Guild Wars 2

I thought I’d put together a comparison of cooldowns on our weapon skills compared to the same weapons for other professions. From my understand, Revenant is about energy management and because of this cooldowns should be lower than other classes that don’t have to manage energy. Let’s see how they compare:

Staff:
Skill 2: 5s (Rev) 3s (Gaurd) 1s (Ranger) 6s (Ele Fire) 10s (Mes) 5s (Nec) 0s (Thief)
Skill 3: 10s (Rev) 15s (Gaurd) 5s (Ranger) 10s (Ele Fire) 18s (Mes) 16s (Nec) 0s (Thief)
Skill 4: 15s (Rev) 20s (Gaurd) 8s (Ranger) 20s (Ele Fire) 35s (Mes) 20s (Nec) 0s (Thief)
Skill 5: 20s (Rev) 40s (Gaurd) 10s (Ranger) 30s (Ele Fire) 35s (Mes) 32s (Nec) 0s (Thief)
Combined Total: 50s (Rev) 78s (Gaurd) 24s (Ranger) 66s (Ele Fire) 98s (Mes) 73s (Nec) 0s (Thief)

Hammer:
Skill 2: 2s (Rev) 5s (Gaurd) 12s (War) 6s (Engi)
Skill 3: 8s (Rev) 15s (Gaurd) 12s (War) 10s (Engi)
Skill 4: 12s (Rev) 25s (Gaurd) 20s (War) 20s (Engi)
Skill 5: 15s (Rev) 40s (Gaurd) 30s (War) 24s (Engi)
Combined Total: 37s (Rev) 85s (Gaurd) 74s (War) 60s (Engi)

Mace:
Skill 2: 3s (Rev) 8s (Gaurd) 10s (War)
Skill 3: 8s (Rev) 15s (Gaurd) 15s (War)
Combined Total: 11s (Rev) 23s (Gaurd) 25s (War)

Sword MH:
Skill 2: 4s (Rev) 10s (Gaurd) 8s (War) 8s (Ranger) 0s (Thief) 12s (Mes)
Skill 3: 12s (Rev) 15s (Gaurd) 15s (War) 15s (Ranger) 0s (Thief) 12s (Mes)
Combined Total: 16s (Rev) 25s (Gaurd) 23s (War) 23s (Ranger) 0s (Thief) 24s (Mes)

Sword OH:
Skill 4: 15s (Rev) 15s (War)15s (Mes)
Skill 5: 15s (Rev) 15s (War) 20s (Mes)
Combined Total: 30s (Rev) 30s (War) 35s (Mes)

Axe OH:
Skill 4: 12s (Rev) 12s (War)
Skill 5: 15s (Rev) 15s (War)
Combined Total: 27s (Rev) 27s (War)

Shield OH:
Skill 4: 15s (Rev) 20s (Guard) 20s (War) 30s (Mes)
Skill 5: 20s (Rev) 24s (Guard) 25s (War) 40s (Mes)
Combined Total: 35s (Rev) 44s (Guard) kitten (War) 70s (Mes)

So, do with this analysis what you will. My opinion is that some of these seem to be spot on, however overall it seems the cooldowns do not make up fully for the energy management necessary when comparing. Obviously the skills themselves are not exactly apples to apples comparisons, however this gives a good starting point for comparisons. What your your thoughts?

Useless.

Cooldown relative to power.

Mightybird.6034:

Useless.

Cooldown relative to power.

It’s nice to see that the cooldowns are indeed a lot lower for the Rev but I agree with Mightybird. I don’t see what we can get from this information and the way it’s presented.

B+ for effort!

I think you recorded the celestial avatar weapon cooldown times for Ranger instead of staff. Should be 6.5, 12, 15, 20 sec for staff 2, 3, 4, and 5 for ranger = 53.5 seconds total.

The data lacks the key feature of what does each skill do. If you’re trying to compare cooldowns apples to apples you gotta make sure that you’re at least starting off with the same fruit. E.G. Each weapon skills for each class would need to have the identical or very similar effect for the cooldowns to mean something.

I think the OP is trying to highlight that the CD for Rev weapons is actually not always that much better than the other classes – but still has an energy cost, regardless of what the skill does.

For standard classes the CD is more or less supposed to be correlated to what the skill actually does.

For thieves the thought process is that initiative cost is tuned according to what the skill does.

Rev is the only class with two tuning levers associated with their skills. This can be a good thing, or in some cases we may be being double taxed. It becomes more complicated as the energy cost for weapons has an effect on the use of utilities. The closest comparison would be to visualize initiative costs for thief utilities. Obviously there are many variables and factors to consider.

To pick a side, I am definitely in the camp that doesn’t think weapons should have energy costs – simply tune the CDs (which are already in place) accordingly.

Honestly, the one weapon type where Rev loses in terms of CD is also the one where there are many versatile skills. Staff has access to some extremely important stuff (Blast Finisher, Block, Condi Cleanse, CC) and it’s natural it has more CDs than usual to compensate.

That said, I enjoy the fact we have lower CDs thanks to energy. This is particularly noticeable in some skills shared across classes (blocking with Sword OH) where Rev has a baseline 12s CD, while Mesmer and Warrior have to trait for such CD. I know a lot of people are annoyed by it, but one important factor to take in consideration is that this also balances upkeep skills. While using upkeep skills, you have to be careful about what skills you use, which help both balance the upkeeps and the skills themselves. For this reason, I don’t see energy cost ever going away from weapons.