Guild Wars 2

Hi all

I wanted to start a discussion about how would you balance core mesmer and chronomancer so that the core class remains relevant. I will discuss mostly in the context of PvP, but PvE discussion is also welcome.

In order to prevent power creep, I will assume that core mesmer is balanced, and thus one just wants to bring chronomancer in line.

Here is my own reflection on the subject:

For core and elite specs to be both relevant, both should have a different niche. Most elite specializations comes with a theme, which also explain there main focus. For example, reaper is all about being in a team fight as opposed to the more 1v1-centric necromancer. To this ends, they get cleaving shroud skills and GS and scaling shouts.

To a large extent, I feel like the same applies for chronomancer. Core mesmer is bad in team fights because it lacks AOE as well as defensive tools to remain in the heat of the battle. Wells fix the former problem and the shield fixes the latter. Also, alacrity provides team-wide support.

And this worked: the elite spec allowed the rise of chronobunker, which works best in team fights. However, where it failed (in my opinion) is that even shatter mesmer switched to chrono. Now shatter mesmer is not so viable anymore, but this is more because of the insane damage to sustain ratio of other class/builds (revenants or scrapper in particular).

In my opinion, shatter mesmer should remain a core-mesmer spec, or at least, shatter chrono should not be an obviously better choice. Shatter chrono don’t even use their shield nor wells, so the chronomancer line is only taken for its traits. In my opinion, the 3 main factors which make shatter chrono an obvious better choice are:

• continuum split
• Flow of Time + Improved Alacrity
• Time Marches On
  that is: the 3 minor traits.

Now I think continuum split is fine as it is. On the other hand, I don’t think “Time Marches On” fits the theme. Chronomancer is about being in the team fights, not about mobility. I think this trait would make much more sense in “dueling”.

Finally, a more controversial topic: alacrity. I think Flow of Time is too much for a minor. It reduces cooldowns as well as “Illusionist’s Celerity” and “Master of Misdirection” do in the “Illusion” lines, but actually reduces the cooldown of ALL SKILLS. Coupled to “Improved Alacrity”, this is just too good. The changes hinted by a-net show that a nerf to alacrity will most likely happen. Currently, the cooldown recharges 66% faster, meaning that if you maintain 100% alacrity uptime, your cooldowns are 40% shorter. Reducing alacrity to 50% faster recharge would mean that the cooldowns would be 33% shorter. The absolute lowest one would expect would be if a-net tries to align to the “usual” 20% cooldown reduction, which would correspond to alacrity providing 25% faster recharge. Regardless of this, I think “Flow of Time” may be too good for a minor trait, considering the chronomancer line already has good minor with “continuum split”. I would therefore move “Flow of Time” to be a major trait instead of “Improved Alacrity” which I would just remove.

How would you do things?

Not possible at the moment. It is pretty much the same situation for all professions.
Elite > core. Unless they do a complete rework with balance between elite and core in mind, it cannot be fixed by small adjustment.

Also, maybe it is intentional for the devs to design a stronger elite than core. That’s why they call the new spec ‘elite’.

The problem is you only have to give up a single trait line to take your elite .Given that this will give you access to a new weapon and skills there are very few instances when this is not worthwhile. Even on my ranger i play as a damage dealer which has the druid specialization ( arguably one of the few specializations that properly fits the different play style they where going for) it is still beneficial for me to take druid as my damage is the same and i gain more group support.

Pre HoT anet was stating that elite specs should just be a alternate play style not an all round better choice ,i was fairly skeptical as the opportunity cost in taking and elite instead of base class seemed really really low not to mention balancing all these new elites was gonna make early HoT a clusterkitten regardless.

I can’t really see any obvious solutions that could be easily implemented .

Exciton.8942:

Also, maybe it is intentional for the devs to design a stronger elite than core. That’s why they call the new spec ‘elite’.

Of course it is intentional. You’re not going to pay to win unless you’re actually, y’know, going to win.

foxcat.4096:

The problem is you only have to give up a single trait line to take your elite .Given that this will give you access to a new weapon and skills there are very few instances when this is not worthwhile. Even on my ranger i play as a damage dealer which has the druid specialization ( arguably one of the few specializations that properly fits the different play style they where going for) it is still beneficial for me to take druid as my damage is the same and i gain more group support.

Pre HoT anet was stating that elite specs should just be a alternate play style not an all round better choice ,i was fairly skeptical as the opportunity cost in taking and elite instead of base class seemed really really low not to mention balancing all these new elites was gonna make early HoT a clusterkitten regardless.

I can’t really see any obvious solutions that could be easily implemented .

Well I do think that linking the new weapons to the elite specs is a bad idea. They should be available to everyone. But even without that, for shatter mesmer for example, people often play it GS-sw/torch, without any well (or sometimes gravity well). This means that they take the elite spec solely because it is a better traitline.

Elites overall are almost always just so much better than core, it’s tough to balance, but I think this is most pronounced for mesmers.

I mean, Alacrity alone is good enough to justify going chrono for any build, but even without Alacrity, you essentially get the cooldown time of your elites drastically reduced along with the ability to double cast them if you like thanks to CS. These two aspects are so overwhelmingly powerful for such a wide range of builds, I don’t see much they could do to make core mesmer ever worth taking unless they really destroyed the chrono spec.

However, if I were a dev, I’d probably look to reducing the cooldown of elites while also reducing their effect’s duration, similar to what was done with Rampage as One when it was changed to “Strength of the Pack!”. This at least would reduce the appeal of using CS with elites.

I believe a simple way to bring Chrono in line with Core Mes is to reduce Alacrity CD reduction to 45% and to make CS not reset Elites, but even then Chrono would be chosen due to the inherent flaws of Core Mes.

Another idea that I see as being drastic is to make CS an Elite, that change would make it be a very competitive choice for elites in all game modes.

Universally they could give the core specs a piece of the elite. Each elite has varying functionality revolving around the common:

1. Weapon
2. Trait line
3. F skill
4. Utilities

For example, if they gave each core profession the ability to use the elite utilities that expands some options. You could potentially apply that idea to any of the other three elite functions. Like each profession could get access to the F skill. For mesmer that’s straightforward but for other professions some base functionality would need built-in with the lack of trait support.

Just some ideas. Obviously this wouldn’t bring core specs all the way up but would potentially improve them. Though, aside from massively buffing all the core specs I’m not sure they’ll ever be as strong as the elites.

skcamow.3527:

Universally they could give the core specs a piece of the elite. Each elite has varying functionality revolving around the common:

1. Weapon
2. Trait line
3. F skill
4. Utilities

For example, if they gave each core profession the ability to use the elite utilities that expands some options. You could potentially apply that idea to any of the other three elite functions. Like each profession could get access to the F skill. For mesmer that’s straightforward but for other professions some base functionality would need built-in with the lack of trait support.

Just some ideas. Obviously this wouldn’t bring core specs all the way up but would potentially improve them. Though, aside from massively buffing all the core specs I’m not sure they’ll ever be as strong as the elites.

If the lowered/removed the power creep from the elite specs and reworked the core specs flaws it would be relatively easy to balance the two different specs, it would take a little more effort on Anets part to apply proper balance and to Better QV the changes before releasing maybe if they implemented a PTR to help get feedback prior to rolling out any changes, the thing that hinders Anets attempts at balance are their heavy handed blanket nerfs/buffs to skills/traits and.

Take well Thieves FS/LS for example before they applied a universal need to it where it allowed the thief to activate if FS missed, and strip two boons when LS hit, they nerfed it into the ground by making it have to hit to allow LS to chain and reduced to one boon steal all the while increasing the initiative cost.

Heavy handed nerfs like that are what break classes and specs to be undesirable, now if they chose one of those nerfs it would be a little more understandable.

Its too late now, but what should have happened is back in June when they decided to go the 3 trait route to get ready for HOT.

They should have chosen one of the base trait lines as the “elite” line for the core Mesmer. (and the same for the other professions). Assigned certain skills/weapons,etc to that core line. Then you would have some type of “line” between the core Mesmer and Chrono(and future elites).

The way it is now, Chrono and other elites will always be “Core + Elite” and thus better.

They just made their job harder. As time goes by and you add more Elites, now you can balance elite vs elites.. but even then the more elites you add the less and less “core mesmer” stays viable.

Its just how they desgined it. Elites are built on top of the core professions. Not along side.

core mesmer build are gone

condi – mtd back to 2 stacks of torment. even if you go with chorno line you will loss either inspiration (condi cleanse) or chaos (sustain) or dueling (DE and blind) . so basic condi mesmer can be ill,due,chron/insp/chaos

power mes – more dmg to AA 5-10% gs and sw

imporve torch dmg and condi

I agree in some ways, it’s chrono, the trait line, F ability, utilities and weapons that need bringing down a tad as they make it flat out better.

However part of that is base mesmer has very deep rooted flaws, low dps, reliance on AI, lack of AoE not tied to said bad AI etc.

If I honestly had to adjust it I would remove CS, adjust alacrity downward to maybe a 25% cool down reduction if up permanently and then adjust the cool downs of the elite skills to make them slightly lower. Moa could become 150s, TW become 120-150s now rezs aren’t affected and keep GW and MI as is.

I would also probably adjust the alacrity sharing so you really need to invest in it but can potentially get very good uptime on it. Perhaps change lost time to allowing alacrity from flow of time to affect allies? Maybe make it into a well cool down trait? I dunno but PvE chrono really needs to be pumping out the alacrity and quickness and something like that would help while making sure bunker Mesmer isn’t getting hated.

As for base Mesmer, in PvE you’ll need to allow phantasms to get all the damage buffs base Mesmer has, all modifiers etc. Maybe beef up the sword auto just in PvE to 0.8, 0.9 then 1.1/1.4 on the chain, would go a very long way to upping its DPS and up blurred frenzy to match.

Won’t solve all the problems but would go a long way to making mesmer desirable for more than a buff bot role, especially if phantasms end up immune to certain one shot mechanics and continue to DPS while you have to faff around with mechanics like throw bombs.

Oh and I would be looking to gut every single elite spec in a similar fashion too.

I’m going to try and be realistic about this since I highly doubt Anet will gut key features of chronomancer ie. continuum split. Removing it because someone doesn’t like that it can cast 2 elites is ridiculous. CS is what makes the chronomancer unique.

It’s already well known that in all game modes mesmer has one of the lowest DPS’s in terms of sustained damage although in PvP it has a very fast burst coupled with interrupts and a well timed shatter that can turn some builds to dust.

The philosophy of the mesmer profession since guild wars 1 has always been about well timed skill casting. Whether in the form of support, interrupts, damage, or conditions.

Thus far, it has extremely good support and interrupts. In terms of conditions it has unique access to loads of confusion and torment, but it seems underwhelming unless it is stacked behind other conditions. A rework of the scepter will help bring more build diversity to mesmers in terms of conditions however the chronomancer trait line has awful synergy choices i.e Delayed Reactions, Danger Time, and Lost time. These choices need to also be reworked if a condition build is to become more viable.

Since support is inevitably going to be nerfed, the block skills on the scepter should be removed (we already have the shield for melee defense) and replaced with a blind or some type of phase retreat skill that would suit the play style of not getting hit versus trying to get in melee range to make the skill effective.

What I would like to see is a condition on the scepter that when applied interrupts the next skill (like clumsiness from gw1).

In terms of the core mesmer, malicious sorcery is redundant if you have quickness and ineptitude is underwhelming if you bring blind on shatter from the dueling line. In most cases, the dueling line is essential for illusion creation and should be made baseline.

Improved Alacrity is not a minor trait ; if anything you want to change it so that Mind Wrack doesn’t give alacrity or isn’t affected by it. The main culprit I believe is Mind Wrack’s interaction with alacrity. With alacrity it’s REALLY low cooldown and if you have enough garbage clones to shatter (see scepter auto attack 3) it makes it trivial to get upwards of 2000 damage every few seconds & the condi cleanse + heal from Restorative Illusions if you’re traited for it.

They are most likely going to nerf the CD reduction in alacrity so the Mond wrack cd won’t be as much of an issue, but we won’t know for sure till they give us some more info.

The only way to balance Elite with Core would be (to take the Mesmer example) to elevate Illusions to Elite status, basicly undo the 15% base shatter reduction and buff the traits (granting Illusions the 30% and improving it all round). This would require a large overhaul of all trait lines as you’ll need to redistribute the traits from illusions into other traitlines (so Chrono could run an effective condi build).

Basicly because Chrono has access to everything Core then more added you cannot make it balanced, to balance vs Core you must make something from current Core unchoosable by Chrono and balance them (you would also need to take a set of utilities away from Chrono – Signets were the obvious choice before HoT).

This is the only way to achieve your goal, nerfing Chrono a bit does nothing to make it less desirable (it will always have Alacrity, F5 and access to everything Core does that matters).

I actually agree that making the 5th traitline of each class an elite spec on its own could be an interesting idea. However, that would need significant trait rework, especially for mesmer. In my opinion, most of dueling and illusions traits should be swapped:

• dueling should become the condi line (we all know condis only work in small skirmishes for mesmer), therefore taking all the confusion+torment traits from “Illusions”
• illusions should be the class mechanics line, therefore taking “deceptive evasion” and probably also “Blinding Dissipation”.
• many other traits should be swapped around
  (note that this is something I already suggested long time ago since I think this swap should happen anyway
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/My-take-on-mesmer-traits/first
  )