Guild Wars 2

Robert Gee.9246:

Gravity well: Changed functionality. This well now pulls every pulse for a total of 3 pulls. The final pulse grants 5 stacks of stability to allies in the area.

• General sentiment from feedback was that the PULL was what was important to selling Gravity Well rather than the float. We’ve gone back to the earlier version where it does the standard 3 pulls but pulled out the ending stun to prevent kitten long AoE CC. I’m still a little concerned about how hard it is to stun break this thing but since it’s got a relatively long cast time and moderate area of effect I think it’s safe to try.

Echo of Memory: Fixed a bug which prevented this skill from working with the traits Illusionist’s Celerity and Persistence of Memory. Lowered slow applied by phantasm from 3s to 2s.

• The slow from these phantasms seemed a little too good considering they could hit multiple targets (especially if you got 2 of them out). With the fixes to traits that lower the recharge of this skill it seemed appropriate to reduce it a bit.

Well of Eternity: Lowered cast time from 0.75s to 0.25s

• The idea behind this skill has always been to wait for the big heal at the end, so it didn’t make sense for the cast time to be as long as it was. Healing numbers still might be adjusted in a future BWE.

Chronophantasma: Increased Daze duration from 1s to 1.5s

• Did anyone try spamming Illusionary Berserkers with Continuum Shift and Chronophantasma? This specific combo isn’t the only reason we are adjusting this trait, but we are watching the types of spikes that are coming from Chronomancer in general.

Illusionary Reversion: Updated functionality. You must shatter at least 2 illusions in order to generate a clone from this trait. (You do not count as an illusion towards this total.)

• Yeah I know this one probably stings but when we started looking at it it was pretty silly that this trait could let you get so much power out of just using all shatter skills back to back.

Alacrity
The last few changes are related to alacrity. We felt that as it was currently, alacrity wasn’t hitting the right level of impact due to how easy it was to get from the minor trait and how little you could share it with allies. These changes are intended to try and improve how alacrity feels to interact with though traits and skills.

• Flow of Time: Reduced alacrity per shattered illusion from 1s to 0.75s
• Improved Alacrity: Increased alacrity duration bonus from 33% to 50%.
• All’s Well that Ends Well: Changed functionality. This trait now grants 2s of alacrity to allies standing within the well when the well ends.

Slow Stacking
Finally let’s talk about Lost Time. Currently we don’t have plans to change this trait for the next BWE but it’s on our watchlist. This is trait is pretty fun and synergizes well with the other traits while working into the theme of chronomancer. However it can get a little blown out when used with certain skills (looking at you Spatial Surge). We’ll be keeping an eye on this one during the next beta event.

I hope this post has helped to explain our thoughts on the current state of Chronomancer and as a reminder these changes reflect our current thoughts and plans for the next BWE. We may add, subtract or change notes between now and then.

For this beta, I’ll be focusing on Alacrity sharing via wells and Clockdown in WvW. What’re yall looking forward to?

(OMG AND DAT THIEF SPECIALIZATION /hypetrainnn)

Very excited!

And the thief spec is the first thing to properly tempt me back to have a serious alt character, in a long, long time.

Hopefully he has already realised the Illusionary Reversion change kills the skills and scrapped the change.

Apart form that looking forward to it, been missing my shield and quickness.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Robert Gee.9246:

Gravity well: Changed functionality. This well now pulls every pulse for a total of 3 pulls. The final pulse grants 5 stacks of stability to allies in the area.

• General sentiment from feedback was that the PULL was what was important to selling Gravity Well rather than the float. We’ve gone back to the earlier version where it does the standard 3 pulls but pulled out the ending stun to prevent kitten long AoE CC. I’m still a little concerned about how hard it is to stun break this thing but since it’s got a relatively long cast time and moderate area of effect I think it’s safe to try.

Echo of Memory: Fixed a bug which prevented this skill from working with the traits Illusionist’s Celerity and Persistence of Memory. Lowered slow applied by phantasm from 3s to 2s.

• The slow from these phantasms seemed a little too good considering they could hit multiple targets (especially if you got 2 of them out). With the fixes to traits that lower the recharge of this skill it seemed appropriate to reduce it a bit.

Well of Eternity: Lowered cast time from 0.75s to 0.25s

• The idea behind this skill has always been to wait for the big heal at the end, so it didn’t make sense for the cast time to be as long as it was. Healing numbers still might be adjusted in a future BWE.

Chronophantasma: Increased Daze duration from 1s to 1.5s

• Did anyone try spamming Illusionary Berserkers with Continuum Shift and Chronophantasma? This specific combo isn’t the only reason we are adjusting this trait, but we are watching the types of spikes that are coming from Chronomancer in general.

Illusionary Reversion: Updated functionality. You must shatter at least 2 illusions in order to generate a clone from this trait. (You do not count as an illusion towards this total.)

• Yeah I know this one probably stings but when we started looking at it it was pretty silly that this trait could let you get so much power out of just using all shatter skills back to back.

Alacrity
The last few changes are related to alacrity. We felt that as it was currently, alacrity wasn’t hitting the right level of impact due to how easy it was to get from the minor trait and how little you could share it with allies. These changes are intended to try and improve how alacrity feels to interact with though traits and skills.

• Flow of Time: Reduced alacrity per shattered illusion from 1s to 0.75s
• Improved Alacrity: Increased alacrity duration bonus from 33% to 50%.
• All’s Well that Ends Well: Changed functionality. This trait now grants 2s of alacrity to allies standing within the well when the well ends.

Slow Stacking
Finally let’s talk about Lost Time. Currently we don’t have plans to change this trait for the next BWE but it’s on our watchlist. This is trait is pretty fun and synergizes well with the other traits while working into the theme of chronomancer. However it can get a little blown out when used with certain skills (looking at you Spatial Surge). We’ll be keeping an eye on this one during the next beta event.

I hope this post has helped to explain our thoughts on the current state of Chronomancer and as a reminder these changes reflect our current thoughts and plans for the next BWE. We may add, subtract or change notes between now and then.

For this beta, I’ll be focusing on Alacrity sharing via wells and Clockdown in WvW. What’re yall looking forward to?

(OMG AND DAT THIEF SPECIALIZATION /hypetrainnn)

Source?

Are there notes for other classes too?

Source deez nuts

Yeah, on each classes (Necro, Guard, Ele, Revenant) forum there is a sticky for the changes

Where is the sticky lol

Chaos Archangel.5071:

(OMG AND DAT THIEF SPECIALIZATION /hypetrainnn)

Meh. Remember when the meta thief build was s/d on both sets? When they did literally nothing but steal, dodge, and mash 3? I remember, and it sucked. Not particularly pleased they’re bringing that feel back.

Fay.2357:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

(OMG AND DAT THIEF SPECIALIZATION /hypetrainnn)

Meh. Remember when the meta thief build was s/d on both sets? When they did literally nothing but steal, dodge, and mash 3? I remember, and it sucked. Not particularly pleased they’re bringing that feel back.

And pistol/pistol will never get any love.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Source deez nuts

Yeah, on each classes (Necro, Guard, Ele, Revenant) forum there is a sticky for the changes

Where is the stickyyyyyyyyyyy?

… O.o uh, where all the stickied threads are.

I’m disappointed about the All’s Well that Ends Well change. It allowed me to use my wells as full party condition clears. I just wanted that to happen when the well was cast instead of when it ended to make it more reliable. If this change stays that will be my 3rd mesmer build that Arenanet destroyed.

VERY happy with these changes. It looks really good actually. Gravity Well is definitely competitive with Time Warp now. It’s a must have for any interrupt build now, and it’s definitely on par for what our elites should be: game changers!

My hope for HoT Chronomancer is definitely high now after seeing these changes and the way they’re balancing.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

… O.o uh, where all the stickied threads are.

the necro and the ranger does not have it for some reason..

I think all of us just mostly want to test the new current changes and how the class plays differently with the builds we were using before. I am also going to try alacrity support as well in the pve setting. I want to try to see what allies think about it and if it is more noticeable. Did some dungeon pve in the first beta, but not as much as I wanted to. The complicated thing about pve is both dps and support matter. In the end you need to figure out how to supply the most dps for the group as a whole as you possibly can. I’ll do some theory crafting before the beta. I’m interested what others think as well. Though the previous well trait added some nice condition removal, we certainly didn’t feel obligated to take inspiration in pve all the time for the condition removal. However, now we don’t want to switch wells for condition removal traits also. Overall, I think it was a good move, it seems to match the whole chronomancer theme better. However, we’ll see.

I’m interested to see how much raw power over time I can pump out with the new IR versus the old one.
I think others are gonna be right, that it’ll be a decent amount with DE, but negligible without DE.

Also, did anyone else looking at the thief trait datamine notice Lotus Training and think “conditions on dodge! I’m rolling a condi thief!”

Crossplay.2067:

I’m disappointed about the All’s Well that Ends Well change. It allowed me to use my wells as full party condition clears. I just wanted that to happen when the well was cast instead of when it ended to make it more reliable. If this change stays that will be my 3rd mesmer build that Arenanet destroyed.

The problem there is that Mesmers already have plenty of options for area wide condition clear and much better ones at that. We have Null Field, Phantasmal Disenchanter, The Mantra, and on top of that we can make our Glamours Grant resistance.

It was just too similar to what we already had and quite niche. The change to applying alacrity on all wells is much better as it greatly increases our ability to provide alacrity to allies.

Because I feel like doing a lot of silly math today (and I don’t want to waste the alacrity formulas I concocted in that other thread),

I’d like to point out that serially casting wells from all 5 skill slots can get your team up to a maximum of 42% alacrity uptime. That’s effectively 22.2% cooldown reduction for your team.
Note that doesn’t account for the specific Alacrity from Well of Recall, or any personal alacrity you may gain through shatters, or for the possible use of f5.
I’m still working on that math, I’ll post it when I solve those equations.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Because I feel like doing a lot of silly math today (and I don’t want to waste the alacrity formulas I concocted in that other thread),

I’d like to point out that serially casting wells from all 5 skill slots can get your team up to a maximum of 42% alacrity uptime. That’s effectively 22.2% cooldown reduction for your team.
Note that doesn’t account for the specific Alacrity from Well of Recall, or any personal alacrity you may gain through shatters, or for the possible use of f5.
I’m still working on that math, I’ll post it when I solve those equations.

Don’t forget iMurica! And could you link me that spreadsheet?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Don’t forget iMurica! And could you link me that spreadsheet?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p6Byh_rZrfQtG0dsI1Y2JL_yYw_mvzt8EqrBXN2hLps/edit?usp=sharing

Added a version with Continuum Split/Shift.
That brings uptime to 92%, and effective CDR on team skills to 38%.

What I still have not accounted for is the effect of personal alacrity, though at 92% group alacrity, it shouldn’t add all that much more (in fact, the very most we could add would be 2% more cdr to the group, which isn’t all that much).
I’ll work on calculating that, just in case it makes a difference (and in the interests of seeing what the theoretical max is).

Math on iCap is frankly too unreliable, I don’t see a way I can calculate how it will affect an entire group reliably.

Other future exploration involves seeing what we lose by swapping out various wells. Losing Gravity well, 2 alacrity on 90s cooldown, is probably not gonna matter all that much.

Dastion.3106:

The problem there is that Mesmers already have plenty of options for area wide condition clear and much better ones at that. We have Null Field, Phantasmal Disenchanter, The Mantra, and on top of that we can make our Glamours Grant resistance.

It was just too similar to what we already had and quite niche. The change to applying alacrity on all wells is much better as it greatly increases our ability to provide alacrity to allies.

I still don’t like mantras because you have to leave yourself wide open to charge them and don’t get any immediate benefit from charging them unless you pick particular traits. On top of that, they still have cooldowns between charge usage so I don’t see the positive that offsets being so ridiculously vulnerable when charging. I honestly feel they would be better off as shouts.

Glamours are another sore point. Beforehand, when I was able to blind and cause confusion from them, I had a WvW mesmer that could 2v1 in small battles and support in large zergs. Now she is shelved because all she can do is support and that support isn’t up to my expectations. Oh, and there’s the cost of gearing her up with Perplexity runes. Now that’s only worthwhile if I use shatters, which I feel are more counter-productive than mantras.

I find superspeed to be laughable. I’d rather have something sustainable than a burst that only last a few seconds, which I could easily do with Blink. And don’t even get me started on needing a target to use Feedback now. No, let me show you how screwed up their logic is! Glamours are supposed to be support skills now but Feedback is a Glamour. What sense does it make that you need an enemy target to cast a “support” skill? I can’t be the only one face-palming about that.

So that leaves Resistance, which I’m not a fan of because it only last a few seconds and it’s counter-productive. Mesmers don’t get any benefit from having conditions on them like Revenants so it’s like slapping a band-aid on a gunshot wound. If I could keep it up about 75% of the time, I would consider it useful but as it is now, it would be better to cleanse conditions.

The problem with Alacrity is that it didn’t make much of a difference. Having skills recharge 3 or 4 seconds faster doesn’t matter much. Focusing on Alacrity made my dps drop too much so that’s not good either.

So yeah, I’m bitter. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m hoping one of you guys can figure out a way to make Alacrity work and preferably WITHOUT shatters. Don’t try to convince me that the new glamours are better though. I prefer the “good for me, bad for you” vibe that the old traits reinforced but the devs seemed to have forgotten that was the overall theme for mesmers.

In the meantime, I have to figure out what to do with more mesmers than I have builds for.

Crossplay.2067:

I still don’t like mantras because you have to leave yourself wide open to charge them and don’t get any immediate benefit from charging them unless you pick particular traits. On top of that, they still have cooldowns between charge usage so I don’t see the positive that offsets being so ridiculously vulnerable when charging. I honestly feel they would be better off as shouts.

Did anybody else see the new datamined Throwing Daggers utility for the Dare Devil and immediately think that Mantras should work that way instead? It’s almost the same functionality, but it’s much easier to balance without nerfing the skill into the ground.

(For reference: https://i.imgur.com/NWy34jF.png)

Because the charges have an expiration time, the skill can be allowed to recharge in the background like our Mantras did for that one glorious month without the degenerate case of having six AoE Dazes in a row or whatever.

tobascodagama.2961:

Crossplay.2067:

I still don’t like mantras because you have to leave yourself wide open to charge them and don’t get any immediate benefit from charging them unless you pick particular traits. On top of that, they still have cooldowns between charge usage so I don’t see the positive that offsets being so ridiculously vulnerable when charging. I honestly feel they would be better off as shouts.

Did anybody else see the new datamined Throwing Daggers utility for the Dare Devil and immediately think that Mantras should work that way instead? It’s almost the same functionality, but it’s much easier to balance without nerfing the skill into the ground.

(For reference: https://i.imgur.com/NWy34jF.png)

Because the charges have an expiration time, the skill can be allowed to recharge in the background like our Mantras did for that one glorious month without the degenerate case of having six AoE Dazes in a row or whatever.

Of course other classes get a better Mantra mechanic then us…

Levetty.1279:

tobascodagama.2961:

Crossplay.2067:

I still don’t like mantras because you have to leave yourself wide open to charge them and don’t get any immediate benefit from charging them unless you pick particular traits. On top of that, they still have cooldowns between charge usage so I don’t see the positive that offsets being so ridiculously vulnerable when charging. I honestly feel they would be better off as shouts.

Did anybody else see the new datamined Throwing Daggers utility for the Dare Devil and immediately think that Mantras should work that way instead? It’s almost the same functionality, but it’s much easier to balance without nerfing the skill into the ground.

(For reference: https://i.imgur.com/NWy34jF.png)

Because the charges have an expiration time, the skill can be allowed to recharge in the background like our Mantras did for that one glorious month without the degenerate case of having six AoE Dazes in a row or whatever.

Of course other classes get a better Mantra mechanic then us…

omg… I’m going to throw a BF! I wanna see the supervisor… better yet, i’m going to write a letter!

Dear Mr. Arenanet,

I am a WHITE FEMALE SYLVARI in TYRIA!

Seriously though… i’m going to be kittened if they give teef mantras +1 and do nothing to fix ours. I really hate how mantras function.

I’m actually semi-hopeful that if this skill works out well for the Teefs, ANet will consider reworking Mantras.

To me, Dare-Devil thief elite specialization looks like lockdown-melee build for thiefs. Don’t know what to think of the physical utilities, all we can do is wait and see how it works and IF Anet will do anything, if it’s “OP” and “to hard to counter” like our lockdown builds.

tobascodagama.2961:

Did anybody else see the new datamined Throwing Daggers utility for the Dare Devil and immediately think that Mantras should work that way instead? It’s almost the same functionality, but it’s much easier to balance without nerfing the skill into the ground.

(For reference: https://i.imgur.com/NWy34jF.png)

Because the charges have an expiration time, the skill can be allowed to recharge in the background like our Mantras did for that one glorious month without the degenerate case of having six AoE Dazes in a row or whatever.

I thought the same. Since Protective Mantras is gone/innate and Empowering Mantras changed I’d rather see the same mechanic for our Mantras. It would also solve the issue of being stuck with half-used-up charges.

That being said, the utility skill won’t offer too much new to Thieves. It is helpful when running Staff because of the range and because Staff lacks interrupts, but every build involving traited Steal or OH Pistol won’t care too much.

Regarding the BW I’ll probably won’t be at home. Meh.

Xaylin.1860:

I thought the same. Since Protective Mantras is gone/innate and Empowering Mantras changed I’d rather see the same mechanic for our Mantras. It would also solve the issue of being stuck with half-used-up charges.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. Protected Mantras doesn’t do that much when we’re basically always charging them out-of-combat or in stealth. Having a 15s window to use mantra charges means we’d have to charge them just before entering combat or during combat, which means we might actually see the extra Toughness do something once in a while. Which is technically a nerf, but totally worth it in exchange for not having to waste our last charge on nothing and then hope nobody engages on us while we wait out the full cooldown.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p6Byh_rZrfQtG0dsI1Y2JL_yYw_mvzt8EqrBXN2hLps/edit?usp=sharing

Added a version with Continuum Split/Shift.
That brings uptime to 92%, and effective CDR on team skills to 38%.

What I still have not accounted for is the effect of personal alacrity, though at 92% group alacrity, it shouldn’t add all that much more (in fact, the very most we could add would be 2% more cdr to the group, which isn’t all that much).
I’ll work on calculating that, just in case it makes a difference (and in the interests of seeing what the theoretical max is).

Math on iCap is frankly too unreliable, I don’t see a way I can calculate how it will affect an entire group reliably.

Other future exploration involves seeing what we lose by swapping out various wells. Losing Gravity well, 2 alacrity on 90s cooldown, is probably not gonna matter all that much.

Those numbers are wrong, I did not account for the fact that you can’t partially-cast a well, so you can only cast wells a certain number of times between Continuum Shifts and still have it ready for CS.

Revising the numbers, we get 63.2% Alacrity uptime, for a group cooldown reduction of 29.6%.

I also did the math to see what how much personal alacrity from shatters might affect that. If we shatter Mind Wrack and CoF on cooldown between CS, we need an average of 0.7 illusions per shatter to get enough Alacrity to put ourselves at 100%. That’s child’s play, so we can compute the numbers assuming 100% personal alacrity without much concern for viability.

Those numbers come down to 74.1% alacrity uptime, for 33.1% group cooldown reduction.

iCap usage can improve that shared Alacrity time, but again, it’s really just too hard to calculate how much iCap would actually share, given the unpredictable nature of the bouncing shield. Plus, 1s of alacrity on a bounce really isn’t all that much, and I’m not confident that the marginal benefit of that extra alacrity outweighs the benefit of extra damaging phantasms.

I should also note that other mesmers with Improved Alacrity would get a lot more Alacrity uptime from the Well mesmer.

Edit: in fact, if the Well mesmer has Improved Alacrity, they don’t even need to shatter for alacrity to hit 100% on themselves, as they’ll get a full 50% over the base alacrity they’re getting from the wells.

I’ll probably do the same thing i did last time.. play with traits and weapons and runes to figure out whats broken and then avoid making builds out of it in-case it gets nerfed.

I’m curious to see how the new Thief Spec plays out but it wont be playable this coming weekend which is a bit sad.. I just hope it doesn’t return them to the status of Mesmer / Chrono Killer and push us straight out of the meta yet again.

New thief spec is playable. =P

My only issue with Thief Lockdown is that they get all this cool interruption stuff – including a version of Power Block, yet they’re immune to such effects themselves.

I’m all for Thieves having a lock down spec, but they should be susceptible to interrupts and power block in some manner.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

New thief spec is playable. =P

I mean that i dont expect it to be functional to fully test things. I am guessing there will be a lot of bugs on the staff and movement skills.

Darn it, Big Boss, why do you have to (most likely) keep me distracted during that weekend? I guess I can take a break at some point.. play around a bit more with Chronomancer. But.. Big Boss..

Will the 2s of Alacrity onto Wells be in addition to the 2 conditions removed? That would definitely make the trait highly competitive and “incentivize” using wells.

MailMail.6534:

Will the 2s of Alacrity onto Wells be in addition to the 2 conditions removed? That would definitely make the trait highly competitive and “incentivize” using wells.

As far as I know it won’t as they state function change to the trait

messiah.1908:

MailMail.6534:

Will the 2s of Alacrity onto Wells be in addition to the 2 conditions removed? That would definitely make the trait highly competitive and “incentivize” using wells.

As far as I know it won’t as they state function change to the trait

alol so alls well still isn’t well that ends well. “OK” in my Paris Hilton voice