Support Chronomancer

August 2022

Chronomancer is a support build with extremely strong utility, providing heavy crowd control, boon removal, condition cleanse, and the best revive utility for large WvW battles. While a meta role, only a few Chronomancers are needed per squad.

This build is hard to master because of Continuum Split, which gives you a short window to essentially use your key abilities twice! Continuum Split offers incredible combo potential but requires a mastery of skill usage to get the most out of.

Commanders will often call for specific skills during an encounter. Be prepared to communicate your skill cooldowns with them and adapt to their commands.

Build Fundamentals

Shatter Skills

Chronomancer’s shatters are powerful instant-cast skills are ideal for melee combat.

Each shatter skill is enhanced by the number of clones available. Clone generation is unreliable in large-scale encounters so shatter spikes should be used as soon as a single clone has been generated. See the “Skill Combos” section for some examples of a shatter combo.

Each shatter skill has a unique active. However, Shattered Concentration and Rending Shatter make all shatter skills remove a boon from and apply Vulnerability to up to five targets on impact.

1. Split Second does strike damage. More importantly, this skill can be cast twice, removing up to 10 boons total.
2. Rewinder applies Crippled and Confusion.
3. Time Sink applies Slow and daze. Vicious Expression and Superior Sigil of Absorption allow your interrupts to remove and steal boons respectively, removing up to 25 boons in total.
4. Continuum Split allows you to duplicate your skills; for a short time, you can use any skills and have their cooldowns reverted to the state before entering Continuum Split.

Continuum Split is by far the trickiest to master. In addition to resetting your skill cooldowns, your health, endurance, and position will revert to their previous state. If you are out of position when entering Continuum Split you may find yourself reverted directly in the middle of an enemy squad.

Upon casting the skill, a rift is formed. The rift is visible to and vulnerable to enemy players. If you are killed or your rift is destroyed during combat you will be teleported back prematurely to where you originally cast the skill. Closing the rift early can be done by using Continuum Shift.

Continuum Split resets the cooldowns for any skill whose cast ends during it. This means that you should always be casting a skill as you are activating Continuum Split. Commonly, Continuum Split is activated during the cast times of Gravity Well, Illusion of Life, or Tides of Time.

Note: The duration of Continuum Split is extended by your number of active clones. Master of Fragmentation adds one second to your original Continuum Split duration. This brings your zero clone duration to 2½ seconds and one clone duration to 4 seconds.

Crowd Control

Temporal Curtain is a 900 ranged field that provides Swiftness to allies and inflicts Crippled on enemies. Activating it a second time activates Into the Void, a 600 radius pull. Altogether this makes you able to pull from a much further range than any other class – up to 1500 range!

Use this skill to pull enemies towards your squad, putting them within attack range of your squad.

Gravity Well is one of the best crowd control skills in the game, knocking enemies down, then floating them and pulling them in. Use this in combination with Continuum Split.

Commanders will often call for a Gravity Well explicitly, so you may want to save it for when it’s called for on voice.

Illusion of Life

Illusion of Life is high-value and one of the best revive utilities in battle, allowing you to temporarily revive up to three players to 80% health via Superior Rune of Mercy.

Revived allies have 15 seconds to kill an enemy, allowing players to either reenter the fight and rally or to reposition to a safe revive location. Failing to kill an enemy within 15 seconds will return them to downstate.

Hold onto this skill to revive multiple players rather than casting it on a single individual. When using it, communicate with your squad to avoid doubling up with another Chronomancer.

If available, use this in combination with Continuum Split. During the cast of Illusion of Life quickly enter Continuum Split. Once Continuum Split has closed you will have another cast of Illusion of Life available.

To effectively use Illusion of Life, prioritize staying alive and stacking tightly to your commander.

Stealth

One of your main responsibilities is to grant Stealth to your squad. Veil generates Stealth on any allies that pass through it and has no target limit.

At the request of your commander, place Veil  just slightly in front of the squad unless otherwise directed.

Note: Commanders often refer to Veil as “Veil”. Avoid using it when they call for “Stealth”, as this often refers to a smoke field-blast combo.

Weapon Skills

Sword:

Mind Spike (third skill in the auto-attack chain) strips boons. This is primarily used to quickly finish downstate enemies.

Blurred Frenzy is a one-second evade that fixes you in place. This can help you survive while casting shatters in melee range.

Illusionary Leap summons an illusion that leaps at your target. Activating this skill again swaps you with the clone and applies Immobilize on nearby enemies. Following up this skill with shatters will strip boons from nearby enemies. 

Focus:

Temporal Curtain is a ranged pull.

Phantasmal Warden summons a phantasm that blocks some projectiles.

Shield:

Echo of Memory is your main block. If you are hit during its cast you will gain a new block – if you’ve misjudged your Continuum Split and need to return to your zerg you can chain together Continuum Split casts to safely reach your Commander. Additionally, as this block is a phantasm skill, Signet of the Ether reduces its cooldown when used.

Tides of Time is a great crowd control skill, casting a slow moving shield that stuns enemies and blocks projectiles before returning to your location. Thanks to synergy with Vicious Expression and Superior Sigil of Absorption this skill can be a massive boon counter, with each interrupt stripping and stealing boons.

Alternatives

Sigils

Superior Sigil of Energy can be swapped for Superior Sigil of Nullification for more boon strips at the cost of some survivability.

Runes

Superior Rune of Durability for more boon duration and to apply Protection, Regeneration, and Resistance upon entering combat.

Superior Rune of Speed for more Swiftness and improved mobility.

Utilities

Peppermint Oil can be swapped for Sharpening Skull. Upon reviving your ally, both of you receive Feline Fury for 30 minutes, increasing all attributes +75.