Guild Wars 2

There have been a lot of proposed reworks for the Renegade, because everyone agrees it needs something, but I’d just like to try and keep everyone within a reasonable proposal. Some things they are almost certain to never do with the spec. They are unlikely to completely change the core nature of the Utilities, for example.

The Shortbow will be the weapon, and the visuals will likely stay at least mostly unchanged. They might change one or two if absolutely necessary (3 seems the likliest candidate).

The Utilities will involve summoning ghost charr in some capacity. What they do is more flexible.

Now what can they change? They can change any numbers they want, causing attacks to do more/less damage, take more/less energy, longer/shorter CDs, longer/shorter range, etc.

They can swap/add/remove boons/condis from an ability. They can make an ability that grants Poison instead grant Bleeds, or both, or neither. They can make an ability that grants Might instead grant Fury, or both, or neither.

These would be easy to do (although might take a while to balance out).

Now the trickier thing is to change the actual nature of an ability, like to make the summoned Charr behave differently. This might be possible, it depends on how they’re set up. It might be impossible to make them more mobile and active, or perhaps that’s doable.

Scrap utilities, they are horrible. Doesnt matter if regenage has to be delayes or whatever, they cant ship it in current state or gg. And as for the shortbow.. its needs utility and kiting tools.

Sorry, those are the Utilities you’re getting, and really don’t expect any major changes by launch, if they commit to anything big, it’ll probably be months after launch. But really, these will be the same Utilities, thematically, that you’ll see in a year or two. These are the Renegade Utilities. Now, that doesn’t mean they can’t tweak them, perhaps significantly. They can change what they do, they can change the timing of them, the costs, the range, they could make them far more useful, but don’t expect anything completely different from this.

I dont except anything, i simply wont purchase xpac. Vote with wallet. Proper spec or no $.

I dont except anything, i simply wont purchase xpac. Vote with wallet. Proper spec or no $.

Ok, that’s fine. The number of players they will lose over the Renegade being bad is outrageously small. They are not afraid of losing you. Don’t expect them to be.

They do, however, want to make a fun game, so they will try to make something that works in a way that players enjoy, but that goal has to be something they can reasonably achieve, and “start over, try again,” just isn’t happening.

Or they can simply give a breakbar to the things that are summoned instead of a lifebar. When the breakbar is removed, so is the summoned being. This way there is counter play but it stay usable almost everywhere. With scaling it could even live a bit in wvw zergs.

Ohoni.6057:

They do, however, want to make a fun game, so they will try to make something that works in a way that players enjoy, but that goal has to be something they can reasonably achieve, and “start over, try again,” just isn’t happening.

I’m not very worried in that aspect, I mean: I never liked the Ventari legend, so after the HoT release never use it; currently is viable in low level PvP matches in public games but I still refuse to use it.

I have no plans to use Kalla, I have 2 Revenants, one will be stick to power builds while the other will run the Renegade traitline + sb and either mace + axe or staff for a while, but not Kalla. If the short bow keeps underperforming then I’ll swap to the classic condi Rev lev. For me Ventari, Kalla (and Jalis to some extent) have the same interest as the spirit weapons or the signets from Guardians: I just don’t play that crap. They can up the Kalla numbers and turn all the utilities into a 100k damage nuke and still I won’t be interested in that pulpy char. Even the animations (which are praised by some players) looks to me way below what other classes (as Firebrand) got.

What I’m most interested about the expansion is the ability to fight the new specs with my core Rev/Herald. I bought the basic edition instead of the advanced ones because as a Revenant there’snt too much to be excited about. I was for crafting Chuka but after the beta I changed my opinion and now I’m either going for the legendary armor in PvP or the Shining Blade (despite I already have Bolt). They messed up this spec, badly: I’m not interested into play a Spirit Ranger with a bad short bow. A corrupted quaggan has more appeal (and is more cute)…

Or they can simply give a breakbar to the things that are summoned instead of a lifebar. When the breakbar is removed, so is the summoned being. This way there is counter play but it stay usable almost everywhere. With scaling it could even live a bit in wvw zergs.

Interesting idea to it. I’m not positive that would suit their purposes for PvE, since enemies can’t focus down breakbars, but it might be interesting in PvP, and maybe they could either have it be easier to break in PvE or just not worry about it.

Even the animations (which are praised by some players) looks to me way below what other classes (as Firebrand) got.

You, sir, do not have a Dreamer.

They messed up this spec, badly: I’m not interested into play a Spirit Ranger with a bad short bow. A corrupted quaggan has more appeal (and is more cute)…

Yeah, I mean I’m not looking forward to the class in its current state, but I don’t believe it’s completely hopeless. I think there are small numbers tweaks they can do as a start, and then commit to some slightly larger changes over the first balance patch, but I would never expect anything too massive.

Buran.3796:

What I’m most interested about the expansion is the ability to fight the new specs with my core Rev/Herald. I bought the basic edition instead of the advanced ones because as a Revenant there’snt too much to be excited about. I was for crafting Chuka but after the beta I changed my opinion and now I’m either going for the legendary armor in PvP or the Shining Blade (despite I already have Bolt). They messed up this spec, badly: I’m not interested into play a Spirit Ranger with a bad short bow. A corrupted quaggan has more appeal (and is more cute)…

I hear you 100%… And then I think about how most of the new specs are insane condi-bomb burst specs with a ridiculous amount of boon removal and I die inside.

I agree the spec is not completely hopeless. I’d strongly advocate changes in some areas; other changes would be nice but not essential. Breaking it down:

Citadel Orders & Kalla’s Fervour: Good potential. I posted a suggestion after the first playable for these abilities which I still stand by so I won’t rehash that specific suggestion here. Instead I will say if the skills merely had their energy costs removed and cooldowns increased then F3 & F4 would have enough synergy to be praiseworthy.

Utilities: Good potential. Something needs to be done about the vulnerability of these summons to unavoidable damage/CC – I’d KISS and suggest invulnerability, but immunity to damage + a breakbar might also work. Function-wise Razorclaw, Darkrazor and Soulcleave are already where they need to be (I do hope that Anet doesn’t nerf Soulcleave to 1 proc per sec or we’ll be in real trouble). Icerazor’s Ire is fine as a power weapon and Breakrazor as group healing. To make Icerazor a viable condition weapon and to double down on the support aspect of these wells Anet could consider making them all combo fields as follows:

• Breakrazor – water field (more group healing)
• Razorclaw – EDITpoison ethereal field (more condition damage, ethereal would have more synergy with Soucleave’s blasts than poison)
• Icerazor – ice field, projectiles are now 20% combo finishers (condition damage via abyssal chill)
• Darkrazor – smoke field (blinds and stealth)
• Soulcleave – no field, pulses a blast finisher every 3 seconds (so as to combo rather than interfere with other spirits).

Weapon: Limited potential. The biggest problems as I see them are that skills 2 and 3 compete with other more interesting skills for the role of mid-long ranged DPS; that skill 1 (although useful) is really boring; and that the weapon as a whole does not offer enough utility or theme to compensate for this. This is just a rough draft, but my current thoughts for an overhaul are as follows:

• Remove Shattershot (skill 1).
• Bloodbane Path (skill 2) becomes the new skill 1. Remove cooldown and energy costs accordingly. Hitting with Bloodbane Path does not break stealth. Pierce is now baseline.
• Sevenshot (skill 3) becomes the new skill 2. Damage is now bleed instead of torment. Each hit reduces the cooldown of Golghein by 1 second. Reduce energy cost to 5, increase cooldown to 7.
• Scorchrazor (skill 5) becomes the new skill 3. Inflicts knockback instead of knockdown. Each hit reduces the cooldown of Golghein by 2 seconds. Reduce energy cost to 15.
• Spiritcrush remains skill 4. Pulses poison instead of slow and functions as a guardian-style ward skill once formed. Foes who attempt to move out of the area suffer more poison/burning in addition to the knockback and will reduce the cooldown of Golgheim by 3 seconds. Increase cooldown to 10. Hitting with Spiritcrush does not break stealth.
• Golghein is the new skill 5. No energy cost, cooldown somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds. 900 range ground target shadowstep that stealths for 3 seconds.
• Heartpiercer no longer grants piercing to shortbow skills.
• Sudden Reversal now provides 3 seconds of Stealth when triggered in addition to its other effects.

Basically this overhaul would theme the weapon around ambush play. Golghein is the setup skill for the other abilities, allowing the renegade to get in position or disengage from a target. Once in position Spiritcrush can be used to hold a target in place and makes it easier to land Sevenshot for a DPS payoff. Scorchrazor is now a tool to maintain distance and can bounce foes into the ward from Spiritcrush for more cooldown. Autoattacks can now be used in stealth without giving away your position to further reinforce the theme. The more foes you are up against the faster the cooldown on Golghein – this gives an outnumbered Renegade a better chance to disengage.

Traits: Lives up to their potential, would only need a little tweaking to support any changes to the other areas of the class.

I don’t really care about Renegade since I don’t like the concept very much. At this point I’d prefer a buff to core Revenant, so both Renegade and Herald become reasonable again.

The Legend looks decently fun to me, if somewhat situational. Seems like it benefits groups more, particularly if paired with Vampiric Aura necromancers.