Guild Wars 2

Hi all,
i played mesmer for some time a couple of years ago and now i’ve unlocked Chrono in new maps.
However i’m not sure how do you play in events, right now i’m using S/T and Staff but things are often dying before i can event shatter once and then i’ve clones and phantasm on cooldown, before we hit the champion i feel like i’m not contributing enough to the event.
I admit i’ve yet to understand how to use F5 so i’m definitely not playing the best I can, should i switch to other weapons? I was thinking about swapping GS for staff, at least the AA is relevant.
Also i’m running all wells and Time Warp, sometimes i don’t know if it’s better to put down the well on me the gain buffs or near mobs to help melee and deal damage.
Any advice?

i usually run s/x (mostly shield, but depends on encounters and such) and GS for general pve/events

I’d imagine Blink and Greatsword would be ideal forgo getting to mobs and hitting them with that 1200 range GS AA. I personally am going to try sword/shield and greatsword

In general, GS for tagging, burst, AoE, Sword for dps and lol25%evadeuptime, Focus for swiftness or Shield for group buffs/skipping mobs that can actually hurt you. Mantra of Pain+Restorative Mantras gives good sustain and AoE tagging when needed. Use as much zerker/assassin gear as you can survive in, it increases your ability to tag mobs and the occasional death will teach you how to better use Mesmer’s plentiful active defenses.

Learn which mobs are reasonably safe to melee, that fixes the well issue since you drop them at both yourself and the enemy. Eternity and Precognition always go on top of allies you expect to get hit, Calamity and Gravity always go on enemies. Action and Recall technically affect both friend and foe equally, but low uptime of chill/slow rarely matters. Especially if you have them traited, drop those on your most damaging allies (those should be melee anyway most of the time) unless you need them right now for a specific breakbar.

When running wells F5 is fairly easy to use: get 3 illusions up ASAP, hit F5, cast everything starting with TW, cast everything again EXCEPT TW once F5 ends. Recast all wells once more (Calamity 2x), then wait for F5 and all wells to come up again, repeat. Only cast TW outside of F5 if you need to finish off a boss extremely quickly and no more difficult encounter will pop up in the next 2-3 minutes, as it has a longer cooldown than F5 itself.

Photoloss.4817:

In general, GS for tagging, burst, AoE, Sword for dps and lol25%evadeuptime, Focus for swiftness or Shield for group buffs/skipping mobs that can actually hurt you. Mantra of Pain+Restorative Mantras gives good sustain and AoE tagging when needed. Use as much zerker/assassin gear as you can survive in, it increases your ability to tag mobs and the occasional death will teach you how to better use Mesmer’s plentiful active defenses.

Learn which mobs are reasonably safe to melee, that fixes the well issue since you drop them at both yourself and the enemy. Eternity and Precognition always go on top of allies you expect to get hit, Calamity and Gravity always go on enemies. Action and Recall technically affect both friend and foe equally, but low uptime of chill/slow rarely matters. Especially if you have them traited, drop those on your most damaging allies (those should be melee anyway most of the time) unless you need them right now for a specific breakbar.

When running wells F5 is fairly easy to use: get 3 illusions up ASAP, hit F5, cast everything starting with TW, cast everything again EXCEPT TW once F5 ends. Recast all wells once more (Calamity 2x), then wait for F5 and all wells to come up again, repeat. Only cast TW outside of F5 if you need to finish off a boss extremely quickly and no more difficult encounter will pop up in the next 2-3 minutes, as it has a longer cooldown than F5 itself.

This is solid and succinct advice. You win the thread, sir or madam.

Personally, I tend to run Sword/Sword and Sword/Shield with Well of Calamity, Well of Recall, Mimic, Well of Eternity, and Time Warp. It’s hardly meta, but rapid shattering with lots of quickness, Alarcity, and well spamming works out fairly okay with all of the survival Mesmers can pull off.

It’s true that phantasm mesmer has a disadvantage in open world PvE. You summon a phantasm for the first mob, a second mob, then you have to deal with the rest of the enemies without phantasms because they’re on cooldown. It’s not like dungeons and fractals, where enemies are health sponges and phantasms stick around much longer.

That’s where Chronophantasma comes in. Paired with Persistance of Memory, you summon two phantasms on a mob and shatter after their first attack, then shatter again after their second attack. This shaves off 8 seconds from both phantasm cooldowns. Taking into consideration alacrity during shatter and cast times, you would have both phantasms almost back up if you manage to shatter your phantasms twice (i.e. the mob does not die before you can shatter a second time).

My experience with chrono + some gameplay advices:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Some-help-needed-with-Chronomancer/first#post5821344
+ some comments bellow it

Run in with sword and swiftness before your Zerg slash everything and drop wells lol than run back haha. The reaction time of the mobs are so slow it’s as if they don’t see you until you run pass them. Only Attack you gotta watch for is the sniper lines other than than you should be fine