Guild Wars 2

Agreeing with Illusions>Chaos. I’m running a similar build and have gotten 31 stacks of confusion on a Necro. He absolutely melted.

The only reason they keep doing this is because they went way too far with the visual noise introduced by elite specs in HoT. When the first beta weekend came around everyone commented on how over-the-top the effects were for nearly every skill. This was part of the appeal for elite specs and no doubt contributed to the sales of HoT. That is why it is so disappointing that they keep gutting the product that we bought with these ‘QoL’ changes. A visual noise sliding/toggle filter is the only appropriate solution to this deliberate deception.

its really easy to get 10-15 stacks AoE in sPvP if you drop it on a stack of enemies ressing/stomping

The only way for mesmers to effectively bunker in this manner is if they chose to take little/no stealth, and do almost NO damage. I run a support/bunker build on my chronomancer and I run a Cleric’s amulet. You give up so many other things in order to run a build like this.

I have a single stun-break on a 45 second CD, NO stealth, 2 CC skills (compared to other mesmer builds with 4-8) and absolutely no mobility. It is extremely rare for me to kill a single target 1v1, but I can survive against 2-3 enemies at once, on point. If i were to leave that point, to help another team-fight out, any other class could decap it faster than I could get back to it because of my terrible mobility. I can barely even survive while travelling because I have to stand in my own wells to survive. Also, I completely melt against 1-2 condi spamming enemies, even with 5 different cleanses.

This is not a problem, because if you were smart you would leave the bunker to 1 point and then 5v4 the other two points.

Stop trying to kill bunkers alone.

I mostly play PvP, but in PvE I’ve been really enjoying a Chaos/Illusion/Chrono condi-shatter build with Staff + Scepter/Shield. I have perplexity runes to proc more confusion from shield-stuns and Im also using chronophantasma to keep myself alive longer (illusionary defense) and to have more shatter fodder. It works really well!

If anyone is having trouble with the Steam-powered Timepiece in this collection, head to Lornars Pass and farm the steam creatures on the frozen lake. I got one to drop after just a few minutes!

Alternatively, if you use a Focus regularly, you can get the Anomaly skin. It creates a very similar effect in the hand in which you have it equipped.

Well of Eternity – New favorite heal for every build I like to run
Well of Recall – The “More Wells” Well. Also support Mes <3
Well of Precognition – The well that let’s you stand in your other wells with impunity.
Well of Gravity – Very creative and satisfying to land successfully on multiple foes.
Well of Calamity – Try breaking this bunker when you’re bogged down with weakness.
Well of Action – Maybe in a dedicated Slow build? Quickness is pretty meh.

Not sure if this is just an aspect of wells but…

Enemy Chronomancer Wells dont show up as a red ring (indicative of enemy AoE) and Chrono v Chrono duels are pretty silly as a result. How do we differentiate our wells from the enemies? Especially in situations where everyone is unloading AoE…

I really loved Chronomancer this weekend, and played it exclusively in PVP testing out a few different builds. My feedback will reflect ONLY PVP gameplay. I tried out Chrono Shatter, Clockdown and eventually fell in love with and perfected a terribly fun Chrono-Bunker build utilizing wells.

Continuum Split:

• This skill felt so appropriate for chronomancer and very unique. It can be used in so many different ways for offense or defense that I really think ANet hit it out of the park. There were a few buggy instances when something would happen to prevent me from returning to the original timeline, leaving my continuum split to linger on the battlefield. Once, I got stomped at the far point during a continuum shift and after I respawned at my teams base, I warped back to the far point before I could even walk back onto the battlefield. I can’t say if my split had been destroyed by an enemy or not, but it was extremely convenient for getting back into the fray, and presumably an unintended, overpowered function.

Weapon (Shield):

• Overall: I have a fondness for the mesmer bunker playstyle and absolutely LOVE the shield as a weapon for mesmers.
• Echo of Memory -> Deja Vu: I really love the way this skill synergizes with Mental Defense. Proccing both blocks summons 2 Avengers and 1 Defender in a very short period of time allowing for some quick and effective bunking. I do think that the two separate, single-hit blocks were underwhelming and I would love to see this skill function as a channeled block more like the original Mimic but with a phantasm summoned at the end or beginning of the block.
• Tides of Time: This skill is a 10/10 for me right now. It serves as effective yet balanced utility, support and offense with an appropriate level of counter-play. I love the animation and the chance to double-stun an enemy if they cant dodge the super obvious wave heading their way.

Skills (Wells): Playing a support/bunker mesmer is endlessly fun when using these wells and I am so happy that the defensive mesmer playstyle is being supported. I love that the wells reward skillful play and that makes them much more satisfying than our other utility skills because they require more thought and strategy to pull off with maximum efficiency. Some wells were definitely better than others and I think some further tweaking is needed for each of them to be at 100% in balance and function.

The biggest issue I came to in regards to wells was that my teammates didn’t understand or know how to benefit from them. More often than not my allies would go about their combat as if the well wasnt there at all because they didnt have any visual cues to let them know that it would benefit them to fight on the wells. For one, since the Chronomancer is still in beta, many of the players simply weren’t familiar with the skills or their function and therefore couldn’t know how to play around them to get their support perks. Second, to chronomancers and non-mesmers alike, the wells all look essentially the same (except for Gravity Well, with its stand-out animation). This leaves allies in the dark as to whether they should stick around on a particular well or move on. I think if each well had a more unique animation that was more telling of its effects, this could help significantly. For example, if Well of Eternity had a more blue-ish tint to it and had some misty water effects, it would be more apparent to everyone that it was a healing skill, and any allies looking for health could know to advantage of it. Also a well like Calamity that provides allies with no incentive to stick around (outside of traited alacrity) has no visual cues to indicate that they have nothing to gain from fighting on the well. I think that since these skills have so many team-support properties, there should be a more obvious way for allies to identify which well can Heal them and which well can grant them Quickness etc.

Finally, I really think there needs to be an offensive condition well, lest that style of gameplay get left in the dust in regards to these utilities. Obviously it needs to be more Mesmer and less Necromancer so, something that pulses confusion and finishes with torment or even retaliation for allies would be perfect. I think just one confusion-based well could open up even more builds for the chronomancer.

• Well of Eternity: My new favorite heal-skill hands down. There is so much play involved with this heal and so much team support that can come from skillful use of it. My only issue with this skill was the vigor. It seemed sort of random and ineffective to me and I never made use of it. If the idea is to enable the mesmer to dodge within the well in order to survive long enough for the final burst heal, that job is better done with a simple Blurred Frenzy. Since the condition removal trait for wells has been removed, and Chronomancers lack any real cleansing without taking the Inspiration trait line, I would suggest that instead of pulsing vigor, each pulse could cleanse 1 condition. Otherwise I wouldn’t change a thing.
• Well of Precognition: I tried to find something to love about every one of the wells since I was so smitten by their concept and animations, but this one felt the most useless to me. I wanted to like this one more-so than the others since its the only well that also acts as a stun-break, but the functionality just isn’t there at this point. Precognition implies a preemptive, proactive sort of play, but the stun-break and final blur of this skill make it much more reactive than it should be. The unblockable buff seems really trivial and the final blur was seldom beneficial enough to myself or my team to warrant us sticking around on the well until its completion. Finally, a 45 second CD on a utility skill with so little impact just didn’t warrant its use in any build for me. Perhaps this well could pulse Aegis and finish with a blur to support a more defensive ‘premonition’ like feel?
• Well of Calamity: This well ended up making into my final bunker build. The short cooldown made it easy to maintain weakness/cripple on enemies when holding a point, and for slowing enemies heading your way. The damage seems balanced, though I never played a high-power build so for me it was more consistent/dps and less burst-like.
• Well of recall: This well seems like a must-have for Chronomancers. Paired with the Alacrity from AWTEW it really made me feel like I was making an impact in supporting my team. With skillful play, I was also able to maintain a decent amount of Alacrity uptime for myself which made me love the elite specialization even more. This well rewards skillful play more so than others and was extremely satisfying to use. The chill at the end is really nice since anyone standing there when it ends deserves to be punished.
• Well of action: I went back and forth with this well, eventually deciding that it felt right. It worked really well in a build I used that made the most of Slow, and its utility was versatile enough that I found myself using it a variety of other builds. The quickness at the end rewards the user and allies enough that it can make a significant impact in battle if the team is aware of its effects and knows how to take advantage of it.
• Gravity Well: I really love this elite, but I miss the float so much. If we could remove the final pull in favor of a shorter float I would be thrilled. The floating aspect is what made this skill so unique and really held the flavor of the skill in my opinion. I got a lot of players complaining that it was OP when I hit them with 2 Gravity Wells back to back (they didnt know about the skill either so they didnt know how to escape/avoid it), but the smarter players knew that a simple blink or stun break with stability protected them completely, so the counter-play is definitely balanced. Also the long cast-time is easily interrupted by the players who knew what to look for, so I feel like that is in a good place as well.

On the topic of Shattered Conditions, I’ve been playing with a build that utilizes this GM to an entertaining level of ‘effectiveness’. It is a 0/4/2/6/2 spread that focuses on support through mantra heals and AoE condi cleanses while also posessing decent condition damage and some cheese retaliation damage if your opponent is dumb enough to eat it.

http://bit.ly/1A63W3T

Nothing too serious here, you’ll get a lot of flack in spvp because people dont really understand what youre doing since your shatters don’t appear to be very effective and your support isnt obvious. Survivability is great, burst damage is essentially non-existent, unless you can land a 3-clone CoF shatter/Confusing Images and successfully summon a Phantasmal Defender immediately after, resulting in some big damage from confusion+retal . This build does shine in that you can laugh off a ridiculous amount of condis over a short period of time, assuming that you are fighting in close quarters and your shatters actually happen. 28 total cleanses if you include Signet of Illusion shatter resets and 24 of those are AoE. Phantasmal Defender is for living longer and the extra retaliation damage mostly. Stability Mantra is your only stun break and helps you to fight close enough to your allies so they get the cleanse from Shattered Conditions. Really the utilities can all be swapped out for anything. Play around and see how you can tweak it.

Give it a try if you’re bored and want to pretend this trait is useful!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWlknpCttpxANcrRirhY6Whqdyi7IVgSFB-TJhIABAcGA2Z/hhLD81jAAA

Whoops!

This thread inspired me to come up with a reworked Boon Support build!

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWlknpMtlqxANcrNCuxY6JaoiTOyJlMgfB-T1hFABA8AAMRVBGODAnpJYm9HS4QAMoaNkBgaMA-w

I wanted to exploit the fact that mesmers are the only class that can get +60% boon duration in PVP. A few notes on this setup:

-Sword 3 + Temporal curtain 2x combo yeilds ~23s Retaliation lol
-Perma Swiftness (19.25s from Temporal Curtain on a 20s CD)
-Can remove/transfer a total of 7 Conditions on 9s (sigils), 20s (heal), and 36s (AT) CDs
-3 Boon Steal has great synergy with boon duration + boonshare
-Easily build + share 25 Might Stacks

Basically as you play and manipulate everyones boons they’ll ‘stick’ to you and start snowballing until youve got 25s or more of several different boons. Then spread the love and wipe the enemy team! You wont be shattering much, except for Diversion for the Bountiful Interruption procs. Surprisingly, a lot of damage comes from Might + Retaliation + Reflect damage.

Thanks for the inspiration Chaos, this build is great fun!

I use disruptors sustainment in several builds and its quite effective if used with Mantra of Recovery and Mantra of Distraction. People are just too lazy to explore new build options and new ideas so they write off this trait as being ineffective. With Restorative Mantras and Dwayna runes and an interrupt/phantasm build you can provide a ton of healing for allies and yourself while providing a lot of CC as well.

If you’re low on health or just waiting for cooldowns, keep your eyes peeled for incoming projectiles you can absorb with [Mimic]. If you can catch one, you will be able to fire the same projectile back at your enemy and will also enter a blocking state for the remainder of the skills channel time. In this blocking state you will reflect all projectiles and block all melee attacks so if you time it properly you can ride it out for up to kitten . You can also cancel this block at anytime with a dodge roll or by using your healing skill. Regardless of your build, this skill is great for running through Zergs unscathed and is on a very short CD of 25s or 20s traited. The second half of this skill is [Echo] and upon activation you will fire the first projectile you absorbed, which can be useful if you absorb something like a Guardians immobilize. I have also found that your bouncing attacks can actually be absorbed by mimic when bouncing back to you. This effectively lets you to trigger your own block if youre in a pinch with Staff 1 > Mimic.

I’ve been experimenting with an interrupt build in WvW recently, and from having played a lot of PvP since launch, animations have become just as easy to read as a skill bar. Just practice against different classes and you’ll start picking up on which animations are linked to different skills. Almost every heal in the game is very easy to spot and interrupt, and I believe this was intentional as I recall back in beta ANet mentioning that learning opponents skill animations was going to be important in GW2. I’m hoping that these mesmer CC buffs are true because Mesmer lockdown builds will finally be viable once more. There are certain skills (many signets for example) that are difficult to spot but if you watch your opponent carefully and learn their rotations you can interrupt their key skills to shut them down. In larger wvw battles things are less easy to see but with the few AoE CC skills we have, chances are you’ll be interrupting several people without even looking.

Tl;dr

Study animations, Practice makes perfect!

Durzlla.6295:

I run Arcane Thievery 100% of the time on my Mesmer and have absolutely NO issue stealing Karkas prot, regen, retal and stability.

Are you sure that:

1) the karka is in front of you
2) a thief, or another prof, isn’t stealing or removing the boons before you can
3) that the karka is NOT evading
4) you are not interrupting your own cast
5) the karka actually has the boon up.

I’ve been stealing their 50s of prot, stability and retal all month and have been LOVING it, so it’s not the skill, it’s the user, I’ve used this skill in both PvE and PvP and have had absolutely no issues with it.

I’ve also spent the past few weeks stealing these boons from Karka, you just have to make sure you activate it at the right time. Then with Signet of Inspiration you can share the boons with everyone

TreeSerpent.3176:

How does this build fare in WvW? Thank you for the link.

If you’re with a group of 10 or fewer doing smaller objectives you’ll be a useful support as the build is. When running with a Zerg I swap Mimic for Blink, iDefender for Null Field, and Signet of Illusions for Illusion of Life. While also switching traits in favor of Far Reaching Manipulations and Master of Manipulation. This allows you to keep your AoE heals/regens, as well as being able to support your allies and keep them alive.

How do you apply conditions? i don’t see the point in using apothecary.
Do you rely on Staff’s auto and F2 Shatter only?

confused

Sorry, those are supposed to be clerics, the link is a bit outdated. This build doesn’t do much condition damage beyond bleeds from phantasm crits.

I’ve been running regen Mesmer for a few months now and can shed some light on the subject for you

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW8dl4z6pnUzhGb9IhJF9G5neA9l78SKwdsB-jgxAoNBZqBANAmKBlFLiGramIqOIAkB-e

Basically youve got 100% regeneration uptime usually around 20-30s but sometimes as high as 55s.
Believe it or not his is your main source of survivability, and regeneration will also proc Protection every 10s for added durability. The way healing power scales with regeneration and lower vitality means every tick of regen is healing you for a surprisingly decent amount. Meanwhile youll be summoning phantasms for more regen as well as damage output through retaliation and bleeds. Use LoS with your phantasmal warden to reflect projectiles and to keep regeneration up. With iDefender, iWarden and iWarlock all up at once you become extremely difficult to take down.

Mantra of Recovery is key with this build. When you channel it initially, you heal yourself and up to 5 allies around you for ~3,000 (Restorative Mantras), grant yourself and 5 allies 10s regen (Dwayna Runes). After that youve got 2 more instant-cast self-heals for ~3,100, more AoE regen and 2 instant condition removals (Mender’s Purity). This is all on a quick 10s CD so you’ll be healing everyone often. The initial AoE heal is great when youre solo as you can heal your phantasms to maximize their effectiveness. It synergizes very well with iDefender who with Signet of Illusions adds a large chunk to your health-pool without negatively scaling regeneration.

Mimic is the trolliest skill mesmers have (except portals) and yet I’ve found its rather unpopular. How it works is you channel it for 4 seconds, and within this time if you are hit with a projectile, you will absorb it to spew out later (super entertaining when you absorb something useful or flashy). If you are able to catch a projectile, the skill becomes a block for the rest of the channeling time which is great for safely running through zergs because during your 4s block youll be healing with regen and can simultaneously pop your 2 instant-cast heals (assuming theyve been channeled). 25s cooldown on this paired with your focus skills gives you an almost perfect defense against ranged attackers. Melee attackers get punished with retaliation/bleeds and unless youre greatly outnumbered, you wont fall below 50% health very often.

Pros:

-100% regen uptime
-AoE heals/regen
-High survivability
-Condition removal on low CD
-Ranged and melee defense
-Team support

Cons:

-Lackluster mobility (focus 4 is all you’ve got)
-Not ideal for running with a Zerg
-Lower damage output

Give it a shot in sPvP and see how you like it!

Ps I just word-vomited all of this out so if I didn’t explain something clearly just ask!

EDIT: updated the build link