Guild Wars 2

Due to a forum argument with another sardonic forum goer in a thread elementalist forum, I have decided to ask you guys will you use the chronomancer sheild off-hand in pvp builds when the expansion hits.

I am in the boat that shield will not be widely used with chronomancer. Here’s why.

Shatter Builds:

Crux of the Argument: Greatsword is a must on all direct damage builds, the GS gives great burst potential but little defensive skills. Therefore the supporting weaponset must give shatter mesmers an easier way to survive being pressured.

The options:
1. Staff- Staff gives a teleport that can be used to kite up to blink spots and away from melee burst (even when disabled), a high damage phantasm, and a pulsing field in chaos armor that provided RNG based AoE interrupt potential, very strong in stopping rezzes or stomps. Staff is practically a requirement on forest of nifhel, playing without a staff on that map is a huge disadvantage due to its abundant and useful phase retreat spots on each node.
2. Sword- Sword gives a decent cleaving auto to use if needed, an excellent damageing skill with evade frames in blured frenzy, and a decent immob skill in ileap. Sword is thought to be ideal on the battle of khylo since its phase retreat spots are much harder to use for the benefit they bring and their difficulty is dependent on which side of the map you’re on.
3. Torch- On a shatter build the torch phantasm is mainly there for shatter fodder, but group fury isn’t bad. The stealth skill is very useful though because it provides setup for GS bursts from stealth (great for 1v1s), lets you reposition, and evade target/focus fire in a teamfight. For these reasons I beleive that torch is the ideal offhand for a shatter build. A mesmer dies pretty fast in teamfights when focused and when its defensive cooldowns are up, and avoiding target with stealth is the best way to combat that fact.
4.-Shield- Phantasm provides small amount of group alacrity and slow on enemies, but seems to be a low damage phantasm, meaning its shatter fodder after the first attack. The first skill gives 2 phantasms and 2 blocks on a 30 seconds cooldown. I believe the blocks do little for survivability compared to stealth (I mean look at OH sword). The 5 skill is an AoE stun/quickness which looks like it gives powerful support in teamfights, but is far less useful in larger fights.

So based on this I believe that staff or sword/t will continue to be superior to sword/shield on burst specs. I do think shield will have some novel potential on support oriented builds (like helseth’s OP settler’s bunker build) and maybe even some condition-shatter based builds, (although for them torch will still be perhaps even more competitive for the burning).

So let me know what you think? Will you use shield, why or why not, and for what kind of build?

Hell yes. Shield phantasm: summon a phantasm that slows enemies and grants alacrity to allies. Chronomancer master trait danger time: Gain additional critical hit chance against slowed enemies: 30%.

The shield phantasm will give me the initial slow, the grandmaster trait that slows on every 3rd crit will keep it up. My burst will be stronger than ever.

Plus slowed people are all the easier to interrupt! And interrupts inflict slow if you trait for it… and slow can up your crit chance… and critting can inflict slow!

My head hurts…

Does make me think you don’t need to stack precision if they keep the crit boost at 30% though, which is always nice.

In pvp, highly unlikely. Let’s look at those options again.

Staff: An obviously strong choice, not much needs to be said here.

Other than staff, we’ve got sword or scepter and an offhand. Which of the two mainhands you choose doesn’t make a big difference here, so let’s look at offhands.

Torch: The standard shatter pick currently. It provides fantastic defense and utility from stealth. For chrono builds going a more glassy and offensive shatter route, torch will probably still be the go-to weapon.

Focus: Utility, inspiration, a niche pick overall.

Sword: Also niche, outperformed by the pistol in a lot of ways.

Pistol: This is the key competition for shield. In a build focusing on interrupts/slow, the pistol and shield are the two offhands with the best access to interrupts. However, pistol has several distinct advantages:

The pistol phantasm does a lot of damage. The shield phantasm, while fantastic for the slow it will provide, will ultimately most likely end up redundant, considering the access to slow you’ll have from critting and interrupts.

The pistol has an interrupt on a far lower cooldown, even if you catch the shield wall. This is exacerbated if you take the pistol trait, allowing for insane access to both pistol skills.

The shield stun is also a quickness buff, and affects everyone it hits. This gives it unique capabilities, but you can’t leverage those much in PvP. The wall moves slow enough that it will be difficult to time actual interrupts with it, and so you’re limited to just tossing it through a group and seeing what happens. Doing that is far more effective in much larger groups, i.e. WvW.

Ultimately, shield is going to see a bit of use, but I feel it will be drastically outclassed by the pistol in most ways for a PvP setting.

Zypp.7921:

Hell yes. Shield phantasm: summon a phantasm that slows enemies and grants alacrity to allies. Chronomancer master trait danger time: Gain additional critical hit chance against slowed enemies: 30%.

The shield phantasm will give me the initial slow, the grandmaster trait that slows on every 3rd crit will keep it up. My burst will be stronger than ever.

Lost time with GS auto nets you perma slow, and I don’t think danger time is really worth it when dueling practically gives you permanent fury uptime anyway. I mean you could make a weird cele hybrid slow build and probably use it well, but danger time looks unnecessary for burst specs, and even if it did, it wouldn’t need shield at all to be functional.

nearlight.3064:

Lost time with GS auto nets you perma slow, and I don’t think danger time is really worth it when dueling practically gives you permanent fury uptime anyway. I mean you could make a weird cele hybrid slow build and probably use it well, but danger time looks unnecessary for burst specs, and even if it did, it wouldn’t need shield at all to be functional.

Permaslow with gs is only if you keep autoattacking. If you poke with greatsword every time before bursting people will learn to react to that. With the phantasm you can make the slow and burst land simultaneously out of stealth. I don’t understand your comment about fury from dueling. With a berserker amulet there is no waste of crit chance (it’s still under 100% against slowed enemies with fury up). We don’t want a great damage boost because another trait line offers a similar great (stacking) damage boost? Chronomancer in its current form needs very little to be functional, I’m just looking to suit my build to my playstyle with the way I like to burst.

I can agree with Pyro’s breakdown. OHs are usually picked for damage or survivability (pistol vs torch), and shield is like an in-between option. Depending on what you’re doing torch or pistol is going to be the better choice.

Personally I’d like to see some general number tweaks and Shield 5 speed being increased (it does feel too slow to me). Catching the return should be a little more profitable too (IMO).

Its a shame there is no Shield CDR trait, but it does grant alacrity (not enough IMO)

Zypp.7921:

nearlight.3064:

Lost time with GS auto nets you perma slow, and I don’t think danger time is really worth it when dueling practically gives you permanent fury uptime anyway. I mean you could make a weird cele hybrid slow build and probably use it well, but danger time looks unnecessary for burst specs, and even if it did, it wouldn’t need shield at all to be functional.

Permaslow with gs is only if you keep autoattacking. If you poke with greatsword every time before bursting people will learn to react to that. With the phantasm you can make the slow and burst land simultaneously out of stealth. I don’t understand your comment about fury from dueling. With a berserker amulet there is no waste of crit chance (it’s still under 100% against slowed enemies with fury up). We don’t want a great damage boost because another trait line offers a similar great (stacking) damage boost? Chronomancer in its current form needs very little to be functional, I’m just looking to suit my build to my playstyle with the way I like to burst.

You can believe what you want to believe and play how you want, but if you look at the bigger picture as myself and Fay have, you’ll realize what you miss out overall by running shield.

Why not just wait to actually test it instead of discounting it so early? Every class is getting a new weapon and a completely new trait line, we have no idea how this could perform in a, hypothetically, completely new meta.

Necrotize.2974:

Why not just wait to actually test it instead of discounting it so early? Every class is getting a new weapon and a completely new trait line, we have no idea how this could perform in a, hypothetically, completely new meta.

Because I was supporting the holy prophecized warhorn in the elementalist forums while stating things like, “you don’t even have to use the warhorn if you think its ugly you sword lover you, I mean chronomancers probably won’t use shields”!

And then a sardonic mesmer main decided to make a scene and say I’m crazy for thinking the shield isn’t that great, so I decided to make this thread to settle our argument outside of the irreleveant ele forums. He hasn’t come to post his rebuttal yet though, but my victory is all but assured.

I mean, there’s no guaranteeing it’ll be great, but I’m sure it’ll at the very least see some use somewhere. But its true, if you don’t like shield, you don’t have to use it. But I always try out new things when they come to PvP because it helps me understand them better and counter them more effectively since I’m bound to run into someone using it. I personally hope that it’ll make for a more reliable AoE interrupt than Pistol as it’s doubtful iCaptain America will outdamage duelist.

Necrotize.2974:

I mean, there’s no guaranteeing it’ll be great, but I’m sure it’ll at the very least see some use somewhere. But its true, if you don’t like shield, you don’t have to use it. But I always try out new things when they come to PvP because it helps me understand them better and counter them more effectively since I’m bound to run into someone using it. I personally hope that it’ll make for a more reliable AoE interrupt than Pistol as it’s doubtful iCaptain America will outdamage duelist.

I’m not as excited about the damage as I am the conditions. Slow on a single target is gonna be kinda nice and make for some nice dueling.

I think everyone will test shield one way or another, but most long-time mesmers are realists at this point after everything we’ve endured balance-wise.

So what about when CS gets nerfed, you could then use Shield #5 for the stun to burst into. :P

I agree in principle with many things Fay said, but I do believe it’s too early to judge it fully. I think that getting 30% extra crit chance on slowed targets is a pretty big deal, and although that has little/nothing to do with Shield directly, it is a pretty easy & reliable way to get that Slow.

The dual Phants with Chronophantasm GM could be pretty neat for double MWs (F5).

Windwalker.7421:

So what about when CS gets nerfed, you could then use Shield #5 for the stun to burst into. :P

I agree in principle with many things Fay said, but I do believe it’s too early to judge it fully. I think that getting 30% extra crit chance on slowed targets is a pretty big deal, and although that has little/nothing to do with Shield directly, it is a pretty easy & reliable way to get that Slow.

The dual Phants with Chronophantasm GM could be pretty neat for double MWs (F5).

Yeah but that stun is still telegraphed with a huge and so so pretty animation. You can’t really compare it to instant cast mantra cheese.

GS Sw/Pistol, offense is the best defense.

I look forward to it.

Right now shield looks like it competes mostly with the focus in the way the sword competes with the pistol; offering boons and defensive utility in a pretty strange and interesting way.

What has my attention is the fact that the shield phantasm can be casted twice per skill use thanks to Deja Vu. If the alacrity one shield phantasm grants is meaningful (especially since phantasms tend to only get one or two attacks off, then being able to summon two (both of which would reduce each others or other phantasms cooldowns) should provide something worth taking. Add in Chronophantasma for a third shield phantasm and hopefully shield will be a strong source of alacrity.

Combined with wells (which are ethereal fields), chaotic dampening, persistence of memory.. Can’t say for sure yet of course but I’m seeing a few reasons to look forward to it.

Shield looks like the go-to for WvW but depending on how it really plays out, it could do quite well in the PvP setting.

I’m just more satisfied that Mesmer Shield will have a block and Guardians won’t/don’t.

If I can get my hands on the zodiac shield skin, I’ll use Shield in place of pistol for sure.

Btw, Do you need to be traited into the Chronomancer tree to use shield, or would any three trees allow shield, assuming your account is update to Heart of Thorns?

Hot Boy.7138:

If I can get my hands on the zodiac shield skin, I’ll use Shield in place of pistol for sure.

Btw, Do you need to be traited into the Chronomancer tree to use shield, or would any three trees allow shield, assuming your account is update to Heart of Thorns?

In order to access any aspect of chronomancer, you must trait chronomancy.

There’s two situations where I will take shield over something else any day:

• messy teamfight, people are down on both sides. Launch your shield 5 wave and go in for a quickstomp while everyone else gets stunned, also blocks missiles.
• rampage warrior 1v1. Block two attacks with shield 4 and make 2 phantasms (on top of my usual dodge/blind/distort rotation for this situation).

I believe they list the alacrity gain from the shield phantasm at 1 sec duration as of now.

Really needs to be buffed

Personally speaking it would depend highly on Alacrity gained. It might actually be a better team fighter OH. Giving yourself and your team less CD and even in Stronghold might effect the NPCs as well. Another thing to think of is the 5 skill is also a Quickness giver, I believe. So throwing that on your allies and yourself would be a big help. I would not judge so quickly when the combos might create more overall possibilities not just for yourself but the people you fight with.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Combined with wells (which are ethereal fields), chaotic dampening, persistence of memory.. Can’t say for sure yet of course but I’m seeing a few reasons to look forward to it.

Wells are a real game-changer in terms of a Mesmer’s PvP role. Right now, there’s little point in us going for bunker builds, because we can’t do all that much while sitting on a point. But the area denial from Wells changes that equation, and I think Shield could be a good complement — Shield 5 doesn’t help set up a burst, but it does provide a threat of “if you get in my face, I’ll stun you and then lock you down with Gravity Well”.

I have to have the Chronomancer spec and shield in hand for a while before I decide to use it in pvp. We all can make educated guesses until we’re blue-faced but I prefer physical testing and to see what all the other elite specs can do before I make any final decisions.

Sword/Shield Staff Power Build yessss.

I don’t think Mesmer wells are going to have the same sort of area denial effect that necro wells have. They don’t have the same raw force of nasty effects that necro wells contain.

That being said, they’re far more varied in effects and uses. Unloading some Mesmer wells on a point won’t cause everyone to vacate it, but they’ll turbocharge your on-point allies while weakening the on-point enemies in interesting ways.

Yeah, they might not shake up anything about PvP Mesmer in the end, but they at least have the potential to do so. Definitely something to watch when HoT goes live.

I expect to see Wells thrive in WvW, but they don’t seem to offer enough oomph in PVP to replace our other essential utilities. How do we give up Blink and Decoy?

I’ll try them, for sure, but their bite doesn’t seem strong enough to make up for reduced survival.

I have the feeling people are greatly overestimting the Shield Phantasm and Alacrity in general in the various modes, unless soemthing gets buffed before release. If we go heavy into shattering (which Anet thinks is the only thing we should do) we will probably get a decent uptime on it for ourselves but they have already said they are going to negate this by giving a lot of Chronomancer skills long cds, we still have our base skills of course but even a lot of them are on long cds.

In terms of group support, which is what everybody is excited about and thinks will get us guaranteed slots everywhere, it looks rather lackluster. Well of Recall is a 45sec CD for 3 secs of alacrity and uses the worst combo field in the game which will get in the way of fire fields in pve. This will still be our best method of sharing it though.

The Shield Phantasms are going to have various problems in different parts of the game.

WvW Zergs – Useless like most phantasms.

PvE – Due to the blocking mechanic, will take longer to set up then normal phantasms. Hard to keep up due to abundance of aoes. As a support phantasm is unlikely to have particulary good damage so cuts into our dps. can’t control who it bounces and gives alacrity too, not sure on the number of bounces here though.

WvW group roaming – similar problems to PvE but on top of that the bouncing mechanic gets worse the more people you add with the projectile often ending up doing nothing as people move all over the place and it bounces off to nowhere.

Levetty.1279:

I have the feeling people are greatly overestimting the Shield Phantasm and Alacrity in general in the various modes, unless soemthing gets buffed before release. If we go heavy into shattering (which Anet thinks is the only thing we should do) we will probably get a decent uptime on it for ourselves but they have already said they are going to negate this by giving a lot of Chronomancer skills long cds, we still have our base skills of course but even a lot of them are on long cds.

In terms of group support, which is what everybody is excited about and thinks will get us guaranteed slots everywhere, it looks rather lackluster. Well of Recall is a 45sec CD for 3 secs of alacrity and uses the worst combo field in the game which will get in the way of fire fields in pve. This will still be our best method of sharing it though.

The Shield Phantasms are going to have various problems in different parts of the game.

WvW Zergs – Useless like most phantasms.

PvE – Due to the blocking mechanic, will take longer to set up then normal phantasms. Hard to keep up due to abundance of aoes. As a support phantasm is unlikely to have particulary good damage so cuts into our dps. can’t control who it bounces and gives alacrity too, not sure on the number of bounces here though.

WvW group roaming – similar problems to PvE but on top of that the bouncing mechanic gets worse the more people you add with the projectile often ending up doing nothing as people move all over the place and it bounces off to nowhere.

Levitty. Aren’t you the voice of all unreason? He Who Made ChaosA erupt like so many volcanoes? The one who spoke doom and gloom for all coming Mesmer changes that vowed, once they’d dropped and proved you right, that you were quitting the game and never returning?

What happened with that?

Yes, I will be using Shield in some of my PvP builds. Mainly in support specs and condi builds. Offhand shield isn’t meant for high burst dps shatter builds. Other weapons, in general, are just better for those purposes.

As an aside based on your last few paragraphs, I think offhand pistol is superior to torch for condi shatter builds.

Oh man Ross, I was just about to go in.

Instead, all I’ll say is an idea for alacrity I’ve been toying with is:

F5 -> Mimic+AlacrityWell -> AlacrityWell (F5) Mimic+AlacrityWell -> AlacrityWell

And the 12s of alacrity (not including shield phantasm, the fact that f5 and all other shatters grant 1s alacrity, OR the 33% alacrity boost trait) would of course… Recharge my AlacrityWell.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Oh man Ross, I was just about to go in.

Instead, all I’ll say is an idea for alacrity I’ve been toying with is:

F5 -> Mimic+AlacrityWell -> AlacrityWell (F5) Mimic+AlacrityWell -> AlacrityWell

And the 12s of alacrity (not including shield phantasm, the fact that f5 and all other shatters grant 1s alacrity, OR the 33% alacrity boost trait) would of course… Recharge my AlacrityWell.

Well, it would certainly help, but iirc the alacrity well has a 40s cooldown. 12s of alacrity, assume another couple seconds here and there for 15s, then 33% increase gets you to 20s total. In those 20 seconds, the well will cool down by roughly (ish, hard to say until we get our hands on alacrity itself and test it) 32 seconds, leaving a total cooldown on that well of 28 seconds, and a cooldown on that entire combo of ~50ish seconds.

Altogether, pretty decent, but very much a 1-off combo, as would any sort of quadruple-tap combo would be. In order to get that you’re losing out on an additional utility you could be getting, like another well or a stunbreak or something.

Fay.2357:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Oh man Ross, I was just about to go in.

Instead, all I’ll say is an idea for alacrity I’ve been toying with is:

F5 -> Mimic+AlacrityWell -> AlacrityWell (F5) Mimic+AlacrityWell -> AlacrityWell

And the 12s of alacrity (not including shield phantasm, the fact that f5 and all other shatters grant 1s alacrity, OR the 33% alacrity boost trait) would of course… Recharge my AlacrityWell.

Well, it would certainly help, but iirc the alacrity well has a 40s cooldown. 12s of alacrity, assume another couple seconds here and there for 15s, then 33% increase gets you to 20s total. In those 20 seconds, the well will cool down by roughly (ish, hard to say until we get our hands on alacrity itself and test it) 32 seconds, leaving a total cooldown on that well of 28 seconds, and a cooldown on that entire combo of ~50ish seconds.

Altogether, pretty decent, but very much a 1-off combo, as would any sort of quadruple-tap combo would be. In order to get that you’re losing out on an additional utility you could be getting, like another well or a stunbreak or something.

Well yeah (pun) but whether or not the combo is worth it depends on how 20s of Alacrity affects all of my other skills.

Let’s assume I’m running staff + gs. Chaos/illusions/chrono(blink mimic AlacrityWell time warp)

What I’m curious about is how much 20s of alacrity will reduce cool downs on low cd skills like mirror blade and mind spike. Zerker, ect. Whether my alacrity wombocombo idea is worth building around depends on what 12s every minute does for my team and 20s does for me.

…and what phantasmal haste + alacrity does for our phantasm! (Especially shield phantasm)

Failry indepth account of why I think a certain mechanic won’t be that great, usual suspect barge in to tell me to kitten off for not agreeing with them adding nothing to the conversation. Mesmer forums in a nut shell ladies and gentlemen.

Ayway what exactly did I say that was wrong about the trait redesigns?

I said power shatter was getting a buff and guess what, its our meta build still.

I said the changes were lackluster and guess what, Anet agreed and redid a whole load of them adding a whole lot of interesting traits and changing ones that seemed questionable and improving some of our skills. Not much point in quitting if Anet listens to the players and changes what you had a problem with and I was very vocal about how happy I was with the second draft of the trait redesign.

I guess I under estimated the effects of CS combined with a buff to mantras that we didn’t know was coming but if you think that is enough to act like a giant kitten then I suggest you leave your basement once in a while.

Isn’t this just a great of example of people jumping the gun though? Making definitive decisions about how X and Y will perform in however many weeks or months is not only impossible, but very naive. There is just no reasonable way to predict exactly how things will perform given that the coming expansion will not only bring a lot to mesmers, but also bring a lot to every other class(and a lot of it still being completely unknown).

That and some people take things too personally. But welcome to the internet I guess, where people won’t walk on eggshells around anyone and certainly won’t be afraid to call you out on something you did in the past.

@Necrotize: Pretty much this, but these aren’t definitive decision rather than impressions based on what we’ve seen and known. Buuut last time I called ..um.. a certain person out on their exaggerations and overly dramatic negativity their next like.. 4 posts were prefaced with “I’m scared to post because chaos will attack me, but…”

@Levetty: You do realize that you tend to over exaggerate, right?

-If we go heavy into shattering (which Anet thinks is the only thing we should do)…
-In terms of group support, which is what everybody is excited about and thinks will get us guaranteed slots everywhere…
-Failry indepth account of why I think a certain mechanic won’t be that great, usual suspect barge in to tell me to kitten off for not agreeing with them adding nothing to the conversation. Mesmer forums in a nut shell ladies and gentlemen.

and … you do realize you’re the same person who said “the devs wont listen to us. mesmer is gonna suck. they don’t care about what we say and if you look at the past you can tell this wont change” ?

I know you may consider this a “personal attack” or whatever but it’s really not.. I do agree that the shield phantasm will likely struggle in largescale combat, whether PvP or WvW. But I think both skills are good enough to be worth taking, ESPECIALLY if Tides of Time has no target limit and can mow through a zerg stunning/halting striking.

Dont really wanna poop on the parade but i see a lot of assumptions posted here about long lasting and chaining Slow on a target or multiple targets…

Lets remember that the Mesmer is designed to be a very Burst oriented class. We dont have long lasting conditions and the ones that we do are on hefty cool downs.

I would find it remarkable if we were to get more than 1 or 2 seconds of Slow per trigger meaning that while yes, it may be possible to chain these things together and keep a target Slowed for a short period of time, you’ll likely only be doing it once per fight or every other fight.

As for the rest of the OP, Don’t assume that Shatter builds are going to be the Strength of our first Sub Class. Chronomancer might be far more impactful as a Support or Control that focuses far less on damage and more on making sure that your team can execute their combos faster than the other side can whilst making it very hard for the opponent to recover… Is that a role that everyone wants to play? maybe not but maybe the option will finally be open to those that miss the older Mesmer style from Gw1.

Will i be taking a shield into PvP? Yes, i’m sick of using Sword/Sword and avoiding torch due to its garbage phantasm. I dont like to use Focus and Pistol cant decide if its a single target or multi target weapon.

I’m interested in shield for a possible condi shatter build.

With the chronophantasma trait, it seems like you potentially get 4 shatters every 24 seconds from this (actually more frequently than that because of the reduction in cooldown you get from the alacrity they give you from shield throws and the alacrity from shattering).

nearlight.3064:

Yeah but that stun is still telegraphed with a huge and so so pretty animation. You can’t really compare it to instant cast mantra cheese.

From what I’ve seen of it, I don’t think there will be any telegraphing before you’re stunned if I’m coming from stealth and releasing it at point blank range.

By the time you see it, you’ll already be stunned and getting dumped on (hard and fast thanks to Quickness), and by the chance you make it through that, you may very well end up getting stunned again when it returns. ;-)

I’m hoping I can just use the Chronomancer trait line, without having to use the shield.

Kusa.6438:

I’m hoping I can just use the Chronomancer trait line, without having to use the shield.

Nope, sorry, the shield gets welded to your arm the second you slot Chronomancer. You also get locked out from ever changing away from Chronomancer. Because apparently ANet totally threw everything about their game’s design out of the window just for this one elite spec, right?

I’m planning to mess around with it. However, I am not expecting to use it a lot. Who knows maybe I’m wrong and I will end up using it a lot. However, right now I am expecting to mainly run burst shatter with great sword and sword/torch with the trait lines domination, dueling, and chronomancy. The new shatter ability is just too good to give up.

tobascodagama.2961:

Kusa.6438:

I’m hoping I can just use the Chronomancer trait line, without having to use the shield.

Nope, sorry, the shield gets welded to your arm the second you slot Chronomancer. You also get locked out from ever changing away from Chronomancer. Because apparently ANet totally threw everything about their game’s design out of the window just for this one elite spec, right?

That was the most obnoxious “Its cool, you don’t need to wield shield to use chronomancer” ever. =P

I’m going to really try shield in pvp. From what I’ve looked up the phantasm gives 3 seconds of slow so having two of them out would greatly decrease the damage anyone is trying to pump out on us, if the numbers remain the same that is. It does take away the escape capabilities we have with torch, but having multiple blocks helps us get away as well. In the end it might be ineffective, but you never know until you try it.