Crystal Hibernation - Give movement on Skill 5

[Blue.1207]

As of right now I'm not too sure what kind of self respecting player, roamer or PvE'er uses Heralds Shield. I think a big step in the right direction in regards to making it a better performer would be to allow the player to move while channeling skill #5.

 

If you feel like giving a heal while moving is too much (it's really not), then make it heal while static, and not while moving. Something needs to be done to make it even remotely useful for anything other than open world PvE (even then it's rather meh).

[Justine.6351]

Shield could use a redesign tbh. Neither skill looks like anything I would want from an offhand atm, in wvw anyhow.

[Zoltar MacRoth.7146]

Herald shield... wow, there's a weapon I haven't thought about, much less used, in years.

[Milan.9035]

There is a lot of easy improvements they could do to rev like this. But you know anet, they maybe get to it in a year or so.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

Remove the root, change animation to being fully enclosed in the crystal shell but floating(like Tempest water overload) rename to Crystal Rejuvination, add Reflect.

 

The Shield 4 Remove completely give better skill with better cast time.

[otto.5684]

Shield 5 made sense to root you when the healing it performed was close to 4K. Now, it really sucks. It needs to be mobile.

[ArthurDent.9538]

Making it mobile would require a new animation which would be a lot of work, which would be better spent elsewhere. Instead give simpler to implement buffs like more healing or condi removal.

[Milan.9035]

> @"ArthurDent.9538" said:

> Making it mobile would require a new animation which would be a lot of work, which would be better spent elsewhere. Instead give simpler to implement buffs like more healing or condi removal.

 

Oh i really like that, keep all the same but add 1 condi removed per pulse

[xihorus.2804]

> @"ArthurDent.9538" said:

> Making it mobile would require a new animation which would be a lot of work, which would be better spent elsewhere. Instead give simpler to implement buffs like more healing or condi removal.

 

Or instead of condi removal, what if it offered a 100% reduction to condition damage while the skill was channeling? Would be fitting with the whole "hibernation" theme.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

> @"xihorus.2804" said:

> > @"ArthurDent.9538" said:

> > Making it mobile would require a new animation which would be a lot of work, which would be better spent elsewhere. Instead give simpler to implement buffs like more healing or condi removal.

>

> Or instead of condi removal, what if it offered a 100% reduction to condition damage while the skill was channeling? Would be fitting with the whole "hibernation" theme.

 

I can see the cries of the Scourges now! The Salt would flow freely.

[Buran.3796]

I still think that current shield still has a role (in conformed teams in which support), but sadly conformed teams no loger exist and anyway if you fight under the help of a support Firebrand having your left hand empty will work perfectly fine. So let it die.

 

Developers killed the block in the off hand sword so if in the future if we get a main hand pistol or scepter or any other main hand we still will lack defense due any of those weapons will be attached to a new spec, so the shield (which is exclusive for Herald and therefore is a big no). So at the end if you want to block you need the staff, which has the huge problem of lacking any meaningful damage and only having two useful skills. So the more I use the hammer the less I like the staff. I would be very happy if ANet ever fuses hammer + staff keeping the skills #1, #2 and #4 from hammer and #3 and #5 (or only #5) from staff.

 

Should the shield have a mobile block? Of course, I mean: spent a lot of time crafting the Flameseeker and now has no use, but at the end of the day losing a block in the off hand weapon which EVERY Revenant was able to wield was worse than losing a role for a weapon originally designed to improve our sustain which currently reduces our sustain making us a easy rooted target. So if you play alone the way to make the shield useful is to not use it at all, but is not different than Renegade's shortbow: the best use you can made of them is to not weild it at all. You have one underwater weapon, one ranged weapon, a condi and a physical mele main had, a couple of off hand weapons and even a 2 handed weapon with a block and a cc... Why you would like more? There are already too many and probably at this very moment some developer is ponding what to nerf next.

[xihorus.2804]

As interesting side note, while I was looking at the wiki page for[ Crystal Hibernation](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crystal_Hibernation#Trivia " Crystal Hibernation") I noticed something interesting:

> _Initially, this skill granted a Defiance Bar to players. If broken, it caused 25 stacks of vulnerability and stunned the user for 2 seconds. This was removed between the second and third beta weekend events of Heart of Thorns._

But I agree with @"Buran.3796" - shield is an offhand weapon designed to help with revenant sustain but accomplishes the opposite due to the rooting and weak heal. To make it viable the rooting effect should be removed, or the skill should offer an additional sustain in the form of cleansing or negating conditions.

[Carighan.6758]

That sounds like a truly interesting idea for the skill though, give it a breakbar. Could do something rather powerful in return, like full heal + lose all conditions in 3 ticks over 3 seconds, plus of course block all incoming conditions and damage. If broken, effect stops + 25 stacks of vulnerability + stun for 2s.

[Jack Skywalker.5674]

I would rather they undo the nerf on the heals from shield 5 and reduce the threshold on the Crystal Hybernation trait from Herald from 25% to 10% or 15%

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

> @"Carighan.6758" said:

> That sounds like a truly interesting idea for the skill though, give it a breakbar. Could do something rather powerful in return, like full heal + lose all conditions in 3 ticks over 3 seconds, plus of course block all incoming conditions and damage. If broken, effect stops + 25 stacks of vulnerability + stun for 2s.

 

No. Just not. Most classes wouldnt have enough CC to counter a breakbar. Maybe a Hammer Warrior or a CC heavy Chrono Mesmer. The rest would heavily struggle with that kind of design. That is why it wont happen. Balance needs to at least pretend to be balanced.

[Carighan.6758]

> @"ArmageddonAsh.6430" said:

> No. Just not. Most classes wouldnt have enough CC to counter a breakbar. Maybe a Hammer Warrior or a CC heavy Chrono Mesmer. The rest would heavily struggle with that kind of design. That is why it wont happen. Balance needs to at least pretend to be balanced.

 

I would counter that with two individual points:

 

* "A breakbar" isn't a value. How many points does that break bar have? A single 1? Meaning any CC at all breaks it? 6500? 400? 1250?

* We already have virtually no balance, comparing other MMORPGs I've played (and I started with EQ1). I don't think breaking things to **try out designs** would actually do any worse. Sorry if that disappoints you, it's not that I don't like the game a lot (I play it daily), it's just that in this specific area (class **design**) ANet is not even floundering, they're not even attempting to compete so far. Nevermind actual balance, you need to get the design sorted before you even attempt that. The game is at a state where massive reworks should be happening quarterly, ripping out entire skill types and stat combinations and whole combat *systems*, simply to find a workable combination. Which the current one isn't.

 

[narcx.3570]

> @"BlaqueFyre.5678" said:

> > @"xihorus.2804" said:

> > > @"ArthurDent.9538" said:

> > > Making it mobile would require a new animation which would be a lot of work, which would be better spent elsewhere. Instead give simpler to implement buffs like more healing or condi removal.

> >

> > Or instead of condi removal, what if it offered a 100% reduction to condition damage while the skill was channeling? Would be fitting with the whole "hibernation" theme.

>

> I can see the cries of the Scourges now! The Salt would flow freely.

 

As in cries of laughter because they have unblockable cc's to instantly knock you out of it...?

[Carighan.6758]

In a way this thread is depressing. It makes me realize how **overloaded** modern GW2 is. It has done mudflation like any other MMORPG, but instead of continuously getting bigger and bigger *numbers*, we do it with mechanics.

 

* Spammy skills.

* Skills which cause 3-5 effects, plus sigil, rune, etc procs.

* Unblockable everything.

* Counter-counter-stealth

 

At this rate, by xpack 3 we'll have a state beyond downed because downed has become meaningless. Near-death or something like that. It's all getting a bit silly, we need a major dearming change on all sides of combat really :anguished:

[Buran.3796]

> @"Carighan.6758" said:

> In a way this thread is depressing. It makes me realize how **overloaded** modern GW2 is. It has done mudflation like any other MMORPG, but instead of continuously getting bigger and bigger *numbers*, we do it with mechanics.

 

> At this rate, by xpack 3 we'll have a state beyond downed because downed has become meaningless. Near-death or something like that. It's all getting a bit silly, we need a major dearming change on all sides of combat really :anguished:

 

I don't agree, at least in our case:

 

Revenant has less builds than ever, procs less condis than ever, does less damage than ever, heals less than ever, lost tons of sustain, burst damage, damage over time.

 

In the PvP the most useful sigils were removed, and the amulet system was watered down to te extent that most of classes only uses 1-2 amulets.

 

The shocking thing is that all the nerfs they have done to the system were made with the purpose to make a more controlled game, one which were easier to balance because people wasn't able to create imaginative broken builds and crazy combos reducting and reducting and reducting the number of viable (and available) builds with each class., **and despite all those changes and simplifications the class unbalances are astonishing**. I mean, you can use 4-5 different builds with the Guardian class, some of them highly competitive, whereas classes as Warrior or Ele saw their useful builds cornered to 1-2 and in the case of the Rev we are fairly close to 0. How, with a landscape so limited in trems of available sigils, runes, stat combos and builds, can be the balance so bad?

[narcx.3570]

Hear me out on this...

 

I know it wouldn't logically/thematically fit with something called "Crystal Hibernation" or "Bulwark", but how interesting--from a strictly gameplay point of view--would it be if they made Shield 5 use the Ammo system and have it hold 3 charges of 1 second blocks/healing pulses that each cost 5 energy, instead of the current 3 second channel. It'd open up a lot of counterplay and not be completely worthless in the land of Unblockable Attacks that we all play in these days.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

> @"narcx.3570" said:

> Hear me out on this...

>

> I know if wouldn't logically/thematically fit with something called "Crystal Hibernation" or "Bulwark", but how interesting--from a strictly gameplay point of view--would it be if they made Shield 5 use the Ammo system and have it hold 3 charges of 1 second blocks/healing pulses that each cost 5 energy, instead of the current 3 second channel. It'd open up a lot of counterplay and not be completely worthless in the land of Unblockable Attacks that we all play in these days.

 

Maybe throw in a Condi cleanse on that idea it could work.