Hybrid Chronomancer [Build]
I’ll be blunt. I think the stated concept is interesting and could be worked with. I also think the linked build is nothing short of disastrously bad.
You’ve stated you want this to be a hybrid build, but you’re using full dire or dire/rabid mix except for your weapons, which are carrion. This means you’ve basically got 180 more than baseline power in this build; a far cry from hybrid. Additionally, your crit chance is 9%. You could have 2500 power, but without critting your damage is going to be absolutely pitiful.
At the same time, you’ve failed to take the most potent condition damage trait we have: MtD. You’re essentially relying on the scepter and torch skills to get the job of condition pressure done for you, and those are going to fall short in a spectacular manner. What this build really is…is a condition damage build without any good condition pressure. It’s quite bad.
So, how do you fix it. First, you take MtD. Stop trying to stack might, you’re not an ele, it’s a waste of time. The most might you’ll end up with in this sort of build will be 10-12 stacks, and only for a couple seconds after burning a bunch of cooldowns. Instead, if you actually land the shatters you used to stack that might, you could instead have more than that many stacks of torment on your target.
Since you’re not might stacking, aristocracy runes are pointless, which brings us to the point of gear. Your gear is condition damage, and not even remotely hybrid. You’re going to need at least 50-60% crit to make this worthwhile, so go ahead and replace all that dire with rabid armor. I’d replace the weapons with zerker as well. Now you’ll have a decent crit chance, ok crit power, and better power. For runes I’d probably take a power based set, perhaps pack runes.
Next, I’d probably ditch scepter in favor of sword on one of the sets. iLeap is such a fantastic setup skill for shatters, and also helps with illusion generation. I’d probably link it with torch, that way you can more easily cast it from stealth.
I’d also probably take either master of fragmentation or ineptitude. MoF would actually work decently here, but ineptitude is great for obvious reasons. Both outclass malicious sorcery.
Lastly, I’d consider dropping mirror images for the cleanse mantra. You’re taking restorative mantras already, and you’re a bit low on condie removal in this build, so it could work well.
Thx Pyro – always better to have direct feedback.
The dire gear can absolutely be swapped out for carrion or rabid.
The power side of this is definitely low in this current version.
That said, the thing that may not come through is that, at least with the testing I did during beta, alacrity speeds things up a lot. So it’s possible to be shattering around every 5 to 6 seconds (it’s likely it will be a bit slower with changes to require two illusions to get the bonus clone and the reduction of 1 second to 0.75 seconds). In the testing I did, I was able to keep 16+ stacks of might up (the heal contributes nicely as well) – but perhaps it will be down to 12 now.
With confusing images coming available about every 7 seconds and scepter block maybe every 5 seconds, it felt like I could keep a really nice degree of condi pressure. The burning from iMage is nice to start, but I wasn’t relying on it much.
Still, I see the weaknesses you’re pointing out. Back to researching I guess.
With permanent alacrity, you’d be getting Confusing Images every 5.75s.
An average 7s cooldown on CI would be about 56% uptime on alacrity, or about 4 seconds of alacrity every 7 seconds.
A three-illusion mind wrack every time it’s off cooldown gives you 3s of alacrity, putting the final cooldown of MW at 8.5s, and your alacrity uptime at 35%. You’ll need 21% more uptime to get to a 7s mind wrack. Fortunately, more alacrity cuts mind wrack down more, so it should be easier to get the next 21% than the last 21%.
Now, if you manage to get Mind Wrack and CoF with a 3-clone shatter every time they’re on cooldown, some annoyingly complicated math says you’ll be at 59% alacrity uptime, which will indeed put you about 7s on CI cooldown.
(incidentally, MW will be at a 7.6s cooldown and CoF will be at 15.7s, or 27% and 28% cdr, respectively)
Not sure how to guarantee a full-illusion shatter every time MW and CoF come off cooldown.
Here’s how I looked at this on paper. Start by assuming you could maintain 50% alacrity.
If you can do just a little better than this, you can get 15 shatters in during a 60 second window (about 8 mind wracks, 4 cry of frustration, 3 diversion). So, in theory, you could pull off a shatter every 4 seconds if you could supply enough illusions. So the question is, can you create 45 clones every sixty seconds.
On the supply side, if you get above 50% alacrity uptime, then conceptually scepter block comes up every 4 seconds. So if you used it every time and got it to proc within 1 second, that’s 12 clones every sixty seconds. Sword block looks like you can get about 6 clones. Because you’re blocking a lot, you should be able to get your 3 illusionary defenders from mental defense (and each can be shattered twice). You should also be able to get 5 swordsman illusions good for 2 shatters each. With two uses of mirror images and 2 uses of decoy, you get 6 more clones. So that gives you 40 shatterable illusions. But with each shatter (as long as you don’t have 3 phantasms), you get a free clone from illusionary reversion. So that’s about 13 extra clones for a total of 53 shatterable things in 60 seconds.
Now in real gameplay, it’s extremely hard to hit every window. Sometimes you’re holding a block for two seconds. Sometimes the block misses. Sometimes you generate an extra illusion when you have no shatter available. Plus, you want to use confusing images, so you have some 2-second windows to work around. And when it’s time to recharge the healing mantra, you basically lose 3 seconds.
On the other hand, the starting sequence that I’m describing lets you create and shatter 12 to 16 things in the first couple of seconds of the fight (because you’re burning all the cooldowns while the F5 window is open). So this means you start off with a much higher ratio than 50% alacrity – you have alacrity for probably the first full 12 seconds of the fight continuously. Also, I’m not even considering clones created by scepter auto-attack.
In my own testing, I found it pretty hectic to try to manage all this. And so I’m guessing a pretty steady rate of 4-illusion shatter every 5 to 6 seconds is pretty achievable but also tricky. Still, if you could maintain a fairly decent level of might, the question is whether that’s more valuable than generating torment with MtD. The idea of the build is hybrid damage – but I’m not trying to achieve a 50-50 split between condi and power. Confusing images looks like it has a 2.5 damage modifier and illusionary riposte is 2.0. So even a little bit more power gets a good return from these.
Anyway, I really appreciate the feedback. It looks like I’ll miss the next beta weekend, so I’ll have to wait a while before I can test more.
maybe a dueling build but every time a add enters the fight your illusion generation will be seriously stressed till your just kiting and blocking, our blocks do not mitigate all damage and we have to wait to dodge to proc the clone extra effect from the block. Seems really thin.
Yeah, the problem of an add (like a thief) joining the fight was basically why I switched from all carrion gear to dire. You do get some nice additional healing if you can keep up with the shattering, but when you’re getting focused on, it’s hard to get the clones out without having a big dip in health. That’s when I try to stealth and either restart the fight or get out.
Still, are there any mesmer builds that allow you to just stand there and take it if you’re being attacked 2v1? I played a trapper condi ranger prior to the June 23 release, and I found I could take enough damage and output enough condition damage that I could fight a 1 v 2 by just pouring on the AoE condis. But I’m not sure there’s a mesmer build that would work like that.