Guild Wars 2

Cyninja.2954:

Varezenem.2813:

midnight tea.3681:

Would it be fairly accurate to say that it’s not so much the across-the-board nerfs in itself that has Revenant players up in arms, but that they’re being applied to a class that’s still only half-functional?

It’s like we were bleeding out on the sidewalk and the much-anticipated ambulance stopped, the paramedics got out and just kicked us in the head before climbing back in and driving off.

Whether the nerfs were justified or not (I’m mostly too casual to accurately assess) I honestly can’t blame the rev community for feeling more than a bit salty about this.

That’s a valid comparison.

Let’s see:

- no racial skills usable
- underwater combat is an afterthought (as in we can barely make do)
- terrible customisation options (due to class design)
- 2 useless legends from a total of 5 (4 if you look at the base class only)
- a LOT of bugs in class skills

Yup, checks out.

Also this heavy bias towards spvp in argumentation. Great, revenants were top tier, some of the 9 classes always will be due to the competative nature of the game (guess it’s thiefs turn now again). What about pve revenants? All they had going for was auto attack damage and boonbot. Conditions were not even on the radar.

While some form of nerfs and changes were justified. The extent of the nerfs coupled with literally 0 changes or fixes to the class while at the same time other classes were way overbuffed or unchanged (see Thief, Necro, Warrior) leaves a very bitter taste.

It leaves the player with the impression that arenanet are only focused on short term solutions that favor mixing up the spvp meta for their new found loveball that is spvp (a game mode that was and still is being shuned by a majority of the playerbase) instead of actual class design and balance.

To be fair warrior needed a lot of changes. Especially berserker because it was widely considered a joke since the expac hit.

Though I’m not sure it needed the changes it got, I really haven’t played mine since then.

I’d be much less upset with the changes if they’d actually gone and fixed some of the numerous issues and bugs with the class, and maybe touched up on the widely unused half of its skills and traits.

Also, using the same logic to nerf Rev sword autoattack and then buff Thief autoattacks is absolutely asinine.

So now after taking a break from the game lets take a closer look at the “balance” patch and what it actually did to revenant. A “quick” review at the changes affecting rev directly and indirectly;

• Finish Them” Finishers: The stomping effect will no longer be time-scaled through effects like quickness and slow.
• Reviving: Reviving characters will no longer be affected by time-scaled effects like quickness and slow.
• Preparation Thrust: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 11%.
• Brutal Blade: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 20%.
• Rift Slash: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 10%.
• Unrelenting Assault: The number of attacks this skill makes has been reduced from 7 to 5. The damage of each strike has been increased by 10%. The strikes from this skill are no longer affected by animation time-scale, as quickness provided no benefit and slow would cause the attack to never hit.
• Precision Strike: This skill has been reworked and will now always fire three projectiles at up to three targets. If fewer than three targets are available, the remainder of the projectiles will be launched at the available targets. The chill duration has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
• Coalescence of Ruin: The recharge of this skill has been increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds. Enemies are now able to be struck by this ability only once every 0.5 seconds.
• Unwavering Avoidance: This trait now has a 5-second internal cooldown.
• Crystal Hibernation: The base healing per level from this skill has been reduced by 36%. This affects Soothing Bastion as well.
• Facet of Light: Activating this facet is no longer instant and now has a casting time of 0.25 seconds.

Now what these changes mean? Lets take a closer look;

• Downed state

Not many people care or even think about this but our downstate got nerfed pretty hard. Our 1 doesnt hit hard, 2 is a single knockback, 3 does.. some more damage than 1 and doesnt help us survive at all. Downed state was balanced with slow in mind and by changes to slow/quickness it lost a lot of it value. It is probably the worst downed state atm.

• Impossible Odds

There are many things that affect this ability indirectly. First is obviously qucikness stomping as its no more possible. Second is quickness rezzing also not possible anymore. Third and main offender is nerf to sword autoattack that makes this ability much weaker as quickness is no longer that huge dps boost it used to be.

• Enchanted Daggers

Its not something i consider a healing skill, it something i consider as huge failure in desing. It feels more like a dps move that can be reflected rather than healing skill. By nerf to UA this ability also got nerfed futher as it lost completely it synergy ith said skill.

• Assassin Annihilator

Also due to lowered UA frame time this skill depending on the posiiton has a chance to proc only one per UA instead of 2 it used to do.

• Sword

The intention of sword to change it into “singling out enemies” is just a joke honestly. Precision strike and Unrelenting Assault works against this concept. Its just so wrong on many levels. But lets stop complain and take deeper look;

While i understand the intention to nerf auto and move damage somewhere as auto was “dealing too much damage” i dont understand why at same time thief autoattack was buffed to deal even more. From logical point it makes absolutely no sense and only show favorism over classes. Both revenant and thief uses resource system. Thief autoattack was buffed so that they can use initiation in defensive manner, but what about revenant? We also need energy to use our defensive abilities and not end up like a sitting duck. With a nerf like that basically forcing us to change playstyle energy needed to use skills should also be lowered as compensation.

Precision strike is a complete joke. A utility skill that is being forced into a dps role for no reason. Not only it scales terrible to do next to 0 damage when someone else show up, it also has to be used in target hitbox due to the amount of bugs it has and how slow projectiles are. This skill was never designed to be a dps move and should have been reworked to melee single target skill to work as intended in “singling out enemies”. Precision strike is not prepared to be our dps move in current state.

Unrelenting Assault nerf is uncalled for and it actually affect 2 mentioned things earlier. While i do understand why it was maker easier to dodge in 1v1 (despite the game claiming to balance around 5v5 not 1v1 but w/e) i am not getting why it was also nerfed damage wise given how easy it has become to avoid it completely. A daredevil or engi can block it every single time in current state due to reworked bandid defense and reduced cd on gear shield. Vs minion necros, rangers, mesmer or gyro scrappers this skill is also completely worthless

• Coalescence of Ruin

Now that one is really funny! Hammer as whole was already useless in spvp due to how terrible it is, in pve it was used to tag mobs and the place where it causes any issues was wvw due to it nature. Thing is its already unreliable skill that tend to bug out a lot and miss even on flat terrain. Certain aoe fields also block this skill by preventing it spread futher as field is kittened kitten man cap. Now also another revenant can nullify my damage bc i used the skill at the same time as him. Are you insane?!

Let me get it straight – instead of reworking skill to either make it a normal reflectable projectile (which also fix the problem with double hit) or ground projectile like tremor which is similiar in concept, also reflectable and doesnt bug due to uneven terrain developers just decided to overnerf the only skill hammer has in the most possible lazy way without compensation whatsoever /facepalm. We ended up that has 4 cd, cost energy, is unreliable, has range penalty (unlike true shot) and also deals lower damage at max range than trueshot? I dont even… like nope. Please delete this weapon and gve me an ranged option for revenant already, for me hammer is dead and revenant was released without ranged weapon.

• Unwavering Avoidance:

Hey man, gm trait in herald line causes rev to have nearly perma stability by dodging, what we will do? Tomorror we will rule the world nerf a trait that doesnt need a nerf, gut core rev some more while at same time force people into herald like never before. Hey mind, youre a mastermind!!! – Pinky

Am i supposed to add anything else here? Maybe i could throw something about logic but meh.. if you nerf such minor trait that causes no issues on it own and even agrees on it nerf then you wont understand at all the issue with that.

• Crystal Hibernation

Back in the beta weeks some people asked to make it a mobile skill but it was explained shorty – if we make it mobile then the healing will have to be drastically reduced. So the skill got nerfed one time already by increasing it cd, and this skill is butchered. Selfroot ability, 3sec channel, 2,5k healing. 0 compensation, nothing at all.

Who in the right mind will pick that up over terrible sword offhand? Was it supposed to force revenants into using sword offhand so the metrics will show “look how sword offhand improved, yeah i know it was always viable but shield was just too strong” kind of thing? There is no reason to pick up a shield, just like hammer it was deleted from revenant kitten nal.

As for the trait, it cd should have been raised up to 40sec long time ago.

• Facet of Light

Im not sure why it was nerfed for second time and what troubles it caused really. It was our only option to survive a focus. We do not have any other options to prevent damage from killing us. 0 condi cleanse, 0 invuls. Lets also not forget that this ability was predicable actually and i dont remember anyone complaining about it for a long time. With the nerf it duration should be reverted back to 4 seconds really.

__
I am personally tired of the “balance” in this game and the prices i have to pay up for the unnecesary weapon swap added due to crying back in the beta weekends. I hope developers will reconsider to remove our weapon swap and revert all the unnecesary nerfs that keep happening. Revenant is in a tight spot in balance as due to weapon swap we can chain more blocks than we intended to be. It most likely also prevent buffing our utility skills to be really stronger than they are now (lookng at rite becoming 100% reduction for rev). Also you should balance elite specs around core classes, not the other way around otherwise in future with more elite specs you will end up having a serious impossible to balance out huge mess. Something to keep in mind.

Posted it here as i think this thread fits it nicely already.

Burtnik.5218:

Very well done review, nice but you should also post it here whenever you can. I hope that at least something gets read by them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/January-26th-Update-Your-feedback/page/8#post5958219

EDIT: Oh nvm you have already done it.
Thanks!

Ya? You should also notice the line about removing weapon swap

Basically the only reason why we got wep swap in the first place was to adapt between melee/ranged but thats a null argument as meta proved. In the end everyone runs full melee on rev let it be raids or spvp. +That makes a rev look like half finished due to only one ranged wep, only one condi set (mace/axe) and only one underwater wep despite having 2 slots there to swap spear to spear..like it makes any sense at all.

Weapons skills was never really balanced with weapon swap in mind, they were designed as standalone sets and i can only imagine futher nerfs in form of raised cd’s etc just for that reason.

Whats with this sword 2 qq? I play against revs and it seems to be landing just fine. Their sustain is still over the top as well.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Whats with this sword 2 qq? I play against revs and it seems to be landing just fine. Their sustain is still over the top as well.

The projectiles are really inconsistent.
They randomly target whatever they feel like, including pets, minions, illusions, boxes, houses, and other random objects.

Not to mention that they can completely miss players if they’re jumping around, running perpendicular to you, or going back and forth.

Our sustain is pretty reliant on just Shield and the opponent screwing up and healing us, so I’d argue you just have to pay attention to beat a Power Revenant. Bringing anti-Block skills would help a lot too since disrupting Shield 5 is almost always a death sentence.
If you’re fighting a Condi Rev (it’s more of a hybrid really), then you’re best bet is boon stripping or big damage spikes (no Glint to fall back on or no Shiro for strong Stun Breaks/Mobility).

Ah well that sucks. It would be pretty lame though if sword 2 specifically sought out players instead of pets/minions though. I mean what would be the point of using an ai build (srs), and why should said skill get special treatment when all projectiles behave that way.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Ah well that sucks. It would be pretty lame though if sword 2 specifically sought out players instead of pets/minions though. I mean what would be the point of using an ai build (srs), and why should said skill get special treatment when all projectiles behave that way.

Give me a projectile attack that doesn’t prioritize your target... We aren’t complaining about body blocking we are complaining about the fact that precision strike chooses its target at random within a 600 radius including indestructible invisible objects... And is slow enough that you would only hit it in meele.

Having them hit pets/minions is understandable. It makes rev sword weak against professions that can carry a lot of those… but revs are necromancer food regardless of minions, so it really mostly matters with mesmers and rangers. And at least when it hits a pet/minion/illusion/whatever, that damage is going somewhere… not where you want it, but it might make a difference in the end. That’s probably working as intended.

Regarding special treatment – I think the issue there is largely because it’s a relatively slow projectile. I’m personally not sure it’s that bad… but I haven’t taken it into PvP yet, and a lot of my experience until recently has been with guardian scepter so that might be tempering my expectations.

Hitting random objects that can’t even be targeted, however, is a serious handicap. I think I had one fly into a bush in PvE while testing out the projectile speed before making this post.

I’ve adjusted to most of the changes, and they haven’t turned out too be all that bad. The Crystal Hibernation nerf still baffles me as devs explained before we got good healing as a trade off to being rooted. It really feels like they went back on their explanation.

Mysticjedi.6053:

I’ve adjusted to most of the changes, and they haven’t turned out too be all that bad. The Crystal Hibernation nerf still baffles me as devs explained before we got good healing as a trade off to being rooted. It really feels like they went back on their explanation.

I would partially agree because crystal hibernation scales reaaally well with healing power (it has a 2.0 modifier). But even for Healing power centric build it was a 25% nerf.

Varezenem.2813:

Give me a projectile attack that doesn’t prioritize your target… We aren’t complaining about body blocking we are complaining about the fact that precision strike chooses its target at random within a 600 radius including indestructible invisible objects… And is slow enough that you would only hit it in meele.

Well best get used to it. At least its not hard to maintain melee with rev.