Showing Posts For Cardica.1853:
I really love the druid. It’s fantastic, super fun, a great change from the normal play of the ranger but it still does adequate damage. The astral skills are great (except the 4 slot using the guardian skill icon :P) and it’s been a blast even in the short time that I’ve had to play it. I do have a few things I think could be addressed about the class, but keep in mind I’ve only been able to play limited PvE, so here goes;
Glyphs
Fantastic, especially the elite, but all of them feel like they last for too short a time to actually do anything. I don’t think it’s a problem, but compared to some of the other skills for the ranger it’s just not that appealing. I think a slightly longer duration for all of them would be better. Also for the elite it would be nice if the timer started once the first hit has been landed on you, though that’s more a QoL change than anything else.
Staff
No complains functionally. I haven’t had enough of a chance to see how it really balances, especially in harder content, but it’s clear from what I’ve seen that cosmetics is the main issue most people are having. I personally don’t have any problem with it, but I think it would be simple enough to address, such as having the Druid carry the staff out of combat like a mage would, then holding it with both hands once in combat. As for the animations, I really don’t mind, except the 1 slot does look silly when you’re moving at the same time. Changes here would be nice, but nothing urgent from what I can see.
Astral Form
I haven’t had enough of a chance to play in harder content, so I can’t really see the true effectiveness of the Astral form, but it’s been fun in my experience. The traits for it are good, the animations are really cool, the way the glyphs change is nice, but it would also be nice to see other skills change in astral form in some way, because as I said, the glyphs aren’t necessarily the most appealing option.
Also the recharge for astral form seems slow. It’s not a big deal since most of your skills do healing damage anyway, but it would be nice to be able to use it more.
I’d also like to see it always charged out of combat, so that you can just put it on for fun. I don’t think it would change much functionally since entering combat only being able to heal is a bit of a waste, but it would be nice just for fun to be able to run around in Astral form in cities and the like, although then again, this is another minor thing.
Pets
Great. No complaints, super cool. They still have a lot of the issues normal ranger pets had, but it’s a step in the right direction and hopefully some retrofitting of the new AI systems will improve it further.
If nothing changes between now and release, I won’t be disappointed, to be honest, but this is just my take on what could make it better, although I haven’t had much of a chance to play it, and I won’t be able to any more until release.
(edited by Cardica.1853)
I agree with you, changing stances should be no slower than changing elementalist atunements and each Legend should have at least a 4th utility skill to have some flexibility.
I also think the weapons are a big problem since the class seem to want to promote changing stances but, weapons seem designed each for a specific Legend. If I use staff, it seems good with Ventari but when I switch to an offensive Lengend the DPS of that weapon is too low.
I’m really unsure how that part should be fixed. Different weapons skills for different stances, like Ele atunements? Not sure I would like a copy like that. Skills that change your attacks like Kits or Transforms? Feels like a bandage solution.
Maybe have each stance change your stats? Ventari could increase your healing power while reducing your power and precision. To give players more control, the reduction could be a percentage of the base stats and the increase would be equal to how much you lost in the other 2 stats? Or a similar mechanic.
What do you guys think?
I very much share your concern about the ‘Heavy Elementalist’ feel that the revenant would get if it were to have different weapon skills for each legend. I posted this around the forums, and on Acaro’s reddit post as well, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have it here as well;
This has probably been said many times, but the Revenant needs a new set of weapon effects. I think for every Legend while the weapons should have the same base damage and animation, but the additional effects (healing/condi/boons) should be different for each legend.
For example, when you use Mallyx, the weapons do condition damage, whilst when you use Ventari, the conditions in the attack change to healing/protection.
The same for traits, for example if a trait gives +10 Power when playing as Mallyx/Shiro, it should give +10 healing power when playing Ventari, or +10 toughness when playing Jallis. I wouldn’t do this for all traits, but have the selectable (square) traits each have a per-legend bonus. The balance wouldn’t be that simple I know, but it would make the legends way more useful in the game.
This may be a big ask, I don’t know, my programming knowledge is limited, but I think this would really make the revenant something special and interesting to play, rather than just being able to faceroll like you can with a few professions, especially in PvE.
I would hope that if they do implement something like this they’re careful not to make it just a heavy armour elementalist. The key difference between the two at the moment is that the Ele changes their 1-5 (weapon) skills when they change attunement, whereas the Revenant changes their 6-10 (slot) skills when they change legend.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that the revenant should change their 1-5 skills entirely as well when they change legend. The reason I’ve gone with something more like my idea, where it’s just some parts of the weapon skills that change, will mean that the revenant is still unique to play and not just the ‘heavy-armour-elementalist’ which I think a lot of people seem to be describing when they propose having the 1-5 slot change entirely as well.
I’ve seen a lot propose to have weapon skills to change according to specific Legendary Stances. I have even touched on the idea in another thread but it feels too much like the elementalist and, even if you only have 2 stances at once, you have multiple choices; it could end up giving even more attack skills to the Revenant than what the Elementalist has.
I have a two step suggestion to help with the weapon problem :
- Each weapon would have a ranged/AoE and melee version of their skills that depends on the Legend in use. Ventari could be ranged and Jallis melee for instance. Equipping 2 melee legends would be like equipping 2 melee weapon sets; changing Stances could refresh weapon skill to make it more like having 2 sets.
- Each stance would have a passive effect in addition to being ranged or melee. Some examples could be:
- Ventari: create healing shards when you block attacks. Gain Healing Power (at the cost of Power?).
- Jalis: gain Protection when critically hit. Gain Boon Duration (at the cost of Precision?).
- Mallyx: Inflict bleeding on critical hits. Gain Condition Duration (at the cost of Toughness?).If the stat gain is tied to a loss in another, it could be done in a way to give player choice more impact by making it a percentage. For instance, you could lose 10% of your Power and the amount lost is added to Healing Power while in Ventari’s stance; your ability to support others would be good even if your base build focuses heavily on Power. This does have more potential balance issues, that’s why I’m not sure about it.
This is kind of what I was going for. I think trying to avoid a heavy elementalist is important. I was wondering what you thought of my idea (just above in this thread, and more fleshed out here )
I think this is probably the best idea on how to fix the weapon issue for revenants tbqh. Not to mention the fact that it’s somewhat in keeping with the theme of drawing on certain ritualist ideas from GW1.
Anyone who has played GW1 will remember the ritualist’s weapon spells (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Weapon_spell) that applied certain attributes to weapons for yourself, your party or both. While that idea probably wouldn’t work on Revenants at this point in development, it might be nice if the Legend currently being used had a more passive but similar effect, like condition removal for yourself and allies after every few hits on Ventari, or an unblockable attack every ten seconds on Jallis. It doesn’t even need to be something that specific, but something to make each weapon set more streamlined with Legend switching.
That’s good to hear. I haven’t actually played Ritualist in GW1, but having just read a bit more about it I think that actually makes a lot of sense and ties into my idea well. I really love the idea of having specific combo finishers like you suggested for each legend too, and I feel like that would be a lot of fun to tie into the lore of GW1, such as, for example, having Shiro’s combo finisher for swords be based on the kill move he does on the group in Factions campaign just before you meet Ventari (forgive me if I’m mixing up my lore, I’ve only ever read it on the wiki :P). That being said, that would be a lot of work and I’d rather that they fix the class before making any additions like that to it.
It’s not very simple issue. Simply giving the weapons a base effect, and some additional trait to tie them to legends would probably not be enough. To choose a legend, is to choose a playstyle. No other class has that kind of hard, definitive choice.
If you want to build a condi thief, you do it by pieces through gear, specialisations, utility skills – and yes, weapon selection. If you want to swap into spike damage or support, you change everything. You don’t keep the same gear, same specialisation picks, same weapons – and just try to swap your utility skills.. and boom, condi thief became spike thief.
That’s the kind of effect revenant is trying to achieve, and it just goes against the basic mechanics of the whole game. The suggestion of trying to add switching effects to weapons and traits, it’s not going to help. Those ‘effects’ won’t equal playstyle. Traits for example do a lot more than just add a flat bonus to condi damage versus healing power. To make them interesting, they have to go deeper and alter the way the class itself behaves, to customize it to specific playstyle, or overall build goal.
Without having a closer look at the class (no pay, no beta), my guess would be the revenant probably tries to achieve this by close ties between legends and traitlines. Make each traitline specific to one legend, while having little effect to others. Try to build the whole customizing into single traitline instead of three. Then make the final one (invocation) so generic it can give some overall bonus and utility to the class – like the stun break that keeps popping up.
This might not be the ideal solution, but it’s probably closest, within reason. The ‘perfect’ solution would probably be to build every legend into complete – if simple – ‘class’ within itself, full with skills, traits, weapons and gear.. and let two of them be defined active at time. That however would be unreasonable amount of work for a single class.
Right now it seems the class is attempting to do this within the confines of the game mechanics. It splits the available traitlines between the ‘subclasses’, it splits the weapon types between them, and splits the skills between them. You can’t really split the armor and jewelry in the current system though (the best you can do is celestial gear) – and for the life of me I can’t wrap my mind around why the weapon sets were not ‘split’ between the ‘subclasses’ – but instead only one being made available.
To a point every class has similar kind of split built in. Some trait lines and options, some weapon types, some skills cater to different play styles. When making a build, you are picking the ones that best suit what you have in mind. The revenant tries to essentially cram two builds worth of those options into one set, and switch the ‘build’ by just switching the utility skills between two premade sets.
I absolutely get what you’re saying, and what I’ve said is indeed not enough to cover all of the problems that the revenant has.
The point of my idea is more that some of the parts of each attack change. I absolutely agree that having a “class-within-a-class” for each legend of the revenant would be ideal, but I think flat out changing every skill on the bar would take away from the unique skills of the class. I think that would make it a class near identical to the Elementalist in terms of the way you have to play it. My idea is trying to make the Revenant unique by changing some of the components, so there is always a distinct way that the revenant plays.
By maintaining the same weapon mechanics for each legend, it means that no legend is at a major advantage or disadvantage with each weapon. Then by changing some of the effects of the weapon for each legend means that the revenant can switch dynamically to suit the situation that they’re in without losing out if they’re on the ‘wrong’ weapon for that legend. As I said, I agree this idea is an over-simplification of the problem, but I think it would go a long way to making this class more fun to play without just making it a heavy-armour clone of the abilities that several other classes already have.
I really like some of the suggestions made here, I think they would be great changes to the Rev. I posted this in another thread yesterday, but I figured it might be worth sharing here to see what you all think, so here goes:
Feedback:
The Revenant is really fun to play, to a point. It requires a bit more attention and management, which makes it more interesting and engaging, but there are some key holes in its design which detract from that. The main thing, to me, is that the legends have too little of an effect on the class and the traits actually work against the legends to an extent. For example, if you want to run a condition damage build, you’re pretty much useless when not using Mallyx. As soon as you switch to another legend, you’re “jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none”.
Also the Revenant straight up feels weak. I honestly don’t know why, it might just be traits, but I dissolved in PvP against any other class. Dungeons were loads of fun, but I went down a lot more than I do on any other class I play, even with full Zerker.
Proposals:
I think for every Legend while the weapons should have the same base damage and animation, but the additional effects (healing/condi/boons) change for each legend.
For example, when you use Mallyx, the weapons do condition damage, whilst when you use Ventari, the conditions in the attack change to healing/protection.
The same for traits, for example if a trait gives +10 Power when playing as Mallyx/Shiro, it should give +10 healing power when playing Ventari, or +10 toughness when playing Jallis. I wouldn’t do this for all traits, but have the selectable (square) traits each have a per-legend bonus. The balance wouldn’t be that simple I know, but it would make the legends way more useful in the game.
This may be a big ask, I don’t know, my programming knowledge is limited, but I think this would really make the revenant something special and interesting to play, rather than just being able to faceroll like you can with a few professions, especially in PvE.
As for the weakness, I think just a few (simple?) buffs here and there should be able to get it up to scratch with the other classes, but I appreciate it will take a while to get that right, and I don’t really mind if that’s after release, I mean, hell we’re still getting tweaks to all the other classes on the fly.
(edited by Cardica.1853)
I didn’t really know where to post this, nor did I want to make a whole new thread, but I hope my feedback on the Rev can be of some use here.
Feedback:
The Revenant is really fun to play, to a point. It requires a bit more attention and management, which makes it more interesting and engaging, but there are some key holes in its design which detract from that. The main thing, to me, is that the legends have too little of an effect on the class and the traits actually work against the legends to an extent. For example, if you want to run a condition damage build, you’re pretty much useless when not using Mallyx. As soon as you switch to another legend, you’re “jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none”.
Also the Revenant straight up feels weak. I honestly don’t know why, it might just be traits, but I dissolved in PvP against any other class. Dungeons were loads of fun, but I went down a lot more than I do on any other class I play, even with full Zerker.
Proposals:
I think for every Legend while the weapons should have the same base damage and animation, but the additional effects (healing/condi/boons) should be different for each legend.
For example, when you use Mallyx, the weapons do condition damage, whilst when you use Ventari, the conditions in the attack change to healing/protection.
The same for traits, for example if a trait gives +10 Power when playing as Mallyx/Shiro, it should give +10 healing power when playing Ventari, or +10 toughness when playing Jallis. I wouldn’t do this for all traits, but have the selectable (square) traits each have a per-legend bonus. The balance wouldn’t be that simple I know, but it would make the legends way more useful in the game.
This may be a big ask, I don’t know, my programming knowledge is limited, but I think this would really make the revenant something special and interesting to play, rather than just being able to faceroll like you can with a few professions, especially in PvE.
As for the weakness, I think just a few (simple?) buffs here and there should be able to get it up to scratch with the other classes, but I appreciate it will take a while to get that right, and I don’t really mind if that’s after release, I mean, hell we’re still getting tweaks to all the other classes on the fly.
(edited by Cardica.1853)