Guild Wars 2

Impossible Odds, trademark skill of Shiro. We all remember this unique ability from the Factions campaign, where it caused him to double-strike, deal out cleaves, as well as transfer conditions off him. All this, admittedly, might be a bit much for someone who channels only echoes of the original. However, power Revenants seem to be lacking in many different ways, so I propose a few change ideas.

So it is I ask you fellow Revenants, which seems best to you? Should Impossible Odds have more effects to offset the large resource cost? Should Impossible Odds have the upkeep cost reduced to allow for more leeway in resources? Is this a pointless endeavor and only serves to distract from the real issues of power Revenant?

Hmmm impossible odds does need a cost reduction for sure, or they should change how it works and turn it into a group buff.

Ryou.2398:

Hmmm impossible odds does need a cost reduction for sure, or they should change how it works and turn it into a group buff.

I still prefer it as a selfish skill honestly, but I do feel it either needs a cost reduction or some additional effects.

Power Rev in all game modes is very Meh at the moment. And the next Elite spec will likely be condi based, but if that doesn’t have any traits or benefits for Power rev, then I agree that base Rev needs some definite improvements.

Ideas:

Impossible Odds: “All Current effects, same cost” + While active, Vulnerability increases damage by an additional 1%. Your attacks inflict Vulnerability (1 stack, 10 seconds).

Impossible Odds “Reduced cost to 5, very slight increase to Quickness” + While active, all damage you deal (including condi) is increased by 10%.

Personally, I love the first idea best. Really fits the “assassin” theme of doing up to 50% more damage to a highly vulnerable target.

Honestly, here are a a lot of changes I’d love to see for Shiro:

Healing

Enchanted Daggers
½ 5 30
Summon enchanted daggers that will attack as you attack, siphoning life from targets hit.

I’d like to just remove the awkward cast time. Just feels weird and doesn’t seem balanced in PvP to have such a weak and delayed heal also be interrupt-able.

Utility

Phase Traversal
½ 35 5 Step through the Mists to your target. Your next few attacks can’t be blocked.

I’d reduce cost to 25 or 30 and add an interrupt effect, and reduce cast time to 1/4th a second. Its not nearly “snappy” enough to be of any use in PVP currently. This would then be quite good for busting bunkers who are in a block animation.

Riposting Shadows
30 Evade back quickly though the Mists, removing debilitating conditions.

The duration of the Evade feels like a really long animation but it simply just ends up taking too long and the travel time is too short to really feel like you are getting away from someone. I’d like to see the Evade time cut in half and the time it takes to travel the current distance cut in half as well, so it really feels like you are escaping. I’d also shave it down to 25 cost as well, to bring it into parity with Phase Traversal.

Impossible Odds
10 / -10 Empower yourself with Shiro’s speed and quickness to quickly take out enemies.

As noted above, I’d love to see this keep its very high cost but also add the double effectiveness for Vulnerability, and have it apply a bit of vulnerability on each hit while active. This would really boost up the Revenant’s ability to maintain Vulnerability stacks and deal damage for raiding and grouping purposes, adding one more “tool kit” available if the group is missing Vulnerability.

Elite

Jade Winds.png
Jade Winds
1 50 5 Call upon the Jade Wind to turn nearby enemies into jade, stunning them for a short duration.

Only addition I would like to see is a SUPER brief duration, high Vulnerability stack, like “25 Vulnerability for 5 seconds.” This would allow for a Shiro spec, who has saved up enough Energy in PvP attempting to burst a bunker, to:

Phase Travel (25 energy cost) into an Unblock-able Jade Winds (50 energy cost) into a few seconds of very high damage from using Impossible Odds with that short but high stack of Vulnerability.

This could allow Power Rev in PvP to have some strong anti bunker potential without really effecting much else, since waiting for 100 Energy against any normal offensive build would be suicide.

Impossible Odds is fine by itself, in my opinion. As is Protective Solace on Ventari, Inspiring Reinforcement on Jalis and Pain Absorption on Mallyx.

The problem with these Legend skills is that they won’t always be universally usable or great. We can try keep adding to them – Impossible Odds could, for example, increase your damage by generic 15% if affected by other source of Quickness already, but do we really want to? It just clogs the skills even more, trying to make them do something else than they were designed to be doing.

What I believe we still need is that one bonus Legend skill option per Legend we can switch to and adapt our utility better for the content we do. It’s been one of the most requested things ever since Revenant beta preview and continues to be so. It’s the most elegant solution. Sadly, I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

An alternative for Shiro would be upcoming traits update. Proper traits could make Shiro skills more suitable for PvE – be it adding weight to movement, unblockable skills or high upkeep costs – which Shiro is currently known for.

Impossible odds should no longer grant quickness, and instead give it the double striking idea from the original game. Perhaps make the second strike only do 50%-75% of the originals damage for balance. This will make it worth using in a raid scenario where despite being labeled as the legend meant for high direct damage it is currently the second lowest direct damage legend when there is already a chrono for quickness. Only ventari does slightly less dps than shiro does in a raid which seems extremely backwards.

I personally would look into changing Shiro, sword/sword and Devastation at the same time, tweaking functionality and costing so that more skills see more use and so that assassin DPS revenants handle their energy in a different way from demon DPS revenants.

You see to me, the big problem with Impossible Odds is how it tends to hog all of Shiro’s energy – I’d love it if Shiro builds could use their full range of skills without compromising their DPS. A lenghty uptime of superspeed and swiftness is simply too generally useful for the other skills to compete. Therefore I would be tempted to make radical changes to the Impossible Odds, including either scrapping the skill or scrapping its energy cost and balancing from there.

The biggest problem with IO is the monopoly of skills Revenant has that ignores quickness. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness#Skills.2Ftraits.2Factions_that_ignore_quickness

While some skills make sense to ignore it such as crystal hibernation, offensive evades like Unrelenting Assault and Surge of the Mists should be affected IMO. If I want the UA evade to last it’s full duration, I would not have popped Impossible Odds.

I.O just needs to lose the initial 10 or so energy it drains, first and foremost.

While I personally prefer the quickness, especially if it can affect other skills that it currently does not like tuvok mentions if they’re fixed, the double strike idea could be pretty crazy with something like staff 5/Sword 3 being massive bursts with all the hits they can connect under I.O, or somewhat uninteresting if its just another Auto Attack DPS boost.

A damage multiplier while the target’s under the effect of Vulnerability already exists with Targeted Destruction, so stacking it with I.O might be a bit redundant (or excessive depending on one’s take on it).

Another idea would be to have it cleanse a condition while under the effect and striking someone who is affected by Vulnerability, similar to Shiro’s condi-transfer while he’s under the effect with a small icd….or guaranteed critical hits while under I.O with its current costs.

I feel like I’ve just been so used to how it is now that I’d really miss the 10 upkeep cost combo’ing with Hardened Persistence and using the Quickness pulse for mobility.

But ya, cleansing when hitting a target with vulnerability I think would be thematically correct, much needed, and not really that OP.

I was under the impression Shiro was doing very well for itself is that no longer the case?

I dont have a problem with the cost but I would like to see a bit more of the gw1 version. Such as each second or 2 seconds IO is channeled it transfers a damaging condition (since RS takes care of the others) to a foe.

In addition to current,
-50% Condition Duration while active.

On roll over skill,
When you deactivate it, clear 1 condition for every second it was active.

A group buff would be nice, especially if it means the game gets a second source of raid quickness.