So I’ve played a fair bit of rev/herald now, and wanted to pitch in my two cents about how to balance this class (sorry for the long post):
1. Hammer 2 skill: This skill needs to be fixed so that terrain doesn’t prevent the damage from reaching a target within range. In PvE, PvP and WvW, if my target is standing on a different piece of terrain – higher, lower, etc – it sometimes will not reach target even though they’re within range (examples include the bone fingers at western battery during teq, or the mordrem spitfires or if an enemy player is standing on a small bump in the terrain). It’s like as if it treats a slight bump in the terrain as a wall or something. Even if the enemy is standing behind a boulder, the hammer 2 skill should reach them IF the skill is able to cover the distance of going over the boulder and still reach the target. The hammer two skill is not a projectile; it travels along surfaces. It should be allowed to travel along surfaces both horizontal and vertical, and as long as the target is within the distance traveled by the skill, it should damage that target. Otherwise, it’s not as effective in situations like clocktower point in Battle of Khylo or during meta events like fighting the mordrem spitfire.
2. Hammer 3 skill should cure two conditions.
3. Hammer 4 skill should reflect projectiles instead of just blocking them.
4. Hammer 5 skill should take 1 second to cast. 1.75 seconds is a long time, and even with Shiro’s quickness, it still takes almost a full second to cast.
5. Sword 3 should have a range of 600 and should not break on stealth. Other skills like the ranger’s Rapidfire stays on the target even if they’re stealthed as long as you started attacking them BEFORE they went stealth. Sword 3 should do the same.
6. Sword 2 needs a chain pull after it connects with its targets. Reduce the range to 450. As of now, the damage on sword two is nothing exceptional, the chill duration is too short, and it just sort of feels like an afterthought as a skill. It needs a chain pull so it feels more substantial.
7. Shield 4 should cleanse two conditions from each target.
8. This is what I want the most…Shield 5 and the Soothing Bastion trait should allow players to MOVE while blocking AND cure a condition for each pulse; the duration should also be increased to 4 seconds. Currently, the herald shield block is the most underwhelming shield block out of all the classes, especially when compared to what a chrono’s shield block skill can do.
Right now, the herald shield block only does two things: it’s an omnidirectional block that can be interrupted by unblockable skills like a necro fear mark, and it heals for a small amount (keep in mind if you have damaging conditions on you, especially poison, the healing is made even more minimal).
My first and most prominent question is why? Why can we not move during this shield block? Every other class can move with their shield skills, even guardians (although it’s not a block of all attacks, it blocks projectiles and you can move with it). How come heralds can’t? There’s nothing that the skill does that justifies heralds having to stand still during this block; it does nothing exceptionally powerful or special. If it did something like provide 10k heal or cleanse all conditions or was a skill that couldn’t be interrupted, then yeah, I could see why the “not being able to move” thing is a trade-off. But it doesn’t do anything special.
Now let’s take a look at what other classes’ shields can do:
-Warrior shield block: Omnidirectional block, able to move around while blocking, if traited then blocking reflects projectiles
-Guardian shield block (well, projectile block): Omnidirectional projectile block, knockback of multiple targets when activated, able to move around while blocking projectiles
-Engineer shield block (this one has a reflect AND a block): Two blocks….one’s a reflect and one’s an actual block, and both skills can be chained so that one of them knocks back nearby enemies AND is a blast finisher, the other one is a projectile daze that bounces between multiple targets, able to move around while both blocking and reflecting, reflect and block are both omnidirectional
-Chronomancer (probably the most OP shield block in the game): Omnidirectional block, able to move around, when blocking even one attack, it chains into a SECOND omnidirectional block you can move around with, AND, for each of the first and second blocks, you get a phantasm that damages enemies and puts slow on them and gives alacrity to allies
So, yeah….please buff the herald’s shield skill and Soothing Bastion trait so that we can move around while blocking (also give it the 4 second duration and a condition clear per pulse/second of blocking).
9. One With Nature…please buff the protection boon to 8-10 seconds…the other boons you get from activating this skill last for that duration, but protection only lasts for about 5 seconds.
10. Facet of Darkness/Gaze of Darkness: Please buff the radius of the reveal to 600. The scrapper’s reveal has a radius of 900. I understand that the Gaze of Darkness is stronger because it does an AOE blind and is also a stun break, so it can’t have the same radius as Detection Pulse, but 360 is too small a radius.
11. Elemental Blast should cure one condition per pulse on allies.
12. Burst of Strength, as it is now, is a pretty lackluster skill. It’s a unidirectional attack with a very short range that does poor damage and applies vulnerability for a pretty short duration (not to mention it has a 15 second cooldown). Even the passive effect of one stack of might every three seconds is kind of…‘eh.’ For a skill that’s called Burst of Strength, it needs to do more. It needs to be an omnidirectional attack with a radius of, say, 600, that does 50% more damage than it does now and it needs to apply its current ten stacks of vulnerability for at least 10 seconds.
13. Reduce the energy cost of Riposting Shadows to 20.
14. Take out the casting time for Phase Travel and make it ground targeted. Make 5 attacks unblockable instead of just two, because only having two unblockable attacks is pretty wimpy. The way Phase Travel is now, compared to other teleports, is probably the worst teleport. Other classes can use their ground-targeted teleports to go up to ledges and even through ceilings, while non-ground-targeted teleports like JI have no casting time and can go through walls with little to now hassle. But Phase Travel can’t do some of the teleports that JI can do, so instead of making Phase Travel like a poor man’s JI, please just let it be ground-targeted so we can at least use it for extra mobility and to move up to higher ground.
15. The Cleansing Channel trait should cleanse 3 conditions. The ranger, when traited, can automatically have its pet take 3 conditions off of them every ten seconds (4 if they have the signet of renewal). Being able to cleanse 3 conditions on a legendary stance switch isn’t too much to ask for, I don’t think, especially since power heralds have pretty limited condi cleanse/protection as it is. The one stance that heralds have that’s pretty OP in terms of protection from condis is the demon stance. The other stances are pretty limited or have no condi protection.
16. Give heralds a second underwater weapon. Not having access to their second underwater weapon makes it a pain to do any sort of underwater content, including open world PvE, fractals, etc.
17. Put a 5 second cooldown on Banish Enchantment and increase the energy cost to 25.
18. Put a 5-second ICD on Demonic Defiance. Being able to perma-spam resistance is way too OP.
19. Put a 30-second CD on Embrace the Darkness, and give it a flat 50 energy cost to transform into a demonic avatar. Give it a 10-second duration, with one stack of stability per second and increase condition duration and condition damage stats during transformation. You can either give them a new set of weapon skills during transformation or allow them to use their regular weapon skills.
20. Lower the cooldown on Chaotic Release to 35 seconds.
21. Allow facet skills on dragon stance, when activated, to give two stacks of stability for 5 seconds. I think this would allow Enhanced Bulwark to kind of make more sense and synergize better with the dragon stance with which the herald elite spec is associated. OR, you can make it so that Enhanced Bulwark is a GM trait that allows dragon stance skills to give 2-3 stacks stability when activated.
