Revenat Balance Notes Preview - Discussion

What do we think?

Revenant

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We're making some changes to the revenant in this update that will curb their excessive condition damage in PvE and bolster their damage in PvP. Additionally, we're making a few changes to help power builds that are struggling in PvE but doing well in competitive modes. Targeted Destruction, for example, will now grant higher damage bonuses in PvE areas where higher stacks of vulnerability can be maintained, but lower damage in competitive modes where applying multiple stacks of conditions is harder.Song of the Mists has struggled to compete with the other grandmaster traits in the Invocation line even after its rework, so we are improving various aspects of the skills, making them easier to land hits and stronger when fewer targets are struck.

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• Inspiring Reinforcement: This skill can no longer hit the same target multiple times in a single cast.• Natural Harmony: Fixed a bug that could cause this skill to fail if the player was in the air or swimming on the surface of water after the skill had finished charging.• Ashen Demeanor: Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to apply conditions to the revenant if they were knocked off their mount.• Targeted Destruction: This now grants 0.5% damage per each stack of vulnerability instead of a flat 10% bonus. It's also no longer split between game modes.• Draconic Echo: Fixed a bug with this trait that prevented lingering passive effects from granting boons while the revenant was in other stances.• Shackling Wave: Increased this skill's damage per each additional strike by 40% in PvE only.• Searing Fissure: This skill now applies 3 stacks of burning for 3 seconds on its first hit, and 1 stack of burning for 1 second on the next three hits. The damage of the first hit has been increased by 100%. Increased the recharge time from 3 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP and WvW only.• Rampant Vex: Reduced the duration of torment applied by this trait from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.• Song of the Mists: This trait's radius of effect has been increased from 180 to 240. The effects provided by each skill activated by this trait have been updated as follows:

Call of the Assassin: The stacks of vulnerability that this skill applies have been increased from 5 to 8. It now grants 2 seconds of quickness with an additional 1 second per each target that's hit. This skill's damage is no longer split between games modes and now uses its highest value in all modes.Call of the Dwarf: This skill now grants a baseline amount of barrier with additional barrier per each target that's struck. Barrier values for each portion have been adjusted. Its damage has been increased by 50%.Call of the Demon: Increased the duration of torment that this skill applies from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.Call of the Centaur: The radius of this skill has been adjusted.Call of the Dragon: The amount of burning that this skill can stack has been increased from 1 to 2. The damage is no longer split between games modes and now uses its highest value in all modes. Damage has been increased by 42%.Call of the Renegade: The amount of bleeding that this skill can stack has been increased from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW. It now always grants 1 fervor stack in addition to the stacks gained per each hit in all modes.

not sure if powere renegade will be any better, but diviner rev got buffed a bit

I don't agree with the condition changes and the 100% increased recharge time on Searing Fissure.

I wish they would change the casting time back to pre-nerf on Shackling Wave but I suppose a 40% damage increase is better than nothing.

SotM still seems lackluster on paper compared to Roiling Mists changes.

Overall I'm indifferent with the changes. The power PvE changes are nice but it's almost undoing what they did previously. Condi changes don't make a whole lot of sense, though.

Thank you thank you thank you ANet for fixing Natural Harmony and Draconic Echo. These were two very significant bugs and I appreciate them being addressed. Especially Natural Harmony as that bug has been in the game for ages.My two biggest critiques of Song of the Mists were the small radius and the target-interaction for Assassin/Dwarf. Both of these were addressed and I see this as a big positive change. It will feel much more usable now. I still wish Dragon had a supportive effect like condi conversion instead of an offensive effect, but I will admit that that is more of a personal belief that Glint needs more supportive features beyond passive boon generation.Seems like this patch is a big positive for power Rev in PvE? Does the Inspiring Reinforcement change affect dps benchmarks? I am not familiar with its PvE builds/variants.Targeted Destruction's change, while a nerf in PvP/WvW, is fair in my opinion. I think this further encourages Expose Defenses needing re-evaluation. I personally believe it should refresh on legend-swap since Jade Winds isn't used often and Shiro is the go-to "power" legend.Searing Fissure change is interesting. I have been playing a ton of condi Rev for the past months and I am both happy and apprehensive about it. On one hand, the increased spike burn potential is very, very nice. However, I would often use this skill to bait dodges because of its low CD/energy cost, which will force me to change how I use it. Not a fully positive or negative change, but one that I am honestly excited to try out and that I do see benefitting condi Rev in PvP/WvW.

Overall I am happy. Am I going to get flogged for saying that? I wish certain things were addressed that were not, but I still think they made some interesting changes with the patch.

A little scared of condi renegade. But super hyped for power renegade changes.

Is Call of the Assassin buffed for PvE?

These "balance" changes do nothing. Condi renegade will still be strong and power herald was marginally buffed from being the lowest DPS spec in the game to the slightly higher but still lowest DPS spec in the game.

can we just have a ... gives you 50 more energy on your legendswap when using this trait..... i feel like revenant get the most downside traits n history.... no other class has so much downsides of traits with this high expensive cost on skillsanfd targeted destruction is a nerf....

The Balance for Revenant, well... I like it but it feels very underwhelming. I thought the class willbfinally be shaken up. Just like Scrapper recently.

What I like about it is the focus on Condi part of the Revenant and that's pretty much it.There are only some number increases which don't fix anything when it comes to competitive - it works in closed Raid or Fractal groups.

I just don't see anything Condi Revenant got on PvP other than 3 stacks of Burn. While I really like Mallyx as a legend it's still just a Torment spammer, nothing else. What made this legend special on release is that it was meant to take advantage of condis around. Now it's just a number, like Kalla - it's all numbers, and while it might fix the overall performance, this just isn't a change for Revenant.

I don't see anything changes coming to competitive environment. In PvE, it's just 40% damage increases and still autoattack spam.It's so boring to be playing class that is performing good just because of numbers.

Targeted Destruction change affects WvW not PvE. Due to condi clears and vuln stacks usually being low unless people are using vulnerability inducing skills there will be a slow rampup in damage to attain 10% damage modifier as you need 20 stacks of vulnerability.

If you are running staff you lose the vulnerability from sword auto.

Ventari Bug Fix? Nice.

I'll try Searing Fissure on release, the front-loaded burn looks tasty for pvp/wvw. On the other hand that was my go-to skill to combo with Rapid Flow for swiftness on Core Rev. With the 3>6 CD increase in PvP/WvW (And 5s CD on RF) i guess i'll have to use staff 2 for that now. Minor Inconvenience.

Rampant Vex could've been split for PvE/PvP+WvW imo. Don't see any reason to lower the duration from 4>3 there.

SotM radius increase is nice. Call of the Renegade is still pretty underwhelming. Going to assume it's now 2 bleed stacks for 5 seconds? Especially compared to Call of the Dragon's 2 burn stacks + chill (>torment with AC trait) it seems pretty bad.

Thanks for the Natural Harmony fix though, massive annoyance to me for the past 2 years. Can we get the same fix for Energy Expulsion? I'm also unsure if it's intended for the healing fragments created by EE to count as projectiles and be destroyed inside Anti-Projectile fields/bubbles.

• Inspiring Reinforcement: This skill can no longer hit the same target multiple times in a single cast.Quite confused. This is a pulsing skill so it doesn't make sense to limit the hits to single cast. Does this mean we only grant stab and apply weakness to one target per cast even though it's pulsing? Sounds like a nerf to me.

• Natural Harmony: Fixed a bug that could cause this skill to fail if the player was in the air or swimming on the surface of water after the skill had finished charging.• Ashen Demeanor: Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to apply conditions to the revenant if they were knocked off their mount.Nice to see bug fixes but there are some others that seem more urgent.

• Targeted Destruction: This now grants 0.5% damage per each stack of vulnerability instead of a flat 10% bonus. It's also no longer split between game modes.We have to apply vuln to get the previous 10% so being a rampup it's q little nerf. Call of the Assassin will help on this but SoTM seems lackluster still.

• Draconic Echo: Fixed a bug with this trait that prevented lingering passive effects from granting boons while the revenant was in other stances.Quite critical. Thank you. (hope it works tho)

• Shackling Wave: Increased this skill's damage per each additional strike by 40% in PvE only.I was excited until I saw the PvE only part.

• Searing Fissure: This skill now applies 3 stacks of burning for 3 seconds on its first hit, and 1 stack of burning for 1 second on the next three hits. The damage of the first hit has been increased by 100%. Increased the recharge time from 3 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP and WvW only.This changes the skill to a condi burst on first hit, but we lose the area control we had. Damage increase is garbage. Increasing CD was not needed. Come on, this is a clear nerf by moving numbers around.

• Rampant Vex: Reduced the duration of torment applied by this trait from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.Seriously? Why? What Anet insight when doing this kind of adjustments? Sure, 4sec was OP so we changed it to 3sec. Thanks Anet...

• Song of the Mists: This trait's radius of effect has been increased from 180 to 240. The effects provided by each skill activated by this trait have been updated as follows:Good to see an increase on radius. Nice to have a baseline effect on use and then increase the effect based on target hits. Looks decent but let's see the details.

• Call of the Assassin: The stacks of vulnerability that this skill applies have been increased from 5 to 8. It now grants 2 seconds of quickness with an additional 1 second per each target that's hit. This skill's damage is no longer split between games modes and now uses its highest value in all modes.Good to have more vuln. Baseline increase of quickness is very nice, helping to set a burst with sword. Overall good change for power.

• Call of the Dwarf: This skill now grants a baseline amount of barrier with additional barrier per each target that's struck. Barrier values for each portion have been adjusted. Its damage has been increased by 50%.Good to have barrier as baseline but we need to know the details barrier values. I don't understand why damage is increased. Dwarf is used as defense so it would have been better to increase weakness duration or similar.

• Call of the Demon: Increased the duration of torment that this skill applies from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.If they change Mace to be more bursty, I don't understand why increase the duration of stacks instead of increasing the number of stacks. Good but inconsistent.

• Call of the Centaur: The radius of this skill has been adjusted.One of the best legends to swap in. Good.

• Call of the Dragon: The amount of burning that this skill can stack has been increased from 1 to 2. The damage is no longer split between games modes and now uses its highest value in all modes. Damage has been increased by 42%.We use Dragon for damage, I don't care about an increase on burning stacks. I would have preferred more chill duration. Damage increase in WvW and PvP to have it aligned with PvE. Wow...

• Call of the Renegade: The amount of bleeding that this skill can stack has been increased from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW. It now always grants 1 fervor stack in addition to the stacks gained per each hit in all modes.Good to see an increase on bleeding stacks and also getting baseline fervor.

Seems fairly underwhelming beside bugfixes. Power revs will still be low, wereas Reapers got a pve buff.

Not happy with these changes as a major power rev fanatic for pve. Targeted Destruction amounts to amount a 3% dps increase against targets with full vuln stacks, that's cool but we are way more than 3% behind all the meta dps builds. 40% damage buff to extra hits on shackling wave amounts to about a 22% damage increase against a single target, small change which makes sword 4 less trash than it is now where it is currently debatable whether it is actually worth using in damage rotations given the huge cast time, 10 energy cost, and split damage if it ever has to cleave. And that is the end of the good, if we leave it at this we are slightly higher dps than we were before but we are still the lowest power dps class in the game especially considering the second lowest, necro, got its own slight dps boosts which were a bit better than the ones rev got (10% mobifier ->15% and 50% more damage on a skill that was already part of the dps rotation).

Unfortunately to get these tiny little buffs that are too insignificant to actually change anything we get to take a pretty large nerf to all the jalis variants of power rev which is going to hurt. With the inspiring reinforcement nerf, it goes from hitting 2-6 times depending on hitbox size down to only hitting once. This means it goes from being a modest dps increase against small hitboxes and our strongest damage skill against large hitboxes down to being a dps loss in almost all situations. The multi-hitting on inspiring reinforcement meant that while rev was lowest power dps against all small hitbox bosses, it could actually pull semi respectable dps against larger hitboxes like with

now it is just absolute bottom tier everywhere. In my opinion the best overall variant of dps power rev is currently jalis shiro herald which benches about the same as glint shiro on small hitboxes and has the added benefits of the damage scaling with hitbox size, superior cleave, and providing a good amount of group stability without dps loss which is a rarer and thus frequently more valuable boon than any of the glint boons. Now jalis damage doesn't scale with hitbox size and can't give additional stability apart from the spirit boon proc without taking a dps loss so it is effectively trashed.

Then we get to the condi changes, rampant vex and searing fissure each lose 25% of their condi damage which I can't really tell you how much that hurts overall damage. What is disturbing is how they think that condi renegade damage is "excessive", it is an extremely slow ramp up condi build with horrible burst and only average sustained dps aside from against large hitboxes. These are major downsides that make condi renegade fairly niche which is why it is only top dps on 1!!!! singular raid boss and is infact pretty bad on many other raid bosses and all fractal/dungeon bosses despite "excessive" damage. It feels like rev changes are always aimed at making sure rev doesn't really excel at anything while always leaving all the weaknesses intact.

The reason I stopped playing my Power Herald in PvE wasn't because Sword 4 wasn't doing enough damage, but because it feels awful to use since they increased the cast time. :unamused:

Adding 40% more damage to an ability that doesn't feel fun to use won't suddenly make it fun to use, and I'll continue using other professions for PvE content.

The nerf to Condi Rev in PvE was absolutely uncalled for. Anet is clearly showing that they are only considering benchmark dps when balancing PvE dps builds. Every single optimal scenario with the sole exception of dhuum, mirage outpaces Condi Renegade by a wide margin. Its clear they just look and think "Top dps is renegade on the golem, that must mean its oppressing every other condi build!" while the brainlet mirage is sitting over there pulling 40k dps on SH and Largos.

Crystal Hibernation is still a root... was only thing I was really looking forward to possibly seeing.

Soulcleave's Summit not triggering stuff that should trigger when using an elite skill still not fixed? I guess it'll be part of the special renegade update.

As far as sPvP goes these changes do very little. Targeted destruction was already nerfed to 7% in PvP a long time ago, so the new version will feel more like a sidegrade than a nerf. It means less instagibbing random targets, but more potential DPS in long teamfights especially if you have another player stacking vuln on a target. Reaper + Rev is potentially very strong.

Nerfing mace in PvP only is one of those LOLWUT head scratchers. Almost nobody used this skill already. There are only a small number of meme tier mace builds and none of them are considered truly viable. It's like they don't ever want mace to be used in PvP for some reason, so they per-emptively nerf it to ensure it never sees any potential chance for meta play.

The only potential change I could see from this is some more players might drop Devastation for Retribution and run invo/ret/herald. Since Devastation now has less burst damage, people might opt for the sustain playstyle Retribution provides.

For wanting to bolster power builds in PVE, the change to Targeted Destruction is really strange.

For patch touted as buff in condi PvP performance, then increaseing the CD of mace 2 by 100% is a head scratcher. Even with increased damage. Most classes run multiple condi removal. This is surely a PvP nerf.

Pretty garbo patch for Revs, no surprise as always...

I can SORT OF see a condi nerf in PvE since it is the "best dps option" for it's specific category--but that category only includes ONE fight... And you have to actually be good at playing Ren to achieve those numbers. Meanwhile, they leave deadeye's meme'd out d/d spec untouched, which is boring af to play and is really detrimental to the meta.

You could argue that anet was trying to reduce class stacking with these changes, since they hate it and nobody stacks DE's... But like, so Ren might not outdps Condi SlB on Dhuum now and the Dangertime nerf will maybe knock the 7chrono meta off of xera/mo, but the DH nerf doesn't even put them below the crit cap, so DH meta for vg/gorse/deimos will remain untouched. And most detrimental of all is that Magnetic Bomb remains strong af which makes playing anything other then Daredevil in any fight where it exists (Sab/Sam/CA/Qadim) completely pointless. So, these changes reduced class stacking on Dhuum, and realistically only shifted them on MO/Xera to a different class (probably DH or DE.)

And then extra nerfing of searing fissure's cd in PvP? Like anyone's even playing condi rev in pvp/wvw in a serious function, plz. Doesn't even make sense.

As for the buffs... Overall these changes don't even change anything. Song of the Mists will never be as strong as the other two options because you can generate so much more impact with the extra energy or crit chance. The amount of condi's/boons/healing applied by Song has to be more than you can generate with that 25 energy to be worth taking, and it will never be that high because that'd be broken. As for 40% dmg to sw4... You could give shackling wave all the extra buffs you want in PvE and it wouldn't be enough to make power herald/ren a top dps build because it's ONE skill. You'd have to buff it to such a ridiculous degree that it would be a joke. The extra 2.5% on TS is whatever, and actually will be a dps loss for most Heralds since Heralds sees the most use in solo-play, where you will only have like 8-15 stacks of vuln. So I guess Diviner's Speedclear Ren's got a minor buff, so congrats to the .0001% of players that adds up to. :bleep_bloop:

At least Mirages got rekt in PvP...

@Obtena.7952 said:For wanting to bolster power builds in PVE, the change to Targeted Destruction is really strange.

A buff to pve and a nerf to wvw/pvp. The change was legit.

@Justine.6351 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:For wanting to bolster power builds in PVE, the change to Targeted Destruction is really strange.

I don't get that ... how was scaling this trait a buff to PVE? Sure, for massive zerg ... where it's not that big a deal, it's a small buff. For everything else, you maybe break even.

Although I am overall happy with this patch, I do hope that the Salvation line gets some attention soon. The line is great if you are after outgoing modifiers, but quite lackluster beyond that. Not only that, but it is overly restrictive to the Ventari legend. While healing should be its focus, it should have a broader scope/application. There are quite a few dud traits in the line and some that could be altered to be more applicable to other builds. Additionally, since the Herald rework, we remain the only class with zero resurrection traits and/or skills. To me, this comes across as unfinished and unprioritized work; there is no logical reason to exclude the class from such an interaction. Salvation would be a fitting place for such a trait. I have an extensive list of suggestions to improve the functionality of the core class in my signature for anybody interested, but in general, these are some points I would like to see looked at.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Justine.6351 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:For wanting to bolster power builds in PVE, the change to Targeted Destruction is really strange.

I believe he's referring to instanced PvE, where 25 stacks of vulnerabilities can be maintained more easily. As for open world PvE that's just a minor nerf and the damage decrease doesn't make much of a difference.