Spear Energy

[Goosekilla.2796]

The cool down reduction mechanic for spear feels kind of out of place on a class that's largely balanced around the energy mechanic. CD reductions look good on paper, but energy and up limiting usefulness in practice. 

Maybe add like +1 energy/sec gain for each abyssal raze stack?

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

I’m not feeling a lack of energy on this weapon at all. Especially when playing with charged mists or Vindi’s version of it. Even without those two option I found the flow of the weapon to be quite fun. The only tip I can recommend is this; just because a skill comes off cooldown, doesn’t mean you need to use it right then and there. If you’re constantly sitting at 0 raze charges, you’re spamming them a bit too fast. That said, the actual most important skill on spear is skill 2, and you want to use that off cool down. Id suggest making one of you legend swaps your “builder” and one of them the “spender”. For example turning mallyx into the spender. Turn on the elite, and use 2 and 5 off cooldown. In the builder legend, let’s say glint or alliance, you only use 2 off cooldown and ONLY use 5 to refresh your stack, as you want to have as many charges as possible when you go back into mallyx. So only 1 or 2 times. You’ll develop an ebb and flow pattern to the playstyle. And if you want to use Renegade? Well you’re kinda locked into charged mists, that legend is too hungry to share space with a majority of weapons.

[Goosekilla.2796]

Just to make sure we're on the same page, it since like you are taking pvp? I am as well, but that matters. 

It's not so much that I feel like I'm constantly running out of energy as the fact that the spear mechanic clashes with the class mechanic. You perfectly described how I recommend playing to new rev players. I mainly just think there's a reason no one is using spear in competitive modes, and giving a bit more energy would be a perk to help get there. It wouldn't be a broken enabler, but rather a bump - there's always *something* I could do to be more effective if I had more energy, regardless of build.

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

No, I’m not talking about pvp because there was 0 mention of it in the opening post and was more looking at it in the general sense. 
 

As far as making it more useful in pvp, that’s something that is on a fine edge at the moment. It has a pretty solid niche as a “ranged” or at least generous melee weapon that is almost exclusively aoe based that can mostly bypass anti projectile mechanics. To me that’s a big win. I feel that it’s more of a flaw of the stacking mechanic that stops it from seeing more play in competitive. There’s just too many evades, blocks, blinds, and movement in the current era of the game to have a weapon that gets stronger based on successful hits. It feels so bad to get to 2 or 3 stacks and then have your 2 not land and refund anything and watch your stacks time out.
 

So yes, either rid the spear of a stacking based mechanic and all its cooldown refunding skills in order to design a single hard hitting skill 5 that can be balanced as such. Or another option is to simply make the stacks build on cast rather than on hit. A third option would to make each charge of raze a different skill. Making a single stack easy to land with a large aoe and unblockable/unblindable and as the stacks go up the skill gets smaller in aoe with less training wheels to land that stack, but with higher damage and a better payout.

[HardStuckBronze.2439]

For PvP I really dislike that crushing abyss procs on weapon swap. Like I played well and got my max stacks and now the big reward is I get to swap to my other weapon to take advantage of crushing abyss? 
 

Chances are people dodged at least one of the slow red circles so I’m out of charges of abyssal raze by the time I’ve hit max stack of crushing abyss so my options are swap or wait for the cd for another powered up raze. It just feels very unrewarding to swap. I don’t know exactly what would be a good fix.
 

Maybe some mechanic where the 5 skill flips and you can consume the stacks whenever you like for no energy cost similar to the consume skill on a facet. Could also have it reduce cd time on your other spear skills in addition to applying the stacked torment so you can repeat the process if you want. Would incentivize the rev player to prioritize obtaining max stacks and also reward the enemy for avoiding the skill. 
 

Honestly anything other than the weapon swap mechanic would feel better. It is a viable weapon. I’ve played it in plat 1 bronze 3 with good success. 

Edited September 7 by HardStuckBronze.2439

[Jobber.6348]

23 hours ago, Goosekilla.2796 said:

Maybe add like +1 energy/sec gain for each abyssal raze stack?

I really like pip concept and energy concepts. This is very interesting to me. 

I hope when Revenant finally does get an updating pass for several core weapons that are just pure clunk, this could be an explored option. (Stuff like Staff especially felt really empty ever since Healing orbs were removed, and emptier still when they messed with Staff 5 and removed all damage in competitive)

Edited September 7 by Jobber.6348

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

We cant have any +Energy pip mechanics though. The UI doesn't support it. And we know very well that this current design team can't or aren't willing to poke around in old code. We only have a range of 10e... +5,0,-5 are the key points visualized on the UI. I understand the idea of wanting  to reduce the cost if  you already have a drain going, which is cool. But what happens If you don't have a drain?? What happens to Herald and their quickness if I'm at -6 but my weapon gives me +1.... do I stop giving quickness? 

I think its a cool mechanic for rev mains that want more depth, but oh boy is that adding more complication for people that want to get into the class.

[pninak.1069]

3 hours ago, UncreativeGreen.2019 said:

We cant have any +Energy pip mechanics though. The UI doesn't support it. And we know very well that this current design team can't or aren't willing to poke around in old code. We only have a range of 10e... +5,0,-5 are the key points visualized on the UI. I understand the idea of wanting  to reduce the cost if  you already have a drain going, which is cool. But what happens If you don't have a drain?? What happens to Herald and their quickness if I'm at -6 but my weapon gives me +1.... do I stop giving quickness? 

I think its a cool mechanic for rev mains that want more depth, but oh boy is that adding more complication for people that want to get into the class.

we get the +1 Energy pip via a trait in corruption. I use it together with the one that copies condis to nearby enemies on legend swap. this allows to do the full combo so elite and 2 more skills to be used and unlike mallyx which sits at 0 regen you get slowly your energy back. this allows you to get max stacks before you swap back to mallyx. for safety I switched to that condi removal trait in invocations tho I am not sure which takes priority. if a condition gets removed before copied, it would suck as you remove the torment before it gets copied.

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

9 minutes ago, pninak.1069 said:

we get the +1 Energy pip via a trait in corruption.

That’s treated more like a -1 to your -total drain. So only +1 if you have a drain. A +1/2/3 mechanic won’t fit the UI unless it’s under the same limitations as the mentioned trait.

[arazoth.7290]

8 hours ago, pninak.1069 said:

we get the +1 Energy pip via a trait in corruption. I use it together with the one that copies condis to nearby enemies on legend swap. this allows to do the full combo so elite and 2 more skills to be used and unlike mallyx which sits at 0 regen you get slowly your energy back. this allows you to get max stacks before you swap back to mallyx. for safety I switched to that condi removal trait in invocations tho I am not sure which takes priority. if a condition gets removed before copied, it would suck as you remove the torment before it gets copied.

there is a small delay ik the transfer, the condi removal on switch is faster

[Jobber.6348]

14 hours ago, UncreativeGreen.2019 said:

I think its a cool mechanic for rev mains that want more depth, but oh boy is that adding more complication for people that want to get into the class.

What I can really dig is for Charged Mists to either:

1. Simply change your new default and swap energy to 75 (65 in pvp maybe?). It's a GM kitten. It should be good. 

2. Grant 3 stacks of "Free Cast" upon casting an Elite Skill, making your next 3 Weapon or Utility Energy costing skills not cost Energy. 
 

Edited September 8 by Jobber.6348

[HardStuckBronze.2439]

100% agree with removing the energy threshold requirement to proc charged mists. Seems like a simple change and would be befitting of it being a grandmaster trait 

[Angesombre.4630]

Maybe it would be more useful to have some kind of small increase on a trait rather than gaining 5 energy points if you manage to throw an anti stun.

[Jobber.6348]

12 minutes ago, Angesombre.4630 said:

Maybe it would be more useful to have some kind of small increase on a trait rather than gaining 5 energy points if you manage to throw an anti stun.

I would swap Glaring Resolve with Contained Temper and revert it to granting Fury upon disabling enemies.

Alternatively Contained Temper buffs your F2 to become a Stunbreak. Stunbreak that has 20s cooldown and can be used without swapping Legend and has an Energy Cost depending on Spec? Sounds good to me.

Edited September 8 by Jobber.6348

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

Yeah I really hate contained temper now. Was such a bad change for no reason (well the reason is cause the balance update looked a little to light so they threw a dart at a board with traits on it, but yeah.) The thing that makes me scratch my head about it is that it just really doesn't help you anywhere. You still need the total cost of the stun break first in order to use it to then get the refund, but then it either:
A. Kittens with your charged mists as you have to linger longer in order to drop below 10e again. 
B. Will swap anyways after that stun break and will waste that energy
C. The one useful place it makes sense to work in, the pvp modes, where you think getting energy back to counter attack would be great, and you get 5e..... 5 kittening energy xD

Man I hate that trait so much. So yes, merge it into Glaring resolve, anything to open back up that minor trait. I mean an energy refund on applying a CC would be 99% more useful then a refund on a successful stun break. Give it back it's fury too. A trait line all about fury and you can only reach 50% uptime by swapping off cooldown. Not every one is playing herald anet. Fury used to be Rev's "main" boon that it was themed around.

And yes, It's time now to remove the restriction on charged mists, 10000% agree. It's a GRANDMASTER trait, please make it worth the slot and not have to play a  mini game to use it. (its like if warrior's fast hands trait, their gameplay defining trait, which is a minor xD, worked to reduce their weapon swap by 5s, but only if they used it between 5 and 6s. If they missed that 1s window it goes on a full 10s cd. what a ball ache)

[Angesombre.4630]

5 hours ago, Jobber.6348 said:

I would swap Glaring Resolve with Contained Temper and revert it to granting Fury upon disabling enemies.

Alternatively Contained Temper buffs your F2 to become a Stunbreak. Stunbreak that has 20s cooldown and can be used without swapping Legend and has an Energy Cost depending on Spec? Sounds good to me.

It would be better where it was before. For as stated in the description of “Invocation”.

Invocation grants bonuses when switching between legends, giving you access to the fury boon. Enhancements to fury give additional damage and an increased critical-hit chance.

There are several traits that have become so weak with nerfing that their usefulness may be called into question.
This is just my opinion, but for example: “Assassin's Presence”, “Bold Reversal”, “Contained Temper”.

[ArthurDent.9538]

On 9/8/2024 at 3:51 AM, Jobber.6348 said:

What I can really dig is for Charged Mists to either:

1. Simply change your new default and swap energy to 75 (65 in pvp maybe?). It's a GM kitten. It should be good. 

2. Grant 3 stacks of "Free Cast" upon casting an Elite Skill, making your next 3 Weapon or Utility Energy costing skills not cost Energy. 
 

That second suggestion sounds absolutely broken on malyx and maybe ventari. And still super strong on everything other than glint.

[Jobber.6348]

38 minutes ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

That second suggestion sounds absolutely broken on malyx and maybe ventari. And still super strong on everything other than glint.

It's as if GMs should actually be strong! 

The reason it's suggested as "number of casts" because it can be easily be balanced by reducing the number of free casts the player is allowed to have.