Chromie Abilities and Strategy

• Time Trap can sometimes be manually activated to prevent damage on allied Heroes as well.
• Slowing Sands is most efficient on narrow choke points, especially near Map Objectives.
• Do not be afraid to miss Sand Blast. It is better to cast this ability too often rather than to wait too long.

Chromie is an Assassin who excels at damaging and finishing targets from a large distance. As such, Sand Blast is her go-to ability, since it has a low cooldown and decent damage numbers, especially when her Sand Echo hits the same target as her. However, Sand Blast comes with a major twist: its projectile gets activated after a 0.5-second delay, which requires you to carefully anticipate your target's movement path.

As a rule of thumb, it is important to note that you should not be afraid to use Sand Blast whenever it is off cooldown. Its Mana cost and its cooldown are very low, which makes missing your target quite forgiving.

Dragon's Breath is Chromie's only source of waveclear. It has a longer cooldown and casting delay than Sand Blast, which requires you to use it very diligently.

Time Trap is Chromie's only means of self-protection. Despite its activation time of 2 seconds, Time Trap proves to be a quite useful ability, as it can disable engaging threats like Warriors and melee Assassins. You should always have a Time Trap near Chromie when you notice that a larger team fight is about to erupt. In the case of an emergency, you can bait an enemy Hero into it and run away to safety.

Another good way of using Time Trap is to activate it to protect nearby allied Heroes. The Stasis can sometimes buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive or prevent big burst damage from the enemy team.

Slowing Sands adds more crowd control to Chromie's kit, which can be quite impactful during prolonged team fights. One of Slowing Sands' biggest advantages is its extremely short cooldown and low Mana cost. Furthermore, Chromie can deactivate this Heroic Ability even while mounted, which makes it very flexible and easy to re-locate.

The best way to use Slowing Sands is on narrow choke points or around Map Objectives. Doing so will force the enemy team to either take a different path or fight in an unfavourable position.

Temporal Loop needs careful timing and anticipation in order to unfold its maximum value. However, it has the potential to lock down and kill a single enemy target in an instant, especially if your teammates follow suit.

When using Temporal Loop, make sure to carefully watch the 3-second time window. It is important to time Sand Blast and Dragon's Breath very precisely, since they both come with a short delay before getting activated. The ideal way to follow up on Temporal Loop is to cast Dragon's Breath while having 0.8 seconds left before your target gets re-located by Temporal Loop and follow up with Sand Blast when there are 0.5 seconds left on the clock. In a best case scenario, both spells will impact on the target location at once to deal a heavy amount of damage immediately after Temporal Loop has expired.

Timewalker is an incredibly useful passive trait, since it allows Chromie to reach power spikes earlier than any other Hero in the game. The ability to gain access to one of her Heroic Abilities at Level 8 alone is enough for Chromie to dominate mid-game team fights, especially while the enemy team is stuck at Level 8 or 9 as well.