Guild Wars 2

Thanks to ANet for giving us the opportunity to take the elites into PvE this morning. But unfortunately I came away liking the renegade even less.

Darkrazor and Icerazor are both garbage. There I was annoyed that they had cooldowns, but then I discovered they’re not worth using at all. Total waste of energy. Literally. If I used them I found them not doing much good and it left me without enough energy to use weapon abilities.

I had the opposite experience to you, aside from the Elite Specialization being very energy hungry (and Sevenshot still being a buggy mess), I enjoyed it immensely in PvE. I also found use for both Ice- and Darkrazor to stack up extra bleeds, and pumping out cripple/dazes to keep enemies at a distance while using the short bow, etc.

I am even more hyped for Renegade on the 22nd of September. If for nothing else, I’ll have great fun with it in open-world PvE while exploring new maps. The trait line is still highly interesting from a condition-focused Revenant’s point of view as well, and I saw the highest ticks from Mace/Axe I have to date, even in Exotic gear instead of my fully decked out Ascended gear with stats-infusions and an actual backpack, proper Sigils and Runes. It’ll be interesting to see what the Superior Runes of the Renegade will be as well. I’ll just assume they are coming.

Only 22 more days to go! I do hope they tune the energy cost a bit though. It’s playable, but it does feel a bit frustrating to not be able to properly combo things together due to energy costs being so incredibly high.

Mobs move around too much for Darkrazor to be much good. Unless you (i.e. you’re not using the bow) or other players are tanking mobs to keep them immobile and in range.

Icerazor appears to be a one-target wonder and extremely brief distraction.

I compared spending my energy solely on weapon attacks instead or using a different legend and both were far superior.

Yes. Skills on paper may have decent effects, but they are completely useless in practice even versus fodder mobs.
Every F-skill and utility skill was just a waste of energy forcing me to spam AA and nothing more and was easily avoided by the AI. The heal does basically nothing.

40 energy on 1 F skill. 60 energy to use 2 utility skills. -9 upkeep on a well.

And changing those numbers won’t fix anything. Even making them 0 energy cost, those skills are useless.

Neeja.4579:

And changing those numbers won’t fix anything. Even making them 0 energy cost, those skills are useless.

the 12k bleed ticks I was getting from Razorclaw and Icerazor beg to differ.

as does the almost full heal I gave my party from using the Elite.

Calcifire.1864:

Neeja.4579:

And changing those numbers won’t fix anything. Even making them 0 energy cost, those skills are useless.

the 12k bleed ticks I was getting from Razorclaw and Icerazor beg to differ.

as does the almost full heal I gave my party from using the Elite.

Agreed. I had fun with it in PvE, I played Renegade exclusively during the stress test and the skills were fun to use. As I stated in this topic, my major issue is the energy costs. Knocking them down a bit would do wonders for me personally.

It was terrible.

Razerclaw gave decent bleed damage with a group that stayed in a backline and wasn’t on the front, one of the only redeeming things about Kalla.

Icerazer suffers from the same issues as mainhand sword does in that he can’t make up his mind who he wants to attack when there’s more than one enemy, alongside the fact that cripple is useless in PvE.

The heal is atrocious. Low numbers while being locked into a small AoE against bosses with AoE is a good way to die, and with the numbers so low and slow to heal, it won’t save you in a pinch at all. At least Shiro’s heal can be used with s3 to nearly guarantee you’ll get some charges out of it, and you don’t have to camp a single spot.

Elite was decent, but the massive energy costs of it, along with all the others, meant it was either this skill, or another before I swapped.

One of my biggest issues with it all is that they all became USELESS when any cc was around. Watching the Champion Man-Eater fling all my summons in the air, and thus making them absolutely worthless, was infuriating. Seeing the Legendary Choya roll all over my summons until they either died or ran out of time made me want to drop the legend then and there. Those 12k bleeds are nice for the few middling moments they’re there when it functions right, but unless nothing was nearby the summons, they all became worthless and a waste of energy.

To be fair Gaile did say that while we would get to try the elite specs that none of the updates given to them would be in the stress test. She said they have changed things but we were still using the demo weekend numbers and even the demo before that’s version of the map art. (As seen by the Lily of the Elon being updated on their stream and the old version in the stress test).

There’s a sliver of hope Renegade has improvements but I guess we’ll have to wait.

Fixing numbers won’t solve core Revenant issues (like conditions cleanse, Resistance becoming useless and so on) and Kalla lore issues (shortbow and summons instead of Greatsword and channeling).

It’s too late to fix this mess. They had to consult the playerbase way before.

Kidel.2057:

Kalla lore issues (shortbow and summons instead of Greatsword and channeling).

There are no lore issues here with regards to shortbow over greatsword.

I tried to stick with short bow, but the damage was disappointing compared to mace/axe. I tried to use utilities but with trial and error they were damage waste compared to heroic. Though sustainability in PvE was better than I expected.

Mallyx is still the main line and mace/ace is still where the damage is at :/

otto.5684:

I tried to stick with short bow, but the damage was disappointing compared to mace/axe. I tried to use utilities but with trial and error they were damage waste compared to heroic. Though sustainability in PvE was better than I expected.

Mallyx is still the main line and mace/ace is still where the damage is at :/

Kinda like I said earlier, Shortbow feels like it’s meant to be played spammy but the energy costs just make that impossible. Tweaking the numbers on the weapon at least would do a lot for it, I think.

The utilities are a different matter. Interesting and good effects, poor execution.

Vyrulisse.1246:

To be fair Gaile did say that while we would get to try the elite specs that none of the updates given to them would be in the stress test. She said they have changed things but we were still using the demo weekend numbers and even the demo before that’s version of the map art. (As seen by the Lily of the Elon being updated on their stream and the old version in the stress test).

There’s a sliver of hope Renegade has improvements but I guess we’ll have to wait.

While that’s true, the first time we actually got to use the elite specs in the PvP weekend was about a month before the scheduled PoF launch. I seriously doubt ANet is going to make any substantial changes with less than 30 days before the expansion goes live. I think the best we can hope for is bug fixes and number changes, and while those could certainly help the situation, I doubt it will fix some of the core issues some people have brought up with the Renegade skills.

Disclaimer: I’m only talking about design decisions, not about numbers since they can be changed easily.

I think what most people here experience as disappointment comes from the misunderstanding that the spec would be a full condi spec (at least better than Mallyx, as if it were bad or something) and the purposefully (?) designed lack of connection between the legend utilities and the shortbow.

The shortbow seems to be an engaging weapon, something to start fights or to be changed into when the contrary is trying to escape. Whether that is its intended design, I don’t know; but it doesn’t surprise me at all: I’ve heard many times that range weapons aren’t supposed to be as powerful as melee to reward being exposed. It has great cc that helps when breaking defiance bars but doesn’t leave you as “condiless” as changing to staff.

The legend itself is designed around having a warband fighting along you and, therefore, around team play. I’m not sure, but maybe before kalla’s fervor was changed, the ability to give the buff around yourself justified a little better the fact that they were summons and not wells (so that they could be targetable to receive the buffs). Being completely justified or not, I didn’t have any troubles with them while I played: I haven’t seen them die because of damage and always did what I expected them to do.

The f3 and f4 skills could be good, if properly balanced. The one I don’t understand is f1: you’re almost always at full stacks of Kalla’s fervor, at least in a long enough fight. Why would I refresh them if gaining them is so easy?

I still kinda trust devs (I know I’ll be disappointed later, I’ll blame on myself) so i’m attributing the lack of connection between the spec’s legend and its weapon to a purposefully attempt to create build variety and situational flexibility. As I said in a previous post, there are many reasons why using Kalla as a secondary legend while doing a healer role might work better than Glint, an interaction I didn’t expect and that’s thanks to the legend working without shortbow.

I’m probably too optimistic, but if they could balance the spec, decreasing energy costs and so on, I’m quite sure they could craft a great pve spec. In pvp it kinda lacks Glint survival and it’s much more dependent on team play.