Guild Wars 2

Renegade’s weak, without question. A lot of the suggestions I use are both based off gameplay (as and against) and potential numbers/theory crafting.

Profession Mechanics
These are cool but kind of expensive to use with energy and cd times.

• Heroic Command: is a worthless skill. It provides an AoE of 5-10 stacks of might for 8s for 20 energy and 10s cd. That’s a steep cost for something Herald does better for much less energy. Sure it refreshes Kalla’s Fervor but that’s not something that’s hard to build. It could be made way more powerful by sharing the Fervor, or if thats not the case, cut the energy cut off or the cooldown off.
• Citadel Bombardment: the ability is extremely inconsistent. You’ll maybe hit 3 shots and they don’t do much in PvP. A split where it’s stronger in PvP would be appreciated. Also doesn’t need a cooldown time for that high of an energy cost.
• Orders from Above: the radius is too small to help more than 1 person at a time and Alacrity is useless for a Revenant so there’s no point to use it for yourself.

Traits
There really aren’t many issues with the traits but it’s not perfect.

• Ashen Demeanor: it does not need a 3s ICD, it probably needs one because of Surge of the Mists but 3s is high. The traits also useless in PvE (break bars) but that can be fixed by changing it to disabling abilities triggering it. In all it feels like the weakest of the 3 options.

Shortbow
Shortbow is kinda weak in comparison to taking herald and popping on a sword/shield or just having a staff as a Renegade. It has no defensive abilities and doesn’t do a lot of damage.

• Scattershot: increased power or condi damage
• Bloodbane Path: increased projectile speed. Against mobile targets you aren’t going to hit any of your shots.
• Sevenshot: longer torment duration and larger projectiles. Even on stationary targets you’ll likely only hit 3 shots, it’s truely worthless.
• Spiritcrush decrease the energy cost to 10 and allow it to hit behind too.

Kalla
Kalla is weak and not very fun to play (that’s coming from a guy that ). This is probably because all her skills cost a lot of energy, have long cooldowns and can be ccd/killed. I can’t see bringing her to any situation in her current state.

• Breakrazor’s Bastion: it’s the stunbreaker so if you get stunned while casting it or cancel it, you lose it for 30s. Giving it 1 stack of stability for 1s or decreasing the cast time would go a long way in increasing surviveability.
• Razorclaw’s Rage: played perfectly (5 players hitting 10 times) you’ll get 50 stacks of bleed that last 2s a pop. That may sound high but that’s only ~12k damage over 10s. For comparison Sharpening Stone does 10 stacks that last 10s, which is the same damage but doesn’t require the massive coordination Razorclaw’s Rage does nor does it require you to keep a spirit alive. Realistically, you are only going to get maybe 6 stacks of bleed from it before its killed or you have to move out of the radius. The idea of the skill is fine but the numbers are very low. Either increasing the duration or decreasing the interval would go a long way.
• Soulcleave’s Summit: the upkeep system for the spirit is not good since she can both be killed and cc’ed. Making her invulnerable (or kitten close) or not making it an upkeep skill would fix this. For -9 energy a second I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.
• All utility skills: all 3 utility skills cost both energy and cd time and they’re not better than other legend skills. No other energy has higher costs, not even Shiro. Removing or drastically reducing the cd time (around 5s) would make Kalla much stronger. If having multiple of the same spirit is too powerful, then dropping the energy cost almost entirely then it would be fair. To note, if there was no cooldown on any of the utilities you couldn’t spawn more than 3 of any spirit at a time and if there was no/little energy cost the command abilities would be much more accessible.

TL:DR – Renegade needs to not have cds and energy costs. SB needs to be buffed.

Not exactly a renegade specific suggestion but alacrity should increase the recharge rate of profession mechanics such as initiative and energy. It’s just counter productive.

Also, the cast times on the summons need to be shorter, I often find myself interrupting a summon by trying to use another because I use it mid cast

I have a theory regarding Heroic Command: I suspect that early on in the design of the spec that trait was supposed to copy the stacks of Kalla’s Fervour on the Renegade to the Renegade’s allies, possibly alongside other traits and effects that shared this buff. That’s why Lasting Legacy reads “Kalla’s Fervour you inspire…” and why a leader was chosen as the theme of the spec. Then at some point the balancing devs decided that the spec was unbalanced in that state, and did a dirty fix by converting the skill that copied the unique +30 expertise + 30 ferocity buff into one that copies the generic +30 power + 30 condi buff.

I agree that the skill is useless and that the whole citadel order line is too energy-intensive. More than that I think that the Kalla’s Fervour buff is too vestigial now – it’s just a thing that happens rather than being a class mechanic that you manage. I have an idea how to rework the whole thing, but in order not to derail any further discussion of what you have here I’ll do that in a separate thread.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Not exactly a renegade specific suggestion but alacrity should increase the recharge rate of profession mechanics such as initiative and energy. It’s just counter productive.

I agree and have made this point myself. It’s a huge balance issue.

Thieves and Revenants with fewer and shorter cooldowns don’t benefit as much from alacrity. So they either end up underpowered in group content or overpowered one-on-one.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Also, the cast times on the summons need to be shorter, I often find myself interrupting a summon by trying to use another because I use it mid cast

Or lose the cooldowns entirely. Revenant is supposed to give us the freedom to decide how to spend our energy. Not have us repeating a specific rotation dictated by cooldowns.

I almost posted a suggestion for a summoner legend at one point – though a Norn one using their spirits. Three utilities – one tank, one dps, one cc – all costing energy to maintain. No cooldowns (unless you let them die). The elite would have cost more to maintain but summon a pack of wolves. An F skill to heal and another to dismiss all summons (as well as being able to dismiss individually by using the individual ability again).

Citadel Bombardment

900 range is not a bombardment. I’d like to see this skill get 1200 range… or maybe even 1500? As others have said, energy cost is too high.

Warband Spirits need to.be chain skills with an active ability to.go along with the current passive nature of the abilities. Right now they seem like weaker Wells on a class that is already poorly designed baseline.