Heinel.6548

The thing about Band Together is that they actually had a far superior implementation of it in Ventari's Tranquil. Ventari skills also can be empowered by summoning the tablet. You get an effect put on you that gives you the bonus, it doesn't change the skills themselves. The current band together is really quite terrible. Not only do you not know when it's actually up, the flipping animation also disables the skills temporarily, so if you don't chain the skills immediately (need energy or whatever) you can get into a situation where you press the button and nothing happens. This doesn't exist with Tranquil. They re-invented the wheel and made it triangular. It's quite the disaster.

Also darkrazor only deals 200 defiance now, NOT the stated 600 on the tooltip (and what the previous version did). Tested on the golem. It's either not working correctly or this is a straight nerf with a tooltip lie cover up. It also does like 1 sec of cripple, which isn't on the tooltip.

TBH I don't think rifle needs to be any more potent in healing than staff currently can manage. It'll be nice to have a direct heal skill so you can heal when you can't summon. But the biggest problem with healing mesmer is always going to be the fact that you need a persistent enemy target to do anything. The open world event has only trash mobs? Sorry no boons for you. Your instanced PvE boss just phased? Sorry no boons for you. For as long as this handicap is in place mesmer support will remain second rate in PvE. My personal wishlist for rifle is for its clones to behave more like renegade spirits, you place them (and they could be kneeling and immobile) but you don't need a target and they just hit whatever close by from range, and shatter in place. While we're on this if ego restoration trait summons a clone that slaps the mesmers themselves and hence be persistent until shattered is also a welcome addition, and would do well to put mesmer on par with other support specs.

This really sound more like a learn to play issue. The duration of the dodge and the size of the ring are all different for all three types. You just need to learn to memorize them, the same way as you would if they were color coded instead. Let's talk about things that are not working or visually unacceptable, not things that are already working well as intended.

The art team is separate from the rest of the programming. This request literally has zero impact on your priorities.

The high upkeep can be useful for the legend as it is now because it is the only upkeep skill in the legend across both kurzick and luxon, and the rest of the abilities have very long cooldown (by rev standards). It's actually difficult to drain your energy for charged mist for your legend swap without this. You could press all the buttons and swap, but considering 66% of utilities in this spec are reactionary skills, you'll just be wasting a lot.

You confirmed that the current implementation of the skill has a self defeating mechanic.

This is one of the criticisms as well. In PvP, where this spec actually matter, everyone is gonna interrupt your drop so you kill yourself.

Upkeep isn't really the problem. The real problem is this skill require you to be on the verge of death to get the full drop effect. If you mitigate the damage with barrier, you are nerfing the skill itself.

I just have to add to the chorus denouncing the Kurzick elite. Everything about this skill is wrong. Bad animations, long cast time, useless effect, possibility of producing negative utility... even in a full heal build you do not want to use it. With the heal dodge as spammable as it can be, you barely have time to use your utilities or weapon skills, and definitely not enough time (or energy for that matter) to use a elite that costs so much time to execute. A skill that better not exist (to make way for the Luxon elite) is a dead weight and bad design. It needs to be reworked.

Well, for a bit of a silver lining in all the negativity, vindicator as it appears seems extremely casual friendly. Maybe even more so than heralds, as you don't even need to worry about energy. GS has a lot of vulnerability on skill 1 and 2, and that means battle scars and self heals. Just cleave away and watch your health go up. If you also take the heal dodge, it cost the same as the normal dodge and looks like the dodge frames are longer, so you actually get more evade than normal and it also heals and gives you barrier. The alliance stance shananigans may seem complicated, but you don't actually have to take it. just use shiro and turn on impossible odds and you'll probably fare better than average player in open world.

The point is, it doesn't matter. The stab on the skill is only there in case you press the button too quickly and group stunbreaked before the stun occurs. But it only effects 5, so no one will bother with it, the same way no one touches the stab mantra on FB. Edit: Actually now that I read the tooltip again it appears the stab is self only, as it is a stun breaker that has a cast time, and all of those have that.

Yes. 1 second group stability is going to make all the difference. I think I have had enough copium for the day.

Like it or not you will be competing with classes that brings more utility with little compromise in any group setting and will be discriminated against accordingly.

Nope. merely having stab share is not going to allow you to replace an FB, who can already 10man stab plus a never ending list of other utilities plus heals. You are also going to significantly reduce your own damage potential if you bring the heal dodge and use it often, as the animation is super long and you are not doing damage while it happens, so you are doing downstate DPS for significant amount of time. At that point you are just trying to do both and failing at both. High healing output means nothing at high level pve. The reason FB and druid can't be replaced isn't because they have amazing healing output. In fact both of them are quite below anything a tempest or ventari rev can do. But healing is really the least of what they do anyway. If you have actually raided, you'll know the druid build for raiding isn't a build at all. Their traits and skills change drastically from encounter to encounter and they can cover every mechanic in the game. Those are mechanics you can't simply heal away. That's why they're always there. FB is in the meta because they are multiple roles combined into one. Every raid group has a list of things they require to succeed, and when one person can check half the boxes, it gives you options, it allows you to carry the group. Vindicators at it's current iteration doesn't have any tools that would allow them to challenge any of the incumbents. Heck, even banner warriors provide unique buff that no other class can provide, cementing them a spot regardless of what happens. And you know what's worse? Vindicators can't even compete with renegades who can provide 10man alacrity allowing a bit of role compression. I sure hope they can do something amazing in the other game modes, or it's a dead spec on arrival.