Chronomancer MEGA Feedback

Hope anyone from GGG will ever read this.

I'm Chronomancer main since 0.1, i made and played caster and melee builds for Chrono, it was decent, but builds on Chrono felt like weaker version of other Ascendancies.

Chronomancer need buffs, i never seen Chrono being played by more than 1% of Playerbase since 0.1, currently in 0.4 it's at 0.6%...

Ascendancy Passives:


Quicksand Hourglass

Overall best Notable Passive on Chronomancer Ascendancy Tree, providing 30% Cast Speed/AoE on average, which is quite a lot, considering that with optimized Tree you won't be able to take much Spell AoE passives and there's 2 main branches that grant around 30% AoE, so this passives on average give us as much AoE as we get from Tree.

~30% Cast Speed on average also feels good, considering that Cast Speed passives give 3% Cast Speed from small Passives and anywhere from 5% to 10% from Notables.

Overall it's good, not too OP, not too weak, kinda unique and match Chronomancer idea.

Temporal Rift

Good defensive button, that sometimes can be used for Mana Sustain, but it's really underwhelming.

In PoE1 Temporal Rift grant "Unaffected by Temporal Chains" and "20% Faster Expire Rate of Debuffs", and yet barely anyone use it (~0.7% of Players in SC Trade Keepers League)

Temporal Rift should have "Unaffected by Slows", it's really weird that Chronomancer cannot be Unaffected by Slows, while Pathfinder can.

The Rapid River

All this passive does is sets base duration of Recoup to 4 Seconds, which is of course good compare to 8 Seconds, but it's really weak for whole Ascendancy Notable.
Not to say, you REQUIRED to use Sacrosanctum to get ES Recoup, because nobody is going to play Life Build on Chronomancer.

Barely anyone bother with Recoup, because it's really hard to make it good with 8 Seconds base duration, and very very few people play Chronomancer.

Not to say, why bother with Recoup, when you can get Leech, that require A LOT LESS investment than Recoup, and overall is much better for Survivability and Manacost Sustain.

For example, Bloodmage's passive for Spell Leech or The Covenant Body Armor with Blood Magic, it's not only great Defensive layer, it also instantly solve any Manacost issues.

While on Recoup even to try to get close to Leech, i have to invest big part of Tree, sacrifice multiple Gear Slots and have multiple Item Mods and Rune Sockets just to make Recoup work and recover enough to sustain Manacost or Damage.

Base duration of Recoup should be 4 Seconds to make more than ~0.5% of Players ever be interested in doing build with Recoup.

The Rapid River should instead grant same modifier that Sacrosanctum, "Life Recoup is also applied to Energy Shield Recoup", or something like "Modifiers to Life Recoup instead apply to Energy Shield Recoup", as well as providing decent amount of Life Recoup, around 20% - 30%.

Because Recoup makes no sense to do on ES build if you can't reach 100% Recoup to fully recover back from Damage, otherwise you will not recover ES fully and it will slowly drain, requiring you to wait for recharge, and at this point it will be better just to drop Recoup, invest all those Passives and Item Mods into more ES, ES Recharge, Damage and other stuff.

This will make Chronomancer more appealing to players, to be able to get ES Recoup without using Sacrosanctum.

Apex of the Moment

This passive is really weird, it has no indication, it has no icon on monsters, you just have to assume it works, or search video on YouTube to find someone who tested it to confirm that it actually works and it's there.

It at least should have any indication, some visual aura effect, or icon on monsters.

20% Slow is decent, but again, this is Notable Ascendancy passive, and it feels really underwhelming, boring and weak.

There's passive called Zone Control that literally does almost same thing as Apex of The Moment. You can use Blasphemy, scale Curse AoE which will make Zone Control just straight up better than Ascendancy Passive.

Apex of the Moment should be either replaced by entirely new Passive, or be buffed to 30% Slow, plus grant increased Presence AoE.

Inevitable Agony

Curse that does Damage when it expire, based on amount of Damage you dealt during it's effect. Basically More Damage with extra steps.

It's sure is useful in party play, no doubt.

But it has issues if using it solo.
Since it's curse, you will need to get Curse Magnitude to make it noticeable on Bosses.
Then you likely use Elemental Weakness or Despair for more Damage, and you likely take some Skill Duration passives. Which means that Inevitable Agony will also get Skill Duration, and you might not even need it because you will be able to kill bosses before Inevitable Agony expire, making it simply useless.

It feels fine as is, but you reach the point where you just don't need it anymore fairly soon during your progression.

Now and Again

Grant 33% chance for Skills to not go on Cooldown.

Kind useful passives for skills like Frost Wall, Marks, Warcries, Skills that use supports that add Cooldown, etc.

It also seems fine, there's couple skills with long cooldown such as Emergency Reload and Lunar Blessing, but i doubt it will be worth it going Chronomancer just to get that 33% Chance to have another use because Chronomancer has nothing to offer for Crossbow or Werewolf build.

Time Freeze

Time Freeze is useful in party play no doubt, and even solo if you stack some Skill Duration with Weapon Points, it will have like 10 sec duration, which is quite good.

One of few Chronomancer SKills/Passives that isn't lacking and doesn't feel weak or bad.

But it doesn't feel like real Time Freeze, it only stop mobs from doing any actions, if it's rare mob and it has some mods that make them spawn ground effects then it will continue during Time Freeze.

Time Snap

Time Snap on it's own is fairly strong skill, but currently only long cooldown skill we have are Time Freeze, Lunar Blessing and Emergency Reload.

If you not using Time Freeze, you won't use Time Snap either.

Noone will bother going Chronomancer just to reset cooldown of Lunar Blessing or Emergency Reload, because those skills are not like build defining, and as said before, Chronomancer has nothing to offer for Crossbow or Werewolf build. Almost any Ascendancy will be simply stronger choice for that.

Summary of current state of Chronomancer

- Good and useful Skills/Passives are only Quicksand Hourglass (30% Cast Speed/AoE) and Time Freeze.
- Too many buttons that provide very little benefits, or have little to no use.
- Practically any build will be simply stronger on other Ascendancy.
- Defensive Ascendancy with lack of good offensive options in game where everyone only care about DPS and Clearspeed, and Game itself balanced in a way that it vastly benefit fast builds with good Clearing/DPS.

"

PaintMaster#2396 wrote:

Defensive Ascendancy with lack of good offensive options in game where everyone only care about DPS and Clearspeed.

And for the rest of us it's one of the best. Turning enemies into slow-mo is the most entertaining layer of defense I ever used.

(Yeah, I read summary only)

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

"

PaintMaster#2396 wrote:

Defensive Ascendancy with lack of good offensive options in game where everyone only care about DPS and Clearspeed.

And for the rest of us it's one of the best. Turning enemies into slow-mo is the most entertaining layer of defense I ever used.

(Yeah, I read summary only)

It's cool, but you use Temporal Chains/Blasphemy for that, can do it on any ascendancy, and yes it stacks with Apex of the Moment which helps reaching 75% Slow cap with less Curse Magnitude.

But it's not hard to reach 75% Slow Effect on Temporal Chains, at this point Apex of the Moment has no effect, and any ascendancy would look no different from Chrono.

And this is clearly not enough to make it interesting or appealing, otherwise it wouldn't be second least popular ascendancy this league, or be at the bottom since 0.1.

In general, I agree with the feedback - I play Chronomancer in Fate of the Vaal. There are some differences though, for:
The Rapid River
In general I state recoup should have 4s base duration for everyone. Then, for Chronomancer, this node should also grant ES recoup equal to life recoup in addition, not instead of it, and recoup effect occur over 2s, maybe 3s. The bonus to life recoup then should be lower, like 10%. So, in points:
1) Recoup effects occur over 2(3) seconds instead
2) Damage taken recouped as life is also recouped as energy shield
3) 10% of damage taken recouped as life

Thanks to these changes Chronomancer will have his own, very solid defense mechanics, and other classes can still use Sacrosanctum and have fun with recouping too.

Temporal Rift
I totally agree it should also grant slows immunity.

Apex of the Moment
20% slow is enough if it will be unconditional, by that I mean it slows everything by 20%, from simplest zombie to Arbiter himself. Bonus to presence radius would be nice to have, and perhaps will open possibilities for some minion-based builds.

Inevitable Agony
All you've written is true. But why not changing the mechanic of the curse to something like "Hits dealt to cursed targets reappear after 0.5s, dealing their damage again."? Will work better with extended duration. Also GGG could manipulate the re-occurrence time, or dealt damage.

Now and Again
As I see it - 66% of time it does nothing. I would change it like this:
1) 33% chances for not not consume cooldown
2) if the above fails then 33% chances to halve the cooldown
That'd make the node much more attractive - most of the time it will grant some benefit.

Time Snap
With the change to Now and Again it will become much more reliable, and maybe will allow to actually make builds based on spells like Eye of the Winter, Conduit etc.

Time Freeze
The only thing I'd change there is to affect not only creatures itself, but also their mods. Nothing worse than freezing a rare mob just to be keep bombarded by volatile plants, lightning strikes, meteors and so on.
Besides that, this is the best skill Chronomancer have

"

MasterBLB#3551 wrote:

In general, I agree with the feedback - I play Chronomancer in Fate of the Vaal. There are some differences though, for:
The Rapid River
In general I state recoup should have 4s base duration for everyone. Then, for Chronomancer, this node should also grant ES recoup equal to life recoup in addition, not instead of it, and recoup effect occur over 2s, maybe 3s. The bonus to life recoup then should be lower, like 10%. So, in points:
1) Recoup effects occur over 2(3) seconds instead
2) Damage taken recouped as life is also recouped as energy shield
3) 10% of damage taken recouped as life

Thanks to these changes Chronomancer will have his own, very solid defense mechanics, and other classes can still use Sacrosanctum and have fun with recouping too.

Temporal Rift
I totally agree it should also grant slows immunity.

Apex of the Moment
20% slow is enough if it will be unconditional, by that I mean it slows everything by 20%, from simplest zombie to Arbiter himself. Bonus to presence radius would be nice to have, and perhaps will open possibilities for some minion-based builds.

Inevitable Agony
All you've written is true. But why not changing the mechanic of the curse to something like "Hits dealt to cursed targets reappear after 0.5s, dealing their damage again."? Will work better with extended duration. Also GGG could manipulate the re-occurrence time, or dealt damage.

Now and Again
As I see it - 66% of time it does nothing. I would change it like this:
1) 33% chances for not not consume cooldown
2) if the above fails then 33% chances to halve the cooldown
That'd make the node much more attractive - most of the time it will grant some benefit.

Time Snap
With the change to Now and Again it will become much more reliable, and maybe will allow to actually make builds based on spells like Eye of the Winter, Conduit etc.

Time Freeze
The only thing I'd change there is to affect not only creatures itself, but also their mods. Nothing worse than freezing a rare mob just to be keep bombarded by volatile plants, lightning strikes, meteors and so on.
Besides that, this is the best skill Chronomancer have

Right, forgot to mention this about Time Freeze, now it's just 100% reduced action speed, but it doesn't stop other effects or non damaging ailments on target from expiring.

"

MasterBLB#3551 wrote:

Now and Again
As I see it - 66% of time it does nothing. I would change it like this:
1) 33% chances for not not consume cooldown
2) if the above fails then 33% chances to halve the cooldown
That'd make the node much more attractive - most of the time it will grant some benefit.

Also this seems way too OP, you either ignore cooldown or you get half cooldown at minimum, which seems too strong.

But another line with 33% chance for half cooldown looks more like balanced.

While in current state it's already good, there's just not much long cooldown skills to actually see it working

In the case of inevitable agony..

Inevitable agony with doedre and impending doom attached. Setup like normal imp doom build, can go into event horizon with 0 downfall because agony isn't a chaos spell. Presence slow instead of blasphemy and temp chains, so you can use despair on blasphemy. Defenses revolve around recoup and sacrosanctum with the midnight belt, scolds helm, and double recoup amulet. You end up recouping more than spent and because the delay is so short due to chrono ascendancy and passive tree recoup bonuses, which make recoup 3s. After 3 seconds I basically self sustain hp/es/mp by casting. Stack all spell +, curse magnitude, curse aoe, chaos damage, curse activation, and cast speed.

I'm currently 132% mana recoup, 120% life recoup + warriors flask. 7k combined hp/es, which I need to get higher. My agony is lvl 29. Aoe is over 5m all the time, so spell cascade overlaps the agony casts and damage.

Sands of time, Inevitable Agony, rapid river, apex of movement

Agony seems to apply first, then procs doedres, then procs imp doom, and finally does the repeat damage. This is what it SEEMS to do.

It feels like it works, i'm playing it. Just needs more cast speed, but it kills juiced map bosses pretty quickly. Not meta quickly, but it works. It's tanky too.

Agony can work, but to throw you a bone on this one, it takes quite a bit of investment to make it work.

Apex of movement feels like it needs a larger radius, but for my build, it slows enough to make recoup even more effective.

Rapid river is fine imo. Once you build deep into recoup, you'll see it. It's very strong. Sacrosanctum is mandatory with this for certain builds but I honestly feel like there are key things floating around to make rapid river extemely useful and powerful. Also, recoup defeats heavy stun...and that alone feels amazing.

I took Havoc's doedres lich tech, and applied it to Chrono. It's working so far, with some extra twists. With agony as the casting skill, being able to use the event horizon wheel is huge for damage.

Rapid River
The comparison of Leech and Recoup is interesting in this specific case. Esp when you compare to Blood Mage. Last league I made an Infernalist with more damage output and equal sustain to Blood Mage by constantly slamming myself for Self damage.

Though it would not have been worth it if not for Grinning Immolation.
Still it's really strong for support which is kinda where Crono at least was.

Quicksand Hourglass
I kinda find myself not caring much about cast speed thanks to the Infusion system. It gates casters pretty hard past a certain point. AoE is always good but cast speed, eh. They really need to ditch the pick-up mini game, just make them stacks. Not to mention add combos for every elemental spell.

Apex of the Moment
This one got trashed after GGG did a derp derp and forgot why the keywords "reduce" and "Less" existed. It was 0% Action speed back in the day which was hilarious. I imagine they might fix it once they fix action speed modifiers.

Inevitable Agony
I almost played a Crono again after they finally fixed that stupid curse stacking. What a pointless addition it was last league. It still probably struggles but that's due to a global problem of players simply doing too much damage.

Now and Again
It's really strong or not at all and makes for some really twitchy gameplay. I would personally prefer it just gave something more reliable like an extra use or similar but it's whatever.

"

PaintMaster#2396 wrote:

- Defensive Ascendancy with lack of good offensive options in game where everyone only care about DPS and Clearspeed, and Game itself balanced in a way that it vastly benefit fast builds with good Clearing/DPS.

Yeah, it's just not played as much since it's more defensive focused. That doesn't mean it's not strong.

Not dying is also actually beneficial since you have 0 portals if you want to use 3 tablets.

"

MasterBLB#3551 wrote:

Temporal Rift
I totally agree it should also grant slows immunity.

Time Freeze
The only thing I'd change there is to affect not only creatures itself, but also their mods. Nothing worse than freezing a rare mob just to be keep bombarded by volatile plants, lightning strikes, meteors and so on.
Besides that, this is the best skill Chronomancer have

Also agree with these.

"

TheRealScrubcake#2146 wrote:

Rapid river is fine imo. Once you build deep into recoup, you'll see it. It's very strong. Sacrosanctum is mandatory with this for certain builds but I honestly feel like there are key things floating around to make rapid river extemely useful and powerful. Also, recoup defeats heavy stun...and that alone feels amazing.

I made Chrono Recoup build, played it in 0.3 with super crazy gear, and a bit in 0.4. It's good, but i wouldn't call it strong, bloodmage is strong by getting basically same thing with infinite mana with single passive, on recoup you need to dedicate part of tree, multiple gear slots, which require other gear to be really good.

Recoup on it's own is weak, base duration of 8 seconds is really bad, recoup passives appear only in top part of tree and branches are really far away from eachother, so taking enough recoup stuff to make it work limits possible builds by a ton. If you want to make recoup warrior, you'd have to path all the way to sorc area, spending huge amount of points for that.

Rapid River fixes too long duration of recoup, but it doesnt do anything else.
If you pick Rapid River, it kinda like has hidden modifier "You can only equip Sacrosanctum into body armor slot", nobody is going to play Life based Chronomancer, it takes too many points to get Recoup, so you can't really path into warrior area to take armor passives if you'd do life build.

Recoup outside Chrono might be usable on Lich or Ascendancy that can stack high amount of ES, so even with slow Recoup it will feel good because of high ES pool.