Revenant energy bar - a glass half empty?

Revenant energy bar - a glass half empty?

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Posted by: Caeledh.5437

Caeledh.5437

Generally speaking I love the look of what they’re doing with this new profession. Combat design isn’t one of the reasons I enjoy GW2. Cooldown whack-a-mole doesn’t thrill me. Thieves don’t have that problem but they’re a bit boring IMO. So when I saw revenants were getting an energy bar I was very, very pleased.

On first glance the revenant’s energy bar being half full on switching seemed benign. I though ok, gives you a bit of juice to get started with when you change. But then I thought about the combat design for existing professions – where there’s a benefit to weapon swapping just to take advantage of skills not on cooldown – and I could suddenly see the same with revenants. You burn through all of your energy on one legend then switch to another – not because it makes sense to switch to that other legend because of what’s going on in combat – just to get more energy.

It’s less like you playing the game and more like the game playing you.

To me it seems like two steps forward and one step back. They give us more freedom to exercise judgement and use abilities in combat not based on maximising cooldowns but on what we think is best at any given moment. Then they have this energy half-refilling on swapping which seems intended to have us arbitrarily switching back and forth between legends.

So I hope they either reconsider this or at least offer traits which change this aspect of the class – eg. make the energy bar shared across legends (i.e. stays the same when you swap) and boost the base regen to compensate.

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Posted by: DevilLordLaser.8619

DevilLordLaser.8619

Counterpoint – certain Legend skills could require more than half an energy bar to throw out there, which would require you to sit in your Legend stance for a little bit in order to accrue the energy you need to throw out something like Rite of the Great Dwarf.

It then becomes a choice between burning yourself down and switching stances often, effectively making frenetic, Thief-like use of your cheaper skills, or of playing a more measured pace which relies more on building up to the big-ticket skills before crushing foo’s with them.

As an addition to this, building up energy in a Legend stance might let you use a particularly advantageous Upkeep skill for longer, giving you a bigger window to make use of a decisive edge that skill might give you in a given situation (i.e. the ‘Embrace the Darkness’ giving you Resistance while active, so that your own conditions don’t impede you. If this has a fierce degen, and it will, then building up energy beforehand might give you those crucial extra seconds you need to wait out a burn or a heavy bleed stack, rather than the form running out and letting you collect another 5k damage in condition tics).

There’s ways for ArenaNet to make it worth your while to sit on a legend. Beyond, y’know, simply enjoying the playstyle of a given legend and wanting to use it more than the other ones, which is also a valid reason to sit on a legend :p

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Posted by: Palador.2170

Palador.2170

Personally, I think it’s a great idea to make it work like they’ve described.

You can choose to watch your energy consumption and stay in a legend for a long time, maybe never needing to change to the other unless it’s more tactically sound for that fight. Or, you can burn through your energy quickly, then switch to a different legend for a more “sustained presence” during the rest of the fight, basically using one legend for a massive opening then switching to your “main”.

Two different ways to approach the limitation, creating two different ways to view the mechanic. I like that.

Sarcasm, delivered with a
delicate, brick-like subtlety.

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Posted by: BrunoBRS.5178

BrunoBRS.5178

well if you keep burning your energy ASAP you’ll never get to use your stronger skills, and you won’t be able to heal either.

plus, there’s a cooldown to swapping legends, so you would be a sitting duck if you burned your stuff too fast.

LegendaryMythril/Zihark Darshell

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Posted by: Sagat.3285

Sagat.3285

Huh wut repeat?

Ele can’t effectively camp 1 attunement all the time,even thief has SB but I do see your point. Traits might fit what you are hoping for, all unique ones affect the mechanic of a class wouldn’t be any different for this one so no worries.

But then again this is GW2 :/

“Revenant is actual proof that devs read the necromancer forum” – Pelopidas.2140
The Dhuumfire thread

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Posted by: Caeledh.5437

Caeledh.5437

Huh wut repeat?

Ele can’t effectively camp 1 attunement all the time,even thief has SB but I do see your point. Traits might fit what you are hoping for, all unique ones affect the mechanic of a class wouldn’t be any different for this one so no worries.

Repeat, no thanks. Why don’t you just read it again? :P

You’re the first person in this thread to even mentioned elementalists so… yeah. But no anyway. Elementalists definitely can sit in one attunement all the time if they trait for it. Fire staff is the obvious example. You can kill things insanely quickly using just abilities 1, 2 and 3. Not my idea of fun it’s incredibly effective both against regular mobs and bosses (where meteor storm is obviously also worth working in).

Re other comments, they seem to be a lot of conjecture. We don’t know that there’ll be any abilities at all which consume more than 50% of the energy bar and if revenants follow the mmo norm there won’t be any. Those kinds of uber abilities usually have cooldowns attached – as we know some revenant abilities will – rather than exorbitant energy costs.

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Posted by: PopeUrban.2578

PopeUrban.2578

Every class but thief has the exact same swap-enforcing design though. You will output more DPS by swapping weapons/attunements/kits at the earliest opportunity, unless you specifically trait in a way that rewards you for not swapping.

Rev is no different in this respect, aside from the fact that its base energy mechanics actively reward you for not swapping at the earliest opportunity as a base design rather than a traited design.

Expect to be swapping a lot, just like everyone else (except thieves, who gain no core benefit from swaps due to initiative), if you want to run your most efficient builds.

Guild Master – The Papacy [POPE] (Gate of Madness)/Road Scholar for the Durmand Priory
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ

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Posted by: BrunoBRS.5178

BrunoBRS.5178

Huh wut repeat?

Ele can’t effectively camp 1 attunement all the time,even thief has SB but I do see your point. Traits might fit what you are hoping for, all unique ones affect the mechanic of a class wouldn’t be any different for this one so no worries.

Repeat, no thanks. Why don’t you just read it again? :P

You’re the first person in this thread to even mentioned elementalists so… yeah. But no anyway. Elementalists definitely can sit in one attunement all the time if they trait for it. Fire staff is the obvious example. You can kill things insanely quickly using just abilities 1, 2 and 3. Not my idea of fun it’s incredibly effective both against regular mobs and bosses (where meteor storm is obviously also worth working in).

Re other comments, they seem to be a lot of conjecture. We don’t know that there’ll be any abilities at all which consume more than 50% of the energy bar and if revenants follow the mmo norm there won’t be any. Those kinds of uber abilities usually have cooldowns attached – as we know some revenant abilities will – rather than exorbitant energy costs.

i’m going by the GW1 norm, where 50% of an energy bar on an energy-reliant profession severely kitten you (which is why a lot of GW1’s strategy comes from managing the flow of energy, not just yours, but your target’s)

LegendaryMythril/Zihark Darshell

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Posted by: Caeledh.5437

Caeledh.5437

Every class but thief has the exact same swap-enforcing design though. You will output more DPS by swapping weapons/attunements/kits at the earliest opportunity, unless you specifically trait in a way that rewards you for not swapping.

Rev is no different in this respect, aside from the fact that its base energy mechanics actively reward you for not swapping at the earliest opportunity as a base design rather than a traited design.

Expect to be swapping a lot, just like everyone else (except thieves, who gain no core benefit from swaps due to initiative), if you want to run your most efficient builds.

That’s just repeatedly exactly what I said in the OP.

Except I’d like revs to be more like thieves in this respect. One thing I have to give to ESO. It’s nice to change weapons in combat because it makes sense to rather than just to take advantage of cooldowns.

i’m going by the GW1 norm, where 50% of an energy bar on an energy-reliant profession severely kitten you (which is why a lot of GW1’s strategy comes from managing the flow of energy, not just yours, but your target’s)

What’s with the kittens? I posted in another thread this morning and it replaced something like “as of” with kitten. When I went into edit the post it showed what I’d actually typed but out in the forums kept producing kittens.

I didn’t love GW1 so didn’t play it much. Were there abilities which cost more than 50% of the bar? Is that what you’re kittening? :P

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Posted by: Palador.2170

Palador.2170

What’s with the kittens? I posted in another thread this morning and it replaced something like “as of” with kitten. When I went into edit the post it showed what I’d actually typed but out in the forums kept producing kittens.

That’s the forum’s bad word filter. Sadly, it’s a bit … paranoid. If it even thinks you’re trying to get around it, the system will still edit the word(s) to “kitten”.

In time, you’ll learn kittenspeak, and mostly just ignore it.

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Posted by: Caeledh.5437

Caeledh.5437

In time, you’ll learn kittenspeak, and mostly just ignore it.

Or maybe develop a purr….

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Posted by: Test.8734

Test.8734

In time, you’ll learn kittenspeak, and mostly just ignore it.

Or maybe develop a purr….

That kinda hurt :P

It actually annoys me that you lose energy when you change legends while being at full energy. But the reason why we likely won’t be able to keep switching legends just to refill energy is the cooldown for the switch, so it won’t become as much a matter of autoplay (switch – spam all skills – end with zero energy – switch – spam all skills – end with zero energy – switch – and so on).

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Posted by: Caeledh.5437

Caeledh.5437

It actually annoys me that you lose energy when you change legends while being at full energy.

Yeah there’s that too.

What it means is rather than switching immediately when you feel you should, everyone will end up jspamming random expensive abilities to use up energy.

But the reason why we likely won’t be able to keep switching legends just to refill energy is the cooldown for the switch, so it won’t become as much a matter of autoplay (switch – spam all skills – end with zero energy – switch – spam all skills – end with zero energy – switch – and so on).

I honestly had not even the slightest concern on that note. The fact the energy bar refills to half seemed to me an iron-clad guarantee there’d be a cooldown on legend swapping.

My concern is this mechanic is intended to if not force then strongly encourage just flipping between legends every 10 (?) seconds for the free energy. Much the same as existing classes (except thieves) are encouraged to flip to take advantage of cooldowns.

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Posted by: Caeledh.5437

Caeledh.5437

Bad news for me it seems. Just read the mmorpg.com article.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/9418/Guild-Wars-2-An-Exclusive-Preview-of-the-Revenants-Skills.html

Revenants flipping madly between legends is specifically what they want and they don’t want traits which discourage that.

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Posted by: Terrahero.9358

Terrahero.9358

Energy is not the only mechanic in place to keep skill spam down for Revenant, abilities will also have cooldowns. Not all of them, an example was given for “substained” cast abilities that don’t have a cooldown but drain energy as long as they are active.

So swapping like mad to keep your energy at 50% is nice and all, but your abilities will not necessarily have come off cooldown yet.

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Posted by: Photonman.6241

Photonman.6241

Bad news for me it seems. Just read the mmorpg.com article.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/9418/Guild-Wars-2-An-Exclusive-Preview-of-the-Revenants-Skills.html

Revenants flipping madly between legends is specifically what they want and they don’t want traits which discourage that.

This makes it seem like energy isn’t going to be that great a resource and maintaining the energy is going to be trickier than swapping to the other legend for more of it.

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Posted by: Caeledh.5437

Caeledh.5437

Energy is not the only mechanic in place to keep skill spam down for Revenant, abilities will also have cooldowns. Not all of them, an example was given for “substained” cast abilities that don’t have a cooldown but drain energy as long as they are active.

I think you might have that backwards. The very clear impression I got – and I’m sorry I can’t find the quote (I think it was a dev post here in the forums)- is that relatively few revenant abilities will have cooldowns. The obvious candidates are healing and elites. Plus some of the stronger attacks.

It’s not just the toggles which don’t have cooldowns.

This makes it seem like energy isn’t going to be that great a resource and maintaining the energy is going to be trickier than swapping to the other legend for more of it.

They have given us some numbers. The current regen rate (which may change) is 5 per second. Safest bet for legend swap cooldown would be 10 seconds (same as weapon). Ele base is 15 but they have four elements. Revenants just have two legends (same as two weapons for other professions).

50% free refill on swap every 10 seconds. Base regen of (5×10) = 50 every 10 seconds.

So legend flipping every 10 seconds would seem to double your rate of energy regen.

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Posted by: BrunoBRS.5178

BrunoBRS.5178

well, like i said, spamming whatever you have available in time won’t be a good plan, even with the 50% refill on swap. they mentioned that some weapon skills will also cost energy, and some skills are “upkeep skills”, which instead of using a set amount of energy and be done with it, they affect your regeneration (putting maybe even a negative tick on it depending on how strong it is) and stay on until you turn them off (or swap legends, since in that case you’d lose access to the skill).

as for my other post, yes, there were very specific, powerful skills that could cost more than half your energy bar. most of them were enchantments you cast beforehand, but there were spells with combat applications that could burn your energy fast and leave you with nothing but your autoattack.

LegendaryMythril/Zihark Darshell