Guild Wars 2

Alacrity reduces skill recharge by 66%. Chill increases skill recharge and movement speed by 66%. If Alacrity’s suppose to counter Chill and vice versa, then Alacrity may not need its function nerf, but instead the duration of it on certain skills/traits. I agree that while I am loving Chronomancer and Alacrity, I anticipate the duration of Alacrity to go down a little.

Thanks for this build as it is the most amazing thing I have ever played. It takes skill along with the use of all skills which is so wonderful. One question I have though is would it be better to take assassins armor and trinkets over zerkers and also would superior rune of strength be more suited to this build over rune of the traveler?

Thanks again so much this is very fun yet at the same time skillful to play.

I had doubts about staff and chaos, but I’ve been playing this in fractals and I absolutely love it.

But I’m anxious about quickness and alacrity uptime nerfs, even though I think the numbers feel pretty good right now considering how you have to give up so much of your usual mesmer stuff and the rotation has such little room for error.

radioAspen.6829:

I had doubts about staff and chaos, but I’ve been playing this in fractals and I absolutely love it.

Do you no longer have doubts? I mean, do you feel that the staff and chaos are really contributing?

radioAspen.6829:

But I’m anxious about quickness and alacrity uptime nerfs, even though I think the numbers feel pretty good right now considering how you have to give up so much of your usual mesmer stuff and the rotation has such little room for error.

This is exactly my feeling. The math supports that chrono can be very potent in a group, but it’s a serious investment. Someone above complained that they would rather the share came through shatters…but this way, it requires that support investment to pull it off.
And frankly, mesmer really does have to give things up for this. It’s a fair bit of dps in those trees, and you just can’t get them all.

Lastly, I feel like a lot of people have lost perspective on what alacrity really means.

1. Alacrity is, at most, 40% cooldown reduction. That’s potent, but it’s not a 40% dps increase, because it doesn’t include channels (you need quickness for that, but you can get quickness without chrono). So it’s at most a 40% damage increase, and not necessarily even that. But when you compare that to Dom, Dueling or even Illusions, you find that the numbers add up, until it’s really not that far ahead even in theoretical maximum.

2. Alacrity does nothing for Chronomancer burst damage. Mind Wrack doesn’t get stronger, it gets weaker, but more often. This is true of all mesmer damaging abilities. Your burst is weaker, but more often.

3. Furthermore, maintaining chronomancer damage is hard. I mean, the skill cap here is huge. At my level of skill, I’m feeling like it’s gonna take me as long to get good at chrono as it took me to get good at mesmer in the first place! And the point of a higher skill cap is to reward skill with greater rewards, not the same rewards.

4. As supcutie said, Elites seem intended to be more powerful. At that point, you have to ask: is the gap between Alacrity’s +40% theoretical dps and Domination’s +30% theoretical dps really unwarranted?

AlphatheWhite.9351:

radioAspen.6829:

I had doubts about staff and chaos, but I’ve been playing this in fractals and I absolutely love it.

Do you no longer have doubts? I mean, do you feel that the staff and chaos are really contributing?

The main thing is that staff provides a relatively “safe” way to quickly generate two illusions that aren’t in melee range. And I’m finding that I’m not worrying at all about phantasm uptime/damage so I don’t really miss traits that support them. I mean, I guess you could probably replace chaos and not really lose all that much? But I don’t feel like the line you replace it with would really do much for you either, unless you also change up the basic rotation/playstyle a bit.

But this is just my impression after one night of testing.

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want Signet of Inspiration (maybe even Illusionary) if the entire point is to spread Quickness to the party?

Is this just based on current fights not lasting long enough for that to have an impact? Because it would seem to me that doubling the quickness duration is a no brainer versus Calamity.

Didn’t browse through the pages but, 3 avengers with Haste = perma alacrity in melee. The first raid boss (Vale) doesn’t seem to kill them at all, bug or feature? Who knows…

Celeras.4980:

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want Signet of Inspiration (maybe even Illusionary) if the entire point is to spread Quickness to the party?

Is this just based on current fights not lasting long enough for that to have an impact? Because it would seem to me that doubling the quickness duration is a no brainer versus Calamity.

Calamity adds both damage and group alacrity. The signet is unnecessary, because you’re already able to provide ~40 solid seconds of quickness if you’ve got a herald nearby.

Has anyone tried a condi version of this build?

I’m thinking of trying a something along the lines of the following:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWncfCtfilfC+fCUrhlejyMAugMqeUb1XF916oZD-ThxCABAcIAYW9HnV+t3+DI/EA9BjpEkUAQM3C-e

1) I’m going to assume that in situations where you are shattering over and over again, that condi is going to outdamage power builds. Anyone know how DPS compares?

2) How does this build fare in situations where a herald is not present for the 50% boon duration?

Leodon.1564:

Has anyone tried a condi version of this build?

I’m thinking of trying a something along the lines of the following:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWncfCtfilfC+fCUrhlejyMAugMqeUb1XF916oZD-ThxCABAcIAYW9HnV+t3+DI/EA9BjpEkUAQM3C-e

1) I’m going to assume that in situations where you are shattering over and over again, that condi is going to outdamage power builds. Anyone know how DPS compares?

2) How does this build fare in situations where a herald is not present for the 50% boon duration?

Unfortunately, sustained condi damage from shatters is already dramatically outperformed by sustained condi damage from phantasms/clones. Which is where the rest of mesmer kind is already, so condi isn’t very special in this regard, unfortunately.
The issue is, of course, that torment and confusion are terrible pve conditions. But our only sources of the real pve conditions (bleed, burn, poison) are from our clones and phantasms (except poison, we just don’t have a good source of that).

So while yes, chrono will improve the condi’s output of confusion and torment, it will have little to no effect on our potential condition damage output, which itself wasn’t meta-worthy yet (and probably never will be, since they nerfed Duelist’s Discipline when they fixed it).

Edit: that said, I strongly encourage you to try it, when HoT drops. Contrary to popular belief, condi mesmer has been surprisingly close to viable in dps since June, just needing a couple things here or there to make it all fall into place. It wouldn’t surprise me to find someone turning out decent dps numbers that I wasn’t expecting.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Unfortunately, sustained condi damage from shatters is already dramatically outperformed by sustained condi damage from phantasms/clones. Which is where the rest of mesmer kind is already, so condi isn’t very special in this regard, unfortunately.
The issue is, of course, that torment and confusion are terrible pve conditions. But our only sources of the real pve conditions (bleed, burn, poison) are from our clones and phantasms (except poison, we just don’t have a good source of that).

I have not tried this build but from what I gather it sounds like you want to shatter as often as possible for alacrity upkeep. So in this scenario, I was not trying to compare single target condi DPS through phantasms/clones but to compare the DPS difference between power and condi shatter. I’m going to assume condi shatter is better than power shatter but not sure of this or how much the difference is.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

So while yes, chrono will improve the condi’s output of confusion and torment, it will have little to no effect on our potential condition damage output, which itself wasn’t meta-worthy yet (and probably never will be, since they nerfed Duelist’s Discipline when they fixed it).

Actually, I’d be scared of the nerf bat if our DPS was anywhere near meta with the amount of alacrity/quickness we can upkeep. You can sort of justify the alacrity/quickness duration so long as our DPS remains near the bottom of the stack.

In the beta i ran sword/focus + offhand sword/pistol/greatsword depending on the encounter and really enjoyed it. Shield so far feels a bit off to me so didnt really use it, but it seems like it was useful for at least one of the teams that beat the vale guardian.

Those of you that played around with it a bit more, do you think shield will have its place in the pve meta (dungeons/fracs/raids)?

Chris McSwag.4683:

In the beta i ran sword/focus + offhand sword/pistol/greatsword depending on the encounter and really enjoyed it. Shield so far feels a bit off to me so didnt really use it, but it seems like it was useful for at least one of the teams that beat the vale guardian.

Those of you that played around with it a bit more, do you think shield will have its place in the pve meta (dungeons/fracs/raids)?

Shield is useful if you need any of the following:

1. More quickness
2. More party wide alacrity
3. More blocks
4. More stuns

You already have a lot of quickness and alacrity, but for longer fights such as those in raids and fractals the extra alacrity and quickness can be nice. In addition, in at least the first raid encounter the stuns are good to for helping to take out the breakbar. So it’s a situational weapon. Good sometimes, sometimes not. Probably will be used for fractals and raids, probably not so much in dungeons. Simply because of the duration of the fight and the difficulty of the fight.

In a power build why pick staff over Greatsword or sword/focus?

derry.2789:

In a power build why pick staff over Greatsword or sword/focus?

Because Staff gives you two Illusions out of cleave range. This has been covered multiple times if you read the thread.

That said, with the non-targeted damage reduction that may no longer be necessary.

Just curious but now we know the iAvenger has a much better chance at surviving to the point where we might be able to keep 3 up 100% of the time. Does this change the rotation at all?

If I remember correctly 3 phantasms will give a total of 6s alacrity every 8s which is 75% uptime of alacrity on its own, add in the wells as a form of top up for the party. Do we really need to do anything more than shatter the first set of staff clones/phantasms for CS so we can double cast?

I know we will shatter for CS for timewarp but with chronophantasma we should be able to keep the avengers up close to 100%

So. I don’t think either of the options besides AWTEW are really all that relevant to PvE. I also think that Well of Calamity and Well of Action are more than attractive enough that they’ll still get slotted. Well of Eternity and Well of Recall are just as good as anything else for PvE, barring a fight where reflects actually matter. If I dropped Well of Recall for anything, it’d be Well of Precog, not some non-Well utility.

Basically, what I’m saying is that you’re probably going to take AWTEW and a bunch of Wells no matter what. Why maintain three iAvengers if you’re already overflowing with Alacrity like that?

Given the long delay between iAvenger attacks, you’re better off manually resetting their attacks with CP and PoM-fueled reconjuring.

@pyro (I know you are reading this too)

In fights that require reflection can you switch to eternity, feedback, mimic, recall, time warp.

And I assume this build is not able to replace the stealth class in speed runs, unless mobs are killed so much faster one can wait for mass invisibility to go off cooldown to switch it to time warp.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@pyro (I know you are reading this too)

In fights that require reflection can you switch to eternity, feedback, mimic, recall, time warp.

And I assume this build is not able to replace the stealth class in speed runs, unless mobs are killed so much faster one can wait for mass invisibility to go off cooldown to switch it to time warp.

With full alacrity and MoM, MI has a cooldown of 43.2s
Additionally, MI can be coupled with CS for extra stealth time. The nerf to PU is a loss, but the gain in CS from chrono will offset that. Plus, portal can make up for some of the loss, as Mesmer’s personal invis (Prestige, Decoy) can displace it.

That said, there will almost certainly be skips that are just better with a thief along regardless.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

@pyro (I know you are reading this too)

In fights that require reflection can you switch to eternity, feedback, mimic, recall, time warp.

And I assume this build is not able to replace the stealth class in speed runs, unless mobs are killed so much faster one can wait for mass invisibility to go off cooldown to switch it to time warp.

With full alacrity and MoM, MI has a cooldown of 43.2s
Additionally, MI can be coupled with CS for extra stealth time. The nerf to PU is a loss, but the gain in CS from chrono will offset that. Plus, portal can make up for some of the loss, as Mesmer’s personal invis (Prestige, Decoy) can displace it.

That said, there will almost certainly be skips that are just better with a thief along regardless.

You aren’t Pyro!

That being said.

Would running warrior, ele, revenant, mesmer, engie effectively solve this issue? And still have better dps than the meta.

Daniel Handler.4816:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

@pyro (I know you are reading this too)

In fights that require reflection can you switch to eternity, feedback, mimic, recall, time warp.

And I assume this build is not able to replace the stealth class in speed runs, unless mobs are killed so much faster one can wait for mass invisibility to go off cooldown to switch it to time warp.

With full alacrity and MoM, MI has a cooldown of 43.2s
Additionally, MI can be coupled with CS for extra stealth time. The nerf to PU is a loss, but the gain in CS from chrono will offset that. Plus, portal can make up for some of the loss, as Mesmer’s personal invis (Prestige, Decoy) can displace it.

That said, there will almost certainly be skips that are just better with a thief along regardless.

You aren’t Pyro!

That being said.

Would running warrior, ele, revenant, mesmer, engie effectively solve this issue? And still have better dps than the meta.

I think you could definitely use a mesmer for stealth skips but it’s going to be very difficult to time everything right. Additionally you’re not going to get tons of alacrity out of combat unless you built up a lot and keep topping it up but even then….

Why not get the engy to switch to scrapper and stealth gyro you all and blast a smoke bomb when needed?

Daniel Handler.4816:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

@pyro (I know you are reading this too)

In fights that require reflection can you switch to eternity, feedback, mimic, recall, time warp.

And I assume this build is not able to replace the stealth class in speed runs, unless mobs are killed so much faster one can wait for mass invisibility to go off cooldown to switch it to time warp.

With full alacrity and MoM, MI has a cooldown of 43.2s
Additionally, MI can be coupled with CS for extra stealth time. The nerf to PU is a loss, but the gain in CS from chrono will offset that. Plus, portal can make up for some of the loss, as Mesmer’s personal invis (Prestige, Decoy) can displace it.

That said, there will almost certainly be skips that are just better with a thief along regardless.

You aren’t Pyro!

That being said.

Would running warrior, ele, revenant, mesmer, engie effectively solve this issue? And still have better dps than the meta.

You’re thinking that between the engi, ele and warrior, we’ve got enough blasts to make full use of the engi smoke fields?

…yeah, I think that could work.
The ele’s really not far off optimal dps, positional issues aside
The engi is obviously meta dps, and can swap to scrapper for stealth gyro if necessary
The warrior was default anyway
Mesmer provides the needed direct stealth to supplement the smoke blasts
Revenant’s the only one I’d question. Not that I don’t like the idea of Herald boosting the chrono’s quickness, but it’s been rightly pointed out that you don’t necessarily need the support the rev is giving, and you could instead have another engi.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

@pyro (I know you are reading this too)

In fights that require reflection can you switch to eternity, feedback, mimic, recall, time warp.

And I assume this build is not able to replace the stealth class in speed runs, unless mobs are killed so much faster one can wait for mass invisibility to go off cooldown to switch it to time warp.

With full alacrity and MoM, MI has a cooldown of 43.2s
Additionally, MI can be coupled with CS for extra stealth time. The nerf to PU is a loss, but the gain in CS from chrono will offset that. Plus, portal can make up for some of the loss, as Mesmer’s personal invis (Prestige, Decoy) can displace it.

That said, there will almost certainly be skips that are just better with a thief along regardless.

You aren’t Pyro!

That being said.

Would running warrior, ele, revenant, mesmer, engie effectively solve this issue? And still have better dps than the meta.

You’re thinking that between the engi, ele and warrior, we’ve got enough blasts to make full use of the engi smoke fields?

…yeah, I think that could work.
The ele’s really not far off optimal dps, positional issues aside
The engi is obviously meta dps, and can swap to scrapper for stealth gyro if necessary
The warrior was default anyway
Mesmer provides the needed direct stealth to supplement the smoke blasts
Revenant’s the only one I’d question. Not that I don’t like the idea of Herald boosting the chrono’s quickness, but it’s been rightly pointed out that you don’t necessarily need the support the rev is giving, and you could instead have another engi.

The lack of 2 eles make fury time go down, revenant keeps it steady. They bring a stackable ferocity combat buff, and using a revenant would also allow warrior to run scholar runes instead of strength.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@pyro (I know you are reading this too)

In fights that require reflection can you switch to eternity, feedback, mimic, recall, time warp.

And I assume this build is not able to replace the stealth class in speed runs, unless mobs are killed so much faster one can wait for mass invisibility to go off cooldown to switch it to time warp.

The way I see it, you’ve got 2 options for reflection. You can take feedback/mimic and drop some wells, relying on iCaptains for alacrity upkeep instead. Alternatively, you can try and stack wardens while maintaining alacrity upkeep with the wells.

Which of those options is better will most likely depend on the particular situation.

With regards to stealth…I don’t think it’s a big deal. I’d be very surprised if newly released content had any significant vulnerabilities to stealth skipping. Momentary stealth needs can be handlers by engie/Mesmer easily. Existing content can be handled with chrono unless it’s a really long skip (basically only arah p2) in which case you’d either want a thief or a scrapper to help out.

Still have no idea how this is supposed to be played!
Do you pop your phantasm’s and a clone and f5 – timewarp well spam then cycle wells untill the next f5 with phantasm’s giving alcricity and repeat?

derry.2789:

Still have no idea how this is supposed to be played!
Do you pop your phantasm’s and a clone and f5 – timewarp well spam then cycle wells untill the next f5 with phantasm’s giving alcricity and repeat?

Yes, this exactly.

The precise well rotation in the “spam” phase can be tricky to balance, but is easily doable when you get the hang of it (I, for example, still have not).

What you do during the “downtime” is up to you, sometimes having iAvengers out to enhance alacrity uptime will make sense, sometimes you’ll just want to bring out as many dps phantasms as you can.

I think if you take PoM (and I don’t see a reason not to if you’re using Illusions) it’s always better to Shatter everything. You’ll likely end up with more Alacrity from iAvengers than if you kept them active.

Bumping this for my bookmark!

Thanks Fay!