Guild Wars 2

Arewn.2368:

@Menaka’s most recent reply to my post
Of course choosing the chronomancer trait line presents a trade-off. Obviously. That’s the exact same trade off we’ve had since launch. Whether you’re picking chrono, or illusions, or dueling, or whatever as one of your trait lines, you are always finding yourself with that exact same trade-off situation. The “flexibility” one gives up by choosing the chrono trait line is the exact same as when you chose any other trait line.
If you were to look at mesmer and chrono and say “all things held equal”, this common trade-off they both have to deal with would be one of those things.

this isn’t exactly true.

if you want any of the chronomancer “bells and whistles”, you’ll need to spec into chronomancy: you don’t need to spec into Inspiration to use a focus offhand, or into chaos to use stealth, or into Illusions to use shatters

Arewn.2368:

And core builds? to heck with core builds. Core builds have, and will continue, to be developed regardless. Some will incorporate the new chrono additions, some wont. It’s irrelevant to the argument at hand.

You didn’t understand what I meant with “core builds”: I meant builds made using only the core specs (Domination, Dueling, Chaos, Inspiration, Illusions). None of them will “incorporate” anything from chronomancer, because when you spec into chronomancy you’ll be a chronomancer, not a mesmer.

Arewn.2368:

If on one hand I’m presented with a mesmer, and on the other hand I’m presented with a mesmer with all the bells and whistles attached (read: chronomancer), then obviously the one with all the bells and whistles is going to be more enticing.

but you aren’t.

in one hand you’ll have a mesmer, on the other hand you’ll have 2/3 of a mesmer and some bells and whistles.

Arewn.2368:

Picking chrono by default net’s me some extra features compared to just mesmer.

Picking chronomancy you can’t run DE+PU+MtD. Easy as that.

Sure, you’ll have different traits in chronomancy, maybe even stronger traits. We don’t know. But that build? You can’t have it if you go chrono.

Saying you get “a mesmer plus something” is just wrong.

Arewn.2368:

If I need a music player, and what I need from it is just the ability to play music, then obviously all the additional features of an Ipod are worthless to that goal. And I could listen to music perfectly well, perhaps even with better quality, on some no-name mp3 player. But that doesn’t mean the Ipod’s additional features don’t exist. That doesn’t mean they aren’t nice to have. That doesn’t mean they don’t hold some value or feeling of attraction. Those additional features sell Ipods, and are subsequently used by the users.

I’m glad you choose this example. As far as I know the only way to put music on your iPod is to use Apple’s iTunes. That’s the tradeoff.

Arewn.2368:

This is the kind of value I place on the chronomancer’s(elite specs) additions. And this is the kind of value I would like to find in mesmers(baseline specs).
I don’t want to see base specs remain mundane in an ever growing pool of special elite specs. I want them to be distinct, and hold their own exclusives.

As I said earlier, core specs are already “exclusive” because you get to pick 3 core traitlines and you can’t do that when speccing in chronomancy.
If you can’t see this point, it’s completely useless to continue this discussion.

On the same note:
Picking any three that don’t include Dueling precludes you from taking Deceptive Evasion (and other Dueling-only traits).

Similarly, picking any three that don’t include Illusion precludes you from taking MtD.

This is similar to not taking Chronomancer precludes you from the Chronomancer traits but also precludes you from the other Chronomancer extras (shield & F5).

The only difference is the preclusion of a weapon and shatter.

In the end, it boils down to tradeoffs. Those are the tradeoffs for this elite specialization and it is only the first. There will be others later with similar tradeoffs.

You can’t try to make all tradeoffs equivalent because people weigh different things differently.

A tradeoff you think is fair someone else will think is unfair.

kylwilson.9137:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

OK – I haven’t read the entire thread because it seemed to start re-hashing itslelf… For my 2 cents though… the problem with the new skills not being baseline is that in PVP it is not at all unusual for there to be quite limited scope in what is an optimum build. My prediction will be that in PVP atleast we will therefore (more or less) ALL end up speccing into Chrono or ALL won’t be. If it’s the latter and Chrono is sub-optimal then we all just carry on doing the same thing we’ve been doing for years – which sucks. If Chrono is optimal then all the previous baselines become redundant and Chrono becomes ‘Psuedo baked-in’ baseline anyway, which is just bad game design. Time will tell but personally I’m concerned that this is more likely to further limit builds than diversify them.

We will be able to grandmaster in three separate trait lines after the trait overhaul. Builds will be nothing but more diverse after this change. Right off the bat we immediately have at least three specs that have been boosted to well beyond what they were in the past, with a staple IP being made baseline. So even if Chromomancy does bring something great to the table, everyone no matter who they are will be better off than they were.

I get the impression that people are kind of focusing on a theoretical scenario in which chronomancy impacts the highest levels of play in such a manner. I’m willing to bet that next to none of us play at that level.

What you are describing is a situation where we are different to how we are now. This certainly isn’t the same as having more potential for diversity. Also whether mesmers are ‘better off than they were’ is entirely contextual and determined by how mesmers will sit in the game over all after all the upcoming changes to all classes etc.

My issue is that either Chrono is going to be (more or less) compulsory or it’s going to be obsolete. This is to a degree true of most ‘choices’ in the game. However when new content comes out it is just more fun/value to know that you are going to benefit from using the new content (skills etc). My point in a nutshell is that – big changes to classes should be done at a baseline level, not at an ‘optional’ level. If new and exciting abilities are given as an option then they have to be balanced a). for people who take them AND b). for people who don’t take them – and this causes a big problem. Either they are too exiciting and are game breaking and compulsory or they are balanced with every other build and as such really not much to look forward to. Given that ‘balance’ is difficult to achieve I’m worried that this is a bad (or at least ultimately dull) design decision.

from a pve point of view i have to agree that 3 time warps are >>> than 1 time warp. but pvp – there are many other options.

IIRC from the PoI, the F5 shatter is granted by the minor Grandmaster trait in Chrono. So when considering opportunity cost and the balancing of core vs elite specialisations, it seems likely that all the new shinies that an elite spec. brings will come at a hefty cost before you even start comparing the major traits.