Guild Wars 2

I actually like the unique playstyle of Ventari, but IMO there are a few things precluding its use. Basically, the traits.

Ventari (Salvation) are too narrowly focused on being (just) a healer, making it difficult to combine with Rev’s other weapons and legends or make any kind of workable hybrid build, the GMs being the worst culprits.

The most interesting thing about Revenant is the interplay between utilities (legend), weapon and traitline, and being able to combine all different legends, weapons and traits to form builds should IMHO be a key design requirement.

Traits that could be improved

• Hardened Foundation (minor master; healing power -> toughness). I think this conversion is the wrong way around, should be toughness -> healing power.
• Tranquil Benediction (dropped healing orbs given regen and swift). Shouldn’t be restricted to staff only. Perhaps could be x% chance for any weapon skill to drop a healing orb, and all dropped healing orbs grant regen and swift.
• Momentary Pacification (daze on elite). This is a weird trait, as the ventari elite already knocks back, so what’s the point of the daze? wouldn’t daze on heal (with 10sec CD) make a lot more sense? would work a lot better with othe legends as well.
• Selfless Amplification (healing power -> outgoing heal%). Another conversion? Another outgoing heal percent% bonus, really? This is just filler, surely. There are already multiple outgoing heal% bonuses in the line already, and no other traitline in the game has more than 1 conversion trait. I’d love this to be something like “You and your tablet swap positions when using an elite skill or swapping legends.” This is thematically consistent (pacifist/avoidance) and gives ventari an escape which he is otherwise lacking.

Staff
Staff doesn’t feel quite right to me. It’s a bit underpowered compared to the other weapons. A couple of specific things:

• combine the 2 skills on the #2 skill, or make the daze the first in the chain and make the second skill a knockdown if using a skill.
• the damage coefficents on the autoattack are a bit low.

Skills
The skills are really unique, and the unique delivery mechanism is the best part of the legend. The upkeep skill is a bit boring/ineffectual/high cost for what it does. It could stand to have an additional effect, e.g. pulsing regen or vigour or endurance regen.

Momentary Pacification is a good skill. Every 10 seconds we have daze around us (jade winds ?2).
Tranquil Benediction is a trash. We have no survivability for 2 sec spam.
Hardened Foundation too weak. Better something else.

I like Selfless Amplification the way it is. Don’t screw with it.

Tranquil Benediction gives a bonus to using staff. Only changes is maybe boost staff healing amount, or give 2 or 3 seconds of protection with the orbs? That could give dual use for tanking and healing.

Staff #1 definatly needs a damage boost, just to make it more usable for players.

Ranger.4950:

I like Selfless Amplification the way it is. Don’t screw with it.

it’s bad for a GM trait. it could easily be combined with Natural Abundance since that is thematically a good match and by itself also a bit weak. Together they’d be a solid choice for heal-oriented builds.

my main argument in the GM space is there should be more diversity at the GM level.

Tranquil Benediction gives a bonus to using staff. Only changes is maybe boost staff healing amount, or give 2 or 3 seconds of protection with the orbs? That could give dual use for tanking and healing.

i think it should be all dropped orbs, including the ones from staff #1, and the orbs from the Natural Abundance trait. ideally there would be some non-staff functionality too, like 15% chance on hit (with any weapon) to proc a healing orb while Ventari is the active legend (and/or 7.5% chance when using any legend).

Staff #1 definatly needs a damage boost, just to make it more usable for players.

yep, agree. Given that Rev’s weapon choices are basically all melee or hammer for ranged, I think staff should move more towards a medium range weapon, with most attacks being 600 range.

Make healing skill tablet be able to auto cast, perfect in action camera + the protection on heal from herald line, and if it does I want to be able to target myself

you mean auto-cast the heal on the tablet right? not auto-cast the tablet heal-through-movement?

I’m leveling two revs currently. One of them is a Corruption spec with mace and Mallyx. The other is a Salvation spec with Ventari and the staff.

Of the two, the most survivable in prolonged fights is absolutely the Ventari rev. I swapped out Tranquil Roots for Blinding Truths the second I picked up Tranquil Benediction, and the Blind is used liberally on harder hitting enemies while I dance around them collecting orbs for my regen and whacking away with the staff.

This combat style also works well with the hammer, where you can sit back and reflect projectiles like crazy and hit Energy Expulsion to knock away things that get close. I’ve gotten good enough at it that I’ll steer the tablet around and use blinding truths on mobs while hitting things at range.

Heavy damage does seem to be able to overwhelm Ventari’s healing, as it’s all steady pulse heals rather than spike healing. For a while I ran Shiro with it for added damage and gratuitous regen acquisition, but the lack of a big heal when things get nasty caused me more trouble than it was worth, so now I keep Jalis on deck as an off-legend when I’m about to go into a big fight and it works much better.

Ventari is very interesting, however quite subpar in pvp because Ventari has poor self sustain compared to Druid, lower healing values than Druid and has a delay and strict positional requirement on all of its heals that make it way too slow for pvp.

Add this to the fact that Ventari stance makes it too easy to just focus and kill the tablet channeling rev whose busy moving it around, and you have the recipe for failure. It needs a stunbreak or some other defensive form of self sustain to be viable.

I just think the orbs need to be enlarged. When two blobs meet its impossible to see them, and I shouldn’t have to tell them where they are on TS.

Yea its lacking a bit in PvP, the cost of all non-elite utility needs to be reduce by 5 energie or remove the cooldown and the tablet should be out, on revenant location on Vatari stance swap other wise its too slow.

Mercurias.1826:

I’m leveling two revs currently. One of them is a Corruption spec with mace and Mallyx. The other is a Salvation spec with Ventari and the staff.

Of the two, the most survivable in prolonged fights is absolutely the Ventari rev.

This is what I felt as well.

I kept trying to find reasons to use any weapon other than staff – but I just keep coming back to that weapon because I find it so amazingly effective.

And likewise my go-to stances are Dwarf and Ventari.

Ventari is just really nice to have around when you find yourself in the middle of a large group of people doing an event. Doing almost any large zone event in HoT content, I end up seeing a couple of tablets moving around the battle map.

Ventari is not a spike up heal, like your typical ‘6 button utility skill’ – its a slow ‘heal over time’ skill – and its burst up on the 7 key, is mild… You use it to keep pressure off your team, not to recover from “oops, I dodged into the fire…”
- Once you master moving it around, its quite effective… but its different.

Playing a Revenant with Staff and Ventari reminds me a bit of playing WoW’s Druid back during their original game and first expansion… I suspect once we get raids in this game, we will want teams that have one staff Revenant and one Druid Ranger. Though the Staff Revenant will probably be on Dragon and not Centaur… If only because Dragon probably needs a nerf…

Conceptually I see no problems with Ventari. If it needs improvement, I would just argue for upping some of the numbers. Give players who have unlocked Dragon a reason to ever use anything other than just Dragon…

My favorite staff skill is #5. The issue with it is you have to line up with the mob perfectly or it doesn’t work. You pretty much have to be on top of whatever you are attacking to have it work well. And you are out of luck if they are up against a wall or at the edge of a precipice.

1. staff is amazingly great if they are up against a wall. You slam them into the wall a half dozen times, and they fall over dead.

But yeah on a ledge – you taking flying lessons.

That said – the more you use it the easier it gets to line up. I stay mobile, run to a side of the mob, and then do it.

Something that is true for both Staff and Mace/Axe wielders of Revenant, but for different reasons – is that the Dungeon meta of stacking really hurts the class. These two types of Revenants need mobility. The staff user wants to be dancing around the mobs to line up #5, the Mace/Axe user needs to be kiting the enemy to get Torment to have maximum effect.

Put these in many a dungeon run where you team wants to stack in a corner, and you’re effectiveness falls through the floor.

I just can’t imagine using ventari for anything but a lark until they make the tablet insta-spawn when you switch to the legend.
The legend isn’t really active without the tablet anyway so I don’t understand why I have to summon it as well.

It goes completely against the class mechanic and is just annoying for no reason as is.

I’ve heard a lot of mentions of people not liking that they have to summon the tablet, and I never really got why this was an issue.

In order to properly maneuver the tablet, I’ve been using a mouse hotkey anyway so it can be done quickly and with a minimum of concentration. Now it’s just muscle memory to hit that mouse button when I swap to Ventari. It took a little practice, but within a half-hour or so I had it down.

I actually kind of like running with the tablet in world events (when I tend to swap a few traits around to maximize group support just for funsies). People will stack near my tablet like it’s Base in a game of tag. I think it’s amusing.

The point is it’s an extra annoyance for no good reason.
Of course you get better at it as you practice, but it will always be an extra button to push which takes you out of the flow of legend switching that is supposed to be what the class is all about.

This isn’t a l2p issue, it’s a : “why does the game want to annoy me?” -issue, there is just no reason for it not to insta-summon.
GW2 has always been very good about avoiding pointless annoyances so many MMOs are inundated with, this should be no different.

Let’s assume they fix that for a moment, it isn’t enough to make Ventari a worthwhile legend.
Apart from projectile blocking with Protective Solace (and giving a light field with it as well) Ventari offers too little tactical options imo, it’s just healing and some more healing and oh … a little more healing.
It needs some interesting boon application to make it an attractive choice; I think it needs access to either Aegis or Retaliation through just a utility or a trait upgrading a utility perhaps.
For PvP I’d rather have Retaliation but for PvE I’d choose Aegis.
I’m thinking short duration (2 seconds?) on either Natural Harmony or Ventari’s Will.

I like centaur , but needs some tweaks

-protective solace should have -1 or 2 energy upkeep with duration of 3-5 sec 20 sec CD , and stay light field with any colapsing secondary effect.

-natural harmony need its own tablet and cast time of 1sec with a cd of 20sec and energy cost of 10 since it is an aoe heal ,just adjust scaling so that is not op and add reveal maybe.

Purifing essence also separate tablet with stun break or some offensive effect added,same as before Cd and energy reduced so that is not abused.

If they remove cast on heal tablet, elite will be just fine( fragments should be larger tho and longer duration.

deda.8302:

I like centaur , but needs some tweaks

-protective solace should have -1 or 2 energy upkeep with duration of 3-5 sec 20 sec CD , and stay light field with any colapsing secondary effect.

-natural harmony need its own tablet and cast time of 1sec with a cd of 20sec and energy cost of 10 since it is an aoe heal ,just adjust scaling so that is not op and add reveal maybe.

Purifing essence also separate tablet with stun break or some offensive effect added,same as before Cd and energy reduced so that is not abused.

If they remove cast on heal tablet, elite will be just fine( fragments should be larger tho and longer duration.

Well if they did that it would be some glorious 5 seconds before they nerf it.

Dont see why ,its not reflect projectiles like ele magnatic aura or engi hammer #2 skill which is only on 6s CD.
Mesmer traited has 4 sec reflect on 15sec Cd heal and focus also generates light field with reflect much more than what im suggesting for centaur.

My personal evaluation of ventari.
On traits I agree with you on hardened foundations.

All ventari utilities except need protective solace need a 40 radius buff (more than that would make the tablet movement useless.).

Ventari’s Will
Increase the movement speed (the reason we cannot make it instant cast is for us to be able to be CC’ed I guess).

Natural Harmony
Increase scaling from 0.6 to 1 reduce base heal by 20%. This skill scales horribly with HP specially compared to the elite (2.5)

Protective Solace
-8 upkeep is a bit to high for the cooldown. Reducing it to -7 would solve.

Purifying Essence
Except for the radius this skill is good.

Energy Expulsion
Increasing the duration of the orbs to 8 second would help with self sustain.

Overall my evaluation is the same as after BWE3.

deda.8302:

Dont see why ,its not reflect projectiles like ele magnatic aura or engi hammer #2 skill which is only on 6s CD.
Mesmer traited has 4 sec reflect on 15sec Cd heal and focus also generates light field with reflect much more than what im suggesting for centaur.

I re-read your comment and agree that it might not be OP but would certainly make energy management useless, with those high cooldowns and low energy cost, effectively removing the profession mechanic from the equation.

But not so much,you still need energy for weapon skills,there are some traits that have different effects depending how much energy you have with lesser upkeep and CDS you can asume control of your energy .

To much energy alowes skill spam while( with cds this is solved) ,now we dont have anough energy to combo weapon -utility skills effectivly.

Main issue you can not combo utility >elite> wepon
you can combo elite>swap>elite (or1 weapon skills >1 utility) ussualy other stance is somthing completly different and not in sinergy,since you would have to run 2 offensive/deff stances for this to have some reasonable roatation.

Im not for destroying class mechanic just adjust it slightly…

In general I agree that the traits for each spec are way too narrow in each row in places, especially in Salvation and Retribution lines but you can also see it for instance in devastation with the two dual wield traits on the same row. There should be more variety in such places to make picking traits more diverse if you go Salvation for example. Even if it’s intended that if you go Centaur stance you have to select Salvation, there is too little of it.

My pet peeves otherwise is mainly the unresponsive feel of the tablet. the cooldown AND trajectory time makes it feel really weird to me, and I feel like it should only have one of these or at least only a very short cooldown to prevent “stacking abuse” later in the raids. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve often played a totem or other external mechanic class in other mmos and i have no problem with that (in fact I enjoy it), but clunky is clunky.

I also believe that energy costs need a real looking over across the entire class… I feel like only Mallyx and possibly Glint has reasonable energy use, and then of those two it’s more circumstantial for Mallyx (you don’t want to use a couple of skills at all if you can help it).

Snafoo.2869:

I just can’t imagine using ventari for anything but a lark until they make the tablet insta-spawn when you switch to the legend.
The legend isn’t really active without the tablet anyway so I don’t understand why I have to summon it as well.

It goes completely against the class mechanic and is just annoying for no reason as is.

I agree the tablet needs to spawn on you on stance swap or they should make the utiliy affect around the rev wen tablet is not out
If so having the tablet out making utiliy skill cost 5 less (or cheaper) would make a better mechanic

If they make Ventari more practical and fix the GM Mallyx condi copying trait. (Maybe give Mallyx a stun break too *wink wink wink)

I’ll switch so hard to Ventari. Wont even think twice.

Amethyst Lure.5624:

My pet peeves otherwise is mainly the unresponsive feel of the tablet. the cooldown AND trajectory time makes it feel really weird to me, and I feel like it should only have one of these or at least only a very short cooldown to prevent “stacking abuse” later in the raids.

Agree, for the amount of healing and energy cost, the tablet would play a lot better if the CD on moving it were cut in half and then energy cost rebalanced to suit. Currently it is more practical to leave in 1 place and spam the heal skill, which is a real shame.

I still think the biggest issues are the initial cast time on the tablet and lack of any personal heal on moving with the heal skill makes the whole legend unviable in pvp.

I think the tablet should also spawn on legend swap and the elite destroy skill should be stronger.

Mercurias.1826:

I’ve heard a lot of mentions of people not liking that they have to summon the tablet, and I never really got why this was an issue.

because it’s too clunky for PVP. Ventari already has no stun-break and self-sustain.

Ventari would play a lot better if tablet spawned on switching into Ventari, and tablet exploded into fragments on switching out of Ventari.

scerevisiae.1972:

Amethyst Lure.5624:

My pet peeves otherwise is mainly the unresponsive feel of the tablet. the cooldown AND trajectory time makes it feel really weird to me, and I feel like it should only have one of these or at least only a very short cooldown to prevent “stacking abuse” later in the raids.

Agree, for the amount of healing and energy cost, the tablet would play a lot better if the CD on moving it were cut in half and then energy cost rebalanced to suit. Currently it is more practical to leave in 1 place and spam the heal skill, which is a real shame.

I still think the biggest issues are the initial cast time on the tablet and lack of any personal heal on moving with the heal skill makes the whole legend unviable in pvp.

I think the tablet should also spawn on legend swap and the elite destroy skill should be stronger.

yeah basically. I’ll say it for the 100th time, the whole “destroyable” thing is useless: table should always be out if on ventari and elite should just KB/orbs without destoying it. #6 should be instant without heal on travel but heal on impact. Ventari #9 (condi remove) could use a stunbreak.

Make this and ventari will be perfectly awesome.

Gaaroth.2567:

Ventari #9 (condi remove) could use a stunbreak.

Make the legend skills (#6-#10) usable while stunned would be a more differentiated & interesting way to do it. ie: so instead of stunbreaking, ventari could use the tablet to heal through it, then maybe add an area stunbreak to the condi remove if it still plays badly.

I think that would be just a bit 2 much…
Stun is stun you know, cant do anything move tablet or anything if you dont break it.
Traited its on 10s cd for a whole team which is a lot,a lot of(bugged) stability on fairly low cd if they fix this it would help a lot.
If they only make one ventari utility break stun it would be ok ,all to OP

Also if they make every legend with stun break it would be to much,you simply cant have everything in one legend.

Auto summmon tablet ,less enrgy consumption,secondary effect on utilities would make ventary good , that is what majority here agrees on.

My personal wish would be to have tablet for each utility , and to have rune that will work with tablets ,but i dont think they will ever make it.

scerevisiae.1972:

Gaaroth.2567:

Ventari #9 (condi remove) could use a stunbreak.

Make the legend skills (#6-#10) usable while stunned would be a more differentiated & interesting way to do it. ie: so instead of stunbreaking, ventari could use the tablet to heal through it, then maybe add an area stunbreak to the condi remove if it still plays badly.

yep we are discussing this in the other thread
I actually think having all skills instant and usable during stuns is ze bezt solution, a huge step in fighting the clunkiness of Legendary Applejack

Having to summon the tablet wouldn’t be so bad if you could ground target summon it instead of it summoning directly under the Revenant. As it is we have to waste time summoning it and then waste more time moving it to the location we want it to be. If we could just summon it at a location of our choosing it wouldn’t feel so clunky.