Guild Wars 2

So when you look at Shared Empowerment and it’s 1 second ICD, you’d think that with very careful skill activation, you could hit the 1s ICD every time on the 3s pulse of your facets, essentially making the most out of it and getting the full stacks.

Wrong

Unfortunately, either by design or accident, this is not possible due to the current way your facets pulse, you will only get the might once every 3 seconds, even if you have absolutely perfect activation.

This is due to the fact that all your facets pulse at the exact same time. Try it out. Activate your facet of Light around halfway to Elements “running out”. They will both pulse together. Now, I don’t pretend to understand how the coding for this works, but it seriously hinders the skillcap of this class.

A player with much better timing should be able to get double or even triple the might of a player who just activates all their facets at the same time.

I see two possible solutions to this.

Solution One

Give facets independent pulses. This will allow for a higher skillcap and allow better players to generate more might for themselves and there team. Your average player could possibly pull around 50% trigger for SE, with an exceptional player hitting all 3 ICDs with their Facets.

Solution Two

Pulse facets every second. This will simply cause SE to trigger every single pulse and result in all players getting the most out of this trait and their facets. While this lowers this skillcap, it does provide a nice buff to the class that I personally wouldn’t be complaining about. I haven’t done the math but I get the impression this would also lower the ability of players to gain extremely high uptimes on their buffs (I can maintain 50s of Fury with rage runes and Nature without even trying).

Either way, I see this as a very, very powerful trait for the Revenant that I’d love to see fixed. At the moment it’s just a free ~90 power for using a single facet which is extremely boring.

Yeah, I pointed this out too when the trait itself was announced. Another solution may be giving it an independent cd for every different boon (so 3s cd for protection, 3s cd for fury and so on). This way if you have 3 active facets you get 3 might.

Kidel.2057:

Yeah, I pointed this out too when the trait itself was announced. Another solution may be giving it an independent cd for every different boon (so 3s cd for protection, 3s cd for fury and so on). This way if you have 3 active facets you get 3 might.

That’s pretty much what Solution One encompasses. Give each Facet/Boon an independent ICD so that with careful play you basically get the 1 might every second or 3 might every 3 seconds.

But is it fun gameplay to activate facets 1 second apart to get this bonus? It seems like the type of static MMO multitasking that GW2 was trying to avoid (e.g. it seems like it adds complexity for the sake of complexity rather than to promote dynamic gameplay). Well, that’s my opinion anyways, so feel free to disagree.

I would rather see Shared Empowerment have a 3 sec cd to match the facet interval, but increase the might (stacks or duration) from Shared Empowerment appropriately.

I had the same issue when trying to activate 3 facets with 1 sec apart from each other. I notice that Elements and Light work the way they’re supposed to, but if you add Darkness or Strength the SE effect doesn’t double. I didn’t try with Chaos, but maybe the Utility (7, 8 and 9) share the boon application. If that is the case, Roy should take a look at because it’s definitely a bug.

isn’t it just easier to change the trait for a 3 sec cooldown and giving 3 stacks?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There are other ways you can get boons besides facets.

I apologize I didn’t understand that response. Did it address the OP’s points and I’m missing your point (sorry if that’s the case) or was that a somewhat evasive response?

Orion Templar.4589:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There are other ways you can get boons besides facets.

I apologize I didn’t understand that response. Did it address the OP’s points and I’m missing your point (sorry if that’s the case) or was that a somewhat evasive response?

I guess it means that if you want to proc it more often (get the most out of it as OP wants), you can apply boons with something else than a facet

Looks like its working as intended. You’re only supposed to get free activations from facet pulsing once per three seconds. Which seems pretty reasonable really. babysitting turning on each facet at exactly the right millisecond would be a horrible mechanic.

There would probably be implications to the skill’s effects were you able to proc it effortlessly, I believe that’s what Roy is saying.

Seems like he’s insinuating that the trait should also be considered useful outside of Dragon stance.

Yeah, the idea is that facets don’t completely drive this trait, you use a mix of facets and other skills and allies to make the most of the trait. I support that. Its not like we cant stack might, seems okay.

That too. You could put a Superior Sigil of Strength on your weapon and enjoy its benefits even without Glint.

I see what you all mean. Thanks! I at first thought his answer was being evasive, but I now see what he meant.

Changing the way facets tick for Share Empowerment will just get it nerfed. Currently, with Facet of Nature, Facet of Strength and a rune set like Strength you get 12 stacks of permanent might. Just increase the ICD to 3 seconds and call it a day.

Sarmach.1547:

Changing the way facets tick for Share Empowerment will just get it nerfed. Currently, with Facet of Nature, Facet of Strength and a rune set like Strength you get 12 stacks of permanent might. Just increase the ICD to 3 seconds and call it a day.

It doesn’t need a change. It is fine as it is.

That wouldn’t be rewarding. There’s too much Might as is. In group combat in HoT it will be hard not to be at max might, especially in raids were a high skill cap can actually be put to use. It also really limits decision making when it comes to when to activate things. I don’t think they want to set the class up for a playstyle where you ignore most of the mechanics within your Facets and merely activate them as some sort of Might beacon. They want you to be activating Facets as needed while fighting against an energy bar basically, but if you make Share Empowerment something people are activating those skills to trigger then they basically stop fighting the energy bar, or they’re fighting the energy bar while they’re trying to rotate the skills for a purpose other than the actual design of the skill.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There are other ways you can get boons besides facets.

The hidden 1 second cooldown is going to make that strategy very unreliable. You’re not exactly going to waste a skill or a dodge to apply boons just for the sake of this trait, and those may very well happen while the trait is in cooldown. It may be pretty cool on regen/ prot ventari and jalis stability, but you’ll always have to manage a hidden cooldown to maximize it, which no one will do it at the heat of battle.

I think GW2 needs new trait cooldown technology to allow you developers to do the following:
This trait can only proc up to X times every Y seconds.

This would give you power to design cool traits like those without forcing the player to manage and get drowned by hidden/ invisible cooldowns. It’s a lot more intuitive that way.

This kind of technology could do wonders not only for this trait, but for many others. For example, there was this time where you had nerfed elementalist’s GM water cleansing-on-regen trait by adding it a cooldown. That cooldown single-handely made one of the most interesting and synergic ele traits into something clumsy and unreliable. When you reverted that change back a time later, the trait could shine again. But with better CD technology, like the one I’ve mentioned, you would have the freedom to put cooldowns on synergic traits without destroying their synergy.

In general, any trait that asks the player to make an entire build around it is more enticing when it lacks cooldowns or features flexible “you can proc this that many times until cooldown” tech. The fact that a flat, traditional, rigid cooldown exists in this trait “for the sake of balance” effectictively makes what could have been a very enticing build-me-around-it effect into what it currently is a unfun “manage hidden cooldowns in your head and hope to get it right” playstyle.