Guild Wars 2

Hi guys
I just watched the stream from ANEt (http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/9763687) and towards the end, Jebro is playing chronomancer. There are a few changes in particular, a very painful one is that “Gravity Well” has lost its pulsing CC… The only CC left is the float at the end (see after 6h10m50).

Interesting…Gravity Well didn’t seem that good to start with. I don’t really understand why they didn’t make the shatter an elite skill, which seems like a better trade-off for what the skill does (I say that because I want to keep what the shatter does, but am afraid it’s going to get nerfed into oblivion).

Took a few minutes, but grabbed a few screens of the current wells from the stream.

If anyone is bored, they also show the traits earlier on in the video.

Well that sucks.

I guess MI and TW will still be superior then.

Don’t know if its already mentioned (or already known) but f5 skill gives us now only 1,5s per illusion….

Macha.9160:

Don’t know if its already mentioned (or already known) but f5 skill gives us now only 1,5s per illusion….

To be fair, even giving only 1s per illusion and not counting the Mesmer (max 3 seconds) is still going to make that shatter INCREDIBLY powerful.

Nachyochez.9758:

Macha.9160:

Don’t know if its already mentioned (or already known) but f5 skill gives us now only 1,5s per illusion….

To be fair, even giving only 1s per illusion and not counting the Mesmer (max 3 seconds) is still going to make that shatter INCREDIBLY powerful.

Agreed.

No need for the traits, the wiki is up-to-date I believe + has the chat-code if we want to check in-game.

For the elite, sure it has a rather low CD, but it really seems near-pointless. I think Time Warp is the elite the chronomancer should have gotten if it was not already in mesmer core (but I’m happy it is in mesmer core), especially considering the synergy with slow.

I can see Gravity getting some use. It’s a Dark Field, which we didn’t have before, and deals damage in addition to granting decent stability. Not as generally useful as Warp, but I could see a Boonshare packing this to explode stability in a high-cc environment.

I would agree with that if TimeWarp was not so awesome. Plus, a boonshare running with bountiful disillusionment (which is quite frequent) is almost guaranteed to share stability.

Yeah losing the pull cc on gravity well is rough, but on the other hand they drastically decreased the recharge to 90s (from initial 120s) and increased the damage a bit.

Silverkey.2078:

I would agree with that if TimeWarp was not so awesome. Plus, a boonshare running with bountiful disillusionment (which is quite frequent) is almost guaranteed to share stability.

Speaking of which, anyone know if BD going to get another boon when using the new shatter?

I think its pretty stupid that they did this to the ultimate. I’d rather have them remove or nerf the stability or damage on it because right after this… It’s really weak for an ultimate.

The interrupt gravity “black hole” kind off effect is what I liked about it.

It would have the perfect synergy with the Mistrust trait. Confusion for everyone. \o/

The CC was obviously OP (people have rarely that much stability on them) but isn’t the point of an elite to be OP for a little while? I mean this lasted only 3s on 120s, it’s a very short game-changer…

Silverkey.2078:

The CC was obviously OP (people have rarely that much stability on them) but isn’t the point of an elite to be OP for a little while? I mean this lasted only 3s on 120s, it’s a very short game-changer…

Three would have likely been a wreck (maybe), but I think they could have at least kept an initial pull in there with the float to follow at the end.

Or maybe when it ends, it could pull every enemy in a much larger radius than the Well into the centre, then Float them. Given that people have 3 full seconds to respond to it (dodge, Stability, whatever) it shouldn’t be something you can just step out of.

skcamow.3527:

Silverkey.2078:

The CC was obviously OP (people have rarely that much stability on them) but isn’t the point of an elite to be OP for a little while? I mean this lasted only 3s on 120s, it’s a very short game-changer…

Three would have likely been a wreck (maybe), but I think they could have at least kept an initial pull in there with the float to follow at the end.

I agree.
Elites should be game changers. They have a long cd for a reason.

How many pulls were there in the past? 3 pulls (one during each pulse) and a float?

I think either keeping that but removing stability & damage would be a nice way to change it. Just make it a CC bomb. nothign else.

Or like you said. Keep 1 pull & float. & keep stability & damage the way it is right now.

Embolism.8106:

it shouldn’t be something you can just step out of.

This is what irks me the most about it. The pull would greatly increase the chance opponent(s) are dealt the damage. The skill advertises “enemies caught in it” but without any kind of soft or hard cc to keep them there, it’s not very enticing.

I think it’s also fair to say this may not be the final product and we can reserve judgement until we see it, but it’s not promising their balance iterations on this skill up to this point have led them here.

I like the idea of 1 big pull in the first pulse. It allows counterplay (while the 3 consecutive pulls were only possible to avoid with blink or high stability stun break). I I could vote, I would vote for that one

Why is it even still called “Gravity Well” if there is no pull?

Because there is a float whicht defies gravity…

That’s anti-gravity.

Pssst, that’s something we know but not “they”

I’m not surprised at all in Gravity Well getting nerfed to not have any sense of gravity. Lol There were many ways they could have balanced this elite. They took the cheap easy route. I’d take Well of Calamity (which is like the very nice MoP version of wells) over Gravity Well at this point… And this is why I haven’t pre-purchased HoT.

Well of Precognition should give distortion instead of blur. They obviously don’t want this to synergize with our other distorting traits. Shame. That being said, can you say hello to kill-shot warriors being paired with Chronomancers?! The plays with this can potentially be insane.

Well of Eternity I’d honestly prefer the self-healing be changed to pulsing. That could possibly be a great AOE healer for your team in conjunction with Mantras. Come on, they keep teasing us with supportive capabilities. I guess I won’t complain too much since we’re as supportive as we’ve ever been.

Wells look to be under-WELL-ming to me at this point overall. I was most looking forward to Gravity Well, but Time Warp outshines it by so SO much considering they do very similar things both in theory and practice. I’ll just happily continue being a glamour fanboy. See you guys during the beta! haha

MailMail.6534:

I’m not surprised at all in Gravity Well getting nerfed to not have any sense of gravity. Lol There were many ways they could have balanced this elite. They took the cheap easy route. I’d take Well of Calamity (which is like the very nice MoP version of wells) over Gravity Well at this point… And this is why I haven’t pre-purchased HoT.

In a sense, this well is more in-line with the others: pulsing effect for 1 side (ally stability in this case) and then opposite effect at the end of the well for the other side (float here). Which is also why this is not an elite skill but worth of a 30-40s CD utility.

Well of Precognition should give distortion instead of blur. They obviously don’t want this to synergize with our other distorting traits. Shame. That being said, can you say hello to kill-shot warriors being paired with Chronomancers?! The plays with this can potentially be insane.

I disagree. The blur is our only way to evade while still contesting the point. Also blur is an evade so all on-evade traits still synergies. The only missing synergy is the distorsion-sharing but since this is already AOE…

Well of Eternity I’d honestly prefer the self-healing be changed to pulsing. That could possibly be a great AOE healer for your team in conjunction with Mantras. Come on, they keep teasing us with supportive capabilities. I guess I won’t complain too much since we’re as supportive as we’ve ever been.

I think it’s a good heal like this. I like having a bit of a burst heal in the beginning.

Wells look to be under-WELL-ming to me at this point overall. I was most looking forward to Gravity Well, but Time Warp outshines it by so SO much considering they do very similar things both in theory and practice. I’ll just happily continue being a glamour fanboy. See you guys during the beta! haha

I actually think wells have their niche. I am looking forward to use them in my bunker build and more offensively in WvW. I only thing the elite is pointless.

Gravity Well is pretty much only useful to chain-stun with an existing form of lockdown now. I think I would rather have seen the three pulls remain and the float effect removed.

Right now, enemies can easily defy your control over gravity and just walk out unscathed. It’d be ideal if they added a large pull initially, but I can understand them wanting to stick with 2 identical pulses in which 2 pulls plus a float would be OP.

They could add pulsing cripple or chill to Gravity, and switch out the cripple on Calamity for Confusion.

I disagree. The blur is our only way to evade while still contesting the point. Also blur is an evade so all on-evade traits still synergize.

Unless you are running Condi Shatter, contesting a point for a long period of time is pretty foolish on Mesmer unless you have ample team support or you’re running a higher sustain build. And if you have ample team support, you distorting is not a big deal.

You’re right though. We have many more on-evade traits than I realized. I don’t use Evasive Mirror or Mental Defense often, but I’m a huge fan of Ineptitude. Probably one of our best gms.

I am quite upset with this nerf to gravity well, For me the 3 pulses with “gravity effect”, were the most exciting new tool that the mesmer was going to get in this new elite spec.

The other new skills, aside of F5, I don’t think they will be very popular among mesmers.

I don’t see people using shield in pve nor pvp. I think off-hand sword and torch are still better options.

Regarding the utilities, and in terms of sustained dmg, i think the mantras still will be a better option than the wells in pve. For pvp and WvW I don’t see people giving up blink and decoy.

Lastly, the elite skill, Time warp and MI are muuuuch better options than this new “gravity” well in most situations.

Very upset Anet. I just hope they don’t tweak too much the chronomancer traits….

I think that the chronomancer is just a very different way to play mesmer. It is much more utility-driven and area control. It can offer damage boost, but not by having damage trait but by providing quickness and slow (quickness on shatter sound strong!).

Personally I decided to try a bunker build (which I had never done before) to prepare for chronomancer because that is where I see the most PvP potential (see https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Chrono-bunker/first ).

I certainly won’t be giving up Torch/Blink/Decoy on my PU Condi, but I could see Recall taking utility slot #3 since it’ll DRASTICALLY improve Chaos Armor uptime!
Shield I see as more of a Boonshare offhand than anything else, and even then primarily for PvE encounters. A fun tool, but beating out Focus/Torch/Sword off hands is always going to be a tall order.

Curunen.8729:

Well that sucks.That well sucks.

fixed it for ya

I’m really disappointed with this nerf. On paper, I don’t see any reason to run GW over TW or MI. We’ll see in game…

Gravity well is essentially trash now. Simply zoning out a small 240 radius area does not justify its 90sec cooldown and elite slot. Its pulsing effect is way too weak.

Do you seriously just place that well under allies’ feet for some stability? Or you place it under opponent’s feet for some minimum damage and they just walk out of it(it takes like 1 second to walk out of 240 circle, and the well takes 3 seconds to have its final effect).

It needs a cripple pulsing effect and a cd at 60sec to see any use.

Exciton.8942:

Gravity well is essentially trash now. Simply zoning out a small 240 radius area does not justify its 90sec cooldown and elite slot. Its pulsing effect is way too weak.

Do you seriously just place that well under allies’ feet for some stability? Or you place it under opponent’s feet for some minimum damage and they just walk out of it(it takes like 1 second to walk out of 240 circle, and the well takes 3 seconds to have its final effect).

It needs a cripple pulsing effect and a cd at 60sec to see any use.

This

They took away the one thing that made this elite appealing.
Stability? well that’s a nice little addition to the elite. Damage? There’s another damage well so the damage doesn’t make this well unique in any way.
And no one’s gnna just sit there waiting for the float.

The the CC was what made it great alltogether

To be honest I wouldn’t mind if they’d increase the cd to 180 sec and nerf the stability & damage as long as they kept the CC.
It was the unique & strong part about the elite.

And so it begins, before we even get the chronomancer the ineptitude of Anets balance team is ruining it for everybody.

I really don’t see why you would ever take Gravity Well over other elites in this state.

What role does it fill exactly? I really don’t see how you would ever take a smigin of damage and a single CC on a 90 second cooldown assuming your opponents like standing in the red.
Are mesmers expected to drop another cc to cover for it?
In that case you could just use your other cc and not waste time casting a well that’s going to do negligable damage and just do your burst rotation.

I’d be down for a pulsing daze.
At least then it would have some kind of function that you would bother slotting it for.

Mesmers have always been blessed with all our elite being quite good in their own merit. This one definitely does not seem to follow this trend.

Honestly, before they nerfed it, I already thought I would rather use TW. But I thought that in some situations it could be useful (WvW to break stability for example). Now… I just can’t see any use for it (WvW is still the only possible place to help the frontline with some stability, but I’m not sure it is worth it even there…).

Silverkey.2078:

Hi guys
I just watched the stream from ANEt (http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/9763687) and towards the end, Jebro is playing chronomancer. There are a few changes in particular, a very painful one is that “Gravity Well” has lost its pulsing CC… The only CC left is the float at the end (see after 6h10m50).

During original stream they’ve said it’s too strong and will either use float or pulsing CC. Mostly indicated float but seeing as they want to underline the final pulse they left it and removed pulsing cc.

That is weird, because the original seemed very weak to begin with. Probably ok-ish in a smaller team situation where you can forcible pull people into other AEs, but they’re just going to stability out of it anyhow.

Now, it feels rather pointless. Why would anyone be hit by the float if nothing pulls them into it beforehand?

If anything, I’d rework it to something like this now:

Gravity Well
Temporarily increase gravity in an area, slowing and crippling foes. At the end, revert gravity briefly, floating foes and causing falling damage when they crash down to the ground.

In other words, it’d float them high enough to actually cause ~20%-25% of HP in falling damage. People with falling damage traits ofc wouldn’t but hey, that’s good trait interaction IMO. I’d also remove the damage because frankly we got a damage-centric well already.

Gravity Well now lost its original identity as the ultimate CC tool in our kitten nal. What is it trying to achieve now with that hefty long cooldown?

keenlam.4753:

Gravity Well now lost its original identity as the ultimate CC tool in our kitten nal. What is it trying to achieve now with that hefty long cooldown?

Do 1-2 ticks of damage, equivalent to one sword or GS autoattack? Oh you can use it on friendlies as a very inferior Mantra of Concentration! :O

(this is such a lame change, why is it still called Gravity Well, tbh?)

Gravity well is more of a defensive utility now. Long lasting pulsing stability definitely has its uses, but I want to see another cooldown reduction if I’m actually going to considering equipping it like this. 60 seconds is a lot more appropriate for what it does now.

Plus it should be called Stability Well :P

In its current incarnation, gravity well isn’t even worth the effort to unlock it. The devs made a massive blunder with how they nerfed it, and I can only hope they realize that eventually. It’s still a good while until HoT releases probably, so there’s plenty of time for more changes. However, I’d be very unsurprised if it just went live in the hilariously awful form it has right now.

So looking at the trait list on the wiki, I see two notable things I haven’t seen brought up.

Lost Time now is 2s Slow every 5 critical hits+1hit, changed from 2s every 3 critical.

Chronophantasma now dazes the resummoned phantasms for 1s on summon.

:/

Dethl.2875:

Lost Time now is 2s Slow every 5 critical hits+1hit, changed from 2s every 3 critical.

I brought it up in another thread. It’s a huge loss in the potency of the trait, to the point that it might be too weak compared to the other two. However, the impact of Alacrity might change that. Alacrity is just…too hard to math around.

Dethl.2875:

Chronophantasma now dazes the resummoned phantasms for 1s on summon.

This was one method to fix to a real problem:
If you Chrono-shatter 3 phants (iZerkers, say), they will be replaced by 3 new phants of the same type, who will all instantly attack (as phants tend to do). That’s a Mind Wrack + instant 3-phant burst. It’s just too much burst all at once, given that our burst is one of the biggest complaints about us. 1s daze gives counterplay, and is only a momentary delay in dps.
Even with the 1s, it’s a damage boost over the alternative (phantasms keeping the same attack cooldown as the phant that got shattered), because it effectively resets the phant’s attack timer with a 1s delay. Decent player timing will always come out a little ahead on that for dps.

I still like my solution better though.

If they made it a 45 second cool down I could live with GW as it is.

90s it just doesn’t compare to MI as I don’t need to do anything special to get good use out of MI but GW I would have to immob/cripple someone for it to be even remotely worth using. That final damage really doesn’t look “massive” either.

I’m wondering if GW even in its new, nerfier form doesn’t have a use in scaring enemies off a point. Like, a 2s Float is a big threat.

But that’s also pretty much the only thing it’s good for, and Time Warp threatens enemies with being Slowed for as long as they remain on point, rather than just being stunned once if they don’t dodge a telegraphed burst, sooo…

tobascodagama.2961:

I’m wondering if GW even in its new, nerfier form doesn’t have a use in scaring enemies off a point. Like, a 2s Float is a big threat.

But that’s also pretty much the only thing it’s good for, and Time Warp threatens enemies with being Slowed for as long as they remain on point, rather than just being stunned once if they don’t dodge a telegraphed burst, sooo…

Does churning earth scare you off a point? Of course not, you just dodge it. Gravity well is just as telegraphed as churning earth, and just as easy to avoid.

For me personally, this killed it for me regarding Wells unless we are talking about tagging mobs. Other Wells are either generic (e.g. Calamity) or too difficult to be used efficiently (e.g. Precognition).

Yes, a number of consecutive CC is very powerful. But that’s what the cooldown is for. One float at the end of the skill won’t cut it. If they thought the pulls were too much, what about a pulsing Immobilize so the float isn’t that stupidly easy to avoid?