If Bladeturn Requiem loses its Block, the skill should just be wholely reworked.

[SatyricL.2784]

First off, I understand virtuoso needed to lose some of its defensive uptime, however this feels like an incredibly scuffed approach to doing that. The skill without its block is just a noob trap for wasting blades, or reduced to a joke of an ability whose sole purpose is to maintain trait uptime.

Either keep block on Bladeturn Requiem and rework Blade Renewal, or rework bladeturn requiem entirely to actually be useful without being defensive. I also read people suggesting to work distortion into it and move it into the F4 slot. Literally anything but turning it into a scuffed "do not press" button.

[Fleckzeck.4673]

If the skill should be somehow good in PvP, it should get one of the following functions:

1. A 0.5 sec block, whose length does not scale

2. It should do so much damage that melee attackers have to seriously consider if they take the risk to go into range of the skill now. Then it would be a Defensive skill that is not actually Defensive. The current wet noodle DPS doesn't stop anyone from staying in melee range on Virtuoso and doing damage to him

[ascii.1369]

3 hours ago, SatyricL.2784 said:

The skill without its block is just a noob trap for wasting blades

I thought the exact same thing. No idea what they were thinking.

3 hours ago, SatyricL.2784 said:

I also read people suggesting to work distortion into it and move it into the F4 slot.

I mean... yeah this has been suggested multiple times over the past months to solve Virtuosos high invuln/block uptime. Now they went half the way and made it a noob trap.

Edited June 10, 2023 by ascii.1369

[Crey.5263]

I can agree that Virtuoso probably had a little too much invuln/block time... I understand the reasoning behind the nerf....but I think this is way to much.  

I don't think that Bladeturn Requiem should have lost access to it's block because that was one of the playstyles of the virtuoso. The top trait line is all about blocking or evading.  I think a better way (though definitely lose points for originality, would be to make it more like the spellbreaker's counter as a single block for a aoe effect that scales with the number of blades stocked. But if they were going to consider reworking it, maybe lean into the other half of that traitline (evade) and make it an evade backwards with an explosion of blades at the original point (I personally would love it it was a stun break, but that may be a bit much).  I think that would play into the playstyle of virtuoso while nerfing their raw block time.

But if they can truly think of no other ways to balance, then they needed to:

• significantly increase the damage and radius; making it into a viable aoe shatter; and/or
• remove the channel component so that the virt can continue evading or using some other form of interaction.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

I really do not get this skill now.

What is the use case for F5 without block over the other 4 Bladesongs?  When is it the best choice to push F5 after this nerf?

Should Anet perhaps remove the F5 skill altogether rather than leaving it to rot for months/years as a useless reminder?  Core and Mirage don't use an F5, why does Virtuoso need one now?

One of the issues in my mind with F5 is that the block is not tied to the blades.  You can pop a 1 blade F5 and get 2 seconds of block, which, to be fair, is very strong.  If the channel and block duration was tied to the number of blades (say .25 - .33 seconds per blade) it would provide some decision making for the Virtuoso and reduce the overall effectiveness of the block.

Even with that, a bump up in the damage on the skill seems required.

[Pie.2167]

I agree, this skill is useless now.  

[dead.7638]

Why is virtuoso so busted that it even needed the nerf when we still have specs that got buffed that have just as much or more invul time currently that revived no nerf.   In the first sentence describing the update notes is the word “pain”.   This is how anet views the entire class.

[Skyroar.2974]

Just combine f5 with f4.

0,75 second Distortion + damage per blade.

It's just a simple change, that I'm surprised Anet is going towards this convoluted path.

[Crey.5263]

didn't one iteration do that , where distortion was replaced with Bladeturn requiem, then they reverted it and gave us f5s again?

 

[dead.7638]

They added distortion on top of f5.   Why this was even done during that time to just nerf it anyway idk.   They can’t forward think to save their lives.

[Skyroar.2974]

23 minutes ago, Crey.5263 said:

didn't one iteration do that , where distortion was replaced with Bladeturn requiem, then they reverted it and gave us f5s again?

No. It started as:

f4 block + damage

To:

f4 distortion + f5 block + damage

And now to:

f4 distortion + f5 damage

(My suggestion would be: f4 distortion + damage)

Bladeturn Requiem never had the distortion effect, because when Anet decided to add that effect to Virtuoso, they did it by adding an additional F skill, instead of reworking BR. And now they're completely destroying BR to keep things balanced...

Edited June 10, 2023 by Skyroar.2974

[Xzygy.1452]

Its a shame to see the lovely graphic they created go completely to waste.  Why not turn it into a counterattack instead?

[dead.7638]

23 minutes ago, Xzygy.1452 said:

 

Its a shame to see the lovely graphic they created go completely to waste.  Why not turn it into a counterattack instead?

 

This, this is a fair trade off…  if this doesn’t get considered anet really dgaf about Mesmer.

[dead.7638]

Shatter blades and counter attack next attack during its duration and ends.   The aoe was always a joke no matter how many times it hit.

[dead.7638]

Mesmer also lacks meaningful reflects, make it that.   But make it something I want to use.

[dead.7638]

Mesmer has always worked around shatters as its unique identity.   Virtuosos blade requiem is its identity skill, mentioned above, anet must have given up on Mesmer just to throw this aside as if nothing.