A Renegade Rework, rework; Why DOESN'T Renegade work in WvW, and what might instead

[Vooksa.2941]

I wanted to compile some thoughts and examples for what, I feel, to be some really curious statements made about Renegade in the March balance patch preview, and resulting livestreams.

First off: Renegade isn't weak. It's got some truly crazy utilities, even outside of Darkrazor's Daring, but the one thing holding it back is how fragile the spirits are in competitive formats. Simply changing the spirits to be invulnerable for even the first 50% of their duration would see improved use, but trying to get allies to stand in a neon-bright Kill Me sign for long enough to generate value is just asking to be the best place to drop a high-yield thermonuclear WvW bomb directly on anybody who made the mistake of standing there.

In the case of Darkrazor's Daring specifically: stunlocking isn't a healthy mechanic, but the rework completely abandons it's use as a zoning tool. Instead, using Guardian tech to expel foes from the zone as a knockback, and preventing them from re-entering the field, at least opens up enemies to have the mobility to do something else instead.

As it stands, there are lots of things keeping Renegade from being effective in WvW:

• Most of Renegade's DPS comes from bleeding, mostly shortbow and two relevant traits. Bleeds take a lot of time to be effective, without any control elements attached like poison does, and 20+ stacks melt off boonballs with a snap.
• Renegade has lots of burning, from shortbow, to Citadel Bombardment, to Soulcleave's Summit being a fire field, but Renegade/Rev has no traits that name fire fields or burning, so you end up with the same bog-standard Corruption traits as any other elite, which feels boring. Vindicator burning suffers from the same.
• Renegade has no sources of chill, so Corruption's chill>torment conversion is a miss, compared to Glint's burning/chill conditions. The single application of chill with the rework, only by casting two spirits, simply doesn't cut it. Icerazor's Ire could be a chill field, blasting and leaping for defensive ice auras and whirling and shooting for chilling bolts.
• Lots of crit chance and chill on weapons like sword/greatsword could be an argument for a hybrid dps, but Renegade has no traits that tie crit chance to condition application, and no traits that increase strike damage, short of a +5% on Lasting Legacy's Fervor dps.
• Icerazor's Ire has lots of vuln, which should be a shoe-in for battlescars self-sustain, but battlescars was gutted at the launch of EOD and never recovered. Lowering the amount from 20 hits down to just three doesn't make it feel like a combo piece anymore, and while the immobilize procs Salvation's Words of Censure and the weakness allows Retribution's Dwarven Battle Training , it doesn't really feel well-directed.
• On the topic of Kalla's Fervor, it's a very powerful effect, but it's completely invisible, due to only 5 stacks and having so many different ways to easily generate it. All it does is mean that while you might get powerful effects like 15 might on Heroic Command eventually, or condi damage reduction eventually, Heroic Command grants precisely 0 might by precasting before a fight. That's a huge miss in WvW, where the chances that enemies dance just outside your range means that you never land the hits needed to build stacks, and you end up having to charge in with nothing just to get them.
• As a healer, Renegade's only contribution is a crit>fury, fury>vigor chain, to use the exact same dodge-to-heal/cleanse tech that Vindicator uses, or Herald uses in PvP due to quickness being replaced with vigor. Breakrazor's Bastion and Soulcleave's Summit are too risky to stand in for long, 50% condi reduction or not, and while new Icerazor's Ire triggers Words of Censure, no Revenant weapon grants a particularly noticeable advantage to a heal-Renegade, not disables, not blocks, not blast finishers, not cleanses, not boons, not anything.
• This extends to scepter: barrier is a non-mechanic on Revenant at large, not like Scourge or Mechanist, and the two boons scepter generates, might and fury, are doled out in spades on Renegade. There's no cleanse, there's no vigor, there's just autoattacking for barrier. Theoretically the pull from Otherworldly Attraction could proc Words of Censure, but that'd mean autoing the enemy, instead of allies to generate the might and fury, and there's no advantage for shadowstepping on Renegade or Revenant either, not like on Guardian or Thief, and the buildup is simply too long to bother using Relic of Peitha for.
• In the case of other boons, the protection, resistance, and resolution from the rework are nice, but feel a bit jank due to the secondary effects requiring other summons. Renegade has alacrity attached to a single button that does nothing else, and then also has a trait that's main advantage is making that alacrity actually useable with full uptime. I've no idea how the Renegade rework managed to slip through the net of slashing alacrity off Tempest, Druid, and Scourge, but I imagine that at some point you're going to want to get rid of that too, and I can't figure out what you'll want to do about it. Herald, by comparison, has permanent uptime of boons simply by merit of still breathing, and if alacDPS is all Renegade is ever meant to live up to, then that's fine, but if you want it to have some versatility, you're going to have to give it something to work with.

A lot of the rework feels like this wasn't so much an effort to solve Renegade, or Kalla, but the most recent step in cleaning up skills to be less performance intensive. There's been a LOT of standing-fields reductions as of late, and while I think that it's good to codify Renegade spirits as working the same way/similarly to Ranger spirits, I genuinely don't think that this is enough to get Renegades to move in to PvP and WvW.

____________________

Off the top of my head, here's a few alterations that could make Renegade more engaging, and give it a unique niche that doesn't overlap with Herald and Vindicator:

1) KALLA'S FERVOR AS A CONSUMABLE RESOURCE: With so many ways to stack fervor, it'd be way more interesting if Citadel Orders and Kalla summons could consume 5 stacks for 'empowered' benefits. The choice becomes when to use the stack, and with who, or whether to sit on the bonus damage and lifesteal fervor provides by using a different legend.

• HEROIC COMMAND: Grants swiftness, 5 stacks of Kalla's Fervor, and Ventari's Tranquil. This is a one-tap button that helps Renegade get their ball rolling, but also an emergency button to press in preparation of the other Order or summon that you ACTUALLY want empowered, if you don't want to wait to rebuild stacks. Ventari's tablet empowerment helps it stay relevant on a healRen in the same way as True Nature does on Herald.
• CITADEL BOMBARDMENT passively fires an extra projectile per fervor held, and consuming 5 stacks inflicts a second stack of burning. Players should want to use this ability, but often, it's cast too slow for too little damage, and getting to sling a ton of projectiles is a great move to use up fervor.
• ORDERS FROM ABOVE extends the duration of existing boons by 0.5s per pulse. If consuming 5 stacks, extends by 1s per pulse. A lot of Rev boons not on Herald don't last that long, these suggestions included. It'd be nice if OFA had functionality outside of providing alacrity, because without being an alacDPS, it's a dead button.

2) REWORKING GRANDMASTERS FOR MORE DIVERSE ROLES. Lasting Legacy ends up being no-brainer for both pDPS and cDPS, and due to the issues surrounding Citadel Bombardment, it doesn't compare in terms of either strike damage, condi damage, or % damage increase, especially since the might is self-only.

• VINDICATION grants 1 might in an area when you gain fervor, and 20% chance when you inflict burning. This helps grant the same group-might functionality of Heroic Command, while also tying in burning from mace2, shortbow4/5, Citadel Bombardment, and Soulcleave's Summit.
• LASTING LEGACY extends the duration of Kalla's Fervor and increases the maximum stack count to 8. Consuming fervor causes the stack's effects to persist for 6 seconds afterward. Mathwise, 8 stacks is +1% more than 5 stacks at 3% each, but it requires more investment and buildup. This shadow-effect also lets you maintain the benefits of fervor, without feeling the loss of dps, while you build up more stacks.
• RIGHTEOUS REBEL reduces incoming condition damage and duration per fervor. Orders From Above now also grants alacrity and regeneration per pulse. Renegade lacks sources of regen, if it's meant to be a healsupport, and it safely defuses Orders From Above and Righteous Rebel to have alacrity stripped in the future without killing the effect entirely.

3) ALL FOR ONE causes legendary renegade abilities to grant nearby allies a boon. (Included below)

4) RENEGADE SUMMONS AS ZONE CONTROL FIELDS. The issue with Renegade isn't so much how immobile the fields are; lots of classes in WvW use them to great effect. The issue is tying so much, to a field so small, where players trying to heal get walloped and enemies stand in the field without fear of consequence. This renders Renegade a field-control artist, who uses distant summon placement to break enemy formations, and casts on allies for boons and support.

• BREAKRAZOR'S BASTION performs a self heal, and an additional heal around the summon, which persists as a light field. Consuming 5 fervor performs three attacks that inflict blind. [All For One] grants nearby allies resolution on cast. The notion here is that the strikes can trigger Words of Censure, as well as eat up uses of battlescars, if slotted, while resolution benefits Retribution.
• RAZORCLAW'S RAGE inflicts a powerful bleed on summon, and then performs five whirl attacks for it's duration. Consuming 5 fervor grants those attacks bleeding. [All For One] grants nearby allies fury on cast. As a whirl, this combos with every other summon, for burning bolts, chilling bolts that can convert to torment, and light bolts that cleanse conditions. 
• DARKRAZOR'S DARING expels foes from it's vicinity and breaks stuns on nearby allies, and persists as a lightning field. Consuming 5 fervor prevents foes from re-entering the field for the duration, and grants stability. [All For One] grants nearby allies protection. As mentioned earlier, the goal of this is zoning. There should be a cost to the wall, but I think that it represents a powerful effect that makes Renegades desirable in a way that's unique, but not in a way that isn't covered by other classes.
• ICERAZOR'S IRE creates an ice field, performing three pulses that inflict weakness and chill. Consuming 5 fervor causes each pulse to inflict immobilize. [All For One] grants allies nearby allies resistance on cast. The ice field  here can be combo'd for chill, but also blasted for defensive ice auras.
• SOULCLEAVE'S SUMMIT continues to be a fire field and steals life. [All For One] generates 1 stack of Kalla's Fervor per second while active. The benefit of Soulcleave's Summit, under the effects of All For One, is that using Kalla's summons to consume fervor kind of pays for itself over time.

____________________

I did this mostly for fun, but also as an analysis of what keeps me, as a Renegade player, out of PvP and WvW. Renegade currently relies on lifesteal to sustain itself through fights long enough for condition damage to become effective, and short of using Song of the Mists to jolt you with a dose of quick-access Kalla's Fervor, legendswapping into Kalla after you actually land a hit, there can be some stumbling getting yourself ramped up, despite all the different ways to generate it. Without escape tools, Renegade ends up having to commit to a fight, and will usually die as a result, and joining a big WvW zerg means that all your efforts to use Kalla don't amount to much.

Reworking Kalla into small, limited doses of boons doesn't help much, given how crazy the boon generation is on Herald, and how powerful the healing and cleanse on Vindicator is. There needs to be a reason to make significant decisions in both the buildcraft and the in-battle gameplay of being a Renegade, or else you'd be better off swapping to any other class or elite spec who actually can. Maybe combo fields isn't the best tech to get a Revenant some added value, but it certainly is tech Revenant doesn't otherwise have a lot of, and zone-control is a role that Revenant can perform, but not otherwise has codified as a build.

I'd appreciate any critique or comments, or even just discussion on the subject, but I hope I'd at least gotten my point across.

[arazoth.7290]

Some interesting ideas about traits, I think they left that out to see how the reworked stance will respond when it's live. 

But yea some traits need some updates. And imo the F-skills energy cost needs to be turned down for using these 3 all together more often. I don't mind even if the Citadel Bombardment gets little tuned down with energy costs for compensation (reasonable amount still). 

And heroic command feel dull/outdated too, I agree on the basline swiftness, ventari tranquill and those stacks of kalla fervor because of spec mechanics. Having some option to get swiftness without traiting it, is always nice!!!

Idk about boon extension because vindi had that removed bc reasons so better not I guess again. rene has in general some lack of good regen uptime like Herald/vindi.

Maybe kalla abilties need littleee bit lower energy. Because if they lower some F-skills too, we will be using even more energy of it.

-----------

Eitherway kalla with new updates "Icerazor's Ire" will get immobilisation cripple and also 3 times aoe chill if enchanced. Enchancing it, looks easy to do. It still pulses aoe but it's shorter duration for the reason that people get easier the full output on them. There will be still enough aoe denial for them to be aware off and probably more dangerous now to watch for.

Scepter you didn't saw the other updates on stream I guess. The skills get stacks themself passively over duration it is applied. I recalulated the numbers after some nerfs and it will still be good, but more reliable mechanics now. Before, scepter was hard to get full potential out in pvp/WvW but pve less and I am happy they saw it. 

Rewatch the stream if you want or wait for the nice surprise soon ^^

[Shagie.7612]

Too much to go through point by point, so I'll mention a couple things instead:

I don't think, without any change to how Kalla's Fervor is generated, adding a consumption effect to the citadel orders is a particularly meaningful change.
Like, if you're actively fighting, you will be back at 5 nearly instantly. You could just make the orders do those extra effects by default and the difference would be negligible.
If you wanted to do that I think it'd make more sense to turn it into something like DE malice or virt blades.

The other thing, and it's not really directly related to your rework, is that I can't figure out what build the changes are meant to enable, at least for PvP. What are you supposed to play after the patch?

Shiro/Kalla? You have no condi cleanse then. You'll die the moment you get a single condition if you play Devastation. If you go Salvation to combat that, you do no damage and don't have much better sustain.

Jalis/Kalla? You'll never catch anything, and you don't have particularly great tools to sidenode. Still not very good sustain unless they buff Soulcleave so hard you're a facetanker again, poor tools to stall out a +1, you're probably not winning many match ups against real sidenoders.
You'd be like Virt, with no ability to stop people from leaving.

Ventari/Kalla? I guess, but I imagine that'll mostly be inferior to Herald or Vindi (even with the boon change) support builds. Support Rev's never been particularly good in PvP but for WvW tho maybe, since a bunch of things lose Alac in the patch.

Mallyx/Kalla as a condi build? Without Herald's True Nature and shield's trait for condi cleanse you don't handle conditions that well tbh. Even with Rabid you're pretty squishy too.
If you play this currently, even when people sit in your ghosts and don't kill em, you lack things like strong cover conditions with quick reapplication, and control. Look at like, condi reaper or condi zerk, skull grinder applies literally like 9 different things. You gain an immobilize here as your only new condition.

WvW zergs I guess, prolly Jalis/Kalla? I'm not that experienced with real wvw comps, but I don't see anywhere else you'd care to bring the legend.

Wish they'd bump the ghosts up to 900 to match shortbow.

Edited February 20 by Shagie.7612

[Vooksa.2941]

23 hours ago, arazoth.7290 said:

Eitherway kalla with new updates "Icerazor's Ire" will get immobilisation cripple and also 3 times aoe chill if enchanced. Enchancing it, looks easy to do. It still pulses aoe but it's shorter duration for the reason that people get easier the full output on them. There will be still enough aoe denial for them to be aware off and probably more dangerous now to watch for.

Scepter you didn't saw the other updates on stream I guess. The skills get stacks themself passively over duration it is applied. I recalulated the numbers after some nerfs and it will still be good, but more reliable mechanics now. Before, scepter was hard to get full potential out in pvp/WvW but pve less and I am happy they saw it. 

I guess it does say that Icerazor's Ire is chill/etc on every one of the blades, if it's empowered first, but "attack that inflicts chill" is only half the problem I have solved. Even Mallyx has an attack that inflicts 3 chill to as many as 5 targets in a line, while also removing boons, and that's an unblockable non-projectile. Both the old and new Icerazors are projectile attacks, not pulsing, and projectiles are a no-go in WvW blobs, because of all the projectile destruction/reflection. While an ice field would also be whirling bolts, I specifically say that Icerazor should be pulses to avoid the projectiles issue.

I did see scepter on the stream, and I still don't care about it. As I said in my post, there isn't a single feature on scepter that's especially relevant to Revenant. All elites have easy access to personal might and fury, and barrier is simply not a mechanic that any legend or trait cares about. I'm not sure what everybody is so excited over.

19 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

Too much to go through point by point, so I'll mention a couple things instead:

I don't think, without any change to how Kalla's Fervor is generated, adding a consumption effect to the citadel orders is a particularly meaningful change.
Like, if you're actively fighting, you will be back at 5 nearly instantly. You could just make the orders do those extra effects by default and the difference would be negligible.
If you wanted to do that I think it'd make more sense to turn it into something like DE malice or virt blades.

. . .

The other thing, and it's not really directly related to your rework, is that I can't figure out what build the changes are meant to enable, at least for PvP. What are you supposed to play after the patch?

The purpose for the effects consuming fervor is to prevent skillspam. There's nothing stopping people from mashing their buttons, but if they want to gain the full advantages repeatedly, then they have to pace themselves or use Heroic Command. Otherwise, simply not pressing Citadel Orders or Kalla summons grants you the passive benefits, and you play as you always have. I hesitated against suggesting that there be an iCD on generating fervor, since the point was that you generated so much that it'd be cool to spend it, but not mashing all the skills on cooldown is one of the intentions at the least.

I think that by handing out resistance, resolution, and protection, along with lifesteal, and the condi damage reduction from Righteous Rebel, that the devs intend for you to just power through the worst of condition stacks. Mallyx/Kalla with Corruption has Permeating Pestilence to transfer conditions on legendswap, and Retribution has Versed in Stone as a condi damage reduction, but I agree, it's a bit spicy. I'd actually had a note for Vindication that "inflicting burning has a 20% chance to cleanse a condition" but thought that might be pushing it, and overlapped too heavily with Righteous Rebel's reduction. But yeah, Breakrazor's Bastion was a neon sign telling enemies to bomb you, but it did at least have a 50% damage reduction from from conditions, and now it won't.

Just to play devil's advocate for a second, but I'm not actually that upset about all the combos you've named here. You've essentially indicated that whatever your chosen combo, there'll be things you're good at, and things you aren't, and there honestly needs to be more effort to build strengths and weaknesses into the buildcraft of each elite. Nothing should be unkillable, and it's up to the player to use their strengths and weaknesses accordingly.

[Shagie.7612]

1 hour ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

The purpose for the effects consuming fervor is to prevent skillspam. There's nothing stopping people from mashing their buttons, but if they want to gain the full advantages repeatedly, then they have to pace themselves or use Heroic Command.

Right, I get that, and I agree that if you were to add bonus effects on to each of the orders, just slamming your fist on the keyboard the instant you reach 5 stacks would be something you wouldn't want, but I don't think there's any real significant delay to how fast you get back to 5 stacks when you're actively attacking. Less than a second on any non-support build, basically.

For example, on a condi build in spvp, I have only the default 38% crit chance without fury. But I can press an order, swap to Vindication (which clears the buff because it's a trait swap) and I'm immediately back to full buff by pressing sevenshot. In combat, with something like embrace the darkness, hammers, or just any any attacks going off, it'd be even faster, especially on a power build or with fury. You'd have them back almost before you're out of the animation or cast time of the two with them.

1 hour ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

I think that by handing out resistance, resolution, and protection, along with lifesteal, and the condi damage reduction from Righteous Rebel, that the devs intend for you to just power through the worst of condition stacks.

I don't think that's worked very well since they changed the damage reduction formula tbh, plus adding the ICD on soulcleave on top of that means your effective HP is way, way lower than what used to allow you to tank em out. Giving up Devastation, Invocation, or Corruption, depending on your build, for Retribution isn't a trade off you can afford to make either. It won't be a net gain of enough to make up for what you'd lose. Versed in Stone is 5s on a 90s CD or you throw all your energy into casting the Jalis elite. Plus, if you run Jalis as your other stance you've lost all your damage on a condi build. At some point you start to run into a problem where you might survive, but now you can't actually hurt anyone and you're just as much of a do-nothing build as you were before.

1 hour ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

Just to play devil's advocate for a second, but I'm not actually that upset about all the combos you've named here. You've essentially indicated that whatever your chosen combo, there'll be things you're good at, and things you aren't, and there honestly needs to be more effort to build strengths and weaknesses into the buildcraft of each elite.

That's not very accurate. None of those currently have any real strengths, and they probably still won't after the patch. They have fundamental lackings that prevent them from fitting into any real role in pvp. You can't fix that by buffing numbers unless you make said numbers MASSIVE, which is a really dumb balancing strategy.
I do agree that power creep has screwed up buildcraft though, it's unfortunate and arguably PoF specs like Renegade were where it really went off the rails, but it's not going away now and my only hope is that it doesn't end up like condi zerk, turned into some monster that just never cares about what the opponent's doing because of sustain.

Edited February 21 by Shagie.7612

[Sereath.1428]

Interesting conversation. Because while I agree that Renegade's legend itself, Kalla, has been underwhelming for a long time in PvP and WvW. Renegade is still everywhere for small scale in WvW, specifically Celestial variants. That kitten is a lot more obnoxious and tanky than Vindicators for some reason, no wonder it's the only thing people use for roaming/small scale when opting to play revenant.
But yes, this was mostly a Celestial complaint.

Anyway, if anything, it might actually start to see zerg play and then it might actually start to get targeted nerfs since they only balance around blobs, so I actually don't really mind how strong it gets.

Edited February 21 by Sereath.1428

[Vooksa.2941]

15 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

Right, I get that, and I agree that if you were to add bonus effects on to each of the orders, just slamming your fist on the keyboard the instant you reach 5 stacks would be something you wouldn't want, but I don't think there's any real significant delay to how fast you get back to 5 stacks when you're actively attacking. Less than a second on any non-support build, basically.

I'm not trying to say everything I've typed here solves the issue, just attempts to create an environment where the amount of fervor you generate actually matters. So much of Renegade's trait economy is eaten up by methods to generate a resource you can max out with Song of the Mists striking four enemies alone, so why does Renegade need to generate it with crits, flanks, defiance, disables, fury, evades, longer duration with Lasting Legacy and renewed duration with Heroic Command for???

I'd like if fervor was stripped down a little and made to matter to different builds. Not stripped down like Catalyst's Elemental Empowerment, which requires strict gameplay and only passively increases stats, but more like Mesmer clones, where there are builds for having max clones and builds for shattering them, and that each shatter scales with the clones you sacrifice. The only skill that acts that way at the moment is Heroic Command, which grants 0 might if you precast it before building your stacks first, and it's bizarre.

We could even split Ambush Commander into the major adept traits. "Fervor on disable, and flanking attacks", "Fervor on fury, and crits", and "Fervor on evades, and striking defiant foes". The cDPS builds wouldn't even notice a change, but it creates a distinct gameplay style for harassing players who turn and run in PvP and WvW, as well as a distinct gameplay for a heal build who's dodging to heal and can be used in PvE against defiant bosses.

The wacky thing about the ease that non-support Renegade has in generating fervor, is that there's still enough tools for a build completely devoid of crit chance to easily gain and easily maintain max stacks. But for what? The only build that wouldn't require crit chance is a healalac, and fervor has 0 impact on the effectiveness of a healRen, so why is it even there? What is it's availability meant to achieve?

[As a note, healRen actually has pretty substantial healing with Soulcleave's Summit and the current Breakrazor's Bastion, but it's all slow and over time. You could supplement the healing with big bursty Ventari heals, but it doesn't hold a candle to the passive healing that Herald's regeneration achieves.]

15 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

I don't think that's worked very well since they changed the damage reduction formula tbh, plus adding the ICD on soulcleave on top of that means your effective HP is way, way lower than what used to allow you to tank em out. Giving up Devastation, Invocation, or Corruption, depending on your build, for Retribution isn't a trade off you can afford to make either. It won't be a net gain of enough to make up for what you'd lose. Versed in Stone is 5s on a 90s CD or you throw all your energy into casting the Jalis elite. Plus, if you run Jalis as your other stance you've lost all your damage on a condi build. At some point you start to run into a problem where you might survive, but now you can't actually hurt anyone and you're just as much of a do-nothing build as you were before.

....

That's not very accurate. None of those currently have any real strengths, and they probably still won't after the patch. They have fundamental lackings that prevent them from fitting into any real role in pvp. You can't fix that by buffing numbers unless you make said numbers MASSIVE, which is a really dumb balancing strategy.
I do agree that power creep has screwed up buildcraft though, it's unfortunate and arguably PoF specs like Renegade were where it really went off the rails, but it's not going away now and my only hope is that it doesn't end up like condi zerk, turned into some monster that just never cares about what the opponent's doing because of sustain.

I'm not sure that I need to go through a lecture about how PvP differs from PvE due to having to sacrifice perfect-boons offense for survivability and control, but like... Revenant is a unique case for bringing two sets of predefined utility skills to the party, rather than getting to mix and match the usual 5. Rev struggles with anything that they haven't made their whole gimmick, but they're incredible at whatever they DO make their main gimmick. It's that gamble that makes Rev defeatable at all, and without such min-maxed vulnerabilities, you'd... well, you'd end up with Willbender or pre-rework Firebrand, actually.

I don't think any single legend is meant to carry you, and I don't think any combination of two legends is meant to carry you, but Kalla is used for self-sustain and area control. Shiro/Kalla is meant to control any stragglers you catch up to, whereas Jalis/Kalla is a bunker tank, far more concerned about preventing the opponent from moving them off-point than chasing down anyone leaving. Ventari/Kalla uses summons for condi reduction and protection, before flipping into Ventari to blast big heals and condi cleanses; it's about surviving long enough to make the move worthwhile, but Salvation still features a group cleanse every dodge for stuff like that. Versed in Stone being on 90s CD just means you aren't relying on it more than once per skirmish, and if you've gotten down to 50% hp on conditions, halving their effectiveness for a minute on top of having resolution is huge. Revenant also has a lot of access to conditions like chill and slow, and Jalis' Forced Engagement is a huge control effect if you can catch someone without a stunbreak, especially as a condi class with expertise.

I dunno. Rev is versatile, while also being vulnerable, and I wish that more classes were like that. Renegade doesn't really promote variation between builds, and I think throwing fields on Kalla and making fervor spendable in different ways are interesting ways to expand it's potential.

 

 

 

[Vooksa.2941]

13 hours ago, Sereath.1428 said:

Interesting conversation. Because while I agree that Renegade's legend itself, Kalla, has been underwhelming for a long time in PvP and WvW. Renegade is still everywhere for small scale in WvW, specifically Celestial variants. That kitten is a lot more obnoxious and tanky than Vindicators for some reason, no wonder it's the only thing people use for roaming/small scale when opting to play revenant.
But yes, this was mostly a Celestial complaint.

Anyway, if anything, it might actually start to see zerg play and then it might actually start to get targeted nerfs since they only balance around blobs, so I actually don't really mind how strong it gets.

Celestial is definitely a problem, but on Rev, it's largely because the class has a finger in so many different pies. Expertise impacts the chill applied by swords, healing power affects the lifesteal effect of Kalla's Fervor, toughness converts to power using Versed in Stone, and so on.

I'm not really so concerned about how strong Renegade is. All the EOD elite specs launched busted out the wazoo, but I didn't care for just about any of them, because they were so insanely rigid in their buildcraft applications. Renegade was different enough from the heal-support design of Herald, being a mid-range condiDPS, but Herald's gotten so many buffs over time that now Herald has a cDPS build with burning and chill ON TOP OF the boons and healing it was able to do.

Renegade doesn't currently have a niche on Revenant that only it can do, that you'd want to switch off of Herald or Vindicator for. I'd thought it'd be cool if that was area denial and control, but the new Kalla rework doesn't do anything to solve that problem.

[Lionwait.4815]

I come from a WvW perspective, and the problem Renegade has is mobility. That said the BIGGEST problem I see with these changes is the underline range of these utility skills being only 600 range. In my mind the old skills that are still available now would work with a long duration because you can take that risk to cast them and run away hoping to get out of reach of the enemies before getting crushed.  You can do this a few times before someone from the other side takes notice seeing some crazy renegade getting 600 range to the zerg over and over. In WvW Renegade was a dead class to play. Its only advantage was crowd control. Now that that's being taken away because of the skill duration changes the class will be even more dead in WvW because I don't see any change in range yet... We will see if anyone sees my post. Make renegade skills at lest 900 range and able to cast on a wall or over a wall and then I can see the classes being used in WvW. Oh, and on a side note energy costs is a problem too, but I just wanted to focus on the BIG elephant in the room being range and over wall use for defense because the class mobility lacks comparted to every class in the game. Take that into consideration and then add the cost of energy to cast one or two skills and then you are dead by any other class out there. 

FYI, I feel like I was the only renegade playing renegade in WvW and making it work. I don't believe there is renegade players that has me bet with time played and worked on to make such a class work. 

[Vooksa.2941]

14 hours ago, Lionwait.4815 said:

I come from a WvW perspective, and the problem Renegade has is mobility. That said the BIGGEST problem I see with these changes is the underline range of these utility skills being only 600 range. In my mind the old skills that are still available now would work with a long duration because you can take that risk to cast them and run away hoping to get out of reach of the enemies before getting crushed.  You can do this a few times before someone from the other side takes notice seeing some crazy renegade getting 600 range to the zerg over and over. In WvW Renegade was a dead class to play. Its only advantage was crowd control. Now that that's being taken away because of the skill duration changes the class will be even more dead in WvW because I don't see any change in range yet... We will see if anyone sees my post. Make renegade skills at lest 900 range and able to cast on a wall or over a wall and then I can see the classes being used in WvW. Oh, and on a side note energy costs is a problem too, but I just wanted to focus on the BIG elephant in the room being range and over wall use for defense because the class mobility lacks comparted to every class in the game. Take that into consideration and then add the cost of energy to cast one or two skills and then you are dead by any other class out there. 

FYI, I feel like I was the only renegade playing renegade in WvW and making it work. I don't believe there is renegade players that has me bet with time played and worked on to make such a class work. 

It's bizarre, because in the last week or two of wvw, I've suddenly started seeing a lot of Renegades. I don't know if it's the server rotation, and Renegade is just weirdly more popular on one server than another, but I got the chance to fight with some pDPS and cDPS, roamers and in zergs. None of them were using Kalla, of course, but it was still weird.

Part of why I say that I want Kalla's spirits to be zoning tools is specifically because there's huge value to promoting or discouraging movement in WvW. As a Ranger, longbow barrage can needle entire blobs into shifting positions, and just a spirit with the range to get enemies away from the wall, from either side of the fight, would help a lot, but mobility wouldn't be needed if you force your opponent to go, or avoid, where you want them to. 900 range is kind of the first step to that, but we're not even getting that.

[Shagie.7612]

There's a ton of people who play full cele renegade since the learning curve to do something is a lot more forgiving than Vindi. WvW players are all fried and none of them know how to press buttons or remember what skill set they're on so the alliance legend is asking a lot.

Anyways the elite with some of the worst effective HP and damage avoidance in the game, some of the worst kiting ability in the game post-EoD, and no more damage than anyone else in exchange for it, is stuck at 900 with its weapon and 600 with its legend. Cool.

They're just gonna bump up numbers dramatically and it'll convince everyone that the rework is good design.

[Angesombre.4630]

The biggest problem was that they had to place zones on the floor that didn't fit everywhere. Even on flat ground it sometimes said "no access path". And for the range you also have the example of the dwarf, weapon range 1200.

Inspiring Reinforcement: was bug for 2-3 years.

Forced Engagement: range 1200, 5 target then,

• This skill now requires the revenant to face their initial target. The radius for attacking extra targets has been reduced from 360 to 180 and its range reduced from 1,200 to 600.
• Reduced number of targets from 5 to 1. Increased range from 600 to 900.

While we know that this skill was slow and easily evitable, and also knowing that certain other professions have grapples that are far more efficient in the same genre.

Edited March 1 by Angesombre.4630