Guild Wars 2

Okay, so, I’ve been playing around with staff-Ventari for a good long while now. The main thing that I’ve noticed is that it’s lacking, which makes sense given that it’s a beta.

The auto-attack is amazingly pretty and beautiful. At first it felt rather slow, but after a good chunk of time playing it seemed to speed up for some reason? I’m wondering if someone made the cast time shorter The whirl finisher I get with it is nice as well. As for the baubles I spawn when traited, why is there an internal combo on picking these up? And why don’t I get told how long that is?

[Punishing Sweep]‘s animation reminds me of one of the gemstore sickles :P It’s very satisfying being able to whack something while it’s using a skill, get off [Debilitating Slam] and then making the enemy rather useless. I just wish I got an interrupt to go along with it…

[Warding Rift] is amazing and I love it to bits. Go blocking!

[Renewing Wave] is really rather underwhelming. It’s animated like a blast finisher, similar to the banner placements, but does nothing of the sort. It has no damage whatsoever, and its healing and condi clear are meh at best for its 14sec cooldown.

[Surge of the Mists], important! I don’t care bout no walls nor obstacles, like how fiery gs used to be. But I can knock-back things, and darn is it fun to headbutt.

My heal skill…. Okay, as for my tablet I dislike the channeling I have to do to get it to move. I spend enough time trying to figure out where to put it, making me spend more to actually put it there is a bit mean. The healing while it passes you is nice indeed, but as I said I spend enough time trying to position it…

[Protective Solace] Ahhh the dome. It would be a good idea to tell me that it’s a light field! I would also love it if it gave me an extra boon of some-sort…. or pulsed extra healing?

[Natural Harmony] combo’s amazingly well with [Warding Rift]. Wish that it healed for a bit more but eh.

[Purifying Essence] isn’t something that I’ve really used all that much because I’m silly and I keep forgetting to… Mainly because I have it in my head (Even though this is false) that my tablet hitting me in the face counts as a condi-clear.

[Energy Expulsion]… This doesn’t do enough for me. The only reason I have to actually use it is when I’m switching back over the legend that I’m using for damage, in this case, Jalis. Otherwise I’m simply left with little baubles that I’m forced to go chase around to heal myself, (Which is made worse by the fact that I don’t know where they’re going to end up!) and that’s it. I get far more out of simply leaving my tablet there…. Now I do understand that I could be running the trait that dazes, but I need that healing.

All in all, now that I know how to actually use Ventari and Jalis with a decent amount of skill, I can pretty much keep myself from dying. Once I get low on health, switch to Ventari and use my healing skill to get the tablet up. Use the upkeep skill asap, and hit myself in the face with it a bunch of times. Or, if I’m really low, [warding mists] and [natural harmony]. Now to figure out how to apply that skillset to my allies and I’ll be set!

Well…. there was my thought dump of a feedback.

tl;dr, Ventari feels like its missing some things, a tooltip needs to tell me it’s a combo field, it’s very pretty, and oh god I can recover from almost anything!!

Just a small note, you can start Natural Harmony while the tablet is in motion, meaning that you can get it to dump it’s healing at the point you send it to the second it gets there. Team mates are going to need to adjust to the tablet’s position though; it’s not that hard to place it correctly as long as they know how to stay still, run in straight lines, or to move toward the tablet when they’re low on health or they see it starting to do it’s charge up animation, but it’s pretty hard to hit people if they’re moving erratically. Also, the trait that creates fragments whenever you use any of the Ventari skills does provide a lot of extra healing.

Energy Expulsion’s big thing is it’s a CC, so using it will interrupt skill use. It’s instant cast, so you can use it while the tablet is in motion as well.

Also, moving the tablet does count as a heal, so anything that procs off of healing will activate when you move the tablet, at least as often as it’s ICD allows; so you can blind in an area around you every two seconds if you take Blinding Truths, or if you’re running something like Runes of Dwayna, you can get maintainable regen.

The Ventari legend seems like it’s telling me to be a full time healer with no damage output (literally none of the Ventari skills does base damage). However we’ve been told time and time again there is no trinity in this game.

Ventari seems like it can be good as an “off legend” to heal you up in case Mallyx is making you die or something but I don’t think is has much purpose on its own. The meta might change to require more healing but the game itself is just not designed around a full time healer which is what Ventari wants you to be. It doesn’t make much sense to me what the purpose of this legend is.

Zerker meta groups or not, no one wants a full time healer in their dungeon group that is outputting auto attack Cleric gear damage.

I love staff / Ventari. I settled on Cleric/Traveler armour, Cleric/Celestial trinkets and an Assassin staff with Air+Fire sigils. Sustain is excellent, though staff damage is poor and relied heavily on the additional punch of sigil procs.

I took it to the Silverwastes to heal critical NPCs and players and it did a solid job at forts, in the Breach and at Vinewrath to heal carriers.

In Frostgorge Sound I was able to tank any of the champions with ease, save the underwater ones.

I had a lot of fun today with Kol Skullsmasher in Harathi, supporting a couple of other players. The on-demand projectile dome negated his boulders and triple-attack with clever positioning, meaning all I had to dodgeroll was the main stomp attack. The boulders were actually being flung at another player, so I moved the tablet to be in the way and just activated the shield for a second or two at a time. I’m finding all sorts of fun uses for the tablet and it’s really unique.

Overall the staff and tablet are a ton of fun. It does feel a lot like playing a traditional MMO healer (particularly the druid/warden from DAoC were coming to mind) in that I could slowly grind mobs into dust while healing and cleaning like crazy.

If I could highlight just one gripe, it’s that the lack of weapon swap makes the class too narrow in their scope. The staff is very low dps and melee, which is too restrictive by itself.

How do u get the ventari tablet up?

How do u get the ventari staff and tablet up?

I agree for the most part. I love the staff animations and the general idea of staff. However, if this is your only weapon you get to use…I have no idea why you would ever want to rely sololy on staff. Healing is such a minor part of this game and not that great on staff anyway. Mostly staff feels like your a martial arts master trying to kill things with a pool noodle. No thanks.

I been using cleric gear with runes of dwayna on it (karma gear from orr)….moving tablet triggers the 6 set bonus which means that would effect other runes like this…the possibilities. But sadly there is no way to access what I need to properly optimize my rev healer to test better so I cannot really comment on the effectiveness of going pure healer quite yet. Darned beta limitations sucks for testing. Grr…

As to staff, I spend most the time just slamming skill 1 for the healing orbs it produces and end up just micro managing the tablet most the time. Staff: Skill 2 is totally worthless energy waster, skill 3 can be ok but it’s too long cd with too short duration imo, skill 4 is pure awesome <3, and skill 5 is only good as a movement spell. The latter also makes the rev the new knock back troll; rangers, you now have competition for h8.

I find that if you play as a healer rev, your game play is extremely narrow with little choices; hit 1 over and over for orbs/micro manage tablet/occasionaly hit skill 4 when its needed/off cd. I can’t switch legends either since that auto nukes the tablet…only reason I would switch is to use the elite skill and that’s it. Class lacks synergy and most importantly choices…other than traits, there is zero ways to customize the class and that sucks. Also being limited to only one weapon means I spam 1, a lot and that’s it. Yawn.

Other issues: being healer has same issues as my other healers…it is extremely hard to get credit for loots/events even though I am providing some serious support, no instead I am punished for it; pure dps gets all the glory. And one other thing that bugs me is a staff rev is a melee only with no range options at all which means…you can’t do 50% the content or more and that is bad…infact I dare call it game breaking.

Adamantium.3682:

The Ventari legend seems like it’s telling me to be a full time healer with no damage output (literally none of the Ventari skills does base damage).

You still have a weapon though – other professions have the choice of having primarily defensive utility skills too (and defensive utility skills are often more useful). Sure, you’re likely to be doing less overall damage in ventari stance, but this is akin to an elementalist swapping to water: you do it when the support is what the team needs, then swap back when you want more damage.

The aim was not to have a completely trinity-less game, but a “soft trinity” where roles were not fixed to professions and where some professions could even switch roles on the fly in combat. Ventari is compatible with this.

draxynnic.3719:

Adamantium.3682:

The Ventari legend seems like it’s telling me to be a full time healer with no damage output (literally none of the Ventari skills does base damage).

You still have a weapon though – other professions have the choice of having primarily defensive utility skills too (and defensive utility skills are often more useful). Sure, you’re likely to be doing less overall damage in ventari stance, but this is akin to an elementalist swapping to water: you do it when the support is what the team needs, then swap back when you want more damage.

The aim was not to have a completely trinity-less game, but a “soft trinity” where roles were not fixed to professions and where some professions could even switch roles on the fly in combat. Ventari is compatible with this.

Staff skills cost kitten energy. Thats over half your energy there alone. leaving less than half for tablet skills.

so its a either or situation currently.

Like I suggested, Staff need to come down to 35 energy max. Right now Mace/Axe is far superior in every aspect except the tiny heals of staff which are very weak compared to blast finishers.

In PvP and WvW, I wouldn’t touch the staff as a Ventari revenant; I see no reason to use it when playing as a fairly squishy healer with so much % outgoing healing and no self-heal. The hammer seems like a far better choice to me since it allows the user to stay at long-range, and its projectile finisher auto-attack shot through Protective Solace’s light field is an easy source of cleansing spam.

What I believe would improve the Ventari skills without changing functionality would be to make all skills (except for the elite) have no casting time. The Ventari’s tablet is essentially a pet. Unlike other pets (Guardian’s Spirit Weapons, Ranger’s pets and Spirits, Engineer’s Turrets, and Necromancer’s Minions), it requires the player to stop all weapon actions to move around. The idea of Ventari’s tablet is awesome, but taking a few seconds to interrupt your attacks just to move a tablet into a better location is a bit annoying.

As for the staff, I never really compared the damage with other weapons. The main upset I have with the staff is its second ability. Most chain skills don’t require you to be at risk for taking damage. Mesmer’s Illusionary Counter and Illusionary Riposte block an incoming attack preventing harmful effects while providing an excellent effect. The Revenant’s staff requires the opponent to be acting which more likely than not will result in you being in harms way. The follow up effect applies weakness for a few seconds, and the overall cooldown is quite low. However, I can’t help but feel the pay-off is mediocre when considering the risk the Revenant potentially in for an attack that doesn’t apply much damage or a prolonged effect. This, in my opinion, is the only skill on the staff needing a buff.

like somebody suggested in another thread, simply make Staff 2 into a skill that resets if enemy is using a skill.

This would give Staff Revs a way to output damage at the trade off of AA heals..

One possibility for staff skill 2 could be to have it grant protection or aegis to the rev if the conditional triggers – that would grant them some defense against the hit that might be about to land in return.

Knighthonor.4061:

draxynnic.3719:

Adamantium.3682:

The Ventari legend seems like it’s telling me to be a full time healer with no damage output (literally none of the Ventari skills does base damage).

You still have a weapon though – other professions have the choice of having primarily defensive utility skills too (and defensive utility skills are often more useful). Sure, you’re likely to be doing less overall damage in ventari stance, but this is akin to an elementalist swapping to water: you do it when the support is what the team needs, then swap back when you want more damage.

The aim was not to have a completely trinity-less game, but a “soft trinity” where roles were not fixed to professions and where some professions could even switch roles on the fly in combat. Ventari is compatible with this.

Staff skills cost kitten energy. Thats over half your energy there alone. leaving less than half for tablet skills.

so its a either or situation currently.

Like I suggested, Staff need to come down to 35 energy max. Right now Mace/Axe is far superior in every aspect except the tiny heals of staff which are very weak compared to blast finishers.

I was thinking about Ventari on any weapon there, not the staff specifically.

That said, when I was playing I didn’t notice the staff having much more energy problems than the other weapons. The higher skills do have more energy requirements, but also longer recharge, and in general the staff seems to be less reliant on energy-using skills than the other weapons. Hammer and mace need their energy-using skills to get their damage – for staff, the additional skills are more like additional utility skills (block and blind, heal and condi removal) than part of a DPS rotation.