Guild Wars 2

Not many people talk about the full implications of Chronophantasma for phantasm builds. There’s a thread I made, which I couldn’t find, that attempts to detail why Chronophantasma does well in phantasm builds in PvP and possibly PvE and WvW (though I went more on the PvP side).

Or maybe I’ve been ignorant about it, people answered it already and that this grandmaster trait only works well for shatter builds. But I want to think of the possible things using Chronophantasma and I tried to incorporate the main phantasm build (post HoT) with shatter mechanics.

So the main thing is: What are the pros and cons of Chronophantasma for phantasm builds in PvE/PvP/WvW? Does the pros outweight the cons? If you also want to add pros and cons of this trait for shatter builds, that’s great too.

Here’s my arguement.
Advantages:
- ability to shatter
- opportunities for instant burst, which normal phantasm builds lack
- Chronophantasma with Protected Phantasms give invulnerability upon resummon as a result of a shatter attack

Disadvantages:
- shatter and phantasm (attempts to fuse them) are like repelling magnets
- Deceptive Evasion is used for shatter buids, but detrimental when having 3 phantasms out
- poor synergy between traits as one person calls it, you’re just “choosing the least bad option”

(In all honesty, the arguement’s hastily made but I’m still sticking to that it gives a nice boost for phantasm builds.)

I think that chronophantasma is good for phantasm builds, however I’m not entirely certain you’d want to even go into chronomancy for phantasm builds. As you said the traits kinda lack synergy. For example if you go into chronomancy as a phant build, you probably won’t use shield as its phantasm doesn’t seem to be the strong enough, although it does have the advantage oh higher generation from the deja vu mechanic. Additionally, you won’t really benefit all that much from alacrity compared to a build that shatters more and can maintain more of the buff. Continuum shift does offer some cool ideas to use with phantasms though, but the long cooldown will keep it from being something you can rely on.

Personally I’d see the future phantasm build for mesmer using domination for the damage buffs, dueling (for the buffed duelists disciple/not buffed blade training depending on which offhand you take) and either inspiration for the new SoI boonshare spam on phantasm GM and the minor traits that keep phantasms from being as easy to take out, or alternatively illusions for phantasmal haste (and not much else). I think the buffs to inspirations could add a lot of creative builds, but it will still suffer from the being kind of pointless aside 1v1 like the current phant builds in pvp.

Personally I see chronomancy as being a better traitline for shatter builds. PvP experts I know think that 6/6/0/0/0/6 would be a likely chrono-shatter spec. I also don’t see chronophantasma as the ideal GM trait for a shatter build. I do think it could work really well at increasing the potential of a burst, but I think seize the moment is just better because on demand quickness is so useful for everything from increasing how fast the next spike can come off to stomping downed enemies better. I also wouldn’t write off lost time either since slow is looking to be fairly strong.

Edit: Also, protected phantasms has an ICD of 10seconds, so chronophantasma wouldn’t restore the invulnerability if you shattered right away.

All of this really hinges on implementation, and thus until we play it it’s very hard to judge. As the Devs themselves pointed out, in the current alpha version the mechanic would be grossly OPd, allowing multiple Phantasms to combine their attacks at the same instance after being shattered.

If they add a random delay to the attack cycle after spawning, or the newly summon Phants simply inherit the attack CD from the shattered ones, then everything is up for grabs really. Most likely this would result in making this GM trait worthless to actual Phantasm builds due to Phantasms being summoned on target where they will die pathetically long before they get to attack again.

The best option would probably be for them to rework it somehow. At the very least, the new Phantasms should be summoned by the Mesmer and work just as they do now, that is ranged Phants summon at range, and melee ones cast on target?

That would help things a bit, and then they could add a 1-2 second random attack delay to avoid the simultaneous “barrage attack” issue.

I really do hope that the CD on Protected Phantasms was a tooltip bug, or that they will rethink this. It really needs no CD at all, and should cover all Illusions, not just Phantasms. In fact, they could then add a component to Chronophantasms to add an additional second of invuln for Phantasms. This would allow slow-attacking Phantasms a better chance to actually survive their first attack cycle. (iMage, iWarlock, and iWarden…not to mention iDefender & iDisenchanter, and of course the iShieldPhantDude too)

Personally I see it as limited by the re summon on what it shatters on, way to open to the extraordinary amount of cleave the game and classes have.

I would much rather it resummons the phantasm upon death, whether that be shatter or cleave out. It will then give phantasm builds what they really need, a way to keep phantasms up and out with a good uptime. It’s worth mentioning phantasms generally die to 1-3 hits which can be annoying in PvP but also they die in 1 hit in most PvE and no amount of good positioning or summoning makes up for that.

Sure I can see a PU zerk, chrono phantasm build being annoying, possibly the new turret engy but let’s see it first then balance it.

Edit: I also agree with windwalker, the all attacking on resummon, while funny and great is a bit much so inheriting the attack time of the phantasm it replaced would be tangfastic if possible.

It would be kinda neat if we got the option to tweak the summon AI ourselves. Basically a toggle switch that allows you to summon all Phantasms at short, medium, or long (max) attack distance.

Short – Melee range of target
Medium -About 66-75% of max distance of the Phants attack (less failures due to “out of range” targets)
Long – About 90% of max distance of the Phants attack (Safest to Phant survival, but prone to being “OOR” on moving targets)

The way I saw it was that chronophantasma, since its shattering the butterfly tell around the phantasms, means that the butterflys would be shattered and the phantasms would just stay there, they wouldn’t respawn or reset their CD for their attacks (please correct me if I’m wrong about this).

You also have to predict that the butterfly effect will put a huge tell on the phantasms that the mesmer is likely going to shatter them, so that could make things easier to dodge for the enemy.

nearlight.3064:

The way I saw it was that chronophantasma, since its shattering the butterfly tell around the phantasms, means that the butterflys would be shattered and the phantasms would just stay there, they wouldn’t respawn or reset their CD for their attacks (please correct me if I’m wrong about this).

You also have to predict that the butterfly effect will put a huge tell on the phantasms that the mesmer is likely going to shatter them, so that could make things easier to dodge for the enemy.

I like that. The butterflies should move to shatter close to the target just like how the illusions run to shatter at their target. The butterflies move but the phantasms stay. This solves:

- the unnecessary burst that can happen when the phantasms run towards the target. They shatter and then respawn on the spot they were shattered, which can bring in too much burst against the target, or
- fail to make the extremely powerful burst and be killed once thier invulnerablity ends.

Both ways are bad in terms of balance and if the devs do think of this, they can bring better consistency to phantasm play, shatter, and not errenously tip any balance.