a dissertation on ventari identity and a recommendation

[tablet.4675]

hi friends!
i'm something of a tablet freak of nature. 95% of my playtime is spent zooming a rock around and slapping people with 9k heals. i think that ventari itself is in a wonderful spot and i frankly wouldn't change much about it (i do have recommendations but this is not the place for that). I likely have more hours on tablet than most players have in the game, period. so i've had a lot of time to think about what makes ventari great and what can make it even better in terms of identity cohesion. i believe that the elite specs each bring unique aspects of ventari out that create compelling subidentities for ventari, however there is one that is blatantly behind in terms of identity cohesion, which i'll get to later.
first off, in terms of tablet identity, ventari has always been a spec with an emphasis on tight aoe positional utility. you can burst heals but only in ~300 radius so you need to be constantly thinking about your positioning and the positioning of your rock. your heals are very intentional so this lends itself to a playstyle of keeping a watchful eye on your whole squad, chasing people down with heals and using your tablet swiss army knife for projectile mitigation, cleanse, or cc. tablet itself is wonderfully balanced and feels good to play. it brings a new paradigm to healing that we don't see very often; it's a high paced, high skill cap support with a focus on resource management, timing, and positioning.
herald does well to add to this identity. the core identity of herald as a boon support resource management game plays well with tablet's positional healing and creates an excellent boon support option that still relies on positioning and smart energy management to get the job done. it does quickness in addition to healing. renegade similarly creates its own subplaystyle with its own boon, alacrity, a set of offensive + defensive buffs, and again relies on positioning with the warband skills.
vindicator is where this somewhat breaks down. vindicator with tablet becomes a positively nuclear heal furnace. what the other specs bring in boons vindicator makes up for with simply more heals. it's highly mobile and the range is even more constrictive than the other two elite specs, forcing you to play in a 240 radius for healing, and forcing you to play intelligently with urn. you are rewarded with the most absurdly high healing per second in the game. you can heal for over 20k with one skill. you can keep a squad alive through Mursaat Overseer's fire platforms as a solo healer (I have literally done this).
However, vindicator has one small problem that brings the nuclear healing to a grinding halt. revenant -- the entire spec -- has no revive skills. **TECHNICALLY** tree song works on downed players, but only if they have condis, it definitely won't get them on their feet, and i'm preeetty sure that's a bug anyways. Even thief has revive support from shadow refuge and shadow arts. and with the prevalence of one-shot mechanics in raids or even open world pvp content, it feels so absurdly bad for the vindicator identity to be completely neutered when an ally goes down to a random meteorite one shot or something and suddenly the Nuclear Heal Reactor is reduced to a mere DPS in terms of revive speed. Even worse, since your healing playstyle is so active and focused on dodges, mobility, and tight radiuses, reviving heavily reduces your potential heal output to other players.
The obvious solution here would be to put revive ticks on Urn and bump up the energy cost. Urn is already not the strongest skill (about 3k hp/s when traited and buffed, slow cast time to put it down, healing cut etc) and giving it pulsing revive even at the cost of more energy would ease such a high pain point of this build. Even drawbacks like increasing the urn's self-damage while reviving would be a welcome change.
I'm not proposing that you transform vindicator into heal scourge or anything like that. We don't need a teleporting instant res on vindicator. It would just be nice not to suffer whiplash by going from nuclear healing furnace to comically worthless in every fight.
thanks~

[Proxy.4983]

I agree, very thoughtful. Good Points, especially later on. Started strong and went up from there. Good job!

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

The problem is that unless Heal Vindicator is able to give quickness or alacrity it still won't be played nearly at all even with a revive ability on urn or not. Heal scourge (while played more than Heal Vindi) is still extremely niche as well and generally only played if the group is awful or on Boneskinner (and that's entirely due to the consistent teleport more than anything else).

[RenneBright.2473]

4 hours ago, tablet.4675 said:

you are rewarded with the most absurdly high healing per second in the game. you can heal for over 20k with one skill. you can keep a squad alive through Mursaat Overseer's fire platforms as a solo healer (I have literally done this).

I assume you meant the yellow tiles/unclaimed tiles by that? Dunno if you mean in NM or CM, but for the latter, that isn't supposed to happen, unless your squad's DPS players are entirely melee and no one wants to cleave the far Scouts on range (not the two on the mid tiles) or you asked your squad voluntarily for test purposes.

4 hours ago, tablet.4675 said:

However, vindicator has one small problem that brings the nuclear healing to a grinding halt. revenant -- the entire spec -- has no revive skills. **TECHNICALLY** tree song works on downed players, but only if they have condis, it definitely won't get them on their feet, and i'm preeetty sure that's a bug anyways. Even thief has revive support from shadow refuge and shadow arts. and with the prevalence of one-shot mechanics in raids or even open world pvp content, it feels so absurdly bad for the vindicator identity to be completely neutered when an ally goes down to a random meteorite one shot or something and suddenly the Nuclear Heal Reactor is reduced to a mere DPS in terms of revive speed.

If that was really a problem, Hfb wouldn't be spammed that much (especially true for Fractals) xP.I can think of a few "one-shot mechanics in raids" you mentioned (in the sense of instant/near-down at least), and those are mainly doable/avoidable:
- CA 25% clap, you either instant-phase or you have 2 persons doing main & bu shields respectively (wall+clap 25%)
- Shockwaves: jump over, or for Qadim, just dodge towards the impact point.
- Dhuum: Getting one shot from his autos after he steals your boons. It's only happening if you got very few/no boons strips. Or getting downed after the soul split for some reason.
- Sloth's shakes (50%) or not dodging his chain slamming
Shadows Arts trait line is literally never-used, and I used SR almost exclusively on TC & escort's tower, even though it's usually a Chrono port filling that role.

1 hour ago, LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

The problem is that unless Heal Vindicator is able to give quickness or alacrity it still won't be played nearly at all even with a revive ability on urn or not. Heal scourge (while played more than Heal Vindi) is still extremely niche as well and generally only played if the group is awful or on Boneskinner (and that's entirely due to the consistent teleport more than anything else).

Yeah, but even on Boneskinner, Druid can do a better job than Heal Scourge, while still having more boons coverage than the latter. You can AoE fast revive with CA Glyph of the Stars. You can take S&R as a + or go for more outgoing healing (CA Glyph of Unity, Lingering Light trait). Heal Scourge is only exclusively here if for some reason you have 50-60% of your squad frequently downed (which shouldn't normally happen) & for these players who sleep/AFK in Boneskinner's claws xP.

Edited April 29, 2023 by RenneBright.2473

[tablet.4675]

these are both valid but imo miss the point, which is that healing vindicator has a very glaring gap in its identity. i'm not under any delusions that healer vindicator would ever become meta or that it even should be meta. specifically i'm trying to claim that healer vindicator, according to the way it feels and plays and according to the identity that ArenaNet is apparently leaning towards, *should* be able to have some sort of revive mechanic.

if i'm missing a thumb on my right hand, i'm still gonna want that thumb back, even if i still won't be a professional baseball player with it.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

His name is even "Tablet"...

[ArthurDent.9538]

The two things holding heal vindi back are obviously the poor boon support but also the urn completely disallowing all incoming healing. For the second one you can obviously say stuff along the lines of just play better and don't tank damage but that begs the question of where is do you play it where your team is taking such immense amount of damage that they need vindicator's insane healing but the heal vindicator itself can survive without dieing? There really isn't any such scenario. You could just try to play without using urn much but then the healing advantage is greatly diminished and it no longer has any advantage over meta healers that bring good boon support.

[tablet.4675]

i partially agree however vindicator has a lot more evasive tools than many specs and also a lot of self-barrier from the barrier salvation trait and your dodge and the healing cut doesn't apply to barrier. often i will camp vindicator stance with urn toggled on for passive chip damage healing and then when somebody needs higher healing you can swap to tablet for burst heals from invocation grandmaster trait, then the healing buffs from vindicator really come alive when you're able to stack like +20% outgoing from dodge, +20% outgoing from legend swap in salvation, +25% healing from empowered natural harmony, etc etc. Urn imo is your utility to keep everyone nice and topped up and you have tablet in the back pocket for when you need it. plus invocation swap has self heal so coming out of vindi even if you're at low health (which you kinda want to be for the passive +250 healing power anyways) you'll heal up real fast.

[draxynnic.3719]

Alternative suggestion: Revive when you slam the urn into the ground like it was Lively Was Naomei.

[jeronimoMD.9802]

I agree that a revive mechanic is needed for Rev or one of its specs. I like to have it on Vindi, haha! In OW it would be awesome, as most other classes have a mass revive mechanic. I feel like a lackluster healer in big zergs, such as that Zakiros fight. It feels nice to be a healer on my Tempest, Druid/Untamed, Spectre, FB, Warrior/Berserker, Scrapper, Scourge, and Chrono due to revive skilles but not on my Vindi/Herald/Renegade. I wonder why Rev (or one of its specs) is the only class without a revive mechanic. Does anyone know? I'd love to have an answer from ANET team as to why.

Edited May 30 by jeronimoMD.9802
I needed a clarification in post about what made difference

[BeardedBacon.9328]

People who love their class have such refreshing feedback, as a fellow rev main I wish I was using ventari more in wvw and this might just make me give it another go. Wonderfully said commander

[arazoth.7290]

3 hours ago, BeardedBacon.9328 said:

People who love their class have such refreshing feedback, as a fellow rev main I wish I was using ventari more in wvw and this might just make me give it another go. Wonderfully said commander

The centaur stance elite skill they overdid it on cd duration...

So it couldn't be pressed too much for WvW zerg boon balls... . But 15 second cd is too much for in there. I would be fine with 7 seconds cd on centaur elite skill.

That way you can reset the tablet little bit more often for the way it works.

 

I also think every e-spec should have empowerment F-skill reset for it like core/herald have.

[Shao.7236]

On 5/1/2023 at 11:41 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Alternative suggestion: Revive when you slam the urn into the ground like it was Lively Was Naomei.

Or have revive healing for a certain percentage like 15% of health on urn break while having urn up keep assist in healing downs so players can commit at a risk to revive then complete that revive with urn break if the downed player health is high enough.

Maybe that would require a CD tho, need to see how that'd perform in practice.

Edited June 9 by Shao.7236

[arazoth.7290]

45 minutes ago, Shao.7236 said:

Or have revive healing for a certain percentage like 15% of health on urn break while having urn up keep assist in healing downs so players can commit at a risk to revive then complete that revive with urn break if the downed player health is high enough.

Maybe that would require a CD tho, need to see how that'd perform in practice.

Urn Suggestion: 

•Upkeep urn part:

- Remove the no incoming healing/self damage while urn upkeep is active.

- Urn upkeep healing will be only give outgoing healing. This is to not get lotsss of passive sustain by upkeep to urseif now.

- 33% damage reduction on all damage stays while on for self sustain + increased self Mobility stays too.

•Denotate urn part:

Remove the health% amount required to put different lvls of urn denotate effectiveness.

Since it's 10 second cd, it can't be spammed anymore. So buffing the denotate effect nicely without HP% requirement effectiveness.

- Let it apply the current healing amount effectiveness like it is under 25% HP always.

- Urn denotate 0,5second cast time.

- Let it apply the current boons amount effectiveness like it is under 25% HP always. 

You could also potentialy add on this 4 seconds vigor for competitive and in pve Alacrity.