Guild Wars 2

BWE3 FEEDBACK

• AWTEW: As I have mentioned before in the second beta, I do not think the alls well that ends well trait should be changed. In the first beta, the chronomancer severely lacked the ability to share alacrity. Now it works out about right.

• Flow of time: This also received a 25% nerf between betas. Now, without improved alacrity, it seems to be in a good place.

• Improved Alacrity: this is the one that might need a few changes. During the first beta everyone took IR because it had no significant costs and IA only made alacrity last 25% longer instead of 50%. Then everyone complained that there was not enough alacrity while others complained we could summon illusions too easily. As a result, IR was nerfed and improved alacrity was buffed by 100%. After these changes, everyone started to take IA over IR. I think they just need to find some middle ground between these two traits. If 50% longer is too much, drop it down to 33%. Now, I am also not totally against the idea of changing it so 50% of your alacrity gained is shared with allies. However, the problem with this is that if you are mainly using wells, and you and your allies are all standing in the wells, your allies will be getting significantly more alacrity than you are. This doesn’t quite make sense to me since in my mind it makes sense that the chronomancer should get more alacrity than others and should be the only class that is somewhat balanced around it. Therefore, I think the trait description should remain the same, and where it is at in the trait line. The only thing that should change is the numbers of how much longer alacrity lasts on you.

• Shield: I agree that the block duration should be reduced to 1.75 seconds. Besides the op complaints, this also makes for some quicker play, which I enjoy. This is old news, however, I would also like to put in my vote to have iavenger throw his shield at the enemy from a distance, with the sound like it was before. Alacrity will then be granted to allies in an AoE from the enemy.

Zetrik.4397:

There is a major difference between a player who knows how to play their class and your casual/meta players. The main player base are the latter, you make not take it seriously but they will and I guarantee this will become a meta in no time once they realize it.

100% Alacrity upkeep time is a problem for 1: It makes the general populace of players lazy, they no longer have to have any kind of skill to play a class since all there skills will be off 66% faster so all they have to do is button mash without a care in the world, 2nd problem is how do you expect ArenaNet to produce any challenging content when most of the players do not even know how to play there class and basically expect to be hand feed. Perfect example of this is Fractals, Dungeons, World Bosses, and alot of PvE content, all the player has to do is stack here and stack there and use all there skills repeatedly. What type of skill does that take, ohh thats right it does not take any.

It has been proven time and again that ArenaNet caters to the whims of the general populace, so for the casual/meta player its perfect, while the so called “Pros” as you stated know there is a time and place for everything suffer.

For you to not ever realize the downside for 100% Alacrity up keep time proves you are the Former and not the latter.

So I CANNOT take your feedback seriously, since you clearly do not understand the gravity of this situation

• Alacrity reduces your cool downs by 40%, not 66% (ty AlphatheWhite)
• The chronomancer shield is balanced around alacrity and cool down reduction. The chronomancer is designed to receive a lot of alacrity.
• The fact that people stack and mash buttons is a problem with dungeons, world bosses, fractals, etc. It is not a problem due to alacrity or that should concern alacrity. If you are in a raid where people move around a lot, not very many people are going to get alacrity.
• Alacrity is not necessarily that bad for a mesmer because they lack sustain damage. While 100% alacrity for free isn’t a good thing, as others have mentioned, its not for free. You may get 40% reduced cool downs. However, you are giving up stealth time, proper shatters (not just spamming), and skills. Additionally, there is no denying that someone who plays chronomancer, or any class, under alacrity with proper technique is going to do a lot better than those who mash buttons (a lot, lot better)

Yes, I kinda agree. However, I was referring to OPness rather than build variety/usefulness. For example, it is generally agreed that the chronomancer line offers a little to everyone. It is useful in almost all build types. However, this does not necessarily mean that it is OP compared to other specializations. Lets imagine that all other specializations had their damage boosted by 1000%. If you took the daredevil line you would not be as good at stealth, as you have mentioned. However, you would still be OP since you would be doing 1000% more damage than the chronomancer, even though the chronomancer line is useful to all builds. Similarly, the reaper could have all melee damage boosted by 1000%. You could say that the necro trades off range damage for more melee damage. However, that specific reaper build would still dominate the chronomancer if it was doing 1000% more damage. All while the chronomancer line could be useful in all build types even though it is underpowered compared to the other specializations that do 1000% more damage.

This is just a demonstration of why there is a difference between OPness and build usefulness. It doesn’t say anything about chronomancer. However, what I was referring to before is that most of the elite specializations are OP compared to the base class. I did not mean they were more useful in all build types.

Ya, but as of right now

Reaper > Necromancer
Chronomancer > Mesmer
Daredevil > Thief (I have a friend who has never lost a duel with his d/d daredevil build and can confirm this)
Revenant > Many, if not all of the current classes in the game right now.
Scrapper > Engineer

Druid is also potentially better than ranger. However, I have not played or heard enough about it to really know. The only specializations that don’t shine through are dragon hunter, tempest, and possibly berserker. However, gunflame, even if it is bugged right now, may still be pretty powerful in the hands of a berserker.

There is probably going to be even more complaining after HoT launch because even if these classes are a close as possible to the current classes in terms of power/ability then people would still have a fit because they will say this specialization is meta to this class and that means I am forced to buy the expansion for the game.

What happens when Sylvari go tanning to much?
They are burnt into charr!

What happens when Sylvari don’t tan enough?
Well, its safe to say that they are one pale tree.

oooh, Ill take number 46!

Well, this is kinda a lie. Anet has recently added armor/weapons through actual gameplay. Examples of these include the carapace armor and luminescent armor from the silver wastes, an entire set of Ambrite weapons, and the Mawdrey back item.

Profesional armor: you will not get professional armor. However, you will get a weapon that matches your elite specialization, along with matching head or shoulder armor if you complete the reward track.

Seriously, why would you post this in multiple sections (pvp and mesmer). This is against code of conduct.

Anyway, putting the foolish multi posting aside, its quite possible that the buffed improved alacrity synergizes a little to well with flow of time. However, there is no way to tell this from one instance. This is one person and one complaint. Additionally, some of the other specializations are very strong now. There are also new mechanics out, like wells and continuum shift, that many players will not know how to handle right away.

p.s. Supcutie, I appreciate that you were so open and posted your build and some technique. Many would not do this. Its very interesting seeing the different combinations and ideas people are testing around with chronomancer.

Honestly, its very hard to tell right now. I would say what type of weapon you have will be more important then weather or not it is ascended. I cannot guarantee this. However, I have the feeling that staff and sword are going to be seen a lot of play in raids. This is simply because

A: You may not necessarily need to do a lot of damage (may). You may just need to stay alive and make sure your squad is doing a lot of damage.
B: These two weapons give you access to a huge amount of chaos armor that should help to protect you significantly in raids.

I would also not be surprised that if you made ascended now, you would have to change the stats on them sometime down the road. As of right now, no one knows what weapons will be optimal and no one knows what stats will be optimal. Perhaps the most likely situation is that you will have to change your weapons, or even stats (meaning carrying multiple armor types with you), depending on where you are at in the raid and what raid you are doing.

There would basically be no difference between the union and what the forums are now. The mesmer forums are one big schizophrenic voice most of the time.

Art work was amazing! I loved the purple hue emanating from the mordrem so that it looked like veins. Mordremoth’s voice is amazing! Loved how the vines move so smoothly. Not gonna lie, I wish it wasn’t so focused on just Rytlock. Needed more diversity. Would have been really cool to see Braham using a bow, Kasmeer using a shield, Rox using a staff, etc. Perhaps Taimi using rocket boots to burst herself through a mordrem with a hammer. Would have also been amazing if Rox had a pet wyvern that attacked the larger one.

The slow motion of the wyvern going over Rytlock was soooooo cool. Sohothin also looked amazing. Can’t wait to see what happens to Rytlock and Sohothin in HoT.

I like the suggestions as well, my main problem, as you have stated, is that you can’t counter the counter.

One theory has been proposed by woodenpotatoes that Mordremoth may use Zhaitan’s dead body to make a clone of him, just like he does with other dead bodies.

I would say roughly 500 hours or so, give or take. It took me roughly 800 hours of game play for a full set of light ascended, light of Dwayna, and sunrise. This is from lvl 0-80. However, it also means no monkeying around and doing mostly dungeons and silver wastes during this time period. I did tequatle, AC p1-3, HOTW p1, CoF p1, and a silverwaste run everyday for about 3 months. What matters is that you do your activities daily fairly religiously. Grinding it out all day is just going to make you want to give up. Work at it a little every day. The finale cost to make sunrise for me at least was roughly 1200 gold. This does not include some mats that I already had saved up. I would highly, highly suggest crafting and not buying directly off the trading post. The time spent to get your crafting up and craft it + time spent to gather the money to craft is far less then the time spent to gather the money to buy it directly from the trading post.

Ah yes, an ugly caterpillar transforming into a beautiful butterfly, just like Lyssa. I never thought of that.

Oh ya, but also forgot to mention that Chaos once said he heard that Robert Gee worked on the mesmer in gw1 as well. However, the original mesmer was more than likely a group effort with ideas coming from many people. However, none the less, it was still genius.

I’m just going to throw in another reply in case an actual dev doesn’t answer. However, some of this is just speculation that I have heard before.

1. Mesmers have been associated with illusionary magic and deception since gw1, just not in the exact same way.

2. I heard somewhere that mesmer’s used to be associated with circuses. Perhaps this is because the circus is one of the best places to use illusionary magic to deceive people.

3. I don’t know why, but the devs decided to strongly tie one of the human gods to this class. Lyssa is the goddess of beauty, water, and illusion. She is also heavily associated with chaos. Lyssa’s association with illusion, chaos, and beauty may also be one of the reasons why mesmers are associated with fashion, art, and beauty.

In one story, she took on the appearance as a twisted women with a flesh eating disease, but it turned out to be Lyssa. Lyssa said, “True beauty is measured not by appearance but by actions and deeds. Many have eyes, but few have seen. Of all here, you saw the beauty behind the illusion. And you alone shall be blessed with My gifts.”

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lyssa

Is this where the first mesmers came from? What is Lyssa’s true appearance? No one knows. We have all heard the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Perhaps this makes it easy for mesmers to use beauty against people. In fact, many mesmers may use magic to change their appearance. One of them is Countess Anise. During the world summit, Canach said he wonders if she is “really as young” as she looks.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Countess_Anise
at the bottom

Mesmers may also naturally be very good at determining the presence of illusions, similar to how Sara determined that the plagued Lady was an illusion and was really Lyssa in the story I told you. One example of mesmers determining the presence of illusions is when the mesmer collective sent members to investigate the veil surrounding Viathan Lake that turned out to be the Tower of Nightmares.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mesmer_Collective

4. I have also heard before that they may use a butterfly to symbolize mesmers because of the so called “butterfly effect.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
This is depicted in many areas of pop culture. For example, in one of the treehouse of horror episodes of the Simpsons, Homer used a time machine to go back in time. However, he accidentally stepped on a mosquito. When he returned, Flanders was dictator of the whole world. This was a parody of the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect basically states that small changes now can lead to very, very large differences in the future. For example, the detailed path of a Hurricane may have changed because earlier a butterfly was flapping its wings at a distant location.

Therefore, the use of a butterfly as a symbol may tie into the mesmer’s association with both chaos and beauty. Stories using the butterfly effect like “A Sound of Thunder” also sets up the class specialization nicely for its role in controlling time.

Items that associate Lyssa with chaos or mesmers include
Chaos of Lyssa
The pistols Ilya and Lyss
and Runes of Lyssa

1. I did not see a second picture. I only saw what was shown in the link.
2. I meant in relation to the color scheme. Both are white and blue colors. In my opinion, its more likely that the new set of legendaries will have different colors that counter the original legendaries. For example, sunrise has very light colors while twilight has very dark colors. This allows players to choose which greatsword they want based on what type of colors the character uses for their armor.

If you like dark colors and have black are dark armor, its unlikely that you would like Frostfang since it follows a “lighter” color scheme. Therefore, I believe they are probably going to add an axe with a “darker” color scheme to cover more preferences. Likewise, bolt seems to follow more of a darker color scheme. Therefore, the new legendary sword my be lighter to cover more preferences. All of this is speculation. However, it would make sense from Anet’s point of view.

ok, here is the problem. As of right now, this is really only speculation. Its entirely possible that they don’t want to show case what is in the collections to prevent a whole bunch of people from buying and selling precursors. It could have nothing to do with buying or selling items in the collections. Lets just look at where they are going. One of their latest collections in silver wastes did not involve any materials that you could buy or sale. My guess is that the collections for precursors will mostely involve materials that you

A. Can’t buy or sell, but have to earn or
B. Can buy or sell, but you can also buy from an npc.

Why do I believe this? Well, they posted an image of the collections tab for the procurer on their website in an article titled “A Legendary Journey”. The image that they have their cursor over has a picture of queen Jennah and says “show off your dance moves to Jennah, queen of Kryta” It then says trophy and soulbound on acquire. If it is souldbound, then you cannot post it on the trading post or mail it to other players. Lets keep looking. It also looks like you may need an Ambrite Fossilized Bee for the collection. What a surprise, you can’t buy these on the trading posts as they are account bound. Another one I see on the list is an Ambrite Fossilized Cricket (same thing). As for the green wine at the bottom, I don’t know what it is. I don’t think its elonian wine, as it has a square at the bottom instead of a diamond. However, the top wine looks like Courage. This can by crafted in the mystic forge with an Eldritch scroll, 20 mystic coins, 20 piles of Crystalline dust, and a bottle of Elonian wine. The only thing you can buy/sell on the trading post is the crystalline dust. However, not sure how much prices for this material are really going to change beings you need 250 piles to complete the legendary any way. Another item looks like a charged shard, which you can buy/sale on the trading post. Another is a Stein of Cold Beer (bought from an npc) and Monk’s beer Stein (bought from an npc with karma). There is an orange in the list as well that can be bought/sold, but these are so easy to obtain. There is also some Fireworks, which can once again be bought from an npc vendor. There is also a Mini Evon Gnashblade that can be bought from laurel vendors. Finally, it looks like there is some more food and other items on the list. However, as of right now, I cannot identify them.

So, in conclusion, it looks like for the energizer the only thing invest worthy is crystalline dust and charged shards. However, it takes only one charged shard while other precursors might require a different material. Additionally, 20 crystalline dust isn’t really that much compared to the huge amount (250) people are going to buy to make their legendaries anyway. Seems like most of the items have to be earned or bought from vendors.

I don’t know. They say its new and legendary. This makes me think it actually might be a new legendary. However, on the other hand, it looks offaly similar to Frostfang. I would think if they were adding a new legendary axe that it would have a different color scheme.

Forgive me, but I am a little confused why you think the recipes in the game are bad. I’m not disagreeing with you. I am just trying to understand why you are upset. Why the recipe was introduced doesn’t really matter. Even if it was introduced due to a complete accident, It may still be a good thing to do (not saying it isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Also, of course chests did not start out stat-optional. However, this does not mean they didn’t latter realize this was a bad idea and that you should get at least some value out of it with the input of some material costs.

You also said that players had time to exploit it. If they did, can you please explain what this exploit is and why it is bad, as I am not currently aware of it.

In my opinion, just based on what I currently know, I thought the introduction of the recipes was a great idea. Some people may have got chests with the exact stats they wanted while others may have not. Therefore, it became completely random weather you want the chest or not. This doesn’t make sense at all and is quite unfair. I believe this is the reason that gw2 is currently moving away from RNG. Don’t have good luck? You can craft your precursors now. Don’t have good luck? You can buy fractal weapons now if you have enough pristine fractal relics. Don’t have good luck? You can now potentially switch the stats of the ascended armor or weapon you got.

Ya, they should also make fall out 4 50% off if you’re a veteran. They should do the same with Halo 5 and Dark Souls 3. For gosh sakes, I bought the original Halo around 13 years ago and have never once got a discount on any of their next games for being a veteran player. Therefore, I should get an even larger discount. What is the entire gaming industry thinking?

Thanks, I always just made that assumption. So, the best way to calculate the cooldown reduction is to just divide the cooldown by 1.66? If this is the case than shouldn’t you get around 39.759% cool down reductions for skills with full alacrity uptime? Its weird that he got 33%, perhaps something to look into. If pyro’s data is correct than we are only getting a “50% faster recharge” or every second under alacrity reduses skill recharge by 1.5 seconds.

What Separates A Good Mesmer From A Bad?

If I was to answer this in one sentence it would be something similar to . . . . . .

What separates a good mesmer from a bad mesmer is the ability to understand the class and game to the point where you know when, where, why, and how to use specific traits, skills, armor, runes, sigils, mechanics, and weapons to best achieve the desired outcome.

This really covers too much to explain in one post, actually it pretty much covers everything in the game. However, its pretty much true. You do need to understand all the classes, items, areas, and mechanics of the game to become a better mesmer. This may involve knowing when to use your different shatters in pvp, wvw, and pve as well as knowing when to use different sigils, armor, runes, and weapons. This is also why I said desired outcome. Everyone might have a different desired outcome. Perhaps your goal is to apply as many conditions as possible. Perhaps your goal is to control your opponent. Perhaps your goal is to apply as much dps in a dungeon as possible. Perhaps your goal is to buff the dps of your group as much as possible. Perhaps your goal is to kill an enemy as fast as possible in a 1v1 pvp situation. Whatever the game mode (pvp, wvw, dungeon, fractal) and whatever goal your trying to achieve, you should know what you should be doing and why. If you do this, your ability to be a “good mesmer” should theoretically transfer with you to other areas of the game as well, like stronghold, new HoT maps, and upcomming raids.

Some hero points are fine, as it just follows the basic process of leveling. However, as others have mentioned, I don’t really care for it requiring a lot of hero points. I would rather have the specialization require a quest series. This way we get to learn more about the class and specialization, while at the same time appreciating it more.

Sure, you seem relatively harmless, just had to make sure you weren’t a warrior planning to turn this around to ask for nerfs or something.

First, I have seen just as many people play chronomancers on the beta weekend as other specializations. Additionally, many people aren’t going to play chronomancer both beta weekends if they are not die hard mesmer lovers. In the first beta, everyone played chronomancer, revenants, and reapers. In the second beta there were more specializations available to play and you may not have time to fully play all of them. Therefore, if some people played a chronomancer first beta, they are probably going to move on and try something new like the daredevil in the second beta.

PvP: In pvp, chronomancer can buff a mesmer’s burst potential with the tradeoff of having less defensive capabilities. Technically, the illusions line can kinda do this. However, its not the same. The illusion line can reduce shatter cool downs and add 10% critical hit to mind wrack. It can also reduce the cool down on illusion summoning skills. However, this becomes less useful if you like to weapon swap a lot.

With chronomancer, you get the cool down reductions through flow of time to gain some alacrity when you shatter. This can be combined with other skills like improved alacrity to make up for the illusion tree right there. Then you can also give your illusions super speed on shatter to give them a better chance of landing and you can use chronophantasma to have a phantasm be resummoned again once and hit an additional time after your shatter, which adds a decent amount of extra damage to the initial bursts. And if all else fails, you’re at least going to bait more dodges with this trait. You can also use seize the moment instead to gain quickness after a shatter burst, which can = more damage. You can also combine illusionary reversion with chronophantasma to resummon two illusions after a shatter. This adds a lot to illusion generation which is needed. Obviously illusions are needed to shatter. However, at most you can only summon two illusions with a 2 handed weapon or weapon set. Before, this made deceptive evasion a must for clone generations for shatters. However, now we no longer are required to take the dueling line. This allows for a lot more potential pvp builds. Finally, if you like more of a lockdown style, you can really apply a lot of slow by combining danger time “30% increased critical hit on slow enemies” with Lost time “basically after 4 critical hits, your 5th hit will give the target two seconds of slow”. These synergize very nicely. With a lock down build you can also use delayed reactions to apply 3 seconds of slow when interrupting a foe. Therefore, chronomancer helps add a little something to everyone. Extra burst damage for shatter builds, A lot of slow for lockdowns, and another way of summoning more illusions besides deceptive evasion for condition builds.

In pvp you can also use continuum shift to do two mind wracks very close together in time. You can also use continuum shift to use your elite skills twice, like moa morph.

WvW: time catches up allows you illusions to reach targets faster on shatter. Therefore, they are more likely to survive. This is a major problem in situations where this is a lot of aoe damage. Illusions die right away. A lot of the wells also apply some AoE damage, which was severely lacking in mesmers compared to other classes. Finally, you get time catches up which allows you to move 25% faster. Dear lord, we never had a skill that allowed us to move faster until now. This is one of the reason you almost always saw mesmer caring a focus in wvw and pve. Without some swiftness, they move very slow and can easily fall behind other classes in mobility. This is actually not only useful in wvw, but all aspects of the game. Many mesmers wanted some extra movement speed so bad they almost cried when they saw this trait.

PvE: continuum shift allows you to cast your elite skill and other skills twice every so often. There is also All’s well that ends well that gives 2 seconds of alacrity to allies when wells end.

So, you can do something like quickly summon some illusions pop continuum split. Quickly use mimic, well of recall, well of action, well of eternity, time warp, continuum shift, mimic, well of recall, well of action, well of eternity, time warp. Of course, its suggested you save time warp for another continuum shift since it has such a long cool down. However, this rotation gives 28 seconds of quickness, 28 seconds of alacrity, gives a bunch of healing, removes 6 conditions, gives 24 seconds of slow, provides chill for 20 seconds, and does a little bit extra damage. Most fights don’t last this long, so its best to utilize your skills and rotations to save cool downs based on the length of the fight. However, this shows you can easily make actions 50% faster and reduce skill cool downs by 66% for a full encounter on your allies. By doing this, in another thread, it has been calculated that it is theoretically possible for a chronomancer and 4 eles to out dps 5 eles. Same applies to other group compositions, eles just provide the most standard dps out of the classes.

Finally, tides of time on the shield can give allies more quickness and stun foes. Also, Echo of memory can now provide more alacrity, some slow to allies, and is now a channeled block.

Conclusion: A lot of people like the chronomancer specialization because it can be utilized with a wide variety of builds and play styles. It adds a little bit for everyone. Additionally, I mean, common, the idea of a profession that can control spacetime is just cool as kitten. I’m not going to give you a set list of builds. Although I gave you an idea, the skills and traits I pointed out to you should give you an idea of when chronomancers are going to use certain traits based on their builds. It was also nice that the devs worked with all aspects of the specialization so that pretty much everything the specialization offers can potentially be useful.

p.s. In pve mesmer are also one of the best classes at reflecting projectiles. However, reflect damage scales with critical chance. Now, by mixing slow with danger time, you can get 100% crit chance fairly easily depending on your cool downs to deliver more damage with reflects.

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 about cried to, sooo happy. Overall, I like the chronomancer more and more after each beta. I’m so glad we have an opportunity to express our opinions about the class and that the devs take those opinions into consideration. Obviously, the best case situation may be for iavenger to maintain a range attack. However, we don’t even know what its new melee attack will look like. If it jumps in and out real quick like iswordsman than I think it should be fine. The radius isn’t that large on it. Therefore, I would think a melee attack would help it dish out more alacrity to allies, as allies would have a better chance of being around the avenger. In addition, I think they felt like they had to make this change to make up for the 20% increased damage. I also can’t wait to test out the new gravity well next beta. Sounds like it will look really cool.

Just shatter to finish stuff off, but don’t shatter all the time if it is a longer fight. However, Just letting your illusions go out when the enemy is dead wastes dps. You are also free to use other shatter abilities like distortion when you have no illusions present since illusionary persona is baseline.

Ill give an example. I was just going through a pug CoF run with another mesmer in the party and we got to the part where you have to kill the flame acolytes. The other mesmer, obviously copping from metabattle or something, summoned two phantasms and started sword attacks to take the acolyte down. I just used a great sword burst shatter rotation. Needless to say, I took down my acolyte over twice as fast as the other mesmer. Summoning phantasms take time as well. In longer fights, you obviously want to try to get as many phantasms up at once. However, in shorter fights where things end faster, it may be a different story.

Still doesn’t load for me most of the time. Checked in and it has been 2 months and I have yet to get a response of really how to solve the issue. It shows me how many gems I have but everything below that is just a spinning bubble. believe me, its not loading.

Please, I don’t want to wait another 2 months and check back again because this problem is still happening

Just thought I would mention for IR there is always that option of changing it to one illusion required instead of two and adding a 1 sec ICD if a 1 sec ICD by itself isn’t enough.

If Anet thought that precursor crafting would be cheap or easy enough to drop the prices, then they would just slowly change the drop rate of precursors so that the precursor prices slowly dropped by the time of the expansion. Since this isn’t happening, my guess is precursor crafting is going to be either pretty time consuming, labor intensive, or still cost a lot in crafting materials. However, prices still might change a little simply due to phycological effects. If people get scared before release a bunch of people may post precursors at lower values all at once and lower the price regardless of how precursor crafting is.

My opinions:
First, if you’re running with a zerg or small group all the time, your just asking for it to be too easy. Go solo! I think that is what much of this map was meant for. Thats what I did, and I had fun.

Now, with that said, yes, some of the enemies were still a bit too easy. However, simply upping their damage is not the solution. Enemies should not be able to one hit kill light armor/low health classes unless its a very slow attack. Then you just asked for it. For example, I never got hit by those big frogs with the hammers. However, if I did, I would expect it to instant down me.

Second, instead of upping the damage, they should dramatically up the attack speed and skill usage of the enemies. For example, those frogs with bows had way too much time in which they were doing nothing. All enemies should be doing actions at all times. Those frogs needed to shoot their bows more frequently and disengage more frequently.

Third, there needs to be a larger variety of skills used by the enemies. For example, the wyverns should have done a different attack immediately after they landed. Particularly, I would have liked to see them do a charge attack and run after you like the teragriffs at silver wastes do. There should also be more of these wyverns in the areas I saw them at.

Fourth, I liked the damage that both the pocket raptors and mushroom things did in the first beta. Not sure if the damage actually changed. However, it at least felt, to me, that the mushroom things did less damage. This is perhaps also because I ran into larger groups in the first beta. However, I liked my first experience with them better.

Fifth, I think I herd someone say that conditional damage was high in this beta. However, I didn’t feel it. This is particularly true with the spiders. The poison didn’t last very long. I would like to see the poison last longer so I need to use condition removal. I would also like to see swans of these spiders so it feels more like the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Sixth, night in the first beta weekend seemed too much in many of the areas I was at if you were running solo. Night in this beta seemed too weak. Lets up the amount of creatures at night. I would like to see it so that some areas at night did not have as many creatures as the first beta. However, I would also like to see it so other areas had the same amount as the first beta or more. There should be a lot of creatures that come out at camps or where there are “group” activities. However, you should still be able to survive at night in non activity areas by trying to get past mobs. You shouldn’t be able to kill all the enemies at night by yourself. However, you should still be able to run past them and survive. Last beta, even when I tried running past hordes at night, I didn’t have a chance.
With that said, yes, there should still be some areas at night that produce so many enemies that you can’t run past them and need to be in a group to survive. However, there should be other areas where you can survive by yourself running past enemies by yourself. I think this is very good as it makes it so you should learn the map better. When you get that night warning, you should go “oh kitten, I should try to get to this area or find a group before it gets dark.” Unfortunately, I didn’t get that feeling at all with this beta.

Last, it seemed like enemies were too “groupy” if that makes any sense. For example, you saw only frogs together, you saw only spiders together, you saw only wyverns together. If you were fighting some pocket raptors, frogs, and wyverns at the same time, this would make the encounter drastically more difficult since you have to worry about a variety of different attack styles at the same time.

Did some looking at the ruins. Based on my observation, yes, there are many similarities. There are also some differences. Wear and tear kinda got to both of them in different ways. My guess is that it is probably just a generic tool used for ruins. However, we don’t know yet. After looking at the trailer for HoT again, it appears that the mursaat city in the trailer has totally different architecture than these ruins. However, the guild halls look like they use the same architecture. Hear are some screen shots.

The first one comes from the silver wastes and the second one comes from Verdant. In these screenshots I’m looking at the top of the pillars. As you can tell, both of them have the same step like design at the top. This is followed by a table that jets out a tiny bit that is supported by oval pillar things. This is then followed by a flat area sandwiched between another two tables. Particularly, look at the right silver waste pillar for the comparison. The top steps of the left one are kinda cut off a bit.

In the third at forth images, I’m comparing the doors. The third image comes from verdant and the fourth comes from the silver wastes. In the verdant image, the triangle is cut off by boulders. However, if you apply the tree like images and checkered pattern to the door at silver wastes, you can definitely see the similarities.

As you can tell, these particular two sets of ruins are very similar. This area of verdant really intrigues me, and I can’t wait to learn more.

All’s well:
I like this trait so, so, so much better than the original. Please, please don’t change it. This was a great change and exactly what the chronomancer needed.

Illusionary Reversion:
I can go through shatters like crazy with dom/ill/chron using imagined burden, illusionary reversion, and chronophantasma. You definitely don’t need deceptive evasion with the current IR and Cp, which is what the initial main complaint was before we saw how it played in an actual beta. I personally like the way the trait is right now and don’t want it changed. You can use improved alacrity to summon illusions faster or you can use illusionary reversion to have an extra clone right away for another shatter. You can also use danger time for all the slow. Right now, imo, these traits compete very nicely. We all know IR was overpowered before and Improved alacrity didn’t seem to help that much. Overall, great changes.

Gravity Well:
I enjoy gravity well in this beta much better than the original beta. However, there were sooooo many great ideas suggested by many in the community. Why did you do something so simple as removing float and adding back the pulls? I would still like to see a hybrid between the two where the last pull is removed and instead there is a 1.5 sec float. However, this was still an improvement from the past beta.

Well of Eternity:
I would perhaps like to see vigor replaced with one or two conditions removed. Right now, we need this more than vigor. Especially when we have skills like blurred frenzy.

Shield:
1. As some of us have suggested before, I would also like to see the phantasm on echo of memory summoned 1 sec after channeling the block or at the end of the skill, whichever one is faster. Right now it seems like chronomancers are forced to be as speedy as possible with skills due to the short time in continuum split and trying to activate a good burst for continuum split as quickly as possible. This doesn’t seem to match at all with with a skill that potentially takes 2 and 1/4 seconds to summon a phantasm.

2. Would also like to see the alacrity pulsed in an aoe to allies instead of the bounce.

Both of these shield changes are very small and I don’t think they would be that big of a deal to implement (balance wise). However, overall, I really love the chronomancer feel they did a fantastic job with the class.

I like gravity well better now than in BWE1. However, the float was what made the skill unique. There were a lot of good ideas posted about how to change gravity well when we were told it was too strong. I was kinda disappointed that they only decided to make a simple change like remove the float instead of the pulls. I would like to still see the last pull removed and replaced by a 1 and a half second float, or have the first pulse pull, second pulse chill, and third pulse float.

Out of all the fun a cool ideas suggested by us, they decide to just remove an aspect of the skill instead of trying new things. Hopefully, we can get some type of blended version between the two gravity wells before the next beta hits.

ugh lol, tried it several times for fun. I would say its impossible with no additional illusions. I can get the first portal and blink off. However, I can’t lay the last portal no matter how many times I try. One and a half seconds is just not enough time. Might as well use mimic. However, it is possible to do with more illusions out. Very cool.

We deal with conditions though the inspiration line of traits and skills such as mantra of resolve and null field.

“As part of rewards for raids, we’re introducing legendary armor. Conquering raid content will earn you the pieces to build legendary precursor armors, which can be forged into legendary heavy, medium, and light armor sets.”

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/raids

Raids will only get you a piece to make the armor. Its entirely possible that actually crafting a piece of the armor will require participation in other areas of the game or require more gold/materials. However, no one knows all that will be required to make the armor. We just know of one piece of the puzzle. More information will be released in the future.

@Palador

I believe the reason people currently still make ascended weapons today instead of going straight to legendaries, or making all legendaries, is because of the huge price difference. If the prices were closer together, I do think it would effect the economy for ascended weapons and therefore you should have to make ascended weapons before legendaries.

Lets look at an example. This is not a perfect example as ascended weapons cannot be sold on the trading post. Therefore, I just added up the highest material costs (For example, I added the cost of Zojja’s Berserker Insignia instead of the cost of the materials to make the insignia). However, this should at least be enough to give you an idea.

The cost of zojja’s blade is roughly 80 gold
The cost of bolt is roughly 3,649 gold
This is a 4461.25% increase in price.

A full set of zojja’s light ascended armor costs roughly 723.85 gold
If we applied the same percent increase in price currently between ascended and legendary swords than light legendary armor would cost about 33,016.61 gold.

If light legionary armor would cost this much to make than I don’t think it would be a problem if you didn’t have to make ascended armor before legendary. However, if the price is lower (or the time needed to make that amount of money), then I do in fact still think you need to make ascended armor before legendary so that it does not greatly effect the economy of ascended armor and the materials associated with them.

First, they have mentioned that they may want you to switch armor sets in raids. This may be why legendary armor is coming out. It may eventually become more useful to swap armor stats in the middle of a raid. However, if you can just swap armor stats anyway like in pvp than legendary armor looses all of its usefulness.

Second: This is kind of a different topic. I do not think ascended armor should be needed for raids. However, I do think a piece needed to craft legendary armor should only come from 50+ fractals. Why? Because if people try to get legendary armor before ascended than the whole economy for ascended armor will collapse and no one will have it. By having high fractals required, it insures people are still making ascended for agony resistance before legendary.

I am all for more skins being implemented in wvw and pve. However, as for legendary armor, we have to remember that from raids we are only getting a piece used in recipes for legendary armor. We are not getting legendary armor itself from raids. This is confirmed on the heart of thorns website. Hopefully, other materials needed to craft legendary armor will involve wvw, conquest, stronghold, and fractals. That way you can only get legendary armor if you play well in all aspects of the game.

Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Small changes now can result in large changes in the future. This is easily seen in pop culture on tv and books. If you go back in time to the age of the dinosaurs and step on a bug, when you go back to the future, humans may not even exist. Originally, butterflies were perhaps used to represent the “chaos” side of mesmers. They have a whole chaos trait line and are widely associated with the guild wars goddess Lyssa. This is the goddess of beauty, water, and illusion. However, she is also related to chaos as well. These are the reasons why I think the butterflies should stay for both the mesmer and chronomancer. They actually match both the actual class and the specialization very well.

Look at it this way
1 support chronomancer and 4 eles may do more dps than 5 eles
5 eles can do more dps than 1 dps mes and 4 eles if no reflects are involved.
Therefore, 1 support chronomancer and 4 eles should beat out 1 dps mes with 4 eles.

Very nice, thank you very much. I’ll look at the math later. However, looks like a very good support build. Glad to hear that a chronomancer may be a very good addition to pve runs. Additionally, as you have mentioned in your post, the chronomancer will do a little damage. Well of action and recall both do some damage on their own. You may also be able to get a mind wrack in continuum split with the rotation if you do a full shatter. You can then mind wrack after continuum shift. However, from my experience, I’m not sure you can do this rotation with one additional illusion. I tried pretty much the exact same rotation in the last beta. Perhaps you could do it with two. However, I highly doubt one, unless you have already tried and were successful.

I’m also wandering about the use of shield. Tides of time gives a little extra quickness to allies while echo of memory provides a little extra alacrity. People have been saying it will be useless on pve. However, I was never so sure of this fact. If you are running this build, its not like you are going to be summoning a lot of phantasms with s/s anyway.

You also have to be careful with your uptime and cooldowns. In some cases, you don’t want to blow through all your wells so you have something left for the next encounter. The 45 second cool down on well of recall is still pretty high. This may potentially be where the shield could be useful. To fill those cool down gaps.

Haven’t read any posts except for that from OP, but please, please don’t make this the case. Changing builds and weapons in the middle of raids should, if anything, be increased. You should be thinking about the future encounter more and how you and your group will handle it. I hope this is also why they decided to add legendary armor. Hopefully changing stats and build types in the middle will become more important.

Obviously everyone would love legendary accessories for stat changes. However, the only thing I am concerned about with all these legendary rune and accessory posts is that of what will be left for future expansions. Also, I don’t necessarily think there needs to be any visual effects to go with them. Just the stat changes would be enough.

Additionally, I wouldn’t get too involved with talking about other legendaries yet. If legendary armor takes about the same time per piece to make compared to legendary weapons than it will take a long kitten time, as it should be. We don’t want everyone running around with legendary armor. I expect, or at least hope, full legendary armor to take at least the same amount of time as two legendaries today, or perhaps the same time as three legendaries (could range up to six). If this is the case, by the time you finally get legendary amor, the next expansion may be announced that has the ability to make legendary accessories.

Need to have some drive in the economy to still make runes and sell them. If a large number of people just got legendary runes then the economy would crash a bit. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are never going to make legendary runes. However, it is something to consider.

In my opinion, they shouldn’t have legendary armor sets for multiple areas of the game (wvw, pvp,pve, etc.). They should have an armor set that covers all aspects of the game. This armor should dictate legendary status. Just do pve and are not good at pvp? Tuff, you can’t get the armor. However, you can work towards it by practicing pvp. Same with pve and wvw. Pieces from all aspect of the game should be required to make it. The problem is, this content should be difficult rather than grindy. Did hundreds of dungeons to get your armor? Sorry, I don’t care. Went around with a zerg hundreds of times in wvw to get your armor? Sorry, I don’t care. Soloed arah to get your armor? You sir, are a bad kitten . You won against some of the best pvp teams in the game? You sure, are awesome.

The problem is most of the pve content is currently too easy to dictate anything close to legendary status. That is hopefully the reason they are adding raids. The ladder system should also work for pvp. You should be really, really good at pvp to make the armor. As for wvw, I don’t really know what they should do. However, they should do something. The problem is, if you can’t grind through dungeons to get the armor because dungeons are too easy, you shouldn’t be able to just grind with a wvw zerg for the armor either. The new stronghold mode is kinda like wvw, only obviously different in many ways. Perhaps this shows some wvw skill? Especially if stronghold was made to match wvw better with battering rams and material gathering and such.

My suggestions
You need to complete raids to get a piece to make the armor-hard ten men content
You need to complete lvl 100 fractals to get a piece to make the armor (This is especially so the economy doesn’t crash for ascended. You need ascended armor and agony resistance in order to get legendary armor)-hard five men content
You need to be on the upper ladders in the league system of conquest pvp for a piece to make the armor. The same way you get the legendary back piece.
You need to be on the upper ladders in stronghold pvp (switched to a more wvw style) for a piece to make the armor. Same way as conquest.
And of course, you will need to play some actual wvw for a piece to make the armor.
However, if there are other ideas to show skill rather than grinding in wvw for a piece, I would love to hear them. This is just a general gist of what I think should be required in order to make a piece of the armor.

As for trading, no, I don’t think you should be able to trade it. With legendary armor, you should be able to show what you accomplished in the game and not, “I bought x amount of gems and sold them for gold.” In my opinion, this is still a problem with legendaries today. As long as there are other good, monetary, rewards for doing raids and 100 lvl fractals, people will still do them. Especially if they enjoyed them.

As of right now, ya people enjoy arah and do it for enjoyment. However, they would enjoy it even more (and more people would both do it and enjoy it) if they got compensated properly for doing arah over other dungeons like cof and AC.

The thing about gw2 is I wouldn’t really say you have reached end game content at level 80. Unlike wow, gw2 has linear leveling. This makes lvling insanely fast. The amount played by all players is different. Im at over a thousand hours but less then 200 were spent under lvl 80. Imo lvl 80 is barely a half way point. Most dungeons are half way points. End game content doesn’t come until Arah and lvl 50 fractals. Hot is just gonna add on to end game content so you cant call it end game anymore. So while some mmos might have content split for example 90 percent for under 80s and 10 percent for 80s, gw2 has it more like 40 percent for under 80s and 60 percent for 80s. Not sure if the percentages are correct but the point is just that there is a larger percent of level 80 content to reflect the linear leveling and large number of lvl 80 characters. After the expansion, the amount of lvl 80 content is also basically going to double.

I think all of us just mostly want to test the new current changes and how the class plays differently with the builds we were using before. I am also going to try alacrity support as well in the pve setting. I want to try to see what allies think about it and if it is more noticeable. Did some dungeon pve in the first beta, but not as much as I wanted to. The complicated thing about pve is both dps and support matter. In the end you need to figure out how to supply the most dps for the group as a whole as you possibly can. I’ll do some theory crafting before the beta. I’m interested what others think as well. Though the previous well trait added some nice condition removal, we certainly didn’t feel obligated to take inspiration in pve all the time for the condition removal. However, now we don’t want to switch wells for condition removal traits also. Overall, I think it was a good move, it seems to match the whole chronomancer theme better. However, we’ll see.

Understandably so. This is pretty much what I figured as well as why I added parenthesis. Changed it as follows.
Edit: Sorry, I am going to partially cut this down. Any questions I am going to try to ask will be before or after the gw2 pax party at respectable times, meaning if you’re going to pax, you could potentially ask as well (Once again, still doesn’t mean I will for sure be able to ask any or get answers). You are also free to ask questions for me, not devs, about the event and, only if allowed, I will let you know. As of now, I am only mainly doing this for those who won’t get selected and submitted entries or those who submitted entries even though they knew they couldn’t make it.