Guild Wars 2

Kalla is pretty self explanatory all around.

Performance wise it’s long been a complaint since Revenant release with HOT that there’s no ranged Condi weapon to pair with Mace/Axe. So if you build your stats for Condi then taking Hammer (our only ranged weapon) which is Power based doesn’t make too much sense. So Shortbow and her traits really cater to the PvE condi build side of things. Unfortunately since base Revenant survivability is so low due to severe restrictions on our utilities and the fact our survivability utilities are delivered in an clunky manner (tablet) this makes giving up Herald impractical for survivability in competitive scenarios and it’s unlikely we’ll see Kalla in WvW or SPvP without heavy changes to the base Revenant class and survivability/mechanics. Her utilities will be fine in PvE but because they’re stationary pets that actually do attacks any CC on them completely negate their effects which again is disappointing for WvW/SPvP.

Lore wise I agree with the general observation that the choice for Kalla was because she was a female Charr rather than really being a good fit like Pyre would have been. A lot of the hub-bub about Kalla is the fact all her statues show Greatswords not a Short Bow. If I’m not mistaken Kalla lead the fight against the Flame Legion to show that female Charr could fight too so she’s likely a symbol for female empowerment. The fact that both Rytlock and Pyre Fierceshot are both voiced by Steve Blum coulda had something to do with it as well….but I still see it more as a “diversity hire” than really something that fits or makes sense.

Realistically the whole Kalla thing doesn’t really take away from it, and it’s not a bad deal in game. The lack of performance out of the shortbow/traits/utilities is far greater issue when you get down to it.

I’ve always just used my WvW build for everything. In WvW you usually gotta pack on enough survivability to not get one pushed by a bomb but still pack in plenty of offense to get kills and do damage. I swap in a staff as desired for PvE but otherwise I’ve always preferred Scepter when putzing around solo (lots of might/fury and burst to end PvE quickly).

For WvW I use staff predominantly and the triple cantrip and play like Staff Backline. Survivability becomes an issue (lotta pick or condi cancer) I swap out Fire for Water. When Weaver comes I’ll probably swap in Weaver for Tempest as I like the Weaver’s passive survivability add.

Unfortunately you’re not going to find many websites out there for “normal” builds. Most people are interested in the meta so content gets created to cater to them. Anything else in the past (and probably present) gets shouted down as “ineffecient” or “wasteful” and other memes that they don’t realize if we cared about those things there’s already plenty of info on them. In my experience if you want builds that are designed to take some hits but also kill then WvW tends to be your best source of info.

Solori.6025:

So when are the Condi thief nerfs coming?
Condi nerf in general really.

Yes and no, a lot of those examples were niche and only used in ONE game mode.
You dont see engi running decap in WvW or PvE
Same for almost every build being nerfed

There were teams running double mes, double war, double ele, double engi
Well before rev
Double classes have always been a thing, yet a lot of the double x classes were untouched, until people cried about something.

Most ele’s still use D/D even after the nerf to RTL ( which again was very short sighted and kneejerk)
For months D/D was meta and to some degree, still is for pvp content.
You telling me D/D will be nerfed again because Ele’s use it?

Everyone starts to complain about it.
Anet nerfs it..
So, yes?

I’m not understanding the order.
People learn about most strong setups because someone complains about it ( like your video of brazil)
People use the build to troll the people that cant counter or play around it
( see DH traps)
Anet see’s the tears and nerfs the class into oblivion
( every class since 2012 that has gotten cries for nerfs)

So if the pattern goes
People complain-Anet changes

then metrics or no, until someone complains, a lot of things remain unchanged.
Like the torment buff.
People were still using mallyx in WvW,PvP, and even some pve content, yet torment was buffed.
but people complained it was weak in PvE
Torment was buffed for PvE

Tears turn gears.

I mean ANet has always nerfed on their own time. I mean we can point to numerous points in time where ANet will let something go for a while and then later gut it with little warning. For example Celestial Turret Engineer they let run for quite a while there, was only useful in SPvP, and they ended up gutting it by making it so all deployables can be crit and affected by Condis rather than really nerfing the specific class.

Yes there were double class teams in the past, but in many cases those classes received numerous nerfs as a result. A great example is from your original post talking about the constant Mesmer nerfs. Elementalist has also pretty much always received numerous nerfs as well (to the point I originally became tired of it and swapped to Revenant…haha oh the irony).

Most Eles I’ve seen use D/F beacuse of /F strong defensive and control abilities where as /D is more damage focused. If D/D becomes dominant on Elementalist to the point it dominates the metrics they’re going to look at why it’s dominating the metrics and take action as a result. This is how ANet has always done balance. You can point to almost every single nerf in the game and you’ll almost always see something that majority of people were using.

Lots of people cry about everything. I mean these forums are basically a repository of constant whining about every tiny detail in game. People still complain about Hammer burst in SPvP on the Revenant forums but it’s not nerfed because there’s really just not much usage there to justify it being out of ordinary. However when Hammer was being used constantly by large raid groups (10-20 Revenants per Blob) in WvW it then got various nerfs.

So lets take our Ventari Revenant Bunker. If a lot of people adopt it and it starts becoming staple in every game, ANet will see this trend and react accordingly. Whether or not people complain about it is largely irrelevant to the fact that unless a lot of people start using it they’re not going to do anything about it. Even then the opposite is true and even if a lot of people are complaining about something but not many people really use something then they’re not going to do anything about it.

In essence, you’re blaming the symptom and not the root cause of why things get changed.

Solori.6025:

Anet has a really bad track record of nerfing things just because people complain about them, without actually fixing the things that would solve the issue in the first place. (healing signet).
You could also look in every forum ( mainly pvp and wvw) and see the hyperbole and misinformation that Anet will take in, and nerf classes based on the tears of the vocal minority.

Prediction:
Ventari Bunker is going to be nerfed based on the crusade of the very vocal pvp minority.

Almost all those nerfs have to deal because those things were constantly and overly used. People in turn complained about things that were overly used. You’re attributing the nerfs to the complaints but the reality it’s players over use and abuse that triggers the ANet nerf bat.

I mean at one point we literally had two Revenants in a single SPvP team considered meta, you know bad things are coming your way when that happens. When the RTL nerf hit it was because literally every Elementalist was using D/D in every mode except WvW zerg play. The more something gets abused the more ANet is going to notice.

See the balancing principle is actually pretty sound because players, as a whole, are incapable of helping themselves use just wildly strong specs/setups. Soon as the cat is out of the bag everyone and their mother starts using it. That’s one of the big points to Brazil’s videos recently, he knows these things are damaging, but he’s going to educate people on how to use them so they get nice and cancerous to the point ANet has no choice but to nerf/change things because everyone is using them.

Any complaints are, after the fact, largely just a symptom of the point that a large amount of people playing a particular class setup that is strong or overpowered.

Kidel.2057:

The fact is that if you don’t equip Kalla and you never press F2-F3-F4, it’s actually usable (not bright or strong, just usable).

I just don’t think it will perform well against broken stuff like this: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winds_of_Disenchantment
I mean, this will probably break WvW anyway.

Even if we 100% math it out where Kalla Utilities and Short Bow are categorically the worst DPS in the game this isn’t going to stop random people from using it. Like that’s the thing you always gotta remember, there’s always random people doing random things with random builds in game and they show up in the usage reporting for skills/abilities/etc. For every super meta player only looking to play the absolute best there’s still a few casual dudes running around the world in a random spec and using random abilities because they “look cool” or “match their character theme.”

I’m not convinced that Winds of Disenchantment is going to be the end of the Revenant for WvW. Pain Absorption is very spammable and it’s ability to rip conditions and stack immense duration is very spammable as a result. I’d be more concerned about it removing Stability stacks as the melee ball lives and dies on it’s stability. That said I don’t think I’d ever consider bringing Kalla for WvW when Herald is vastly superior for solo and group play in WvW.

Knighthonor.4061:

Using this argument, why hasn’t Centuar Legend been fixed to be useful?

Because it still gets used. Ventari Bunker Revenant is certainly a thing in SPvP. Ventari healer I believe is a thing on some raid groups. So even if you or I think it’s the most worthless piece of garbage and wouldn’t ever actually use it in it’s current form doesn’t mean it doesn’t see usage in game.

JMaarse.7086:

try taking a rev to any raid other than deimos kiting. It HAS fallen out of the meta in PvE ever since NR/SoI nerf and that has been a LONG time. yet no buffs despite split PvP balance.

But that’s one game mode, nor have people really stopped using it in other various game modes such as WvW (where it’s still staple), SPvP (again staple on multiple builds), and general PvE (dungeons, fractals, world, etc). Even then you could bring it on a Raid and it would be viable, especially the Condi spec after the new Torment changes, and even quite good. This should be even more so after the introduction of Kalla giving a third trait line to boost Condi damage. ANet balance moves super slow, which while is VERY annoying, it’s one of those things it’s unlikely they’ll do anything until they see how things shake up post POF at this stage with it being 2 weeks away from launch of POF.

Joxer.6024:

So, what I am reading from this is that there is hope for Renegade!!?? KK, thx!!

I mean if it’s really that bad and no one actually uses it then yes it will see changes.

Absconditus.6804:

Luckily there’s not a chance in a heated desert of that happening, given they’d have to create assets for a new weapon all of a sudden with less than 3 weeks to go.

None of these changes will happen except possibly some unrelated Kalla changes based on overwhelmingly negative feedback regarding the new Legend.

ANet basically has always balanced based on in game actions and performance of players and almost never player feedback. Players lie. Players over exaggerate. Players make bad arguments. However in game by collecting class usage, weapon usage, skill usage, etc they can get to truth of how and what people are actually doing. We can make arguments like Jalis will always be more DPS than Shiro but they can take a look in game and see that X% of all Revenants use Shiro Y% of the time in ABC game modes etc.

So until the Revenant completely falls out of the meta for each game mode and people actually stop using it then I wouldn’t expect much outside of Kalla tweaks. I guess people just are incapable of learning you can’t lie to the devs who can actually access the in game data.

messiah.1908:

so your suggestion is to take ventari with power build?
lets check the nrg cost – 3 cleanse cost 25 nrg – 5 sec cd. you lose ability to disengage like shiro, or use heal as the heal skill with no healing power is useless. so you taking 5 skills just for 1 skills which cleanse…..
so now you will tell me use healing power amulet like mender but than i lose so much direct dmg….
now you get the point?

every other class dont have to sacrifice their whole 5 utilities just for 3-5 condition cleanse even with low cd, as you lose your heal skill, and 4 more utilities.

on thief, warrior,guard, ranger, engi, necro forum they dont ask for more dmg
necro want more stability, ele wants more build to play and not just support
gaurd wants more cover condi the burn.

only revs wants more dmg, more cleanse and some more healing and all better nrg management.

25 energy is 5 seconds of regen with zero upkeep against you. Since we aren’t taking healing power it’s unlikely spamming Natural Harmony would be a good idea. This leaves energy regen for weapon skills, but even if you are spamming Purifying Essence on cool down it should maintain regen to 50 depending how many weapon skills you use during the 10 seconds until next swap (it’s enough energy you should be able to spam 2, 3, 4, 5 on cool down and still be fine). At end before swap back blow it up (more condi cleanse), now got shards on ground for more tiny heals after back. However you could also go another route, such as if you have projectile hate and use the bubble if you wanted but that’s going to be rough on energy.

Yes, you have to give something up. But everyone has to give something up which was one of my original points. You don’t think an Ele would like to run full glass? Why do you think they complain about only having 1 viable build (cause it’s full of things they don’t want to take but have to take!). Revenant has two sets of utilities. So saying a class who has to run 2 condi cleanse slots but we have to run 5 is misleading because we have double the utilities. 2/5 or 5/10 is pretty equal ratios.

They’ve systematically dismantled our damage over the last year or two. Why do you think they would give it back? Requests like this make no sense.

narcx.3570:

The difference between DP thief’s utility cleanse and staff 4 on revenant are three-fold…

As for their traited cleanse on evade, the 1 second ICD is fine… It’s not about cleansing yourself entirely, it’s about resetting the stacks. A few stacks on you is no big deal, it’s when you start getting large stacks where you find yourself in trouble. That’s exactly why Rite of the Great Dwarf, Kalla’s Heal, and the Kalla GM trait are so useless… They don’t prevent your opponents from getting those 10-20 stacks of bleed/torment/confusion on you that a cleanse would have reset.

As I ALREADY said, Mr. Do Your Leg Work, the problem with Ventari is not a clunky tablet, it’s the fact that you have to invest over half your build into it to get the ability to cleanse. It FORCES you to either play a healing/support spec or play as a DPS spec, but without access to enough of your kit to actually kill anyone with.

But yeah, warriors are going to be in the same boat as Mallyx revs after PoF… I guess the devs are hoping their crazy bonus burst and off hand dagger life steal will sustain them through it? I’m sort of thinking that’s what they had in mind for Kalla as well, they’re hoping all the bonus ferocity can carry your dps through being stuck in Ventari.

As you quoted, however, I said Ventari Tablet. If you’re going to compare utilities you should do so properly.

So if you’re facing a heavy interrupt opponent switching to Staff wouldn’t be smart like you point out and simply rely on our Condi cleanse utility of Purifying Essence (instant cast, 5 second cool down, 25 energy). Now I’d point out that Ventari removes your point on weapon swapping to staff, but the essence of it is still there. That’s kinda part of playing a swap class like that. We see this with other timed swap classes like Ele when they swap to certain attunements classes dump damage since they know they’re locked out for a bit. Think that will always be there as part of the class design. Finally any Thief just straight up will never have as much condi cleanse as Ventari. 3 conditions every 5 seconds is insane. While their disengagement is superior, that’s thief in a nutshell. Again, why do you expect us to be equal to another class when we all have different setups?

I 100% agree that reduced condition damage is spinning in the mud. I would never argue for more of it. What I do argue for is making our Ventari legend less clunky in high mobility scenarios such as PvP and WvW. If that isn’t enough, we can show examples trying to use the tools they designed for us to deal with conditions and show, factually, it’s not enough.

Most classes end up giving up something to pick particular abilities. Sometimes that’s their trait lines/choices. Sometimes that’s their utility slots. Sometimes that’s their weapon choice. In WvW on my Revenant I have to take a Staff and Mallyx because those are what’s required to function there on the front line. The only point you could really make here is that because most of Revenant abilities are “Legends” they have poor Superior Rune set synergy (IE: You can’t get any Soldier Runes because no line is “Shouts” utilities).

I really have no idea what they were thinking with Kalla. Like I can’t even guess, the whole thing is just…yikes

messiah.1908:

man you clearly dont know rev or ventari skills

support rev needs more cleanse, not to say rev needs more cleanse.

i show you a fact of support build with cleanse while rev is the lowest on that tier you insist on your way.

for the dev… revenant needs more cleanse to play the conditions stacking. thief – condi, necro – condi, mesmer condi. just 3 classes which if targeted you are down so fast no matter how cleanse you got.

I do know the skills quite well.

What I insist on is trying to get something actually accomplished. You can literally go to any class forum and read threads for every single class asking for more power. More condi cleanse. More damage. More survivability. More something. If we start from a flawed or broken misconception about the Revenant then when the Devs do read it they will ignore it with the rest. But if we acknowledge the truth, we do have tools to deal with conditions like Ventari, and state a problem like it’s not very good/handy/wieldy/whatever at dealing with conditions and we need that fixed it’s a much higher likelihood chance of success we’ll actually see something get done.

ScottBroChill.3254:

How is ventari considered a good way to cleanse conditions for anyone not running a healing build?

I said it was the way that Revenants were given to cleanse conditions, especially when directly compared to full on healing builds like the Elementalist. I’m not sure why you expect to have condition cleanse on our offense. Other classes either have to bring a healer line and somehow manage to keep damage going I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

messiah.1908:

ventari takign salvation, jallis take retribution and herald. 3 trait line which offer support . same as ele. so what is your point exactly?
in this game ppl need more cleanse ability – its a fact. not to be same by other ele rather to be useful as anet state each class can play each role.
to build meta build you have to compare it to others – fact. if you do less good your build wont be either. thus you wont be able to play such role.

atm revenant suffer with each role with less to none condi cleanse

mallyx is not that good also as your boons easily rip, removed, stolen and nrg cost is too high to maintain it

My point is that you can’t point to another class who is overstacking Condition Removal and playing 100% defensively then turn around and demand that we get similar tools in our offensive builds. That’s not how things work. I mean you can do it, but don’t be surprised when 1, 3 or 6 months down the line when they’ve completely ignored your unreasonable request.

What I’ve shown, repeatedly, in this topic with multiple facts and examples on classes that the Revenant has similar condition cleansing potential as other classes. The big difference being is that ours is locked behind a clunky tablet mechanic that is poor for PvP/WvW. It can be used there, it is used there, but it is still clunky for general use.

When you guys talk about other classes it becomes problematic because your arguments can be completely unfounded. Look at that last guy who rattled off all sorts of builds but when you actually go to those classes, look at their builds, and every single time you either see someone 100% dedicated to condi cleansing and defense/heal or you find someone who has just as limited tools as we do. You guys clearly don’t play enough of the other classes to understand them or their mechanics to do an objective or unbiased comparison.

Why is that bad? Because it means the arguments you make end up being non-fact based and when the Developer reads that feedback: “Revenant has no condition cleanse.” they’re going to pull up the skills and look at them and say, “Well no, that’s wrong, next topic.” You have to make compelling arguments that make the developers think about the scenario. If you misrepresent the facts of the scenario, they will think about it at all.

narcx.3570:

Both DP and Condi Thief, Power and Condi Zerker, Any Reaper build, Phantasmashatter Chrono, Any tempest build to varying degrees, Meditrapper, Scrapper… All of these meta builds have a way to deal with conditions without deliberately sacrificing loads of offense.

DP thief build has 2 condi cleanses and has to take 2/3 utilities to cleanse condis on a 30 and 50 second cool down and still ends up taking cleansing. Zero weapon cleanses. How is that different than having Staff’s 2 condi removes on a 15 second timer and taking Ventari to cleanse off tablet other than the tablet is bad and clunky to use? S/D seems to take the evasion removal one, but as this has a 1s ICD it’s not going to remove the kinds of persistant, stacked and covered conditions people are talking about.

Warrior/Zerkers literally rely on Resistance like people are complaining Mallyx currently does in this thread and will end up facing the same problem soon as well.

I mean if you’re going to bother stating classes and combinations, at least do your own leg work and recognize these classes have no more condition removal than our own base class. The tools are out there. Educate yourself. This is the #1 problem I keep talking about false claims and poor expectations. You don’t even know what other classes are capable of but have this mythical idea that everyone else but Rev has endless tools to deal with Conditions while remaining 100% offensive in their traits, weapons and utilities. It’s just factually wrong.

Biggest limiting factor I found towards my DPS was that most auto attack chains would get interrupted on the 130 only range and the slow animation/attack speeds. Like I’d go in for an auto attack, but since many of the Balthazar mobs like move around constantly (oh boy Wolves again) they’d simply go out of range and then there goes the attack chain as I run around. Looking at other classes with similar melee weapons their auto attack chains tend to run 1/4 or 1/2 to solve that where as most of the Weaver Sword seems to be 3/4.

Taking Ventari to cleanse conditions is literally the exact same answer that every other class has. Again, by all means show me a wholly offensive build with condition management but simply put you aren’t going to find it. Every single build that deals with conditions at what people consider a “reasonable rate” either gives us weapons, utilities, trait lines and usually multiples of those. To expect that we don’t need to do the same is absurd and going to be ignored by the Devs.

Yes, Mallyx was a decent work around to the issue and we had our fun with it. Good times. However since Boon Strip just became a fairly common thing with POF we’re going to need to find another way. The only other sensible way is to ask for the same parity as other classes and making our cleanse/heal utilities (Ventari) more functional in highly mobile and active PvP scenarios.

Asking for additional cleanse on weapons when we already have similar condition cleanse as every other class isn’t going to go anywhere. You might as well just ask to be immune to conditions at all times because it has literally the same chance of success: Zero. There’s absolutely no precedent in this game for the kinds of things you people are asking for. Everyone who can deal with conditions has to use the tools their class got to deal with them and what we need is our tools we did actually get to deal with them to be put into a more usable state for PvP and WvW scenarios.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Had a lot of fun with Sword/focus condi combo in the betas. They flow so well together, specially fire and earth. in fire/eart you can use your sword 2 for a fire field and focus 4 for a blast finisher, then swap immediately to earth/fire and do focus 4 for a fire field and sword 2 for a blast finisher. Mix in a couple of pure fire and earth sword 3s for extra damage and you basically have a very rythmic rotation going. Having earth focus skills in there is also great for survivability. you can also combine earth skills with the sword water 2 for additional healing. The only problem with this combo is usually condi cleanse, though you can supplement that with traits or utilities.

Was doing similar with Sword/Dagger starting in Earth/Fire then going Ring of Fire → Earth → Rust Frenzy → Earthen Vortex → Auto Attack Chain (waiting on swap) → Fire → Lava Skin → Flame Uprising (Fire Aura due to persisting flames) → Earthquake → Churning Earth) → Auto Attack Chain (waiting on swap, if swapping to Fire again doesn’t interrupt could swap to fire after 2 hits but didn’t test this) → Fire → Cauterizing Strike → Fire Grab

This was on a Fire/Earth/Weaver build so had a lot of bleed/burn and durations but I didn’t have anywhere near the optimal setup.

The auto chains felt really slow but we’d have to see with Quickness. Even then I see this an area where Sword will eventually get buffed cause it’s just so slow for a 130 weapon. Battle moves for 1 second and it’s like oh well start your chain over.

Kidel.2057:

I don’t agree on the fact that we should equip a healing oriented legend to be just functional. Sure that would be a good option for heavy cleanse, but for QoL improvements just having cleanse on Shield-4 and double effect on Cleansing Channel would be decent. Still subpar, but decent.

Except literally every other class in the game has to equip a healing/condition cleansing oriented set of traits and/or utilities to be considered what we call functional. No one has shown a single class that can go full offense and get the same level of cleansing that you’re asking for. You can point out Druids (a healing trait line) or Elementalist Water or Earth lines but in every case they have to dedicate a significant portion of their character to defense in order to outlast their opponents. The only significant difference is ours is tied to a clunky Tablet that just isn’t realistic to micro in competitive environments where there’s high movement.

messiah.1908:

ele – has 12 abilities which cleanse 23 condition he can rotate between cd and diamond skin.
guard – has 5 abilities but block also remove them
druid – 1 amazing ability, signet, CA spamming seed of life
rev – staff – 2, ventari 3, and EE probably with 10 nrg or 20 so another 1-2.

this is why ele is meta. he is the best to counter condition dmg

An Elementalist has to dedicate 3 lines (Earth, Water, and Tempest) to defense in order to manage conditions as much as you claim and is forced to take Shouts to generate regen (Auras) in order to condi cleanse on top of using a Cleansing Sigil (which we can match with weapon and legend swap every 8-10s). The shouts are also used with Soldier Runes to clear even more Conditions. The bulk of the cleansing comes from aura generation which has no ICD on it’s Regen as well as Cleansing Water which also has no ICD but only have 4 direct auras to call upon and 2 auto generated ones all of which have around a 20-40s CD.

The point being is you’re talking about a character who is 100% spec’d for defense and condition removal. Are you spec’d Retribution/Mallyx, Salvation and Herald? Are you using Sword/Shield and Staff with Ventari and Jalis/Mallyx? Are you using 2 Cleansing Runes? Are you using a rune set that clears Condis?

You can’t willy nilly throw things out. Take an effort to understand what’s being done before you talk about parity. More importantly, why would you expect every class to be equal? That’s not how most MMO games are balanced. Not everyone is going to have the same damage, the same survivability, the same condi cleanse, the same healing or the same condi damage as every other class.

The best chance you have at successfully getting something changed is to present the problem our class is having, in a vacuum without comparing our classes to XYZ. The second you say, “Well Revenant can’t clear condis like an Elementalist” any game Developer is going to ask, “Well why don’t you play an Elementalist then?” Oh wait, that’s right, it’s because Elementalist has the lowest HP, lowest armor and if they don’t 100% focus spec into defenses they get killed in less than a second and if you’re bad you’re going to die super fast regardless of spec! You can’t compare classes. There’s literally zero ground to start from because not all classes are created equal.

That’s only half of what I said. We also have the ability to choose to bring Condi Cleanse, but it’s tied to a clunky and generally ineffective legend for competitive game modes. The difference is that other classes aren’t tied to clunky mechanics. I don’t have to summon a water elemental or be near it to cleanse myself on an Ele. Druids don’t control a movable flower that all their cleanses are tied around.

Furthermore most other classes’ cleanse mechanics while remaining offensive typically are 1-2 condi cleanses and generally on swap timers or similarly time gated effects. For example Cleansing Wave on an Elementalist or Strength of the Fallen on Guardian both stuck on set interval times (attuning to water or a 10 second timer). Many other condition cleansing traits on other classes are tied to specific utilities (IE: Use this type of ability, remove X conditions) which force them to bring sets of utilities themselves for similar advantages. So there’s a parity there you’re not giving credit to.

You are 100% right that the weakness to conditions should be addressed, especially with them balancing towards such a condition heavy meta. As I originally pointed out we’ve largely coasted on the Resistance Boon to work as a serviceable option the boonhate we’re seeing with new POF specs is going to render that largely useless. This means we need them to look back into our original method they gave us to dealing with conditions, Ventari, and make it a battle ready option that isn’t so clunky in a variety of game modes.

Kidel.2057:

Most classes can casually cleanse even on offensive builds. No need to even mention Druid and its 10 conditions cleanse. I get that Druid is a healing spec of course. However you can go conditions DPS on Druid and still get all the conditions cleanse you want, while Revenant is more limited by design. Given that it’s more limited, it should get some benefits

Again, if you actually take the time to go out and look at the other classes you’ll see that the “casual cleanse” that other classes get generally speaking is little different to what the Revenant can already do with Cleansing Channel.

The main two differences remain here between Revenants and other classes:

1. They have the ability to mix in their condi cleanses into their builds because of utility choice where as we have to take an entire set of utilities for condi/cleanse/healing that are tied to a clunky mechanic that is ill fitted for SPvP and WvW where those abilities are crucial.

2. More of an aside, we lack a “freedom” style trait/setup where we can reduce the effects of immobilize/cripple/chill that many other classes seem to have under specific conditions.

I was hoping someone was going to bring Druids up. Druids, in normal form, have the same Condi cleanse as most other classes and zero weapon condi cleanse just immobilize/cripple/chill removal but that doesn’t do anything against the stated case of “16 points stacked up” on us. They also have 2 more condi cleanses on Glyphs but only in Celestial Avatar form. Now they also get this form, but I think taking a class’ elite specialization and using it as a baseline comparison for every other class is faulty.

The argument that we’re not equal to the best healing mode class in the game (and even then in Ventari, with the tablet, and staff, and Salvation it’s pretty debateable…) therefore we’re garbage is just not going to work. When you present problems you want fixes to you have to present realistic problems and realistic solutions. If we present false exaggerations and don’t give credit where credit is actually due they’ll see us as lying and simply ignore us.

Therefore by acknowledging they already gave us tools to deal with conditions (Ventari) we admit we have the tools but that tool is poorly suited for the game modes where we need them the most (SPvP and WvW) so we need the tools changed to better represent the needs of those modes to stay competitive (tablet centered on us). This also gives us the trade off of making us have to use a defensive legend (ventari) if we want the benefit’s of it’s defenses (condi cleanse/heals) without keeping us in power through multiple offensive legends. If that is not enough of a trade off, by making us take a trait line that in turn works removes another part of our offense (and is on par with other classes) in favor of having those kinds of defenses. We give up something, we gain something. That’s the essence of balance.

messiah.1908:

maybe for hot spec ventari can used with cleanse but even with hot when i see 16 stack of poison just from thief and necro with bleed and 7 cover conditions you cant do anything against it.

like almost every other class we need cleanse on weapon or with our mechanism.

i see anet push renegade to to bruiser role . think with jallis and kalla you can have 33%, 50%, 20% reduce dmg from conditions but not cleanse at all with any weapon but the staff.
in a game that 5 sec ticking is important we need to be able to cleanse more or gain more nrg faster

I mean if you can show me the class/abilities that can deal with 16 stack of poison/bleed with 7 cover conditions by all means go ahead. There are very, very few classes who have that level of condition management and none via weapon. In most cases in order to manage conditions classes are forced to spec into specific lines (water ele, alchemy engineer, ranger wilderness survival, etc) or use very specific utilities to manage them (elixirs on Engie, shouts on Guardian, etc etc etc) for the level of repetition they get applied.

When you compare every other class weapon selections you’ll actually see we have roughly the same condi cleanse as most other classes and almost none as fast as cool down as we get with Staff 4. I mean Ele’s Cleansing Wave is twice the cool down and isn’t even a blast finisher.

What you will see when you compare our class to others however is that our entire Condition cleansing line is tied to a rediculous tablet mechanic that requires additional micro management just to get a basic class function. In that line we can cleanse 3 conditions every 5 seconds, on top of staff every 15 seconds, which is some of the highest condition cleansing in the game available…if you’re next to the tablet. If we address the tablet issue, we make our whole cleansing line and abilities available which would literally fix everything and put us on the same ground as everyone else.

Qori.9671:

you have more than that. Some of your legends slot skills remove 3 condi’s. Probably just not the legends you want to use because it isn’t what you wanna play , same with Eles, except we Have to play those traits or we die like a mesmer clone.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. Those condi cleanse/heals are tied to the tablet so in order to take advantage of them you gotta end up doing a whole other level of micro there on the tablet. In game modes where you’re constantly on the move (IE: WvW) this is pretty much impossible which is why you rarely if ever see it out there.

Now if they made us count as the tablet…then yes it’d be simply having to give something else up for their own defense like the Eles do with the water line.

I think it’s fundamental to understand that the core issue here isn’t the Resistance Boon in Mallyx or the fact that said boon will have more counters in POF.

The most important thing we need understood is our cleanse/healing option of Ventari is so unwieldy in so many scenarios we don’t even see it as a viable option that we have come to rely on Mallyx/Resistance as our only viable option to manage conditions

What we should be pushing for is to make the Ventari legend actually usable. We need a way, be it by trait or base line build, for us as players to be counted as the tablet. Ventari already has a wide number of condition cleansing, healing and defensive capabilities that we simply can’t take advantage of because of having to micro manage the tablet in scenarios where micro management is punished and/or not rewarded. This effectively takes one of our most needed core sets (condi cleanse/management) and makes it useless in the areas where we need it the most (PvP and WvW).

The most sensible solution to this, to me, is to simply make it so you carry it on your back and if you want you can use the heal key to move the Tablet to somewhere else like you can currently, and pressing the heal button again will bring it back to you like a boomerang. I don’t care how this is accomplished, be it by a GM trait in the Salvation line or otherwise.

However, simply put, we have the solution to conditions and cleansing built into our character we just need it in a state that’s functionally usable for the game modes we need it in.

Maybe it’s some consolation but the new POF expansion appears to be bringing the male equivalent to the “boob window” with most of their light armor aka: the “pecs window”

But Light Armor and Heavy Armor (numerous gladiator armors) had/have options. Medium armor has always suffered, but that’s because all of their armor is basically trenchcoats.

I’d rather they add a new utility in each legend so we have options than do a second Specialization.

But since this is an Elona expansion and Dervishes came with Elona and worshipped the Gods I think they’re smiling because I’d wager that’s probably toucched on with the expansion story.

Joxer.6024:

Oh I sooo want to really get behind you on your points, all great ones! Am so holding out hope that what you have mentioned is viable. But…..what about:

“any kind of cc will disable any effect the summons are giving out, an example to give is imagine using your elite summon and gorseval slams the ground, you and your group might of dodged but the summon is now cced and you’re draining energy and it’s not giving out the life drain/siphon anymore. meanwhile ranger spirits for example give out their buffs regardless of cc without energy costs.”

That’s a very good point, unless as you mentioned its not the case in pve? I myself am not really sure but if bosses can make them useless then we are right back to standing at the entrance to raid watching the parade go by.

Well Soulcleave has no cool down so it’s just a matter of toggling it on/off but then there’s the DPS loss of having to recast it.

The wells themselves have a 360 AOE radius, same as Meteor Shower, so they can be positioned strategically on some encounters but otherwise massive AOE CC just won’t be avoided.

Takes around 9 hours or so at T6 participation to complete a track.

Really isn’t that bad when you get down to it and I certainly have to grind a hell of a lot more PvE than I wanted to by comparison.

ardal.5403:

After trying other classes (mainly Daredevil and Dragon Hunter) I think that I will continue playing Revenant despite all the negativity here and in other topics.

I simply like the nostalgia and the feeling of uniqueness amongst all the other classes.

Thank you all for your input!

Cheers!

People are passionate right now to get things fixed. We know after the last time when we didn’t push as hard to get bugs fixed and issues looked at we basically had to wait a few years to see things changed/fixed. I wouldn’t take too much negativity too seriously, people just trying to make their case now when there’s a slim possibility something might change vs later when we’re at the mercy of balance passes and if someone is feeling like doing something other than just nerfing our class.

Solori.6025:

People said this when the renegade was revealed, a lot of " We havent even tested it yet you cant judge it based on the leaks" and come to find out, the renegade sucks.
Sometimes, its better to call a spade a spade instead of hoping it turns into a king later with testing.
If it is unviable, in the controlled environment that is the pvp testing grounds
Their is a very high possibility it’s going to straight up suck in other places.
Better to say whats wrong with it now then ’ waiting" for the official release and getting an elite spec no one will use.

Renegade sucks for PvP and WvW. No one is even trying to say otherwise to my knowledge.

The problem is you can’t call a spade a spade because you likely haven’t done a 5 player DPS test to see how much damage add there is from the Bleed Well let alone the Damage add Well. Both of which arguably, even just eyeballing the numbers on the Bleed Well alone, will do more damage than Vengeful Hammers in Jalis. This will make her utilities, since all we use Jalis for is hammers, more useful than Jalis as a straight upgrade.

I’m 100% with you that we should ask for upgrades now, but again we also shouldn’t overstate the case at hand because then it’s likely everything will be ignored. Claiming that a whole spec is not going to be good in PvE when we can already see that 2/3rds of it will be upgrades to existing Condi Revenant specs and the other 1/3rd useful in other parts of PvE it’s a hard case to sell that the spec is bad.

We should be focusing our efforts on making it more viable on the PvP and WvW fronts where it does tremendously need a lot of work.

I use a 4k UHD 40" TV and it’s ok. Not great, not good, just ok. Biggest issue I have is mini map size and text size even with all maxed out. Good Lord trying to see items to gather on the radar, have to zoom in most cases to check an area. Wouldn’t mind an option one bigger or even preferably just a sliding scale.

To be fair Devs tend to ignore most class forums these days.

Only time we saw heavy communication in here was when Roy was a class designer and he was working things out with us during the original Beta Weekends.

So your suggestion is we use Right of the Great Dwarf (5s)(50 energy cost) with Versed in Stone then start channeling Vengeful Hammers (-7 energy degen putting us at -2) to manage conditions?

I think you fail to understand the problem here.

Most condition classes are balanced around the idea in PvP that other classes have access to the ability cleanse themselves of conditions. This lets them overstack a large number of condition stacks. We have it ourselves in Mallyx and have tremendous ability to pump out Torment stacks so that even if a bunch get cleansed we can just generate another batch. This way when you run into Mr Elementalist with his 5 cleanses you aren’t wholly negated long as you keep the condition pressure up. So this means spending 50 energy for 5 seconds of -50% condition damage while channeling a skill further reducing condi damage but putting us at -2 degen isn’t sustainable in the face of the amount of condition pressure we’re going to face.

Revenant also has Condition management…but in Ventari. We can cleanse 3 conditions every few seconds around the Tablet. Unfortunately since PvP/WvW is constantly on the move and ever shifting we can’t really afford to waste time microing a tablet, applying damage pressure ourselves, and firing off cleanses. So the majority of the condition cleansing/healing we could do just isn’t really functional in the environment we need it the most in.

Since Ventari isn’t realistic in those competitive settings, most Revenant players have shifted to Mallyx in competitive settings. Mallyx will give us Resistance boon which in turn will let us ignore the conditions that are actually applied to us. That gives us an alternative way of dealing with Conditions as a class and it’s actually worked quite well up until recently. Recently we started seeing more and more new specializations get access to heavy Boon Strip (specifically the Scourge and Spellbreaker). This means having resistance to manage conditions is less of a working solution since we’re no longer reliably able to keep that going.

Having to rely on Mallyx for condition management, which only has access to Resistance in the first place as some sort of old throwback to the original design of the Revenant gathering conditions then spreading them out to opponents, is poor. The ideal solution would be for ANet to create a Grandmaster Trait in Ventari where you “become” the Tablet instead and things instead pulse around you (few other tweaks would be neeeded). This would allow us to give up one of our trait lines in favor of Salvation and make Ventari usable in competitive settings as a cleanse/healing option.

I only have three complaints about Revenant.

1. Our Cleanse/Heal set of utilities is tied to a clunky tablet to use. This has lead to most Revenants transitioning towards the use of Mallyx in competitive settings (PvP and WvW) because the Tablet just isn’t usable there realistically as well as the fact the meta has largely transitioned towards heavy condition usage. However with them also now focusing quite hard on boonstripping it in turn means we effectively have no functional way to handle conditions because Resistance gets stripped pretty quickly.

2. Revenant was designed around having to manage our energy. Adding skills with cast times, energy cost and lengthy cool downs goes against the way the Revenant was originally designed. It’s not even a “new” way to play because it has all the same downsides as the “old” way to play (energy costs) and all the downsides of another way to play (cool downs). By all means give us cast times and cool downs, but then remove the energy costs or keep the energy costs and remove either the cast times or cool downs.

3. For the love of God and all that is holy please fix the environmental issues with our weapons. Adding in a bunch more weapon skills that get messed up by terrain is just frustrating when the last batch haven’t even been fixed :/

The underwater stuff isn’t a big deal to me as if you’re a condi player you got Mallyx and if you’re not there’s Shiro. Ideally they should add others, but it’s such a minor thing I don’t really care. I just see it as them being lazy cause there’s really no good reason for the other legends to not work under water.

If you don’t like something just reroll off it for a while.

Usually is the best solution.

Kidel.2057:

I see your point, but please understand that if your pve build basically only uses Renegade traits, avoiding weapon and skills, it means that traits are the only decent part of this spec for pve. Renegade as a whole is bad, and a bunch of traits are not on par with what other classes are getting

But, again, we can’t say the Legend abilities are bad for PvE yet because we can’t properly test them in a PvE setting. Razorclaw’s Fury is terrible for a single target, but when you’re adding 5 bleeds a second from 5 people attacking for 10 seconds that adds up. Especially because it’s bleeding off the Revenant’s Expertise and Condition damage. Now tack on the Elite that adds X damage to every single attack that lands as well as life healed for the same 5 members as your energy drains and that’s not a bad mix to the point I’d wager it would out perform Jalis Hammers for a Condi Revenant. The Daze well also would work very well for break bars since it’s 6 applications of daze.

Shortbow adds a ranged condi weapon that we didn’t have before. No condition PvE player is going to “avoid” it. They’ll use the stronger Mace/Axe combo when they can and when they can’t they now have an option where without Short Bow they’d be sitting there useless.

So the entire basis of your argument that it’s “just the traits” doesn’t hold up. It’s the other half of the PvE Condition player kitten nal. I’m not sure if you’re just trying to complain to get things buffed up or something but you just don’t really have a basis for an argument.

Kidel.2057:

If we don’t equip Kalla’s utility skills, but just the traits, it means that Renegade is flawed for PvE, as I’m saying.

If you just take Renegade for a couple of traits and maybe the shortbow, without using any of the skills, it just means that Renegade is bad for PvE. You’re admitting that those summons/wells are crap.

Also all the boons from Renegade traits don’t really affect Mallyx, that is based on Torment.

I already pointed out that the Legend’s wells could end up being more damage that Jalis’ hammers we just won’t know till we can do a proper DPS test with 5 people taking advantage of them as intended. So what you’re saying is wrong.

Furthermore, there’s lots of examples of using trait lines for benefits without using the relevant skills. In WvW we see a lot of Jalis/Mallyx despite running Herald trait line for example.

The only Boon that Renegade generates is Might and Fury both of which would help Mallyx with Condition Damage and Crit Chance (to proc Torment). Kalla’s Fervor, which is a seperate buff, also benefits Mallyx even with a Mace (tested) as it increases all Condition Damage by 10-20% (depending on GM trait) as well as adding an additional 150-300 Ferocity (on top of what we already get from Devastation Line).

You’re really reaching here man. I mean by all means criticize away at being not effective in PvP and WvW both of which are 100% legit complaints. Trying to make a case for it not being useful in PvE as the second half of the Condition build is bridge too far.

Currently there’s a Condi build of Viper gear with Corruption/Devastation/Invocation with Mallyx/Jallis.

Kalla’s Trait Line allowing us to create 10%-20% additional condition damage and 300 Ferocity will likely be a straight upgrade to either Invocation or Herald even if you’re using Mace/Axe. Even then since most of our game play revolves around Mallyx Elite, swap, Jalis Hammers the bleed from a Geomancy sigil will likely benefit from the bleed based traits in there as well.

Kalla’s Legend is very questionable, but the ability to have 5 players trigger Bleeds for 10 seconds / 15 seconds (which take your condition stats) then immediately go into her Elite (which will proc Diabolic Inferno for more Burn) which will potentially add tremendous amounts of damage currently means that they could also be damage adds over Jalis with Hammers. The biggest issue with testing is that since these wells only benefit at maximum with 5 players utilizing them it’s hard to test even with a test dummy scenario.

Shortbow’s ability to pierce and bleed basically is going to match every other piercing, bleeding weapon for open world farm before it. Pistol Engineer comes to mind with their piercing. Big clumps of spawns can easily be farmed with the relative safety of range again benefiting a Condition focused player since Hammer already provided the same function for a Power focused player.

So, again, yes it is very PvE focused and PvE oriented for a Condition focused character.

The biggest issue with them being spirits is that they are spirits. Every class in the game dreads getting pets or pet like mechanics because even if they don’t actually attack they can still be CC’d and cleaved down. I’m pretty sure they can even be pulled/pushed/etc based on the fact they can be feared (when feared they run away, then setup to do their effect again). These just make them horrendous for any kind of competitive play.

The second biggest issue is they have cast times, energy costs and cool downs. Revenant was designed to not have that many cast times and cool downs due to energy cost. If they wanna mix things up and have cast times and cool downs the energy costs need to come way down to compensate.

So adding more spirits that follow you like a Warband isn’t going fix the current problems with them. I’d love to see them as offensive auras instead of defensive ones like Glint, but I feel like that’s pushing it a bit much and likely wouldn’t synergize with short bow very well.

Except you can play without Herald.

Renegade, in it’s current form, is basically the 3rd trait line for a PvE Condition based Mace/Axe build. The traits increase in bleed duration, bleed damage, and a total of 20% condition damage with 300 Ferocity from 10 Kalla’s Fervor should be higher DPS increase than Invocation or Herald can provide. So for PvE, a no Herald build will be just fine.

The main issue for the Revenant in competitive modes (WvW and PvP) is we lack the utility build diversity to handle conditions outside of Mallyx’s Resistance buff which simultaneously is being destroyed with the huge amount of new boon strip/conversion they’re adding. This forces us more and more into Retribution and Herald just to be able to survive in these game modes which means Renegade or any new Legend will never be a serious option without their utilities and lines adding additional condition removal or defenses.

Renegade feels like it was designed by someone who doesn’t really play or know the Revenant. Everything has cast times, energy cost and cool downs which the whole point of the Revenant was meant to be about energy management. It’s like they heard the cries of “We want ranged condi damage!” then took the ideas they had abandoned on other classes (IE: Engineer shooting things through portals, shooting missiles to a point instead of like a shot gun, etc) and slapped it on to the Renegade.

Vyrulisse.1246:

Honestly scared this could happen because hearing them talk about Renegade they all sound so proud of what they created. I fear in their quest to make a cool sounding spec they forgot about the gameplay part of it.

But firing arrows into portals and having them come out the other side is so cool and neat we had to do it twice!

In all seriousness, as a former Elementalist (and probably returning to one), I’ve seen this same style of “thematic design” done before. It’s very frustrating and usually ends up having to be reworked eventually anyways.

Vyrulisse.1246:

Does the heal even work? I felt like I got nothing from it and died anyway.

It does. But it can be interrupted during casting also if it gets feared/CC’d it doesn’t do it’s 33% condi damage or healing aura.

I think Roy had a lot of great ideas and a great attention to balance towards the Revenant when it first came out. There were conversations like the ability to move on Crystal Hibernation would be too much with the heal.

Then the normal balance team took back over and we see the same clueless, moronic and purposeless nerfs that we see across many other classes. Crystal Hibernation heal ends up taking a huge nerf and did we get the ability to move with it? Nope. Have fun just being worse.

You can tell from the Dev stream these guys were super proud of themselves and the neat portal style attacks they came up with but functionally it’s all just a huge miss. Such a shame, I miss Roy

I know taking the Legend out back and shooting it in the head to put it out of it’s misery is off the table but honestly that’s the only way I see “fixing” this legend. Everything pretty much needs to be reworked.

What I predict will happen is ANet will balance like they always do. Rather than admit they could ever possibly do wrong, they’re going to take our feedback that Mallyx + Mace does way more condi damage and nerf Mace + Corruption traits while nerfing Herald of any offensive support it already does better. Because it’s not that “Renegade is bad” it’s just that “all the other things are overpowered!” so Renegade can’t be appreciated properly

Aomine.5012:

I don’t really care about raid, so the introduction of SB for openworld and wvw is a huge plus to me, especially after hammer got nerfed to ground.

Hammer is still pretty amazing. Got smacked with COR the other day for 12k still on my 2500 armor Ele. It’s also one of the few ranged weapons that’s projectiless on it’s skills. Between reflect and the 900 range on Shortbow it was decidedly lackluster compared to Hammer.

In open world PvE content with waves of monsters, that pierce + bleed will be very strong though like it is on many classes with it (Engie Pistols with pierce come to mind)

Short Bow is thematic garbage. It’s cast times take forever, most skills are clunky/awkward to use, take way too much energy for the long cool downs, and generally all around is just an inferior weapon. I mean the stuff looks neat, bravo to the animation team, but functionally it’s inferior to the mace in every aspect but range. Probably see most use on PvE open world bosses if you’re lazy.

The current condi meta characater basically spams mace 1/2/3/5 while channeling down Mallyx Elite and Jalis Hammers on rotation using a Devastation/Corruption/Invocation build. I can easily see Kalla taking the place of Invocation because it should have more condi damage add with it’s Kalla’s Fervor and bleed damage traits (which we bleed with Geomancy Sigil) assuming you can get side/back hits in all the time to keep buffs rolling.

The Kalla Legendary on the other hand gets interesting when compared against Jalis. For one, the Razor well adds Bleed for each person who hits with it, but the bleeds count for you and take your stats. So if you got 5 people hitting each second it’s going to add a lot of bleed. The Energy drain one is the uncapped damage add which I see getting a nerf because holy crap if it’ll let us add damage on each hit with no ICD. But there’s long cast times on these (3/4) so the damage loss during that time might not make up for it compared to just using Jalis so it’s something that’ll have to be tested. The other two abilities one does okay damage (Ice) and the other one with the Daze seems like it’d be great for break bars.

Sadly I don’t think we’re going to see many buffs for Kalla. What we’ll see instead is a bunch of nerfs to existing Condi builds and Herald to make Kalla fit better.

Can confirm Nevermore showers the area with a mix of birds and fire.

narcx.3570:

lmaogg.7325:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Renegade is a PvE spec, get it in your heads.

The real problem is they didn’t allow us to test these specs in PvE. That was the real dumb decision they made

It’s just bad. There is no such thing as a “pve only” spec.

Also, it seems like it’ll suck for PvE too.
Not enough support to justify bringing such lackluster damage.

I dunno man.

Short Bow is automatically out. It’s just a terrible, terrible weapon with novel effects maybe okay for open world PvE where being at 900 is preferable to being melee.

However trait wise, with 20% condition damage and 300 ferocity from 10 stacks of Kalla’s fervor is much higher than anything from Inovcation or Herald gets I’d wager. That, combined with additional bleed damage (trait) which would impact swapping with Geomancy sigils seems like a better over all condition setup with Deva/Corruption/Kalla. That setup also gives you access to Citadel Orders but tbh I don’t think they’re worth their energy cost in most cases.

The legend itself (Utilities) aren’t too shabby either. I could easily see a rotation where instead of Jalis and using Hammers you’d swap and use Razor Claw’s Revenge which for the next 10 seconds you’ll add 3 seconds of bleeding x5 provided 5 targets are in range of the well. The condition damage and source is attributed to you so that’s not bad at all and synergizes with her Bleed traits. After that there’s Soulcleave’s Summit which is a straight up huge chunk of added damage with no ICD currently. This will probably be nerfed but adding damage like that for 5 people seems super strong. Until meters come out tho we’ll not be able to realistically see how much damage add these are, and even then meters won’t accurately represent others hitting to offset their damage loss during casting (that wonderful 3/4th timer everywhere).

So for PvE….pretty solid. PvP and WvW on the other hand, complete trash. The base Revenant lacks the base tools needed to make it a viable build.

BlazeQ.1095:

Would group comps not help support the role as condi DPS?

Okay so when you’re looking at group comps you gotta look at what that person also brings to the group. In the case of the Renegade, that’s unfortunately very little. You’re going to need to be brought into a dual Guardian group (for stab). But lets break down what Kalla can do for a team:

1. Share Might stacks (Citadel Order). Herald already did this, but also provided a lot of other boons as well. More importantly, since you gotta be in a Dual Guardian group anyways chances are extremely likely they will be running dual staff for might stacks before an engage anyways.

2. Provides Alacrity (Citadel Order). This isn’t a bad add, and with the right Trait you’re looking at a 6s of Alacrity every 20s which isn’t bad at all. This is arguably one of the better uses for Kalla’s trait line.

That’s it (unique to Kalla).

Now before you protest, understand most of the wells are useless. Almost all the benefits of Wells will be negated by hard bombs (which will kill the spirits, already tested) or by the high mobility WvW requires (you’re out of their wells/effects). So any benefits those could add in a group fight are pretty much negated by the fact they can die and be CC’d which also negate their effects.

So this means you wouldn’t take wells and you wouldn’t take shortbow even if you want to do Condi. At that point the trait line and Citadel Orders directly compete with Herald trait line and Natural Resonance and all things considered Herald is just vastly superior for WvW. It gives the Revenant additional stability, shares might stacks with allies, and adds to boon durations which boons kinda make the WvW world go ’round.

For PvE this is an entirely other matter and Renegade has a clear seat at the table as a viable Herald alternative for a PvE condition focused Revenant rocking Corruption, Kalla and Destruction/Invocation. Wells being obliterated is less of a concern and they have seemingly good set of uses.

I laughed out loud when I dropped my Healing well and it immediately got feared in WvW and didn’t heal/reduced condis.

Theme > Functionality run amok.

Regenade is without a doubt a PvE focused specialization, basically the other half of Mallyx Condition Revenant. For PvE I see a lot of synergy with a Corruption, Kalla, and Devastation/Invocation mix.

In WvW it’s just straight up awful:

Shortbow – In large scale it’s just straight up worse than Hammer in every way imaginable. There’s just too many 3/4 cast times on the weapon to make it really viable and it makes it very vulnerable to any kind of counter CC/interrupt. There’s no mobility on the weapon what so ever meaning if you get caught out of position you’re just done for. This also makes it poor for smaller groups as no leaps, mobility just leaves you at the mercy of other classes with mobility as trying to deal with thieves/mesmers (very common small scale) or anyone else is just annoying since they can blip around all over and you’re stuck there with basically no mobility.

Citadel Orders – These are probably one of the better parts to Renegade. Heroic is nice if you need to keep Fervor up and it’s about to go down, but the might generated is pretty lackluster compared to Herald. Bombardment I wasn’t impressed with the 900 range or 40 energy cost but after trying it out I see why and it made the cost pretty worth it. I was condi focused and saw a lot of high burns was very impressive. Above’s Alacrity was very impressive and welcome.

Breakrazor Bastion – Right off the bat I saw everything wrong with these “wells” or “spirits” when I summoned her and she got immediately feared and started running away for a few seconds before resuming her aura. Complete and total garbage for WvW. Stun break on heal is interesting, a 3/4th cast time (more…) is not. The reduction in Condis is nice but over all this heal isn’t functionally useful in a fight since the spirit can just get CC’d and the effects all stop.

Icerazor’s Ire – Not much to say here, Chill/Vuln field. Damage feels low. The 600 range doesn’t help. Would probably be more interesting with Chill to provide additional Torment from Corruption line than Cripple.

Darkrazor’s Daring – 1/4th Daze on 1 pulses is neat but as fast as people move it didn’t really stop anything. Might be decent as a stab remover but that’s about it.

Razorclaw’s Rage – Probably the only well I liked because he Bleed it does is attributed to the Revenant not the player who does the attack. That means it scales with my condi damage even if a power player is doing the procs. Was super cool to buff up the allies and add Bleeds to their attacks while I sat back unable to fight in a 1200 vs 1200 fight.

Soulcleave Summit – This was again a neat thing to buff up allies, but I didn’t see much use out of it lacking the sustain to really stick in a fight. Only chance I got to really use it myself in a fight was in a 1v1 and it didn’t really hurt but I don’t feel like it gave me the fight either. Probably better as a free damage add in PvE.

Renegade Traits – Biggest issue I see with basing things off Fury is Herald is our most consistent source of Fury when we’re solo. The small amount of disables and evasions (I mean, basically dodge roll) we get make the other two Adept traits questionable as well. Stunbreak CC sounds nice in theory, but again we have very few stun breaks as a class making Heart Piercer the default go to in Master level (as even without a Short Bow the increased Bleed damage would benefit Geomancy Sigils). Good Grandmaster traits as each have good benefits to them, was hard choice, but probably going with lazy convenience of Improved Fervor.

Basically Revenant has very few ways to deal with conditions. Many other classes can go with an offensive weapon, offensive trait setup, and still slot defensive Utilities which the Revenant just can’t do. This makes having a new Legend lacking stun breaks (I mean, to the heal? Really?) and ways to deal with conditions on you (reducing damage by 33% is great and all but 3k burn stacks are real). This makes Kalla a really squishy option that just has no place in SPvP or WvW especially when it’s directly competing against the utility Juggernaut of Herald. This makes Kalla basically fit perfectly into a PvE condition role because now Revs can be condition focused without wholly giving up their offensive support role. But SPvP and WvW both wholly rely on defenses considering the immense levels of damage, conditions, etc out there and Kalla adds nothing there and the base Revenant options (Jalis, Retribution Traits, etc) aren’t enough to carry it.

Jinn Galen.2468:

You’re making my switch from necro to rev really worth it. It’s a shame rev has no ranged weapon. I hear renegade isn’t so good.

I feel like even if Renegade isn’t 100% worth it as a weapon or legend the trait line of adding 20% condition damage with 10 stacks of Kalla’s Fervor, additional bleed duration/damage, etc from the trait line seems like it’d be worth it over Devastation or Invocation. I mean 3 DPS trait lines…just dang.