SDAKendall.6574

What about this as a solution... If you have 5 blades, every additional blade you overcap reduces the cooldown on Bladestorms by 1s. This would fix both the cooldown problem as well as the "overcapping blades is easy and useless" problem. Also, I agree. Bladestorms should be like the Shade abilities and have no cast time or restrictions on use. Being able to use them while doing other things would help bring Virtuoso DPS up to competitive levels and just make the whole spec play a lot smoother. I think that those two changes would go a LONG way.

So I get that Virtuoso has a theme... Cutting things with psychic energy. And to reinforce that, they made key traits only proc off of "Blade" skills. Ok, cool... but I feel like they could easily tag some skills from other weapons as "Blade" skills too. All Sword skills. The skills definitely imply that you are wrapping your sword in psychic energy, not just hitting with the blade. Greatsword 2-5. Skill 1 is a beam, not a cutting strike. All Spear Skills. Same as Sword and lets the traits work underwater. I feel like this would give Virtuoso some more flexibility in which weapons they could reasonably use while still adhering to the theme, ESPECIALLY condition Virtuoso who uses Jagged Mind as the linchpin that holds the entire build together. Or they could just make the traits apply to all skills, not just blade skills. That would be cool too... but again, I get the theme they want to have here. It would just be nice if "Blade" skills included the blade skills that Mesmer has already had for the last decade.

That's exactly what this is. There was no hard cap and it was causing issues. Now the hard cap is 750%.

Renegade is part of Revenant though and in my post I only talked about a single trait from the renegade tree, one that if you are using core (and replacing with Retribution) you have MUCH better tools to replace it with and what I said above still stands. If you are using Herald you gain additional condition cleanse on your shield skills. I am not telling anyone to switch, I just wrote it from my viewpoint as the flavor of Revenant I am most familiar with. I agree that Herald has it the hardest out of the three though. The way I see it Core has it easiest, then Renegade, then Herald. Any Revenant can get a permanent 33% Condition Damage Reduction through Retribution, and Condition builds can get an easy 5 (3 for Power) Cleanses per 10 seconds with use of the Sigil. Core can fit the Retribution traitline easier than the other two though which is why I feel like it has it easiest when dealing with conditions. Using Jalis isn't mandatory, but it DOES help with managing conditions substantially if someone is having trouble with that.

I personally do not seem to have any issues with conditions as a Condition Renegade; at least any more than I would deem reasonable. Permeating Pestilence punishes people who put conditions on you and cleanses you 2 every 10 seconds. Sigil of Cleansing if you need 3 more than that. You don't really NEED a whole lot more straight up removal because of the crazy condition damage reduction you can get. As Renegade you can have a permanent 20% from Righteous Rebel and a lot elsewhere depending on your legend/trait picks. I am going to assume Mallyx and Jalis for Legends. Invocation and Corruption for Traits. If in Jalis you can get an extra 5 cleanses from your heal skill in addition to 33% reduction in damage for the ones the remain. 20% reduction from hammers. You should just be laughing at condition damage in Jalis (20% x 20% x 33% = 57% Condition Damage Reduction). If in Mallyx it isn't AS good with Pain Absorption only giving you the 33% for a total of 46% Condition Damage Reduction, however the heal skill scales up in effectiveness with more conditions on you so it sorta helps compensate somewhat. Now... those should be good enough... but if you really want more and are willing to give up damage for it (like everyone has to if they want to get more than baseline class defenses) you can trade Invocation for Retribution and HO BOY can you shrug them off. You get on demand resolution with Spiritual Resolution and/or Resolute Evasion. Then you can choose to recoup some of the lost damage with Vicious Reprisal (and also make your resolution buff effectively permanent) or pick Versed in Stone and have a reactive 50% ALL damage reduction once you hit half life and buff the active Great Dwarf skill to do the same. You also gain other fringe defenses for making the switch so you get a LOT sturdier if you feel you need to. Renegade wasn't designed to purge conditions as a primary defense like all the other classes, it was meant to shrug them off with excessive amounts of damage reduction and the occasional cleanse to stop the stacks from getting too high.