June 27th Revenant Balance Preview

[Jaykay.9641]

Quote

Herald's quickness application is being moved to Elevated Compassion and tied to maintaining upkeep skills. In its place, Draconic Echo will now cause facet passive effects to grant additional bonuses to the herald. Vindicator is also getting some adjustments in WvW to bring it more in line with other support builds.

Core

• Banish Enchantment: This skill now has a 5-second cooldown in WvW only.
• Aggressive Agility: This trait no longer removes immobilization, and it instead grants resistance.
• Demonic Defiance: This trait will now also remove a damaging condition when it triggers.
• Forced Engagement: Reduced number of targets from 5 to 1. Increased range from 600 to 900.
• Battle Scars: Increased base healing from 58 to 68 in PvP only.

Herald

• Elevated Compassion: This trait now grants boons to nearby allies while six or more points of upkeep are in use, in addition to its current effect.
• Draconic Echo: This trait no longer grants boons when using a consume skill and instead causes facet passives to grant an additional bonus to the herald.

Vindicator

• Saint's Shield: Reduced base barrier and healing from 582 to 300 in WvW only. Reduced healing attribute multiplier from 0.33 to 0.2 in WvW only.
• Tree Song: Reduced number of conditions removed from 5 to 3 in WvW only.
• Urn of Saint Viktor: Reduced base pulse healing from 708 to 450 in WvW only.

What are everyone's thoughts? Seems Rev getting picked apart again for the second major balance update in a row and also the least amount of changes of any class. No Hammer or Shield changes, Empower Misery getting nerfed again in WvW. Support Vindi in WvW in shambles. The Herald changes will be interesting for PvE, but essentially this felt like a big WvW slap in the face for Rev.

[Sonork.2916]

 

Aggressive Agility: This trait no longer removes immobilization, and it instead grants resistance.

^ Seems like it'll be good, ignoring all soft cc is better than jut removing immobilize.

And i feel reducing the healing/barrier from the vind leap is simply healthy for the game.   Every time Anet messes with dodges it ends up badly. XD

[Otter.3841]

Moved Herald Quickness to Elevated Compassion...terrible. Absolutely terrible. Now we get the bonus healing but Draconic Echo is worthless now and we can only grant boon duration if we have 6+ Upkeep. Flicking facets on and off for quick feels better. Hoping these changes get pulled back. Forced healing but 6+ Upkeep is going to jack up dps rotations for Heralds who just wanna do Quick DPS.

[Silesium.5623]

Feels like people who doing updates play specific class and when thay fight some one and lose they think '' o this is to op I lose need nerf'' also been like 3-5 balance update where rev get nerfs I know that this team can only balance skills. Wish that design team start some work and change shild or hammer. And remove/create some traits that can be better use.

[Ulysses.2058]

Another dreadful patch for Revenant. Nothing new, but it's still painful to see...

Time to accept it guys, there's probably no one who thinks of this profession in the balance team. No changes to Devastation, no changes to Shiro skills energy costs in PvE, no updates to gameplay, no design ideas, and I could go on.

On top of that, the quickness changes don't seem appealing to me at all.

[nosleepdemon.1368]

Yeah but forced engagement once again goes further than arm's reach. Rejoice, ye plebs!

[Buran.3796]

Copy & paste from my thread (wasn't aware of this first one: happened while was writting it 😛; I hope mods remove mine):

 

   My thoughs:

    I only care about this two changes:

*  Forced Engagement: Reduced number of targets from 5 to 1. Increased range from 600 to 900.

   Is a step in the right direction, but we are still nerfed. The original range was 1200, and using it well was almost the only way to have a chance against roaming necros in WvW. The Necros still have the advantage of 1200 range with the staff skills (oftenly traited to be unblockable), and aside staff a Harbinger still has the pistol + dagger with 900 range (1200 if is running focus) to equal our short bow plus the advantage that when enters in Shroud gets stability (Implacable Foe) and can corrupt all our boons at 900 range (Dark Barrage + Path of Corruption trait). And is now worse because Harb's elixirs have now granted a 20% cdr for free in PvP and WvW (of all things!). A Dark Barrage + boon corruption ususally is enough to to finish the fight, whereas a Forced Engagement + Scorchrazor + Sevenshot doesn't. So we are still in a massive disadvantage. And that with our only ranged build, mele doesn't even have a chance (Vindi doesn't even have any cc to land a single hit).

* Aggressive Agility: This trait no longer removes immobilization, and it instead grants resistance.

   I don't understand if this will work as a buff or a nerf. In theory, Resistance removes for a limited time 8 non damaging conditions. The only reason I play Vindicator in WvW (or any power Rev build in WvW, if that matters) is because Agressive Agility.  Is the only asset to grant us a chance against the perma-root roaming Druid: the Vindicator has cleanses enough, mobility enough, damage enough and the hard counter againts one of the absolute top predators (and lamest builds) in the food chain of WvW roaming, and ripping of the skin of the face from a surprised Druid with the help of this trait was one of the very few pleasures Rev still could bring me in WvW.  I'm not sure if the change will be better, because albeit could do good things as prevent blinded or chilled for a while, if the duration is low in WvW it will be entirely useless against perma-root builds. IF ends being a nerf, I will never touch a Vindicator inWvW again (the same as entirely stopped playinmg  Herald at WvW and PvE 16 months ago). It will greatly depends on the implementation, but I'm pesimistic.

   Aside from that, support Vindi got nerfed, which I don't care. Rest of the changes are meaningless to me, which is good.

   @Sonork.2916: Largely depends on implementation. A 4 seconds Resitance at WvW (won't happen) would be a buff, a 2s Resistance would have been a nerf, since as I said is very different remnoving a 12s root than being immune to 8 condis for a second or two and then remain rooted/chilled/dazed...  for the rest of the fight.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Buran.3796

[Nephalem.8921]

2 hours ago, Otter.3841 said:

Moved Herald Quickness to Elevated Compassion...terrible. Absolutely terrible. Now we get the bonus healing but Draconic Echo is worthless now and we can only grant boon duration if we have 6+ Upkeep. Flicking facets on and off for quick feels better. Hoping these changes get pulled back. Forced healing but 6+ Upkeep is going to jack up dps rotations for Heralds who just wanna do Quick DPS.

You could just play jalis/shiro and play 2apm rev but with quickness.

I like the herald direction but it lacks a bit on glint. elite cd is too long so you probably cant use active anymore or quick uptime will suffer. we will see. draconic echoes gets nice changes but probably nobody will use it now.

[SunTheBro.4853]

23 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

I like the herald direction but it lacks a bit on glint. elite cd is too long so you probably cant use active anymore or quick uptime will suffer. we will see. draconic echoes gets nice changes but probably nobody will use it now.

Agreed. I think if they changed it to let Elevated Compassion grant Quickness for a lesser cost while in Glint stance it could work. Something like, 4 points of upkeep while in Glint, 6 while in any other.

Edited June 10, 2023 by SunTheBro.4853

[Virdo.1540]

Am i the only one thinking the passive buffs from DE (like -5% dmg) are complete garbage?

[otto.5684]

From PvE standpoint, the changes are mostly meaningless. Granted, rev is in a veey good condition. But will hammer and shield remain in the garbage bin forever?

[Infusion.7149]

Elevated compassion change means (herald) revenant is probably the lowest effort quickness source for PVE purposes.

[Buran.3796]

5 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Elevated compassion change means (herald) revenant is probably the lowest effort quickness source for PVE purposes.

   True, but will be an improvement? Prior to the changes qHerald remains popular at instanced PvE, whereas aRenegade, which is even simpler in terms of delivering the boon, not so much. The change opens the quickness to any legend, at the cost of demanding a lot of energy and therefore limiting the use of skills. Will qHerald remain popular if is bonded to just auto attacking?

Edited June 10, 2023 by Buran.3796

[Shagie.7612]

was hoping to see some energy cost reductions somewhere for rene, whether on weapon or utility skills
no real changes to the uptime boons/auras so you still get deleted from the match if a tempest is on the other team

bummer, not looking for renegod 111 spam but shortbow is probably the coolest weapon kit in the entire game and i wanna pew pew people

e:
i will say it's significantly better after the feb patch but i don't think you can really address its problems in pvp by just increasing damage

Edited June 10, 2023 by Shagie.7612

[Jobber.6348]

Aggressive Agility got me hyped because it now not only removes Immob which is a pain in everyone's rear but it also removes one core counter to Power Rev: Weakness. Definitely gonna run it over the other options in PvP/WvW now. 

Herald looks like they WANT to dip into the full upkeep playstyle, which idk how I feel about. I never liked Upkeep playstyle due to the 1 Legend camp but if it means an easier time for Herald then... idk. 

Force Engagement: Why even bother at this point. Please Anet, just remove the whole "range taunt" thing if it's so troublesome and make it a melee range AoE taunt. I think it'd work much better as a close ranged AoE taunt anyway. 

Now what actually interests me the most is Demonic Defiance removing a damaging Condi. This essentially bandaids the whole "ugh I'm poisoned, my heal now sucks" issue but it also makes all of Demon's skills essentially a Condi removal every 5 seconds. Still, should just have Demon heal consume all Condis >.> 

NO HAMMER OR SHIELD NEWS. WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED. 

 

 

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Aggressive Agility seems really nice considering just how many skills can proc it. Knowing I can potentially hit Thieves through their blind spam is actually really exciting. Even better than this change, though, is the deletion of Ancient Seeds. For years that absolute garbage unfun design has plagued roaming. Get kittened.

[Esufer.8762]

Loving the Aggressive Agility change.
Less happy about the Banish Enchantment change, it was already tough in wvw due to the energy cost.

Would love some clarity around the changes to Draconic Echo and Elevated Compassion. Patch notes in general could be way more detailed than "we changed some stuff lol" - although I appreciate that we are getting communication at all ahead of time.

Saint's Shield and Tree Song nerfs were warranted, although I wish Tree Song was handed by a cooldown change to target builds that camp Blue Alliance rather than bringing the skill's output down (especially with the buffs to stuff like Harbinger and Druid we're seeing in the same patch)

Not sure about the Lunchbox of Saint Viktor nerf though, I've only ever really pressed that accidentally.

Edit: also if this patch was meant to target some weapons that felt aimless or bad, how were Hammer and Shield missed? I hope they're targeted to get looked at at some point.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Esufer.8762

[Buran.3796]

1 hour ago, Yasai.3549 said:

Aggressive Agility got me hyped because it now not only removes Immob which is a pain in everyone's rear but it also removes one core counter to Power Rev: Weakness. Definitely gonna run it over the other options in PvP/WvW now. 

   Again, Resistance DOESN'T remove Blinded/Chilled/Crippled/Fear/Immobilized/Slow/Taut/Weakness, only suspends its effects for a duration. That means that the aftermath of the changes in Aggressive Agility will entirely rely in how is implemented in WvW. How long with last? If is only 1-2 seconds, it will be a nerf, since currently entirely removes Immobilized. 

   For context: a typical power Willbender has at WvW 3 seconds of Resistance using Crashing Courage (F3) in a ~25s cooldown, which also highly benefits from Flowing Resolve (F2) entirely REMOVING Immobilized, Crippled and Chilled two times every 17 seconds. So: the change can be good or garbage just based on how much Ressiatnce lasts in WvW.

[Jobber.6348]

45 minutes ago, Esufer.8762 said:

Would love some clarity around the changes to Draconic Echo and Elevated Compassion. Patch notes in general could be way more detailed than "we changed some stuff lol" - although I appreciate that we are getting communication at all ahead of time.

I mean it's pretty straight forward: 

They made Draconic Echo more selfish in nature and made buffed Elevated Compassion to provide Quick, which is based on your Upkeep ticks. They are essentially allowing players to potentially maintain Quickness without Glint as most Legends are 6 upkeep anyway. 

In fact if you are QuickDPS, you could just drop Glint altogether and run Jalis/Shiro. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Yasai.3549

[Esufer.8762]

2 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

I mean it's pretty straight forward: 

They made Draconic Echo more selfish in nature and made buffed Elevated Compassion to provide Quick, which is based on your Upkeep ticks. They are essentially allowing players to potentially maintain Quickness without Glint as most Legends are 6 upkeep anyway. 

In fact if you are QuickDPS, you could just drop Glint altogether and run Jalis/Shiro. 

Oh yeah, but I mean I basically exclusively play WvW, and theorycrafting is a lot of the joy that the game brings me, in terms of like optimizing stuff etc - so would be really good to know exactly how long we are getting boons for, how often it ticks, exactly what boons in what modes, etc. More detail is always good!

[Polar.8634]

On 6/10/2023 at 12:50 AM, Jaykay.9641 said:

No Hammer or Shield changes,

those needed update

On 6/10/2023 at 12:50 AM, Jaykay.9641 said:

Banish Enchantment

not used in general wvw already, overnerfed because someone in anet team tries gvg but does not know rev

On 6/10/2023 at 12:50 AM, Jaykay.9641 said:

Aggressive Agility

rather good change. weaker against immob but works against weakness and blind now

On 6/10/2023 at 12:50 AM, Jaykay.9641 said:

Demonic Defiance: This trait will now also remove a damaging condition when it triggers.

better then it was, not enough overall, they push condi herald in pvp but dont want to fix malyx

On 6/10/2023 at 12:50 AM, Jaykay.9641 said:

• Forced Engagement: Reduced number of targets from 5 to 1. Increased range from 600 to 900.
• Battle Scars: Increased base healing from 58 to 68 in PvP only.

plain buff, not so big tho

On 6/10/2023 at 12:50 AM, Jaykay.9641 said:

• Elevated Compassion: This trait now grants boons to nearby allies while six or more points of upkeep are in use, in addition to its current effect.
• Draconic Echo: This trait no longer grants boons when using a consume skill and instead causes facet passives to grant an additional bonus to the herald.

Slight buff to roamer, nerf to quickdps and buff to healquick

On 6/10/2023 at 12:50 AM, Jaykay.9641 said:

• Saint's Shield: Reduced base barrier and healing from 582 to 300 in WvW only. Reduced healing attribute multiplier from 0.33 to 0.2 in WvW only.
• Tree Song: Reduced number of conditions removed from 5 to 3 in WvW only.
• Urn of Saint Viktor: Reduced base pulse healing from 708 to 450 in WvW only.

from my experience vindi was never better that engi or ele in cleances, compensating with healing. Now both are nerfed, so idk. Maybe someone ever saw vindi as top cleancer in wvw raid?

Edited June 12, 2023 by Polar.8634
watched vid, text version bit misleading

[Sonderm.4639]

Nerfing Banish Enchantment because of GvG is peak ANet.

[Phyrak.7260]

Could herald become the camping spec with the potential changes or am I misreading the patch notes?

Colour me intrigued either way 

[Sutepun.9450]

Not sure about the Quick Herald changes, it seems like it will kill build diversity and create a very boring playstyle.

In one hand, maintaining quickness is basically the normal DPS Power Herald rotation and there is a extremely reliable LI build for quickness now. But on the other hand, this will essentially kill off using Jalis as a "reliable" stability source since you need to keep up your upkeep skills for quickness uptime. With the current Quick Herald build, you can build up more than 9s of quickness in Glint and then use Inspiring Reinforcement twice within your Jalis loop and then return to Glint and reapply your quickness. Although clunky when compared to Firebrands, this loops quite well and supplies 2 instances in which you can apply pulsing 5 stacks of stability, when you immediately enter Jalis and just before you legend swap back to Glint (this means that you still "pulse" stability during Glint).  However, similar to the Power Herald DPS rotation, it is incredibly tight with energy when not in Glint - to the point in which it is often recommended to not use Sword 4 and 5 during your non-Glint loop while you have your upkeep and F2 facet active. If you can't even use 20 energy, how can you even fit in 30 energy for stability. One argument is that you use the Facet of Nature active in Jalis for stability and just rely on hammers then for quickness, but even if you use the active of Facet of Nature in Jalis for stability, thats only 2 stacks compared to the at least 5 you get from Inspiring Reinforcement. This means that it will never probably be expected for a DPS Quick Herald to share stability, even with the Shiro/Jalis build unless they are running extreme boon duration in order to gain a quickness allowance to not be using upkeep skills in Jalis. Squads and parties will simply prioritize quickness uptime instead of stability even though the old build could have done both. This is bad for build diversity as the previous iteration of Power Quick Herald could be ran with Shiro or Jalis as the off Legend depending on the situation. This will potentially not affect Condi Quick Herald and Heal Quick Herald as much as Condi Quick Herald is not expected to supply stability and Heal Quick Heralds are probably running 100% boon duration for a generous quickness allowance if they are full or mixed Harrier armor (which most  of the time they should be).

A solution to the above problem would be to instead tie quickness uptime to the Facet of Nature uptime instead of a threshold of energy depletion. Although a lazy solution to this problem, this is in line with the current Power DPS Herald playstyle anyway, as you are expected to keep F2 up all the time. Facet of Nature uptime also has the benefit of allowing Heralds to plan their energy more flexibly. A Herald can easily manage their energy so they can plan to use impactful utilities and skills, such as Inspiring Reinforcement and Offhand Sword skills by hovering their energy between 20 and 30 energy. This will somewhat nerf Condi Quick Herald during their Mallyx loop, but you can just turn off the upkeep skill and be at +3 energy gain to keep up the facet for quickness uptime.

Another issue is boon diversity that isn't quickness. Since you take Elevated Compassion now, the unique boons you apply is limited to specific combinations (e.g. F2 facet, might facet, fury facet or protection facet and F2 facet) that equal -6 upkeep to maximize boon uptime, while the old DPS Quick Herald can share almost all of the boons, albeit with not a permanent uptime for some of those boons. By not taking Draconic Echo also affects non-quickness boon uptime as the passive facet effects are not being extended, reducing overall boon uptimes. This issue also means that expected boons from different Quick Heralds will be different. Some may use the fury facet, some may avoid the fury facet in favor of only using the protection facet and F2 to make the build LI and still share quickness.

Another concern depends if Elevated Compassion only shares quickness as a boon from upkeep. I know its unlikely that only quickness is being shared as the wording is left ambiguous to imply that this trait will work differently in PvE/WvW/PvP, but the same wording was used for Draconic Echo, which heavily implies the latter. The amount of DPS Quick Heralds that will join in future squads in which they only do Shiro/Jalis, no Facet of Nature, no Spirit Boon, and only press 1 on sword and ONLY share quickness so you literally have to pair them with HAM's, HAT's, and Druid's in order to cap the other boons seems to invalidate some of the new "heal" alacrity builds that are being introduced in the balance patch, as the majority of them cannot cap might by themselves.

[Jaykay.9641]

3 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Again, Resistance DOESN'T remove Blinded/Chilled/Crippled/Fear/Immobilized/Slow/Taut/Weakness, only suspends its effects for a duration. That means that the aftermath of the changes in Aggressive Agility will entirely rely in how is implemented in WvW. How long with last? If is only 1-2 seconds, it will be a nerf, since currently entirely removes Immobilized. 

   For context: a typical power Willbender has at WvW 3 seconds of Resistance using Crashing Courage (F3) in a ~25s cooldown, which also highly benefits from Flowing Resolve (F2) entirely REMOVING Immobilized, Crippled and Chilled two times every 17 seconds. So: the change can be good or garbage just based on how much Ressiatnce lasts in WvW.

I think @Yasai.3549 is smart enough to know that Resistance doesn't 'remove' the conditions, but just puts them on standby. Assuming they just kept the typing short and sweet.

But to your point, I agree with you that the duration and activation are absolute key in this. As you mention, 1-2 secs? Probably not gonna cut it. Great than 2 sec would be ideal, but I think we know it will probably be 2 secs. And activation: does Resistance come online during the channel of the ability? After the animation is complete? The reason this is important is that if we gain Resistance after the ability cast, we could get rooted by Druid, use Staff 5 and still be rooted in place, and then gain Resistance after the cast. This is poor design. It needs to be activated at start of cast.

Also, one more thing about Aggressive Agility and the Resistance change, is that we can be much more 'proactive' in fights instead of reactive. We can stick to Rangers much better since we don't have to wait to be rooted to use a movement ability to get out. We can teleport and proc Resistance negating their reaction; this in itself is a welcome change. Also, this change gonna make it much easier vs. Necros now - all their soft CC (weakness, cripple, chill, fear) will be much easier to negate AND they lost a substantial amount of boon corrupt. Excited to see this matchup play out now.