what is better for open world pve (especially the new zones): normal mesmer or chrono?
Chrono. 25% movespeed > all. Once you don’t need the swiftness from TC, you’ll be surprised how much less appealing focus is.
I used to play a phantasm-build. The shield provides you with a block (is kinda ok) and a wall that gives you quickness for a short duration, but has really high cooldown. The focus I used before just feels much more useful with its damaging phantasm and additional reflects.
Shield is a utility/defense weapon. To compensate in open-world, your other weaponset needs to be a damaging weaponset. So you’ll stay in your damaging weaponset until you need the shield’s defense/cc, then swap over.
Additionally, you don’t need to use the shield for Chrono to pay off. Alacrity, movespeed and illusion uptime are the primary gains from Chrono, and you don’t need the shield for any of them. It has its benefits, and it’s really cool, but using something else doesn’t ruin the chrono.
Wells are mostly just for providing boons.
This is incorrect. Wells can be mostly just for providing boons. But Calamity does strong damage, Precog is a stunbreak and 3s free-flow invulnerability (ie, you can have it while still using skills), Action add slow on top of the quickness, and Recall adds one of the strongest debuffs in the game (chill). If you’re not keeping those capabilities in mind as you use your wells in open-world, you’re missing a large portion of their power.
But I dont feel like they are more important than things like feedback or blink. The elite-well is ok, but timewarp is more useful I guess?
Yes, TW is more useful in more situations. On the other hand, GW is massive breakbar-killing, which can be more useful with the right timing.
But what we’re hearing from people having success is that they take a mix. Some do still use Blink alongside one well, or two wells. Or one well, feedback and mimic. Or whatever. Taking all wells seems mostly to be an organized-group thing, maximizing team alacrity. But in open-world, where coordination is low, and you’ll find yourself alone as often as not? Go ahead and pick whatever you feel like. Wells are just another tool in the toolkit.
The F5-Skill is nice for things like double-tw, and the 25% speedboost ist really convinient. But still, talking about open world pve the normal mesmer seems more efficient.
Don’t use f5 for double-TW. Use it for 48-70s Time Warp. If you double TW, you’re just getting twice the TW duration on the same unbelievably long cooldown, and TW remains just a once-in-a-while burst.
But if you use it whenever you use f5, suddenly TW becomes as frequently useful as Mass Invis, or Gravity Well itself. In open-world, that’s a Big Deal.
Am I missing something? Or am I just playing chrono in the wrong way?
Yes, you are, but it’s understandable. Chrono’s skill cap is higher. Balancing alacrity is essential to getting the most out of it. Understanding exactly what you are doing to make use of crazy traits like Chronophantasma, Illusionary Reversion, All’s Well that Ends Well, Lost Time or even Danger Time is essential.
By comparison to other trait lines, most of the Chrono traits and benefits are active, that is, you need to shape your behavior around them in order to make full use of them.
To make use of Alacrity, you need to balance its uptime and know when you’ll have it and when you won’t. Popping alacrity with nothing on cooldown does nothing for you, popping alacrity with everything on cooldown has enormous benefits.
To make use of Chronophantasma, you need to be balancing your phantasms’ attack cycles with your shatter cycles, so that the shatter will make them attack sooner than normal. If you want to use Chronophantasma for more than just another shatter-fodder trait, you’ll also want to take Persistence of Memory and start keeping track of your phantasm summon cooldowns.
To make use of Illusionary Reversion’s incredible shatter-fodder capabilities, you need to be balancing all your other illusion-generating skills on the edge of a knife, so you don’t pop any shatters without having at least 2 illusions up already.
To make use of All’s Well that Ends Well, you need to be cycling through your wells intelligently, using F5 to its fullest potential, and coordinating positioning with your allies perfectly.
Frankly, the movespeed is one of the few parts of chronomancer that is passive at all.
