Guild Wars 2

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I don’t want to go into speculation as to how Specializations will work with so little information, though I do have several theories. One thing I did notice, though, was that the new clock skill was not the only changes shown for Mesmer. A lot of these things were only shown in a fraction of a second, and I only happened to notice them because I was looking for the Druid Ranger displayed (which was ungodly obvious and I really didn’t need to try so hard x_x)

What I will presume is that this new specialization will NOT be damage-focused. Anet knows Mesmers strength right now is heavy damage via illusions and shattering and have been slowly pushing Lockdown/Support in different ways, the Chronomancer concept does seem plausable seeing as we already have some time manipulation skills. The Mesmer is essential a time/space mage, with Illusions, vortexes, and teleports making up our “space” aspect.

Temporal Curtain
Time Warp
Distortion

I’d figure it’s a good bet that this specialization will be sacrificing damage for more support/control.

- 1:29 New Shield Ability OR New (Glamour?) Utility; AoE CC persistent field: While many are thinking that this ability came off the shield, it could very well simply be a new utility skill or even reworked class mechanic judging by the way it “shatters” at the end. There are a couple things worth noting here:

• The skill has a cast/channel time, the Mesmer begins by glowing all fabulously at 1:27 for about 1.5s before casting it. If you notice the editing, it seems the field persists for a bit until both hands of the clock meets. The initial effect is a slowing field, followed by damage and potential knockdown (some of the same type of enemy died differently from others in the field, perhaps they didn’t die at all but were knocked down). Judging by mesmer mechanics, it’ll likely be a ground-targetted AoE and likely Ethereal combo field.

- 2:20 Chaos Armor Rework? (Reduced Cooldown? Chaos Armor now grants Aegis to Mesmer and illusions?): Currently Chaos Armor’s animation is pretty straightforward. You push the button, a bubble appears, you profit. However if you watch the video really closely during the “New Competitive Gamemode” snip at 1:20 you can see either Chaos Armor or a new skill[/url] being used. The animation is different here, with there being a slight shimmer of light before the bubble appears. It’s also worth noting that the Mesmer and … something else also get Aegis the moment Chaos Armor is popped. While one could argue that the Aegis came from the Chaos Storm nearby, notice that the Mesmer isn’t actually standing IN the storm when they get Aegis. It is possible that, being at the very edge of the storm, the very tip gave Aegis to the Mesmer and her.. clone? Illusion? What is that?

One thing to keep in mind here is that Chaos Storm doesn’t give the same boons to everyone standing in the storm at once. It’s rather rare for both Mesmer and illusion to receive Aegis at the same time, so I’m guessing/hoping..

Reduced Cooldown by 5s. Chaos Armor now grants Aegis to Mesmer and illusions.*

- 2:24 Mysterious New Utility/Mantra/Shield Ability?: What if our specialization removed Phantasms/Clones and instead had fields for us to shatter? Either way, I spotted a new ability being used here. At first I thought it was the clock skill again, but I went back and checked and the effects are different. The clock has a darker purple and Mantra of Pain-like indigo swirls. This new skill does look time-based, but the colors are much brighter and the animation is slightly different. New Mantra perhaps?

What do you guys think? Anyone spot anything else?

Quick break down from someone not looking for excuses to speculate or be excited >.>

Btw couldnt find your other things of note, just the shield.

So let’s start with the shield..

Channeled skill or Held in some fashion, Mesmer glowing before cast, no glow after cast.

Foes are moving at normal speeds

Foes are hit with AoE which has an initial strike

Foes are slowed by cripple (easily noticed after second pulse)

Foe B dies on second pulse

Foe A dies on third Pulse

AoE dissipates much like chaos storm or any glamor skill does as of current, this does not look to be a shatter of any kind.

No Knock Downs, no delay or slowing of time, just limping critters that get pwned.

Regular Chaos armor is shown in a group fight where other professions are present, not outlandish to assume whatever you noticed is an effect from a guardian (which is clearly present)

Mysterious new utility… i Saw a mesmer use Gs1, A portal either open or end, maybe a mantra explosion of some type could have just as easily been a Guardian skill…

I’m just not seeing whatever it is you’re seeing chaos, I’m terribly sorry but I would appreciate some of the drugs you’re taking if you have any to spare

I live in the hood, of course I have some to spare, but they’re not legal in most states. =P

Anyways, the clips are only barely a second, but you can see Chaos Armor definitely has a new animation, and the Guardian himself didn’t receive protection (assuming that’s a Guard and not a War/Revenant).

The last bit is definitely not a portal, if you maximize the screen at 1080p, there is a fading purple glyph/sigil on the ground like nothing in the game so far. It has the “dots” of a clock around it’s edges, which makes me thing it’s another time-based ability. All glyph-related magic abilities in the game are color-coded: Guardian Blue, Necro Green, Mesmer Purple, ect. That’s definitely somethign new to us.

As for the time bomb, the dying critters go through two separate animations -one falling straight down and one collapsing onto it’s side- there’s nothing saying there that it’s not a knockdown (use temp curtain on a devourer and see the same knockdown animation)

my god the forums are terribad today..

yes but the scarab, thats what i’ll call them for now, creatures are a very close if not copy past of the destroyer crabs, which carry those two death animations.

clone death effects on shatter …. one can dream

The thing about the 1.5s glowing before the mesmer actually casted the Clock AoE…
I found these 1.5s twice in this video. This could only be a coincidence but the Clock AoE also lasts ~1.5s

I used a metronom that counted 4 hits for the glowing mesmer and 4 hits for the field toexist before exploding(shattering?)

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- 2:24 Mysterious New Utility/Mantra/Shield Ability?:

Grabbed some shots from the HD trailer, definitely looks like a new skill to me.
Also attached are shots of the shield skill and the possibly reworked Chaos Armor animation.

On the chaos armor animation: The burst of light is from using Phase Retreat from within the chaos storm, thus granting the chaos armor. The rest simply looks like a new animation for gaining chaos armor.
The aegis effect looks different from normal aegis effects, I assume it’s just part of the new chaos armor animation.

Oh wow awesome! Thanks Pureblade.

Now here’s the thing.. did you notice how the Mesmer AND the clone got Aegis/Prot? I’m having a really hard time telling if that other thing that got the boon is actually a clone or not, since it doesn’t look like the Mesmer. There’s two “clones” running around in that clip but they look odd to me, did you notice?’

Edit: I didn’t notice before, but that mystery ability appears, shines, creates an expanding dome of some sort, and fades. The first thing that comes to mind is a sort of projectile reflect/negation ala Feedback/Shield of Absorption but it seems to fade away too quickly for that. Second guess: a push/knockdown/knock-up of some sort. Or maybe “Chronomancer” really will have shatterable AoE fields.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

I don’t want to go into speculation as to how Specializations will work with so little information…

What I will presume is that this new specialization will NOT be damage-focused. Anet knows Mesmers strength right now is heavy damage via illusions and shattering…

Speculation but I was hoping/thinking (mostly hoping) that this might be a more aoe personal DPS focused specialization and of course CC.

I’m getting the impression that the 5th trait line of each class will change based off of specialization and would be mutually exclusive.
Example: Currently the base Mesmer has the illusion trait line with shatter recharge/condi dmg and various traits on shatter/illusions. The “chronomancer” traitline would only be available with 0 points in illusions and placing points into the chronomancy line would block off the illusion line.

Chronomancy line would have CD reduction to a new set of F1-F4 abilities and traits affecting the new utility/heal/elite and shield. While condi dmg seems like the obvious other stat, having something like power would be able to up mesmer DPS through raw stats. The shield may not even have a phantasm associated with it (defender already has a shield anyways). The reduced illusions/shatter potential would allow for F1-F4 becoming strong AOE spells with CC attached to them.

So something like a 2/0/6/0/(6.2) chronomancer could maybe be a new aoe shutdown build that doesn’t have it’s DPS held back by illusions.

Imagine a field where while standing in it, your skills dont recharge, or recharge certain % slower.

@smilko: That would be excellent! Things like that are exactly what I’m hoping for from the specialization.

@Duck: The thing is, the New F1-4 lines would still have to be tied to illusions. Too many of our traits, skills, utilities revolve around clones or phantasms. Unless specializing into Chronomancer alters/replaces traits like Deceptive Evasion, Desperate Decoy, Phantasmal fury, ect I still think that any new class Mechanic would still involve Clones/Phants. Maybe it won’t be “Shattering” them though. Maybe it’ll be a different form of conversion.

Hell.. It may not even be 4 abilities as it is for vanilla Mesmer, may only be one or two.

I don’t see any phantasms hmmm interesting!

smilko.4056:

Imagine a field where while standing in it, your skills dont recharge, or recharge certain % slower.

I’d actually like a field that makes your skills recharge faster (and your allies’).

A lot of my speculation is based off of what they mentioned with how it’s like gw1 dual spec class changing. Each class had 1 unique/primary “traitline” just to that class. If we are changing specializations, I think that 1 unique traitline will be changing; balance wise it wouldn’t makes sense that the core mesmer would have 5 traitlines and then new specializations would have 6 avaible at once. It would be a bit of a nightmare to balance. Devs have also mentioned that some class mechanics will be changing in specs.

@ChaosA.
So I think the new chrono spec will still have Dom, Duel, Chaos, Insp but won’t have Illusions. Those 4 trait lines have the traits you mentioned but without IP, IC, PH etc, a phantasm build is weakened and a shatter build completely neutered.

So if you lose the illusion (it’s even in the name!) line, why not lose the shatter mechanic. It’s what makes mesmer “viable” at high pvp lvls with huge aoe spike/boon strip. What would replace it? AOE’s we could place ourselves without relying on illusions.

I don’t think it will remove all illusions. It looks like mesmers are only getting 1 offhand weapon for the “chrono” spec and assuming we still have a weapon swap there will be illusions available. It’ll just be that illusions don’t need to be used as ammunition for F1-4 and that most of the dmg will be shifted towards the mesmer instead of phantasms. I do think a few traits from the 4 “core” trait lines might be changed to better balance the new specializations.

Although thinking more… I’m not sure they would actually needs to be changed. Assuming the new line affected CD of the new F1-4 skills and also had traits for the new heal, utility, elite skill subset and also a new trait for the shield…. How many points would you spend in an old lines for to make a “PvE” phantasm build that had 50-70% of dmg from phantasms while also putting points in the new line to benefit with actual specialization? It wouldn’t be inherently broken/op.

Me Games Ma.8426:

smilko.4056:

Imagine a field where while standing in it, your skills dont recharge, or recharge certain % slower.

I’d actually like a field that makes your skills recharge faster (and your allies’).

This is how timewarp should work …

Xyonon.3987:

Me Games Ma.8426:

smilko.4056:

Imagine a field where while standing in it, your skills dont recharge, or recharge certain % slower.

I’d actually like a field that makes your skills recharge faster (and your allies’).

This is how timewarp should work …

Yes T_T

I could also imagine a skill that slows or stops enemy endurance regeneration (weakness?) and grants vigor to allies.

Me Games Ma.8426:

Xyonon.3987:

Me Games Ma.8426:

smilko.4056:

Imagine a field where while standing in it, your skills dont recharge, or recharge certain % slower.

I’d actually like a field that makes your skills recharge faster (and your allies’).

This is how timewarp should work …

Yes T_T

I could also imagine a skill that slows or stops enemy endurance regeneration (weakness?) and grants vigor to allies.

warrior’s warhorn is what you need.

pepper.6179:

warrior’s warhorn is what you need.

I tought of a field that applies these both… maybe the size of nullfield and a duration of 2-3s per tick i think it could really hurt players in pvp when fighting a point.