User:Masel/Builds/Chronomancer

Power Dagger Chronomancer

Build Rating (Subjective)

Criterion	Rating
Burst Damage	4/5
Sustained Damage	4/5
Utility Options	5/5
Survivability	2/5
Difficulty	3/5

Power  Chronomancer is known to be a fairly difficult build to execute well due to Clone micromanagement and the additional complexity layer through   Continuum Split. In this guide, I want to make it as easy as possible while still retaining good damage! This build can be played as full DPS and boon DPS without gear adjustments and it can bring all the utility of a mesmer (e.g.   Blink,   Signet of Humility,   Mimic and   Portal Entre). It always provides some  Superspeed,  Might and  Fury around it and can be adjusted to supply either  Quickness or  Alacrity without changing gear or the rotation at all, which is unique to Chrono and makes it very flexible to fill roles.

Link to the Build on the Editor

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Shatters
Dagger + Sword
Focus
Utility

The range from using Dagger feels great to play in any game mode and massively helps with survivability in open world.

  Continuum Split

•   Continuum Split deserves its own section, as it is one of the unique aspects of  Chronomancer.
• It reverts time, in that it will save the skill cooldowns, health and position when you activate it.
• Then, for each Clone you shattered with it, it gives you more time to use skills and have them reverted.
• In this build, the highest damaging skills are Phantasm skills, i.e.   Phantasmal Disenchanter,   Phantasmal Warden and   Phantasmal Swordsman, so ideally, we would revert their cooldowns. I provide an example in the rotation showcase down below.

Dagger Mainhand

•   Flying Cutter is a very strong ranged auto attack that will do another attack on every third hit with this ability. Simple, strong, great!
•   Bladecall is the bread and butter for damage. It creates a Clone when it hits. Use on cooldown, great skill!
•   Unstable Bladestorm is a ground-AoE that will launch blades at nearby foes. Also great damage, use on cooldown.

Sword Offhand

•   Illusionary Riposte is a Block that will create a Clone and Dazes when you block an attack. Use can also trigger the second skill   Counter Blade by pressing the button again.
•   Phantasmal Swordsman is a Phantasm that will turn into a Clone after it is done with its animation. If the melee portion hits, you gain  Might. This is the skill that maintains  Fencer's Finesse for 150 Ferocity (10% Critical Damage) and does a lot of damage. We will focus on resetting every second cast of this via   Signet of the Ether to maximize the damage output.

Focus Offhand

•   Temporal Curtain is a ground-AoE that aplies  Crippled to foes and  Swiftness to allies that touch it. The secondary cast pulls enemies in, so you can use this to group mobs up.
•   Phantasmal Warden is a Phantasm that will turn into a Clone after it is done with its animation. If reflects projectiles, applies lots of  Vulnerability and does great damage. Even though this looks like an AoE-skill, it only hits a single target. That is important, since it can miss bosses and hit adds instead on many encounters. Whether you use this consistently every rotation loop or only in the opener and camp sword depends on your preference.

Utility Skills

Default Skill	Notes
Signet of the Ether	heals you for every Clone or Phantasm you create. More importantly, this can be used to reset your Phantasms, which is particularly powerful when using   Chronophantasma. Ideally, cast this right after   Phantasmal Swordsman while   Phantasmal Disenchanter is on cooldown.
Well of Calamity	High damage skill, use on cooldown. Is also an Ethereal field that grants you Chaos Aura when you use   Phantasmal Swordsman inside of it.
Well of Action	Technically,   Mantra of Pain is a tiny bit more damage, but it does not provide  Superspeed,  Might and  Fury to allies. I found this to be the much more consistent and easy to use choice, since a misclick on   Mantra of Pain costs a lot of damage. Like   Well of Calamity, this is an Ethereal field.
Phantasmal Disenchanter	Strong Damage against foes with no Boons and strips Boons off the target. Use on cooldown.
Gravity Well	Strong damage and massive amounts of Breakbar damage.

CC Skills for breakbar damage

•   Time Sink
•   Temporal Curtain, then   Into the Void
•   Illusionary Riposte, then   Counter Blade
•   Gravity Well does 550 Breakbar damage, so save it when necessary.

Gear

Important Stats in Hero Panel (descending in Importance):

1. At least 75% Critical Chance:  Fury gives 25% for 100% in total.
2. Maximize Power
3. Maximize Ferocity

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Berserker's	Superior Rune of Infiltration
Shoulders	Berserker's	Superior Rune of Infiltration
Chest	Assassin's	Superior Rune of Infiltration
Gloves	Berserker's	Superior Rune of Infiltration
Legs	Assassin's	Superior Rune of Infiltration
Boots	Berserker's	Superior Rune of Infiltration
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Assassin's
Ring 1	Berserker's
Ring 2	Berserker's
Accessory 1	Berserker's
Accessory 2	Berserker's
Backpack	Assassin's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Dagger (Main Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Force
Sword (Off Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Accuracy
Focus (Off Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Accuracy
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro Lime Sous-Vide Steak
Damage	Non-Ascended Food	Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppercorn-Crusted Sous-Vide Steak
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Oysters with Zesty Sauce
Damage	Utility	Potent Superior Sharpening Stone
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Thief

• For a budget variant, simply replace all ascended armor pieces of Berserker's and Assassin's with rare/exotic Berserker's and Assassin's, respectively.
• Ascended gear is always ideal, but exotic gear is fine for everything aside from higher-tier fractals.
• If you want more damage at the cost of more complexity, you can use Relic of Fireworks.
• Since Shatter skills count as weapon skills, all Shatter skills with a cooldown of at least 20 seconds will trigger Relic of Fireworks. Aside from those, Phantasmal Warden and Into the Void will trigger the relic.
• Ascended Food is always ideal, but never required.

Traits

Dueling
Domination
Chronomancer

Dueling

•  Dueling is the bread and butter for power  Chronomancer because it centers around  Fury, Phantasm damage boosts and higher Ferocity/Critical Damage.
• It’ll also make yor Phantasms apply  Bleeding on critical hits and grants them  Fury, which is pretty essential for having them critically strike reliably.

Domination

• It just flatout increases your strike damage by a large margin. You apply more  Vulnerability, your Phantasms deal higher strike damage, deal higher damage against foes at lower health % than you and higher damage against boonless foes.
• Since enemies rarely generate boons (bosses like Dhuum or Qadim the Peerless aside),  Vicious Expression is pretty much always active. And even if they do have boons,  Vicious Expression includes native boon strip when you disable a foe. On top of that,   Phantasmal Disenchanter strips boons on hit.

Chronomancer

• The first two trait choices in  Chronomancer are always the same, its only the last one we change across the build variants.
• For explanations on   Continuum Split, see the dedicated section above.
•  Improved Alacrity makes  Alacrity more powerful, reducing all your cooldowns, and you also gain additional Critical Damage while you have  Alacrity. This comes at the cost of  Alacrity havign reduced duration on you. Luckily, You always supply some self- Alacrity through  Flow of Time. Even with 0 Clones, you grant yourself 1 second, since you also count as a Clone.
• In the dps variant, we’ll run  Chronophantasma. This makes your Phantasms reappear after they finsihed their first animation, which massively increases the damage they deal (multiplies it by two, big brain). This trait is the reason why Phantasms are your main source of damage.
• If you want to supply  Quickness or  Alacrity around you, all you need to do is to use  Seize the Moment or  Stretched Time, respectively. The rotation does not change at all.

DPS Rotation Showcase

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

Link to Damage Log

Open World Build

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.

Increasing General Survivability

For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.

•  Chronomancer (similar to all power Mesmers) does not have a large amount of passive healing or innate survivability. You will not be able to facetank damage with  Chronomancer without making larger changes to gear.
• That is why it is best to use your Clones as decoy and stay behind them to avoid taking damage. They will gain aggro from many foes. Use Phantasms and   Bladecall on cooldown to keep a constant flow of new Clones up that absorb damage for you.
• Use the survivability food and utility item listed above for another -10% damage taken and 150 Toughness!
• Use   Continuum Split to reset   Signet of the Ether and   Distortion in cases where you might need it.

Boon Coverage

• As a first step, you can increase the self-coverage of essential offensive boons by using  Illusions instead of  Domination.
• With the traits of choice, this will allow you to cover  Quickness, more  Fury and  Might on yourself without relying on Jade protocols and/or Relic of the Cavalier.

Tier	Trait		Description
Minor Adept	Cry of Pain		Shatter skill 2 inflicts more stacks of confusion for an increased duration.
Major Adept	Persistence of Memory		When a phantasm becomes a clone, it transfers its boons to you.
Minor Master	Compounding Power		Creating an illusion increases your outgoing damage and condition damage for a short duration. Virtuoso: Triggers when stocking a blade.
Major Master	Phantasmal Haste		Phantasms spawn with quickness. Gain quickness when you create a phantasm.
Minor Grandmaster	Master of Misdirection		Shatter skills gain recharge reduction.
Major Grandmaster	Phantasmal Force		Phantasms deal increased strike damage for each stack of might you have. Gain might when your phantasms become clones.

• If you want to solo harder content, make use of   Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge for 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from  Stability,  Resistance and  Resolution on entering combat. The  Protection from this is a massive gain in survivability, as Mesmer does not have good native sources for it.
• These effects can be pre-stacked by using an Enchanted Snow Diamond Tonic repeatedly when out of combat, but they get removed when you enter story instances, fractals, raids and strikes.
• Use  Stretched Time to cover  Alacrity on yourself.
• In story instances (or if you don't want the hassle of reapplying protocols), you can abuse the synergy between Relic of the Cavalier and   Blast from the Skyscale to apply lots of  Aegis,  Resistance,  Might and  Quickness to yourself. It does not have an internal cooldown and applies the boons on every hit of   Blast.
• The utility skills are meant to help cover boons on yourself and creating as many Phantasms as possible to benefit from  Illusions and  Stretched Time.

Utility Skills (Open World)

Skill	Notes
Signet of the Ether	Used to recharge all Phantasm skills. Use this when   Phantasmal Defender,   Phantasmal Disenchanter and   Phantasmal Swordsman are on cooldown to regain access to them.
Signet of Inspiration	Extends all boons on you by 3 seconds. Especially useful when using Relic of the Cavalier and/or   Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge since it extends all boons they provide.
Phantasmal Defender	Summons a Phantasm that applies  Taunt and thus takes the focus away from you. Deals a lot of damage when it blocks attacks.
Phantasmal Disenchanter	Summons a Phantasm that deals a lot of damage.
Gravity Well	Make use of this for Breakbar damage.

Dealing with Conditions and Control effects

• In case you need frequent condi cleanses, getting a cheap second focus (can be exotic) with Superior Sigil of Generosity or Superior Sigil of Purity is worth looking at. Adam costs …. Simply swap to the exotic focus whenever you encounter condition-heavy enemies and stay on it for as long as necessary.
• If you want more consistent healing and frequent condition cleanses at the cost of a large chunk of damage, you can use  Inspiration. This makes the build a bit more laid-back.

Tier	Trait		Description
Minor Adept	Mender's Purity		Cast Lesser Power Cleanse when you use a healing skill.
Major Adept	Sympathetic Visage		Phantasms take your conditions from you when summoned.
Minor Master	Inspiring Distortion		Grant aegis to other nearby allies whenever you give yourself distortion or use Shatter skill 4.
Major Grandmaster	Restorative Illusions		Heal and cleanse conditions from yourself and nearby allies when you use a Shatter skill.
Minor Grandmaster	Healing Prism	10	When healing yourself, nearby allies are also healed. Gain healing power based on a portion of your power.
Minor Grandmaster	Illusionary Inspiration		Increase healing to other allies. Summoning an illusion heals all allies around you. Virtuoso: Triggers when stocking a blade.

•   Well of Precognition is a Stun break and applies pulsing  Stability and  Aegis.
• Final tip to solo hard content on mesmer: play Mirage, it's OP for that.