Vooksa.2941

Oh I know, but so far as I'm aware there's nowhere where the exact coefficient, number of strikes, and amount of condi is all available on a single table. I'm not trying to build a rotation calculator, just to try to estimate what the value of staying in an element for the 10 seconds you'd need to bounce back to your main one of choice is actually doing to your damage. This is kind of what I mean in my OP, when I say that there's issues with Ele weapons, and introducing more is only going to dig the hole deeper until something is done about it. Ele has multiple traits built around disables, and numerous weapon options to do smaller, weaker disables, and yet it somehow doesn't feel like it really matters as a build, not compared to a class like Ranger, who has powerful disable tech on all three elite specs. It has lots of play with multi-strike, including all non-Fire autos on scepter (water and earth have 3x, air has TEN HITS), secondary strikes on Air sword, even a Catalyst augment for inflicting secondary attacks, but the traits that might actually benefit from these, Burning Precision, Arcane Precision, Raging Storm, all have 3-8 second iCD, and only Persisting Flames has any kind of tech advantage in the vein of Engi's Aim-Assisted Rocket, Willbender virtues, or Virtuoso bleed-on-blade (seriously, 100% chance is insane, nobody gets that). For example, staff is an amazing control weapon, but that's only valuable in WvW, PvP, and instanced PvE, in descending order. I wish other professions had even half as many area-denial options as Ele has just on staff alone, with knockback walls, dazing rings, fire fields, immobilizing waves, meteor shower, Gust, frozen ground... the Ranger and Kalla spirit reworks were a missed opportunity. And, on the launch of GW2, the Arcane traitline had a trait that increased the radius of staff AOEs even more than they are, so it makes sense that it's supposed to be a WvW or meta-event weapon for cleaving lots of enemies. But then, if it's meant to cleave, why does Earth AA only hit one target? If staff is meant to be support, why does Fire have five damaging skills instead? If you're not a Fire Wizard, are you meant to bluff with the fire fields? Like, concept: What if instead of AirStaff2 being almost a clone of AirScepter2, we improved it's cleave? Staff2 is on a lower cooldown, but the targeted enemy becomes a superconductor for 10s. Attacks targeting the superconductor are piercing, and arc lightning between the superconductor and up to 5 enemies within 300 range for a weaker, secondary strike. Or, why don't we update the Lightning Rod trait, that has you build charges every time you critically strike a foe, 5 charges if you disable an enemy, and performs a bonus AOE lightning strike to a target once you hit 10 stacks, granting barrier and fury to allies in the radius? Not that Ele has any explicit barrier play without Relic of the Scourge, but it'd mean Lightning Rod is a half-dps/half-group support traitline, instead of a THIRD damage-increasing grandmaster. Air scepter autos proc this trait all by itself, but several Ele weapons could, as well as utility options on every elite spec. _____ Long story short, it might suck, but before we can have real solid Ele builds and be excited about new weapons, some weapons will have to have some things taken away, and/or given to other weapons. I've shelved the notion that traits are responsible for Fire Wizard supremacy in terms of damage output, but I really do seriously believe that they simply aren't designed in the capacity to make us have really interesting decisions regarding our builds, not like on other classes, or that if they are, they don't do anything to communicate that, being trapped behind a few hundred calculations involving stats we don't have access to in the game.

So, as an update to this, I had been reasoning that since +10 Power is +1% of the 1000 Power base (and yes, that means +10 Power increases the end damage, by 1% of base, no matter how high your final modifier count gets. If 1% of base is 50 damage, 50 damage is 50 damage, if 50 damage kills an enemy then it's dead. A random skelk is not impressed by how low you've driven 50 damage as a ratio of your final output), then it stands to reason +20% is +200 Power, and +10% is +100 Power, right? Wrong. Turns out, the calculation is Power x1.2 x 1.1. I'd thought, all things being equal, that +20% +10% would be 1300, but it's actually 1320. Truly, it's a marvel that casual players only hit 2k dps, what with how transparent the system is. _______ So, I decided to run some spreadsheets and calculate exactly what the impact of a main element spec, and secondary element spec that you don't actually go into actually is, using the standard Berserker Scholar Steak 25-might and all boons variables that are actually testable, using 1000 Weapon Strength, 1.0 Coefficient, and 1000 Armor as a neutralizing standard, and Signet of Fire and Sigil of Accuracy for critcap. This doesn't include the impact of things like Sigil of Force, it's just to standardize what inflicting crits does for the benefit of Air. Fresh Air is only really accounted for as a result of maining Air, since the 10s CD on returning to your main element makes toggling a bit of a problem. Some of the numbers got jostled a bit in an edit, but they're still within ~0.1% of what they should be and at this point I'm sure nobody actually cares. In descending per-hit order, but not actually listing ALL the combinations (god Air blew the options out): "Hi DPS" comes in with 3407 Power, 2031 Precision, and 1255 Ferocity, assuming all situationals like burning, vuln, and bleed are active, and they manage max stacks of things. That's 3407 Power, x (150 + 1255 Ferocity/15)/100, or x2.336 crit multiplier, for a final critcap of 7951.02 crit damage. It's worth noting, IN FIRE, Air 332, using Fresh Air's bonus while in Fire attunement had the highest singular strike, but only for the 3.5s it was applied. Because of the 10s cooldown on elements, you'd have to start in Water or Earth, flip to Air, and then to Fire the instant opportunity allowed. This is used by spike-burst Scepter Weavers in WvW, but has enormous falloff, with at least 10s in a non-Fire, non-Air attunement to set it up again. IN FIRE, Air 331 - 16018 (201.20% of base). This is 13349 above half health on a defiant foe, so avg 14683.5 (184.67%) across the fight. Non-defiant, avg 13348.5 (167.66%) IN WATER, Air 331 - 15436 (193.89%), or 12863 above half, avg 14149.5 (177.95%), and a non-defiant 12863.5 (161.58%). Surprising, and an indication it's not Water spec that's a problem for DPS aura-share Tempest, but an issue with water SKILL COEFFICIENTS being weaker than Fire or Air, as well as overall having fewer damaging skills. IN AIR 331, Fire - 15341 (192.70%), or 12787 above half, avg 14066 (176.9%), or non-defiant avg 12787.5 (160.82%). IN AIR 332, Fire - 15294 (192.11%). We can reliably cycle Fresh Air whenever we want, if dealing our damage while in attunement. Fire is the highest Fresh-Air-supporting spec while in Air, with Arcane (188.56%), Water (184.00%), and Earth (159.67%) coming up behind. IN AIR 331, Arcane - 15058 (189.14%) is the first appearance of Arcane as an off-main traitline. Again, requires all boons for +24% damage, which isn't reasonable. IN WATER, Air 321 - 14680 (184.39%) is the next mention of in-Water attunement, avg 13460.5 (169.29%). This has higher open-world damage than FIRE/Air331, which is interesting to note, but not by much, so 'interesting' is all it gets. IN AIR 331, Earth - 12751 (160.16%), against defiant low-health enemies is the first sight of Earth on the per-hit sheet. A low 11494.5 average (144.5%), and 10234.5 non-defiant average (128.71%), but it's clear Air is doing the real heavy lifting here. IN WATER, Earth - 11034 (138.6%), assuming vuln and bleed. IN EARTH, Water - 10114 (127.04%), the same. ______________ The end result of this is varied. On the one hand, my point that Fire specialization is absolutely a pivot for a whole mess of strike DPS, and in-Fire advantages are responsible for peak damage, are absolutely true. On the other hand, in-Fire didn't carry as much benefits as in-Air with Fire as backup, due to an extra 180-480 ferocity, depending on the build. Air 331 consistently outperformed Air 332 in every instance, but the 20% shift above half health skewed the average dramatically. Water traits having a compounding x1.2x1.1 or even x1.1x1.1 ended up having a much more dramatic effect than I expected, which means that it's actually not Water specialization that's the problem here, so much as the low skill coefficient on many Water skills, and that some of those skills don't even deal damage, compared to EVERY Fire skill dealing damage in some way. This is concerning, but also promising, because while it means that while the devs would have to rebalance existing Water skills to allow a Water DPS to actually... hold water, it does open up the possibility for a weapon in the future potentially locking out our ability to swap attunements, but just cranking the in-attunement damage of each weapon. Pistol represents mechanics that involve casting more than a single skill per 1.5s reattunement, so it'd be cool if there was some real initiative to crank the in-attunement advantages of a mono-attunement build. Earth is where things go sour. All Earth combinations fall in the bottom 50% of the rankings, and even mono-AIR331, mono-AIR332, mono-AIR321, mono-FIRE, and mono-WATER, with no second or third specialization, were stronger than IN-EARTH/Arcane with all boons, IN-EARTH/Water, or IN-WATER/Earth, averaging just around +30/30/40% extra damage compared to having no traits at all. Ranger, by comparison, is getting a traitline update to Wilderness Survival, which is swapping out some cleanse and competing condition traits for some harder-hitting, bruiser-y traits that could be used by a tanky pDPS. It'd be really nice if Earth got the same treatment, because it'd be really cool to see a future Ele weapon forego all the bleed damage in favor of hammering opponents with heavy boulders. I don't really see EVERY Earth weapon be able to be used for both pDPS and cDPS. But, if any aspiring memelords want to join me in using Mono-Earth pDPS for giggles, sword/dagger and Air 331 is generally how I'd do it. Hammer has nice coefficients, but lacks a disable and a fourth damage skill. The next step of this insane sidequest I've made for myself would be documenting the Impacts, Coefficients, Conditions, Cast Time and Cooldown of every Ele skill in the game to prove Fire has substantially more damage than any other element (it does, and it's not even close, having damage on every skill will do that), but also to prove how to use the other elements in more interesting ways. I'm not sure I'm that crazy though. Not right now. _____________ Parts of this thread start to sound like I just hate Fire, but honestly, even just a firestick that doesn't EXCLUSIVELY deal damage would be nice. Where are the self-cauterize cleanses? Where are the immolating boonstrips? Why not a Warmth spell that pulses regeneration around you on interval, helping proc Water's Cleansing Water skill for cleanses? Why not an explosion that sends enemies flying, enabling Air's disable-based damage? Heck I'd go for an Arcane pDPS greatsword that literally doesn't have a different skill per attunement honestly, anything that isn't just "do burns and bleeds a lot"

[LATER EDIT: Doing this actually clarified for me that damage is logged as Power coefficients, not as a base value with a scaling value. I think I was thinking of healing, which is logged as a flat value + value that scales with healing power... Anyway,] Since a level 80 character has a baseline 1000 Power, it's reasoned that by adding another 1000 Power, you'd double your damage, so if +100% is 1000, +1% is 10, and might adds +30 Power per stack. Let's say I strip all my gear off. Actually, I'm going to, I have no gear on, and I'm using Earth/Arcane/Water with no traits on, so I don't have any bonus damage modifiers. My Power is now 1000. Airsword's second auto, Polaric Slash, has a wiki entry of 367, 1.0 scaling. In-game, it says 266. If I actually equip this legendary sword, power 950-1050, that number goes up to 385. If I assign stats, let's say... Valkyrie, for +125 Power, my Power is now 1125, and Polaric Slash goes up to 433. Tooltips in game list their Damage based on [hits] x rounding[(Weapon Strength Average) x Power x (Skill Coefficient)/(target's armor value)]. It assumes an armor value of 2597 for the display, for whatever reason. This makes Polaric Slash's damage = [1] x rounding[ ((1000) x (1000) x (1.0)) /2597], or 1,000,000/2597, for 385.05, and rounds down to 385. With Diviners, Polaric Slash's damage = [1] x rounding[ ((1000) x (1125) x (1.0)) /2597]. That's 1,125,000/2597, for 433.19, and rounds down to 433. Checks out. Based on this, let's say I had 1000 Power, doubling my baseline value. Polaric Slash's damage goes to [1] x rounding[ ((1000) x (2000) x (1.0)) / 2597], for 770.119. 770 is precisely double the damage listed when I had when I only had 1000 power. And why wouldn't it be? I doubled the amount of Power. ________________ Let's try it with a different skill, one that doesn't have a 1.0 coefficient. Aqua Siphon, sword3, has a wiki damage of 275, (0.75) coefficient. Ingame, with my sword equipped, no stats, it says I'd inflict 289 damage. I equip my trinkets, a Berserker backpack and Accessory, and an Assassin's accessory, amulet, and two rings. My power now reads 1525, and Aqua Siphon now reads 440. Plugging in the math, [1 hit] x rounding[ ((1000) x (1000) x (0.75)) / 2597], is 750,000/2597, and becomes 288.79, rounding up to 289. With 1525 Power, [1 hit] x rounding[ ((1000) x (1525) x (0.75)) / 2597] is 1,143,750/2597, and becomes 440, rounded down. I shouldn't have to frame it this way, but in case there's any further doubt, 1.525x 289 = 440. ________________ So now that we've established the tooltips work, let's swap it with a fire skill, and Fire specialization. Cauterizing Strike has a wiki log of 642 damage, (1.75) scaling. My 1525 Power has it read as 1028, so [1]x[((1000) x (1525) x (1.75)) / 2597] is 2,668,750/2597, or 1027.62, rounding up. So far so good. I swap Water with Fire. Empowering Flame's +150% Power makes my hero panel read I have 1675 Power now. The math should be [1]x[((1000)x(1675)x(1.75)) / 2597]. 2,931,250/2597 is 1128.70... And lo and behold, my ingame tooltip reads: 1129. ________________ Also, regarding might: it says it right there in the game, man. "Might (9s): 30 Condition Damage, 30 Power." Flipping into Fire while I have Arcane slotted gives me 2 might, or +60 Power, so my hero panel reads 1735, while those two might last. Cauterizing Strike's tooltip goes up to 1169. I feel like this trick is getting old, but one last time: [1]x[((1000)x(1735)x(1.75)) / 2597] is 3036250/2597, or 1,169.13. Nice. ________________ Note, this is all based on the tooltips, which presume an enemy to have 2597 armor. I don't know why that value, because even all-ascended heavy armor is only 1271, but Toughness is added to armor, so maybe that's the expected cap. Weird that they'd list for greatest toughness, and minimum damage, rather than no toughness, and maximum damage. But we have, without a doubt, proved that 10 Power = +1% increased damage, and that doubling the amount of Power you have doubles your damage. And that also means, that yes, Weaver sitting in fire attunement with Fire spec slotted, with enough might to trigger the threshold and bathing foes in fire fields, is getting +77% extra damage out of it. Which is obscene.

WANNA BET?? Ahem. I'm just gonna lay this out, because, fair, this number is kind of thrown out there and is so extreme that it forms a reasonable basis for doubt. So, strap on in, because we've got numbers to crunch. For reference, Power adds +1% damage per 10 points. 1000 Power doubles your damage. Every 21 Precision beyond the base 1000 increases your crit chance by 1%, up from a base of 5%. Every 15 Ferocity increases your crit damage by 1%, or +0.01x, on top of a flat 150%, or 1.5x, crit damage modifier. Condition Damage is wack because all the conditions scale differently. A 100 damage attack, 1.0 scaling, crits for 150. Adding 300 Power adds +30, for 130, crits for 195. Adding 300 Ferocity adds +0.2x critdmg for 1.7x, and crits for 170. Adding both makes 130 crit 1.7x for 221. Essentially, +(0.3 + 0.2). Confused? Good. I only bring this up for when we talk about Air's Ferocity benefits, because the math looks funky when you only look at the benefits that traits offer, without the base damage and damage scaling of each attack, which would need hundreds of pages of text to describe the impacts of. ________________ FIRE -Empowering Flame (minor): Gain +150 Power (+15% damage) while in fire attunement -Power Overwhelming: While at/above 10 might, gain +150 Power (+15% damage). Power bonuses are doubled while attuned to fire (+15% damage) -Pyromancer's Training (minor): Fire skill CD reduced 20%, deal +10% increased strike damage to burning foes (+10%) -Persisting Flames: Fire fields last 2s longer, and fire fields grant up to 10 stacks of +1% strike damage (+10%) Total bonuses: Without burning or fire fields, but with might, from non-Fire sources, using other attunements: [+15% damage] ^, burning from other players: [+25% damage] ^^, using lava axes to get fire fields, since there are actually no other non-attunement methods for fire fields except through Weaver (more on that): [+35% damage] ^^^, while in attunement: [+65% damage], up from "reliable squad play" 25%, or 30% higher while in attunement. * But Wait! Weaver grants +120 Power, or +12% damage, for being attuned to fire in either hand. ^^^^ Weaver who's in mainhand fire attunement has an in-attunement maximum of +77% damage, or a maximum of +42% increased damage with either mainhand or offhand fire. So: the benefits of being in fire attunement, with fire fields that only fire attunement can reliably cast, with burning and with might that only fire skills reliably grant, is "only" 40% higher than slotting Fire as a specialization, but not using Fire as an attunement, and 52% higher as a Weaver. This doesn't account for the fact that fire-attunement skills regularly hit harder, have higher power scaling, than any other element, and additionally often inflict burning for even more damage over time. ________________ WATER -Piercing Shards: Increased vuln time, +10% strike damage to foes who have any vulnerability whatsoever. Bonus is doubled while attuned to water (+10% damage) -Flow Like Water: Deal +10% increased strike damage if above 75% health. Blocks/evades heal with a 10s iCD. Total bonuses: While above 75% health, and the foe is vulnerable: [+20% damage] ^, while in attunement: [+30% damage] ________________ EARTH -Serrated Stones: Bleeding duration increased by 20%, deal +5% damage to bleeding foes -Strength of Stone: 10% of your Toughness is converted to Condition Damage. This is a minimum 100 Condition Damage, but often Ele doesn't slot any additional Toughness. Total bonuses: Against bleeding foes: +5% ^, while in attunement: No Change Contrary to how it might seem, I'm actually happier that Earth's bonuses don't rely on being in-attunement, but come on what is this ________________ ARCANE -Some scattered sources of conditions and evasion rolls, but largely just -Bountiful Power: Grants +2% damage per unique boon. Casually, this is maybe around +10% with Might, Fury, Regen, Prot, and Swiftness, especially by merit of whirling between each of the four elements, but has a maximum output of +24% outgoing damage with all boons. No in-attunement bonuses for obvious reasons, but also no revolving-based advantages. ________________ AIR: Most of this is in crits, so it's kinda funky. Ferocity obfuscates a LOT of numbers, and it means a lot of research before you even understand what your options do. -Zephyr's Speed: Increased movement speed attuned to air, and your crit chance is increased by 5%. Theoretically this is 105 Precision that could go toward anything else. -Ferocious Winds: Gain Ferocity based on your Precision (not your crit chance): 7% conversion. (Considering Fury and Zephyr's Speed, but no other crit chance increases from other traits, Sigil of Accuracy, or Signet of Fire, the resulting 2365 crit-cap Precision becomes 165.55 Ferocity, or +11%, or +0.11x crit damage). A)-Raging Storm: Gain fury when critically striking, gain +180 Ferocity while you have fury. (+12%, or +0.12x crit damage) B)-Stormsoul: Stun duration +33%, increased strike damage to disabled/defiant foes (+10%. This is evidence that unless your crit chance is trash, Raging Storm is just better.) -Aeromancer's Training: Air skill CD reduced 20%, gain +150 Ferocity, doubled while in attunement (+150 Ferocity) (+10-20%, or 0.1-0.2x crit damage) X)-Bolt to the Heart: Deal +20% damage to foes below 50% health (Better for bosses or trash crit) Y)-Fresh Air: Recharge air on crit, gain +250 Ferocity for 5s when attuning to air (+16.6%, or 0.166x crit damage) (Better for spike damage, competitive) -Weaver grants +150 Ferocity while attuned to Air in any way. Total bonuses: I don't know. It's hard to say. >Maximum flat, statless, attunement-agnostic damage: +30% damage against disabled/defiant foes below 50% health >Maximum Ferocity bonus without attunement: +180 Ferocity, ~conversion, means an additional 0.23x, or 1.73x crit damage; assuming critcap, this blows ^flat out of the water. >Maximum Ferocity bonus by flickering into and out of attunement: +595.55, or +0.39.7, for 1.89x crit damage (Weaver reliably adds +0.1x, for 1.99x crit damage) >Maximum bonus while in attunement, without flickering in and out: 682.3, or +45.48%, or +0.45x, for 1.95x crit damage (Weaver makes this 2.05x crit damage) >Maximum bonus while in attunement, but flickering in and out to proc Fresh Air: 932.3 ferocity, or 0.62, for 2.12x crit damage (Weaver makes this 2.22x crit damage) This makes Air either A) extremely good for high-damage, low-scaling attacks, or B) enormously reliant on the Power advantages gained from Fire. It does open an interesting door for effects that guarantee crits, allowing you to drop Precision for Ferocity, such as for Dragons stats or Valkyrie's for really high burst strikes in competitive, but I would never in a million years recommend doing that outside of a meme build, and even then, calculating exactly how much damage the spike actually does on every single attack Ele has, to figure out if it's even worth it. ________________ So, to review, in descending order: FIRE: +65% in, +25% reliably out. WEAVER: +77% in mainhand, +47% offhand with fire fields, +37% offhand without fire fields. Reliant on high Power scaling, but base attacks often have higher values, and condition damage attached. AIR: +62% in Fresh Air flicker, +45% in, +40% out Fresh Air flicker, +23% reliably out. WEAVER: +72%/55%/40%/23%. All this presumes critcap, but is MULTIPLICATIVE of Power contributions from sources like gear and Fire, so Fire/Air together are much higher than these numbers suggest. WATER: +30% in, +20% reliably out. ARCANE: +24% with all boons, +10% reliably and self-sustainably. EARTH: +5% strike damage, reliably out. Condition contributions vary. This was longer than I wanted, but there's a lot of data here, and I imagine nobody would read the original post if all this was attached to it. At a glance down here, Air seems almost as powerful as Fire, but that assumes critcap, and is largely reliant on low-scaling skills, info that isn't actually available at a glance in game. I'm not even sure there is a readily-available database that would allow me to sort every ability Ele has, to find out which skill has the highest base damage and lowest power scaling, but I'm willing to bet the devs don't design for it. And why would they? The average player is completely oblivious to this stuff. In the earlier case of 'alacDPS auraTempest', you'd end up with something like this: FIRE/AIR: No source of group auras, relies on shouts. Assuming critcap and flickering Fresh Air, in-Fire crits +122.85% base, in-Air crits +55.5%, with larger base-damage impact. FIRE/WATER: Powerful Auras, sunspot and conjure auras if low uptime. Assuming critcap, in-Fire hits crits +127.5% base, in-Water crits +82.5% base. AIR/WATER: Powerful Auras, no additional aura source. Assuming critcap, in-Air crits +42.4% base, in-Water crits 63.6% base. ARCANE/WATER: Powerful Auras, aura on res. Assuming critcap, in-Water crits for +60-81% of base, depending on boons, out-Water crits for +45-66% of base, depending on boons. So, Water's dps contribution isn't actually so bad, due to before-crit calculations, and is actually stronger than in-Air advantages a lot of the time, due to Ferocity being inherently 50% weaker per-point than Power is, and Water's "+20% damage" coming out to ~200 Power, while Air's +150 in-attunement Ferocity is only worth ~75 Power. That said, Fire is OVERWHELMINGLY the damage contributor, even before considering that fire skills tend to hit harder, have better scaling, and have solid condi DPS tacked on the end. I didn't mention EARTH/WATER, because with so little damage and more defensive tech, it's a better healalac, using signets for non-shout sources of alac auras and granting prot.

So, I'm glad you brought this up, actually. I played alac-spirits Druid and quick-banners Warrior, so believe me, I know what impact that had, and I also know that they completely missed the point. Water's Powerful Auras is only a liability because of the massive DPS disparity between the traitlines, and the extreme nature of their in-attunement advantages. It's literally that simple, and the entire point of the thread, but more weapon skills that apply auras in a radius would seriously be the only tech a new weapon could offer that benefits both Tempest AND Catalyst. Because going FORWARD has stronger skills and shorter cooldowns than going BACKWARD, to where your in-attunement bonuses and glyph types are, Ele skills like waterhammer have to hit like a wet towel, and you're often better off revolving to a third element rather than flickering back and forth between two. It's easier to balance DPS/Boon/Heal with competing traits tied to elite spec mechanics, but you trade slotting specific utility types and traits for spamming the mechanic on cooldown, when it's not the right time, with new weapons, sigils, runes, and relics all completely meaningless to a build. FIRE/WATER DPS requires you be in Fire for damage, but offers aura on fire attunement, and 1-2 auras per conjured weapon, as well as options for might and cleanse as support. AIR/WATER DPS requires you to be in Air for damage, which is easy enough with Fresh Air, but Air/Water disable-CC using Stormsoul and Lightning Rod is a joke compared to other classes, and as support, is only fury/swiftness on auras, Inscription isn't group boons, and returning to water for heal/cleanse is on an 8-10s cooldown, and you gain no new source of auras. EARTH/WATER DPS has terribad damage, despite water pistol inflicting bleed and Written in Stone granting an aura per signet, with Water lacking condi support, Earth lacking any damage comparable to Fire or Air, and both lacking offensive boons. As support, defensive auras helps for prot, but is largely meaningless. ARCANE/WATER should be better mono-attunement gameplay as an Element x Arcane x Elite than it is. Flow Like Water's self-heal and damage conflicts with Arcane's Evasive Arcana evade-heal, and Bountiful Power's boon damage, gained from revolving elements, doesn't synergize with Arcane Restoration's whirling only healing you. It's so close to a hydromancer DPS, but again, water skills are a wet towel, and can't muster enough dps in instanced PvE to matter, promoting whirling yet again. The issue isn't alacrity on Tempest shouts, or even Powerful Auras, the issue is that Water sucks, and other traitlines either don't have the synergy or the damage to uphold it as a pDPS or cDPS. Ranger's Nature Magic is perfectly viable as a DPS line, despite being associated with healing, and ANet only just overhauled mesmer's Chaos traitline three months ago, granting shatter prot, shatter2 chaos aura, shared chaos aura, chaos aura regen, aoe heal on illusion, shatter heal and cleanse, healskill ally regen, healskill creates illusions, distortion ally stunbreak and resistance, transfer ally condi to phantasms. Chrono doesn't care if it passively improves condition damage and experitse, or that Virtuoso doesn't grant alac/quickness, what matters is the insane heal/boon synergy it has with mesmer skills and other traitlines. Frozen Ground updated a year ago for group frost aura, so why not more of that? Why doesn't Arcane's Final Shielding grant auras, or glyphs even, element-specific group auras? If we got offhand shield with group auras, or mainhand support with group auras, alacTempest would not care in the slightest, because there is fundamentally no tech ArenaNet can give elementalist that improves overload-alacrity in ANY WAY. Powerful Auras might be an unfortunate needle to thread, but Tempest has PLENTY of different sources of auras available through different weapon skills, traits, shouts, conjures, and signets, not counting leaping fire fields and blasting ice fields on pistol and staff. That's enough flexibility to justify Powerful Auras any day, but without the damage or the attunement cooldowns to back it up, we get threads and comments like this.

I'm actually cool with Ele having melee-related builds. They're mobile enough, and have some decent defensive tech, and auras, if you actually invest into that, but they're kind of lacking on the self-sustain options, and having massive Fire/Air damage really overpromotes spiky burst kills in competitive. That said, I keep getting mowed down by Catalysts in WvW, seemingly impermeable to damage, who overload me with more conditions than I can handle, and who are mobile enough to chase me if I run. I don't think that every profession needs access to every condition, just for those conditions to matter. Before Reaper, Necro chill was pretty docile; it took the elite spec to blow it out into really excellent pDPS, cDPS, and self-sustain traits. Catalyst has access to poison fields with Earth Sphere, and it always felt like an overly-PvP design decision, but also that there's no such thing as an earth field. Torment could be an Arcane-exclusive condition, but I don't know that Ele NEEDS torment? Burning represents rapid cDPS, and bleeding represents slow DPS, whether against immobile bosses or not. Ele also lacks traits like Modified Ammunition or Target the weak, that improves based on the number of conditions the target has. I'd rather that we just get really cool and interesting interpretations for the conditions Ele does inflict, rather than that Ele get more of them and not engage with them in an interesting way. (You don't play with the toys we buy you!!!) I think there's value in designing the specs so that they have similarities (on-enter, while-in, etc), they help keep the elements equal, but without equivalent ways to deal damage, heal, etc, it feels like it's more of a limitation than an advantage at this point. Auramancy is one of Ele's unique skills, like pets on ranger, or shroud on necro. A lesser one, to be sure, but still a tool we can use to design and personalize different elementalists who use the same tech but for different reasons.

This is true, but part of this design is removing so much flexibility from elementalist, without severing access to it completely. Ele has a lot of CC on everything except fire, and several defensive utilities that don't actually require going into earth. Weaver is only half playing reactively, it's about being on your guard and not overcommitting, but because of their lower attunement recharge, they actually play much more like Arcane than even Arcane does. Plus, by feeding Weaver's attunement recharge reduction into a core mechanic of attunement recharge reduction, there's a case to be made for dual-element Weavers, rather than exclusively all-element Weavers. Just as now, Arcane is about the flexibility of elements, but with all the other changes I suggested, it's my hope that you don't HAVE to rely on attunement swap to generate value, CC, or defense. The exact recharge-reductions based on build could use some finagling though, you're right. Why not a Weaver trait that reduces attunement recharges even further? Part of Stormsoul's contest with Raging Storm is whether you can source enough fury for the uptime, but yeah, they do draw a little close. I like the idea of healing while critting under quickness, but without quickness access anywhere but Catalyst, it feels a little out of reach. Simply, "heal for a percentage of your outgoing critical hit damage for a period after disabling a foe (3s?)" would more or less accomplish the same thing, and lend to a much more aggressive aerothurge who would be encouraged to attack when a lightning aura dazes an enemy, rather than simply escape. The flat damage bonus for foes with Lightning Rod is less even than the 10% Stormsoul is now, and far below the 20% it once was, historically. Especially in competitive, where disables don't generally tend to stick, and that Ele's disables are also not very long in the first place, I think I'd prefer a Twice As Vicious-style bonus damage for a duration.

Believe me, this is the short version lmao TLDR: I wish element specializations gave better advantages that didn't actually require you to be in their attunement so much. Older traits had it, but they changed, and now Ele is stale. All the changes made since Weaver released have hurt diversity, and Catalyst, hammer, and pistol just rehash what we already had, and new weapons in the future are unlikely to be different. It'd be nice if I could be a Water DPS or a geomancer instead of whirling through elements. Tempest should grant alacrity with barriers and Catalyst should gain energy by transmuting.

Long story short, every time I discuss a topic about elementalist (like, why it has 23 source of chill, and no trait, when Reaper has ~14), I fall down my well-trod rabbithole of elementalist design frustration like some kind of Alice in Wvwborder-land. I used to be fascinated by this class, and Tempest and Weaver represented real tonal shifts, as a mono-attunement stormstriker/auramancer or an elaborate dancer/evasion skirmisher, but somewhere along the way, we really lost the plot. Trait balance and elite specs started to be more about whirling through elements at a fever pitch, with only a scant few skills/traits being used as balance dials to control the meta, and anything else falling off the map and forgotten. We got Catalyst and hammer, a tonal repeat of Weaver element blending and Tempest placed-AoEs, and a weapon performing both melee and midrange condi AND power, all in one, then Tempest traits changed to revolve around overloading, becoming a demand rather than a cool option or saved for when needed. Weaponmastery didn't meaningfully open up new possibilities the way it did on other professions and elite specs, and now we get another midrange condi in the form of pistol, a tonal repeat of Catalyst/hammer, and not really representing anything new on Tempest, Weaver, or Catalyst at all. Elementalist is actually quite well documented on the wiki, so it's easy to go back and see where it all changed. And boy, has it. Fire had almost no traits boosting damage directly, converting power to condition damage, and a Flame Shield that only inflicting burning against melee-range attacks put it in harmony with Earth, which was a a +25% damage melee-range brawler. Bountiful Power helped bring Water spec up to +50% damage, not Arcane, Air had a trait converting precision into healing power, to go with the marriage of CC-synergy Water/Air still has echoes of today, and Arcane had traits granting scepter endurance regen, staff larger aoes, and bonus movement speed per dagger. But everything changed, when Fire Wizards attacked: between updates in 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2020, Fire specialization had multiple traits reworked, trading power>condi conversion for boosting the effects of might +50% but +100% while in attunement, another passive +150 power while in attunement, and reworking Persisting Flames to generate +10% bonus damage using fire fields, which only fire attunement and Lava Axes were capable of placing. Bountiful Power and Elemental Restoration were moved from Water into Arcane, while Soothing Power ate up trait real-estate with an enhanced passive that only required flickering into Water briefly for a heal-over-time, that wasn't even regeneration, so didn't combo with any regen traits, like Cleansing Water. Arcane lost it's weapon-specific benefits, and Earth was reduced to a toady serving up bonus condition damage and Signet of Fire cooldown passives to condi-Fire's superior in-attunement damage. Weave Self was joked for resembling Avatar TLA, but over the last 9 years, it seems like elementalist was balanced around the belief that firebender dominion was actually a good thing. You only play Water if you want healing, you only flicker into Earth to get defense. Any mono-attunement that isn't Fire Wizard is shouted down by veterans insisting "using all four elements is the fantasy!!!" Because Water lacks condi support and Earth gives it's bonuses to anyone who asks, water-pistol inflicting bleed won't disrupt the FIRE111/EARTH212 condi meta that's existed for years on Tempest, Weaver, and Catalyst. Water-pistol granting Weaver two new sources of chill, two new sources of cripple, and an immobilize to all trigger Elemental Pursuit for 2s every 10s is meaningless when literally every weapon has access to those conditions already. A new weapon might be 2H longrange DPS, or a mainhand support or power weapon, or a shield, but at this point, there's basically no confidence that it won't have all the same conditions on every element, and won't still somehow fail to be meaningful to Ele's supremely lackluster trait personalization. ____________ There are a few things I'd do to help elementalist take advantage of the only personality it's got: the ability to choose to use one element over another. ATTUNEMENT CD: Currently, a 10s CD prevents going backwards into attunements, which is in line with weapon swap on other classes. But with four attunements, and only a 1.5s CD preventing entering a NEW attunement, with fresh cooldown and powerful attacks, Ele is overwhelmingly encouraged to bounce and flicker. CMC himself has stated it presents a problem for the devs, and it's clear it presents issues for new players to learn, but it seems the bandaid to that was pistol benefitting from using more than just one mainhand skill before shuffling off to a new element to do it again. The solution is simple: Elementalist specializes in elements, RETURNING to specialized elements should have shorter cooldowns than visiting new ones. A universal 10s cooldown on swapping attunements, but reducing that CD for specialized elements by 3s, to any element by 2s with Arcane, and all elements by 3.5s when using Weaver, would mean that elementalist has to specialize again, more rapidly returning to the elements they've chosen to use, rather than feeling pressured to switch to the ones they haven't. Weaver ends up with the choice between favoring two elements with a 3.5s CD each, and 7.5s CD on the other two, or, being a djinn, specializing in just one element/Arcane, and having 4.5s CDs on all elements, but just a 1.5s CD on attuning their primary element, helping them achieve their mono-element skills for that element, and triggering Elements of Rage easier. Let what elements they know, be more dependable than emergency-shifting to elements they don't. REATTUNEMENT: Similar to Revenant updates, there needs to be a function that holds core Ele away from Tempest and Weaver, besides specializing in three elements. Allowing core Ele and Catalyst to reattune to the current element by pressing the button again, triggering on-enter effects with a 10s cooldown, would help enable mono-attunement builds, as well as casters who are forced to toggle in and out of non-Fire attunements just to get their enter-attunement advantages, like Healing Ripple on Water. EQUALIZE: Fire specialization granting +50% outgoing damage while in attunement, vs 17.5% if you refuse to use fire attunement, means other in-attunement traits for other elements can't compete. No traitline should ever be able to muster more than 30-35% bonus damage, and fire needs to be reigned way, WAY in. If the elements were more equal, it'd be easier to justify off-meta DPS combos, using Air/Water, or Water/Earth, without being treated as a joke and having Fire to shoulder it's way in, and use the tech available to non-Fire builds in instances like raids and strikes. OUT OF ELEMENT ADVANTAGES: Elementalist traits used to grant significantly more value to using out-of-attunement elements. Stat conversion traits, while passive and boring, still meant supporting a primary playstyle. Air attunement inflicting vuln on crits even outside of air and Water granting +20% vuln damage helped marry Air/Water as a vuln-DPS machine, and Fire once granted auras might, regardless of typing. We still have a bit of this scattered around; Earth still grants auras protection after all this time, and Arcane grants vigor on critically striking, and Fire inflicting burn on crit should allow non-pyromancers to take advantage of Pyromancer's Training, but we overwhelmingly have traits that only function while in attunement, benefits for boons and conditions attached to the skills of specific elements, and utility skills that even have different cooldowns based on which attunement you use it in. There needs to be more traits that grant boons, and inflict conditions, associated with a specialization, but outside their attunement: Fire should have options to grant might when striking burning foes (to go along with the option to inflict burning on crits), when applying auras, and on cleansing conditions (attached to the Burning Fire trait). By having so much might limited to Fire skills, switching elements with Arcane, and fire-attunement glyphs, Ele feels a little forced to gen might compared to options on other professions and elite specializations. Air should be inflicting vuln on crits again, even outside attunement, while buffing Stormsoul to increase ALL damage for a period after disabling, similar to Soulbeast's Twice as Vicious., first to enable hybrid builds, and second because disables don't last long enough to compete with Raging Storm's +12% crit damage. Zephyr's Boon is already a great use of auras with Water, but right now the only way to secure Water's vuln from traits is Arcane Precision, on crits, and Water/Air/Arcane obviously doesn't work for elite specs. Water inflicts vuln when applying chill, and the benefits of vuln are doubled overall, not granting a flat value or requiring attunement, and disabling an enemy inflicts chill. Seriously. Make chill do something. Earth needs the most work, and should 1) inflict bonus damage to movement-inhibited foes, 2) inflicts bleed on crits, 3) inflicts cripple when disabling, blocking, or being struck with an aura, 4) performs a blast finisher when attuning to ANY element on a 5s CD, and 5) grant bonus condition DURATION, not condition damage. Prot on auras is still great tech, but otherwise there's far too many defensive traits that overlap with Water without directly comboing with Water. SPECIAL MENTION: EARTH FIELDS. Poison is lame, dude. It'd be cool if the game had an earth/mud field, with leaping cripple, blasting protection, and whirl and projectile bleeds. It'd even fit on other classes, like 'grave earth' condi Necro, or Wilderness Survival mud ranger. Arcane is actually pretty okay, despite the fevered whirling through elements. Moving conjured weapon traits out of Fire, and into Arcane, would help promote their flexible identity. Arcane weapons used to have charges to cast their skills with; letting them slowly recharge over time, and having a 10s toggle-cooldown to enter them, would help them act like a second- or replacement-element attunement for the same element. Arcane also used to passively retain the in-attunement values of attunements as you left them; conjured weapons could instead be traited to "grant the on-enter benefits of an attunement, based on which weapon you use", if REATTUNEMENT is off the table for core Ele/Catalyst. As a result of all this, Fire/Air 'plasma' rapidly buffs/debuffs with multiple strikes that inflict burning, generate might, and inflict vuln, Fire/Water 'steam' generates team might through aurashare/transmute and cleansing conditions, and Fire/Earth 'magma' prolongs burning duration, and slows enemies striking your auras for longer fire-field exposure. Water/Air 'monsoon' disables and pummels with sea and storm, while Water/Earth 'winter/muddy' deals bonus damage to inhibited foes. Air/Earth 'harathi' elementalists are then control-dps of a different kind, becoming a burst-hybrid build that CCs and bombards with bleeding. SPECIAL MENTION: TEMPEST. Tempest should apply alacrity when generating auras, not overloading, man. Overloading already has tech to apply auras to proc this, but Tempest shouts represent elementalist tech that applies auras to allies without explicitly needing Water's Powerful Auras. It's a no-brainer. SPECIAL MENTION: CATALYST. I have a lot of words for this spec, but I'll keep it short. Augments should transmute auras, Transmuting auras should generate energy, and Hardened Auras should instead grant reduced incoming damage and condition duration while you have a flip-over skill active, with spheres flipping over if they have enough energy to cast. This promotes hammer, with orbiters flipping into grand finale, but also every single weapon that has a transmute skill on it, and makes having energy a damage reduction option, rather than just sphere spam. Catalyst is still an auramancer like Tempest is, but with completely different philosophies and applications. Despite little of the above naming weapons directly, these changes instead produce completely different playstyles with the weapons we have. I'd be THRILLED to have volley on waterpistol2, if it meant a massive stack of vuln if they were chilled, and switching to Earth to lob a boulder and daze foes to chill them would be great too. A harathi hammer slamming an enemy down to tornado them with bleeds while they struggle to gain distance sounds gas, and a Plasma Tempest inflicting a burning lighting storm to surge ahead in might and vuln is more like what I liked from Tempest to begin with. News we're getting shield would excite me, as heal tech in Water and cripple tech in Earth would make me able to land in team fights and expect to actually survive, and if a mainhand support stick had even two aura/transmute skills, I would want to use it on both Tempest AND Catalyst for completely different reasons, and using completely different traits in completely different specializations, based on if I wanted to be offense, defense, or support. ____________ I sincerely hope that any of this lands on a desk in the skill design and balance team, but that it at least starts getting the gears turning on how to make elementalist's elemental play interesting and customizable again. As a game designer myself, this post is mostly for me, an exercise to see what it'd take for me and my other Ele friends to become enthusiastic about experimenting with the class again, without feeling like we're being punished for not playing the class the exact way the devs seem to want us to. As always, I welcome critique and criticism, discussion about how this would affect the way you play Ele and the options you'd want to try because of it, even just to tell me that I'm wrong.

It's bizarre, because in the last week or two of wvw, I've suddenly started seeing a lot of Renegades. I don't know if it's the server rotation, and Renegade is just weirdly more popular on one server than another, but I got the chance to fight with some pDPS and cDPS, roamers and in zergs. None of them were using Kalla, of course, but it was still weird. Part of why I say that I want Kalla's spirits to be zoning tools is specifically because there's huge value to promoting or discouraging movement in WvW. As a Ranger, longbow barrage can needle entire blobs into shifting positions, and just a spirit with the range to get enemies away from the wall, from either side of the fight, would help a lot, but mobility wouldn't be needed if you force your opponent to go, or avoid, where you want them to. 900 range is kind of the first step to that, but we're not even getting that.

Celestial is definitely a problem, but on Rev, it's largely because the class has a finger in so many different pies. Expertise impacts the chill applied by swords, healing power affects the lifesteal effect of Kalla's Fervor, toughness converts to power using Versed in Stone, and so on. I'm not really so concerned about how strong Renegade is. All the EOD elite specs launched busted out the wazoo, but I didn't care for just about any of them, because they were so insanely rigid in their buildcraft applications. Renegade was different enough from the heal-support design of Herald, being a mid-range condiDPS, but Herald's gotten so many buffs over time that now Herald has a cDPS build with burning and chill ON TOP OF the boons and healing it was able to do. Renegade doesn't currently have a niche on Revenant that only it can do, that you'd want to switch off of Herald or Vindicator for. I'd thought it'd be cool if that was area denial and control, but the new Kalla rework doesn't do anything to solve that problem.

I'm not trying to say everything I've typed here solves the issue, just attempts to create an environment where the amount of fervor you generate actually matters. So much of Renegade's trait economy is eaten up by methods to generate a resource you can max out with Song of the Mists striking four enemies alone, so why does Renegade need to generate it with crits, flanks, defiance, disables, fury, evades, longer duration with Lasting Legacy and renewed duration with Heroic Command for??? I'd like if fervor was stripped down a little and made to matter to different builds. Not stripped down like Catalyst's Elemental Empowerment, which requires strict gameplay and only passively increases stats, but more like Mesmer clones, where there are builds for having max clones and builds for shattering them, and that each shatter scales with the clones you sacrifice. The only skill that acts that way at the moment is Heroic Command, which grants 0 might if you precast it before building your stacks first, and it's bizarre. We could even split Ambush Commander into the major adept traits. "Fervor on disable, and flanking attacks", "Fervor on fury, and crits", and "Fervor on evades, and striking defiant foes". The cDPS builds wouldn't even notice a change, but it creates a distinct gameplay style for harassing players who turn and run in PvP and WvW, as well as a distinct gameplay for a heal build who's dodging to heal and can be used in PvE against defiant bosses. The wacky thing about the ease that non-support Renegade has in generating fervor, is that there's still enough tools for a build completely devoid of crit chance to easily gain and easily maintain max stacks. But for what? The only build that wouldn't require crit chance is a healalac, and fervor has 0 impact on the effectiveness of a healRen, so why is it even there? What is it's availability meant to achieve? [As a note, healRen actually has pretty substantial healing with Soulcleave's Summit and the current Breakrazor's Bastion, but it's all slow and over time. You could supplement the healing with big bursty Ventari heals, but it doesn't hold a candle to the passive healing that Herald's regeneration achieves.] I'm not sure that I need to go through a lecture about how PvP differs from PvE due to having to sacrifice perfect-boons offense for survivability and control, but like... Revenant is a unique case for bringing two sets of predefined utility skills to the party, rather than getting to mix and match the usual 5. Rev struggles with anything that they haven't made their whole gimmick, but they're incredible at whatever they DO make their main gimmick. It's that gamble that makes Rev defeatable at all, and without such min-maxed vulnerabilities, you'd... well, you'd end up with Willbender or pre-rework Firebrand, actually. I don't think any single legend is meant to carry you, and I don't think any combination of two legends is meant to carry you, but Kalla is used for self-sustain and area control. Shiro/Kalla is meant to control any stragglers you catch up to, whereas Jalis/Kalla is a bunker tank, far more concerned about preventing the opponent from moving them off-point than chasing down anyone leaving. Ventari/Kalla uses summons for condi reduction and protection, before flipping into Ventari to blast big heals and condi cleanses; it's about surviving long enough to make the move worthwhile, but Salvation still features a group cleanse every dodge for stuff like that. Versed in Stone being on 90s CD just means you aren't relying on it more than once per skirmish, and if you've gotten down to 50% hp on conditions, halving their effectiveness for a minute on top of having resolution is huge. Revenant also has a lot of access to conditions like chill and slow, and Jalis' Forced Engagement is a huge control effect if you can catch someone without a stunbreak, especially as a condi class with expertise. I dunno. Rev is versatile, while also being vulnerable, and I wish that more classes were like that. Renegade doesn't really promote variation between builds, and I think throwing fields on Kalla and making fervor spendable in different ways are interesting ways to expand it's potential.

I guess it does say that Icerazor's Ire is chill/etc on every one of the blades, if it's empowered first, but "attack that inflicts chill" is only half the problem I have solved. Even Mallyx has an attack that inflicts 3 chill to as many as 5 targets in a line, while also removing boons, and that's an unblockable non-projectile. Both the old and new Icerazors are projectile attacks, not pulsing, and projectiles are a no-go in WvW blobs, because of all the projectile destruction/reflection. While an ice field would also be whirling bolts, I specifically say that Icerazor should be pulses to avoid the projectiles issue. I did see scepter on the stream, and I still don't care about it. As I said in my post, there isn't a single feature on scepter that's especially relevant to Revenant. All elites have easy access to personal might and fury, and barrier is simply not a mechanic that any legend or trait cares about. I'm not sure what everybody is so excited over. The purpose for the effects consuming fervor is to prevent skillspam. There's nothing stopping people from mashing their buttons, but if they want to gain the full advantages repeatedly, then they have to pace themselves or use Heroic Command. Otherwise, simply not pressing Citadel Orders or Kalla summons grants you the passive benefits, and you play as you always have. I hesitated against suggesting that there be an iCD on generating fervor, since the point was that you generated so much that it'd be cool to spend it, but not mashing all the skills on cooldown is one of the intentions at the least. I think that by handing out resistance, resolution, and protection, along with lifesteal, and the condi damage reduction from Righteous Rebel, that the devs intend for you to just power through the worst of condition stacks. Mallyx/Kalla with Corruption has Permeating Pestilence to transfer conditions on legendswap, and Retribution has Versed in Stone as a condi damage reduction, but I agree, it's a bit spicy. I'd actually had a note for Vindication that "inflicting burning has a 20% chance to cleanse a condition" but thought that might be pushing it, and overlapped too heavily with Righteous Rebel's reduction. But yeah, Breakrazor's Bastion was a neon sign telling enemies to bomb you, but it did at least have a 50% damage reduction from from conditions, and now it won't. Just to play devil's advocate for a second, but I'm not actually that upset about all the combos you've named here. You've essentially indicated that whatever your chosen combo, there'll be things you're good at, and things you aren't, and there honestly needs to be more effort to build strengths and weaknesses into the buildcraft of each elite. Nothing should be unkillable, and it's up to the player to use their strengths and weaknesses accordingly.

>Guardian, a class with aegis and more stability than any other class in the game, usually getting free downs as a Willbender with the only cost being the time needed to channel, an action accelerated by quickness, gets an evasion finisher with a 600-range shadowstep with a 1.75s cast time on a 20s CD >This guy: "It's totally like this other class that doesn't have quickness and has a three-step, 2.75s combined cast time, non-evasion non-shadowstep finisher move on a 25s CD you guys" I think Heaven's Palm being a finisher is cool. I want there to be more classes that have special finisher moves. But I NEED to know, how far away does "enemies nearby" prevent the finishing move effect, and what the notification system is for if you aren't going to get the finisher, before I can say if it's justified. You sound smug enough to maybe not realize, but the average player HATES Willbenders, because of the lengthy catalogue of nonsense they have at their disposal. Gapcloser? Escape techniques? High damage, Blocks, literally Unkillable phases, Condi Cleanse, Stability, Protection, Resistance and Resolution, Projectile Reflects? Alacrity AND Quickness? It's exhausting. Tossing on an evasion teleporting finisher move on one of the shortest elite-skill CDs in the game in the same patch that they're adding bonus damage, reduced condition damage, aegis, and longer duration to a grandmaster trait that literally already made you unkillable is not going to make it friendlier with the neighbours.

I wanted to compile some thoughts and examples for what, I feel, to be some really curious statements made about Renegade in the March balance patch preview, and resulting livestreams. First off: Renegade isn't weak. It's got some truly crazy utilities, even outside of Darkrazor's Daring, but the one thing holding it back is how fragile the spirits are in competitive formats. Simply changing the spirits to be invulnerable for even the first 50% of their duration would see improved use, but trying to get allies to stand in a neon-bright Kill Me sign for long enough to generate value is just asking to be the best place to drop a high-yield thermonuclear WvW bomb directly on anybody who made the mistake of standing there. In the case of Darkrazor's Daring specifically: stunlocking isn't a healthy mechanic, but the rework completely abandons it's use as a zoning tool. Instead, using Guardian tech to expel foes from the zone as a knockback, and preventing them from re-entering the field, at least opens up enemies to have the mobility to do something else instead. As it stands, there are lots of things keeping Renegade from being effective in WvW: Most of Renegade's DPS comes from bleeding, mostly shortbow and two relevant traits. Bleeds take a lot of time to be effective, without any control elements attached like poison does, and 20+ stacks melt off boonballs with a snap. Renegade has lots of burning, from shortbow, to Citadel Bombardment, to Soulcleave's Summit being a fire field, but Renegade/Rev has no traits that name fire fields or burning, so you end up with the same bog-standard Corruption traits as any other elite, which feels boring. Vindicator burning suffers from the same. Renegade has no sources of chill, so Corruption's chill>torment conversion is a miss, compared to Glint's burning/chill conditions. The single application of chill with the rework, only by casting two spirits, simply doesn't cut it. Icerazor's Ire could be a chill field, blasting and leaping for defensive ice auras and whirling and shooting for chilling bolts. Lots of crit chance and chill on weapons like sword/greatsword could be an argument for a hybrid dps, but Renegade has no traits that tie crit chance to condition application, and no traits that increase strike damage, short of a +5% on Lasting Legacy's Fervor dps. Icerazor's Ire has lots of vuln, which should be a shoe-in for battlescars self-sustain, but battlescars was gutted at the launch of EOD and never recovered. Lowering the amount from 20 hits down to just three doesn't make it feel like a combo piece anymore, and while the immobilize procs Salvation's Words of Censure and the weakness allows Retribution's Dwarven Battle Training , it doesn't really feel well-directed. On the topic of Kalla's Fervor, it's a very powerful effect, but it's completely invisible, due to only 5 stacks and having so many different ways to easily generate it. All it does is mean that while you might get powerful effects like 15 might on Heroic Command eventually, or condi damage reduction eventually, Heroic Command grants precisely 0 might by precasting before a fight. That's a huge miss in WvW, where the chances that enemies dance just outside your range means that you never land the hits needed to build stacks, and you end up having to charge in with nothing just to get them. As a healer, Renegade's only contribution is a crit>fury, fury>vigor chain, to use the exact same dodge-to-heal/cleanse tech that Vindicator uses, or Herald uses in PvP due to quickness being replaced with vigor. Breakrazor's Bastion and Soulcleave's Summit are too risky to stand in for long, 50% condi reduction or not, and while new Icerazor's Ire triggers Words of Censure, no Revenant weapon grants a particularly noticeable advantage to a heal-Renegade, not disables, not blocks, not blast finishers, not cleanses, not boons, not anything. This extends to scepter: barrier is a non-mechanic on Revenant at large, not like Scourge or Mechanist, and the two boons scepter generates, might and fury, are doled out in spades on Renegade. There's no cleanse, there's no vigor, there's just autoattacking for barrier. Theoretically the pull from Otherworldly Attraction could proc Words of Censure, but that'd mean autoing the enemy, instead of allies to generate the might and fury, and there's no advantage for shadowstepping on Renegade or Revenant either, not like on Guardian or Thief, and the buildup is simply too long to bother using Relic of Peitha for. In the case of other boons, the protection, resistance, and resolution from the rework are nice, but feel a bit jank due to the secondary effects requiring other summons. Renegade has alacrity attached to a single button that does nothing else, and then also has a trait that's main advantage is making that alacrity actually useable with full uptime. I've no idea how the Renegade rework managed to slip through the net of slashing alacrity off Tempest, Druid, and Scourge, but I imagine that at some point you're going to want to get rid of that too, and I can't figure out what you'll want to do about it. Herald, by comparison, has permanent uptime of boons simply by merit of still breathing, and if alacDPS is all Renegade is ever meant to live up to, then that's fine, but if you want it to have some versatility, you're going to have to give it something to work with. A lot of the rework feels like this wasn't so much an effort to solve Renegade, or Kalla, but the most recent step in cleaning up skills to be less performance intensive. There's been a LOT of standing-fields reductions as of late, and while I think that it's good to codify Renegade spirits as working the same way/similarly to Ranger spirits, I genuinely don't think that this is enough to get Renegades to move in to PvP and WvW. ____________________ Off the top of my head, here's a few alterations that could make Renegade more engaging, and give it a unique niche that doesn't overlap with Herald and Vindicator: 1) KALLA'S FERVOR AS A CONSUMABLE RESOURCE: With so many ways to stack fervor, it'd be way more interesting if Citadel Orders and Kalla summons could consume 5 stacks for 'empowered' benefits. The choice becomes when to use the stack, and with who, or whether to sit on the bonus damage and lifesteal fervor provides by using a different legend. HEROIC COMMAND: Grants swiftness, 5 stacks of Kalla's Fervor, and Ventari's Tranquil. This is a one-tap button that helps Renegade get their ball rolling, but also an emergency button to press in preparation of the other Order or summon that you ACTUALLY want empowered, if you don't want to wait to rebuild stacks. Ventari's tablet empowerment helps it stay relevant on a healRen in the same way as True Nature does on Herald. CITADEL BOMBARDMENT passively fires an extra projectile per fervor held, and consuming 5 stacks inflicts a second stack of burning. Players should want to use this ability, but often, it's cast too slow for too little damage, and getting to sling a ton of projectiles is a great move to use up fervor. ORDERS FROM ABOVE extends the duration of existing boons by 0.5s per pulse. If consuming 5 stacks, extends by 1s per pulse. A lot of Rev boons not on Herald don't last that long, these suggestions included. It'd be nice if OFA had functionality outside of providing alacrity, because without being an alacDPS, it's a dead button. 2) REWORKING GRANDMASTERS FOR MORE DIVERSE ROLES. Lasting Legacy ends up being no-brainer for both pDPS and cDPS, and due to the issues surrounding Citadel Bombardment, it doesn't compare in terms of either strike damage, condi damage, or % damage increase, especially since the might is self-only. VINDICATION grants 1 might in an area when you gain fervor, and 20% chance when you inflict burning. This helps grant the same group-might functionality of Heroic Command, while also tying in burning from mace2, shortbow4/5, Citadel Bombardment, and Soulcleave's Summit. LASTING LEGACY extends the duration of Kalla's Fervor and increases the maximum stack count to 8. Consuming fervor causes the stack's effects to persist for 6 seconds afterward. Mathwise, 8 stacks is +1% more than 5 stacks at 3% each, but it requires more investment and buildup. This shadow-effect also lets you maintain the benefits of fervor, without feeling the loss of dps, while you build up more stacks. RIGHTEOUS REBEL reduces incoming condition damage and duration per fervor. Orders From Above now also grants alacrity and regeneration per pulse. Renegade lacks sources of regen, if it's meant to be a healsupport, and it safely defuses Orders From Above and Righteous Rebel to have alacrity stripped in the future without killing the effect entirely. 3) ALL FOR ONE causes legendary renegade abilities to grant nearby allies a boon. (Included below) 4) RENEGADE SUMMONS AS ZONE CONTROL FIELDS. The issue with Renegade isn't so much how immobile the fields are; lots of classes in WvW use them to great effect. The issue is tying so much, to a field so small, where players trying to heal get walloped and enemies stand in the field without fear of consequence. This renders Renegade a field-control artist, who uses distant summon placement to break enemy formations, and casts on allies for boons and support. BREAKRAZOR'S BASTION performs a self heal, and an additional heal around the summon, which persists as a light field. Consuming 5 fervor performs three attacks that inflict blind. [All For One] grants nearby allies resolution on cast. The notion here is that the strikes can trigger Words of Censure, as well as eat up uses of battlescars, if slotted, while resolution benefits Retribution. RAZORCLAW'S RAGE inflicts a powerful bleed on summon, and then performs five whirl attacks for it's duration. Consuming 5 fervor grants those attacks bleeding. [All For One] grants nearby allies fury on cast. As a whirl, this combos with every other summon, for burning bolts, chilling bolts that can convert to torment, and light bolts that cleanse conditions. DARKRAZOR'S DARING expels foes from it's vicinity and breaks stuns on nearby allies, and persists as a lightning field. Consuming 5 fervor prevents foes from re-entering the field for the duration, and grants stability. [All For One] grants nearby allies protection. As mentioned earlier, the goal of this is zoning. There should be a cost to the wall, but I think that it represents a powerful effect that makes Renegades desirable in a way that's unique, but not in a way that isn't covered by other classes. ICERAZOR'S IRE creates an ice field, performing three pulses that inflict weakness and chill. Consuming 5 fervor causes each pulse to inflict immobilize. [All For One] grants allies nearby allies resistance on cast. The ice field here can be combo'd for chill, but also blasted for defensive ice auras. SOULCLEAVE'S SUMMIT continues to be a fire field and steals life. [All For One] generates 1 stack of Kalla's Fervor per second while active. The benefit of Soulcleave's Summit, under the effects of All For One, is that using Kalla's summons to consume fervor kind of pays for itself over time. ____________________ I did this mostly for fun, but also as an analysis of what keeps me, as a Renegade player, out of PvP and WvW. Renegade currently relies on lifesteal to sustain itself through fights long enough for condition damage to become effective, and short of using Song of the Mists to jolt you with a dose of quick-access Kalla's Fervor, legendswapping into Kalla after you actually land a hit, there can be some stumbling getting yourself ramped up, despite all the different ways to generate it. Without escape tools, Renegade ends up having to commit to a fight, and will usually die as a result, and joining a big WvW zerg means that all your efforts to use Kalla don't amount to much. Reworking Kalla into small, limited doses of boons doesn't help much, given how crazy the boon generation is on Herald, and how powerful the healing and cleanse on Vindicator is. There needs to be a reason to make significant decisions in both the buildcraft and the in-battle gameplay of being a Renegade, or else you'd be better off swapping to any other class or elite spec who actually can. Maybe combo fields isn't the best tech to get a Revenant some added value, but it certainly is tech Revenant doesn't otherwise have a lot of, and zone-control is a role that Revenant can perform, but not otherwise has codified as a build. I'd appreciate any critique or comments, or even just discussion on the subject, but I hope I'd at least gotten my point across.