Guild Wars 2

“Boons: The duration-based boons Protection, Quickness, Regeneration, Resistance, Retaliation, and Vigor will now only stack up to 5 times instead of 9.”

“Naturalistic Resonance: Boon-duration increase has been reduced from 50% to 33%.”

I have two questions for people at Anet and perhaps my old friend Karl might be able to help out a brother :P with this predicament. If the Revenant’s main job is to be both damage and support, how are they supposed to function in this current meta is they can do neither vary well anymore?

Okay so this is my main reasoning for the above question – Might stacking no longer works (could be bugged due to a duration issue? Has this also had the duration 9 to 5 rule applied to it also? Because it was not stated). Revenants can no longer independently stack might to 25 anymore it seems to stop at around 14. That is with out weapon sigils. Which goes against a lot of the trait lines also making them pointless.

Additionally support builds focused on healing can no longer do as much regeneration as prior to the patch because of the changes made to natural resonance reduction to 33%. You do note that regen had its duration increased but that does not take into consideration the difference that was made by the boon increase from resonance. Yes i also see that there was a comment that an eye would be kept on the effectiveness of the changes. But to me it seems a bit to heavy handed already and may need to be reverted or it could turn many people who have invested time and money into making specific builds away from the game.

Might doesn’t have 5 stack cap. Or else you won’t even achieve 14 stacks. I’m not sure how you achieve 25 stacks of might independently.…

• shared empowerment + facet of strength can only achieve 14 stacks max in 100% boon duration, this is the same pre and post patch.
• UA can add 5 stacks of might for 16s in 100% boon duration, but it’s widely consider as dps loss compare to auto-attack even if you have nice might stack number. This is on 12s CD.
• Activating facet of nature is 3 stacks of might for 12s in 100% boon duration. This is on 25s CD and is still not recommended unless you must.

In all cases I feel like there is a misinformation here. Mathematically you cannot consistently maintain 25 might stack independently (or achieve it for few seconds following 2 UA and facet of nature). Even if you try to pursue it you’ll have significant dps loss due to lost opportunity of more damaging auto-attacks. Your past perceived 25 stacks of might is most likely due to mesmer’s Signet of Inspiration, which does share stacks and effectively multiply 14 by 2. Now it won’t share stacks so you can only achieve what rev done best in its own highest dps rotations, roughly 14 stacks.

You can still achieve other boons permanently in herald without much effort. Since facets do pulse 3s boons every 3s. Essentially herald playstyle hasn’t change one bit, you pop facets and just auto-attack. That 16% duration decrease is only noticeable if you pop facets’ active form which is not recommended in group setting unless you really have to (eg dying and must pop facet of light).

Don’t worry, PS warriors will still be OP at might stacking anyways.

I thought heralds were able to 25 stack with strength runes and sigil of strength in the past?

Yes if you have sigil of strength it is not hard to get 25 might since each proc gives 16-20s might (depend on if you have food or not). But you can’t share that sigil might and OP stated without weapon sigils.

In actual raid/fractal scenario in the past, it is more or less a waste of sigil spot since rev/mes combo can give 25 might without weapon sigils. Now just have one PS warrior (power preferred) and you’ll never have to worry about might, probably can even save that upkeep cost on facet of strength.

The true thing that hurts rev presence in raid is, ironically, the mesmer’s signet of inspiration. Without its might share and with the quickness cap, it is now impossible for mes/rev combo to keep quickness and might on majority of members in 10-men party. So optimal build shifted towards 1 mes in each 5 men party as a mirror comp (2 mes total), and rev becomes obsolete when that duration demand is reduced.

Despite it means rev is not the optimal choice in raid, that doesn’t mean rev is terrible though. Any one who just pick up rev and has a good build can still consistently pump out 25k dps. Since all you do is auto-attack you can easily focus on boss mechanics as well. A bad ele who can’t get rotations right can drop his potential dps from 35k all the way down to 20k, not to mention engi with even higher skill floor. So personally I still feel rev is the top 4 pick in terms of dps.

And I still use rev consistently in T4 fractal due to amount of utility it brings. Ventari on furnace/uncategorised, mallyx on Mai Trin, Shiro on hard hitting vets during cliffside and UB. Rev still provides a lot of support without losing on the dps as oppose to say druid, though I won’t deny that condi druid is rising in presence.