Guild Wars 2

If your team plays the right builds you dont need to waste a slot for more healing

So, my mesmer was pretty much forged in the mists. I spend 90% of my time in PvP since my friends grinded me to death on dungeon runs (that weren’t actually runs so much as a collection of dungeon exploits) and I was happy there until I recently upgraded my computer. Now I can roam in WvW without compromising my graphics, so I decided to explore this bold new world that until now I’ve only had very brief ventures in.

So, you often hear that your average WvW player isn’t nearly as good as your average PvPer, and I really wanted to see if it was true. So I’m running around on my PvP build (4/4/6 Staff sword-focus CI pack runes, fire+energy & doom+hydromancy) and while at first the world was barren and boring.. I came upon an enemy supply camp.

I tried to flip it cuz.. Pfft. Everyone else solo-flips camps why not I? .. 3 minutes later in chased out of the camp by like 9 angry NPCs.

.. Right into 3 enemy players on a team.

So I break the eff out, they’re chasing me, and as I’m running I stop to really take a good look at my terrain .. This isn’t PvP, I don’t need to fight on point, these guys are likely bad.. I can take these fools!

And so it began. I turned around vs a guardian, necro, and ele and charged back in. Necro was too slow to keep up, Ele was too tanky to do damage and the guardian was just kinda bad. Even though I was kind of wishing for Greatsword (which seems far superior to staff in WvW) I managed to wreck them all in a way that woulda made osicat and vashury proud.

3v1? The way I was managing my decoy and blinks it may as well have been 3 on 3. It was glorious.

Ok, I will try to be constructive and as fair as possible.

TyPin.9860:

I have played some PvP with Necromancer lately. And I felt the pain over and over again, when Lich Form got canceled into Moa by Mesmer. I find that counter actually too hard.

This is coming from a necro perspective yes? If so, this is already biased. What about other classes dont have access to any transformation elites? Transformation elites are meant to be justifiably strong and thus why you felt the pain being stripped off all that power. But your suggestion is biased to improve necro gameplay instead of giving a fair go to all classes being hit by Polymorph Moa.

TyPin.9860:

So my suggestion is that Moa only cancels a transform. So if you were transformed, like Tornado, Lich Form or the like, Moa will transform you only back into normal form.

As someone above me said it and I want to reiterate in a more polished way. You’re basically asking to change the elite skill not to work as its intended purpose (polymorph moa), even though certain conditions need to be met. If we go with your suggestion, suddenly mesmers have yet another thing that doesn’t do the thing per original design (cough.. Power Block against thieves… cough).

So, not entirely bashing your whole argument about Polymorph Moa though so please hear me out.

My suggestion is that, since transformation elites usually last longer than 10s of Moa.
When you get Moa’d, you will still go back to your transformation after 10s instead of going all back to normal form.
For example, to clarify, u go Lich form, a mesmer moas you when you’re already 3s in your elite form, you become a moa for 10s, then after that, you get back to your Lich Form for the remaining 17s.

I think it would be a fair change. Not sure if Anet has the code sorted out to do it or not yet though.
To compensate for this change though, Polymorph Moa cooldown has to reduce to match the lowest transformation cooldown currently in the game, that is, 105s to make it more effective to “temporarily” counter enemy transformation for 10s.

All of this really hinges on implementation, and thus until we play it it’s very hard to judge. As the Devs themselves pointed out, in the current alpha version the mechanic would be grossly OPd, allowing multiple Phantasms to combine their attacks at the same instance after being shattered.

If they add a random delay to the attack cycle after spawning, or the newly summon Phants simply inherit the attack CD from the shattered ones, then everything is up for grabs really. Most likely this would result in making this GM trait worthless to actual Phantasm builds due to Phantasms being summoned on target where they will die pathetically long before they get to attack again.

The best option would probably be for them to rework it somehow. At the very least, the new Phantasms should be summoned by the Mesmer and work just as they do now, that is ranged Phants summon at range, and melee ones cast on target?

That would help things a bit, and then they could add a 1-2 second random attack delay to avoid the simultaneous “barrage attack” issue.

I really do hope that the CD on Protected Phantasms was a tooltip bug, or that they will rethink this. It really needs no CD at all, and should cover all Illusions, not just Phantasms. In fact, they could then add a component to Chronophantasms to add an additional second of invuln for Phantasms. This would allow slow-attacking Phantasms a better chance to actually survive their first attack cycle. (iMage, iWarlock, and iWarden…not to mention iDefender & iDisenchanter, and of course the iShieldPhantDude too)

For zerguing Chronomancer will be pretty much mandatory with shield and wells. There are quite a lot of variations to test. The best for me are Dom/Insp/Chrono, Dom/Chaos/Chrono and Dom/Due/Chrono.

Roaming is a different world. There will be some nice builds with chronomancer, but there are a lot of potential meta builds which won’t need it

Some other interesting things: Chronophantasma with the super speed on shatter trait means that when your phantasms are low, you can quickly shatter them and refresh their hp. And since they get distortion on the resummon, they have a buffer to survive the burst. If the really don’t have the time to run to a target, f4 shatters them in place. If you have the illusions phantasm shatter reduction trait thing, then you can summon 3 phantasms (if your enemy is nice enough to let you), let them do their burst, shatter them, let them do their burst again, shatter them again, and will have shaved 12% off the cd. If you can get off that full burst, it may be worth dropping dueling for domination, to get the bonus shatter damage on inactive foes (f3 shatter->f1 shatter), 15% illusion damage buff, and blurred inscriptions (for 20% more signet of the ether).

Invictorum.7643:

Okay, question. How do I not get brutally melted by any thief?

I main a thief and I used to have issues against good mesmer players.
The ones that screwed me over when I played D/P or D/D would make clever use of their Stealth (#4 on torch, Decoy, Mass Invis) and Mobility (Sword #3, Blink) and time their evade on the sword #2 when I had been in stealth for ~2 seconds. Thief Stealth lasts 3 or 4 seconds depending on their traits most of the time (Shadow Refuge or several Heartseekers increases their stealth upime as you know). SInce the Evade on Sword #2 lasts longer than 2 seconds, I’d miss my backstab and be out of stealth before I could do anything useful against them.
As the D/D and D/P players are both rather squishy you can out-damage them. When you played smart on the Stealth and the Mobility, some well-timed burst can really demolish a thief so badly that they’ll be dead at your feet, or forced to pull off (and reset), some of the strongest burst can be achieved by linking the Greatsword’s #4 (Berserker) into #2 (Throw Sword) to finalize it with #3 (the AoE sword popping out of the ground).
Another good thing is to use your GS #5 to knock thieves out of their Shadow Refuge, effectively denying them the Health they’d gain from it and forcing the Revealed effect on them for 4 seconds.

Oh yeah, a S/D player can be beaten in the same way, only the timing of your Sword #2 changes to be used at a moment where your health is getting low (and you need to stall a bit for your heal to get back up).
A well played S/D thief will end up beating you though. Luckily they’re being phased out of the meta quite badly (even Sizer hopped over to D/P it seems) so you won’t be facing too many of those

All nice ideas but what I’d rather see is the precision aspect removed and sword skills deal bonus damage to targets with no boons.

-20% CD, Sword skills do 50% more damage to boonless targets.

And yes, it is painfully obvious I’m thinking of PvE but hey, it’ll take a lot of skill getting that damage buff going in PvP.

P.s. Before someone cries OP, you will still do a lot less than the normal auto attack from other classes.

Team up with another mesmer and use their portal … there’s one option.

Mesmer portal bomb:

• One mesmer drops portal … runs to drop exit.
• Other mesmers summon illusions on some random mob and F5 shatter
• Mesmer drops exit.
• Other mesmers portal in and unleash chaos
• Other mesmers teleport back to safety via F5 shatter.

Giggle.

Made the mesmer, did some PvP.

Definately loving this class already.

that_shaman is obviously already a Chronomancer. Or will have having been a Chronomancer.

Now wait for the incoming:

“Change it to trait line I’m using”
“Put it on signet for all mesmers”
“Should be 33%”
“Make it baseline”
“Why does one of my traits get used for speed buff?”

Type threads and posts.

Hope not too much nerf between now and the HOT release

Quick, someone gag Juba.

I agree with you on many points actually, but basing this on a few days of play is not going to give you an accurate picture, even if you’re a good/experienced gamer and GW2 player. This class requires a bigger commitment, especially for the build you’re choosing to play!

The Zerker Power Shatter Mesmer is just plain hard to learn. You need impeccable personal skill, as well as absolute lack of lag. Most of all, to really make it work, you need a good team to baby-sit you. You need heals and condie clears from others to really survive long enough in team fights to get your bursts out. When you land those bursts, they can be among the most devastating AE damage bursts in the game.

In pug unranked arena I absolutely hate playing Zerker power shatter. It doesn’t suit me well cuz I’m too old (slow), my PC is not optimal for gaming (iMac), my latency is “OK” but not great, and most of all I don’t have a team to cover my blatant weaknesses! So currently I’m greatly enjoying a Power PU build. It’s also Zerker, but thanks to PU and Chaos in general, I have a LOT more survivability then a P-Shatter build.

With GS I can put out very strong damage bursts still, and the Sw/Torch provide me with good offensive and defensive options. I have had very little trouble beating the average Thief riff-raff 1v1 in unranked, although occasionally one of the better ones reminds me just how much the odds are stacked against me in that fight. ;-)

However, it is for these instances that I now trait Moa Elite. Screw the whiners! Everyone else is using their cheese, why shouldn’t I use mine in fights that I can not win otherwise? The other GMs are simply bad for unorganized play. Took me 2 years to realize this, and now I finally am enjoying MoA as an Ellite that occasionally does what I expect of an Elite. The CD is too long for the various ways in which it can fail, but at least when it lands, it can be a fight changer. It still ain’t an EZ-mode game-changer like Engie or Necro Elites, but it certainly has it’s moments against especially Thieves, and to counter the Necro Elite!

Oh and as a final point, I really have fairly strong faith that HoT will improve the lives of Mesmers significantly. Although the other classes will get stronger too, naturally, it’s many of the little QoL things that will greatly improve the Mesmer experience across the board. (IP, AE Blind on Shatter, 100% stun on Confounding Suggestions will be huge against Thieves, greatly improved Condition options, more MW damage potential, far more viable boon-sharing, support and even bunker builds etc.)

Teach us your Gallifreyan ways, O Time Lord.

Edit: This was made before the stream. I am far more impressed now, will edit shortly!

Of course, coolness is objective when I say so subjective, and we’ve still more to discover about this new class but…

The Dragon Hunter!

• Guardians.. a supporty class is getting more… active support?
• Guards get a longbow.
• Class Mechanic (Virtues) changed. Burning Virtue now .. Burns more! Healing Virtue now grants a leap along with its heal, making it .. Less accurate? Aegis virtue creates a shield that shelters allies from all damage; can’t really hate on that one it’s pretty tight.
• Traps! Made of light! Sorta like symbols but now more Ranger-esque!

Sorry guards, but nothing here is really all that impressive at first glance, hopefully the stream tomorrow will shed more light (get it? get it!?!) on this elite specialization. The Chronomancer spec seems like a much more dramatic change of style from core Mesmer than Hunter does for Guardian.

One down.. Six more to go! Who do you think will have the coolest specialization? I’m betting Necros may give us a run for our money. Dat Greatsword.

You forfeit one of the standard specialization lines.

Now go look at those, look at any build you might want to run, and tell me you don’t see major trade-offs for each and every one of them.

As an example, go with a classic Power-Shatter build and significant trade-offs you will make:
1) Dueling: Clone generation on dodge, AoE Blind on Shatter, Vigor
2) Domination: Mental Torment, Fragility, AE Boon-stripping
3) Illusions: Shattered Strength (15% CD redux on all shatters & Might on shatter), Compounding Power, and Master of Fragmentation (pretty big deal from what people are saying it’s now 20% to Crit chance, the usual AoE on F3 & Reflect on F4, and possibly another damage bonus?)

Every line has significant and unique traits that you won’t get if you go with Chronomancer. Also we have not experienced how Chronomancer plays, so anyone who thinks it will be automagically superior to other lines, is simply talking out their tail end.

The whole F5 thing frankly sounds like a pretty big trade-off, one that a competent player whom is playing against a competent team may quickly grow to hate. You can be pulled out of your rift at the enemies discretion, basically, depending mostly on how many “HPs” a rift has. I’m guessing it’s not going to be a whole lot. This alone should be a huge red warning sign to competent players who like being in control of their own destiny. ;-) (Being pulled into a coordinated AoE burst will not be a whole lot of fun.)

A powerful ability on paper, indeed, but until we see how it actually plays we just can’t judge how powerful it really is.

Edit:

Taiyetos.3260:

I don’t believe there ever was any official mention of losing anything when using an elite spec. Certainly none of the official posts mentioned anything.

Actually I believe they stated in the video that the F5 shatter specifically, and choosing Chronomancer in general too IIRC, will disable some existing abilities for balancing reasons.

It’s hardly “being stuck” in a traitline, when you consider what the line offers. As stated above, you used to put 4 points into it to get 2 minors, 1 adept, and 1 major (DE). Now you get a far more useful minor on top (Confusion on crit for both you and illusions), and you get and extra major. How about AE Blind on shatter…oh yeah, that’s not really useful, is it? ;-)

That might as well have been a GM right there. That is a boat-load of blinds! Not to mention that you likely had “Far Reaching Manips” as an adept before, which you also now get for free. (Not to mention IP!)

What changes? Nothing! lol! These boards are always great for a laugh.

If you still feel stuck with Dueling, you also can choose Chronomancer and live quite well without DE! At worst you pick up MI and combo it with F5 and the Clone + Phantams traits, you’ll have plenty of Clone/Illusion generation. Of course you’ll give up on that AE Blind, easy Vigor, and the lesser items you get from Dueling.

I get your point, but IMO it’s focusing too much on the current game, and forgetting about the other changes. DE is still a fine GM trait, specialization defining in fact, but it is no longer a must-have as before. There are alternatives, and with IP being baseline, a lot of pressure to be forced into Illusions is off the table. That alone opens up a variety of shatter builds that weren’t possible before. Making DE baseline on top, would have possibly been too much. (For example, allowing you to build a very tanky P-Shatter build with Dom/Chaos/Ill. without any trade-offs. Do massive AoE damage, but have near 100% Chaos Armor uptime, lots of added Chaos Storms, and of course PU.)

At least now we have 2 unique lines for Clone-intensive builds.

Allow me to quote myself.

Fay.2357:

Let’s start with interrupt builds. Standard interrupt will probably be domination, dueling, and chaos. Chaos gives the strong CI/BI effects, along with good staff boosts. Dueling has the incredible pistol trait, along with standard DE for clone generation and other utility stuff. Domination has the amazing reworked CS, along with the power block + upgraded halting strike trait. This a really well-working, strong build. Now, to take chrono, you’d have to sacrifice some of that. You could…but it would be a significant sacrifice. From what we know of chrono, some stuff is comparable to stuff from other traitlines. This makes that sacrifice a viable option, but absolutely not the single best one.

Alright, now lets do power shatter builds. Power shatter is domination, dueling, and illusions. You’d have to sacrifice one for chrono. Domination has incredible damgae amp. Dueling has DE. Illusions has the powerful shatter cooldowns + shatter boosting traits. Chrono might be worth dropping one of those for…but it’ll be a big sacrifice. One that some people might take, but is definitely not the single best choice.

Now lets look at condie shatter. Condie shatter is generally going to be dueling, chaos, and illusions. This is a really strong set, with dueling providing conditions on crit plus DE, chaos giving staff traits and PU, and illusions providing Maim. One of these must be sacrificed for chrono. Again, maybe you could sacrifice chaos, maybe dueling…but it’s a hard choice. One that some people might take, but definitely not the single best choice.

I could do this for phantasm builds, mantra builds, literally any standard build archetype….I could do this same analysis for.

Conclusion
Chrono is an interesting specialization, has some strong utilities, useful traits…and is absolutely not going to be the only option.

You know, the more I see the more I’m wondering if DE -or rather, clone production for shatters- will be as mandatory as it used to be.

So many new tactics come with the F5 shatter alone that it’s a bit scarey.

Signet of Inspiration twice?
TimeWarp twice?
Mantra of Distraction twice?
Four shots of MoPain?

Siiick.

Hell, F5 → Phantasm Summon (signet activates) → Signet of Inspiration → F5 → Summon (Signet Activates) → Signet of Inspiration

Chaos Maestro is gonna return with a fury! /cackle

Korusef.3714:

From what they said the Shield might be actually better for Zerg tagging than any other weapon at our disposal right now.

Maybe.

Chaos storm base cd = 35s.

Normally, you can phase retreat once through a chaos storm. If you have the staff trait and alacrity, you will be able to do it twice.

Chaos storm —> phase retreat (5s CA) —> phase retreat (5s CA) —> Chaos armor skill (5s CA).

While under the effect of chaos armor, chaos storm at a rate of 2.75 (1s + 35s*.05) seconds per second. This means chaos storm will recharge in 12.72 seconds. At this point you can restart the combo from the top.

12.72s chaos storms are going to be pretty handy for tagging too. I’m thinking sword/shield + staff. Dom, Chaos, Chrono. Wells, Interrupts, alacrity, slow, quickness.

This is.. Literally.. Everything I was hoping for!

I wouldn’t say it is insane, as it does take some skill to chain chaos armor perfectly to get the max amount of CDR, but it is a very solid trait overall. It will be a great staff trait

Too early to tell. Wait for chronomancer tomorrow or whenever the blog is , then decide.

Empowered Illusions is totally out of place in the Domination line.

Please consider moving it to Illusions or Inspiration lines.

• Can be merged with Illusionary Inspiration in Inspiration. It’s fine since you either shatter and get shatter buffs, or do not shatter and get the phantasm buff. It may even be something like “Illusions deal more damage while Mind Wrack is not on CD” to separate the playstyles.
• Can be merged with Compounding Power – damage modifiers for both sides, mesmer and illsuions. You might say “OP”, but really, how OP are phantasm builds now? =_=
• Can be merged with Persistence of Memory since no one is going to ever take this trait to get that WHOPPING OP -2% DECREASE IN CD on shatter anyway.
• Can be merged with Mind Wrack. Same as Illusionary Inspiration – it’s fine since you either shatter and get the bonus, or do not shatter and get the phantasm buff.

That way, PvE mesmers will be able to happily trait into Dueling, Illusions and Inspiration for better phantasm (+reflect) builds. This can also open options for PvP phantasm builds (which can’t be worse than turret engies, right?).

These are some bold design changes. On paper I like the ideas. While I have concern for existing builds, I’m excited for the new ones that will be created. I’m really hoping for some default profession mechanics to be included (such as DE or IP).

Note there is a 4 hour ready-up episode scheduled for tomorrow where each profession will get a block of discussion time. Anet will also be fielding many questions. You can post them here.

Whatever you do, buy a sigil of speed off the TP and slap it on whatever weapon you’re using. That way you can stack up constant swiftness just by killing things. Let’s you run around quicker which will make life more pleasant.