Chronomancer - Rifle Mantra Support

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Support and Control

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on March 24, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A support Chronomancer build utilizing the latest addition to the Mesmer arsenal, the Rifle.

Skill Bar

Rifle

Sword/Shield

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

For the optional slot:

• Feedback - high anti-projectile uptime, quite useful against specs like Rifle Deadeyes or Longbow Dragonhunters.

• Mantra of Concentration - another stun break and extra healing via Restorative Mantras.

• Mantra of Resolve - if more condition cleansing is needed.

Elite

• Gravity Well - the CC could help set up kills for the team.

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Specializations

Variants

• Ego Restoration is another viable option, improving various clone related traits and skill. It's also the only real option when you're NOT playing with Time Warp and Feedback.

Equipment

Rifle

Sigil

Sigil

Sword

Shield

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Chronomancers gain access to brand new Shatter skills that are more or less the same as the old Shatter skills. F1 is still the power damage one, F2 still has Confusion and F3 Dazes targets.

• In the F5 slot Chronos gain a new Shatter that's unique to them: Continuum Split and its chain skill Continuum Shift. More about these later.

• Time Marches On provides a passive movement speed bonus, rendering movement focused runes unnecessary.

General

• While Rifle adds a strong ranged option to the build, many of your important healing, cleansing and boon sharing tools like mantras and shatters still have to be used in melee range of allies.

• Singularity Shot shot creates a portal for a brief amount of time that allows allies to teleport to your location, but in ranked games (especially solo) without voice communication the odds of someone actually reacting in time and taking the portal are virtually 0. View this as a ranged barrier sharing tool with extra Resistance on top.

• With Rifle you can afford to stay in range and support your team from a safe distance. When Rifle skills are used up you're going to have to go melee and provide support with mantras and shatters. The Sword/Shield set allows you to spend time in melee and survive enemy focus for some time.

• Mantra of Recovery (MoR) has quite a long cast time when you have to charge it up - either block line of sight for enemies by hiding behind objects or Stability from shatter skills to protect it. This mantra unlocks the skill Power Return.

• There's some decision making involved when you're using charges of Power Return. Upon pressing this skill 1 charge is consumed and immediately starts recharging, but you'll still have a second charge available. The recharge time is 20 seconds but you can speed it up with Alacrity. If you end up using the 2nd charge before gaining back the 1st one, all the time you've spent waiting for the 1st charge to come back will be lost and Mantra of Recovery will go on full CD. For this reason it's often beneficial to use both charges back-to-back if your allies are taking heavy damage and you feel like you couldn't wait for the 1st charge to come back before having to use the skill again, since using both charges together allows MoR itself to start recharging sooner. The downside is that you're losing out on an instant reactive heal when this mantra is on CD.

• Glamour skills such as Feedback grant Superspeed which could allow you to kite enemies or get to allies faster.

• You're allowed to spam shatters more freely while Signet of Illusions is available. This signet is mainly taken for its active, reseting all of the F1-4 shatters with the press of a button.

• Every shatter skill grants a small amount of Stability. Timing here is key, but since shatters are all instant that's not a problem. This Stability could be used to negate interrupts (which is especially useful when channeling a rez, an important skill or a shield block). It's just enough to walk or dodge out of area-denial skills like Dragon's Maw too.

• Feedback (when traited with Temporal Enchanter) isn't just an anti-projectile tool - the Superspeed and Resistance coupled with being an instant cast ability makes this a great skill to use for kiting opponents.

• Ideally you should have 2-3 clones out before pressing Rewinder as the recharge of this skill scales with the number of clones shattered, but even without that the skill offers great value with all the trait synergy baked into it.

Healing/Support

• Rifle has 3 ranged support skills (not counting the auto): Journey, Inspiring Imagery and Singularity Shot.

• Journey heals the least amount of the 3 but is the quickest to go off, making this the most reactive support skill on rifle.

• Inspiring Imagery is slower, has a travel time and creates a combo field on the ground called Abstraction. You heal allies by detonating Abstraction. Abstraction is a mix of raw healing and damage mitigation through Blind and Weakness and is the only source of condition removal you have aside from shatter skills.

• Singularity Shot doesn't heal but rather it grants a higher amount of barrier than what the other skills could heal for. This can be used proactively to shield allies who are expected to take damage, or it could buy you time to heal low HP allies.

• The 2 main sources of healing outside Rifle are mantras and shatters. Both of these have to be used in melee range, hugging allies.

• On top of healing allies shatter skills also cleanse conditions and grant various boons via Bountiful Disillusionment.
  • Shatter healing scales with the number of clones you have. Try using shatters after skills that spawn clones, like Illusionary Leap.

• Try to maximize Chaos Aura uptime for allies! Chaos Aura sources in the build:
  • Inspiring Imagery's chain skill (Rifle #3)
  • Rewinder (Shatter #2)
  • Executing leap or blast finishers inside Ethereal Fields such as Feedback or Time Warp
  • Chaos Aura granted to you is always shared with allies via trait synergy. Note: auras don't stack in duration! Wait for one to run out before applying a new one whenever possible.

Continuum Split (CS)

• Continuum Split allows you to use your skills twice.

• It's best used for double elite activation and allied healing. Press CS just before Time Warp finishes casting then unload as many Shatters, Phantasms, Mantras, Wells and skills in general as you possibly can while CS is active.

• Important: CS prevents capture point contribution, same as Distortion. If you're the only one holding a point, sometimes you might want to try keeping the time spent in CS to the bare minimum.

• Phantasms, combo fields, and applied boons will still persist after CS has ended. Spam as many skills as possible while CS is active for the extra bonuses like Alacrity. While your HP's going to revert to what it was when you activated CS, you get to keep everything else (boons, fields, auras) and teammates even get to keep the healing.

• If you absolutely have to, even Continuum Split itself could be used defensively. It reverts your HP back once it has ended, so if you can activate it right before taking damage then it acts like a healing skill with a delay. You'll also be returned to your original position, allowing you to pull off things like using CS before jumping off a wall and teleporting back with Continuum Shift once the enemies jumped after you. This however is a bit predictable and could even backfire, as you're inevitably going to return to your starting position in a few seconds so they could just wait it out and burst you when CS ends.

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