Guild Wars 2

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Does alacrity affect Rune/Sigil ICDs?

To answer my own question, it doesn’t appear so.
I tested Sigil of Earth on a golem with an assassin’s set, greatsword, and chr/dom/ill.

The only source of bleeds is the sigil, and only at a chance on crit, and only on a 2sec cooldown.

The setup had effectively 100% crit chance, and with greatsword should be capable of producing large amounts of bleeds if not for the icd. So any reduction on the icd should show up in a higher average bleed stack.

Without alacrity, the build averaged 2-3 bleed stacks at a time.
With alacrity, the number of bleeds didn’t increase at all.

So for Sigil of Earth, at least, alacrity has no effect. It’s likely this applies to all sigil cooldowns, with an also high (but not guaranteed) likelihood of applying to runes as well.

Nachyochez.9758:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Does alacrity affect Rune/Sigil ICDs?

No. All testing I’ve done and seen from the forums is that it only affects the CDs of the skills on your bar and shatters. Trait/Rune/Sigil/Signet ICDs remain unaffected.

It does affect the CD of traits that use skills, such as Mental Defence and Illusionary Inspiration.

Embolism.8106:

Nachyochez.9758:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Does alacrity affect Rune/Sigil ICDs?

No. All testing I’ve done and seen from the forums is that it only affects the CDs of the skills on your bar and shatters. Trait/Rune/Sigil/Signet ICDs remain unaffected.

It does affect the CD of traits that use skills, such as Mental Defence and Illusionary Inspiration.

Curious if this is a bug or WAI, since it doesn’t impact ICD (like Ineptitude) but is working with Mental Defense (taking you word as I’ve not tested that one)

Well the idea with traits that cast a certain skill is that they are suppsed to create synergy with things that effect that skill so I imagine WAI.

Yeah, the whole point of having traits cast a skill is that you can create greater synergy between traits that way.

From a WvW organized group perspective, I’m quite disappointed.

Wells are bad.

• 0.75s cast time (easily interrupted) and damage delayed to the last tick, so it lands 3.75s after I started casting. The cast time should be 0.25s for all wells except maybe the Elite and the Heal.
• I understand ANet designs with tPvP/conquest in mind, hence the “defensive” focus of wells, but there is no cap point in WvW. The enemy will just move out of the red circle. I would really like to be able, by selecting a trait, to give up some of the defensive value and get the bonuses and apply the damage around 1.5s after the well is deployed. There’s still plenty of time to dodge it, but it would be easier to land it on… someone in WvW fights and it wouldn’t force the melee to stand in it for 3 seconds…
• Gravity well has been gutted and rendered completely useless, it needs a rework. I’d rather have the pulls than the float.
• The heal well is like screaming “look I’m gonna be there in 3 seconds! drop your AoE!”. Maybe it’ll work in PvE because the AoE heal is not bad, but I don’t see any reason to pick this over Inspiration + MoR.
• The only good thing I can think for the wells is that most of them are Ethereal fields, so you can have good Chaos Armor uptime.

Continuum split
It’s a shatter and as all shatters suffers in big scale fights because our clones are regularly obliterated by AoE. I was hoping it would allow you to open with some jukes (double portal?!), but with the base duration limited to barely a second, the best you can do is just double timewarp. Meh.

Shield
I’m so disappointed that Echo of Memory is not a proper block for 3 seconds… Instead, we get this gimmicky skill that allows you to block 2 hits at best, summoning a somewhat unimpressive phantasm. Slow and Alacrity are strong, but I’m not a fan of the “bounce projectile” mechanic on phantasm and the attack recharge is way too slow.
And then we have Tides of Time. I was so excited about this skill. Double stun with no target limit! And quickness! In practice, though, it’s very situational. The wall travels slowly, so fleeing enemies can just outrun it and if you want to use it agaist a group you need to be practically in melee range. Also, it’s retaliation will utterly destroy you (I’ve been saying this like forever, retaliation needs fixing).

There is some good stuff (Quickness on shatter, Alacrity, and the movement speed trait are my favourites) and in small scale roaming it did a lot better than in large groups (chronophantasma is very strong in those scenarios), but I was hoping this elite spec would be useful for large group fights…

About wells: As someone already suggested, the possibility to end wells prematurely by activating the skill again would be great: You could chose to get the buff instead of the debuff at the expanse of the pulse effect, and it would make “all’s well that ends well” more useful.

I am only a novice Mesmer, my character is in her mid 50’s still leveling, but the main reason why I rolled this profession was to play as a Chronomancer so I gave it a try, PVE.

Shield: So wonderful and love, fits so well, and with a sword mainhand it’s tons of fun.

Shield 4: Effective, and I do like that it summons a phantasm even if i do not block, and extra bonus if I do. The purple bubble makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside it.

Shield 5: Fun in a pack of mobs. Not too difficult to catch on the return just dont get too far away from the initial position you launched it because it does not bounce back too far. It’s easy to lose in all the other particle effects from other players. Its fun to stun!

Wells: We get 6! Including the heal and elite. The heal one was lackluster but is good to use on other party member especially the vigor. I liked Calamity on groups of mobs, recall for the alacrity, action for the quick/slow. Precognition for the support. I was a bit overwhelmed using all the wells so I have yet to find my all time favorite. The elite was fun, raising a Oakheart off the ground was laughable. With that being said very niche. I rather use timewarp.

And F5. I cannot even begin to say how amazing this is, especially when you are able to get the sequence and timing down. A bit complex at first but a huge payoff. I was doing double time warps, double wells, shatters, shatters, more shatters, more clones. etc.

Like I stated earlier, I am not even level 80 but I am very content with this elite. The whole time playing I was humming back to the future theme, for realz.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Xillllix.3485:

i just tried Chronomancer and I love it. It feels new and powerful. It’s what elite specialization should all be.

In comparison Tempest is what elite professions shouldn’t be. It’s terrible at everything and just makes me want to change my class to mesmer. Anyway you guys are lucky because for us elementalists we got a crappy elite profession that doesn’t justify the expansion price at all unless they redo like 75% of it.

While I agree about Tempest, I have a hard time feeling bad for the most powerful class in the game.

lol it’s not like mesmer is in a bad spot. You guys are 1-shotting people from stealth and have the coolest utilities coming in the expansion with new boons, condis and dual shatter on top.

6/6/6/6/6/6 build strikes again!

Is it again an elementalist complaining mesmer is OP??? O.O