Caeledh.5437

> @"narcx.3570" said:

>

> Gameplaywise, it'd also be nice to attach it to Vengeful Hammers

Doesn't smacking someone in the head with a hammer usually have the opposite effect?

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> Its really bad game design honestly as I respectfully explained above.

Agree with you on all points.

I've always hated the refill energy on legend swap nonsense. Manically changing legends every 10 seconds for that is never going to be my idea of a good time. But it's what the game forces on you if you want to be optimal.

Sure, solo content doesn't require being optimal and I've done that without the stupid manic legend swapping. But group content is a significant component of MMOs and I'm not going to selfishly bring my sub-optimal play into that.

While the elite specs may be superior in effectiveness by design, they're totally inferior for gameplay and fun for me.

The base rev legend utilities offered a thief like freedom of play, with nearly all legend utilities having either no or an extremely short cooldown.

Hooray!

Both elite specs are full of cooldowns.

Bait and switch. Do not love that. It's why I still haven't bought PoF.

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Revenant was sold as “low/no CD utility skills” not “no CDs on traits” so I’ve never looked at the class as necessitating no CDs on its traits; it’s mostly a matter of perspective.

It's not a matter of perspective. It's a matter of objective reality.

Take for example [Diabolic Inferno](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Diabolic_Inferno "Diabolic Inferno").

That effectively transforms all Revenant elites into a burn condition aoe on a hidden 8 second cooldown. Of course you can still use elites for their other purpose, but you can also try to count out those 8 seconds or work that into a rotation to use it as another cooldown attack and that is exactly what will be most effective.

And as I said, you can't even avoid them. Every single master level corruption trait has a cooldown on it. So do 2 of the 3 adepts and 1 of the majors.

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> I didn’t realize your objection to the trait CDs was so strong that you’d completely disregard Mallyx for that reason alone, especially since he can be used outside of Corruption.

Corruption traits boost condition damage, which is what Mallyx focuses on. Not using the corruption trait line would gimp you.

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Also you mention not being able to make a build without CDs in Mallyx’s traits, but you can. Pulsating pestilence has a 10s CD, but is tied to legend swap, so realistically the trait itself has no CD. Unless of course you object to cooldowns on legend swap as well?

You betcha I object to cooldowns on legend swap. Also weapon swap. One of the best things about engineers is not having cooldowns on kits which are effectively weapon swapping. And you know what, it doesn't make them ungodly powerful. Just less annoying to play.

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Ummm Mallyx says hello? He’s even purer than shiro in terms of no cooldowns

Hang on a second. Why did I have to explain to **you** that this is horribly and obviously wrong?

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Fantastic profession **if you know what you’re doing with it**. Skill cap is higher than a lot of the other classes so be aware of that. **I’ve mained rev since HoT and have thousands of hours on it** and it’s never let me down. Sure, it’s not always the best (no class is except mesmer) and currently it’s more just above average on a lot of things and meta in some environments, but it gets the job done and can fill a lot of different roles in a lot of different scenarios. **The key thing really is to learn how all your skills** interact and get used to the energy cost playstyle. Plan ahead and play conservatively (unless you know you can go Ham) and you’ll have great success with the class

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Ummm Mallyx says hello? He’s even purer than shiro in terms of no cooldowns

Tell Mallyx he can kiss my arse.

The active skills don't have any cooldowns, except for the self-heal. But look at the associated traits.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_revenant_traits#Corruption

Only 3 without cooldowns. I generously and I think reasonably include the 1s cooldown one as basically no cooldown.

And because all of the major traits have cooldowns it's not even possible to create a build which avoids them.

By comparison, Shiro only has 2 traits with cooldowns and both can simply not be taken. The 5s cooldowns on their 2 active abilities are negligible. Jade Winds has a 3 second duration so it's only really 2 seconds of downtime between uses. And phase traversal in PvE at least is not an ability you'd often want to use more than once every 5 seconds.

> @"Lonami.2987" said:

> Yeah, PoF was very disappointing regarding elite specializations, most of them less exciting than the ones we got in HoT. When they first announced them, back before HoT, I expected new mechanics with every new elite specialization, and not just some glorified skill unlocks that in other games would be part of your usual patch-released skill packs.

The problem for me and possibly many others is that the elites sometimes take a big crap on the things you like most about the base profession.

Best thing about rangers is nature theme and pet. Soulbeast gets rid of the pet.

Best thing about engineers is kits allowing weapon swap without a cooldown. Holosmith both has a cooldown on photon forge and puts cooldowns on kits.

Best thing about revenants is no / few cooldowns. All but 1 renegade skill has a cooldown and they're not short.

Deadeye did the unthinkable and introduced a cooldown lite (aka ammunition) to a thief weapon skill, kneel. I was gobsmacked. Also not surprised that ANet later took it off the ammo system.

Firebrand mantras look nice for my tastes. The ammunition system is a bit more flexible than regular cooldowns and their regen rate for the Firebrand ones are relatively short. But it's still inferior compared to base revenant.

Scourge barriers look interesting and I'm not bothered by their losing shroud. It's one less cooldown! But necromancy and death don't appeal to me thematically. Other mechanical aspects of necromancer already appeal, eg. pets without limited durations, and it was the last profession I bothered to level to 80 with two more I may never.

Elementalists are an interesting case. The player base is split between those who like to camp one attunement and those who like to madly jump around between them. HoT and PoF delivered separate elites catering to each. So some would have been happy with one and despised the other. Meanwhile the base profession managed to cater to both separately with different traits.

> @"Lonami.2987" said:

> They better make the 3rd generation really shine out, or people will just stop caring about them altogether.

If you recall, pre PoF they announced their intention to roll out future expansions more quickly. That didn't actually happen and now it seems like there might be another season of living story rather than the next expansion. It's probably safe to infer that PoF also didn't do as well as they'd have liked and that they're re-evaluating lots of things including elites.

Hopefully they've realised that elites messing with core mechanics like they have is basically SOE's NGE mistake on a smaller scale.

I'm going to be boring but straightforward - just make them work like necromancer pets and have no duration, and tweak as needed for balance. I'd be mad for them then and I suspect many others would be too.

They look cool as hell. Or heaven. Or whatever you're into.

> @"Turkeyspit.3965" said:

> The problem is every other legend has a decent effect from using F2, all except Glint =/

From the wiki:

> Gives a flat +20% duration to any boons applied to you, regardless of the source. Can go above the boon duration cap allowing up to +120% boon duration.

That's an improvement over the original. If other players were already at boon duration cap, facet of nature did nothing for them. Now it does. And also allows you to go full concentration and exceed the cap.

I approve.

> @"Brian.6435" said:

> The burst buff is completely gone now, why get rid of this??

I watched a video once with someone demonstrating juggling buffs before entering combat - taking advantage of rev's higher energy regen outside of combat - and finishing with facet of nature.

I just rolled my eyes at the notion of people enjoying that.

As someone who doesn't think there should be any abilities with cooldowns, nerfing the hell out of one is a definite improvement.

And I love the new passive bonus which changes depending on current legend. That's great stuff.

Great in theory. In practice a mixed bag.

In theory this is an energy driven profession which allows you to determine moment to moment, what you're going to do in combat. You control your character. Most other GW2 professions are cooldown driven and for a large part those cooldowns predetermine optimal rotations. Your character controls you.

In practice courtesy of cooldowns and traits only Shiro (assassin) and Ventari (healer) are really like this. Also Glint but only if you use the aura buffs and completely ignore the active abilities which all have cooldowns.

And there's this weird and stupid mechanic of your energy resetting to 50 when you swap legends. Makes sense insofar as it gives you enough energy to use the heal on that legend immediately after swapping. But it's unfortunately also the only means revenants have of improving energy regen, i.e. you're meant to burn your energy down to 0 on one legend, swap to reset to 50, then burn down to 0 etc. etc.

Then you're back to your character controlling you. Though if you enjoy other GW2 professions that might not bother you.

> @"Lonami.2987" said:

> Weapon skill normalization.

>

> This means that every weapon does the same thing, no matter the attunement. Skills would still change, but they would use the same core stats and design, making them easier to balance and design. Few examples:

I don't hate the idea but at this time, a change that significant could be dangerous.

Many who play ele might play it specifically because they like the existing attunement system. A change this drastic could see many of them jump ship.

> @"Lonami.2987" said:

> The first of them is weapon swap. One of my biggest gripes with elementalist, is being locked to either melee or ranged, and not being able to change without going out of combat.

I've probably spent more time playing ele than any other profession and not once was I ever bothered by this.

Ele are a light armour caster class. Ranged combat is the norm.

____________________________________

Two changes to eles would massively improve them IMO.

Remove the durations from conjured weapons. Give them a range instead, i.e. they last until dropped or if picked up by another player once they move a certain distance away from the elementalist. Having to summon new ones is annoying, especially when playing with others and there might be just one they want to use.

Do the same for conjured elementals. If elementals were perma summons like necromancer pets, I'd have been much more into GW2.

The only thing I would change about energy mechanics would be buffing energy regen rate after 10 - 20 seconds of not swapping legends.

Manically swapping legends every 10 seconds for the 50 energy is not something I'm ever going to do. I'll switch legend if it makes sense to, i.e. if I need to use one of their abilities. The **fundamental** appeal of energy v cooldown class design is that you control your character, not the other way around. Swapping legend every 10 seconds for the 50 energy undermines that.

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Thief also shares nearly all the "issues" you mention for Revenant. If a thief misuses their initiative they have little ability to setup stealth/do damage/get away unless their utilities are up.

Theoretically players have the freedom to spend initiative or energy wisely or not.

Revenant is very different from thief though.

Thief has no cooldowns on weapon abilities so the game doesn't promote weapon swapping to take maximum advantage of weapon cooldowns.

Revenant has cooldowns on weapon abilities. Revenant also has cooldowns on lots of utility skills and the game promotes swapping legends as much as possible to take advantage of the potential free 50 energy on legend swap.

Thieves have to manage energy + utility cooldowns (unless they use signets). Weapon swap cooldown is often not an issue.

Other professions have to manage weapon cooldowns + weapon / attunement cooldowns + utility cooldowns.

Revenants have to manage energy + weapon skill cooldowns + utility skill cooldowns + weapon swap cooldown + legend swap cooldown. It's convoluted. Some might focus on energy as the problem because revenants have to manage as many or more cooldowns as other professions and then have to worry about energy on top of that.

> @"lombomon.7268" said:

> I do not think the Revenant needs a huge mechanical overhaul. Some traits need to be changed and some weapon/utility skills could use some energy adjustments but a huge redesign is not necessary in my opinion.

Yeah there's a very solid foundation. It just needs tweaking.

eg. simply redesigning the Corruption traits would instantly double the profession's appeal to players like me who don't like cooldowns.

Shiro is good. Excluding the self-heal, only two active skills with cooldowns and they're both a short 5s. Only two traits with cooldowns and both can simply not be used.

Mallyx looks good at first glance. There aren't any cooldowns on his skills. But then you look at the traits and most have cooldowns. They're unavoidable.

* Change Diabolic Inferno from 2 stacks of burning of 4s duration on an 8s cooldown to 1 stack of burning of 2s duration with no cooldown.

* Change Maniacal Persistence to have no cooldown but consume a small amount of energy to inflict its torment.

Jalis isn't too bad. But I would tweak it slightly.

* Increase the energy cost and decrease the cooldown for Forced Engagement.

Ventari is pretty good. The two 5s cooldowns aren't too restrictive and the 2s and 3s cooldowns are almost nothing. There's only two traits with cooldowns and they can easily be not used.

Glint just needs to change the activatable facets to consume energy rather than put the facet on cooldown.

Kalla is probably the worst. Only one skill without a cooldown and those cooldowns are all over 10s. Simply converting those skills to be maintains like Soulcleave's Summit would be an immense improvement.

One higher level improvement - tweak the energy mechanic. To accomodate players who don't want to manically switch legend every 10s for 50 energy, give revenants an energy regen buff after 20s of remaining in a legend without swapping.

Those changes would have me playing GW2 again.

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> Swapping legends as a way to increase Energy seem like a nice baseline mechanic to go along with the passive regen of energy while keeping weapon skill's Energy cost in play.

Fair enough if you enjoy that but not all of us like to manically swap weapons (for other professions) in slavery to taking maximum advantage of cooldowns or manically swap legends to take maximum advantage of energy.

Personally I'd prefer the exact opposite of what you suggested. The option - possibly via a trait - to change the energy mechanic, to maintain your current energy level when you swap legends. With slightly improved energy regen to compensate. That would be a HUGE improvement to revenant for my tastes.

Broadly speaking I think the OP is on the right track.

It's great that rangers have pets, but they've never been equally useful so generally most people use the same few. It's really boring.

And shapeshifting would be awesome. It's the one thing which could get me interested in rangers again. Obviously depending on implementation. GW2 has a habit of presenting great ideas and then royally screwing them - eg. revenant demon stance. No cooldowns. Hooray! Then you look at the associated traits and 2/3rds have BLEEPING cooldowns. So yeah, I reckon ANET could BLEEP up shapeshifting if they really put their mind to it.

Still, watching this space. PoF was a complete write off for elite specs, as far as my tastes are concerned so I didn't buy it. But I'll see what the next batch has to offer.

Hypothetically speaking, let's say ArenaNet decide to walk back the revenant bait and switch and rework the elites to strip or at least minimise cooldowns to bring them in line with the base legends. Here's how I'd fix Herald.

1) Keep the utility boon toggles as is, but clicking an active boon just turns it off and without triggering a cooldown.

2) Get rid of Facet of Nature. Replace it with 2 new F skills : one deactivates all boon toggles, the other is used to trigger the active abilities.

3) Instead of the active abilities having cooldowns, they would have energy costs and there would be combo effects. Specifically, if you want to use either the heal or elite active, no other boon can be running. The other 3 (utility) boons would individually trigger an ability, but if multiple boons are active, the F skill would trigger a different ability. Eg.

**Individual**

Facet of Light (regeneration boon) -- F activate -- Existing self heal (with cooldown - I'd prefer a weaker cooldown free self-heal but the whole game is built around long CD self-heals)

Facet of Darkness (fury boon) -- F activate -- Existing de-stealth.

Facet of Elements (swiftness boon) -- F activate -- Existing fiery breath.

Facet of Strength (might boon) -- F activate -- Existing vulnerability debuff.

Facet of Chaos (protection boon) -- F activate -- New maintain (like Embrace the Darkness / Impossible Odds) ability with energy upkeep. Something suitably chaotic. Maybe fling around random boons and conditions.

**Combos**

Darkness + Elements -- F activate -- New ability, possibly shadow themed to match the facets, eg. stealth, lifesteal etc.

Elements + Strength -- F activate -- New ability, possibly boon related to match the facets. Maybe move the original + boon duration to here.

Darkness + Strength -- F activate -- New ability, maybe condition removal.

Darkness + Elements + Strength -- F activate -- Existing (graphically) dragon summon ability with HUGE energy cost. Possibly have it entirely drain you of energy and damage scales according to how much energy went into it.

**Where's the Balance?**

Cooldowns aren't necessary to achieve balance. In addition to energy there are other ways to prevent abilities from just being madly spammed.

Eg. if on demand condition removal needs to be toned down, a condition removal field which removes 1 condition every x seconds could achieve that.

Eg. if on demand de-stealthing is a problem, make it immobilize the user, give it an activation time and make it interruptible. Stealthed players could run away to avoid the de-stealth or their allies could interrupt it.

> @"Zlater.6789" said:

> That's so stupid, how the hell did the game balance out like that?

Renegade can't stand on it's own and to boost its popularity, they've apparently thrown a buttload of (popular) might at it.

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> Most of the complaints about these things stem from the idea that all classes should be equal on any factor that affects play ... I don't get that. Why?

Or more to the point, why are you asking that question here?

My strong and clearly expressed preference would be to strip all CDs from revenant and make it all about energy.

There is definitely no other profession like that. Thieves only if you're willing to go all signets for utilities, but that doesn't leave you with much and it's dreadfully dull.

> @"narcx.3570" said:

>

> If you had no energy, how would channeling skills and upkeep work? You could just turn on Impossible Odds/Embrace the Darkness forever and still spam all of your weapon skills off cooldown? Yeah, that'd be real balanced.

>

> So many people complain about Rev's energy system, but it's literally the core dynamic of the class... People tend to just QQ about not being able to use all their abilities because they mismanaged their energy, but nobody ever talks about how you can use the energy system in a positive way since it effectively lets you stockpile offense power. Like, say you have to go do raid mechanics... Normally this is a loss of dps as it pulls you out of your rotation, but a Revenant can now add in extra skills that they wouldn't have been able to use before to make up some of that dps. Other classes can't do this, they just have to re-prioritize their skills and amend their rotations to lose as little dps as possible.

>

> If you don't like the energy system, obviously that's cool... To each their own. But why lobby to make it play exactly like the other classes? What's even the point of that? If you want that play style, you can just reroll DH...

I could not have been clearer about loving energy as a mechanic - though not as it's been implemented here because of all the associated cooldowns. It is cooldowns I hate.

That said, even converting revenant to be entirely cooldown driven (i.e. no energy) like most of the other professions would be an improvement. At least then it would appeal to GW2's existing playerbase. No good for me but still a better state of affairs.

And in their present state, revenant has so many cooldowns - on weapon abilities, many utilities, weapon swap, legend swap, F-skills - that they don't feel much different to the other professions anyway. Their cooldowns tend to be shorter is all. If I go all signets on any other prof I end up juggling fewer CDs and don't have to worry about energy.

Re your question about channeling skills and upkeep, obviously if there's no energy there can be no upkeep. Those abilities could be converted to limited duration (5-10 seconds) abilities with cooldowns.

> @"Carighan.6758" said:

> Because, in theory, the Revenant is the "class switcher".

Except as several of us have spelled out clearly, it isn't.

You either feel forced to manically swap legends every 10s just for the 50 free energy - as the only way to increase your energy regen rate.

Or you feel like you should avoid swapping unless circumstances are dire and require the other legend because once you swap you're locked out of swapping back for 10s.

> @"Jack Skywalker.5674" said:

> My conclusion:you need brain power and lots of practice with this class to make it work.

More personal attacks. What a community....

I have no shortage of brain power. I've been tested and seen the results. I have several degrees.

As I've made painfully clear, repeatedly, the problem is that cooldown driven combat is simply too boring for me. And it always will be.

It's pigeon level gameplay. You know, bird rats. They can be trained to press buttons in a sequence for rewards. That's galaxies away from posing a challenge or being entertaining for me.

I've shared my own thoughts [here](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26286/revenant-how-to-fix#latest "here").

> @"ernestsco.7853" said:

> Right now Rev feels like you are stuck in one legend and aren't really encouraged to switch because you will be stuck in the other legend knowing that you need a skill that is connected to the previous one you switched from.

You're right and wrong.

Yes, the legend swap cooldown discourages swapping because it makes the other legend unavailable. But the 50 free energy you can get for swapping legends (assuming you've drained the current one to zero) encourages it. I've always hated that one.

Personally I play the legend (singular) I want at the time and swap only if absolutely necessary, which is almost never. I'm fine playing non-optimally but more enjoyably while solo'ing but not for competitive group content. So mechanics like this take that content off the table for me.

> @"Amiron.1067" said:

> I believe if ANet made cosmetic changes like you've suggested, it would make legendary weapons all the more enticing to chase after for players who do not currently have any. In a game all about cosmetics at end-game, I would think that would be time well-invested, but what do you think?

I'm not against this idea but be aware that many players who don't have any legendary weapons find the weapons themselves to be hideously ugly. And there's the matter of sigils. A huge amount of grind for a weapon you have to keep feeding money into to change sigils and for a skin you wouldn't be seen dead using. Passing on that is a no-brainer.

Cosmetically they're aimed squarely at the asian market. Which I'm fine with. The skins I do like are all much easier to acquire. Yay!

> @"Master Ketsu.4569" said:

> The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing.

Oooooh. Such a cutting and devilishly intelligent insult....

No it's not fine.

During development ANet decided to do away with energy for all but 1 profession - initially guardian and later thief. They hyped this as one of their leaps forward in combat design. If you've got cooldowns, what's the point of energy? It's silly. Personally I think they were right. Just CDs is better than CDs and energy. Many critics agree. And the game has certainly been successful.

But many players prefer just energy over just cooldowns. It's not a matter of us "not knowing" how to play. It's a matter of us preferring a different style of play.

CDs dictate pre-determined rotations. If pressing the same series of button in a particular order over and over and over and over entertains you, fine. I don't judge. Truly. But it's dreadfully boring to me. I can tolerate it in short doses. I've been playing since launch but only for short bursts and this is why.

Energy gives you freedom and control. You execute abilities not because a particular sequence results in the most efficient output of damage over time courtesy of CDs but because it makes sense to use that ability at that particular moment. I strongly prefer this. Unfortunately I hate the concept, theme and function of thief. In all games. And I've tried playing them in this one but it's just not fun for me. Had guardian kept initiative rather than thief I'd be a super fan. Or if revenant didn't have cooldowns (except perhaps on the self-heals).

Revenant is a weird and not much loved throwback which is in an awkward spot. Like I said, it's within spitting distance of being awesome fun but they should just go one way or the other.