Chrono isn’t all bad but yes, need rebalance, lets be honest please, this is our first play at chrono, maybe they will rebalance before next beta (if there is one) since live stream a few things did change! Grav well now pulses damage over time with larger end damage and floats but no longer pulls during pulses. The well trait now purges 2 condi instead of 1, the grand master lost time if i recall right was 3 hits and not crit required but now is kittens and only after that is fit hits of critting not five normal hits which kinda needs good precision and danger time to reap benefit from prompt and properly.
Alacrity had promise but unless you pressure cook it (aka spam duh heck out of alacrity gains aka burn shatters and recall) you don’t really get much out of it, its something that requires effort given uptime to feel an affect while people who barely poke it feel its quite useless cause yeah you blinked its over wait did I even scratch one second off the cd?
Considering the big rollout we got last month which made condi builds more of a pain to run into in pvp/wvw or even condi spam mobs in pve, 1-2 condi purge ability’s feel worthless to slot if it’s going to be over ridden in an instant.
Look t ele, water grandmaster applying regen to self or friend = purge 1 condi, I feel they should endeavor to either give effective condi purge count or apply a nice twist to get a better benefit for running it, well power for purging 2 condi si better then 1 but again, you gotta be in the well field when it ends oops watch out for cc or you totally won’t get condi purge!
I’ma big mesmer player and because i burn alacrity like hot cakes I do feel its affects but only because I keep it up a lot and that is not easy, much like the supposed ele learning curve people keep talking about alacrity is a floating ability that needs to be held onto as much as possible to do anything.
As to wells I feel they all have their use, and some don’t hav emuch, especially if you focus one of three fields in gw2 aka pve/wvw or pvp, for the same reason necros don’t seem to use wells a lot meswells don’t feel too valuable even the grav well because its easy to avoid standing in them if they aren’t yours, without it’s pull function anyone will get out of the grave well unless they aren’t watching then the ability gets used for nothing.
As for the shield, eh I like it, but the tides of time does feel overly heavy. (again if you aren’t burning alacrity for uptime on it.) then even if you do get the 10s reduction you won’t feel special especially if the enemy jumps out of the way further wasting it. The block skills are ok to a degree I have no real problem with the blocking setup but the phantoms need something that isn’t a shield so avengers don’t look like stand in defenders!
Con-shift ooooops weren’t we promised clever use with tides of time for an even better cd reduction? WELL that was a LIE! Burn a cd in shift it will revert to its previous setting aka ready to use, use it before con-shift and oops you can’t get the cd bonus cause again, you will change the current time on the cd when you shift back, so what really got was this. Shift -> throw tides instantly close shift throw tides again (to cheat time and have 2 walls up.) then run through 2 that’s neither clever nor investing in skill its a simple open and close combo, roll shift cast tide shut of shift right after and throw the tide again, you can never get the bonus cd reduction off 1 tide like they told us we could.
And yes Shift is beyond balignerantly short even with max 3 illusions up when you use it. While shift can make some fun (spam) combos aka double TW grav well mass invis moa morphing possible, its really just a shift burn all cd’s possible before shift ends then reuse outside it for a burst attempt, it doesn’t offer much tactical timing unfortunately its just a trivial cheat to cooldown timers pure and simple because skills like blink won’t help when you boing back to where you opened shift.
No this is not a rant post its just a critical opinion to show I care and that I hope this being the first beta event serves its purpose well and that the next beta event shows some development to the chrono and other specs for us to test.
Improvements needed:
Improved alacity gains or durations.
trait for wells aka ‘alls wellt hat ends well’ needs to provide more then just a measly (worthless) 2 condi purge function, maybe a small cd reduction (10%) and/or a radius increase.
Grav well needs pull function so it really feels like gravity instead of a belated soft cc with a large cooldown.
More investing choices in its ‘trait’ line that feel like time magic based abilities.
A better cd balance on the shield 5 skill and a reaction animation for shield 4 when you block an attack.
Avengers need something other then the shield (or the other weapons phantoms already have) so that you don’t mistake them for defenders.
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