Guild Wars 2

Roy, as I imagine you’ve likely seen the complaints about the changes that have come up, but really, it seems to lead to a bigger question:

Why do we have both energy AND cool downs?

Thieves don’t have cool downs for their weapon skills. Granted, it’s just their weapon skills, but still, it seems to me that the skills should be balanced around energy, and energy management, rather than cool downs.

The reason I say this is, honestly, the cool downs effect my skill usage much more than the energy cost does in most cases. There are some exceptions: for example, using Unyielding Anguish to teleport around and effectively speeding my movement. Another is the upkeep skills: the upkeep skills DO effect the rest of my skill usage due to energy.

However, it seems to me that energy should be the primary management here. I understand if some skills are too powerful, but still, having some skills with 20+ second cool downs, why bother with energy in those cases?

I’ve already suggested that you could have some kind of tax that increases a specific skill’s energy cost when being spammed, and that tax bleeds off. Others have suggested increased energy cost. You know, something.

But with heavy cool downs, energy only ends up making a difference when using maintained abilities; and really, not everyone is using Glint. I’m not. I’m using Jalis and Mallyx, with a total of three maintained skills that I don’t use in every circumstance.

I just ask you to please look at this and consider reducing or removing the cool downs in favor of an energy management strategy that this class was supposed to be using anyway.

Thanks.

Anyone agree? disagree? LOL

I realize calling on a dev to respond usually doesn’t amount to much, but Roy has been a LOT better than most other devs in responding to us over things. I am hoping this might be one of those times.

Regardless, I think a lot of you had been agreeing, seeing the other posts. Am I wrong?

Youre not wrong but what we are supposed to say?

Burtnik.5218:

Youre not wrong but what we are supposed to say?

“Roy, we need you, come save us!”

I dunno. What I do know is if there is ENOUGH of an outcry, they do respond. For two examples, Revenants now have weapon swap, and Elite Specs now require 250 instead of 400 hero points.

If I’m the lone voice in the crowd, then nothing will change. If most revenant players agree with the sentiment, and we continue to discuss it, maybe we have a chance of getting an adjustment made.

I posted this in another thread, but I will repost it here since it’s more relevant to your topic.

Regarding utility skills
I don’t mind short cooldowns on utility skills in principle, because they are generally just implemented to prevent spamming of otherwise powerful skills in short succession. In other words, a 5 second cooldown on a utility that costs 20+ energy still feels primarily energy-limited, to me, while a 20 second cooldown would feel more limited by the cooldown. That’s just my opinon, of course.

However, to truly get at the core of the issue, I think we need to ask how long can utility cooldowns be before they break the theme of the Revenant? E.g. is a 1 second cooldown okay? 3 seconds? 5? 10?
Again, personally I think a few seconds (probably around 5 at most) is acceptable without breaking the theme of the Revenant.

Regarding weapon skills
Could we remove cooldowns on weapon skills and use energy alone to regulate them? Probably. But I’m not sure it would be worth the cost. For example, how much would Shield 5 have to be nerfed if the cooldown was removed? Or, alternatively, maybe they could just make it cost 50 energy, but then you’d never be able to use it in an emergency.

It seems easy to compare Revenant weapon skills to thief weapon skills and say “We don’t need weapon cooldown because Thieves don’t have them.” But because Revenant uses energy for utility skills too, they can’t afford to use all their energy on weapon skills. Thieves, however, can afford to dump 30-40% of their initiative into a single use of a weapon skill and still have utility skills available. I think the best balance for Revenant weapon skills is short cooldowns (e.g. 2-15 seconds) and low to moderate energy costs (e.g. 5-30). Just like with utility skills, a cooldown means a particularly potent ability can’t be spammed (like Shield #5). And this is good for us because it means we can have potent abilities. On the other side, lower energy costs means it’s hard to lock yourself out of weapon skills (because that would probably not be fun).

In summary
You will see that I am treating weapon skills and utility skills differently here. This differentiation allows weapon skills to be used frequently while utility skills are more selective. It is probably possible to give all skills (weapon and utility alike) the same treatment, but we’d probably find ourselves locked out of weapon skills more often (due to high energy costs) and we’d spend a lot of time auto-attacking. I’m not sure if we want that.

Sure. I’ve suggested it before, but I think some kind of energy tax mechanism would work great here. You know, something like first time you use a skill, it casts, then adds some number to its next cast, but that second number counts down by 1 every second.

So for instance, maybe an attack skill that isnt too bad, say it has a tax of 3; maybe a heal skill, being a heal skill, has a tax of 50; and a fairly powerful utility has a tax of like 25. Maybe Jade Winds has a tax of 75

then it would remove 1 pt of tax every second. Jade winds becomes usable again in 50 seconds, at the cost of 100 energy

Ok, maybe thats too much, but you get the basic idea. I’m not trying to throw out actual numbers to work with, just the basic idea.

I mean, having an energy mechanism that charges 20 energy AND a 25 second cool down seems kinda silly, as well as against the general idea that we’ve seen with the revenant.

I’m not saying my particular idea would work. But something that would at least put the management of skills in the energy department instead of the cool down department I think would be nice.

I only think the very long cooldowns are silly (like staff 5) given how rapidly we use up energy; In a vacuum perhaps it would be too strong if it had say 4 sec cooldown, but in actual combat you have so many ways to spend the energy that any weapon skill mostly becomes a filler before you swap stance, or else if you camp a stance you’re still conserving as needed. In that way energy already functions as the general cooldown buffer it is.

The only time I could see it break is if you did go with a 0 Cd and if one weapon skill would trump almost all the benefits you could get with that energy on its own. Let’s use staff #5 again as an example, and in that example it would simply do more damage than everything else, including things like impossible odds or glint facets. In that case it’d feel broken. So i’m not sure if the removal of cds, while it’d feel more natural, would be worth the potential headache considering the amount of skills the energy fuels. Remember initiative isn’t as all-encompassing for thief, they typically use utilities standalone.

i would like to see reductions on the longest though, 10 seconds or so I think should be the very max for a weaponskill.

Morfedel.4165:

Sure. I’ve suggested it before, but I think some kind of energy tax mechanism would work great here. You know, something like first time you use a skill, it casts, then adds some number to its next cast, but that second number counts down by 1 every second.

So for instance, maybe an attack skill that isnt too bad, say it has a tax of 3; maybe a heal skill, being a heal skill, has a tax of 50; and a fairly powerful utility has a tax of like 25. Maybe Jade Winds has a tax of 75

then it would remove 1 pt of tax every second. Jade winds becomes usable again in 50 seconds, at the cost of 100 energy

Ok, maybe thats too much, but you get the basic idea. I’m not trying to throw out actual numbers to work with, just the basic idea.

I mean, having an energy mechanism that charges 20 energy AND a 25 second cool down seems kinda silly, as well as against the general idea that we’ve seen with the revenant.

I’m not saying my particular idea would work. But something that would at least put the management of skills in the energy department instead of the cool down department I think would be nice.

This method sounds to me like it would solve the problem. I just have one concern, and that is transparency / usability.

For example, right now I know that Phase Traversal will cost 20 energy every single time I use it. But with a tax system like this, let’s say I used Phase Traversal at time t=0, and that the energy cost increases by 20 per use, then declines by 1 per second to a minimum of 20. So 10 seconds after using it the first time (t=10), it costs 30 energy. So maybe I use it again. Now it goes up to 50 energy for the next use. Let’s say, 8 seconds later, t=18, I want to use Phase Traversal a third time but I see that it’s greyed out on my UI because I don’t have enough energy. I can glance at my energy bar and see that I’m at 40 energy. But unless I hover my mouse over the Phase Traversal skill icon, I have no idea how much Phase Traversal will cost, unless I have been mentally keeping track of the time and the frequency of use.

The problem is that I don’t know how much Phase Traversal costs now, and therefore I don’t know how long it will be until I can use it. If it were 2 seconds, maybe I’ll wait and pool some energy. But what if it’s 6 seconds? Maybe I can’t afford to wait 6 seconds on it, so I’d rather use something else. But I won’t know unless I look at the tooltip. And it gets worse…Let’s say I do look at the tooltip AND at my energy bar. I see that I’m at 5 energy now and Phase Traversal costs 29 energy right now. How long do I have to wait in order to use it? I can’t just use the normal 5 energy/second math because my energy is increasing while the cost of the ability simultaneously decreases. Effectively, I need to wait atleast 3 seconds because the minimum energy cost is 20. But in that 3 seconds, the cooldown will have been reduced to 26. On the fourth second, my energy goes up to 25, while the cooldown also comes down to 25, so I can use it. But do I really want to try to do that calculation in the middle of a hectic fight?

This seems a bit unwieldy. I’m sure it’s possible to modify the UI to show real-time energy costs, but even then it still requires more time spent staring at the UI and less time looking at the action, because I would need to constantly see how much energy my skills cost AND how much energy I have.

So it is a cool idea and I do think it would work, but I also think it would make Revenant too complicated to play.

Edit: What if we take your idea and make it simpler / more transparent? All Revenant skill cooldowns go away (some skills would need to be redesigned), and instead they have three tiers of energy costs and a related cooldown. When you use a skill, it’s energy cost doubles and the skill icon changes color (e.g. to green) to indicate that you’ve used it once. A cooldown is displayed on the icon as if it were a normal skill. If you use the skill again while it’s green, you’ll pay the increased energy cost and then it will move up to the next tier. The skill icon changes color again (let’s say now it’s yellow), and the cooldown starts over. If you use it again now, it has triple the normal energy cost. Using it now will make it red (tier three) at quadruple the normal energy cost. Each time you use the ability at tier three, it will remain at tier three and the cooldown will refresh. Each time the cooldown finishes, the ability comes down one tier. An example:

Phase Traversal
Tier 0 cost – 20 energy
Cooldown – 5 seconds
Tier 1 (green) cost – 40 energy
Tier 2 (yellow) cost – 60 energy
Tier 3 (red) cost – 80 energy

So if I use Phase Traversal once, it costs 20 energy and turns green, and if I use it again within 5 seconds of the first use, it costs 40 energy and turns yellow. Now I’ll have to wait for two cooldowns (10 seconds) for it to return to green (5 seconds) and then normal (at 10 seconds).

This method would be much easier for me to glance at the UI and know what’s going on. Of course, it would still require a pretty big redesign so I doubt it would ever happen. But it’s a fun thought experiment.

Take a look at many of the mmorpgs or mobas in the market, and you’ll see that energy + cooldown is the norm. GW1 had that too.

Usually, energy + cooldown leads to healthier gameplay. Cooldowns are great to prevent players from spamming the same skill over and over. The lack of cooldowns is one of the reasons for why thieves have the reputation of being spammy among non-thieves. Meanwhile, energy is great to prevent players from spamming their entire skill set on cooldown, because using some skills will lock them from using others, forcing strategical decisions, resource management and promoting risk/ reward plays while creating windows of play where “not much happens” (which is very precious time, because that “wasted” time gives the opportunity for players to spend more time reading the battle and observing everything that is happening).

GW2’s combat system is, generally, very spammy. You either spam the same ability over and over with a thief, or spam most of your abilities when out of cooldown with everyone else. This has been especially bad for pvp’s competitive scene, because battles rarely have a climax and rarely give the opportunity for players some resting/ watching time. This is mostly due to the lack of energy management across most classes, because energy management involves spending most of your energy on powerful skills for deadly plays (the climaxes) or put you waiting for you to build up your energy to set those deadly combos (the waiting time). But, as thieves show, energy without cooldowns leads to abusive and mindless rotations that no one likes or respects, like the classic Heartseeker combo.

In that regard, the Revenant is an evolution of GW2’s combat system.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Take a look at many of the mmorpgs or mobas in the market, and you’ll see that energy + cooldown is the norm. GW1 had that too.

Usually, energy + cooldown leads to healthier gameplay. Cooldowns are great to prevent players from spamming the same skill over and over. The lack of cooldowns is one of the reasons for why thieves have the reputation of being spammy among non-thieves. Meanwhile, energy is great to prevent players from spamming their entire skill set on cooldown, because using some skills will lock them from using others, forcing strategical decisions, resource management and promoting risk/ reward plays while creating windows of play where “not much happens” (which is very precious time, because that “wasted” time gives the opportunity for players to spend more time reading the battle and observing everything that is happening).

GW2’s combat system is, generally, very spammy. You either spam the same ability over and over with a thief, or spam most of your abilities when out of cooldown with everyone else. This has been especially bad for pvp’s competitive scene, because battles rarely have a climax and rarely give the opportunity for players some resting/ watching time. This is mostly due to the lack of energy management across most classes, because energy management involves spending most of your energy on powerful skills for deadly plays (the climaxes) or put you waiting for you to build up your energy to set those deadly combos (the waiting time). But, as thieves show, energy without cooldowns leads to abusive and mindless rotations that no one likes or respects, like the classic Heartseeker combo.

In that regard, the Revenant is an evolution of GW2’s combat system.

Except that’s not how it’s been working, at least for me. And the only time energy has ever been issued for me was when I was maintaining abilities, if I wasn’t maintaining them I wasn’t really slowed down by anything except cooldowns.

Although admittedly, maybe it would be a different story if I was doing more toggling between the two legends I will spend a couple of days testing that and see if my opinion changes.

I have found, so far, that if I am using Glint, and especially if I am activating the facet actives, energy is pretty much a non-issue. I think others have said as well that Glint seems to play like any other the other professions (primarily cooldown-limited), and under many scenarios I agree. Though it isn’t true if you’re leaving facet passives on, especially if you have more than one turned on, or are using the elite facet. When energy pips drop to 0, +1, or sometimes +2, I am much more cognizant of energy.