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I really loved your initiative here!
I like most of your suggestions and I honestly love some of them. I think all the flavour ones are spot-on and it’d be great if the devs got to implement them.
I also thought about your Shortbow #3 suggestion. It’d be really cool to be able to change the trail angle of the arrows from this ability. It’d basically mean that we can use it to its full potential with targets that are closer than 900 range and increase the skill it takes for somebody to use it properly. What I’d like to see is that the meeting point for the projectiles is marked by the mouse pointer, while the projectiles would still run for 900 range. It’d increase the possibilites and chaos that this skill brings to the table!
Regarding Kalla’s Fervor, I understand why they’d be afraid of letting us share it with allies. It could be countered, however, by removing our stacks when we shared the Fervor, so we need to build it and then share it and so on. I’m not too sure if F2 could be used for that end when traited, but then I love being able to have 10 stacks on, so… maybe remove the F3-enhancing trait and make it sort of baseline? Then we could free up a GM that makes F2 increase in energy but allows us to share Kalla’s Fervor instead of might? That’d be nice since we’d have 3 competing (and amazing) GM traits that allow us to support our allies depending on the situation or strategy, through Fervor, Alacrity or Might generation.
I know you didn’t want to get into balance but… I got an idea for some (or maybe all) of the utilities. The elite skill is bonkers amazing and we could learn from its design. And that’s thanks to the fire field it brings with it. I think it’d be really amazing if we could provide fields through our utilities (maybe not 10-second fields, mind you). The healing would clearly benefit a bunch from having a water field (2-3 blasts with mace? I’d fell in love). The other clear candidate would be the Icerazor dude: as the name implies, make it an Ice field and let it synergize with Corruption better. I think the rest of the utilities are good enough, mechanically. But then it’d give it more consistency if they gave a poison or ethereal field (for the bleeding charr) and dark (for the dazing charr). It’d be as simple as a 2-sec field, but it could clearly improve the utility and support possibilities of Kalla’s legend. Regarding flavour… I’d go all the way and call them Echos since lorewise it’d make sense for the warband to be a temporal echo from Kalla’s revolution and it makes them feel more detached from Ritualist’s spirits and their own thing. I think of them as Kalla’s memories of her lost warbands materializing from the mists. Also, there’s the paragon connection right there.
So cool that you started this thread! I have big hopes for the Renegade and this changes could really make it feel more unique.
Thanks!
Thank you =)! I really appreciate the feedback and it sounds as though you’re on the same page as me!
I love the idea of the Grandmaster trait change you suggested! Providing real substantial choice in what play style you want to take!
The great thing about using the F2-F4 skills as well with it… is the flavor and style of the Renegade elite can move around with you regardless of whether you’re using the Kalla legend or not. Maybe shift the focus of Kalla’s Fervor more primarily to the F skills and how you share that buff, allowing you to be a condi rev, a power rev, a support rev, etc. while still spreading that leadership love!
Definitely agree with aligning the utilities more closely with Paragon, so they feel more relevant to the expansions location in the world, while still making thematic sense with Kalla being a war band leader. It would also leave an open path for a proper Ritualist style legend if we were to visit Cantha in the future.
I really like the Revenant and I wanted this elite spec to make me love it! But it’s struggling to do that for me in it’s current form. Hence all the flavor suggestions above.
I definitely agree balance has a big part of making a class feel enjoyable as well, and that utilities like the current elite provide a powerful buff…. I’m just not a big fan of how they have been executed… they feel very static and lack luster to use, which moves away from what the rest of the class is like to play. I get they want elite specs to change the play style… but I don’t think you need to re-define the class to do that… because that will ultimately end up muddying the water and all classes will start to feel the same.
I really hope Anet devs are looking through these forums and taking things on board and changing stuff accordingly. I’m just not sure this time round though. Last elite specs, all the forums had devs actively responding to peoples posts and you could really see the feedback being taken on board, especially with the Revenant!
It’s like a work place… good managers listen to their staff and take their feedback onboard and change things accordingly to have things work better…. I think it’s even more important for a game.. we are those workers, we are providing feedback to help better their game. At the end of the day, the game wouldn’t exist without us… so the worst thing they can possibly do is ignore us (not saying they are, but it feels a bit that way).
Thanks once again for the addition!
—-Kalla Legend [Utilities]—-
Now… this is where I come to what I truly feel makes my claim of the class being boring! The animations for the utilities are boring, the sound effects are boring, the utility is boring, not to mention the balance is terrible, compounding the issue even further!
Now I don’t know if the intention was to make the class feel like a Ritualist… because is just… doesn’t! The Ritualist summoned spirits and could move them with him/her using skills. They looked and sounded cool as well.
I don’t know if this was an attempt to give the Revenant wells, without actually giving them wells! I just can’t grasp what the intention was!!!
I honestly feel this was ArenaNet trying to give the Revenant a strong group support option, but just failed terribly at making it feel good to play… Leaving people who do group content as AI bots that just auto attack and want to stab their eyes out.
I’m not even 100% sure how they could fix this without having to do some serious re-design of the whole elite spec.
I’m not going to go skill by skill on this one, as they all fall into the same category for me!
But I’ll try my best on some suggestions that could improve this part of the elite!
Suggestion 1
Instead of having each skill cast a Char that just dances in the middle of a ring for X flat energy cost, providing some sort of group buff, why not have it summon said “Leader” and a bunch of other char warriors/healers/etc that go out and do the effects to allies actively while slowly draining energy the longer they’re up.. giving the utilities the feeling that you’re actually summoning some kind of… I don’t know… war band maybe? this way the flavor of the skills at least improve. Sure, maybe this would make it feel like a Christmas tree with Revenant’s running around with 20-30 ghostly chars running next to them, but it’s better than a dancing char in the middle of some light mist.
Suggestion 2
All these suggestions are going to be some kind of re-work to the animations/feeling of the utilities, because that is what is so terrible about them. So similar to the above, instead of having a char summon and stand there dancing. Why not summon char(s) per skill, that immediately cast a single powerful skill at said location and then disappear. for attack skills, you have some run in from the mists with swords/axes/weapon of choice and attack as they run past the enemy, disappearing at the end of the animation… kind of like a bull rush charge type thing in a line. You could have a line of them appear near you and let off a volley of arrows at a location (wow, bow type synergy here???), summon some that stand next to mini catapults launching balls of fire…. I don’t know, there are so many different things in war that could be leveraged off to give these skills flavor while providing similar utility.
Suggestion 3
Remove summons all together! Use other things that are used in times of war, like battle cries, that give similar buffs to enemies in X radius around the Renegade. Maybe take some inspiration from GW1’s paragon class and have them do Leadership/Command skills and provide chants/echos out to allies. This would also fit perfectly into the Elona theme (Not that Kalla had anything to do with Elona… but whatever). The theme still remains with being some kind of leader and your war band can be your allies.
Yeah… This is a tough one… but it DEFINITELY needs some serious work. There is a very good reason why everyone is voting and complaining about the Renegade being the worst Elite Spec of this expansion.
So yeah! That is my 2 Cents guys! Tell me what you think and add to the feedback.
If ArenaNet aren’t looking through this feedback like they actively were last time round and nothing changes because “That’s how they wanted to do it” and the customer base’s opinion fall by the way side, then you’ll quickly see this profession/elite forgotten. A lot of people will be annoyed and probably cause some of those people to quit. But anyway!
—-Elite Mechanic—-
Now, I’m not so sure how much of a fan I am for just adding some more F skills and calling it an elite spec that plays differently, because it really doesn’t make it feel as though it does. But I can sympathize it might be hard to mix up the Revenant play style given it’s design, so I’ll forgive that one for now.
F2 – Heroic Command
I feel this skill and all F skills need some serious balance tuning, but I did say I wouldn’t talk about balance, so I digress. Overall the skill works OK? Sorta… in it’s current form, bit boring, bit eh. I’ll talk more about how it could be really great when I cover my thoughts about Kalla’s Fervor design further down.
F3 – Citadel Bombardment
Love it, awesome looking and sounding skill. Probably the best part of the whole elite, which is a bit sad. I would however up the amount of missiles/arrows, un-traited that the skill fires, and reduce the damage a little bit to make it feel even more impactful and flavorful.
F4 – Order from Above
Errgghhh… Alacrity although good for the game, just doesn’t feel like it should be here! It just seems like a poor attempt to make another class option to provide it. Leave Alacrity to the Chronomancers, so that they stay unique!! I’m not sure what to change this to, but something else. Maybe take inspiration from what I have to say per Kalla’s Fervor.
Kalla’s Fervor
Now!!! This is where I feel you could make Renegade feel truly unique. As I was saying above about leaving Alacrity to the Chrono. Why not make Kalla’s Fervor sharable to allies and unique to the Renegade?? The class has a lot of built in components that help keep the up time of this buff, so numbers here or there may need to change. But Kalla is all about her “war band” right? What better way to spread that feeling, by having her act as a leader to a party and spread the buff? Thematically it’d be great and it’d also make the Revenant a solid RAID/Fractal/Dungeon group choice, same as how Chrono is now!! There would be some fiddling about traits and balance, but faaarrr out I think it’d transform the class!
OK, I’ll just start by saying, this feedback thread is not going to include any specifics for the following:
Balance [The reason for this is because, well… it can change before release. Numbers are not final, condition types/how many per skill are not final, etc]
Core Revenant Issues [Of which there are many that I won’t go into here]
This feedback thread is going to primarily focus on the design of the Renegade elite spec and how it overall feels to play in my opinion. I’m by no means a pro, so please excuse me for blunders of core understanding.
I’m going to try structure the thread as best as possible for easy reading. Broken down into:
Shortbow
Elite Mechanic [F abilities and Kalla’s Fervor]
Legend [Utilities]
For each I’m going to:
- Break them down by skill and what I like and dislike about them
- Suggestions on what could be changed to improve that skill (if applicable)
So with that out of the way, let me get started!
—-Overall Renegade Thoughts—-
I’m just going to get straight to the point. It feels boring! Definitely in its current state.
I’m not 100% sure on the intention the devs had/have for the spec, but putting down what are essentially wells, that are boring to look at, make terrible noises and have bland effects isn’t what I feel makes the Revenant fun to play.
Switching between weapons and legends to quickly use the required abilities for the given situation make it great to play. It feels like a magical hybrid of Thief and Guardian… Renegade moves so far from that and almost forces you to sit in the legend to get any kind of benefit from it at all!
—-Shortbow—-
Overall, I actually think the shortbow is the best part of the new elite spec. Each skill has flavor and purpose and look great! I’m not a big fan of the sound effects it makes though! It seems like every skill is a blip noise. You cast Bloodbane Path or Spiritcrush and it just goes blip, blip, blip. Which doesn’t make them feel very impactful…. Not like Mace 2 and 3 anyway, which feel and sound great! I feel all shortbow skills need a better sound effect, however minor people feel that is! Give it a similar sound to what Citadel Bombardment uses, that’d make them feel awesome!
Shattershot
Looks good, functions well, not really much else wrong with it other than balance.
Bloodbane Path
A bit hard to read what’s happening with this skill as it kicks off so quickly, so maybe some slight animation adjustments to make it better to see, but overall a cool skill and works well.
Sevenshot
Now this skill is clunky to use (and not because half the arrows currently bug out). The idea of the skill is sound, but I feel it could be implemented far better. instead of having the reverse shotgun targeting that makes you feel that you have to back peddle in order to maximize it’s potential, why not allow the user the ability to choose the location the arrows congregate? This would still leave some difficulty for skill use, while providing some awesome skill shot moments! Think of Li Ming’s targeting of magic missiles from Heroes of the Storm if people have played. I know, shock horror using another game as a basis for improvement here ArenaNet =O. just my 2cents!
Spiritcrush
Good skill, works well. Maybe add a bit of fire inside the ring, to better represent why people are actually getting burnt. having fire around you and nothing on the inside doesn’t make a lot of sense as to why you’re getting burnt standing in blank.
Scorchrazor
Really like this skill! Feel it should be a knockback just because of the animation, but overall the function is really good non the less!
Very interesting topic. Not sure that any developper is going to read this, but i might have an idea concerning the “this legend is best suited to this weapon”. Instead of a weapon swap per se, i believe that switching to a specific legend should tailor the weapon’s effects to itself.
Allow me to explain with a crude example with the hammer skills.
Let’s say you’re using Jalis:
Hammer Bolt works as intended now
Phase Smash doesn’t have chilled effect, but provide with a 1 sec knockdownAnd now, you switch to Mallyx:
Hammer Bolt now has a purple color and inflicts 1 stack of torment, but has less damage.
Phase Smash chills the enemy as intended nowThen switch to Ventari:
Hammer Bolt inflicts medium damage and 1 stack of vulnerability
Phase Smash is less powerful, but heals AoE at target (so it can be used as offensive or help allies, especially meleers)This would help differentiate playstyles and most of all increase diversity while not making the revenant unreadable by other players, and make multiple legends more viable because as OP mentioned, right now weapons feels connected too much to specific legends.
It may look a tad more elementalist, but toned down (same attack animations, just slightly different effects) so you still feel like you have to choose your weapon wisely.
First post since i have the game, hope you guys can add to the idea and make the revenant a worthy adversary.
This is a really neat idea! Definitely would be a unique to the Revenant!
It still begs the question on the Range to Melee switch issue that the class suffers from at the moment. Maybe, there is the potential with this system, that upon swapping legend, the weapon turns to ranged, instead of melee (Obviously, this wouldn’t work in all cases… ranged swords might look a bit odd haha).
I feel the community is coming up with some good solutions to the issues the class is currently facing and for the most part they’re all in line with one another. I’m just wondering what path ANET will go down, if any (which is a scary thought if that’s the case, as the class definitely needs to see some work).
I’m also wondering how many of these forum threads ANET go through, given how many there are, hopefully these good ideas don’t fall through the cracks and forgotten!
The biggest problem I see with the revenant is the inability to weapon swap during combat. If it is true that legends and weapons are tied together, then it would be foolish to switch one without the other. If I can only weapon swap or switch legends then I would rather have the ability to swap weapons. At least that gives me a choice between ranged and melee combat. If I am currently running a hammer and Jalis build why would I ever want to switch to the demon legend? My hammer skills have a range of 1200 but my utility and elite skills will only have a range from 600-240 (which makes more sense if you are using a mace and axe).
You raise the valid point of range and then melee combat that I didn’t cover in my original post! Thank you!
Ele and Engi both have options to switch from melee, to range depending on the situation. Every class in the game has this option… I think the Revenant is the only one that doesn’t!
So I’m going to add my thoughts here since this thread’s title is the most direct. Just tried rev and in my first event encounter I fought a veteran mini boss and just spammed my abilities. I used legendary demon ability 9 (Unyielding Anguish) and a player got mad because he couldn’t hit the teleporting enemy and stood to the side hoping to see the boss kill me.
I wasn’t trying to troll him and after killing the boss I explained myself and I think I’m on good terms with the guy now, but I can see this being a major issue to the overall “you should be happy to see other players” mentality GW2 is known for.
Think Longbow ranger knock-backing foes out of your AoE is annoying? Revenant is going to bring a whole new level of rage on that front. Especially for melee players.
I also found this same frustration with that ability! I think I see the angle ANET are coming from with this one, that you stack up torment, then pop skill 9, so you’re always keeping the enemy moving and thus getting the higher torment tic, but in practice… it just annoys other people assisting you and I found it annoying for myself, Trying to judge where to run next to continuing attacking with the melee weapons I had on at the time.
I can only speak from spvp point of view but this feels like one of those classes right now that doesn’t do anything that another class can’t do better (i know its only in testing).
If you go condition side of damage then you need to be up close and personal… you die so fast idk why they are just so squishy no matter what build you do. I also feel like the cast time animations are quite long on most of their skills.
im yet to play a pure damage one after finding out how squishy they are.
Couldn’t agree more! I don’t do a whole heap of PvP, so I may not be the best person to comment on the Revenants ability there, however… I did find that it didn’t matter how I spec’ed the class, it never excelled at what I was trying to get it to do.
Where as with the Ele and the Engi (which I feel are the direct comparisons to this classes setup/style), I always feel I have something to answer for the situation I’m in.
Overall, the class comes across as unique and therefore is a good addition to the game, however I have my concerns with the class going forward, even after the next 2 legends are released.
The problem I foresee, is that you’re designing a particular weapon to a particular legend, then each legend also has it’s own play style (Damage, Tank, Heal, Utility). So if for example you like doing direct damage, you’ll be locked to only using the damage legend (Shiro) and whatever “Damage” weapons that are associated with him (Swords). Then you’ll have your berserker/assassins gear on to work with that style. But that then COMPLETELY negates the use of ALL other legends/weapons as they have their own specific play styles.
I completely agree with what everyone else is saying about the class feeling very lack luster in the DPS department, but if your solution is the Damage legend (Shiro) to solve that, then it just further backs up the problem of locking people into playing 1 weapon type, with 1 legend and having all other legends as a bit of “Average Utility”
Another thing, if you look at all the classes, in the light armor category, you have 2 classes (Necro and Mesmer) that have weapon swap and 1 lot of utilities, then the Ele, with 4 different weapon bars through attunements and 1 utility set making 5 total. Medium armor is the same, with Ranger and Thief having weapon swap and then 1 lot of utilities, and Engineer having a potential total of 6 different bars, 1 weapon, 5 kits. why can’t heavy be the same? Guard and Warrior with weapon swap and 1 lot of utilities and then Revenant having 4/5 theoretical weapon bars?
Since the class is very static in nature to what weapon you have equipt and what legend you have on, providing a weapon swap feature will at the very least allow 4 potential bars and maybe even fix the issue of “This weapon with this legend” and “that weapon with that legend”. I personally think that’d help.
However my suggestion would be to, not design weapons for specific legends and instead design them to be all round good at everything, but not amazing at any one thing and then the legend that you invoke brings in that damage aspect, or the tank aspect, or the heal aspect, so that you can swap on a dime mid battle and have that “Minute to Minute” game play you always talk about. Wouldn’t it be awesome dishing out damage on a boss with Shiro, then all of a sudden your party starts getting messed up, so you swap to Ventari, whip out the tablet and save the party? Yeah… that’s what sounds great to me.
I know there is a while before the expansion drops, so hopefully we can see some great changes come to the Revenant to make it an awesome profession to play… because honestly at the moment, it’s just a fancy light fest that doesn’t feel impactful at all.
Hopefully this feedback helps!
(edited by pitchBLACK.5479)
Now I’m not going to go in depth about each legend and my thoughts on them, as I have a different overall opinion about how these are all going to work together which I’ll cover below, so I’ll just do a quick dot point form of my thoughts:
Mallayx:
- Interesting legend, which if used right would see some good play
Jalis:
- Best designed legend of them all so far in my opinion. All the skills are good to use, and are useful in different ways.
- I do however feel that each Jalis skill other than the healing and elite are kind of designed more as damage dealing skills, yet don’t have the numbers to back them up.
Ventari:
- Interesting legend to say the least. I get where you’re trying to go with this one and even though each skill is quite good. It just feels to clunky and way to much effort to keep the tablet moving around with you, maybe that’s because I’m in AUS, so the latency ruins in a bit.
Thought I’d throw in my 2 cents on Revenant feedback like the rest of them, it’s a bit long, so hopefully you guys can pain the read! So here goes:
Weapons:
Mace:
- Feels the best of all weapon types released so far. all 3 skills are great fun to use and are smooth and fluid, albeit maybe a little weak on the damage.
Axe:
- Feels great to use and I believe will synergize well with other M/Hand weapons that are released
Hammer:
- Skill effects are great, so well done to the art team for that
- Skills feel as though they take too long to cast and don’t hit anywhere near as hard as they should for their wind up
- Frequently found myself trying to land the hammer 5 smash skill, but due to how slow it casts, had to pre-empt where an enemy was going to come. Then even if it did it, it barely did any damage compared to it’s wind up and solid slam animation
Staff:
- Auto attack is good, however found at times, it’kitten animation didn’t really sync up with the effect on the monster or the damage tic. Looked pretty, just the connection seemed off.
- Skill 2 seems terribly pathetic, even it’s animation… and is very hard to sync its attack up with an enemy in order to use it’s second phase, which wasn’t that great either
- Skill 3 is a great skill and once mastered will be awesome to see some play
- Skill 4 has a great animation, however there should be some AOE damage associated with it potentially? The heal is OK at best. I’d suggest keeping the skill the same, but just adding a damage component. So damage nearby enemies, while healing nearby allies. Feel it’d fit in closer to it’s animation then.
- Skill 5, I had a lot of fun using and thought it was the best skill of the entire weapon, however may get frustrating for Dungeon groups and things like Edge of the Mists, where moving enemies at key times could annoy people. Then again, that just depends on the user of the skill.
Ehh? That’s not really all that jarring. Then again, I don’t value “immersion” with things I’ve already experienced. It’s just another day in Tyria, to me. I only have HoT to renew that drive as of now.
EDIT: Actually, I like it when the music continues to play. It allows me to continue to enjoy some of the pieces of the soundtrack I like before they end and play the current map defaults.
I agree that the transition of the music isn’t “Jarring”, but it also doesn’t set the tone for the new zone. Even if the music were to finish and then play the next maps track, that’s fine… the point is, the music that plays in a lot of zones, doesn’t reflect the zone you’re in. It’s as though it’s a big playlist for the whole world of Tyria, with only a few extra songs thrown in for different zones.
They have a large repository of Music that they can pull from (GW1) and they seem to be developing some fantastic new tracks for the game as well… yet they still throw in a few songs from Kryta, etc into the new zones/wrong zones.
A lot of other games have area specific music and it’s great! Pubs/taverns is a good example of this… say you walk into a tavern in Norn territory, you should hear some kind of Irish music or something, clapping of the hands of Norn, or people dancing to set the mood of that area. But no, nothing.
I wouldn’t think it’d be a great technical feet to be able to put this is place. They already have music playing in certain zones, just remove the stuff that doesn’t suit the area, add a few more if needed and chuck some music for area’s like taverns and I think the feel of immersion would go WAY up.
I’ve seen plenty of posts of this already and It seems to have gotten ignored for this long, so It probably won’t ever change which is a crying shame!
Hi Everyone,
I wanted to write a quick forum post to express my views on zone specific music and to see how many other people out there feel the same way as I do.
To start off, Guild Wars 2 is a beautiful game and has some incredible music to boot. However I feel that the one thing that lets GW2 down over GW1 and several other games, is it seems to have shyed away from the use of specific music, in specific zones.
I quite commonly find that I may be running around places such as Orr and hear music that should only be played in places such as Queensdale or Gendarran Fields. Now even though the particular music may be fantastic, when you hear happy music playing in a place the represents death and despair, the mood get’s completely ruined!
I remember the days back In GW1 when you’d enter the crystal desert and be presented with that fantastic sound track that was only played in that area. There was no looping of other music to fill the gaps, just the one desert themed sound track that really set the mood for the entire time you were there. This was common place for every single zone in GW1 and as such really created a memory for where you were, not just because of the visuals, but because of the music as well!
GW2 has a tendency to keep playing the music of the zone you just exited and waits for it to finish before playing some music for the new zone. I’m unsure whether this was an attempt to create a fluid transition between zones, but I believe it breaks the immersion of the new zone you’re entering, not the other way round. I don’t feel that cutting/fading the music of the previous zone and starting the new zones soundtrack is an issue, but is instead a fantastic way to set the tone for where you have entered.
I find myself disabling the music in the game as it just breaks the Immersion to much for me in certain situations due to all of this!
It would be great to see zone specific music return to the world of Tyria, whether through a feature pack or as part of the Heart of Thorns expansion. An MMO is all about the immersion and music is a massive part of that!
Let me know if you guys feel the same way and hopefully we can get some Dev’s looking in on this as well!