Guild Wars 2

Hi, sorry if this is a newby question, but I just bought Hearts of Thorns after at least 2 years without playing GW2. So I need to catch up

My main player is a mesmer, and I do full PvP.

Now, trying to create a build, I was concerned on the mechanics of Alacrity.
This cooldown reduction, does it take effect on any skill currently being recharged? or do I need to active a skill while under the effect of Alacrity?

Thanks in advance and hope you can help me here

Alacrity applies to any cooldown you have while under the effect of alacrity. It doesn’t matter if the cooldown started before, at the same time, or after you got the alacrity effect.

You’ve just started HoT so you probably aren’t that far in the Chronomancer line yet. But you unlock two traits that are hugely helpful with Alacrity. One of them grants you an additional 2 seconds of alacrity if you are standing in a well when it ends, and the other increases the duration of alacrity applied to you by 50% .With these two traits on you can get 10.5 seconds of alacrity just from your Well of Recall.

Its a huge buff to everything, your DPS, your survivability, your ability to escape sticky situations. Don’t underestimate it, and be sure to use your shatters often to keep it up as much as possible

That was a very interesting tip you gave me there. Honestly, my question was because if the alacrity only applied to skills triggered while the effect of it, then in my opinion it would be useless (one second of alacrity it would decrease the recharge of only one skill as long as the skill can be triggered in less than a second).
But as you mention, having 10 seconds of alacrity drastically reduces the cooldown of your entire skill bar.
I wonder how often you can redo such buff. I will definitively give it a try

So far, while I do not understood alacrity mechanism, I liked the idea of mixing blind + daze + block, while also take some benefit from alacrity + quickness. Something close to this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAsa7encfClqh1oBOoBEgiFYjiMASgXq+XH2ltcC2tfD-TZRCABVfCAovMAAPBAOOIAJt/AA

Haven’t give it a try yet, but will do today. So far I see that conditions applied to me might be the biggest of my concerns, but at least foes will find very hard to actually land a hit

Alacrity decrease your CD by increase recharge rate, rather than the absolute number. So you probably won’t feel too much effect on PvP with builds you just linked up.

I don’t follow you there… I guess that you mean that if I can’t stack alacrity enough, then is useless?

Palmillo.9756:

I don’t follow you there… I guess that you mean that if I can’t stack alacrity enough, then is useless?

Precisely. You are correct.

While you are under the effect of alacrity, each 1 second, 1.33 seconds pass for each skill. This results into a 25% cdr of all skills while under the effect of perma alacrity.

Thanks all for your replies