Guild Wars 2

Hey all, just a simple question. As a “common” mesmer, I ran around with dueling, domination and Illusions (having assasin / zerker gear) in open world PvE.
Now having access to the elite spec, which of these trait lines should I swap out for the chronomancer? How do I trait the chrono and what utility skills (thought about mantra of pain, well of calamity) should I primarly use?

Thanks for the help =)

Drop Illusions. All’s Well that Ends Well, Improved Alacrity and Chronophantasma are the way to go. For utilities use all Wells (Eternity, Calamity, Action, Recall, Gravity).

What trait do I choose in Dueling incase I’m not using mantras?

Since you ask about open world, just try everything and pick the weapons, utilities and traits you actually enjoy/play well with.

Domination offers virtually nothing except damage boosts (which you don’t need in the open world) and the GS+signet traits. You don’t need to trait GS if you have Illusions and/or Chrono unless you need perma cripple, and signet actives aren’t worth it if you can’t share the distortion unless you like them.

Dueling is largely selfish with damage boosts and the survivability from vigor+sword cdr. Since Chrono gives you a long-lasting block and Alacrity for cooldowns this is easily replaced. You want Dueling if you plan on camping with phantasms, need the extra mantra charge (for tagging?) or plan to try a non-Alacrity Chrono traitset. If you aren’t running any mantras you have to decide for yourself: Deceptive Evasion is good for feeding shatters, but if you plan on camping champions with phantasms it will overwrite them and thus hurt you. Mistrust is practically useless but at least won’t harm you. Or just leave it on the mantra trait so you don’t have to switch traits every time you need heavy stability/stunbreak/cleanse, Mistrust is that useless in power builds.

Illusions has little damage boost, especially since Phantasmal Haste doesn’t mingle too well with Chronophantasma. It has tons of cooldown reductions though, which makes it great for a more shatter-oriented playstyle with tons of personal Alacrity. Also lowers the cooldown of F5 if you want to spam that a bit more.

For utilities Mantra of Pain and Blink are always a good bet, though the mantra isn’t really worth it without Inspiration. “All wells” has the issue of locking you to a specific area for 3+ seconds as you lay them down, plus they all have cast times.

When going into the jungle make sure you have at least one duration-based defense (Sword2 or Shield4 mainly), one stunbreak or other instant-cast escape button (Staff2, Blink, Decoy, Well of Precognition) and one on-demand condition cleanse (even a single traited signet is enough most of the time, mantra/well is also good)

Or if you’re lazy pick your favourite group-play build and swap out the weapons and utilities for whatever you feel like using. Things like the Alacrity-bot build work perfectly fine when solo and you’ll have a bigger contribution to large boss fights. Full zerk GS+MoP is all you’ll ever need for any tagging purposes, though Tides of Time has a certain charm when launched through 20+ Risen