Guild Wars 2

I saw on metabattle that the current pve mesmer meta is domination-illusions-chronomancer http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Utility_DPS

but I found myself more comfortable playing a domination-duelling-chronomancer variant: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAsc8ansIClfi9fCuqBUrhFVjqOZn2qlMAGhirsDKhtB-TxRBAB5dSAMTJ4/7PclyPAeCA4pfgS1fAA-e

Duelling offers the same phantasm CD reduction (if you play sword/sword you are actually getting reduced CD on blurred frenzy as well), you get FURY on phantasms, you get 50% uptime on vigor, you get bleeds from phantasms (no need to remind you how well pistol phantasm racks up those bleed stacks), one additional fury source and you get fencer finesse which is a free 150 ferocity. Moreover, if you want a fast clone generation for some nuke encounter, you can trait deceptive illusions for chlone on dodge.

Illusions offers a 9% increased damage with 3 illusions up, 20% haste/recharge on illusions and reduced CD on shatters.

The only reason why I’d pick up illusions over duelling is only for the reduced cooldown on F5, but beside that, the rest seems a bit lackluster to me when compared to duelling.

So, why is illusions so much valued over duelling? Is there something vital I am ignoring? The pros of running duelling outnumber the pros I get from Illusions.

In both cases you can: summon iDuelist, summon iSwordsman, Ether signet activate, summon iSwordsman, f5, put down all wells and timewarp, continuum split expires and resets cd on wells and TW and you are free to repeat. All dungeon bosses usually succumb to the first 2 rounds. Those 20s of permanent alacrity and quickness are godlike for your party. And if the boss is something nasty that instakills your illusions, you can iLeap, dodge x2 and you have 3 clones up again, ready to shatter.

Enlighten me, please

PS: from a solo pve perspective, duelling is better too

So, basically the key is that illusions lowers the cd on F5. In dungeons/fractals, fights don’t last long, and you’re running to the next fight very soon. With a lower cd on F5, it means you can do your wombo combo on every fight, as opposed to being stuck on cd when you reach the boss, which means your team either has to wait for you or you’re just useless at that fight.

The damage bonuses offered by domination and/or dueling are just meaningless when push comes to shove. No matter what you do, your damage is going to suck, so you want to optimize your ability to boost your teammates.

To be honest, I run a signet mesmer over the chronomancer. With mimic I double boons twice provide cleansing and evades for my party. If you do the calculations, doubling might and other boons actually provides more support than our present chronomancer capabilities (post-nerf). Pre-nerf I ran chromo and enjoyed it, but now signets with dom/ill/insp make more sense.

curtegg.5216:

To be honest, I run a signet mesmer over the chronomancer. With mimic I double boons twice provide cleansing and evades for my party. If you do the calculations, doubling might and other boons actually provides more support than our present chronomancer capabilities (post-nerf). Pre-nerf I ran chromo and enjoyed it, but now signets with dom/ill/insp make more sense.

Any halfway decent group will have permanent uptime of 20+ might and fury. Your doubling of already maxed out boons does absolutely nothing.

Even if you’re in a bad party with no boons, you clearly haven’t ‘done the calculations’ on the effects of alacrity and quickness. Going from 13 might to 25 might isn’t going to add ~40% dps to a group like permanent alacrity and quickness will. Whatever odd signet build you’re running is just flat out bad.