We have no official confirmation… but it’s a decently safe assumption to make, especially considering the public beta weekend next weekend…
yea we don’t know when this is happening. He says “You’ll be seeing a balance pass in the next release”
Is he talking about the expansion? Cause thats months away and guardian SW’s have been terrible for years. I’m honestly done waiting for them to not be terrible…..
Chances are we’ll see the balance patch sooner than later; recalling the HoT balance patch came out a few months before HoT launched.
We still don’t have good enough reason to believe this is a change to all of the justice passives… so you’re complaint is based entirely on conjecture.
Recall how symbol of punishment summons many fists to pummel the target?
Imagine if scepter had necro scepter auto animations and each swing was a ghostly punch; right hook, left hook, overhead hammer fist, and the last attack hit twice to help trigger justice faster
The point of revenant, to me, is adaptability; much like how elementalist is adaptable through elements and their weapon skills, revenant is adaptable through their legends and utility skills.
You bring up a couple of legend combinations and state “why not play this class instead”, well, because that class can’t do what the other legend combinations you listed can; but there are some major differences between the legend pairs and the classes you compared to. Sure, maybe some of these legends under perform as the moment, but that can be fixed with balancing patches. Each legend at least has some uniqueness (Glint’s Facets or Ventari’s Tablet for examples), and the energy and upkeep system of revenant makes the profession play differently than every other class.
But I never see anyone play it like that. No one takes advantage of the adaptability because it isn’t good.
Lets take the current meta builds.
Fractal: Bereserker. Half the time you’re sitting in Hearld giving off boons. Why not just play Guardian? They output more DPS and give just of good as boons without having to worry about energy. 90% you’re not using the other legend.
Raids: Same thing as Fractals. You’re taking the part of a physical DPS that puts out boons. Again, guardians seem to be the better choice.
As I understand it now, the current meta for a berserker Herald (in raids) is Jalis/Glint, relying on others to stack boons for you and using Jalis spinning hammers for extra damage; switching to glint to renew energy, and switch back to Jalis.
Guardians do not supply boons as well as Herald facets. Herald has more access to fury, and much more might while doing decently competitive damage and having better survivability (imo).
Right now Revenant has no identity. No purpose. It is out classed by every other class. Not only this, but every single good build REQUIRES Herald! Why? Because every legend offers so little team support and self sustain that the class would be completely useless without it. The physical DPS and benefits of the other legends aren’t good enough to warrant taking them over boons. And 50% of the reason why you take glint is because her heal is a get out of jail free card. If herald didn’t exist, no one would ever want a Revenant on their team. They would rather have a necro or a guardian.
Revenant does have identity, I’ve already described it in the quote and even contextualized it with the fact that they may not be balanced 1 to 1 to what you find equivalent.
Dragon Hunter on guardian is close to the same situation. Dragon Hunter is just flat out superior to core guardian in almost every way. Higher damage mods (27% increased damage at melee, 33% at ranged), better virtues, period. It’s very rare for a core profession in GW2 to be as good as a profession with 2 core 1 elite. Revenants and Herald are no different.
What revenant needs is LESS RNG TRAITS, more ways of dealing with any kind of pressure. Ways that don’t involved herald. Finally, the other legends need to take on a better role/identity and actually give off some team support to warrant taking it over herald.
Ask yourself. Does the new legend REALLY look better than Herald? Don’t forget, you have to choose. You can either have infinite fury, might, swiftness, insane boon application, and a get out of jail free card…or you can be a ranged condition damage whose boons that it applies aren’t good enough to compete with Herald’s support. Just looking at the damage numbers (I’m not sure if they’re in 80 gear when they took those pics), it looks significantly less than hammer. I doubt any PvEr will want to take this and certainly not the other modes.
They were probably in celestial or some kind of hybrid stated gear for the press beta.
But, if you’ve examined the skills for renegade, it looks very promising. They have a stacking buff called fervor that can stack up to 10 times and grants 30 ferocity and 2% condition damage per stack. That significant. Not to mention it’s elite skill that provides AE lifesteal that deals a healthy amount of additional damage and healing while active, not to mention it may be a fire field, which is also a pretty big deal.
Renegade has the potential to be a very good hybrid damage elite capable of providing unique support in the form of it’s utilities that behave unlike any other utility in the game. People have compared them ranger spirits, but that’s not quite right. They behave more like fields or wells, imo.
I want to love Rev. They’re such a cool class design. Such a cool lore background. Everything about them is cool. I just get really frustrated when I’m playing and the feeling of “I could do this in a quarter of the work with another class” keeps popping up. Especially in PvP.
I don’t share the sentiment, I’m personally having a hard time choosing between Guardian and Revenant for this upcoming expansion.
Maybe some of your issues will be addressed in the upcoming pre-expac balance patch.
It’s probably going to be on a skill by skill basis; no need to pigeon hold their balancing by making arbitrary rules like “all utilities of this category must have charges”.
I think making sword 5 only teleport you backwards if you actually can pull the target would be a great change. Makes it better suited for break bar stripping and doesn’t punish you for hitting an unmovable target.
and yeah, mace skills need to come out faster.
I also think staff 2 should have a daze on the first skill, not the turnover. Makes it too hard to actually use it as an interrupt when you have to hit an opponent while they’re casting, and then wait for the turnover. So, staff 2 daze, interrupt turnover to damage.
sword 3… wish they’d fix it so that doing it against an enemy near a wall doesn’t break it.
I think axe 5 comes out a bit slow too… but this isn’t as bad as mace, imo.
Huh, this might actually be a really powerful hybrid condi/power elite with all that ferocity and condi damage.
Passive AOE buffs don’t stack. Also consider Grace of the Land caps at 10%, which across a team is pretty massive jump in DPS. Given its a 20% boost, I’m guessing its either hard to stack, or is only a self-buff similar in nature to Shiro’s sword trait. In fact…. its probably there to compensate for the lower or unfocused damage to help boost it in a DPS configuration.
The buff itself stacks, not from multiple sources:
https://i.imgur.com/YbfL6eU.png
but it seems like I’ve misread, nothing anywhere says it’s granted to players; the f2 says it grants might per stack to players.
Well… this isn’t as cool as I first thought, but a potential 300 ferocity and 20% condi damage is really strong. But maybe there’s a trait to share it; or at least part of it.
Well, besides that, the elite skill seems promising for a group damage/sustain buff.
The point of revenant, to me, is adaptability; much like how elementalist is adaptable through elements and their weapon skills, revenant is adaptable through their legends and utility skills.
You bring up a couple of legend combinations and state “why not play this class instead”, well, because that class can’t do what the other legend combinations you listed can; but there are some major differences between the legend pairs and the classes you compared to. Sure, maybe some of these legends under perform as the moment, but that can be fixed with balancing patches. Each legend at least has some uniqueness (Glint’s Facets or Ventari’s Tablet for examples), and the energy and upkeep system of revenant makes the profession play differently than every other class.
Renegade – Why not play Ranger? The “charr” are exactly the same as spirits
This… isn’t true, and you can tell this by reading the tool tips for them. They’re not upkeeps and they don’t stay around until killed. As far as I can tell, you cast them, they last a set amount of time (6 seconds) and go away. I don’t believe we have summons that function exactly this way in game yet (correct me if I’m wrong). The elite is a 9 pip upkeep with a pretty crazy effect that I believe will be coveted in groups.
Have you seen the cost of the Kalla skills as well? For what they do they’re incredibly costly. Hopefully still a work in progress.
Yeah, I was looking at those. It’s insane. Are we really going to ever use them? They are such a huge energy drain. Between those F2-F3 skills plus the utility energy cost….way too much energy is being used. How are we going to have any energy to even use our weapons? I see us either not using these abilities so we can use our weapons or using the non-weapon skills/utilities and then basically just auto attacking because we’ll never have energy to do anything else.
Unless, this new traitline gives us some energy regen mechanic. That would be very much needed. Guess we just have to wait and see. Maybe it will work out.
I don’t think this will be a problem. Weapon skills are fairly cheap, except for the situational ones like stuns and control, as long as you don’t have upkeep, your energy regenerates more than quickly enough.
Also, the f2-f4 skills are there no matter what your legend is, so you can abuse the energy reset from legend swapping to cast them in either legend stance; so if you need to use them, they’re a swap away.
Considering the impact the warband members are likely to have and the fact they persist for 6 seconds, their energy cost seems acceptable to me. The elite with it’s 9 upkeep seems pretty steep though, then again, the elite seems really powerful for group sustain/support and a flat increase to damage.
^
Any elite that needs more than one button pressed is too “clunky” for this community.The old tomes also weren’t “patched out” in my opinion. They were stripped down to the only things they were used for… tome of wrath was changed to just the AE quickness and fury, the main reason anyone ever used that tome… and the tome of courage was changed to just the AE full heal and an AE passive health per second, also the only reason anyone ever used that tome…
Well then you, like most people, don’t actually know why Tome of Courage was used, because it wasn’t the full heal.
You’re right, the full heal was too slow to be usable at all. I can’t really remember why anyone ran Tome of Courage in the past, I was personally a bigger fan of Tome of Wrath… I think I recall Tome of Courage having an AE stun or daze on it… but the full heal was definitely the big important skill on the Tome of Courage, or at least, it was set up to be.
Edit: It had a ground targeted heal, a bouncing blind, regen and protection, ae cone daze, and the long cast full heal. Still, it’s not that great since I seem to recall the tomes locking you out of your utilities, meaning that if you were focused or stunned you could do nothing about it. Taking an elite just for a 3 second cone daze and protection seems pretty weak too when compared to renewed focus.
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So, Renegades are getting a mechanic called “Fervor”, that grants 30 ferocity and 2% condition damage per stack (seems it can stack up to 10).
It’s hard to say how this mechanic will impact revenants place in groups, since no one had the courtesy to hover over any of the renegade traits… but the trailer made it sound like this is a profession specific buff that revenants can grant to other players.
I feel like this will made renegades very desirable in PvE group content, that is, if it’s something that can be maintained at a decent amount of stacks; this is a unique damage buff that only revenant can bring.
I can see Ventari/Kalla being a potentially powerful support combo: especially if the spirits summoned by Kalla’s utilities persist through legend swap (which they might, since they last set durations and aren’t upkeeps).
What do you think of fervor? Hopefully it has traits to modify it… (I’m very annoyed that no one captured footage of renegade traits…)
Here’s the skills we know of so you can inform yourself: https://i.imgur.com/bTcuJNnr.jpg
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I disagree… I think it’s really cool how it has this open handed caster look to it; I always wanted to play a caster that just shoots spells out of their hands, and this is finally it.
I never thought the floating books from the old tome elites looked particularly cool; looked pretty goofy with this big book floating in front of you.
The 2 new things we know for sure that are coming to some core classes are the barrier mechanic (as mentioned) and utility skill charges (like warrior kick is getting).
Personally, I think it’d be pretty sick if judge’s intervention had charges, that’d be crazy! I also really hope we do see some barrier on guardian, it’d really help with some survivability woes and could maybe help them fill some niches in support.
These are nothing like the old tomes mechanically, these are completely different skills… and they’re not really shouts either… they’re kits; the tomes of courage and justice have damaging skills on them, and most of the cast times are below 1 second, with only one of them with a cast time of 1 1/4 second.
The old tomes also weren’t “patched out” in my opinion. They were stripped down to the only things they were used for… tome of wrath was changed to just the AE quickness and fury, the main reason anyone ever used that tome… and the tome of courage was changed to just the AE full heal and an AE passive health per second, also the only reason anyone ever used that tome…
You can look at the tooltips here: http://i.imgur.com/rncbRSa.jpg
You’ll find that the similarities end at the name and the fact that it’s a kit.
What if they decided to remove spirit weapons, turn them into minions like necromancer get, and sell them back to us for $30-$60 in the next expansion? That’s the kind of thing I’m upset about. Not the way the actual skills preform other than they were crap before and are presumably good now.
It’s really not the same at all… to make this analogy equivalent, they’d have to also:
1. Replace the spirit weapons with new skills that fulfills a similar function, like the tome of wrath becoming a quickness shout and tome of courage becoming a full heal.
2. Change the type of skill spirit weapons are entirely, in this case making them a profession mechanic outside of the 10 slot bar.
3. Change their functionality entirely and completely changing their art and assets… other than the fact it would be a summoned AI.
Also, as others have pointed out, the 3 tomes don’t cost 30-60$… the entire expansion does.
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You got no clue lol, Guard had max health pool in vanilla. Besides blinds being kittenty doesn’t make aegis being kittenty better. Both are underpowered compared to dodge spamming and facetanking.
I think you’re trolling me; I’ve mained guardian since beta and their health pool has always been about 12,000 base.
And it’s fine that blind and aegis are weaker than dodge spamming and facetanking… since you can do all 4 at the same time. Maybe you’d have a point if you had to choose between dodging or getting an aegis.
The better question is…. why would you want to try and play condi guardian without firebrand?
Even if this change to justice was universal, (which it might not be… firebrand has access to so much burning, and with the GM trait that makes virtue passives remain active while their respective tomes are out, having a 4 second passive burn on every 5th hit would be nuts) firebrand is already seriously outclassing any other guardian option for condition damage, considering it’s access to bleeds and AE condi with one of it’s mantras.
Sadly, the one person who’s posted videos of the elite specs in the press demo, AuroraPeachy, just afk on the trait window during her video and hovered over none of them…
So we’ll have to wait until someone else who had access to the demo and recording software posts their video, or we get into the demo ourselves. Sad, but none of the people that played in the demo had getting information for the rest of us at the forefront of their minds; probably not realizing they’d be the first sources for this stuff.
Dude it’s not about the channel it’s about the numbers of attacks that can be blocked with one aegis.
One aegis, one block, just like one blind, one miss. Changing aegis to block multiple attacks would not go over well in PvP or WvW game types. A 1/4 second long block that can be granted to a zerg or an entire team is insanely powerful. As it stands now, aegis and blind are used to avoid large single hit attacks and are countered by multiple smaller attacks. This is fine, as guardian survivability does not revolve around aegis alone, it revolves around having heavy armor and many sources of healing as well has aegis in combination with blind.
Aegis doesn’t need to be like DH f3, it just needs to be like dodges to combat the powercreep in this game that also happened to enemy’s attacks (and aegis was already problematic in vanilla as well, but it didn’t matter because back then we had as much health as a Warrior).
Give up on having a build without an elite be as powerful as one with, that’s clearly not their goal for balance. And guardians never had as much health as a warrior… are you high? Guardians, as well as thieves and elementalists, have always had the lowest health pools in the game.
They should fix/buff core Guard to bring it to HoT standards. Since I know they don’t touch core traits because that does not print money I said at least Firebrand should have these changes.
I’d like to remind you that in preparation for the launch of HoT, the entire trait system got reworked. Remember when trait lines had stats on them and you picked your traits from a list of about 8 or 10 per line and you had to spend trait points to unlock further down the lines 30/20/20/0/0… that kind of thing? Yeah, this was done while the elite specializations were being worked on, not to mention all the changes that were made during HoT. Not to mention, we know there’s a large balance patch coming out before Path of Fire that’ll add new mechanics to the core classes… like the new barrier mechanic and charges to existing utility skills. Guardians could very well get barrier as a mechanic on some of their core abilities and traits before the expansion launches.
Core professions have not been neglected; but like I said before, 3 core trait lines is never going to be as strong as 2 core and 1 elite, that’s just how this is being balanced.
I feel obligated to comment on this, because it’s still a problem. A fix would be appreciated.
I also want to point out that a similar problem exists for the Revenant Shiro skill phase traversal; however this one just won’t let you use it outside of range, it’ll say you need a target, even if you have one. At least this one works consistently when you’re in range.
Guardian teleports just refuse to work sometimes. This cost me a lot of fights in a PvP match because my set ups were ruined by the lack of ability to properly position myself with judge’s intervention.
EDIT: Just tested something; the teleports work consistently when you have the action combat cursor over the target you want to teleport to; it doesn’t prioritize, or even recognize a hard target… which is bothersome.
Still don’t know why Phase Traversal refuses to work out of range with action combat. However, it doesn’t suffer from the ignoring a hard target… probably because it needs a target to work, while flashing blade and judge’s intervention don’t.
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Not everyone is suppose to have Legendaries. People complain about having to do content they don’t want to do for the current Legendaries. Well, too bad. If you’re not willing to do what is required for a Legendary then you don’t deserve it. Same with Legendary armor, in fact, I believe it more so for that.
Legendary armor is a big deal… it should be gated behind the hardest content the game has to offer. If that kittenes off the entitled people that think they deserve to have legendary armor doing what they want in game, then so be it.
I’ve been having a strange Performance hiccup since yesterday that I can’t figure out the cause of.
In random areas of the game; with seemingly no real cause; the game will nearly freeze; going to a 1 fps crawl complete with stuttering sound and music. This happens even in areas of low action or activity, but it does seem to happen more often in HoT maps, if any at all in core world maps.
From that alone I would chalk it up to my cpu acting up, but the strangest thing about this performance hit is that after it’s over, the game seems to speed up, as if trying to catch back up, in that moment the performance seems high, and then it’ll settle back into it’s normal performance shortly after the speed up. So, I can’t quite tell if it’s a connectivity issue or a performance issue; but this is a new problem. I was having no such issues when HoT launched and during Halloween.
It happens on both the 64 and 32-bit clients.
The term “Elite” in the guild wars franchise has always been synonymous with “Unique” in other games. The only thing elite implies is that you can only use 1 of them at a time.
In GW1, Elite skills were the defining skill for a build; but that didn’t always mean that they were “better” than any other skill. It’s elite for the sake of balance.
You feel like you’re grinding because you’re only concerned with rewards rather than the act of playing the game. There are some decent rewards to be have if you’re into certain things; a lot of things are bought with gold…
You’d have a lot more fun if you treat drops as a consequence of playing rather than your end goal. Your goal should be to enjoy playing the game; playing the game shouldn’t be an obstacle for a carrot.
If you sit doing the same event for hours on end; that’s on you, not on the game. There are so many events different events and activities in the new zones, calling doing “events” grind is a misnomer. You’re hardly doing the same thing over and over again unless you choose to do the same event in the same spot.
This game has barely any ‘true’ grind. The only grind that’s here is for those who choose to grind; like the mad king lab trains or the CoF mastery farm. Those 2 are grinds, but I’d hardly say they’re mandatory… not at all comparable to doing events in the new zones. Even legendaries are notably less grindy now that you no long have to play the lottery for hours to get a precursor.
WoW has very little grind while leveling; but the end game is nothing but grind. Once you arrive at the level cap in WoW; you’ll spend the majority of your time grinding out dungeons over and over for gear; most high end raids demand you to have proper consumables, so if you’ll be farming for herbalism mats, food mats, ect. I remember spending hours farming mats for flasks in Cataclysm so that I’d be raid ready.
Raids were the best part of WoW’s endgame. Since they’re so long and usually interesting mechanically, they never felt grindy….. until they added raid finder and then raids became the next step up from dungeon grinding; then when you had the gear you needed from raid finder; you do the exact same raids you’ve already farmed, except harder.
Taking 2 days to get 250 hero points is pretty care bear.
I don’t think hero points were ever meant to be difficult to get; just a way to gate content so you don’t get everything at once.
Legendaries are what suppose to represent the hardcore. The old ones don’t because of their trade-able nature; but the new ones do seem to do what the old ones were suppose to do.
Oh; and raids are coming soon; and from playing the first boss; they seem promising. The legendary armor from those will probably be a good indicator of player skill and dedication.
Newer zones have their rewards back loaded from the mobs onto the chests and bags you get for completing the events and the map wide rewards to prevent mob farming; wouldn’t want any events to be farmed for their mobs like Orr events have in the past. Random mobs not connected to events still drop a lot of stuff in my experience.
I don’t know about this “event graying out” thing, it has never happened to me.
So; I’ve been playing HoT happily with no problem; and I decide to pop onto the forums for the first time since launch, and what do I see? kittening and moaning about the most ridiculous stuff.
Everything from “Game too hard” or “Can’t solo anymore” or “Game too grindy”. I’m really angry at you people. Finally we have some competent open world content and the forums are a flame with kitten. I seriously hope no one is listening to these complaints seriously. Don’t let the vocal minority here ruin it for the silent and content majority.
Most of all, I’m upset at anyone who complains about “grind”. You guys are spoiled and don’t even understand what grind is. You want to know what grind in GW2 is? Doing Mad Kings Labyrinth for 5 hours at a time to level up characters; that’s grind. If you’re going to sit down in one area and do the same event for hours; that’s on you, that’s not the fault of the game. You could just as easily make the same progress by just playing the content you want.
Seriously; if I hear one more complaint about how someone can’t solo everything in an MMO and how they have to grind for masteries as they do map completion, I’m going to flip out.
Melee works fine throughout; just expect to go down a lot if you’re using zerker stats. Build for some survivability and you’ll have more fun not licking the floor.
You’re complaining about playing with strangers in an MMO…
I can’t even contain the amount of facepalm I have.
There was a time where you didn’t know how an event worked either; these events will be smoother as time goes on and people become more familiar with them. You claiming they won’t listen and waving them off like they’re inferior doesn’t improve anyone’s experience and helps no one.
Also, small suggestion; is there a way you could make the timer circle inside of the marker grow out instead of shrink in. It’s just easier to see when it goes off that way.
We won’t change the animation simply because we’re already using a version of the telegraph that grows outwards later in the release, and that telegraph is definitely something you don’t want to stand in and need to get away from.
In other words… If the telegraph grows inwards, you should stack on it in some form (or maybe it’ll pull you in /plots). If the telegraph grows outwards then you need to get out.
Oh! Then never mind then; my suggestion was with the assumption that all the fill-in animations would be the same regardless of the mechanics. Since they denote different mechanics then this is actually much better.
It would be nice if the defiance bar was always available, and breaking it when you shouldn’t punished you; however the fact that soft CC melts the bar would cause problems.
I think the defiance bar mechanic was ok as it was. It kept people paying attention, and it’s a reason to have CC in the group, which is nice. Otherwise CC would have no place what-so-ever.
Also, small suggestion; is there a way you could make the timer circle inside of the marker grow out instead of shrink in. It’s just easier to see when it goes off that way.
With raids requiring specific abilities for certain mechanics; switching builds and skills became very common during the raid. Now is a better time than any to seriously consider implementing some form of build saving/switching.
I know there have been too many threads to count asking for this feature; personally I’ve never seen an overwhelming need for it before, but raids are practically screaming for that kind of quality of life feature.
I realize that creating a build save feature for gear inside of PvE/WvW would be a bit difficult; but just having a save feature for specializations and maybe even utilities would be much appreciated.
PLEASE DISABLE THE USE OF BOOSTERS IN RAID ENVIRONMENTS LIKE YOU DO FOR PVP.
Just wanted to signal boost this. Very good point.
Completely agree.
Insert facetious P2W joke here.
From anets POV, having 2-3 supports is probably the sweet spot… and I think most raiders would agree with that… I don’t expect a 50/50 split between DPS and support at all…..
This is also what I would consider realistically ideal. So we agree on that I suppose.
Because offensive stats have a MUCH bigger impact than defensive/support stats in this game….
You don’t think that’s an issue in the game’s design? I personally think it is.
If anet tunes it to make the raid doable with less DPS – you realize how easy this raid will become?? ~1min remaining on timer with 9 DPS, 1 Support will become like ~3mins left…..
Doable with less dps, but requires more survivability. I have no issues with the difficulty of the fight, just the balance of the composition of the raid required to clear it.
Again, the more support stats needed = more easy the raid becomes. That is not ANETs goal , and it shouldn’t be….
Right now it’s: more support stats = more difficult.
I personally think that the damage the raid takes should be tuned up, and the hp of the boss tuned down or the time limit increased.
This might just be an insurmountable problem. The raid was great to me, I just think the balance should be tuned up a bit.
You’re talking like DPS and Support are two completely separate roles.
They aren’t. I main a guardian, and I can tell you that I generally have 3 support utilities slotted, usually two at a min. Along with support Traits despite wearing zerker gear. It isn’t required that people wear Soldier or Clerics or nomads to give support to their team. The wonderful thing about guild wars 2 is that we have never had to choose between DPS and Support.
If they had 1:30 left on the even tankier specs should be able to complete the challenge
You’re still missing the point. Yes, you can support with zerker gear on; yes, you can try to dps with clerics gear on. GW2 doesn’t have static roles, they’re much more fluid. I know this.
When I say ‘build’ I’m talking about their stats; and the timer puts a minimum damage requirement. So a raid needs a certain amount of offensive stats in order to complete the encounter. There is a threshold at some point where the raid can have too little offensive stats to complete the encounter; and I think that threshold might be too high.
I’m glad there was time left on the timer when this particular group cleared it. I’m only voicing my concerns that we may see a situation where only 1 non offensive stat build is acceptable for the raid; I think the balance should allow for more, and it very well might as is, but I think it’s a reasonable concern seeing as the only 2 groups I’ve seen clear it has the same balance of 1 unconventional stat combination and 9 damage stat combinations. My personal group that had quite a few more defensive builds was only able to get the boss to 50% before the timer wiped us.
Due to active defense in this game we have never been required to carry dead weight if we were good enough to run full glass. Our defensive utilities are not tied to our gear.
Nothing about this should change. If people want to run tanker or healish builds, that is fine, they should have that option, but nothing should require us to take them. That would go against everything this game was sold on.
But that’s the rub. The timer on the boss makes it so that the raid has to achieve a minimum amount of dps to succeed. This is good, I like that, it’s important. But what that does is make it so that if the group has too much defense they cannot succeed. If the current balance is 1 support to 9 dps, then I think it should learn further towards support so more people that enjoy that role can enter the raid and still succeed.
What’s the difference between requiring 9 dps and requiring 3 supports?
Taking defensive stats where they are not necessary in a raid is bad, has been bad in every raid since forever, and means that it is tuned appropriately.
This is a beta, so I think it’s reasonable to question whether or not the current minimum for the raids survivability is appropriate.
I think the minimum survivability required should be higher and the minimum dps should be lower. This isn’t WoW where characters have defined roles; so the mechanics have to enforce those roles instead. It doesn’t seem outside of the realm of possibility that a group of nothing but dps builds could clear this particular boss; defensive stats seem undervalued.
Note that when they finished they still had ~1:20 on the timer. That means slightly bulkier and lower DPS groups could still finish just fine.
This is good, but I still believe the balance of survivability to damage is still skewed too much towards damage. For example, WoW would have 2 tanks, 3 healers, and 5 dps, usually for a 10 man. 1 hybrid/support/tank/ect and 9 dps seems skewed by comparison.
The fight is balanced around the raid having survivability stats as well as damage already; I just think the importance of survivability should have a bit more weight.
The only reason anyone has ever brought tanky stuff or healers to a raid ever in the history of MMOs is to provide minimal necessary support so that the DPS characters can perform their max DPS rotations unimpeded.
Exactly right; which is why I think the minimum survivability for the raid as a whole should be higher. I’m not foolish enough to completely scorn dps stats; I was actually relieved that full dps builds were more than usable still. I don’t want any stats off the table, so it seems counter productive to me to push out defensive stats with a timer that requires a predominately DPS group. I think the balance of support/survivability to damage dealers is skewed too far towards damage dealers.
My greatest fear is that a group with 9 damage builds is the minimum requirement to clear the boss. I feel like the balance should be closer to 6-7 damage builds and 3-4 defensive/support/hybrid builds. I agree, at least 1 non-dps build in the raid is a step in the right direction; but I think they should keep stepping.
I agree with you guys. The timer is there to make the fight challenging. What that also means is that the fight isn’t challenging at all without the timer.
The raid bosses should have mechanics so brutal that would kill you. That should be the difficulty, to survive, not to make it in X time. In my opinion the Guardian Vale boss lacks of mechanics strong enough to push players to the limits where they will die. Once everyone understands the fight, this boss will be just a DPS race and bye bye to the challenge. With true challenging mechanics, this would never happen because the sense of danger would be always there.
There are mechanics that kill in the fight (failing to stack in the lightning, and failing to kite the boss out of the AE post split phase); failing in the execution will cause problems.
I think the main problem with the timer is that it forces defense stats out of the game. I have my doubts that the fight is doable with a group that’s even half tanky. That’s not acceptable; and it’s that way because of the harsh time limit.
I think the damage numbers should be tweaked up, and the timer either increased or the health of the boss reduced.
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Even the warrior’s adrenaline depletes over a short amount of time; at least make it behave like that instead of making it instant.
This was my first chance to play Revenant, and I must say that the profession is a blast to play. Extremely fun. I do have a few criticisms though of the profession and some thoughts on their mechanics. This is all from a PvE perspective, by the way. I did mostly the raid, world content, and a fractal.
The Legends
I have very little to complain about when it comes to all 5 legends. They are all fun to play and have clear identity. I thought I would dislike Mallyx after the changes, but it probably is one of my favorites.
My only issue with the legends system is that switching legends isn’t really a thing you do very often. I found that most of the time I would camp 1 legend and switch only if I needed to fill a different role or needed to heal. I think the reason this is is because almost all of the legend utilities and skill have no cooldown or very short ones; so the only skill you switch legends for is the heal. Switching legends for energy isn’t worth it because it takes you out of a role that you might need and energy regens extremely fast; far too fast for me to care about switching for energy or even being concerned that my energy is low.
Energy
Energy management isn’t nearly as important as I thought it would be. I don’t really care if I run out of energy because my heal costs only 5, which is regen’d in less than a second it feels, and the auto attacks on revenant are very strong and usable throughout an energy drought. Energy only really came into play when using upkeeps; but I found flooding your upkeeps while playing with Glint to be a good way to turn off your facets without invoking their CDs; and it gives you a nice moment of having a lot of powerful boons.
I’m not sure the intended playstyle of Energy by the devs; but I basically cared much more about how many pips of regen/degen I had than how much energy I had. Having no energy wasn’t that detrimental to me.
Specializations
All the spec lines are great but have minor problems here and there… except for Salvation and Invocation.
It seems like most of the lines allow you to go into them and then use other legends and weapons that weren’t meant to gel with the lines. Say, I could go Corruption and use a sword/shield with Shiro and Jalis and I could get some useful things out of corruption for that build.
This is where Salvation falls short. Salvation is way too biased towards ventari and staff; to the point where the line is mostly a waste unless you have 1 of those 2 things. Ventari could possibly benefit from less benevolence and more base healing so that healing moves from the other legends could benefit. Without having ventari or a staff, the best I could do with the line is support this weak control type selection of traits. Staff/Ventari is too mandatory with the Salvation line.
As for Invocation, it has the problem of being difficult to use. Like I mentioned earlier, I spent most of my time camped in 1 legend and only swapped if the situation called for it or if I needed healing; due to heal skills having CDs and the other not. The traits related to energy in the Invocation line are better than the swapping traits. Taking advantage of legend swapping traits doesn’t come naturally because of lack of incentive to swap; I suppose invocation creates incentive; but does it outweigh swapping into a legend unfit for your current situation?
Final Thoughts
I can’t wait until HoT comes out and I can main this profession. It is by far the most fun I’ve had in a while; and as someone who has been fumbling to find his main in this game, this is very exciting. I have very few issues with Revenant other than the ones I’ve mentioned here. Great work.
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The Lightning AoE always spawns in the same section that the Vale Guardian is in. If you keep it in the middle, he’s probably crossing the line when it spawns and its spawning farther away.
That’s actually a revelation that our group didn’t come to. The lightning AE always seem decently nearby since we tended to pull him to the edges of the arena often. We were concerned because of the phase where the areas light up and do damage, that them spawning in the zones would be RNG we’d have to deal with. Glad to know that it’s not.
I’d be in full support of leader boards. There is a small problem with defensive stats being bad, and this would just make that worse. Hopefully they can find a way to make the encounters require a balance of damage and defensiveness before the raids release. Then it would be much more enjoyable.
I’d love to see the game get to the point that people start theory crafting their group comp: How many damage dealers can you get away with without sacrificing too much survivability. Too bad it seems that defense is worthless.
Anyway, this is a great idea. There should be leader boards in other areas of the game too. Nothing wrong with healthy competition. The boards should also keep track of world, region, and server firsts.
Because your reply was condescending and patronising…
Sorry; that wasn’t my intention.
Anyway; I personally think the boss’s mechanics were sound. After the first phase he get’s a massive AE attack that requires the raid the break his bar to stop him. We spent the entire time calling out the lightning in the fight, and when he split up it was fun coming up with a strategy on how to split the group to handle them; since you have to break their bars to kill them. After the first split the ground also starts lighting up to do damage, so you have to kite him around the arena while paying attention to the lightning still and handling his AE attack by breaking the bar.
There were enough mechanics going on that made the fight engaging and required people to pay attention. This is a great step in the right direction when compared to boss encounters in dungeons and fractals where stacking and burning is the only thing you really need to do. I have high hopes for the other bosses considering this was only the first boss.
My only problem with the boss is that it seems to punish players from running more defensive gear. Too much defense in the group and the timer becomes impossible to beat. Some number tuning is mainly what needs to be done in my opinion.
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Why are you being hostile? You can’t blame me for thinking you didn’t attempt the boss when your criticism didn’t go that far.
So, what do you suggest is done differently? Do you have anything constructive to say other than “I personally dislike this”. I can’t take your opinion seriously when your arguments boil down to “This has been done before” and “This is boring”.
Maybe you could say something like: “I think the instance was uninteresting story wise. I think they should have more NPCs talking about what’s going on rather than putting the lore in NPC dialogue boxes and notes.”
or, “The boss mechanics aren’t very interesting, maybe when phase 2 starts the RBG guardians could have a new mechanic that they didn’t have before.”
Just saying that you don’t like it and it’s been done before means nothing to anyone.
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I still don’t think you even played the content; the only comment you’ve made on the actual boss was that he looks uninteresting. What about the mechanics of the fight? Can’t you construct some better criticism? Be more detailed.
So… did you attempt the boss? What did you think of the boss?
I don’t think not being able to kick players is intended. We swapped out players for others during our raid and had no problems in that area.
The first 3 trash mobs are only there to teach you mechanics; not to be challenge, but I think they should be more challenging than they are.
We had a druid in our group; and his healing was invaluable. He also survived the longest out of everyone when we had wipes. He had nothing but praise for the role he was filling.