Renegade is Horrible in Open World PVE

[Buran.3796]

@"Tora.7214" said:

Seeing as you are updating your build videos, and you seem to be having trouble with reve, you might want to check the Battle Scars trait line. it seems to be doing quite well with power builds. I been using this build for a week and it feels to me altmost as powerful and tanky as your one man army warrior build (when it came out). you might get some ideas from it for when the time to revisit revenant comes

Very instructive, great build and video. What amuses me is that despite all that protection and tankiness some foes cut through the HP like paper, and is the sustain (heal recovering) which saves the day. I feel funny how dangerous the bristleback channel is to the build (a power Herald can delete his defiance bar on demand, but fails miserably in sustain on long fights against some of those champions). Anyway, thanx for the upload!

I'm also intrigued about which build will showcase Hizen when he re-takes the Rev.

[Kichwas.7152]

@Opopanax.1803 said:

@"Kichwas.7152" said:I find Renegade in open world PvE to be silly powerful.

As noted above only Reaper has been more 'cheese mode' - I can solo some of the temple chains in Orr on my Reaper and she doesn't even have anything but exotic gear...

Renegade - shortbow and maxe/axe. Swapping between Kala and Malyx - it's pretty absurd. Kala's elite makes me almost as immune to damage as Reaper's shroud mode... In fact I often also use it in fractals up through T3 in moments when we're taking too much damage and there's been a lot of group fail - it's a recovery trick to buy time while the group gets back on track - AND if I place it right I can heal my entire group back to full.

Spamming Bannish Enchantment and Embrace the Darkness can strip the CC bar of bosses off very fast if you have the right talents.

I'm assuming you are running Runes of Torment?

I use Runes of Nightmare. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_NightmareThe fear duration is a wasted item, but otherwise everyone on it is perfect and very potent for a condition renegade.

[Ari.7319]

I play Grieving Renegade with Lyssa runes in PVP and in PVE a combination near it, but with strenght runes. I use retribution, invocation and kalla for traitlines and use mace/axe and shortbow. I suck, but the spec performs well :) Lots of endurance regen, weakness to opponents and protection to cut down damage to myself. For legends Kalla and Jalis. In PVP Courage and Doom sigils might helps with both damage types and doom fot cutting enemy heals.

[Kat.2849]

@Moradorin.6217 said:

@"Lord Hizen.5918" said:I am a big fan of revenant and i really love how renegade spec works but the main reason that i dont like to use it is because Renegade : Heal, Utility and Elite can be CCed ( knockback, knockdown, Stunned, dazed and feared ).

https://prnt.sc/vd9lfg

https://prnt.sc/vd9lnq

and when they do after i summon them their duration will be before i get the benefits of using them beside wasting 30-50 energy :skull:almost 90% mobs of path of fire season 4, 5 they CC lock renegade skills so i hope the devs do something about this for new players and rev mains sake :(

I will just say I think renegade is amazing in OW or any pve for that matter. Its the best for many things. Renegade srance imo has a good heal. It is stationary to a location and has a cast time. That isnt unique. For instance, Ranger healing spring comes to mind. Also it heals allies, also renegade elite is also a group heal, also you can just f1 to change stance and use the OTHER heal, also you can use staff if you still want yet more heals.

So Im really having a hard time understanding why you feel renegade is horrible in EQ.

Condi or power renegade is pretty amazing! Try playing it a little more. If you still have a hard time or dont like it maybe try another class and come to renegade later. I really enjoy playing renegade in open world and also in Fractals. Rengade is one of the best class options according to MANY players.

This video is a year old - changes didn't happen in a year for Revenant?

[draxynnic.3719]

@Kat.2849 said:

@Moradorin.6217 said:

@"Lord Hizen.5918" said:I am a big fan of revenant and i really love how renegade spec works but the main reason that i dont like to use it is because Renegade : Heal, Utility and Elite can be CCed ( knockback, knockdown, Stunned, dazed and feared ).

https://prnt.sc/vd9lfg

https://prnt.sc/vd9lnq

and when they do after i summon them their duration will be before i get the benefits of using them beside wasting 30-50 energy :skull:almost 90% mobs of path of fire season 4, 5 they CC lock renegade skills so i hope the devs do something about this for new players and rev mains sake :(

I will just say I think renegade is amazing in OW or any pve for that matter. Its the best for many things. Renegade srance imo has a good heal. It is stationary to a location and has a cast time. That isnt unique. For instance, Ranger healing spring comes to mind. Also it heals allies, also renegade elite is also a group heal, also you can just f1 to change stance and use the OTHER heal, also you can use staff if you still want yet more heals.

So Im really having a hard time understanding why you feel renegade is horrible in EQ.

Condi or power renegade is pretty amazing! Try playing it a little more. If you still have a hard time or dont like it maybe try another class and come to renegade later. I really enjoy playing renegade in open world and also in Fractals. Rengade is one of the best class options according to MANY players.

This video is a year old - changes didn't happen in a year for Revenant?

None that substantially changed the build. In fact, IIRC, that was before the Devastation changes, which only made it stronger.

[Dante.1508]

For me its the clunky animations on the skills that make so bad. The horrible cones and square shaped attacks just seem niche and pointless in the actual game.. Imo it was a really poorly thought out class.

[Kanok.3027]

@Dante.1508 said:For me its the clunky animations on the skills that make so bad. The horrible cones and square shaped attacks just seem niche and pointless in the actual game.. Imo it was a really poorly thought out class.

I disagree. Sure, it could have had some more thought put into it, but you can still get a lot out of it and the animations make it easy enough to know what you're doing to do next without much issue.

@"Kat.2849" said:This video is a year old - changes didn't happen in a year for Revenant?

I've been using the Shortbow Renegade build from Metabattle (with Trailblazer gear) and even switched out Kalla for Glint to have an option that mitigates one-shot attacks (Facet of Light is AMAZING). The DPS is a bit lower, but honestly, it barely notice it and still kill champs fast and easily. I switch to Power Bombardment if I want to kill trash mobs fast before going after something much more powerful or if I want a bit more challenge. Honestly, Condi Herald with the rest of the Shortbow Renegade build is really strong and it makes things melt pretty well. It says to use Superior Runes of Tormenting, but it won't really matter much if you are face tanking and not moving (plus it won't help against immobile targets). Just go with Nightmare. It's a best general purpose option that gets results. Switch out Corruption (if running Trailblazer) for Invocation to help against heavy condi fights or fights where projectiles are a problem (use Dome of the Mists). Even against trash mobs, the AoEs from Mallyx and Glint really help take them out fairly quickly.

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

Hey Rev forums. Long time forum stalker, first time poster. I have seen a lot of cool builds posted over the years and I always love seeing what people come up with as Theory crafting is one of my favorite aspects of this game. I’ve also mained Rev from the HoT launch and have never looked back. I’ve played everything from the good old OP power Herald days with every boon you’d ever need + perma superspeed and quickness, to many forms of condi renegade, and my personal favorite, both heal Herald and Renegade. I’ve copied a lot of builds people have posted over the years, adapted and changed what I personally didn’t like, and mainly just have had a lot of fun with the wide range of playstyles Rev has to offer.

So since I saw yet another Herald/Renegade is good/bad post and many people suggesting different types of builds, Including both Open World condi and power Renegades, I wanted to post my personal favorite that I’ve adapted over the years.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmyAwyZltQMsMqjpResNijNSkMDigpu1+rH-zRZYBBZsFUIc09hdOhpQKUE0qEsXBR0CowFCK+CIQC4zvfQDFOjA-e

This is an Open World Power Renegade adapted for my personal taste. It has instant and permanent 25 might, fury, vigor, protection, 25% movement speed, and with a pretty simple rotation I’ll talk about below, 80% quickness and 70% alacrity uptime. It’s mostly diviner to get to a nice sweet spot where most boons are maintained at their desired duration while not dropping below 47% crit chance for 100% crits (47base + 33brutal momentum +20fury). It abuses vulnerability spam like most power Renegade builds for battle scars broken life leeching sustain however it does also come with that permanent protection (-33inc power dmg) and Righteous Rebel (-33%inc condi dmg) which does help immensely with survivability. It has decent condi cleanse when it does need it and of course the standard break bar damage that rev is know for due to staff. Mostly standard stuff for a Power Renegade, however I think the difference is in a rotation I use and the way the traits interact that make this version unique.

Rotation as followed (start in Kalla) Darkrazor (30), Icerazor (20), LEGENDSWAP, Impossible odds toggle (-6ps), Deathstrike (10), Chilling Isolation (5), auto attack spam, at around 25 energy or 1s left till you can swap use Orders from Above (20) LEGENDSWAP Darkrazor (30), Icerazor (20), Shackling Wave (10), auto attack spam, Darkrazor (30), Icerazor (20) LEGENDSWAP … Repeat from the Impossible odds toggle.

This rotation opens with instantaneous 25 might, fury, vigor, prot, quickness and trash mobs just explode before you get to Deathstrike. Some vets take more of the rotation, but you generally don’t get into the full thing till you are fighting champions. For those who care, In my testing I was reliably hitting 14.5k dps both on Open World champions in lvl 80 zones and on the golem with only the conditions and buffs the build provides by itself, which is insane for a self-contained Open World build. For note, if you’re questioning the use of alacrity, it’s mainly for getting the Razor’s down to a 9s cooldown so we can use them twice in a single Kalla swap rather than having to wait the full 12 (plus in group events its nice to support others). Also, each legend swap consumes 100 to 110 energy depending on delays or not, so feel free to swap out skills to equal out to the same amount. However do not sub out darkrazor’s daring. This skill is vital to maintaining many of the boons. Darkrazor on a single target alone over its duration procs 6 applications of fury, (sometimes vigor) 32 might, protection, 10 vuln, cripple, 10 battle scars, 8s of quickness, and daze spams keep mobs (that don’t have break bars) from attacking, protecting both you and your spirits from taking damage/cc.

Final note. You can adapt this build to use a short bow however there is a few trait changes I would make to do so. Also the build is tailored to me and is not min maxed. For example, I have the food the way it is cause it only adds more damage but sometimes I don’t run food. If you use food all the time you could min max the stats with the gear to get overall a better spread. You can absolutely run this in exotics too, you will just have less stats in certain areas and will need to hit 47% crit chance and 66% boon duration by other means.

Sorry for the wall, but if you read this far, Thanks! If you try out my adaptation of the Power Renegade let me know what you think or If you have any questions. I will also take critiques! I Love seeing all your guys’ builds so please keep them coming while I continue stalking the forums.

[Dixa.6017]

A lot of reponses to this post and sorry for the necro here, but none of them actually address Hizens issues with Kalla.

The summons can be cc'd, negating them completely in many fights. Given Kalla is your main source for vuln for battle scars if playing pure bow or condition renegade, and the base heal is low because it pulses an aoe heal that stops when the healing summon is knocked down/feared it IS an issue. the summons need stability inherent.

[Buran.3796]

@"Dixa.6017" said:A lot of reponses to this post and sorry for the necro here, but none of them actually address Hizens issues with Kalla.

The summons can be cc'd, negating them completely in many fights. Given Kalla is your main source for vuln for battle scars if playing pure bow or condition renegade, and the base heal is low because it pulses an aoe heal that stops when the healing summon is knocked down/feared it IS an issue. the summons need stability inherent.

Renegade already does damage faster than Herald (either power or condi variants), can fight both ranger or at mele, and Darkrazor's deletes defiance bars as handly as Surge of The Mist (larger energy cost but much lower cooldown and can be cast at range). Soulcleave's + Sevenshots (7 seconds cooldown) refills your HP entirely . If the summons were immune to cc and had larger HP then wouldn't be a reason ro run Herald in PvE instead of Renegade: it would be better at everything.

Fortunately, is not the case: I don't think the weakness of the summons are that crucial, because some of those monsters with AoE cc have a defiance bar which can be deleted with a single well timed, well placed Darkrazor, and when they aren't champions usually explode after absorbing a few volleys of arrows. Some of the videos in this thread showcased strong performances of Renegade builds at PvE soloing bounties and hard bosses. On top of that, for open world events with large number of players in which sometimes the game experiences heavy lag and low framerrate (Dragon Stand, Dragonfall, Drizzlewood meta events...) playing a Renegade short bow build is way easier and safer than trying to reach mele range (sometimes the goons die before you arrive under heavy rain of rangeg attacks from your team mates, sometimes the visual cluster is so dense that you can't see the warnings from the attacks from the bosses, etc.).

Does the Renegade offer the best builds for open world PvE? I'm not sure, but arguments can be made about and anyway seems clear that is far from "being horrible" at that task. Hizen showcased a solo OW PvE power Firebrand build which is powerful and tanky; and I think that is fun to play. But I've been playing also the Roul (Snowcrows) condi Firebrand build for solo PvE and albeit a bit more frail and less "flashy", seems to be able to kill the same content in ~35-40% less time. That's HUGE.

So my point is: He loves soloing hard content and approaches to the Renegade seeking to replace the Herald to do the same tasks but better, but happens that the Renegade has some trade offs. And that's not inherently bad, in my opinion. I personally prefer the Herald over the Renegade, but currently I'm playing 4 different Revenant builds and I can see how they fill different roles making them useful for different tasks.

[Obtena.7952]

If it works ... are these really issues? It's a pretty hard sell to say "Oh, something is really bad ... but watch me solo Bounties with it".

[Dixa.6017]

@Buran.3796 said:

@"Dixa.6017" said:A lot of reponses to this post and sorry for the necro here, but none of them actually address Hizens issues with Kalla.

The summons can be cc'd, negating them completely in many fights. Given Kalla is your main source for vuln for battle scars if playing pure bow or condition renegade, and the base heal is low because it pulses an aoe heal that stops when the healing summon is knocked down/feared it IS an issue. the summons need stability inherent.

Renegade already does damage faster than Herald (either power or condi variants), can fight both ranger or at mele, and Darkrazor's deletes defiance bars as handly as Surge of The Mist (larger energy cost but much lower cooldown and can be cast at range). Soulcleave's + Sevenshots (7 seconds cooldown) refills your HP entirely . If the summons were immune to cc and had larger HP then wouldn't be a reason ro run Herald in PvE instead of Renegade: it would be better at everything.

Fortunately, is not the case: I don't think the weakness of the summons are that crucial, because some of those monsters with AoE cc have a defiance bar which can be deleted with a single well timed, well placed Darkrazor, and when they aren't champions usually explode after absorbing a few volleys of arrows. Some of the videos in this thread showcased strong performances of Renegade builds at PvE soloing bounties and hard bosses. On top of that, for open world events with large number of players in which sometimes the game experiences heavy lag and low framerrate (Dragon Stand, Dragonfall, Drizzlewood meta events...) playing a Renegade short bow build is way easier and safer than trying to reach mele range (sometimes the goons die before you arrive under heavy rain of rangeg attacks from your team mates, sometimes the visual cluster is so dense that you can't see the warnings from the attacks from the bosses, etc.).

Does the Renegade offer the best builds for open world PvE? I'm not sure, but arguments can be made about and anyway seems clear that is far from "being horrible" at that task. Hizen showcased a solo OW PvE power Firebrand build which is powerful and tanky; and I think that is fun to play. But I've been playing also the Roul (Snowcrows) condi Firebrand build for solo PvE and albeit a bit more frail and less "flashy", seems to be able to kill the same content in ~35-40% less time. That's HUGE.

So my point is: He loves soloing hard content and approaches to the Renegade seeking to replace the Herald to do the same tasks but better, but happens that the Renegade has some trade offs. And that's not inherently bad, in my opinion. I personally prefer the Herald over the Renegade, but currently I'm playing 4 different Revenant builds and I can see how they fill different roles making them useful for different tasks.

sevenshot can't heal you if you have no battlescars because icerazor keeps getting knocked downdarkrazor can't delete defiance bar if it's constantly cc'd and on it's butt

it is an actual issue that can turn what should have been a narrow or sure victory into a sudden defeat.

[Buran.3796]

@"Dixa.6017" said:

sevenshot can't heal you if you have no battlescars because icerazor keeps getting knocked downdarkrazor can't delete defiance bar if it's constantly cc'd and on it's butt

it is an actual issue that can turn what should have been a narrow or sure victory into a sudden defeat.

I don’t buy that argument.

First of all, Kalla’s summons are a kind of skills; skills can be meditations, stances, glyphs, traps, mantras, etc. Some are considered powerful or handly, other much less. The Renegade’s summons are in the likehood of Ranger’s spirits, Necro’s minions or Scrapper’s gyros. Some people don’t like that kind of skills because they are essentially pets, and pets sometimes involves a very bad A.I.

We can argue if pets are convenient or not (personally: not a fan), because they have handicaps: usually they provide an effect for a given time, and that effect ceases if they are disebled/killed/destroyed. So I agree that Kalla’s summons could be better, but what would be achieve with that?

Think: at the beginning Gaurdian’s spiritual weapons were pets: they were strong so they nerfed if (specially at PvP). Then people stopped using them. Then were turned into special skills which spent ammunition, and no longer were killable. Let’s figure that Anet turns the summons into not killable pets, like totems… Then they will become like Warrior’s banners. Much better? Well, Lord Hizen made recent builds about almost every class (only Necro and Rev rest to end that anthology), and guess what: his favourite Warrior build doesn’t use a single banner. So you think that Kalla’s summons aren’t great because are vulnerable to cc/damage, but they are used (with great results, as the videos above showcase) in both condi and power Renegade builds, with great effect. You think also that making then invulnerable will enhance the quality of life with Kalla alot, but no solo Warrior build uses banners. Yes, I catch that summons are tricky, but can be used, successfully. And they aren’t terribly hard to figure out how. Also, their cooldowns are low and the energy cost is a joke if you run the Charged Mist trait.

Second, you insist in which you can heal with Sevenshots nor break defiance bars due the summons keep getting knocked down. Well, let me tell you that you don’t need Soulcleave to refill your life with a Renegade build, neither Darkrazor to break defiance bars with a Renegade build. Essentially: Renegade doesn’t require Kalla in order to perform well at soloing hard PvE content like bounties and champs. You can run eithetr condi or power Renegade, an mix Kalla + Mallyx, Kalla + Shiro, Kalla + Jalis or Shiro + Jalis. To different degree all of them work. But I would advice you againt the use of the builds from metabattle for open world PvE Rev, since they are either outdated or just wrong.

Yesterday spent a few minutes recording some fights in Auric Basin, testing some builds I run or regular basis.

The first one is a power Renegade, a power Herald, a condi Herald, a PvP power Renegade build with viper & trailblazer stats (that one also runs an exotic armor, rest of the gear in the builds is either ascended or legendary) and a (sorta) burn quick Firebrand with trailblazer, highly unoptimized (no Balthazar runes, runs ~1350 condi damage, I can achieve 2000 but the legendary armor is on the Rev and don’t want to spent runes to try them when the shared legendary wardrobe is near the corner… ). Also, no food, and not enough experience riding some of these builds, take a look:

In the screenshots posted Hizen blamed summons knocked down by a veteran Stonehead; the Stoneheads are an easy target for a Renegade bow: regular ones explode after a volley of Sevenshots; the veteran ones can be freezed by a single Darkrazor after 8 seconds of doing nothing. Anyway they are beast easy to evade and to crush at range. If you run Jalis Forced Engagement can do the work; if you run Shiro Jade Winds is less effective but still usable. I’m not very used to the Renegade and Kalla so I don’t use Soulcleave’s aoftenly. But as you can see in the 4th build (the PvP one with Shiro + Jalis but running viper + trailblazer) you don’t need Kalla’s Fervor or Soulcleave to make battle scars to work and beat simultaneously a few Bristlebacks while enduring massive spikes of damage (those dammed have a cycle of 7 seconds of auto-targeted channel of pain each 15 seconds, if they aren’t disabled). I’m not saying that every one of those Renegade builds have the same soloing bounty potential, but all of them have some. So if you don’t like summons, don’t run Kalla: is not mandatory.

An talking of non mandatory, is beautiful how well power and condi Herald still perform (power is lacking in sustained dps and AoE damage, but still I can 60% some bouties with that 5 years old build. Condi, as can be seen in the video, just deletes veterans without even sweating. And talking about being fast, the Firebrand has much less sustain, but oh boy! The damage. And that’s with ~1350 condi damage, maxed around 2K is incredible (but moves slow and lacks cleanses).