Shatter your Phants
The concept of this playstyle is to shatter after every phantasm attack such that how often they’re attacking becomes irrelevant – you’re simply shattering after every attack, and resummoning them when they disappear to attack again. The benefits are threefold:
- Get the burst damage of shatters on top of the sustained damage of phantasms
- Phantasms attack more often
- Gain near-constant alacrity just by shattering – no shield phantasm, no wells
And the downside:
- You never have three phantasms out at once
The spec lines will be Chrono/Illu/Dom. Insp replaces Dom if reflects are needed.
I’m sure many know the synergy between Flow of Time (alacrity on shatter), Chronophantasma (you can shatter a phantasm twice), and Persistance of memory (shattering a phantasm reduces all phantasm cooldowns by 2s). Basically the more you shatter the more alacrity you get, the faster you can pump out illusions and the faster you can shatter, which in turn gives more alacrity etc etc… you get the idea. The cleverest part of Chronomancer IMO is this synergy, which combines the best of the traditional shatter mesmer and phantasm mesmer while eliminating their flaws (Shatter mesmer has good burst but poor DPS after mind wrack is spent, Phantasm mesmer has to ignore mesmer’s class mechanic of shattering and clones for optimal DPS)
Rotation
I tinkered around in heart of the mists and came up with a rotation that best suits the playstyle concept. Because you want to shatter as often as possible between phantasm attacks, frontloaded damage phantasms such pSwordsman and pBerserker are the best while pWarden is less than satisfactory. On top of that, pSwordsman and pBerserker are phantasms that can chase mobile targets very well, again unlike pWarden.
Start in Sword/Sword:
( the ’- ’ means to pause and give a moment for your phantasm to attack before shattering)
- pSwordsman
- iLeap
- pBerserker
- - Diversion (20 vuln)
- Mirror Blade (6 vuln)
- Mind Stab (Use as filler when available)
- - Mind Wrack
- pBerserker
- Mirror Blade
- pSwordsman
- - Cry of Frustration
- iLeap
- - Mind Wrack
- pSwordman
- Well (to fill time waiting for iLeap to recharge, Calamity preferred due to lowest cd and highest dmg)
- iLeap
(Repeat from step 3)
You provide party alacrity via wells (esp. Well of Recall) and party quickness with Timewarp (only used after continuum shift). Well of precog to allow yourself to safely carry out Well spam after continuum shift without having to dodge any AOEs or attacks, switch with Well of Action is no such danger is around.
And since you’re churning out illusions constantly and shattering constantly as well, you’ll find distortion to be very accessible(25s with constant alacrity). See your teammate downed with archdiviner going for a hammer slam? Pop your 3 clone distortion and go in for the res!
Also, Diversion with 3 clones is one of the best breakbar CCs in the game, you’re talking about a 4 second daze on a 19.5s cooldown (with all that alacrity). Pair that with illusionary wave (If you’re on greatsword) or Counter Blade + iLeap immob (if you’re on sword) means you wreck breakbars plenty, and often too.
Feel free to critique!
