Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: Revenant

[Vooksa.2941]

It's difficult for me to keep this short and succinct, but as everyone else has said, spear feels too slow to use, even with quickness, it takes too long and too much effort to upkeep Crushing Abyss/Abyssal Raze against a single target and is too inconsistent when not used in shoulder-to-shoulder zerg content, doesn't have nearly enough cover-conditions where torment, it's only source of damaging DOT, can't be evaporated by a single cleanse, and doesn't have enough range with enough gapclosing to feel impactful. Dodging before you fully charge the lengthy Abyssal Raze cast wastes the charge and cancels the attack, and Abyssal Blitz seemingly has completely random 3-5 mines (and is listed as an Explosion in the tooltip. Absolutely bewildering.)

Much like every other spear I tried, I applied my stubborn insistence of Core builds to the test, and was surprised at the interaction for a Corruption/Invocation/Devastation base, using [Dance of Death] and Relic of the Sorcerer for battlescars that felt only marginally less bad than trying to ram this abyssal toothpick through the various bottlenecks that every elite spec requires of it, but, to be frank:

Revenant is not well-suited to hybrid-damage builds, and so, forcing a 2H hybrid-damage weapon on us is completely pointless. We can adjust the numbers, play with the animation and cast speed, increase the range, increase the damage, add more conditions, whatever, but the fact is, it's extremely difficult to design a hybrid-damage weapon when hybrid-damage isn't a supported playstyle.

Torment is the only condition truly supported by Revenant. Not burning, not poison, and not even bleeding, which before weaponmastery decoupling shortbow, had all Rev bleeding EXCLUSIVE to Renegade. Weakness supports Retribution for strike damage, blind and immobilize supports Salvation for healing, vuln plugs into Devastation for battlescars, and chill converts to torment with one, single Corruption trait. Gone are the days of 2018, when Corruption had traits to inflict torment and chill with critical hits, now are the days when Devastation trades 30% of your might cDPS into pDPS. Glint fields chill and burning, Archemorus fields burning and torment, and still, the best we can manage is a torment-pDPS with two doses of chill, because hey: it was on axe, swords, hammer, and Mallyx, right? So let's slap it on greatsword, [Vassal of the Empire], Icerazor's Ire, and spear. Oh, and I mean landspear, by the way: seaspear has had chill on it since it released in 2015, and somehow manages to be a more effective and diverse hybrid-DPS weapon than landspear is today, featuring range-benefit torment autos, an 8x flurry of vuln, a poison sphere that explodes into chill, a chain that inflicts burning every second it's connected and shadowsteps on reactivation, and a pulsing damage field preventing movement. I swear, whoever was in charge of designing Revenant was either fired or quit, but if he left notes, they've been summarily ignored, or put to the torch entirely. For all you who weren't there: Every Revenant legend and weapon was supposed to synergize somehow, even weakly. You weren't just "using Shiro" while "using a hammer", you were using Shiro's speed to counteract the hammer's slowness and land follow-up attacks. And since then, Revenant has become solidly caged in feeling forced to use a specific weapon, with a specific legend, with specific traits, and never. change.

Given the option:

• I would shuffle landspear's focus on Abyssal Raze: cooldown reduction comes from spending energy, -1s every 10 energy spent, and instead of using Abyssal Raze exclusively generate Crushing Abyss that empowers Abyssal Raze (jeez), I would have Crushing Abyss be stacked whenever torment is applied while holding the spear, and consume up to 5 Crushing Abyss stacks on Abyssal Raze use. This creates a dynamic where spear skills compete with, but never fully supplant legend skills, where casting torment-inflicting spear skills charge Abyssal Raze's damage resource and reduce it's cooldown, and legend skills offer utility and reduce Abyssal Raze's cooldown, but don't necessarily charge it's bonus damage. Herald and Renegade can comfortably use energy upkeep and Orders From Above/Citadel Bombardment for faster Abyssal Razes, but without torment applied, it wouldn't hit as hard; Corruption's [Replenishing Despair], Invocation's [Charged Mists], and Vindicator's Energy Meld under [Angsiyan's Trust] generate more energy, and Corruption's [Invoke Torment] and Invocation's [Song of the Mists] blast conditions when swapping and out of energy.
• Abyssal Raze punches for an initial light jab, inflicting cripple and vuln, while charging a final, Crushing Abyss-consuming blast, with all the fetters it currently has, lining up foes for damage, while helping ensure foes in competitive feel the final hit, especially when under the effects of:
• Abyssal Blot bombards foes inside the ring with control conditions, one for each pulse: first chill, then cripple, then blind, then weakness, then immobilize, then slow alongside the pull. Two 'phases' of strong control prompt players to either double-cleanse, or attempt to wait out the effects and cleanse afterward, risking an Abyssal Raze blast.
• Abyssal Blitz evades for 450 range, but grants 3s of superspeed, placing one mine every second. This allows for a stronger gapcloser, reposition, and escape tool.
• Spear's ranged autos lance 900 units forward in a line, and can pierce multiple targets.
• We could give Abyssal Force a packet of damaging conditions, including bleed, burn, and poison, but ultimately:

We aren't going to have a satisfying hybrid-DPS weapon until hybrid-DPS is actually supported on Revenant.

1) Bring back [Rampant Hex] for torment on crit, [Venom Enhancement] for poison on torment with longer poison, and [Frigid Precision] for a chance to inflict chill on crit, or at least some variation of them, including burning. 2020 absolutely slaughtered a good deal of Corruption's cDPS flexibility, removing a good deal of the crit tech a hybrid build would be relying on, including the multiple strikes made by Shiro's Impossible Odds, Jalis's Vengeful Hammers, and Kalla's Icerazor's Ire.

2) Alter a Devastation trait to inflict bonus damage based on the number of conditions that a foe has, or remove or even reverse the cDPS might penalty on [Notoriety].

3) Alter a Retribution trait to grant bonus damage against movement-impaired foes.

If we can get some of these off the ground again, there might actually be space for a weapon like this, but unless we attack how Revenant INTERACTS with a weapon like this, we're going to just keep going in circles. Scepter is a disaster of a heal-support weapon because it doesn't actually engage with traits, by providing resistance or resolution, or inflicting blinds or immobilizes, or anything that might have given it a distinct advantage over other mainhand weapons, and it exhausts me to see the exact same mindset being applied here with spear.

[Josif.2015]

Abyssal Strike: reduce the Abyssal Raze cooldown reduction from 1.5 to 1 second.
Abyssal Force: reduce the Abyssal Raze cooldown reduction from 10 to 5 seconds.
Abyssal Blitz: increase the Abyssal Raze cooldown reduction from 3 to 5 seconds when you evade an attack.
Abyssal Blot: no changes needed.
Abyssal Raze: no changes needed.

[youle.5824]

10 minutes ago, Josif.2015 said:

Abyssal Strike: reduce the Abyssal Raze cooldown reduction from 1.5 to 1 second.
Abyssal Force: reduce the Abyssal Raze cooldown reduction from 10 to 5 seconds.
Abyssal Blitz: increase the Abyssal Raze cooldown reduction from 3 to 5 seconds when you evade an attack.
Abyssal Blot: no changes needed.
Abyssal Raze: no changes needed.

Are you ok? Do you need help, your post doesn't make any sense so I can't help but worry.  

[Josif.2015]

21 minutes ago, youle.5824 said:

Are you ok? Do you need help, your post doesn't make any sense so I can't help but worry.  

I'm fine and it's just my opinion. I tried to test every profession as much as I could during the beta and I see if a certain skill needs to be changed or not.

[Shagie.7612]

2 hours ago, Josif.2015 said:

I'm fine and it's just my opinion. I tried to test every profession as much as I could during the beta and I see if a certain skill needs to be changed or not.

You wanna explain your thought process behind that one?

The weapon is bad in every game mode, is a worse choice than other available condi options, has zero niche in which it fills for buildcraft, and your concern is... number tuning that makes it worse in most encounters?

Utterly bizarre.

[Markus.6415]

9 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

You wanna explain your thought process behind that one?

The weapon is bad in every game mode, is a worse choice than other available condi options, has zero niche in which it fills for buildcraft, and your concern is... number tuning that makes it worse in most encounters?

Utterly bizarre.

@Josif.2015 is coming to every feedback thread, trying to make everything worse. I wouldn't bother too much...

Edited Wednesday at 08:38 AM by Markus.6415

[arazoth.7290]

Just now, Markus.6415 said:

This guy is coming to every feedback thread and is only trying to make the weapons worse it seems.

haters of the game, only having 1 goal, making it worse for everyone because they feel miserable 👌. You really find them everywhere.

Or he has zero clue 😂

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

19 hours ago, arazoth.7290 said:

haters of the game, only having 1 goal, making it worse for everyone because they feel miserable

"Haters" Don't have to do that. Anet is perfectly capable of doing that themselves, and have for a good while.

I hear rose tinted glasses are cheap this time of year though.