Guild Wars 2

First let me start off by saying I absolutely LOVE this skill. The icon is probably my favorite icon in the entire game and the visuals it makes on the skill active are amazing. The 90 second cooldown provides us with a skill that gives us an offensive combat option we don’t have to wait 3 minutes between uses plus it syncs up very nicely to our new profession mechanic’s cooldown. I even love that it’s a Dark field going with the space theme. The actual skill effects however is a mixed one…

Last BWE I found that the Gravity Well with only Float at the end was very strong overall. Using a 90 second cooldown skill for a 100% chance to disable for 2 seconds regardless of Defiance – as long as they’re in the AoE. This felt incredible and fitting to allow Mesmers to have an elite disable of this caliber. In all of PvE this felt like a fantastic addition to my skill bar and finally gave me a reason to swap off Time Warp that’s been stuck on my bar for almost 3 full years. PvP and WvW it was almost useless using it randomly, but if you set it up in advance and try to use other disables to make sure your target is in the area when it ends was very satisfying but not too much to gain off of it. In addition to all of that, the visuals on Float fit in very well with the Gravity Well theme and was a really fun sight to see giving off a mixed vibe of powerful and silly.

The new Gravity Well is… something. For actual combat situations in open world PvE with trash mobs the constant Pulls are pretty great. However with Champions or anywhere in Dungeons/Fractals the loss of Float makes this skill almost completely useless. So far it seems pretty threatening in PvP/WvW as long as your target doesn’t have easy access to blinks or an instant few stacks of Stability. The center Pulls are also very fitting for the theme, but it’s certainly not as impressive as before.

Overall these two versions of Gravity Well are equally as fitting to the skill’s theme but feel like two halves of a whole when you look at each of the game modes. The Float effect is incredibly unique and visually impressive while still feeling like an elite disable skill. The Pulls for each pulse are actually really effective with mobs and players but drops off instantly with Stability stacks or Champion targets. Perhaps there’s a way the skills could merge together without being too strong?

I would suggest replacing the last Pulls or two for the old single 2 second Float. This way there’s still the big casting time tell, and the danger of getting pulled to the middle while your time is running out before the big disable. Stability can still counter this but it keeps the pressure of needing to stay out of the AoE. This basically has no change with mobs in PvE and returns access to a 2 second disable to Champions regardless of Defiance/Stability (basically like Basilisk Venom). For PvP/WvW as mentioned above, with Stability you can still ignore the Pull but they’d have to leave the area before the Float happens.

Which version of Gravity Well do you other Chronomancers like so far? If you like neither of them, what would you do to change it? Do you think we’ll see Gravity Well ever genuinely being a better option over Time Warp?

For PvE:

• damage is ok
• the pull is too fast to trigger multiple power blocks – unfortunately
• the cd is way too long since chrono users have F5 = time warp gets 90 sec aswell
• time warp does more for the team than this well does
  Overall an ok skill, but time warp will always be better.

For PvP:

• forces the enemy to use stunbreaker or stability and dodge
• rather small aoe wich you can leave pretty fast – not so good for zoning
• long cd
• instant stomp interrupt
  Overall again “ok”, but I think mass invis is probably still better for the team and survival (safe heal) etc.

I suggest a few adjustions for Gravity Well:

• increase the radius from 240 to 360 like time warp
• increase the duration from 3sec to 6sec
• keep the same amount of pulses
• lower the CD to something between 60 and 90

For PvP this way it gets a large zoning capacity and combined with the longer duration a “danger zone” for enemies, just like time warp. It also gets fairer for enemies since they can dodge between ticks to evade the massive cc.

For PvE the lower CD will make it a viable option instead of TW before a bossfight. It will also still be lower than chrono TW. The big aoe pull will allow a good stacking of pve mobs where the 240 radius just is not enough. The delayed pull will also allow this skill to trigger power block multiple times wich gives it more damage + weakness procs.

The current gravity well is just not strong enought to be used, sry

I agree with the OP in terms of it being fairly useless in PvE with the pull change. The entire reason I made a second mesmer so I can have one that is condi and one that is power was because of the float effect… now I am second-guessing that. I only PvE so it has turned into a useless skill… sure, the float was not a lot of benefit, but it made the game amazing and I considered it the best skill in the game solely for that. Even in the beta so far I have used it once in the two hours I played with my chronomancer. In BWE1, I used it every time it was not on cool-down!

As it stands, everyone that does PvE is just going to go back to using TimeWarp (or golum for solo’ing Asurans). It needs to have viability in both PvP and PvE… and the fun factor of float while still having the pulls gives it that. Please bring that back…

Make it so, number one~~

Xyonon i agree with you on the increased radius, but the cooldown appears to built with someone running close to all wells in mind. I used our friendly indestructible golem in the pvp zone to test how long I could keep alacrity up, the answer was 100% of the time while in combat and 15 or 16 seconds after combat ended. with continuum split you can cast gravity well twice every 33 seconds i don’t think that any other class can cast that many elites that often.

my suggested changes would be
increased radius to 360
last pulse changed to float with a 1 or 1.5 second duration

Gah. I have had this question in my head since the start of beta. Honestly I don’t know which well I like better. It was so much fun to float but during the beta I ran with friends and my well pull set up a large mob to be bombed on and all the number damages everywhere was great. xD

I could be happy either way they keep or change it. Though if the wells were larger . . . the fun I could have >:D

The pull just seemed like a different version of the temporal curtain we already have. The float was something new and really cool. I really looked forward to using it once the actual game came out. It was so disappointing to see it gone today!

Folcan.7645:

The pull just seemed like a different version of the temporal curtain we already have. The float was something new and really cool. I really looked forward to using it once the actual game came out. It was so disappointing to see it gone today!

Exactly this! I didn’t want to prod at it too much in my main post, but I feel like the AI is so awful in PvE that one Temporal Curtain will throw all of the mobs together in a more convenient stacking spot. The Float didn’t bunch everything up but it was much more distinct.

What about 3 mini-floats and 1 pull at the end? (extra cc at the end to balance the fact the pulses won’t relocate you to the center anymore)

I remember someone saying that 3 pulls + float was too much CC.
The float alone made it borderline useless.
Now we get 3 pulls but no float which makes it a lot more useful than a float after 3 seconds.

I think its fine the way it is right now.

Current iteration of gravity well is pretty good. It is very strong CC but only has small radius and long cast time. It is definitely not as strong as time warp however it is at only half of the cool down so it balances out nicely.

There is really no need to be obsessed with float just because it looks cool. The previous iteration of gravity well is simply useless.

Exciton.8942:

Current iteration of gravity well is pretty good. It is very strong CC but only has small radius and long cast time. It is definitely not as strong as time warp however it is at only half of the cool down so it balances out nicely.

There is really no need to be obsessed with float just because it looks cool. The previous iteration of gravity well is simply useless.

Yeah, but that’s what I was trying to point out in my original post. In regards to PvE: Having the old Float being able to disable literally everything regardless of status was powerful, but a little hard to setup and could still be useless; While the new Pulls do much less than Float did because Focus 4 stacks mobs up faster/better and also has no effect whatsoever on Champions. Before you mention helping with Defiance stripping, I can clear full stacks of Defiance (on instanced area Champion mobs) instantly with basic Mesmer skills and I’d rather use Focus 4 to move him once where he needs to go than instead use my Elite Well to possibly get him where we need to stack. The old/new skill effects are reversed in PvP however, so the new one is very strong but the old one was pretty trashy.

Float didn’t just look great during BWE 1 in PvE, it was an incredible tool in dungeons. The current version of Gravity Well for instanced content is most likely tied for worst Elite skill option to bring.

glenndevis.8327:

I remember someone saying that 3 pulls + float was too much CC.
The float alone made it borderline useless.
Now we get 3 pulls but no float which makes it a lot more useful than a float after 3 seconds.

I think its fine the way it is right now.

Totally agree.

I don’t care what else it does as long as it floats :-)

Honestly I always thought each pulse should spam some combination of conditions like chill, slow, and weakness. Then end with float. Only because three pulls and a float is too strong, but I still want the float :-)

I like gravity well better now than in BWE1. However, the float was what made the skill unique. There were a lot of good ideas posted about how to change gravity well when we were told it was too strong. I was kinda disappointed that they only decided to make a simple change like remove the float instead of the pulls. I would like to still see the last pull removed and replaced by a 1 and a half second float, or have the first pulse pull, second pulse chill, and third pulse float.

Out of all the fun a cool ideas suggested by us, they decide to just remove an aspect of the skill instead of trying new things. Hopefully, we can get some type of blended version between the two gravity wells before the next beta hits.

It does too much damage. Keep the CC, nerf the damage.

Just split the skill for PvE/PvP. In PvE it has the float at the end, in PvP it does not.

Something nice to do would be
Pulse 1: Pull inside
Pulse 2: float 1 sec
Pulse 3: knockdown

glenndevis.8327:

I remember someone saying that 3 pulls + float was too much CC.
The float alone made it borderline useless.
Now we get 3 pulls but no float which makes it a lot more useful than a float after 3 seconds.

I think its fine the way it is right now.

Agreed. Plus I like the beneficial/offence duality of most wells, and this one pulses pulls and then gives friendlies stability. Nice combination.

The float was nice but it was too much because they did not want to end up with too much AoE CC, it was changed to this… excuse of a skill. We’ll see if we can make it work for something but honestly, looking at some other professions, the whole reasoning seems dishonest. If Anet really did not want so much AoE CC in their game, then why would they not take a look at engineer, necromancer or elementalist for example.

kolompi.1287:

If Anet really did not want so much AoE CC in their game, then why would they not take a look at engineer, necromancer or elementalist for example.

Way to both misread and misunderstand the communication about the GW changes. Well done!

The point was to not have 4 CC effects (within 3 seconds!) in a single skill. Which in total CCs for ~5,5 seconds, more like 6, on a fairly short cooldown and can be cast twice within that CD.

The float made it super unique, but I understand why it is not in there combined with the 3 pulls. I prefer the 3 pulls to be honest from a mechanical standpoint.

Why not a combination based on time spent inside the well.
Note: Each pulse should be per-target, meaning you start with pulse 1 effect, even if you enter during the final pulse.

First pulse: Pull.
Second pulse: Chill.
Third pulse: Cripple.
Fourth pulse: Float.

Maybe different things, but that’s just what I can come up with off the top of my head while distracted by eating spicy food.

My way-preferred solution which is probably impossible would be to make the gravity well simply make people walk ~50-60% slower when trying to move away from it (including dodged distance) and 100%+ faster when moving towards it.

Then float at the end. That way escaping it in time takes effect in the sense that you need to walk 2,5 or so seconds to get out before it floats, or use a teleport (any movement ability should be affected, like leaps etc, and effectively not be able to get you out of the well on their own).

I pretty like that skill, however I still miss that amazing float. So what about this:
-Every pulse displaces enemies to middle of well. If enemies were already displaced, they will be displaced with next pulses even if they leave well area (If they are in the range treshold before next pulse, 600 or 900 range maybe?).
-Last pulse makes that float and stability.

I don’t agree, I don’t want Chronomancer to be easier than it is now.
If you want to land the skill, place it at thre right moment at the right place.
240 is enough, I though it was small, but it is enough, there is no need to increasce the size.
The well is quite fine as it is.

For the float, you want “float” so much?
Ask for a debuff on the enemy per puls caused by the gravity.

2 version:
.1rst: if the enemy get 3 puls—> 3 debuffs he get float for 1 sec at the end of the well.

.2nd: the enemy get a debuff per puls—→ cause 0,33 sec float per puls; activate when the well end or when they manage to leave the well.

So you have your “float”.

But as said before, I like how it is now. I don’t want it to be changed again. I found away to use it. You’ll find one aswell.

But stop asking for change on everything.

you can look at some videos, you’ll see it is pretty useful. follow link