Buran.3796

Condi Herald instead.

Competitive players finally reached zen status delivering the same care to the balance of the game as ANet: none.

You just have to go back in time 1 year and play power Herald. I guess current Ranger could work to some extent, but take in consideration that average joe is currently way tankier than before the last month megapatch.

Didn't saw a single power Rev in my last 30 2v2 ranked matches. Condi variations with Mallyx feels better than power Rev, that's for sure. I mean, if a power Rev lands a full burst in my condi Rev and I do nothing, I can maybe lose half of my HP, and that's with him using zerk amulet...

Trailblazer (or Dire, or any combination between Dire and Trailblazer) works perfectly fine. I use this: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PmxAke7lhQKsIyiJRXMICjBSiMBqgj7SdrD-zRJYkRLfZ0RBESK49BJI6tsonG-e You do more damage with viper or grieving stats, but that min-max choice is designed mainly to be carried by healers in group content; playing solo sustain is more important than pure damage. Corruption/Retribution/Glint is WAY tankier than the other choices (Infuse Light alone beats any other choice). Now, Renegade has a interesting place in OW PvE, because provides access to the short bow. The short bow is in no way a well designed weapon (has almost 0 synergies with the condition Revenant, which relies in torment, whereas most of the damage from sb comes from bleeds). But the sb still works well with condi damage (hammer doesn't), and is easy to kite enemies with the sb: you can stack damage fast and even do AoEs without being at close range, so is safer against some foes which can one shoot you (despite those ones are susually designed to be faced in a group). So condi Renegade is easier to play but more frail, whereas condi Herald is tankier but harder to play (against though enemies). Vs regular content/creeps Embrace the Darkness can just take care about everything...

Mace really has no mobility; a small leap after a 0.75" cast doesn't help to chase targets trying to disengage neither helps to get out a fight. So I have troubles to find those 4 weapons which provides mobility to us. We have off hand sword (which requires a target) and off hand axe (which requires a target and a sucessful hit, and is useless to disengage). Staff maybe provided a short burst of mobility in the past, but now is just a weapon which roots you for 0.5" and does no damage (is not even a utility tool since you can play perfectly fine without using Surge of the Mist, even in PvE); main hand sword shadow step has a very limited range, can't be used without a target and again is useless to disengage. Hammer, shield and shortbow have 0 mobility. So there's a problem, specially if one doesn't plan to use power weapons; condi weapons are really lacking in mobility at the moment. Then there's the legends: Herald provides good sustained mobility, but we will lose Herald if we chose to play the new spec. So this is a nope.Jalis is slow, which is fine given the nature of the legend, but totally not ok if the new spec is also slow. So is another no.Mallyx was a good source of speed burst before ANet decided to stack mobility, a 360º x 360 unit pull and chilled all in the same skill; as happened with off hand sword, which lost a valuable moving block in exchange to a overpowered damage burst which was later nerfed in time cast, cooldown and damage (so we lost the useful block for nothing), chances are that the utterly overpowered Call of Anguish will end being nerfed again to the point of being crap, so I wouldn't put too much faith in the future of that legend. So this is a maybe; maybe Mallyx keeps being ok in mobility in the future so we maybe could afford a "slow" legend with Cantha. But that window is smoll (which means cute and naive but tiny). Finally we have Shiro. Shiro is dead to me, I won't use it ever again: is so differen from what was at the release of the class that when I think about it puts me in a bad mood and just swap to Guardian or leave the game. You can totally count that I won't play Shiro along the next legend spec. So yeah, better ANet puts a mobility skill in the new weapon if they want my money when the release date of the expansion arrives. Six months before the PoF release the specs were leaked and that time Kalla and the short bow seemed weak as **** and at the end that was just what we got.

If you want to play mostly at range Necro and Ranger would be the best choices; Mesmer had some strong ranged builds also, but I'm not sure about how well they do at the moment after the huge February patch. My only complain about ranged play (which usually does less damage than mele to balance the fact tha is usually safer) is that in general the bows in the game are very bad (outside the Ranger's longbow, but Ranger uses a pet and is not a pure archer). Not a single class can be properly called "archer": thief's bow is just a mobility tool with some cleave gainst rezzing; Dragon Hunter's long bow is slow and weak, Warrior's long bow is condition based, not terrible, not great, Renegade's short bow is full of useless, clunky skills and is just an auto attack device devoid of any fun. Long bow and short bow from Ranger are nice, but the class has to share the dps between the skills and the pet (which you don't have a full control over), so the game in general lacks a pure bow based class which can be played across all the content (you can use what is given, but bows are generally sub-par).

Legend related I would like to see either a Tengu or a Norn/Kodak related.Weapon wise I would put longbow or pistols above greatsword, but if they release again a 2H weapon without any mobility and defense skills I just will pass.

Condition: overall great; short bow is still mediocre for PvP/WvW, but can be usedPhysical: garbage; not only is worse than condi at every place in the game but also loss the distinctive flow that has since the release. Legends: Mallyx: strong, amongs the best and more usefull. Herald: good, despite the nerfs still provides value at decent cost of oportunity. Jalis: decent, has good synergies with condi builds, but if used in physical damage based ones the dps is really low. Shiro: garbage, skill x skill very low value in relation to the energy cost but more important no longer plays/works as before; 0 reasons to use it in the future. Ventari: useless; never liked the lore or the mechanics of this legend so I never use it; doesn't exist to me. Kalla: useless; never liked the lore and I hate the mechanics of this legend so even when is buffed I don't enjoy this one and keep returning to M/H/J after using Kalla a few days. Weapons: Mace: slow but good, easy to interrupt but can put a lot of pressure and stacks damage well. Axe: decent, other classes have better off hand weapons but is still usable. Shield: decent, used to be bad, but the current meta is so tanky and the other weapons so bad that currently works at everything except zerg vs zerg WvW. Shot bow: decent, can be used at every game mode albeit half of the skills are garbage (the state of bows in the game outside Ranger's LB is pitiful). Swords: mediocre, they can't compete against condi in PvE neither beat tanks in PvP/WvW, so no reason to use them. Staff: bad, I wouldn't even use this one for bar breaking in PvE; has a huge "DPS LEAK" neon banner floating around every time you touch one. Hammer: LOL, was only used at long range WvW warfare and now svcks at that, so there's no longer reason for this weapon to exist, much less to use one. Overall feel: good, finally condi bunker Rev can stand against all kind of Guardian, Mesmer or Necro builds in Conquest, do it well in WvW and seamlessly level PvE content without even touching the build. Power Rev is garbage, but 2019 was essentially a one year long farewell to that build. For both PvE and competitive game modes if I want to play power there's at least 3 specs of Guardian/DH/FB builds I would run instead of power Rev, which is a bit sad due the time I spent crafting the legendaries (now on track to make Astralaria and Eureka), but what could be said? Main designed of Rev/Herald leaved the ship long ago and the heirs had a long running dismantling the build and how it worked (instead of just squaring the numbers). I don't even think about touching Shiro or the power weapons again. Is all condi Rev for me; If I want hybrid or condi I just play Guardian...

Provide again a block to sword offhand. Give the short bow a movement skill and/or a evade/block instead all those garbage skills that can't be used in uneven ground.

95% of that builds were ubernerfed long ago. Actually I think that devs nerfed the kitten out of that builds after each vid. Quite the compliment for Hizen... Actually damage from the condi Herald went buffed in the last balance patch of 2019 and remains untouched in PvE in the 2020 patches, so is better than ever.

Glad to see a hammer viable in a game mode; hard to see any class using them anymore.

I entirely agree with this. I would remark some milestones about the Revenent identity: The staff was never envisaged as a weapon that roots you in place; Herald already provided that with the block in the shield and we had already lost a block on movement in the off hand sword. They botched the block in the sword "to provide damage instead", then erased the sword damage, made it slow as the hammer, removed the interrupt in the staff #2 and finally made the #5 useless to disengage.Condition Revenant was designed to be slower but tankier, and to have better AoE damage and better tools to endure conditions; the main source of damage was torment, with a bit of burning. Then with PoF they provided a condition weapon based on bleeds with 0 synergies with the core condi Revenant, and without defensive or mobility tools. Kalla was also designed as squishy, with summons than die easily, the stunbreak in the heal, and some other atrocities. They should have nerfed the damage of power Herald instead of botching the flow of its skills, it would have lessen the weight of the class in PvP without turning it in a trainwreck. I don't buy the argument of "less frequent skills, more weight in their use"; the game is as spammy as before the patch: the only difference is that now it takes longer to kill foes.

Last year when I played power Herald zerk amulet arleady was the logical choice, because being their role to +1 the vit stat in marauder felt lke a total waste. 12k between DS and CI sounds cute: you can almost halve the life of a condi Rev or a Necro stacking those two hits (assuming that aegis, a barrier or something equaly instantaneus and balanced doesn't suddenly appears).

They should rise the cost to 55 to everything seriously. I kill with mace autoattacks; when I swap to Mallyx I tend to not use skills, saving energy to breakstun or proc resistance with Pain Absortion if is needed, or using Call to Anguish to interrupt rezzes, or after stacking energy for a while activating the Embrace the Darkness upkeep, which seems to be the passive agressive gameplay ANet expects from us.

I would ditch the staff from that loadout; does very little damage, is not better for defense against the A.I. than the shield, and the current #5 is a shadow from its former glory. But yes, Mallyx/ Jalis with mace+axe works perfectly fine.

Hizen made pretty much the best PvE/open world Revenant build you can run in terms of survability/solo playing potential: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmxAke7lhQKsIyiJRXMICjBSiMBqgj7SdrD-zRJYkRLfZ0RBESK49BJI6tsonG-e The latest changesfor condi Revs in PvE even buffed it a bit, and since doesn't use Invocation or staff the changes in the megapatch from February 25 didn't hurt it. There's other alternatives that can do damage faster or being more safe (using the short bow, of breaking defiance bar from dangerous champions with the staff) against some particular bosses, but broadly speaking those can't reach the things that that build achieves.

That's because there's no "meta" condi Rev; there's at least 3-4 viable condi builds which move from core Mallyx+Jalis, Herald Mallyx + Glint, Renegade Mallyx + Jalis and even Kalla sometimes. And weapons usually include mace and axe but sometimes also shield, shortbow and even the sword. The only thing that settled is that power Herald is now crap. Enjoy the bunker Nurgle meta which everyone was asking for.

Lost 3-2 vs a 2 Firebrand team in the Asuran Arena playing as Herald Rev along a Mesmer. Las round was lost due map mechaning after exceeding the time cap by ~30 seconds. They aren't unbeatable, that's for sure.

Don't trust this man. He wan'ts you to run brittle builds so he can score the second kill. : 3

I won't ever land staff #5 again because I won't even use it again. Worst thing about the shield was how it rooted us, and now the staff is worse, because the shield at least can be paired with a weapon which does, you known, damage (mace) so staff can root (pun intended) in hell. The same with the hammer: I won't touch those two (or power Revenant builds) with a 10 feet pole. Shiro was an agressive legend based on attack speed, mobility and evasion with high risk (weak to condis) and high reward (burst damage) and now instead is a phat no one with harmless weapons which makes you slower. I refuse to play a shadow of its former glory.

Shao's previus build (core with Jalis Mallyx, mace + axe/staff): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAkeZldQIMHKi1QSsHCi9RgsASgD7SfqC-zZB8UiUEkpEIghQCLA5NA Cevni's from WvW (Renegade with Jalis + Mallyx, mace + axe/short bow): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAkeVlhQHsIgJBMIgBSfMBKgD/S7rC-zVRYcRHpjMCuiLlcCxMDkcrqiTAvPAh73C9faA-w Hizen's for solo PvE (Herald with Glint + Mallyx, mace + axe/shield), I've been running this adapted to PvP for the last two months: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PmABkel7lpQIMLKidRSMMCiJSgsCSgj7SdrD-zZoOleFBRLBaXIkwCwfDA Caith's celestial core Rev (Jalis + Mallyx, mace + axe/double sword): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmABwylflhQHsIyhJRNMI6hBSfMBKgDzSfqC-zZgAA There's not a "meta"; tons of options util the strongest builds settle.

Buy some stability, most of classes have access to stab in one or another form but the players refuse to equip it because like to run "perfected" cc/burst chains. I play without stab but my build has 29k HP, reliable access to (expensive) breakstuns and plenty of resistance. Also: the better the power builds perform in the future, the worse will do the condi Revs.

Mostly rifle Holos and some hammer Scrappers. But is hard to value "builds that counter a condi Rev" because currently there's not a clear "meta": there is a lot of variety in the builds that Rev players are using. Yesterday Caith was running in PvP a celestial core Rev with double sword/mace + axe, Jalis + Mallyx and corruption + retribution + invocation; I'm running a carrion Herald with mace + axe/shield, Glint + Mallyx, and I found Renegades running Jalis + Mallyx or Kalla + Mallyx, sometimes wielding short bows, sometimes not. There's a lot of differences in terms of strong and weak points on those builds: Jalis provides better sustain and great team access to stability but is lacking in cc; Glint has better cc, mobility and breakstun access but is weaker mitigating damage. I think that will take probably a few weekly tournaments and the end of this 2 vs 2 season in March to settle a bit which loadouts overall offer better value for Conquest teamplay. I also found a lot of players "bandwagoning" the Necro but being unable to do crap with the class, because despite how tanky can be is really vulnerable to cc.

Not that odd taking in consideration that in the real world maces are weapons specifically designed to negate the protection from armors creating trauma through delivering kinetic energy instead of slicing and bleeding enemies. A non armor/light armored fighter has no business wielding a mace vs foes with metal plates.