Some Chrono Change Ideas

[wickerbough.5390]

I AM NOT A GAME DEV AND I PLAY MOSTLY PVE CONTENT, PARTICULARLY FRACTALS, DUNGEONS (gasp, I know), AND RAIDS, NONE OF THEM AT A TOP EXPERT LEVEL.That said, I do play PvP and WvW, and my main has always been mesmer. I just like portals and that's seriously the reason, come at me. I want to talk about Mirage as well, but I'm opening with Chrono because it's my main... Then again, it's my main mostly because of the state of Mirage. Ideally I'd swap between them for different encounters.

CHRONOMANCER:Mesmer is my all-time favorite class in any MMO I've played, and Chrono is my favorite Mesmer elite spec. Initially it came out with a strong support build that could provide high quickness, much-needed alacrity uptime, and some spotty heals with All's Well that Ends Well. The fact that quickness and alacrity are so powerful meant that groups were willing to play around the chronomancer: pay attention to where wells drop and make sure you're in them when they end; chronos make sure you shatter in range of allies and drop wells when mechanics won't force players to leave the well or get pushed out of it. Moreover when the first raids came out, the chronotank was born - a VERY particular niche that I nevertheless loved playing.Chrono has also always been good at sustained damage while mostly lacking in burst options. That's not to say there aren't any: You can certainly cc -> gs2 -> Mirror Images -> Split Second -> gs3, but now a significant portion of your kit is on CD and you've wasted your potential for a good continuum split opening until MI comes off cd... And it's tough to think of a non-pvp situation where that kind of expense is worth a burst.

PROBLEMS:1) Lacking Support: Support chrono is outclassed by Firebrand and Renegade, who provide their boons so effortlessly while providing such additional utility that chrono is never wanted for a boon slot in small groups.2) Damage Delay + Ramp-Up: By far the chrono's main damage tool is Chronophantasma - and this is picked on support builds as well, along with some phantasm boon transferring shenanigans unless you don't have a quickbrand and need Sieze the Moment. Chronophantasma causes our phantasms to become dazed after they perform their action, then perform it again: Phantasms are still weak to CC and various bugs that cause skills not to fire when they should, but the main reason this is problematic is because of the fast-paced nature of GW2 combat. A casting animation of ~1 second, followed by an appearance animation of ~1 second, followed by a potential running-to-enemy animation, followed by an often sluggish attack animation that can miss mobile enemies, then a 1.5 second daze, another run-to, another sluggish attack. We have the damage, it's just spread out between all these admittedly cool animations - you basically only get to be a chronomancer on bosses.3) Wells: Chrono wells tend to pulse a debuff on enemies in the well, then give a boon to allies in the well when they expire. I see two problems here: First, the radius of the wells is only 240... and this is supposed to cover enemies AND allies? The second issue is that the wells that end up getting used are only used for the buff they provide - alacrity or quickness. Packing the boon at the END of the well makes it very difficult to buff your allies unless you're on comms doing something serious - and if you're on comms doing something serious, you're probably not using a mesmer: At least, not for alacrity stacking.4) Slow Potential: The Chronomancer has many traits that interact with enemies who are 'slowed'. It's rough, then, that the chronomancer abilities that slow are either very high CD, provide very little slow, are difficult to hit, or all three. Worse, the traits that would give you more slows are directly competing with the traits that give you more damage: Do you pick Delayed Reactions for a slow whenever you disable a foe, or Time Catches Up ro deal more damage to movement-impaired (IE SLOWED) targets? Do you take Danger Time to increase crit-hit and crit-change vs slowed enemies, or improved alacrity which you need to be able to use your slow-applying skills often enough to make damage-while-slowed worth it? Slow was a theme of the class that I don't think works very well. It isn't impactful on most npc enemies (and since we're talking about using phantasms I'm going to focus on pve) aside form dealing breakbar damage, and it only comes out in 2 second bursts without traiting. Blugh.

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS:My goal here is to make the chrono viable as support or DPS without replacing any existing class (a courtesy not paid to chronos, in my opinion).

WELL REWORK:NOTE FOR ALL WELLS: Currently they pulse 3 times, once per second, then have some effect that occurs when they end. Typically they pulse out damage or condis on enemies for 3 seconds, then 'snap back' to grant a boon to anyone standing inside them when they end.

CURRENT - 240 Radius: All non-elite chrono wells have a radius of 240. This is greatsword 3 radius, for chronos who understandably haven't used them very often. Given that most wells are intended to have effects for both enemies and allies, it's very rough to hit an enemy with 2-3 pulses and even half of your allies with the final snap.RECOMMENDED - 300 Radius; Can we increase this to 300 (scourge shade size)? Or since they're so underutilized we could be very daring and give them 360 (spirit bow) size...

CURRENT - Pulse-And-Snap: For the mostpart, the only well that's worth running for any reason OTHER than to grant boons is the elite spec ability Gravity Well. Other than that, your main wells are Well of Recall, which pulses chilled and snaps back with alacrity, and Well of Action, which pulses slow and snaps back with quickness.RECOMMENDED - Boom-And-Pulse Have wells apply boons instantly, then tick - instead of ticking, then applying boons at the end. This puts more skill into the hands of the chrono, and since most content doesn't necessitate getting on discord or being highly communicative, everyone is kind of responsible for applying their buffs... something the chrono can't consistently do as of now. Flavorfully, instead of compressing time and then having the 'snap back' be the reasoning for the boons, you could say you're stealing time to grant the boon and letting the area of distorted time hinder your enemies while it catches back up.

TIER 2 CHRONO TRAIT REWORKGOAL: My goal here is to give all chronos the ability to spread alacrity around, just choosing how they do so. Alacrity is such an important component of any kit that if you make one trait share alacrity and the other two do nearly anything else, the shared alacrity trait will be the only one picked. So let's make it more of a class feature! It is for revenants, after all!All's Well The Ends Well (Lower tier 2 chrono trait)-> "A Well-Earned Gift" (Because we're putting an end to the end! .... As in, no more when-a-well-ends boons.)CURRENT: Wells heal allies when they end. (~1,611 in my minstresl gear).NEW: Wells heal allies and grant alacrity with each pulse. (Maybe ~1k healing w/Minstrels and 1.5s alac per pulse? 1s alac on a 1s pulse means you'll need concentration to get a net positive out of the wells, which seems appropriate to me...)MATH!: Yeah there's an exclamation point there: Math! is fun! With 100% bonus boon time and an ideal well placement (IE, all wells tick on your desired allies), you get 9s of alacrity per well. Wells begin their cooldown immediately on cast, NOT after the 3-second pulse. If you're going well support, you've got Well of Eternity for healing and 3 wells for utility: It's unlikely that you're going to consistently use Gravity Well for alac given its powerful cc and 90 second cd, and it'd be good to leave ONE utility skill open for some build variety, so let's say you're using 3 wells (healing + 2 util or 3 util). So that's 93 = 27 seconds, and Well of Recall grants an additional 10s with max boon duration. 37 seconds of alacrity on a full, well-executed well rotation, and your highest well cooldown is 30 seconds. Accounting for animations and trying to keep all allies within each well for as much of their duration as you can manage, I think we've got a class that can manage good alacrity throughput, 100% only if they pick 3 well abilities, the situation is right, their teammates are playing along, or the group stacks: Since groups stacking is the current meta, this seems like a decent off-healer support build with 100% alac. Crucially, what they gain in alacrity they will lose in utility or healing skill slots, nerfing their damage significantly: Which is fine.On the healing end, you have 3 wells healing for 1k pr pulse; 3k healing per well 3 wells = 9k healing, If using well of Eternity then on a 30 second CD you also get 3,913 and 1 condi cleanse per sec for 3 seconds. So every 30-ish seconds, you can heal about 13k healing - but that healing is staggered by casting animations, needing to stand inside of wells, waiting for wells to pulse, and trying to balance healing the guy who's running away from danger with providing alacrity to allies in the fight. For all the slow-ticking healing, the approx 4k heal at the end of Well of eternity if your only 'burst' heal. You won't be replacing druid or healbrand, but you'll be an off-heal alacrity bot with some aegis, some stability some quickness, some CC... yeah man. Not optimal, but good enough to take along for the alac alone.

Time Catches Up (Middle tier 2 chrono trait)CURRENT: Activating a Shatter gives your illusions superspeed. Shatters deal increased damage to movement-impaired foes.NEW: Activating a Shatter gives your illusions superspeed. Shatters deal increased damage to movement-impaired foes. Flow of Time affects allies near you.REFERENCE: Flow of Time (Tier 3 Chrono trait): Gain 2s Alacrity for each clone you shatter (at 100% boon duration).NOTES: I just went and did a bit of testing my alac uptime with all combinations of (berserker/diviner) + (Improved Alacrity + Illusionary Reversion), here are my findings:It was a short test, but based on it I conclude: In order to maintain 100% alac uptime, you need improved alacrity, otherwise your shatter skills don't come off cd quickly enough even with diviner's. In berserker's gear with improved alacriy, it's tough to tell whether alacrity would be 100% on allies, since it would last 50% longer. Given what I see in diviner's - that I can't quite keep improved alacrity up 100% of the time - I'm willing to bet you'd have spotty coverage. In other words, to make this give 100% alac uptime, you need improved alacrity and 100% boon duration. That seems fine by me, but maybe others will disagree: Basically, you're swapping offensive stats for boon duration, lowering your damage but hopefully putting you in the ballpark of an alacregade. Again, though: Your damage AND your alacrity uptime relies on 3-clone shatters. If you shatter with fewer than 3 clones, your uptime won't be 100%. Building up clones will make this challenging outside of boss battles - surely alac is most necessary in boss battles, but this leaves alacren in the king spot for keeping alac up throughout an entire... fractal, say, with small skirmishes and few shatter opportunities.

Delayed Reactions (Upper Tier 2 Chrono Trait):CURRENT: Disabling a foe slows them. (Slow: 3 seconds; Interval: 3 seconds).NOTES: Okay... So here we hit a wall. Do we drop slow from the chronomancer trait line, leading to more reworks, or do we do something lazy like granting allies alacrity when you slow an enemy? If I had infinite time, competence, and experience, I'd just replace the slow traits... but for now I'm gonna make something a ltitle cheesey that at least accomplishes our goals.REWORK: Stolen Reaction: Disabling a foe slows them. When you or an ally attack a foe you've slowed, gain alacrity. (Slow: 3 seconds; Slow Interval: 3 seconds; alacrity: 3 seconds; Alacrity Interval: 5s).FURTHER NOTES: I don't have a solid grasp of how interrupts interact with the defiance bar, but here's my general premise: This is going to force you to have slow uptime in your build - aside from f3, not something many chronomancers pay attention to. By making it a source of group alacrity, we make the weaker future traits that apply slow much more appealing whereas they're currently never picked. With 100% boon uptime, this should grant people 6 seconds of alacrity whenever they strike someone you've slowed. You don' get any damage bonus like Time Catches Up and the internal alacrity cooldown of 5s means that you have to be using boon uptime to maintain 100% alacrity and you have to be slowing (or itnerrupting) every 5 seconds, disrupting your preferred damage rotation... and I think the amount of utility you get is a lot less than our new 'A Well-Earned Gift'. That said, it's also presumably easier to pull off than other combos - closer to alacregade.

FIN?This started as a two-sentence question and evolved into this assuredly typo-riddled monstrosity. I want to go further, but my major problems with chrono are the fact that it's clearly intended to support but doesn't adequately do that, the low usage of wells, and the huge ramp-up time and random factor for phantasms on damage. That last one would require a lot more thought on how to maintain the class and enhance its damage-dealing without actually increasing its damage numbers... and I'm just about spent for now. LMK what you guys think!

HONORABLE MENTION FROM BEFORE I DECIDED NOT TO DIVE INTO THE TIER 4 TRAITS:Improved alacrity (Lower Tier 4 Chrono Trait)CURRENT: Alacrity applied to you is stronger, but has a reduced duration. (Recharge increase: 50%, Duration Decreased: 33%)NEW: Alacrity applied to you is stronger but has a reduced duration. Alacrity applied to nearby allies has a lesser benefit. (Self recharge increase: 50%, Self duration decreased: 33%; Ally Recharge Increase: 35%; Ally durration decreased: %23)NOTES: This would be giving Chrono a unique buff - something like spotter. The effect here is relatively minimal compared to having alacrity at all. Also, the chronomancer does not have to be the source of the alacrity: This makes it so that a chrono can join as DPS in a group with a renegade and the renegade is not outclassed. To demonstrate the effect here: Assuming alacrity is applied for the entire cooldown of a 10, 20, and 30 second skill, its actual cooldown will be....Normal Alacrity: 8, 16, 24(Chrono Ally) Lesser Enhanced Alacrity: 7.4, 14.8, 22.2 This is the new one - for most cooldowns it'll shave off a fraction of a second to a second and a fraction from the cd... Powerful, but hopefully not obscene. We're supporty time mages for crying out loud, let me have this one.(Chrono Only) Enhanced Alacrity: 6.7, 13.3, 20

[Infusion.7149]

Two main things: chrono is not weak in instanced content, it is only weak in content with trash mobs.

Chrono should have danger time scaled back to decrease the effectiveness of chrono stacking. 5-7% would be a more reasonable number ; a chrono without Danger Time active does roughly 36K which is in line with an average DPS class. If it is to be a net buff, it could be the crit chance is applied also when alacrity is up to help solo chronos.

Wells could apply boons per tick, similar to necromancer wells or scrapper gyros.

Seize the moment applies quickness to allies near the chrono at the cost of damage from phantasms (so a ~30K bench instead of ~40K with current danger time) but chronophantasma is rather underwhelming in terms of the daze in PVE. It could easily be reduced in phantasm daze duration since it is already split to competitive modes. This would function more like a power build than a fast ramp condi build. Currently, unlike firebrand it can do 10 man quickness.

Hard CC has an immediate impact on the defiance bar. Delayed Reactions is usually used with chrono stacks to supply slow.

Movement impaired includes chilled/cripple.

IA (Improved Alacrity) should not give added bonuses to others. That is a balancing nightmare and would likely involve greater server loads.

Because chrono is able to apply both quickness and alacrity it is in a unique position. Your suggestion regarding Time Catches Up would exacerbate this. Instead of changing a trait that can be run alongside Seize the Moment , I think perhaps an alacrity trait should be rolled into Lost Time only. That way you could specialize in alacrity or quickness. Keep in mind any changes need to have wells , Time Warp elite skill, and shield skills (Echo of Memory + Tides of Time) in mind.

Current minimum boon duration for dual boon chrono (supplying quickness and alac) is ~30% and ~20% for condi boon chrono and in that case the benchmark DPS is <20K ; suggested amount is actually ~50% for power boon and ~40% for condi boon. For StM it's 0% boon duration and that's the main reason why it has seen adoption. Condi quickness firebrand runs 40% boon duration but in actuality it only needs 24.5%.

see the following which were before July 2020 patch