Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone over the past couple daysI have been taking screenshots of the ability tooltips and videos of ability animations of the Chronomancer for those who are curious about the current state of Chronomancer in BWE1 for reference or comparison in later BWEs.

The tooltips damage numbers are based level 80 character wearing exotic Berserker armor/accessories with Rune of the Scholar. (2333 power, 1095 toughness, 1095 toughness, 1852 precision, 952 ferocity, 95 condition damage). No traits are selected. This was done to standardize the comparison of abilities across multiple elite specializations.

Here are the ability tooltips: http://dulfy.net/2015/08/10/gw2-chronomancer-mesmer-elite-specialization/

Video of skill animations on all race/gender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1YCnMpB_PE

I’m rather unimpressed and disappointed with it as it currently is. I felt that it was far too short to be of any real use. I understand the reliance on clones to lengthen the duration since it’s a shatter, but as it is, it felt like it will get you in trouble far more often than it will help.

Definitely agree with the above notes, as with #5 you can’t hit F5, no clones, and activate a 1s cast skill at the same time, as CS ends before it actually activates.

Silv.9207:

Ehm… seriously, guys… had you try the Chronomancer in this beta?

Illusionary reveng grant 1 free Clone and Chronophantasma grant 1 Phantasm Back (only for one time for every phantom, if you shatter it twice it don’t come back anymore).

You have Two Traits to obtain clones and phantoms back. That make you able to stay more or less alwasy with a clone and a phantasm up.

Before say that I don’t know what I’m talking about read and think about the chronomancer skills and traits. You’re the best mesmers of the game, right? Why have I to explain one by one all the traits of your elite specializzation?

Have you tried cleaving them down, or spamming aoe? I’ve heard that works pretty nicely for clearing out illusions…

So i made a new character and run throuhg blue portal as soon as i was loaded in…this is where i found myself

Ok, so a couple things.

Firstly, the build. The metabattle build as given is pretty bad. It’s generally right, but missing a lot of the key elements that make the build work well. In general, take metabattle builds with several grains of salt.

Ether signet is the worst possible heal you could ever use. Every single other heal outperforms it spectacularly. Personally, I prefer mirror for the high uptime on reflects, but ether feast is burstier and will outperform mirror if you always use it with 2+ illusions.

Arcane thievery is a really poor choice. It’s on an very long cooldown and really doesn’t do very much. A much better choice is the condition removal mantra.

You’re already doing this, but dire armor is an awful choice. You should run full rabid armor/weapons, though I prefer to use the dire/rabid mix trinket type. That rounds your hp out around 20k, but keeps your good crit chance.

Perplexity are great runes, but undead are also great and like 50g cheaper, no problem there.

The sigils in the build are horrid. You should have an energy sigil on both sets, at least they got that right. You also need doom on at least one set. I like to put it on my staff. I used to run double doom, but now I take a corruption sigil because the +250 condition damage it provides is so strong.

The last thing to note is that I always avoid taking desperate decoy. It can and will get you killed, by proccing as you use an attack and causing you to get revealed at a really awkward moment. I always take phantasmal fury instead, purely because desperate decoy will kill you.

Ok, so now you’ve got an actually usable build. Let’s look at actually playing it.

Firstly, don’t bother trying to use this in a Zerg. It’s not worth the time and effort. If you want to Zerg, go for a power based setup, as glassy as you feel comfortable with, and use that instead. Better yet, hop onto a staff ele and be actually useful, it’s a nice feeling.

This build works great for roaming, both solo and in a party, so use it for that only.

Regarding camps, you really shouldn’t be having trouble with them. You’ve got enough toughness and healing that they won’t do a whole lot of damage to you as long as you don’t eat hits from a supervisor with flames. Flipping them quickly requires a bit of technique though.

Badically, you’ll want to LoS them all into a tight pack, then hit them with torch 4, a full shatter or two, and chaos storm. That’ll mostly kill the 4 minor guards, then you can kill the supervisor. Keep in mind that once you engage the scouts, they’ll cast a pulsing pbaoe blind that will make you completely useless if you stand in it, so don’t stand in it and focus on killing them first. Clones for shatters should not be put out slowly. You don’t have to worry about getting all your shatters to 3 clones. Instead, aim to make one clone from a skill, then a dodge clone, then shatter immediately. Doing that allows you to do shatters without any setup time.

I mentioned LoSing the guards. Every camp has a best spot to do this in, except NW camp which is just annoying. For SE, pull the guards behind the supply hut, and pull them around the corners of the hut for a tight pack. In SW, use the little house that’s in front of the camp and to the left of the path as you’re coming in, and do the same thing. In NE, you can pull all the guards except the supervisor around the left corner of the big rock as you’re entering the camp, then do the supervisor alone. North camp can be pulled easily when you enter it from the east, and LoS the guards to the left corner of the house just behind the supply hut. For NW camp, just sorta try to LoS alongside the walls a bit, but you’ll have to spread out a little more for that camp.

First of all,thanks for giving me the chance to join this stress test,it was a great experience!

I was able to run around for a good while and have a look at almost everything,except the oasis event,sadly. Except for the 3 hours tournament, I mainly was with 4-5 guildies roaming around.

Map in general – This map is absolutely stunning! I’m not the kind of player who spends hours walking around to explore but the more I was looking around the more I wanted to see. Everything from general environment to the smallest details was neat and gorgeous, good job!

Cons :

Map is really huge. It would be too easy to avoid each other while running as guilds , for example, and this will lead to long times of hunting groups and walking around.

Servers with small WvW population might suffer in this map. I’ve played on a bronze league server for years and I know you often can’t afford to have scouts in every tower or simply roamers doing their things around. This means it would be very complicated and tiring to defend your borderland especially because it takes a really long time running all the way south due to having only two wp’s, one being at spawn.

Shrines – I really liked shrines and the unique effects you gain by owning them are really good. I enjoyed a lot walking around on lava and I can see how it is going to be a good way to get rid of a group chasing you.

I’m not a big supporter of blessings buffing your outgoing damage but the movement speed was a life saver while walking all the way back.

Air turrets were a real problem, even if you can get past them with dodges/stab ,they are a bit too many and they will eventually force you to stay in a spot 1-2 more seconds waiting for your dodge/cd to avoid being pushed down.

Tower Guards/Keep Lords – Keep lords were really a nice change, each one of them having different skills and combat gives that epic touch that got me glued to WvW and they are actually a challenge and not only NPCs to tag for a champion bag.

Tower guards were ,mostly, a pain. They hurt way too much and some of their skills can be incredibly annoying. I was immobilized by archers at air keep on the bridge, with air turrets all around , rain of ac’s and being hit by those archers for 3-4k.
There are also guards using icebow #5 (I believe it was at a southern tower but I might be wrong) a bit too often,imo. It was 4 of us ramming a gate and I got icebow’d 3 times in what it felt like a short time.

Keeps/Towers – Once again,good job! Keeps and towers are all very different and they all look great, I couldn’t really find a place that I didn’t like.

Cons : I found keeps to be very confusing as for inner/outer and it was always tricky to figure out where the enemy was,what did they breach and so on. I’m sure it will get better once we get the hang of the map but making outer and inner and gates/walls in general a little clearer can be useful.

I’ve noticed way more spots where to place defensive sieges that can’t be taken care of while assaulting a keep, not even with Omega Golems and this will only make siege wars even more common.

Supply depots should be more visible and/or have their number increased according to the size of the keep, a big keep needs to have more than 1-2 depots . Maybe an icon on the minimap could be handy or some sort of sign with the same purpose.

No valid path – On top of breakable walls it was often impossible to use any sort of blink, it was normal straight walls where I would usually be able to blink and if it wasn’t completely impossible to blink,there was only a small part of the wall that let me do it. I’ve checked few walls and north eastern tower was the worst for it,due to having quite a long wall that was pretty much useless for blinks.

Yaks/Sieges – Buff given to yaks while being escorted is very very nice and I can’t wait to see it live in game!

Superior siege looked amazing and Shield Generator will surely be useful, great addition!

Prepare yourselves folks, cause this one’s a doozy.

With a scepter equipped, malicious sorcery not only causes scepter attacks to increase in speed by 15%, but in fact causes EVERYTHING to increase in speed by 15%.

Including, but not limited to, offhand attacks, heals, mantra charging, mass invis, and stomping.

Tested and confirmed by frame counting in premier.

I totally called the Mirror Blade nerf, though many other Mesmers disagreed.

The change to Mantras is disappointing. I did think it was over the top but I preferred to see Mantras start CDing after the first charge is expended while in combat. Going back to only CDing after the last charge encourages people to blow all their charges after the first to avoid wasting CD, especially for MoRec where the low down time between heals is a major factor in choosing it over the alternatives.

I miss the matchup threads, funtimes.

A few funny instances spring to mind:

A blink stomp on a vapour form ele among absolute chaos in a teamfight in the middle of Courtyard – it was either blind luck or divine intervention that moved my hand to the right place because all the visual effects going off meant his path of travel was obscured.

An Into the Void “shootout” on skyhammer between me and another Mesmer – we both ended up pulling each other through the same hole. xD

With the golem week, there was no antidote to the golem rush. I would have liked to see a trap that created an empty hole that a golem fell into and crashed to zero. It would allow the towers to build up a defensive perimeter and kill off a number of the golems and give a fairer fight.

Inkie

Attack the Strong

Double points for attacking the strongest server.

No invisibility week: All players are constantly revealed. Revealed bonuses are cancelled.

Everyone even week: As invisibility is so special lets make it even, everyone gets permanent mass invisibility whenever they are on WvW.

Snowball mayhem week. Everyone is automatically equipped with snowballs and presents on entering WvW. They can throw presents to enemies, or throw snowballs at them. As someone gains more presents they become encumbered, and unable to move, eventually falling over and having to port to spawn or get their gifts destroyed by other people of their side. Snowballs have no other effect than knock enemies down and interrupt them.

Flower Power: Everyone is automatically equipped with a bunch of flowers on entry to WvW and has to throw them at each other. Eventually people get overloaded with the love and burst into tears. This may be useful during Februrary…

Devs actually read all the posts in WvW forum week, and keep reading them until they actually understand what the post means. Every post has to be replied to personally.

I’d like to have a special event where every time you change maps you turn into a different animal and gain the attacks of that animal. So if you turned into a panther you’d have the skills the Panther has. And everyone on the map is a different animal. Zoo Wars!

Or! It would be awesome if we had a special event where Yak’s ran 125% the speed of a human. And Keeps upgraded twice as fast. Call it Digging In!.

I still would love to see a mode where the longer a realm owns a keep the higher the pot is in the rewards. If you take a keep that has been owned for days it rewards you exotics and what not. Like a daily chest popup bounty for keeps that have been owned a certain amount of time. Say like add tiers. So T1 is 1 Hour, 2 3 Hours, 3 6-hours 4 12-hours 5 24 hours 6 48 hours, etc. So a T6 would reward you with some pretty sweet gear. Alternatively, make the defensive ticks increase as well for each hour the keeps remain in your control. So defenders that successfully defend get some sweet loot and exp too.

1 week were only Points you get are for kills and stomps and capping/defending building were Paper is Worth 0, T1 50 camp, 100 Tower, 250 keep/sm, T2 camp 100 Tower 200 keep/sm 400 T3 camp 200 Tower 300, keep/sm 500 and Points for defense is given when sword is gone.

Fright Week: All skills will, besides their current skill hit, also give a 1 second fear.

Yak Wee Week: Upon entering WvW you are transformed into a Yak. You then run around the map saying Weeeeee, Weeeeee, Weeeeee. The louder and the frequency you “Wee” determines your contribution to ppt.

Corporate take over. – This mode adds the option for guilds to just buy towers and keeps with gold.

I would be interested in a PPK style scoring experiment with no PPT; you would get points for

a) flipping something
b) killing someone

I believe this scoring would be more advantageous to low population servers than the current one, but would like to see it played out.

Sephiroth.. .gotta do it right.

Anarchy week!
- Players may damage and kill any other players in WvW outside of the spawn point.
- Players in a squad or party will not damage their party members.
- Structures are automatically claimed by the guild of the person who flips the structure. If the flipper is guildless the flip goes to their party.
- PPT for structures goes 10x toward a guild’s influence and 1 silver per point to the guild bank. Structures flipped or claimed by an individual will award silver per point to the one who claimed it.

Activate friendly fire.

Yeah, I think ANet’s Golem Rush is stupidly huge compared to the stuff we’ve been posting, so I’ll try to do an ANet styled one…

Heavy Artillery – Trebuchet siege cap is lifted. Trebuchets cost 0 supply. Trebuchet Damage increased by 100%. Trebuchet skill cooldowns removed. Rotting Cow applies 25 stacks of Poison unless they have the Gas Mask skin as their headgear. Explosive Shot launches hit players instead of knocking them back

Also:

Caravan – All Pack Dolyaks are now champions. Supply convoys will now have three Dolyaks instead of one. Camps upgraded with Caravan Guard give more guards to the caravan, led by a Champion guard.

Flawed Engineering – Wall and Gate damage resistance is flipped (Walls can now be rammed and hit by player skills, Gates cannot)

Haunted House – Walls, Gates and other Structures have strong perma-retaliation (anti-PvD basically)

The Watchers – NPC Sentries are now Siegerazer-level Champions

OH YEAH! – Siege does no damage to gates or wall, but players can hit walls and do significantly more damage to both.

Cutbacks – Only regular siege can be dropped.

Labor Strike – The only NPC’s that spawn are Keep Lords.

Dhuum’s Wrath – No downstate.

Light as a feather. – No fall damage.

Unlimited Powah! – No AOE caps.

Ram it all. – Only rams can be dropped but have vastly more range and do more damage to other rams and players.

KAMIKAZE!!!!! – When a person (and maybe mobs) dies it leaves a Big Ol Bomb behind. The bomb doesn’t effect friendly units of whichever side dropped it.

Un-Righteous Indignation – Lords don’t gain RI after a point is capped, but instead have a constant buff that allows them to do the same damage as RI without the invuln.

IKEA (or maybe “Consortium” because of copyright) Catalog Siege – All siege requires half as much supply and time to build, but has half the health.

It’s funny how you’re assuming Anet actually cares about WvW : )

I betcha a couple ectos that NOTHING will happen to the wvw structure. They’ll just dump us on the new maps and make more Scarlett Quin fanfiction.

I drop other mesmers a lot because every warrior and his grandmother is playing mesmer right now, so its at the moment the easiest matchup by far just because 99% of the people that play the “OP MANTRA BUILD OMG NERF” actually suck and are free kill if you actually think a bit instead of mashing your face into the keyboard and if you don’t have the reaction time of a camel in surgery. Also the mantra build is the most boring mesmer build ever created. You spend 90% of your time just charging mantras and underpreform in teamfights.

i think average reaction time is like around .3s, so someone bursting you in 2 seconds is plenty of time to react. people just don’t like when their egos get hurt and would rather blame other players or classes or builds or w/e, and this happens in basically every pvp game ever.

it’s quite literally just “l2p”.