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Akeno.4962

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  1. [Speaking from a PVE point of view] Okay, let's see. What does this spec try to accomplish? Is it a healer? A strike damage dps? Some hybrid? As a pure healer: It provides almost no boons that are interesting to keep. I guess you could theoretically try to keep alacrity by spamming Natural Harmony in Ventari and then Imperial Impact as much as you can while in the Legendary Alliance, but it feels clunky and even unrewarding. Why go through so many loops to get what renegade can do just by pressing one skill on cooldown? From the skill set, healing can be done with either Selfless Spirit, Urn of Saint Viktor, Redemptor's Sermon, or Saint's Shield. These feature some problems: All of them are rather mediocre as healing skills. Saint's Shield is kinda fine in that regard since its interaction with Reaver's Curse lets you basically spam it (if you're going for a pure healer spec), but both the Legendary Alliance skills need some up-tuning. Redemptor's Sermon feels mostly like a selfheal rather than a group heal. It may not fire when your allies need it. I think it interacts with Urn of Saint Viktor, but why is its cooldown higher then? Even if you changed to Ventari after going through all your Saint Viktor's skills, when you come back you'd be forced to Alliance Tactics to change your Archemorus skills. That would mean that Urn of Saint Viktor is available every 20s, not 30. Selfless Spirit only heals. That wouldn't be a problem if basically every skill wasn't bloated with effects, but now it is. Urn of Saint Viktor can be cc'd while it's being dropped and it may kill you. For a skill that you pay with both health AND energy, it feels unrewarding that it basically only heals (boons provided have so low duration that they are unimportant). Finally, I see two other problems: At least from a identity point of view, no skill in greatsword provide any healing whatsoever. There's no overarching mechanic to any of Saint Viktor's skills. Usually stance skills have some interactions with traits that go for an overarching mechanic (Ventari = healing orbs/soft cc, Mallyx = torment/resistance/selfapplying conditions, Jallis = weakness/resolution/Rite of The Great Dwarf, ...) Basically, as its implemented ingame, I don't find any reason whatsoever to run a Vindicator as a healer or to use Saint Viktor's skills in any meaningful or thoughtful way. As a pure strike damage dealer: Damage modifiers come from Empire Divided and Forerunner of Death. The first one is okayish i guess, but the second one is awful. Death Drop, right now, is a dps loss so big that the modifier isn't even worthy. I guess the idea with the increased endurance was to try to force some smart use of traits and skills in order to keep the modifier running, but it's not rewarding enough and leaves you defenseless when you may need an evade. And then there is the greatsword. I understand that you want to keep sword/sword the "assassinate one enemy" feeling, but it needs some up-tuning in damage in order to make it worthy to change weapons mid-combat. The "I'm cleaving many enemies" feeling that you want to go for might need for some of the ranges of the skills to increase, especially the autoattack chain. Also, it feels filled with skills that already exist ingame. Moreover, we have the skills of the legendary alliance. Archemorus skills do pitiful damage and that's basically all they do. They barely interact with traits, and in those interactions there's no overall mechanic characteristic of Archemorus (same thing with Saint Viktor): Amnesty of Shing Jea adds regeneration to Archemorus skills. Why? If I'm going for a pure damage dealer I'm not building any healing power / concentration to make them worth it. Leviathan Strength adds nothing when you don't use the Legendary Alliance stance. And then, I'm not sure if it is rewarding in a long enough combat. Since, as a pure damage dealer, you don't want to use any of Saint Viktor's skills, ideally you want to flip them as you enter the legendary alliance stance, but the increased cooldown for Alliance Tactics won't let you. So it may help with a burst in a short combat, but that's it. Finally, Saint Viktor doesn't provide any damage whatsoever, and its utility skills are very situational. You COULD double tap Reaver's Rage/Awakening, but Selfless Spirit, Battle Dance and Tree Song are considerable dps losses because of cast times or getting you away from the battle, and Urn of Saint Viktor can't be double-tapped. As a hybrid dps/healer: First, let's talk about what it would mean in regards to balance. Its dps would need to be in the very high-20'sk to mid-30'sk bracket. That is not feasible with the spec as it is, since a pure dps build benches at the moment that exact dps. Then, encounters would need to deliver more unavoidable damage for it to not be relegated to training squads or statics that want to play safe, unless you want that. And finally, balancing this kind of role can be a nightmare if you consider other game modes. Nevertheless, let's assume you want to take this route. From an equipment point of view, you'd need to introduce some berseker+healing power, either as a major or as a minor in a 4-stats set. And perhaps a set that features ferocity as a major too, in order to combine them. This kind of role would be easier if it based its damage on conditions, since you can design skills to have pitiful damage modifiers but good condition application, and create some ++condition damage/+expertise/+healing power. There's also the problem of which legend pairing the Legendary Alliance with. Not any of the base-revenant legends combines damage and healing, so you'd need to choose between dealing damage (and therefore, going Shiro/Jalis) or healing (going Ventari). Moreover, there's also the problem of which weapon: staff (only weapon available with any healing) deals pitiful damage, so if you go sword/sword or greatsword, all your healing comes from your legend. Speaking of which, the Legendary Alliance suffers from two halves that don't interact with each other. No Saint Viktor's skills do any damage (in fact, the only thing they do is healing and minimal boon generation). No Archemorus' skills do any healing or any support. Archemorus' skills may be fired of in a rotation-like kind of way (once their damage is fixed), but most Saint Viktor's skills are situational. What are you supposed to do? Fire them of cooldown, losing energy and lowering your dps to not gain any effect? If at least using Saint Viktor's skills granted you damage modifiers, and using Archemorus' skills granted you healing modifiers... In any case, I think some of Saint Viktor's skills should be redesigned to not be situational so that you can fire them off-cooldown. Another thing is the energy costs. Each of these "half skills" feature similar cooldowns and energy costs as full skills from other legends. Right now, creating a rotation that goes through both Archemorus and Saint Viktor skills is very energy constrained. And then, there are the jumps. Why does Imperial Impact extend boon duration, if the spec isn't about boons really? A missed chance to combine Death Drop and Saint's Shield in a jump that deals both damage and healing, but in a lesser quantity. Is the idea that while in Archemorus/Shiro my available heal is Saint's Shield (Redemptor's Sermon can't be procced at will)? Or that while in Saint Viktor/Ventari my greatest damage option is to Death Drop? Both these options seem clunky to me (I can attest, however, that Saint of zu Helter combined with Reaver's Curse lets you spam the healing jump as much as you want) There many solutions to having a dps and a healer stitched together but not interacting with each other. One among many, is the following: Change Spear of Archemorus to be an upkeep. Archemorus keeps firing spears until you deplete your energy or take the Urn of Saint Viktor. Adjust damage and range. Greatsword skills deal increased damage while you become the Urn of Saint Viktor (now decreasing your life does have a pay-off) and provide healing while Archemorus shoots spears (adjust healing to greatsword's slow rhythm). Otherwise, create a trait where Saint Viktor's skills provide a damage modifier and Archemorus' a healing modifier.
  2. I do believe Thieves can use magic or could be able to do so, but for discussion's sake, let's say they don't. That doesn't mean that a support spec can't be given to the thief. In fact, around this forum I've seen many ideas of support specs that don't need magic. There are plenty of thief archetypes that work together to get their goal, pirates for instance. You just gotta remember that thief (main mechanic: steal) isn't the same as assassin (main mechanic: combos).
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