Guild Wars 2

I’m as surprised as many people here by the huge nerf to Revenants, a class that wasn’t even fully functional yet, but I wanted to bring to discussion a particular point of the release notes:

- Coalescence of Ruin: The recharge of this skill has been increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds. Enemies are now able to be struck by this ability only once every 0.5 seconds.

I verified this and indeed, if 2 or more revenants cast the skill on the same target, the target will only take damage from one of them. Don’t you think this is a bit overkill? Do we know about some other skill in the game that works in the same way? And by same way I mean cancelling damage from everyone else using that skill because another player decided to use it at the same time you did.

My guess is this is a way of weakening pirate ships in WvW, but wasn’t the cooldown increase enough for this purpose? The revenant nerfs may be questionable and give a lot to think of, but in my opinion this particular thing is quite absurd.

That MUST be a bug.
Also the fact that you cannot hit a target with 2 hits of that skill is really dumb.

Yes, I found this odd as well. I suspected this is what was happening in a boss fight when my skill wasn’t hitting at all, but my others were just fine. Then another Rev. happen to stand next to me and do his CoR at about the same time and mine didn’t hit. I reread the patch notes and thought that couldn’t be it, but now I’m not so sure.

I do not believe this is intended, but if it is then that is a HORRIBLE move as that goes against their mantra of always welcoming help (as I will hate to see other Revenants from now on since they can negate one of my skills).

If this is, as I suspect, a bug then it needs to be fixed ASAP! It makes Hammer 2, unreliable at best, useless at worst, in any kind of zerg event in WvW or PvE.

Plz tell me you trolling

Why would this be a troll? It’s how the skill works now.

I’m very skeptical towards the no-hit part, as the increased CD already effectively halves the damage output from that particular skill. As long as you’re the only Rev that’s not a problem, but that’s not very likely in any setting outside of dungeons.

I agree with what you guys are saying, having multiple revenants in a group using a hammer suddenly feels awkward. Now I feel reluctant about having multiple revs in a group since it renders a very good skill (with a now increased cooldown) as unreliable.

I’d guess the same applies to Berserker Longbow now? I haven’t checked it but they changed it to work the same way from the looks of it.

Limberneck.4702:

Why would this be a troll? It’s how the skill works now.

I’m very skeptical towards the no-hit part, as the increased CD already effectively halves the damage output from that particular skill. As long as you’re the only Rev that’s not a problem, but that’s not very likely in any setting outside of dungeons.

I told you to tell me you were trolling >.<

We also noticed this and posted a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMNo6pl0-3Q

To me, it looks like a bug. But with ANet is always hard to tell…

Yeah, we did the exact same experiment at our guild hall and no damage from the second revenant was visible, not even a record of it in the Combat logs.

Now scale this to bigger scenarios where there are multiple revenants and we have a Hammer #2 that simply won’t work because some other rev activated it more or less at the same time. I don’t think this is a bug because it was explicit in the release notes, but I think it is a very bad move that should be reverted. What do you think?

I was wondering about why they nerfed the damage on this skill so hard?

Having the attacks reduced from 7 to 5 comes to about a 28.6% reduction. Each hit was given a plus 10% damage but that just means the overall reduction is 21.4%.

Was this skill really so detrimental before that it needed its damage adjusted so heavily? I feel a 10% nerf to its damage would have been adequate. Although I rarely use it in pve. Was this reduction because of pvp?

Fey Zeal.7032:

I was wondering about why they nerfed the damage on this skill so hard?

Having the attacks reduced from 7 to 5 comes to about a 28.6% reduction. Each hit was given a plus 10% damage but that just means the overall reduction is 21.4%.

Was this skill really so detrimental before that it needed its damage adjusted so heavily? I feel a 10% nerf to its damage would have been adequate. Although I rarely use it in pve. Was this reduction because of pvp?

You’re referring to the Sword 3 nerf. This thread is about Hammer 2 and it is more than just the nerf, but the (hopefully) bug that now means that one Rev. using his skill can completely negate another Rev’s use of the same skill. Completely insane and if this isn’t a bug causes real concerns in the future of this company as it begins a majorly negative and dangerous trend.

Well, that is what happens in a company when it’s technical stuff has no idea about what Quality Assurance means and it’s totally driven by the marketing department. That is why every balance patch is just a disaster and why this game and this company is a joke and will always be.

Invictus.1503:

Fey Zeal.7032:

I was wondering about why they nerfed the damage on this skill so hard?

Having the attacks reduced from 7 to 5 comes to about a 28.6% reduction. Each hit was given a plus 10% damage but that just means the overall reduction is 21.4%.

Was this skill really so detrimental before that it needed its damage adjusted so heavily? I feel a 10% nerf to its damage would have been adequate. Although I rarely use it in pve. Was this reduction because of pvp?

You’re referring to the Sword 3 nerf. This thread is about Hammer 2 and it is more than just the nerf, but the (hopefully) bug that now means that one Rev. using his skill can completely negate another Rev’s use of the same skill. Completely insane and if this isn’t a bug causes real concerns in the future of this company as it begins a majorly negative and dangerous trend.

Bug ?

You’re behind the times dude. Warrior’s long bow elite skill got the exact same nerf:

“Scorched Earth: Enemies are now able to be struck by this skill only once every 0.5 seconds.”

So it’s fairly obvious that this is indeed an intentional path that ANET is going down with regard to certain skills.

^ I agree that this change is likely intentional. Let’s face it, it was fairly easy to hit larger targets with the second and third hits of the skill, every two seconds, for massive damage. Now picture a bunch of revs in a zerg hitting this way. It was too powerful and this nerf makes it a balanced skill. Plus you can still hit some larger targets twice, like dragons if you fire across their feet.

The “stops dmg from other players’ CoR” part is likely because there was no technical way to stop one player from hitting twice in that 0.5 without stopping all players from doing so.

They probably had no other way to make the multi-hit abilities not double hit from the same cast so they did this “fix” as a quick and dirty fix.

We should create a pool on how long it takes for them to address it.

Kalarchis.8635:

^ I agree that this change is likely intentional. Let’s face it, it was fairly easy to hit larger targets with the second and third hits of the skill, every two seconds, for massive damage. Now picture a bunch of revs in a zerg hitting this way. It was too powerful and this nerf makes it a balanced skill. Plus you can still hit some larger targets twice, like dragons if you fire across their feet.

The “stops dmg from other players’ CoR” part is likely because there was no technical way to stop one player from hitting twice in that 0.5 without stopping all players from doing so.

the problem with this logic is that then why lets say 5 necros placing their wells at the same time still hit one target all the time?

… if they wanted to fix the possibility of one rev hitting one guy more than once with the same skill , they should have done it in a way that the rev himself has the cd, not the receiver… i.e. the you should not have a cd on being able to be hit with a skill, it should be the rev who has that 0.5 sec cd on hitting somebody

Wow I hadn’t noticed Scorched Earth has the same constraint now, thanks for pointing that out Hexalot. If this is the beginning of a new trend that some skills in the game will now follow I think we should let our voice be heard and kill the problem before it even begins.

Kalarchis you made a really really good point, perhaps the intention was to stop one player from hitting twice the same target with the same skill, a fix of this kind would totally make sense. Perhaps as Kodiak and Peterson mention, it was fix that simply missed a very important thing, keying this effect by [skill+player_id] and not only by [skill] as that renders all other CoRs useless.

If you reader agree with this new move, I just want to invite you to put yourself in the situation and visualize any skill you like having a chance of not working because someone else cast it within a same interval as you did (necro marks, meteor showers, rapid fire, etc). Is this something we want in the game?

I find it hard to believe there was no technical way to resolve this issue. All you need is a check for the damage source and then apply that 0.5s restraint to that source. Before software developers come out of their cave and scream ‘YOU DON’T KNOW THE CODE!!!11!‘, I don’t. But how would that be impossible when there’s already separate tracking of conditions and damage sources in general in the game?

IF this is a bug, and it better be because otherwise it’s just braindead design (and yet another example why no SPLIT BALANCING is detrimental to the game when all game modes get cheap nerfs because of something being overpowered in a mode), then it’s the same as the glorious Guardian Symbolic Avenger trait bug, where you increased your damage for every Symbol you stood in, no matter the source. And they could fix that, too.

this is hilarious…………..

Sourde Noire.5286:

I find it hard to believe there was no technical way to resolve this issue. All you need is a check for the damage source and then apply that 0.5s restraint to that source. Before software developers come out of their cave and scream ‘YOU DON’T KNOW THE CODE!!!11!‘, I don’t. But how would that be impossible when there’s already separate tracking of conditions and damage sources in general in the game?

I don’t know the code either but I know it’s just a rigged-up version of the GW1 code, and I’ve heard the devs talk a lot about how many changes like this just aren’t as easy as one might think to put together.

Condi damage is a great example; the current system took so long to implement because it was a nightmare to get it working properly. Tracking the individual contribution of 2-6 conditions from 150 players at once is not an easy task, esp. not on a 10-yr-old engine that was not built for it. Pretty sure I remember them saying that they had to buy some more servers just to handle all the data for it as well.

Do 2 revenants on opposing sides cancel each other out?

Conner.5803:

Do 2 revenants on opposing sides cancel each other out?

You mean in WvW? We didn’t test it, but I would assume so…

Kalarchis.8635:

Sourde Noire.5286:

I find it hard to believe there was no technical way to resolve this issue. All you need is a check for the damage source and then apply that 0.5s restraint to that source. Before software developers come out of their cave and scream ‘YOU DON’T KNOW THE CODE!!!11!‘, I don’t. But how would that be impossible when there’s already separate tracking of conditions and damage sources in general in the game?

I don’t know the code either but I know it’s just a rigged-up version of the GW1 code, and I’ve heard the devs talk a lot about how many changes like this just aren’t as easy as one might think to put together.

Condi damage is a great example; the current system took so long to implement because it was a nightmare to get it working properly. Tracking the individual contribution of 2-6 conditions from 150 players at once is not an easy task, esp. not on a 10-yr-old engine that was not built for it. Pretty sure I remember them saying that they had to buy some more servers just to handle all the data for it as well.

Yes, that’s why I added the example of SA at the end. It had the exact same problem (not tracking the source of the Symbol so you would benefit from others), so a comparable solution is already in the game.

Besides, if they can handle a ton of indivudal condi stacks on a single target from all different sources while tracking each source’s condi damage, duration, modifiers like Might etc., tracking a maximum of 150 (assuming WvW) skills firing at once and how often they can hit a target shouldn’t be unrealistic. It’s a cheap fix to avoid Berserker LB stacking on Gorseval and Rev Hammer 2 Trains in WvW, and that is the truth of it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Oooh, we have info on that! Just posted here.

Thanks for the info.

Thank you for the clarification, Gaile, really glad to hear a fix is coming soon