Please don't change Herald

[Kheron.9062]

Right now, Herald is a fun option that is different from, say, Firebrand.

With the proposed changes to quick herald we will be losing stacks of might by giving up Draconic Echo. We will only on paper get more versatility - in reality we'll be shoehorned into maintaining a negative upkeep and forgoing potential damaging attacks to only auto, or to give up Dwarf roads for stability because it eats into quick uptime. We'll have a harder time building a quick buffer. We'll passively give quick out instead of it being an active thing we do by smashing facets. And unless this is a pvp only balance change, the radius is being reduced to firebrand mantra range, so we're losing range on our buffs as well.

You're nerfing our damage, our flexibility, our utility, our versatility, and our fun. Please, please don't change quick herald. It's the only quick class I actually enjoy.

[Cuks.8241]

I wont judge the change until its out, I think it has the potential to be good and give even more versatility to qdps Herald. It would sucks if it would be reduced to AA build with upkeeps but we dont know how hard it will be to keep quick up.

BUT if this means the boon share range is reduced, this is a huge nerf for me. That 600 range is the best feature of Herald qdps and something I think should be baseline for all boon shares. 

[Virdo.1540]

Draconic echo might be a boring spam-everything-playstyle, but its what makes herald actually playable. 
Qdps herald will have lower-end quick dps after the change on top of literally 0 booning. 
In Pvp/WvW its ok-ish, without DE complete garbage. Healer might feel horrible afterwards & lose a ton of healign due to not being able to spam skills anymore.

This will put herald into an Pre-DraconicEcho state.... (remember? When you got kicked out of 99% of the groups just for playing herald)

[Polar.8634]

Depending on duration of quick we get it can be good change for PvE quickdps build.

Also, quickdps herald would still give a lot of boons to team, much less then before but enough imo to cover for lazy heal. Literally, if u see that u don't have prot use prot button, you don't need to give all boons in game at once.

Alternatively, if they greed quick duration then herald can auto and maybe few more skills. This would mainly hurt ability to use dwarf skills. And would be boring.

1 hour ago, Virdo.1540 said:

Pre-DraconicEcho state

Now this is not possible. Herald is already over healing now, facets don't heal that much. Also, u use facets now not when party needs heal, but to give quick. Meaning, now it is wasted healing.vwith change you use them when you need their effect. For other skills - you have 120 % bd on heal herald. It will most likely cap quickness before he needs to use any skills. So it will have energy.

 

I also did not like facet spam since introduction, that is not gameplay.

[Jobber.6348]

1. I do like that they are allowing Herald to essentially spread Quickness giving to other Legends besides Glint. That's cool in my book. 

2. I don't like how it simply changes the problem from one being "oh only Glint is monopolizing my Quickness uptime" to "Be permanently -6 Upkeep or tough tities" 

There could be many better ways to do this but this all screams to be as a QuickDPS biased change, being the only playstyle which will benefit from maintain Upkeep and just pressing 1 and 2. HealQuick is definitely gonna hate this change because they need to use their other utilities and -6 Upkeep is nonsense for that. 

Oh how I wish it's just something simple like pulsing Quickness whenever you Legend Swap or something. At least then it's something more proactive and inline with how Revenants will play. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm in favor of this change, if only because my hands hurt too much.  I hate playing quickness herald because it involves tapping every facet 1-3 times as fast as possible to get quickness.  Mashing 6 different buttons as quickly as my fingers can muster is quite painful for me.  

[Monchichi.9301]

While qdps herald will be able to swap between impossible odds and rotating hammers, which will give quickness and dps. But we'll be missing a lot of boons from herald, and this doesn't give us any more flexibility. And while in Glint it's going to be very awkward as we need to maintain two skills to keep pulsing quickness but we'd also want to use consumes for dps. 

I think it will be more awkward on heal herald. You have to maintain bubble in Ventari, so you can't do much else. And you have to swap out to get energy back, but what if that's when you need the bubble?

I just think we need more tools in our toolbox. Maybe we could give a burst of quickness when we use energy and pulse when we maintain -6 energy.  Or a burst of quickness when we swap legends with the -6 pulsing. That would give a bit more flexibility. 

[Polar.8634]

i actually just found vid of anet showing changes, there i could see detail on changed skills. So, PvE herald quick dps becomes more active and fun imo after change but bit nerfed, it still should be strong enough (if quickness tick duration is enough). And Heal herald in pve gets buff to passive healing, but can needs to use skills more activelly for boons, tho i think some kind of aegis is more needed that even more heal. 

Draconic echo stays as roamer pick, it gives facets some passive effects, but what was not clear from text, it still gices you facet boons after consume. So it is small buff as 5% dmg for fec seconds is better then 1-2 might for few sec. each facet gives additional bonus to herald not allies while active, bonuses like 5% damage, condi damage, healing. dmg reduction

[Polar.8634]

9 minutes ago, Monchichi.9301 said:

I think it will be more awkward on heal herald

i think anet balance quick uptime so that quick dps can maintain quick with around 30-40 % bd. heal herald has 3 times more bd, so upkeep would not be needed all the time. also, heal herald can take charged mists and also it will have more passive healing due to new heal trait. 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Polar.8634

[hash.8462]

Can't we have both?

They are mutually exclusive, so you can't use both of them at the same time, what is the problem in having the old Draconic Echo and the new Elevated Compassion?

Two different gameplay styles to achieve the original GW2 motto "play as you want" and 100% of happy players.

[Echostorm.9143]

I don't love the constant spamming of facets to keep quickness up but I don't expect I'll enjoy only being able to use auto attacks to keep quickness up.  Take the power cost off weapon skills and you've got a deal!

[PleaseRelax.6251]

the change is an idiotic bag of crud.
i love playing herald in between my other calsses/elites for buirst of 30k dps and all the boons and quickness.
They're taking it all away......

puke

Edited June 12, 2023 by PleaseRelax.6251

[TheMightyHamm.9246]

As someone who just recently leveled a rev for the express purpose of playing heal herald - can someone explain how these changes are gonna ruin my experience like I’m a little baby.

im just not experienced enough to understand at the moment lol

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

5 hours ago, TheMightyHamm.9246 said:

As someone who just recently leveled a rev for the express purpose of playing heal herald - can someone explain how these changes are gonna ruin my experience like I’m a little baby.

im just not experienced enough to understand at the moment lol

For Heal Herald?  It will lose its flexibility.  Ventari needs the energy to use Natural Harmony and Purifying essence as needed.  But, to maintain quickness. Ventari will need to have Protective Solace active at all times.  With how energy management works, this means that you'll have enough energy for two Natural Harmonies before running out of energy.  You'll be forced into the situation where you'll either have to drop quickness to heal, or lose teammates.  This is a dilemma that other heal + boon specs do not face.

Though IMO it is the only really bad part of this change.  As someone who plays diviner herald as a boon DPS, it will change my playstyle very little.  

[Polar.8634]

11 hours ago, TheMightyHamm.9246 said:

As someone who just recently leveled a rev for the express purpose of playing heal herald - can someone explain how these changes are gonna ruin my experience like I’m a little baby.

im just not experienced enough to understand at the moment lol

heal herald gets more healing output and easier quickness generation, but now instead of spamming all facets to give quickness you activate some of them and then wait for whan you need their active effect. 

the key will be allways have -6 upkeep in herald at least, so rotate facets as you need active effects or specific boon. also, most people play retribution now but it will make sense to take invocation now for charged mists.

i think after balance you will be able to prebuff quickness and most boons in glint stance, and when you swap legends you already have 7-10 sec quickness upfront so you can use other skills as you want.

[Danek.9450]

4 hours ago, Polar.8634 said:

heal herald gets more healing output and easier quickness generation, but now instead of spamming all facets to give quickness you activate some of them and then wait for whan you need their active effect. 

the key will be allways have -6 upkeep in herald at least, so rotate facets as you need active effects or specific boon. also, most people play retribution now but it will make sense to take invocation now for charged mists.

i think after balance you will be able to prebuff quickness and most boons in glint stance, and when you swap legends you already have 7-10 sec quickness upfront so you can use other skills as you want.

Edit: I realize the segway from the quote to my actual comment might not be entirely clear - the intention was to point out that offensive power quick heralds will be severily restricted in terms of access to situational skills and that even heal heralds might not enjoy being forced to rotate between legends due to an energy-constraint at some point, thus also foregoing access to other on-demand utilities. 

Offensive Heralds use Facet of Strength and Facet of Elements off cooldown for their offensive value (+10% damage mod and a lot of damage, respectively). Assuming this entire rework is supposed to afford situational availability of skills (e.g. Facet of Darkness as a stun break), maintaining Facet of Nature (-2 ukpeep) and Facet of Chaos (-4 upkeep) is genuinely your only option to achieve the -6 upkeep threshold in Glint. How does this improve flexibility?

Should one prestack Quickness in another legend? How about Shiro; now one gets to camp in Impossible Odds (-6 upkeep, the only upkeep skill for that matter) with very limited access to any energy-intensive skills. 

What about Ventari? Offensive Herald popping the bubble just for the purpose of continuing to share Quickness? With no other value attached to it whatsoever? 

This is not rewarding gameplay. 

This doesn't even mention the clunkiness of the suggested 3 second interval of the Quickness application; what happens if you accidentally legend swap / consume a facet / deactivate an upkeep skill a second too early? 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Danek.9450
spelling, context

[Katary.7096]

On 6/12/2023 at 3:48 AM, Yasai.3549 said:

Oh how I wish it's just something simple like pulsing Quickness whenever you Legend Swap or something. At least then it's something more proactive and inline with how Revenants will play. 

Agreed. AoE quickness on legend swap is both simple and effective and comes with none of the downsides of facet spam and the upcoming upkeep toggle.

[ButterPeanut.9746]

One idea I had was instead of only giving quickness if it was -6 upkeep, it could instead be an increased amount of quickness depending upon tiers. 

Let's just pretend their current proposal is 3s of quickness every 3s when you have -6 upkeep (I hope its better than this, but just an easy example). 

Instead what if it was something like this?
-2 upkeep = 1s quickness every 3s

-4 upkeep = 2s of quickness every 3s

-6 upkeep = 3s of quickness every 3s

-8 upkeep = 4s of quickness every 3s

 

This way you could still get some quickness value without the full -6, but you also could weigh that against keeping up specific glint facets. 

 

However the issue here as others have pointed out is that draconic echo is so good for the other boons. This will definitely impact DPS quick herald, as it will greatly reduce might, fury, regen, swiftness, prot uptime. Heal will probably be less affected because you overcap so hard anyway, but still annoying. 

I do wish there was a re-work in place that tied the upkeep quickness with draconic echo. The idea of having it tied to upkeep isn't necessarily bad because you can then give some quickness outside of Glint, but Draconic Echo is just so good for all of the other boons. 

Edited June 13, 2023 by ButterPeanut.9746

[Polar.8634]

11 hours ago, Danek.9450 said:

Edit: I realize the segway from the quote to my actual comment might not be entirely clear - the intention was to point out that offensive power quick heralds will be severily restricted in terms of access to situational skills and that even heal heralds might not enjoy being forced to rotate between legends due to an energy-constraint at some point, thus also foregoing access to other on-demand utilities. 

Before, because you asked about heal herald, i suggested it will have enough flexibility. Oh sry it wasn't u

And since now you talk about offensive herald, how will it work. Players who will min max boon duration to absolute minimum for DPS increase might find they lack flexibility. And those who take 10-20 bd more will have their flexibility. That is speculation of course, but i see how it might work in a good way .

Regarding Ventary upkeep - the only situation quick DPS herald would take Ventary is when he wants to use this bubble upkeep. There is no other reason. So don't worry about that at all.

Regarding glint facet combo to have -6. I would do stunbreak and elite mostly, and i would use nature before swap out of glint. This way i have my stun break ready, provide fury and prot Perma. You can use other depending what boons party lacks .

Regarding shiro - all herald DPS builds use Io. There is no worthy skills to use in shiro anyways .

3 second ticks fit nicely in 10 legend swap cool down by the way .

So for quick DPS not so sure, after it comes live will need to test. For sure it will be more flexible then now - because you have stunbreak, cc, heal skill on demand now.

for heal herald i am hundred percent sure it will be better then it is now, and stronger.

My only real concern is what quickness share radius will be, because if I remember correctly now heal trait gives boons in 360, which is extremely small.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Polar.8634

[Danek.9450]

Don't get me wrong, offensive Herald was in desperate need of a nerf, but the suggested mechanic is going to make it extremely clunky to play. Personally, the more i think about it, the more i like the earlier suggestion of folding quickness generation into the major trait Shared Empowerment (replace Might with Quickness generation) and slashing base boon durations across the board - thus forcing Heralds to actually run 40%+ boon duration on their gear alone if they wish to maintain appreciable boon uptimes. 

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Regarding Ventary upkeep - the only situation quick DPS herald would take Ventary is when he wants to use this bubble upkeep. There is no other reason. So don't worry about that at all.

To name one example: Heralds can run Ventari on Harvest Temple CM specifically for the purpose of using the Bubble during the Purification phases - you need the bubble twice thrice for a combined total of 45 - 60 seconds throughout a >10 minute enconter.. There are probably other examples out there, but this one came to mind right away. 

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Regarding glint facet combo to have -6. I would do stunbreak and elite mostly, and i would use nature before swap out of glint. This way i have my stun break ready, provide fury and prot Perma. You can use other depending what boons party lacks .

So you don't generate quickness anymore if you need to use the stun break? (keep in mind; you used Facet of Nature previously so it's still on cooldown and you use Facet of Strength as well as Facet of Elements off cooldown for their offensive value)

What if you want to contribute towards CC using your Facet of Chaos consume skill? Situational skill usage is actively being discouraged because you sacrifice your ability to maintain quickness generation until your cooldowns permit again. 

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3 second ticks fit nicely in 10 legend swap cool down by the way .

The tick duration being so high is discouraging for a different reason - it relates to the ambiguity pertaining to no longer being in precise control of when exactly quickness is shared as well as the extremely small radius around you. 

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Regarding shiro - all herald DPS builds use Io. There is no worthy skills to use in shiro anyways .

Why are we not talking about how Shiro utility skills should be more useful then? How can we be contempt with this statement?

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So for quick DPS not so sure, after it comes live will need to test. For sure it will be more flexible then now - because you have stunbreak, cc, heal skill on demand now.

The bizarre part is that we can already have all of those things, if people would just pack enough boon duration - today. 

Quote

My only real concern is what quickness share radius will be, because if I remember correctly now heal trait gives boons in 360, which is extremely small.

According to the stream, the tooltip was showing a radius of 240, which is extremely small and would be really frustrating if an ally stepped out of it ever so slightly during one those precious 3s intervals. 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Danek.9450
clarification

[Polar.8634]

1 minute ago, Danek.9450 said:

name one example: Heralds can run Ventari on Harvest Temple CM specifically for the purpose of using the Bubble during the Purification phases - you need the bubble twice for a combined total of 45 - 60 seconds throughout a >10 minute enconter.. There are probably other examples out there, but this one came to mind right away. 

I think because of facet cool downs , you don't lose anything. Use elements and damage facets twice, then go Ventary, when you are back in glint facets are just up. While bubble don't benefit you during entire fight, it never did. So it is not problem of this patch 

 

7 minutes ago, Danek.9450 said:

don't generate quickness anymore if you need to use the stun break? (keep in mind; you used Facet of Nature previously so it's still on cooldown and you use Facet of Strength as well as Facet of Elements off cooldown for their offensive value)

What if you want to contribute towards CC using your Facet of Chaos consume skill? Situational skill usage is actively being discouraged because you sacrifice your ability to maintain quickness generation until your cooldowns permit again. 

If I used stunbreak i would replace with nature. If nature is on CD, then i would drop some quick uptime yes. That's why I usually take 5% boon duration more then minimally required. It would give me few seconds of quick prebuff to wait for some facet off CD.

Chaos active i would use only before leaving glint. Or , if other facets went off CD, i would just replace it with other upkeeps and new upkeeps i would use few sec later before swap legend .

14 minutes ago, Danek.9450 said:

The tick duration being so high is discouraging for a different reason - it relates to the ambiguity pertaining to no longer being in precise control of when exactly quickness is shared as well as the extremely small radius around you. 

Quick DPS was always about swapping legends off CD, i think you would not even think about those 3 sec ticks once you get used to swapping 

 

15 minutes ago, Danek.9450 said:

Why are we not talking about how Shiro utility skills should be more useful then? How can we be contempt with this statement

There are literally no other shiro skills i would want to use. Port in - not needed, group is usually staked. Port out - same reason. Heal - i think you could use it , but it's not utility. Elite - it is so expensive, it will not ever be used , unless gets cheaper. And this is problem for other patch .

 

17 minutes ago, Danek.9450 said:

The bizarre part is that we can already have all of those things, if people would just pack enough boon duration - today

Agree. Ppl want to see big damage numbers. I run bit more bd than on popular builds so i cad postpone some consumes, gives room for decisions.

 

19 minutes ago, Danek.9450 said:

According to the stream, the tooltip was showing a radius of 240, which is extremely small and would be really frustrating if an ally stepped out of it ever so slightly during one those precious 3s intervals. 

Wow, 240 is tiny. It would be close to unusable if radius is this small.

Alot of lack of rev flexibility comes from the fact that we cannot select utility skills like other professions, we also are limited in weapon selection. That is another story 

[Danek.9450]

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Wow, 240 is tiny. It would be close to unusable if radius is this small.

Hence why i am so concerned with the high interval. It would be crazy annoying to keep track of this clockwork-like interval during gameplay and to always make sure that everyone is this tightly packed whenever the interval triggers. Here is the timestamp to the preview stream (only the PvP version was shown on-screen); 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1842006044?t=01h02m57s 

The current version doesn't have a radius tooltip - it is probably indirectly limited by the radius of whichever skill triggers the trait's passive heal. 

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Danek.9450

[Polar.8634]

5 minutes ago, Danek.9450 said:

Hence why i am so concerned with the high interval. It would be crazy annoying to keep track of this clockwork-like interval during gameplay and to always make sure that everyone is this tightly packed whenever the interval triggers. Here is the timestamp to the preview stream (only the PvP version was shown on-screen); 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1842006044?t=01h02m57s 

The current version doesn't have a radius tooltip - it is probably indirectly limited by the radius of whichever skill triggers the trait's passive heal. 

It's not just 3 sec tick, it is impossible to have average LFG group this stacked. It depends only on Anet how big the radius of actual boon will be. 

[Polar.8634]

10 minutes ago, Danek.9450 said:

preview stream

By the way, here on video vigor tick is 3 sec. Probably his character is naked. So if quick duration is same, then at least that is long enough.