[Impossible to complete 'Oblige Obscure' Achievement for the Amnytas Mastery ?]

Alright so after 3 days I found how it works, it is the Livia chain that starts with the relics, into the platforms. And apparently if you wait with her after the platforms, in another Bastion where you end up, the next event counts towards that one... 

[Impossible to complete 'Oblige Obscure' Achievement for the Amnytas Mastery ?]

So I have been running around for 2 days straight now in the Bastion of the Obscure to find the 'Defeat the Kryptis Boss' event to complete the 'Oblige Obscure' Achievement without success. I've done every possible event there and ran around everywhere. Am I this blind or is this some kind of special event that needs to be triggered? Or does the event just not exist, or maybe I just don't get credit for completing it? What event is this? 
 

[07/18/2023—July 18 Balance Changes]

10 hours ago, emtea.6931 said:

kinda feels like the deadeye nerf was workshopped in a meeting.. 

balance lead: "ok you four, I want each of you to give me 1 idea on how to tone down deadeye."
dev 1: "we could nerf one in the chamber?"
dev 2: "or how about we tone down premeditation?"
dev 3: "what about reducing iron sight?"
dev 4: "shadow flare/swap could be reduced... " 
balance lead: "great, love it all, do all those things will you.. next on the agenda, give me some ideas on how to buff quick herald!" 

except this implies that there was 5 people thinking about balance..

Yeah was thinking the same. Their ideas of buffing and nerfing things is basically, less numbers, more numbers, less numbers, more numbers. Instead of looking at traits and separating boon supports from dps builds etc. it feels like they open snowcrows, tune down numbers of top performing classes on golem and increase numbers on worst performing classes. Or just take the ideas of top performing classes and force it on the others. 

Like I don't get why they nerfed DE in the first place, have they let 1 person actually play it in content because I was pulling nearly 40k on a golem but in actual raids and strikes I never even came close to that and I always outperformed it with my harbinger due to range advantage I guess 😛. And I actually really enjoyed playing thief for once ... 

[07/18/2023—July 18 Balance Changes]

47 minutes ago, lvis.3824 said:

So, what is left now ?
Just when it made fun again to play specter or deadeye again they must nerf us again. It's so frustrating everytime, makes me want to reroll or quite everytime 😞

'What is left now'; Lowkey underrated statement. Every time something kind of works and fits in decently, they just change the whole thing 360° to make it more clunky and worse. They really want all parties to consists of (h)am and q(h)fb only don't they 😛, because that's always what's left ... 

[The Quickness Herald Rework did not achieve what it set out to do - and how to actually solve it]

I thought about the herald situation a lot too and your solution is actually a really good starting idea compared to what we have now, because no matter how much I try to make upkeep work, I keep finding the pre-patch 'spam' herald version just a lot better and less clunky. Most players didn't mind the spamming anyway and with a bit of over-capping on concentration you didn't have to spam anyway after like 2 rotations. The upkeep now just does not feel right imo, Anet tried, experiment failed, be the bigger person and revert the patch until you have a manageable solution AND THAN TRY IT OUT IN A BETA FIRST so you don't have to scroll over the rev forum and see 25 pages on how herald is clunky and is worse off to last its last version when compared.

[07/18/2023—July 18 Balance Changes]

Why did they even nerf (quickness) deadeye this hard 😮 I mean from the moment you had to do mechanics or when there are multiple targets the damage dropped insanely anyway ... They really just look at the golem dps don't they ... (I mean sure it did massive numbers, but so does everything else??)

I actually enjoyed playing it a lot now as I found a new quickness provider because they gutted herald playstyle for me. Guess I'll have to find another class again ... 

[quickness herald upkeep change]

2 hours ago, Polar.8634 said:

there is no reason for anything to not be tied to energy in energy based class. Some class depends on energy like thief, some on cooldowns like ele, rev depends on both, why would some two boons be out of this. there are classes out there which work different from rev, but rev should not copy them imo.

Thiefs, for quickness and alac do not depend on initiative, and it works really well imo right now, making at a well designed change for them as you can still use your weapon skills efficiently (maybe it's only concern rn is it doing a bit too much damage for a boonclass atm?, but that is just a number issue and it's not thatttt insane high as it is mostly single target anyway). I changed playing to quickness deadeye from herald ...

So basically all classes depends on cooldowns and boon duration, and revenant before this patch did as well as well. So now revenant is I think the only class that does not depend on cooldowns, but on its upkeep mechanic. I don't need to be 'unique' if the trade-off is suffering from boredom and clunky-ness.

With this patch I think they wanted to make all classes do the same anyway with forcing quick and alac on everyone, so why make herald different for no real reason without testing it? I like to use my energy to actually press buttons and do stuff instead of mostly auto attacking to preserve energy to I can actually build buffer. I'd rather spam stuff to build a buffer so I get to do things all the time, instead of doing nothing for the first 2 min of a fight so I can end a fight with some sword 4- and 5's. Meaningless to explain how healherald suffers even more from that 😛. So no, quickness should not be tied to the energy as you want people to actually press some buttons and have fun. Maybe if they make weapons cost no energy they can fix that problem, but that would just take away more from the rev identity. All of this just makes me conclude the same every time: give us at least the option in the traitline so we can choose how we want the uptime, and i'm pretty sure a lot more player are going to play herald again. 

___

11 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think the logic behind it is getting rid of the 'you spam all your utility skills' playstyle. For most of the professions that were doing this, this significantly hampered your build flexibility, since having to take a full or near-full bar of wells, spirits, gyros, or whatever could hinder your ability to adapt your build to deal with the specific situations you're going to face by taking other utility skills. 

Problem was, herald wasn't like other professions in that respect. It didn't matter if you were spamming all your facets, since the way you adapted to the encounter was usually switching to another legend - Shiro for power damage or teleports, Jalis for stability or damage reduction, Ventari for bubble or heals, Mallyx for boonstrip or condi damage. You could spam your facets, but then it's only half your utility bar, and you can then switch to the other half and do whatever you wanted to do with that once you have ~10s of quickness banked up. Rather than being the equivalent of being the scrapper with a full set of gyros, old quickherald was more like firebrand where roughly half of the bar is devoted to quickness (directly or through being there to trigger traits), but the other half was open to be filled with other things.

The change, ironically, pushes quickherald more into the problem that the other professions had. Instead of only one legend being about quickness and the other being open to be used for something else, now both are part of the quickness engine. Now, that's fine if what you get from the upkeep skill (damage from Shiro, condi damage from Mallyx, bubble from Ventari - nobody's going to take Jalis specifically for hammers in group content outside of some niche tank build since it's selfish and lower DPS than Shiro) is what you want anyway, but that's like saying that old quickscrapper was fine as long as those gyros happened to be bringing something you'd have wanted anyway: what if it's not? If you wanted the other legend for something other than the upkeep skill, than whatever skill you brought it for is now competing for energy with your quickness engine. The change looks like it's the same sort of change that the others had, but it has the reverse effect: making it harder to flex into a variety of sub-roles.

Well said. I totally agree

[quickness herald upkeep change]

40 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

It does amuse me that apologists for new quickherald justify it with 'but you can build up a buffer so you don't always have to be at 6 pips' despite it being just as possible to do that with old quickherald too so you can keep some facets in reserve.

Although I do have to admit to finding a good use for new quickherald - the convenient quickness access makes it great for home instance and guild hall farming.

Yeah, spot on. Idk the change for me is just a change for the sake of changing it. It doesn't really improve anything so why change in the first place. It feels like not a lot of thought was put into it. You face same problems and they added some more ... 😛 

[quickness herald upkeep change]

31 minutes ago, Polar.8634 said:

Upkeep is core rev mechanic, all the builds work around it why heal herald should not. Specifically herald legend does not have any skill with energy cost, only upkeep, so there is no way to spend energy in other way. I would like to be able to drain energy in glint, so that I can trigger trait for more energy in Ventary , for said reactive gameplay.

Before quickness change, heal herald would have full energy and all facets on cooldown at all times.

The only thing I miss in current herald is might gen, but there is fix coming hope it works.

I meant upkeep is bad mechanic for quickness uptime. Its weird and doesn't make sense as it contradicts what you want from a boonsupport. It feels like it attacks its own uptime. Ofcourse upkeep is a rev mechanic. But quickness should not be tied to it, nor should alac, it makes you fight your own character. Idk, rework Glint energy cost or at least give rev people a choice how they want to apply quickness, but this just doesn't feel like you are in control over your legends and that's not the identity for rev for me. 

[quickness herald upkeep change]

On 7/12/2023 at 12:21 AM, Polar.8634 said:

It would be nerf to any possible use of f2 for the sake of quickdps build. Any upkeep less than 6 would be strange on legends other than glint.

I find upkeep requirement ok as it is, and it should become good after mini patch with 1 sec interval and buff to might gen. 

Comparing to previous play style(rotation) nothing changed much except for now quick build has heal and stun break skills on demand which is improvement. 

Only thing I am confused about is that quick ess application was put into healing trait, and quickdps needs to take it .

Nah upkeep is just a very bad mechanic in general (EDIT, to avoid confusion: a bad mechanic for uptime of boons such as quickness, as obviously upkeep is inherent to rev) as it drain your energy bar. Objectively it does not make any sense to force quickness on upkeep as by default:

- it makes reactivity worse (less energy to work with and there is a forced switch at some point) 

- it makes alacrity on the class useless? They force quickness and alac on every class, but with this change alac does literally 0 things for herald. Qdps can spam more abilities, which shorten its energy bar, which makes quickness uptime worse? Or it makes that you can't press your attack abilities? Like if you think about it, it makes no sense. You have buttons you can't press? Healherald has the same problem but even more because it heavily relies on its reactivity so the more you use your utilities and weapon abilities, the worse you uptime is? I really don't get how you would design it like that. It makes no sense for me. 

- it makes it worse than any other quickness class in tight situations because you can't spam your quickness and switch to useful stuff for incoming mechanics because if you have no buffer stacked, it forces you to stay on glint, making it less flexible in the end as well. 

Also I would say in previous patch you had to indeed spam stuff and didn't always have heal and stunbreak up, but if you managed concentration right you always had buffer to work with so that you could keep uptime with only 3 glint skills, which made it that you could hold on to stunbreak, heal or cc in cases you knew it was coming. So it really is the same outcome. Now you are energy starved at some point which make you unable to use stuff, and back than u had more cd's but at least alac was useful on it. So I would not say it's an improvement on this part. It's a status quo. 

Furtermore you are right about quickness and healing imo, as they are put in one trait. Healing should be on ventari anyway. That would mean that you could play healherald through ventari and glint, and qdps herald through glint and shiro/jalis. However, as it is now, the herald before the patch made way more sense and allowed both playstyles to shine a lot more. I feel like if they want to force the upkeep quickness mechanic you almost have to make the legend swap cd disappear in order to restore a manageable reactivity for the average player (which includes me) that plays for fun and not counts every energy cost etc. every sec. 

In conclusion for me, revert the upkeep, it makes no sense and if you plan on doing this anet, do it in a beta format as with the weapons. I literally barely see any heralds anymore and I stopped playing it as well as it just does not feel smooth anymore, especially healing which I loved. And its mostly just because of this upkeep mechanic, like it makes you not use utilities which I find really weird, it so much more natural to work with energy costs while you can actually press stuff. And for some legends like ventari it is just a bad design, the bubble, really ... 

[quickness herald upkeep change]

On 7/3/2023 at 12:38 AM, DeathPanel.8362 said:

That would make QDPS Rev too op of an option.  The trade-off intended is that you're going to be energy starved if you want to maintain Quickness.

Because literally all the other quickness classes have to make a similar trade-off? Herald isn't even close to top in DPS regarding quickness, and it's also not better boonswise than for instance a firebrand. So this trade-off is just a bit stupid ... This just forces you off glint because Anet read one comment about 'glint camping' and had no better solution 😛 So now they made herald very clunky and kinda killed healherald. Rev was never too op and as long as there will be this weird upkeep mechanic it will not be op. The only thing that they can do is powercreep tf out of it so that youre an auto attacking god. Which playstyle-wise is still a huge L. 

[Quickherald/ Quickhealherald changes..]

18 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

 

My entire argument thus far has been that no, the class has not become more clunky.  As I've said many times, if you drop the imposition to maximize damage, then you drop all constraints on flexibility.  You just dismissed an authority on the matter greater than yourself, only because it contradicted what you've said.  You are just projecting your claims of dissatisfaction onto Heralds.  The funny thing about heralds is that I rarely saw them even before the June update.  This is because their damage was inferior to the other two specs, their given role of quickness was inferior to what Guard/Ele/ Engi already did, and the legend/traits/shield had no unique abilities that couldn't be fulfilled by other specs or other professions.  

I don't know which content you do a lot or with which goal but qdps herald was probably one of the qdps builds I saw the most paired with a ham (together with firebrand). And it had nothing to do with dps but with it providing boons/utility that most other qdps specs can't provide such as stab or even a reflect on like adina. So I assume you run content with max efficiency, which is something not a lot of people do. So a 5k damage diff (i dunno exact numbers im not into that) is not really that important for most as they don't get the snowcrows numbers anyway 😉 

18 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

You are outright contradicting yourself now:

Yes you did:

Not really, you just misread it again after me explaining it. Ventari is the best burstheal to follow up on glint. 3rd time now, Unless you think that is a wrong statement? But anyway I still don't see what this has to do with the discussion. The argument I was trying to make with this was that there was a reactivity downgrade (in a patch aimed to help herald, which obviously makes no sense). 

18 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

This is disingenuous.  Following this standard, Rev became an auto attack bot after all of the using all of the facets because you had to wait for their cooldowns.  Your definition of "auto attack bot" seems to be "I had to use auto attacks for any reason for any length of time," which is why it contradicts with everything you've said so far.  I could play this game, too.  "The previous Quick Herald was a Glint Bot.  The spec was boring because all you did was camp Glint"  There.

Not really, because you had full energy and you could literally do every ability on the weapon-set you wanted, but also switch to the other legend and do whatever utility you wanted because you had quickness stacked from glint. So on the contrary, now you are more of an auto attacking bot as you have 1 whole legend less and you have overall less energy to work with. So I don't see how i'm contradicting in any way. Its very clear? How can you argue you don't have less energy to spend? You literally drain Glint which you didn't before? I see you on the 'previously Quickherald was a Glint bot'. BUT IT STILL IS. So the changes didn't change anything because you still need glint and you can still somewhat camp it if you want. If you don't take Glint you're basically trolling or selfish. Before the change, exactly the same. Only difference now is that they actually force you to change legends instead of giving you a choice? So it's objectively LESS flexible. But I do indeed understand that you don't like that, but I addressed Glint being far superior as a problem in my statement. Which is something they did nothing about in the patch. (if you see this anet, buff ventari boons)

18 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I've already addressed those "problems' multiple times now.  Just admit the motivated reasoning already.  You're posting all this here out of a preference in style, and now out of any sort of problem.  You conjured up all of these reasons as a means to service this preference first, and not as the actual reasons why you don't like these changes.  That's why it is that, when pressed, everything is inconsistent and doesn't make sense. 

YES AND NO. I concluded earlier:

On 7/2/2023 at 7:30 PM, Ekko.9854 said:

So overall summary: Most problems that existed (e.g. weapon variety, glint>other legends, etc.) were not touched, the patch created more problems and the patch made healherald do a houdini (aka dissappear). The only thing that got tackled is that it's less spamming. So it's safe to say that the changes didn't really achieve a lot, which is why I would argue that it's just better to revert the changes OR make it that you can choose how the uptime works in the traitline so that you can atleast choose for yourself what you find best WHILE also making healherald a viable option again because I don't see why you would try to kill it? 

That's why I suggested this, it makes both groups happy again. You just change last 3 traits a bit and it's fixed. The patch didn't achieve anything except for not spamming stuff. So why not make both groups happy and make it a trait you can give quickness on other legends through upkeep. It means I can keep my preferred playstyle while working through the problems that herald still has and you can keep your preferred playstyle while working the problems. I think my take is very consistent, as I read a couple of times through it now. Summarized its: Herald has problems, anet didn't manage to even fix 1 important one in the patch, but while trying to fix them, they created a lot of other problems while killing healherald in the process. So instead of forcing people to play the class differently for no reason, at least give them a choice to do so. Which takes like the revamp of 3 traits ... Hard to argue with this no? You get your clunky playstyle and I get to keep mine together with a lot of people I know which would play herald again, and especially healherald because I have literally not seen one since the patch 😉

[Quickherald/ Quickhealherald changes..]

Also because all of the quoting, I'll quickly recap what I think the main problems are of this patch to make it more clear. 

1) Legend flexibility - There is not more flexibility imo

Qdps herald still goes shiro-glint, and other versions are just worse overall (less boons and everyone loves boons). For instance you can still take Jalis when you have to for certain fights but you will never start with it. So why do the changes here? Same outcome, except that now you are more forced into swapping than before. And I think forcing people to swap is never a good thing. You should be able to decide that as it is inherent to the class of rev to be in control over your legends (this last part is indeed a subjective opinion so I have no problem if you don't agree with that). 

Healherald still goes glint-ventari and sometimes Jalis, so idem. 

Conclusion: Nothing changed regarding legend flexibility. Main reason why: All good boons are on Glint. 
Patch reflection: Changes were only there for the sake of changing as no problems were solved or tackled. 

2) Overall reactivity

Reactivity definitely dropped as objectively you have overall less energy to work with on both Q- and healherald. There is no arguing here. This dropped Healherald to a bottom tier healer as the class became a lot more clunky, and not being able to quickly spam a buffer of quickness also contributed to this. 

Conclusion: Patch made class overall a bit worse. 
Patch reflection: Bad change, creates a problem where there was none. 

3) Forced swapping

Qdps herald: There was already forced swapping as you want to stay in Shiro as long as possible for damage and than you had to swap back to Glint for quickness. However, you could always stay in Glint and use the swapping reactive when needed as things got heated (e.g. for a quick last sec staff swap for last bit of cc or condi clease).

Healherald: There was no forced swapping, Glint had everything you needed and you used swapping reactively all the time.

Conlusion: Patch took the problem of Qdps herald and instead of solving it, it kept the problem but spilled it to healherald as well
Patch reflection: Why would you do that? This makes no sense XD

4) Low energy more often makes you an auto attack bot (which makes the class more boring for me if you are a casual player that doesn't have the time to be a prefect snow crow imitator)

So for both Q- and healherald, you either have to be a lot better in managing energy or you have to constantly switch legends in order to do a lot of other abilities than the ones required. 

Conclusion: While it indeed seems that you made the class more daring for good revenants, you made the class more boring for the average player that just tries to survive most fights instead of being in a pitch perfect promo vid for a speedrun. Overall we can agree that you have less energy to work with, which I would state is a downgrade. But I guess that's subjective. 

Patch reflection: I mean for some people you gave them a new challenge I guess? I don't really see the upsides though. 

 

So overall summary: Most problems that existed (e.g. weapon variety, glint>other legends, etc.) were not touched, the patch created more problems and the patch made healherald do a houdini (aka dissappear). The only thing that got tackled is that it's less spamming. So it's safe to say that the changes didn't really achieve a lot, which is why I would argue that it's just better to revert the changes OR make it that you can choose how the uptime works in the traitline so that you can atleast choose for yourself what you find best WHILE also making healherald a viable option again because I don't see why you would try to kill it? 

[Quickherald/ Quickhealherald changes..]

10 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

This makes no sense.  Of course I assume heal herald runs stuff.  It is, quite literally, impossible to be a heal herald and not "run stuff."  I didn't pull any of this out of thin air, mind you.  Snowcrows has had a Heal Herald build for awhile now.  Though personally I prefer to run Invocation instead of Retribution, for Spirit Boon and Rolling Mists.  I also never said that heal heralds ran glint + reactive legend.  In fact, I said the opposite, right here:

Because your description seemed to alternate between heal herald, which runs glint/ventari, and boon herald, which runs Glint along with a filler legend depending on context.  

 

The other thing is that the two builds really don't have the same problem.  Boon herald already maintained upkeeps to maximize both boons and damage.  Every rotation video I saw for it and practiced myself initially stayed in glint to double-cast their activated facets, then immediately swapped to another legend (usually Shiro), flipped on their toggle, and stayed there until they could swap back.  This was done to maximize damage, which is essentially the same rotation that the new Qherald does now.  It dealt with handling mechanics and legend swapping the same way that the new Qherald does now.  

"Fun" is subjective.  I'm also not talking about being an insanely good player.  All my comparisons about the difficulties of Alacrigade and Condi rev serve to highlight a few points, and none of them are about my personal skill.  The points are that these complaints about the new QuickHerald being difficult and unfun are wholly inconsistent with how Rev is regarded with every other build that Rev is known for.  Objectively it isn't nearly as hard as the condi builds and the alac builds to play, and the actual playstyle of the build is nearly identical to how DPS Herald and DPS Vindicator play.  The assertion that the spec is an auto attack bot is without merit, and repeating that meritless claim over and over again changes nothing.  Deflecting this to be all about me also does not give merit.

 

Herald does have burst heals outside of Ventari.  They have Menders Rebuke, Renewing Wave, and Envoy of Exuberance.  Slam those three skills down, and with all of the modifiers you'll heal your teammates for 10k health as fast as you can push the buttons.  Of course, I'm not even sure that would be necessary, since Herald has immense passive healing.  

 

No, it matches perfectly.  Saving energy on the new build works the same way that it did for all of the other builds, which is by reducing weapon/utility usage to either delay the legend swap or retain enough energy to cast the skill in your current legend.  Really, I think the only part of the Draconic Echo build that was anomalous was all of the players that just camped Glint and refused to legend swap for damage.  

 

Boon duration didn't matter.  Getting the boons required double-tapping every single utility skill and f2, while triple-tapping one of them since it is ground-targeted, on top of everything else.  This means hitting those buttons twice as often as every other profession needed to, and most were on short cooldowns.  Your "experience" isn't worth much, considering you just told me that Herald has no burst heal outside of Ventari.  You are aware that, to obtain maximum damage, the new build still uses the actives of Facet of Strength and Facet of Elements?  Or is this "auto attack" bot claim applying strictly to the heal build?

Okay so this is exactly what I mean, and exactly what we don't need. Snowcrows is on a golem fyi and always tries to get the highest possible numbers. This is FAR from how fights go, especially for healers. All your arguments stem from 'if you play it optimally', 'if you optimize those numbers', 'if you maximize this or that'. No, it's just not about that. The class has become a lot more clunky and you know it. A lot of players play this game casually and have no time to learn how to maximize saving energy and upkeep perfectly, and have legendary gear to change boon duration numbers every 5 sec arenanet changes things for no good reason. Changes need to have a clear purpose and certainly not kill classes. Objectively there are a lot less heralds now, with good reason. These changes did nothing and only created more problems (which i"ve already addressed multiple times). I respect you for trying to explain that its still playable, and you I'm overreacting a bit with 'dead class' for healherald as ofcourse you could still play it, but before the change healherald was just a tier below QHFB, now its bottom tier for sure. 

So healherald:
- Yes healherald runs reactive legends as well? You didn't need ventari on every fight as for instance I always took Jalis at sloth? Glint heals are enough for most fights. So no, you're kinda wrong here, its not because snowcrows says take ventari its written in stone. The problem now is that the reactive legend, so jalis for stab most often en ventari for burstheal/cleanse, doesn't really complement the quickness uptime anymore because of the upkeep skills you don't really want to use on those legends. So you still camp glint. Nothing changed. So why change it in the first place? You will never go to other legends if they only provide the reactivity and no other boons, which glint does. 
- I never said ventari is the only burstheal? I said in certain situations like the vale guardian, ventari is the best follow up to the glint heals as you need a very hard burstheal on demand. I don't even know why your arguing about that, it's just how it is and has nothing to do with the patch? And it comes back to what I just said about reactivity. 

Qdps herald: 
- The playstyle is kinda the same, except for the fact that you have to press less buttons and run out of energy in glint as well. This makes it that, no matter what you say, you become an auto attack bot near the end of the energy, objectively making it generally more boring for most players. Most people never said it is harder, because it's basically the same. The change just feels like a change to change stuff for no apparent reason, there is no goal in this change as it doesn't address any of the problems which I have already explained numerous times now. Boons are on glint so there is not more flexibility, the other alternatives are just a worse version still. 

I mean you really can't ignore the fact that there are a lot less heralds in parties so the changes did have I negative impact I would say and those are mostly because they made reactivity harder for casual players. But also because you have to re-learn quickness uptime for no good reason as the changes solved nothing. 

[Quickherald/ Quickhealherald changes..]

36 minutes ago, RangerAUT.4692 said:

could you please stop with the alacrev comparisons? this post is about the quicknessherald. if you are unhappy with the alacrev being so much harder to play than the quickherald was, then just play alacmech (more alac uptime easy to play). But stop complaining that the energy management is so hard and don't compare apples with pears.

As you can see, most of the community doesn't agree with the changes. And want the devs to notice.

We complain that one of our favourite classes has been patched into an AFK alacmech bot that only casts a brainafk utility and does autoattacks.

Herald was a very good class, now that he is only scuffed to play, you see almost no Heralds in raids or strikes. The loss of felxible switching is also very noticeable in OLC CM, for example. There are no more Qheralds to ignite Rite of the Great Dwarf, which was a great support for many groups. Now I have already experienced many wipes because it is no longer possible to switch like that.

True that, I stopped playing herald completely. 

[Quickherald/ Quickhealherald changes..]

5 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

 

No.  I'm going to bet that your here to pick a fight..  I'll show it, too.  

This entire paragraph doesn't make sense in light of what you're quoting:

You spent spent two paragraphs presuming to lecture me on something I've already said in a half a sentence, refuse to actually address the context that I gave in the second half of that sentence, and by your own admission say that a Glintless build running Elevated Compassion will do more damage.  

You're putting words in my mouth.  Never have I said that the reactivity for heal builds hasn't changed.  In fact, I've said the opposite in previous threads.  My post was exclusively talking about the boon herald builds, and not the healers.  Now, I've only been skimming these forums for a bit, but I haven't seen a single person say that the heal herald builds were unchanged by this update.

One of the things I learned very quickly while fighting Slothasor is to never use Inspiring Reinforcements.  The Evolved Slublings corrupt stability into fear, ironically having the opposite effect than what is intended.  I learned not to do this after getting a few teammates killed from using IR.  Also, your counter-example doesn't make much sense, since the previous Draconic Echo tactics kept Nature and Chaos toggled on... consuming 6 energy per second. 

Finally, the notion of having zero influence when to switch legends is a skill issue.  Or a lie.  One of those two.  Something else I've learned from pugging raids and fractals with nearly every rev build is how to save energy.  This was done mostly to manage Charged MIsts, but also it had to deal with reserve CC or other particular mechanics.  Like every other rev build, if there's some important role you need to fulfill coming up, but your legend swaps don't align with when that would be convenient, you just cool it on the weapon/utility skills for a few seconds to make it convenient.  This isn't rocket science.  Energy management should come as second nature to experienced rev players, and it is far easier to handle on builds that aren't dependent on Charged Mists.

Was this all supposed to be on Heal Herald?  Don't they run Ventari for... heals?  Your lead in to these paragraphs doesn't make sense, your particular example doesn't work, you've neglected that Draconic Echo Herald kept high upkeeps anyway, and your assertion of rigid legend locking isn't right, either.

The simplicity is what I like about this change.  As I said to some else above, the new quickness build plays very similarly to... just about every other build that rev has going for it.  The implicit claim here is that the previous rev builds sans Draconic Echo Quickherald are all insufferably boring, which is just hyperbole.  Likewise, the assertion that Herald is now an auto attack bot is just hyperbole.

You seem to be changing between Quickherald and Heal Herald between as you write sentences.  It bears mentioning that the only way that Ventari locks the player into auto attacks is if they need to use Natural Harmony in order to heal their teammates.  Protective Solace by itself isn't energy hungry enough to reduce players into auto-bots.

A lot of what I've said before applies here, but there is something that also bears mentioning regarding these builds: boon duration.  Sitting in full Harriers with Monk Runes in Salvation/Invocation/Herald, I'm resting at 92.8% boon duration, no concentration sigil required.  But, lets throw that sigil on there and hit 100% boon duration.  By switching on Chaos, Strength, and Darkness until I run out of energy with weapon skills,  I'm able to build up enough quickness (10-11 seconds, roughly) to swap to ventari and never need to use the bubble once to keep permanent quickness, let alone protection and fury.  This is while mashing sword skills, though.  For a safe strat, you could forgo the weapon skills at the beginning of the fight and switch on Light to save enough time to get a healthy bulwark of quickness (18 seconds or so when I tried it), and never have to worry about keeping up a bubble or restraining weapon skills again.  Of course, popping up the bubble will help to proc additional quickness if you want.  Even swapping between the two legends off cooldown, I'm able to maintain permanent fury, protection, and quickness, and also permanent regeneration if I cool it at the beginning of the fight and switch on Light.

One person tells me there's too much micromanaging from this update, another person tells me there isn't enough.  Apparently it is arbitrary whether managing energy or managing cooldowns is more braindead than the other.  I can't vouch for how much testing the devs have done regarding this update, but chances are if they did test HealHerald, they did it in something like Harriers and Minstrels... with boon duration.  So I've got to ask: what build, exactly, are you guys using for QuickHerald and HealHerald that are keeping you so strapped for boons to cause such lamentations?  Because as I've tested it, aside from the tight timing at the start of the fight the only legend that needs to maintain its upkeeps to get permanent boons is Glint.  It's going to get easier in July, too, after that update fixes the disjointed proccing between the facets and the traits.

I didn't ask for it, but I'm glad it happened.  I hated the previous quickness herald, because it involved floating my hands across the keyboard to mash 4-5 skills two to three times as quickly as human possible every 12 seconds to maintain just barely enough quickness to function.  It hurt my hands.  But that's all aside from the point.  To give a quick recap, about the only valid point you have is that the upkeep skills make legend swapping for utilities less reactive, but not to the degree that you say it constrains you.  Everything else is adversarial, exaggerated, or just outright counterfactual.  

Ok so we agree that heal herald is abysmal now as it is very clunky atm so I won't go into that anymore specifically. Also if you just assume healherald run stuff, I assume you don't play it... And no healheralds ran glint and whatever was needed as reactive legend. You run full harrier if you don't need to tank stuff so you have max quickness and can be as reactive as possible. 

Also I did indeed write about QDPS and healherald at the same time because they have the same problem, which I kinda clearly stated. And I stay with that take that if you don't run glint you are either trolling or just selfish because glint gives way too much useful boons, so no matter how they change it, if the boons stay at glint there is no real other option. 

For the sloth example, I can give you a million other examples. I don't need to be explained about how mechanics work, its about making the class user-friendly and fun. Now it's safe to say it's not that fun, as a lot of people have already made remarks on the forums about being auto attack bots. You talk about being an insanely good player with perfect energy management, but a lot of people don't have the time for that and just want to play their class to a decent extent. 

Another example of how bad the forced legend switching (and yeah it is forced no matter how you try to explain it, as you want quickness uptime there will be a point you run out and need to switch if you are not mr perfect) is the Vale guardian and greens mechanic. You ignore greens, but if you just switched of ventari, people will die because you can't provide the same burstheal in other legends. 

Also your notion of saving energy doesn't match with the new quickness builds as these consume energy so there will always be a point were you are either running low on energy or you are forced into a swap. And playing to delay these swaps to make the timing work is indeed something a good herald can do, but this is very clunky and can't be an intension. 

Furthermore, If your hands were hurting from spamming all the facets you could just get more concentration in your gear? You don't have to be optimal, that is for the target golem and to post on snowcrows. A lot of people just take those builds and put a piece or two of extra diviners on it to make it more manageable. As I said, first rotation you had to indeed spam all facets, second time you can easily manage the upkeep with just 3 or 4. And I do get that people find it a lot more easier now, but than you also have to acknowledge that it's more boring for a lot of players as that goes hand in hand with not needing to press any buttons anymore, complemented with increased energy drain which makes you an auto attack bot. 

Also your 'counterfactual' , lol. Pretty sure most of what I say is grounded in my experience of running both builds everyday in all content of the game. While you haven't even touched healherald? 

[Quickherald/ Quickhealherald changes..]

19 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

People keep saying that, but it really isn't true.  It takes 9 seconds to swap legends, and 9 seconds of 6 upkeep consumes 9 energy.  Per legend swap, there's 41 energy to spare for use for weapon skills and utilities.  I've had limited use with it, but so far the new quickherald plays similarly to the old alacrigade builds.  Qherald is less punishing because it doesn't rely on Charged Mists to make up for their energy costs or Invoking Torment for damage.  I use weapon skills quite liberally under all of the toggles.  

The increase in flexibility comes from permitting more legend combinations.  Previously, Glint was mandatory for quickness.  Now, it is possible to run any combination of legends.  Granted, a boon herald will probably take Glint anyway, but overworld heralds that want self-quickness won't be pidgeonholed into taking Draconic Echo with Glint.  

The changes are really bad, and tbf, it even looks like there was put no thought in at all.  I'll break it down for you like I did on multiple other posts so far because people keep posting stuff like this that makes no sense (no offense). So maybe, just maybe a good dev sees this together and either revert this or at least for once address the obvious real problems instead of creating more and worse versions. 

1) Addressing bad take one: 'The changes improved legend flexibility'.
First of all, Glint is not only mandatory for quickness, but also for all other important boons you want to have from a supportive class. Camping Glint is/was/will always be an issue if literally all useful boons are tied to that stance. So it doesn't matter how much you change it, if the other stances like ventari don't change, Glint will always be the go to legend. 
Therefore, the patch changed literally nothing regarding flexibility because if you don't take Glint you are pretty much just overall worse than before. Who cares about a 2k dps increase if you basically give up all boons except for quickness. So there is still the question of which is the other legend I will take besides Glint, but now you created a lot of other problems which will be discussed below.

2) Addressing bad take two: 'Reactivity didn't change'
For this take, I will take the example of quickheal herald because reactivity is a lot more important for healers in this game. Imagine you are raiding at sloth and you are the designated stab for your subgroup.
Before the patch, you spammed all facets once to get quick uptime. From than on you can perfectly manage quickness by spamming 3-4 facets keeping the ones you need available, aka the elite for cc at sloth. CC phase happens, you press elite for cc, quickness uptime should be around 20sec by now so you can comfortably swap to jalis to provide stab on time, everyone is saved and you continue to give quickness. 
After the patch, you press facets for quick uptime, you energy bar is draining. Energy is almost 0 you are forced to switch. You are now controlled by the energy and have 0 influence on when you will pick which legend efficiently. You now either have to get extremely lucky, give up quickness uptime, or just get feared by slot because you just had to switch of jalis. 
This is just one example but a million more can be given. It is never a good idea to force legends swaps. Also it is rev's identity to control these legends of the mist, but now you are a slave to the uptime and it feels more like they control you. 

3) Take three: Playing herald has just gotten extremely boring in PVE

I won't really say much about this as it is pretty straightforward, no idea how the devs did not see this coming. You run out of energy a lot faster for quickness where previously you always had Glint stance. In Glint the energy was never a problem which allowed you to cast stuff you had to cast which couldn't be done or efficiently achieved in the other legends, aka the ones used as the reactive legend as explained above. Now there is no more reactive legend as both legends are needed for uptime. which means that the class is an auto attacking bot every time when energy gets low, when previously you could always swap back to Glint. Sure spamming stuff could be boring for some, but if you played the class right, you knew what you were doing. Now you have to keep stuff up and auto and that's about it.
Also Quickheal herald is literally unplayable at the moment so it's not even boring, it's just dead 😛 

4) Take four: Forced use of reactive skills, aka the 'dumbing down' of the class, which wasn't that hard already. 

So before the patch you actually had to press buttons for quickness uptime, had more energy to manage stuff and react, but you also had the choice to just auto attack and have full uptime, which it is now. So you could either be really good, or just very average. Now everything tends to lean towards average.
You now don't really have a choice but are forced to use (reactive) upkeep skills (such as bubble or stunbreak) and auto attack, making you press like 3 buttons. This also killed healherald as upkeep with a bubble is just next level trolling imo. This just shows that nobody in the dev team actually played herald before these  changes went live. 

 

So please don't come with herald was a good, or even slightly decent change. Nobody asked for this, quickness herald was one of the classes a lot of people liked to have in their party as it provided nice boons etc. and had barely any complains about (except for the spamming, which also a lot of herald players actually didn't mind at all). Compared to now how they murdered the fun in Qdps herald and absolutely slaughtered quickheal herald which has become unplayable and more troll than actually a build. It was never at the same level as qhfb, but now its probably not even a tier anymore. (which will never be fixed if you keep upkeep btw)

Also apparently mukluk has a good video that kinda explains the whole reactivity thing more in depth and not only for the  herald class which might be helpful to anyone trying to understand how these changes were actually not good. 

Peace out (and hopefully they revert this crap because upkeep is not a good way for quick at all)

[June 27 Balance Update Preview]

14 hours ago, ericpeggy.8206 said:

Pressing all skills can make sure you have more time to stay in Jalis or Ventari.

Swapping legends is an old problem, you still be struggling to swap to glint if you need to maintain quick but still need stab or bubble.

I understand why you hate this change so much now.

But our best friend still keeps silent...what can we expect?

Idk, before this change I never experienced problems swapping legends because if you played quickheal herald you could camp glint because there is no need to change unless you specifically need ventari or jalis -> reactive playstyle. 

Only problem that could happen was quickdps herald because you were bound to shiro for dps, which made it a forced legend swap. But they took that shiro problem and put it in all scenarios, literally making everything worse. It's like they took the one problem and spilled it to everything else instead of trying to fix that one problem, they just made the whole class the problem now. Camping Glint was never the issue because it gave you the boons and the quickness, which made it that the other legends could be used reactively. The problem is the upkeep skills that drain the energy which force you out of stuff. Instead of fixing glint, they should better fix upkeep skill such as impossible odds, the bubble, the hammers etc. 

[Beta testing Ranger: Ambush gives no quickness on staff (was testing quickheal untamed)]

So normally if you use unleashed ambush you should give quickess and I was trying quickheal untamed, but the staff unleashed ambush doesn't trigger the quickness. 

[One in the chamber doesnt work anymore on thief?]

Yeah it is still not working ... Just as I started enjoying quickness deadeye, one of the few new things in the patch that I actually really liked haha

[June 27 Balance Update Preview]

6 hours ago, ericpeggy.8206 said:

Maintain upkeep is not the best way to give quick probably, but that's better than swap to dragon in time and press all skills.

But if you are used to camp in dragon, you do struggle with low energy exactly.

Actually, I only use Ventari when my squad needs bubble.

Herald change is the very few changes not bad in this patch.

Okay so Herald change is REALLY bad and I'll break it down for you so you see why:

1) You previously never had to press all skills of CD at all. Bad players did that, or players new to herald did that. If you managed concentration right you just had to spam facet of strength, fury and than 1 of the other 3 you did not have to use (mostly just facet of darkness because you want to save elite for cc and heal for bursthealing when something went wrong) after initially spamming them all to start a fight. This is like saying if virtuoso spams all skills he deals damage which is a bad way to get 30k dps. Well yeah but if he spams stuff in the right order he gets borderline 40k... Obviously if you spam all stuff you have quickness but than you cant react to anything.

2) There is no struggle in low energy. You have low energy and you can't press stuff. That's how it is, there is no 'you can manage it better', if you want uptime you need upkeep and if you are getting low on energy because of it you cant react to break a cc bar or burstheal your party as a healherald as you have no more energy. Making reactivity worse is never a good way to change things. 

3) Forcing people to swap legends also contributes to the reactivity problem. Example: You are doing Sloth and you are the stab of you party with jalis. You are giving quickness and are doing the upkeep in jalis, you get low on energy and are forced to switch to shiro or glint idk. Bam CC phase happens and everyone gets feared because you were forced of jalis and have to work with the legend CD. And I can give a million examples of this btw. It is never a good thing to force people to swap. Also it just takes away from the rev identity to manage legends as you are now just a slave to them. 

4) It makes it super boring to play. People were complaining that 'spamming' all facets was boring. Now you just press the facets and afk auto attack???? That is less boring xd? That's actually just a joke ngl. There is no rotation at all anymore. You literally press upkeep skills and afk... 

So please don't come with herald was the only good change. Nobody asked for this, quickness herald was one of the few classes a people liked to have in their party as it provided nice boons etc. and had no complains about, and now they kinda murdered it and made it hella boring. 

Edit: apparently mukluk also has a vid that kinda explains the reactivity thing more in depth and not only for herald

[One in the chamber doesnt work anymore on thief?]

If I use cantrips I don't get stolen skills anymore? Was trying out quickness deadeye and out of nowhere the fire for effect in combination with one in the chamber doesn't work anymore? I only get stolen skills from deadeye's mark anymore? This is bugged right ?

[Deadeye's One in the Chamber now always grants Steal Time and gives AoE quickness even without Fire for Effect]

Anddd now you don't get any stolen skills at all from cantrips anymore ... Just began to enjoy that build and its already dead haahha

[June 27 Balance Update Preview]

13 hours ago, ericpeggy.8206 said:

If you have full harrier or minstrel equipments, you don't need to use six or more points of upkeep all the time.

Lol but the upkeep is the problem .. Why would you want to have upkeep skills on to drain your energy? You have 0 reactivity with that if you are low on energy and it forces Qdps players to just auto attack only and healers to maintain a bubble just for the sake of upkeep ?? It's just such a bad design which doesn't contribute anything at all. Before the patch it was nice, I just see 0 reason to do it like this. it's not fun and unplayable as healer if people fail a mechanic which other healers would just heal through but if you are low on energy rip xd

(also i'm just gonna ignore how changing the trait completely broke how herald takes damage somehow)

[June 27 Balance Update Preview]

Okay, so earlier on this thread I addressed how bad and problematic the herald changes were looking, and I'm totally right. Please revert this, please? ... There is no reactivity at all and quickhealherald is borderline dead because you are forced in ventari or you need to massively overcap on concentration for no reason (and on top of that use the bubble for no reason which is weird af) ... This change makes no sense and doesn't help herald in any way imo ... You can basically only auto attack or if you overcap you deal about 5k damage more than a healer ... 
You try to implement quickness and alac on all classes but completely destroy it on herald? How do you suppose to have fun when the only thing you can do is auto attack XD