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Is Renegade the most poorly designed elite spec in this game?


Skyroar.2974

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i for one started to love it after a lot of testing ... and for a power spec not condiits a breeze to go in the new maps with power renegade ( saying this after map completion with mirage , scourge , soulbeast and renegade - the renegade is by far the easiest and fastest to do it)u lost herald but u get other things to make up for it - sure u dont have perma swiftness and blind - but u get 25 might now instead of 10 , coupled with more ferocity, makes it so much better. the herald skill negated dmg , the renegade instead has a LOT of healing (heal and elite) so i dont really see any downsides to it. this is what i use in open world :http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlEQNAsXinXMXNSumrJRZz/kst5gSY38QJ4berkFNlqdACgIgNMSj44vHPykE-jBCBQBaUZQe0HwIlgA4MAEgHBQN2fILK9Uo6PkC4pxAA-e

now when it comes to condi and shortbow and what it brings to condi spec ... meh , still using same mace / axe and legendswap , only new thing being the use of kalla's bleeding summon instead of jallis's hammers in group content and the fact that it adds some ferocity and some condi dmg to the existing package, so all in all its just some numbers that got improved , nothing else changed , same boring play style.a much needed range condi weapon atrociously implemented -auto is meh , skill 2 can miss 3/3 in pve if a mob is moving and has swiftness or usualy misses 2/3 on normal moving , #3 is only good as opener in combination with #4 and #4 is way to slow with its cast animation and can only be use if u are facing the area where u want to use it, #5 interesting idea but a knockback would be better than a knockdown in my case.

so all in all if it wasnt for the change to open world power spec i would probably despise renegade ( as i did in the 1st 2-3 days) but now i love it, even if overall its a very badly implemented elite spec.

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It's certainly not exciting.

I don't even mind an elite spec designed just for PvE and nothing else in mind. But it only brings numbers, not new gameplay.It was the one opportunity when competitive gamemodes weren't in consideration and design could go wild. Instead we got a spec that seems like someone's been going through a checklist rather than running with some unique idea.

This one time, we could've got something totally unviable in PvP, but exciting in PvE, something as wild as Surrender to Madness in Legion. The class starves for some exciting new design that would breath life into monotonous PvE rotation system, but instead of breaking this trend Renegade just reinforced the problem.

The reverse of Renegade - Spellbreaker - is a major design success (even though "a bit" too good on some numbers for the time being). A spec that has nothing to do with PvE absolutely flourished in two other game modes, with pretty much all traits being viable and interesting enough, fluid gameplay and fun skills.Sadly, it looks like Revenant got the short end of the stick this time and I don't expect any Renegade re-works in the near future.

The damage is there, but the fun isn't.

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I tried to give a chance to the short bow those last days, but this is just one of the worse weapon design in the game, and there are plenty of pretty useless weapon skills out there, I already gave few pieces of feedback here and there, so I might sound like a broken record.

Bloodbane Path– It misses most of the time moving targets, and by moving targets I mean a random drake moving towards you, because of the ways the portals work, and the thing is portals don’t bring anything to the skill, sure the attacks count as being flank attacks, which works with Ambush Commander (but you don’t need to have flank attacks to generate easily Kalla's Fervor) and eventually Assassin's Annihilation, but otherwise the portals are useless and cripple the way the skill works.Sevenshot – If you use it at maximum range you’ll miss any moving target, if you use it at medium to close range you’ll not even deal half of the potential damage.Spiritcrush – It can’t be cast without line of sight, when the AoEs on the Thief short bow can, it has a low burning duration, and it has a delay before the AoE starts to appear around ¼ seconds, if not ½ seconds, after an already ¾ seconds cast time.Scorchrazor – It has a low burn time and the missile is rather slow, highlighted by a ¾ seconds cast time and a 16 energy cost.

Otherwise the short bow on Renegade lacks functionality, unlike the short bow on Thief and Ranger, Renegade’s doesn’t have any gape creator, when Ranger has Quick Shot and Thief has Infiltrator’s Arrow, and Renegade’s doesn’t have access at all to speed, and core Revenant already has little access to it.

Kalla’s Fervor is way too easy to produce and maintain, which means all of the major adept traits producing more Kalla’s Fervor are partially redundant because the minor adept can already maintain 10 stacks easily on its own, and it means Kalla’s Fervor is just a boring damage increase.

It's sad to said that everything OP said is true, I don’t see really how the three “f abilities” are relevant to each other’s, and even relevant to the specs as a whole, and they also make the energy management even worse than what it already is on core Revenant, and Kalla’s skills all have the same mechanics, which means less flexibility in your gameplay, and they also work like wells, without the advantages of wells, and work like illusions, without the advantages of illusions.

I really think Renegade is the perfect specialization for the Revenant, because just like the Revenant it’s shaky in its foundation.

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What does condi rev bring for breakbars?Before it was a harsh choice. Lose a lot of dps to bring staff, or just have mace axe.Now you have sb. Reasonabke breakbar, ok dps, AND ITS RANGED.Bosses where youre stuck out of melee, previously rev was fucked. Now we have sb and i am personally happy.

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Tempest is probably the worst. Renegade probably needs buffs, well not probably, definitely. All the points OP made are well founded and need addressing. I've also said similar things before. It's a poorly thought out spec. Of this iteration of specs it's definetly the worst, cause it's much less thought through than the rest but this iteration was pretty good. All the specs, except renegade, are really well done and it makes renegade the runt of the litter.

What people have said in defense of Renegade is the most important thing: it's fun. It makes Herald look like a game of monopoly. It may be weaker but that can be adjusted. They could tone up f1 and f2 and change f3 with some trait changes and buffs to Kalla and fixes to SB, but at least there's stuff to do when playing it and different ways to play it. Power is good with it, bunker/support is possibly broken with it (PvE) and condi has a lot of damage, and you have to actually manage your energy.

Now I'm going to rip on Tempest, the real worst elite spec...

  • Warhorn is both a lame weapon option in function, flare and fun. No builds use it, it's just a weaker focus. There are almost no good skins for it, and the abilities look underwhelming. It's also boring, making fields that go forward and conditional support skills aren't fun to use. Shortbow at least has a purpose and does something Revenant doesn't do.
  • Overloads are bored. They have a 4s cast time and you're always going to use them, slowing down the flow of the game. They don't work with any skill but they provide AoE auras, fields and strong effects while stunbreaking (which ele has few of). At least our f abilities are quick to instant and combo with other skills we have.
  • Shouts may be the laziest skills. Tempest shouts just give auras. As uncreative as some Renegade skills are, they are at least each skill have to be described rather than being able to sum them up all of them in two words (give aura).
  • Bad ideas, good execution All of tempests design is around halting gameplay. Why in any game would you want to stop playing the game?! The worst part is that it's strong. You do very little and have a huge impact.
  • It made Elementalist not Elementalist The devs were really devoted to making one of the fastest, most complex classes in the game to be the slowest and simplest ones. D/D ele, while was too strong, did have a lot of complexities to it and you had to chain skills correctly to do it properly. Tempest skills are all focused around making Elementalist easier to use and removed the benefits of skill chaining. You can chain for higher effect but it's less noticeable. What ele was, was an all-rounder that required planning and skill chaining. Tempest made it a boring skill spammer.

It's bad what we got, but it can be fixed and it doesn't ruin what we still have. Tempest ruined elementalist, Renegade didn't ruin Revenant. The play style of Renegade is pretty much the same as core Revenant.

TL;DR We can rebuild it, better and stronger. Tempest can't be rebuild 1/10 bad spec.

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@Burtnik.5218 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:The concept promised but failed to execute.The idea of the revenant seemed to me to be "a warrior who moves fast, uses some magic and is more sophisticated."Theses AoE spam is very weird and not effective.

Revenant was supposed to be the "death knight" type stuff.

I played another game for Many years in which Deathknight is one of the classes and I can tell you that in that game Deathknights are Very well designed and implemented.Beyond compare to Gw2's Revenant.

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Biggest problem with Renegade is the Warband mechanic. It needs to be changed to be like Herald, so each skill has a 'flip', because the current nonsense does NOT work for Revenant. Frankly, I think they should invert the Herald's design. Where herald has the homogenous skill as the opener, and flips to the 'real' one, I think the Renegade skills should provide a skill based on the Warband member's abilities, then flip to conjuring that warband soldier (And flip back after a second or two if unused).

Shortbow... I'm still messing with it, but all it really needs is some sort of gap-opener (I thought SB 5 knocked enemies back in a cascade, but it just knocks them down). I can't remember if Sevenshot pierces without the trait, but it's actually a pretty nice AoE (They should probably buff the damage, though) - You put the "Big" target at the maximum range, where your arrows converge, but the spread handles the adds between the boss and you. Skill 2 feels weak, but allows you to hit your target while moving away from them to reposition. I'm still trying to figure out 4.

Overall, though, the shortbow is great at tearing through hordes of enemies at range. Unfortunately, Kalla is trash because of the aforementioned terrible homogeny of skills, so I find myself running Shiro/Mallyx for the mobility I need.

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My only issue with the spec is the legend abilities themselves. The spirits and what they do aren't the problem, but it's the fact that they cost a lot of energy and can be cc'd and killed rendering a wasted slot. At least ranger spirits can be blown up to provide a second utility before they die and go on cd. They are also very finicky in placement on different terrain. Platforms, stairs and other places where it isn't touching solid earth is a real pain when you need to switch legends for a second heal or damage ability.

The line itself and the f-skills I find useful. F-skills could use a lil more energy reduction for what they do imo, but they do what it says they do on the tin. Shortbow is fine and i have no problems with it. It feels very "reverse Ranger", but considering that the lead dev is Irenio, that doesn't surprise me.

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@Murdock.6547 said:What does condi rev bring for breakbars?Before it was a harsh choice. Lose a lot of dps to bring staff, or just have mace axe.Now you have sb. Reasonabke breakbar, ok dps, AND ITS RANGED.Bosses where youre stuck out of melee, previously rev was kitten. Now we have sb and i am personally happy.

Better to just bring a sword off hand on swap for an extra 150 breakbar damage. If that isn't enough, then go with staff and just accept a big dps loss for the next 10 seconds.

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i played renegade for about 100-200 hours + so far and i don't rly get where all the hate to it is coming from , each utility has its own uses having ranged condi is fun and the energy management isn't so bad for players who do rotations and overall the support it gives in a party is pretty powerful , my biggest letdown of this spec is the idea of another support spec. overall i think its more of a preference thing .

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@DiogoSilva.7089 said:And while Herald uses the same upkeep mechanic for all of its skills, each one of them has a second, active skill with unique mechanics, so you can breath fire into a >location, knockback foes with massive wings or revert damage done to you.

Here comes Renegade...single mechanic copy-pasted into 5 different skills.

So Herald uses the same mechanic but its okay because they are different skills, but Renegade is bad because all the different skills using the same mechanic?I don't get it.

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@shadowcaster.3789 said:i played renegade for about 100-200 hours + so far and i don't rly get where all the hate to it is coming from , each utility has its own uses having ranged condi is fun and the energy management isn't so bad for players who do rotations and overall the support it gives in a party is pretty powerful , my biggest letdown of this spec is the idea of another support spec. overall i think its more of a preference thing .

THe only reason anyone uses renegade is Kalla's Fervor. It does not offer anything else and not useable in PvP.

And the ranged condi is almost obsolete, unless You are forced out of melee.

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for pvfun renegade is fun. good dmg in pve (i hardly play pve for 3 years till this patch) so i can kill npc with cool weapon and utilities animations.

BUT

warbands easily cc and becoming usless while nrg lose. - how to fix? give them ticking stability and more hp or reduce nrg and cd so they can be more spammable. atm you can summon them all and have to w8 for nrg while as usually spamm AA

F skills cannot be combo with other skill which cost nrg beside AA.

SB hard to use and i mainly use AA and #2. dmg is low but sometime range works in pve.

after playing it so far i came to the conclusion renegade is more ritualist from gw1. spirit which cannot move, do dmg, cc, life leach, or heal. easily killedbut in gw1 we had more nrg to play with.

i really like the idea of spirit who fight aside of me. but atm in pvp they are so useless, in wvw the same, the dmg is very low compare to other build class and expansions.

probably anet afraid from the what happend in hot expansion where revenant was so strong so they nerf it before they issued it.

i hope and guess we will see huge buffs

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So far, the only thing that's really good about Renegade is that it fills out the Rev condi build with a viable second weapon/legend that it previously lacked. But, both the legend itself and the shortbow feel weak enough that I rarely swap to them and just continue to use M/A and Mallyx, and to make matters worse the F skills are in competition with the weapon and utility skills and therefore not that useful.

Altogether, it's kind of a problem and a no-brainer why Renegade tends to be considered the worst of the new elites.

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@DiogoSilva.7089 said:So, what's the style behind shortbow? Which combos can you make with it? I can only see synergy between skill #4 and #5. You put a fire field and then knock them down to make sure they stay there burning. Everything else seems completely unrelated. If #4 and #5 are all about AoE, then why are other skills so focused on single-targetting, up to the point of being anti-AoE (sevenshot)? Why are there no skills that support seven shot? No leap backwards, nothing, except an AoE knockback that seems more fitting to the fire field instead. What does this weapons wants to be or to do, exactly?

I think several players especially overlook the Combo Field aspect of the game when they ask what combos one can make with the Short Bow and what kind of synergy it has with.. well anything. In fact, I think they overlook several things. Also, for the love of Kormir.. or Joko, please do not start bringing up Energy cost in any responses to this. My response is in regards to there being synergy, not if it costs Energy to take advantage of it. Here's just one example of a combo one could do (while also showing how Sevenshot will fire at the location one places the shot to hit, and how it allows the player to move in the meantime – don't move out of range though);

Sevenshot shoots 7 projectiles, all with their own Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% Chance) potential. That means it could apply 7 stacks of Burn from one salvo when the stars align as in the clip above. With traits such as Rampant Vex, in the clip triggering twice, you could potentially be looking at 14 stacks of Torment as well (– plus it can also trigger from critical hits done by the pulses of Spiritcrush or other sources). Soulcleave's Summit unfortunately doesn't trigger on Sevenshot (and I can perhaps understand why), but it does trigger on each pulse of Spiritcrush (and if I did them, auto-attacks). I'd make sure to toggle it off sooner than I did in this clip for energy management granted, though I must admit that normally I would likely not throw it out in the first place even if it does have Combo Field: Fire properties. I prefer the Spiritcrush into Sevenshot combo for that purpose. Also, yes, I know Sevenshot is one of the hardest skill shots in the game, but you do get better at leading it on moving targets when you practice through usage. Kinda like oldschool Quake and leading your rockets.

Also, while I didn't do this in the clip, I could alternatively have gone with Scorchrazor (to crowd control and add 2 stacks of Burn), into Soulcleave's Summit, Spiritcrush and Sevenshot, basically draining my energy right after Spiritcrush triggered Soulcleave's Summit a second time. I also neglected to auto-attack, and those arrows also count as Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% Chance); each a chance to trigger additional Torment and Burn besides a couple hits of the Life Siphon Damage that Soulcleave's Summit provides. See some semblance of synergy between skills and traits yet?

Synergy doesn't end there of course. You could use Unyielding Anguish to fire off Lifestealing projectiles to damage enemies and heal yourself, and as a bonus it's not so bad for creating damaging fields to kite away from. You could use Inspiring Reinforcement to try to apply some Vulnerability. Protective Solace could probably remove some conditions (plus you can use Energy Expulsion to Blast off an additional one and perform a Knockback, or alternatively you could disable Protective Solace, throw down Spiritcrush and produce 3 stacks of Might as you Knockback and remove conditions based on the remaining energy consumed). Traits such as Dismantle Fortifications could be somewhat interesting to use in areas such as World vs. World when firing Scorchrazor towards an enemy zerg, although I haven't used it yet in my own World vs. World build. Mutilate Defenses of course have 7 chances to apply Vulnerability from one skill. And so on.

I do want some care and love put towards Renegade, don't get me wrong. But I also think players are being far too harsh on it. My main problems with the Elite Specialization is the fact that all our utilities suffer from a "No valid path to target" issue, likely thanks to the developer not wanting us to be able to put them up on (or down from) walls in World vs. World. I however fail to see how that would be different from a field being placed on to a wall. They're even killable! On that subject, I think it's far too easy for them to become problematic to use in areas such as World vs. World due to the sheer amount of damage sources they are exposed to. Perhaps they could spawn with 5 seconds of Protection to help them slightly. They can of course be crowd controlled as well, and I would very much like to see all of them at least start off with 1 stack of Stability, although I fear that wouldn't really help against a zerg of players. Bloodbane Path also has.. pathing issues when the target is moving, so that includes enemies in PvE as well. All arrows can basically fail to hit. I feel that needs to be resolved. Spiritcrush not being possible to shoot without line of sight is a bit annoying too, more so since visually the arrows are even fired through portals. I can work with this though. Heroic Command lacks a use when outside of combat (and without Kalla's Fervor), although one can give it 5 seconds of Swiftness by using the Rapid Flow trait (though any skill that uses Energy will provide that Swiftness every 5 seconds, for 5 seconds (and I use this for World vs. World I might add, where I mostly trigger it from repeated use of Unyielding Anguish to move around faster)). I wish it would at least do something without Kalla's Fervor stacks, and without requiring a trait. Perhaps there could still be some energy tuning done here and there too, but I personally aren't all too fuzzed about that right now. It's at least a big improvement already from how it were during the Demo weekends and stress tests.

Again, I want to see favorable improvements, it's not a perfect Elite Specialization, and Short Bow does drastically underperform when compared to Mace/Axe. But I still find it fun, and there are synergy in how it's presented. To say it doesn't have any synergy, just feels unfair. It simply needs some polishing. In the end, I can't necessarily say that I feel as if it's an, quote,

, unquote. The damage numbers just aren't quite there for that statement to hold true to me. It's also hard to properly support your allies when the allies you bring to the field are so prone to dying from damage and being rendered useless from crowd control.

PS: For what it's worth, I find Citadel Bombardment to be absolutely amazing in World vs. World when fighting zergs, as it can hit up to 30 players untraited (45 when traited, though I prefer Righteous Rebel for the additional- and extended range on Alacrity, together with the almost crucial Condition Damage reduction). Aside from that the Short Bow is also pretty amazing at tagging, without it feeling as if it doesn't contribute anything. Sevenshot with piercing arrows obviously hits a great deal of players as well. Razorclaw's Rage is not so bad when used on your ranged backline either. What I'm getting at, is that it's not terrible for WvW (in a zerg environment).

PPS: For those interested, the damage dealt by the combo in the clip were a total of 69920 over the span of aprox. 11 seconds. Roughly 6356 damage per second although in fairness nothing was done to try keep the damage going beyond the initial three skills, no nourishment is used and there are no auto-attacks to supplement the damage. It took aprox. 3 seconds to fire the three skills. It only took about 4 seconds to reach 43392 damage, putting it at an somewhat impressive burst of 10848 damage per second at that point. Unfortunately, while the numbers do somehow seem big and impressive, it's not enough to contend with Mace/Axe.

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You combo'd Soulcleave's > Spiritcrush > Sevenshot and were left with 10-15 energy. It's just too expensive for what you get. I'm not knocking the idea and yes, comboing skills for finishers is fun and interesting but it's just leaves you with no energy. I don't find Soulcleave very useful after the nerf. Sure, I can combo it with Citadel Bombardment and specced Vindication butt requires lots of energy. I do find it useful as a good energy dump before legend swap.

For shits and giggles, I ran a valk/zerk power build in dragon stand. Once the Thornheart was CC'd, I used the Soulcleave > Citadel combo and all missles procced lifesteal. Honestly, the siphon life is terrible after the nerf. It scales terribly(if at all) with power. Sure, all 15 hits siphoned for ~450 dmg but the real showstopper was the missles were hitting for ~11-15k each. Granted this was done to a debuffed(CC'd) Thornheart and you need a large hitbox enemy, that's still ~165k dmg-225k(+ ~6,750 siphon) in ~2 seconds. Tons of fun in open world with lots of setup. Not very realistic though. Seems like using Impossible Odds' 10% dmg boost would have been better overall. 16,500-22,500 extra direct dmg vs 6,750 siphon dmg.VKMMtCa.jpg

Soulcleave's Summit unfortunately doesn't trigger on Sevenshot (and I can perhaps understand why)

I don't. It's is a hard skill to land. Using Soulcleave is already a huge upkeep investment. Why doesn't it reward you after this setup? There's lots of "anti-synergy" with Renegade. Icerazor not having chill. Soulcleave not affecting the summons. Imagine combo-ing Soulcleave with Icerazor. The anti-synergy with Soulcleave + Sevenshot? Can't say I'm surprised at this point.

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@Absconditus.6804 said:

@DiogoSilva.7089 said:So, what's the style behind shortbow? Which combos can you make with it? I can only see synergy between skill #4 and #5. You put a fire field and then knock them down to make sure they stay there burning. Everything else seems completely unrelated. If #4 and #5 are all about AoE, then why are other skills so focused on single-targetting, up to the point of being anti-AoE (sevenshot)? Why are there no skills that support seven shot? No leap backwards, nothing, except an AoE knockback that seems more fitting to the fire field instead. What does this weapons wants to be or to do, exactly?

I think several players especially overlook the Combo Field aspect of the game when they ask what combos one can make with the Short Bow and what kind of synergy it has with.. well anything. In fact, I think they overlook several things. Also, for the love of Kormir.. or Joko, please do not start bringing up Energy cost in any responses to this. My response is in regards to there being synergy, not if it costs Energy to take advantage of it. Here's just one example of a combo one could do (while also showing how Sevenshot will fire at the location one places the shot to hit, and how it allows the player to move in the meantime – don't move out of range though);

Sevenshot shoots 7 projectiles, all with their own Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% Chance) potential. That means it could apply 7 stacks of Burn from one salvo when the stars align as in the clip above. With traits such as Rampant Vex, in the clip triggering twice, you could potentially be looking at 14 stacks of Torment as well (– plus it can also trigger from critical hits done by the pulses of Spiritcrush or other sources). Soulcleave's Summit unfortunately doesn't trigger on Sevenshot (and I can perhaps understand why), but it does trigger on each pulse of Spiritcrush (and if I did them, auto-attacks). I'd make sure to toggle it off sooner than I did in this clip for energy management granted, though I must admit that normally I would likely not throw it out in the first place even if it does have Combo Field: Fire properties. I prefer the Spiritcrush into Sevenshot combo for that purpose. Also, yes, I know Sevenshot is one of the hardest skill shots in the game, but you do get better at leading it on moving targets when you practice through usage. Kinda like oldschool Quake and leading your rockets.

Also, while I didn't do this in the clip, I could alternatively have gone with Scorchrazor (to crowd control and add 2 stacks of Burn), into Soulcleave's Summit, Spiritcrush and Sevenshot, basically draining my energy right after Spiritcrush triggered Soulcleave's Summit a second time. I also neglected to auto-attack, and those arrows also count as Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% Chance); each a chance to trigger additional Torment and Burn besides a couple hits of the Life Siphon Damage that Soulcleave's Summit provides. See some semblance of synergy between skills and traits yet?

Synergy doesn't end there of course. You could use Unyielding Anguish to fire off Lifestealing projectiles to damage enemies and heal yourself, and as a bonus it's not so bad for creating damaging fields to kite away from. You could use Inspiring Reinforcement to try to apply some Vulnerability. Protective Solace could probably remove some conditions (plus you can use Energy Expulsion to Blast off an additional one and perform a Knockback, or alternatively you could disable Protective Solace, throw down Spiritcrush and produce 3 stacks of Might as you Knockback and remove conditions based on the remaining energy consumed). Traits such as Dismantle Fortifications could be somewhat interesting to use in areas such as World vs. World when firing Scorchrazor towards an enemy zerg, although I haven't used it yet in my own World vs. World build. Mutilate Defenses of course have 7 chances to apply Vulnerability from one skill. And so on.

I do want some care and love put towards Renegade, don't get me wrong. But I also think players are being far too harsh on it. My main problems with the Elite Specialization is the fact that all our utilities suffer from a "No valid path to target" issue, likely thanks to the developer not wanting us to be able to put them up on (or down from) walls in World vs. World. I however fail to see how that would be different from a field being placed on to a wall. They're even killable! On that subject, I think it's far too easy for them to become problematic to use in areas such as World vs. World due to the sheer amount of damage sources they are exposed to. Perhaps they could spawn with 5 seconds of Protection to help them slightly. They can of course be crowd controlled as well, and I would very much like to see all of them at least start off with 1 stack of Stability, although I fear that wouldn't really help against a zerg of players. Bloodbane Path also has.. pathing issues when the target is moving, so that includes enemies in PvE as well. All arrows can basically fail to hit. I feel that needs to be resolved. Spiritcrush not being possible to shoot without line of sight is a bit annoying too, more so since visually the arrows are even fired through portals. I can work with this though. Heroic Command lacks a use when outside of combat (and without Kalla's Fervor), although one can give it 5 seconds of Swiftness by using the Rapid Flow trait (though any skill that uses Energy will provide that Swiftness every 5 seconds, for 5 seconds (and I use this for World vs. World I might add, where I mostly trigger it from repeated use of Unyielding Anguish to move around faster)). I wish it would at least do something without Kalla's Fervor stacks, and without requiring a trait. Perhaps there could still be some energy tuning done here and there too, but I personally aren't all too fuzzed about that right now. It's at least a big improvement already from how it were during the Demo weekends and stress tests.

Again, I want to see favorable improvements, it's not a perfect Elite Specialization, and Short Bow does drastically underperform when compared to Mace/Axe. But I still find it fun, and there are synergy in how it's presented. To say it doesn't have any synergy, just feels unfair. It simply needs some polishing. In the end, I can't necessarily say that I feel as if it's an, quote,
, unquote. The damage numbers just aren't quite there for that statement to hold true to me. It's also hard to properly support your allies when the allies you bring to the field are so prone to dying from damage and being rendered useless from crowd control.

PS: For what it's worth, I find Citadel Bombardment to be absolutely amazing in World vs. World when fighting zergs, as it can hit up to 30 players untraited (45 when traited, though I prefer Righteous Rebel for the additional- and extended range on Alacrity, together with the almost crucial Condition Damage reduction). Aside from that the Short Bow is also pretty amazing at tagging, without it feeling as if it doesn't contribute anything. Sevenshot with piercing arrows obviously hits a great deal of players as well. Razorclaw's Rage is not so bad when used on your ranged backline either. What I'm getting at, is that it's not terrible for WvW (in a zerg environment).

PPS: For those interested, the damage dealt by the combo in the clip were a total of 69920 over the span of aprox. 11 seconds. Roughly 6356 damage per second although in fairness nothing was done to try keep the damage going beyond the initial three skills, no nourishment is used and there are no auto-attacks to supplement the damage. It took aprox. 3 seconds to fire the three skills. It only took about 4 seconds to reach 43392 damage, putting it at an somewhat impressive burst of 10848 damage per second at that point. Unfortunately, while the numbers do somehow seem big and impressive, it's not enough to contend with Mace/Axe.

To piggy back off this, they should make each summon have a field specific to them. An ice field on Icerazor would be great for sevenshot and shortbow, or echoing eruption. A water field on breakrazor would be amazing for echoing eruption. A smoke field would be unique and thematic and give renegade interesting potential access to stealth. A change like this plus a little stability on the summons would go a long way to making Renegade way better.

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@Hooglese.4860 said:Tempest is probably the worst. Renegade probably needs buffs, well not probably, definitely. All the points OP made are well founded and need addressing. I've also said similar things before. It's a poorly thought out spec. Of this iteration of specs it's definetly the worst, cause it's much less thought through than the rest but this iteration was pretty good. All the specs, except renegade, are really well done and it makes renegade the runt of the litter.

What people have said in defense of Renegade is the most important thing: it's fun. It makes Herald look like a game of monopoly. It may be weaker but that can be adjusted. They could tone up f1 and f2 and change f3 with some trait changes and buffs to Kalla and fixes to SB, but at least there's stuff to do when playing it and different ways to play it. Power is good with it, bunker/support is possibly broken with it (PvE) and condi has a lot of damage, and you have to actually manage your energy.

Now I'm going to rip on Tempest, the real worst elite spec...

  • Warhorn is both a lame weapon option in function, flare and fun. No builds use it, it's just a weaker focus. There are almost no good skins for it, and the abilities look underwhelming. It's also boring, making fields that go forward and conditional support skills aren't fun to use. Shortbow at least has a purpose and does something Revenant doesn't do.
  • Overloads are bored. They have a 4s cast time and you're always going to use them, slowing down the flow of the game. They don't work with any skill but they provide AoE auras, fields and strong effects while stunbreaking (which ele has few of). At least our f abilities are quick to instant and combo with other skills we have.
  • Shouts may be the laziest skills. Tempest shouts just give auras. As uncreative as some Renegade skills are, they are at least each skill have to be described rather than being able to sum them up all of them in two words (give aura).
  • Bad ideas, good execution All of tempests design is around halting gameplay. Why in any game would you want to stop playing the game?! The worst part is that it's strong. You do very little and have a huge impact.
  • It made Elementalist not Elementalist The devs were really devoted to making one of the fastest, most complex classes in the game to be the slowest and simplest ones. D/D ele, while was too strong, did have a lot of complexities to it and you had to chain skills correctly to do it properly. Tempest skills are all focused around making Elementalist easier to use and removed the benefits of skill chaining. You can chain for higher effect but it's less noticeable. What ele was, was an all-rounder that required planning and skill chaining. Tempest made it a boring skill spammer.

It's bad what we got, but it can be fixed and it doesn't ruin what we still have. Tempest ruined elementalist, Renegade didn't ruin Revenant. The play style of Renegade is pretty much the same as core Revenant.

TL;DR We can rebuild it, better and stronger. Tempest can't be rebuild 1/10 bad spec.

Railing on the tempest is pretty off topic, but I couldn't disagree more with your conclusions about tempest. Besides being one of the most functional elite specs in the game, it's also an enjoyable variation of the base class. That's the whole point of an elite spec imho - to be an effective and enjoyable variation. They work best when they synergize with the other trait lines and open up build opportunities. Tempest is actually a great example of an elite spec that you can run with virtually every other trait line and be effective.

Renegade, however, really locks you into one playstyle and i'm not even sure it does that very well. It's easily the most discombobulated elite spec in the game atm. A mid range weapon with aoe utility skills and wtf are those F skills? The only way to fix the spec is to rethink a lot of it, and that's never going to happen. When the most effective way to play the new elite spec is to not even use the legend...you might have a problem.

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@Set.7461 said:I don't. It's is a hard skill to land. Using Soulcleave is already a huge upkeep investment. Why doesn't it reward you after this setup? There's lots of "anti-synergy" with Renegade. Icerazor not having chill. Soulcleave not affecting the summons. Imagine combo-ing Soulcleave with Icerazor. The anti-synergy with Soulcleave + Sevenshot? Can't say I'm surprised at this point.

I wouldn't call Soulcleave's Summit a huge investment. It loses you 14 Energy to trigger the Combo Field: Fire effect and toggling it off. Subsequently it wouldn't cost any more if it were to work with the Life Siphon Damage and Sevenshot. We can perhaps argue that landing the seven arrows, for in my case an additional 3185 damage, would not necessarily be all too broken. But each arrow do also have a chance to apply more Burn and Torment, and Sevenshot does a respective enough 6.5k damage in the following clip. There is some balance there. Also don't forget that there is some healing gained from Soulcleave's Summit, and we do have Unyielding Anguish to provide additional chances to regain even more health besides our two heals. From a balance perspective which also extends to PvP, I can actually see why Sevenshot does not work with Soulcleave's Summit. Even if it is a hard skill to land. As I wrote in my previous response, practice certainly helps with leading shots.

As for Icerazor's Ire having no Chill. Are you proposing (like others have a number of times) that it should have the potential to output a guaranteed 20 stacks of Torment when facing single targets, on top of the Torment it can already produce from Rampant Vex triggering? Keep in mind that all our summons are extensions of us. Things that trigger on (Critical) Hit applies to our spirits as well. In the following clip it, e.g., triggers my Superior Sigil of Earth every chance it can with its 2 second ICD and Rampant Vex 13 times. Renegade has been blessed with an incredibly easy time maintaining 100% Critical Chance, which I absolutely adore.

Soulcleave's Summit does also technically work with our summons, as they are as aforementioned, extensions of us. It simply does not work with Icerazor's Ire the same way it doesn't work with Sevenshot, since that would be 20 hits triggering it in a very short period of time. Again, I can see the balance there from the points I tried to make above. It does however, works with Darkrazor's Daring as can be seen in the following clip.

But sure, I can certainly imagine comboing Soulcleave's Summit with Icerazor's Ire (with it having Chill instead of Cripple), providing the potential for a whopping 8200 physical damage + 70455 Torment damage (20 guaranteed stacks from it doing Chill and triggering Abyssal Chill, plus let's say 13 stacks from Rampant Vex like in the clip above, over the course of 7 seconds – on a stationary target) + 9100 Life Siphon Damage + 6150 Poison damage (2 stacks from Venom Enhancement over the course of 10 seconds) + 9360 Bleed damage (3 stacks from Superior Sigil of Earth triggering 3 times over the course of 10 seconds) + healing, while using the setup in the videos above. Certainly seems balanced. Get on it, ArenaNet! If it's not obvious, I think ArenaNet has actually considered these things and I find it a bit ridiculous when players are suggesting what might be seen as over the top things without seemingly understanding what they have in the first place.

Regardless of all that's been written in my responses, even if it may seem as if all I do is defend the Elite Specialization, I actually do want to see improvements to the Elite Specialization as a whole. It is not perfect, and does definitely need some work. I've written it before, but it bears repeating; Short Bow especially suffers somewhat and lags far behind the Mace/Axe damage potential. Our new utilities has some really frustrating and I'd venture towards saying game breaking issues as well, with the "No valid path to target" popping up frequently in the dumbest situations and them being so prone to being disabled. Hopefully things will improve soon. In the right places.

PS: Again, in relation to Icerazor's Ire and Chill. People often cite that the spirit is named Icerazor, as if that means it automatically must have Chill. Ever heard of experiencing a crippling cold? The Cripple condition suits it just fine. It doesn't have to use Chill to make sense. It becomes so cold that our foes struggle to move.

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@Absconditus.6804 said:As for Icerazor's Ire having no Chill. Are you proposing (like others have a number of times) that it should have the potential to output a guaranteed 20 stacks of Torment when facing single targets, on top of the Torment it can already produce from Rampant Vex triggering? Keep in mind that all our summons are extensions of us. Things that trigger on (Critical) Hit applies to our spirits as well. In the following clip it, e.g., triggers my Superior Sigil of Earth every chance it can with its 2 second ICD and Rampant Vex 13 times. Renegade has been blessed with an incredibly easy time maintaining 100% Critical Chance, which I absolutely adore.

If 20 is too much then lower the number of hits, it is in the name ICErazor yet it doesn't have anything to do with ice or chill which makes it seem like a last second nerf to tone it down with no thought about the flavor of the skill.

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Wow, I read this thread after frustrating myself trying to get the HPs for a Renegade. That HP which is a giant that constantly CCs? My poor ghosties. Constantly CCed and pushed away from the boss.

Who programed this and thought it was a good idea? Wells that can be CCed and knocked out of the way? As if it wasn't bad enough trying to land them with a mobile target!

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@Kanto.1659 said:Wow, I read this thread after frustrating myself trying to get the HPs for a Renegade. That HP which is a giant that constantly CCs? My poor ghosties. Constantly CCed and pushed away from the boss.

Who programed this and thought it was a good idea? Wells that can be CCed and knocked out of the way? As if it wasn't bad enough trying to land them with a mobile target!

The one in the corrupted area at the East of the Desert Highlands map? Didn't notice that was able to konockback with Herald because He was the one cced to death, and with the Renegade He died too fast. But caught me by surprise with another character and was forced to restart the fight 3-4 times. The Hero Points in PoF which involves fights are WAY easy than the ones in HoT. Just use axe #5, mace #2, #3, UA, swap to short bow #5, #4, #3 and is dead...

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