An unlikely hero: Solo open world Celestial Alac Chrono

[Crackmonster.2790]

For the longest time ive been staying away from my mesmer after they continually butchered it. Well i've  tried pretty much everything else since and what i didnt yet try were power celestial builds coz i had in my head it was only making sense for condi or hybrid. So when i tried out celestial chrono i was surely surprised to find its an excellent build for open world solo play, and it also provides a lot of support for a group making this hands down one of the best and most relaxed builds with straightforward tools ive played in a while. It is both strong in terms of personal damage, safety and group support.

Now if youre mr meta gotta pump the maxest dps, and run with fully optimized boons from other players all the time and using glass cannon gears where you cannot make mistakes - then look elsewhere, this build is all about having a very strong solo open world build that makes a great safe playstyle and is simply satisfying without being overcomplicated, too hard or stressful. Celestial alac chrono delivers here.

It should be said of course that being a celestial build this is not a super high dps build, but it does have good dps for a tanky build alongside good trailblazer builds and the like - in other words its not one of those terrible tanky builds that cant kill anything - damage is good among tanky builds.

Let me start with the build:
GW2Skills - Celestial Alarcrity Chronos

The offset weapons here are scepter/focus, but that set is very open to making whatever changes you want. Most of the time i run Greatsword there for tagging, but you can run sword in mainhand and/or shield in the offhand as well depending on what you need. Scepter/shield gives you so many blocks + stun + illusion summons for example if want to survive. Also sigil of rage can be changed for something else, i like it to quick kill packs.

Similarly, the domination traits can be swapped for other lines should you need that, but i prefer the damage it provides for solo play. This build is made to facetank content without too much brain use, but there is a point with the hardest bosses/legendaries you might find where you cant fully facetank - in those rare scenarios i swap to staff mesmer since it's one of the very very top solos for impossible content.

Things that make this build great:

Group:

• Alacrity or Quickness 100% Group Uptime (trait choice) - using 3 wells only(does not require shield or continuum split to achieve it)
• Fury group uptime 100%
• Pulse Aegis for 3 seconds every 20 seconds
• Two Abilities that can pull enemies together
• Very decent bonus group heal equating to 560 healing per second from just your 3 short cd wells
• Cleansing group a little bit about 3 cleanses every 20 seconds
• Boonstrip in rotation
• High weakness uptime
• Applies some vulnerability, 5-15 stack uptime
• Possibility to swap mesmer utility such as stability or cleanses

Self:

• 25 might personal uptime 100%(quick ramp too)
• Very low cd blocks/evades, with distortion/continuum as an oh kitten backup
• Illusions help protect you

.

Because of the upfront way you can unload aoe damage mixed in with aegis/stability/healing/pulling and the cd's being ready soon again, it just gives it a good flow of going up and killing packs without taking too much damage or getting cc'd, and it also helps with the evade frames in rotation and low cd block on demand. That is what makes this build great in mu opinion. And, when youre rolling around in the world and running into people doing stuff, you also always provide good buffs to help them stay alive while killing.

This build is designed to work at the basic level without trying hard, but being a chrono, of course if you are a very skilled player and can use continuum/shatter mechanics well you can push it even higher on demand - and with the support being malleable it can adjust to a lot of situational needs.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Crackmonster.2790

[mungozen.2379]

Celestial Chrono is fine. I far preferred it pre-EoD as there were more options for how to build it out via trait and weapon choices and that flexibility offered more powerful builds. Still non-meta builds, still not top DPS but absolutely viable. 
 

The biggest difference was pre-EoD I could solo Champ bounties really easily with Celestial Chrono. Can’t do that today due to DPS being suspect.  You can’t die but you also can’t kill much before the timer runs out. 
 

All that said, this build should be pretty decent in Open World for anyone boosting a Mesmer since they get Celestial gear with the boost.  

[Mell.4873]

4 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Celestial Chrono is fine. I far preferred it pre-EoD as there were more options for how to build it out via trait and weapon choices and that flexibility offered more powerful builds. Still non-meta builds, still not top DPS but absolutely viable. 
 

The biggest difference was pre-EoD I could solo Champ bounties really easily with Celestial Chrono. Can’t do that today due to DPS being suspect.  You can’t die but you also can’t kill much before the timer runs out. 
 

All that said, this build should be pretty decent in Open World for anyone boosting a Mesmer since they get Celestial gear with the boost.  

The pre-EoD builds still work. I can still solo Champion Bounties with the same Phantasm spam strategy as before. The main different now is we have good access to Alacrity Via Wells. Before this it was kind of a waste of time since from memory you had to wait for the Well to end to get the boons.

They also buffed Phantasmal Defender so now is even better at AoE Stalling in the Open World. It is also much more viable to do builds like Relentless Pursuit + Persistence of Memory for great Aegis uptime since they buffed Chronophantasma.

Edited December 28, 2022 by Mell.4873

[mungozen.2379]

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

The pre-EoD builds still work. I can still solo Champion Bounties with the same Phantasm spam strategy as before. The main different now is we have good access to Alacrity Via Wells. Before this it was kind of a waste of time since from memory you had to wait for the Well to end to get the boons.

Pre-EoD Celestial Chrono only needed 1 Well, Tides of Time and Shatter Spam to self buff Alacrity and make good use of Improved Alacrity.  When they updated Celestial to include Concentration and Expertise it really helped self buffed builds like this.  I was running Imp Alac and Seize the Moment to double dip on both Quick and Alac when I started playing around with Celestial builds.

 

3 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

They also buffed Phantasmal Defender so now is even better at AoE Stalling in the Open World. It is also much more viable to do builds like Relentless Pursuit + Relentless Pursuit for great Aegis uptime since they buffed Chronophantasma.

I do not understand what you are saying here.  What is this "Relentless Pursuit + Relentless Pursuit for great Aegis uptime since they buffed Chronophantasma"

[Mell.4873]

13 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Pre-EoD Celestial Chrono only needed 1 Well, Tides of Time and Shatter Spam to self buff Alacrity and make good use of Improved Alacrity.  When they updated Celestial to include Concentration and Expertise it really helped self buffed builds like this.  I was running Imp Alac and Seize the Moment to double dip on both Quick and Alac when I started playing around with Celestial builds.

I didn't like that style of Phantasm Spam; I still use Berserkers.

EDIT: Protected Phantasms + Persistence of Memory

Edited December 28, 2022 by Mell.4873

[mungozen.2379]

26 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

I didn't like that style of Phantasm Spam; I still use Berserkers.

EDIT: Relentless Pursuit + Persistence of Memory

Isn’t relentless pursuit a Reaper thing?

Edited December 28, 2022 by Mungo Zen.9364

[Ellon.4316]

19 hours ago, Crackmonster.2790 said:

Pulse Aegis +  Stability for 3 seconds every 20 seconds

Nitpicking here, well of precognition only gives 1 sec of stability to yourself on cast. It doesn’t pulse it 😉.

For solo chrono you could also take a look at the illusions trait line instead of domination. There are quite some traits here that trigger on phantasm summon and chrono has a chronophantasma to trigger all these traits twice. So going 2-2-1 in illusions means you self sustain quickness and might plus any other boon your phantasm might spawn with (aegis if you take inspiration, fury for dueling trait line). For the second weapon set i would take staff, not only does chaos storm pulse some nice boons (including aegis) you also get pWarlock which isn’t a strong skill but it summons two phantasms twice (thanks to chronophantasma) giving all those juicy boons.

You will lose some group support but gain quite a bit of DPS.

[Mell.4873]

12 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Isn’t relentless pursuit a Reaper thing?

EDIT: Protected Phantasms + Persistence of Memory

Somehow, I keep copying wrong parts of the Wiki

[Crackmonster.2790]

On 12/28/2022 at 1:03 PM, Ellon.4316 said:

Nitpicking here, well of precognition only gives 1 sec of stability to yourself on cast. It doesn’t pulse it 😉.

Ohh must have been gone for mesmer too long!

For illusions yea i really wanted illusions especially with rage can get full or nearly full self quickness uptime. However, when testing it out it seemed be less effective than domination so sad as i was i have just accepted that it seems better. I really like illusions 😕

You said the naughty word chronoplasma word, urrgghh i hate that 😄 With chronoplasma now chronomancer is a class i have no interest in playing it completely ruinsn the feeling for me and its just so annoying to have. It's why i've rarely ever touched chrono i cannot stand that functionality theres so much garbage about it how it can break if targets die, how it turns power into slow ramp dps bla bla bla. Instead i go alacrity 50% giving me more healing and much lower cd's on defensives etc.

And now also with chronoplasma you now have to go kitten mode on shatters and tryhard to push some alacrity etc etc. It makes this relaxing straightforward build into a terrible build to play.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Crackmonster.2790

[Warlock.2461]

This looks like a fun build. I'm looking to play a mesmer in a duo and do a lot of open world. I'd like to have a hybrid leaning build with decent damage and heals/support. We are fairly new and have a lot of masteries and HPs to farm. Do you think this would be good for that?

 

I like the fact this has group utility for my duo partner. I just wonder if the healing is enough. I wonder if I should swap Domination for Inspiration for more healing (Illusionary Inspiration on illusion summon), but I wonder how much that would kill damage. Lately, I've been playing a Celestial blood scourge, and it does pretty well (8Kish and I'm sure I could get higher with practice), but I really just like the idea of the mesmer class, but I've struggled to find the right build for open world. Most that I see are for Mirage, but I think these have less group utility/healing. So I'm wavering a bit between Mirage and Chrono.

[Waffles.5632]

On 12/28/2022 at 7:03 AM, Ellon.4316 said:

Nitpicking here, well of precognition only gives 1 sec of stability to yourself on cast. It doesn’t pulse it 😉.

For solo chrono you could also take a look at the illusions trait line instead of domination. There are quite some traits here that trigger on phantasm summon and chrono has a chronophantasma to trigger all these traits twice. So going 2-2-1 in illusions means you self sustain quickness and might plus any other boon your phantasm might spawn with (aegis if you take inspiration, fury for dueling trait line). For the second weapon set i would take staff, not only does chaos storm pulse some nice boons (including aegis) you also get pWarlock which isn’t a strong skill but it summons two phantasms twice (thanks to chronophantasma) giving all those juicy boons.

You will lose some group support but gain quite a bit of DPS.

Another cool interaction with illusions trait line is persistence of memory  + staff 5 + staff 3 so if your phantasms are in the chaos storm field from staff 5, they will get the boons too, and when they turn into clones, those boons will transfer to you. So even more aegis uptime.

You can then double up on chaos storms if you run chaos trait line for chaos storm on heal. I've done a chaos/illusions open world Mirage Build and this synergy gets even crazier because mirage staff ambush = might + alac to your phantasms as well lol.

I don't really play Chrono that much, but with chronophantasma trait I'd imagine the boon generation would be absolutely bonkers given all the phantasms at play.

 

 

 

 

[Apheleion.8572]

I have tried chronomancer with this set up in pve viper stats gear and perplexity runes. It's actually been a lot of fun, I can solo the vampire in verdent brink pretty easily. Only issue I have is getting the illusions in the chaos storms but if they do end up in the storms I pretty much jump to 25 might instantly and have basically all the boons on me here is a link to the build I'm playing around with. I'm always open to feedback and critiques maybe someone else can make this even better.

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiQAYjVYe2mhgn+lWzH-zRJYmRBfZ0RBESCo9AA-e