Guild Wars 2

Great changes overall.

Personally, I feel there needs to be condition removal somewhere though. Every single other group of utilities can provide condition remova: arcane thievery, the mantra, null field, traited signets, pDisenchanter. Condition removal either needs to be baked into one of the wells or provided on the trait.

Gcostanza.2086:

PU condi mes is the cheesiest build that WVW has seen. I will say worse than Condi thief. I had a PU shatter interrupt mez switch to it because he couldnt beat my engi then proceeded to say it wasnt cheese. Take off the training wheels mesmers, you are better than that….

Basically, what I’m reading here is this:

“I got beaten by a PU condie mesmer last night in WvW while roaming. Instead of attempting to figure out counterplay for this build, I made a beeline for the forums to complain. I did this because complaining on the forums is easier than learning to play better.”

Maybe try bringing some condie removal next time?

Mirmil.5074:

Fay.2357:

Hits to death is one metric of survivability, but it’s ultimately not a very useful one because it ignores the existence of sustain. A much more useful metric is ‘sustainable damage taken’. If you can heal 6.5k hp every 20 seconds, then sustainable damage taken is 6.5k damage every 20 seconds. More than that and you’ll eventually die, less than that and you’ll stay alive.

In this scenario, you can see that toughness gear is significantly better, because it means that taking the same hits as in a vitality setup will result in a lower amount of damage taken, making it more sustainable. Ultimately if you just get whaled on you’ll die in any build, but mitigating damage to a sustainable level is how you survive in fights.

Lets see by taking those numbers and assume that I get damaged every 2s.
After 20s rabid takes 6024 damage, carrion 7896. When both heal for the same amount, indeed rabid is fully healed while carrion lost 1396 health – rabid can sustain it indefinitely while carrion will die.
BUT if I’d be taking twice this damage (every second not two) then rabid looses:
in 20s rabid has taken 12048 damage, carrion 15792. That after heal leaves rabid with 10734 health and carrion with 15150 – as you can see both version will die in next 20s but carrion has t dodge just ONCE (to avoid 789 damage leaving with 15150-(15792-789)=147 health) while rabid would have to be lucky 2.18 times.

Sure, but if you’re not taking sustainable damage, you’re dead regardless. In the second situation, both builds would be dead in another 5 or 6 seconds no matter what. The main point is that rabid (toughness) makes it easier to keep your damage at a sustainable level.

Carighan.6758:

Zenith.7301:

They keep it like that though for pvp reasons, since they don’t have the manpower ( a generous assumption on my part) to balance split pvp/pve skills.

He comments right after a post showing how the phantasms have different health in PvE and PvP.

I can’t find my WAT?!-gif right now, but it’d be appropriate.

I gotchu

Mirmil.5074:

Fay.2357:

Regardless, what he said about vitality being better than armor is pure bunk. Armor value increases your effective hp vs power damage, but doesn’t affect conditions. Vitality makes you tankier against conditions, but doesn’t have as significant an effect on power damage. Ultimately, you’re looking to have condition defense be cleanses, and rely on armor for power damage mitigation. Particularly in this meta of burn stacking and such, a bit more vit just means you’ll squish slightly slower. Without condition removals, anything else is meaningless.

Hmm, I’ve tried to do a bit of math:
In build listed in OP I have 15922 health and 3320 armor. In full carrion (with dire+rabid trinkets) I have 2533 armor and 24442 health
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW7flsnhG1YBawMNQtGLvGk5KG+IKTQvjGaAyZTA-TFSHABEq+TtXAAY2f4MdD3pE8IlfC8QAA4IAAA-w

Power damage is calculated as (weapon damage) x Power x coefficient/armor
so with sword and typical zerker you can assume to deal (1k*2k*1) =2000k raw damage.
Now in rabid gear that gives 602.4 health damage, for carrion its 789.6 damage.
Dividing total health by the damage per attack will give you number of attacks till death: 26.4 for rabid and 30.9 for carrion.

So in the end he might be right and carrion is more defensive than rabid. Still, I like that 8% toughness to condi damage

Hits to death is one metric of survivability, but it’s ultimately not a very useful one because it ignores the existence of sustain. A much more useful metric is ‘sustainable damage taken’. If you can heal 6.5k hp every 20 seconds, then sustainable damage taken is 6.5k damage every 20 seconds. More than that and you’ll eventually die, less than that and you’ll stay alive.

In this scenario, you can see that toughness gear is significantly better, because it means that taking the same hits as in a vitality setup will result in a lower amount of damage taken, making it more sustainable. Ultimately if you just get whaled on you’ll die in any build, but mitigating damage to a sustainable level is how you survive in fights.

bhagwad.4281:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

bhagwad.4281:

So if one calling another a “scrub”, they need to follow it up with why they think it’s a bad thing, and how their argument is a better one. Otherwise it’s just lazy thinking, hoping that the other person will feel ashamed merely on the basis of the stigma of the name itself. Which is irrational.

It was a specific followup to Pyro’s post explaining that very reasoning. I just took the trouble to put a name to it.

That said, the name itself is an invocation of the storied and now well-known Sirlin article about scrubs, and is far briefer than having to elaborate on all that myself.

I read that article. And it didn’t take into account balance patches which might end up validating the “scrub’s” point of view

Balance patches don’t validate the point of view of a scrub. Just because something is deemed ‘too strong’ by a balance team doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the optimal way to play at the time. Regardless of balance, knowingly handicapping yourself due to a contrived sense of fairness and honor in a game is being a scrub. There is no exception. Looking down on others for not being scrubs just means you’re doubling down on scrubbiness.

Mirmil.5074:

Tongku.5326:

…cut…

I appreciate your post but I’ll stay with my build: switching dueling for inspiration is not worth in my opinion. Yes, you gain some heals but you loose far too much: 1500 heal from shatter is worth LESS than avoiding the damage completely thanks to blinding dissipation. Sharper images and deceptive evasion from dueling GREATLY increase total damage I can deal (and gives as well a free decoy, especially if you blink/invis).

From other points: I don’t understand how temporal enchanter can block rangers/warriors? If I get rooted I blink/decoy or use torch to remove condition, to reflect damage I use master of protection.
Also you mention “armor” – I guess you mean toughness? We have the same armor – light, I don’t believe that there are same level light pieces with different amount of armor (but hey, I might be wrong) and by general rule toughness is more useful than vitality, especially if you take Chaotic transference in count (7% tough to condi). Yes, I’m bit weak against condition damage but I often replace signet with cleaning mantra (and even without it I have two 1 condi cleanse on torch).
Thank you for your input anyway.

Just a quick note: Armor = armor rating on your actual gear + toughness. It’s the actual functional stat that’s used for damage calculations.

Regardless, what he said about vitality being better than armor is pure bunk. Armor value increases your effective hp vs power damage, but doesn’t affect conditions. Vitality makes you tankier against conditions, but doesn’t have as significant an effect on power damage. Ultimately, you’re looking to have condition defense be cleanses, and rely on armor for power damage mitigation. Particularly in this meta of burn stacking and such, a bit more vit just means you’ll squish slightly slower. Without condition removals, anything else is meaningless.

Good luck reflecting mirror blade…

It’s unblockable.

Carighan.6758:

baylock.1703:

Nop I have inspiration so endless supply of condi clense so they do not actually manage to deal eny damage to me but mesmers playing pu condi with dire gear what most do makes them really booring to fight with and i usealy cant be bothered so I just leave them if there is other ppl to fight on map , if there isent il take the 10 to 15 minutes what it takes to kill them. But imagine thiefs , warriors how hard will you conter these classes….. and playing pu condi is soooo passiv you could mind as well play it eyes shut…

Now ignoring that reading this made me want to gouge my eyes out, how is PU Condi cheap again? You beat it consistently with a power shatter built with inspiration?

So… stop being so cheap? Seems you’re playing quit the lame overpowered spec there. Bad players having to use OP specs, meh.

PU condie isn’t cheap of course. What baylock is demonstrating is merely a common phenomenon seen in games.

It’s very rare to see someone that consistently wins all the time feeling the need to denigrate or insult what their opponents do. There isn’t a need. The only statement that needs to be made is the one silently made by winning.

On the other hand, it’s quite common to see people that lose all the time creating insults and reasons as to why their opponents aren’t playing fair. Since they can’t make the silent statement of victory, they’re reduced to making the noisy statements of accusations.

Take from that what you will.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Rangers and Necros have a dedicated class bugs thread in the Bug forum.

Do we?

We used to, a long time ago. We stopped bothering.

Tealots.6095:

Would those be Chrono-condi mesmers? I imagine the Chrono-lockdown bunkers would be running something between control and boonshare. I’m still of the opinion that there will be need for some non-Chrono builds. I still run Dueling/Chaos/Illusions in SPvP pretty often and I imagine it will always be useful and troublesome.

Yeah, they’d be chrono. The non-chrono build I’d want in that comp would the roaming burst shatter mes. Chrono just offers a lot of supportive utility that allow everyone to do their job better. If everyone has more slow and more interrupts and more quickness, everyone performs more effectively.

Silverkey.2078:

I would have at least 1 of the 2 bunker running “Bountiful Disillusionment” instead of “Chaotic Interruption” just to have some stability. Also this same non-lockdown could run the well condi cleanse.

I really don’t know how viable are condi with those ele everywhere (though I agree their sustain is better)…

BD is certainly an option, but stability is much less important when you have slow on the downed person and quickness on you. Combine that with blinding dissipation and you’ve got very reliable stomps a lot of the time.

Chrono condie actually performs quite well against an ele, considering how absurd eles are atm. Slow really hurts eles, and ele doesn’t have a lot of sources of stability (they’ve got armor of earth + armor of earth proc and that’s it), so a large amount of slow + lockdown can really screw them up. D/D eles also have a lot of long channeled skills (drake’s breath, blue drake’s breath, rtl, lightning auto, churning earth, magnetic grasp) which can be leveraged for a lot of nasty interrupts.

Chorazin.4107:

Seems like it would be slow to kill on point compared to the shatter burst builds out there atm?

I guess if its just for fun you can really run whatever you want.

This is for WvW. On point kill time is less than meaningless here.

baylock.1703:

stop being so cheap and stop playing pu condi and get urself a ZERKER gear….

i never stomp other mesmers in wvw unless they play pu condi no respect

That’s ok, playing with that mindset will just get you stomped by people playing PU condie left, right, and center. Thankfully, we aren’t hampered by your artificial constructs of ‘cheapness’ and ‘honor’ in WvW. Instead, we simply play what’s best, and crush those that don’t.

Though as a special honor, I’d let you bleed out with a clone on you if I happen to run into you, just for kicks.

summons ross biddle

Ironbars.9123:

@Fay, thanks for all of the great advice. As a returning player this is a huge help. I wish I had read it before I followed the meta build to a T. I have full dire gear (armor, weapons, accessories). Since ruined it out with perplexity runes I am loath to replace the armor due to the cost of the runes, would it be more effective to change my accessories out to all rabid?

Well, is your armor ascended/WvW badge gear? If not, you can just salvage it. If so, then your best bet would be full rabid accessories, you’re correct in this.

Ironbars.9123:

Another question I have seen an answer to, is it better to leave the clones up as long as possible to deal more condition damage or is it better to shatter them once I have 2 or 3 up?

Clones generally aren’t going to do very much damage to players. They’re just too slow, and don’t apply much pressure to moving targets. However, shattering isn’t as simple as once you have 2 or 3 up. You want to shatter when your shatter will hit. This means positioning your clones properly (take a look at the youtube video from vashury ‘shatter tactics’ for more on this) around your target, and trying to bait out dodges. If you only have 1 clone up but are sure your shatter will hit, then shatter.

Ironbars.9123:

Not to derail the thread but would you change anything from the meta build for the power shatter build?

For power shatter, I assume you’re referring to ‘burst shatter (GvG)’? If so, then just a couple things. Veil is for GvG only. If you’re not doing GvG, don’t waste a spot on your bar for veil. Take the daze mantra or cleanse mantra instead. I also (personal preference) never take desperate decoy because it can kill you if it procs at an awkward time, giving you revealed. That’s just my preference though, it’s not a bad trait unless it kills you.

Generally speaking, bunker-based comps are much more effective on a risk/reward baseline analysis. You can do a more offensive comp, but that’s very difficult to do effectively with the current meta. With that in mind, let’s take a look.

2 chrono lockdown bunkers. Probably running insp, chaos, chrono. They have lots of sustain, lots of support, and lots of control. CI and chrono slows and such let them set up picks for everyone else.

2 heavy condie shatters. Depending on viability, this could be cele (hybrid) shatter instead. The idea is that these are more mobile and offensive builds than the lockdowns, but still provide decent lockdown pressure alongside the more significant offense.

1 PU pure glass roamer. This is your +1. They come in, delete someone, and move on.

This basically mimics the abjured team comp, Mesmer style. We will of course have a lot of optional utility to play with. We can take portals, wells, play around with a bit of boon sharing or just cycle quickness wells and such in a fight. There’s a lot of possibilities, but I’d stay away from specifics until we know more about what the final form of chrono will be.

I don’t have all the numbers off the top of my head anymore. However, I can say the following:

Phantasm hp in PvE is roughly 2.5x larger than in PvP. The pDefender has drastically more health than other phantasms, and the shield phantasm when untraited had about 5.8k hp.

An easy way to test is with another Mesmer. Spawn the phantasm and have them autoattack with the gs continually. Each hit does low damage, and continual attacks cause the floaters to add up for easy recording of the total.

Goodness nubu certainly has a full jug of Mesmer haterade uncorked here. Give it a rest, would ya?

At any rate, I’m confident that the devs are going to make reasonable tweaks to chrono that will put it in a better spot. I’m very much looking forward to the next beta event.

Carighan.6758:

But can we actually play Chrono Condi with the minor traits from Dueling gutted compared to what they used to be in early teasers?

To be specific, Sharper Images was shown to cause bleeding on crits from our Illusions or us in early HoT info, and we had a minor which caused confusion on crits from us.

Both combined beautifully with Rabid gear to do a condi well chronomancer. With that removed, and with shield and wells being all about direct damage, which CShift ofc works, I doubt it’s useful to take chronomancer just for the added power of that. Compared to taking, say, Dueling or Chaos on top of the other one + Illusions.

I played chrono condie pretty extensively using dueling, illusions, and chrono. It’s absolutely stronger than it should be, and needs some tweaking to bring it in line. It’s not a well build though, wells aren’t very good right now. Just standard shatter condie amped with slow and shatter output.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I no longer get a clone from illusionary riposte (sword 4). The skill appears to work as it used to, except no clone appears. Anyone else seeing this? I’m using scepter/sword and scepter 2 works fine.

Yeah, it’s broken when using scepter/sword.

Mirmil.5074:

No, I definitively won’t go for celestial, if chrono spec will require me to switch into it I’ll do it then, until now I’ll stick to my rabid (maybe with a hint of dire).

I like to use the dire/rabid ascended mix for my trinkets. That gives me a bit of nice hp to play with.

Mirmil.5074:

But runes… To be honest I was tempted to get the perplexity runes but they are so bloody expensive (11g per rune last time I’ve checked) and I am not sure will it pay out in total damage.
So should I stay with my undead, switch to traveler or suck it up and buy perplexity? But then again in this build there are not too many ways to actually disrupt the oponent

Perplexity definitely aren’t worth the price. Traveler might be, depending on how highly you value that passive movement speed.

Stormbolt.7293:

What kind of gear would you recommend using with this? Also, if you were to take Dueling over Chaos (using Greatsword), would pistol be preferable because of Duelist’s Dicipline, or does Shield still offer better utility?

Are you talking PvE or PvP? If PvP, marauder is probably going to be the best choice (as it is for pretty much any power build these days). You could, of course, go glassier or tankier as you prefer.

I feel that shield would still be a better choice if taking dueling, for the slows and the wall. While low cooldowns on the pistol can be nice, the shield wall is just massively impactful, and the slow from the phantasms is even more so.

Yakubyogami.7586:

Go with Celestial armor. It takes time to make (30 days for the full set of 6) but is well worth it. You won’t always want to be in condition spec and Celestial gives you better stats overall.

This is really horrid advice. Do not make celestial gear. If you want to run a different spec, then get armor that corresponds for what you’re doing. Taking celestial and trying to make it work in all types of builds is a great way to be really bad at all types of builds.

Let me give you a bit of a disclaimer:

Ascended armor will increase your stats (with a full set) by 1.2% (for the major stat, not even the minor stats). It does so at a cost of hundreds of gold.

Don’t get it.

Aside from that…

Rabid is your best choice. It synergizes well with the build and mechanics of mesmer. Instead of signet of inspiration, you should be taking the condie cleanse mantra. As-is, your build is extremely weak to conditions, and the mantra is the best choice to clear that up.

Personally, I don’t run with traveler runes. I hotswap a focus and use the prestige as I run to keep nearly permanent uptime on swiftness with the help of swiftness procs from PU. Not everyone wants to do that though, so it’s quite reasonable to take travelers (though expensive).

I think you misunderstand the trait. Evasive mirror doesn’t give reflect whenever you use the dodge button. Evasive mirror gives reflect whenever you actually evade an attack. This means that it can also proc from the use of blurred frenzy and the well of precognition. It also means that you can’t just tuck and roll and gain immunity to projectiles (ignoring the fact that that’s not possible anyway due to dodge roll constraints).

As potentially strong as lost time is, it’s usually outclassed by the other two options, especially since the nerf to it. If the proc could be procced in an aoe with an aoe attack, it would be more competitive.

You’re wasting your breath alpha. Just look at that person has been posting in this thread…

Known bug, it’s caused by mender’s purity and not any particular heal. Very annoying for sure.

Oh man, I wish I’d known about this one. That would have been a load of fun to screw around with.

Iavra.8510:

Fay.2357:

Iavra.8510:

Change CS to be 1s per illusion/self and make the mesmer invulnerable for the whole duration. Since CS has a longer cd than Distortion, it would probably be balanced (might need to exclude elite skills from the reset to prevent double Moa etc).

Maybe change the skill to only revert on 2nd activation and remove the forced revert after the rift is destroyed or the buff runs out to make it usable for jukes.

So… A flat nerf to Mesmer defense. Yeah, great idea, 10/10.

Yes it is, in exchange for the ability to reset skill cds. This is how other specializations work, you know. Giving something up for new stuff.

Except you’re wrong. What does an ele give up to overcharge an attunement? Nothing! Does a dragonhunter give up aegis for the new shield thingy? Nope. The only one you have a half case for is reaper, but even then it’s a case of modified but not worse. They get a powerful melee set instead of a ranged set, but accomplish the same things with it.

Your genius idea is simply taking distortion, nerfing it, taking CS, nerfing it, mashing them together and saying ‘hey guys, look at this new great skill that’s actually not good and worse than you had before!’

Yeah, I’ll pass. As was said before, thankfully the devs don’t pay too much attention to all the crud that floats through these forums.

Iavra.8510:

Change CS to be 1s per illusion/self and make the mesmer invulnerable for the whole duration. Since CS has a longer cd than Distortion, it would probably be balanced (might need to exclude elite skills from the reset to prevent double Moa etc).

Maybe change the skill to only revert on 2nd activation and remove the forced revert after the rift is destroyed or the buff runs out to make it usable for jukes.

So… A flat nerf to Mesmer defense. Yeah, great idea, 10/10.

Esplen.3940:

Are you guys sure there’s no cast time? Not even a tiny one? So once I block, if I immediately follow with a roll, I won’t cancel the Phant?

Yep, can confirm on this one. It’s an instant summon.

apharma.3741:

Another thing I keep seeing is people saying about clone spam. Is it really allowing so much clone production that it nullifies how AoE heavy the game PvP wise is?

No, it’s not. What it allows you to do is pick a moment when aoe is at its weakest and rapidly chain several shatters together for maximum effect. This is a good thing, in my opinion.

Nova Stiker.8396:

… at any given time, giving them turn order.

Meaning that if you explode 3 Mind Wreck clones then 2 Cry of Frustration clones at once, the 3 Mind Wreck clones will run to explode first THEN the 2 Cry of Frustration clones would run to shatter. Instead of all 5 running to explode at once.

What would happen to Mesmers in competitive play?

Uh…

I’m not entirely sure what you’re envisioning changing. This would have no impact on normal shatter play other than annoying people for no good reason.

Iavra.8510:

Pyro, i usually tend to respect you and your opinion but if you would have actually tested Chrono condi spam during this weekend you would know how absurdly op it is in its current state.

Also, this topic and iReversion/Chronophantasma are independent from each other and even then, most of my roaming builds play without DE, anway, and i have no problems bursting people down.

I tested it thoroughly. It’s certainly too strong currently, but the ridiculous drastic changes being floated around in this thread are simply absurd. I’ve given my suggestions and thoughts on this elsewhere.

Edit: To elaborate a bit more…

The chrono condie shatter is very strong because you can leverage all the shatters for good pressure, and are able to aggressively shatter to maintain nearly permanent alacrity uptime. On top of that, you can pump out a high rate of interrupts thanks to the effortless slow up time from the shield phantasms. The solution to this is 2-fold.

First, shield phantasms need to provide 2s of slow instead of 3. Might still be too much, but it’s a good start. Additionally, they should provide 2s of alacrity instead of one. More on this later.

Alacrity on shatter needs to be dropped to either .75s per clone or .5s per clone instead of 1s per clone. As it is, any chrono shatter build effortlessly maintains nearly permanent uptime on alacrity, which is (I believe) the largest contributing factor to the build being too strong. Additionally, non-shattering builds have close to zero access to alacrity, which also sucks for the opposite reason. Buffing alacrity on the phantasms encourages use of them in a supportive role instead of just for slow spam. Additionally, alacrity should be made readily available from wells by traiting, preferably in a way that conflicts with the standard shatter trait choices. This would mean that a build could spec for 100% alacrity uptime, but would have to sacrifice other things to do so. Otherwise, both shatter builds and well/support builds would have good alacrity access without it being overpowering.

Spleen.7836:

Iavra.8510:

Except the Chrono traitline throws to many illusions at you, that you don’t know what to do with them, anyway. There is no real illusion “management” even if people like to believe that.

You are already militating to put both iReversion and chronophantasma on GM trait, and that would end the capacity to create so many illusions. Asking for both is a bit much.

It’s just another case of the overly zealous mesmer self-nerf syndrome. They’re so caught up in mesmer being some exclusive and brutally painful class that nobody plays that they want nerfs until it becomes awful again.

Zentoji.8654:

I’m running a Sword main hand with both a focus and pistol, it seems to trigger with the warden but not duelist

Yeah, according to frifoxy, they coded the warden to use a sword instead of axes like it should, causing that bug.

Zentoji.8654:

I noticed that Fencers Finesse doesn’t trigger with duelist, would anyone else be able to verify if this is bugged or not?

I should hope it doesn’t…

“Gain a stacking ferocity effect when you or one of your illusions strikes with a one-handed sword or a spear.”

Unless that duelist is chucking swords around, I’m thinking it shouldn’t proc fencer’s finesse.

Just to put it out there…

Vanilla mes still performs the roaming instakill role significantly better than chrono builds can. That being said, the roaming instakill is pretty much the only thing that vanilla Mesmer does well (other than boonshare, which is questionably necessary in a meta team with celery elery and guards spamming boons anyway).

Chrono introduces a lot of new mechanics and abilities to Mesmer that we currently don’t have, and this is pretty great. The thing to remember though, is this: vanilla Mesmer doesn’t lack interesting and unique things to do, they just all suck. Condie shatter is bad. Phant builds are bad. Mantras got neutered. Glamours only are able to serve niche utility roles. So much of our toolset that could be cool and useful just is flat out bad for various reasons, reasons that make me a bit hesitant to start applauding Anet for the Chronomancer yet.

That all being said…

Yeah, I’m enjoying what chrono brings. Wells allow you to do different flavor things than before, and slow in general is just a brutally crippling condition. A couple notes about the build:

Shattered concentration is absolutely better than FI, even in this build. Stripping boons is still such an incredibly important utility to have in the current meta. A bit of quickness is nice, but ripping 20+ might, stability, and protection off that ele is far far better. Plus, you’ve already got good quickness from shield 5 (shield 5 a downed person, start the stomp, and get a quickness stim to finish it rapidly while interrupting anyone ressing).

Another strong variant is taking dueling and dropping chaos. You lose the immobs and might from CI, but you gain dodge clones for more shattering (which means more alacrity, very important), permanent fury (which offsets the loss of might), and blinding dissipation (no explanation needed).

Edit: I experimented with wells removing conditions. In a word, it’s awful. When you need conditions removed, you need them removed now, not in 3 seconds plus cast time. You also need the removed wherever, not where you cast the well 3 seconds ago. It’s better than nothing…but it’s awful. It’s just horrid to use and unbelievably clunky. Rarely, if ever, will save you when you need it.

Regarding wells…

I enjoyed using them. However, even the good ones are pretty bad.

The well radius is really tiny, some of the wells have insane cooldowns, and they have significantly long cast times. On top of all that, the final pulse effect is often rather lackluster.

Unlike necro wells or ranger traps, our wells take 3 full seconds to do something impactful, and they’re blockable. This means that unless you chain cc on someone, they’re going to either walk out of the well or just dodge the last hit. Making the wells larger will help somewhat with this.

The cd for the alacrity well is insane. 45 seconds for 3s of alacrity and a bit of chill? No thanks, that well will never see the light of day unless it gets a drastic cd reduction, something like 30/35 seconds. Can’t remember the cd for precognition off the top of my head (mainly because I never equipped it on account of it being awful), but I think it’s too long as well.

The final pulse of the wells and the preliminary pulses are just so weak. The damage well pulses for ~500 and then ~2500…crits on a damage build. That’s really wimpy. Yeah, it also does cripple and weakness, but for a persistent aoe that you have to stand in for 3 full seconds, I expect a bit more bang for my buck. Gravity well also has problems, but we’ve got threads devoted to that.

On top of all this, there’s another problem. Unless you’re playing an aggressively shattering build, you’re going to have close to zero access to alacrity. On the flip side, if you’re playing an aggressively shattering build you’re going to have close to 100% uptime on alacrity. This is broken in both respects. Alacrity availability needs to be split between shatters and other mechanics (possibly traited wells). This way if you want 100% uptime you’ll need to spec purely for that, but otherwise all builds will have some access, but not have crazy access.

About sigils:

If you’re not using an energy sigil on both sets, you’re making a stupendous mistake. There is no substitute for energy, and no excuse not to take it.

For your other sigil, you’ve got more options. I personally prefer doom sigils. They add a lot more pressure through varying your condie application. The healing debuff utility of poison is very strong, and it can act as a cover condition for other more intense conditions you apply.

In WvW, I run with corruption on one of my sets. This is because the +250 condition damage outweighs anything else. Additionally, if I’m dying particularly often when roaming in WvW, I’m useless regardless of my sigil choices. In PvP though, you’ll die at a fairly decent rate regardless, so you won’t get much mileage out of corruption. Double doom is absolutely the best choice for PvP.

Bursting is a poor choice, especially in PvP. Since it works off of a percentage boost, it will give a rather low amount of condition damage since stats in PvP are still lower than in WvW. In WvW, I hit about 2100 condition damage when fully stacked, and a % boost there is pretty large (though I don’t take bursting anyway, it’s just worse than the other choices). In PvP you’ll max out much lower, making bursting an even weaker choice.

Losing distortion would mean that no pvp Mesmer that was halfway intelligent would ever take chrono.

Losing continuum split would completely gut the unique feel and cool abilities of the Chronomancer.

Luckily, the devs have already obviously rejected foolish ideas like this one. Many people complain that the balance devs don’t pay enough attention to the forums. I, on the other hand, would be perfectly happy if the balance devs never read a single forum post that wasn’t a bug report. While I more or less continuously malign the competence of the balance devs, the general intelligence of “suggestions” posted on these forums make the devs look like a Mensa focus group by comparison.

Carrion is never going to be a good PvE set, never in a million years. If you want hybrid, you’d go sinister. Pure condie, rabid. Power, zerker/assassins.

All things considered, I’m not too sold on chrono as far as PvE goes for most things. It could be good…but it’s hard to say. If it is good, it’s going to revolve around a much more complex playstyle than current mesmer, which makes it harder to actually execute effectively in dungeons when you’re also needing to pay attention to the bosses.

However, if you’re going to run power on chrono, I’d probably recommend zerker over assassin. Since danger time gives a 30% crit chance boost to slowed enemies, that higher crit chance isn’t necessary.

Seriously, stop posting. The only reason this thread is still alive is because people are getting baited by the op. If you stop posting, the thread will either fall off the front page in a day, or can be reported for bumping.

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…

All invites are up to date.

Yeah, I think somebody earlier summarized it extremely well with the mike tyson quote:

Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.

princode.2750:

as of now chornomancer is seriously broken…I can have nfinity amount uptime of alacrity on players. I love the new concept but please fix choro before its release

So, I’d be concerned about this…except for one small detail.

You’re wrong.

So something I did…

Trait dueling, insp, chrono. Take illusionary reversion, take quickness on shatter, take phant -> sig of inspiration. Take mirror images, take sig of inspiration, take quickness well.

Put up 3 illusions. Drop the well, shatter, spawn a clone, dodge roll, shatter, mirror images, shatter, cast phantasm, cast SoI.

Everyone around you now has ~15 seconds of quickness.

Edit: If you keep shattering to keep alacrity up, this combo has ~25s cooldown.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Fay.2357:

Yeah, except neither confusion nor torment actually do solid damage in PvE.

I’m sure it’s a fun playstyle, but I guarantee you it’s not “very high damage”.

Honestly, I agree with him. My time to kill trash mobs in SW is as low as on my condi engi, now.
There’s just a LOT of confusion and torment stacks.

edit: and my time to kill veterans is wayyy up.

Sure, but a zerker build should kill anything that’s not a husk faster, plus it has better aoe too. The aoe on a condie build is limited to a couple shatters, while you’ve got cleaves and iZerker and iWarden for power.

Telekinesis.8312:

Keeping dungeons aside, power builds in open world are bad..

wat

Telekinesis.8312:

verdent brink, silverwastes etc.. you cant outdps a condition build in these areas by any means.

wat

Telekinesis.8312:

you cant kill a huge mob of creeps with power builds quickly.

wat.

Are we even playing the same game?