This is a sPvP thread
Hey guys, in the wake of rev’s many nerfs, I see a lot of complaints about weapon skills. Those come from rev players who hate the nerfs, and also from non-rev players who hate the effectiveness of rev weapon skills. Because of Anet’s current approach to modifying Rev, it’s important to consider how Anet has been thinking, and what we can realistically petition for instead of constant QQing (to be clear, I have been part of this, it doesn’t work).
At the moment, it’s clear that Anet doesn’t want power rev to be the obvious choice in sPvP. Rather than directly pushing back against the weapon skill changes they made, what traits can be buffed or fixed to help Rev in other ways? Here’s some of my thoughts at the moment:
- Retribution is currently a dodge-focused trait line. One minor gives stability on a successful evade, another gives endurance simply for being hit. While I think requiring an actual evade for stability was a step in the right direction, ultimately I think it should be changed out for 6s of retaliation, and the stability should replace taunt in Eye for an Eye. Autotaunting someone for CCing you is brainless. Retaliatory Evasion isn’t the best major trait tbh, it should be replaced by something more useful, like a damage boost for a few seconds after evading an attack.
- Corruption focuses on 2 things: boon removal and torment improvement. Boon removal is good, until the boon meta is toned down this is a necessary role. However, why torment? Banish Enchantment applies confusion, Searing Fissure applies burning, the 3rd attack in the mace AA chain applies poison, and both Precision Strike and Frigid Precision apply chill. It’s frustrating to have 2/3 minor traits focus on torment, yet condi rev clearly is much more diverse in its condi application. Making one condition much more powerful and commonly applied than others exposes condi rev to even weak condi clears like Signet of Agility.
- Devastation Probably fine as-is. It gives tremendous offensive utility, and there are other trait lines for defense.
- Invocation Very useful for power rev, not much else. Power rev has basically 2 dedicated trait lines whereas condi rev only has Corruption. I primarily played Invocation power rev last season and saw great success, but I’m not finding as much use in Invo condi rev. Since this isn’t tied to a particular legend it should have something to offer to all builds, including Ventari, on all trait levels. Right now only the GM traits are sufficiently diverse. Instead of more fury, to which Heralds already have plenty of access, Fierce Infusion should be replaced with a trait that applies a snaring condi like immobilize or chill, cripple would be UP. That would help power revs anyways. Invigorating Flow should have its HP contribution upped yugely, right now it’s like… why would I take that with a 5 second CD? Alternatively the CD could be reduced to 3 1/2s.
- Salvation is not my area of expertise, but I notice that despite a specialization and everything, Ventari revs are just not as good at their jobs as support ele, druid, or even the upcoming support guard. Kinda lame imo but then again there’s not a lot of players pushing to make Ventari great again.
To sum up what I’m thinking: like I said, Anet has had some preconceived notions about nerfing power rev down, and we clearly can’t change that. Seriously, it never ends. However, the new stunbreak on Mallyx is actually a huge buff, and so they’re not hating on revs in general. So I think that rather than abandoning the profession because one build got nerfed (again), it’s more productive to focus on the profession’s potential for multiple viable builds and how that can happen. Right now rev still has a number of bugs, but from recent personal experience I’ve found condi rev to be very viable, it just needs a little push to be viable at high-level play.
(edited by Huskyboy.1053)
