Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I’m trying to figure out what a decent build would be for open world and some fractal pug groups.

I want it to be self sufficient in some ways as the perfect team comp isn’t always going to be there.

I see a lot of back and forth regarding builds and gear with no repeatable cohesion in the discussion. I see a lot of discussion on maximizing boon duration recently but not sure that would work in my situation. I looked on Metabattle and it seems to take into account the ideal team comp.

I’m NOT looking to do raids. I’m looking to be useful and survive in open world, HoT zones and pugging fractals. I’m also not a brand new player.

I have no problem with either full zerk or full assassin. But digging through all the posts of builds and gearing leaves me very confused as to what I should run to accomplish my goal. As I said I cannot rely on ideal team composition.

Any idea on a “real world” setup?

Many thanks for any helpful direction!!!

Heyhey Dark Night!

I made you 3 builds, one for PvE open world in the new zones and two for fotm. I tried to keep the same weapons and armor etc, so you just have to change skills, traits and use food for fotm.

Open World:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+cnsIClohtfC2fCEgiFVjiMAGhirsDKhBoOZn2qF-TxBBQBA4kAMK1fCwDA4MKBzjeBAu/AWU+BA-e

FotM normal build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+cncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjqOZn2qlMAKgiDtLSjsD-TxBBQBA4kAMK1fOjSwA8AAyjeBAu/AWU+RKAAXAA-e

FotM reflection build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dncfC9fitqBmfCUrhFVjiMAKgi7MIGijoOZn2qF-TxBBQBnRJIWU+lH9AAc/BAcCAGl6PB4BAQKAAXAA-e

If you have any questions, just go ahead!

Greez
- Madame Le Blanc

Awesome! Thank you so much for your kindness! I will review and let you know if I have any questions.

I do have a question. The boon duration food. Does that affect alacrity or something else?

Greetings!

Alacrity is not a boon and is unaffected by that food or boon duration in general. Boons are yellowish dyed in your buff section and Alacrity is (together with Super Speed) an exception and sort of a “semi boon”.

You get as much boon duration as possible (normaly a revenant grants you +50% boon duration aswell) for the quickness you apply with your sheild #5 (Tides of Times aka ToT), a well called “Well of Action” and with your elite, Time Warp.
The goal is it to keep up a high amount of quickness to get more group dps compared to the loss of personal dps you would have.

This means in raids for example you will most likely not use Well of Calamity, instead you’ll use Signet of Inspiration (also referred as SoI) to share the boons with the 2nd squad, since your skills only affect 5 ppl (except for shield #5).
This requires some serious tryhard skill, since the Chronomancer will be forced to do “hopping” between the subgroups manually to distribute the quickness evenly.

There is other food you can buy too, there are many different +20% boon duration foods out there. Just pick the cheapest.

Btw I recommend you to watch my videos about the Chronomancer opening and rotation. I just started recording and sharing information via YouTube, so if you enjoyed these vids, I’d be happy for a like!

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Thank you for the great information! It’s 12:45 am here (I’m in NA – east coast) so I will watch the video tomorrow when I’m refreshed and can give it my full attention.

Thank you so very much! I really appreciate all your help!

I personally for open world use this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRncfC9filpBmfCUrhlUjC96WjtreZr2rlcAugAA-TxBBQBnRJYe0DUJ1fwiyPAcKACwTAAg7PQEgyWA-e
With that, u can spam iBerserkers with ~1s cooldown (after shattering 2 phantasms)
+ constant F1 and F2 shattering – more aoe dmg

For FotM I use this coz the focus is too good to not be taken, the utility it brings and the dmg is awesome (maybe better than iSwordsman) if your group has some fire fields (or other dmg fields) on the ground:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhlljq+Qj0J9sBCgIDdyOhLD-TxBBQB5RPAWU+dGlgAc/hKp+DAOJAB4BAQEgyWA-e
When reflection or the focus cdr is not needed I swap the trait for Restorative Illusions.

Hey, for open world, you can go with:

2.2 The Lazy Chrono Kai

Jacob.4280:

For FotM I use this coz the focus is too good to not be taken, the utility it brings and the dmg is awesome (maybe better than iSwordsman) if your group has some fire fields (or other dmg fields) on the ground:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhlljq+Qj0J9sBCgIDdyOhLD-TxBBQB5RPAWU+dGlgAc/hKp+DAOJAB4BAQEgyWA-e
When reflection or the focus cdr is not needed I swap the trait for Restorative Illusions.

Great input about the utility of the focus itself. Againt trash mobs use the focus pull / warden for cleave damage instead of a sword. Agreed, there is no reason to use a single target phantasm against trash mobs!

Yet against single target enemies (boss fights), the sword dmg is much MUCH higher than the focus damage. Don’t get decieved by the high numbers on your screen of the iwarden.

Phantasmal Warden attacks every 14.2s (13.3s with PH)
Phantasmal Swordsman attacks every kitten (3.5s with PH)

I also recommend to use Domination over Illusions if you have to swap out one of them for Inspiration. Domination gives you a high amount of personal damage wich is quite noticable in fotm where you are 1 of 5 peps and not 1 of 10 like in raids. But I also agree here that they are pretty even in terms of damage and utility. I think it’s rather personal preference.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Thank you all so much for responding! This really means a lot too me! I’ve played primarily WvW for many years so I’m not the most familiar with the better skills & setups as both are such different beasts in terms of builds.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help with a build AND actually explaining it’s benefits!!! That is so helpful and I really appreciate you all for taking the time to respond to my post.

Cheers to you all!!!!

Honestly, I’ve found that your standard support well-based chrono build works pretty kitten well for open world. There’s only a few main exceptions for some skills:

- You don’t need Sig of Inspiration in open world and in place you can take blink, portal, decoy, or whatever is most helpful for you.
– You can swap a weapon set for Greatsword if you want some range.

I’ve found that in general, a sword/focus build with wells is really helpful for open world since you can focus pull a group of mobs together, then drop a well or two on top to burn them down quickly.

Greetings!

As a ranged option in open world I recommend staff over GS. GS is sort of a noobtrap. With it, you go ranged against enemies you wouldn’t have to. If you really have to go ranged, better take a staff instead. Let me explain my toughts:

If you are facing an enemy, you have two simply options: ranged or melee.

Melee…
…means you have to be able to dodge or block attacks in order to survive, but you’ll be rewarded with much higher damage. If you need some time off, you can still go ranged for the time you’ll be recharging Mantra of Pain and get your CD’s back from your heal skill or well of precognition for example. You don’t really need ranged here.

Ranged
If you decide to go ranged tough, you’ll better have a good reason to. If the enemy is a melee enemy, he will walk towards you so you’ll end up in melee anyway. You can use a GS for openings and then swap to sword and never touch the GS again tough. But if your enemy is so extremly dangerious that you have to go ranged from time to time (like the Chak Lobber hero point in Auric Basin) a staff is the way to go. You replace the GS and the staff aa with Mantra of Pain anyway, so the weak aa issue is off the table. The staff has the survivablity you need against an enemy you don’t want to fight all the time in close combat. The GS has not. I made a vid to demonstrate this:

If you are facing the world events in open world, all those champions, oh boy you’d be ready for the damage you’ll be doing by picking a staff there. I see so many GS mes just spamming 1-4, but instead they could make use of all those conditions on your enemy and do this: (uploaded screenshot)

If you got questions, just ask

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Xyonon.3987:

Greetings!

As a ranged option in open world I recommend staff over GS. GS is sort of a noobtrap. With it, you go ranged against enemies you wouldn’t have to. If you really have to go ranged, better take a staff instead. Let me explain my toughts:

---

If you are facing an enemy, you have two simply options: ranged or melee.

Melee…
…means you have to be able to dodge or block attacks in order to survive, but you’ll be rewarded with much higher damage. If you need some time off, you can still go ranged for the time you’ll be recharging Mantra of Pain and get your CD’s back from your heal skill or well of precognition for example. You don’t really need ranged here.

Ranged
If you decide to go ranged tough, you’ll better have a good reason to. If the enemy is a melee enemy, he will walk towards you so you’ll end up in melee anyway. You can use a GS for openings and then swap to sword and never touch the GS again tough. But if your enemy is so extremly dangerious that you have to go ranged from time to time (like the Chak Lobber hero point in Auric Basin) a staff is the way to go. You replace the GS and the staff aa with Mantra of Pain anyway, so the weak aa issue is off the table. The staff has the survivablity you need against an enemy you don’t want to fight all the time in close combat. The GS has not. I made a vid to demonstrate this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6oc_LRPiHA

---

If you are facing the world events in open world, all those champions, oh boy you’d be ready for the damage you’ll be doing by picking a staff there. I see so many GS mes just spamming 1-4, but instead they could make use of all those conditions on your enemy and do this: (uploaded screenshot)

---

If you got questions, just ask

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

This is just not true. Staff is a terrible weapon for open world. And only because people do not understand how to use a GS doesn’t make it a bad weapon.

The GS is the best open world weapon period. This was true for the vanilla mesmer and is even more true for the chronomancer.

The GS skills you use as chronomancer are not 1 and 4 but 2 and 4. And you want to be in melee range for IP all of the time, but it is nice to have the option to start from range.

Take my build, variation 1 with iDefender as secondary phantasm (it is just a bit harder to keep up with signet of the ether and two iZerkers, but the damage is great).

You will have perma alacrity, you will have full shatters all the time on ultra short cooldown, you are back in business after a battle in no time.

You will tag tons of mobs in bigger events for xp (like in DS) you will have burst and sustain and still a choice of utility.

Staff just fails, as clone generation is a pain, and in open world the phantasm is crap 95% of the time compared to the iZerker.

Melee is nice on paper, but will cost you too much time to get started, especially in bigger events.

Nothing beats the greatsword in open world. Not by a 100 miles.

As I said – GS is good as a ranged opener and never touched again. That it is good for tagging is out of question. But it’s not optimal for either melee or ranged because of the reason WHY you go ranged.

Did you even read everything I wrote? :P

Xyonon.3987:

As I said – GS is good as a ranged opener and never touched again. That it is good for tagging is out of question. But it’s not optimal for either melee or ranged because of the reason WHY you go ranged.

Did you even read everything I wrote? :P

As chronomancer, GS is a melee and ranged weapon. If you run my build (variation1), you will never have to worry about weapon swap.

You go:

2,4,iDef,F1(full shatter)
2,F2(full shatter)
4,2,iDef,F1(full shatter)
2,F2(full shatter)
2,4,Well of Recall,iDef,F1(full shatter)
2,F2(full shatter)
.
.
.

From any range, at any time, without any downtime – nonstop. With SotE if you ever run out of phantasms.

There is no reason to use anything else in open world, unless you dislike the playstyle.

Can you link me that build? I’m intrested

Right above your first post, or just look in my guide in the signature… ^^

I mean an editor link

The Lazy Chrono Kai Build

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The Lazy Chrono Kai Build

Thx Yea it looks much like what you said; rather an issue of playstyle. I agree with that build you’re better off with GS, but why the defender if I may ask? Even with just 2 illusions instead of 3 to shatter, Calamity would deal more damage for sure, don’t ya think? Since you shatter him anyway I don’t thiink it’s for the tankyness, or is it?

The only sentence I do not agree with you is this one:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The GS is the best open world weapon period. This was true for the vanilla mesmer and is even more true for the chronomancer.

In my playstlye a GS wouldn’t fit. But I see how it does in your build and playstyle. Just don’t use that “It is like this period” statement. That’s poison for a good discussion

greez!

The reason is, in open world mobs die. You want some options to keep going when your stuff is on cooldown. So you want an easy accessible phantasm. You can go with weapon swap and be maybe trapped in you off-set.

You can go with iChanter, which has actually a shorter cooldown, but it doesn’t make too much a difference with the rotation.

So I go with iDefender which might save my other illusions from an unlucky AoE between spawn and shatter.

Also, I had calamity in my original build (when I first posted it) and I use it quite often as third utility. Other options for third slot are Signet of Illusions for if you need to get your shatters back up (mostly for soloplay) or blink for mobility.

If you get better with the build, starting off with two iZerkers (with SotE) will give you absolutely great burst before you even reach the target(s), that is why the original build is with resetting your phantasms at the beginning of the fight.

But this is not always possible as SotE might be on cooldown, so I go with iDefender as backup.