Among the Legends of the revenant in the past BWE we have seen 3 useful, fun and higly playable stances (Mallyx, Shiro, Glint) and 2 stances that feel weak and unfinished(Jalis, Ventari). With the changes announced for Mallyx the Demon Stance is threatened to join the weakish ones but this is already being discussed in many threads here so i will not add to it in this thread, instead i want to Focus on Jalis aka the Dwarf and drop some thoughts on what could be done so that he can feel as unique and exciting as Mallyx used to be and Glint and Shiro are.
Dwarf Stance
The Dwarf stance is aimed to give you a tanky feeling aiming for a kind of bruiser gameplay taking hits for allies throwing yourself into the line of fire and outsustaining the enemy by not taking as much damage as others would in the same position.
Many skills on the Dwarf are very well put into this context:
Soothing Stone is a very decent heal and with the added condi remove a good choice for a tanky feel
Vengeful Hammers have become an expensive but still useful upkeep skill that allows for aoe damage while increasing your own damage reduction
Rite of the Great Dwarf is basicly teamprotection “+1” with it´s 50% reduced damage and fits the legend well, however it still seems off that you can just launch or knockback Stone Statues easily and this skill would deserve to spread some aoe stability to allies as well (3 to 5 stacks for 5 seconds – same as stone duration) especially since the high casting time makes it hard to use this skill, the rewards should be greater
So despite these nice skills, why are so few people using this stance?
A Tanky kind of play is not really wanted anywhere in PvE so you will find the dwarf only in PvP or WvW and many might feel a lack of synergy with other legends as Shiro(assasin) or Mallyx(demon) require gear that does not go well with the dwarven tanky approach. Among the weapons the Hammer seems like a good fit for the dwarf but since it is a ranged weapon it is not quite as suitable for a tanky playstyle as it seems but the main reason why it is not used there is a lack of crowdcontrol
The CC is really the main point about why the dwarf feels wrong! A tank without crowd control can not protect his allies in a meaningful way and the dwarf offers very little in this regard. His only hard CC is the forced engagement which is single target, hard to hit in WvW and PvP and has a high energy cost, even with the announced reduction to 35 energy and apparently Roy is unhappy with it as well:
“A lot of you thought Forced Engagement was too high of a cost for a single target control skill, and I agree! But, I can’t allow you to use it back to back or else it creates bad chain controlling situations so there is an added recharge as well.” quoted from upcoming Revenant changes for BWE3
Otherwise the dwarven utilities offer no hard or soft CC so you are forced to work with FE and the limited weapons CC only.
What to do about it
Forced enegagment in it´s current form looks something like this:
Launch a chain at your target. When the chain connects with a foe, it slows and taunts them.
Damage: 184
Involuntarily attack foes. Taunt (2s): Involuntarily attack foes.
Skills and actions are slower. Slow (2s): Skills and actions are slower.
Range: 1,200
in this form seems it seems like a very expensive generic CC that will probably be stopped by a random blind, block or dodge in PvP/WvW anyway. To make it (and the dwarf) special you could make it look like this:
Launch a chain at your target. When the chain connects with a foe, periodically apply conditions
Duration 3-5s (Interval 1s)
Taunt(1s)
Self Taunt(1s)
Range 600
Energy 35-50
20-30s cooldown
Can be cancelled via “end engagement” which will also stunbreak you
or possibly set this up as an upkeep skill with self taunt and -10 Energy reg
This skill would be very strong without making you to powerful in any situations as you make yourself very vulnerable when using it relying on your tanky gear and utilities to keep u alive during this time. It would also much more accurately reflect a “forced engagement” with the aspect of taunting both players. Combine this with adding an immobilise or stun effect on Inspiring Reinforcements which would fit nicely with the animation of getting “stoneroaded” and the dwarf would have the CC you would expect of a tank. Making the dwarf highly viable as a supporter/tank on soldier or celestial gear by helping set up kills for your team and impeding your enemies