Vindicator Feedback Thread

[Kidel.2057]

Dodges should NOT be altered by Slow and Cripple. 

 

[Drakonhammer.2148]

Agreed with the posts saying F2 needs to have an effect on other legends too, not just Archemorus&Viktor. It doesn't have to be gamechanging, just some bonus specific to which other Legend you have equipped so that it has a use outside Legendary Alliance that isn't just 50 Endurance. Could add for some nice flavour with Shiro equipped too.

As for the dodge mechanic, I like it, but it really needs (at least slightly) different visuals depending on which GM you have equipped - if players are expected to counterplay this in sPvP, they should know if they're about to get spiked or not. This'd give the balance team wiggle room to up the damage too as it'd still allow for counterplay.

 

[Ausar.9542]

21 minutes ago, GrayHawk.7560 said:

So far for the most part really enjoying the spec.  A lot of the issues are probably L2P because there is quite a lot to juggle right now and a lot to experiment with.  In general I think the build is going in the right direction.

.

Hard to juggle something with 10 second cooldowns on the flip...

[SachanHD.1784]

First for GreadSword

GS really needed more DMG and fastes animation

 

DODGE

Dodge is totaly terrifying... Needed 2x faster dodge and back him 2x dodge, it's absolutely important...

 

Heal, Utility, Elite Skills

I don't want to lie but its totaly good for nothing..

F2
Needed change... It's totaly bad

Trait
They seem ok
 

Animation
Animation it's really they don't look good

GS (5) - Same aniamtion for Reaper.... Really?
The rest of the animation doesn't look good (No Filing)

Edited September 21, 2021 by SachanHD.1784

[Kidel.2057]

I've also been testing this in WvW. 

Things there are a bit better compared to PvE since dps is less important.
Having Retribution line + spamming Saint's Shield is nice

(I've been using Retribution in PvE too, but Death Drop should be the preferred dodge for PvE because of the dps modifier, and well, that's bad).

However, once again, Legendary Alliance SUCKS both for roaming and for zerg. No CC, bad elites, a lot of cooldowns on top of energy management AND flipover management, no control over situational skills.

It's not a matter of "git gud". Even by taking the skills I'd like, it's still inferior to Shiro/Jalis (even if we don't factor the cooldowns, but the cooldowns are also there). 

PvE on a dps meter is tragic even if we factor in the +15% damage of Death Drop. And Death Drop is unusable. 

All 3 dodges have a bad interaction with CC conditions such as Slow, Cripple and Immob. 

All and all, good concept but still needs a lot of work. You got time until february to delete Saint Viktor (especially Urn), make GS less clunky and give better traits with better modifiers. 

At the moment I'm mostly enjoying barrier spam using Retribution + Saint's Shield

Edited September 21, 2021 by Kidel.2057

[RizelStar.3724]

53 minutes ago, Kraav.8136 said:

Greatsword skill #5 should be 1/2 second cast AOE Taunt (4s) with some damage, as to synergize with Greatsword #4.

This double legend should be handled as follows. You start in Archemorus and stay there until you hit f2 and then your bar switches to Saint Viktor. Only f2 swaps between the two. Should you Legend swap to say Jalis and then back to the double it will remember which legend was current between the two. This would allow pure offensive play and pure defensive play should a player want to "camp" one of the double legends.

That is a good idea, leaast ibn my opinion. 

 

The swap mechanic really doesn't feel good and I want to chop it up to L2P but thinking about it in the long run it really will be something that you're more so fighting against rather than with it as it stands now. 

[Drakonhammer.2148]

Further impressions: when swapping around the utilities in their slots, the icons should be split down the middle so new Rev players can see what they look like for both Archemorus and Viktor. That or Awakening needs a figure standing behind the sword like the Reaver's Rage icon, it's odd how the other icons' forms fit each other so closely, but Awakening and Reaver's Rage don't (apart from the swords). I'm guessing the current Awakening icon is a placeholder?

GS feels a bit too familiar somehow. #5 should have its own animation, not Reaper's, and with its chill, vuln, movement skill and block (analogous-ish to evade) it feels like it treads on dual swords' toes a bit too much for my liking (even if the target cap is higher). GS #2 reminds me too much of S/S #4 too. To me it doesn't feel like GS offers enough uniqueness to set itself apart from S/S as it is right now.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Drakonhammer.2148

[Heinel.6548]

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.

[Kidel.2057]

5 minutes ago, RizelStar.3724 said:

That is a good idea, leaast ibn my opinion. 

 

The swap mechanic really doesn't feel good and I want to chop it up to L2P but thinking about it in the long run it really will be something that you're more so fighting against rather than with it as it stands now. 

Rev is already relatively complex as it is with very little payoff (considering you can't pick utilities and you have energy management). There is really no need to add a 3rd swap that's even more complicated on top of the lack of a dodge (at least if we consider the energy requirement of Death Drop that must also be used on CD to keep the modifier up and is basically 1 dodge every 10 seconds with endurance sigils and perma vigor), PLUS cooldowns. 

I've been liking the GS (mostly) and the core mechanic (mostly), but the traits are bad, as well as the utility/elite skills. They're horrible. 

Most St. Viktor skills are "dead weight" as Heinel.6548 said. Especially Urn. 
And Archemorus skills are not so much better to compensate, given that they're inferior to Jalis/Shiro/Mallyx and have also cooldown + the flipover. 

Impressive this class has a trait that removes cd on skills if you F2, but adds more CD to F2. To  basically get what core rev legends already have 😅

Edited September 21, 2021 by Kidel.2057

[Goglak.2591]

Sorry but needs a ranged option, no way i am giving up my short bow. Every other class has a ranged option we need ours also and hammer is way to slow

Edited September 21, 2021 by Geezer.3947

[Kidel.2057]

2 minutes ago, Geezer.3947 said:

Sorry but needs a ranged option, no way i am giving up my short bow. Every other class has a ranged option we need ours also

Ehm, Hammer? This is a power spec, Hammer is the power ranged weapon. 

[RizelStar.3724]

2 minutes ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Rev is already very hard as it is with very little payoff. There is really no need to add a 3rd swap that's even more complicated on top of the lack of a dodge (at least if we consider the energy requirement of Death Drop), PLUS cooldowns. 

I've been liking the GS (mostly) and the core mechanic (mostly), but the traits are bad, as well as the utility/elite skills. They're horrible. 

What would a solution be though? Cause the idea presented at least gives more control over what you're doing where as the current swap makes you have to figure out more. 

 

I'm thinking either that or allowing us swap the skills or mix them up. 

[Goglak.2591]

3 minutes ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Ehm, Hammer? This is a power spec, Hammer is the power ranged weapon. 

Hammer is way to slow, you must not PvP

[Kidel.2057]

26 minutes ago, RizelStar.3724 said:

What would a solution be though? Cause the idea presented at least gives more control over what you're doing where as the current swap makes you have to figure out more. 

 

I'm thinking either that or allowing us swap the skills or mix them up. 

A nice fist step could be removing the cooldowns. It's not like this makes the skills spammable since we have limited energy. None of these skills are so powerful that they need a cooldown to limit them except the healing skill. This reminds me of when they had the "BRILLIANT" idea to put the stun break on the healing skill on Renegade (during the beta), except they messed up the whole legend this time, not just the stunbreak. 

Removing the cooldowns can allow so much better control that you don't need the swap on F2 at all, since you can just doubletap the skills if you want, just by spending more energy (that would be needed for F2 too anyway!). So F2 can be used for endurance/boons, and the first adept trait can be removed (since why would you even have a buttonfor cooldown reset ON REVENANT?).

Also make Urn useful and remove the lock/animation on doubletap, plus make it impossible to interrupt. And make Spear (or another utility) a hard CC. 

Make dodge/jumps FASTER and not hindered by Slow/cc (that makes the whole animation slower and the cursor harder to move).
Reduce the endurance cost of Death Drop and make the damage modifier available to other traits, not only on the worst dodge of the bunch. Or make it good/less expensive, because at the moment it needs max endurance generation on sigils to allow for permanent +15% damage (giving up other modifiers and overall reducing the dps since the attack is slow). 

Making the dodge faster also allows for a better interaction with upkeep skills, that keep draining energy. 

At the moment the spec wants you to dodge offensively all the time, while regular dodges are useful when the enemy is attacking. As per design, Vindicator doesn't dodge and instead jumps into battle, using the dodge offensively. Fine, cool. But it should have some SERIOUS mitigation to make up for the (effective) absence of dodge 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Kidel.2057

[sos.6510]

- Likes

The dodge mechanic feeling, the idea is super cool.

The idea of a double legend.

The traits line, and offered path are clear and fun.

Overall, the idea is cool, the execution less

- Dislikes

The clunkiness of GS 1 and GS 5, and lack of synergy within GS skills.

The F2 small utility, even with Alliance stance

The individual small effect of utility skills. Understandable from a balance point but the feeling is weird

- Ideas

Have a faster dodge animation (dps loss is more important than having more i-frames)

Adding some GS chain synergy, for exemple GS 5 being focusing Chilled target

Using the charge/ammo mechanic for the dual legend skill, with 2 ammo each.

[Wolfenky.2951]

Here is my feedback from an extremely limited first impressions with the goal of making a good healer build (NOT a comprehensive look at everything):

First issue - dual legends swap on skills on use.

If one wants to focus on support/healing teammates, you feel punished when you use a skill and it swaps to the selfish side, as now you are down a support skill and if you use your f2 to switch it back to a support skill, the others that you didn't use are now unable to be used to support your team.

-- suggest fix: change f2 to be the only way to flip your alliance skills. Like a mode swap for the stance.

 

Second Issue - general lack of boon support for healing

With the goal of improving rev ability to be a healer, it hard to justify using alliance legend as it just doesn't give any meaningful boon support. Its main boons are regen/vigor (if trait for vigor on dodge) and that's about it if you want to have the healing dodge. If you want the boon support dodge, you lose out of the meaningful healing/unique group shielding (normally scourge's domain) which makes choosing a vindicator rev healer over other healers less viable as they can only give meaningful healing or give out meaningful boons, while other healers like firebrand, druid, and scrapper can do both.

-- suggested fix: make a trait the make selfish skills share their boons to party members which would allow the vindicator to have a wider array of boons to give out.

Third issue: boons only available to one legend makes you feel like you have to stay in that legend and ignore your other legends. For example, alacrity from centaur can only be maintain by staying in centaur, if you switch for any reason, you cannot maintain that boon. It not a bad idea from a creative design perspective but in practice, it limits revs when it comes to boon support when other class do not have to pay said price. Renegade is a good example of boon application as it is legend agnostic with its alacrity, but the rest of rev is not so lucky.

 

Suggested fix: With vindicator have a support choice, expand the boon duration increase trait to be on both the healing and the boon dodge and maybe make a trait the further increases the duration of boon on you and your party/squad. For example: for every second you have an upkeep skill going you add 2 secs to your boons and your allies’ boons. Likewise, when you legend/f2 swap, add like 4 secs to the current boons you and your party have

 

These are just the first few ideas I had on the support design, and I hope of this helps and thank you for reading this.

[BlueTurtle.9263]

Vindicator as a specialization feels slightly off. The greatsword as a weapon feels too strong.

 

The focus from energy to endurance is a bit awkward. Upkeep skills remain actively draining energy when doing the dodge/leap; they should probably either be disabled when activating the dodge (and possibly reenabled after it finishes) or make it so it doesn't drain any energy when doing the dodge. Having the F2 refresh endurance is fine when in the Alliance legend but the other legends are really hurt but the sudden inability to refresh some energy. You can take the "gain energy on legend swap" trait but overall it feels like there's less energy available to a rotation.

 

Managing three legends feels too complicated. The two sides of Alliance are different enough that a build wouldn't cycle through them in a rotation, they'd be cycling between one of them and the third legend. However managing that is awkward. The F2 exists as a means to instantly flip them but one would probably swap to the third legend to continue through their rotation and the F2 doesn't flip the Alliance skills when the third legend is active. There's also the added awkwardness of having the skills mixed in state when flipping. I have a few suggestions I feel might help this: One is to split the F2 into two separate buttons that turn all skills, regardless of state, to a specific state. Two is to separate the skill cooldown between the states, as in if a skill is used, it flips to the next state immediately able to be used (after casting is finished) like an ammo skill. If used again it will go to the previous state with whatever amount of cooldown it would have left after recharging in the background. The ammo skill cooldown indication could be reused here just maybe colored to reflect whatever the other state's cooldown is. Three is to make the F2 function while the third legend is active just so the player can flip that legend's state at their convenience instead of adding an extra step when in the rotation. Four is to let the F2 regain some energy again. The other legends really need this back and I don't think Alliance will be broken from someone being able to channel the Kurzick elite longer given it hurts the player.

 

Greatsword, on the other hand, feels pretty solid but quite strong. I don't think there should be a chill on the attack chain. That sounds way too strong in pvp. With two/three leaps between the weapon and utilty skills, they should have no problem sticking to an opponent. There's also enough chill elsewhere in the kit to supplement this if needed. Plus if one takes the corruption trait to apply torment on chill, this spec can frontload a lot of torment already and doesn't need more on the attack chain. Additionally, the 5 seems too hit a little too consistently for how random it's supposed to be. In like nine or so activations, I'd expect two or three to hit a single target, given it's basically a mobbing skill. But I seemed to have been consistently getting four or five hits on a single target. I think the area of activation is smaller than what was shown in the preview video so maybe increasing the size of it would add more randomness to it; that or the number of activations should be less.

 

On a minor note, the F2 is still noted as "F2" in descriptions. Should probably be changed to be the skill's name.

 

Will update more as I do more tests and articulate my thoughts better.

[Haru.5493]

GS3 needs evade frames like how Staff5 has it. the skill visually makes you become mist/ethereal before we phase out to cleave.

 

can we get a cc?  
a) on utilities like the lunge with 2s daze or the spear throw elite for 2s knockdown or stun?

b) make the grandmaster upper also pulls/knockdowns enemies?

and please lower the endurance cost for grandmaster upper

i played around with Sigil of Energy and still feels it is very clunky.

or make it as another profession mechanics with like 15s cooldown.

adept traits upper middle are just bad.... leviathan is so pointless. f2 costs like 25 energy and we also need to wait for energy after all utilities burst so might as well do a legend swap and wait for another 10s to swap back again. no reason to use this.

Edited September 21, 2021 by Harubpunbaru.3260

[Kidel.2057]

21 minutes ago, Geezer.3947 said:

Hammer is way to slow, you must not PvP

That's true. I've been testing it in WvW and PvE so far with this build 

 

 

I'd like to get more insights on how this class is performing in PvP. Haven't been playing that game mode for years now. 

 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Greatsword feels great, the dodge mechanic feels terrible. Just remove it and give vindicator a normal dodge.

[Kidel.2057]

Having F2 function like a second legend swap doesn't seem like a good idea. Sure, it's more control, but it's basically a second legend swap. 

 

To be honest, removing the cooldown on Alliance skills would partially solve this issue. And would also allow to free a trait slot, since the first trait would be useless. I mean, that's already a super bad trait that's mathematically a loss. 

[GonzoNeo.4965]

I know for open world all is valid, but testing this for raids, cm and end pve. I would remove the flip skills, yeah the flavor is good  and the theory seem fun, but in the practic they are a mess. If you play power for example and want use archemorus because Viktor skills are dead weight , you need to spam all your skills  so the F2 is effective to revert back to archemorus. If you only use skill 7 and use F2 to flip back to archemorus, now 6,8,9 and elite flip to Viktor which you don't really want because you want revert 1 skill only. Is just a mess, I would increase the CD of each skill and they simple don't switch. Just use F2 to change between archemorus bar skills and Victor without individual switch is to overcomplicated for the sake of flavor but messing  the gameplay. Yeah less unique, I know , but at least is no a clunky. Other issue how no CC skills in GS or the legend

 

Dps Dodge is too slow for the damage done, almost 2,5 seconds in the air , for 150 endurance, and the the final result is very big loss of dps, if you want to use the 15% damage buff.

 

Overall Dps right now is pretty bad , right now power herald or power renegade have more dps with lower effort thant the power DPS specialization, but we'll number can be tweak and I wish the class were well design and simple this was a DPS number issue , but the issue right now is the overall design. The class can make 60k DPS, but doesn't change the utility skills system is a mess and the rotation and skills feel clunky.

 

Support side in the legend , the barrier dodge is good, but the utility skills had the same with the switch system, clunky game play where you can't offer any special buff support, so scourge is better given barrier , firebrand can give you aegis and quickness, druid 25 might and unique spirit buffs. Viktor have mess utility, a little regenration, barrier and protection but nothing unique to offer the party.

 

To me right now the class need a heavy rework, and I'm not talking numbers, I'm talking the basic utility switch skills design. And improve the dodge mechanic.

[Elan.7523]

Alternative option, though not one I'm overly for, personally, is make it so the utilities don't flip.  At all.  Ever.  Instead they do a little offense and defense at the same time.  True hybrid skills.  You're not toggling between both entities, you're using both at the same time.  Then make F2 not only a way to regenerate stamina, but supply buffs and/or AOE effects based on whatever legend you currently have active.

[Copyright.9082]

Lazy design.

 

Recycled mechanics. 

 

Insanely clunky. 

 

Non cohesive. 

 

Most important : STOP TOUCHING DODGE ROLL MECHANICS. 

[Aesalas.6759]

Overall I liked the Vindicator, I enjoyed having access to damage and healing, with the ability to focus on one or the other. The flip-over utilities combined with the F2 were interesting to play with and added an element of planning. I also found greatsword fun, with the 4 and 5 skills having a big impact. On the other hand, I feel like the Forerunner of Death dodge could use an addition to give it more of an immediate impact and use beyond maintaining the damage buff (and dodging). The damage buff is good, but easy enough to maintain that it doesn't have much impact on how the Vindicator is played or have the multiple effects of the Vassals of the Empire dodge. That said, the dodge in general does feel very distinct from the regular dodge roll with the delay, added aoe, and damage and/or beneficial effects. Lastly, I think Balance in Discord should have an effect representing Viktor, since it is a minor trait.