With Utility Goggles, Lock On Trait, and Sneak Gyro, we might as well rename this class Thief Hunter
Guys, guess who is getting 2 handed melee power weapon with blocks and several leaps….
The ScrapperI love the Reaper, I seriously do. But is it only me or everything I see from the other classes (except the tempest and maybe the dragonhunter) seems more op and better than the ours? It’s always the same thing
PS.: I know we have a leap on RS but it’s not the same thing that having it on the GS for example.
First of all we havent seen everything on scrapper yet; as for the others, not really. I love the chronomancer, but my reaper in bwe2 was doing absolutely horrific amounts of damage. I think we will be just fine.
You know, I was just thinking of Mirror of Anguish earlier today; its the mesmer trait that, when hit by a CC, it copies the CC on whoever cast it.
What if EtD was kind of like that, but with conditions? Basically, it would copy conditions to all enemies within the area every time a condition is APPLIED. So the moment a condi lands on you, self-inflicted or not, it gets copied to all enemies in the area immediately. You could retain the pulsing condis as well if and when it doesn’t get cleared, thus….
Then if its cleansed a half second later, no biggie, it already got copied. I’d rename the skill Mirror of Darkness though in that case
Just an idea.
I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.
Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.
Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.
Some things to note:
- Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
- Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
- The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
- Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
- Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?
I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.
I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.
Roy, I think the reason people are upset isn’t a power issue, it very well may be that this change does make it more powerful, the reason people are unhappy is because the copying of conditions was a very unique feel that we didn’t get from anything else, and that’s just got changed to just add more torment.
That being said, I will go ahead and give it a try. In the meantime is there anyway you can make runes of torment available for us to test with for this last BWE?
As for your suggestion of a trait increased torment, you might want to consider making that a selectable trait because player versus player style battles characters will be moving a lot anyway, so this might be something more selective, kind of like the falling damage traits, make it where we can select it, or perhaps kind of like that dwarf trait that doubles the effect of taunt against npcs, maybe it could have one effect against players and a different effect against NPCs. But I agree that otherwise torment in a static fight won’t be as impressive.
What about a unique effect, like for example that effect mesmers have that grants them stacking effects of ferocity every time they or an illusion hits with a main hand sword attack? You could have it give stacking effects of condition damage perhaps every time it hits a target that isn’t moving, or perhaps stacking effects of percentage overall damage increase or something like that. That way you get bonuses every time you hit a target that isn’t moving, and the target gets hit for additional torment damage when they are moving. That way it might not necessarily have to be fine-tuned to players vs non-player.
To reiterate my own thoughts as well as the thoughts of others:
1. Energy Balance vs Cooldowns: Do we need more cooldowns? I thought the entire point of the class was to use energy balancing ala thief’s initiative. I understand the differences, but it feels like it defeats the entire purpose by adding more cooldown.
If spamming skills is an issue, as someone else suggested, why don’t you add an escalating cost? For example every time certain skills are used, it gets, for example, a +10 or +15 energy cost on its next use, and every second that extra cost decreases by one? Except for upkeep spells, perhaps, give THEM a cooldown.
As a side note, I thought it might be amusing to make the dwarf taunt an upkeepable spell, but with a really high upkeep, pulsing 1 second of taunt per second
2. Displacement: It was a really cool effect, really cool. But if its causing problems that arent easily solved, I guess we have to lose it – with the caveat that if someone figures out how to solve the issue that would be really awesome
3. Embrace the Darkness: I really don’t understand the problem here, for a couple reasons. First of all, any necro that goes heavily into the corruption line of skills will have the exact same problem, as they would most likely use condi transfer skills to continue the pain. Second of all, besides the self inflicted conditions, we also have pain absorption, which will likewise be adding conditions to us: without condi removal, we need more resistance, but with condi copying it made it a very satifying if risky experience. I really think this was just fine as is.
But if you just believe you CAN’T keep the previous iteration, at least consider doing something else to make it more unique. I’ve made a couple suggestions, which may well not be viable, but something.
4. Banish Enchantments: If i’m reading this correctly, banish enchantments ALREADY got 3 stacks of confusion flat; so you just took out the bonus confusion and the self applied condition. That seems odd, and a bit of a nerf overall. But why don’t you have it remove ALL boons and convert each boon into a bonus stack of confusion? After all, it wouldnt be a lot different from the necro’s Corrupt Boon with the caveat that you get a lot more nasty confusion stacks, but at the expense of one condition more easily removed than the potential heavy collection of conditions that the necro corrupt boon does?
5. Overall I think the rest of the changes were fine and reasonable.
As a side note, although I love torment, I worry that its too focused on that one condition, making it easily cleansable. With the previous iteration of Embrace the Darkness they were able to “spread some love” the way necromancers could, albeit in a different way. Turning it into another source of torment concerns me that it will be too easily circumvented when classes have access to many effects that only remove one condition, which is much more common than the “remove tons of conditions” effect.
That being said, I suppose if they are constantly inflicting torment with their AA, then maybe its fine. I don’t know yet. Its probably ok for pve, its pvp and wvw where this might be a problem.
I’l reserve final judgement for BWE3, but obviously i’m in the “don’t nerf mallyx this way!” camp
nice, I like almost all of this. I still think illusonairy reversion should have the icd, only because the illusion requirement is just weird 
other than that looking good!
Roy: I think there is a valid complaint here RE: Embrace the Darkness. I’m not pleased with the displacement changes, but this change I’m not sure is necessary. I can understand tension with condi cleansing people, but is that really that much of a problem?
If it is, though, and this change is going to stick, maybe you could add on to it either a pulsing Resistance or a TRANSFER of conditions instead, but without the self conditioning effect. Do the same perhaps with Pulsating Pestilence.
Or maybe do something to return some of its distinctiveness. I’ve already made a suggestion, though maybe its a weak one, where Embrace the Darkness could maybe increase the stacks and durations of conditions (or maybe just damaging conditions, as some, like fear, would be bad to increase like that) on nearby enemies… I don’t know, i like torment and already picked up torment runes for my revenant mallyx build, so more torment is great for that build, but… ah, it just had a unique flavor that just got kinda lost a bit.
Were the issues about aoe condi cleansing really that bad? Because I’ll admit I didn’t notice anyone else complaining about it before you mentioned it… though I dont read these forums addictively. I mean, how is this any different from a Corruption Necro using all those self condis and transferring them too?
EDIT: I was hesitant to suggest this, but after thinking about the unique effect that chronomancers got, Alacrity, what about a unique effect for Mallyx? something like.. Agony Without End or something like that… the embrace the darkness could add it on every second to enemies in his aoe… while active, conditions cannot be removed by enemies in your vicinity.
It may be too late to add an effect like that, and maybe it would be too powerful, but I’m grasping at straws at how to keep our uniqueness without making it too powerful lol… i know, I know, us fans always have suggestions that are usually unfeasible, but what the heck
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Roy, you’ve quickly become my favorite dev due to your interactivity in this subforum.
Go kick Karl, make him as talkative about Daredevil
+1 on that. There is some actual anger on some of the other profession forums on how this one gets so much attention from a dev and the others are ignored.
Which basically is the roundabout way of saying THANK YOU ROY… and tell your co workers to start paying attention to their people in some of the the other profession forums, they are feeling left out
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I must say, I wondered if they were making rangers last because they were going to include some tweaks to the core ranger as well. One can hope, right?
Darn it, make torment runes available for BWE3
Once the game goes live, I’ll be running some variation of the following in wvw and pve:
I think the people that are complaining want to run Shiro/Glint and still have strong condition removal.
And thats the problem. As with any build, you can’t get everything you want.
Unless you are an elementalist.
Much to your dismay, Revenant’s do need a weakness.
I do agree each class needs to have a counterplay. Don’t you think that it also doesn’t have to be he should be virtually helpless against it though. Conditions are no longer like they were when the game first launched, they are now more prevalent, easily reapplied (in matter of seconds). Especially in PvP when virtually every classes do condi now, it means that non-Mallyx will be weak against everyone. I do think condi removal on legend swap should be increased to one, each legend should have at least one way to remove condition, be it a weaker one than other classes.
I don’t think that is entirely true, as an example engineers don’t run much condition removal in PvP as they have limited options similar to revenant, but still aren’t helpless in PvP.
Well now you’re right in my wheel house Roy!
Most competitive Engi builds use Alchemy, which even if you change nothing about your skill bar can help tremendously (relative to baseline Engi). You get the 75% health Elixir B proc and clear. 25% health Elixir S proc and clear if you grab it. Transmute every 15s. This is without using any elixirs or Elixir Gun on your skill bar. A skill bar that already has one of the best heals in the game that removes 2 condis every 15-20s.
Engi is among the worst at dealing with conditions no matter how you gear, but they have a chance. My argument is unless using Mallyx + Corruption a Rev doesn’t really have that same chance, at least I don’t think so. I believe increasing the amount of conditions removed on the traits/skills that have that functionality would help a lot and I would like to see where that puts us in BWE3 before we start seriously asking for more sources of removal.
The problem isn’t lack of options, its lack of build diversity. They actually have a couple of very decent options:
Salvation Trait Eluding Nullification: Dodge rolling removes a condition from nearby allies.
Invocation Trait Cleansing Channel: Invoking a legend removes a condition.
Staff skill Renewing Wave: Send out a wave of mist energy that heals and removes conditions from allies.
Legendary Assassin skill Riposting Shadows: Evade back quickly though the Mists, removing debilitating conditions.
Legendary Dwarf Skill Soothing Stone: Heal yourself and remove conditions. Gain retaliation for each condition removed.
Legendary Centaur Skill Purifying Essence: Remove conditions from allies near the tablet, and heal them for a small amount per condition removed.
This doesn’t even count Mallyx’s access to resistance or the legendary dragon’s Infuse Light.
So that gives us five different legendaries that grant some means of dealing with conditions, although some much weaker than others: Dwarf and centaur can outright remove several, dragon can convert some of the damage to healing, assassin can cure a few specific ones, and mallyx can flat out ignore them via several methods.
We have one weapon skill that removes conditions, a trait on dodge, a trait on invocing a legend….
Frankly, although we may not have the best method of dealing with conditions, we aren’t entirely flatlined by them either, and some builds will in fact deal with condis very well.
Its like the aforementioned engineer: they have means too, they just have to CHOOSE them.
The problem is that the engineer can pick and choose to some extent, whereas the revenant his skills come in packages together, limiting your build variety. THAT is the problem: but you can deal with condis just fine if you choose to build for it.
Me, I was playing Mallyx/jalis… I loved it, and condis were rarely an issue for me, plus I was dealing out condis to the enemy like it was candy. Loved it
EDIT: that being said, although I don’t like the lack of build diversity that the revenant has to deal with, now that they also have weapon swap, having both two weapon sets AND two utility sets would make him too powerful if he could also change skills… with one exception. I firmly stand by the belief that they should be able to use racial skills. It wouldn’t harm anything, as the devs have said from day 1 they make the racial skills weaker, and it would just be strange to have one class that cant use racial skills.
And frankly, I now LOVE the revenant. Mallyx/Jalis all the way here, baby LOL
EDIT #2: And Jalis’ Vengeful Hammers reduces incoming condi damage 20%
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Much to your dismay, Revenant’s do need a weakness.
So what’s elementalist’s weakness?
a dc
Seriously though, they announced they are looking to balance ele. Don’t compare rev to that, or it will just be a call for nerfs right from the start.
Have they? That would certainly be nice.
Much to your dismay, Revenant’s do need a weakness.
I would agree with this if it was something that every class had.
I can’t think of any class right now that has to sacrifice EVERYTHING (weapons,utilities,traitlines) to deal with condies.
It’s like the warrior used to be back in 2012
Right now, in this meta there is little room for a rev to spec into condi cleanse and still keep relevant damage.
As of this last weekend of beta I was finding that any class that decided to go condi could render me on the retreat in a few seconds.And every class has the ability now to make some kind of tanky condi build.
It would be nice if some condi removal was moved into either Jalis or Glint.
And the tablet would be great if it wasn’t so clunky to micro manage.
It may be better if the tablet acted like blood fiend and just followed the player.
Having to manage an enemy, tablet location, and energy may be overwhelming for some people.
I completely disagree with your assessment. I’ve been playing with mallyx and jalis most of the time, and firstly condis weren’t an issue. Secondly I was build to do heavy Condi damage, focused mostly on torment. I did great, didn’t feel I sacrificed anything.
Just wish I’d had runes of tormenting. Ah well.