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Spectrum Shield is just a better Rife of the Great Dwarf. This needs balancing.


ArielRebel.3426

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Spectrum Shield from holosmith vs RotGD from rev.

The only advantage for RotGD is that you can share the damage reduction with 4 allies which we can all agree happens rarely (that you give it to 4 ppl) in sPVP for example. In WvW, not gonna change the tide of a Zerg vs Zerg and needs a lot of coordination to be reliably used in a roaming party vs party to be useful for your allies (and it's way too expensive to use for allies).

RotGD:

  1. Requires the player to equip and actually be in the dwarf stance to be able to use it.
  2. Has a ridiculously long casting animation of 1.25 sec.
  3. Has a ridiculously high energy cost.40% = 8 seconds of having no upkeep skill activated and no attack used beside autoattacks, after using it once we can agree the revenant will only have access to it next time he comes back on Dwarf stace). Even if you JUST changed into the stance with Charged Mist (75%) you're still left with a lowly 35% of energy left for the next 8-9 sec before you can switch legend again. Even worse, without Charged Mist, you are a sitting duck at 10% energy until your legend switch comes off CD which means you're dead against a not-asleep opponent.
  4. Only reduces damage against regular damage, needs a trait to reduce condi damage.
  5. Lasts 5sec.

SS:

  1. Doesn't require anything other than having the skill on the bar. Can be used any time.
  2. Instant.
  3. No cost.
  4. Easily achievable reduced CD of 30sec in WvW/sPVP.
  5. Reduces not only regular damage but also condi damage without requiring any trait.
  6. Lasts 4 sec in WvW/sPVP.

What gives? I'm just baffled by this bs. There's already so many requirements to be able to use RotGD, I don't understand why the condi damage reduction isn't built in and why the casting time and cost are so high. I'd be down to sacrifice the sharing aspect of it if it meant we could have a better version of SS (as we should have considering we have more requirements to furfill to be able to use it) but as it stands, it's a just a joke.

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Comparing skills between classes doesn't really work. Different classes are bound to have differences.

And especially if you use a class like revenant for the comparison. You list the costs of the skill here as a point and that engineer has none, but that is their whole identity. The energy mechanic is their class mechanic, of course it has an energy cost.

We could also claim that revenant utilities need to be weaker than all other utilities, since they get twice as many of them in a build than other classes.

Also, you make it sound like spectrum shield is so amazing, yet no one is picking It?

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@Kodama.6453 said:Comparing skills between classes doesn't really work. Different classes are bound to have differences.

And especially if you use a class like revenant for the comparison. You list the costs of the skill here as a point and that engineer has none, but that is their whole identity. The energy mechanic is their class mechanic, of course it has an energy cost.

We could also claim that revenant utilities need to be weaker than all other utilities, since they get twice as many of them in a build than other classes.

Also, you make it sound like spectrum shield is so amazing, yet no one is picking It?

I was just about to write this, but you said it first.

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@Strider.7849 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:Comparing skills between classes doesn't really work. Different classes are bound to have differences.

And especially if you use a class like revenant for the comparison. You list the costs of the skill here as a point and that engineer has none, but that is their whole identity. The energy mechanic is their class mechanic, of course it has an energy cost.

We could also claim that revenant utilities need to be weaker than all other utilities, since they get twice as many of them in a build than other classes.

Also, you make it sound like spectrum shield is so amazing, yet no one is picking It?

I was just about to write this, but you said it first.

haha yeah was gonna say no holo uses Spectrum Shield.

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@Kodama.6453 said:Comparing skills between classes doesn't really work. Different classes are bound to have differences.

And especially if you use a class like revenant for the comparison. You list the costs of the skill here as a point and that engineer has none, but that is their whole identity. The energy mechanic is their class mechanic, of course it has an energy cost.

We could also claim that revenant utilities need to be weaker than all other utilities, since they get twice as many of them in a build than other classes.

Also, you make it sound like spectrum shield is so amazing, yet no one is picking It?

My point isn't to nerf SS, but to buff RotGD.1.25sec cast time and not having condi damage reduction part of it really hurts the ability.

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@Spartacus.3192 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:Comparing skills between classes doesn't really work. Different classes are bound to have differences.

And especially if you use a class like revenant for the comparison. You list the costs of the skill here as a point and that engineer has none, but that is their whole identity. The energy mechanic is their class mechanic, of course it has an energy cost.

We could also claim that revenant utilities need to be weaker than all other utilities, since they get twice as many of them in a build than other classes.

Also, you make it sound like spectrum shield is so amazing, yet no one is picking It?

I was just about to write this, but you said it first.

haha yeah was gonna say no holo uses Spectrum Shield.

Considering RotGD is worse than SS, the fact holos dont even use it says a lot about how bad RotGD is.

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One important point that you do not take into account is that RotGD, when used, affect up to 5 allies. Which fondamentally make it a support skill, not a self oriented survivability skill, justifying the cast time.

The revenant is short on stun break by design, just like the necromancer is short on stability by design. The compensation for being short on stunbreak is the high amount of damage reduction perks that the revenant have.

  • Dwarf stance: Forced engagement: 33% damage reduction for 4 seconds, 15s CD. Inspiring reinforcement: weakness. Vengeful hammer: 20% damage reduction (power and condi). Ancient echo: 50% damage reduction for 3s.
  • Retribution: Close quarter: 10% damage reduction. Determined resolution: 15% damage reduction while under vigor.
  • Salvation: Unyielding devotion: 15% damage reduction after healing.
  • Corruption: Demonic resistance: 33% damage reduction under resistance.
  • Herald: Hardening persistence: 1.5% damage reduction per upkeep. facet of nature (dwarf): 10% damage reduction.

Let's assume you are a core revenant Retribution, salvation and corruption wielding a staff. You can upkeep vigor all while healing yourself through orbs by auto attacking, maintain vengeful hammer. Puting you at: 1.15x1.20= 1.38 or 38% damage reduction (51% melee) while in dwarf stance and 1.15x1.33=1.53 or 53% damage reduction (68% melee) while in demon stance. Add to that weakness and the occasional Ancient echo and you're quite durable.

Let's just assume that you are an herald with salvation and retribution wielding a staff. You can upkeep vigor all while healing yourself through orbs by auto attacking, maintain vengeful hammer. Puting you at: 1.15x1.1x1.20x1.1=1.67 or simply 67% damage reduction (83% melee). Add to that an ally giving you prot + perma weakness on your opponent and you take next to not damage.

Renegade provide protection but is more impressive when it come to condition damage reduction.

NB.: That's assuming that defensive mods work the same way attack mobs work and thus are multiplicative. If they are additive it's a bit weaker but still impressive. I think only elementalist with weaver have a higher potential for damage reduction mods.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:One important point that you do not take into account is that RotGD, when used, affect up to 5 allies. Which fondamentally make it a support skill, not a self oriented survivability skill, justifying the cast time.

The revenant is short on stun break by design, just like the necromancer is short on stability by design. The compensation for being short on stunbreak is the high amount of damage reduction perks that the revenant have.

  • Dwarf stance: Forced engagement: 33% damage reduction for 4 seconds, 15s CD. Inspiring reinforcement: weakness. Vengeful hammer: 20% damage reduction (power and condi). Ancient echo: 50% damage reduction for 3s.
  • Retribution: Close quarter: 10% damage reduction. Determined resolution: 15% damage reduction while under vigor.
  • Salvation: Unyielding devotion: 15% damage reduction after healing.
  • Corruption: Demonic resistance: 33% damage reduction under resistance.
  • Herald: Hardening persistence: 1.5% damage reduction per upkeep. facet of nature (dwarf): 10% damage reduction.

Let's assume you are a core revenant Retribution, salvation and corruption wielding a staff. You can upkeep vigor all while healing yourself through orbs by auto attacking, maintain vengeful hammer. Puting you at: 1.15x1.20= 1.38 or 38% damage reduction (51% melee) while in dwarf stance and 1.15x1.33=1.53 or 53% damage reduction (68% melee) while in demon stance. Add to that weakness and the occasional Ancient echo and you're quite durable.

Let's just assume that you are an herald with salvation and retribution wielding a staff. You can upkeep vigor all while healing yourself through orbs by auto attacking, maintain vengeful hammer. Puting you at: 1.15x1.1x1.20x1.1=1.67 or simply 67% damage reduction (83% melee). Add to that an ally giving you prot + perma weakness on your opponent and you take next to not damage.

Renegade provide protection but is more impressive when it come to condition damage reduction.

NB.: That's assuming that defensive mods work the same way attack mobs work and thus are multiplicative. If they are additive it's a bit weaker but still impressive. I think only elementalist with weaver have a higher potential for damage reduction mods.

I'll stop you right there, the point of my discussion is for meta PVP or WvW fighting so you made a couple of mistakes :

  • Forced engagement = 2sec, not 4 sec. If the taunt is cleansed, the damage reduction goes out the window OR the person is litterally only autoattacking you, that's not the burst you need to use damage reduction against. While nice, having 33% damage reduction against 2sec of autoattacks is insignificant.
  • Ancient echo = never used as you can only use it if you play core Rev and that's giving too much away (Herald and Ren bring too much to not use either or).
  • Close quarters = only works against far ranged attacks. 360 range is not really short so most fights against players will be inside of that circle even moreso in PvP when fighting on nodes.
  • Demonic resistance = actually 10% in WvW and PVP. Also, to have resistance up all the time would require you to spam your demon abilities, leaving you spamming autoattacks afterward until you can switch legend and then loosing access to the resistance boon so you can't be in dwarf stance with resistance.

Nobody runs with your Ret, Salv and Corruption build while wielding a staff lol. Salv is a joke spec.No Herald build runs Salvation unless they are trying to be full healing support which is kitten.

Also, for a rev to stack that much damage reduction, like you listed, he would need to fully build for it and use all of his energy for those skills, making him useless in an actual PVP or WvW fight because he wouldnt be dealing any significant amounts of damage.Finally, everything you just listed doesn't disprove what I said, that RotGD is bad and needs a buff. And RofGD affects a TOTAL of 5 ppl, so only 4 allies get it, and as I said, nobody uses it in a meta pvp/wvw build for support.

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Why are you even comparing these skills? You say RotGD's "only" benefit is that it shares to allies as if that is a minor detail, but that is what it is balanced around. Expecting a group-oriented skill to perform to the same degree as a player-only defensive is just silly. This sounds like a user error. Jalis needs legitimately zero buffs right now. If you think RotGD is a joke, then you need to spend more time with the legend and managing your positioning, stunbreaks, and energy management better.

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@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:Why are you even comparing these skills? You say RotGD's "only" benefit is that it shares to allies as if that is a minor detail, but that is what it is balanced around. Expecting a group-oriented skill to perform to the same degree as a player-only defensive is just silly. This sounds like a user error. Jalis needs legitimately zero buffs right now. If you think RotGD is a joke, then you need to spend more time with the legend and managing your positioning, stunbreaks, and energy management better.

How can you "manage your stun breaks" if RotGD is your only stunbreak (in the stance you currently are in) and that once it breaks a stun it leaves you open to another one or any form of CC for 1.25sec while also having no reduction against condi damage without a trait? Also, that whole stance is selfish, I dont understand why they made it give it's effect to 4 more people, I'd glady take a removal of the AoE effect (so it only affects me) if it means they buff it.

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@"ArielRebel.3426"I think you're mistaking something here. ANet do not care whether things are used or not, they care about what potential the profession hold. If the player do not play a profession to it's full potential he can only blame himself. That's what it mean to "build" your character. You're complaining about balance yet turn a blind eye to the context which is the revenant, going on with a silly excuse like "Nobody play that in PvP/WvW" just kill your own "balance" arguments. Skills are different because they are held by different professions with fondamentally different strengths and weaknesses by design. The revenant is weak on stunbreaker because he is supposed to be strong on damage mitigation mods (and it's true for all gamemodes, whether players chose to play on those strengths or not). Nothing more, nothing less.

What I did is show you that the revenant have RotGD in this state compared to SS because the revenant's skill design revolve around it's inate potential passive defense. Just like the necromancer have extremly low access to stability because of it's own inate potential passive defense.

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RotGD's main selling point is that it shares that 50% damage reduction. It can be set with a trait to reduce 50% power and 50% condition damage. It doesn't need any changes, especially since Revenant is given many options, as said above, to reduce incoming damage anyway.

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If people think this is bad don't tell them about Dolyak Stance. Stacks additively with protection + Second Skin for -67% all damage, last 6 seconds and can be traited to 9 seconds, grants 6x stability for 6-9 seconds, and removes all movement impairing conditions. That's all while also being instant cast and 30 second cooldown just like Spectrum Shield without heat requirement. Oh, and can also be shared like RotGD when traited, though with shorter duration on allies.

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@Clownmug.8357 said:If people think this is bad don't tell them about Dolyak Stance. Stacks additively with protection + Second Skin for -67% all damage, last 6 seconds and can be traited to 9 seconds, grants 6x stability for 6-9 seconds, and removes all movement impairing conditions. That's all while also being instant cast and 30 second cooldown just like Spectrum Shield without heat requirement. Oh, and can also be shared like RotGD when traited, though with shorter duration on allies.

LOL. And on top of not having any heat requirement, it also doesn't have any energy/legend stance requirement. You are so right.

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@"ArielRebel.3426" said:Spectrum Shield from holosmith vs RotGD from rev.

The only advantage for RotGD is that you can share the damage reduction with 4 allies which we can all agree happens rarely (that you give it to 4 ppl) in sPVP for example. In WvW, not gonna change the tide of a Zerg vs Zerg and needs a lot of coordination to be reliably used in a roaming party vs party to be useful for your allies (and it's way too expensive to use for allies).

What gives?

I think what gives is that most of us don't play PvP either at all or as our primary game mode.

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@Kichwas.7152 said:

@"ArielRebel.3426" said:
from holosmith vs
from rev.

The only advantage for RotGD is that you can share the damage reduction with 4 allies which we can all agree happens rarely (that you give it to 4 ppl) in sPVP for example. In WvW, not gonna change the tide of a Zerg vs Zerg and needs a lot of coordination to be reliably used in a roaming party vs party to be useful for your allies (and it's way too expensive to use for allies).

What gives?

I think what gives is that most of us don't play PvP either at all or as our primary game mode.

Yet there's plenty of balancing done JUST for PVP and WvW players.

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@ArielRebel.3426 said:

@ArielRebel.3426 said:How can you "manage your stun breaks" if RotGD is your only stunbreak (in the stance you currently are in)Don't you have the stability road? That's your stunbreak, you just need to use it before getting stunned.

LOL, funny joke.

Tayga is right though. You have access to stab and a stunbreak in Jalis, and if you are taking anything other than Ventari, you will have access to another one. I disagree with the assertion that Rev is vulnerable to CC as this is an overgenerialization that cannot be applied to the class as a whole. If you build for it, you can be incredibly resistant to it, even with stunbreak on swap gone. This goes back to managing your energy properly so you can have the proper amount available for a break, or knowing your swap is off cooldown soon so you can dump all of your energy for an easy stunbreak in your next legend. Charged Mists is a game changer for this. I fail to see what is a funny joke about having long AoE pulsing stab as part of what is to be considered when managing your stunbreaks and CCs. It is legitimately extremely strong. Seems like people like to forget that all classes got their stunbreak and stab access nerfed in the big balance patch.

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