Chrono Needs a rebalance?

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Fimbulwinter117#0929 wrote:

I feel like there is nothing intensly appealing on chrono besides recoup. The increased aoe and cast speed are decent, but to feel like a real ascendancy class thing it should be a "more" multi. Sure, that would be crazy busted, but I feel like cast speed is so much more important in poe2 than in poe1. That's because cast speed isn't really an offensive mod in poe2 but a defensive one.

The active skills feel completely gimmicky tbh. I'd rather have good passive boosts there for different archetypes. Time freeze is interesting but at the same time gimmicky as you cannot automate it.

I could see the chrono taking some proj nodes or something like passive charge generation. That could be a really interesting concept.

These are all good points and I agree everything but the gimmickiness of the active skills. I think there are maybe too many of them compared to other ascendencies, and it makes chrono stick out in an odd way. I wouldn't mind to see Inevitability go away for some passive bonus to cast speed (which is definitely neither offensive or defensive, as you point out). Perhaps increased cast speed when slowing enemies and put it behind Apex of the Moment, to make the time-slowing mechanic more appealing for the ascendancy that is all about controlling time.

Specifically on the topic of recoup there remains several major issues.

1. The Chrono is a Sorc ascendancy, which is heavily or entirely ES. Almost all recoup nodes are life only, and the few that aren't are to recoup ES from specifically elemental damage, making pathing and taking these a major cost for a minor upside.

2. For recoup to be meaningful, you of course must not get either burst or 1 shot. If going ES, as mentioned above recoup has either no effect, or at absolute best a minor one. If going evasion, getting 1 shot is a real possibility. If going armour, it should help, but far less than ES for 1 shots, and is extremely costly to get for the Chrono given she is a pure int class with the related starting point, and requires a heavy investment in STR.

3. Between pathing to recoup clusters and the recoup nodes themselves, the investment to get enough recoup to be noticeable is gigantic. A level of investment at odds with it's actual usefulness. Remember, this is assuming the character taking these nodes is a Chrono using two ascendancy points to take 'The Rapid River'. Is anyone taking recoup nodes without being a Chrono with the related nodes? I can't imagine anyone is given each passive point is averaging 4% damage taken recouped as life over 8 seconds, not taking into account passives spent pathing to the recoup clusters.

4. If one wants to get Time Freeze, they have to take Temporal Rift. Temporal Rift is at odds with recoup entirely.

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Regarding 'Inevitable Agony', it is a cool idea but practically useless for anything but bossing or exceptionally strong rares, making it a painful two points to allocate. In reality it also isn't exciting or fun to use(like all curses currently), unlike other ascendancy skills both within the Chronomancer ascendancy and others. In my humble opinion it needs to either act as a cull if the stored damage is greater than the targets remaining life + ES, or be replaced with something else entirely.

The buffs to 'Inevitable Agony' in this leagues patch notes don't fix the actual issues with the skill itself. Doesn't count against curse limit is simply mandatory to even be used at all, and more damage stored makes it better in the one use case it already has.

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I absolutely love the theme of the Chronomancer, and personally I like both Temporal Rift and Time Freeze, (Yes even Temporal Rift. It just feels 100% on theme) even though Temporal Rift is hindered by the bursty/1 shot nature of the game and at odds with recoup entirely.

This is intended as feedback, and are my own opinions as they stand currently regarding these specific aspects of the Chronomancer.

In my opinion chronomancer is actually very great as it is. There can be minor improvements but that is it. It is not a mainstream ascendancy but that is fine, i dont think all ascendancies have to be like that.

1) for example the argument it is a defensive one but the meta is about killing fast. Yes, sure it is. But some people prefer playing more defensively (me included) and therefore it is great we have some options.

2) For minor changes:
- I would love to see the Sands of time to have skill speed instead of cast speed for build diversity
- Also temporal rift takes too long to activate in my opinion as also said before. Make it instant or close to instant and it is much more pleasant to use. I do like it as it is, too though.

3) the recoup is great and allows build diversity. It may be useless in a standard sorcerer but i have seen crazy good builds making use of it, therefore i still think the opportunities are all there, we only have to use them. It may never be a mainstream ascendancy but that just makes me liking it even more tbh :D

Best regards

Fips

0.1 chronomancer was very fun but due to constant outside class changes, they turned it into... absolute nothingburger.

Before, you had very good chronomancer build with Hammer of the gods. It wasn't amazing or anything for mapping but it did the job. Very fun for bossing, very exciting to use.
Boom. Patch later nerfed. You now have to use the garbage glory mechanic.
Same with huntress skills.
Druid comes in. Another useless chronomancer class. Because majority of the mechanic is gated behind rage. You can't revert yourself to state where you had rage. Neither that class really uses cooldown. Don't really have high enough cooldowns to justify the time freeze route.
So once again, your only options are Temporal rift for small defensive layer, apex of the moment for utility and recoup for melee focused build.
Sands of time MAYBE for caster/bear. Why do that though when you can go Smith of Kitava, Titan or Shaman, right?

ONLY actual way you can make good use of a chronomancer cooldowns is freezing time OR making one skill that has a long cooldown that you achieve by shoving cooldown support gems on it. Meh.


On top of that, changes to slow have been devastating. There's barely any support for auras. Jewel slot nerfs were soulcrushing and the cap on slow made it so the level of fun in first patch level can never be achieved.
How different is is really to slow the entire screen to a crawl where they can't attack VS oneshotting the entire screen. Zero difference.
If one is allowed to exist, why not the other? More so when slowing enemies to a crawl had significant investment into curse effect and curse aoe in order to not get killed offscreen.

GGG have consistently sh-t on Chronomancer since the launch of the game and ignored feedback about its issues repeatedly. 0.1 Siege Cascade and Hammer, removed from the game. Maybe it actually was a bug, maybe GGG didn't like the interaction. Ever since then chrono has only gotten scraps and maybe 1 hour of dev time at the end of the week it feels like.

Removing practically all cooldowns and making us give up support gem slots to make skills worse! Nerfing lightning skills, removing Unleash, and now crushing Incinerate. It's like GGG only want Chronomancer to only be played as a cold damage dealer, but why would anyone do that when Stormweaver exists? The only other alternative play style is being a time stopping buff bot for people with real ascendancies. Imagine that. The class about time manipulation being the slowest and most unfun to play!

I'm not saying that chrono is unplayable. It functions as intended I guess. But then again you could probably play the game as a base sorc and still function fine. It's just a not fun, not cool, slow, L, bald, no b--tches, and unemployed feeling class. I think any other developer would have just scrapped the class at this point.

I don't see hope for chrono. It's been a whole year and GGG just don't know what to do with it in spite of obvious changes they could make but give to other ascendancies that didn't need it. Hell I don't think people bother to play get to level 100 like they do with other classes. I started the game as chrono and each league so far, I'll probably keep starting chrono, but damned if I find any reason to invest more than the $60 I already have unless they make the class actually fun to play.

Maybe Werewolf Chronomancer would work. idk

Since we got a new Sorceress ascendancy that is quite cool and thematic - Chronomancer feels even more outdated and niche in comparison to other 2 Ascendancies and could use more work and improvements.
There are actually many possible improvement ways for Chronomancer:
- Node for accelerating / exploding DoTs on enemies with time speedup (would also make Chronomancer more compatible with Fire / Ignite builds since Stormweaver lacks Fire support and Disciple while having fire djinn is still minion based).
- Node to steal time from enemies to debuff them and extend your own buffs.
- Returning a form of Unleash to the Ascendancy tree since it was both quite thematic and valuable / useful. Maybe passive form with internal cooldown to not overlap with staff based Unleash.
- Improvements to minor passives (buff duration and curse delay reduction are not that useful, especially with existence of items like Windscream) and to some major passives like Now And Again (making it more reliable like affecting every Xth cooldown used instead of 33% chance or making it increase cooldown recovery rate instead) and Sands of Time (making it and its prerequisite passive provide skill speed instead of cast speed to provide more synergy with non-spell builds).
- Providing better / more cooldown based spells and abilities to synergize with Time Snap and Now And Again.
And likewise. Hopefully this Ascendancy would get some love and attention too.