LucianTheAngelic.7054

Your proposal looks to add CDs to upkeeps (moving farther away from core revenant philosophy) and additionally adds requirements to avoid said CD. This is more complicated than the current system. Additionally, balancing concerns are paramount since you’re also looking to mix upkeeps (ignore the fact this makes no sense/would have to be heavily modified for legends like Ventari, Kalla, Viktor) Don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water just because Anet makes bad changes sometimes. Further, it doesn’t fit what upkeeps are. It’s a mechanic directly ripped from GW1 and changing it to have alternative functionality would be to essentially make them no longer true upkeeps and thus miss the point of being upkeeps entirely. No herald doesn’t count here since their facets are not just upkeeps but upkeeps+utility skills; a modification by the elite spec to differentiate itself from core mechanics. Literally, the much much simpler solution is to just lower the energy costs on skills in PvE to be more reasonable and thus able to be used more often for their actual utility. We shouldn’t redesign an entire core mechanic when a simple energy reduction on certain skills serves the purpose. Keep it simple, as they say. Complicated solutions have a higher chance of adding additional complications, which is not something Revenant needs more of

I don’t understand why many of these suggestions seek to add weird functionality to the class in order to “fix it.” Sure, This could be interesting as a trait (probably Grandmaster since it would potentially be busted), but as regular functionality it’s a bit ridiculous, doesn’t fit the theme, doesn’t fix anything, and needlessly makes the class more complicated (the class being “easy” has never been a complaint thrown at revenant; no need to make it even more complicated)

Yeah I agree that I wouldn't use Thief Relic for WvW and instead opt for something else

Honestly if they just passed off the healing into a 360 radius for both self and teammates it would be a fine weapon for healers in PvE

Rev has plenty of opportunities in its rotation to refresh its thief relic. The only issue with Rev and thief relic at the moment is that the 3rd skill on both GS AND S/S (phantom onslaught/unrelenting assault) don’t give thief relic credit right now, so it’s partially bugged. But otherwise mist unleashed is meant to be spammed regardless so as long as you can maintain DPS on target you shouldn’t ever drop thief’s bonus

I don’t think archemorus needs an upkeep skill; it’s actually kind of nice to have a legend that doesn’t have one (kind of). i also don’t think boonDPS is a role vindicator needs to cover. If they decide to give vindicator a boon role I would hope they lean into the healing aspect and make the boon support option scale with healing power, forcing a healer boon build instead and forcing St. Viktor to be relevant in PvE. That way herald can still have an optimal role as QDPS while Vindicator can perform better as pDPS and either QHeal or AHeal

Swords just need a slight increase in damage on 2/4/5 and then they’ll stay relevant in the same way mace/axe stays relevant for condis. This would be an easy change and bring a bit more parity between S/S and GS.

See I find this to be the reverse; I found that the old “fire at target” system hit most of the time provided the opponent wasn’t moving forward erratically or dodging. With the new system I find that, since the line is skinny, you end up in a lot more “oh they didn’t move where I anticipated them to move, so I missed” situations. The benefit of the “fire at target” system was not having to predict where the target was going to go, and also the COR line wouldn’t choose its trajectory until the cast time had finished (making it reliable, even on most moving enemies). The current system makes you select the trajectory before the .75s cast time, making it janky and hard to hit unless you predict correctly or lock them down with CC. The old system didn’t really have these issue. I personally never had an issue with the damage being different at different distances (Hammer has always been an anti-range, keep your enemies at range type weapon) and I thought it added extra complexity and reward to the weapon. The only thing I think it was bad for was PVE, but hammer has also always sucked there, so it’s kind of moot

They should revert CoR entirely, honestly. The Line AoE is obnoxious and doesn’t feel more flexible or better than the old “fire-at-target” system. The damage being greater the farther you were away from an enemy was also quite novel and didn’t need to change for the sake of balance

The damage reduction on Jalis being only 6% (multiplicative) when you have protection is pretty abysmal tbh

There's a lot of massive overthinking in this thread honestly. It's not that deep and it's really quite simple: Shiro will always use IO for damage and that's fine. Decreasing energy costs on its utility skills allows you to actually use them, ya know, for utility without completely tanking your dps. Simple solution (and the only solution that needs to happen) is to decrease the ridiculous energy costs, NOT rework the entire upkeep system or overload skills with even more effects. This is PvE and none of Shiro's skills would be ridiculously abusable if the costs were decreased a bit and we certainly don't need a full rework of Rev mechanics simply to boost Shiro's usability.

Not only does it have a longer range, but it also has no cast time (which is the bigger pain point imo). The cast time on Unrelenting Assault is actually the cause of most of the major bugs with the skill and is the reason Smoke Assault doesn't suffer from the same issues that UA does

The OP of the entire thread was talking specifically about PvE, so pvp/WvW concerns aren’t really relevant for this convo. Cost reductions in PvE are warranted for Shiro and would not cause any issues to the spec in any other capacity

They’d still have to add 27 buffs to each elite spec line (27 lines!) to do what you’re saying, In addition to the fact they’re going to have to nerf many of the e-spec weapons to prevent full homogenization. This is still absolutely a balance nightmare. Also a “detune” is just a nerf lmao, fancy language doesn’t make it not a nerf and even if they add buffs to the espec lines it’s unlikely to be 1 to 1 equivalent to what we have now Edit: Also it's not even a trait that gives you access to the e-spec weapon, it's a "minor proficiency" so it's unlikely they'll add anything to that part of the Elite spec traitline. They're much more likely to have to add to a trait or build a new one entirely than do what you're suggesting they do. Also Props to you for a snarky reply tho! Very funny, cool, and oh so intelligent!! ☺️

I actually find this unlikely since they would have to add a trait for every single elite specialization. I think it’s much more likely they will just nerf the more powerful elite spec weapons, which is obnoxious

Pretty worried they’re going to neuter the elite weapons in a lot of cases just to make the “balance” fit. This is honestly a balance nightmare that’s just going to create a lot of “dead” options, even moreso than right now. Despite being fun, it’s a pretty whack feature they chose to go with simply to avoid making new e-specs.

You might want to check snowcrows and top benchmarks. Top DPS is currently 44k. Top quickdps is 35k. Herald quickDPS is only 32k. Thats a 12k difference between the top DPS spec and QHerald. Overall, it’s roughly a 10k differential between a boonDPS and a full DPS. Also boonDPS have typically been between 28k-33k since around PoF. That hasn’t really changed; they’re not suddenly soooo much stronger; there’s just more of them. The 10k differential isn’t “dubious at best;” you just haven’t actually looked at the benchmarks you missed my point about golem benchmarks entirely. Go reread it and look at the word proportional. Damage done on a golem TRANSLATES PROPORTIONALLY to damage in an actual encounter (with some variation based on type of encounter/mechanics and build). BoonDPS are still not doing as much as the majority of fullDPS builds in actual encounters; only about 2/3rd to 3/4ths the amount of DPS. yes, again, you can do whatever you want in most content, even raids/strikes. But again, this increases chance of failure with lower DPS as fights take longer. That’s literally always been the case on most encounters and that’s why most groups are not adopting your 2 boon DPS/1 healer comp. Also, there are encounters where overall DPS is incredibly important. For example, I’d dare you to go take your 4 boonDPS/2 healer/4 DPS comp over to something like Ankka CM Gazed into the Void (and take a video/provide logs) and try to beat it with the lower group DPS and non-snowcrows level players. That 20k lower group DPS can absolutely be detrimental in certain encounters/achievements. so no, it’s still not “boomer logic” lmao

Yes, I acknowledged the hybrid DPS supplying those boons has “gone up.” It still doesn’t matter because you’re looking at a 10k~ dps loss in a composition using 2 hybrid dps/1 healer/2dps for a 5 man party, and a 20k DPS loss in a 10 man squad (if using 4 boon dps/2 healer). like yes, you CAN do that and that’s fine, most content is still clearable in raids/strikes without that 20k extra DPS. However, it’s extremely nonoptimal to trade 20k squad DPS for 2 non-boon healers. Role compression is powerful and beneficial and it’s not like something like Heal Vindicator which provides neither quick/Alac is so powerful that it warrants the spot over a healer that can provide one of those boons. also the whole “golem benchmarks doesn’t account for game mechanics” is like the hall mark catchphrase of people that don’t understand how the golem actually relates to encounters, so I wouldn’t use that as an argument. While yes, DPS in actual encounters varies based on mechanics, if a DPS build is doing 40k~ on golem and 30k~ in an actual encounter, a boonDPS that pulls 30k on golem isn’t suddenly pulling 30k in a real encounter, more like 20k~. The relationship between golem DPS and actual encounter DPS is proportional (ofc with variations based on mechanics/class, but overall still proportional, a condi Alac Ren on a fight that favors condi isnt suddenly hitting full dps condi Ren numbers…) This isn’t me saying “don’t play heal vindi,” sure go for it, I like the idea of the build myself. This is just me explaining that it’s not “boomer logic” if the goal is to complete content faster and more easily. (Remember, higher DPS = less mechanics = less need for healing/less chance to wipe)

It’s not boomer logic; it’s math. Any composition of 2 boon DPS, 2 DPS, 1 healer is missing out on about 10k DPS. This is why the healing role is also a boon role in meta comps.

Definitely a “l2p revenant better” issue going on in this thread, at least with PvE complaints (tho Shiro energy cost complaints for PvE are valid)

Eh, Qhealherald isn't really screwed, especially after the changes on the 18th. At 100% BD the quickness being pulsed is 2.5s for every 1s, so you can get a huge buffer pretty quickly. Moreover, might generation is even easier and higher now, with 1 stack of 24s might every second just with Shared Empowerment, so you can get a huge amount of might without even using Facet of Strength. Elevated Compassion also pulses healing every 1s, so while you're upkeeping you're still providing some additional healing. If you do need to dump a lot of energy on burst healing, you can do so comfortably if you have a buffer, which you should in almost all scenarios (groups really shouldn't be taking massive damage within 5-10s of a fight, which is all you need to build huge quickness). Ventari/Jalis is now an option as well, if you don't want/need Glint's boons. The build requires more micromanagement now, but overall after the 18th's changes the build is fairly flexible now. Heal Herald is likely either the same or better than before the Elevated Compassion changes

The changes on the 18th effectively solved the problems. Overcapping on quickness is insanely easy, even in berserkers, and the 1.25s base duration for quickness on a 1s interval is insane. While I don't love the changes overall just because I don't like it being attached to upkeep, my original criticisms (inflexible rotation, clunky) are pretty much entirely assuaged with how high the uptime on quickness is, which lets you do plenty of other things if you need. It feels easy and effective to play, even in hard CM content.

Yep, welcome to Revenant the forgotten child. We’re also missing 5+ utilities compared to every other core class

Especs are dead, at least for this expansion. Instead we just get Weaponmaster training which will homogenize the hell out of the existing e-specs

Weaponmaster Training is a nightmare. Weapons that are fine right now are going to be nerfed to hell and left broken. There will always be a few BIS options and it’s going to increase homogenization of all elite specs/core classes massively. The diversity gained from this is an illusion.