What if Ancient Echo gave us +100 Energy, and had a 13s cd?

Just an interesting thought exercise. In trying to fix baseline Revenant, and improving our new Profession skill, what sort of capabilities would we have even in its most OP form? How would this change the way Revenant plays? Would we reach any benchmark DPS in PvE? Would it be viable in PvP/WvW?

a 10 sec cd would be fine as well

Yes please, buff me more. Can't wait to spam UA on Mallyx 5x in a row, that'll be fun for the enemy i'm sure.

The energy is fine, just change the effects for Shiro/Mallyx/Ventari to not be as unimpressive as they are currently compared to jalis. ~15s CD would be ok.

@Kain Francois.4328 said:Just an interesting thought exercise. In trying to fix baseline Revenant, and improving our new Profession skill, what sort of capabilities would we have even in its most OP form? How would this change the way Revenant plays? Would we reach any benchmark DPS in PvE? Would it be viable in PvP/WvW?

It wouldn't reach current PvE dps benchmarks because you don't really have any issues with energy during current rotations... Having it grant 100 energy, on a 10 second cd, would essentially just let you either camp your highest dps legend without swapping, or dump 100 extra energy worth of spammable skills every 10 secs. So let's look at how that would affect both a power and condi build:

Power specs don't have enough core skills to spam for damage, so you would be utilizing Ancient Echo to camp Shiro with 100% IO uptime the entire fight. This would be a slight dps increase over bouncing between Shiro and Jalis. But like, reeeeeaaaaally slight. The problem with this tho, is that it would only mater in fights without hard phases... And in any fight without a hard phase (and even in those ones honestly) condi renegade dunks on power specs so hard. The only reason to play a power rev build over condiren would be because you have really short windows of dps, and in these short windows not only could you not even take advantage of the extra IO uptime, but you'd miss out on all the modifiers Herald brings (Burst of Strength, Forceful Persistence, Reinforced Potency). Ironically, the extra 100 energy could actually work better in a power renegade build since you have high damage Kalla skills to burn the energy with, but you can't have Ancient Echo with Renegade, soooooo, yeah.

Now let's look at condi. Condi builds would work different than power since you actually have a high damage skill to dump that energy into. You would essentially be doing the Mallyx/Shiro rotation, but every time you were in Mallyx you could pop AE and drop 3 Unyielding Anguishes on the boss. That's a solid 144 ticks of torment damage before condi duration bonuses, which is nothing to scoff at. In fact, this is basically how you start your burst vs Dhuum since you have 100 energy going into the fight from the pre. And while that may seem good, let's look at what you'd be giving up... First, no short bow. This matters less on small hitbox enemies than it does on large, but even against them, using your sb in your rotation is a pretty big increase over camping mace/axe. Secondly, no Citadel Bombardment. Once again, more of a large hit box decimator, but it's still something you include in the Shiro part of your rotation vs small hitbox, so this would be a straight loss. And finally, no Kalla's Fervor, which would be a flat loss of 15% vs small hitbox/dhuum and 10% vs large (assuming a vindication build.) That's just comparing to a Shiro/Mallyx Renegade, if you had the option of being one of your raid's two Kalla rev's, the loss would be even greater because you'd lose Razorclaw's ~100 bleed ticks and Icerazor's ~21 Torment ticks (before duration).

All in all this would add up to a pretty substantial shortcoming for a condi dps build as well... Less so vs small hitbox, but it would still be out performed by Renegade. Essentially, you're trading all the modifiers and extra skills of renegade for about a flat 633 dps (non-moving target) increase from the extra 100 energy/10secs.

I think it wouldn't change much in PvE environment since you can already use pretty much any skill with 50+ energy, then swap.+100 Energy would make spammable skills (Mallyx, Shiro evade) a lot more annoying and unhealthy. Ancient Echo should be designed like Facet of Nature, then Herald can get 2-3 new F skills.

Let's say - Ancient Echo:

• Upkeep - provides current FoN buffs
• Active - gain 25 energy + FoN effects (leave mini-RotGD to Jalis since it's great)

Herald gets new F abilities; 2-3, and we're fine.

@DonArkanio.6419 said:I think it wouldn't change much in PvE environment since you can already use pretty much any skill with 50+ energy, then swap.+100 Energy would make spammable skills (Mallyx, Shiro evade) a lot more annoying and unhealthy. Ancient Echo should be designed like Facet of Nature, then Herald can get 2-3 new F skills.

Let's say - Ancient Echo:

• Upkeep - provides current FoN buffs
• Active - gain 25 energy + FoN effects (leave mini-RotGD to Jalis since it's great)

Herald gets new F abilities; 2-3, and we're fine.

I'd see it more like:

• Upkeep: reduce base energy cost of legend skills by 33%. Upkeep cost: 1 or 2 energy pip.
• Active: gain 25 energy + a boon based on the legend (let's be original with the boons: Jalis get prot, shiro get fury, ventari get swiftness and malyx get might).

This would make skills that cost way to much easier to play and still promote legend weaving, all this while proc'ing some existing core traits that require upkeep. Jalis's elite skill should have long been reworked to be a personnal instant (or almost instant) effect that need to be traited to be given to allies for a lesser duration, on Ancient echo, it's objectively way to strong.