Buran.3796

My take on this subject after testing several builds across all game modes and making and taking some representative samples: Time to kill: a WvW char sentry, a WvW veteran hwarg, a veteran giant from Elon Riverlands. Builds: "Condi" Renegade Stats: full ascended/legendary gear with viper short bow & armor and trailblazer trinkets; Nightmare runes, no consummables Traits Devastation 3,3,3 or Retribution 1,3,3 Invocation 1,2,2 Renegade 1,2,2 Power Renegade Stats: full ascended/legendary gear with grieving short bow, cavalier armor and assassin trinkets; Speed runes, no consummables Traits Devastation 3,3,3 or Retribution 1,3,3 Invocation 1,2,2 Renegade 1,2,2 Goal: to test the "all terrain" performance of PvP/WvW roaming builds vs PvE/A.I. controlled foes. Those are subpar builds for the task not designed to maximize damage but to be able to deliver pressure while enduring fights vs another players. Notice that those are just samples and the time is the average of the best I was able to get with my limited skill and experience in that department. For context, I played also a unoptimized (no Balthazar runes, no consummables, no Signet of Wrath...) condi Firebrand PvE build in full trailblazers (more details in the description). I also ran power Herald, condi Herald, power FB, power Warrior and other variants using the same targets, but I only showcase Renegades & FB in this short video. Numbers: Condi Renegade Power Renegade Condi Firebrand TTK Sentinel 6” 6” 5” TTK Hwarg 13” 15” 11” TTK Giant 32” 32” 19” Conclussions: I think that power Renegade has a similar output damage as the condi Renegade with this build which is used, and has better weapon synergies; a propper condition build will surpass the power nurbers by a wide margin, but has more counters and the trade ons in traitlines, weapons and legends will hurt the sustain. The Firebrand even unoptimized is way ahead in damage, but is not viable vs targets with functional brain and FB feels weak at competitive game moves compared to how string is at PvE.

The main problem of GW2's PvP is the lack of support. If you take a look at any of the top 25 most followed games in twitch, most of them are competitive and get patch support at least once a month, oftenly even every two weeks, and they shuffle the meta very often. GW2 has a balance patch at most 4 times a year, but oftenly skills and traits which are considered too weak or too strong remain unchanged for over a year. With no developer support, the game stagnantes, and people end leaving it, and the decrease in population reach numbers that make the matchmaking system unable to work, which is what's happening lately...

> @"Game of Bones.8975" said: > The only thing bad about the Renegade is the Short-bow vs having a longbow. It's sad the hammer is your range weapon. Pharus is way better looking than C&C (and easier to get) in my opinion, but horse bows > long bows irl. @Obtena: the short bow is better than the hammer with both power, condi or hybrid stats/builds at anything PvE/PvP related, and at roaming/small scale skirmishes in WvW.

My advice would be to go with Renegade. The Renegade can fight both at range or mele, using either power or condition stats, staying in short bow 90% of the time, and kill well both single targets and small packs of enemies. The powe Herald is pure mele and albeit very competent at single target damage, loses a lot of efficiency when has to tag multiple foes at the same time. The condition Herald is mele/short range AoE, much better against small packs, but a bit slower vs single targets. To me soloing hero points/bosses with power Herald is faster but more risky, with condi Herald a bit slower but way tankier. Herald has the quality of life of having perma-swiftness (Facet of Elements) without relying in traits or runes, but Renegade has the quality of life of being able to kill everything below champs without even being touched (short bow).

Lately I've playing both power Renegade and condi Renegade in PvE and WvW (and only power in PvP) using the same traits from what is essentially the PvP build (Shiro + Jalis Short Bow & Staff) and I found that the damage is similar (50% + 50% cavalier + assassin + speed runes vs viper + trailblazer + nightmare runes) but that build is not optimized in traits to deal maximum condi damage, so in reality condi would have an edge. Anyway, both are very competitive and you can jump from game modes without making changes. The advantage of the power build is that swapping to staff doesn't hurt your dps that much. In a few days I'll upload a small video showcasing a few examples of the performance. The fastest killing machine still seems to be the quickness burn Firebrand, but that one is too glass cannon to work in PvP/roaming and lacks some quality of life features due moves way slower and has much weaker access to cleanses and stability.

Maybe they don't have a 100% proc, or have an internal cooldown each time they proc the effect...

Both are entirely trivial. 120 wins in ranking are easy to get even in a single Conquest, season, because doing ranking is worth the time just due the economic rewards, ATs are a bit harder, but after a few matches here and there you will get those even playing your worst class. Unless you don't like to play PvP, which is an entirely different topic...

> @"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said: > > @"Virdo.1540" said: > > Power renegade. > > > > it provides high reward with an incredibly low skill ceiling ,but can still be mastered for even more reward > > Yeah, I'm still astonished that Renegade made a break in the Conquest scene. For years it was the trouble child of all the classes—people held faith that the class design was simply not made for PvP. However people in the EU scene kept trying to wake it up on streams, I remember asking Frostball why he was running Power Renegade probably last year or two years ago and acted as if it was a completely normal build. In NA everyone trashed it, including my skilled Revenant friends. It's just so surreal to see it in the "Meta" category on Metabattle, or taken to monthlies. WOW. Renegade was garbage before the overall damage nerf of February 2020, because the bow was terribad (no defenses, no mobility, mediocre damage) and lacked both sustain and any way to deal serious pressure. Then two magical things happened: the nerf in damage (and specially in skills with cc) made much easier to survive with this spec, so sustain was no longer a problem. Then Sevenshot was buffed from almost useless to really strong. Currently is the build I'm enjoying the most: has finally a usable ranged weapon with a serious punch, tons of mobility, tons of sustain, good cleanses, stability on demand and nice team support. Is everything I would like to have on a... Ranger. And you don't even need to run the pesky Kalla summons! Is not good in 2 vs 2, has a pass in 3 vs 3 but is strong at Conquest and you can run the same build at roaming in WvW (replacing Demolisher with a mix of Cavalier and Assassin) and even works well in PvE. What to not love? Only the fact that was utter rubbish for two and half years...

In GW2 skills are linked to specific weapons (you can't do the same attacks with an axe and a mace) and weapons have been designed for covering specific task (mele dps, ranged dps, support, defensive... ). This means that when one given weapon fills a role usually trying to run others in the same spot delivers subpar results. Also, skill nerfs can easily make a previously functional weapon or build now suddenly mediocre. Finally, the game oftenly favoures mele weapons over ranged ones at PvE due the balance at PvP/WvW demands for mele weapons to be stronger (due ranged ones already have the advantage of dealing damage before mele ranged is reached). So, having the Guardian already the sword, greatswod and scepter as best in slot for mele and ranged physical damage and axe & torch and scepter for best in slot for mele and ranged condition damage is hard for everything else to have a place (ouside staff for support and fovcus and shield for defense). If you want an archer with strong dps and superb mobility I would advice you to run the short bow Renegade, with either power or condition builds and using Shiro & Jalis as legends. And by the way horse bows > long bows (based in both historical facts and my experience practicing archery irl):

> @"Shao.7236" said: > Nerfed into uselesness is a big statement when being able to convert 3 conditions from 5 other players at once on your team. If players cared for the clear exclusively after the nerf, they'd be using Lyssa which hasn't been touched in any significant way yet. Lyssa provides precission. When I play a power Rev, I don't need precission. When I play a condition Rev, I don't care about precission (traits which procced condis faded long time ago for this class). Also: removing 3 condis each 45 seconds... Staff's Renewing Weave doubles that amount in 45 seconds (2x3), Jali's Shooting Stone removes 5 each 30 s, traited shield can clean 5 in 45s, and you have more control over when you use those skills than over the use of the elites. Lyssa is just a waste, won't be ever used by this class. But go ahead, ANet, delete the Resitance rune. As I said won't change anything: you're at best a season or two behind the meta. Reducing the amount of options won't change how broken the game is because the main reason behind the unbalances is the lack of consistent support due patches arrives once in 4+ months so player have 8+ months to exploit "weakness".

> @"Shao.7236" said: > Nah, PvP suggestions. Also not a removal but rather increase of ICD to the Rune is necessary. It's pretty much carrying anything that can use it's effect often in PvP right now, mostly Herald builds as also shown to be the favored pick on metabattle, not a shocker tho. > > There was quite a lot of complaining of Herald being underpowered before it got popular. Do you realize that Resistance runes are used only due Durability runes were deleted from PvP, so players replaced it with the runes of the Leadership, only to see them nerfed to nothingness (lol, 10% boon duration, who wants to run that crap?!) and Resistance are just picked because most of runes in PvP do nothing? And by the way, they should also nerf the Melandru and Dolyak runes, which are the next ones which fills the "not entirely useless" box? Also, remove the Speed runes, because lately have been used a lot! Won't change anything: gear selection at PvP is currently pretty mediocre: if a player is having problems killing a (put your hated nemesis here) class is due there's no damage, so staying alive is very, very easy at the moment. They will keep being unable to kill those revs. And I'm talking about running berserker amulets, no one wants to use crusader (lol, -200 stat points because "reasons").

> @"NorthernRedStar.3054" said: > The hate comes from people who realize how broken this class is, both from a fundamental as well as a numbers perspective. Yes, a bad revenant is most likely a free kill no matter where you encounter them. But anywhere from decent to great you'll start to see the issues with the class: low windows of vulnerability (and people complain about ranger's counterattack, lol), high mobility and burst (hello there, thief nerfs), versatility and utility thanks to legend swapping etc. the list goes on. > > On a heavy armor class. Who on earth thought this was a good idea during development phase. Condi Herald has moderate to low mobility, and lacks any ranged pressure. If has blocks (staff) either loses tons of dps when wielding that weapon or (shield) roots himself in the ground. As most of Revs, their cleansing capabilities are very limited, and they are easy to poke at range. Resistance has been butchered. Power Herald has high mobility and barely any cleanse; usually no stability, also. In the current meta with damage from cc skills entirely nerfed they oftenly get demolished by condition bruisers. Renegades have good range pressure but worse defenses, usually they have access to stability but their breakstuns are weak, their summons easy to counter and they are weak to condis, as always. The exception are power Renegades, which are (were) unusual until yesterday. Do you know that the difference in this game from wearing a bikini (1920) to buttcapes (2064) to armor plate (2211) are merely 291 points? . I've seen Eles wearing ~4000 armor. The rise in armor from scholar to adventurer to soldier classes are barely 145.5 atribute points in each jump, which is not only neglectable in terms of % but also irrelevant because sustain is WAY more linked to the correct use of evades and mitigation skills than raw stats. Armor was (initially) mostly a choice of aesthetics (and no longer due the outfits). Base HP has WAY more impact and limitations in what you can do with your class that the "armor" that wears. And big LOL about the "versatility" of the skill system with the legends. Only 3 utilities, witn each legend, you chose two sets of 3 predefined utilities. wereas the rest of classes freely chose between 16 skills for 3 slots... Not to mention the "savage" amount of weapons available: mace and axe for mele condition, swords, staff and shield for mele power? You want a secondary set of mele condition weapons? Oh, sorry, we forget to add it! You want a ranged condition weapon? Oh, then you need the Renegade spec, but don't worry: the power ranged weapon (hammer) is so bad that in core and Herald you won't miss the absence of a condition ranged weapon. Also, we apologize for forgetting a breakstun for Ventari (and initially releasing the one from Kalla in the healing skill), we will try to not do it again in EoD, lol! Seriously, the class is amazing (despite being full of bugs) and yes, some numbers are overtuned to cover the lack of ideas and direction, but is far from being "broken" (except if you count the way in which the loadouts and template system keeps unfixed).

Excellent job and very smart and thoughtful design of the build. Is a very clever use of the resources and synergies of the spec trying to cincunvent the current limitations imposed after a long chain of nerfs. And even resembles the feeling of grappling characters in fighting games. I tried to build a suitable burn Firebrand a few months ago with full trailblazer gear and the same weapon selection (but Radiance instead of Honor) but sadly the damage and sustain ratio wasn't there: with similar tools the DH was way more tanky. Your approach with Sanctuary is very clever, and I would say "but..." but the video speaks from himself. My only problem with the build is the mobility and a certain feeling of frailty: it relies to large extent on the notion that if you face multiple targets chances are that some of them will play bad and feed your procs. But as you say is not oriented towards duels. Anyway, a refreshing take of the FB for WvW, thanx for sharing it!

> @"Zeesh.7286" said: > I just want to wear pauldrons on my ele instead of a kitten skirt and I want plate mail on my engineer instead of ridiculous trenchcoat. Can we please get rid of armors already.. it's god damned 2021 and the stat isn't adding anything remotely like balance.. Then use suits. You can cover you Ele in full plate armor if you want: there's plenty of oufits to make him to look like a walrus. And by the way I advise you to take a look at players like Cellofrag or Phantaram, and tell me them "how squishy" are the Eles.

> @"Crackmonster.2790" said: > I'm quite new to revenant myself - but i did look at the builds and i just don't see how herald is ever competitive with renegade. It just gives some randoms boons which any impactful of which you can already full uptime with a renegade for yourself, and lacks real damage abilties - lacks synergy with battle scars for healing, cant alacrity your group. It seems more like a stylistic choice for solo play. Shortbow is very good also for both power and condition as swap for when you need to be in ranged or to tag mobs. I use diviner gear for boon duration. ...With condi Herald most of damage comes from torment, so instead of running runes of nightmare as condi Renegade uses runes of tormenting, which both enhances damage and drains life (and escalates like crazy the more foes you face), which combined with a heal which well placed refills your entire HP each 20 seconds, and the shield is really strong in PvE provides a superior tank build. Happens that in instanced team content this game usually doesn't needs tanks (or that the support builds already are tanky/do damage enough), so from a fractal/raider player the Herald maybe makes no sense. But remember that a lot of players in GW2 do play solo, and Herald is more intuitive to play (energy easier to manage, no complex combos, you always play at mele range... ). Being said that, for a new player which starts in the game with PoF available, I would now advise to unlock the Renegade spec before Herald, because currently has better build diversity, comparable mobility and larger damage potential.