ArthurDent.9538

My 2 cents, I don't play nearly as much as I used to. I saw two hammer revs one of which was much more effective on their warrior the other wasn't much of a threat. During that time staff warrior was played in basically every game I played since it's release often stacked and always tougher to deal with compared to those 2 hammer revs. Metabattle doesn't even have the hammer duelist build on it even though all the other new meta builds are up to date. I'm a rev main but haven't even tried new hammer since I find range weapons lame and boring in general. Hammer 4 1.8 coefficient @ 1200 range on a skill with excellent defensive utility seems kinda nutty but is a testament to how bad the rest of the kit is that it's stayed an unpopular sleeper pick for so long. Let's be clear, this is revenant hammer we are talking about, the single most neglected weapon in the game since its release all the way until just recently. It had never seen a single buff before recent changes while also never having seen significant competitive usage ever and it couldn't really function as a meme one shot weapon aside from the first few weeks of its existence. Seriously name me a more neglected weapon prior to the recent change. The point is: it is only potentially getting popular after stronger stuff has been nerfed which would not indicate something broken and needing a hot fix. Second I suspect a lot of people have literally never seen a hammer rev in pvp before now, have no clue how it works, and very likely have some l2p issues. Lastly it would be nice to let it have a month of meta status before it can go back to dumpster tier for another 9 years instead of expecting it to be nerfed with all the real fotm's and never allowed to shine even a bit.

Rampage 3 isn't a cc but the final hit of the auto chain is a daze iirc.

And a minor trait vs the main gimick of an espec + grandmaster trait. Also 5k death drops are abnormal; I would advise putting on armor if you are being hit by the regularly as my full glass vindi needs to prestack significant vuln or have a teammate give significant amounts of might to get death drops in the 4k range.

I think they should require LOS or have a cast time. Just no instant + no LOS at the same time.

Instant daze isn't exclusive to druid. Mes and thief also have it.

Jalis hammers give a lot of extra sustain and even do more DPS than shiro in cleave scenarios. Run jalis over alliance or shiro and your sustain will likely be just as good as core again.

NA finals were mirror comps. Core guard + DH + DE + Druid + Reaper.

If it was even close to out dosing zerk/vipers (spoiler it often really is quite close to vipers) that would be incredibly broken because zerk/viper have absolutely nothing going for them except for damage. Cele damage is actually disgustingly close to vipers stats for most condi builds so long as they have a decent amount of hybrid damage yet it has a ton of extra defensive and support stats baked in almost for free. Yet, none of that matters, people want absolute max damage on their damage dealers and would consider cele "niche" even if it made them literally immortal (see the old 100% damage reduction herald for a completely broken and overpowered build that was never meta merely "niche").

Those are literally examples that my support my point: encounters designed where defensive stats have less value.

It's op in pve too it's just that there isn't much content that is difficult in a way where being able to stack lots of defensive/supportive stats while still maintaining solid damage is of great value. Most pve enemies simply don't have the consistent fast paced attack patterns where players don't have enough dodges to avoid everything important (also healers are pretty OP at keeping glass cannons alive against stuff like passive damage auras) which could showcase cele's insane statistical superiority. Cele is only "balanced" in pve because encounters lack depth in a way where they can punish running full offensive setups. The reality is that you can't have a stat set have 60% more stats than other sets and call that balanced unless much of those stats are literally worthless. Pvp has shown that all stats have good value, it's simply that pve lacks encounters where more defensive stats help significantly.

I guess best option here is spam victor skills till out of energy so it self cancels. Definitely an extremely strong counter. Best to just not use the skill around PB mesmers unless legend swap is available.

Average stays the same regardless of population in theory. The bell curve just doesn't have the girth to allow as extreme of ratings on either end. There probably aren't any legitimate bronze players on NA.

Scrapper is THE most popular dps in top tier play while druid has been seeing lots of meta usage lately including winning the last MaT iirc. Weird choices for garbage tier specs.

Getting rid of the sub 10 energy requirement just makes it easier to use. I kind of like having to pay attention to using it to get the benefit.

Restore charged mists to at least 20 energy. It was always one of the few fun and interesting traits core rev has and was butchered down to complete and total uselessness at 10 energy.

I really miss damage on SotM. It was such a cool and fairly unique mechanic where the number of hits and thus the amount of damage you dealt scaled with how perfectly you aimed it. Now there is barely any incentive to even to to land it as it is both extremely clunky and difficult to land as well as the cc is such a short duration that there isn't much time to land any follow up damage (which staff doesn't even have any of its own). So now it's basically an extra evade with a tiny amount of extra mobility which leaves it almost completely devoid of the skill expression it used to have.

Tldr

If you check version history for the individual skills for necro dagger (mainhand and offhand) you can see numerous pvp buffs to most of the skills at various points in time. Additionally I do recall dagger mainhand being used on various bunker necro builds that have shown up in the meta on rare occasion while offhamd dagger has been a staple for condi builds (at least before torch was available to non scourge necro). None of that can be said for revenant hammer.

Funny fact: this will be the first time hammer has ever been buffed in pvp despite having never having seen significant meta usage. Probably the only weapon across all classes to be so neglected for so long.

All of the impacts are single target and it is seemingly totally random what target they go after in multi target situations. Even the tracking impacts target a random enemy within range so instead of hitting the boss you have targeted that is right in front of you, sometimes they decide to nuke a random firefly off to the side.

The insanely buggy/inconsistent nature of gs5 is quite infuriating and for some reason it seems most people don't even notice.

The 30 sec duration nerf for portal only really nerfs a side node mesmer's ability to plop a portal on home and roam around far more freely than any other side noder without fear of decap. I think if you want sidenode mes to be workable it can't be viable with portal at least not with 60 sec duration.

Dumb change

Most all builds look for ways in which they can attack while being protected from counterattack. This can take the form of evading while attacking like vindi does, but also applying blinds, aegis, barrier, disabling the enemy with cc, applying weakness, opening from stealth, out ranging the target, etc. Having safe attack windows allows for skilled outplaying to be possible as players attempt to maximize value during their strong windows while minimizing their opponent's ability to do the same. Without these windows, fights would come down to whatever build has the most damage+sustain and warrior would just always win in the current state. Vindi tends to be lacking in most of these options such as all gs skills are melee and leave them vulnerable to counterattack and it has very limited cc options. What it does have is a bit of damage at the end of its dodge which helps to compensate its other deficiencies but as it currently stands it is clearly not even close to dominating the meta.

Mes has to go up to A+ tier. There are no reliable methods to reliably stomp it first try except daredevil elite I guess also the 1/3 skills hit very hard. War is honestly f tier, vengeance is super situational and most of the time I see it used people just kite leaving the war on an even longer respawn or the warrior actually gets a down and rallies it when their timer runs out. The 1/2 skills are pretty bad with its only redeeming quality being large health and heavy armor making it slower to cleave out and decent for downed vs. downed rally wars. Rev goes up to c tier. 1 skill is low damage but perma slow makes it slower for an enemy to cleave out and helps protect teammates going for a rez. 2 is fast casting, not affected by projectile hate, and can even get enemies stuck in a wall if you are lucky. 3 skills sucks though, no getting around that. It also has decent natural bulk to not get cleaved out too fast.