Guild Wars 2

So over the course of the beta, with the unfortunately limited time I had I dug deep into Well Support, blending it with the lockdown I’m already familiar with to create an interesting style that stayed familiar with what I’m already good at (lockdown & support) while adding a new layer (Alacrity/Wells). The result was this build:

Tik Tok
(Totally not the real name. Please don’t call me Chao$)

Dom / Chaos / Chrono
- Confounding Suggestions , Shattered Concentration , Power Block
- Master of Manipulation, Chaotic Dampening, Chaotic Interruption
- Alls Well, Improved Alacrity, Chronophantasma

I’ve got a lot to write about and little time this week, unfortunately, but I wanted to atleast get the thread up and post the videos of duels/gameplay with this build. So far I’m liking it a lot, but there’s a slight damage lack that.. could easily be fixed with Greatsword had I been so inclined.

NOTES

• I LOVE all the AoE I provided. Call me the Mesmerentalist, because I was almost never never without an obnoxious clock beneath my feet.
• Lack of DE takes getting used to, but Chronophantasma is deceptively good strong illusion production when combined with Shield.
• Damage is lacking a bit when Well of Calamity doesn’t land, but it is a support build.
• The lockdown is way strong. Well of Action & Calamity make excellent control wells.

VIDEOS

duels vs Revenant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlad7H3kQpU

duels vs Tempest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v79G5_Ipo58

duels vs Reaper (coming for you Holts!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RA4WRF-XOE

RANKED match vids

FINAL THOUGHTS
(Coming soon)

I assume you skipped over Delayed Reactions because this is intended to be a teamfight-oriented build (though most of your vids are duels…), right? Still, I’m kind of curious if the additional Slow source could be worthwhile.

Seeing an interrupt-oriented build that doesn’t have MoD or Pistol is weird, though. It also means that CS is mostly going to proc at random against enemies in Chaos Storm, which seems weird. (Not that there’s a better Adept choice in Dom anyway, but still.)

I woulda taken delayed reactions, but the key focus of the build is the wells and what they provide. It’s actually possible well support could be a thing in pvp, so I was more interested in exploring the possibilities there. This build is actually very similar to the chrono-lock build with only slight adjustments to traits/utilities.

Chaos storm is the only random interrupt in this build. CS is almost always procced by stagger-shattered Diversion (sending 3 clones at different distance to shatter one after another for a series of dazes) and with Alacrity + Chaotic Dampening, Chaos Storm returns nearly every other weaponswap.

The main reason for interrupting, though, is Chaotic Interrupt, which was a big help with trapping people within wells. In one of the duels with the minion Reaped (which will be notated soon) I managed to chain-intrrupt someone and trap them inside of all three wells for their full duration. Insta-kill!

DUUUUUBE! I’ve got a two day weekend. Stop whatever it is you’re with your life that you think is important, and lets get some PvP on.

When you get your chrono back in your hands, you should dump that alacrity on my kshot war.

Just wanted to say I loved the vids! I had a great time with a similar build in group WvW and can’t wait to step in to PvP and try yours out.

The second group vid was “private” so I couldn’t see, but since it’s such a group-supportive build, first one was fantastic.

I’m really surprised how often folks stood in the shield stun wave and the wells. I wonder how much practice and display fixes (the big noticeable clock hands don’t always display…) will change the performance of the build.

Until then… I dig it

Kelthien.8593:

Just wanted to say I loved the vids! I had a great time with a similar build in group WvW and can’t wait to step in to PvP and try yours out.

The second group vid was “private” so I couldn’t see, but since it’s such a group-supportive build, first one was fantastic.

I’m really surprised how often folks stood in the shield stun wave and the wells. I wonder how much practice and display fixes (the big noticeable clock hands don’t always display…) will change the performance of the build.

Until then… I dig it

Avoiding that first shield wave might be (relatively) easy, but once you’re caught in it that second one comes back and reks you unless you take appropriate action.

I think the thing is, unlike so many other stun based attacks, the associated animation lets it just come out of nowhere. The wave is the only real thing you see.

Nice fights.

I noticed the Revenant/Reaper targeted your wells, forcing you to dodge out of them before they could proc the final effect.

PS: Please remove those bouncing chests I always want to click on them when watching the videos just to stop them

Can’t wait to check the videos out! Looks like an interesting concept.

Ooooh this was really fun to watch! I’ll be sure to try this next BWE, I didn’t get much time to use chronomancer last time since I was busy with reaper/herald/tempest, and pushing those specs to their limit.

But as someone who used to play well necro a lot, I can say that chronomancer wells have far more potential than just basic area denial and downcleave, and these videos show it. I like how you can take this build as an offensive support build and still have offesnsive tools like powerblock and boon rip to make due.

When I run this next time I might go full ham and take portal over blink. I feel like its utility is too good to give up on any build as long as the game mode rewards good rotations and mobility.

The duels were fun to watch. My biggest take away from them was that wells are fantastic area-denial which helps to set up your skill rotation. The Reaper was amazingly good at keeping you poisoned which really hurt the heal. Lastly, smart players will lay their AOEs on top of your wells in order to “even the playing field” so to speak.

Observations:

• Well of Eternity’s weakness shined bright a few times when you really didn’t have any on-demand burst heal. Any other heal, even Mirror, would have provided more of a clutch heal, because you won’t always be able to time it so that you gain the additional AOE heal. I really like this heal though. It seems pretty well-balanced. It’d be neat if this well gave Resistance instead of Vigor.
• Moving nicely onto the issue of conditions, you didn’t face many condition users besides an engi and the revenant, the latter which gave you a little trouble in terms of positioning. Your rune choice undoubtedly helps against this. However, considering that Wells require you to sit within a point (either the actual node or the well itself), how do you work around this? Like most Mesmer builds, this might just be an innate weakness.
• Your skill recharge times from the Alacrity was amazing. Astonishing even. There weren’t many times where you were without clone generation thanks to Alacrity and Chronophantasm. While it’s hard to gauge, I think your allies gained a lot from Alacrity as well. I saw a lot of purple fire!
• Nice use of Continuum Shift. I noticed you mostly used it to keep your elite handy at all times. You seemed a little gun shy with using it though. With the amount of Alacrity you’re pumping into yourself, I think you could afford to use Gravity Well more often.
• Overall fantastic support, especially to your bunkers and point-holders. I noticed this mostly with your guardian on Khylo. Great job on Tik Tok!