Guild Wars 2

Continuum Shift (F5 estimated 80s+ CD) allows us to shatter our illusions to “displace” us from time. This effect allows us to cast freely, eat damage, and do whatever we want in an assumed 1-4 seconds until the effect ends, which then we’ll be reset to whatever state we were in before shattering, cooldowns/health reset and all.

This means we can literally use any skill(s) twice.

Alacrity is a new Chronomancer-specific resource that allows us to lower the cooldowns of our abilities. Mostly trait-focused, Alacrity works on Mesmers, their illusions, and even can be shared to allies in limited form. Alacrity will be gained through shatters, but it is hinted that there will be other ways to gain/grant it. ( Assuming interrupts, Phantasm summons, and on … Mantra charge? )

It is assumed this was the “something just as good” that was hinted before to make up for us only receiving an offhand. Are you happy with this or would you rather have gotten a new weapon besides shield?

They also said necro gets a new way to use death shroud , but they have a greatsword. Could be utilities I guess

Anyway! F5 is just so interesting it easily outweighs a far more build specific weapon for me .

Edit : I really like the shield choice anyway for the style

No offense, but I strongly dislike these numbers I keep seeing thrown out in different threads that have no basis other than per speculation based on current shatters’ cooldowns/durations.

Since it does something quite different than distortion, I don’t think assuming distortion duration per clone is necessarily what we’ll get.

Now, given its potential power, sure, I could see its duration being longer than distortion’s … but we have no information … so seeing hard numbers posted like facts chaps my butterflies.

I think the one ability we’ve been shown from the shield is already pretty darn good. If its other weapon skill is just as good, then I could see that alone justifying not being given a 2H weapon.

As I’ve stated before, there is an advantage in getting an 1H weapon over a 2H weapon in that you have more options for pairing those new weapon skills with other existing weapon skills while a 2H weapon has all of its weapon skills as a full set … no options there … all or nothing.

We don’t have enough information about the alacrity, continuum shift, etc. to really know … but the Shield is looking nice so far as are the high-level concepts for these.

I’d say, yes, I think what we’ve been given is looking just as good, if not better, than getting a 2H weapon.

Though I want a MH Pistol sometime :-p

Actually, I’m basing the duration on the pattern of all the shatters.

Mind Wrack/CoFrustration is 1, 2, or 3 bursts depending on clones.
Diversion is 1, 2, or 3 seconds of daze.
Distortion is 1, 2, or 3 seconds of invuln.

Its almost certain Continuum will follow suit. As for the cooldown time.. Yeah total guess. =P Alacrity seems pretty straightforward, but I’ll agree with you that that info on it, besides what it does is scarce. But the concept of a fresh Mesmer-only “boon” is rather unique.

Mind Wrack is direct damage … the damage per clone isn’t (dmg * X) where X is the number of clones … as the damage per clone goes down the more clones are involved … though total damage does increase overall.

Cry of Frustration stacks confusion … stacks are different than duration.

Diversion’s daze is not increased per clone. The only way to increase is with passive daze increase or proper positioning of your illusions so that they shatter >= daze_duration (base 1 second) apart.

Diversion is the only actual duration one between all of them.

Like I said, I understand what you’re basing it on … that doesn’t make it any more/less of an assumption.

Speculation, assumptions, etc. are great … when presented as such … when presented as facts … meh.

True enough, and edited the OP.

…You’re getting thrown into that I-told-you-so-thread too! Along with pyro, swish, and levetty!

I’m extremely happy with how Alacrity and F5 are looking, even though we don’t have any numbers yet. I’m even happy with how Shield is shaping up – it looks like it’ll be a solid compliment to our line-ups.

Would another mainhand be nice? Sure. Do I regret that the reveal doesn’t include a new mainhand? Absolutely not. Our Specialization is looking concrete so far.

@Chaos:
Lol. If you’re right, feel free to create that thread. I’ll have a good laugh from it too

You’ll have been right and I’ll be right that it was an assumption before then ;-)

I feel that’s different than the naysayers that are naysaying based on assumption :-/

Rampant assumptions … the new donkey nation.

Feels great being a list of people who gets to say I told you so.

I mean the blog did specifically say that they designed this without a weapon in mind and at first were going with a 2h.

Well, we must see first how it works. They have said that the shield a probably the F5 CDs are high. That forces you to stack Alacrity all time to be effective. You should be aware of that all the time. Not for all players.

But what scares me is the posibility of need too much time to make our combos with the new skills/F5. For example if you need 4s to complete a combo, you can be killed off several times before do it.

In any case, I’m waiting to the Twitch and curious.

I think your “I told you so” is based on something quite different than mine Levetty :-)

I can already “tell you so” that there are assumptions flying about ;-)

My logic is infallible … :-p

It’s not really comparable. Always on mechanics versus an optional new weapon I’m probably going to always choose the former.

Though I really would have liked another main-hand to help mix things up a bit.

This definitely makes up for no new main-hand for me.

I can’t wait to get more details on how it works.

I’d rather have a new main hand weapon.

For PvE I won’t use shield since Staff/GS works so well and for PvP I won’t sacrifice either Staff or Torch for the builds that I like to play.

So no, not even close to happy. Other classes will get the “just as good” anyway. We got shafted and everyone will see this once the rest of the classes have been revealed. Mark my words.

The problem is stated early offhand lets you choose options to pair with the mainhand but since we only have 2 mainhands we don’t have much of a choice.

New main hand weapon for sure.
Alacricy looks interesting, and hte new f5 shatter looks awesome. And I’m very happy about getting shields.
But we are in such terribly desperate need of a new main hand that I would forgo all of the above for one.

Arewn.2368:

New main hand weapon for sure.
Alacricy looks interesting, and hte new f5 shatter looks awesome. And I’m very happy about getting shields.
But we are in such terribly desperate need of a new main hand that I would forgo all of the above for one.

Yes I share this sentiment – I love all the info about the elite spec and am looking forward to play with it.

I would however have preferred a new main hand weapon instead – such as a MainHand Focus.

I don’t really know why they didn’t just give us a main hand to go along the shield offhand.

Other classes get a 2 handed weapon with 5 skills. It’s only natural to assume that you’ll give 5 new weapon skills to ALL classes, not just some of them.

Curunen.8729:

Arewn.2368:

New main hand weapon for sure.
Alacricy looks interesting, and hte new f5 shatter looks awesome. And I’m very happy about getting shields.
But we are in such terribly desperate need of a new main hand that I would forgo all of the above for one.

Yes I share this sentiment – I love all the info about the elite spec and am looking forward to play with it.

I would however have preferred a new main hand weapon instead – such as a MainHand Focus.

no mainhand focus is a stupid idea, if that was the other option than im glad they went with shield (which i hate) mainhand focus is so stupid i caan barey wrap my head around it

Leonhardt.8164:

Curunen.8729:

Arewn.2368:

New main hand weapon for sure.
Alacricy looks interesting, and hte new f5 shatter looks awesome. And I’m very happy about getting shields.
But we are in such terribly desperate need of a new main hand that I would forgo all of the above for one.

Yes I share this sentiment – I love all the info about the elite spec and am looking forward to play with it.

I would however have preferred a new main hand weapon instead – such as a MainHand Focus.

no mainhand focus is a stupid idea, if that was the other option than im glad they went with shield (which i hate) mainhand focus is so stupid i caan barey wrap my head around it

That’s your opinion – please don’t state is as “fact” that “mainhand focus is a stupid idea”, because there’s a fair few of us on here that like this idea, certainly more than people like yourself who seem to get seriously angry and outright hate the idea of mainhand focus.

I don’t like offhand pistol – I doubt I’d ever use mainhand pistol to any great extent. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s a stupid idea.

F5 will never be good because, in true ANet fashion, they had to a create a destroyable marker that enemies will make a priority target. Continuum Rifts will be AoE’d to hell the instant they appear, making the whole mechanic pointless. Enjoy your 1.5 minute+ recharge before you can even try again.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

F5 will never be good because, in true ANet fashion, they had to a create a destroyable marker that enemies will make a priority target. Continuum Rifts will be AoE’d to hell the instant they appear, making the whole mechanic pointless. Enjoy your 1.5 minute+ recharge before you can even try again.

Wait, is that how it works?

I was under the impression you pop F5, shatter clones and basically create a window when nothing that happens to you matters. When you use it again during that window, you revert to your original state. Didn’t read anything about creating something that can be destroyed.

Ramiel.4931:

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

F5 will never be good because, in true ANet fashion, they had to a create a destroyable marker that enemies will make a priority target. Continuum Rifts will be AoE’d to hell the instant they appear, making the whole mechanic pointless. Enjoy your 1.5 minute+ recharge before you can even try again.

Wait, is that how it works?

I was under the impression you pop F5, shatter clones and basically create a window when nothing that happens to you matters. When you use it again during that window, you revert to your original state. Didn’t read anything about creating something that can be destroyed.

It was explained in the Points of Interest – Episode 20: after the minute 35:20

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/655187027

And yes, it can be attacked and destroyed. And, of course, once destroyed… watch the video.

Reminder that Engineers gets a F5 added to their base class and then a 2hander for the specilisation.

Reminder that they are already talking about increasing cooldowns to blance out alacrity.

Zoser.7245:

Ramiel.4931:

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

F5 will never be good because, in true ANet fashion, they had to a create a destroyable marker that enemies will make a priority target. Continuum Rifts will be AoE’d to hell the instant they appear, making the whole mechanic pointless. Enjoy your 1.5 minute+ recharge before you can even try again.

Wait, is that how it works?

I was under the impression you pop F5, shatter clones and basically create a window when nothing that happens to you matters. When you use it again during that window, you revert to your original state. Didn’t read anything about creating something that can be destroyed.

It was explained in the Points of Interest – Episode 20: after the minute 35:20

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/655187027

And yes, it can be attacked and destroyed. And, of course, once destroyed… watch the video.

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, ANet manages to surprise me. What a disaster. I hope the Druid specialization is a nature spellcaster with plant pets, mesmer got shafted hard.

I look at these forums, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who’s happy with having mainhand sword. I have no desire for another mainhand, because the sword fits exactly what I want.

So to answer the question, yeah, I am happy with what ANet has shown us.

Ramiel.4931:

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, ANet manages to surprise me. What a disaster. I hope the Druid specialization is a nature spellcaster with plant pets, mesmer got shafted hard.

Giving a powerful skill a counter is being shafted? What? It lets you use your elite skill twice, what more can you ask for?

Knox.8462:

Ramiel.4931:

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, ANet manages to surprise me. What a disaster. I hope the Druid specialization is a nature spellcaster with plant pets, mesmer got shafted hard.

Giving a powerful skill a counter is being shafted? What? It lets you use your elite skill twice, what more can you ask for?

A new main-hand weapon?

Capricorn XI.4390:

I look at these forums, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who’s happy with having mainhand sword. I have no desire for another mainhand, because the sword fits exactly what I want.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. All the years I played GW1, I ached for Mesmers to be able to really use a sword outside of Illusionary Weapon shenanigans. If nothing else, GW2 realized that dream.

However, the doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be supplemented by a ranged power-based mainhand. It’s not one or the other, so stop presenting a false dichotomy.

Knox.8462:

Giving a powerful skill a counter is being shafted? What? It lets you use your elite skill twice, what more can you ask for?

It’s counter is its long recharge, and the fact that there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to make effective use of the reset. There was absolutely no need to create yet another point of failure. Anet has never learned from the mistakes of GW1, where being able to AoE down player created entities, like spirits or minions, made them useless in PvP. Having one of those randomly and pointlessly attached to Continuum Shift will make it completely unviable.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Capricorn XI.4390:

I look at these forums, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who’s happy with having mainhand sword. I have no desire for another mainhand, because the sword fits exactly what I want.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. All the years I played GW1, I ached for Mesmers to be able to really use a sword outside of Illusionary Weapon shenanigans. If nothing else, GW2 realized that dream.

However, the doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be supplemented by a ranged power-based mainhand. It’s not one or the other, so stop presenting a false dichotomy.

Did I ever say that we shouldn’t have a ranged power-based mainhand weapon? No. Did I say that everyone should play the same way I do? No. So please, don’t act so presumptuous. Chaos was asking an opinion-based question, and I answered it with my opinion

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

It’s counter is its long recharge, and the fact that there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to make effective use of the reset. There was absolutely no need to create yet another point of failure. Anet has never learned from the mistakes of GW1, where being able to AoE down player created entities, like spirits or minions, made them useless in PvP. Having one of those randomly and pointlessly attached to Continuum Shift will make it completely unviable.

A recharge is absolutely not a counter. This skill is easily one of the most powerful in the game. Even managing to get one skill insta-recharged before the node is destroyed is not to be sniffed at.

Capricorn XI.4390:

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Capricorn XI.4390:

I look at these forums, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who’s happy with having mainhand sword. I have no desire for another mainhand, because the sword fits exactly what I want.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. All the years I played GW1, I ached for Mesmers to be able to really use a sword outside of Illusionary Weapon shenanigans. If nothing else, GW2 realized that dream.

However, the doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be supplemented by a ranged power-based mainhand. It’s not one or the other, so stop presenting a false dichotomy.

Did I ever say that we shouldn’t have a ranged power-based mainhand weapon? No. Did I say that everyone should play the same way I do? No. So please, don’t act so presumptuous. Chaos was asking an opinion-based question, and I answered it with my opinion

Presumptious was speaking for everyone else on the forum and pretending you had the only contrasting view. Maybe don’t do that in future.

Knox.8462:

Ramiel.4931:

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, ANet manages to surprise me. What a disaster. I hope the Druid specialization is a nature spellcaster with plant pets, mesmer got shafted hard.

Giving a powerful skill a counter is being shafted? What? It lets you use your elite skill twice, what more can you ask for?

lets be honest, none of our elites are worth the long cool downs.

moa, fairly useless in PVE, easily dodged/interupted in pvp, with a long wind up time.
the new elite, CC+damage, easily defeated by a stun breaker (dmg isnt even that high, use a blurred frenzy)
and time warp, definately the best option. 50% faster AA basically, but 50% faster AA isnt really all that, and looks like there will soon be better ways to dispense quickness.

watching the stream i have a feeling at the end of the day, chronomancer is gonna be pretty weak, they sound very afraid of its potential right now, and will likely balance it accordingly.

however i like the f5/alacrity thing.
i probably wont use shield much though.

my feeling is that chronomancer will probably not be the hax omg spec at all. I think thats why they released it first. Start low, and build up.

Knox.8462:

Ramiel.4931:

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, ANet manages to surprise me. What a disaster. I hope the Druid specialization is a nature spellcaster with plant pets, mesmer got shafted hard.

Giving a powerful skill a counter is being shafted? What? It lets you use your elite skill twice, what more can you ask for?

I don’t want to use the same skill I’ve been using for 3 years twice.

I want to use a new god kitten thing altogether.

The new traits that we now know are shatter oriented (in the chronomancer spec). To help us to obtain Alacrity without sacrificing too much.

Perhaps, the key for those that don’t use shatters often or when is not desirable, even losing the cd reduction, is in the traits that we still don’t know.

alacrity and F5 sure sound interesting.. but I wonder how long their newness will carry them

not happy with the lack of a new decent main hand. it’s been a well known gripe for many mesmers for so long and it’s not being addressed. the fact the new weapon is an offhand even amplifies the problem, ie: too many cool offhands, too few mainhands to pair them with!

I’m actually in love with the new concept. Yes, I would have loved a new mainhand weapon – it’s what the class really needed. But I still really like how the Shield is turning out. A Phantasm summoning weapon that does more than just simply summon the Phantasm? Yes please. Never mind being able to do it twice quickly. I remember suggesting long ago that they make Phantasm skills do something other than just summon the phantasm, like iBerserker causing you to do a spin attack. I like the concept of an attack which creates a Phantom image that repeats itself.

As to Continuum Shift – it’s really good. Yes, it’s got a built in counter but it’s a counter you can control. They said they wanted to bring back some skill to Mesmer play and this is one aspect of it. By knowing the potential counter to your skill you can use it to your advantage. Drop your CF and then lay into whomever tries to attack it with reckless abandon – or hell, just gravity well them twice. It’ll take a lot of their CDs to ignore two of those. Don’t treat having your CF destroyed as a lose condition – treat it as an opportunity to position your enemies.

phys.7689:

lets be honest, none of our elites are worth the long cool downs.

moa, fairly useless in PVE, easily dodged/interupted in pvp, with a long wind up time.
the new elite, CC+damage, easily defeated by a stun breaker (dmg isnt even that high, use a blurred frenzy)
and time warp, definately the best option. 50% faster AA basically, but 50% faster AA isnt really all that, and looks like there will soon be better ways to dispense quickness.

This is silly logic. You basically said “yea it sounds good but it’s not” or “it’s good but it can be dodged/countered” to everything. You can apply that same ‘logic’ to just about anything in the game. Something having a counter doesn’t immediately define it as bad.

I prefer alacrity. I still think they need to implement main hand pistol at some point, but I’m happy with alacrity for now. That is, if they make sure to make it strong enough to be as desired as what other professions bring to groups. That is also assuming they don’t nerf it into uselessness due to bads complaining all day about imaginary OPness.

Dastion.3106:

I’m actually in love with the new concept. Yes, I would have loved a new mainhand weapon – it’s what the class really needed. But I still really like how the Shield is turning out. A Phantasm summoning weapon that does more than just simply summon the Phantasm? Yes please. Never mind being able to do it twice quickly. I remember suggesting long ago that they make Phantasm skills do something other than just summon the phantasm, like iBerserker causing you to do a spin attack. I like the concept of an attack which creates a Phantom image that repeats itself.

As to Continuum Shift – it’s really good. Yes, it’s got a built in counter but it’s a counter you can control. They said they wanted to bring back some skill to Mesmer play and this is one aspect of it. By knowing the potential counter to your skill you can use it to your advantage. Drop your CF and then lay into whomever tries to attack it with reckless abandon – or hell, just gravity well them twice. It’ll take a lot of their CDs to ignore two of those. Don’t treat having your CF destroyed as a lose condition – treat it as an opportunity to position your enemies.

phys.7689:

lets be honest, none of our elites are worth the long cool downs.

moa, fairly useless in PVE, easily dodged/interupted in pvp, with a long wind up time.
the new elite, CC+damage, easily defeated by a stun breaker (dmg isnt even that high, use a blurred frenzy)
and time warp, definately the best option. 50% faster AA basically, but 50% faster AA isnt really all that, and looks like there will soon be better ways to dispense quickness.

This is silly logic. You basically said “yea it sounds good but it’s not” or “it’s good but it can be dodged/countered” to everything. You can apply that same ‘logic’ to just about anything in the game. Something having a counter doesn’t immediately define it as bad.

point is, our elite skills arent so powerful that casting them twice is extremely powerful.
you would probably gain more benefit using blurred frenzy, and some phantasms, or some utilities with the f5 than the elites

remember you have 3-6 seconds to do whatever you are going to do, wasting that time casting moa, is likely not the best use of resources.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

to make up for us only receiving an offhand

I’m not sure what something has to be “made up” for this. What’s so bad about that new weapon? It happens to be an offhand, so what? At least we are a class with as somewhat meaningful weapon choice in our offhand slot, that’s more than most can say.

Ramiel.4931:

I don’t want to use the same skill I’ve been using for 3 years twice.

I want to use a new god kitten thing altogether.

And you ofc expected an advanced class to simply remove everything about the class and do it differently, right? Because that seemed very likely. Mesmer isn’t for everyone (neither is any other class). No shame in that.

Carighan.6758:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

to make up for us only receiving an offhand

I’m not sure what something has to be “made up” for this. What’s so bad about that new weapon? It happens to be an offhand, so what? At least we are a class with as somewhat meaningful weapon choice in our offhand slot, that’s more than most can say.

Necromancer gets a GS, most likely a cleaving weapon to fix their lacking skillset. On top of the elite specialization.

Engineer gets a hammer, a melee weapon, exactly what they lacked to complete their skillset and bring variety.

Mesmer gets an offhand shield, of which we have 4 offhand weapons to choose from already. It neither complements what we already have, nor does it address the issue of so few main hand weapons.

Specializations and chronomancers aside, mesmer is getting shafted in the weapons department and that is a fact. Your attitude of “get over it” is what’s wrong. You will blindly accept whatever anyone throws at you for no reason. I hope you’re content in your simplicity but I sure as hell am not and I will yell and scream change until I can’t anymore.

Ramiel.4931:

Your attitude of “get over it” is what’s wrong. You will blindly accept whatever anyone throws at you for no reason. I hope you’re content in your simplicity but I sure as hell am not and I will yell and scream change until I can’t anymore.

Well, then you got a hoarse throat and still didn’t change anything. Vote with your wallet. There’s hundreds upon hundreds of very much enjoyable games coming out a year nowadays. I really cba trying to fix every single one of them I’m not even personally a dev of. If I’m personally involved in a game, sure, I’ll try to change something. But I’m not, with GW2.

If it’s not enjoyable, I just take my money and time elsewhere. The game will succumb eventually, or improve. Either way, not like I’ll ever run out of fun games to play, looking at my steam backlog.

Even the whole social aspect of MMOs is no longer required nowadays as social interaction via gaming is nearly ubiquitous. You group up in games, you voicechat during games, you skype/hangouts while playing something separately, etc. Chat and voicechat have become too common to still require the community-building aspect of MMOs as a gamer.

(edit)
That aside, my personal preferences for MMOs, especially for what I’d like GW2 to be, would be so far away from what the sPvP-rabid fanboi crowd would want that there’s no way in hell the devs would ever implement something like it. For starters, I’d intentionally not try to balance classes in a smallscale setting, instead relying on something like 30v30 players as the smallest encounters where the sides will start to balance, below that individual class skills will be too powerful to not overpower the enemy based on who has more cooldowns up.

The reasoning would be that individual skills should feel powerful. Warrior rezz banner is on the very very lowest end of how powerful an elite skill should be, IMO. And even then it’s CD is far too long.

Beyond that I’d go even further on the weapons, making them quite unique in their loadout so that individual weapons on individual characters cannot hold their own in a fight. Say a weapon which has no attack, a pure support buff/debuff weapon not even having the option to actually deal damage via weapon skills. Or a weapon which deals siege damage, more or less impossible to use against players.

Add to this an overall class design which keeps the classes’ position in the game fixed by these more-powerful effects (as in: your traits have a lot of power but your elites are such gamemakers that even speccing fully against your elite wouldn’t change that your elite dominates your combat role), then balance these positions in the larger-scale settings mentioned above.

Another benefit of this would be that PvE becomes easier to balance. We have issues with encounter scaling due to tons of players, but if 30+ players are the norm for balance adjustments then scaling encounters correctly becomes pretty easy. Easier than scaling from a basis of 1-2, at least.

But as I said, cold day in hell before those changes would happen. Which is fine with me. I enjoy the game, overall. And if I don’t, endless amount of games to play.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Continuum Shift (F5 estimated 80s+ CD) allows us to shatter our illusions to “displace” us from time. This effect allows us to cast freely, eat damage, and do whatever we want in an assumed 1-4 seconds until the effect ends, which then we’ll be reset to whatever state we were in before shattering, cooldowns/health reset and all.

This means we can literally use any skill(s) twice.

Alacrity is a new Chronomancer-specific resource that allows us to lower the cooldowns of our abilities. Mostly trait-focused, Alacrity works on Mesmers, their illusions, and even can be shared to allies in limited form. Alacrity will be gained through shatters, but it is hinted that there will be other ways to gain/grant it. ( Assuming interrupts, Phantasm summons, and on … Mantra charge? )

It is assumed this was the “something just as good” that was hinted before to make up for us only receiving an offhand. Are you happy with this or would you rather have gotten a new weapon besides shield?

skilled thieves can still hide in stealth while we are in this mode (and SA thief has a 50% damage reduction in HOT), and the duration is too short. This is a perfect sell job by Anet, Alacrity is overrated and thieves will still eat Mesmers all day long.

Personally I prefer a new main hand weapon for Mesmer.

Hard to say if I’d rather have a main hand, before seeing our traits and what they did with other classes, but at the moment I’m quite happy with what I see.

Alacrity seems really interesting and CShift will allow for some crazy combos.

I’m already in love with Tides of Time, while I’m a bit disappointed with Echoes of Memory since I was hoping for a “real” block.

I think the shield fits this spec.

My vote goes for new mainhand weapon.
Like Pistol.
Pistol or AXE.. I´d love me a beautiful axe wielding butterfly pirate. Yarr.

I wanted a shield, thanks ANet. Now I just need a Mace for Mainheand, and a Rifle for Ranged. So, I would vote vor the new weapons instead of f5 and alacrity.

I just hope they won’t do a MH pistol. Come on..mace mace mace. (Axe would be awesome too)

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Continuum Shift (F5 estimated 80s+ CD) allows us to shatter our illusions to “displace” us from time. This effect allows us to cast freely, eat damage, and do whatever we want in an assumed 1-4 seconds until the effect ends, which then we’ll be reset to whatever state we were in before shattering, cooldowns/health reset and all.

This means we can literally use any skill(s) twice.

Alacrity is a new Chronomancer-specific resource that allows us to lower the cooldowns of our abilities. Mostly trait-focused, Alacrity works on Mesmers, their illusions, and even can be shared to allies in limited form. Alacrity will be gained through shatters, but it is hinted that there will be other ways to gain/grant it. ( Assuming interrupts, Phantasm summons, and on … Mantra charge? )

It is assumed this was the “something just as good” that was hinted before to make up for us only receiving an offhand. Are you happy with this or would you rather have gotten a new weapon besides shield?

Alacrity, new weapon and more condition removal options throughout “each” trait line as opposed to the future inspiration/illusion lines.

But…will anet ever care….and how long will it take?

In general, I’d love a new MH weapon. Are the new mechanics “just as good”? I think so.

First, I’m a big fan of Continuum Shift, but the long cooldown means it isn’t something I’m going to plan my life around quite yet. Instead, I’m focusing on Quickness, Interrupts, and Alacrity as our real “new powerhouse”.

Alacrity looks to be anywhere from a 10% to a 30% speed-up on all our recharge skills (up-time percentages and accurate effect power are still needed). That has a big effect on how many skills-per-minute we’re able to use, much more than a single extra MH weapon skill would.

The only thorn in my side about Shield is finding a weapon pair. As a WvW player, Chronomancy’s effects are perfect for a support role. However, I still don’t feel like the class has the survivability to stay in melee/mid-ranged for very long. The lack of a ranged power weapon is the brick wall here. It wedges ranged players who want to use shield into condition builds. Knowing that new weapon releases will be part of Elites, and we can only use one Elite at a time, it means we’ll likely never get to see a Pistol/Shield combo.

Otherwise- pretty darn happy. Can’t wait to see what builds the traits open up!

Mathematically, a new Main-hand would have given us more potential options since …

• 3 MH * 4 OH = 12 options
• 2 MH * 5 OH = 10 options

… but the Mainhand on a Mesmer is often dictated by whether or not you are a power/condi build.

Let’s face it, if we were given a new MH Weapon …

• If it was power-based, those that prefer condi would be complaining
• If it was condi-based, those that prefer power would be complaining
• If it was hybrid, those that prefer straight condi/power would be complaining

… because complaining is cheap and easy and several people’s go-to :-/

Since ANet told us that …

• they plan on releasing future Elite Specializations
• they want each Elite Specialization one to have a weapon, etc.

… I’d say just sit back, wait, and go with it.

Sometimes a class’s new Elite Specialization will give them a 2H. Sometimes it will give them a MH. Sometimes it will give them an OH.

It’s not like we had something taken away in exchange for this new stuff. We simply got new stuff. Some people just wanted more … and will always want more.

Did I really want a MH Pistol or some other new MH weapon? Heck yes.
Am I happy with what we’ve been shown we’re getting so far? Heck yes.

These two things are not mutually exclusive.