Vindicator Feedback Thread

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

5 hours ago, Argo Silversea.4609 said:

Animations seem more snappy and fast on a human than on a Norn. It's very apparent to me with the dodge. But it could be because of scale? Either way the superman jump part of it feels very cool on a human not so much on a Norn. 

 

Dps is ok but for some reason I'm struggling with keeping it going after the first set of mobs.  Either get rid of the conditions on the attacks and boost base damage or add more stacks. Seems like conditions are pointless for the synergy of this spec.

No need to remove the conditions. Can boost the DPS of the power side of the skill in pve  without needing to remove the condis which can help enable hybrid builds in wvw/pvp

[SinisterSlay.6973]

I am having difficulty figuring this spec out.  It's just not for me I guess.  Abilities never where I left them. So many bars to look at instead of focusing on the fight.  

Edited September 21, 2021 by SinisterSlay.6973

[Loules.8601]

55 minutes ago, Kidel.2057 said:

Not only that. Saint's Shield is fast, lasting less than a second. Death Drop lasts 2.5 seconds and can take even longer if you have Slow. You can basically stay out of existance for 4-5 seconds for 2k damage and a dps buff, but no more dodge for 10 seconds (if you have MAX endurance generation and Energy sigils, otherwise it's 20 seconds)

Revenant affected with some slow and disappear (somewhere in the air) from ranked PvP until end of match.

[phokus.8934]

Urn of Saint Viktor elite is probably the worst and most useless elite in the game.  You just spam it off cooldown as it's a death sentence.

Edit: The energy consumption for the upkeep is madness.  It needs to be -5 instead of -10.

Edited September 22, 2021 by phokus.8934

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Y'all killin my hype while I'm at work after reading all this lol. 

[THF.9672]

More and more I play this spec in pvp, its just inferior in every single way to herald, at best it can be a knock off core rev or boring bunker build.

 

Greatsword isn't bad at all its just the spec traitline + horrible flow of the alliance legend and the fact that the spec does nothing for other legends making it so you would be better off just playing another spec if not using alliance legend.

 

This is all as far as power dps goes.

[Perihen the Thawk.9527]

Urn of Saint Viktor--Become the Urn of Saint Viktor...

 

Drop Urn of Saint Viktor--Slam your urn into the ground...

 

Uh... slam myself into the ground? Because I'm... carrying myself? So now I will drop myself. Got it.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Perihen the Thawk.9527

[Kain Francois.4328]

Honestly my first impressions are mixed. *However* this may be a problem myself not understanding the proper way to play it yet.

One aspect I think it really cool is having to manage between the Legendary Alliance skills. It keeps you on your toes, and forces you to think ahead.

I'm hesitant to call it bad. It's probably good. But first impressions feel hard to play. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Kain Francois.4328

[Zenith.7301]

The greatsword animations feel outright incomplete. There is nothing distinctive about each skill's animation trails and effects other than the recycled animations from reaper. The stance utility skills outside the Urnn and Lance elite are also completely visually bland and almost indistinguishable from each other.

[Nezekan.2671]

2/3 of Mirage traits are also about dodging and endurance. Its obvious what they were trying to do. So it can work, but it seems DPS capabilities are less than other revenants. A pure dps gear would be a waste on Vindicator. It must at least be a hybrid to fully utilize the class.

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

Going through more playthroughs and the biggest issue still is Urn of Saint Viktor. I've tried my best to make it something useful and nothing. It is literally the most useless Elite I have ever seen and I find it very difficult to call any skills in this game useless because they all have some level of use. This one though is just abysmal. All punishment, no benefits. I literally opted to stop using this Elite because of how useless it is and swapped GM Trait to Saint of Zu Heltzer because spamming dodge for heals was more of an Elite Skill than the actual elite skill offered for Saint Viktor lel

The other issue I have right now is damage output on GS. I can't tell if this is just an issue because the Beta version of this E-Spec is incomplete and is missing some stuff but I feel like I'm tickling enemies more than I am actually fighting them. The GS feels absolutely weak damage wise. I thought I was just wearing terrible combination of equipment, but after testing the exact same equipment stats on Shortbow Renegade, I easily out DPS'd GS Vindicator without even trying. I even felt the massive difference in damage when I did Dragonstorm because I felt like I was doing nothing to either Ryland or Braham damage wise on GS, but after swapping to Sword/Sword on Vindicator, I was doing far better damage. So there's obviously something up with GS Damage output compared to other weapons available on Rev. 

[Nysha.7021]

I'm mostly a pve player, so I can't give much of an opinion in pvp and wvw. Looks like it might be a good team skirmisher there, but I'll focus on my pve testing.
On one hand, the SFTA golem results are incredibly disappointing. It's given a giant sword that looks like it's supposed to do damage, and struggles to compete with boon builds. Even herald can hit higher benchmarks.
Is it supposed to be a support? If so, what exactly is it bringing to the table? Stone spirit druid and the healbrand/alacrigade combo can maintain protection better, and any other boons it brings are pitiful. It might be competitive in terms of raw healing with a side of barrier, but I personally just don't see a reason to ever consider this spec for support compared to the others. It's a jack of two trades and master of none.
When I tested its ability to go against strong, single targets, it pales even in comparison to the core revenant, unless I just play it like a core revenant by equipping shiro/jalis and focusing sword/sword. Its sustain if trying to use a power build with greatsword and Alliance makes elementalist look beefy because the small amount of vuln application on the greatsword just doesn't keep up compared to what you can do on sword/sword, meaning battle scars sustain is basically out the window unless you go purely into battle scar generation, which hurts its damage output further. Not only that, you only get up to 3500 healing on the actual heal skill itself in Alliance unless building for healing power. At that point, your main source of survival comes from taking the dodge trait that does healing and barrier. Tree song is the only other source of self-heal and it relies on having conditions.
The skill flipping to represent duality is intriguing on paper, but feels bad in practice. Your ability to flip them on demand has a 20 second cooldown (and lemme tell you, *never* take the trait that doubles the cooldown of the F2. 40 seconds just compounds the problem.) which means often you're likely just going to burn the other skill once it's off cooldown so you can get back to the one you actually want, and the benefits of those skills absolutely are not worth a 20 second wait. The best thing you get is a 10s cd stun break - well, except for the part where Shiro and Mallyx get that with no cooldown if your energy management is good. The other issue, of course, is that it means these utilities aren't very reactive. You either play reactively or just don't bother with your F2 skill at all lest you lose a skill you might need later. If the cooldown of F2 was removed entirely while in Alliance stance, I'd say the class would play way better and be much more tactical in its use.

tl;dr
-Luxon skills need way more damage if we're expected to use them. If this is our power spec, it needs to actually do more damage than core revenant.
-Traits need more useful damage multipliers to accomplish the above better.
-The 20s cooldown on F2 makes using the Alliance stance feel awful to play outside of a strict rotation. Please just remove the cooldown entirely while in Alliance stance. (Potential balance to this, trait that makes it instantly refresh cooldowns gives it a cooldown, using it in other legends gives it a 10s cooldown, roughly consistent with legend swap cooldown)
-If this is a support spec, it needs to bring more to the table that gives us a reason to take it over other support options, including within other rev elite specs.
-Greatsword needs more vulnerability application and faster/more strikes, or the alliance and traits need better sustain options.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Nysha.7021
Adding more specific notes on my thoughts

[Kronos.2560]

Was it just me or does it feel like my character took a lunch break when I hit dodge before he came back down? And then decided he needs 3 endurance bars worth of dodges before he takes a dinner break on his next dodge? 

 

Overall some things felt underwhelming. Some was just the dps seemed low and things like the elite were very clunky. But hopefully those can at least get ironed out.

[Neo Mortem.3627]

Why do the skill icons look like Willbender and Harbinger? There's little to no distinction. Rev normally has a grey-ish blue background, so shouldnt the Vindicator also share the same color palette all the other Rev skills?

[nosleepdemon.1368]

I couldn't be more disappointed. The spec looked great in a vacuum when it was demoed, but trying to play in WvW is impossible:

 

1. Lack of damage. Good Lord, it's so weak!

2. Why do some of the skills do condition damage? The traits give zero condition damage buffs.

3. And those traits. Christ. You know a profession mechanic is bad when half the traits are designed to make it palatable.

4. They fail, by the way. The dodge is awful. Bad bad bad! It's sloooow, takes far too long to execute AND you can get cc'd, apparently, which means you just sort of get stuck and your opponent moves out of the landing zone and spends 5 minutes gleefully listing everything they are gonna do to you once you land.

5. Lack of dodge also means you are forced to use Alliance Utility 1 for movement...

6... If you have the right variant up, otherwise you move in the opposite direction after a woefully slow single attack. Oh hi! Enemy zerg! Aaawkwwaaard.

7. The Elite is similarly bad. The wind up is huge, the damage pitiful, and you better check that hotbar in case you have the "just kill me now" blue variant up.

8. The blue Elite. Yikes.

 

Soo yeah. It's a miserable failure of a spec. I don't even know if the developers play tested it outside of a select few combos 5 minutes before the stream. God knows what would help it? The dual mechanic is garbage, and the F2 present here is a pitiful stop gap measure to make it halfway playable. But it fails. Because the spec is pish. kitten I should have waited to preorder - the Elites were the only interesting thing about the expac thus far mentioned.

[ScottBroChill.3254]

Feels like i need to be really familiar with the utilities and different traits before i can know for sure. So far, balancing both luxon and kurzick is a bit much. But playing a healing/bunker with jalis/alliance and retribution/invocation/vindicator made for a pretty decent tanky healer. 

[Darkgaiden.3791]

Having stablished from the moment we started to play the game the importance of dodge and how to use it, i HATE things that modify it (yes, Mirage also has it, and i hate that one even more), dodge is not just "avoid next frame of attack" in this game, is avoid, while repositioning (mirage cries in the corner😭), some times we even use it to "move faster" (and im pretty sure that is just placebo 😅), and while the idea of dodge/jump attack is fun (yes, it is fun, i played it, it feels super fun), it 10000% SUCKS to only have one dodge roll.... every class will strugle their kitten of in pvp with only one dodge roll..... but for some reason, developers thing there are classes that are so spectacular in every way that this kind of punishment wont matter (Mirage included😭)... in pve most of the time you dont need to roll, you can just out dps the enemy and heal back up, and if things get too hairy, you have a heal and a dodge, but most of the time you wont even need it, but in pvp doing that is inhumane, we rely on the dodges we know we have.

Just do a pvp try run with every class in game now having only one dodge, and see how much fun everyone has.

 

I think this is my main complain with what i have seen so far....greatsword move set feels good 👍, legend's habilities are ok... altough the urn one kinda sucks kitten, you will never use that in any scenario, if you are going dps/tank, that is off the radar, and if you are going healer, you will be using staff and centaur, so again, NO need for that to even exist.

The build skill tree has way too much focus on the jump roll, and nothing outside of it.... nothing on legend use, and nothing on greatsword, nothing on F2 use (like herald or renegade have) ...and the art/desing on the skill tree doesnt match at all the class and the other specs desing.... is just a huge black square or shape over this blue/red background, with some new black shape to follow it... 0% inspiration

I can also see how the F2 use is way weaker than other options (even than core revenant), so far i have only used it to switch the legends moves to use the cooldown more eficiently, the endurance bonus is disregarded.... is not that F2 is bad, it just feels weaker than other ones......... and since you can "switch" the 2 legends that are one, the OTHER filler legend feels left outside...why even have this cool second legend, when you have one that swaps with itself so you dont need to change it?

 

 

Overall the class is good, dont get me wrong, but has a lot of work to be done. The main change that needs to be focused here is the dodge/jump mecanic....  (and while you look at it PLZ rethink the Mirage's 😭) that aspect is extremely restrictive in pvp (some of us are normal humans with normal reaction time and some caveman brain, we have 2 dodge, we use 2 dodge, simple)

 

Peace ✌️

[ledernierrempart.6871]

i like the dodge mechanic and the twin legends swapping skills.

gs damage burst is okay but a bit slow to use so it needs a cc before being able to pull out a nice burst.

i was forced to use the dwarf legendary to get both condi cleanse and low cost hard CC.

 

however the ultimate abilities are underwhelming. especially the blue one. i don't see the point in using it. the red one should cripple the target or snare it.

 

F2 should have a different effect depending on the used legend.

shiro => mini aoe quickness buff

dwarf => mini aoe stab.

ventari => mini aoe heal/condi cleanse.
mallyx => mini aoe condi to boon converting.

alliance => additional aoe swiftness.

 

 

hey, why not add a special effect to the dodge depending on the used legend?
shiro => mini stun.
dwarf => mini weakness.
ventari => mini magnetic shield that may reflect projectiles.
mallyx => mini boon corrupt.
alliance => mini vulnerablility stacks.

Edited September 22, 2021 by ledernierrempart.6871

[Venkas.1824]

GS feels very generic.

Like it's a mismatch of different skills with no clear identity.

 

Skill 1 is visually boring, Skill 5 steals the show.

Ranger GS for example feels like a complete kit.

As for the utility skills, I wanted to use the offensive way more, flipping between them during a fight was just too much to keep track of.

[Angesombre.4630]

This is just a dumb guess but why not remove the CD for the legend skills, with maybe a little higher consumption of the alliance utilities but not the weapon ones.  The skill that allows you to dodge backwards is long to cast I think because it is supposed to allow you to back up quickly .I also feel like the specialization lacks a bit of power, a CC and swordfish is slow.
I also feel that the specialization lacks a bit of power, one CC and the swordfish is slow.

I got chained during a dodge jump and grappled while in the air only to end up in traps when I fell back so I guess it was cool or not.... Dodge should be able to choose when to fall back with the longer skill and vary the damage based on the time spent in the air as the skill is easily predictable to an opponent. As mentioned, there should also be a small amount of invulnerability when falling back down.

The urn should be quicker to reuse because you lose too much to pick up the other elite and the spear should do some area damage, I'm not saying a big one but just enough to hit around a bit.

The specialization could for basic legends bring a slight decrease in consumption if it keeps its current look.

I haven't tested with the second one's heals so I don't know what they are worth.

The F2 could bring something else on the other specializations.
Or the specialization could be turned into some sort of kit (F2 the dps legend, F3 the other healing one) which is still just a guess. 

Edited September 22, 2021 by Angesombre.4630

[AquaBR.9250]

I get the idea of loosing a dodge to deal damage, but the damage of the dodge doesn't feel high enough to compensate for 1 less dodge, at least not with Forerunner of Death, maybe a tiny bit of damage increase in the dodge.

 

The F2 feels unfinished, like Herald at lauch, it should do something else when used in other stances based on the legend, or else will be very useless if not used in the Alience stance wich limits gameplay options.

[g e o.2589]

I think Energy Meld should be reworked completely;

 

It should have a unique effect based on the legend, it already has that on alliance where it swaps between Arch/Viktor. Skills should no longer flip over when used, it should only be swapped by using F2. Other legends should have a different effect. 
 

OR energy meld should have a unique effect based on the two legends you have equipped. 

 

[morsdood.1987]

Rework the Grandmaster traits to give the player a choice between an Archemorus utility bar or a Viktor utility bar alongside their specialized leaps, make the mid option what the Spec currently is

The two legends thing was a neat idea but it doesn't work well or feel good, the flipover skill is a waste of F2 and not at all a good enough remedy to make the spec flow nicely

Honestly though.. why did it need to have Support tacked on at all? Weren't the last two Especs with a heavy focus on party support enough?

Edited September 22, 2021 by morsdood.1987

[Buran.3796]

  Ok, AWFUL, as s

expected. The summary:

1) Useles in PvP/WvW, but surprisingly the batch of the current known 6 new specs has been so woeful that Vindicator falls (pun intended) as the second less worse of them , only surpased by the Harbinger. I'm honestly amazed of how ANet was able to craft 6 new specs and none of them aren't even able to compete against their core selfs (much less about their metas) at those game modes. 

2) The greatsword, where is the damage? And I'm not taking about PvP; even in PvE  falls behind core/Herald/Renegade at providing dps with power (strike) stats. The weapon is too slow for competitive gaming modes, #4 seems bugged and #5 is just a long casting attack with a very random AoE and damage output. Should have instead either a usefull cc or a powerful AoE attack to support #2, but is none of both. Also, I understand the red/blu for the Alliance, but since the gs skills don't swap their should employ a mix of black/red/white icons to fit with Rev's arsenal. Also, recycled animations...   The only redeeming point is that the audio design in really good.

3) Legendary Aliance: sorry but is weaker than Shiro or Jalis, and the flip mechanics and F2 function are just terribad.  I can't see why anyone would chose to run this new legend over the core ones in any game mode. This also hurts the F2 usability because for PvE is a net loss of dps. And don't make me talk about the elites...   Oooooh the huge manatee!

4) Traits: "Not great, not terrible".  They waste too much slots in enhancind the new dodge mechanic, instead of adding new features to the general use of the class. And this is a problem due #5.

5) Too much time wasted in dodging. Seriously. Even with the shortest evade (which is the most usable in competitive game modes) the duration of the animation is too long (which in PvE also hurst the dps), and is worsened due after the fall there's almos a full  second of recovery animation with the character standing up from the ground. This makes a massive disservice to the skill due reduces dps in PvE and makes follo ups in PvP/WvW much harder: you're a sitting duck which just did use its only dodge. The dogge should be shorter in duration and provide some sort of cc instead of so much bloated PvE boons...

 

   Now, today I did play Vindicator with gs + swords and gs + staff, most of the time with Alliance + Shiro or Alliance + Jalis. Most of the time was in OW PvE (HoT maps) and PvP. I ended replacind the Alliance for just Shiro + Mallyx in PvP due how low and inconsistent was the damage. Next days I'll focus on gs + staff and gs + hammer. In PvE previous specs (and core) have better damage output with better sustain and much more cc. I think that damage can be tuned up in PvE increasing the speed of the gs attacks and coeficients; sadly I don't think the new Legend could be fixed (too much contradictory mechanics); also the evade should have defiance barr damage attached to its use.

   So, The good:

* Good sound designs.

* Finally a spec optimized for roleplaying! Imagine having Shiro., Kurzik and the other one inside your head...  Never ending memes.

* Has tools which enhanced will allow him be off meta in PvP in the future.

 

   The bad:

* For being a power dps PvE spec, the current damage is lame. Also the sustain and cc pressure.

* Doesn't stand a chance against the current PvP/roaming  meta, which means that if you enjoy that content you will either have nothing of interest in EoD or the current specs will be nerfed to level the new bottom tier at the arrival of the new specs.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Buran.3796

[Naxos.2503]

The dodge is :

-too slow, against mobs it's fine, against players it has 0 chance of hitting if someone is paying attention, they have 1 more dodge than you do

-has a too long cooldown, it's extremely punishing along with gaps in it's evade uptime resulting in you getting hit and downed mid-dodge and has an animation lockup at the end which guarantees you're getting killed after your dodge because you cant move way from the hit nor dodge again.

-Doesn't do enough damage, even with berserker gear. If it had the potential to End a fight, the extremely vulnerable position you are in after the dodge would atleast make sense, even if it feels wrong.

 

The greatsword : The damage is okay on it on a full berserker build, the animations are kind of obviously reused, but then again so is Bladesworn gunsaber's, it's just that the latter's flashy explosions and new effects are distracting from it. Unfortunately aside from Greatsword 5, none of the skills graphics have a particularly unique feel to it. 

... I'd like to talk about how the skills function on anything but small fry, but I died to my typical Stonehead Hero Point test, within the first few seconds because of the dodge. Something the other two elite specs succeeded at with flying colors. I blame the dodge. I got hit while dodgeing, and after dodging. I'm probably not made for this elite spec, but the dodge Definitely need to be reworked.