lunaeclipse.6843

I am unhappy with the weapon as a whole. The weapon as a whole is really only good at one thing: barrier. To me, this really makes the weapon feel really one-dimensional. I like the gimmick of the weapon with the auto attacks 'powering up' but in practice is often really difficult to use as there are often better skills that are needed when simultaneously would also be ideal to use the weapon's mechanics. It also seems like its trying to be a hybrid weapon, but I find its offensive side is incredibly lacking. Changes I would like to see: target cap increases on Skills 2 and 3. Skill 2 in its current design already makes sense to damage enemies in AoE (perhaps adding a secondary strike-damage based Dot on affected enemies if you reach 6 stacks before detonation). Skill 3 should increase damage to all targets struck, not just the tethered target. The pull should remain single target. Add ally condition cleanse in some form to the weapon's kit. In my opinion, Sceptre lacks a real identity or reason to use it over Mace especially when considering the Karakosa relic. When used as a support weapon, mace offers a ton of flexibility: 6 blast finishers for a huge amount of utility, a fire field for on demand might blast, and burst healing if you take Karakosa Relic to be able to support while using non-healing legends (i.e. dwarf for stability). Conversely, Sceptre can only do one thing, although it does it well, which is barrier. I dont have much to say about the Auto attack chain, I like it personally. The only thing it leaves me wishing I could use it on allies. This would allow for barrier and might pre stacking before an encounter in PvE or before a push in WvW. All in all, in it's current iteration I think this weapon 'works' in controllable environments such as Instanced PvE. However in other game modes like WvW it leaves a lot to be desired. Additionally, with its offensive capabilities being lackluster alongside its almost entire focus around barrier, it makes the weapon almost exclusively useful for pure support builds, leaving it overall feeling one-dimensional.

Herald already can not maintain permanent alacrity. Wont happen. + you have to give up jalis stability, which heal mech does not have to trade off for.

While mostly competitive, the last balance patch brought things that shows what they seem to be looking at. I would expect to see probably a few changes to vindicator. As stupid as it is, I wouldn't be surprise to see them make the PvE version of GS5 match the PvP one. That said, they've also mentioned wanting to make more tradition dps builds generate group might and fury. I wouldn't be surprised to see vindicator get some of this boon share. I would worry however that this would hurt Herald. Right now though, DPS Vindicator really offers nothing other than damage, and some stab if you run jalis, so personally i think it may be a contender for getting some of that mentioned might/fury. I would also expect to see more changes, probably nerfs, for renegade. I feel like they really want to push renegade into the role of forcing you to be an alacrity bot. I'm hoping that Herald will get the ability to actually generate 25 might on its DPS build though. That could really open it up to fit into groups well i think, especially if you want to run something like a heal scourge (or any full healer that doesn't have much boon gen, like staff tempest). Especially so with warrior getting quickness and ranger getting alacrity, we might see a lot more dps boon builds, and 25 might/fury/swift/prot on a dps build would be nice.

good changes. I thought march 29th patch was gonna be a more wvw focused balance pass though

Base stats were halved, Scaling was doubled. Should in theory be no loss for a full support build.

Anet please, ET and TC were already linked.

They hotfixed the game. see this forum

Rework the Urn of Saint Viktor. As is stands even after the second beta, I still can't find a good use for it. The health threshold mechanic doesn't work well in my opinion. Instead, I'd suggest following the concept used for the rework of Spectre's Shadow Shroud. The idea of the Urn is an extreme defensive stance for your allies at the cost of yourself. So, make it so that while channelling the Urn, you still cant be healed and still heal allies, but you gain a stack of a buff every second instead of deteriorating your health. Every Stack threshold pulses additional boons to allies every second. Dropping the Urn Gives additional boons based on Stack thresholds and consumes all stacks. 1) Protection (1s) 3) Stability (1stack) (1s) 5) Resistance (1s) Dropping the Urn: 1) Protection (3s) 3) Stability (4 stacks) (5s) 5) Resistance (5s) This type of mechanic will instead reward for upkeeping the Urn and utilizing its defensive aspect instead of spamming it as a clutch heal at low health (which doesn't really work as the 1s channel will get you killed before you get the effect when you're that low on health). It also doesn't hurt to give more classes access to AoE stability instead of guardian dominating stability access as it has since release.

Honestly, originally i thought the skill flipping was fine. After playing it without the skill flipping, please don't bring it back.

Yeah, that's not a vindicator problem though, thats a Willbender problem, and not the point of the thread. No one's saying Willbender isn't underpowered, but don't try and use that as reasoning to say Vindicator is OP.

11k hp full glass walking straight into a highly telegraphed, fully buffed burst without using any active mitigation, or even the heal skill (which would've blocked all the attacks). I have no idea what you expected.

If anet want to make saint Viktor a viable support, they should combine the heal dodge and boon dodge. It would make it the only support that can give decent boon output and barrier. Scourge can give a lot of barrier, but its boon output is crap. Every other support can give good healing and boons. This would be the only spec that can do both. I dont think it needs quickness/alacrity and we already have stability/projectile hate/boonrip from other legends. It could work.

Thats actually a pretty neat idea. Although combo fields aren't utilized all that much nowadays, it'd be a neat addition to the spec. That said, I don't think giving rev in general stealth is a good idea, especially for pvp. Core rev already has some good burst on sword 4-5 and doing that from stealth...i dont think that would be fun to play against. Spear of Archemorus should honestly have a 3-4s Knockdown on it though.

Design wise It feels a lot better, for all game modes. The ability to have kurzick skills/luxon skills on demand is nice and actually feels a lot more fluid to me. WvW: Gs5 I'm starting to notice isn't landing as much as i'd like it to. I believe the explosion time may be a tad too long and players are simply walking out of it, unintenionally. I'm not really sure how to balance this though. I've noticed that in the unfortunate circumstances where a player gets singled out, they'll get hit with all 5 guarenteed hits for like 16k+, but with more targets it seems to miss a lot. I think the best solution may be to simply reduce the explosion timer. On GS skills, I'm noticing the majority of my damage is still from hammer. That isn't to say vindicator isn't adding to a lot of my damage through leviation Strength, Death Drop, and the 240 power minor trait, but i'm still finding i'm really competing in damage with other specs like reaper and DH. Asmall buff to dps by reducing the cooldowns of GS skills could go a long way as the damage numbers i am seeing seem fine, but i can't use them often enough. PvE: On the PvE side, The rotation feels really good. Again, the numbers are still a little low but the rotation has actual burst and isn't super dependent on Hitbox size (with the exception on GS5 but I'm going to come back to that). The rotation is very, very reminiscent of the old 4-loop condi renegade rotation which is super super hype for me. Again, Gs5 is a slight problem, but mostly a number tweak. I'm noticing in a full berserker build fully buffed, i'm doing less damage on GS5 than a DH gs2 with the same buffs. I dont think changing the hitcount would be good, just upping the coefficient. I can't comment on PvP as i dont play it.

what's actually going to matter is what the peak dps is. Now that the dps boost from dodging isn't locked to a 3s animation (likely to be 1s now) and the damage from landing is increased, the peak dps should be much higher. In realistic scenarios, that peak dps will be what matters for whether the changes will make vindicator competitive or not. I think its really being under estimated how much dps that dodge was draining. 3s of absolutely no damage is absolutely devastating to overall dps even if it is technically a dps increase.