We need to talk about legend skill cooldowns

Forced Engagement: Reduced the energy cost from 25 to 10. Increased the cooldown from 10 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW

Alright so this is the chanage planned for fe in the upcoming wvw/pvp splits. The first iteration of this proposition had an even longer cooldown and that seems to have been shot down, but we still need for their not to be an increased cooldown on this skill to compensate for the reduction in the energy cost.

This seems like a small change but this sets the precident that increasing cooldowns and decreasing energy costs is an acceptable way to balance rev. This cannot be allowed.

If a revenant util or elite cannot have an extremely low (< 3 seconds) cooldown than the skill itself needs to be reexamined rather than have its casting cost and cd (which should not exist) manipulated.

If we continue to have cooldowns increased than eventually rev skills will be like regular ele weapon skills except they would have a resource attached to them that when depleted prevents you from using revs weapon skills, and this is a bad design.

Some of Rev's utility skills do need short cooldowns to prevent them from being spammed in rapid succession, and this is one of them. I would personally say that a 5 second cooldown should be the max on any rev utility skill. Jade Winds and Phase Traversal are in a decent spot when it comes to this- you can see how chaining them together would be a little bit too strong.

However, I really agree that Revenant is becoming too much like the other classes with this change. The class has always been intended to be based around energy management and smart usage of that resource pool. Lowering energy requirement and increasing cooldown makes us more like other classes, and that affects the identity of the class itself.

Not only this, but I'm also getting a bit sick of the class being dumbed down, starting with the patch that deleted Equilibrium and buffed Incensed Response massively because Equilibrium was "hard to use." If something is hard to use, but some players use it well, is it really bad for the game?

We've gone from revs managing their energy well for an Equilibrium burst/might stacking through active use of legend skills from Nefarious Momentum... to braindead automatic 25 might from Incensed Response because our class spits out fury everywhere, and a flat 150 ferocity bonus from Assassin's Presence. This removes significant outplay potential. Let's say a highly skilled rev player is dueling an average player. In the past, the more skilled player would be able to manage his/her energy effectively and land Equilibrium on the other player. In addition, he/she manages active skills of his/her legends well in order to maintain a constant high might uptime. The other player wouldn't have these advantages. Now, in any rev duel, both players have 150 ferocity from Assassin's Presence and permanent high might, bridging the gap between a skilled and average player.

The revenant class has its roots in being based on smart, but more importantly, ACTIVE use of skills and managing a new resource pool used for all skills on the bar. I'm proud to play a class that relies on absolutely no passive procs and has significant outplay potential. However, things like the Equilibrium change and the change you mentioned in this thread are threatening its identity.

I want to be a good rev, but atm i'm a beginner rev. Lotsa work ahead.That being said even i can see that this is messed up as the general rule of thumb is - weapon skills cheap as dirt but on regular cooldowns, utilities expensive, but very small cooldowns.

The very idea of legends (and energy system) is that as long as you can afford it you can use your legend skills frequently. To have any legend skill on a 15s cooldown is crippling the legend and saying "sorry this guy has only two utilities!".

If you want to give it low energy cost but high cooldown then you should make it a weapon skill. If it's to stay as legend skill, you should find a different way of balancing it, though tbh i have no idea why would you. Single target, blockable, destroyable by projectile hate skills, and a taunt (one of least potent cc types out there).

I don't hear anyone bitching about Shiro's Jade Winds, so why the sudden "concern" about forced engagement?

@"ZeftheWicked.3076" said:I want to be a good rev, but atm i'm a beginner rev. Lotsa work ahead.That being said even i can see that this is messed up as the general rule of thumb is - weapon skills cheap as dirt but on regular cooldowns, utilities expensive, but very small cooldowns.

The very idea of legends (and energy system) is that as long as you can afford it you can use your legend skills frequently. To have any legend skill on a 15s cooldown is crippling the legend and saying "sorry this guy has only two utilities!".

If you want to give it low energy cost but high cooldown then you should make it a weapon skill. If it's to stay as legend skill, you should find a different way of balancing it, though tbh i have no idea why would you. Single target, blockable, destroyable by projectile hate skills, and a taunt (one of least potent cc types out there).

I don't hear anyone kitten about Shiro's Jade Winds, so why the sudden "concern" about forced engagement?

Because Jade Winds costs 50 energy, which is effectively giving it a 10 second cooldown anyways... And not just a 10 second cooldown, but a 10 second MEGA cooldown where you can only be auto attacking if you want to use it again.

If Forced Engagement didn't have a cooldown, you could keep somebody taunted literally forever--it costs 10 energy and is a 2 second (with zero expertise) cc and you generate 5 energy per second. While being able to swap to Jalis and keep somebody taunted forever while you have 50 energy and auto attacks to kill them with might actually make Jalis worth playing, it'd clearly be beyond broken. They might as well just make Vengeful Hammers apply a taunting aura at that point.

If you think in terms of 10 second legends (which you should be doing), the change to forced engagement is clearly a buff... You still get to use it once per Jalis rotation, but now you have an extra 5 energy (1 second) to use on securing a kill.

they didn't really think this one through. They are balancing skills around cooldowns now but now some skills are locked out because of energy. I want explanations.

@narcx.3570 said:

@"ZeftheWicked.3076" said:I want to be a good rev, but atm i'm a beginner rev. Lotsa work ahead.That being said even i can see that this is messed up as the general rule of thumb is - weapon skills cheap as dirt but on regular cooldowns, utilities expensive, but very small cooldowns.

The very idea of legends (and energy system) is that as long as you can afford it you can use your legend skills frequently. To have any legend skill on a 15s cooldown is crippling the legend and saying "sorry this guy has only two utilities!".

If you want to give it low energy cost but high cooldown then you should make it a weapon skill. If it's to stay as legend skill, you should find a different way of balancing it, though tbh i have no idea why would you. Single target, blockable, destroyable by projectile hate skills, and a taunt (one of least potent cc types out there).

I don't hear anyone kitten about Shiro's Jade Winds, so why the sudden "concern" about forced engagement?

Well first Not everyone swaps legends after 10 seconds. No one is saying that fe should have a 10 ec and no cd, the point im trying to make is that legend skills should be balanced around having a low cd and then at the same time largely decreasing or removing the cd, rather than having cd removed and then seeing what happens.

@narcx.3570 said:

@"ZeftheWicked.3076" said:I don't hear anyone kitten about Shiro's Jade Winds, so why the sudden "concern" about forced engagement?

Now now, let's not add things that weren't there in the first place. I never said i expect FE to be 10 energy and no cooldown. That would obviously be broken.What i'm saying is to leave it the frag alone or just reduce the energy cost.

Currently it's 25 energy and 10s cd.

I think that given the fact that it's already on pretty high cd given it's a legend skill, lowering energy cost while leaving 10s cooldown as is would be fair. A compensation for it lacking in most crucial aspect a legend skill should have - frequent usage.

Another thing is how a-net is panicking about a taunt skill. Short reminder here - taunt is the easiest cc to break along with fear - both condi cleanses and stunbreaks will set you free, unlike most real, hard cc. Also it's actually even below fear, because fear is on boon corrupt table - even if it's easy to cleanse, a necro can still put out extra fears via stability corrupts. Taunt cannot be achieved via such method, therefore it really is a scarce condition.

And let's not forget a-net already balanced FE for competitive - by making Improved aggression trait extend it only by 25% in competitive modes and not 100% like in PvE.But once again this is a major what if scenario, because anyone playing competitive who isn't a firsttimer has his stunbreaks and condi cleanses at hand, and vs taunt any of these get the job done.