Orders from Above needs longer PvE duration

[Player.2475]

tl;dr you need 100% boon duration to barely reach 100% boon uptime on Orders of Above, which is currently only possible with dedicated healer builds.
While Alacrigades are very good at providing healing, trying to be alac dps is pretty much impossible because most of your relevant traits, stat combinations and runes are completely anti-synergistic with each other.
Renegade's weapons and traits favour condi damage, but you can't reach 100% boon duration even with celestial or ritualist's + boon duration runes and sigils outside of fractal buffs to concentration. You basically have to equip a few extra pieces of diviner's gear, which lowers your damage even more than swapping your traits and runes did.

Meanwhile something like Quickness Herald can have a full DPS build with DPS runes and a few pieces of Diviner's and achieve 100% quickness uptime in all end-game content. I don't understand.

 

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

So you don't need 100% duration; you just need 78%ish (which is still a ton).

But yes, the main issue with both versions of AlacRen right now is the gearing. The spec could be far more competitive if it didn't require so much more boon duration. I wouldn't increase the boon duration on Orders though since that also buffs the dps build's support output, but put the increase in Righteous Rebel. Making Righteous Rebel also increase the base duration from 1.5s to 2s would make it so you only need about 25% BD to hit 100% uptime which would put it more inline with other AlacDPS/QuickDPS

[Infusion.7149]

I think the issue is if two RR renegade can put out high DPS then it shuts out other condi builds especially when CC is beneficial as on Matthias or Soulless Horror. Less so on Twin Largos since those bosses are moving all over the place. Condi renegade is still in a decent place so long as you don't need to dodge often.

More of the damage has to be offloaded to Lasting Legacy if RR is to be more boon duration most likely.

[Player.2475]

I keep hearing people mentioning that but in all my years of playing I've never been part of a raid group that even considered Renegade to be relevant enough to include in a composition, let alone to have two.

The rotation isn't exactly easy to get good DPS on, especially if you mistime it by just a couple seconds. Meanwhile there's so many other support-dps specs that can out-DPS a suboptimal DPS while still providing buffs. Then there are pure DPS that are so easy, you can smash your face into your keyboard and even a decent pure cDPS Renegade can't compete.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Player.2475

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Player.2475 said:

I keep hearing people mentioning that but in all my years of playing I've never been part of a raid group that even considered Renegade to be relevant enough to include in a composition, let alone to have two.

The rotation isn't exactly easy to get good DPS on, especially if you mistime it by just a couple seconds. Meanwhile there's so many other support-dps specs that can out-DPS a suboptimal DPS while still providing buffs. Then there are pure DPS that are so easy, you can smash your face into your keyboard and even a decent pure cDPS Renegade can't compete.

RR renegade was a pre-Mechanist thing.

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

On 1/24/2023 at 1:20 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

RR renegade was a pre-Mechanist thing.

True, but still not extremely common in non-speedclear groups back then.

Regardless I don't think it would matter today. Buffing the duration of RR alacrity from 1.5s to 2s wouldn't be an issue overall since the opportunity cost for playing 2 dps Rens in a party is higher now. Not only do they lose damage from taking RR like the old days, but they also lose damage now from having 2 in the same party. Back when it was 10 man you could afford to take two Rens because they didn't cut into each other's damage, however, now RR cRens compete with each other for Razorclaw uptime or are forced to take Shiro, which makes at least one of them drop their damage significantly on top of dropping their dps for RR.

 

Worth mentioning as well that double RR cRen isn't being played right now by most groups even though it can still cover alacrity in its current state. Buffing RR to make AlacRen more viable due to less BD gear won't change that

Edited February 4, 2023 by LucianTheAngelic.7054

[Yasai.3549]

That's the effect of having a single lazy button providing all your boon uptime: you need insane amounts of boon duration to upkeep it due to its own internal cooldown. 

Easy way to smooth this out is to probably let RR reduce the cooldown of Orders from Above, but I don't see that happening. 
(I mean, just imagine how much more flexible Rene can be if All for One gave Alac instead of Prot and you could easily maintain it by toggling Soulcleave) 

[LuRkEr.9462]

Your wish has come true in todays balance patch preview

[Infusion.7149]

Looks like 2s per pulse so without RR it's 8s since there's 4 pulses , with RR you get 12s since you have 6 pulses.
To upkeep alacrity solo you need 100% boon duration without RR or ~34% boon duration with RR if the change goes through.

With alac up, Orders from Above is 16s cooldown so two non-RR renegades already upkeep alac... we'll see what happens.

[Uete.3805]

Yessss! This is amazing! Thank you so much Balance team! ❤️

This is gonna make alacRen more effective in instanced pve content. While it is true that 2 renegades might be able to provide full alac, they will also need to use their energy for OfA instead of a damaging skill, while screwing their rotation on top and needing the rest of the group to be in melee range of both renegades. The current iteration is too gated and equipment-dependent. I guess if it ends up being a problem it might need a revision (such as reducing the base pulses to 3, while keeping the RR version on 6 pulses), but I don't think that would happen in PUGs (imagine if people start asking for adps or 2 renegades xD, as if team composition isn't complicated as is for some already).

In any case, this is quality balance: THANKS!

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

5 hours ago, Uete.3805 said:

Yessss! This is amazing! Thank you so much Balance team! ❤️

This is gonna make alacRen more effective in instanced pve content. While it is true that 2 renegades might be able to provide full alac, they will also need to use their energy for OfA instead of a damaging skill, while screwing their rotation on top and needing the rest of the group to be in melee range of both renegades.

Precisely this. Not to mention losing allied damage due to Razorclaw not overlapping, plus the very precise timing needed for 2 Rens to be able to cover it permanently. I don't think this is going to be common in the general community, but might be used in some speedclears on some specific bosses. Is that a problem? No, I don't think so

[Infusion.7149]

6 hours ago, LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

Precisely this. Not to mention losing allied damage due to Razorclaw not overlapping, plus the very precise timing needed for 2 Rens to be able to cover it permanently. I don't think this is going to be common in the general community, but might be used in some speedclears on some specific bosses. Is that a problem? No, I don't think so

It was a point brought up by speedclear players that ended up getting Martial Cadence nerfed so I hope you are aware of that.

[sevenDEADLY.5281]

So much for this buff.  Seems like it was removed.

[soul.9651]

9 hours ago, sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

So much for this buff.  Seems like it was removed.

Did they actually removed it or just forgot to add to the patch notes lol?

[Jijimuge.4675]

49 minutes ago, soul.9651 said:

Did they actually removed it or just forgot to add to the patch notes lol?

On the stream they mentioned that the version from the stream supercede the written draft balance notes - apparently the notes have to be sent for approval, translation and other stuff (IIRC), so I suspect it's just a change that was decided on after the notes were sent to be rubber stamped. i.e. I think the change to 2s is still in

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

On 2/4/2023 at 4:16 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

It was a point brought up by speedclear players that ended up getting Martial Cadence nerfed so I hope you are aware of that.

That's wonderful, but I said what I said and explained it above. It still won't be used in the majority of groups. Even when it was meta previously it was rarely seen in Above Average and below PUGs, which make up the vast majority of raids. If Anet wants to nerf it for extremely niche speedclear groups, sure, I guess.

Regardless though, they shouldn't have buffed Orders directly and the buff should have been to RR.

Edited February 7, 2023 by LucianTheAngelic.7054

[Yasai.3549]

On 2/6/2023 at 6:25 AM, sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

So much for this buff.  Seems like it was removed.

Good. I'd prefer an update to the Alacrity gameplay of Rene anyway, instead of a "haha they pushed our numbers up, now we get to wear more DPS stats" 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Yasai.3549

[Player.2475]

the devs have spoken!