Guild Wars 2

someone has a nocturnal life -.-"

He’s saying using slow to make Deja Vu blocks 4s or so instead of 2.5s….you don’t have quickness while blocking though and if you’re talking about other boon application its too situational tbh.

Not a bad idea tbh, Mallyx do need some CC and fear seems to be fitting condition legend.

Embrace the Darkness is the absolute retaliation skill against condition users, thus making it elite worthy. But the removal of copying conditions from this skill makes you wonder why you would ever toggles it. If you’re concerned with fighting against your own teammate’s cleansing then why would you toggle on this elite in the first place? Please give players some room for various playstyles as oppose to parentally funnel us down into something that is no longer Mallyx. The key commercial thing you guys promised was Mallyx able to copy your own conditions onto other.

Displacement nerf is necessary in PvP, but the CD is definitely not.

Check frifox’s youtube channel for nice demonstrations on condi in dungeons. As explained, and you probably know it as well, mesmer’s torment and confusion isn’t working so well for NPC so they have to use bleed to stack damage.

• iDuelist takes a while to ramp and they’re usually cleaved very soon, making them not exactly effective in dungeon. Not to mention iWarden against most bosses.
• WoC spam is good in solo and very easy to play, allowing you to pay more attention to boss etc. Unfortunately as the party size increase you start to give allies minor boons instead of viable dps.

If we’re talking about PvE bosses…slow and chill don’t work on break bars atm and it seems like devs inclined to move from defiance to break bars. Plus interruption build is generally bad in PvE (except that period of power block on mobs huehue).

Anyway I think traited alacrity wells + double time warp makes chrono very useful to parties in PvE setting, and it won’t collide with your preferred phantasm build as well.

Been having small group roaming with this in WvW lately. Had plenty of amazing fights and I hardly die even in the midst of enemy clusters. Deathly chill reminds me of the old burn.

I’d say depending on comp. When we’re facing outnumbered fights and my guildie was running support guard I ran blighter’s boon, which works amazing with Empower. Basically heals me back up completely and allow me to soak a lot of damage. But in equal number situations I tend to run deathly chill to damage opponent and boost my fear damage.

Didn’t you get the memo? Moa no longer prevents stomps or resses. And I do love a 6/6/6/6/6 build, haven’t seen that for a while really.

This is a really awkward bug I’m encountering on my Beta character. Running this build in WvW with friends but whenever I use blink my decoy goes into CD as well. Even more strange is decoy will share the same 24s CD as blink. So both is recharged.

Was testing with a friend as necro and warrior today. Seems like head butt can’t break stuns from chill to the bone, but it can break daze from necro warhorn etc. Anyone else experience other sorts of stuns that they can’t break out with head butt?

I don’t know when does this started, but for the past two weeks I occasionally get stuck on one spot after I dodge. I can still use skills but I can’t move left, right, forward and backward etc. This almost feels like immobilize but I don’t have immobilize status. The only way to break out of that situation is use a movement/teleport skill or use another dodge (which is why I’m certain that I’m not immobilized). Stun breaks and condition cleanses don’t work unless they move me as well. Is anyone else having the same problem?

Did somebody said highest burn ever?

Impractical but fun nonetheless lol

OMG how about clonadoes?

Robert can we add new functionality to Master of Fragmentation? Something like activating shatter creates a blast finisher on mesmer himself, kind of fits the name as well.

With IP being baselined, power mesmers are reluctant to pick Illusion traitline because Master of Fragmentation offers less than other traitlines’ GM traits. Illusion is offering too little for power mesmers, most power mesmers who do choose this line are picking it for shatter CD.

While condition mesmers mainly pick this line, they will pick ineptitude any time of the day.

I wonder how many D/P thieves will choose unhindered combat over bounding dagger…as for S/D I think we need to see how unhindered combat plays out before judging, since S/D was nerfed to the ground.

According to the blog, Karl design Daredevil traits and skills with evasion in mind rather than stealth. Ofc you still have an option of taking pistol offhand or utilities for accessible stealth.

hmmm intothemist seems to have no elite specialisations. I recommend using Build editor, it hasn’t incorporate recent updates though.

I tell you a story back in my childhood, it’s about a mesmer casually strolling in open world with SoI. Suddenly a red name mob decides to stop me from leaving!
Oh no! He’s going to make me walk in combat speed!

Bam!!

Thank you aegis, thank you SoI.

You have 2s quickness upon activating berserker mode, I think your money shot will be that 1/2-3/4s one.

Imagine how much your zerg will hate you if your shot is reflected…

Roughly like this

Hardest hitting auto attacks with quickness or embrace the darkness. Basically just swapping legends, tune up the upkeeps and autoattack. Your teammate should provide enough might or prolong your fury in ideal situation.

Whether hardest hitting auto attack means highest DPS, I’ve yet to test out. But I doubt rev will have the lowest DPS.

Kidel.2057:

Implying warriors will be objective and ask for a nerf if the class turns out OP.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

where exactly do you see ton of condition cleanse, especially when you disregard defense line?

Shout+that moving fire field on torch 5.

This is why I dislike cross-class comparison. Clearly you do not play warrior enough and you’re banking your argument on something you have limited knowledge of. You’ll only be spreading false information and gather a bunch of clueless people who knows little about warrior to complain with you.

Shoutbow has been out of meta since June’s trait rework. Your shouts will, at best, remove 1-2 conditions on a 20s CD at the cost of lots offense power that rage utilities have to offer. 1-2 condi removal on that long CD is far from ton of sustained condi cleanse, so a condi thief, condi mesmer or even a smart burn guard will wrack you. To top it off you choose one of the worst traitline in PvP warrior, which tells me you don’t know what you are saying. The fact that you discarding CI will only make your shout warrior lack burst condi cleanse, so engi and necro can pile more than enough conditions to kill you, even if you burn all your cleanses. If you read the description, torch #5 will only cleanse 2 conditions on a 25s CD. If you want that CD to drop to 20s, then you’re sacrificing the precious Dead or Alive trait that you claimed made warrior invincible. In conclusion, any condi player will be able to defeat your build unless they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

Regardless of your horrible choices only bring minimal benefits, notice every decision you made have an offensive opportunity cost as I pointed out? This is where balance comes in, a berserker does not have everything in its build. And keep pointing at rifle burst won’t change that.

I could say the same thing about mesmer. Any mesmer who traits for chronomancer has some sort of opportunity cost.

• Domi/Duel/Chrono power gives you very little condi cleanse
• Duel/Chaos/Chrono (people’s so called OP PU chrono) offers very little shatter benefit so cleaving illusions will leave mesmer offensiveless. Essentially like 2013 PU mesmer but this time you don’t suffer from clone death proc when mindlessly cleaving his illusion.
• Chaos/Illusion/Chrono very limited on demand illusion generation so again, cleave the illusions will deprive mesmer of offensive power and you won’t have to worry about clone deaths.
• Duel/Illusion/Chrono is more of a condi set up but you lack the “OMG OP PU”.
• Duel/inspi/Chrono offers more sustain but you can’t kill anyone with.
• Chaos/Inspi/Chrono is pure bunker type and he’ll have even harder time to kill you.
  You are welcome to come up with other mesmer trait combinations and I can tell you the opportunity cost in that one. But the idea is the same, anyone who goes for elite are sacrificing something for the benefit of elite.

I play all professions extensively and I can tell you comparing cross-class is really stupid.

?_?

I have a feeling you are just emotionally regurgitating on what berserkers got rather than seeing the opportunity costs in berserker. You’re not even reading our stuff properly….where exactly do you see ton of condition cleanse, especially when you disregard defense line? Also seeing Robert’s habit on mesmer and necro, he’ll likely increase CD anything he deemed “a little overpowered”. So I wouldn’t worry too much on berserker in expansion release.

Berserker’s rage utilities offer no condition cleanse and their torch only cleanse 2. This is far from sufficient and so the warrior has to trait other lines to counter conditions. Traiting defense, discipline or dedicate another heal utilities will mean sacrificing a potential offense power, as expected for balance purpose. So tbh berserker is in the same boat as revenant.

Btw the new flurry has no immobilize and projectile speed seems to be slightly lower than normal projectiles, so I wouldn’t worry too much about getting hit point blank.

Unfortunately all elite specs must have something better to offer, same goes for other professions if you look at each skill individually. It is the only way for ANet to attract PvP/WvW players to buy expansion and make money for their development. So your assumption on making horizontal changes to elite spec isn’t exactly realistic to what a game developer will have in mind.

If continuum shift has the same CD as distortion, then sure

Anyone still remember Pyro’s Immortal mesmer build? Basically it utilizes retaliation from both mesmer and phantasm to kill opponents, while protecting you with high protection and regeneration uptime from traitlines and chaos armor.

I was thinking if we can recreate this bunker build using chronomancer.
Quick build link before we start.
Several other variants mentioned in this thread depend on your taste: 1 and 2
Melandru for bunking in PvP, and radiance in WvW. I surprised myself for suggesting radiance as well but it is actually quite decent with this build due to very high light aura and chaos armor uptime. Also radiance grant light aura with well of eternity so extra retaliation!

A mesmer burning in purple flame (alacrity), emitting white light but at the same time envelope himself in dark purple shield, what a wonderful sight isn’kitten I claim this build as Light and Darkness! Just joking lol.

Funny this build doesn’t have Chaos line, which you would expect as a must have in the past. But chronomancer line actually offer quite a lot of stuff and synergize well with Illusion and Inspiration. Together they deliver surprisingly similar outcome with very different playstyle, but there is one key uncertain factor I’ve yet to test out.

Offense

• As I mentioned before, there is one key factor that I’m banking on but not certain about. If persisting image works with chronophantasma’s respawned phantasms, then we’re looking at almost close to pre-vengeful images nerf ones if you shatter and cast phantasms constantly. Don’t ask me why I didn’t think about testing that when running insp/illu/chrono in the last BWE, must have slipped my mind. This require high coordination from mesmer though so developers please please don’t overreact to it! Plus this is the only way to make persisting images viable.
• Chronophantasma actually synergize well with persistence of memory, giving you roughly 4 seconds of all phantasm recharge per phantasm shattered. And its not hard to create and shatter 2 phantasms with this build.
• Well of eternity provides another light field on 20s CD. Which can be super helpful if you find leaping into temporal curtain is tricky after iLeap change. Funny thing with light aura is you also apply 8s of vulnerability to enemy when they hit you, not a big boost but just a nice little extra compare to old combo haha.
• With introduction of light aura, each light field leap will give you 5s of aura. This aura will grant 2s retaliation on 1s ICD. Thus giving you high retaliation uptime (theoretically 10s but normally 4-8s) even without cry of frustration. This won’t be 100% uptime, but hopefully you’ll be able to keep up the leapings with the light fields you have and alacrity!

Defense

• Unfortunately without Chaos traitline you have no protection on chaos armor cast, but hopefully those wells will provide enough chaos armor for you to stack protections.
• Its a shame about the removal of condi cleanse with wells. But with persistence of memory and chronophantasma, I find myself unlikely to have iDisenchanter on CD when bursted with condi during PvP. I know iDisenchanter isn’t so good sometimes though but with inspiration you shouldn’t be kill by conditions that easily. Your well of eternity will also provide 2 condi removal on cast due to mender’s purity, potentially helping you remove poison before the big, end healing pulse hits.
• You won’t have much regeneration uptime as in the past, but with the changes to restorative illusions, we are looking at much better burst heals than regeneration.
• With the wells this bunker build can keep very high alacrity uptime. Which provide good defense and offense abilities across the board.

Weakness

• Stuns, that’s the main thing I can’t emphasize enough. Hopefully phase retreat and chaos armor blinds will keep you alive from melee chains but I can’t guarantee this.
• You can swap iDisenchanter with iDefender if you find the traited iDefender die too frequently. Your condi cleanse will be slightly weaker but it shouldn’t left you too vulnerable. Alternatively you can swap with well of calamity but you’ll have less chaos armor uptime.
• Sorry about the mobility.
• You are relying on others to kill themselves, but we know that since Pyro’s build isn’kitten

Overall this build seems to work on paper but I need to test it out. A very different approach compare to the past Immortal build but it can achieve the same outcome. Maybe it no longer work on current meta? Maybe we can slap celestial on it? Maybe someone already tested and know persisting images work on chronophantasma? Maybe Pyro won’t be as pessimistic if this build is viable? Who knows. Discuss!

Solori.6025:

While we have condi rev’s putting on 15-20 stacks of burst torment.

This is assuming you will throw all skills against someone who can’t dodge…which mesmer can achieve the same with multiple shatters mind you.

Back to topic, despite what Chaos said is already bad enough. I’m probably a bit more pessimistic than that. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more nerf on alacrity to bring it in line with other traitline or classes if general public don’t get the concept of “elite specialisation”.

W T F

*cough

Want this fast.

Justin Theng.6540:

Signz… Seeing all these “recommendations” to add ICD to Illusionary Reversion by players make me wonder if they ever play shatter mesmer before or not. Not to be rude but adding ICD will kill off the shatter build instantly. That 3 secs or 5 secs recommendation is a very long duration in pvp.

Robert’s implementation of 2 clones seems like a better choice. If you say it’s hard to produce 2 clones, then you aren’t playing a mesmer right. Mesmers can create 2 clones easily anytime. All you need to do is just to add another clone after each shatter prior to the 1st one to continue the clone generation.

Mesmer is a class where it requires a lot of skills thinking/rotation. not just stand there to attack and hoping for a second clone to appear.

Your argument makes me wonder if you ever tried a PvP build without DE before. Or you just don’t get the point of our argument yet, this is for you and also for dev to see…

We wish to have something that can help us move out of DE. Simple as that.

With the 2 illusions requirement, even chronophantasma + IR will be hard to replace DE. Perhaps make a 1 illusion requirement to start with in BWE, suddenly jump from 0 to 2 seems a bit heavy handed.

Ofc 3s ICD or stack time lag charges could be alternative solutions.

EDIT to change clones to illusions blah blah blah.

Anyone else thinks this skill resemble this?
[img]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1255/647214371_4252bd7d4e.jpg[/img]

Unfortunately HoT will only give us offhand shield, so double sword sets will still be dominating PvE.

Moa clones are not uncommon, but this seems like it can last forever :P. You should see me when I toss elixir x on mesmer illusions though, I laugh til death haha.

Compare cross-class will always end badly Lucius…but I agree both nullfield and arcane thievery needs some love.

Embolism.8106:

Re: Gravity Well’s Float: I’d rather have a functional skill rather than one that looked cool but is functionally useless.

My thought exactly. The amount of times people walk out of my Elite (despite attempts to lock via CI) makes me cringe. But when people do get caught simply because they want to contest the point, I wondered whether I should laugh or cry.

I must admit though, having careless people sucked into a blackhole is also a good sight.

EDIT: maybe we could slap 3 condi removals onto precognition or recall? Those 2 skills have really high CD for such little use.

Step 1
Have a full condi mesmer in illusions, perplexity runes and duration food

Step 2
Cast confusing images

Step 3
Have your opponent do fast auto-attack 10+ times without cleansing it.

Bam.
You have 1-button kill wonder.

Embolism.8106:

IR wasn’t a substitute for DE by itself though, it kind of needs to work with Chronophantasma for that. And with Chronophantasma I think IR is fine even with a 2 Illusion requirement.

I dunno. Maybe I was spoiled because I used Sceptre-Shield and the Illusion generation was crazy.

Having DE as a must have in every single PvP build is the last thing everyone likes to see but it has been the case for years. One of the main reasons for that is because enemy cleaves our illusions all the time. Now that chrono traitline is added it severely hampers build diversity if DE/Dueling is still a must.

Mallyx corruption with herald’s facet of nature to boost your resistance up to 3-7s depend on the skills you use. But you’ll lack stun breaks and stability so you’re limited to Jalis/Shiro or invigoration/retribution….man there isn’t much options.

Embolism.8106:

Do people really Shatter with 1 illusion or less that often? I get doing it for utility like Diversion, Distrortion, Boon Stripping or a panic blind/heal/cleanse but generally I don’t Shatter unless I have 2, if not 3 Illusions anyway.

IMO Improved Alacrity should improve all outgoing Alacrity, not Alacrity you receive.

Loving the changes.

Except it can’t exactly provide sufficient replacement against DE in PvP setting with 2 illusion requirement. Any random cleave will render this trait pointless. I understand this change is to address the burst potential with IR, but it also hurts mesmer sustain damage substantially.

Say a mesmer no longer wants to trait DE. He can summon 2 illusions with each weapon set. A random cleave of a single clone or phantasm (which is probably the easiest counter I’ve ever seen) will deny him of IR and he’s left with 1 illusion. So he has to swap to another weapon set and so on. If the AoE/cleave remove both illusions, that mesmer is going to find a hard time to keep up 3 illusions or any sort of damage.

So what will the mesmer do? He goes back to DE.

Solution to this would be to add 3s ICD as suggested above, solve the burst craziness but maintain sufficient sustain for this trait to be viable.

uhohhotdog.3598:

“Unrelenting Assault – When striking a foe, gain 1 Energy for each stack of Vulnerability on them.”

Sounds extremely OP. What about pve? On a boss? Or even in pvp when teammates also have vuln stacked on that target? That would be a crapload of energy. 7 hits x 25 stacks = instant fill up.

Needs a cap for that suggestion (10 per skill use?)

Simplest solution isn’t necessary the best solution, I still propose lowering cost on essential skills. but here is one when you think outside the box:
Reduce legend swap CD from 10 seconds to 5 seconds

Couple of benefits from this change:

• Reduce chance of energy depletion even under the current energy costs. Given that each swap gives you energy at 50%.
• Prevent spamming utility skills as you can still deplete energy in each legend, thus impede your attack flow. You still won’t be able to spam weapon skill due to CD.
• Promote legend swap and inter-legend combo.
• Less likely to suffer adverse effect due to legend specialties etc. So you’re less likely to die from condition in while you’re waiting 10s in Shiro; or you can swap to stun break legend much faster while in Ventari or Mallyx. You can still suffer if you swap carelessly, but it won’t immediately means a death sentence.
• Extremely high fury uptime as a reward if you swap constantly at the expense of changing skills and upkeeps. Also beneficial if you like to stay in particular legend due to low CD, thus promoting both styles.
• Cleansing channel will finally be useful in keeping revenant alive from conditions. It’ll be good but not OP, just like warrior’s brawler recovery with fast-hands. Revenant can still die of condition if condi bursted or piled enough condi, but at least players won’t die of minimal condi pressures.
• Traits that effects when invoking a legend can finally be more appealing to choose compare to their competitors.

Ofc some balancing needs to be addressed:

• Add 10s CD to empty vessel (stun break when swap legend), which may seem intimidating at first but given you can swap to stun break legend much more easily every 5s it’s not that horrible.
• Perhaps slightly more CD for low CD weapon skills.

Revenant is a mix bag of problems right now. I normally wouldn’t complain about “energy are so high that you can only use one utility each time” if you can swap legend and maintain the momentum or survival. But each legend are so specialised in what they do they sometimes lack certain essentials for survival. Just some examples, you have Mallyx and Ventari that lack stun breaks at all, you have Shiro that lacks DoT clears and 35 energy for stun break and you have Jalis with alright 3 condi clear on long 30s CD heal and 40 energy for stun break.

Having only enough energy to use only 1 utility from each legend each time is definitely not enough for revenant to cope with condi and stun pressure from current PvP. And its very naive to think 10s CD legend swap and “perfect rotation of legends” can justify its energy cost, when PvP is all about unpredictability from you and opponent.

No one is stupid and demanding a spammable class, but currently a single use of stun break or condi clear will drain that legend of any offensive and defensive drive. What if you just used a legend swap when you’re stunned? What if your next legend has no condi clear? Which legend can reliably handle engi and necromancer, who have both CC and condition pressure at the same time?

2 would be very beneficial given each legend are very niche in offense, condi, heal/cleanse or stun break, but probably so good that players will stop swapping legends unless they’re forced to.

In this case best one is 3, reduce energy cost for weapon by 10% (mainly affect high energy cost ones) and, importantly, utility skills by around 20%. Most utilities have 35 or more energy, making it difficult to chain weapon skills and utility skills without hoarding energy beforehand. You also won’t have much chance to hoard those energy when you’re relying on energy to survive or push people to defensive in PvP.

The high demand in utilities energy means majority of scenarios you’ll use 1 utility with 2-3 weapon skills then you’re left with no energy for utility in the next >5s (depending on your energy) or swap legend, but press F1 early can can mean death if your alternative legend has no stun break or condi removal/resistance etc. This makes revenant both very vulnerable and offensive-less against opponent who can sustain well, which just so happen to be majority of PvP metas.

I gotta admit, I agree iAvenger needs to use bouncing projectile, that’s how Captain America hurt his enemies with his shield

…I’ll show my way out.

Every mesmer weapon must have a skill that creates a phantasm, that’s just the way it is. Shield’s phantasm just so happen to land on a block skill, it doesn’t make it similar to sword 4 (which only gives clone).

Its not hard to reproduce it Eremite, surely a necro main like you have tried signet (eg plague) build?

duster.7013:

I think double moa is physically possible to deal with and therefore perfectly balanced.

Also lol, let’s give it “some time” to “see how it plays out.” The idea of free wins for a few months doesn’t actually sound that bad, time to roll mes.

Why? Because your pride stops you from learning or coping with elite spec during Beta? Chronomancer playstyle are no where near ground breaking, mesmer is essentially doing the same rotations as before. If you trouble now then you just showed failure to cope with mesmer playstyle even before beta.

Chronophantasma? Destroy phantasms when they cluster together and stool there in daze.
Continuum Shift? Destroy the weak rift.
Slow from GS? Why are you giving him chance to spam GS auto on you?
Condi PU chrono OP? Funny because he has to decide Dueling or Illusion to achieve that. Losing Dueling means cleaving his clones/phantasm will stop him from generating illusions reliably and his illusions can’t inflict bleed at all; Losing Illusion means he can’t blind you while block/evade and he can’t shatter. Both of which can be countered by destroying his illusions. Either way he’s playing just like a PU mesmer since 2013, except this time you don’t suffer anything from mindless cleaving/AoE.

Chronomancer is hardly OP, it is just more improved in general. Those who take it and can utilise it well will have slightly better outcome, but no change to playstyle and nothing ground breaking. Tbh bad players will remain bad (which I do see a small trend of disillusioned people jumping on “OP bandwagon” like in June 23rd patch), good players will be more competitive. Before we jump to OP conclusion I think its safe to say every elite specialisation is upped in this beta.

Some quick video on golem…hehe golems…I had some games as well but I shut off bandicam due to stutters.
https://youtu.be/t7hJuBB9yhY

Quick update on what I seen so far:

@Nachyochez
I still can’t reproduce your scenario (shatter prolongs CS duration). Can you describe it further?

@Kaiyanwan
Continuum shift does reset your shatters.