What about more damage oriented Vindicators? Feels like we're being punished for another spec's issues

[Curennos.9307]

Selfless Spirit heals me for 3.5k. Selfish Spirit heals for a base of 2.8k. Together, they were about as effective as a single heal skill on other specs, albeit with a total 2.5 second cast time when channeled together. I can understand some nerfs, particularly to support setups - and even on a full glass Vindicator, being able to use them every ten seconds was 2.8k + 3.5k -> 6.3k every ten seconds, or 18.9k every 30 seconds (if used perfectly). Plus whatever group healing there was from Selfless or extra targets on Selfish.

 

The issue here is, 1.5 seconds is a really long channel in PvP. On a DPS spec, managing to heal an ally through Selfless Spirit was more icing on the cake than something you would actively seek out, and as a DPS build there really wasn't enough defense to make it worthwhile, as your opponent could easily take advantage of it and just start whacking you both due to the short AoE range of the skill.

 

Similarly, Selfish Spirit, in requiring a target nearby to gain more healing, is lovely in PvE because enemies are NPCs. In PvP, trying to get any sort of use out of this the way it seems intended ends up with just taking more damage than you heal because the only enemies around are players - sometimes a pet, which will also be hitting you.

 

Ultimately, in my experience DPS vindicators only ever were able to use these skills while kiting and rarely were able to benefit from the additional effects. Despite all this, their low cooldown made them more valuable to glassier builds, with build in periods of vulnerability due to the long channels for counterplay. They were definitely available quite a lot - but spending 2.5 seconds to get a 6.3k heal every ten seconds (give or take, leaning more towards give to compensate for sticking around in a legend a little longer, pooling energy, etc) still left the vindicator with an easily exploitable vulnerable window.

 

Having two weaker (ish) heals on a shorter cooldown felt like a newer, differently engaging style of play on a damage-oriented setup and I'm not too pleased to see these skills being hit as hard as they are, particularly as Salvation appears to have been left alone (albeit with a note in the patch notes about keeping an eye on selfish defensive builds - appreciate that the notes acknowledge Salvation currently, even if nothing was changed there).

 

Equipping the avatar amulet (assuming no healing rune, as the metabattle setup takes melandru, which offers no healing power) bumps up the numbers to 3.5k and 4800, respectively, for a total of 8300 every 10 seconds or 24900 every 30 seconds. That's a 6000 healing increase over 30 sec, or an increase of...30% ish? 32%?

 

Don't get me wrong - that's a lot. That's a decent chunk of healing. A mambo, a chonker, an absolute unit, regardless of whether or not the Avatar amulet was equipped (*numbers based off napkin math and GW2skills, may be horrendously wrong). That all said: 

 

1) The damage reduction and healing increases came from Salvation and Retribution, respectively

2) Full DPS Vindicator runs none of those traits, with the possible exception of a hybrid setup that may lean into Dwarf for 2v2s, a little more teamfight ability, etc. I am not talking about those kinds of builds tho (may take mara, some tanky-ish rune, takes Ret, takes Dwarf/Alliance, etc).

3) Over thirty seconds, that's still 2.5 x 3 = 7.5 seconds spent channeling (without quickness). That's 25% of those thirty seconds spent channeling. That's a lot of time for enemies to interrupt, CC, deal damage, etc.

4) Bunker or support vindicators actually had the durability to be near allies and benefit more from support healing by Selfless Spirit, and the durability contributed to being able to make better use of Selfish Spirit. Damage oriented vind builds have neither of these.

5) Damage oriented vindicator is squiiiiiiiiishy already, and so suffers much, much more from this change than the builds anet is trying to trim.

 

I am wondering why anet chose this solution instead of, for example, changing Selfless Healer to do less healing to the rev and more healing to allies? Or, alternatively, tie the two skills together so you can only use one healing skill but not the other, forcing a choice between selfless or selfish. It also seems like most of the issues - durability, healing increases (Salvation has a decent amount of healing amps, which further boost up the healing numbers and are definitely a culprit here) - are in Retribution and Salvation traitlines.

 

Anywho, thanks for reading. My builds is usually zerker (sometimes mara, I swap stuff around for 2v2s etc), scholar, Devastation and Invocation traitlines.

 

I hope in future changes this issue could be addressed - I really enjoy glassier Vindicator builds and it feels really bad to have my build suffer because of other overperforming builds on the same class.

 

 

[Master Ketsu.4569]

Should also finally get to the bug where Song of Arboreum doesn't work with Imperial Impact. Bugged since beta, still not fixed.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Master Ketsu.4569

[freyKEROLAIN.8640]

2 hours ago, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

Should also finally get to the bug where Song of Arboreum doesn't work with Imperial Impact. Bugged since beta, still not fixed.

Can you tell me why it doesn't work? I have vigor after the dodge. I missed something? 

[Master Ketsu.4569]

The boon duration doesn't increase. SoA applies to "the stack" right before II does, so you don't get the benefit of II.

If they are going to nerf the toxic af salvation bunker build, they should have at least fixed the alternative more balanced bruiser option that has been bugged this entire time.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Master Ketsu.4569

[Shao.7236]

It's another case of they don't know what they are doing. In no right mind would you nerf without a compensation somewhere else.

And they didn't just nerf, they nuked everything. From the base line, both heals should be 15 seconds, not 10 seconds. Making them 30 seconds is exactly like how Mallyx was castrated from Resistance. Unable to survive on it's own because the reasoning behind the mechanics was tossed out the window. They completely ignored their half and half logic with those nerfs, we're talking a trip around the solar system miss.

From the very start the evade sustain was such a toxic design pumped with power creep when Viktor was already good on it's own. It had more or less going too with the low CD on skills, it's just insulting for Revenants still that they do not care about any of the mechanics they come with, whomever decided to nerf everything this way clearly doesn't play it.

Do the devs really struggle the understand the concept of difficulty and skill? You can make something have great results with great effort, it's not that hard to comprehend.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Shao.7236

[Buran.3796]

   Just saw the Automated Tournament which finished  moments ago...   Congrats ANet, after almost 5 months from EoD release, and 8 months of nerfs since the 4th beta you got it: Revenant no longer is a meta class in PvP.

   Vindicator entirely erased, core and Renegade missed for years/months and only two players able to work with Herald (Azurrs and Boyce) which anyway wasn't enough to get the tournament (every other Herald just farmed by the new triple thief meta).

   I guess they no longer count of banking in selling the expansion to Rev older players, so now the badly designed Vindi is "out" at every part of the game but they can now focus in their favs or the expecs for the next expansion. Talking of that, which silly tradeoff would you like to have for the next Rev spec? No weapon swap as Bladesworn? -300 armor as Berserker? Maybe no legend swap?

Edited July 24, 2022 by Buran.3796
typos

[Angesombre.4630]

6 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Just saw the Automated Tournament which finished  moments ago...   Congrats ANet, after almost 5 months from EoD release, and 8 months of nerfs since the 4th beta you got it: Revenant no longer is a meta class in PvP.

   Vindicator entirely erased, core and Renegade missed for years/months and only two players able to work with Herald (Azurrs and Boyce) which anyway wasn't enough to get the tournament (every other Herald just farmed by the new triple thief meta).

   I guess they no longer count of banking in selling the expansion to Rev older players, so now the badly designed Vindi is "out" at every part of the game but they can no focused in their favs or the expecs for the next expansion. Talking of that, which silly tradeoff would you like to have for the next Rev spec? No weapon swap as Bladesworn? -300 armor as Berserker? Maybe no legend swap?

It's been 3 years since the developers or the game changes.

[Angesombre.4630]

No weapon swap and no legend swap, even then it would still get nerfed.

[Lighter.5631]

7 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Just saw the Automated Tournament which finished  moments ago...   Congrats ANet, after almost 5 months from EoD release, and 8 months of nerfs since the 4th beta you got it: Revenant no longer is a meta class in PvP.

 

lol finally? oh man. after like how many years

also i wouldn't call missing one mAT = out of meta.

thief/rev often miss one mAT and people make such a big deal only to have them back in the next, every time.

specially when the patch note happened not long before.

rev has always shared second place in terms of meta up time with guardian, while thief being untouchable.

if only ever rev become out of meta is when thief is too dominant, after thief nerf, rev will be back in no time.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Lighter.5631

[Buran.3796]

7 hours ago, Lighter.5631 said:

lol finally? oh man. after like how many years

also i wouldn't call missing one mAT = out of meta.

   I agree with both your points: 1) Rev has always been strong at PvP, others had much worse luck and 2) there's still moving parts so maybe Herald could fill a slot.

   But my point is: Rev is not very good at instanced content and naturally lags in popularity due was released later than the vanilla game and requires a expansion purchase; they nerfed Renebow due was was essentially farming EoD specs (most of which are heavy reliant in ranged attacks), and Herald just can't endure the condi spam from EoD specs (Harb, Specter, and Virtuoso are mostly played in condi variants and even WB has tons of burns to spam).  Disclaimer: talking there about power Herald, condi Herald is entirely fine against the EoD meta, just top players didn't try it yet.

  Now, there's Vindi, the new spec: I knew when was announced that the single dodge would make it fail, then was the second beta and surprisingly the 50 endurance dodge worked well. Then was the 4th beta and the dodge was nerfed to 100 endurance; then the release and we saw nerfs in damage, healings (multiple times), barrier, cleansings and energy costs. Still, some pros were able to made it work (despite at that time very few players were able to play Vindi without dying in seconds.

   After a 2 month hiatus I did chose to play the current Ranked season with Vindi; first 25 matches with a 40% w/l ratio (my worst ever, not that I'm great, but I can do it better with classes which I barely touch).

   Now ANet releases a new balance patch which, as we feared, is moving skills from a class with low cooldowns balanced by high energy costs, to skills with large cooldowns as everything else but which on top of cooldowns must spent high amounts of energy for doing anything but autoattacks (and remember that the full rotation of Alliance skills costs 185 energy points, WAY more than the 135 from Shiro). Add also that swapping between Alliance legends provides exactly 0 energy points...   So, to nerf  "bunker Vindis" which doesn't exist in automated tournaments (every Vindi in a team was running berserker amulet) neither in ranked (at least in the few dozens of matches I played in this dead PvP game mode) CmC and company chose to triple the cooldown of the Alliance heals (which heal for a pity 714 HP and were designed to be used oftenly, in one of the finest examples of "cognitive disonance" I've seen in the game, as if the guy which designed the spec and the one which is making the balance changes had no communication between them, or the new one had any clue of how the spec works).

   So, every Rev player in the MAT ditches Vindi like a used kleenex and moves to either poser/support Herald (which overall performs poorly in the current meta) or to another class.

   An now we have a spec which least than 5 months after EoD release is dead in every game mode: is not meta in instanced PvE, is one of the worst specs at OW PvE, has no place in WvW zergs, is not particulary viable as a roamer and is just bad at PvP.

   Slow clap.

[Lighter.5631]

26 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

   I agree with both your points: 1) Rev has always been strong at PvP, others had much worse luck and 2) there's still moving parts so maybe Herald could fill a slot.

   But my point is: Rev is not very good at instanced content and naturally lags in popularity due was released later than the vanilla game and requires a expansion purchase; they nerfed Renebow due was was essentially farming EoD specs (most of which are heavy reliant in ranged attacks), and Herald just can't endure the condi spam from EoD specs (Harb, Specter, and Virtuoso are mostly played in condi variants and even WB has tons of burns to spam).  Disclaimer: talking there about power Herald, condi Herald is entirely fine against the EoD meta, just top players didn't try it yet.

  Now, there's Vindi, the new spec: I knew when was announced that the single dodge would make it fail, then was the second beta and surprisingly the 50 endurance dodge worked well. Then was the 4th beta and the dodge was nerfed to 100 endurance; then the release and we saw nerfs in damage, healings (multiple times), barrier, cleansings and energy costs. Still, some pros were able to made it work (despite at that time very few players were able to play Vindi without dying in seconds.

   After a 2 month hiatus I did chose to play the current Ranked season with Vindi; first 25 matches with a 40% w/l ratio (my worst ever, not that I'm great, but I can do it better with classes which I barely touch).

   Now ANet releases a new balance patch which, as we feared, is moving skills from a class with low cooldowns balanced by high energy costs, to skills with large cooldowns as everything else but which on top of cooldowns must spent high amounts of energy for doing anything but autoattacks (and remember that the full rotation of Alliance skills costs 185 energy points, WAY more than the 135 from Shiro). Add also that swapping between Alliance legends provides exactly 0 energy points...   So, to nerf  "bunker Vindis" which doesn't exist in automated tournaments (every Vindi in a team was running berserker amulet) neither in ranked (at least in the few dozens of matches I played in this dead PvP game mode) CmC and company chose to triple the cooldown of the Alliance heals (which heal for a pity 714 HP and were designed to be used oftenly, in one of the finest examples of "cognitive disonance" I've seen in the game, as if the guy which designed the spec and the one which is making the balance changes had no communication between them, or the new one had any clue of how the spec works).

   So, every Rev player in the MAT ditches Vindi like a used kleenex and moves to either poser/support Herald (which overall performs poorly in the current meta) or to another class.

   An now we have a spec which least than 5 months after EoD release is dead in every game mode: is not meta in instanced PvE, is one of the worst specs at OW PvE, has no place in WvW zergs, is not particulary viable as a roamer and is just bad at PvP.

   Slow clap.

 

 

i wouldn't say they ditch vindicator just because it is bad.

vindicator is not bad in pvp by any means.

only unplayable now as thief is so dominant, which is the the sole reason rev swapped from vindicator to herald, as herald is decent against stacked roamers, while vindicator get destroy hard when enemy team stack specter and DE, because of the natural of the spec.

vindicator will be naturally weak when enemy team stack roamers, like powe heralds, power mes, power thief.

 

just like when rev ditched power herald to play condi herald when condi thief was meta and stacked.

was because power herald bad? no, the moment condi thief is out, power herald back in full force again.

vindicator will still be better then power herald then moment the meta isn't about stacking roamers to a more balanced comps.

i can't think of any comp that's bad for vindicator outside of roamer stacking in the current balance of game.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Lighter.5631

[Zaret.1450]

i have seennsome coment about the heals nerf and tradeoffs and.... you know, with how vindi traits are made, they could make so the last trait was more specific, like, the dps jump locks you on archie and maybe increase cc or give fields or finishers on its skills, the healing jump locks you on vicky and makes some of its skills give alac for example, and the boon jump, well it has some suport and some dmg, like a 50/50, and you would get both legends but no specific upgrades, so youd be good to go, as for the heals... well its true that 3 heals are great but... maybe decreasing the healing for each one instead of cd? i mean after all you need to swap to get the other heal, and the animation is a channel, for comparison guard channeling heal not only lets you move but makes you invulnerable, yeah archie deals dmg, who knows why ( because dmg based heals arent that good) and vicky heals alies, but i havent seen heals do that much to outsiders, i think needing to swap is enought tradeoff for having 2 heals