Note: This is written from a WvW roaming perspective (solo or small group), where things like keeping people from escaping, chasing, and mobility matter far more than group support or team synergy.
Chronomancer brings a lot of exciting things to the Mesmer profession. AoE support options, good access to slow, alacrity, and most of all, tons of new options for lockdown builds. Before, Chaotic Interruption was more or less the only game in time. Now, we have far more options available. I’ve decided to take a less orthodox approach by focusing on increasing the cooldowns of my foes as much as possible with chill and Power Block rather than the traditional “inflict ALL the conditions on interrupt” strategy.
Chaotic Interruption is a great trait, but since the specialization update I’ve hard a hard time justifying devoting an entire tree to it with all the new toys we have. Donination and Chrono are givens with what they provide, leaving a free slot. Dueling is typically taken for Deceptive Evasion, but Chronophantasma makes it unnecessary. Illusions has some nice phantasm traits, but it’s more team support oriented. The Illusions line has some goodies that lockdown players shouldn’t ignore, including cripple on F2 and AoE daze on F3, faster phantasm recharge, and more.
Traits:
Donination: No matter what your take on lockdown is, you want to use Domination. Confounding Suggestions is a no-brainer. It may not keep people still as long as Chaotic Interruption, but a well timed interrupt can still let you land a shatter. You need boon stripping to get rid of stability, so Shattered Concentration is taken over Furious Interruption. Power Lock is the main attraction here. Interrupting a key skill can neuter a build. Interrupting a heal can be a death sentence. With this and chill, your targets won’t be doing a whole lot of anything.
Illusions: Persistence of Memory allows you to melt through your Echo of Memory and Phantasmal Berserker cooldowns with a flat 12 second reduction plus alacrity when you shatter 6 phantasms (which you’ll be able to in quick succession thanks to Chronophantasma), in addition to the flat reduction from Illusionists Celerity. Shattered Strength and Phantasmal Haste are both viable choices for the second trait. Take the former if you want more DPS, and the latter if you want more cripple and slow from phantasms. Master of Fragmentation gives us a lot of nice goodies, including cripple on F2 and AoE interrupts on F3.
Chronomancer: Delayed Reactions vs. Time Catches Up was a difficult choice for me. I ended up going with Time Catches Up because I’d rather have shatters that can’t be outran than a pinch of slow in a WvW roaming environment. Flow of Time is incredibly powerful for a minor. It’s the main reason you’re going to want to shatter as often as possible. Illusionary Reversion allows you to shatter your two shield phantasms for a Continuum Split to use your wells and have a triple shatter ready to go immediately. Chronophantasma is a game changer, and the reason I’m not taking Dueling anymore. It allows you shatter twice in quick succession, and without giving up valuable endurance to generate illusions.
Utilities:
With your strong illusion generation and the low cooldown, Ether Feast is a good choice, although Well of Eternity can be considered if you’re concerned about the lack of condition cleanse. Well of Calamity is taken as an additional source of burst, since we’re giving up some traditional burst items like Runes of Strength/The Pack/Hoelbrak/etc. Well of Recall is an excellent lockdown well that both increases your target’s cooldowns and makes it easier for you to land the Gravity Well/Well of Calamity/Mind Wrack combo, not to mention you get (even more) alacrity at the end. Mantra of Distraction is simply mandatory on any serious lockdown build, period.
Well of Gravity is your main combo starter. Once you have two phantasms, you can Continuum Shift, drop Gravity + Calamity, drop them again out of the shift, Mind Wrack, and wail on them with your various weapon skills. If they’re still alive after 6 seconds of interrupt hell, be sure to interrupt their heal to finish them off.
Equipment:
Gear is mostly Berserker, with a pinch of Valkyrie thrown in for some survivability. The Sigils/Runes of Ice are the unorthodox choice in this build. While the other runes and sigils are nice, I feel that chill is woefully underutilized on lockdown builds. You also get some vitality, which is always nice. Mesmer doesn’t have a ton of skills that implement chill, but I feel that the rune and sigil investment is worth it.
This build is still a work in progress, but I feel like it has potential. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I didn’t get to actually try this out in BWE3, but I plan on testing it in the new borderlands first thing HoT hits.