Note: All changes are referred to BEFORE the recent patch
With the recent power rev changes the community is very upset and it is understandable. I am here to give you a very reasonable balance change to rev, while also allowing condi to have similar power, allowing more versatile builds for rev. In the forum post about upcoming changes for season 5 Anet stated this: “It’s undoubtedly one of the more difficult professions to play, but when mastered it is devastating on the battlefield.” Excuse me if I’m wrong, but you basically just said that power rev is rewarding skillful gameplay and is hard to master. So this is where the community went haywire, because you completely ignored that fact and nerfed it to the ground. I have come up with some reasonable changes that would make power rev and condi rev BOTH on equal footing while keeping the common weaknesses that it has.
Starting with power rev, the obvious weakness was condition builds (some argue thief too but it is not as much of a needed fix as condi). Increasing the condi cleanse of Cleansing Channel (Invocation) to 2 condi’s and giving shield 4 a condi cleanse of 1 is the perfect amount. It gives power rev a better stability of conditions without having to rely on lucky removals from staff, while keeping the weakness. As for Precision Strike (sword 2), decreasing the damage by 12% and increasing the chill duration to 2s (instead of 1.5s) for each missile allows for more utility while nerfing the high damage to a more reasonable number. Also, to increase optimal weapons/playstyles, Grasping Shadow (sword 5) has an awfully high energy cost for a move that is bugged and gets blocked or blinded half the time. A simple solution is to make this unblockable and fix any bugs that occur with it. This keeps the risk/reward feel of it without getting prevented and wasting a hefty 15 energy. For Surge of the Mists (staff 5) I would not reduce it by 50%, but by 20% to prevent marauder revs from near 1 shotting glass builds. Also keeping Warding Rift (staff 3) at 12s was perfectly fine.
For condition rev, there were multiple amulets and traits you could choose from that would generally make the same effect. This was very good, however power was superior and mace felt a little vulnerable. This lack of evades and balance of heal vs. dps was its main weakness. You could run Mallyx and Glint and have very good sustain with resistance although your mobility was very limited. Shiro provided evades and chill/cripple/immob removal, although you lost the burn/chill on glint, as well as the best heal a rev can have. To fix these changes, I would first like to agree with anet’s change to Pain Absorbtion. It allows condi rev’s to run more tanky builds without loosing the stun break from Invocation and wasted power traits from the trait line. But some weapons are under-used such as mace and axe offhand. They do not provide enough protection such as evades/blocks as sword and shield do. This results in an awkward build that uses power weapons (sword/shield – staff) for defense and legend skills/sigils as your only way of proper dps. Before I suggest any changes please note that I do not play condi rev as often, and am only suggesting smaller changes to allow build diversity in condi rev while remaining on par with other builds. If you do play condi rev a lot feel free to leave any trait/legend skill changes below, but for now I think these small changes will do a lot of good. Allowing axe offhand to have an evade while traveling during Frigid Blitz (axe 4) provides a nice balanced weapon set. Mace on the other hand has 2 options. The first is to simply add an evade on Echoing Eruption (mace 3) and be done. The second and more flavorful option is to make a redesign of Echoing Eruption. Much like sword 2, the ability to do a very fast rotation combining Precision Strike, Equilibrium, and Hydromancy Sigil was deadly and required a bit of practice. I feel like Echoing Eruption should be similar. Removing the animation lock on the skill, allowing fast reactions/combo’s like dodges and Geomancy Sigil can provide a very nice condi burst, similar to power. This keeps skill cap high, while also being “devastating on the battlefield.”
My goal was to provide reasonable changes to rev allowing for a greater diversity of builds. I know this post was very lengthy, but I felt it was long overdue and much needed. Thank you all and any feedback is appreciated.
