Guild Wars 2

Timtimtimmaah.4069:

PowerBottom.5796:

Timtimtimmaah.4069:

To all the considering the Mallyx changes to be bad, consider the pre change Legendary Demon Stance:

If you play a Mallyx Rev in any group scenario, you’re gonna be next to useless due to the constant condi clears your own allies give you. Your heal skill won’t do as much and your elite would only pulse out torment.

Well, that’s kinda the mindset that keeps dumbing down the game.

It’s a TEAMGAME. If I play a Rev in a teamsetting with mallyx, I talk to my team so they don’t condi-clear right before I pull the condis on me. Also, maybe the team wouldn’t run shoutgards and Shoutwar and other stuff with mass condi-cleanses.

This game shouldn’t be balanced with random solo-Q’ers in mind, because that doesn’t work.

In a full premade, Mallyx required skill, timing, communication and could be very useful, but it also allowed the opposing team to react to it and punish the rev and/or the team if they don’t set it up and execute it properly.

It was a beautiful skill with great synergies through and through and the fact that ANet now plans on removing it, shows me that they have no clue what they are doing in terms of PvP.

In small group WvW and PvP, sure. That level of communication should be possible. In large scale WvW that’s a lot more difficult to communicate since you’re likely to get pugs. It’s not about catering to “solo-Q’ers”, it’s about being realistic about the current metagame and you will have to deal with pugs.

Well, then your argument doesn’t apply at all, cuz in large scale battles you’ll definitely have enough conditions to pull even with mass removals, since removals have a max number of targets applied skill-fact and the pain absorption radius is so huge, that you’ll defnitely get some condis to pull.

And even if we go the other way and say: well, it will be usless in 1v1’s. Yes, in some 1v1’s, it’ll be mostly useless, but not for example against D/D-Ele’s, which is the Nr. 1 build used for 1v1’s atm.

Also, ppl need to stop to think that everything needs to be good against and at everything. I thought of Mallyx as a great 1v1-build against D/D-Ele’s and as astrong addition to teamfghts against certain compositions. That was IMHO enough to make it a viable option in the current meta.

Besides, since everything costs energy, even without pain absorption and the old elite, you could still be useful and take full advantage of your energy, because every energy you spend is a tradeoff with sth. you didn’t spend your energy on: It’s about maximizing efficiency and from my experience, you really don’t have enough energy to just spam stuff, but you actually have to make a more or less concsious decision for every skill you press.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

That would work. So upping the base damage they get tore up standing still with torment and even more while moving. That would work well with frigid precision, as you could land torment then chill. Or even toss in a fear to send them running

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Roy, glad to hear you are reading all the feedback. I’m assuming you are still reading the feedback and just wanted to reply so that people knew you were paying attention (you’re awesome that way ya’ know). As such, when you really take a deep dive you’ll see it isn’t as much about the power (though EtD does seem rather underwhelming at the moment) what people are generally upset about is that one of the most unique and interesting mechanics of Mallyx was removed and replaced with a rather bland torment spammer.

Before, it had a true risk/reward play style and although a majority of the players would never realize it’s potential (and it isn’t something that would fit EVERY scenario) it was truly fun to play and was a signature of the Revenant (so much so that Mallyx was the first to be revealed and got everybody exited in the first place).

If the group condi-cleanse was truly such a big issue, fine. But please don’t just make Mallyx a boring torment pusher. Give him a true Corrupter feel again, a legend to be feared like the demon once was in GW1. I have made a few suggestions in other threads, but will recap a few (forgive me if you’ve read these already). Others have made some good suggestions too:

Suggestion to make him a Corrupter and once again unique if we can’t have the old Mallyx back.
-Trait/skill that prevented conditions from being cleansed by any source other than a demon skill while in the demon stance (a popular suggestion)

- Trait/Skill that “reflects” conditions back at the person sending them so that they receive what they are trying to send out (with Mallyx’s condition stats applied)

- Trait/Skill that transfers conditions from allies directly to enemies

- Trait/Skill that heals Mallyx for every tick of a condition on him equal to twice that of the actual tick of damage (give me your conditions if you dare!)

- Skill that removes all boons on Mallyx and sends their inverse condition to all enemies within a radius (a true corruption, using his own boons rather than theirs)…I like this one as it seems a very demon-y thing to do “bah, I don’t need boons, but I can corrupt them into a weapon (evil laugh)!”

PowerBottom.5796:

Timtimtimmaah.4069:

PowerBottom.5796:

Timtimtimmaah.4069:

To all the considering the Mallyx changes to be bad, consider the pre change Legendary Demon Stance:

If you play a Mallyx Rev in any group scenario, you’re gonna be next to useless due to the constant condi clears your own allies give you. Your heal skill won’t do as much and your elite would only pulse out torment.

Well, that’s kinda the mindset that keeps dumbing down the game.

It’s a TEAMGAME. If I play a Rev in a teamsetting with mallyx, I talk to my team so they don’t condi-clear right before I pull the condis on me. Also, maybe the team wouldn’t run shoutgards and Shoutwar and other stuff with mass condi-cleanses.

This game shouldn’t be balanced with random solo-Q’ers in mind, because that doesn’t work.

In a full premade, Mallyx required skill, timing, communication and could be very useful, but it also allowed the opposing team to react to it and punish the rev and/or the team if they don’t set it up and execute it properly.

It was a beautiful skill with great synergies through and through and the fact that ANet now plans on removing it, shows me that they have no clue what they are doing in terms of PvP.

In small group WvW and PvP, sure. That level of communication should be possible. In large scale WvW that’s a lot more difficult to communicate since you’re likely to get pugs. It’s not about catering to “solo-Q’ers”, it’s about being realistic about the current metagame and you will have to deal with pugs.

Well, then your argument doesn’t apply at all, cuz in large scale battles you’ll definitely have enough conditions to pull even with mass removals, since removals have a max number of targets applied skill-fact and the pain absorption radius is so huge, that you’ll defnitely get some condis to pull.

And even if we go the other way and say: well, it will be usless in 1v1’s. Yes, in some 1v1’s, it’ll be mostly useless, but not for example against D/D-Ele’s, which is the Nr. 1 build used for 1v1’s atm.

Also, ppl need to stop to think that everything needs to be good against and at everything. I thought of Mallyx as a great 1v1-build against D/D-Ele’s and as astrong addition to teamfghts against certain compositions. That was IMHO enough to make it a viable option in the current meta.

Besides, since everything costs energy, even without pain absorption and the old elite, you could still be useful and take full advantage of your energy, because every energy you spend is a tradeoff with sth. you didn’t spend your energy on: It’s about maximizing efficiency and from my experience, you really don’t have enough energy to just spam stuff, but you actually have to make a more or less concsious decision for every skill you press.

The more I read about the negative feedback on the Mallyx changes, the more I’m starting to swing around to your side. I agree that my WvW argument no longer holds water when considering the abundance of condis constantly being dished out overwhelming cleanse. I read someone saying that the Mallyx stance was too niche but the thing about the Revenant is that it can switch between stances, so it can fill two different roles at once. I can go Glint buff machine or go Mallyx condi glutton anytime I want (maybe not now). Maybe it is too early to say since BW3 isn’t here yet but I think keeping the condi pulsing on the Mallyx Elite along with the current torment buff may be viable and not that OP?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

So the 10 second recharge is a mistake? If yes then good because it would’ve been a crazy nerf.

30e for it sounds good but with no CC part I wonder if it shouldn;t get down to even 25e. But that’s up for testing

Embrace the darkness – Adjusting the upkeep but which way ? -9 -10 or less than -8 ? -8 is too much atm. It’s definitely weaker than it was so it’s warranted to reduce it. Point in case blind every 1 sec was imba

the bold part not moving but WHO? Us or the target? Sounds good but to what level. Mallyx being master of torment maybe make Torment be as strong as bleed when enemy is not moving (instead of weaker than bleed) and do normal torment dmg when target is moving (like it is now). Kinda similar to what Thieves have with +20% poison dmg.

Or did you have in mind something else.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

I’m still going to miss the condi-copy of EtD, but do agree with you on the other changes. Since you really want to keep the Torment aspect, can you think about reducing the energy cost by 1 point? The cost is still a bit too high, even with what you’d like to do with Torment. Also, I think the torment traits sound nice. I’d have to play with it though to see.

Also, can you still rethink the CD’s? I understand the Elites/Heal getting a CD, but some of the other skills I’m still unsure about. What about instead of increased CDs, increasing the Energy cost?

Thanks again for the hard work Roy!

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

It’s a good suggestion but unless torment is going to do as much damage as burning, I’m not sure how viable condi Rev will be in PvE. In PvP, this will be almost useless since everyone is always moving. Only useful on downed bodies I guess. All in all, it will probably never be taken in my opinion.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

…

This sounds fair. I’m still very disappointed that Embrace the Darkness lost the very cool functionality it had with copying conditions. I’m very glad UA is not getting a cooldown, I hope that is not the solution to balance Rev skills moving forward.

Roy you have proved that you deserve a chance to play test the changes and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. If you say Condi Rev has a higher condi generation than before then that is good, it needed it. It can survive condis pretty well but I just don’t feel it had that level of output to be a real threat, especially without Embrace the Darkness transferring now.

I think the Torment trait idea is a great one, especially in Adept tier. You choose between all the resistance you can get from Mallyx skills with Demonic Defiance or choose to be more offensive with better Torment damage (and presumably duration?). Currently even with the Poison trait upgrade I don’t think there’s much of a choice to be made in Adept tier (pending on how the poison trait actually plays of course but losing DD in PvP is often a death sentence…). I think it should combine with the poison trait not replace it because by itself just boosting stationary torment damage is not going to do anything in pvp. Good idea though, I say implement it!

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

With all due respect Roy, but Embrace the Darkness was NEVER about the damage from torment. First of all this skill was basically never used to copy condies in pve because, let’s face it, there’s currently no situation in current pve where you have any more than 2 or 3 condies on you. But still, for any other mode it was amazing at what it did. You can’t just balance skills with only one scenario in mind, “oh your allies MIGHT take condis away from you” is not reasonable enough. Sure, I understand making the skills more baseline so they dont depend on your condies for increased effects but this one? It was the whole point of the skill. Going by this logic all corruption skills on necromancer should be completely revamped, but instead, they got more conditions added to them on the june 23rd patch!
Hearing UA isn’t meant to have a CD alliviates some of my concerns, but EtD was NEVER about the torment it pulsed. Please please please have a deep dive and reconsider this. On a side note, I find it extremely awkward that EtD increases your stats, is there any reason for this? Not complaining, but I’d rather see the stat increase go and have the condi copying back.

Increasing stationary torment damage is a good idea to boost condi revenants in pve btw, could be part of Rampant Vex trait since it synergizes with it. I’m down with that.

So I did get that right. Yes that sounds good and goes along with the theme of master of torment, Realm of Torment Abyddon’s right hand man and so on

I won’t lie. Ever since BWE1 I thought about how hard it will be to balance in PVE mobs that don’t move vs pvp.

If you do bring in that upped dmg vs not moving (but never ever the same as mobing or it’s another bleed) then it even becomes easier to balance between PvE and PvP.

Amd all for it BUT it would’ve to be a MINOR trait so every corruption spec rev has it.

Maybe slap it on GM Minor ? That +33% torment duration one so it’s +33% duration +% dmg when target is not moving (and rename the trait to Realm of Torment)

Previous Embrace the Darkness – Master of Corruption (spread condis, even strong ones like immo and blind which WAS OP somewhat)

Current Embrace the Darkness (and MAllyx) – Master of Torment.

Both are fitting and cool if done right.

Can we have Diabolic Inferno proc every10s (ICD) if we kept channeling it for 10+s? so we don;t have to turn it off + on every 10s with this trait?

PS

Can we have Rampant Vex apply poison instead maybe? So maybe there will be more reason for Venom Enhancements

Roy Cronacher.1576:

One other thing to note in the next beta revenant will have a stolen item for thief. It’ll be basically a more powerful version of Essence Sap.

Why do thief stolen items end up being so strong? I find it hilarious that a thief can fear my necro for 6 seconds and you guys are totally okay with that, but Jade Winds needs a cooldown,

Photinous.4628:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

It’s a good suggestion but unless torment is going to do as much damage as burning, I’m not sure how viable condi Rev will be in PvE. In PvP, this will be almost useless since everyone is always moving. Only useful on downed bodies I guess. All in all, it will probably never be taken in my opinion.

If we really want to make it useful in all areas of play, make a trait “Burning Torment – Whenever you apply Torment, you also apply 2 seconds of burning” give it an internal cooldown if you think it too powerful.

Invictus.1503:

Photinous.4628:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

It’s a good suggestion but unless torment is going to do as much damage as burning, I’m not sure how viable condi Rev will be in PvE. In PvP, this will be almost useless since everyone is always moving. Only useful on downed bodies I guess. All in all, it will probably never be taken in my opinion.

If we really want to make it useful in all areas of play, make a trait “Burning Torment – Whenever you apply Torment, you also apply 2 seconds of burning” give it an internal cooldown if you think it too powerful.

We already have a similar trait with Diablic Inferno, and I’m pretty sure that was meant to be used with EtD since it’s on the corruption line, but since it doesn’t pulse burn, it’s not really that great.
Also revenant has a fairly decent upkeep of burn with Searing Fissure as it can be spammed on CD.

I think lowering the upkeep cost of embrace the darkness is a bad idea.

With the glint’s facet of nature and embrace the darkness, revenants could get the -10 upkeep needed for the glint minor’s 400 armor bonus.

Just bring back the old embrace the darkness and the condi pressure it offered.

Changes look good. Thanks, Roy!

I’ll have to try out the new Mallyx to see how it feels. Making a reduction in upkeep for EtD would certainly be a welcome change now along with the increase in non-moving torment damage.

I still have some concerns about Chaotic Release. It does a lot of things, but it doesn’t seem to do any of them particularly well (in PvE anyway). I didn’t really get a whole lot of use out of it especially when compared with something like Jade Winds.

Nice idea to tweak around torment but since barely no1 is standing still only place is pve and even there targeta should be way more actvie , right? RIGHT?
So here a couple of suggestions:

• we already have plenty of torment and good confusion let’s add something unique since we lost old mallyx
• we have a nice condition that is way underused in game: slow. We cast it on downed AA so we already have it as class. Applications: put in on unyielding anguish instead of torment, so overall the torment stack should be less scary or put it on Embrace the Darkness keeping actual upkeep cost.
  I’d fine with either. What you think?
• alternative that goes well with torment is fear for obvious reasons. You can put it on UA on landing or make a trait “fear foes you torment 2s, 30sCD” or something like that, or even pulse fear on EtD, short duration long interval like 1s every 5s.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I haven’t played Mallyx much (and not since BWE 1) so I didn’t comment on the changes. This gave me an idea, though, to perhaps give a bit more flavor back. Instead of just increasing damage when stationary, what about something that would encourage enemies to move. I’m thinking about the venom trait you just revised. What if hitting X stacks of torment caused a pool of poison at their feet? Just a thought (which might be terrible) for a different feel. I think the CD would have to be lowered for that to be useful (offset by requiring more stacks)

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

Roy, I think the reason people are upset isn’t a power issue, it very well may be that this change does make it more powerful, the reason people are unhappy is because the copying of conditions was a very unique feel that we didn’t get from anything else, and that’s just got changed to just add more torment.

That being said, I will go ahead and give it a try. In the meantime is there anyway you can make runes of torment available for us to test with for this last BWE?

As for your suggestion of a trait increased torment, you might want to consider making that a selectable trait because player versus player style battles characters will be moving a lot anyway, so this might be something more selective, kind of like the falling damage traits, make it where we can select it, or perhaps kind of like that dwarf trait that doubles the effect of taunt against npcs, maybe it could have one effect against players and a different effect against NPCs. But I agree that otherwise torment in a static fight won’t be as impressive.

What about a unique effect, like for example that effect mesmers have that grants them stacking effects of ferocity every time they or an illusion hits with a main hand sword attack? You could have it give stacking effects of condition damage perhaps every time it hits a target that isn’t moving, or perhaps stacking effects of percentage overall damage increase or something like that. That way you get bonuses every time you hit a target that isn’t moving, and the target gets hit for additional torment damage when they are moving. That way it might not necessarily have to be fine-tuned to players vs non-player.

Misguided.5139:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I haven’t played Mallyx much (and not since BWE 1) so I didn’t comment on the changes. This gave me an idea, though, to perhaps give a bit more flavor back. Instead of just increasing damage when stationary, what about something that would encourage enemies to move. I’m thinking about the venom trait you just revised. What if hitting X stacks of torment caused a pool of poison at their feet? Just a thought (which might be terrible) for a different feel. I think the CD would have to be lowered for that to be useful (offset by requiring more stacks)

Actually, that might be cool.

Timtimtimmaah.4069:

The more I read about the negative feedback on the Mallyx changes, the more I’m starting to swing around to your side. I agree that my WvW argument no longer holds water when considering the abundance of condis constantly being dished out overwhelming cleanse. I read someone saying that the Mallyx stance was too niche but the thing about the Revenant is that it can switch between stances, so it can fill two different roles at once. I can go Glint buff machine or go Mallyx condi glutton anytime I want (maybe not now). Maybe it is too early to say since BW3 isn’t here yet but I think keeping the condi pulsing on the Mallyx Elite along with the current torment buff may be viable and not that OP?

Glad to see that there are actually ppl on this board willing to change their mind. ^^

And yes, maybe Mallyx was niche, but as you’ve said, he has another stance and in addition to that, while 2 skills from the demon stance where designed around the opponents actually dishing out enough conditions, 3 of the skills weren’t and at least one of them can still be pretty easily spammed and would still be very useful in teamfights.

Also, being niche isn’t necessarily a bad thing: In the current meta, too many builds just wanna do everything at once and thats to a big part because ppl aren’t used to playing their characters to fit a certain role. Why does every char have to be good at everything? Being niche to a certain degree makes the demon stance stand out and gives it justification in the right team-setup and in the right metagame.

Mallyx was IMHo still good enough in a balanced team to be played against almost all current compositions; yes, you’d probably have to rotate well to be useful enough for a top-tier pick in the current meta, but there were quite a few situations where mallyx could be very useful:

- 1v1 against a D/D-Ele, which is IMHO slightly rev-favoured cuz you simply facetank the burning and reapply it. Also, the condi-removal is very strong. It’s also good against other builds sometimes used i 1v1’s, like burn-guard, nade-engi etc. I had some problems with necros, but it really depends on how well tiemd they use their boonremoval.
- In teamfights against teams that use Nade-Engis, Shoutbow, D/D-Ele’s, Necro’s etc. – which are quite a few teams.
- It’s a quite decent build to kill bunker-guard quickly.

It still had some big enough weaknesses that you’d really have to think where the rev goes and the opposing team had to counter it well, rather than a team with 4 D/D Ele’s where they can basically go wherever they want… -.-°

Let me say here that I think the changes to embrace the darkness are great for 2 reasons:

1. If I’m facing a condi heavy build, I prefer to save my energy for pain absorption to keep resistance uptime high.
2. If I’m facing a zerk heavy build, then old ETD is kinda useless but this new one will be great at spamming torment on mesmers and thieves with generally low condi clear.

Overall perfect change, in my opinion.

Photinous.4628:

Let me say here that I think the changes to embrace the darkness are great for 2 reasons:

1. If I’m facing a condi heavy build, I prefer to save my energy for pain absorption to keep resistance uptime high.
2. If I’m facing a zerk heavy build, then old ETD is kinda useless but this new one will be great at spamming torment on mesmers and thieves with generally low condi clear.

Overall perfect change, in my opinion.

Ooohhh… yeah that will work well against enemies in stealth won’kitten All of a sudden I like that idea a lot more lol

Morfedel.4165:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome…

Roy, I think the reason people are upset isn’t a power issue, it very well may be that this change does make it more powerful, the reason people are unhappy is because the copying of conditions was a very unique feel that we didn’t get from anything else, and that’s just got changed to just add more torment.

This pretty much sums it up. It was unique, it felt good at what it did even if what it did was niche. Slotting Mallyx was a compromise from the begining, you KNEW what kind of playstyle came with it.

Photinous.4628:

Let me say here that I think the changes to embrace the darkness are great for 2 reasons:

1. If I’m facing a condi heavy build, I prefer to save my energy for pain absorption to keep resistance uptime high.
2. If I’m facing a zerk heavy build, then old ETD is kinda useless but this new one will be great at spamming torment on mesmers and thieves with generally low condi clear.

Overall perfect change, in my opinion.

Seems like you didn’t spend much time using Mallyx during BWE2.
1. With Demonic Defiance keeping resistance wasn’t too hard. Use Pain Absorption, pop EtD, demolish them and if the fight went too long you switch legends, cleanse, go back to Mallyx and repeat. I found very little in the way of a condi build holding up to that.
2. Although definitely less useful, it was far from useless as you had self applying conditions from your own skills that fueled EtD. Not to mention, even zerk warriors and the like apply some condies on their normal attacks, which then fueled your EtD while you enhanced the damage with your own stats.

Why not instead change Pulsating Pestilence into something like Into the Abyss that states: While channeling legendary demon Mallyx conditions cannot be cleansed. Demon stance skills cause self torment. Embrace the Darkness now copies conditions to nearby foes.

I think that this type of change would make an amazing Grand Master trait that would bring back some of the old Mallyx style while blending well with the other changes. If it was set as a GM trait it would be an opt-in play style and I love when GM traits change the way the whole build is played.

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

Invictus.1503:

Photinous.4628:

Let me say here that I think the changes to embrace the darkness are great for 2 reasons:

1. If I’m facing a condi heavy build, I prefer to save my energy for pain absorption to keep resistance uptime high.
2. If I’m facing a zerk heavy build, then old ETD is kinda useless but this new one will be great at spamming torment on mesmers and thieves with generally low condi clear.

Overall perfect change, in my opinion.

Seems like you didn’t spend much time using Mallyx during BWE2.
1. With Demonic Defiance keeping resistance wasn’t too hard. Use Pain Absorption, pop EtD, demolish them and if the fight went too long you switch legends, cleanse, go back to Mallyx and repeat. I found very little in the way of a condi build holding up to that.
2. Although definitely less useful, it was far from useless as you had self applying conditions from your own skills that fueled EtD. Not to mention, even zerk warriors and the like apply some condies on their normal attacks, which then fueled your EtD while you enhanced the damage with your own stats.

Not sure why felt you needed to start your post with an insult instead of commenting normally but whatever.

Regarding your comments, sure you could apply your self condis but they did not use your condition duration and were pretty weak anyways. Second, if you are simply relying on demonic defiance together with EtD to survive against a condi build then you will blow all of your energy from EtD very quickly and most likely die in your other legend unless you back off. Staying in Mallyx is pretty important against a condi build.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

That is not really accurate, because torment stacks. In other words by using both skills together, we will be adding much more torment.

Photinous.4628:

Invictus.1503:

Photinous.4628:

Let me say here that I think the changes to embrace the darkness are great for 2 reasons:

1. If I’m facing a condi heavy build, I prefer to save my energy for pain absorption to keep resistance uptime high.
2. If I’m facing a zerk heavy build, then old ETD is kinda useless but this new one will be great at spamming torment on mesmers and thieves with generally low condi clear.

Overall perfect change, in my opinion.

Seems like you didn’t spend much time using Mallyx during BWE2.
1. With Demonic Defiance keeping resistance wasn’t too hard. Use Pain Absorption, pop EtD, demolish them and if the fight went too long you switch legends, cleanse, go back to Mallyx and repeat. I found very little in the way of a condi build holding up to that.
2. Although definitely less useful, it was far from useless as you had self applying conditions from your own skills that fueled EtD. Not to mention, even zerk warriors and the like apply some condies on their normal attacks, which then fueled your EtD while you enhanced the damage with your own stats.

Not sure why felt you needed to start your post with an insult instead of commenting normally but whatever.

Regarding your comments, sure you could apply your self condis but they did not use your condition duration and were pretty weak anyways. Second, if you are simply relying on demonic defiance together with EtD to survive against a condi build then you will blow all of your energy from EtD very quickly and most likely die in your other legend unless you back off. Staying in Mallyx is pretty important against a condi build.

First off, I didn’t mean to be insulting, however looks like my fingers typed out the words too quickly and upon rereading it I see it did come out that way. For that, you have my apologies.

As to the topic, I found that as long as you ran a supportive second legend (Jalis at first, but found Glint complimented well too), when I faced a condi build and had to swap, they gave me survivability before popping back into Malyx pretty quickly (with the extremely low cooldown on legend swaps, getting back is easy). Glint’s heal is amazing in that respect. In all, seems we had rather different experiences and honestly I am going to truly miss the interesting play style that Mallyx offered.

Photinous.4628:

Invictus.1503:

Photinous.4628:

Let me say here that I think the changes to embrace the darkness are great for 2 reasons:

1. If I’m facing a condi heavy build, I prefer to save my energy for pain absorption to keep resistance uptime high.
2. If I’m facing a zerk heavy build, then old ETD is kinda useless but this new one will be great at spamming torment on mesmers and thieves with generally low condi clear.

Overall perfect change, in my opinion.

Seems like you didn’t spend much time using Mallyx during BWE2.
1. With Demonic Defiance keeping resistance wasn’t too hard. Use Pain Absorption, pop EtD, demolish them and if the fight went too long you switch legends, cleanse, go back to Mallyx and repeat. I found very little in the way of a condi build holding up to that.
2. Although definitely less useful, it was far from useless as you had self applying conditions from your own skills that fueled EtD. Not to mention, even zerk warriors and the like apply some condies on their normal attacks, which then fueled your EtD while you enhanced the damage with your own stats.

Not sure why felt you needed to start your post with an insult instead of commenting normally but whatever.

Regarding your comments, sure you could apply your self condis but they did not use your condition duration and were pretty weak anyways. Second, if you are simply relying on demonic defiance together with EtD to survive against a condi build then you will blow all of your energy from EtD very quickly and most likely die in your other legend unless you back off. Staying in Mallyx is pretty important against a condi build.

Well, does the change make the rev more of an allrounder? probably, but why do we need more of that, since every class and every conceivable build is getting pushed into that direction…. -.-°

The old Elite had great synergy, some situations where it was very strong, but also situations where it was almost useless: It was up to you and your team to find the right situations which are suitable for the build.

It was also just harder to use properly for you, your team and harder for the opponent to react to it appropriately: it required actual communication and teamplay – now it’s just another skill that get dumbed down.

Pretty soon, we’ll all have 1 skill only that applies all conditions, removes all boons (and vice-versa for your allies) instarezzes every ally and instakills every enemy while transporting you to any point of the map…. -.-°

In this stage of beta-testing, it should be about creating interesting mechanics and interactions and allowing great team-play and enabling smart counterplay. It shouldn’t be about making everything good in every situation.

My question is about underwater weapons: revenant is going to have 2 of the same type weapons (but 4 different sigils) or you are going to remove second underwater weapon slot (dont think it’s possible) or we have chance to see new type that revenant can use?

Electro.4173:

As it is now, I’d probably rather just keep EtD off permanently, keep my energy recharge high, and rely on Unyielding Anguish for Torment without locking myself out of other stuff with a huge -8 upkeep.

No, you’ll definitely want to do this. The energy cost/cast time per stack of Torment for one (get to use other abilities while applying). Mobility and a field for two and three reasons. Also with increased base duration of Torment 5s in lieu of 4s, lower energy cost to 30 (from 35) and you get a pulsing 1s Chill. Maybe (just maybe) you’ll have energy to use the Elite AFTER all of that but basically it serves the same purpose while Shared Anguish is on cooldown. But I personally want to vary my damage conditions on target (bleed, fire, confusion) as much as possible so it’s a no go on another Torment applying utility.

The revised Elite is now inferior to the revised Shared Anguish utility in every way except a 3/4s cast time.

Time for Embrace the Darkness to give stealth.

Three quick thoughts:

1) Removing the condition transfer on Mallyx was the right move. That said it now removes a significant disincentive to stacking conditions on Rev. I understand that conditions are our weakness, and I honestly love that, but can we get a Mallyx themed way to reduce the incentive to stacking them on us? Perhaps the elite could apply an additional stack of torment for every condition on us? If that is still in conflict with the cleanses then how about psudo-condi-reflect, if a condi is applied to the rev it applies to the caster too?

2) Healing and condi removal aren’t really meta support options right now; the knockback and shield on Ventari are the big reasons to take it. The knockback is fine as it is. If the shield had its upkeep reduced by one or two pips, say -6 instead of -8, it’d allow it a bit of access into the PvE scene without totally unbalancing the WvW scene. In addition, a trait that causes the tablet to teleport to a location instead of travelling would be interesting, perhaps with a misty animation?

3) “What do you all think?” Sure, increased Torment damage is nice. Alternatively, “when a torment application runs out it causes X damage”, forcing opponents to deal with the condition since it is the only one we apply a significant amount of (it also has counter play, there’s no point making us OP).

Morfedel.4165:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

That is not really accurate, because torment stacks. In other words by using both skills together, we will be adding much more torment.

At the cost of virtually all your energy like that.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

Hi, Roy.

I do not doubt that the new Mallyx might be healthier – and possibly stronger – than the old version. My worries are – as other posters have pointed out already – about flavor and uniqueness.

The removal of self-applied conditions? That’s fine, I don’t mind that. I may even enjoy the new version because it seems to be more straightforward/ clear to use. But I ask: did the condi-transfer from the elite also had to go? It would still make sense in the new toolkit, and it would bring back the legend’s uniqueness. Besides, that was very fun to play with.

Would it really be negative for the game if condi-transfer was back to elite? Maybe it would inflate the energy/ cooldown costs, making the skill harder to use for its new intended purpose (torment application)?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

Seems fine, although I’m worried about the lack of counterplay.

Some suggestions about adding trait effects that may make the opponent want to move around (or force them to do so) in order to maximize torment’s effectiveness:

• “If you hit a target with 3 or more stacks of torment, you’ll also taunt them for 1 second (plus something else).” (Revenants have a taunt-enhancing trait, but not enough taunt applications. Taunt synergies well with torment.)
• “When you apply torment to a single target, also apply it on the area at a lower duration. 240 radius”. (Great for pve farming with conditions, but also great in pvp to make players not want to ball together – aka, forcing them to move away from each other as well – aka, taking more damage because they’re moving).
• “Same as above, but creates a torment field instead” (good for combo finishers AND forces players to move away from the field, increasing torment damage from their movement).

What do you think?

I think at the very least we could have a compromise, and change Pulsating Pestilance from a passive, uncontrollable proc, to give EtD’s functionality back. It would require active management, it fits the traitline, and it’s objectively better than just a passive proc you can’t control. I don’t Revenants to be another passive class like warriors please.

EtD’s condition transfer effect being back through a grandmaster trait is also an idea that I like very much. No need to inflate energy costs because it would come at the cost of a grandmaster trait, and it would be optional so players would only pick it for the most fitting situations.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.

First, It’s awesome to get so much back & forth with you Roy. Just know that it is appreciated.

As for Embrace the Darkness… I have a middle-of-the-road suggestion for you. What do you think of the following?

For each second that EtD is active, add a new condition to be spread (all short duration).
- Torment
- Bleed
- Poison
- Burning
- Confusion
- Cripple
- Chill
- Slow

So the longer you have it running, the more powerful it becomes. But if you do this, you may have to increase the upkeep to 10. You may even have to reduce the target cap to 3 or something… At the very least you can remove the flat stat increase. Anyway, you get the idea.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

My thoughts:

-I love the shield fixes very excited to try them out!
-I enjoyed the old displacement with unyielding anguish BUT it hurt your own teams dps/melee dps so I think this change is good. Mainly with the no cd! =)
-Embrace the darkness did have times where it didn’t work as well as others so I’m leery but will embrace the change, hopefully the energy degen gets lowered to maybe -5ish.
-A trait to increase torment damage would be fantastic/the problem I have is Demonic Defiance is kind of required to be able to deal with any conditions, So basically you have to take this and the other minor traits don’t matter. I almost feel like Demonic Defiance should be a minor master trait and set in stone for the legend. (but maybe its just me). That way you can pick the one you like among the others.

Questions/concerns

-With Unrelenting Assault fix does this mean it now works when the enemy is against a wall?
-Also what about Vengeful Hammers against walls?
-What about some of the hammer terrain issues?

-One main concern is with Pain Absorption. What is the point of this skill now that you can’t send condition damage back to enemies with elite? In just about every example I can think of using this skill will get you killed or hurt. (where as before it was in order to deal more dps but now it doesn’t?). I guess I just can’t see someone intentionally using this skill when they have no way to cleanse themselves of the conditions when resistance ends. I guess overall I’m just wondering if this skill will be addressed/changed?

Thanks for all the great changes! Keep at it! Looking forward to the responses!

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Snipped the rest of the post.

This is why I have faith in you. However still raises concerns. I felt that Mallyx was the ‘’Fight fire with fire’’ legend. Because of the new changes I feel it’s just another ‘’apply condition and bunker it out build’’.

Unyielding Anquish had different issues other than disorienting for players, it bypassed stabo (which it should not) and bypasses defiance in PvE (which it should not) and was capless on target which again should not behave like that.

I still vouch for putting displacement on the initial hit and then pulsing torment. Just because we need a way to knock stuff out of a certain range. (Decapping nodes, stop stomp/rezzing.

Embrace of Darkness needs to be reverted. By the looks of the new changes we already have a massive amount of torment available to us. Why add another elite on top of it that pulses more torment?

I also want to note that we have had two Beta weekends to test out the Revenant and Mallyx. You and your team have followed feedback of two weekends on completely changing mechanics based on the new experiences of players using Mallyx in a team composition. What i’m saying here is that people may not have found a way to work with Mallyx Revenant stacking conditions on themselves yet. This is a l2p issue not a dev2change issue.

Personally I have had zero issues using Mallyx and allies condi clearing me. I feel the choice to mechanically change our Demon Monkey stance may have been somewhat rushed.

Mallyx is the most fun legends and is in my opinion the best you have created in terms of functionality. i.e. Fight Fire with Fire, Condi with condi!

Please reconsider some of your changes.

Most of these changes are great however about mallyx.
Couldn’t pulsating pestilence be changed to “As long as you are channeling mallyx.All conditions cleansed on you are converted to boons. Periodically copy the boons on you as conditions to foes 240 radius.”? That way condi removal would be a positive experience again.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

While I am skeptical about the mallyx changes I will say that the upkeep cost of Embrace the Darkness needs to be reduced to 5 or 6, since 8 is too much for an effect thats not that amazing. Maybe also have Embrace the Darkness pulse boon removal instead of the useless 10% stat boost.

For corruption, I think a new minor trait boosting the power of torment would be helpful, however the first minor trait should be replaced instead of the second. On crit procs for conditions are immensely weak, and downright useless in Carrion or Settler amulet builds, which are the best amulets for condition builds in general. Additionally, Opportune Extraction is a very good trait, and with most of the elite specializations adding more boon dependence to the game (tempest/herald/reaper/chronomancer especially) it would be healthier for the game to have more boon removal rather than less. In fact, I’m disapointed that none of the new HoT content besides Mallyx/Corruption is featuring boon removal, since there isn’t enough boon hate in the game unless you dedicate all of your mesmer or necromancer build to it.

What if the new torment trait made it so torment did more damage on non-moving targets than moving targets (while still keeping the moving target values the same), so it could change people’s ideas about counterplay? That might be kind of cruelly overpowered though.

Regarding Dwarven Battle Training: this trait is 100% Grandmaster-Tier worthy. I recommend its place be swapped with reflexive summon, since otherwise, NO ONE would ever take Eye for an Eye in its merged state over Dwarven Battle Training, since Eye for Eye’s cooldown ruins it. Also while Redeeming Protection was basically a clone of the Engineer trait Protection Injection, I can see your reasoning for merging the trait, but it just makes it useless when another trait gives damage reduction (although easier to counter due to condi removal) and utility in the same tier. Also with herald, Redeeming Protection was probably too strong, since perma-protection was very easy to achieve. Using weakness for low cooldown damage reduction gives more counterplay.

tl:dr- We need MORE boon removal across the board, not less in this game.

A new torment trait would be great, but not at the expense of a boon removal trait.

Dwarven Battle Training is a GM-worthy trait.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

What I think is that this fix to torment should not be class specific.

Torment and confusion, and to a lesser extent even bleeding, are vastly undervalued conditions in PvE right now.

Why? Because burning condition specs completely eclipsed/displaced them.

You have classes like necromancer and mesmer who will essentially never build for conditions because while initially bleeding was intended to overcome burning with higher stacks, that is no longer the case and burning outperforms bleeding in every way.

So condition spec engineers and to a lesser extent rangers and guardians completely dwarf classes like necromancer/mesmer/revenant because those classes are stuck with torment/confusion, both of which are REALLY WEAK in PvE, and the necromancer in particular with bleeding.

Please don’t fix torment/confusion just for revenants. Fix it for every class so it’s a desirable condition in all game formats. It’s time engineers stop reigning supreme in condition damage.

Shave down the scaling formula for burning and add that damage into bleeding/confusion/torment/poison so that when stacked enough these conditions outpace burning.

Right now the necessary investment in condition damage for these weaker conditions doesn’t even match the returns that a celestial engineer/ele can even achieve on their own with burning….

Griffith.7238:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

Your posts literally blow my mind. You seem to be the most unreasonable person in this entire forum. I get that you are upset that Mallyx lost a lot of flavor I am too ,but some of the things you say are just completely void of logic. There are plenty of reasons to use EtD. Reason 1 EtD will be vastly superior to UA on any target that is moving period. You can move out of UA as long as the Rev is near you you cannot move out of EtD. EtD also provides a 10% stat increase where as UA provides chill. They both have their uses and EtD is definitely still deserving of being called an Elite. Please control your rage and use logic when you type.

A stack of torment per second is worth an elite? Are you serious? I am not even gonna continue this conversation with you lol

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

Depending on the team support condition builds can be really BAD and can unbalance the game too much. That’s why they’re relegated in a game mode but strong in others.

Currently in PvE outside of condition engineer most builds are just used for casual play or soloing, the resons? doing competitive damage compared to Power DPS builds while keeping party support in a balanced way can’t be achieved, and they can get absurdly STRONG in PvP/WvW, if you want to make decent PvE condition builds they CRAVE not only condition stacking but also a ton of condition diversity availeable and most builds need to sacrifice all of the team support for the damage they can get with the exception of condition Engineer as a lot of it’s support comes from the combo fields it can give to the party and the skill diversity it has access to, currently condition engineer in a best case scenario can do 14k DPS, that’s around 2 k more than a condition Ranger and around 3-4k less than a condition warrior, all the other PvE Condition builds sit around 7-9k DPS with a ramp uptime of 12-15 seconds, and best case scenario situations: food, sinister ascended gear and perfect skill rotations, if you run Malyx you would be forced to run Corruption and to run party support you need Herald (otherwise you’re locked to pure DPS with no party support unless you run Ventari active Healing is not as good as having blind, protection and weakness uptime, you can just ask your ele to put up some water fields and blast them on demand) and you’re sacrificing either Invocation or Devastation, devastation is a great loss due to Assassin’s Pressence being a great party support skill specially because you can generate permanent fury uptime, prescinding of Invocation leaves out a decent ammount of crit chance for yourself which translates into a net loss of personal damage, and since now conditions are affected by critical damage this can be anything from 5 to 20% damage which is quite significant.

PvP and WvW wise those kind of builds can get out of control and absurdly overpowered if not balanced in the right way mostly because there’s just so much access to condition cleanse and a lot of conditions are spam friendly and getting as high as 2.5k DPS is more than enough to kill a player rapidly if said player has no condition clear (see burn guard and the current state of certain hybrid builds in PvP).

If you want to make a condition based Revenant it just needs more condition diversity, specially because torment and confusion both suck in PvE, however given the right circumstance they can get absrudly strong in PvP/WvW specially if you have 1-2 conditions to spam to cover either torment or confusion while keeping high burn uptime, you need to be careful and keep all of this in mind to keep the profession balanced as much as possible.

With the long wall of text up you could do something about corruption traits like this:

Rampant Vex Critical hits have a chance to cause torment, you have a 5% increased critical hit chance to foes suffering from Torment
Venom Enhancement The chance to apply poison when you apply torment ICD down to 15 instead of 20
Bolstered Anguish won’t even be as effective since your skills do not generate conditions anymore, change that to increased damage per condition on your foe if that’s too overpowered then just change it to a global 7-10% damage to foes suffering from torment
Frigid Precision Weakest trait on corruption whatsoever, as you now have on demand chill in Unyielding Anguish specially if you remove the CD on the skill, change it to something else, maybe whenever you apply Chill you also Weaken your foe or, Chill you apply lasts longer and you apply bleeding 2 stacks whenever you critically hit ICD 5-8 seconds.
Yearning Empowerment feels a bit redundant as you can spam freely torment making duration sort of trivial, you could play around with the effect if the increase in torment duration isn’t needed.
Pulsating Pestilence 15 second ICD feels weak as there’s no other source of copying conditions now and your skills do not self apply conditions anymore, reduce it to 10 seconds or revamp the trait around enhancing Embrace the Darkness.

Altogether I don’t see Malyx being bad for conditions, but just lacking in comparison to direct damage builds and this stems from the cost vs. effect of the elite skill, overall having damage modifiers to foes with Torment will be a better effect for personal DPS but adds nothing to the party for PvE and playing around with conditions is hard as you mess with specs that can get quite strong if played well in PvP/WvW.

My last words on this for now will be that a lot of the discontent with the changes to Embrace the Darkness come from a couple things: 1) Demonic Defiance was almost mandatory due to the self apply of condis on skills, now it’s just too good to not pick since you can run Malyx/Jalis and face tank stuff if you run Corruption/Devastation/Invocation while still doing decent damage which is quite decent in PvP. 2) It added a ton of counterplay to condition heavy builds that wasn’t availeable elsewhere, if you reverted the changes to Embrace the Darkness the reaction to the change wouldn’t have been as negative IMO, 3) Running the Corruption line you’re forced to pick Malyx since it adds a ton of condition uptime that you can’t attain without it and that isn’t a problem stemmed from the changes, it’s tied to the Demon Legend mechanics and effects, Also forgot to say: you can’t stack enough torment without Axe offhand, Unyielding Anguish and Embrace the Darkness, so that ties you to Mace/Axe, Malyx AND Corruption for a Condition build, otherwise the reliability of your condition output is just not quite where it needs to be.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Griffith.7238:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

Your posts literally blow my mind. You seem to be the most unreasonable person in this entire forum. I get that you are upset that Mallyx lost a lot of flavor I am too ,but some of the things you say are just completely void of logic. There are plenty of reasons to use EtD. Reason 1 EtD will be vastly superior to UA on any target that is moving period. You can move out of UA as long as the Rev is near you you cannot move out of EtD. EtD also provides a 10% stat increase where as UA provides chill. They both have their uses and EtD is definitely still deserving of being called an Elite. Please control your rage and use logic when you type.

A stack of torment per second is worth an elite? Are you serious? I am not even gonna continue this conversation with you lol

With a 10% stat increase yes. Especially when he plans to lower the cost and make torment do more damage on targets not moving.

Aside from a loss of flavor these changes make Mallyx significantly stronger then its previous iteration. I am going to miss displacement if it doesn’t get re-implemented ,but these changes really improve the Legend. Previously Rev’s could barely apply condis to their target if they weren’t getting slammed with condis themsevles. Not every opponent applies a ton of condies. If you were fighting a Power based opponent you barely did any damage to them because the only real condi application you got came from the mace and from a skill that you can easily move out of it. This is a huge step in the right direction at a cost to flavor sure ,but there can be a compromise.

Griffith.7238:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Griffith.7238:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

Your posts literally blow my mind. You seem to be the most unreasonable person in this entire forum. I get that you are upset that Mallyx lost a lot of flavor I am too ,but some of the things you say are just completely void of logic. There are plenty of reasons to use EtD. Reason 1 EtD will be vastly superior to UA on any target that is moving period. You can move out of UA as long as the Rev is near you you cannot move out of EtD. EtD also provides a 10% stat increase where as UA provides chill. They both have their uses and EtD is definitely still deserving of being called an Elite. Please control your rage and use logic when you type.

A stack of torment per second is worth an elite? Are you serious? I am not even gonna continue this conversation with you lol

With a 10% stat increase yes. Especially when he plans to lower the cost and make torment do more damage on targets not moving.

Aside from a loss of flavor these changes make Mallyx significantly stronger then its previous iteration. I am going to miss displacement if it doesn’t get re-implemented ,but these changes really improve the Legend. Previously Rev’s could barely apply condis to their target if they weren’t getting slammed with condis themsevles. Not every opponent applies a ton of condies. If you were fighting a Power based opponent you barely did any damage to them because the only real condi application you got came from the mace and from a skill that you can easily move out of it. This is a huge step in the right direction at a cost to flavor sure ,but there can be a compromise.

And you just proved you haven’t read my posts at all yet you decided to attack me.
First of all I already stated that I am okay with removing self applied condis making the rest of skills perfectly useful for condi application rather than manipulation. The problem is that EtD got its core functionality completely removed. It pulses torment, but so it did before. Now it’s exactly the same thing it was before, even after changing some numbers, just duller and with less possible usages. How many people do you think used EtD for the torment pulse alone?

Griffith.7238:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

Your posts literally blow my mind. You seem to be the most unreasonable person in this entire forum. I get that you are upset that Mallyx lost a lot of flavor I am too ,but some of the things you say are just completely void of logic. There are plenty of reasons to use EtD. Reason 1 EtD will be vastly superior to UA on any target that is moving period. You can move out of UA as long as the Rev is near you you cannot move out of EtD. EtD also provides a 10% stat increase where as UA provides chill. They both have their uses and EtD is definitely still deserving of being called an Elite. Please control your rage and use logic when you type.

Both of you are right and wrong, you need to be on a certain area radius for EtD to be effective, if your enemy opens a gap you’ll need to close said gap you have 2 options: use Frigid Blitz or Unyielding Anguish.
FB will be almost always much more energy effiencet than UA, because if you want to keep decent condition uptime you need to run mace/axe.
UA it’s more situational, as you’re gonna be out of energy to manage to have high condition uptime. Now it’s 40 energy for 5 seconds of EtD and that’s just 5 stacks of torment for 6 seconds, UA it’s a total of 4 stacks of torment for 4 seconds and some chill to cover up so torment can’t be removed, sure it’s a blind combofield and all that but if nothing changes it’s on a 10s CD and at 35 energy you will be using the skills on different situations, and setting up a condition burst? sure you’ll be at 0 energy and have 2 choices swap legends or die.

Basically Malyx just changed the playstyle from managing energy and copying conditions to a more straight forward condi spam build. You also have to keep in mind that gaining access to the ammount of conditions needed to have decent damage requires you to foricbly run Mace/Axe, Malyx and Corruption as a base staple for the build which pigeonholes you a lot more than it should.