Guild Wars 2

@Klonko:
I hope you keep in mind, that the MMR in PvP is kept for each class separately (as far as I know). Meaning if you usually play above the average the system will need to find the appropriate matchups when you hop on another class. How many games did you play with Mesmer already?

I agree that Mesmers have many awesome tools, especially in the areas of mobility, survival (not to confuse with tanking) and controlled burst. But just listing all the utilities we (can) have, doesn’t really make a compelling case. This game can be played with all professions. I would love to see you play and witness how easy it is as Mesmer for you.

I personally play mainly Mesmer and Neromancer and with both I can deal with Mesmers quite easily. The burst is actually in most cases really predictable. Mesmer is unproportionally strong against players with low skill. But the strength evens out the more you get to the top.

Regarding gear I always approached a full offensive route with Power, Precision and Ferocity. For open world PvE and Dungeons that’s actually all you need. No idea how it will be after Heart of Thorns has been released. But even then, if you keep to core Tyria and Dungeons you should be fine with Berserker or Assassins gear.

Much of the gear you get as level up reward or that drops is actually not very optimal in my experience. When I leveled my first Mesmer (just after release, so the experience might be different now) I was crafting my armor (Tailor) and some of my weapons (Artificer) myself – I was mainly using Staff + Sword/Focus. Crafting in itself is a good way to gain additional levels

Regarding trait lines: For leveling I do not find Dueling optimal. I’d focus actually on Domination (phantasm damage, especially helpful with GS), Inspiration (Phantasms can have Retaliation and more HP + Focus Trait) and Illusions (Phantasmal Haste makes Phantasms attack more often, you can reduce cooldown for all Illusion skills and for shatters).

As Bubi said, for open World PvE many things work well, for it’s fairly easy content. If I leveled a new Mesmer without any “help” (like tomes of knowledge and stuff), I would focus on this: click me. Yes, it’s a level 80 build, but should just give an idea of traits, weapons, utilities and gear setup I would personally focus on (Focus + Signet of Inspiration helps for swiftness).

Klonko.8341:

I played Mesmer for a couple of week […]

In what mode? Which build(s)? Give us some context and some concretes, if you don’t want us to disregard your post as an attempt to deceive.

This argument only made sense, if there were no separated queues at all. Why apply to stronghold another philosophy than to courtyard, when both are simply enriching the gaming experience, by offering more than just conquest.

EDIT: Also the patronizing comment about not selecting it makes absolutely no sense. Why would I choose a map, which I don’t like in the first place? But that’s the internet… I guess…

Exactly. Also, in the last guild chat, I believe, they said that PvP is the fastest growing area of GW2. So maybe it wouldn’t actually be a problem in the future. Also, there may be a variety of people enabling all game modes in their preferences and thus providing players for all game modes.

The problem isn’t the stat requirement. To really understand, if the problem lies in the condition build, one needs to analyze which combo loads which condition. Is the condition formula for the condition not appropriate? Are there too many stacks to easy to apply? Is the frequency of application an issue? What are the usual counter measures?

But before we do this, consider the following:
The lower the PvP “tier”, the more often you see condition damage builds. At least that is what everybody says, I did not see actual evidence of this. I am not 100% sure if that holds true, but it seems to be generally accepted, so I will go with this assumption.
Many players but also check for their builds metabattle.com. Which leads to weird interactions. Builds, that are designed for team coordination and specific roles, are now used by completely random groups, which in the lower tier lack the communication and skill to deal with condition burst. This leads to a huge biased opinion (at least in the forum), where people think conditions are actually so much stronger and when fighting a condition build, they actually go in there with a different mind set, pressuring themselves.

I personally haven’t had the issue to be overwhelmed by a condition build in a few seconds. When I lost, then due to being outnumbered or due to being simply outlasted by the other guy. And this is, how it should work.

The principle is sound. Only certain instances should be looked at. Those, which actually may be problematic.

I agree that I didn’t take protection, weakness and toughness into account in my post. I will come to this later.

However, I will first address what you said about “invulnerability”. There are 3 instances only granting invulnerability to direct damage, but not conditions: Signet of Stone, “Protect Me!” and Endure Pain. There are but also 2 instances, where you are granted invulnerability to conditions but not direct damage: Diamond Skin and Berserker Stance – with Diamond Skin making you basically immune to purely dedicated condition builds. Though, the broad scale of invulnerability effects, blocks and evades aren’t picky if they prevent direct or condition damage or both.

Amenaza.8346:

This is further amplified by the fact that a lot of condition applying attacks are unblockable (e.g. all traps) which also adds aegis, reflections and other block skills to the list.

This is simply an exaggeration and “cherry” picking. There is a vast list of unblockable skills on weapons and utilities as well as some traits that modify certain skills to be unblockable. This applies to condition damage skills as well as to power skills and other types of skills.

Amenaza.8346:

In addition to that, in some significant cases the number of successful attacks required to apply conditions for X damage is a lot smaller than the number of successful power attacks required for X damage. This already balances the fact that conditions can be cleansed and a relevant part of their damage removed.

Your argument doesn’t make sense. If there is a general principle to condition damage, which is offset by the ability to cleanse, why does it only apply to “some significant” cases? You are actually dead wrong here. I’ll explain the general concept of cleanses further down. There are issues, where I agree that conditions might be too strong. But those issues aren’t connected to the principle of condition damage but to the nature of certain builds or even just single skills/traits.

Now to the involved stats: The nature of all involved stats in direct damage application and prevention and condition damage application and prevention comes down to this: Conditions are designed to bypass armor and work over time. So the only stat against condition damage is vitality. But, for the reason of attrition, condition builds need to have more stats open to survive themselves, to survive the longer lasting fights. This is the principle, which provides a really interesting interaction in GW2 combat. Are there condition damage burst builds? Yes, there are. However, if you have one teammate or you yourself cleanses available, this burst doesn’t help, because you will simply cleanse it and we are back to attrition. In some cases, you can virtually nullify the condition damage permanently, which I haven’t seen possible with direct damage. And I do find this kind of situation completely okay.

For your comment on protection and weakness I will only answer: resistance.

Liewec.2896:

if campyard gets its own queue then failhammer should get one too,
or just remove both from the unranked rotation, problem solved!

The issue is not the dislike of the map, but the completely different mode of how it works. I know many people dislike Skyhammer, but it’s not about that. It simply is about courtyard not being a conquest arena.

I believe it would be better to put courtyard in its own queue, like stronghold had its own queue in the BWEs. So you could make 3 queue preference settings:

• Annihilation (currently only courtyard)
• Conquest (all the conquest maps)
• Stronghold (currently only one stronghold map)

If that is already planed, consider this post irrelevant^^

@Ross Biddle:
Lol. My thoughts exactly^^

PowerBottom.5796:

hardest build was for me Mantra Mesmer. Only if you really use Mantra of Distraction for smart interrupts and not only for the free stun because of confounding suggestions. ^^’

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJARWl0nhy0YNawWNQtGLnG05Tiy1JDwCCaZGaeCA-TZBFABCcBAEvMwH7PswhAAgnAAA

Reasons

- Knowing what to interrupt.
- Being able to actually interrupts it.
- knowing the teleport-spots for Staff 2.
- Smart use of Portal.
- Pretty squishy build that can’t simply rely on stealth, but you need good positioning and awareness.
- Managing Mantra’s and channeling them at the right time is crucial.
- Teamplay and communication is key for the important spikes/stuns/boonstrip. If you make a mistake, often the target simply doesn’t go down.

It’s funny, that’s almost exactly the build I am using atm. It has its difficulties but it’s really powerful imo. Guess it all really comes down personal preference.

I always had problems playing a thief. Tried to get into it, but couldn’t really grasp it^^ I suck at thief.

Again. The problem isn’t the number of stats that go into condition damage. To bring this up already highlights the lack of understanding. Condition damage requires less stats (in some cases it only barely does), because it works different than power damage. The biggest issues are: Condition damage works over time and can be cleansed. So after one applied conditions, the “future” damage can be removed. This is different to power damage, which cannot be removed after it was applied.

Does this mean every condition damage build out there is super balanced? No, there are certainly issues in some areas. But don’t pretend it’s due to how condition damage works. The principle is sound.

Unfortunately many players fail to understand how this works. This is why I personally am successful with a mantra inspiration build. As a glass cannon lockdwon Mesmer I support my team with AoE condition cleanses, which turns very often previous lost team fights (I wasn’t around) to wins, because many players prefer going conditions lately and suddenly their damage is reduced to next to nothing.

I use imagined burden in PvE and there it doesn’t seem to bug GS#5.

I (one of the people^^) have it disabled.

Condition damage is not strong because of the required stats. It is strong, because of people’s ignorance towards the mechanics involving condition damage. This argument comes up again and again and is never conclusive. I am tired of this.

Condition damage does not nearly compete with power damage, because it can be cleansed. If you waste cleanses on low stacks of conditions, then it’s your own mistake. Be clever and manage your cleanses or go crazy on a condition damage counter build. If you believe condition damage is so much stronger than anything else, then expect and counter it and don’t run the same metabattle build over and over again.

My experience is:
PvE:

• OpenWorld: Conditions are actually okayish, though the dps from a phantasm power build is better.
• Dungeons: Conditions on Mesmer suck.

WvW:

• Zerg: Conditions suck, due to high condi cleanse on enemy zergs.
• Roaming: Conditions are very strong. Mostly due to a lack of understanding. People believe condition damage is a passive thing and if they have cleanses, they pop them too early and cleanse only the initial application, making themselves vulnerable to the actual burst. Also, most Condi Mesmer builds have it easier to survive.

PvP:

• mid/low tier: Condi Mesmer are generally strong, cuz rarely do players build to defend against conditions (or over build and have no dps on their own). If the enemy team has a condi Mesmer, I urge them to leave him alone, because I have seen it often, that 2 or even 3 guy fight that one Mesmer for ages and we lose all other contest points due to being outnumbered. I will then but focus on that condi Mesmer and make him regret being there (hurray for inspiration^^)
• high tier: (not actually my experience). Players tend to build better and understand game mechanics better, which makes it easier for them to deal with condition Mesmer (like not attacking into scepter block and such things)

Last time I tried, mantra works with Portal (you mimic the exit of the portal, if I remember right, to make it work). I am not sure, if your idea is good or not. If we had only core Mesmer to think about, then I’d say: Yes, do it. But thinking about the upcoming Chronomancer, I am not sure, how that would impact balance. Yes you still have to give up another utility. But being able to speed up the reduced Mimic cool down via Alacrity… seems dangerous to me^^

@TheFrighteningFrenchFry:
We seem to have utterly different experiences in GW2 PvP. I personally find it easier to run a shatter build (power or condi) with MoR or Decoy, Blink and Portal. Either MoR or Decoy make it easier to survive (depending on team compositions). I do run CS on a power shatter build too. I personally though make a conscious choice to play a power lockdown build with MoD, Blink and Portal.

My experience is that it becomes significantly harder to fight any build with good access to Stability and it becomes easier to fight builds that don’t (like most Necromancers I meet out there). To say that CS+MoD makes it easier to hit burst is not what actually ever happened to me. Landing a burst is no issue on both builds, the approach how to land a burst is different as well as the ability to survive for the next try. With the Lockdown build one needs even more awareness as to what your opponent is doing. On a shatter build, your next burst is up quickly, so is it on a lockdown build, but on lockdown your tries are limited to 2 or 3 times (obviously going for harmonious mantras [which I do] comes with an additional significant trade off). So you need to be more careful what you do with those charges. After you have expended your charges, you are for a time so much weaker compared to a shatter build.

You always make the assumption, just because you hit one button to stun and this stun has only a 5 seconds cool down, it makes things more easy. But you seem to ignore, that you give up a potentially defensive utility slot, you have a limited amount of tries in a certain time window and people actually have adapted.

After the initial balance patch, I had an awesome time, especially against thieves. I stunned stuff left and right and felt like the master of the universe. And you seem to have had a similar experience. People have learned though and there were certain balance changes and bug fixes. It is a very different experience now. I can’t really judge on a broad scale, if lockdown with CS+MoD is easier than a power shatter build or not. I can assure you though, that against a half decent opponent, it is actually a challenge to make lockdown really shine.

I like the puppeteer idea. I know that illusions don’t count as companions any more, thought I’d love if they did

Well in matters of diversity of utility Chronomancer seems OP… but utility alone won’t win you a match. I believe Chronomancer will be an essential part of PvE dungeons and raids in the future and will be a welcome asset to PvP teams. The Mesmer alone however won’t win the match for your team.

We will also have to wait and see what happens after people have adapted to what Chronomancer can do.

My personal opinion: Chronomancer is a spellcaster that actually can manipulate time. So of course it should be totally op^^

/deleted due to my own stupidity^^

The “simple” tricks (like obscuring view or hiding between the illusions) won’t work against a half decent opponent. But, you can still use Mesmer skills to trick people. However, that is less due to the nature of Mesmer but more due to the nature of combos, which have a tell.

Every build has some kind of tricks, like baiting dodges with GS#4 on a power shatter build. Or often Mesmers wanna surprise burst their foes from stealth and this burst combo starts often with GS#2, so using GS#2 from stealth but not committing to the actual burst combo will leave your foe exposed for future attacks. Things like this can be used to actually apply mind games, but this is not necessarily unique to Mesmer.

Illusions also have the disadvantage that they often fall victim to AoE or cleave damage. So even if you briefly “tricked” someone, they might just straight out kill your illusions and thus even take one of your possible damage sources away.

On the other hand, what Curunen said bears actually a strong advantage of Mesmers. The combat in GW2 as well as the current pvp formats very much rely on positioning in and out of combat. And Mesmers can be very mobile. If you are good and have a good team, then with the help of blink and portal you yourself can be very mobile in a match and even can make your team very mobile. And this is in imo the actual strength of the core Mesmer profession, which can be incorporated in many builds to a certain degree.

@Ross Biddle:
Your quoting confused me. I thought you were trying to argue my position… but became confused when reading your post further^^

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Make the stun on daze stun on interrupt with daze. In addition add a 15 second internal CD.

I have suggested something like that a while back. I am not sure that a nerf is actually needed, but I’d still like the idea of stunning a foe, when you interrupt it with a daze. However, I don’t think a double nerf is ever the way to go. So either go for an increased icd or a change of the trait’s nature.

However, before we really talk about nerfing something, one must make a compelling case, that something actually is too strong.

While I see that against Necromancers this trait is so very powerful, I see it actually significantly weaker when facing classes with high access to stability and/or invulnerability.

@OP:
And all mentioned games suck^^

Such comparisons don’t make any sense, because u take a mechanic out of its gameplay environment and put it into the GW2 gameplay environment. What information is to gain from that? Nearly none, because the context has been completely changed. You can use such comparisons to gain inspiration, but they aren’t an argument for the good or bad design of GW2 stealth mechanic.

GW2 as a whole works differently than the mentioned MMOs, as far as I can tell. So any similarities or dissimilarities are purely incidental.

I bet every kind of iCD, be it of runes, sigils or traits, won’t be affected by Alacrity.

How about:

Superior Rune of Chronomancy

1. +8 to All Stats
2. +10% Slow Duration
3. +12 to All Stats
4. +25% Chance when struck to inflict Slow for 3 seconds. (Cooldown 60s)
5. +16 to All Stats
6. +20% Quickness Duration; When you gain Quickness, gain Alacrity for 2 seconds (Cooldown 30 sec)

Superior Rune of Domination

1. +25 Power
2. +10% Stun Duration
3. +50 Power
4. 25% Chance to remove Stability on hit (Cooldown 60 sec)
5. +100 Power
6. +20% Daze Duration; When you interrupt a foe, inflict Immobilize for 1 second (Cooldown 30 sec)

Superior Rune of Dueling

1. +25 Precision
2. +35 Ferocity
3. +50 Precision
4. 25% Chance when struck to inflict blindness for 3 seconds (Cooldown 40 sec)
5. +100 Precision
6. +20% Blindness Duration; When you succesfully evade an attack, remove revealed and gain stealth for 3 seconds (Cooldown 60 sec)*

*I realize thieves would propably love such a rune set^^

Superior Rune of Chaos

1. +25 Toughness
2. +5% Boon Duration
3. +50 Toughness
4. +10% Condition Duration
5. +100 Toughness
6. Duration of auras you apply increased by 33%; 25% Chance when struck to gain Chaos Armor for 5 seconds. (Cooldown 30 sec)

Superior Rune of Inspiration

1. +25 Healing Power
2. -10% incomming Condition Duration
3. +50 Healing Power
4. 25% Chance to remove a condition when struck (Cooldown 30 sec)
5. +100 Healing Power
6. -15% incomming Condition Duration; When you use a heal skill, you and nearby allies gain Resistance and Superspeed for 2 seconds. (Cooldown 60 sec)

Superior Rune of Illusions

1. +25 Condition Damage
2. +10% Torment Duration
3. +50 Condition Damage
4. +15% Confusion Duration
5. +100 Condition Damage
6. +20% Might Duration; When you summon a companion, gain 5 stacks of Might for 5 seconds (Cooldown 5 sec)*

*Counts for pet swap, as well as summoning of turrets, gyros, elementals, minions, illusions, spirit weapons, thieve guild and ambush (if I didn’t forget any^^).

Superior Rune of Chronomancy

1. +8 to All Stats
2. +10 to All Stat
3. +12 to All Stats
4. +14 to All Stat
5. +16 to All Stats
6. +33% Alacrity Duration; When you gain Alacrity, gain Quickness and inflict Slow around you for 3 seconds (Cooldown 90 sec)

AtomsOrSystems’ numbers seem to be correct

The game was never balanced, if you hold it up to the initial intend of ANet. Originally all professions were aimed to be able to fill all roles, just using different mechanics. This clearly never was the case.

There were always professions, that were easier to play or could do certain things better than other professions. Some had higher/lower skill floors/ceilings than others, some were/are face roll on newb level and have a hard time in an environment of very skilled players. This inherent unbalance between all the professions, the players’ creativity and the paradigms of what is considered to be effective create the so called “meta”. This, in turn, dictates how the balance is perceived by most.

To say there is no balance is ignorant. There is always some kind of balance. If you which for a balance, that gives every profession equal opportunities and chances, you would never be able to enjoy a game. Such a balance is near impossible and is also not intended in game design. This ensures you have a shifting meta with the introduction of new/changed content. A shifting meta keeps a game interesting.

I personally am excited about the HoT release. And I am exited exactly for the reason that I can discover a whole new world in PvP. The times, where the meta isn’t “settled” is the most exiting time in my personal view.

Talking PvP only:
Actually after I was testing Chronomancer in BWE2 and 3 (similar to Chaos’ Clockdown) I am not sure, if it really is stronger in manners of lockdown than my more traditional lockdown build with Greatsword + Sword/Pistol. The team support on the other hand is phenomenal with Chronomancer.

So what will likely happen:
If my team needs a roamer, I will likely go with the traditional Mesmer only build and take also Portal. If my team has a roamer I will go with something Clockdown like. That doesn’t mean Chronomancer can’t roam… I personally but prefer roaming on the traditional setup.

I also think, after the dust has settled, many people will learn to deal with Chronomancer better. As awesome as for instance shield is, it is also slow and strongly telegraphed, making it more easy to avoid.

We can now be veil and alacrity bot. Don’t sell Mesmers short^^

Yeah, you were right. There is glowing with the right dye. Sadly, the idea I had doesn’t seem to work. But well, there is glowing xD

Nice, I will wait for night cycle again. Should start soon. Maybe I missed something with the T2 armor.

mtpelion.4562:

TyPin.9860:

Erm… moon and sun aren’t part of nature? And guess what plants need in order to grow

By that same argument we can state that the Charr war machines require fossil fuels to operate, and fossil fuels are made of plant matter. Ergo, Druid is thematically linked to tanks.

You could argue that tanks are part of nature. Due to the unclear definition what actually nature is, where it begins and where it ends. However, sun and moon has always been described as part of nature or the cycle of nature or the natural cycle. For me HoT druids, sylvari and nature are thematically so very very close together. Just look at the background story of sylvari and the awakening cycles.

Plants (in most definitions part of nature) need the moon and/or the sun to grow (moon and sun also being part of nature). It is weird to me to detach nature moon and sun. All we traditionally describe as nature depends on sun and moon in one way or the other.

Tanks could be widely seen as part of nature. But it needs a specific mediator: sentient races. Here is, where everything becomes subject to definition. Is the doing of the sentient race natural? Is the race itself natural? That is a very important point and needs a discussion of its own. But the connection between druid, nature, leaf stuff, moon and sun is so very close. It is a mystery to me, why people have the need to separate those.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

There’s definitely glow on some Sylvari cultural armours.

I have t3 heavy on my Sylvari Warrior and it has glow on the barky/twig-like bits. I can provide some screenshots if you wish.

I’m pretty sure that TA armour also has a glow.

Of course, if you dye the glowing regions very dark, the glow won’t be very noticeable.

Yeah I’d like to see some pics. I have tried different dyes on this armor and didn’t see any glow. Maybe I am blind though^^

Corelion.7460:

Not to blow up your idea.. but Ranger in GW2 (specially the Druid) has little to do with nature and leafs and more to moon and sun.

Erm… moon and sun aren’t part of nature? And guess what plants need in order to grow

I have recently created a Sylvary Ranger, so I can have a proper Druid when HoT releases. For her being a druid, she also needs a leaf like armor. So I am currently running with the tier 2 cultural armor. However, I found it very distracting that the glow isn’t present on the armor. At daylight it looks very cool, as if the armor is actually a part of her “skin”. But at night, especially from behind, it looks weird. I have added 2 pictures, to illustrate that.

On the first, you can see her from the front side and it looks kinda okay, the glow seems to gradually decrease from top to bottom. However, from behind (the 2nd picture) you only have glow on her head/hair, but then the rest of the armor doesn’t have any glow (her hair is black and at daylight that goes well with the all black armor).

So, would it be possible (and wanted by the community^^) to add glow on leaf like armors (cultural Sylvari armor sets and TA armor set)? Maybe it could be even a gem store armor set with glow. I personally would love that.

EDIT:
T2 armor also glows… I tried it with too dark dyes, which simply don’t glow…

Ross Biddle.2367:

At least gyro’s dont inflict conditions and effects upon death.

…oh wait.

That one made my day Engi gyro death build incoming? JK

I will need to test it myself next beta weekend. Just tested it once from the PoI, when Chronomancer was revealed. And there it seemed to be a flat out increase of recharge speed by around something of 60-70%. Never tested it in a real BTW.

First off, I am not usually playing engineer. However, seeing the reveal made me really like the scrapper. I was just thinking about the Hammer #3 skill. And maybe it would be nice, if Hammer #3 was not a channel of 3 leaps, but actually 3 leaps in an attack chain (with a time of 1s between attacks to keep the chain active). This would give players more control about the leaps and make it less predictable. You could then also use a skill with short activation time between the leaps

It might also give you better control, if the leaps bug out on a rock or smth like that

Just a thought

AlphatheWhite.9351:

And yes, if Pyro’s estimation turns out to be correct, that means alacrity is only giving 50% faster recharge rather than the stated 66% (2/3).

But even this is fairly strong I would say

I haven’t been keeping track of the news. But are there any plans from ANet to merge servers or something along those lines, to increase the borderland presence of low populated servers? Or are we being allowed to choose new server for free, when HoT hits?

If anyone has any information about that, I would be grateful, if you shared

Xstein.2187:

Additionally, on game changing, have you ever tried to pvp stomp in an enemy time warp? Imagine this all the time, its a game changer. Alacrity is also a game changer as it reduces all cool downs by 66%. This means instead of casting ice bow 4 every 20 seconds, you can cast it every 6.8 seconds if under alacrity for the full duration, which as I have mentioned, is possible.

I believe Alacrity works differently. It speeds up the recharge “speed” by 66%. Meaning in 1 second you recharge 1.66s of a skills cool down. This would reduce a 20s cool down to aprox. 12s, if alacrity is 100% of the time active.

That would mean in combination with alacrity and Harmonious Mantras one could potentially use 5 charges on Mantras (With Mantra of Distraction). 2 during split and then it resets back to 3… Some others could be spammed even more often. That would be a bit too much imo.

Embolism.8106:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

TyPin.9860:

This is what I used today:
PvP: Selfish Shatter Chronomancer
WvW roaming: Selfish Shatter Chronomancer

Shattering a million times in a row with sometimes Alacrity up time of like 10 seconds was amazing. I often phase retreated through the same Chaos storm twice, had constantly 1-2 stacks stability, around 10-25 stacks of might (not to speak of the millions of other boons) and could use all those long cool down skills like Gravity Well/Moa or Chaos Storm very very often.

My best encounters: A condi shatter Mesmer in PvP, who I held a point against for 5 Minutes without any condi cleanse until our thieve arrived and took his last 10% HP with a steal^^ Right afterwards a condi guardian came (I had only like 30% HP) and I made him regret coming there :P

EDIT:
Also Chronophantasma, Illusionists Clarity and Persistence of Memory synergize amazingly on Shield

I don’t understand where you would be getting constant stability from. The only source I can see in the build is Gravity Well, which is on a 46s cooldown at best.

My guess is he picked Prismatic Understanding by mistake. It’s probably meant to be Bountiful Disillusionment.

Yeah… my bad. Ofc I meant to choose Bountiful Disillusionment

I fixed the links^^

This is what I used today:
PvP: Selfish Shatter Chronomancer (link fixed)
WvW roaming: Selfish Shatter Chronomancer (link fixed)

Shattering a million times in a row with sometimes Alacrity up time of like 10 seconds was amazing. I often phase retreated through the same Chaos storm twice, had constantly 1-2 stacks stability, around 10-25 stacks of might (not to speak of the millions of other boons) and could use all those long cool down skills like Gravity Well/Moa or Chaos Storm very very often.

My best encounters: A condi shatter Mesmer in PvP, who I held a point against for 5 Minutes without any condi cleanse until our thieve arrived and took his last 10% HP with a steal^^ Right afterwards a condi guardian came (I had only like 30% HP) and I made him regret coming there :P

EDIT:
Also Chronophantasma, Illusionists Clarity and Persistence of Memory synergize amazingly on Shield

Can’t say much about Tempest. Didn’t meet one, didn’t play one. But I played Chronomancer. I have no idea how it feels on the receiving end, but the CC, especially if you go full out (C)lockdown is very strong. Especially in team fight or even +1 situations it can make very much the difference and strip all stability even without boon ripping... Even D/D Eles quickly surrendered after I burned through their boons.

I even used a variation without domination (Chrono, Chaos, Illusion... so no boon rip, confounding suggestion or power block) to have access to more frequent shatters and alacrity. But this one lacked significant damage.

Thing is, if you played GW1, you’d still know this is nothing. In GW1 a Mesmer could literally shut you down and you couldn’t do a thing. However, GW1 Mesmers weren’t bursting you down like it’s nothing, even if you were fully committed to offense. Maybe ANet should look at the balance between damage and CC. I personally enjoyed the low damage CC variation, because it gave me so much flexibility and allowed me to use the long CD skills ridiculously often. And it felt very rewarding finally to down my foes, after I wore them down.

Rain.9213:

GUYS! Let’s not forget this: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Pillar

It has a blade and a freakin flail on it! This is a perfect staff skin for Melee.

fully agree. That will be my weapon of choice^^

Lokheit.7943:

All that dodging is what you will see the time revealed is active before safely stealthing again.

This is something I expect too.

Yeah… that’s all I have to say. This is how I will approach that elite spec and I think I gonna enjoy it^^

Need an Asura Thief though xD

EDIT:
Wanted to play Rev at first… cuz of melee Staff… but I think that’s way better and people will curse at the 24/7 evasion^^