Guild Wars 2

Just wandering if you guys thing Assassins or Zerker will be meta with the chronomancer in pve. Every 5 critical hits you can slow the enemy for two seconds. You then can get 30% critical hit chance against slowed enemies. This combined with furry makes it so you can easily get to 100% without the extra precision. However, is it too situational? Should chronomancers still use assassins or zerker? Will it depend on the dungeon or event?

The usefulness of this in PvE is yet to be established. I could see swapping out a couple of Assassin pieces for Zerk, if perma-slowing enemies ends up being a thing. (I suspect it won’t be a thing, though.)

For PvP, you’ve still got to land the five crits before your +30% crit comes online. Or else land a slow from some other means. And also trust that it won’t get cleansed. Which it probably won’t, since apparently most PvPers can’t even be bothered to slot a stun break, never mind condition cleanse. But Marauder will probably be the amulet of choice regardless, as it currently is for all non-condi Mesmer builds at the moment. Best case, this could let us swap out Sigil of Air for something else.

It will depend a lot on the role the chronomancer will take. Depending on how useful alacrity is, “Improved Alacrity” may be stronger than “Danger Time”. “Chronophantasma” can also give a strong boost to DPS, which may be better than “Lost Time”. If this is so, assassin will remain better. Else, Danger Time + Lost time may dispense the need for more crits.

There are three major caveats:

1. What is your slow uptime? The GM trait got heavily nerfed, so it takes 6 hits (5crits+1hit) to apply 2s of slow. It’s not that easy to get 5 crits every 2 seconds. You can’t rely on the interrupt-slow either for all the same reasons you can’t rely on interrupts in general for dps purposes—because bosses and champs are not interruptable.

2. Will slow continue to be a non-defiance cc? It’s extremely powerful, and chronomancers chaining slow will conceivably be enough of an issue to call down Anet’s nerfbat, at which point you get exactly 0% extra crit chance on bosses and champs.

3. Assassin’s is only meta because of reflects. What percentage of the time are the enemies you are reflecting also going to be slowed? AoE slow isn’t all that easy to come by, so reflecting from multiple enemies still benefits more from Assassin’s.

Unless they seriously overhaul the sources of Mesmer damage, it will never make it in the PvE meta over Guardian, as the current state, which is the only slot we ‘compete’ for, the reflect/quickness slot. I seriously doubt they’ll give us enough group Quickness to make up for the loss of damage of bringing a Mesmer over a Guardian.

Slow is a troubling condition, You don’t want it going off in a reflect fight, as you slow down your damage caused by reflects. You don’t want it against creatures and mobs that have channeled defensive skills as it lengthens the time blocked. It’s one of the only conditions that can be a straight up determent for your allies. Right along side of Fear screwing with stacking, and cripple for Dredge Fractal Booss, It also can screw up people who already know the telegraphed attacks of bosses, and dodge ‘early’ because the enemy is slowed, and if conditions EVER become good to use in PvE, the last thing I’d want is to slow my Confusion ticks down 50%.

Aside from that, I don’t think Alacrity will be a decent ‘Buff’. Do we even know if it can be shared by inspiration? Will it count as a ‘Boon’ for purposes of Boon Removal, or "Increased Damage when under X amount of Boons’? We know Boon Duration doesn’t effect it, for -some- reason, and most abilities grant an insignificant duration of it.

It won’t amount to much in the ‘meta’ which fights last 10 seconds, and bosses rarely last 30 seconds.

(Ascalon Fractal Boss for example, Or go to Spvp and get slowed and do a blurred frenzy, and who knows what channeled defensive mechanics they’ll have in HoT.)

I disagree with you thetarot. It seems that with wells + time-warp-F5, we can have an amazing quickness uptime! If you want more, you can shatter and boonshare. Then you can boost somewhat damage with alacrity (more hundred blades?). Even if we reduce our DPS to 0 (which we won’t, we are “only” half the DPS of the best professions), the DPS increase from the 4 others will be higher (less than 50% higher). Technically, assuming we are half the DPS of one other toon, by maintaining quickness on both of you, you would already mostly compensate for the DPS loss. So with 4 other people in the party…

Silverkey.2078:

I disagree with you thetarot. It seems that with wells + time-warp-F5, we can have an amazing quickness uptime! If you want more, you can shatter and boonshare. Then you can boost somewhat damage with alacrity (more hundred blades?). Even if we reduce our DPS to 0 (which we won’t, we are “only” half the DPS of the best professions), the DPS increase from the 4 others will be higher (less than 50% higher). Technically, assuming we are half the DPS of one other toon, by maintaining quickness on both of you, you would already mostly compensate for the DPS loss. So with 4 other people in the party…

Time Warp has a terrible cooldown. F5 like Time Warp, has a long cooldown.
Quickness on Shatter requires set up for clones for decent duration Quickness, F5 requires set up of clones for decent duration Continuum, and who knows how much HP that portal will have. My bet is it’ll be cleaved the second it drops. – and if it’s not on a group stack, your group will be upset for screwing up the stacking once it ends.

Compare it to Feel My Wrath which is half the duration, and potentially less than 6 times the cooldown. (30/24 when traited)

Guardian’s can already maintain the Quickness for Trash fights. Improving the damage of 4 viable damage dealers by almost 50% is good, Improving the damage of 5 viable damage dealers is better. Particularly one that can group things up even in an open field.

Trash fights in which that can be freely used, Where as Time Warp cannot, and Well’s quickness trigger after 3 seconds. That fight, with a guardian, who does better damage than us, is probably over.

There is the case of Shattering grants Quickness, followed up by Inspiration Signet or the Inspiration Signet on Phantasm use Trait, However Mesmer’s quickness only truly shines during boss fights that will last more than 10 seconds. Most time spent in a Fractal group, or dungeon for that matter, is running or killing unskippable trash, that’s in the way.

If you use F5 to pop Time Warp only once (as opposed to back-to-back) you can basically get Time Warp on F5’s CD, which is 76.5s if traited, and less with Alacrity. Not bad, and remember it also Slows enemies.

So if treated you get 10 seconds of quickness every 76.5 seconds. This is .1307 seconds of quickness per second of cool down.
Guardians feel my wrath currently gives 5 seconds of quickness every 30 seconds. This is .3333 seconds of quickness per second of cool down.

.3333>.1307

So ya, Guardians elite skill will provide better quickness than the time warp when the chronomancer is traited. It may also slow enemies, but the shout gives furry.

Xstein.2187:

So if treated you get 10 seconds of quickness every 76.5 seconds. This is .1307 seconds of quickness per second of cool down.
Guardians feel my wrath currently gives 5 seconds of quickness every 30 seconds. This is .3333 seconds of quickness per second of cool down.

.3333>.1307

So ya, Guardians elite skill will provide better quickness than the time warp when the chronomancer is traited. It may also slow enemies, but the shout gives furry.

Bro, your math stinks.
5/30 = .167, not .33
Time Warp gives 11 seconds of quickness (11 pulses), so that’s .144.

Much closer, but Guardian still wins, right?

Oh, but you’re forgetting that new well!

3 seconds of quickness on a 30s cooldown, that’s .1
So between Well of Action and Time Warp, we’re up to .244
.244 > .167, so we’re done! Mesmer now officially has more group quickness than guardian. Oh, but that’s quite the investment for your group quickness! The new shatter skill, going chronomancer instead of a dps line, and occupying both an elite and a utility slot!
Fortunately, both the well and TW also give that wonderful new condition called slow, TW can be traited to give resistance and super speed (eat that, guardians!), and you can do other things during continuum split than just drop Time Warp.

Hmmm, do we have any more?
You bet your britches we do.
4s of quickness on a 30s cooldown via shatter+Seize the Moment + Signet of Inspiration.
That’s another 4/30=.133
But! If you forgo the glamour trait, you can do it twice with Illusionary Inspiration! So that’s another .133
That takes us up to .1+.144+.133+.133=.51
Hrm, is there more….yep.

Over in the dom tree we find a trait that gives 20% off inscription cds.
So shatter-boonshare is up to 4/24=.167!
.1+.144+.167+.167=.578

Guardians can trait too, of course, so 5/24=.208

.578 >> .208.
What’s more, the guardian’s quickness uptime only happens in 5s spurts. Mesmer can lay down all their uptime in one big burst if they need to. That’s 11+3+4+4=22s of continuous quickness.

Maybe we don’t want to give up resistance and superspeed on Time Warp, though, because that’s one of the things that makes it better than Feel My Wrath.

Traiting Temporal Enchanter instead of Illusionary Inspiration loses .167 of our uptime, but gains us 2 more seconds on TW, which takes TW up to 13/76.5=.17
For those keeping track, that means glamour-traited TW gives more quickness uptime than untraited Feel My Wrath.
In fact, signet-traited shatter quickness is also better than untraited Feel My Wrath.
The fact that we can have both is just gravy at this point.

Chronomancer wins the quickness battle by a landslide.

Also worth noting that if you really want to, you can lay down a whopping 13+13+3+4 =33 second of continuous quickness by using Time Warp on its actual cooldown after the continuum shift, sacrificing long-term uptime for a temporary burst.

And as regards fury, do you really think the group can’t keep 100% uptime on fury without Feel My Wrath?
Plz, Fury be EZ.

(BTW, if we want to be reeeaaaalllly silly, we could get 100% group quickness uptime by getting to 73% boon duration, but to get there we have to start equipping givers gear and platinum doubloons and such.
As it is, a minimal investment in boon duration consumables gets you to 1.3 boon duration, boosting sustainable quickness uptime to .7529, or having party quickness 75.29% of the time.

Lastly, sorry for the continued caveats, but none of the above accounts for Alacrity.)

I like how people fail to point out, or acknowledge, every single one of mesmer quickness. Aside from Shield (Which won’t be great in a group stacking situation, because that’s usually against a wall) Requires set up. Multiple clones, which means combat has already started. Set up and cast time, MATTER. Wells trigger after 3 seconds. Again, F5 will too, require set up, and include leaving behind a portal like killable structure to end it early. Which we again we do not know it’s HP.

If the current meta is any indication, Sword+Focus/Shield/Sword/Pistol will still be the PvE meta. – In which case you can ‘quickly’ produce 2 clones. Three if you double dodge. You won’t be wanting to use your phantasm if you plan to boon share. As even any stray boon will cause the Phantasm inspiration signet to share boons thus waste the duration before you actually want to share.

Mesmer is the hardest class to gauge ‘on paper’ as it has been for almost three years now. Guardians too, can stack boon duration Guardians can also reduce the recharge of their Elite by 6 seconds. How’s that ratio looking on quickness up time now? With one button press, Not 4-6 and enemy actions can lower the duration.

Ratios of Quickness are great and everything, On Paper, a real situation involves waiting for wells to trigger, producing clones, enemies cleaving down clones before a 3 clone shatter. Inspiration through phantasm being wasted because you have other boons.

Yes, Mesmer’s quickness on bosses that last more than 10 seconds will be vastly superior. Most fights are not boss fights, and they are trash mob fights. – It doesn’t matter if you’re giving 10 seconds of quickness after a 3 second setup. If 5 seconds of that duration happened after the fight ended, and the other half was 3 seconds late.

Slow is a terrible condition, it is almost completely useless in all forms of PvE of the current content, whether or not it will be useful in HoT remains to be seen. In a PvP situation, Yeah, it’s great. No argument here.

To answer a question posed earlier:

Alacrity is not a boon, it is a buff. It can not be extended with boon duration, nor shared, nor stripped. Whether it can stack in duration is currently unknown.

He also left out Signet of inspiration’s cast time and then for the trait proc you need to add in the cast time for the phantasm summon, which eat into how much quickness you’re sharing. Also, will we be getting all of the quickness the moment we press the shatter, or do we need to wait for all our illusions to run into range to actually shatter to get the quickness? Which would basically mean -1 sec of shared quickness/ranged illusion. In practice, you’d be looking at closer to 1-3 secs of shared quickness w/o boon duration food/runes depending on your weapons and personal reaction speed.

Boon duration also seems to have no effect on Time warp. It just refreshes the quickness every pulse.

sorry bro, did it correctly before. I quickly just went to google calculator and must have accidentally typed 10 instead of 5. My bad, I rushed it. However, I knew I did it correct before and got more quickness out of the guardians elite (I mentioned the .167 number before in a different post). So add traited to my statement before guardian.

A traited Guardians elite skill will provide better quickness than the time warp when the chronomancer is traited.

There we go, .208>.17

Sorry, now this should be a correct statement.
Never was arguing that the chronomancer couldn’t provide more quickness than the guardian. I was only talking about the elite skills in my answer. I also did not take the retaliation and super speed into consideration.

Note, these explanations are just my personal opinions. Opinions may vary based on the person and situation.

In pve 12 slow every 76.5 sec = 20 seconds of furry every 48 seconds
My opinion is that slow can help and it can also be detrimental in pve as many have pointed out before. However, people mostly care about dps so in the end furry beats out slow for the party as a whole for fast runs. Not saying the group can’t provide furry anyway. However, based on the stats given, I think its a fair trade and they are viewed as equal by the party.

short duration and short cool down = long duration and long cool down
My opinion is one big burst vs two small bursts makes up for the situations like today when you have to carry time warp when its off of cool down and not use it because if you use it on this small mob, it won’t be off cool down for the finale boss.

Then we have the 22.35294118% faster cool down rate/sec quickness. lol did my calculations on an actual calculator this time. Hopefully I did it right this time, sorry for before, I think (.2235294118 X .17)+.17 = .208 is correct.
So as I mentioned before, I did not take the resistance and super speed into account. However, I still believe 3 seconds of resistance and 2 seconds of super speed every 76.5 seconds does not make up for the 22.35% faster cool down. Everyone is free to make their own opinions. However, once again, I believe most groups care more about dps, making them believe feel my wrath is a better choice as an elite skill than time warp.

p.s. I was not talking about quickness provided by the class as a whole. My answer was directed towards OP who mentioned the quickness and slow were not bad when using continuum shift. I just mentioned that time warp with continuum shift would still provide less quickness for the cool down than feel my wrath and they both provide extra effects. Therefore, I think the shout is too powerful, as it should not provide more quickness than the elite skill of the chronomancer and a TON more quickness than the mesmer.

At the current state, Mesmer elite <<<<<<<< Guardian elite, which I believe should not be the case.

Chronomancer can do some insane things with mimic as well, which will be nice. Chronomancer will provide more quickness overall. However, their elite will not, which is sad imo and should not be the case. I also don’t think they should make the mesmers elite so much weaker than the guardian. I’m curious how many mesmers or chronomancers would take feel my wrath over time warp.

@Mikkel
I did try boonshare during time warp, and I saw my allies who instead of going from 1s to 0s quickness every seconds went from 2s to 1s every second, so it does stack in some way.

@thetarot
Most of the time is not really spent fighting trash but running from trash to trash. Chronomancer is now plain faster than guardian. During a 2-3s trash fight, the time gained by a higher DPS is very close to 0.

Also, on some bosses, slow is powerful like the example DnT gave where it prevented Lupicus to go in its second phase or something like this I believe.

Xstein.2187:

At the current state, Mesmer elite <<<<<<<< Guardian elite, which I believe should not be the case.

That is only true in PvE. In PvP the slow is amazing also, so mesmer elite is a temporary game changer while the guardian elite is more of a utility (for stomp and rez mostly) than an elite.

Yes, that is my opinion as well, that Feel My Wrath is too powerful at the current cooldown.

Furthermore, all the extra quickness uptime I cited is not just subject to teatarot’s caveats, but it’s only available to the Chronomancer.

Any other mesmer build is stuck with 11-13s of quickness on a 180s cooldown, which is just terrible.
Meanwhile, any guardian can pick up 5s on a 30s cooldown for lolzquickness and no downsides.

Silverkey.2078:

@thetarot
Most of the time is not really spent fighting trash but running from trash to trash. Chronomancer is now plain faster than guardian.

Also, on some bosses, slow is powerful like the example DnT gave where it prevented Lupicus to go in its second phase or something like this I believe.

Faster, How? The 25% run speed? 33% Run speed from swiftness + Leaps are ‘faster’. Who has easier access to swiftness, and can easily maintain it 100% by itself, emphasized further by if it goes into Boon Duration and Swiftness from other players, and preparing blink and portal will cut into your quickness sharing when you do reach that boss.

Portaling a group is all well and good, but then you’re just a glorified taxi, Show me a group that wants to wait 80 seconds while portal gets off cooldown so you can swap it out to something useful for a boss fight. If you do wait, well then, You’re pretty much better off running without portal, and without the mesmer.

I fail to see how it’s powerful on a very specific case where the Mesmer’s reflects (Namely Feedback) are vastly superior to the Guardians. Phase 2 is where Mesmer’s shine the most. They always have, slow adds nothing. This does not emphasize the power of slow. People have already murderhoboed the guy down in 10-14 seconds because of feedback, before slow was even a thing.

and if people truly just want to break speed run records. At the cost of gold, Simply replace Mesmer with a faster class. Perhaps on a thief, for skips, with a Watchwork Portal Device.

thetarot.8246:

Aside from that, I don’t think Alacrity will be a decent ‘Buff’. Do we even know if it can be shared by inspiration? Will it count as a ‘Boon’ for purposes of Boon Removal, or "Increased Damage when under X amount of Boons’? We know Boon Duration doesn’t effect it, for -some- reason, and most abilities grant an insignificant duration of it.

Alacrity is not a boon, so it can’t be shared by Signet of Inspiration; it also can’t be stripped by boon-stripping, or converted into a condition by boon corruption, or anything else that happens to boons. It’s like Quickness was at launch—an effect separate from the boon mechanic.

I get the impression that Alacrity is for the Chronomancer, not for the Chronomancer’s allies. You’re very limited on how much Alacrity you can apply to other players. There are only two ways: Well of Recall, which grants three seconds of Alacrity to allies who stay in the well for the whole time (which equals about two seconds of cooldown reduction), and the shield phantasm. The shield phantasm will definitely not be used in PvE, barring a major overhaul of group PvE dynamics, because it doesn’t do damage. Even if it did, the Alacrity it grants is out of the Chronomancer’s control and comes in insignificant durations.

So, in practice, it’s just Well of Recall. You can reduce everyone’s cooldowns by two seconds every 45 seconds. Woo-hoo.

Chronomancers have a few other ways of applying Alacrity to themselves due to traits, but still in short bursts. It’s basically a neat little trick for the Chronomancer and an extremely minor consideration for the Chronomancer’s allies.

I don’t understand why the traits the traits flow of time and improved alacrity only apply to you. They should apply to 5 allies as well.

continuum split, mimic, well of recall, well of recall, continuum shift, mimic, well of recall, well of recall —> 12 seconds of alacrity, but then you have to wait another 45 seconds to even use the skill once again.

Xstein.2187:

I don’t understand why the traits the traits flow of time and improved alacrity only apply to you. They should apply to 5 allies as well.

continuum split, mimic, well of recall, well of recall, continuum shift, mimic, well of recall, well of recall —> 12 seconds of alacrity, but then you have to wait another 45 seconds to even use the skill once again.

On the other hand, you get the extra personal alacrity even if another chronomancer gave it to you.
5 Chronomancers using Well of Recall with Improved Alacrity:
4s of alacrity per well, 4*5=20 seconds of alacrity
.66*20=13.2 seconds of cooldown reduction from WoR,
putting the first chrono’s well at 45-20-13.2=11.8s left

If those Chronomancers do one synced 3-illusion shatter,
That’s 5.32s more alacrity apiece, for 5.32*.66=3.51s cooldown,
Putting us at 11.8-5.32-3.51=2.97s left
One more 1-illusion shatter will do it, giving us 2.66s of alacrity, which gives 1.76s off cooldowns, giving us 1.kitten to spare, leaving the group at 100% alacrity uptime.

The only requirements on the group at this point are:

• Everyone is a chronomancer with Improved Alacrity and Well of Recall slotted.
• Everyone does at least one 3-illusion shatter and one 1-illusion shatter in a 26 second period (or 2 + 2, or 2 +1 + 1).
• If alacrity from different sources doesn’t stack, everyone has to time their wells and shatters extremely well (or shatter more).

Do note that mathematically, while it might seem that 100% alacrity = 66% cdr, that’s not the case.
cooldown – time – .66*time = 0 => cooldown = time + .66*time = 1.66*time
=> time = cooldown/1.66
cdr = (cooldown – time)/cooldown => cdr = (cooldown – (cooldown/1.66))/cooldown = cooldown*(1 – (1/1.66))/cooldown = (1 – 1/1.66) = .4

So 100% Alacrity = 40% cooldown reduction on all skills.

In short, a 5-chronomancer party with good timing, Improved Alacrity and a dedicated utility slot can theoretically accomplish 40% cooldown reduction 100% of the time.

At the risk of drawing Anet’s nerfbat:
Can 5 chronomancers make up for not having any meta builds???
I really don’t know, but here’s some thought-provoking numbers for the 100%-alacrity team:

Continuum Split now has a 46s cooldown, putting Time Warp at 11s per 46s, or 23.9% uptime.
If every chronomancer slots Time Warp, they can have 55s of Time Warp per 46s, or 100% Time Warp uptime with some spillover.
If the chronos are all traited for Glamours, we’ve actually got 65s Time Warp per 46s (141%), and 10s super speed and 15s resistance per 46s (21.7% and 32.6% respectively).

So now we have 40% cdr and 50% action speed on a 100% uptime, as long as we stay in one place.

As a nice bonus, enemies in melee with us are perma-slowed and nearly perma-chilled.

Time Warp and Well of Recall being ethereal fields also gives us the opportunity to have a LOT of chaos armor uptime, maybe?

Signet of Inspiration drops to a 14.4s cooldown with Blurred Inscriptions. With Inspiration on all 5, that’s 5s of distortion every 15s or so. Traiting Illusionary Inspiration from there takes it up to 10s of distortion every 15s, for 66.7% distortion uptime.
Distortion is now down to 26.1s, so we can add at least 5s every 26s, which is an added 19.2% uptime, for 85.8% total distortion uptime.
If 5 mesmers with Inspiring Distortion all hit Distortion at the same time, does the distortion shared via Inspiring Distortion stack with the distortion gained from Distortion itself? If so, that could put us at 100% distortion uptime, for permanent invulnerability, 40% cdr and 50% action speed.
Meanwhile, since we’re activating Signet of Inspiration every 7.2s or so, we’re sharing a lot of boons, so I’ll bet we get to 25 might and 100% fury pretty easily.
Can our group of super-fast, Invulnerable mesmers deal enough damage to be worth all this effort? I really don’t know, since we’ve gone down Inspiration, Illusions and Chronomancer—not exactly the highest-octane skill lines. And Improved Alacrity precludes taking Danger Time—a shame since our enemies are 100% slowed now.

With Mimic down to 43.2s (with Master of Manipulations), we can skip the need for Alacrity from Shatters, since that gets us 20s of alacrity every 43s, or 10s of alacrity every 22s, which is more than enough to cover the gap.
Alternatively, Mimic might let us forgo Improved Alacrity. Some quick numbers suggests doing so might raise the required shatter-level by one, so we’d need 5 levels of shatter every cycle instead of 4. It may be possible to time the mimics just right so that’s not necessary, but since mimic’s adjusted cd is still longer than our cycle, that timing would be really tough.

As another alternative, you can go with something other than Illusions, since on a 90s cd, Continuum Split is still short enough for 100% Time Warp uptime (.6*90=54, 5*11=55), so that opens up some room for a more damaging trait line.

Looking back at my numbers, it occurs to me that with 100% alacrity, Mind Wrack will be on a 6.3s cooldown, so you can MW shatter 4x every cycle anyway, which fulfills our shatter requirements without any clones needed at all.

What other clever tricks can people think of with this setup?

There’s not even the most remote chance that 5 chronomancers could make up for not having eles/warriors/engineers(highest sustained dps now).

Our damage is so hilariously low it’s painful. Quick bit of bearbow math…

Let’s assume every wrack you do hits for 4k a clone. It probably won’t, but it might. This means every 6 seconds you’re doing 16k damage from shatters.

In a phantasm build, your pSwordsmen will easily hit 6k every attack. They attack once every 4ish seconds. This means that every 6 seconds, the 3 pSwordsmen will be doing about 20k damage.

Even in a perfect situation of 100% uptime on 3 phantasms, our dps lags significantly behind what eles and engies can do with no strings attached. Shatters with permanent alacrity will do significantly less than that.

Fay.2357:

There’s not even the most remote chance that 5 chronomancers could make up for not having eles/warriors/engineers(highest sustained dps now).

Our damage is so hilariously low it’s painful. Quick bit of bearbow math…

Let’s assume every wrack you do hits for 4k a clone. It probably won’t, but it might. This means every 6 seconds you’re doing 16k damage from shatters.

In a phantasm build, your pSwordsmen will easily hit 6k every attack. They attack once every 4ish seconds. This means that every 6 seconds, the 3 pSwordsmen will be doing about 20k damage.

Even in a perfect situation of 100% uptime on 3 phantasms, our dps lags significantly behind what eles and engies can do with no strings attached. Shatters with permanent alacrity will do significantly less than that.

• You’ve gotta account for personal dps too, which is where the 40% cdr and 100% quickness makes a bigger difference.
• It’s also possible we might be able to get the alacrity running on the phantasms.
• Chronophantasma means you can mix some phantasm damage in there, too. Alacrity = better phantasm generation, chronophantasma = coexisting phants and shatters.

I’m not saying you don’t have a point on the raw dps of ele/warr/engi, but you’re being unusually pessimistic here, Pyro. This is our opportunity to try, and you just wanna go be a sad sack. I’m disappointed.

Heck, the perma-distortion team can bring Signet of Ether along for the ride and keep it on cooldown for super-phant uptime. It’s not like we need the healing, with 100% distortion uptime.

Personal dps certainly will increase, but there’s a few things to consider.

Firstly, our autoattacks are pretty bad, and our other skills (aka, blurred frenzy) don’t do appreciably more damage than the autoattack (5% iirc), that makes the CDR have little effect on our dps. Quickness certainly helps, but you have to consider that a single Chronomancer can provide 100% uptime on quickness for the duration of most normal fights. You don’t need quickness forever, just long enough, and other classes benefit far far more from quickness than we personally do.

I’m certainly interested in exploring different methods of dps and trying to see what else Mesmer can do in PvE. However, I’m not going to entertain delusions about mesmers replacing the real dps classes in a serious PvE group. It could be fun for sure, but it’s not going to be even remotely optimal.

I haven’t done the math yet but we definitely got an increase in dps and utility because of our new F5 skill. Although yes the cool down is long we don’t really need it for trash mobs and having a Mesmer in the party no doubt ups the party’s dps because of quickness. Also because of the new F5, with an ele in the party we can all use our favorite speed run dungeon skill twice… The broken ice bow #4. Now although mesmers aren’t the ideal profession to be using an ice bow damage wise I think the chronomancer may be better than our standard dps thief. This is because when you use an IB 4 (ice bow 4), you are no doubt doing more damage than your standard rotation especially since after your done casting, damage from the IB4 is still doing damage. However during that cast time you aren’t doing any damage. So what does this have to do with anything? Mesmers dps is split up into about 40%/60% damage with 60% coming from your phantasms. So while you are casting IB4 you are also doing 60% of your damage while most classes (except for maybe guardians with symbols or ranger with pets, which are almost negligible) are doing no damage. Now combine that with being able to do it twice because of continuum split… I believe you will see some big burst damage coming out of the Mesmer. Plus if your party is good with defiance stripping after your second IB4 you theoretically should be able to get off a second deepfreeze. Just in case the boss isn’t dead yet. Also while testing i came up with a decent dps rotation which I will post at the end. now combine the fact that mesmers and bring reflects and long amounts of quickness and now some alacrity (6 seconds because of a continuum split/well of recall combo meaning you can use hundred blades faster, meaning you stack more might faster) it may be a contender for a meta speed clear group. Of course we all know after that rotation is over Mesmer dps is pretty much **** but we are just going to hope the boss is dead by then anyway. I’m not saying that because of this post Mesmers should be part of the meta, but it should at least be taken into consideration.

That was long. Now time for dps rotation. Some things to note: we are taking chronophantasma so after our F5 shatter we still have our phantasms up. Also I am using s/f s/s build. Let me know what you guys think:

1.Warden phantam
2.Swap weapons
3. Swordsman phantasm
4.Signet of ether
5.swordsman phantasm
6.(Wait about 1/4 sec for your third phantasm it land attack)
7.F5 shatter
8. Time warp
9. Ice bow #4
10. Drop wells here if you have them, if now use ice bow 3
(At this time you will be running out of time for continuum split)
11. Deep freeze if defiance is down
12. Drop wells again
13. Ice bow #4 it finish boss off

Also note in this rotation it helps to bring along mantra of distraction to help strip some defiance. Only using it in the middle of casting other skills.