Guild Wars 2

Why do skills have both energy consumption AND cooldowns? So much of rev’s utilities (and elite) are based on skills that constantly drain energy, so much so that you essentially have to choose between using utilities or skills. I am just starting to use my rev more but honestly it seems that just as much as ranger was pigeonholed into a buffbot, rev is pigeonholed into an autoattack-only class. I’m honestly looking for input – I didn’t come here just to troll

Because we have less cooldowns overall in comparsion to classes that only relies on cooldown and we have a second set of skills to use. You said that you’re new to rev, so you’ll need some time to learn how to manage energy.
If you’re complaining about keeping all the upkeeps up all the time, I believe you’re talking more about PvE, right? PvE revs are used to sit on a single legend all the time, just like some eles like to sit on fire attunement. And this is a problem. If you change legends on cooldown, you’ll make TWICE as much energy per second than just the regular energy recovery in combat.
So my tip is for you in PvE is: swap to a legend, spend everything in 9 seconds and swap again.

“PvE revs are used to sit on a single legend all the time”
Untrue. Refer metabattle recommended skill rotation for PVE rev as a reference. Swop legends on cooldown to generate energy.

Thraellic.5147:

“PvE revs are used to sit on a single legend all the time”
Untrue. Refer metabattle recommended skill rotation for PVE rev as a reference. Swop legends on cooldown to generate energy.

I think he meant that is what new revenants tend to do. He says that regenerate twice as much energy by switching. He is not advocating camping a legend.

bplayz.1957:

Thraellic.5147:

“PvE revs are used to sit on a single legend all the time”
Untrue. Refer metabattle recommended skill rotation for PVE rev as a reference. Swop legends on cooldown to generate energy.

I think he meant that is what new revenants tend to do. He says that regenerate twice as much energy by switching. He is not advocating camping a legend.

I definitely understand that switching is beneficial due to the fact that it gives additional energy back, so that is something I am getting more used to doing. My main gripe is still the fact that skills and utilities don’t see as much use as they would had there not been an energy requirement. Many professions ignore many weapon skills due to the fact that they are either a DPS decrease or too little utility, so that is unfortunate. With rev I just feel a magnification of that where I truly might as well just keep strong passives on and autoattack until energy is gone, then swap and repeat, instead of using skills more. Again, something I’m getting used to – but I still wish that I felt like I was doing more than auto-ing

I dont take issue with energy+small CDs on skills (barring Glint, which uses more upkeeps) because you’re able to swap legends and get another toolkit to use. However, energy cost and CD on weapon skills really rub me the wrong way. One already has to be careful of energy use with the Legend specific utilities, but I always felt energy+cd on weapon specific skills is pretty heavy handed on top of that.

I see this question a lot. I have a big concern that is generally not addressed though.

If energy costs were removed from weapons, our energy would only be spent on utility skills. I expect that for the base Revenant legends, utility skill costs would need to increase to balance the removal of weapon skill energy cost. Also, Glint would become incredibly boring to play, and possibly broken.

So my question for other players: Do you support removal of energy cost from weapon skills? And if so, are you willing to accept an increase in utility skill energy costs to compensate?

fluidmonolith.3584:

I see this question a lot. I have a big concern that is generally not addressed though.

If energy costs were removed from weapons, our energy would only be spent on utility skills. I expect that for the base Revenant legends, utility skill costs would need to increase to balance the removal of weapon skill energy cost. Also, Glint would become incredibly boring to play, and possibly broken.

So my question for other players: Do you support removal of energy cost from weapon skills? And if so, are you willing to accept an increase in utility skill energy costs to compensate?

>Phase Travel already costs 35 Energy
>IO is an -10 upkeep
>Jade Winds is 50 energy
>Riposting Shadows is 30 energy

Shiro wont need an energy increase tbh. If anything, its current costs would be fine without the burden of Weapon Skill energy.

>Pain Absorbsion is 35 energy
>Banish Enchantment is 20 energy
>Unyielding Anguish is 30 energy

Mallyx’s costs seem fine as is. At MOST I could see BE increase to 25.

Jalis and Ventari would benefit from this as well, and their costs seem reasonable without weapon energy tacked onto them.
Glint would be mostly unaffected anyway, since its nature as an Upkeep means that once the active’s used up, it’ll start building up energy again while its in CD if the others dont leave you in the negative anyway.

fluidmonolith.3584:

Do you support removal of energy cost from weapon skills? And if so, are you willing to accept an increase in utility skill energy costs to compensate?

As if utilities didnt cost tons of energy already. Also news from last min.. we dont really have more skills than other classes. For example Chrono got 20 skills as well. The difference between other classes and rev is that other classes got second set of utility skills in F keys while we swap kits. Thats all.

Rev came out with energy on wep skills for one simple reason – they came off with lower cd’s compared to other classes. However since all these nerfs that happened revenant doesnt really have shorter cd’s than other classes but they still cost energy for no reason. For me its unacceptable situation. Either lower cd’s to what they originally were or get rid of energy cost already.

Why do Revs have energy and cooldown costs? I’ve answered this a few times, the short answer is balance. The skills should be balanced at a cost that lets you use a reasonable amount of different skills for your rotations while not being too spammable for what they do.

With just energy, the more powerful a skill the higher the cost. If you had a powerful skill with no cool down it would be used consecutively until your energy runs out leading to auto attack spam after that.

With just cooldown, the more powerful a skill the higher the cooldown, as it is with most other professions, not counting thief weapon skills.

With both, a skill can be powerful without a massive energy cost as it also has a cooldown. Thus you can use it in your rotation without tanking your energy.

So basically that’s the idea, to allow Arena net to balance skills to be useful but not overly costly or spammable. The balance is far from perfect though, the biggest two issues i hear about being CoR being too cheap/spammable and PT costing an excessive amount of energy.

Burtnik.5218:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Do you support removal of energy cost from weapon skills? And if so, are you willing to accept an increase in utility skill energy costs to compensate?

As if utilities didnt cost tons of energy already. Also news from last min.. we dont really have more skills than other classes. For example Chrono got 20 skills as well. The difference between other classes and rev is that other classes got second set of utility skills in F keys while we swap kits. Thats all.

Rev came out with energy on wep skills for one simple reason – they came off with lower cd’s compared to other classes. However since all these nerfs that happened revenant doesnt really have shorter cd’s than other classes but they still cost energy for no reason. For me its unacceptable situation. Either lower cd’s to what they originally were or get rid of energy cost already.

Despite the increase in weapon cooldowns over time, Rev still remains competitive. I suspect the removal of energy costs from weapon skills would make Rev OP unless other changes were made. Further, I think the increase in weapon skill cooldown over time is largely independent of energy costs but rather is due to the fact that Rev can swap weapons, which permits chaining of powerful skills on one weapon into those of another. I previously proposed a removal of weapon swap combined with the addition of dual auto-attacks (like spear) to maintain versatility – a change such as this would permit significant reductions in weapon skill cooldown.

Euthymias.7984:

fluidmonolith.3584:

I see this question a lot. I have a big concern that is generally not addressed though.

If energy costs were removed from weapons, our energy would only be spent on utility skills. I expect that for the base Revenant legends, utility skill costs would need to increase to balance the removal of weapon skill energy cost. Also, Glint would become incredibly boring to play, and possibly broken.

So my question for other players: Do you support removal of energy cost from weapon skills? And if so, are you willing to accept an increase in utility skill energy costs to compensate?

>Phase Travel already costs 35 Energy
>IO is an -10 upkeep
>Jade Winds is 50 energy
>Riposting Shadows is 30 energy

Shiro wont need an energy increase tbh. If anything, its current costs would be fine without the burden of Weapon Skill energy.

>Pain Absorbsion is 35 energy
>Banish Enchantment is 20 energy
>Unyielding Anguish is 30 energy

Mallyx’s costs seem fine as is. At MOST I could see BE increase to 25.

Jalis and Ventari would benefit from this as well, and their costs seem reasonable without weapon energy tacked onto them.
Glint would be mostly unaffected anyway, since its nature as an Upkeep means that once the active’s used up, it’ll start building up energy again while its in CD if the others dont leave you in the negative anyway.

I know some utility skill costs have increased over time (Phase Traversal…). But despite these continual nerfs, Rev still remains competitive. I hate the Phase Traversal changes as much as anyone else, but I still use Shiro and Phase Traveral a lot. IMO, Mallyx is also still very competitive. So I still claim that removal of weapon energy costs would necessitate an increase in energy costs for utility skills (or some other type of balance). There are some exceptions, primarily in weak Jalis or Ventari skills. For example, I never touch Inspiring Reinforcement anymore since HoT beta nerfs. But Shiro and Mallyx, in my opinion, are competitive right now, so removal of weapon skill energy may cause their utilities to become more expensive.

And a final point that I am still concerned about – if weapon skill energy costs were removed, Glint would become broken and horribly boring. Players could maintain perma might and fury and essentially ignore touching their utility skills while spamming weapon skills off cooldown. Even if facet upkeeps were increased to balance, the gameplay for Glint without weapon skill costs would still be incredibly boring, IMO.

I understand everyone’s concern about high weapon skill cooldowns combined with energy cost – but Rev seems pretty balanced right now and I just don’t see how weapon energy costs can be removed without some sort of re-balancing somewhere else.

I still say the energy system itself needs and overhaul to make it actually interesting to use. As it stands there is little difference between energy and initiative (thief). Both resources passively regenerate over time. The thing is at least Thief has skills and traits that fundamentally alter their playstyle and allow them to gain more initiative through smart play. Revenant doesn’t. Revenant just auto attacks all day until their energy comes back.

Because not having cooldowns was apparently OP so they had to revert their original idea of them being purely energy dependent and add cooldowns. ;s

Could be worse though. Originally Rev was going to have no weapon swapping. But I started getting bored of Revenant still because even with that they just didn’t have much build diversity with their limited amount of weapons and uncustomizable legends.

Xenon.4537:

…Revenant just auto attacks all day until their energy comes back.

And this is how you know you’re seeing a bad revenant. If there is a revenant just sitting there auto-attacking (i.e. not switching legends and using utilities), then they’re just doing it wrong. You should never be waiting for your energy to come back as a revenant; instead, simply switch legends when you run out of energy to attack.

The reason that’s often given is that our weapon skills have lower cool downs to compensate for the energy costs. Let’s be real our cool downs aren’t that much lower.

I would rather have slightly longer cool downs to be honest. At least then I would actually use the weapons skills. I almost never use my weapon skills because the energy is better spent on the utility skills/upkeeps. So I basically spend 90% of my time auto-attacking which isn’t that fun.

And I swap legends constantly. Even with swapping there is no where even near enough energy. 1-2 weapon skills will completely drain your bar depending on what you use. You are much better off using the upkeeps (quickness, hammers, boons, etc.)

They should just delete weapons skills 2-5 – I doubt most folks would even notice.