Guild Wars 2

The Devs had asked for feedback so this is just my personal view, now we have Chronomancer traits and a few specializations revealed. I am not the worlds best mesmer, nor the most hardcore player but I main Mesmer and I really love the class (this post probably sounds more pessimistic about the class overall than I actually am).

Good Things

• Theme: it is similar-but-different enough to Mesmer. The team has done a great job in translating the time manipulation theme into the Slow and Alacrity mechanics.
• Wells: Wells look great, visually, thematically and in terms of effects. The float on Gravity Well is a great idea (please keep it!).
• Traits: It is nice to see the traits trying to address some long standing issues (with movement speed increase on Time Marches On and the slowness of illusions with Time Catches Up). Traits are also an area I feel could be improved.
• Continuum Shift: Great idea. A bit iffy about the destroyable rift since it gives the control to your opponents or NPC AOE damage but great concept.
  
  
  Continued below…

Concerns/Things To Think About

Confusion and Slow:

It seems to me there is a clear negative synergy between Confusion and Slow. Slow slows down skill use. Confusion damages on skill use. It seems counterproductive to use both Confusion and Slow. This is very concerning – it means right away Scepter and Torch are not viable weapons with Chronomancer. Ethereal combo fields are also not looking very good with Chronomancer as a result, despite 3 of the wells providing Ethereal fields.

Lack of Actual Gameplay Difference:

This is my #1 concern for Chronomancer.

If you look at the type of thing you are doing on Mesmer, and the type of thing you are doing on Chronomancer, they are going to be very similar. You will still be shattering (just more frequently to maintain Alacrity and Slow), you will still be summoning Illusions to support allies, you will still be using AOE skills to support allies (Wells instead of Glamours). With the new weapon updates for regular Mesmer, reducing skill cooldown by doing things (like maintaining Chaos Armor) is already going to be a core part of the gameplay.

Absorbing attacks for allies with Echo of Memory is interesting, but absorbing attacks with an AOE effect isn’t going to feel very new or different for Mesmers given our history of projectile absorption/reflection. The AOE stun and Continuum split are cool but I really don’t feel these two things will substantially change the gameplay.

Playing as a slow but heavy hitting melee juggernaut with short range shouts is a substantially different gameplay experience for Necromancers. Playing with the Longbow with some more mobility is a substantially different gameplay experience for Guardians (even if it is derivative of Ranger).

Chronomancer definitely provides different things (different support, different debuffs etc.). My concern is it is doing them in exactly the same way a normal Mesmer does normal Mesmer stuff.


Other Concerns

My other #1 concern is that the opportunity to address core issues with the Mesmer class is not being taken. For example Guardians have been an A+, meta class in all game modes basically throughout the lifespan of the game and regular Guardians are still getting Tomes looked at. The issues around Blood Magic and Necro support are being addressed as part of regular Necro as well.

In both of these cases core issues with the class are being addressed by fixing the class, not with specializations. Regular Mesmers have a lot of issues and I hope these will be addressed at the class, not specialization, level.

Mechanical
For example Temporal Curtain and Veil not stacking with ANYTHING

Mimic
I honestly thought this would already been changed. Easier access to the Signet of Inspiration effect doesn’t seem promising – you are choosing the ability to copy buffs and share to allies with significant trait investment VS simply removing them via Null Field and providing condition cover as well.

Lack of Weapon Variety:
I find it deeply concerning the cries over the past years about the FOUR offhands and TWO mainhands have been ignored. Adding yet another OH weapon and no MH or alternate skill bars is going to put Mesmer basically last in both raw number of weapon skills and the number of possible weapon combinations.

Thieves Hard Countering.
I am fine with being countered. What I am not fine with being told “this GRANDMASTER trait doesn’t work on 80% of thief skills”. Power Block will never see proper play in sPVP in its current form because of this and everybody knows it. One suggestion is make “default attack skills” unaffected, instead of all 0 CD skills.

Putting Time Marches On in Chronomancer
This needs to be a regular Mesmer trait. Put Time Catches Up as minor for Chrono and let it give the speedboost to Phantasms when summoned (so it benefits both Phantasm and Shatter builds) and then come up with a new Adept trait for Chronomancers.

Closing
I’m still looking forward to playing Chronomancer and I’m hoping it will be even more fun than it already looks to be!

I think your concerns are pretty reasonable. Its natural to be wary about bigger changes happening. And many guardians seem to be weirded out by their changes, and while necromancers will be a lot better thanks to those long due reworks, they’ll still function very similarly due to their slow cast times and lack of escapes. I just want to add a few opinions.

One of the mesmer’s greatest weaknesses, especially in WvW was a lack of AoE. The Wells directly remedy that as they seem to be more useful than even the necro well bombs. The well of gravity will probably be a mesmer staple in pvp/wvw. So I personally feel like they really did try to remedy this issue for the mesmer.

As far as theives go.. they’ll still be a counter but I think the shield and access to slow could really give us a better chance against them, but they’d still probably have an advantage, just not as great as one.

I agree with the MH weapons, since it does kind of limit our choices. At least in pvp, I personally feel like the stuff offered by shield will be a lot more useful than the things offered by the other offhands. I’d only really consider torch over it for the stealth, but as we know stealth isn’t built for capture point pvp.

The conflict between confusion and slow is interesting and true, but I’m not concerned about it because I feel like those who spec into chronomancy will be pushed more towards a burstier set up than a condition based set up, and the slow will really help glassy chronomancers to be able to survive long enough to burst targets. In general I feel that the continuum split mechanic and traits like chronophantasma and illusionay clone shattter resummon (can’t remember its name) will make the chronomancer one of the highest skill ceiling burst classes in the game, where you really can’t faceroll, because you’ll need to understand how to use time to achieve that burst.

While slow may be counter-intuitive to confusion, those running with interrupt builds will LOVE the slow will make it possible to interrupt stuff that were pretty much impossible before.

As for the speed chrono get time marches on yes, BUT a regular mesmer can take signet of inspiration and it will proc swiftness as well as one other boon each time, so is certainly fixed for non-chrono mesmers too

After looking at the traits, I can’t think of a single reason to not take chronomancer. It’s essentially Mesmer 1.5

You don’t lose anything but gain access to an awesome clutch shatter and alacrity at the cost of literally nothing. It’s got awesome traits that make shatter builds AMAZING with the grand master.

That said, I’m not excited about it at all. Because it’s not a specialization it’s an upgrade. It specializes in nothing really. Dragon Hunter and Reaper both essentially change the profession into something specialized, new virtues and deathshroud changes. Mesmer 1.5 is just the same as Mesmer 1.0 but with a few added things. It doesn’t get a change really and doesn’t specialize. It’s so far the least appealing and most boring of all known specializations.

heartless.6803:

After looking at the traits, I can’t think of a single reason to not take chronomancer. It’s essentially Mesmer 1.5

You don’t lose anything but gain access to an awesome clutch shatter and alacrity at the cost of literally nothing. It’s got awesome traits that make shatter builds AMAZING with the grand master.

That said, I’m not excited about it at all. Because it’s not a specialization it’s an upgrade. It specializes in nothing really. Dragon Hunter and Reaper both essentially change the profession into something specialized, new virtues and deathshroud changes. Mesmer 1.5 is just the same as Mesmer 1.0 but with a few added things. It doesn’t get a change really and doesn’t specialize. It’s so far the least appealing and most boring of all known specializations.

I wouldn’t really say its boring or unnapealing, more like in terms of our class mechanic, anet thought we didn’t need as radical of a change. The shatter skills have always been solid from day one and our staple build type in pvp, so there wasn’t a need to rework it in the way that reaper shroud reworks death shroud. I’m excited about it because the skills they add and the time-boon/condition management abilities really raise the skill bar for the types of things that the mesmer will be able to do. In theory the burst potential for shatter specs seems so much higher when you can essentially reset cooldowns and have consistently lower cooldowns from alacrity. I firmly believe that the chronomancer will be one of the most difficult to use but powerful elite specializations.

The reaper may have gotten tons of new weapon skills from GS and RS, but they didn’t get new boons/conditions, and with the exception of the elite shout, their shouts look kinda of limited compared to the wells we’re getting. For those who WvW, I can guarantee that the shield 5 and elite well alone with change the GWEN WvW meta into GWENM meta, and there will be more reason to take multiple mesmers besides veil and gank.

nearlight.3064:

heartless.6803:

After looking at the traits, I can’t think of a single reason to not take chronomancer. It’s essentially Mesmer 1.5

You don’t lose anything but gain access to an awesome clutch shatter and alacrity at the cost of literally nothing. It’s got awesome traits that make shatter builds AMAZING with the grand master.

That said, I’m not excited about it at all. Because it’s not a specialization it’s an upgrade. It specializes in nothing really. Dragon Hunter and Reaper both essentially change the profession into something specialized, new virtues and deathshroud changes. Mesmer 1.5 is just the same as Mesmer 1.0 but with a few added things. It doesn’t get a change really and doesn’t specialize. It’s so far the least appealing and most boring of all known specializations.

I wouldn’t really say its boring or unnapealing, more like in terms of our class mechanic, anet thought we didn’t need as radical of a change. The shatter skills have always been solid from day one and our staple build type in pvp, so there wasn’t a need to rework it in the way that reaper shroud reworks death shroud. I’m excited about it because the skills they add and the time-boon/condition management abilities really raise the skill bar for the types of things that the mesmer will be able to do. In theory the burst potential for shatter specs seems so much higher when you can essentially reset cooldowns and have consistently lower cooldowns from alacrity. I firmly believe that the chronomancer will be one of the most difficult to use but powerful elite specializations.

The reaper may have gotten tons of new weapon skills from GS and RS, but they didn’t get new boons/conditions, and with the exception of the elite shout, their shouts look kinda of limited compared to the wells we’re getting. For those who WvW, I can guarantee that the shield 5 and elite well alone with change the GWEN WvW meta into GWENM meta, and there will be more reason to take multiple mesmers besides veil and gank.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying Chrono isn’t useful. But I can see uses and needs for staying Guardian over Dragon hunter and Necro over reaper, but I’m really struggling to see why anyone would stay mesmer when they can be chronomancer. It’s essentially an upgraded mesmer. I don’t think any other 3rd trait line will top chronomancer’s traitline.

heartless.6803:

nearlight.3064:

heartless.6803:

After looking at the traits, I can’t think of a single reason to not take chronomancer. It’s essentially Mesmer 1.5

You don’t lose anything but gain access to an awesome clutch shatter and alacrity at the cost of literally nothing. It’s got awesome traits that make shatter builds AMAZING with the grand master.

That said, I’m not excited about it at all. Because it’s not a specialization it’s an upgrade. It specializes in nothing really. Dragon Hunter and Reaper both essentially change the profession into something specialized, new virtues and deathshroud changes. Mesmer 1.5 is just the same as Mesmer 1.0 but with a few added things. It doesn’t get a change really and doesn’t specialize. It’s so far the least appealing and most boring of all known specializations.

I wouldn’t really say its boring or unnapealing, more like in terms of our class mechanic, anet thought we didn’t need as radical of a change. The shatter skills have always been solid from day one and our staple build type in pvp, so there wasn’t a need to rework it in the way that reaper shroud reworks death shroud. I’m excited about it because the skills they add and the time-boon/condition management abilities really raise the skill bar for the types of things that the mesmer will be able to do. In theory the burst potential for shatter specs seems so much higher when you can essentially reset cooldowns and have consistently lower cooldowns from alacrity. I firmly believe that the chronomancer will be one of the most difficult to use but powerful elite specializations.

The reaper may have gotten tons of new weapon skills from GS and RS, but they didn’t get new boons/conditions, and with the exception of the elite shout, their shouts look kinda of limited compared to the wells we’re getting. For those who WvW, I can guarantee that the shield 5 and elite well alone with change the GWEN WvW meta into GWENM meta, and there will be more reason to take multiple mesmers besides veil and gank.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying Chrono isn’t useful. But I can see uses and needs for staying Guardian over Dragon hunter and Necro over reaper, but I’m really struggling to see why anyone would stay mesmer when they can be chronomancer. It’s essentially an upgraded mesmer. I don’t think any other 3rd trait line will top chronomancer’s traitline.

Yeah thats how I feel too. So many of things that chronomancy adds are just to good to pass up. Even if you don’t take shield, time marches, on continuum split, the elite well, and the other really interesting traits are too good to pass up really. I’m interested in seeing where exactly the meta will evolve into. Will it be chrono-shatter with the same GS/Staff ranged spec, or will sword/shield see more play? And yeah in general, it seems like chronomancy, illusions, and probably dueling will be the most used traitlines, although all the other lines may be able to offer something over dueling depending on the nature of the build.

Not sure I can agree with the statement that Chrono will be a must have, and then saying that in relation to a Chrono, Illusions, and Dueling build. Such a build would have fairly redundant illusion generation that still mostly depend on F1 to do damage. Even with the goodies that Chrono offers, I don’t see such a build outperforming a classic Domination, Dueling, and Illusions build.

You would be lacking boon removal, and the incredible burst potential of the new Mental Torment, and of course Fragility is nothing to scoff at either.

Sure with the above Chrono build you can set up a dual F1 shatter in a combo with F5, but it’ll be harder to pull off and more failure prone, relies on a long CD, and any way you slice it the spike will come in two bursts and not one!

The classic build will innately pull off a single MW that does 35 – 60% more damage then the Chrono build, while also AE stripping boons like Protection to make that spike even worse.

So despite all the really nice “bells and whistles” that Chrono offers, to me it doesn’t seem that likely to unseat the classic Power Shatter Mesmer. A highly competent power shatter Mesmer doesn’t really need super-speed illusions, more illusions to shatter (Dueling provides plenty to feed MWs), or perma speed. They’re all nice things to have, no doubt, but they’re simply not “must have’s” to the most popular and competitive of current Mesmer builds/playstyles.

I think Chronomancy fits MtD shatter far better, because every single shatter including F5, is turned into an offensive weapon with MtD + IP, and synergizes very well with Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasms.

Windwalker.7421:

Not sure I can agree with the statement that Chrono will be a must have, and then saying that in relation to a Chrono, Illusions, and Dueling build. Such a build would have fairly redundant illusion generation that still mostly depend on F1 to do damage. Even with the goodies that Chrono offers, I don’t see such a build outperforming a classic Domination, Dueling, and Illusions build.

You would be lacking boon removal, and the incredible burst potential of the new Mental Torment, and of course Fragility is nothing to scoff at either.

Sure with the above Chrono build you can set up a dual F1 shatter in a combo with F5, but it’ll be harder to pull off and more failure prone, relies on a long CD, and any way you slice it the spike will come in two bursts and not one!

The classic build will innately pull off a single MW that does 35 – 60% more damage then the Chrono build, while also AE stripping boons like Protection to make that spike even worse.

So despite all the really nice “bells and whistles” that Chrono offers, to me it doesn’t seem that likely to unseat the classic Power Shatter Mesmer. A highly competent power shatter Mesmer doesn’t really need super-speed illusions, more illusions to shatter (Dueling provides plenty to feed MWs), or perma speed. They’re all nice things to have, no doubt, but they’re simply not “must have’s” to the most popular and competitive of current Mesmer builds/playstyles.

I think Chronomancy fits MtD shatter far better, because every single shatter including F5, is turned into an offensive weapon with MtD + IP, and synergizes very well with Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasms.

I see what you’re saying, but I really want chronomancy to work. To me it sounds like its a tossup between the utility of duleing versus the damage of domination.

Have you considered something like this build?
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMBWAWoBlg~

With illusionary reversion, I don’t think that deceptive evasion would be necessary for clone generation. I feel that the vigor on crit minor and blinding dissipation would be a much bigger loss by comparison, but if mental torment gives as much burst as you say it does, that might not be that big of deal.

I think that giving up DE will be pretty significant to your Clone generation. I’m not convinced that Chrono alone will be enough illusion generation in many cases. In 1v1 I can see that working, although still will be a bit slower to set things up as compared to the more traditional power shatter build with DE.

As you said, on top of that you’re losing vigor and the awesome new Blinding Dissipation trait, which is a huge deal to improve P-Shatter Mesmer sustain IMO. Even the lack of Sharper Images and the improved Confusing Combatants will be noticeable IMO. Obviously not critical to a power build, but that’s missing damage none the less.

On the build you linked I would personally go for Rending Shatter in Domination, in order to ensure I get the Fragility bonus. Secondly, I would take Compounding Power over PoM, again for maximum damage on shatters.

This sort of shatter build incorporating Chrono looks very interesting, especially when using MI to help with Clone production. Then with F5 you can double-up on huge damage spikes, but after that you’ll be a bit slower in setting up additional spikes.

Definitely something I’ve also been considering! (Although I’m hardly a P-Shatter expert.)

Yer a new mainhand for “different playstyle” would have gone a long way.

Coulter.2315:

Yer a new mainhand for “different playstyle” would have gone a long way.

True, but a shield is awesome and we already got one power-centric MH and a condi-centric MH.

Rather buff/fix existent options than add new ones, at least right now. What we need is weekly~biweekly balance changes, not more stuff to balance but then only once a year as now.

Carighan.6758:

Coulter.2315:

Yer a new mainhand for “different playstyle” would have gone a long way.

True, but a shield is awesome and we already got one power-centric MH and a condi-centric MH.

Rather buff/fix existent options than add new ones, at least right now. What we need is weekly~biweekly balance changes, not more stuff to balance but then only once a year as now.

So what are you going to do when you want to use 2 different offhands and playing power?

Windwalker.7421:

I think that giving up DE will be pretty significant to your Clone generation. I’m not convinced that Chrono alone will be enough illusion generation in many cases. In 1v1 I can see that working, although still will be a bit slower to set things up as compared to the more traditional power shatter build with DE.

As you said, on top of that you’re losing vigor and the awesome new Blinding Dissipation trait, which is a huge deal to improve P-Shatter Mesmer sustain IMO. Even the lack of Sharper Images and the improved Confusing Combatants will be noticeable IMO. Obviously not critical to a power build, but that’s missing damage none the less.

On the build you linked I would personally go for Rending Shatter in Domination, in order to ensure I get the Fragility bonus. Secondly, I would take Compounding Power over PoM, again for maximum damage on shatters.

This sort of shatter build incorporating Chrono looks very interesting, especially when using MI to help with Clone production. Then with F5 you can double-up on huge damage spikes, but after that you’ll be a bit slower in setting up additional spikes.

Definitely something I’ve also been considering! (Although I’m hardly a P-Shatter expert.)

Oh and another idea I’ve heard from talking to some really experienced shatter mesmer PvPers is that they think Illusions won’t be needed at all anymore outside of condition-shatter builds. They expect that 6/6/0/0/6 or 6/6/6/0/0 will become more popular depending on the focus. 6/6/0/0/6 (without ireversion) to me works in theory because alacrity and the baseline 15% shatter recharge should be enough to keep shatter (and general) cooldowns low enough, while most of the other reasons we went into illusions before will be baseline, like IP and Ielast. The main caveat is to keep cooldowns low you’d want to shatter more clones than usual, which rewards bigger bursts, but I think it could work. Theres a thread floating around the next page back that looks at cooldowns with alacrity and it seems manageable. I’m also interested into seeing what the new illusions GM that “improves shatters” will actually do to see if its really worth taking.

Coulter.2315:

So what are you going to do when you want to use 2 different offhands and playing power?

Eh… as the name implies, you can only use one offhand. At a time. You can’t DW offhand items.

Or if you meant having two weapon sets with different offhands, do this:

1st set

• MH: Sword
• OH: Focus

2nd set

• MH: empty
• OH: Sword

That’ll automatically use your first set’s item in the second set, since the slot isn’t used there.

I have to agree with you on mimic and power block.
I know thieves’ skill don’t have cds. However, their skills actually share a universal cd that is tied to initiative regeneration. It is more than reasonable to ask power block to do sth on that part.
It can completely stop initiative regen for 1-2 seconds for just slow it down by certain percent over a longer period of time.

Carighan.6758:

Coulter.2315:

So what are you going to do when you want to use 2 different offhands and playing power?

Eh… as the name implies, you can only use one offhand. At a time. You can’t DW offhand items.

Or if you meant having two weapon sets with different offhands, do this:

1st set

• MH: Sword
• OH: Focus

2nd set

• MH: empty
• OH: Sword

That’ll automatically use your first set’s item in the second set, since the slot isn’t used there.

My point was MH+OH/MH+OH, you cannot run Sword as your only MH weapon in PvP (I mean “cannot” in the sense it would be certain death) and Scepter is awful. Thats the shame of Mesmer – some of the best offhands in the game but you can only run 1 at a time… And they gave us another offhand.

But that’s “just” a balance issue, isn’kitten Sword needs to be rebalanced, and we all know that. Why heap another, probably unbalanced, weapon on top?

Carighan.6758:

But that’s “just” a balance issue, isn’kitten Sword needs to be rebalanced, and we all know that. Why heap another, probably unbalanced, weapon on top?

Its not a balance issue though, its a lack of MH Ranged option.

Coulter.2315:

Its not a balance issue though, its a lack of MH Ranged option.

Scepter, and indirect Greatsword and Staff though these ofc lock you into a pseudo-offhand.

Yes, I know, is a condi weapon. And condition has no melee weapon, yes. And in theory I’d easily want all weapns but for now I’d be mighty happy with actually having a (functional) melee weapon for power in the first place, not the sword we have right now. And have the Scepter be less terrible.

Although Scepter definitely still has some issues, it shouldn’t be underestimated either. With the plethora of Quickness options we’re getting, and the improvements to Confusion, I think it’ll be a bit better as a mid-range weapon, even for Power. The #3 and the AA can do OK damage actually, and the Clone generation might make it easier to give up DE if you felt compelled to do so (w/Chronomancy).

The #2 skill does decent direct damage and the 5 stacks of Torment hurt a little too. Considering there isn’t much else to take as an Illusions Master trait, one could even try out Malicious Sorcery and see how that 50% damage bonus on Torment works out for a Power build. (Looks like ~478 damage per second on a moving target with 0 Condie damage. That’s ~3825 damage over 8 seconds.)

Regarding Confusion and Slow, isn’t Confusion being reworked to have most of its damage tick with additional damage on skill usage?

Carighan.6758:

Coulter.2315:

Its not a balance issue though, its a lack of MH Ranged option.

Scepter, and indirect Greatsword and Staff though these ofc lock you into a pseudo-offhand.

Yes, I know, is a condi weapon. And condition has no melee weapon, yes. And in theory I’d easily want all weapns but for now I’d be mighty happy with actually having a (functional) melee weapon for power in the first place, not the sword we have right now. And have the Scepter be less terrible.

Its not the fact its just a condi weapon, its because its very poorly designed – incredibly slow animations that make it so clunky and worthless for landing pressure on PvP targets. I would be happy with a revamp to scepter but my point remains that atm we have a SINGLE viable mainhand to pair with an offhand – this must change.

Coulter.2315:

Carighan.6758:

Coulter.2315:

Its not a balance issue though, its a lack of MH Ranged option.

Scepter, and indirect Greatsword and Staff though these ofc lock you into a pseudo-offhand.

Yes, I know, is a condi weapon. And condition has no melee weapon, yes. And in theory I’d easily want all weapns but for now I’d be mighty happy with actually having a (functional) melee weapon for power in the first place, not the sword we have right now. And have the Scepter be less terrible.

Its not the fact its just a condi weapon, its because its very poorly designed – incredibly slow animations that make it so clunky and worthless for landing pressure on PvP targets. I would be happy with a revamp to scepter but my point remains that atm we have a SINGLE viable mainhand to pair with an offhand – this must change.

You do know that scepter advances it chain regardless of hitting or not. It block does TONS of damage on a condi build. And its 3 skills is a channel (good for stealthed targets) with a long duration confusion.

The full channel of confusing images has a higher damage coefficient than blurred frenzy. The block does ok power damage and solid torment damage even in a power build.

Really, the stinker of scepter is always the autoattack. Regardless of whether you’re going power or condition, the autoattack on scepter is just abominable.

Knox.8462:

Regarding Confusion and Slow, isn’t Confusion being reworked to have most of its damage tick with additional damage on skill usage?

Yes, it looks like this is what is happening. Actually this makes sense and is still unique, it’s a bit like Torment but instead of “movement” it requires Action to get the bonus damage. Very good idea and long overdo. I hope they balance the numbers out correctly so that the punishment for activating skills remains useful/strong.

And in fact, Slow+Confusion would be an awesome combination this way.

Because the only way they could properly code this would be with a duration-based state. So you don’t take increased damage “on using an ability”, you’ll probably take it while using an ability. I.e. castbar. but Slow makes cast bars longer. :P

Carighan.6758:

Because the only way they could properly code this would be with a duration-based state. So you don’t take increased damage “on using an ability”, you’ll probably take it while using an ability. I.e. castbar. but Slow makes cast bars longer. :P

Wat.

I can think of at least 2 ways to code it that wouldn’t require this.

Method 1:

while(confusion_state == true){
ticker_value = confusion_damage
if (skill_use ==true){
instant_damage = confusion_damage
}
}

So what this would do is add the confusion damage to a nonstop ticking damage timer (which we’re pretty sure they use) when you have confusion on you, and then run a check (skill_use function) that would see if you’ve started using a skill in the last however many clock cycles you deem appropriate. This would be sorta clunky, but would work.

Method 2 would just do the same while for adding the ticking damage, but then you’d just have an interrupt call that would apply the damage instead of doing it in the while loop. A cleaner method for sure.

There’s probably more ways to do it, but I just thought of those immediately.

Phaedrus.7159:

It seems to me there is a clear negative synergy between Confusion and Slow.

Negative synergy is the core mesmer class mechanic. Being a mesmer is about being strong DESPITE your class mechanic.

Imagine a warrior only did 50% of damage without any adrenaline and only did full damage at full adrenaline. That’s mesmer shatter system in a nutshell. It’s all about antisynergy. You put up some damage then your ruin it for some burst. Did you bring Phantasmal Defender to tank the damage for you or Phantasmal disenchanter to remove conditions? They’re gone now lol.

It doesn’t stop there. There’s no less than 3 traits that apply conditions if a clone dies without being shattered. Anti-synergy, the mesmer class mechanic.

The class has a lot of confusion, at the same time it has a ton of interrupt traits and interrupts.

Whatever the Chonomancer brings, it will not change the Mesmer tenets, handed to from ANet gods to Moses on top of GWEN mountains:

1. You shall always use zerker gear, because you do kitten-all damage otherwise
2. You shall lock down 2 utility slots to Decoy and Blink and lock down 1 weapon slot to Staff to have any hope of surviving with your zerker gear.
3. You shall lock down third utility slot to some condi removal or portal
4. You shall always get Deception Evasion else your shatters will be pitiful in number and effect