Yasai.3549

The fact that Summons STILL only have 600 cast range and wonky placement on terrain is making me so sadlife about Kalla.

I think your ideas are fine but this part here really got my head scratching. You do realize that you're trying to compare two weapons which have different priorities and intentions in design right? Hammerbolt is meant to be a staple damage source from the weapon set, with other skills supporting the Hammerbolt in terms of defensive skills or AoE cleaving otherwise unable to be performed with a linear projectile pierce. Fireball from staff is a filler skill and not a staple. People use Ele Staff for literally all the other reasons and Fireball is not one of them. Also, Eles are NOT okay with Fireball btw, people have been very upset with Ele staff for a very long time, I invite you to go and look into their subforum. Also factoring things like Slow and animation recovery, you will slaughter the functionality of Hammerbolt without meaning to, making it neigh useless in any content anyway because talking numbers is one thing, actually using it is another. It would be "fine" if Hammerbolt was just a bad skill and the rest of Hammer makes up for it but this is not the case. Hammerbolt cannot lose functionality.

Er, they're steadily nerfing everything to do with support and healing with Vindi, making Power its only functional aspect. The only thing they aren't doing is hideously buffing or reworking Vindi to support Death Drop build but I think it's going to get there eventually.

Indeed it was solid like 8 years ago. CoR was actually monstrous back then and it only had 2s cooldown. Was the good times. Then it got nothing but nerfs and bugs over the years. Good stuff. Yea.... I think you may need to be updated on what's going with the game. DTH damage got nerfed with CC damage removal years ago.

Make Imperial Impact restore Energy based on how many enemies it hits with its expanded dodge AoE. PvE: 5 targets max, 5 Energy per target hit. Competitive: 5 targets max, 3 Energy per target hit.

Imo DTH being made free cast was the best thing that could happen. Not being locked into the full animation is already an amazingly huge buff and I cannot stress this enough. I cannot care less if it takes the same time or longer as the old hammer drop if it freed me of animation after 0.75s max. It's still a very avoidable skill, but now it doesn't make you pose for a full 1.5s before the hammer drops. That was just bad, terrible, disgusting. FotM imo didn't need Aegis but what it could have needed is just full frontal damage block, like Dragonhunter and Warrior's Staff. CoR... man I wish it just moved away from this line shaped ripple nonsense. It just doesn't make it any more unique than other AoEs or is cool or is functional except for being BAD. What makes me madge is that it's also a ground target. Why can't I just send a ripple directly to my targeted enemy, cos it seems to be fine for Necro Sword to have a line target cleave with their Sword 2.

Fantasy and Functionality go hand in hand with making a weapon feel good to use. That's the core reason some games have weapons feel good to use despite crappy balance and some games have weapons that just feel like a waste of time for how good they look and sound. Revenant Hammer falls into the latter category. While it being a slow, strong, hard hitting weapon with weight, it does not translate well into most game modes. In PvE, it's a joke for any content that isn't open world. Seriously, Hammer is just not viable at all for Raids or Strikes, and using it in Fractals is a niche situation when you're expected to stack up and cleave things down, not throw heavy hits from range. In competitive it was just plain bad plus the coefficient nerfs as well as CC damage removal made it a huge waste of time. The recent Hammer update was a huge Functionality win for sure, but I also understand that it ruins the fantasy. But hey, it feels good to use now and I think fantasy can take a back seat if it becomes more usable. I am still in mind that Hammer is just a confused mess of a weapon that needs a hard look at and reorganization of its capabilities. Either make it better for Sieging or make it better for Skirmishing. This current Hammer as of the balance pass is just a weird mess. If it is a Siege weapon archetype: - Needs to hit HARD from FAR. If it doesn't fulfil these two points, it's still a jank weapon in my books - Strength should come from mainly your ability to lay down consistent damage from range, via Autos and Hammer 2 probably. Also CoR just needs to be made more consistent and hit harder. It's such a joke damage wise right now in competitive. - Other 3 skills should be utility based and helps you keep your distance/protect your position or else there is NO POINT. (Imagine if Deadeye Rifle had a shadowstep onto the enemy, when your gameplan is to keep your range) So far this can be easily accomplished with minimal tweaks because Hammer is already built as a Siege weapon, with Phase Smash being absolutely terrible for such a weapon even if we need a defensive Evade because it not only roots your return location, you can just straight up miss the damage because it's so slow! Just a backwards roll that damages and chills enemies who are in your melee range should be able to round up the kit to be a great defensive sieging set. If it is going the Skirmish archetype: - Fast, consistent damage. Range may vary. - Utilities that enable the player and help lay down damage. - Cheap and consistent damage tool. This is also easy to tweak into from our current Hammer. Autos are already there with the new speed. CoR needs to be changed into a skill that can be used in a variety of ranges with great effect, something that's like Shortbow 2 or Warrior's Hammer Shock are great inspirations. Phase Smash can be sped up and become an excellent Evade with Damage. Hammer 4 is already perfect. DTH could be made into a melee range slam that knocks down enemies who are infront of you, letting you set up damage while allowing you to use your character to aim instead of a ground target that can be walked out of.

Remove Chill in competitive and remove boon extension entirely. Why even pick it anymore. Ooo 2s Protection! Heralds laughing in the corner slapping their knee.

Unless the gameplan for Vindicator would be to make their Dodge button the method in which you Swap between Alliance, I don't think Vindicator's dodge is interesting at all. To put my thoughts into point form: - Vindicator still has their two dodges and its effects. - When they dodge in Alliance stance, they switch from one form to the other, as if the other Alliance member took their place as they left the battlefield - This makes the Vindicator not want to be a furious dodge spammer or rather if anything forces them to dodge, it will be for a reason or provide utility that can help them post dodge. - It simply changes up how Vindicator mindset is compared to other classes with unique dodge. - And again, using the GM choice you can either lock in your desired Alliance set to prevent the dodge from switching but at the same time specializing in a role or use Vassals to buff up your general effectiveness while retaining the Dodge to Swap mechanic.

That'll be a dream. Old Resistance negating any and all Conditions was really ridiculous all things considered. Resolution should be buffed instead. And no, they really shouldn't try and use Traitlines to "fix" anything. If anything, traitlines need to be more independent from the Legend and vice versa since we cannot just switch out utilities as we wish. When we pick a Legend, it's a huge commitment. Forcing a traitline choice ontop of this commitment to "fix" something is so frustratingly bad. It's already extremely bad that we only have ONE Condition supporting Traitline and it's not even super good. If you want further Condition support, you only have Renegade as a choice, and Renegade's Condition traits only really affect Shortbow because no other Revenant weapon naturally applies Bleeding.

And if Anet doesn't like immunity, then at least give Barrier + Barrier per condition absorbed. Same with Empowering Misery btw. Heal for base amount, gain Barrier per condition currently on you.

Idk where you get the idea that Hybrid weapons are problematic. It's because Cele increases survivability by an immense amount while allowing you to scale a weapon in both direct and indirect damage which makes the build strong. I mean, you try running Grieving and see what happens. You die, so clearly Hybrid isn't an issue. It's a Cele problem, not a Hybrid weapon problem and it should NOT have its coefficients nerfed to compensate for a playstyle. Absolutely not, especially since the Spec it was made for, Renegade, literally builds around the idea of dealing hybrid damage as evidenced with Kalla's Fervor unique buff. I will echo the person you replied: I'm all for Shortbow buffs or ability clean ups but as long as it doesn't compromise Power coefficients in order to skew it to be Condition aligned. And I'll tell you why pure Condi Renegade is trolling in WvW anyway despite any sort of coefficient change: People just cleanse Condis off and Renegade is very poor at applying cover Conditions. Even the new Kalla Summons is very bad at applying the Vuln, Chill and Immob. With only Bleed, Torment and occasionally Burning as their main Condition output, Condi Renegades just cannot fight any build with decent and consistent Condition removal, neutralizing their damage. Hence Renegades will always aim to go hybrid in competitive to remain a threat.

Imo the difference is the home-base advantage when it comes to defending, not the penetration spots for attacking. For one, RBL as home base has a TERRIBLE long walk from spawn to any major objective if the WP are contested. To add to that, the ruins form a very large terrain infront of EK that further spans FK and AK apart. Add to that the terrain elevation and other pathing differences mean that there is alot of terrain in RBL that makes it terrible for Warclaw traversal, or slows down traveling in general. ABL has very good coverage from spawn, within walking distance for NWT and NET as well as easily defensible NNC which are all right at your doorstep. Having good defensible towers mean you can siege/defend Garri's rear better, limiting enemy attacks on Garri to Watergate or the front slope. And most importantly: relatively flat land for Warclaw traversal as well as controlled Ruins providing area for gliding from Garri lets you reach middle or even south of the map from Garri rather quickly.

You're probably right about the Tofu not being related to tech. I really didn't wanna fall too hard on real life languages but the more I think about it, the more the Tofu is probably lai indeed. Lai in mandarin translation to rely/trust Now Jade Trust sounds really bank-y huh? Question is why did they modernize the character for Jade but not "Trust"? Maybe not all words are modernized at all.

It really is the root that is the be-all-end-all deal breaker of Shield. Also feel that Shield 4 can still be improved. I would like it if Shield 4's heal just pulsed healing in 4 pulses with the first pulse giving boons, and that Shield 5 be unrooted and blocks for a larger area. Staff needs to reevaluate itself. Again, it is in a spot where it is overshadowed by other healer weapons due to being functionally clunky and more importantly, doesn't provide nearly enough healing presence to be a "healer's weapon" (which is why people have been using Mace/Shield as a healer's main weapon forever) and now with Scepter, it just can't compete, being a 1 time swap for either quick Breakbar deletion or emergency healing and cleansing with Centaur bubble. (which is kind of pointless because Centaur itself already comes with alot of healing, cleansing and the bubble) The main problem with Staff is that it requires you to complete a full autochain (eg. gotta whale on something) to heal in a small area around you, if this were to be changed then I'd say maybe Staff has a chance to fight against other options.

I really love Shortbow but ngl it can wait behind Shield and Staff. Those two are in actual dire states of existence in the current weapon ecosystem.

The poster for Xunlai has the same first character as Jade BH's symbol. I'm guessing Xun is the Canthan pronounciation for Jade (which is pronounced Yù in chinese mandarin btw hence I made the connection that it's a one-meaning symbol) This means the =口 is Canthan text for lai This means the two Tech related Tofu characters are somewhat related to invention and engineering and could sound like lai. (Some eastern text use character prefix or suffix to give the character its "sound" while the supporting prefix or suffix alters the meaning of the character. Good evidence that Canthan text uses a similar system is the Profession symbols literally being Man + symbol relating to the profession) I've only skimmed through the page so this is the sort of understanding I can draw regarding the unknowns. Sorry not much help 😛 but I hope this gives you some insight.

Alas we know how Anet treats "Hard hitting" in competitive modes. They'd rather make something do more damage over a longer duration than frontload damage into a short frame of time. I'm still in the mind that Hammer should be made more dueling centric than sieging centric so this change is "okay" in my books.

They already gave it a rather hefty coefficient nerf so I hope people can actually learn how to use their classes' kits to counter projectiles. It's so dumb if Hammer gets nerfed because lobotomites don't know how to use Projectile hate. I was fighting a Scrapper and couldn't do much to them with Hammer set because there's so much projectile hate. PTing into them with Ancient Echo Shiro was too risky as well because I can only get 4 autos unblockable while putting myself in danger.

Yea WvW is where it's at for me too but I do dabble in sPvP to see how a build functions under restriction to simulate (nerfed state)

Essentially, yup. Ironically the "self casting DTH" is now one of the best skills of Hammer after it being the laughing stock for almost 5 years. It refreshing CoR is just more points to DTH but CoR itself being unreliable in most content is 🤮 Unless you specifically want 1200 range Power focused autos. Now Hammer can give you that. I've been running Core GS/Hammer in competitive since patch dropped and honestly, pretty decent deal. You will mainly use GS for all your damage but you can swap to Hammer to harass people who are too dangerous to go melee range and a huge plus is that you can chase down and kill people much better with new Hammerbolt and Shiro. Also remember that Hammer 4 gives Aegis now as well as anti projectile, good for pushing into ranged enemies before you swap to GS and start tearing them apart.

Yea the Energy Bottleneck is a gameplay flow problem with Kalla's new design atm but it's not due to Kalla, it's because Revenants are waiting around at 50 Energy on swap or entering combat cos hurhurhur. (Literally have a thread about how this new design is gonna pigeon hole Kalla deeper into a "demanded to spam but unable to" situation) As the others have also mentioned, there NEEDS to be a UI indicator if you are currently able to Band Together. I was playing it in WvW and honestly while NOT BAD in small scale/duels but horrendous when there's alot going on. It definitely does not help that the skills have terrible range and terrible terrain checks for casting. Overall: Good attempt at making Kalla more user friendly but it still has several Functionality issues plaguing it, namely the terrain check and the godawful range. My suggestions are relatively simple: Band Together mechanic: Consumes 5 stacks of Kalla's Fervor to trigger. You have Kalla's Fervor? You're good to go, no need to spam back to back Summons. All for One: When you use a Citadel Order, instantly gain 5 stacks of Kalla's Fervor (balance accordingly to game mode) For the people who like to wait on Energy and then machine gun skills.

JUSTICE FOR RED TEAM They get shafted with a really awkward Borderland and the worst spawn layout for EBG.

Honestly the only thing I think is left "awkward" on Hammer is Phase Smash. Firstly, it's just way too long as a damage tool but it's decent as a defensive tool. Secondly, even if it's a defensive tool, it's essentially a telegraphed self-own because you're locked in place. Would be nice if it was changed slightly to be something like a backwards Roll but I don't see it happening anytime soon. Also, CoR is still CoR so I'd rather not talk about it.

But what the hell happened to Scepter? What's the reasoning behind its nerfs when it needed more functionality buffs?