Chronomancer currently has no place in the game

Aside from speccing into HotG, which requires you to go to the opposite end of the skilltree*, I really dont see a place for Chronomancer in the game at the moment.

I just dont.

The problem is that there are neither skills with good inherent cooldowns, nor skills that are good with hourglass or the like slapped on. This means even the intended chance to consume no CD + reset in case it does are pretty useless.

It also does not help that anything but Lightning currently simply is not good. Cold just ate another nerf. The passive tree is a load of work to get to other sections that might offer something.

Everyone picking Sorc just has to ask themselves one question: Why not play Stormweaver?

If you see a good (!) reason to currently play Chrono, please do tell me. Like, something that makes the ascendancy truly unique and worth playing. Recoup, reset and time freezes aint it.


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*with the coming aftershock gem i can see it getting nerfed into the ground soon btw

If I were to build a Chrono, I'd go Quicksand Hourglass, Apex of the Moment, Circular Heartbeat, The rapid River.

That is:
Every 12s you get +50% cast speed for 4 seconds
Enemies in your presence are slowed by 20%
30% of Damage recouped as life
Recoup Effects occur over 4 seconds

This is a tight defensive package to spec into recoup layers for survival and to get bursts of spell spam with anti-swarm/chase protection.

If you grab every recoup node available, you get:

100% all damage taken recouped as life
15% phys and elemental damage recouped as life
3% all damage recouped as life, mana and energy shield
26% all damage recouped as mana
Recoup effects occur over 3 seconds (! base time is 8 seconds)

With Mind over Matter/Eldritch Battery, ALL damage taken heals you for more than the total damage over 3 seconds.

Stack some mana, mana regen, and cast speed and you get

46% cast speed + 50% for 4 seconds every 12 seconds



You can pretty much run any spam spell setup with life tap from this platform and as long as you dont get one shot you are immortal.

I'd run unleach Arc archmage electrocute on this. The cast speed + unleash seal skill points will give you extremely fast chargeup for arcblasting and the new patch has electrocute with no damage reduction downside.

I think this is the intended way to build it, yeah. Question remains:

Why not play Stormweaver instead if you want to spam spells?

I get that with all the recoup effects, this is a very defensive build that is hard to kill. But so is a MoM + EB Stormweaver, and you can play Archmage and and get incredible arcane surges there. Waaaay better.

So is Chrono just the recoup mage?

Recoup is a horrible mechanic. Suggesting building a Chrono around recoup only showcases the lack of Chrono viability in the game. The only real danger in Endgame is one-shots and they are waiting for you at every corner, which recoup helps you not with.

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I think this is the intended way to build it, yeah. Question remains:

Why not play Stormweaver instead if you want to spam spells?

I get that with all the recoup effects, this is a very defensive build that is hard to kill. But so is a MoM + EB Stormweaver, and you can play Archmage and and get incredible arcane surges there. Waaaay better.

So is Chrono just the recoup mage?

Yes, for now Stormweaver is probably stronger but I think when we get more phsyical spells or maybe with the buffed chaos spells there could be a strong recoup chrono spammer.


Recoup over 3 seconds is actually really strong and the unique stat available only to this class.

Slow aura is really good, rewinding time is extremely OP, time stop seems a bit over the top in terms of the cooldown cause it's genuinely pretty weak, cooldowns really depends on what you put into your skills with support gems, recoup isn't bad it's just not amazing, but neither are a lot of notables on the other ascendancies.

I have the impression that different designers worked on the same game and what they designed doesn't really fit together.
The current endgame meta seems super boring mindless skill spam (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdBszZHQhVI).
On the other side, especially early game the game feels much slower, with less mob density, boss fights can last longer, classes like monk can play more combo based.
Chronomancer looks like a very defensive design to me. The recoup seems super strong sustain wise (with some passive nodes it can go up to 80%+), jumping back in time to restore hp allows to be hit by a powerfull boss attack and basically negate the entire damage immediatly afterwards, I'm not sure if time stop can cancel certain boss mechanics (?), its a solid CC and really good in group content (can also be used to get time for spell casting, lets say to channel incinerate), the 20% slow is likely to be stacked with another slow as a strong debuff and so on
Regarding the cdr I don't really know myself which spells they intended to use with it. Maybe some will get added in the future.

I don't think chronomancer will ever fit into a "burst bosses down with super high dps"- or "clear hordes of mobs with screen wide AoE"-meta. However it looks like a fun to play ascendency to me with mechanics that are not merely passive benefits like damage boosts, but can alter the playstyle in different ways.

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fouquet#0993 wrote:

If I were to build a Chrono, I'd go Quicksand Hourglass, Apex of the Moment, Circular Heartbeat, The rapid River.

That is:
Every 12s you get +50% cast speed for 4 seconds
Enemies in your presence are slowed by 20%
30% of Damage recouped as life
Recoup Effects occur over 4 seconds

This is a tight defensive package to spec into recoup layers for survival and to get bursts of spell spam with anti-swarm/chase protection.

If you grab every recoup node available, you get:

100% all damage taken recouped as life
15% phys and elemental damage recouped as life
3% all damage recouped as life, mana and energy shield
26% all damage recouped as mana
Recoup effects occur over 3 seconds (! base time is 8 seconds)

With Mind over Matter/Eldritch Battery, ALL damage taken heals you for more than the total damage over 3 seconds.

Stack some mana, mana regen, and cast speed and you get

46% cast speed + 50% for 4 seconds every 12 seconds



You can pretty much run any spam spell setup with life tap from this platform and as long as you dont get one shot you are immortal.

I'd run unleach Arc archmage electrocute on this. The cast speed + unleash seal skill points will give you extremely fast chargeup for arcblasting and the new patch has electrocute with no damage reduction downside.

congratulations, you have absolutely no damage.

Most ascendancies don't give a particular lot of damage.

"

congratulations, you have absolutely no damage.

You have cast speed on interval. If you grab all recoup nodes you can easily path to all the lightning nodes for arc/arcmage/unleash setup. Plenty of damage in that combo esp with cast on shock conduit.