Guild Wars 2

Hello,

Some of you might remember the old suggestion threads of mine from more than year ago, including Mallyx and Corruption thread or the Revenant’s Dagger one.

I generally stopped doing those in light of no visible Revenant improvements after the launch. And it lasted untill somewhere around last week when I decided to make an effort and try to make one thread like that again, but specifically on Ventari and Salvation (with addition of already posted Staff change) which have seen some attention over the last few weeks.

I split it in two parts. The first part of feedback is general suggestions already posted on this forum couple of times that could improve Ventari a lot with relatively low effort. These focus on visibility and similar aspects of existing Ventari mechanics, without going deeper into it. The second part is my own vision of Ventari and Salvation, including almost complete rework of Salvation specialization and addition of Ventari’s Blessing mechanic to Centaur Stance.

As always, before we go further, a disclaimer. Some of these changes might seem overpowered in number values when added to the current state of Guild Wars 2. That’s intentional, as I have no way to balance them. Numbers are vague.

Part I

1. Radius on skills increased from 240 to 300.

2. A visible outline/other indicator of Tablet’s position visible only to Revenant. Sometimes you can just lose sight of your Tablet in teamfight if it’s cluttered/crowded enough.

3. Out of combat, Tablet follows Revenant at ~300 leash range. If sent to targeted location, it stops following for 10 seconds. Suggested by InsaneQR.7412 and many others in the past.

4. Making Tablet more visible for allies:

• Green outline that shows Tablet’s effective radius. Currently there is nothing and that’s a big part of the reason why you have to chase allies with Ventari and they never stick around it. They simply can’t see it.

• A split second before moving Tablet with Ventari’s Will, draw a green line of ordered Tablet’s path that is visible to allies.

• When about to cast one of Tablet’s skills such as Natural Harmony/Purifying Essence/Elite, briefly flash/highlight the mentioned green outlier or whole radius circle so allies can easily notice incoming beneficial support.

5. This one is optional, but I decided to include it in here. A small re-design to Staff #2 explained in this thread

These are the core changes that would help Ventari tremendously in all game modes and wouldn’t, hopefully, require too much effort.

Part II (A Graphic of Part II as a whole avalible in attachments or here)

This is when it gets more interesting. With this design, I assume that all changes mentioned in Part I are implemented. Additionaly, healing orbs from Staff chain attack are renamed to Mist Spheres.

First, why did I make it? Because I could. The vanilla design of Ventari, aside from tablet movement part, is pretty straight-foward – it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I thought that I could possibly make it more interesting without adding too much uneccessary complexity.
One other issue that I fix is the problem with Stun break on Ventari – it’s needed, but it’s also not that easy to place it on one of the existing skills. Placing it on Elite might make it cost a bit too much Energy, Solace has only 5s cooldown and two other skills might lead you to wasting energy on skill you really would rather not use since one is an answer to condition pressure and other to power pressure. This version adds a little more choice to your gameplay, further enhanced by traits.

I recommend you to open relevant graphic in other window to see what I’m talking about more clearly.

To begin with, let’s start with my logic behind changes to Legendary Centaur Stance:

Link to imgur album with Centaur Stance changes only

• Elite no longer destroys the tablet, so in order to still provide the option to despawn it, holding Healing Utility keybind (Ventari’s Will/Arbitrer’s Will) for 2 seconds or longer despawns it.

• First addition is the Ventari’s Blessing mechanic. It is a buff applied by the new Elite skill that lasts 10 seconds and improves your next Legendary Centaur skill. After you use one of the improved skills, the buff disappears. The improved skills have same functionality and Energy cost/cooldown (with exception for Elite) as the “vanilla” versions, but bring something extra on top of it.

• Protective Solace has been changed into more universal defensive skill – Tranquilizing Solace. It no longer provides Projectile Block baseline (improved version still does) or provides a Light Field. Instead, it delays half of incoming direct (not condition!) damage you took over the next few seconds. People who are familiar with Brewmaster Monks in World of Warcraft should recognize this mechanic as Stagger.
  Let’s assume that Thief critically hits you for 10’000 while you’re under the effect of Tranqulizing Solace and to make calculations easier, let’s say that the DoT duration is 10 seconds instead of 7. What happens is, you take 5’000 damage instantly, but the remaining 5000 as a DoT (damage-over-time) effect over next 10 seconds – so 500 damage per second.
  Essentialy, this mechanic helps to deal with direct burst damage, but doesn’t nullify or reduce it – it just makes it easier to heal over time. Because Ventari is a sustain healer, I think this sort of defensive mechanism should naturally work the best.
  It also makes the passive periodic heal around the Tablet – Project Tranquility – tick every 1,5s instead of every 3s.

• Our old Elite has been changed into Serenity Elite. With 10s cooldown, it provides the mentioned Ventari’s Blessing buff upon activation, is a stun break and gives brief Superspeed to the caster. I also put Water Field on it, but it’s not core to any further design and could be left out.

• First improved skill is the enhanced version of Ventari’s Will. Arbitrer’s Will turns the base skill into aimed CC skill, to compensate for the loss of CC on Elite. It also makes Ventari’s image trample enemies, which is a bit more thematic and easier to read than the current Elite.

• Second improved skill is the enhanced version of already mentioned Tranquilizing Solace – Protective Solace, which basically adds the Projectile Block functionality back. I dislike prolonged projectile hate and we’ve seen a lot of it already. Having easy projectile block that lasts forever isn’t fun for anyone. It’s still here, but will cost Revenant a little bit more effort.

• Third improved skill is the enhanced version of Natural Harmony – Absolute Harmony. It is pretty similar, but also brings a Blast Finisher at Tablet’s location and heals Revenant, even if he’s out of range. I think that Revenant could be healed twice by this skill (normal Tablet heal if in range and Absolute Harmony’s personal heal), but that’s up for the discussion.

cd.

• Fourth improved skill is the enhanced version of Purifying Essence – Refreshing Essence. It aims to help with the sustained condition pressure, for times when a single cleanse is not enough. Refreshing Essence enhances Project Tranquility – the passive periodic heal around the Tablet to also cleanse a condition when it heals an ally. This enhancement has great synergy with Tranquilizing/Protective Solace.

• Final skill avalible with Ventari’s Blessing active is Revitalize. It’s the only skill that’s not a simple enhanced version of the vanilla skill – for obvious reasons. Revitalize is essentialy a cheap skill for the times when you don’t need any other improved skills, but maybe used Elite as a stunbreak. But it’s not without use. It is the only Ventari skill that can affect up to 10 allies in huge radius and brings back the well-known Energy Fragments from vanilla Elite that now spawn directly in front of allies. However, only allies with your Regeneration can benefit from it.

Second and the final part is the rework to Salvation specialization:

Link to imgur album with Salvation changes only

• This rework focuses the Specialization and Ventari around couple core themes:
  a) Sustain theme – with big focus on Regeneration and bonus healing such as Mist Spheres
  b) the pre-existing Denial trait theme (interrupts, immobilizes, blinds)
  c) the pre-existing Healer trait theme
  d) and the broad Utility trait theme with Endurance restoration or Energy discount on next skills you use (Ventari was a prophet, right?)
  e) Superspeed theme – “can’t outrun a Centaur”…duh…
  This design ensures that Salvation is an interesting option not only to healing-focused builds, but also opens up possibilities for other ones.

• Spheres of Life – (Adept Minor) the first minor makes Revenant constantly spawn small healing orbs in combat, like the ones from Staff chain, as he uses his Energy on skills. The difference is, Mist Spheres spawn where they are needed – directly in front of injured allies in radius. Their healing might be small, but they are further enhanced by traits and…

• …Tranquil Benediction – (Master Minor)Whenever you heal an ally (Dolyak runes/healing food/leech/Regeneration excluded), you apply Regeneration to that ally. The second part of this minor trait is a fix to interaction between many sources of Regeneration. Because Regeneration in Ventari and Salvation plays bigger role than ever, I decided to allow it to stack, if other sources of Regeneration are already present.
  This is, however, a band-aid to current situation when Regeneration is being constantly overwritten and with better fix in place, this could be removed.

• Serene Rejuvenation – (Grandmaster Minor)Pretty simple grandmaster minor trait, that ate Tranquil Balance trait.

• Selfless Amplification – (1st Adept Major)Vanilla trait that was moved two tiers down. Simple % modifier for healing-focused builds.

• Blinding Truths – (2nd Adept Major)Already strong trait, with added blind on Legend swap.

• Coalescing Mists – (3rd Adept Major)One of the Utility traits. It ensures that you get better value out of Mist Spheres and also provides additional Endurance regeneration. With timed swap and enough Spheres, it could restore a significant amount at once. Endurance per Sphere could go up to 3 or 4.

• Mediator’s Haste – (1st Master Major)Coming with a cheesy name, this trait rewards your interrupting with shorter cooldown on Legend swaps. Works well with all “on Legend Swap” traits and can effectively bring your more Energy to play with due to Energy resets when you invoke a new Legend.

• Invoking Harmony – (2nd Master Major)A revised idea of a trait with the same name. The original version, while interesting, often forces you off preffered Legend. This version has activator in weapon swap (something that didn’t exist for Revenant due to original one weaponset design) and adds a bit more gameplay. Maximum Duration limit could stay or be removed, up for discussion.

• Momentary Pacification – (3rd Master Major)Let’s say it clearly, the trait that currently goes under this name is not great. This is a similar concept, but different type of trait. Works great with anything that restores Endurance or Blinds. The 5 second internal cooldown could be removed.

• Quickening Breeze – (1st Grandmaster Major)This is the ultimate Regeneration trait. Upon invoking a Legend, you breathe three times in front of you. Each hit applies healing (and Regeneration from the minor) along with Superspeed. The main feature of the trait however is the second part with Regeneration when Revenant is affected by Superspeed.
  What it does is it simply turns 4 second Regeneration that heals for 1000 in total into 2 second Regeneration that heals for the same amount. Works well with anything that reduces the recharge on invoking Legends. Or provides Superspeed (Shiro?).

• Essence of the Mists – (2nd Grandmaster Major)Where did Alacrity go? It’s right here. This trait is the only Tablet-specific trait in Salvation. It is also a positional trait, because the wave it sends originates from you and flies towards the Tablet.
  What does this trait accomplish that live version on Alacrity does not? Firstly, it doesn’t pigeonhole you into camping one Legend and spamming one skill. As long as every 5 seconds you use a weapon or Legend skill that costs 10 (could be 5) or more Energy and can hit your allies with the wave via good positioning, you are free to do what you want. Secondly, the wave affects 10 people, which means whole raid. Which means that one Revenant can supply 60% Alarcrity uptime by himself if his positioning skills are on point. That’s a big difference from the current state of things, because two Revenants can give permanent Alacrity now, assuming they hit with waves. If other professions could supply Quickness, that would create the possibility of not running Chronomancers.
  Finally, you don’t have to camp the Legend since a copy of the Tablet stays at it’s last location for 15 seconds (pulsing Project Tranquility) or untill you spawn the Tablet again.

• Premonition – (3rd Grandmaster Major)Lastly, since Ventari is a prophet, I decided to include this final Utility trait. It simply gives you a 10 Energy discount on next three Energy-consuming skills after using an Elite skill. It doesn’t matter if the skill costs 5 or 25 – in first case it just costs 0, in second 15. A trait like that would be welcome in any Revenant build.

This is the end.

There might be some typos. Unbalanced skills or traits. But I’m quite happy that I managed to dedicate these several hours of fan work and write this thing. Maybe devs see it, maybe they don’t.

If you have any feedback, write it down below. Big thanks to that_shaman for his site I used to create all the tooltips. Some icons were missing and I had to replace them, but without the site there would be nothing.

Cheers,
Rym

I love your redesign, I just want to make two suggestions.

First, keeping the tablet in place using project tranquillity when you change legends should be basic, not something you need to trait. This would reduce the punishing decrease in hps and healing options while you’re not in Ventari.

Second, i think you’ve missed the point why you don’t see ventari healers (at least in raid environment). The class needs some kind of unique group support to start competing with a druid. In my opinion, the best way to do it is to introduce a debuff you apply to the boss so that all the breakbar damage incoming is increased (longer cc in pvp). So you find a group with enough dps but has troubles ccing (i’ve seen it quite a lot in VG, for example), you change a druid for a revenant.

Why a debuff? In order to provide the effect to all the squad without turning it into something like a 10 man basilisk venom. Why a buff to cc? Because Salvation is quite soft cc oriented and a dps buff is “against lore”. Devs want to make it a must in raiding teams? Increase the breakbar health of every boss 2, 3 or 4 times, you just gotta change some numbers.

Tablet by itself doesn’t really do any healing, so I found no real reason to let it persist after legend swap without the GM trait – 99% of your healing will come from active abilities and regeneration rather than passive project tranquility. The reason why it’s on the trait is simple – to allow legend swapping.

I didn’t miss the reason why ventari is not wanted in raids. I just chose the route of replacing Chronomancer, rather than Druid.
As it stands, Druid brings way too much buffs – if I wanted to compensate for all of them, we would have to get GotL, both spirits, empowerment glyph. Realistically, it’s easier to replace Chrono than Druid atm.

But isn’t Chronomacer meta specially because of quickness? I mean, alacrity is a cool buff to the party, but isn’t quickness the real deal?

Regarding druid, i think that a nerf is in necessary in order to keep all healers (or future healers coming with the expansion) viable.

Akeno.4962:

But isn’t Chronomacer meta specially because of quickness? I mean, alacrity is a cool buff to the party, but isn’t quickness the real deal?

Regarding druid, i think that a nerf is in necessary in order to keep all healers (or future healers coming with the expansion) viable.

Druid definitely needs nerfs to amount of the unique buffs it brings, but I doubt it will happen before pre-expansion balance pass.

Chrono is meta because of quickness, but I could see ArenaNet adding group-wide Quickness to many more professions soon. So you would either bring Chrono for both effects in one slot or spread the role out on couple party members.

Akeno.4962:

Second, i think you’ve missed the point why you don’t see ventari healers (at least in raid environment). The class needs some kind of unique group support to start competing with a druid.

Actually, doesn’t that still miss the point?

If your healers are only competing with each other in their non-healing support, then isn’t the requirement for healing too low to even require much external support in the first place?

That is to say, isn’t the encounter/combat design the first big problem to worry about here, not actually demanding proper, targeted, focused and designed healing taking place, just “spew some heals to top people up”?

Carighan.6758:

Akeno.4962:

Second, i think you’ve missed the point why you don’t see ventari healers (at least in raid environment). The class needs some kind of unique group support to start competing with a druid.

Actually, doesn’t that still miss the point?

If your healers are only competing with each other in their non-healing support, then isn’t the requirement for healing too low to even require much external support in the first place?

That is to say, isn’t the encounter/combat design the first big problem to worry about here, not actually demanding proper, targeted, focused and designed healing taking place, just “spew some heals to top people up”?

I mean, yes, it’s a combat design problem, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Imo, druids are only wanted above other healers because of their buffs. One evidence is that I’ve been told that taking a tempest healer to Mathias instead of a druid makes him much easier, probably because their constant healing is much better. The other is that i’ve healed in VG many times before the last patch without many problems.

In conclusion, yes its true that it is a design problem. Are they changing it? Not probably, since they last gave one to engis. Therefore, either druids buffs are erased or nerfed (and their healing buffed) or both revs and tempests need unique boons.

The approach of handing out a lot of unique modifiers was already proven to fail in old World of Warcraft days and ultimately leads to either erasing them altogether or making them so bland and common that every second class brings them.

A lot of the unique modifiers were initially implemented to compensate for lack of pure damage or out of pure fear that the new thing won’t be brought to the new content (Druid and change to Grace of the Land), back when skills were not split in between game modes. Now, with shift in this approach I believe that we could tone down on them.

As for healing, I think that ArenaNet should definitely introduce more sustained pressure on players to make healer role more desireable and there is a phleora of yet unused mechanics that could easily make it happen in natural way – damage split mechanic, for example.

This discussion aside, I’d love to hear a feedback on my suggested changes.

Hardened Foundation has gotta go… Or at least get moved into retribution or made a major trait so you can not select it.

i like these changes you present i haven’t dwelled deep in the theoy crafting so if i see something that i find wrong or not ill say it so far great suggestion.

The whole unique-modifiers thing can actually work tbh, but not if they aid in the primary use case of the spec. Or the class has to be built around it.

That is, a healer which heals via buffing targets works, but not a healer who also happens to buff, because then as soon as the healing is no longer super tight and super stressful (assuming pure healers heal more) then you’ll only want the damage enhancing healer.

It can work if someone were to hand out short-lasting targeted toughness buffs for example, effectively avoiding damage in return for healing less. And other such ideas, we obviously have Aegis and Blur, too.

But in the end it’s often easier to differentiate supports via non-support elements. A supporter who can temporarily become an ok DPSer is interesting for example, or one which is nigh-unkillable herself (nothing worse than the healer going down first).

narcx.3570:

Hardened Foundation has gotta go… Or at least get moved into retribution or made a major trait so you can not select it.

Part of the suggestion is removing it. I agree that it messes up toughness levels in PvE. While it’s not really an issue in PvP or WvW, that minor is not anything exciting nor influences your gameplay and I’m generally against design like that.

Make the ventari tablet like a tome of old guardian tome skils

1. Radius on skills increased from 240 to 300.

360 at bare minimum if you ask me. The huge downside to revenant healer (right after no GotL buff) is the abysmal reach of tablet’s heals. That should be addressed, given how unlike yourself tablet has limited movement options (only straight line once every 3s). A druid or ele may reposition himself to get the best of their heals at any time, all the time. Revenant’s tablet does not have that luxury.

I think 300 is fine, from my personal experience. We still want to keep the tablet micromanagement aspect of Ventari, because moving it correctly isa big part of the gameplay. Once you get more familiar with Legend mechanics you can snipe heal quickly moving allies with delayed heal+Ventari’s Will. Most issues come from allies not noticing the kitten thing, rather than just small range.

Tablet being a separate entity to control sure comes with some downsides compared to more traditional “AoE around me” supports, but also a significant advantage – you don’t have to be where you want to heal. I’ve been playing quite a bit of organised WvW lately and it really matters. Additionaly, in combat Tablet moves much faster than any other support build so you can respond with heals in different areas miles better. Not to mention that on it’s own Ventari has the highest throughput by far out of all supports.

With better visibility and slightly bigger radius (and stunbreak) I believe Ventari would have much bigger success. It’s quite ridiculous what it can do even right now.

It’s a shame that, apart from micromanagement, Ventari’s Tablet has no mechanics whatsoever. The design choice of not tying weapons to legends to provide build diversity has resulted in no interaction between them, and Salvation only offers lackluster options: either tablet fragments that appear wherever (even if Ventari’s kiting builds use them) or an increase in healing output while changing legends, only worth when you change from whatever to Ventari since weapons don’t have many healing skills.

Even when they added alacrity to Ventari (that only benefits the healer himself because of making tablet skills spammable) they didn’t try to create a mechanic for it. Just spam Natural Harmony. And the effect is purple as if Ventari were some mesmer.

Akeno.4962:

It’s a shame that, apart from micromanagement, Ventari’s Tablet has no mechanics whatsoever. The design choice of not tying weapons to legends to provide build diversity has resulted in no interaction between them, and Salvation only offers lackluster options: either tablet fragments that appear wherever (even if Ventari’s kiting builds use them) or an increase in healing output while changing legends, only worth when you change from whatever to Ventari since weapons don’t have many healing skills.

Even when they added alacrity to Ventari (that only benefits the healer himself because of making tablet skills spammable) they didn’t try to create a mechanic for it. Just spam Natural Harmony. And the effect is purple as if Ventari were some mesmer.

That’s precisely why I split my feedback in two parts – first adressing the most needed changes and second part, where I present my take on adding more mechanics, decision-making and trait interactions, akin to modern healers from other MMOs.

plz replace the flavorless Alacrity from Salvation with Grace of the Land, perfectly suitable for VENTARI’S tablet. Alacrity doesn’t even help the Revenant, and Ventari is more Druid than Chrono

Lumpy.8760:

plz replace the flavorless Alacrity from Salvation with Grace of the Land, perfectly suitable for VENTARI’S tablet. Alacrity doesn’t even help the Revenant, and Ventari is more Druid than Chrono

reduce cd on shield skills, facet of nature, heal skills – doesnt help to the revenant
reduce cd also on your team skills – bonus

sure i would prefer it to give stability instead as ventari lacks of it, or cleanse 1 condition for every ally affected by your heal as we need more ways to handle conditions beside mallyx resistance, or even better give 5% nrg back for every ally affected by your heals.
if alacrity could effect also gaining nrg faster also could be great

Can someone give me a TLDR? and one thing I would like to mention is that the tablet should just tether to player.. It should just automatically move wherever the player does beside having to keep clicking it to the location you want to move it

CrimeMaker.8612:

Can someone give me a TLDR? and one thing I would like to mention is that the tablet should just tether to player.. It should just automatically move wherever the player does beside having to keep clicking it to the location you want to move it

That would destroy the current viability of ventari in wvw. I don’t feel micromanagement itself is the problem, not being rewarding enough for such a hard way to heal is. If you don’t like micromanagement, play druid or tempest.

Changing topics, I’ve been toying with the idea on a Salvation’s revamp based on blinds and a minor trait such as:

Blinding truths: effects that should happen when a foe misses an attack due to blindness take place even if stability or a breakbar prevent attacks from missing.

Then you can have a very interesting trait line that increases the blinds you produce and ties foes “missing attacks” to effects like boons, heals or other utility. Correctly crafted, would provide some mechanics to Ventari without a need of some f2 (a proper f2 would help Ventari too, tho)

.

Akeno.4962:

CrimeMaker.8612:

Can someone give me a TLDR? and one thing I would like to mention is that the tablet should just tether to player.. It should just automatically move wherever the player does beside having to keep clicking it to the location you want to move it

That would destroy the current viability of ventari in wvw. I don’t feel micromanagement itself is the problem, not being rewarding enough for such a hard way to heal is. If you don’t like micromanagement, play druid or tempest.

Changing topics, I’ve been toying with the idea on a Salvation’s revamp based on blinds and a minor trait such as:

Blinding truths: effects that should happen when a foe misses an attack due to blindness take place even if stability or a breakbar prevent attacks from missing.

Then you can have a very interesting trait line that increases the blinds you produce and ties foes “missing attacks” to effects like boons, heals or other utility. Correctly crafted, would provide some mechanics to Ventari without a need of some f2 (a proper f2 would help Ventari too, tho)

.

nice idea but atm blind can be spam every 3 sec so it might be too strong which push them to nerf the blind which atm is the main source of defense ventari has.

i would buff the minor trait to cleanse condition when ever your enemy miss attack due to blind, this would help alot as it has inherent cd with blind spamm so no need in another cd. it would cleanse only 1 every 3 sec so no op too much. and can open ventari to use jalis or dragon beside mallyx maybe