Guild Wars 2

I haven’t seen a thread of the type while I have seen many discussions orbiting around this specific subject. The idea of this thread is to explain what do you think the chronomancer could bring to PvE. I am restricting this to the current PvE model (dungeons, fractals in particular) and not the “challenging group content” of HoT since we know nothing about it yet (the fact that the developers still haven’t showed it means either it is so good they want to keep the news for the end or they have no idea about it either ).
Also, as we have been the first specialization revealed, a lot of tweaks are to be expected in numbers, traits etc… Anyway, here is my opinion based on the current info:

1) shield is useless for PvE. We already have better blocks/evade and the phantasm seems lackluster as it only applies alacrity to a few allies. The AOE interrupts could be nice, but we already have some of those for trash.
2) F5 at the start of the fight (with IP) can be very useful for time warp for example.
3) wells seems very nice. I would argue this is what I am most tempted about. Currently our utilities are mostly to boost a bit our personal DPS, but well of action and recall seems very interesting and calamity may turn out to be a nice DPS boost on its own.
4) alacrity could be useful, but we don’t seem to have many sources of it currently. Except for the well or the shield, it’s only shatter and for yourself only! Also, it would be interesting to know how much other classes actually benefit from alacrity. Most PvE rotation rely mostly on AA. Could alacrity change the DPS ranking of the classes? Or the best weapon of each class?
5) traits: I suspect this is what could change the most until release. Currently, there is no DPS increase trait except for possibly a crit rate increase. We can get a lot of slow from traits, which can be useful in a few occasions. “Time marches on” can be useful in record runs. Then one thing which could either be very useful or completely pointless is “chronophantasm”. Will this be finally the moment where shatter become of global use in PvE? I hope so considering how much shatter traits we are forced to take with the current specialization system, but some number crushing will be needed.

Finally a last important question is what core specialization should we give up for chronomancy? Because of this, I really don’t think chronomancy can be used in reflect builds. But maybe it could be a way to find some good support niche when reflects are not needed. We would oscillate between a “reflect bot” and a “quickness/alacrity bot” so that we would still be very relevant to both cases…

Overall I am fairly excited since if chronomancer lives up to my expectations and becomes meta or close-to-meta, it will probably give up more interesting fight rotations.

Your opinion?

Slow spam will be awesome.

The increased crit chance on slowed enemies is really good. If it also applied to your Illusions that would be awesome.

The Shield can summon two Phantasms in ideal situations but yeah it seems limited.

Wells are good, especially the damage one.

Maxzero.4032:

Slow spam will be awesome.

Sure.

Maxzero.4032:

The increased crit chance on slowed enemies is really good. If it also applied to your Illusions that would be awesome.

Meh. In a good party you’re already near/at the crit cap, so that won’t be a huge deal.

Maxzero.4032:

The Shield can summon two Phantasms in ideal situations but yeah it seems limited.

Yeah, but the phantasms do no damage, they’re purely utility. If you really need the slow, that’ll be great. If you want to do any damage, that’ll be awful.

Maxzero.4032:

Wells are good, especially the damage one.

Eh, not really. Some of the other utility wells might be used, but the damage one won’t do nearly enough damage to be worth equipping compared to say mantra of pain.

The only nice thing about 2 Shield Phants is the Alacrity, but it’ll probably get uptime similar to iMage, meaning that all players affected will have 100% uptime with 2 (assuming they’re properly synced since Alacrity isn’t affected by boon duration and doesn’t look to stack duration).

You’re losing a significant amount of personal DPS, but you’ll boost the DPS of your team slightly. Conceptually (in PvE), it’s similar to running PS as a Warrior (at least, before the trait revamp) where you had to lose personal DPS to give party-wide DPS (in the form of Might).

Totally out of curiosity, if mesmer is constantly shattering like a mad man and runs Illusionary inspiration. Giving 5s alacrity and 4s quickness each time he shatters then cast a phantasm or use signet of inspiration. Would the team support output overcome guardian’s feel my wrath (6s quickness)? The party will have extremely high quickness uptime (potentially near “perma” quickness with a smart guard, since quickness stacks in duration), but everyone also gets a piece of alacrity

Alternative build will be changing dueling to domi for signet CD. You’ll have less sustain and no sword stacks but the loss is slightly made up by increased MW and illusion damage.

Weapons will run sword/sword for DPS and easy 3 illusions. I know everyone will be saying “why not shield” but sword CD is very very low so it’s more suitable for constant shattering. Utilities will run mantra of recovery for condi removals, signet of inspiration for party boons, mirror images for continuous shatters, and mimic for signet of inspiration again. Plus F5 for repeating all those or other shatters if you want faster supply (less DPS though).

Very gimmicky to test out but definitely interesting. Not to mention signet of inspiration will copy every boon your party gives you, making fury/might stacks easily if you have a guard/PS war/ele around. Also quickness and alacrity as explained above.

In all honesty mesmer’s DPS role is always overshadowed by ele, why not think outside of the box and go for other niche? This could create a new role outside of reflect if achieved, and I’m definitely looking forward to shatter in PvE with this song

Say you shatter and get a bit more than 5s alacrity. After 5s, the signet has reduced recharge of close to 9s. Since we have the signet and the phantasm every 24s, assuming full sync and adding some wells, we can have close to full uptime…
Alacrity+quickness pretty much means a 50% increased party DPS. That sounds neat.

One concern is the difference between “gain quickness for each illusion you shatter” and “gain alacrity when you shatter”. It sounds like you get only 1s alacrity regardless of the number of illusions shattered. Without that, it is 1s alacrity and 4s quickness every 12s which is still interesting, but I don’t know if this will make up for the DPS loss (especially since we can’t take chronophantasm).

Moreover, with F5, we already have a chance to strong quickness from time warp. Basically if F5 is on 60s CD (I think they said they already increased it but… ) that means time warp on 60s cooldown and possibly used twice on the final boss.

For the shatter rotation, it looks very possible and especially interesting with phantasms that are slow (so all but sword). Start the fight with F5 and you can in principle use time warp + 1 phantasm “for free” (tight schedule, you may need a first clone up to give yourself more time). This way, you can cast the 3 phantasms without using the signet. Shatter after their attack, shatter again after their attack. With 6 shattered phantasm, you get 12s recharge for your phantasm, which should be close to enough to have them ready to cast. This time use signet. Then you can shatter once more.

This can create a very strong burst, but assumes you run illusion+chronomancer. Definitely a bad idea in reflect situation since (currently) it will sync phantasms so you will destroy the warden reflection uptime + too restrictive for traits. I actually think this could shine in my favorite hybrid build
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Dungeon_Hybrid

Removing domination is not so bad in this build, and the shattering will be good for duelist and warden to reduce the time between their attacks. Also, since personal damage is low anyway, the time to cast phantasm won’t be such a DPS loss.

I don’t see that much use for the Shield in PvE. I guess you can have two projectile-destroying off-hands, so that’s not nothing, but I don’t see a compelling argument for doing that over bringing off-hand Sword or Pistol instead for more Phantasm damage. I guess you can run Sw+Sh/Pi if there’s a fight that requires you to shred a Breakbar really fast.

Whether the Shield phantasm is worth a kitten will depend a lot on how good its Alacrity-sharing is, but the awkward method of summoning them kind of sucks, and you’ll almost never get the double-summons out on a boss. Having Quickness up while summoning your iCaptainAmerica will make it marginally less painful, maybe, so at least the Chrono has decent access to Quickness.

The viability of PvE shatter builds with Chronophantasma+Persistence of Memory+Alacrity is something that really needs to be tested, but it’s promising at least.

So Wells are the big remaining thing. I really doubt our damage well will see any PvE use. Pulsing Vigour from Well of Eternity seems handy, though. Well of Action for essentially a mini-Time Warp on a lowish cooldown is pretty good. Unblockable attacks via Well of Precognition could have some niche uses, especially if you’re good enough to time the group Distortion at the end with a boss attack. Well of Recall, like iCap, depends on how good Alacrity is. I don’t see any reason to take Gravity Well over Time Warp in PvE.

To sum up, based on my understanding of the current PvE meta, I think there could be a good justification for taking Chronomancer just to get Well of Eternity, Well of Action, and Continuum Split/Shift. Chronophantasma may provide a way to bring shatter builds into dungeons, but if it doesn’t then Sieze the Moment + Boonshare or Lost Time permaslow both seem they could make us worth the slot even if our personal damage isn’t that great.

I super vote for “iCaptainAmerica” as the new name for this phantasm!

Can’t claim credit, it’s been floating around the forum ever since the reveal.

I kind of think the shield is meh. I like the Wells a lot but on the flip side mantras are just so good I don’t know where I’d use wells. In the current content I see no place for the shield, maybe just wells for stacking

Have we even seen solid tooltip numbers for shield phantasms? It’s also worth mentioning that shield phantasm is the only phantasm besides iwarden and izerker that cleaves.

And the advantage of shield phantasm is that unlike iwarden its attack is neither stationary nor is it a long channel that fails to complete because the phantasm immediately dies to cleaves.

Doesn’t the shield also slow? Slow is rather powerful against bosses.

i think we’re all going to suffer the worries of the OP. from both a PvP and PvE Point of view, i beleive the reason it has taken Anet to put proper PvE into Guild Wars 2 is because it will bring out the typical MMO Argument.

throughout MMOs which incoperate both PvP and PvE on a Supported level, have always had the issue with certain builds and set ups being for specific areas, I.E Shield, Shields amazing in PvP it offers sustain which always will be needed so this will making Chronomancer 100% in one of the weapon slots to be fully used, however in PvE where DPS is what matters for the Mesmer u arnt going to use the shield, it’ll provide no damage, however the wells will be used as they do Damage and Add support.

So sadly, some of these Elites will be PvE Focus’d (the Tempest) where it is another support, now pvP already have a D/X build, but in PvE they use staff not D/D so this will give a D/X build for PvErs also with the l;ayout it’ll always be more viable in the PvE world then the PvP, having Dead set mechanics like Overload in a Unpredictable enviroment is weaker.

Chronomancer seems reasonably split, it seems it wont be used in power runs however in Raids and stuff support will be needed and Chronomancer does provide Alacrity which would become needed in bigger events, however they will prolly lose DPS having this and Would be taken for more of the role of support then a DPS. due to the brawler play shield will bring with additional survivability i think more pvp builds will include in comparison to PvE so it will always be Slightly pvp sided for that reason.

it is going to happen and with the game becoming split between PvE and PvP more and More builds are going to been thrown out of meta and Just Unusuable in parts of the game as the devs can no longer just focus on balancing for pvp from this expansion onwards… its going to bring both good and bad to the game, Mostly bad for strict PvP players, We’re all going to feel alot more pidgeon holed with whats happening.

but the Limitations on Some weapon sets being Useless, and the Inevitable outcome that these Elites will be Unusuable for part of the game weather thats WvW PvP or PvE is something we will have to accept, Anet cannot Balance 1 Specc to work in 2 Completely different styles without Duplicating them 1 for pvp and 1 for pve so u can swap across to PvP orintated versions of the Speccs or pvE orintated versions, which likely will never happen, balancing would just consume so much having balance Doubles of Every proffessions weapon sets.. Specially on proffessions such as the Elementalist.

With Elementalist becoming the FULL Support, I cant see u using the shield in pve, I can see u using the specc for Wells (Wells provide the alacrity too u dont need the shield to do so) but u’ll be taking something with More DPS then the 2 blocks.

Zenith.7301:

Have we even seen solid tooltip numbers for shield phantasms? It’s also worth mentioning that shield phantasm is the only phantasm besides iwarden and izerker that cleaves.

And the advantage of shield phantasm is that unlike iwarden its attack is neither stationary nor is it a long channel that fails to complete because the phantasm immediately dies to cleaves.

Doesn’t the shield also slow? Slow is rather powerful against bosses.

I feel like in all honesty, In games with supported PvE bosses are generally immune to slows and things which may transfer into GW2 when they go out to make it more challanging etc etc, so i feel theres a chance slows maybe wasted on bosses.

so no i feel theres a chance that the shield as a weapon set will be useless to a PvEr the traitline will still be good though i feel this is why Anet have seperated these mechanics from its weapon set in all honesty, as they know some weapon set skills wont be useful in PvE or PvP where things such as Utility skills and Trait line bonus’s / New Core mechanics will always be useful in both.

U will use Chronomancer as a PvEr the Utility from wells will always be useful in most situations but i doubt u will use the shield.

@Drayos
I think an important question is how will HoT new PvE mode be. Depending on how they build it, it may form a bridge between PvE and PvP content. Staying alive may become a more important part of everyone’s builds, stacking enemies will most likely not work anymore reducing the importance of cleave etc… But that is very much an unknown.

The good news is that aNet seems to be aware that they need to balance PvE, the best example being I believe the reaper. Too slow to be useful in PvP, based on melee combat, benefitting from the number of enemies around (while the necromancer usually lacks scalable defense/offense)… that is the definition of what the current PvE needs. I still think the damage is too low for reaper, but that’s hopefully something they will change.

The shield alacrity could be welcome… if it hit more than one ally. As of now, I don’t see the slightest reason to use it in PvE. WvW zerg may be where the chronomancer is the best addition to the mesmer.

Enemy scaling is actually a bad thing for reaper shouts. The most vital part of dungeons is boss encounters, which are single target affairs where the shouts themselves are useless.

Silverkey.2078:

@Drayos
I think an important question is how will HoT new PvE mode be. Depending on how they build it, it may form a bridge between PvE and PvP content. Staying alive may become a more important part of everyone’s builds, stacking enemies will most likely not work anymore reducing the importance of cleave etc… But that is very much an unknown.

The good news is that aNet seems to be aware that they need to balance PvE, the best example being I believe the reaper. Too slow to be useful in PvP, based on melee combat, benefitting from the number of enemies around (while the necromancer usually lacks scalable defense/offense)… that is the definition of what the current PvE needs. I still think the damage is too low for reaper, but that’s hopefully something they will change.

The shield alacrity could be welcome… if it hit more than one ally. As of now, I don’t see the slightest reason to use it in PvE. WvW zerg may be where the chronomancer is the best addition to the mesmer.

well yes that is true, but Mesmers are 1200 Range, you arnt going to really be near the actual Damage itself, I can see Proffessions as a whole Sinking into the Abyss at a time rather then just skillsets.

Lemme give u a Example from WoW… the Paladin, Started good in vanilla, Got reworked in WoTLK, It now sucks Every expansion in PvE cause they cant buff it because of PvP reasons and everytime they try it turns into a FoTM before being Nerfed back to useless, we will see this happen in GW2 now..

Something gets Strong in PvP it gets Nerfed Direct effect on proffessions capability in PvE and becomes useless, Suddenly We start rejecting those proffessions Because they just dont stand up and a Pure disadvantage to have in our teams. same other way round when something gets too much DPS they nerf it and it loses everything in PvP.

by assumption these weapon sets are to pidgeon hole us so they Can treat them differently if everyones forced to run staff ele in PvE then they know not to buff/nerf it for PvP reasons and leave it as it is… where if both ran on D/D they’d be constantly nerfing/buffing it conflicting with the other side of the game.

Do i think a Sustain Mesmer will be taken while Elementalists get sustain and Support all while doing more DPS then the Mesmer No, i dont i think Mesmers will be taken as Glass Cannons to do pure DPS While the elementalists Supply the main portion of support.

MMOs cannot be devided between PvE and PvP they are going to have to pick one Side they Want to focus on and let the other Rot as its swished around all the time between speccs and Rerolling to be decent in the raids or PvP content, thats how every MMO goes, this is why MoBAs are sooo successful offering Nothing but PvP to that community that gets out of MMO PvP.

They need to DUplicate the speccs into 2 so they can buff PvP versions without affecting PvE Versions or this will be doomed from the get go, the only reason why the balance is so close atm is Because theres no PvE to worry about when it comes to nerfing/buffing.

Ur example the Reaper is a Perfect example, Its too slow for pvp, Its just not going to function pvp wise in anything more then maybe the new shroud til People QQ enough on the shroud and it gets Nerfed Destroying it for both PvE and PvP Players, til new players die to reapers GS Attacks because how hard they hit every swing QQ til Reapers Damage is Lowered to match other proffessions which will again destroy it for both pve and pvp players

PvP = a Boat of QQ about one anothers Proffessions being OP, the Devs will take so much of it and it’ll be shown in Nerfs done because of this, right now your going to get the backlash of this effect forcing you to play specific things cause what u want to play just wont work and wont be usuable… U cant run the same weapon sets for pve and pvp they are two completely different demands.

Drayos.8759:

well yes that is true, but Mesmers are 1200 Range, you arnt going to really be near the actual Damage itself

Hahaha, ok. If you say so.

tobascodagama.2961:

Drayos.8759:

well yes that is true, but Mesmers are 1200 Range, you arnt going to really be near the actual Damage itself

Hahaha, ok. If you say so.

If i say so?… Its a classic MMO thing for Melee to be at more danger then Ranged, 1200 Range should be enough Distance to see things coming, which gives u more time to react to it rather being upfront where it’ll fall on you faster.

Im sorry, but In PvP Mesmers Survivability with a Full Zerker builds pretty strong, they dont need a Shield to survive, they havnt since the release of this game and have made it through everything.

Arguing this Shield will be a required for Mesmers to survive the Upcoming PvE Content is silly, if Mesmers survivability was that bad it’d of been identified in PvP, sure pure Focus will but Lets face it ur not face tanking the monsters.

So here’s my thought on chronomancer for PvE. See if my logic and assumptions make sense:

1. In an ideal scenario, a mesmer fully specced for damage is roughly comparable to slapping the boss with a limp noodle compared to the amount of damage elementalists do
2. The mesmer role in a party, therefore, should aim to maximize the damage the elementalists do without sacrificing more damage than is necessary
3. Alacrity and quickness will make elementalists do significantly more damage
4. Chronomancer can provide alacrity and quickness in several ways
   1. A well provides alacrity, 4 seconds of alacrity on a 45 second cooldown
   2. A well provides quickness, 3 seconds of quickness on a 30 second cooldown
   3. Shield wall provides quickness, 3 seconds of quickness (1.5 in, 1.5 out) on a 30 second cooldown (assuming you catch the wall)
   4. Shield phantasms provide alacrity, bouncing attack, 1s alacrity….not reliable
   5. Can trait to gain 1s of quickness for each illusion shattered. Potentially 3 (4?) seconds of quickness for a full shatter, can chain 2 shatters for potentially 6 (8?) seconds of quickness, then share
   6. Time Warp
5. All methods of sharing alacrity and quickness have cooldowns.
6. To minimize the cooldowns, the mesmer should aim to have maximize uptime on alacrity
7. To maximize uptime on alacrity, the mesmer may want to trait dueling, illusions, chrono for low shatter cooldowns and high illusion generation.

So basically, the conclusion is that the mesmer can take on the role of quickness/alacrity stick by speccing as a shatter build to maximize personal alacrity uptime. This would allow for the lowest possible cooldowns on providing quickness and alacrity, allowing your dps teammates to dps as hard as possible. Somewhere around a 50% uptime on quickness could be achieved, with significantly lower alacrity uptime depending on how well the phantasms perform.

I’m not sure if speccing like that would be worth the dps loss, but it’s definitely something to consider.

Drayos.8759:

tobascodagama.2961:

Drayos.8759:

well yes that is true, but Mesmers are 1200 Range, you arnt going to really be near the actual Damage itself

Hahaha, ok. If you say so.

If i say so?… Its a classic MMO thing for Melee to be at more danger then Ranged, 1200 Range should be enough Distance to see things coming, which gives u more time to react to it rather being upfront where it’ll fall on you faster.

Im sorry, but In PvP Mesmers Survivability with a Full Zerker builds pretty strong, they dont need a Shield to survive, they havnt since the release of this game and have made it through everything.

Arguing this Shield will be a required for Mesmers to survive the Upcoming PvE Content is silly, if Mesmers survivability was that bad it’d of been identified in PvP, sure pure Focus will but Lets face it ur not face tanking the monsters.

He’s laughing at you because every single class in PvE plays melee, this is not a matter of debate. Even using a ranged weapon, you play up close because that keeps you in range for all of the boons your party generates, and keeps mobs from wandering around much.

I’m going to put this video to clarify Silverkey’s queries on alacrity stacks on shatter. Specifically look at 6:00.

As you see you actually get 1s alacrity for each illusion shatter, provided that illusion hit opponent. So 5s alacrity is achieve-able as long as you don’t let your illusions die on the way.

Edit to put up the correct time, silly me

Edit again, so forum does funny things to linking youtube on certain time…anyway just click on 6:00 after you open it please lol

Ok, thanks for spotting it, then that’s very good This will definitely be interesting in PvP!
As for PvE, we really need to see how good is alacrity for the party DPS and see if we should invest in signet of inspiration!

tobascodagama.2961:

Can’t claim credit, it’s been floating around the forum ever since the reveal.

Guards already copyrighted shield of the avenger :p

Yeah I’m really looking forward to it. Hopefully alacrity won’t be horribly bugged or anything. I think signet of inspiration is definitely worth it for utilizing your shatter though, the real question is if inspiration traitline worth it for that additional signet cast, especially since mimic and F5 allows you to cast it again anyway.

If you want your party to quickly clear boss you will be:
1. getting 3 illusions (double dodge + iLeap? iLeap + iRiposte + dodge?)
2. F5
3. mimic
4. signet of inspiration
5. Immediately cast mirror images and another illusion (phantasm preferred as this shares whatever alacrity and quickness you have left again)
6. Shatter F1 first for damage, then shatter absolutely everything for additional alacrity and quickness. Since those will be refreshed after F5 there’s no point holding them.
7. Cast signet of inspiration again.

This should give party around 12-15s of alacrity and 8-12s of quickness from 2 sets of signet casts and one additional cast from phantasm cast.

8. Then cast time warp before F5 ends (wasted around 5-6s of quickness though as TW can’t stack with 1s pulses)
9. Attack with whatever skills you have until F5 wears off.
10. Time warp again to finish off the boss.
11. Repeat 1-7 with F1 and F2 for burst support or just do normal F1 rotations.

You’ll be giving around 25s-35s of quickness and 20s of alacrity with shatters and time warps. By this time if you have 3 competent eles friends and you’ll probably clear most bosses under 30s without doing much damage yourself. Maybe more or less, I’m just guessing the time.

Nike, that’s a nice rotation, but I would suggest canceling F5 (you can press again to destroy the rift) as soon as you’re done and re-doing the rotation. Now that Alacrity and Quickness both stack duration, there’s no downside to plopping down 2 Timewarps on top of each other. You could then hold off on the Mimic SoI if you wanted to min-max the duration of boons.

Just a note, you can’t share alacrity, so you can go ahead and scrub that from any theorycrafting you do.

I haven’t crunched the numbers, but you could use that build to instead be sharing Quickness instead of Alacrity (since I doubt most fights are going to last long enough for Alacrity to be more than nice in PvE). Otherwise you could slot alacrity well instead of SoI (or Mirror Images) to give 4-8s of Alacrity. Also consider using Shield skills in the middle of your rotation (start in Sword so when you pop F5 again weapon swap is off cooldown).

@Esplen
You can’t really stack TW though, since each pulse only gives 1s quickness and its pulses every second. Unless I misunderstood your suggestion :O.

@Pyro
Well that’s a pity, the quickness part still stands though. So the only way to share alacrity is via well?

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

@Esplen
You can’t really stack TW though, since each pulse only gives 1s quickness and its pulses every second. Unless I misunderstood your suggestion :O.

@Pyro
Well that’s a pity, the quickness part still stands though. So the only way to share alacrity is via well?

Drop 2 TW, they each pulse every 1s for 1s duration, therefore every 1s, you get 2s Quickness and the enemy gets 2s Slow.

Test it in a party with 2 Mesmers, they almost always stack TW nowadays (unintentionally) but it no longer lowers DPS (unless the Slow lowers DPS, but that’s a different matter entirely).

@Fay
Was this officially stated?

Esplen.3940:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

@Esplen
You can’t really stack TW though, since each pulse only gives 1s quickness and its pulses every second. Unless I misunderstood your suggestion :O.

@Pyro
Well that’s a pity, the quickness part still stands though. So the only way to share alacrity is via well?

Drop 2 TW, they each pulse every 1s for 1s duration, therefore every 1s, you get 2s Quickness and the enemy gets 2s Slow.

Test it in a party with 2 Mesmers, they almost always stack TW nowadays (unintentionally) but it no longer lowers DPS (unless the Slow lowers DPS, but that’s a different matter entirely).

Thanks for the explanation! This makes TW really useful

@Silverkey
Ok once I have a look it says here “Alacrity is a buff right now and not a boon. You can’t increase it via boon duration buffs.”. Sooooooo I guess it works like warrior stances? Robert did specifically say “right now” at 8:03 in the video but he later said this was done intentionally.

Gosh looking back a that PoI makes me cringe at how much that hostess dislike mesmers getting good stuff.

Fay.2357:

Just a note, you can’t share alacrity, so you can go ahead and scrub that from any theorycrafting you do.

Yup. iCap’n and Well of Recall are the only two ways we have of providing Alacrity to our group. It provides a good use case for Mimic, though!

Edit: Expanding this more…

So, the Duel/Ill/Chrono build Fay suggests would probably look something like this: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMCfAWoBmw~

Weapon sets: Sw+Sh & Sw + Sw/Pi/Fo
Utilities: Well of Eternity, Well of Action, Well of Recall, Mimic, Time Warp

Shattering gives us 1s of selfish Alacrity and 1s of selfish Quickness per illusion, so we’ll get 3s of Quickness — every time we shatter. Well of Recall gives 3s of group Alacrity, Well of Action gives 3s of group Quickness on expiration. Time Warp of course gives 10s group Quickness.

Start of fight combo: Weapon Clone + Dodge Clone → F5 → TW → Mimic → Well of Recall → Well of Action → Well of Recall → F5 (reset) → TW → Mimic → Well of Recall → Well of Action → Well of Recall → Phantasms → AA

I count 26s Quickness + 12s Alacrity. Not sure exactly how long it takes to execute the combo, which will affect whether we can summon Phantasms during F5 and therefore how long we delay the start of our DPS. Unaffected by Quickness, I think we can execute all those utilities in ~2.75 seconds, and we should have at least 5s of Chronoshift to do it in. iCap has a super long channel time and we probably won’t proc it, so we’ll want to start off with our non-shield weapon set and summon its Phantasm during Chronoshift instead (and then summon another after the reset).

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Esplen.3940:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

@Esplen
You can’t really stack TW though, since each pulse only gives 1s quickness and its pulses every second. Unless I misunderstood your suggestion :O.

@Pyro
Well that’s a pity, the quickness part still stands though. So the only way to share alacrity is via well?

Drop 2 TW, they each pulse every 1s for 1s duration, therefore every 1s, you get 2s Quickness and the enemy gets 2s Slow.

Test it in a party with 2 Mesmers, they almost always stack TW nowadays (unintentionally) but it no longer lowers DPS (unless the Slow lowers DPS, but that’s a different matter entirely).

Thanks for the explanation! This makes TW really useful

@Silverkey
Ok once I have a look it says here “Alacrity is a buff right now and not a boon. You can’t increase it via boon duration buffs.”. Sooooooo I guess it works like warrior stances? Robert did specifically say “right now” at 8:03 in the video but he later said this was done intentionally.

Gosh looking back a that PoI makes me cringe at how much that hostess dislike mesmers getting good stuff.

Most of them are pretty casual WvW players. Robert Gee designs with PvP in mind primarily, look at the necro traits as well and his revamp of mesmer traits mostly involving interrupt dependent effects in a format where interrupts are useless.

I think ever since they let go of Robert Hrouda, things went downhill for the dungeon community, especially when they announced a fractal weaponbox with the fractal revamp only to confirm it was put for lv51, a fractal level players could not achieve. And fractal weapon drops plummeted in drop rate because before whereas fractal weapons would not share a loot table with rings/ ascended chests, now happened to do so after the revamp.

It also shows because they’ve done nothing to fix pets/minions/illusions and AoE damage in PvE, or balancing autoattack damage between the classes which has led to such obvious imbalances in DPS output across the classes.

tobascodagama.2961:

Start of fight combo: Weapon Clone + Dodge Clone -> F5 -> TW -> Mimic -> Well of Recall -> Well of Action -> Well of Recall -> F5 (reset) -> TW -> Mimic -> Well of Recall -> Well of Action -> Well of Recall -> Phantasms -> AA

I count 26s Quickness + 12s Alacrity. Not sure exactly how long it takes to execute the combo, which will affect whether we can summon Phantasms during F5 and therefore how long we delay the start of our DPS. Unaffected by Quickness, I think we can execute all those utilities in ~2.75 seconds, and we should have at least 5s of Chronoshift to do it in. iCap has a super long channel time and we probably won’t proc it, so we’ll want to start off with our non-shield weapon set and summon its Phantasm during Chronoshift instead (and then summon another after the reset).

You’re going to want to waste your shatters while casting your Wells (which, along with Mimic, should get cast pretty darn quickly with Quickness) and then cast a Phantasm at the end (do Phants get destroyed when you break F5? if yes, idfk, otherwise idfk). You get bonus Alacrity when shattering and since you have IP, you’ll get yourself 3s of Alacrity in 1.5s (0.5s band-aid internal cooldown which is now “working as intended” T_T).

It’s not much, but why not get more? Although if breaking F5 returns your boons to where they were when you cast it, don’t bother since you won’t get anything out of it.

Esplen.3940:

It’s not much, but why not get more? Although if breaking F5 returns your boons to where they were when you cast it, don’t bother since you won’t get anything out of it.

Eh, the benefit to the group is the important part. The theory is that you’re multiplying the DPS of the four Eles you brought with you enough that they didn’t need to bring a fifth Ele. Which is a dubious theory until somebody actually tries it out.

The shatters are going to grant you Might, and (if you took Chaos with Chronomancy) BD which is going to share…. Might, Vigor, Fury, and Regen.

A team of 4 Ele won’t need Might and Fury. Vigor maybe, but it’s not worth you going down the Chaos tree just for 5s of it.

Maybe, maybe, maybe you might apply Vuln, but if you’re running with 4 Ele’s, they will have Vuln applications. Air GM Minor applies Vuln 60% on Crits. Every weapon combination has an application of Vuln on their Water Attunement, and there’s an Adept in Arcane to apply Vuln 33% on crit when in Water. I doubt 4 Vuln is going to be significant.

Also, if you F3, you might break Defiance (SH, THERE’S NO DEFIANCE BAR YET SO SH).

Not saying it’s not worth it, but it seems to me to be a waste of effort. If you want to press more buttons, I’m all for it, but if it doesn’t do anything, then it’s up to you whether you want to or not. (Like spamming the 1 key with auto attack on. It’s fun, but not necessary… unless you have no target.)

Except it’s not really 4 eles +1 mes vs 5 eles, is it?
Skips are kind of a big deal to speedrunners, so they’re gonna have a thief in the mix there.
You don’t have to be more valuable than another ele…just more valuable than a thief.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Except it’s not really 4 eles +1 mes vs 5 eles, is it?
Skips are kind of a big deal to speedrunners, so they’re gonna have a thief in the mix there.
You don’t have to be more valuable than another ele…just more valuable than a thief.

Respec into PU, toss on torch, drop a portal, instant skip. Speedruns rarely use a thief for skips. They more commonly just drop an FGS for the mesmer, the mesmer drops a portal and then hauls off to the next fight as soon as the door opens.

Edit: I missed your point. 5 eles with FGS can still move pretty fast though, so the question becomes whether the additional ele outweighs the increased speed of the mesmer porting.

IMHO there is really nothing trait wise from the Chronomancer that appeals to PvE. The only significant change could come from Danger Time, and the possibility that it makes Berserker’s > Assassin’s depending how it works with reflects. 30% crit (wiki currently says it’s a damage increase, but that doesn’t match the description so I assume its supposed to be crit) is a lot and would easily nullify any needed commitment to Assassin’s as we currently have.

Skill wise I don’t think Continuum Split would be too much of a factor in DPS rotations since you’d have to shatter. Alacrity/Quickness bot with wells is possible but a stretch, and speccing shatter for your own Alacrity will ultimately come down to whether the personal DPS loss is a net gain for the party. You’d probably need Chaos for boonshare if you go that route, as well as Inspiration for the extra signet. Leaving you in the terrible state of missing out on both Fragility/Blurred Inscriptions and both Fencers+Harmonious Mantra.. which is quite crippling for PvE DPS.

Every skip run or speed clear record involves a thief. To say mesmer replaces thief in skipping is vastly ignorant. Portal cooldown is far longer than blasting stealth fields.

Thief is also brought for black powder trivializing some fights like Arah P4 Priest of Melandru since the gorillas are summoned more often than an ele’s glyph of sandstorm can come off cd.

Most importantly, a thief puts out even greater single target damage than ele on bosses, and with their bundle trait they’re the class that does the most damage with a frostbow barrage.

Moreover, vulnerability is a non-issue. Ele with glyph of lightning storm stacks 25 vulnerability immediately on any boss fight long enough for the boss to die. And then there’s the mandatory PSEA warrior throwing in vulnerability as well as the thief who also applies vulnerability on crit.

Mesmer is virtually brought for portal and time warp, nothing else (guardians are better than them for reflects, thieves for stealth, and every other class is better at damage including necromancer). If you’re bringing mesmer for stealth skips, you’re doing it wrong.

If boons become more important, then mesmer may gain that additional niche as mesmer is better than necro for boon hate with sword auto+iDisenchanter+null field.

The meta setup will still involve Thief/PSEA Warrior/Ele/Ele/Mesmer. If portal is not useful in a particular run, replace the mesmer with a Guardian for better group DPS.

I think alacrity with shatters is going to be very strong in dungeons or group pve. I’m going to try something like this:

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMGmAJ8BZg~

I’ll run zerk or assassins with sword/sword + sword/shield. I should be getting plenty of alacrity through shatters, and plenty of shatters through PoM, MoM, DE, IR, and Chronophantasma. Between shatter alacrity, phantasm alacrity, and well alacrity, I’m hoping to pump out a constant chain of damage and alacrity without worrying about illusions dying. It might not have as much dps as the perfect ideal situation build, but pve is rarely perfectly ideal.