Guild Wars 2

I’m seeing most chronomancers in pvp running a chrono mantra build and I can’t figure out why. Chrono doesnt recharge mantras and they’re not effected by alacrity too much so why am I seeing so many? What am I missing? Is it not needing de for clones? But then the survive or damage goes down since you can only then bring inspiration or domination but not both since dueling is being taken? Can some one please enlighten me?

How many mantras? If it’s Mantra of Distraction then it’s just Lockdown.

Chrono lockdown (clockdown) is a fairly strong build to make a mess in a team fight.
And mantras are still improved by alacrity! Sure F5 is not great with mantras, but alacrity recharges the CD between the charges (5s for distraction becomes down to 3) and before loading (20s for distraction I believe, which makes 12s in the optimal case).

Dondagora.9645:

How many mantras? If it’s Mantra of Distraction then it’s just Lockdown.

It’s usually the heal, distraction and pain.

Hooglese.4860:

Dondagora.9645:

How many mantras? If it’s Mantra of Distraction then it’s just Lockdown.

It’s usually the heal, distraction and pain.

Each for their own reason, I would imagine.
Heal because there’s a preexisting dogma that mantra heal is the only heal worth having. This is silly, of course, but it’s based on the fact that Mantra heal still does the best heal-per-second.

Distraction because interrupts and lockdown. This is a staple of many pvp builds.

Pain because of ranged aoe damage, and having competitive dps with sword. Pain still doesn’t make a lot of sense on a pvp build, but you do see it in WvW where mesmers struggle with tagging.

In fact…are you sure this is sPvP, not WvW? In WvW you could be adding some aoe to your heals with all mantras via Inspiration, tagging with Mantra of Pain, and daze/interrupts with Mantra of Distraction.

As for legitimate reasons, I could kind of see a front-loaded chrono build that relies on ending fights fast with a two-burst setup. Unlike the classic shatter mesmer, which tries to hit you with a sudden burst and finish you off with follow-up before you can recover, this one would plan for two bursts, a sort of one-two punch.

Drop the opening shatter+everything burst, use Mantra of Distraction to interrupt recovery efforts, Mantra of Recovery to stay alive while your alacrity works to bring your cooldowns back up.
By the time your MW is back, you’re up to full illusions again, you’ve got more stacks of Harmonious Mantras, more stacks of Vulnerability, and you unload your entire battery again, adding in Mantra of Pain. The second hit is significantly harder than the first, but the first was just softening them up for the second blow.

Such a build would be Dom/Duel/Chrono, I think. MW cooldown would be 7.2s, I don’t know if that’s too long for the plan to work, or if the loss of the element of surprise isn’t worth that, or if Distraction just won’t be enough to keep them from recovering/bugging out.

First off: The meta is still settling. While I can see, that healing mantra might be useable as a chronomancer (e.g. improved access to quickess for the channeling), I still don’t think it will prevail.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Pain because of ranged aoe damage, and having competitive dps with sword. Pain still doesn’t make a lot of sense on a pvp build, but you do see it in WvW where mesmers struggle with tagging.

In fact…are you sure this is sPvP, not WvW? In WvW you could be adding some aoe to your heals with all mantras via Inspiration, tagging with Mantra of Pain, and daze/interrupts with Mantra of Distraction.

In SPvP Mantra of Pain has absolutely no place in the top tiers (if you don’t care about top tier, play with whatevery build you have most fun with).

In Zergsfights (WvW and PvE) this might be different.

Teutos.8620:

In SPvP Mantra of Pain has absolutely no place in the top tiers (if you don’t care about top tier, play with whatevery build you have most fun with).

In Zergsfights (WvW and PvE) this might be different.

Yeah, that’s what I meant. This really sounds like something spotted in WvW, not sPvP.

It’s definitely spvp. >.> oh well I guess to each there own. It just confuses me

I really like that mantra loadout for burst, but even so I would have trouble justifying it with Chrono even in wvw – it really uses Dom/duel/insp heavily and pain doesn’t pay off well in spvp

That said, it could be a strange bunker build – alacrity and quickness make it very high heals per second, and it boosts toughness quite a bit. Might test something like that eventually…