The laments of a Shiro fan

[Thornwolf.9721]

The legend is horrendous; Like mallyx works as a better power legend than our Power dps legend? It makes no sense and his kit has been lack luster since the big balance patch; Almost the entire kit is trash outside of his two movement abilities but neither of them are enough to sell his inclusion. Mallyx can give you more sustain against condi's in general and has the ability to AoE cleave and the damage you can get even in full power builds is insane + The boon rip? Why even have shiro.

Jalis can offer stability, a dedicated "Get over here" button and has better sustain while his hammers do more damage or equivalent too impossible odds. The legend for shiro is lack-luster and as someone who has loved the character since guild wars 1 its sad; You gave him a kit that is basically "Remember the jade winds? Pepperidge farms remembers.." You should've just imported his kit over and as someone who has now seen willbender its a shame that to me THAT looks more like shiro than the actual shiro legend. He was classifed as a warrior/assassin and borrowed aspects of both; He also had unique abilities due to being an envoy... why not capitalize on that and make him more unique? At this stage of the game the entire legend needs a remake to make it even remotely serviceable and to top it all off... Vindicator and him have no synergy. So if one wanted to run the complete canthan package deal it's really a bust, because mallyx and jalis are superior options and even the alliance stance is horrible.

Can we please bring back Roy Cronacher? And get him to bring back the team who brought the HoT revenant and rework the parts of this class that are being neglected and get it to a better place? It's sad that there are aspects just outright abandoned and left to rot. I miss old sword/sword, I miss old shiro and heck I even miss old mallyx... I miss when the class felt really unique and powerful and sure you can make it work but it doesn't feel like it flows or has the fluidity it once had. Constantly you've nerfed, removed and gutted this class AND YET so many others are left with only minor inconveniences. I moved from warrior to rev because as a guild wars 1 player I was pumped to play as basically the embodiment of old enemies like you promised which as of now you keep failing to give us, kalla and now the alliance stance are so.... meh. You could've done anything for either legend and instead we get this and to top it off my favorite legend is completely trashed. 

It's sad that Im close to just dropping this class as I love it; Really I do and its concept and all the little nuances about it. But right now it feels like ya'll don't care about it in any way shape or form and you're just pigeon-holing us into specific builds. Of which im sure you'll nerf into oblivion at a later date. Im disgruntled. I miss and long for the class HoT teased and gave me. I miss how it felt. I miss all the things I could do and how each build felt unique. 

And before someone comes in here reeeing at me because I don't like the greatsword class, its because its kind of lack luster all the way around in theme to function. Its clunky. I remember when herald came out and how fun and fresh it felt. I remember how fun and fresh core felt. I remember how it was to be a revenant back when the class embraced what it was; Rather than just trying to be... well this.  I dont mind vindicator being here but I wish it worked better, felt better... I wish the legend skills didn't feel so bad and I wish that herald and core didn't feel like they do right now. I won't even speak on renegade because I refuse to even look at it; As far as Im concerned thats like our distant cousin thirty times removed.

[captrowdy.9561]

Have you tried playing guardian? 

[morsdood.1987]

I'm confused, you say you've loved his character since GW1 and then go on to say that Willbenders, martial artist fire guardians, are more like Shiro than the legend that lets you use some of his GW1 abilities aswell as his most iconic moment?

Shiro is the king of Power builds and always used over Jalis if there is no need for the Rev to provide Stab, what are you playing where you're running around with Mallyx for your Power build? Sounds very niche

Vindicator works fine with Shiro, Alliance + Shiro lets you put out 35k-40k, if you just want to use the Greatsword you can Jalis + Shiro and still be in the 32k-35k range

The way you describe ''the amazing past'' just makes it clear this was never the class for you in the first place

[Dadnir.5038]

I'm genuinely confused at this whole wall of text.

If I do understand well, all of this can be sumed as: "Shiro legend don't make me feel like I am Shiro. I want to play and feel like a GW end boss not some random good guy that's conveniently put in the lore."

The legend skills are more about the concept that these legends represent than the character itself. And they generally do their job well at embodying these concepts. I'm not saying that I'm happy with the whole vindicator thing but, as a legend, the alliance fit well the concept of 2 characters working together (again, I'm not saying that it fit the whole vindicator idea just that the legend itsef is ok as a concept of alliance).

The true issue might be that Shiro is called the "legendary assassin" while a more fitting name would be the "legendary murderer".

 

[Kulvar.1239]

TBH, Shiro need a bit more love.

Jade Winds cost is too high for what it does in PvE.

 

 

 

[Telgum.6071]

My only complain about Shiro is the energy cost of every single ability in competitive, except the healing. In WvW/PvP most of the times you can't use two Shiro abilities in a row because then you run out of energy.

[Thornwolf.9721]

15 hours ago, captrowdy.9561 said:

Have you tried playing guardian? 

Ew, not on your life.

 

 

9 hours ago, morsdood.1987 said:

I'm confused, you say you've loved his character since GW1 and then go on to say that Willbenders, martial artist fire guardians, are more like Shiro than the legend that lets you use some of his GW1 abilities aswell as his most iconic moment?

Shiro is the king of Power builds and always used over Jalis if there is no need for the Rev to provide Stab, what are you playing where you're running around with Mallyx for your Power build? Sounds very niche

Vindicator works fine with Shiro, Alliance + Shiro lets you put out 35k-40k, if you just want to use the Greatsword you can Jalis + Shiro and still be in the 32k-35k range

The way you describe ''the amazing past'' just makes it clear this was never the class for you in the first place

First of all it was the class for me, Second of all Glint has all of her abilities from guild wars 1. Mallyx has most. The only cases who didn't have a kit to be utilized to craft their skills are Jalis and Ventari as neither really played any role where we could see them utilizing their abilities. Shiro was legitimately crafted; Battlescars could've been our version of defiant stance rather than glints heal and glints heal could've been different to what it is now.  The jade winds should never of been his elite skill, banishment should've been.. how they could've used it I am unsure. There was once a rework thread for shiro there that was working with the concept of incorporating his envoy nature more; As yes the jade winds was caused by his death but as we know now that came down to void/dragon magic.

To top all of that off, your siting numbers I don't care about. You can run literally anything for PvE overworld and Fractals, strikes and raids don't matter in the slightest to me. I don't care about them and again you can run litterally anything as long as you're a competent player; In PvP and WvW this is not the case. Shiro is worthless in both modes, he suffers from the fact that his kit has been diluted from what it was and he himself doesn't bring anything to the table outside of within the core class. His kit has no synergy with Alliance stance and on herald or renegade if you're not taking mallyx (Who does more damage, more readily in an AoE and has a reliable way to rip boons) you're playing the class wrong. I've been playing it since it came out; And never had he felt so bad until that one feburary balance patch. He should be using his iconic abilities from his fight. JUST LIKE GLINT. Just like mallyx. Not some half baked "Lets use jade, because jade! Because he is from cantha and jade is his fault!" Which we know AGAIN in the lore it was not his fault just his death that caused all the dragon shenanigans to go cooky. 

Clearly you don't get what rev was intended to be vs the discount warrior/guardian it became. Why run rev when both of the other classes can do what you do better than you? You want boons? Guardian has firebrand. You want ranged? Dragonhunter. You want a mobile burst fighter, well willbender is there for you and is a carbon clone of what in some respects power herald used to be.  Warrior can do more for less as well. Im not saying the whole class is bad; On the contrary the rest of the class is quite good. But shiro on his own? When compared to the other legends feels like a wasted slot; A waste of time. And more importantly he feels like he was done this way solely to ensure his use would be niche for dps padding. Even on renegade kalla's modifiers and increases to damage and team play far outperform shiro. So get out of my face.

 

 

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I'm genuinely confused at this whole wall of text.

If I do understand well, all of this can be sumed as: "Shiro legend don't make me feel like I am Shiro. I want to play and feel like a GW end boss not some random good guy that's conveniently put in the lore."

The legend skills are more about the concept that these legends represent than the character itself. And they generally do their job well at embodying these concepts. I'm not saying that I'm happy with the whole vindicator thing but, as a legend, the alliance fit well the concept of 2 characters working together (again, I'm not saying that it fit the whole vindicator idea just that the legend itsef is ok as a concept of alliance).

The true issue might be that Shiro is called the "legendary assassin" while a more fitting name would be the "legendary murderer".

 

Except he doesn't use any of his original kit, Glint and again mallyx do. Glint more so than mallyx but the way it was originally shipped and sold was that it'd be using iconic abilities from iconic people we've either heard of or faced in the past. Shiro was not all about jade. And honestly the jade winds and his whole green theme doesn't even fit him because the explosion that caused the jade winds was VOID energy and was purple and black; As well he never used anything to do with jade in his fight. Granted it could be incorporated in some respects but I feel he was honestly more notorious and feared an envoy. Especially due to when he went around spreading the infliction and attempting to become whole again while retaining his powers, of which we needed and elder dragon scion(Kunavvang) And orange/blue boy respectively as well as the whole of cantha backing us to come deal with

You know the guy who literally had the envoys helping us the whole time to ensure we'd win because he one shot us? The same guy who was nearly able to beat us? And the same one who casually beat the same spirit of the same assassin who originally did him in? He brought all of cantha to its knees and this was after the jade winds. I feel the jade winds themselves was the lesser of his accomplishments as a villain as it was not really due so much to him; But more the unknown power that the emperors subjected themselves too (Impure dragon magic/Void)

Edited March 22, 2022 by Thornwolf.9721

[morsdood.1987]

Pretty sure it was caused by Dwayna's magic that he learned to corrupt, not straight up dragon void but maybe I missed a line of retcon dialogue in EoD or something, also Kuunavang isn't a scion, just a bonded champion who became that by choice like Caithe, Ryland and Braham

I'm not sure how you can say Shiro is worthless for PvP and WvW when he's one of the go-to legends for PvP and for WvW roaming, he basically has a place in every gamemode available, yes you sometimes swap him out when the situation demands it but you do that with other legends aswell, it doesn't make Shiro worthless

Two of his skills involve Jade, thats not really screaming ''HAHA IM ALL JADE'' to me(even though he did become all jade by the end of Factions, lol), Impossible Odds and Riposting Shadows are both abilities that he used in his encounters in GW1 and Phase Traversal takes the ''shadowstep to foe'' element of GW1's Riposting Shadows, Battle Scars can be found in the traitline that is very clearly themed after him

And I run rev because I think rev is fun, if I want to play support there's multiple flavors of Alacrevs and Healrevs, if I want ranged there's a shortbow, if I want mobile burst fighter theres.. you guessed it, a build involving Shiro

Yea, Shiro on his own isn't amazing but you're not supposed to look at the legends on their own, they're all gonna seem a bit lackluster from that perspective

So what I get from all this is that you don't like the way they did Shiro, either for mechanical purposes or nostalgia purposes and thats fine but that doesn't mean he's bad, unusable or irrelevant to everyone else aswell, countless viable builds have proven that

[KeoLegend.5132]

But i like Shiro

[Esufer.8762]

as a roamer i can safely say
all shiro all the time

[Arklite.4013]

Isn't Shiro necessary on pretty much every power Rev focused on DPS? Impossible odds + sword autos is pretty hard to beat with the other legends.

[Kulvar.1239]

6 hours ago, Arklite.4013 said:

Isn't Shiro necessary on pretty much every power Rev focused on DPS? Impossible odds + sword autos is pretty hard to beat with the other legends.

He's "necessary" because there is no power DPS alternative.

Jalis, Mallyx, and Ventari are not power focused.

You wouldn't waste a legend slot by not using Shiro for maximum DPS.

Weapons can be used regardless of the legend equipped, so you can't count them as part of the legend balance.

[lysico.1297]

Condi spec here. I use it for PvP for the elite 

[Xervite.5493]

I kinda agree with you on some parts because shiro imo is extremely energy thirty but the damage is certainly there. Yes it is more effort to play him as opposed to jalis but impossible odds does more damage than those hammers mate. I do miss the super speed but oh well. As for alliance why do you find them lackluster? Saint has excellent sustain for basically 'free', the orange dude is pretty good damage and quickness too. Just put down his spear elite and do your thing?

[Jobber.6348]

On 3/22/2022 at 10:27 PM, Kulvar.1239 said:

TBH, Shiro need a bit more love.

Jade Winds cost is too high for what it does in PvE.

 

 

 

Jade Winds is just a fundamentally flawed skill which links back to Revenant's skill expression in general. 
Revenants are just not rewarded enough for burning all their Energy on Elites that take away all your Energy. Should they buff these Elites then? No, because it doesn't matter if you buff it, it's still a skill that locks out everything after casting, so it's either an all in skill or a skill left on the shelf. 

Honestly I would rather change all Elites to become their Upkeep skill and give them some form of empowerment feature instead, so it fully justifies its usage, and at the same time all the Legends can be rebalanced to have some basic features slotted in because god knows Ventari needs a Stunbreak, Jalis needs a more handy Stunbreak, and Shiro needs a less overloaded Stunbreak that doesn't also nuke his entire Energy Bar. 

[Kulvar.1239]

1 hour ago, Yasai.3549 said:

Jade Winds is just a fundamentally flawed skill which links back to Revenant's skill expression in general. 
Revenants are just not rewarded enough for burning all their Energy on Elites that take away all your Energy. Should they buff these Elites then? No, because it doesn't matter if you buff it, it's still a skill that locks out everything after casting, so it's either an all in skill or a skill left on the shelf. 

Honestly I would rather change all Elites to become their Upkeep skill and give them some form of empowerment feature instead, so it fully justifies its usage, and at the same time all the Legends can be rebalanced to have some basic features slotted in because god knows Ventari needs a Stunbreak, Jalis needs a more handy Stunbreak, and Shiro needs a less overloaded Stunbreak that doesn't also nuke his entire Energy Bar. 

 

Huge costs are indeed detrimental to Revenant gameplay. So many skills you just don't use.

Having the upkeep skills as Elite is already true for 3 legends : Mallyx, Brill, and Kalla.

I would say 4 but Alliance technically has no upkeep skill. So 4 out of 7.

Only Jalis, Shiro, and Ventari do not have their upkeep as Elite.

Jalis and Ventari I can see them keeping their elite skills as it is, but I agree it could be nice for a Shiro rework if Impossible Odds became his elite skill.

[otto.5684]

Shiro is rev’s best legend. It is nearly essential in most PvP and some PvE builds. It could see some PvE improvements. PvP, well… I dunno. It seems Anet entire pvp balance adjustments are done solely by adjusting Shiro’s energy costs.

 

[Shao.7236]

On 3/22/2022 at 11:00 AM, Telgum.6071 said:

My only complain about Shiro is the energy cost of every single ability in competitive, except the healing. In WvW/PvP most of the times you can't use two Shiro abilities in a row because then you run out of energy.

But that's how Revenant works. What do you want to do? Phase Traversal into Jade Winds as soon as you swap? Play Core. You're asking for the profession to get nerfed into the ground with such demands. What would you want to do even if you had the energy other than Jade Winds?

 

Running out of energy comes with a big asterisk*, you can still use your weapons to be offensive/defensive. They have it so you have just enough to do anything but stunbreak right away because they want you to cycle legends if you want to sustain. You can look back and easily tell why Revenant(More like Herald kekw since nobody plays actual Revenant) was absolute top tier which is easily stunbreaking out of any situations and running away with it every time because energy costs were extremely low and empty vessel existed.

 

Don't recommend you play Revenant if that's what you think it should be, that would be broken, arguably Impossible Odds is overly nerfed and should get Superspeed back if they're going to keep it at -8 upkeep. Otherwise it should get buffed down to -6 if that's as fast as they want it to be.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Shao.7236

[Jobber.6348]

On 3/28/2022 at 12:54 PM, otto.5684 said:

Shiro is rev’s best legend. It is nearly essential in most PvP and some PvE builds. It could see some PvE improvements. PvP, well… I dunno. It seems Anet entire pvp balance adjustments are done solely by adjusting Shiro’s energy costs.

 

It's nearly essential to most POWER PvP and PvE builds, that's because it's kinda the only other viable option. Shiro offers too much damage and target access to ignore even if it's in a state where it feels like playing it is driving an old car with 4 flat tires. 

If Jalis' Force Engagement had a flip skill that pulled yourself to the target, I bet you 80% of Shiro builds in PvP will switch to Jalis immediately. 

PS. not quite fair to mention PvE. PvE Shiro is not in as a hideous state as WvW/PvP Shiro. 

On 3/30/2022 at 5:14 AM, Shao.7236 said:

Running out of energy comes with a big asterisk*, you can still use your weapons to be offensive/defensive.

This also has a huge asterisk because the skills you are speaking of save most weapons skill 2 and some weapons skill 3 also cost a modest amount of Energy, around 15 - 20 which takes long enough to regenerate that it could mean life or death of the player.

That's why I previously suggested something like a refund system for Energy regen like how Thief's Ini does, that if they perform specific skills under conditions, they get some Energy refund. For example, if your Phase Traversal's skill "hits" the target, maybe you can get a refund of 10 Energy or something. And this is if you have Aggressive Agility traited. 

Like Aggressive Agility could be something like: 
Movement skills remove Immob
If your Movement skill hits an enemy, gain 10 Energy. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Yasai.3549

[Aeolus.3615]

7 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

(snip)

That's why I previously suggested something like a refund system for Energy regen like how Thief's Ini does, that if they perform specific skills under conditions, they get some Energy refund. For example, if your Phase Traversal's skill "hits" the target, maybe you can get a refund of 10 Energy or something. And this is if you have Aggressive Agility traited. 

Like Aggressive Agility could be something like: 
Movement skills remove Immob
If your Movement skill hits an enemy, gain 10 Energy. 

Well i dont see Anet doing that energy refund on trait system, BUT (theres always a but) Anet could change rune of the revenant to help with +1 pip or something similiar under certain event that isnt a legend swap.

For example, +2 pip for 4  seconds when interrupt/CC target within good ICD to avoid get perma effect, or they could just give a direct energy like u said  on CC/interrupt, but still should have a ICD to avoid get a every time CC/interrupt happens u gain energy...

Edited June 27, 2022 by Aeolus.3615

[Shao.7236]

7 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

That's why I previously suggested something like a refund system for Energy regen like how Thief's Ini does, that if they perform specific skills under conditions, they get some Energy refund. For example, if your Phase Traversal's skill "hits" the target, maybe you can get a refund of 10 Energy or something. And this is if you have Aggressive Agility traited. 

I'd rather have Charged Mists not suck and have the requirements removed. Just give players 25% energy on legend swap. SotM benefits in many cases is the equivalent of using a skill of around 20% anyway.

[Jobber.6348]

6 hours ago, Shao.7236 said:

I'd rather have Charged Mists not suck and have the requirements removed. Just give players 25% energy on legend swap. SotM benefits in many cases is the equivalent of using a skill of around 20% anyway.

Would definitely be a step in the right direction. I'm more leaning toward things which promote active play though, as I have suggested. 

Things like if your skill hits the target, if your CC lands, if you successfully cleanse a Condition etc. It helps players stay in the Legend they want for Combos if they play perfectly and don't miss their skill combos. 

In general, I dislike the entire "Revenant Rule" of swapping Legends constantly. That I believe was never the design of Revenant's Energy x Low Cooldown system on launch. It was due to all the nerfs being added as well as GW2's fast paced combat that made Revenants need to keep swapping to keep their Energy up. I always will believe that Revenant is meant to be a "dual-profession" style system where you can choose what Legend to be in based on the Want, not the Need. 

I'd argue to say that the entire reason Ventari doesn't work in modern Rev design is because Ventari is more or less STUCK with old Rev design in mind, where if you Ventari stance, you are actively choosing "Okay, I'll be Healing for the majority of my actions now" 

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Yasai.3549

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

17 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

In general, I dislike the entire "Revenant Rule" of swapping Legends constantly. That I believe was never the design of Revenant's Energy x Low Cooldown system on launch. It was due to all the nerfs being added as well as GW2's fast paced combat that made Revenants need to keep swapping to keep their Energy up. I always will believe that Revenant is meant to be a "dual-profession" style system where you can choose what Legend to be in based on the Want, not the Need. 
 

No, it was part of the original design. Roy Cronacher said as much very explicitly on some of the original streams during the Rev reveals that this was the intention; "if you want more energy you make the choice of either swapping or staying in the legend and waiting" (paraphrased). It was pretty much intended to be the class's core trade off and limiting factor so that you could only spam utilities so much (remember, most util were low/no CD back then and had low energy costs generally)

Edited June 27, 2022 by LucianTheAngelic.7054