Guild Wars 2

Much appreciated man! Sooner than I anticipated tbh.

Dude you just made every WvW mesmer everywhere convert to Chrono with Time Marches On.

SLOW ON INTERRUPT! CALLED IT!!

• Activating a shatter gives your illusions super speed. Very clever, I’m liking that.

• Well trait is not worth it imo, no more than 2 wells will be in any build and those cooldowns, even with alacrity, makes the trait unappealing.

• All master traits are legit, hard choice there.

• Lost Time and Chronophantasma are very strong, Quickness on Shatter doesn’t seem able to compete unless traited with Furious Interruption

Thank you so much! Tell Robert we love him. These traits look amazing. Maybe except for All’s Well that Ends Well…

Does Lost Time have ICD?

Thanks a ton, Mr. Peters. Please remind all hosts of future streams to include them in the reveal!

Wow. Time Marches On….

Every WvW Mesmer will be a chronomancer…

These traits look awesome. I’m liking the idea of 600066 now….

A couple gripes here:

• No ability to trait shield?

• No further support for wells? That well trait is barely worth it. Should be at least 2 condis cleansed if you have to wait in the well for 3s. Or one Condi per pulse.

JonPeters.5630:

• Time Marches On – You move 25% faster. The duration of incoming movement-impairing conditions is reduced by 25%. (Cripple. Chilled, Immobilize)

We will get so much hate for this one!

So… not sure what to do now… 6/6/6/0/0/0 or 6/0/6/0/0/6…

“Time Catches Up – Activating a shatter gives your illusions Super Speed”

:_(

Every mesmer needs this.

(Don’t get me wrong: interesting stuff overall!)

This is kittening rad. Dueling/Chrono/Illusions power shatter here I come.

So Time Catches Up, I’m hoping the super speed lasts until they shatter. I still wouldn’t take this over slow on interrupt (too sexy), but still a really nice trait.

Also I expect stupid nerf via icd to delayed reactions and lost time. I’ll probably still take them both though :P

These seem pretty nice! Also, I love the names of them!

So can we finally drop Deceptive Evasion, hence drop Dueling? Please help me!

MSFone.3026:

This is kittening rad. Dueling/Chrono/Illusions power shatter + MoD here I come.

What about Domination? You can’t drop that one!

How does the chronolhantasm one work. On any shatter will recharge the phants lost?

Thank you!

Minor

• Time-splitter : We all have theorycrafted the crud out of this F5. Nothing new here.
• Flow of Time: 1s per shatter … per shatter or per illusion per shatter? 1s per each of our shatters doesn’t seem like it’ll have that much of an impact … even less if you’re not a shatter build.
• Time Marches On: Goodbye traveler runes … hello Hoelbrek or Melandru with some Lemongrass … very happy about this one.

Adept

• Time Catches Up – I could see this being very nice … I’m curious about “for how long”. I’d think infinitely for those shattering as they are not going to last indefinitely since they are running to shatter; that should be a sufficient limit to it.
• Delayed Reactions – more ways to punish people when we interrupt them … I like that … slower attack animations makes them easier to interrupt as well … synergy!
• All’s Well That Ends Well – I currently can only see myself using this for PvE, but will have to get my hands on it. 1 Condition isn’t much given the long cooldowns we saw on wells and the fact that we’ll have to be in the well when it ends.

Major

• Illusionary Reversion – saw this earlier and we loved it. Solid trait.
• Improved Alacrity – so 1.3s instead of 1.0s … initial impression isn’t impressed.
• Danger Time – coupled with our new Dueling traits, I could see this being quite deadly … even more since interrupts slow, pistol slows, pistol trait in Dueling is awesome, and so on … pretty obvious from there.

Grandmaster

• Lost Time – any ICD on this? I assume this is just our hits and now illusions’ as well. I could see this being quite deadly with Greatsword since that gives us non-projectile 1,200 range and a very solid # of hits per second.
• Chronophantasma – another great trait for phantasm builds
• Seize the moment – this could be quite nice since with IP that could be 4s of Quickness per Shatter.

I’m really wanting to get my hands on this now … between these traits and the Shield, I’m going to be hard-pressed to not include Chrono in most builds … though I think I can still think of some still-viable ones that won’t use it.

Woot for Robert!

Question: Illusionary Reversion – Gain a clone after you activate a shatter skill, does this clone participate in the shatter that summoned it? Like I have 1 clone out, activate MW, a second clone appears and also runs at target for a 2 clone MW?

If so, yes DE is no longer required. If not, sorry DE is still mandatory for any PvP build pretty much.

Ithamir.5928:

Thank you so much! Tell Robert we love him.

Agree.

denis.9487:

How does the chronolhantasm one work. On any shatter will recharge the phants lost?

They’ve shown that in the PoI stream actually. Summoning a phantasm will give them a “butterfly-particle” effect. When you’re activating a shatter, a new phantasm will be summoned in the same spot you shattered them, without the particle effect. Which means that after you shattered a Chronophantasm, it will turn into a normal Phantasm that won’t respawn after shattering. It seems to work with any shatter skill!

MSFone.3026:

Question: Illusionary Reversion – Gain a clone after you activate a shatter skill, does this clone participate in the shatter that summoned it? Like I have 1 clone out, activate MW, a second clone appears and also runs at target for a 2 clone MW?

Judging on what we’ve seen in the stream, the clone will be summoned AFTER you shattered, meaning that it wont participate.

Minor

• Time Splitter: No need to comment.
• Flow of Time: 1s per shatter sounds rather weak unless it’s per Illusion.
• Time Marches On: Awesome.

Adept

• Time Catches Up: How much Super Speed? Could be very nice for shatter builds.
• Delayed Reactions: Very nice if no ICD.
• All’s Well that Ends Well: Underwhelming when compared to Piercing Light. Also redundant when looking at Glamours (Nullfield). I assume it was done to grant pure Well-o-mancers condition removal. I give this trait a big no-no.

Master

• Illusionary Reversion: An okay-alternative for DE.
• Improved Alacrity: Does Alacrity consider values like a 0.33 tick? If not, this trait is pretty pointless. Even if so, it still feels underwhelming considering we mostly get 1s Alacrity.
• Danger Time: We don’t have too many ways to apply Slow. It seems rather underwhelming when compared to Radiant Power. Of course, such cross class comparisons are difficult but in this case I don’t see why it should be less powerful.

Grandmaster

• Lost Time: Nice for 1vs1. Pointless in 1vsX. Should probably be an area effect.
• Chronophantasma – Yumyum.
• Seize The Moment – Extremly nice for shatter builds.

MSFone.3026:

Well, can’t take 4 sadly. DE is mandatory, so that leaves 2. Illusions imo is still going to mandatory for a shatter build. So that leaves chrono or dom :-/

Domination can provide 60+% shatter damage while ripping boons. How can we not take it? Maybe Alacrity and Chrono traits make up for DE?

However, dropping Dueling, means that we lose all of our defensive traits. We’ll become even squishier than now!

Also this doesn’t actually seem like that much alacrity :-/ The increase should be like 50-100%, not 33% (i.e. 1.5 or 2 seconds per shatter).

Ithamir.5928:

MSFone.3026:

Well, can’t take 4 sadly. DE is mandatory, so that leaves 2. Illusions imo is still going to mandatory for a shatter build. So that leaves chrono or dom :-/

Domination can provide 60+% shatter damage while ripping boons. How can we not take it? Maybe Alacrity and Chrono traits make up for DE?

Illusions GM also buffs shatter dmg, and flat out not just against inactive foes. I do not think chrono makes up for DE at all.

MSFone.3026:

Illusions GM also buffs shatter dmg, and flat out not just against inactive foes. I do not think chrono makes up for DE at all.

Do you mean Master of Fragmentation? All I know about it is that it “improve shatter skills”. Does it straight out improve damage? Still, even if that’s the case, 60+% damage is hard to ignore.

JonPeters.5630:

• Chronophantasma – Your phantasms respawn the first time they are shattered.

I would like to bring something up about this trait that I verified going back through the chronomancer POI video. When you shatter phantasms, your phantasms move TO your target and then shatter. This makes perfect sense under normal circumstances. With this trait, phantasms still run to your target and then respawn where they shattered. What this means, though, is that things like a duelist will run into melee, respawn and be in melee range. If I am using a duelist, it is typically because I want to keep it long range.

It would be nice if the respawn happened where the phantasm was when the shatter was activated not where it was when it physically shattered. This could be done in a couple ways. 1) a reference is made when the phantasm was when the shatter is activate and the respawn happens at that point 2) the “respawn” actually happens before the move into melee range or 3) phantasms are given a skill where they “throw” their butterflies at the target which shatter on the target rather than shattering themselves. The 3rd option (and the second if it is actually the duplicate that gets shattered) would address the concern mentioned on the livestream about being able to essentially reset the skill cooldown of all your phantasms for spike damage if it is determined that that is too powerful.

Does anyone know if Stability prevents Slow? If not that makes this trait line that much more awesome.

Ithamir.5928:

MSFone.3026:

Illusions GM also buffs shatter dmg, and flat out not just against inactive foes. I do not think chrono makes up for DE at all.

Do you mean Master of Fragmentation? All I know about it is that it “improve shatter skills”. Does it straight out improve damage? Still, even if that’s the case, 60+% damage is hard to ignore.

I believe so, if you look at the picture the numbers for MW are much bigger than what you have normally, so I’m assuming from that picture that the talent gives a flat dmg increase to MW, and does some other things we don’t know yet to other shatters.

Since Slow is the opposite of Quickness and Quickness is a Boon … I think we can safely assume that Slow is a Condition.

Moving from that assumption, since Stability does nothing about Conditions, I think we can safely assume that Stability will not prevent Slow.

That being said, there is a new effect that prevents the application of conditions … the name of it currently escapes me though :-/

MSFone.3026:

Does anyone know if Stability prevents Slow? If not that makes this trait line that much more awesome.

For all I know, it doesn’t affect the effect of Chill. Shouldn’t affect slow either.

Sebrent.3625:

That being said, there is a new effect that prevents the application of conditions … the name of it currently escapes me though :-/

Resistance.

Does nobody here get the Blazblue reference or Sylvari speech quote?

-40% condi duration food, Melandru runes and Time Marches On. :P
Panic Strike? What’s that?

I’d like to know how Lost Time works. Without ICD or other limitations the synergy with Danger Time is way too strong. Basically permanent Slow and +30% crit with GS.

JonPeters.5630:

• Seize The Moment – Gain quickness for each illusion you shatter. (1s of Quickness)

Combined with furious interruption and the GS trait might be very powerful

Ragner Angel.3690:

Does nobody here get the Blazblue reference or Sylvari speech quote?

All’s Well that Ends Well? It’s also a play by Shakespeare (according to Wiki :P)
But yeah, the first thing that came to my mind is “This won’t end well”. Shut up Trahearne!

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• Lost Time and Chronophantasma are very strong, Quickness on Shatter doesn’t seem able to compete unless traited with Furious Interruption

It’s not much, but it helps you throw weapon attacks into the burst, which is exactly when you want them most. Consider the potential synergy with F5 “POP ALL YOUR COOLDOWNS ASAP!” Shatter as well.

Time will tell whether or not it’s better than Chronophant for shatter burst builds. (My first impulse is Chronophant, but I can see this going either way.)

JonPeters.5630:

Minor

• Time Marches On – You move 25% faster. The duration of incoming movement-impairing conditions is reduced by 25%. (Cripple. Chilled, Immobilize)

FINALLY! And I’m so glad it’s a Minor, too.

Adept

• Time Catches Up – Activating a shatter gives your illusions Super Speed

This confused me for a bit until I realised what it actually does. It’s quite cool, now that I’ve wrapped my head around it.

For those similarly confused: Less delay between Click and Boom.

• All’s Well that Ends Well – Wells remove conditions from allies when they end. (1 condition)

I was really expecting this to remove a condition per tick. Seems UP as written here.

Master

• Illusionary Reversion – Gain a clone after you activate a shatter skill.

:D

• Improved Alacrity – Alacrity applied to you lasts longer. (33%)
• Danger Time – Gain additional critical hit chance against slowed enemies. (30%)

Both pretty reasonable alternatives if you’re already getting clone generation from DE, so that’s pretty cool.

Grandmaster

• Lost Time – Every 3rd critical hit will slow your target. (2s of Slow)

Every 3rd crit against the same target, or just every third crit in general? Was this originally intended as an every-crit effect that turned out too powerful with a build that maxes out crit, or what?

MSFone.3026:

Question: Illusionary Reversion – Gain a clone after you activate a shatter skill, does this clone participate in the shatter that summoned it?

The PoI stream demonstrates this pretty well. Any illusions you have out will shatter, then you generate a new clone that starts auto-attacking.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• No ability to trait shield?

Yeah, that seems a bit weird. I guess they couldn’t think of anything that didn’t overlap with existing weapon traits? Or maybe the fact that both Shield skills can already reduce their own cooldowns (Alacrity from iCaptainAmerica, catching the Tides of Time) meant that a trait which reduced the cooldowns further would either be OP or require increasing the base cooldowns of the skills too much.

TyPin.9860:

JonPeters.5630:

• Seize The Moment – Gain quickness for each illusion you shatter. (1s of Quickness)

Combined with furious interruption and the GS trait might be very powerful

Holy Snickers, Batman, you’re right. That’s another nice potential.

The well trait seems kinda underperforming.It should be changed to 2 condis and/or some CD reduction, imo. And I agree with Chaos, why no shield trait?

A movement speed trait! WAT!

Seems like shatter builds and interrupt builds will all want to become chronomancers.

I think Illusionary Reversion, by being a good alternative to DE, should be moved to one of the baseline, non-dueling trait lines, and, in its place, chronomancers should get a shield trait instead. I think this would be a win-win scenario, because chronos are currently lacking a shield trait, while extra clones is something that the entire profession has a need for so it is not stuck with DE.

Time Marches On – You move 25% faster. The duration of incoming movement-impairing conditions is reduced by 25%. (Cripple. Chilled, Immobilize)

OMG IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING? MESMER +25% SPEED? OMG THANK YOU! THANK YOU ANET I LUV U <3

So stuff mesmers should have had baseline for better functioning mechanics are made traits.

A trait to make shatters land before they die to a zerg. A minor to gain 25% movement speed that any other class gets high to permanent swiftness uptime via weaponskills while we’re stuck with a temporal curtain that doesn’t even renew swiftness and has an uptime of 12 seconds per 25 seconds.

Reduced cripple/chill/immob duration, which is useless in PvE since everything gets cleansed immediately in group content.

All’s Well that Ends well is the only real PvE option of that trait tier. Delayed Reactions is underwhelming for PvE given the attack intervals of mobs and the weakness of interrupts in PvE (all of them high cooldown except for offhand sword). And a well with large cooldowns removing a single condition is just a bad trait.

1 second of alacrity per shatter. And some alacrity from a long cd well. 33% duration increase is a marginal effect given the uptime of alacrity on the mesmer.

I see few valuable PvE related traits.

It’s gonna basically be All’s Well that ends Well, Illusionary Reversion (to keep compounding power uptime), and Chronophantasm.

Very crappy/bland outlook for PvE mesmers relative to the massive utility and power Guardians got plus they got a full set of 5 new, strong skills on their weapon while we got 2 skills, one with a phantasm summon that has a delay (not good for PvE dps) and another that with a 30 sec cd.

This is a raw deal for PvE mesmers.

ASP.8093:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• Lost Time and Chronophantasma are very strong, Quickness on Shatter doesn’t seem able to compete unless traited with Furious Interruption

It’s not much, but it helps you throw weapon attacks into the burst, which is exactly when you want them most. Consider the potential synergy with F5 “POP ALL YOUR COOLDOWNS ASAP!” Shatter as well.

Time will tell whether or not it’s better than Chronophant for shatter burst builds. (My first impulse is Chronophant, but I can see this going either way.)

What are you guys talking about? Seize The Moment is my first choice! Diversion, gain quickness and then Mind Wrack them!

Xaylin.1860:

JonPeters.5630:

• Time Marches On – You move 25% faster. The duration of incoming movement-impairing conditions is reduced by 25%. (Cripple. Chilled, Immobilize)

We will get so much hate for this one!

So… not sure what to do now… 6/6/6/0/0/0 or 6/0/6/0/0/6…

its like (a better version of Warrior Sprint + a bit weaker version of Dogged March) in one trait as Minor!!

its OP for real.

Quick, someone gag Juba.

That Guy.5704:

JonPeters.5630:

• Chronophantasma – Your phantasms respawn the first time they are shattered.

With this trait, phantasms still run to your target and then respawn where they shattered. What this means, though, is that things like a duelist will run into melee, respawn and be in melee range. If I am using a duelist, it is typically because I want to keep it long range.

It would be nice if the respawn happened where the phantasm was when the shatter was activated not where it was when it physically shattered. <snip>

Keep it simple: Phantasms respawn at a point 50% of their maximum attack range from their current target. Melee phants spawn in melee, ranged phants spawn at range.

The trait might already work like that, for all we know. I think the video demonstrated it only with melee phantasms.

tobascodagama.2961:

That Guy.5704:

JonPeters.5630:

• Chronophantasma – Your phantasms respawn the first time they are shattered.

With this trait, phantasms still run to your target and then respawn where they shattered. What this means, though, is that things like a duelist will run into melee, respawn and be in melee range. If I am using a duelist, it is typically because I want to keep it long range.

It would be nice if the respawn happened where the phantasm was when the shatter was activated not where it was when it physically shattered. <snip>

Keep it simple: Phantasms respawn at a point 50% of their maximum attack range from their current target. Melee phants spawn in melee, ranged phants spawn at range.

The trait might already work like that, for all we know. I think the video demonstrated it only with melee phantasms.

This is actually what I had to double check. In the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Ls5bjLFBk at 20:10 he summons a disenchanter which spawns at range. He then uses a shatter, it runs into melee and then respawns itself in melee range right on top of the golem.

EDIT: In fact, rewatching, the respawn actually happens CLOSER then the range at which the disenchanter ran to which seems to be odd to me

Ithamir.5928:

What are you guys talking about? Seize The Moment is my first choice! Diversion, gain quickness and then Mind Wrack them!

That was my first impulse as well, but then I thought about what would happen if I threw an iZerker, shattered it for Diversion, and then shattered it again for the Mind Wrack on a stunned foe. (Would it spin again after the first one?)

So now I can see either being quite brutal.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

A couple gripes here:

• No ability to trait shield?

• No further support for wells? That well trait is barely worth it. Should be at least 2 condis cleansed if you have to wait in the well for 3s. Or one Condi per pulse.

One condition per pulse sounds much better. Also, I like the buff to GS.

Ithamir.5928:

ASP.8093:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• Lost Time and Chronophantasma are very strong, Quickness on Shatter doesn’t seem able to compete unless traited with Furious Interruption

It’s not much, but it helps you throw weapon attacks into the burst, which is exactly when you want them most. Consider the potential synergy with F5 “POP ALL YOUR COOLDOWNS ASAP!” Shatter as well.

Time will tell whether or not it’s better than Chronophant for shatter burst builds. (My first impulse is Chronophant, but I can see this going either way.)

What are you guys talking about? Seize The Moment is my first choice! Diversion, gain quickness and then Mind Wrack them!

Quickness doesn’t affect movement speed (that’s what the super speed trait is for) and all our shatters are instant anyway. The trait will have no effect on shatter rate

And mesmer elite now is still more op than the guard one…
Free travelers rune speed (without even having to chose between that and something else trait wise) while guards just get only a 10% damage with a condition of needing to be greater than 600.
How come guards don’t get a speed trait?
Yeah, that seems fair…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Quickness doesn’t affect movement speed (that’s what the super speed trait is for) and all our shatters are instant anyway. The trait will have no effect on shatter rate

I think the idea is that Quickness speeds up your skill activations, meaning you can use more skills before F5 expires.

skullmount.1758:

And mesmer elite now is still more op than the guard one…
Free travelers rune speed (without even having to chose between that and something else trait wise) while guards just get only a 10% damage with a condition of needing to be greater than 600.
How come guards don’t get a speed trait?
Yeah, that seems fair…

Give up being constantly in the meta for all three game modes and we’ll discuss giving you a trait that gives you +25% movespeed.

Heck … they took away our swiftness stacking with Temporal Curtain (had that at release) while at the same time letting Guardians stack swiftness with their Symbol (couldn’t do that at release).

Guardians don’t have much room for complaining about what others get.