So I’ve now had the time to collect my thoughts on the Revenant and as a whole it’s looking really good and loads of fun, but there’s two legends in particular that need some serious work. Jalis and Ventari. I feel Ventari is going to be a very difficult legend to tackle for feedback as I haven’t played it a lot and most of the problems with the legend are it’s clunky behaviour, so I’m skipping that and jumping straight into Jalis!
As A Whole
When you put everything together, the mighty dwarf king Jalis is a pretty decent legend to channel in specific circumstances, but there’s quite a few things that really bring it down. On paper, the legend is great, it provides some awesome utility, the best heal of the class, and great support, but it’s let down by two skills*
The Heal
Soothing Stone is a really great heal. It has some awesome condi clear, Retal and it’s a pretty phat heal given the classes’ base health. This should be kept as is, though I wouldn’t complain if the base heal was bumped a few hundred.
Vengeful Hammers
The new version of this is simply awesome. It has the much needed damage and condi reduction and if you pair it with the Devastation line can make for some really solid life-steal in an AoE setting. This skill is pretty much perfect. Leave it as is.
Rite of the Great Dwarf
Again, this skill is much better in it’s new form. It could use some improvement, possibly in the way of a slightly longer duration as this skill is more of a preparation skill than a reaction skill, unlike most damage reducing skills. Around 8 seconds would be worth the cast-time and energy cost. Alternatively, a stack or two of stability would go a very, very, very long way on this skill as currently Revenant has extremely little access to it.
Now, you’ll notice I’ve done these out of order. That’s because I wanted to address the good skills first. I feel these last two are what is seriously letting the legend down right now and they need a bit of a longer discussion.
Forced Engagement
There’s no two ways about it. This skill sucks for something that costs 50 energy. It is simply rubbish. A single target taunt/slow for 2 seconds that costs half your energy. Absolutely not worth it. This skill simply needs either another effect (possibly a defensive effect or AoE effect) or reducing the cost to around 30/35. That said, I think this skill just needs a complete rework. Jalis is very AoE focused and somewhat supportive, so a single-target offensive skill just doesn’t make sense.
I propose something more along the lines of a shout, or an instant/short-case AoE skill. Something like granting AoE weakness to targets. You could even maintain the taunt/slow functionality and keep the energy cost, but add an AoE 5s weakness burst to the target & nearby enemies to make it worth it. This would allow better play in PvE and WvW. Currently this skill is only effective in PvP and even then it’s largely useless. Do the above and reduce the cost to 40 energy, perhaps shorten the slow and taunt to 1.5s for balance..
To summarize, I believe adding some form of AoE weakness burst when you hit the target, for around 5s, while maintaining the other functionality and reducing the cost to maybe 40 Energy would see this skill have more play
Inspiring Reinforcement
This skill is just… clunky. It can’t fulfil it’s purpose because of a number of reasons. It’s a front-cast ground-target AoE that doesn’t have it’s supportive effects until ~1s after casting. It’s a very small pulsed stability and lighting field. This just doesn’t work. It’s trying to be too thematic without taking into account how it works in actual play.
Many, many times I’ve used this skill and tun over it before getting any of the stability. Maybe I’ll get one stack. That or it’s just too small to be used properly. This skill discourages the mobile combat system GW2 has in place. Skills like Hallowed Ground can get away with it because they’re a far better ground target, don’t get fired off directly in front of you and are basically instant.
I like the notion of providing stability to your allies and weakness to enemies, but it just doesn’t work in the current way. It’s kind of hard to provide a proper solution for this, but it needs to work better as an AoE stability, since Revenant completely lacks it.
The best thing I can come up with is separating the Stability from Weakness and Road. Give it an AoE 3 – 5 stacks of Stability (short range, possibly 450 – 600, or even in the direction of the road), make the road pulse swiftness instead of stability once it’s cast and retain the weakness, reduce the damage.
This allows Revenant to gain access to Swiftness without the Herald, retains the road-like functionality and allows the class to have much better access to supportive Stability without it becoming Guardian. The Stability should be fairly short duration, possibly 4 – 5s. Increase the energy cost to 35 to compensate for the fact it now has swiftness.
To summarize, remove the pulsing stab, turn it into a 4s 3 – 5 stack AoE (or front facing cone) burst on cast, retain the road and weakness component but add pulsing swiftness. Increase the length of the road by ~100 – 200 units or unlock the road from the caster (turn it into a proper casted AoE) for swiftness to be more reliable. Increase energy
Conclusion
I see these changes giving Jalis a much, much more brawly, tanky feel than the current implementation, especially in WvW, because let’s be honest, Jalis is going to shine the most in WvW, not PvP or PvE. My hope is that these ideas can spark other, better ideas to improve Jalis, because I truly want it to shine and be on par with legends like Shiro and Glint.
(edited by mexay.3902)