Every build will be Devastation + Invocation + Who cares. Just look where all the damage % modifiers are. Look where the Fury traits are. Look where the stunbreaks are. Etc, etc.
The only exception is for those rare situations where you want to tank or something…
Weapon swap was a quick band-aid on a much deeper problem with the class. But no one wants to talk about how energy is boring and passive…
You don’t like energy management, I actually do, so it’s just your opinion.
Other suggestions for 1-5 replacement are crap
You don’t like other suggestions. I actually do, so it’s just your opinion.
Weapon swap was a quick band-aid on a much deeper problem with the class. But no one wants to talk about how energy is boring and passive…
I think alacrity with shatters is going to be very strong in dungeons or group pve. I’m going to try something like this:
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMGmAJ8BZg~
I’ll run zerk or assassins with sword/sword + sword/shield. I should be getting plenty of alacrity through shatters, and plenty of shatters through PoM, MoM, DE, IR, and Chronophantasma. Between shatter alacrity, phantasm alacrity, and well alacrity, I’m hoping to pump out a constant chain of damage and alacrity without worrying about illusions dying. It might not have as much dps as the perfect ideal situation build, but pve is rarely perfectly ideal.
Condi mesmer is strong in pvp because their main damage comes from “conditional” conditions.
Confusion: more damage to players because they cast often.
Torment: more damage to players because they move often.
In pve though… condi mesmer is terrible because NPCs simply don’t proc the higher damage, and there’s not enough bleed or burning to compensate. Also it takes up to 10 seconds to “ramp up” condi dps in pve. Mobs are usually dead by then.
Why do we need another post on nerfing the Mesmer. All classes can burst plain and simple. Learn to dodge practice more playing, less forum post rehash on how to nerf Mesmer.
I rather agree with this… Indeed mesmer is strong in pvp against players who don’t know how to counter, but in pve mesmers are relatively weak and restricted in their builds. Any nerfs on behalf of pvp will certainly cripple the pve mesmer.
Condition damage in PvE needs to be looked at on players too. Some classes deal plenty while others struggle. In fact it’s rather sad that Necromancers, the so called masters of conditions, are one of the worst at applying condition damage.
Is there any way you could reformat this idea into concise bullet points?
If I had to summarize the OP:
- Healing Power kinda sucks by itself.
- So combine it with Boon Duration. 500 points of “Concentration” (new Healing Power) stat = +15% boon duration. (So you could get about +45% if you maxed out – similar to old boon-duration builds.)
- Now your Healing Power character has more real “support” than just restoring some hp. Also you can be tankier with the improved Prot and Regen.
Ah okay. I’ve seen this idea before and I’ve even suggested something like that myself. The problem is that there’s other sources of boon duration which might cause problems if stacked with such gear. Also, it doesn’t really address the core issue of combat in pve (being dominated by zerker). The game needs combat encounters that can be most efficiently cleared by something besides zerker. That could mean any number of things, but changing gear stats isn’t the answer.
Is there any way you could reformat this idea into concise bullet points? 3 walls of text is way too much for the average forum goer, and Anet themselves have asked that suggestions be made into compact lists. It makes it easier for the community managers to take your information to the designers if it’s easy to parse.
I’m hoping for Sandwichmancer Staff.
Sandwichmancer Staff Recipe (mystic forge):
- Gift of Sandwichmancy
- Ancient Staff Shaft
- Ancient Staff Head
- 3rd year Birthday Badge (automatically mailed to character on 3rd birthday)
Gift of Sandwichmancy Recipe (mystic forge):
- Gift of Bread
- Gift of Meat
- Gift of Cheese
- Gift of Sauce
Gift of Bread Recipe (mystic forge):
- 250 Fresh White Rolls (dropped from feline enemies anywhere in the world)
- 250 Fresh Wheat Rolls (dropped from feline enemies anywhere in the world)
- 25 Globs of Ectoplasm
Gift of Meat Recipe (mystic forge):
- 250 Slices of Premium Roast Beef (dropped from ogres anywhere)
- 250 Slices of Premium Smoked Ham (dropped from ogres anywhere)
- 25 Globs of Ectoplasm
Gift of Cheese Recipe (mystic forge):
- 250 Slices of Exquisite Muenster Cheese (dropped from skritt anywhere)
- 250 slices of Exquisite Cheddar Cheese (dropped from skritt anywhere)
- 25 Globs of Ectoplasm
Gift of Sauce Recipe (mystic forge):
- 250 Jars of Mayo (dropped from centaurs anywhere)
- 250 Jars of Mustard (dropped from dredge anywhere)
- 25 Globs of Ectoplasm
The staff itself would be a toy just like the Birthday Blaster. It would allow you to summon delicious sandwiches for you and your friends, giving semi-useful buffs. The staff would look like an oversized toothpick with a gorgeous 12 inch sub at the top, crowned with a nice olive for garnish.
The only actual work Anet would have to do to implement this is the weapon model, the skill visual effects, the buff numbers, the drop rate numbers for ingredients, and the icons for the ingredients and stuff… Come on Anet!
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I love how this thread just keeps going and going while Anet quietly sits back and watches. I’d like to think they are waiting to see how HoT goes before they decide on Cantha. Let them see if they can handle 1 new Maguuma region before they tackle a whole continent.
Portal is fine. I feel like OP came up with this idea because he wanted more AoE skills for the mesmer. Well you’re in luck! Just wait till HoT and you get chronomancer aoe skills.
Orr needs to stay a rotten wasteland as it’s always been. However I would like them to remake most of the events and add more interesting enemies. Orr was really a prototype of what Dry Top and Silverwastes became. They need to go back and apply that design to Orr.
“Shootsfoot” gouges his eyes out… Lol.
My expectation is that Anet will keep adding these boring, ugly orange circles to open world bosses. It’s yet another tacked-on, duct-tape solution to a problem which could have been more creatively solved. Essentially a missed opportunity.
My best compromise I can reasonably ask for is that they limit such orange markers only to open world content of 30+ players. Also add a setting in the graphics tab to lower the opacity of all orange markers from 100% to 0% on a slider. I would keep it around 5-10% personally. Obviously I need to see this crap to dodge it, but I would like the ugly bright intensity to be lowered at my personal preference.
@Tuomir.1830
@Rayti.6531
I understand why people want more orange circles and consistency. They are easier to see. It takes zero imagination to say “put these on every fight”. Please don’t think I’m trying to offend anyone by saying this. It seems like you all consider form and function to be two different things, and they never intersect in game design. Well the reason I cite Dark Souls is because of the remarkable synthesis of form and function in many aspects of it’s design.
In the context of this discussion, Dark Souls has a clear animation for every action that every character makes. When a player casts a spell, they brandish the catalyst, the catalyst glows, and a moment later the spell fires. When a player swings a giant sword, he shifts his weight, hefts the weapon, and then slams it. The same goes for bosses. Any attack is preceded by a clear and deliberate body movement. Each attack has a different body movement. Each body movement anticipates the direction of the attack.
There is no need for ground markers because you can always tell where the danger zone is by the body language of the enemy. It’s therefore not hard to imagine a version of GW2 in which this works.
1. Make bosses large enough to stand over players so that their body language may be seen even when crowded.
2. Remove avatar-based particle effects from bosses. This means no more fire or glowing clouds clinging to the boss’s skin.
3. Create clear and consistent body language animations for every attack. If a boss swings a sword, make him pull it back first for a second while he shifts his weight. If he casts a spell, make him hold up his staff as it glows before the projectile is launched. Make the projectile always fire in the direction he is facing.
I don’t expect GW2 to ever reach such a state. It would have required Anet to adopt a different design philosophy 4+ years ago when the game was in development. However, Anet is an old company with experience and many talented artists and designers who get paid to do this work. Surely they can design something more sophisticated than orange circles.
I really hate seeing my beloved GW2 turning into a monochromatic splurge of orange shapes… I would rather they come up with a different solution than to bathe my entire screen in flat, bright, glowing shapes. It destroys the beauty of environment, character models, and animations. What is the point even? Why make character models or animations? There’s no reason to if you are just going to watch big orange circles instead.
Does anyone else remember when the word “telegraph” meant the boss was doing an animation? Not spewing an orange triangle across the ground? This is what telegraphs used to be (notice the distinct lack of puerile geometric shapes):
(edited by Xenon.4537)
Yeah and after the first try I couldn’t even get near him >.> and he even called me a pus for building a bali when i wanted to use it as bait.
He communicated with you over wvw? How?
Even so, I would have just blocked and reported him for verbal. And if he’s exploiting the golem thing, then there’s no much else you can do but report him for that too.
Shouldn’t the cool downs be about 40 sec long or something? because I saw him pop the same thing every 10-20 ish sec and its kills back line.
Mind Wrack (F1) is a 10 sec cooldown. That’s the main damage shatter. It will crit for maybe 1-2k per clone on a zerk build. With 3 clones + the mesmer in melee that’s between 4-8k. Add the Mirror Blade which will hit a single target for up to 5k if done correctly. An interrupt with the damage trait will crit for about 1k.
Under ideal conditions if the mesmer hits with EVERYTHING just right, its between 15-20k burst. But that can’t be done without full clones. Either he has to cast the #4 phantasm, dodge, and mirror blade… Or he has to use mirror blade and pop Mirror Images. The former requires a ramp-up time, wasted endurance, and has clear telegraphs allowing you to dodge it easily. The latter requires a 32 second cooldown (Mirror Images). Either way, it doesn’t hit as hard as some other builds out there (thief comes to mind) and is easier to predict. Not to mention the only defense he has is stealth and blink which are also 30 second cooldowns.
Protip: if he lacks condi cleanse, immobilize will ruin his day.
Edit: Oh well if he’s using a golem exploit then that changes everything…
That would entail making a lot of new skills. Most likely too much work for too little gain.
Actually it would not require designing new skills. It would, however, require new animations. And the same reason prevents them from implementing it: too much work for too little gain.
Not that it’s a TON of work… but it’s just not a simple check box or line of code.
Actually the OP’s suggestion does require new skills to be made, I do like this idea though – won’t be implemented for a while though.
I feel stupid now for not actually reading the whole OP. I’ve seen requests like this since the game launched, and usually people just want to visually see the offhand weapon strike the enemy during the auto attack chain.
I’m trying to decipher what he did to you. I play mesmer, though I’m no expert. It looks to me like he did something like this:
1. Mantra of Distraction (daze)
2. Mirror Blade
3. Mirror Images
4. Popped F1 and F3 on top of you.
Mirror Blade bounces several times. Each bounce does moderate damage, which adds up to a lot when it crits, and if it bounces between the mesmer and you each time (instead of between other players). It adds vuln to you and might to him, which futher racks up the damage. Popping Mirror Images at the same time and then instantly shattering F1 is a big spike of damage too.
Shatter mesmers are very predictable. They use GS and they try to get into melee range for the burst. They typically lack cleanse and have little or no defensive stats. If you see him stealth before engaging, or you see him auto attacking while running straight towards you, that means it’s time to dodge.
TL;DR – he used a lot of big cooldowns on you and was probably wearing full zerk, making him extra squishy should his burst fail. Dodge the burst and kill him.
That would entail making a lot of new skills. Most likely too much work for too little gain.
Actually it would not require designing new skills. It would, however, require new animations. And the same reason prevents them from implementing it: too much work for too little gain.
Not that it’s a TON of work… but it’s just not a simple check box or line of code.
Only one thing to tell you Xenon: wait for the next beta to complain. No way you can get accurate POV on energy without experiencing it live
People complained about it with the beta that occured before but the main problem relied on low damage output. With higher damage now allowed maybe energy won’t be a problem after all
This isn’t about whether the Revenant can deal enough damage, cast enough skills, or any of that. This is about how energy works. Of course if you stack damage numbers, energy “won’t be a problem” because everything will be dead. That’s not my concern at all. My concern is with how passive energy is. You just wait for it to build up, and then mash buttons. There’s no nuance to it.
I get that everyone thinks we should just wait and see because its in beta. You are missing the point of beta. I’m here giving my feedback on concerns AFTER having participated in a beta. We already got to try the energy mechanic, and since there is no announced change coming to the system as of writing this, I feel compelled to voice my concern now, not later.
You never want to hit 100% because that means you would be losing opportunity to gain energy.
There IS no opportunity to gain more energy. You pop your skills the instant you hit 100%, and you swap legends the instant you hit 0%. You can’t accidentally “waste” energy over 100% because there’s nothing to push you past it. You simply wait for it, and then push buttons. That’s the whole point of my post.
I quit Revenant.
Spammy class with no intelligent mechanics. Spam skills, wait for energy, spam some more. Boring.
Well when you put it that way that is every single other class really. But this one just looks like a blast!
Have you heard of the chronomancer’s temporal shift mechanic? I daresay it actually requires some skill to use properly. You have to actually think about when to cast certain skills because they will be reset during shift, and back on cooldown when it ends. Revenant energy is literally thief initiative with no affecting traits or skills to boost it. It’s a more passive version of thief initiative… And from a practical standpoint, it functions the same as warrior adrenalin. You just wait for it to build up and then spam spam spam. And again, at least warrior gets traits to boost adrenalin. Rev does not.
Good job guys. You complained and begged for an unimaginative solution, and you got it. Now the class is doomed to be boring as all hell. There were plenty of way better ideas than duct-taping default weapon swap to the class.
Sometimes the best and most practical fixes to problems are not the most imaginative ones nor should they be.
That is just depressing. If this is how humans think, I’m ashamed to be one.
Good job guys. You complained and begged for an unimaginative solution, and you got it. Now the class is doomed to be boring as all hell. There were plenty of way better ideas than duct-taping default weapon swap to the class.
To be fair, Anet had every ability to make it that unique thing but ended up going with regular weapon swap, at least for now. I really can’t much complain about getting an extra 5 skills though.
Also, it makes more sense thematically if you can swap your legend and swap into weapons that fit them better, no? Running hammer with Jalis makes sense, but hammer on Shiro is more difficult to make it fit thematically.
Yeah, it’s great and all to have the weapon swap. It’s just not a solution to the deeper problem. You put a band-aid on a surface cut when the patient was suffering from internal bleeding.
You have weapon versatility. Great. What about skillful play? Where is it? The Revenant’s main mechanic is legends which cost energy to use. Energy is nothing but a passive resource that you can’t influence other than consuming it. It’s like thief initiative, but at least thieves get traits and skills to boost initiative. Revs don’t. It’s also like warrior adrenalin. You just wait for it to build up and then spam it down. And again, at least warriors get traits to affect adrenalin. Revs don’t.
Energy is a watered-down version of existing mechanics with none of the possible modifiers and no chance of a better player using it more effectively than a bad player. Now that you’ve added weapon swapping, it would be even harder to balance a skillfully-based energy system.
It’s probably no cost. Energy reached 0 and I’m sure there was no symbol, not even for an instant.
I can be wrong. Hope not.
Even if they removed energy cost from weapons, that wouldn’t be a solution, only a basic buff. I’m talking about making Rev gameplay more intelligent and skill-based. As long as the energy system remains a purely passive system, it will never require high skill. It’s practically like warrior adrenalin… You just wait for it to build up and then spam it down.
Good job guys. You complained and begged for an unimaginative solution, and you got it. Now the class is doomed to be boring as all hell. There were plenty of way better ideas than duct-taping default weapon swap to the class.
I quit Revenant.
Spammy class with no intelligent mechanics. Spam skills, wait for energy, spam some more. Boring.
From the stream I could tell thet energy cost got removed or lowered a lot on weaponskills. That would pretty much solve half of your concerns.
For the rest I’m still waiting Roy’s post.
Lower cost isn’t a solution. It’s still nothing but a passive resource that you can’t influence in a skillful way. Maybe I should have waited for Roy’s post, but I didn’t see anything in the live stream that remotely indicated a smarter energy system. If they were going to make such a big change to the mechanic, they surely would have mentioned it on-air.
Am I the only one who finds this mechanic boring, simplistic, uninspired, and somewhat pointless?
- Every skill costs energy, except auto attack.
- Energy can only be passively generated over time in combat.
- You can get a boost up to 50% when you swap legends IF you swap while below 50%.
- No traits or skills give energy, only take.
Where does this leave the class? Essentially the best rotation is:
- Enter combat and wait for 100%
- Pop upkeep skills that drop energy over time
- Pop major skills that cost energy and give the most damage/benefit
- At 0% swap legends. You gain back to 50%.
- Wait for 100%.
- Rinse/repeat.
Maybe I’m just doing it wrong… so please correct me… But I don’t see the point of energy. It’s effectively the same as initiative. You can only activate skills as long as you have the energy, and then you have to wait. It’s even worse than initiative as there’s nothing to boost it. At least initiative has traits, signets, tricks, etc to give you more.
So why not just remove energy all together and have them use initiative, or standard cooldowns? Even upkeep skills might as well have a base duration. They can last a max of 14 seconds if you only auto attack.
Honestly to me this system seems boring and requires little or no actual thought or skillful play. Not even remotely close to mechanics like Chronomancer’s Temporal Shift. Why aren’t there any Rev skills or traits that allow you to gain energy by playing better? Energy on block? On interrupt? On revive? On striking 5 enemies? On successfully avoiding damage?
What’s even more sad is that everyone cried and complained and begged for weapon swap and “we the people will have triumph”. Well now that there’s more weapon complexity, there’s even less room for energy complexity. It would be even harder now to balance a smart energy system when weapon swapping has added significant strength to the class (in another boring way).
That doesn’t seem the case however. To me the problem with Revenant traits is that they don’t do much.
That too. I’m sure Roy has heard.
I’m just worried that builds will be mostly reduced to Shiro + Invocation + Other or Two Legends + Invocation. It would be nice to see a reason for people picking up three non-Invocation trait lines.
At this rate, every PvE build will be Shiro + Invocation + Choice of: Mallyx or Glint.
Conquest pvp is going to be Jalis + Ventari + Invocation. Stand on point and tank all day.
You’re basically suggesting to move main skills in the right side of the bar?
Because it doesn’t matter how you fix energy stuff, I can’t spam a healing skill and I can’t spam damaging attacks with an elite skill or a utility skill.Utility skills are there just to be useful, providing things like blinks or CC, while the main source of gameplay are skills from 1 to 5, and Revenant is the only, again the ONLY, class that can’t swap those.
You are assuming that 6-0 cannot be made into “main gameplay” skills as you put it, which is just nonsense. Every skill on your bar should be considered “main gameplay” on any class. If you mean “situational” then yes, that’s a problem. What I’ve been saying this whole time is that revenant 6-0 should NOT be so situational.
Take your elementalist argument. They have 35 skills? Vs the revenant’s 15? Okay so Ele has roughly twice the skills, but has to use them twice as fast and twice as often for the same benefit. Do you see what I’m getting at? You don’t need to shove more skills onto the bar. You can allow the Rev to use the smaller number of skills more frequently similar to a thief who uses initiative instead of cooldowns. Your assertion that utility skills can’t be spammable is just not true. It’s all in the balance.
I’m not saying the heal should be spammable. I’m saying 6-0 need to be equivalent to other classes. If an Ele can do X amount of things with 35 skills on 1-5, then the Rev needs to do roughly the same amount of things with 10 skills on 6-0. #6 needs to remain balanced obviously. 7-9 need to be better, and 0 needs to be better.
Now before you attack me, let me reiterate the energy problem. I’m not saying they should just make 6-0 godly overpowered insta-spam 1-shot skills. I’m saying that they need to create a system where you actually have to play better to use energy and make those 6-0 skills work. You should have to think about where you stand, when you block ,when you interrupt, etc. If you ever played GW1, you know there are a lot of fun and interesting ways to do energy management… and they only had 8 skill slots back then…
@Kidel.2057
Yes I did play the revenant in the last beta… And I’m done talking to you until you actually read my response to you in this thread instead of spouting the same argument from elementalist skills which I already addressed there.
As I said in another thread, forcing you to swap weapon with legendswap is a bad idea.
I may want to legendswap to heal (Shiro basically has no immediate healing skill) or to use a certain skill, or to reset energy, but I may want to keep my ranged weapon.
Yes yes yes, all good reasons!
Normal weaponswap is a good solution. Also because weapons seem to be designed for a particolar legend, so having 2 legends and just 1 weapon doesn’t make much sense.
No no no! This is just boring implementation… Make every weapon a “blank slate”. Have the weapon be defined by the traits of the legend. Mallyx traits add conditions to slots 1-5. Shiro add damage modifiers. Ventari add support, etc. You keep those effects on 1-5, so you are free to swap legends as you wish and use whichever weapon you want on whichever build you want.
Style? Oh come on. Every other class can swap skills from 1-5, that are the skills you use the most.
This gives them a lot of advantages.
Yes it does, but being able to swap 6-0 gives Rev other advantages which are unique to the class.
Look at Elementalist. Has no weaponswap, but has attunements and kits. This allows the Elementalist to use 35 skills in a row (only those from 1 to 5), without stopping or waiting for cooldowns. Again 35. And without factoring any skill from 6-0 except the ones to conjure weapons.
All of those 35 skills have much longer cooldowns than most other classes. They also have limits and situational effectiveness in almost every case. Have you ever heard people complain that Ele has to press twice as many buttons for the same DPS as a warrior? More skills =/= better.
Revenant can use his weaponskills and then wait for cooldowns. Or can use 1 toggle skill (like Ventari barrier, or rotating hammers, or Mallyx elite) and do nothing, because once your energy is low you can’t use any weaponskill except AA.
This is why they need to overhaul the energy mechanic. It has nothing to do with weapon synergy. Energy is a boring “wait for it” mechanic, because it only passively regenerates. There should be skills and traits that give you more energy when you play better. For example gain energy when you block, gain energy when you interrupt, gain energy when you revive, sacrifice 20 energy to gain 50 later, etc.
Do you get how much swapping skills from 1 to 5 is useful? Swapping skills from 6 to 0 is not even close to that. Mainly because those skills suck however, or have a huge energy cost.
Yes those utilities are lackluster, I agree. Again, that’s evidence that the utilities need to be buffed and the energy mechanic needs to change. Nothing to do with weapon swap. Do you get how much swapping 6-0 would be useful if they removed cooldowns and made you actually THINK about how to boost your energy?
As I have stated many times on this forum, the issue here is not weapon swapping. It’s lack of synergy between legends and weapons. My solution is to make weapons a “blank slate” with no conditions, support, CC, or damage modifiers. Instead have traits which add those things to slots 1-5 regardless of weapon. Here’s my thread which goes into more detail:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/My-feedback-on-Rev-build-mechanics/
Does Rev hammer need a buff? Yeah, but they don’t need to be this “end-all-be-all versatility class” with every contingency covered. They are a heavy armor class for crying out loud, and we already have Engie and Ele who are supposed to be “jack of all trades.” Rev isn’t supposed to be “jack of all trades.”
I have to disagree on that one. They may be Heavy armor, but because how the mechanics are designed, you realize that they can technically be good at least on two things at a time. They are really selling that flexibility to us, but the weapons don’t really help. They seem to be a crutch to the class since the weapons are really tied down to their specific Legends, which to me doesn’t do the class justice when we have the ability to switch between 2 Legends, but that the weapon only works for one.
That’s why I’ve been advocating for a change, if you read my other comments. They don’t need weapon swap, as I’ve explained there’s other ways they could fix this issue which would actually add far more build diversity. It would also avoid glaring issues which I’ve listed, and allow the Revenant to retain it’s unique identity.
…weapon swapping as there really is no reason the class shouldn’t have it…
There is a good reason not to have it: they get to swap their 6-0 instead…
Range vs melee really is a non-issue. The real issue is synergy. Legends don’t synergize well with each other, and their weapons synergize even less. My solution is to make weapons a “blank slate” by removing conditions, damage, support, etc from them. Instead make traits add those effects. Mallyx traits add conditions to the weapon slot, regardless of which weapon type. Jalis traits add CC regardless of weapon. Ventari adds support, and Shiro adds damage modifiers.
That way your build defines your weapon, not the other way around. For example you would be able to apply conditions while channeling Ventari, as long as you took the right Mallyx traits. Legends should be about switching 6-0, not 1-5.
I believe adding default weapon swap is just a lazy design, and tying weapons directly to legends is extremely limiting. If your weapons switched automatically, you would never be able to do a ranged Mallyx build, for example. And if you wanted to use the Jalis heal instead of the Shiro heal, you would lock yourself out of sword DPS for 10 seconds.
What do D/D eles do in the middle of a fight when they need range? They Ride the Lightning and BECOME THE RANGE! lol
No seriously though… Lots of classes just “man-up” so to speak when this situation occurs. They either change weapon out of combat ahead of time, or they get into melee and kill it. I see warriors do this all the time. They have rifle and longbow available, but they would rather use axe and GS for obvious reasons.
Does Rev hammer need a buff? Yeah, but they don’t need to be this “end-all-be-all versatility class” with every contingency covered. They are a heavy armor class for crying out loud, and we already have Engie and Ele who are supposed to be “jack of all trades.” Rev isn’t supposed to be “jack of all trades.”
forcing you to swap weapon with legendswap is a bad idea.
I may want to legendswap to heal (Shiro basically has no immediate healing skill) or to use a certain skill, or to reset energy, but I may want to keep my ranged weapon.
This x9001
or the ability to channel more than 2 legendary stances. Three legendary stances would be great, so that we can match the 3 specializations accordingly.
I was rather disappointed myself that we could only use 2 Legends at a time. It would be nice if they changed it to more than two.
The problem with that is, there are only four non-elite legends planned for you to choose from. Might as well just make all of the legends accessible at that point…
ANet really needs more than the four non-elite legends they have lined up. If we had more to choose from, a lot of the issue with lack of options would be greatly helped.
The issue isn’t really a lack of legends. It’s lack of synergy between legends, coupled with lack of synergy between weapons across the board. Staff is only good on Ventari, hammer on Jalis, axe/mace on Mallyx, etc.
My solution is to make all weapons a “blank slate” and use traits to define them. Mallyx traits add condition, Jalis adds CC, Ventari adds support, Shiro adds raw damage modifiers.
This would allow you to swap legends freely, while still applying conditions, CC, DPS, or support whenever you need it. No need for weapon swap. IMO the Revenant’s unique style should be that it swaps 6-0 instead of 1-5.
6. Tie Legendary Stances to their respective weapons (so swapping stances auto-swaps your weapon, or swapping weapons auto-swaps your stance)
This is by far my favorite idea. I can’t imagine any stance other than Ventari wanting to use the staff, so bringing up a staff when you switch to Ventari makes a lot of sense to me. Likewise, I think malyx and the hammer go really well together.
Revenant needs a way to switch between melee and range in the middle of combat, and I think the above option is the only one which does this easily and in a way that makes logical sense.
I third this. Would help a heck of a lot.
This is a bad idea. It limits build diversity even more. You would never be able to make a ranged Mallyx build, for example. On top of that, what if you need to fight ranged, but you need the projectile block of Ventari? You would be stuck using staff and dealing no DPS while you block things, then switch to ranged for DPS and not be able to block things…
A better idea would be to make weapons a “blank slate” and use traits to add their effects. Shiro adds damage modifiers, Mallyx adds conditions, Jalis adds CC, Ventari adds support. That way you are free to pick any weapon you want and use it for any build you want. The difference between weapons would be through animation, speed, and range.
never played revenant but reading carefully through a lot of the feedback posts i think your ideas are a great way to address one of the major problems for revenants based on their class mechanic.
in my opinion, the legends itself should have some customization as well though, maybe 9 utilities you can chose from per legend? heal and elite skills could be fixed per legend
I think Anet intends to add more utility skills. When I played it, I had the option to select the utility slots with that little arrow over the slot. However there were only 3 utilities and 1 heal available, so there weren’t options to chose from at the time. It seems to me like they will add more later. So for example you won’t HAVE to run pain absorption on Mallyx if you don’t want to. There should be more Mallyx skills in the future, as well as every legend.
I just hope they don’t try to solve this by adding default boring weapon swap. There are much cooler ways to build the Revenant that would allow it to be unique.
In regard to weapon swap: Engi has 15 skills even without a kit equipped, and he gets to customize his bar; This goes up to 19 with one kit and 23 with 2 kits, which are common situations. Ele has 25 skills. Revenant has 15 and cannot customize outside of choosing his legends (also can’t chose which skills to bind to which keys). Adding a weapon swap would bring this number up to 20 skills… still with the lack of customization of skills. Ele and engi also have flexibility to include both ranged and melee attacks, whereas Rev can choose only one. Even necro has 20 skills when you consider deathshroud, so why should Rev be limited to only 15?
Rev needs at the least either weapon swap or more skills tied to each legend for us to choose from.
Also, whatever happened to this supposed strong in-combat mobility?
I don’t think Revenant needs to have X number of skills. He just needs to be able to use the ones he has better. They ought to overhaul energy management and get rid of the cooldowns on utility skills. Let us use them as much as we want, as long as we have the energy. Make energy a higher skill-cap mechanic; something that requires good positioning, combos, and timing.
For example, there should be traits that boost energy when you hit multiple enemies, revive an ally, use an elite skill, a heal skill, etc. There should be delayed energy gain effects, such as sacrificing 20 energy to gain 50 later. There should be skills that give energy when you successfully block an attack or stun an enemy.
Right now everything just costs energy and has an arbitrary cooldown on top of it. Energy gain is purely passive and BORING. Let us boost it through skillful play, and let us use the limited skills we have more frequently than other classes to compensate.
The problem I see with having the legend auto-swap your weapon is what’s the difference? You basically just gave Revenant default weapon swap in addition to utility swap. I would rather you stick with 1 weapon, but have it’s skills be determined by traits.
The weapon should come “blank” and it’s effects should be derived from traits which are already inexorably tied to the legends. If you take Mallyx, the traits should add conditions to specific 1-5 slots. If you take Shiro, the traits should add a damage modifier to specific 1-5 slots. These traits should remain in effect no matter which legend you currently channel. That way you can be in Mallyx, but retain the damage modifiers of Shiro. Or you could swap to Ventari but still apply conditions from Mallyx.
IMO legend swapping itself should only affect your 6-0 slots. This would open up the most build diversity because you could use any weapon you feel like for any build. The only difference would be attack speed, range, and animations.
My solution would be to remove special effects from weapons (conditions, healing, stuns, etc) and put those effects on traits. That way you can use whatever legend you want while getting the effects you want passively. Those passive weapon effects would be augmented by whichever legend you use.
- Want to do ranged DPS? Take hammer, equip Shiro traits.
- Want to do melee DPS? Take axe/mace, equip Shiro traits.
- Want to do ranged condi? Take hammer, equip Mallyx traits.
- Want to do both power and condi dps? Take Mallyx and Shiro traits. Pick suitable weapon…
- Etc, etc…
Weapon difference would come from the range, attack speed, animation, and style. Effectiveness would depend purely on the traits. No need for weapon swapping. you retain the trait effects regardless of current legend. Current legend only affects utility skills.
Edit/Followup:
Currently as I see it, if Revenant build systems and skill balance isn’t significantly changed, Every Revenant in PvE will run roughly the same build:
- Take Shiro (the dps spec)
- Take Invocation for fury, stun break, and faster swap
- Take Glint (elite spec) for whatever it does, OR take Mallyx for some condition damage.
They might take Jalis over Glint/Mallyx for some defense, but given the nature of PvE, Shiro and Invocation will be required no matter what. Unless of course HoT requires pure tanks and healers…
This lack of fundamental build diversity in the traits is what I see as one of the glaring design flaws of the Revenant, and I too am worried that Revenants will mostly be running Shiro/Invocation + Other.
Given Anet’s track record, I have a feeling you are right. I’m sure they are listening to feedback right now, but development for AAA games is like sailing the Titanic. They can’t just turn the ship around on a dime. Most of the current Revenant is going to stay the way it is at launch. I think the most we can expect is buffs and nerfs to traits, and some tweaking on damage numbers. Given the structure of the class so far, I predict every build in PvE will be Shiro + Glint + Invocation.
Basically the class needs some fundamental changes to the way energy is used and generated, and to the way weapons receive effects (damage, conditions, control, and healing). There needs to be more synergy between every legend, and there needs to be a reason to use something besides mace/axe on Mallyx, or something besides hammer on Jalis. I’m predicting these problems will persist for a while until Anet feels like they’ve gathered enough feedback to decide a course of action.
@LunarNacht.8913
Thanks! I’ve thought more about that idea, and I wanted to give some example build situations that would arise from it.
Build #1:
This is a hybrid DPS/control build using 3 legends to add control effects at the cost of Invocation.
- You take Curruption (Mallyx), Retribution (Jalis), and the Shiro line.
- You equip Mallyx traits which add the torment to the #1 slot, and burning to the #2 slot.
- You equip Shiro traits which boost the base damage of the weapon up to match standard power weapons (before damage modifiers).
- You equip Jalis traits which add a knockback to #3, and a stun to #5.
- The previously listed effects are passively applied through traits, and remain active regardless of the active legend.
- You slot in Shiro to F1, and Mallyx to F2. You gain Shiro’s power-based utility skills while channeling F1, and you gain Mallyx’s condition-based utility skills while in F2.
- Your legend swapping benefits are reduced due to lack of Invocation, but you gain the passive effects (weapon skill buffs) of Jalis even though you can’t actively channel him or use his utilities.
Build #2:
This is a hybrid DPS/control build using 2 legends with Invocation
- You take Shiro, Jalis, and Invocation.
- You equip Shiro traits which add the weapon power, and Jalis traits which add the control effects to weapon skills.
- You equip Invocation traits which allow you to swap legends faster, stunbreak on swapping, and gain various ways to boost energy generation.
- You slot in Shiro to F1, and Jalis to F2. You have their passive trait effects as well as the ability to channel them. You lack the passive benefits of a 3rd legend, but Invocation makes up for that by enhancing your energy management and allowing you to swap between Shiro and Jalis more frequently and quickly.
Build #3:
This is a hybrid build idea to illustrate the possibility of equipping a legend without it’s trait line or weapon.
- You take Mallyx traits, Shiro traits, and Invocation.
- You slot in Mallyx to F1, and Ventari to F2.
- Your Shiro traits boost your base weapon damage, Mallyx adds the conditions, and Invocation enhances the energy.
- Even though you took no Ventari traits, you can channel him in F2 to heal allies and cleanse conditions via the utilities. You can also cleanse via Mallyx’s Pain Absorbtion.
- Your stat set would be Sinister, and your playstyle would be to stack conditions and moderate power damage through active Mallyx boosted by passive Shiro, while cleansing and topping off allies with active Ventari.