Condition-damage-based renegade could use some defensive option

[Awn.1327]

Hi,

 

the title pretty much says it all. Condi Kalla + Mallyx is really great DPS and fun, but incredibly squishy (for bigger events, bounties, open world bosses). Sure, you get the double heal and life leech elite, but with the abundance of poison floating around against you preventing heals and random-ish 15k hits from bounties, that really does not cover it.

 

Some active block on one of the weapons would be nice. Maybe even on offhand sword, though giving up axe for that lowers the DPS potential a bit. Or a self-aegis on F2 or F4? I don't know. At this point, I'd take anything.

 

Thoughts?

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

I did propose a staff rework that would give it condi options, but it fell on deaf ears. Can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped.

[Buran.3796]

Neither the mace, axe, short bow, the spear or the new trident, and the legends Mallyx or Kalla do include blocks or evasive skills, so we can guess that the developers didn't conceive the kamikaze condi Rev to have defenses. Probably they forgot about the niche WvW/PvP also.

 

With a bit of luck in the next spec they could add aegis on a 90 sec cooldown when you use your gathering tools (or maybe 2 seconds of vigor; a random block for condi Rev seems too fulsome).

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

Echoing Eruption should have an evade on it and shortbow should also be given one somewhere, probably sevenshot.

 

Phase smash on hammer has a 1 & 1/4 s evade on Phase Smash that costs 5 energy and has an 8 second cooldown, so I don't see why they couldn't give one to both sevenshot and echoing eruption, since both have similar costs and cooldowns. They don't even have to be long evades, short ones would work fine too, like death blossom length, 1/2s to 3/4s. Hell, if Bull's Charge and Whirlwind Attack can both be evades I don't understand why Echoing Eruption can't be/is not

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Echoing Eruption should have an evade on it and shortbow should also be given one somewhere, probably sevenshot.

>

> Phase smash on hammer has a 1 & 1/4 s evade on Phase Smash that costs 5 energy and has an 8 second cooldown, **so I don't see why they couldn't give one to both sevenshot and echoing eruption, since both have similar costs and cooldowns**. They don't even have to be long evades, short ones would work fine too, like death blossom length, 1/2s to 3/4s. Hell, if Bull's Charge and Whirlwind Attack can both be evades I don't understand why Echoing Eruption can't be/is not

 

While I admire the enthusiasm , the reason here is poor. Phrase Smash is a partly a traversal skill, and the Evade given for a specific reason. Given Hammer's design origin, Phase smash is designed to help bait out certain types of skills and traits without putting the Rev at risk. One of its strongest uses is setting off traps/marks (only previous possible with minions), clearing a path for Allies. Thus the reason for it having an evade, without the mobility advantage of repositioning, is to keep it in line with Jalis' scheme of counter strategies.

 

Seven Shot's animation and overall purpose doesn't support this, and would need a total rethink to make it a defensive skill. Of the current Bow skills, ScorchRazor would be the most compatible skill to put it on (charge forward and teleport back), and making it an Alternate form of Phase Smash. You also have to take into account that, if working as intended, Warband summons also offer a ton of area denial that can factor into a defense strategy; something Jalis does not have.

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> > @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> > Echoing Eruption should have an evade on it and shortbow should also be given one somewhere, probably sevenshot.

> >

> > Phase smash on hammer has a 1 & 1/4 s evade on Phase Smash that costs 5 energy and has an 8 second cooldown, **so I don't see why they couldn't give one to both sevenshot and echoing eruption, since both have similar costs and cooldowns**. They don't even have to be long evades, short ones would work fine too, like death blossom length, 1/2s to 3/4s. Hell, if Bull's Charge and Whirlwind Attack can both be evades I don't understand why Echoing Eruption can't be/is not

>

> While I admire the enthusiasm , the reason here is poor. Phrase Smash is a partly a traversal skill, and the Evade given for a specific reason. Given Hammer's design origin, Phase smash is designed to help bait out certain types of skills and traits without putting the Rev at risk. One of its strongest uses is setting off traps/marks (only previous possible with minions), clearing a path for Allies. Thus the reason for it having an evade, without the mobility advantage of repositioning, is to keep it in line with Jalis' scheme of counter strategies.

>

> Seven Shot's animation and overall purpose doesn't support this, and would need a total rethink to make it a defensive skill. Of the current Bow skills, ScorchRazor would be the most compatible skill to put it on (charge forward and teleport back), and making it an Alternate form of Phase Smash. You also have to take into account that, if working as intended, Warband summons also offer a ton of area denial that can factor into a defense strategy; something Jalis does not have.

 

While I understand that hammer is the "Jalis weapon" and certainly has its fair share of defensive/control uses (such as all the ones you've mentioned) there's also no denying that Phase Smash does a _ton_ of damage in pvp modes and its uses vary depending on the situation. My purpose in bringing up Phase Smash is to show that we have a long range, long evade, low energy cost, low cooldown, chill inflicting, high damage blast finisher skill that is comparable to Echoing Eruption and Sevenshot in terms of energy cost, cooldown, and damage. Given your argument above being that Phase Smash was given its evade due to being partially a traversal skill, I think it's perfectly reasonable to give an evade to Echoing Eruption given that it's currently in line with Phase Smash. Sevenshot could be reworked slightly to include an evade and I wouldn't mind.

 

I think revenant (for pvp/wvw) is largely balanced around having access to at least one evade or block on skill #3. Every single mainhand weapon that performs well in pvp/wvw has access to one of those in that spot. The only two mainhand weapons that don't have access to an evade or block on skill 3 are just not used/barely used in pvp/wvw. Both shortbow and mace have other issues from a competitive standpoint, such as reliability of landing damage, but the glaring, major issue for both of them is that they just don't have access to defense baked into their kits. Hell, sword feels like a better condi pvp/wvw weapon than mace does and that's largely due to its extra defense.

 

Lastly, I don't think it's fair to compare or balance the weapons with "their legend" as while the weapons may fit the theme they also can be used alongside any legend combination, meaning they should be able to stand on their own in terms of strategies/effectiveness so as to be able to be incorporated into a variety of builds (this also goes for legends as well). I don't really think Jalis complements hammer as much as Shiro or Glint does even though hammer/Jalis are themed together. I have an issue with the idea that "shortbow also has Kalla and large amounts of area denial, so we should factor Kalla into the equation when balancing shortbow." While they do come from the same traitline, they're still separate entities and should be balanced/treated as such

[Awn.1327]

Also, anything with a defiance bar and huge crits just more or less ignores the survivability aspects of Kalla's summons. Short evades or blocks, or even a medium duration aegis on the "3" skills sound like viable solutions to the problem and not out-of-line with other professions (or even other weapons).

 

I get the argument about evade "not thematically fitting" a skill. That is probably another thing on the list for a bigger re-work, though. I'd really prefer to not wait that long. :#

 

On the other hand, I am pretty sure the game designers have already thought of these things. So I wonder why they didn't put them in. I assume there is a rationale for not giving condi Kalla any block, evade or vastly improved mobility.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

I think another big problem with renegade is that the energy/ cd cost to benefit ratio is askew. particularly with citadel bombardment, aaand basically all of the utility skills.