The first of the Elite Specializations coming in Heart of Thorns is revealed to be the Mesmer's Chronomancer.

ArenaNet has today started revealing the Elite Specializations coming in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Elite Specializations are additions to existing professions, providing access to new weapons, skills and gameplay mechanics. The first of these reveals is for the Mesmer and its Elite Specialization Chronomancer.

The Chronomancer is all about time, often stealing the enemies' time to use for its own gain. The best example of this lies in one of the Shield skills, the new weapon available to Chronomancers. Called Tides of Time, this skill launches a wall of temporal energy that in addition to absorbing projectiles, will cause enemies to become frozen in time and stunned for a short duration while giving allies a short duration of quickness which makes all skills activate quicker.

To further help Chronomancers control time, they will gain access to an exclusive buff called Alacrity. Alacrity is the opposite of the current Chill effect in game, causing all skills to recharge faster than normal while under the effect. Chronomancers are the only profession and specialization with access to this effect, but they have some opportunities to apply this buff to allies.

To fill out the utility skills, the Chronomancer will be access to Wells, a utility skill type that has previously only been available to the Necromancer. Like the other Chronomancer abilities, the Chronomancer's wells are all about time and feature a large clock face as the skills visual effects. Not only does the well look like a clock, the hands will tick in time to the skill pulsing on the ground. Chronomancer wells are also unique from their Necromancer cousins in their duality. Each well will pulse three times before performing a powerful burst effect when the time ends. The trailer shows a more offensive well, while the Well of Precognition is more defensive with a burst that allows allies within the well to evade all incoming attacks for a short duration.

Even with all of this awesome Chronomancy, it is the new F5 shatter skill that steals the show. The shatter skill is called Continuum Split with a follow-up skill called Continuum Shift. Using Continuum Split will shatter all of the Chronomancer's illusions. When the duration of Continuum Split is over, or the player uses Continuum Shift, the Chronomancer will revert back to its state when Continuum Split was first used. This includes its position, health, endurance and all cooldowns (including the elite skill). This means that the Chronomancer could use their Elite skill twice in a row, by shifting back to the time before its cooldown was activated.

For more information about the Chronomancer, check out the blog post reveal over on GuildWars2.com. Also, check out the Points of Interest livestream tomorrow, May 1st at Noon Pacific as ArenaNet will be showing off a demo of the Chronomancer.

Matt Adams aka the Mattsta

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