skills that other players appreciate is Time Warp. Quickness tends to be a bit rare and also has a short duration. Gaining quickness with a non-elite skill usually has some sort of drawback: you take double damage in Frenzy, you can’t be healed during Quickening Zepyhr, and you have endurance drain during Haste.
The Chronomancer should not only have an easier access to quickness and have fewer instances of drawbacks. However, Quickness should only be allowed in short bursts. This would make Quickness usage have a skill factor in which you would need to apply the effect during appropriate portions of a chain of skills to reach maximum effectiveness. So while the quickness buff is quite powerful in its own right, players would need to master being efficient with it. This mechanic of the Chronomancer would adhere to Power/Crit builds and Effect on Crit builds.
Duration Mastery – A Support or Condition Damage Playstyle
The above mechanic alone wouldn’t make for completely unique gameplay. There definitely has to be something new to bring to the table. Pretty much every condition can be found majorly in one or two professions. Confusion is majorly accessible by mesmers while Freezing is majorly accessible by Elementalists. Necromancers also benefit from conditions and use them as a resource. The same can generally be said with boons.
The only real choice left is to have the Chronomancer be able to manipulate the duration of boons and conditions to benefit allies and to harm foes. Solely with this additional mechanic, the Chronomancer has great Support capabilities both offensively and defensively. The Chronomancer would be able to augment the durations of their own conditions, which would make for good Condition Damage playstyle as well.
Hybrid playstyles would utilize the Quickness mechanics to do more power/crit damage while also being able to apply conditions faster with increased action and skill use.
Implementation: F1-F4 or Resource?
So far, we’ve really seen two ways to make use of class mechanics. Most professions currently have special F1-F4 skills that go on cooldown, but can be reduced using traits. Chronomancer would definitely get a self-targeted Quickness of small duration as his F1. I’m unsure of what the others would be
There can also be a resource gain. Similar to Thieves where the Chronomancer can expend X number of resource to do Quickness related actions based on need. There could also be a Warrior-like resource gain in which the Chronomancer can utilize different stages which give him a higher duration of Quickness for each stage.
Possible Skills with Time Theme
Perhaps the Chronomancer can cause brief accelerated aging on his victims and infliction of blindness, weakness, and cripple to signify this. Weakness could be a niche condition for this class to inflict as well. I can also see the Chronomancer using time acceleration on his weapons to make them rust and cause bleeding on hit. Maybe the Chronomancer can have a druidic element to it and have him through various seeds that he can then use time accleration for quick growth. Like growing a big field of tall grass to stealth inside or drop a giant pine tree on someone’s face.
Your Thoughts?
I’m curious to know what you think of my ideas. I also would love to hear yours either going along with one of my suggested mechanics or something entirely different. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I had fun with it. =)