Guild Wars 2

Fay.2357:

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

kitten (45s) for Precog as well.

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

Transferring the Cripple+Weakness from Well of Calamity to Gravity Well and then boosting the damage on WoC would do a lot to fix both of those skills, I think.

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

This is a very good point, actually. My Chronobunker was spamming a lot of shatters and stuff was just flowing off of cooldown rapidly due to the Alacrity I had. But when I tried to do a Dom/Duel/Chrono Power Shatter burst build, I had almost no Alacrity whatsoever. Maybe the All’s Well trait needs to give the Mesmer some Alacrity for casting Wells instead of the condi clear effect. Then the Alacrity from Flow of Time could be reigned in a bit.

Fay, I’d be curious to hear your opinions on the Slow traits. I haven’t made my mind up about them yet.

Silverkey.2078:

@Fay Many of your comments are somewhat already in my text, I will add the others. Thanks

Are you specifically asking for unblockable?

I think Fay is saying that the Well effects are too weak for how easy they are to mitigate.

Alpha.1308:

i absolutely adore the idea of having Disenchanter casting Null Field
Avenger dropping Well of Action
Mage having a Wall of Fire/Ring of Fire with purple effects or something
just make them “minor” versions of the actual spells as you’ve said, obviously

iMage could run up to a target and do the flame blast from The Prestige. The others could essentially just tick a single pulse of Null Field/Well of Action at their target’s feet without actually placing the field on the ground.

Silverkey.2078:

It is because you still think in terms of “burst mesmer”. I can tell you that in my bunker build iReversion is a must-have because it is about sustaining shatter cadence. Phantasms have high CD, can be killed and only sustain 1 shatter with chronophantasma. Both have their niche. But together, they are over the top!

Yeah, that’s the thing. If you’re playing Power Shatter and just fishing for that one big Mind Wrack, it’s not obvious what iReversion does for you. Chronophantasma has a more noticeable effect on your burst because of the follow up attacks that happen 1s after Mind Wracking.

However, builds that use the other shatters more frequently will see huge benefits from iReversion. Using Chronophantasma and IR together is pretty huge. Picture this in a condi build: iDuelist -> iLeap -> Decoy -> Swap -> Mind Wrack -> Dodge -> Wait 1 -> Cry of Frustration. Bam, you just did two three-clone shatters with two iDuelist attack cycles mixed in. That’s a lot of Bleeding and Confusion, so they’re probably dead in a second. Now Dodge again and then hit your two-clone F4 to stomp.

Even in Power Shatter, you can open by Blinking into a cloneless Diversion for a 1s stun via Confounding Suggestions, then Dodge/Decoy+Mirror Blade into a three clone Mind Wrack that didn’t need Power Lock.

iReversion is a very, very strong trait if you want to hit a lot of shatters in a short period of time. Power Shatter is so one-dimensional that being able to cast cloned-up shatters other than Mind Wrack doesn’t seem like a big deal, but iReversion is actually huge for what it does to non-Power Shatter builds.

Good post as usual, Chaos.

I have to agree on the bouncing Phantasms. And bouncing skills in general, really. They’re awkward to use and prone to degenerate use cases (Mirror Blade burst).

One thing I’ll say is that I often find myself wishing we had more Blast finishers. We also have two Phantasms with Whirl finishers, one with Projectile finishers, and one with Leap finishers. If iMage, say, got a Blast finisher, I would be pretty ok with that.

Also, while your suggestion for iCap is obviously more useful in gameplay terms, I’d still kind of miss the bouncy shield if it ever went away.

Silverkey.2078:

• Danger Time: can be useful, especially in PvE, but many enemies cannot be slowed… Has been suggested to change it into a damage multiplier instead since PvE already max crits. This is a bit out of the “debate” here, but I think the defiant enemies are a particular problem for mesmers. I believe that even if you can’t interrupt a boss, you should be able to proc the “on-interrupt” effects for yourself. Same with slow: the boss could keep the condition for the trait to proc, but simply not getting slowed from it.

I think a lot of PvE issues could be solved by selective Resistance effects, as opposed to Defiance which just blocks certain conditions from being applied at all. There would be a minor loss in clarity, but the benefit would be things exactly like this: letting certain builds use their condition synergies without trivialising encounters. Reaper will have the same issue with all their Chill-related traits.

• Chronophantasma: in its current form still too strong. A very good idea has been made in the forum which is that the phantasm should keep its usual attack rotation and on the first shatter, it “clones itself” and only the clone gets shattered. This clone would not count for the illusion count of course. This prevents the phantasm burst after the shatter, and also keeps the phantasm position.

I dunno. One nice thing about the current implementation is that (AFAIK), you can get Persisting Images and Protected Phantasms on the phants summoned by Chronophantasma. Which is important, because what is the point of the trait if your Phantasm just gets blown away by an AoE before its next attack cycle anyway?

If the trait is indeed OP, then I think that the Daze duration would be a more appropriate thing to adjust.

Agent Noun.7350:

I agree with your assessment overall, though I’d say we should be careful about lowing the duration on Continuum Shift any more than it’s already been lowered. Too short of a duration and you cut off most of what you can really accomplish with it.

You’re right that its complexity means that we can’t really knee-jerk on it, though. It’s hard to know how it’ll play out once people learn how to counter it and start expecting it to happen.

Yeah, the smart move on ANet’s part would be to leave it mostly untouched until HoT release while spending a lot of time thinking about what they could nerf if they end up having to. (I think that cooldown, duration, and even activation time are all solid levers to pull if that ends up being the case.)

It’s a potentially very powerful skill, but it also has clear counters. (Hard CC so you can’t reset any useful skills, cleaving the Rift, etc.) People haven’t even grasped that they can safely AoE our clones yet, so it’s gonna take them a long time to figure out how to play around F5.

SnowHawk.3615:

Chrono is fun but there are things broken about it like the f5 skill, doesn’t always activate as it should and it activates too fast without phantasms- and you can use skills 2 times? that’s… like idk— a little insane – like 2 moas? OP much?

I still think we need to let F5 stew for a while. Putting all Elites on a ~90s cooldown sounds scary, but actually executing a good F5 takes a lot of premeditation and preparation which can be spoiled by an enemy CCing the Chrono or cleaving the Rift. There are some levers which can be adjusted on this skill without totally destroying it (cooldown, duration per clone, activation time, etc.), but I don’t think ANet should touch them until everybody’s had more L2P time.

I like the time well idea – but removing conditions – it may do that but half the time there is no indication to your team that it is what they do, healing well needs to have a brighter indication and more – idk blue? if it were more of a blue it may translate better as a heal.

Yeah, there’s a bit of a clarity issue with the wells. They all look basically the same in the heat of a PvP battle. Most of them have both ally and enemy effects, so it’s not a huge issue, but it’s important for enemies to understand if they’re standing in Well of Calamity/Gravity Well or allies to understand if they’re standing in Well of Eternity/Precognition.

As it is, the clock theme is awesome, but it might be obscuring the readability of the skills a little. There’s got to be a way to keep the clock face while hinting more strongly at what each Well is doing.

Weird thought: What happens if you get downed while in Chronosplit, then another Mesmer casts Illusion of Life on you before the Rift expires? I suspect that getting down is supposed to destroy the Rift without triggering the Revert effect, but I’m curious.

Do ally stunbreak skills like that even affect Phantasms? I kinda wish I’d grabbed somebody to test out that interaction now.

(Though, TBH, wasting an ally stunbreak just to get the phantasm attacks a little sooner seems silly to me.)

Quadox.7834:

It would be ok if they replaced distortion, but made CS 60 sec base cooldown, and removed the crystal from it- making it more reliable. Then i would be fine with this. Otherwise HELL NO.

This would be a sucky trade for Mesmers while also doubling down on the things the haters hate about Chronomancer. So, it’s probably what ANet will end up doing.

Fact is, we don’t get to see actual statistics like win rates broken down by class, let alone by build or spec. Compare this to a (no offense, Anet, but yeah) real competitive game like League of Legends where you can see that Zilean has a 60% win rate but a sub-1% pick rate for this month in the North American Diamond tier Ranked Team queue or whatever.

So we only have our subjective experiences to go on. Some people are aware of this, others prefer to state their subjective experience as fact as noisily and often as possible. But essentially everyone is just blowing smoke, because we don’t know the numbers.

The only even slightly objective view that we have of the game’s balance is looking at tournament play, because if something is truly OP the pros will be using it. But even that’s not perfect, because the solo queue meta is always different than the team meta, and the majority of the player base is playing in solo queue. Revisiting the LoL example above, Talon has the highest win rate in the NA Diamond tier Ranked Solo queue, at 54%, and the winningest champions change quite a lot as you look at different tiers for each queue.

So, to sum up, the only even slightly objective view we have into game health is tournaments like WTS, which is a pretty poor lens from a solo queue perspective. But it’s the lens we have, and doesn’t show anything dramatically unhealthy about the state of Mesmers.

6/6/6/6/6/6 build strikes again!

I agree with most of the feedback from SuinegTsol. The biggest problem I see is that there’s no reason to summon Archers because Guards die too quickly to players. For similar reasons, the 4/1 or 5-man rush is too effective.

I kind of think that having separate attack and defend lanes was a mistake. Archers would be more useful if the minion waves were actually meeting in the middle. Then they could help you counter the enemy’s push. There would also be more reason for players to fight around minion waves.

As it stands, I think it would be a good idea to let players spend Supply to revive Guards or summon more of them. While I don’t necessarily want to see turtling become a viable strategy, Stronghold currently needs both more stuff to spend Supply on (so there’s a point in fighting over mid) and a way to counter rush tactics.

That said, I still enjoy Stronghold more than Conquest. It just needs more turning around the game pace and more reason for players to fight one another.

The best use I’ve found for Imagined Burden is making Teragriffs go all flippy-floppy during Silverwastes events.

On the one hand, it’s another Phantasm with a bounce skill. On the other hand, it’s Captain America. Soo… ¯\(?)/¯

EDIT: Not even gonna bother trying to fix the Unicode rendering thing, I like the result too much.

Esplen.3940:

Basically, since every weapon set has a Phantasm tied to it (offhand or 2h), the Shields is also a block. Having a 1s block skill is extremely high skill floor and since it’s the first elite spec, ANet probably doesn’t want to make it difficult to use. The reason why I bring up 1s is because that’s the time it takes to cast a Phantasm.

Worth mentioning: The channel for Echo of Memory is 2 1/4 seconds. So, if you use it without a block, it takes (more than) twice as long to cast as every other Phantasm.

It’s ridiculous what some people arbitrarily decide is overpowered.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

bump to seek more fresh feed back.

no one else thinks 21 precision per 1 critical chance is extremely confusing to new players?

It might be confusing if the Equipment tab didn’t show you exactly what your resulting Crit Chance was…

Now there’s a Chronomancer nerf I wouldn’t mind seeing.

Seriously, though, there seems to be a bug that makes the Rifts stay on the map after popping. Saw it a bunch near the HotM golems while trying out rotations. Worst of all, they still make the noise.

Aomine.5012:

It has infinite clones/ phantasm, good mobility, condition removal, EVERYTHING.

It can totally replace Chaos and Inspiration, and you choose the rest.

It has permanent quickness, infinite shatter and so on.

No point responding to obvious trolls with facts, since y’all have consistently proven to be impervious. So, instead, I’ll just say: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!

Necrotize.2974:

Buff other specs, change amulets. I still think that amulets weren’t properly balanced to account for the loss of stats from trait lines.

A thousand times this. If all the amulets traded a bit of their damage stat for 560 Vit like Marauder does vs. Zerker, I think we’d see fewer complaints.

I should’ve made some Chrono vids this weekend. But then you’d all see how awful I am at PvP.

Yeah, the whole point of having traits cast a skill is that you can create greater synergy between traits that way.

vincecontix.1264:

Being moa twice in a row is no fun

princode.4129:

i dun know why people is defending something that is broken…memser now can use their elitle twice in a row..MOA TWICE IN A ROW…i dun know why the so call pro memser think its ok

You guys realise Moa has a 1s channel time? And it can be dodged and blocked? And that nobody actually runs it for PvP anyway because it’s not even all that useful compared with Time Warp or Mass Invisibility?

Selya.5039:

It’s still not ice bow, but it’s something huge for a class that has always been held back by its low damage potential.

Yeah, it’s kind of ironic that one of the best PvE usages of Chronoshift I’ve heard suggested is to pick up an Ice Bow and cast 4 twice.

Velimere.7685:

Chronomancer is fine.

Yup. It’s not significantly stronger than traditional power shatter, it’s just a little more flexible. Like, you can actually use shatters other than Mind Wrack without totally throwing your burst damage threat out the window.

Re: Lost Time

Actually, I went back in to check out whether permaslow is actually possible with the Spatial Time attack cycle. It’s not, even against golems, because the duration of the Slow is actually too short for that. You can produce quite a lot of Slow, but it definitely falls off. It’s actually kind of hard to even follow up with a burst because the Slow duration is so short — you might get Danger Time for Mirror Blade, but it’ll fall off before Mind Wrack.

If Lost Time ends up being too over the top, I think the appropriate nerf would be to reduce the Slow duration to 1.5s or so. But I also don’t think it needs a nerf at this point.

Xstein.2187:

Found out that Dom/Duel/Chron does more damage than Dom/Duel/Illusions (and obviously PU shatter as well). The extra attack from izerker seems to beat out Compounding Power with Master of fragmentation. I was not surprised at all that this build was good, its beastly. Ran Time Catches Up over Delayed Reactions as I feel like the later is more for lockdown builds. I also ran Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma. The chronophantasma is what causes this build to do more damage than other bust shatter builds. However these two traits synergize very well, especially with continuum shift, for excellent illusion production.

iZerker hits for a lot, so I’m not surprised this turned out to be good, either. IMO, the 1s Daze should be enough counter-play for enemies to dodge the Zerk, but apparently dodging a bunch of clones running at your face is too hard for most players, so IDK.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Esplen.3940:

It takes 2 mesmers to permastealth, fyi.

I think I could do it with a chronomancer. I was almost there with The Pledge.

Obligatory reminder that The Pledge is still giving twice as much recharge as it’s supposed to.

Necrotize.2974:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BujuG3Nm0as

ayup

If you’re trying to get at what I think you’re getting at, here we go:

Hmm…a mesmer supplied with 25 stacks of might, running 2 wells and a full dps build managed to kill a stationary target very quickly. If you think is applicable to anything but PvE then I question the types of players you’re used to fighting. Plus the warrior is attacking through the whole thing in order to maintain those might stacks.

It’s stuff like this that makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously.

Golem balance strikes again! XD

Xstein.2187:

3. Seize the Moment: Still seems a little lack luster compared to the other two traits it competes with. It would be nice if it was reduced to 1 second of quickness per shatter (not illusions shattered) and they made it so the quickness would be applied to 5 allies.

Good suggestion, actually (I misread it at first). Keeping it down to 1s/shatter would still allow Distortion stomps, but the extra group Quickness would make it more competitive with Chronophantasma.

Calling it now: the first nerf to CS will probably be giving it a 1/4s channel or something.

Don’t stand in the kitten is, like, the oldest MMO adage. Amazing that some people still haven’t figured it out.

Anyway, I think Silverkey does have a point about the interaction between GS AA and Lost Time. Dueling already gives us perma-Fury, more or less, so with Marauder gear it takes basically two AA cycles for a guaranteed Lost Time proc. Which you can then sustain indefinitely because you’re over the crit cap if you also took Danger Time.

Problem is, Spatial Surge is basically the only way we have to reliably proc the effect. So if you nerf Lost Time any further, it becomes nearly useless for any weapon other than Greatsword.

So, here’s what I think of Lost Time at the moment:

• It’s more useful for leading into a burst combo (Danger Time!) than for keeping up perma-Slow.
• Greatsword is already our best burst combo weapon, and it’s the best way to apply Lost Time as well.
• Master Fencer + Danger Time means we can easily reach the crit cap with only ~50% base crit chance. The rest of those stat points can feed into Power or Ferocity.
• Combining the above points, I think the specific interaction between GS AA and Lost Time might be a little over the top, even if Lost Time isn’t necessarily OP in general.

Given all of the above, I think it would be reasonable to apply a short ICD on gaining Lost Time stacks. 3/4s seems appropriate, it would ensure that you can’t gain more than 2 stacks per Spatial Surge cycle while not hurting Lost Time application too much for other weapons.

People were kittening about PU even pre-patch, so my personal prediction is that the whining will never, ever stop ever no matter what.

All I see is you being consistently proven wrong… Oh, and you’re still wrong! Have a nice day.

Chrono doesn’t offer anything specifically for the condition playstyle. It offers opportunities for shatter builds to do more shattering, so you can certainly make a good condi shatter Chronomancer if you can find a spec line to drop from your existing condi shatter build.

Necrotize.2974:

It says something that the one well people thought was gonna be usable was the one that CC’s people to keep them inside, now that’s gone.

(Dragon’s Maw has a 4s immobilise, just sayin’.)

Actually, DM is only a single-target skill, as far as I can tell, so it’s not a fair comparison. But, yeah, GW as an Elite Well needs some mechanism to keep enemies from just walking right out of it.

I somehow got Aegis lasting 1 month, 2 weeks, and 5 days by casting Fragments of Faith. XD

Sadly, I don’t know exactly how I got that to happen, since I was just screwing around. Has anybody else seen that bug?

EDIT: Haven’t been able to recreate this again, but I attached proof.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Basically, being a chronomancer means coming up with ways to use the variety of tricks to compensate for raw damage and durability. Everyone who is complaining about how op it is are just seeing the tricks and assuming that’s just more powerful. What they don’t see is that under the hood, those extra shatters aren’t hitting as hard. And that the chronomancer is more vulnerable than other mesmers.

Yeah, it sounds like Chrono has expanded our 6/6/6/6/6 build into a 6/6/6/6/6/6 build, to hear some people tell it.

GS and Marauder implies PvP.

EremiteAngel.9765:

all the chrono haters, just learn to interrupt the F5.
its more L2P than an OP issue.

GW2 players obviously don’t want to learn anything, though.

They’re really bad for roaming or any kind of mobile dueling, to be honest. I find them useful in PvP for fighting literally on top of a point. But unless you’re bunkering, they’re really hard to use.

Crossplay.2067:

Instead of berating you like the others, I will ask you to show how you’ve managed to sustain alacrity on an entire party indefinitely. Whether it’s overpowered or not will depend on what the rotation is, how feasible it is to maintain that rotation and the impact it has on battles.

He can’t, because it’s literally not possible. All group Alacrity sources provide 1s at a time. The Well provides 1s per tick for three ticks, the iAvenger provides 1s per attack and attacks every ~4s even with Phantasmal Haste. Also, iAvenger’s attack seems to only bounce two times and favours bouncing to the Mesmer, so even if its attack rate were once per 3s you could only sustain indefinite Alacrity on yourself and once other person, and only for as long as you could have three iAvengers out.

Thanks for posting this, Necro. CS is potentially very powerful, but there are also a lot of limitations on its effective use. Just like most of the rest of the Mesmer’s kit.

Treetoptrickster.4205:

CptCuddles.8912:

My vote is to drop ‘Improved Alacrity’ and create some type of shield augmenting trait (really disappointing this even needs to be suggested).

Make ’All’s Well That Ends Well’ into something more interesting, this trait and wells in general are pretty underwhelming.

I agree about how this trait could use some improvement, but I’m really liking the wells as they are.

I actually think the Well trait is fine as it is. Most builds don’t need it, but defensive PvP builds will spend a lot of time standing in wells with their allies. Two cleanses per well removes a ton of potential condi pressure, especially with Burning being such a big deal in PvP right now.

Just like baseline Mesmer, Chronomancer has a really intricate playstyle. A lot of things that seem OP at first glance will totally fall apart once players have time to get used to them.

I haven’t seen anything so far that A) can’t be done as well by some other class or B) can’t be played around in some straightforward fashion.

Esplen.3940:

You only need to cast Mimic before closing the Portal.

I wonder if this is how Mimic interacts with Mantras…

Ah, the hyperbole.

Anyway, I really like Well Bunker, though I’ve only put in a couple of games in so far. I’m not good enough at PvP to say whether it will be A Thing, but it’s pretty survivable and seems pretty effective at preventing decaps.

In my case, I went with Chrono/Chaos/Insp. Delayed Reactions/Danger Time/Chronophantasma from Chrono, the obvious traits from the other lines. Staff/Sw+Sh, Barbarian Amulet, Rune of Earth. Most of the survivability obviously comes from having Chaos Armour/Protection uptime. I also tried out Crusader. Seemed to sacrifice some damage pressure for not that much extra survivability. I’ll try out Settler and Celestial next, just for giggles.

Gravity Well, predictably, didn’t seem to do much for me. I’m insisting on using it, but in general enemies seem to avoid Wells. The Well of Renewal heal is actually really nice, it does more than I expected even without Healing Power. Well of Calamity is surprisingly workmanlike, the conditions are actually quite punishing and make it hard for enemies to pressure you off-point. I brought Well of Precog pretty much just for the stun break, which is meh. One of our other Stun Breaks is probably better, but like GW I’m insisting on using it just for testing purposes. Finally, I rounded things out with Well of Recall for the extra Alacrity.

Necrotize.2974:

People already jumping on the “ITS OP AND SHOULD BE NERFED INTO THE GROUND” bandwagon after only a few hours of testing? Gotta be a record or something.

You realise people have been calling literally every part of the Chrono kit OP since the moment it was revealed, right? (Meanwhile, Dragon Hunter obviously is trash because of the name, or something.)

Anyway, the Shield 5 skill is way more responsive than I would have expected. Needing to recast Shield 4 and not being able to cancel out of it somehow still kind of sucks, though.

Also, iAvenger hits for more damage than I was expecting, though it’s still nothing compared to actual damage Phantasms like iDuelist or iZerker. Its attack rate seems really low, though.

Wells are, predictably, hard to use against enemies that move. SW Lashers tend to move out of them by accident, for instance. I’m pleasantly surprised with the damage on Well of Calamity, though. The final burst comes close to matching Mirror Blade (post-nerf) or Mind Wrack. The trick, as with all the wells, is getting enemies to be there when the burst goes off…

Also, I honestly was not expecting MoF or BD to affect F5, but they both do and the effects are nice. (Respectively, a Slow on Shift and Resistance on Split.)

Embolism.8106:

First thing I noticed is Echo of Memory/Deja Vu is apparently not considered an Illusion skill for the purpose of traits. Illusionist’s Celerity doesn’t reduce its CD, neither does Persistence of Memory.

The question is: bug or WAI?

Yobculture.5786:

From what I’ve screwed around with, it affects the breakbar, but not the mob itself, which is kind of sad because I really wanted to just run around around and get almost 100% slow uptime on champs.

Well, ok, that’s better than nothing. But I bet it’s not a huge chunk of the bar, is it?

I’m with Fay, slowbot is something potentially very useful that isn’t just MOAR DEEPS. It just requires more thought on the dev side to create content that isn’t then trivialised by the slow effect.

Float is cool. I just feel like we’re never gonna see it in-game. :P