Guild Wars 2

What if the change came with a compromise

3s pulse
Breaks stun
1st pulse aoe blur, 1s
2nd pulse aoe Aegis, 3s
3rd pulse aoe Next attack is unblockable

That’s like, all three iterations (minus the dumb distortion) rolled into one, it still relatively strong, still relatively effective, and still offers great team support in various ways.

3s pulsing Aegis is the stupidest precog concept to date.

Still no response from Anet? Wow.
If they stick with the change despite all the feedbacks, they’ll reach a new low in my book.

Ross Biddle.2367:

What if the change came with a compromise

3s pulse
Breaks stun
1st pulse aoe blur, 1s
2nd pulse aoe Aegis, 3s
3rd pulse aoe Next attack is unblockable

That’s like, all three iterations (minus the dumb distortion) rolled into one, it still relatively strong, still relatively effective, and still offers great team support in various ways.

3s pulsing Aegis is the stupidest precog concept to date.

That’s not what precognition is for. Precognition is all about the 3s being safe.

To specifically get back to what Windwaker said:
Strong effects are a requirement for class-“feel”.

If Chronomancers are “messing with time”, then some or all of those effects need to be overpowering strong. This can be balanced, and plenty games do that.

To give you an idea of the balanced which can be achieved here, let’s look at Bleach. Until they made the mistake of taking it Dragonball Z style, they had this interesting idea that each character’s power was really strong, but only in one specific instance.
A good example is Byakuya’s bankai being defeated by Ichigo’s, despite him being a newbie. But he is so fast that he can actually deflect the million blades flying at him.

Translated back into game-speak, overpowered effects are countered by other overpowered effects, intentionally being overpowered compared to the “not-the-right-class baseline”. This creates a certain rock-paper-scissors like balance, but with more facets as each class has more than one strong ability.

And to get back to Chronomancer, I would point out the following 3 as the strong elements of the Chrono setup:

• Alacrity, the ability to shorten cooldowns significantly.
• Continuum Split, messing with time.
• Wells, confined areas of messed up time.

Heh, incidentally I know which 3 things you can trait into. :P

Now instead of trying to “balance” these, let’s exactly do the opposite. Let’s give Chronomancers nothing but these, but make them really really strong (mind you, this’d happen for all classes).

Alacrity
Time around you is in a fragile accelerated state. Your cooldowns regenerate 5 times (yes, five times) as fast, but if you lose more than 10% of your health or you get disabled the effect ends.

Possible trait enhancements:

• Very limited ability to give this to others (not speaking AWTEW here, and mind you, probably the one well is plenty, might even need to be the elite well).
• If no CDs are up, gain quickness for each second than Alacrity ticks.
• Alacrity is 40% stronger on you (7x as fast) but if you are disabled, all skills recharge 40% longer.

Continuum Split (no longer a shatter!)
Create a rip in time to project an alternative timeline version of you for up to 20 seconds.
Your other self starts with all skills off cooldown, but cannot utilize your elite skill and cannot cast Continuum Split. At the end of this effect, you return to your original timeline, restoring health, cooldowns, effects, boons, conditions, but also undoing any lasting effect you caused, all conditions and boons which you caused.

The rip can be attacked. If it is destroyed, you eject back to your timeline immediately and suffer near-fatal damage from the shock (you are left with 1 HP and all skills on 2s CD).

Possible trait enhancements:

• Upon rip destruction, only get set to 50% health or the original number, whichever is lower.
• Continuum Split now lasts until destroyed or triggered or you move 2000 units from the rip (this is the GM trait).
• Being defeated during split automatically triggers the effect to restore the original timeline (usually you’d just be defeated).

Wells
Create powerful areas of warped space and time, affecting up to 5 enemies or allies inside.

Mostly unchanged, but:

• Now work underwater, cast as PBAE.
• AWTEW removed.
• One trait buffs the primary effect of each well slightly.
• Another trait makes Gravity Well explode for damage at the end. Baseline I’d restore the float, due to lack of double-well with these changes.
• Another trait makes all wells tick 4x before ending.

Anyhow the overall point is: Make the strong things really strong. And then balance these between classes. Make thieves absolutely brutal if they get the jump on you. That’s it, it’s their class specialty, you’re dead.
Make mesmers (base class) really hard to nail down. Chronomancers mess with time. Reapers are masters of gaining life force and shield themselves well with it, but rely on people getting downed or dying around them more than Necromancers, etc etc etc.

In general, if it’s iconic of the class or elite-spec, it should be so powerful that it defines the character both as a player char and as an enemy.

Comparisons would best be made to TF2 here, where each class has a very easily identified silhouette and you know what to prepare for as each class also has 1-2 very unique roles they do better than anyone else. Significantly so.

Xyonon.3987:

Ross Biddle.2367:

What if the change came with a compromise

3s pulse
Breaks stun
1st pulse aoe blur, 1s
2nd pulse aoe Aegis, 3s
3rd pulse aoe Next attack is unblockable

That’s like, all three iterations (minus the dumb distortion) rolled into one, it still relatively strong, still relatively effective, and still offers great team support in various ways.

3s pulsing Aegis is the stupidest precog concept to date.

That’s not what precognition is for. Precognition is all about the 3s being safe.

Rofl, says who? Initially it had nothing to do with safety XD

Blur was safe but OP
Distortion was safer, but dumb for various reasons
Aegis is not safe at all XD

I’d say your definition is to narrow for the design initiative to stand on.

Precog could always give a new effect. Avoids all damage but not CC effects ~Sans endure pain/sig of stone. That way it could be used as a safety net, it could be used on point, but a Chrono could also be CC’d out/within it to stop things like res attempts etc.

Meh whatever, could just forget it and throw it in the trash with the rest of Chrono next season

Many people already pointed out how this change is dumb because it completely destroys the skill. Ontop of that it – yet again – takes away some of the few remaining unique characteristics of the class. Even worse, even though the skill will be garbage, Guardians are annoyed because Aegis is their thing.

If I had to decide, I would:

• Leave WoP untouched untill the patch hits since the Alacrity change might be enough to bring it back in line.
• If it’s still an issue, I’d increase the cooldown (but increase Endurance on final hit). A higher cooldown is very likely to compensate issues caused by its effect – regardless of it being Distortion or Blur.
• If this still didn’t work, I would have to consider reworking the skill. But untill then, I won’t. However, Aegis shouldn’t be an option.

If it stays Aegis, you might as well lower the cooldown down to 20s. And even then it would be questionable. But this is just my humble opinion.

After they change Precog like that, it’ll be a long journey (if ever) to make it a skill worth taking again. As I said – similar to Mimic. I seriously want to know which dev came up with an idea like that. The whole idea is so off that it really blows my mind this time. What game are they playing to think anyone would ever pick precog again (in any game mode)?

I mean, it’s not only that. Next thing is 5% more attack speed on the scepter trait. HOW on earth would that make scepter viable? It’s really frustrating to see seemingly clueless balancing like that, without any communication in regards of the feedback anet is getting. You can write your kitten off in the forums and they keep claiming that they’re reading and listening, but their actions prove otherwise.

At this point, I just think they’re bored of balancing their own game… I know I would be, after more than 3 years.

I have no words for this change. lol

Well of Precognition is officially only better than Veil in spvp now. gj Anet.

MailMail.6534:

I have no words for this change. lol

Well of Precognition is officially only better than Veil in spvp now. gj Anet.

Hey, at least it’s still a stun break

skcamow.3527:

Hey, at least it’s still a stun break

Probably just an oversight. It’ll break stuns on enemies in the next patch.

I really doubt they gonna go live with aegis. It’s just too stupid to be serious. I don’t know what the problem with the skill is. It’s messy with VG and op with bunker in pvp? It was fixed with invuln in pvp, but blur is better for pve. I mean after all – it’s a utility skill – ofc it has to do something in favor of your team when used o.O blergh

Here’s an idea that might be fun with Precog: Each pulse of Precog gives a stack of a charge which turns your next attack into a 1/4s Daze, essentially an interruption skill now. We won’t have the usual defensiveness, but it gives our team a plethora of interrupts for a short time and can synergize with various skills and traits, such as using this with Mantra of Pain for a pseudo MoD.

TY ANET for nerf precognition

Bunker mesmer was the main reason ruining pvp, with only-bunker bored game

GG

They could give it distortion in PvP to stop caps and give it blur in PvE to stop skipping the green circles.

Their entire insulting argument about “the people who play our game are too kittened to know what to do if we split skills between modes” wouldn’t apply because the people who would get confused by skill splits also wouldn’t know the difference between evade and invuln anyway.

It took them 3 years to split skills in first game give them more time plox

Levetty.1279:

They could give it distortion in PvP to stop caps and give it blur in PvE to stop skipping the green circles.

This. It’s so simple and with the deletion of some tank amulets in PvP i see no problem in invuln there. And for PvE, invuln only messed with mechaincs blur won’t do. It’s the PERFECT SOLUTION GOD kitten IT ANET Q_Q

So apparently we see no response at all and we all have to wait til tuesday patchday to see how lethal we will be shot … great …

The invulnerablity was too strong in pvp. I think it was fine in raids/open world pve/wvw where it saw a lot of good plays. Why can’t we split it between pve and pvp? —> problem solved!

Walkure.9056:

The invulnerablity was too strong in pvp. I think it was fine in raids/open world pve/wvw where it saw a lot of good plays. Why can’t we split it between pve and pvp? —> problem solved!

The invulnerability was only arguably too strong in stronghold.
(stronghold is pretty imbalanced anyway)

It sees no use in Conquest anymore, because Invuln prevents point capture.

You know what was stronger than an AoE invuln in stronghold?
Multiple tempests rushing your base/healing their lord.

The reason it was nerfed, is because the Invuln was really strong in raids. Which is why people suggested making it a blur in PvE, and an invuln in PvP.

This new aegis providing Well of Precognition is going to make it completely unused. I don’t think that’s where ANet or the community want ANY skill to be. Please reconsider your change! 3 seconds of Aegis on a 45 second cooldown is absolute garbage.

Curo.2483:

Please reconsider your change! 3 seconds of Aegis on a 45 second cooldown is absolute garbage.

Dev 1: But alacrity so it’s not a 45 second CD which makes it waaaaaaaaaay to strong.

Dev 2: Let’s nerf alacrity!

Dev 3: Can I have some of what your smoking? At least split between PvP and PvE? Reduce cast time?? Add more endurance on the end since energy sigil nerf?!?!? ANYTHING, just don’t ruin it!!!!!

~Anet dev team

So we can only hope ANet really read this thread over the past couple of days … I’d be really sad and disappointed about aegis version going live … It’d be just … no … unacceptable and never ever used again. It’s like deleting a skill completly.

The skill is kinda destroyed with the Aegis change. It was an exciting skill (AoE invuln really was something special and unique).

I would have hoped the standardised res/stomp would be enough to kill Bunker Mesmer without this change, maybe just not implement it for a week and see if its needed after.

Feedbacks completely ignored.
kitten you, Anet.

Xyonon.3987:

Heya …
Aegis just doesn’t fit the concept of PRECOGNITION, the ability to forsee enemy actions! Aegis is also not reliable with multi hits or all the auras in raids. With aegis, this well will just go from top to flop and will be never seen again in raids. Aegis is for chaos storm, not Well of Precognition.

Thank you! I guess the name and the vision behind the skill was dumped because they needed to make “balance” changes. Next time don’t bother giving us a backstory about your classes/skills because you obviously don’t give a kitten about it anyway!

Oh I have powah of precognition so I know I must put up a shield to block an attack!

Because Chronomancer can equip shield and shield = aegis! Good job team! Wonderful idea! Now let’s patch it to live!

Xyonon.3987:

So we can only hope ANet really read this thread over the past couple of days …

They did not. :P

Fhaeris.9237:

Feedbacks completely ignored.
kitten you, Anet.

Actually, Feedback has been reworked!
Ba-dum-tsss.

They did … and they had a good laugh.

Honestly, this was the only well that really made Chrono worth playing for me in WvW and with it gone, I may just move back to my old mesmer setups. I knew what the outcome would be but I tried the well tonight in wvw, in a normal situation and in every case it absolutely failed me. The alacrity nerf didn’t sting nearly as much as I thought it would but this, this was the worst.

Its truly made the skill worthless outside of granting alacrity to others really. :/

dawna.6290:

Honestly, this was the only well that really made Chrono worth playing for me in WvW and with it gone, I may just move back to my old mesmer setups. I knew what the outcome would be but I tried the well tonight in wvw, in a normal situation and in every case it absolutely failed me. The alacrity nerf didn’t sting nearly as much as I thought it would but this, this was the worst.

Its truly made the skill worthless outside of granting alacrity to others really. :/

With a 40+ second cooldown, calamity is better for that. And at least deals damage (A.K.A. Does something useful).

The alacrity nerf hurts exactly as much as I thought it would. I actually have 0 reason to run the Chrono line other than continuum split.

The quickness nerf hurts even more.

The saving grace for Chrono, for me, was that mesmer had access to on demand quickness (as long as you didn’t use every shatter).
This meant we could actually kill someone in downstate in a close fight.

Which lets face it, if you don’t 100-0 a thief (Does this happen on anyone that’s paying attention?), then if you win it’s going to be a close fight.

Except thief’s downstate is kittening OP. So if you can’t stomp him out, chances are he’s going to kill you in down state. And his down state is stronger than yours. He’ll cleave you out first.

Same with necro, same with rev, same with name your class mate.

It bugs the kitten out of me, that to even stomp a thief I’m going to have to have blink up. Regardless of quickness.

And with the rest of the classes I’m going to have to have distortion up, no exceptions.

It’s ridiculously silly.

We have this one build that’s too strong in PvP, and one of our nerfs ended up being buffs in PvE & WvW.

NERF THE CLASS INTO THE GROUND is clearly the right answer.